Today’s episode features Mike Salemi.  Mike specializes in human performance and is a sought after international presenter in the field of health and fitness. He has a diverse background in strength and conditioning and has competed over the course of 15+ years at an elite level in Powerlifting and Kettlebell Sport.

Through his own path of resolving sport-related injuries, Mike understands the importance of integrating the body, mind and spirit as a means to foster high performance for the long term.  His motivation is to help athletes, fitness professionals, and coaches discover their own potential from the inside out.  He has extensive experience learning from Paul Chek, and integrating this into a holistic method of athletic performance.

For this podcast, which was recorded in-person, Mike takes us through how his injuries in his athletic experience provided a gateway for him to learn more about his body and move into another realm of movement.   One of the big things Mike shares with us is his use of “working in” (as opposed to working out), which he learned from Paul Chek, and how to use this as a means to improve athletic recovery and psychological performance in competition.  Mike and I worked out together prior to this recording, and I was able to experience first-hand his integration of breathing into various athletic movements with a HIRTS band and the Bulgarian (Suples) bag.

Mike also shares with us thoughts on tonic vs. phasic muscle system balance, and how to fix it (which has striking resemblance to the performance of extreme ISOs in Jay Schroeder’s system), as well as how he incorporates ELDOA stretching into his practice.

Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.

Key Points

How Mike has utilized band work as a creative, flow based series to train the body

What Mike has learned coming off of powerlifting in terms of training the body from a functional perspective

Working out versus working in and the impact of working in on holistic high performance

Psychological and recovery benefits of “working in” techniques

How to get started with “working in”

Tonic vs. Phasic system imbalances and how to assess and correct them

Mike’s use of ELDOA work in his training

Mike Salemi Quotes

“The link between grip and shoulder stability, I’ve seen a lot of people working with these tools (Suples Bag) increase shoulder stability in overhead movements and such, because they can irradiate the tension from the grip all the way through into the shoulder joint”

“When it comes to sport specific qualities, you need to have freedom of movement, and integration with the breath”

“Uncontrolled deceleration is where I see most all the injuries happen, especially in the planes we don’t train”

“Rotation is probably one of the most important patterns for day to day living and sport, and we never train it”

“Through every injury, is what I found is it opened to the door to understanding myself better and what I was missing in my own training"

“Paul (Chek) put an emphasis on balancing the body not only structurally, but energetically”

“A working out exercise is an energy expenditure activity, working in is an energy cultivating activity”

“If you teach someone something but you don’t live it, I think people pick up on that”

“You can pick a very familiar movement (for working in) done bodyweight, you take that movement, and then there are four criteria that show if you are working out and in a sympathetic state: Number one is if you are sweating; if you are sweating you know you are working out.  Two is digestion, if you can’t do the working in exercise on a full stomach, then you know it’s not activating the parasympathetic nervous system.  The third is the tongue should stay moist, and the fourth/fifth is the heart rate and respiratory rate shoul...