Coach Ted talks about redefining yourself and what’s possible in your training.
Another Telesco Profundity
arrow_drop_down_circle
Divider Text
Another Telesco Profundity
Season 9/Episode 13
July 9, 2024
[Block//Author//First Name] [Block//Author//Last Name] [Block//Date Added %M j, Y g:i a%+0d0h0m]
[Block//Comment]
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Introduction
This is The Ted O'Neill program, where we explore the science and philosophies for performance optimization, and the elevation of the human experience from the mind of Ted O'Neill, with John Leon Guerrero.
0:20 Ted
I remember Charlie Telesco, who had a 2400 pound total, and he went from like a 1600 pound total to 2400 in like a year and a half in this training group.
0:29 Jon
Yeah, we definitely talked about that, yeah.
0:32 Ted
Yeah. Like a mediocre guy to, like, runner up in a very hotly contested nationals, and really a world class lifter by all accounts. But he was a very balanced lifter. He was assisting me training a group of new guys, and they were doing their dynamic effort day in the squat. And they got to the end, and I asked him, and I said, how many I said, “what set are you on?” They said, “We're done.” “It wasn’t a question, (yeah,) what set are you on?” And they're like, “Well, we're done.” “Start over.Because none of them looked good.” Right? And so Charlie's kind of smiling because he was, he had gone from kind of like, I don't want to say a goofy kid, but for lack of a better term, kind of a carefree, goofy kid, until just like this, stern stone faced, like, you know, beginners have no rights, no say nothing. They're just here for work. Like that was, that's who he became. So kind of smile so these guys go through the second iteration of their speed day. He looks at me and he's like, Man, that's a lot of work. I said, I don't, I don't know that we can do that, like two speed days on top of each other. (Yeah) Now, of course, they're newer, so they don't know how to produce force and all this kind of thing at that point, like we're all in. So the next week comes up. What do you think's gonna happen? Because Charlie saw this, and he was the one who was always the instigator in this group of seniors, but he was a little bit younger than the rest of us, and so (weeper snapper) yeah, we get to, you know, our last set. We had planned out eight sets of two. We were at the top of our speed wave and so…
2:04 Jon
And I know what Charlie said.
2:06 Ted
He didn't say anything. He just went over to the ninth set. One of the guys said, we're done. Charlie doesn't answer. He just racks it. So I take the ninth set, and then the other guys kind of look at each other. They go again.
2:20 Jon
They can't whip out. (No) That's out of the question. What does Charlie do next?
2:25 Ted
Same thing. So I’m thinking, Okay, we're probably going to go to 10, maybe 12, because that's not outside the balance. And we get to 12, and then, like one of my guys Dylan, I think, takes the belt off in a demonstration of we're done. So there you go. Well Charlie jumps right back in. And I'm thinking, all right, we'll go into 16 I know what he's taking. (Yeah) We gave those new kids something, and we always lived by the demonstration. So if we were gonna assign something, we had to live it too. That's just, that's just how it was. I didn't feel that I necessarily had to live that particular demonstration, because we weren't the ones who weren't putting the effort in, (yeah), but nevertheless, we got to 16. 16 sets in, and then, so that's a lot, because the more advanced you get on this speed work, the more fatiguing it is. (Yeah) I remember Dave Tate telling me, 25 plus years ago, you could do anything other than lay on the ground for 20 minutes after doing speed squads, you don't know how to do speed squats in your body hasn't been trained to fire maximally against the resistance, and we found that to be true. So we're on set 16. Two of the guys are like, You know what? This is stupid. You know, we still got to train Monday, (yeah) for a big day coming up. We got a meet coming up, and Charlie just went back up the bar again. And I'm thinking, we're in for a long call. Let's get it. (Yeah) Let's do this kid you want to go. He doesn't say a word, by the way, isn't spoken the whole training session, as he was prone to doing so…
3:55 Jon
Live by the example,
3:57
As we're going through this thing, set after set after set, he does 25 and he's starting to show signs a little bit because when I look at him I know this guy is pretty good at this point. He's a little bit like, and everyone else is done, like, people are going home. We're still in this and we're still going like clock. Like we're not resting eight minutes in between. It’s a speed day. We’re going. So he takes that set and kind of wanders around for a second and I get under and I go again and he yells out. Why won't you die old man? Wasn't even old then, like this was back in 2008 so, yeah, that (that’s terrific) was obviously what he was trying to get me to do, right? So I think we ended up going to, like, 26 sets or something. It was one of those mutually assured destruction moments where we kind of looked at each other after the 26 why we both knew, Okay, we did it. So that's the way that sometimes you can dig in so deep and throw yourself into the work to the point where you don't have a lifeline out and you have no idea where you're going. You're just in the moment. And there's a value in that, because it creates a redefinition of self. And until you've experienced that, in my mind, you don't understand the process of training. You know how to maybe do sets and reps, but you don't know how to go into the unknown. Now, what was cool about that moment is, since that time, that feet have been broken many, many times. I took a new guy, 45 sets deep into speed work. Now, this was a little bit different, what we call a lactic acid tolerance train. So this wasn't like five plates on the squat like me and Charlie doing that day. Like a legitimate speedweight for us Like 25 sets. This was a little bit lighter to where you go in very short rest. But it was someone who was a little cocky, a new guy. He got pulled all the way into the deep but we now had that path, you know, in front of us, and since that time we had done it many, many more times, to where we had done 20 sets, 25 sets, 30 set, to see who could walk that gauntlet and redefine themselves to the process of training the moment. Now, trading purists will say, well, that's just stupid. That's not, that's not how the dynamic everyday works. Blah, blah, blah, do it. It's done this. It's a volumetric progression. It's designed for, yeah, whatever. Right. You know, (got done). It got done and it served multiple purposes. Because sometimes the greater part of training is, where's your mind? Like, what do you have in your brain? How strong are you mentally? Because if you have this thing down advanced trainee, and you're doing speed work per the definition of the work, where you're actually exerting maximum force against a sub maximal object, and you have your volume parameters, and you're literally in as hard as you can. That's now a known quantity. Does that make sense? (Yeah) So you've controlled the variables to the point where now that's what they're in the know. (That's right.) So in order to have something to do happen, you would have to step outside of those parameters, right? Because at first, when you're doing it, like, there's the volume, and it's like, yeah, this is where we scale volume. Here's how we do, all the technical stuff. But then the person has to harden to that work, to where they've walked into those shoes, where now they are fulfilling from the athletes requirement, not the foundational nuts and bolts of training, but what the individual has to bring. Because when you've got that on lockdown. What else can you do? Well that’s up to the individual to determine.
7:43 Jon
We’ll stir the second week in a row, we’re going to let the profound words of Charlie Telesco teach us a lesson.
This is The Ted O'Neill program, where we explore the science and philosophies for performance optimization, and the elevation of the human experience from the mind of Ted O'Neill, with John Leon Guerrero.
0:20 Ted
I remember Charlie Telesco, who had a 2400 pound total, and he went from like a 1600 pound total to 2400 in like a year and a half in this training group.
0:29 Jon
Yeah, we definitely talked about that, yeah.
0:32 Ted
Yeah. Like a mediocre guy to, like, runner up in a very hotly contested nationals, and really a world class lifter by all accounts. But he was a very balanced lifter. He was assisting me training a group of new guys, and they were doing their dynamic effort day in the squat. And they got to the end, and I asked him, and I said, how many I said, “what set are you on?” They said, “We're done.” “It wasn’t a question, (yeah,) what set are you on?” And they're like, “Well, we're done.” “Start over.Because none of them looked good.” Right? And so Charlie's kind of smiling because he was, he had gone from kind of like, I don't want to say a goofy kid, but for lack of a better term, kind of a carefree, goofy kid, until just like this, stern stone faced, like, you know, beginners have no rights, no say nothing. They're just here for work. Like that was, that's who he became. So kind of smile so these guys go through the second iteration of their speed day. He looks at me and he's like, Man, that's a lot of work. I said, I don't, I don't know that we can do that, like two speed days on top of each other. (Yeah) Now, of course, they're newer, so they don't know how to produce force and all this kind of thing at that point, like we're all in. So the next week comes up. What do you think's gonna happen? Because Charlie saw this, and he was the one who was always the instigator in this group of seniors, but he was a little bit younger than the rest of us, and so (weeper snapper) yeah, we get to, you know, our last set. We had planned out eight sets of two. We were at the top of our speed wave and so…
2:04 Jon
And I know what Charlie said.
2:06 Ted
He didn't say anything. He just went over to the ninth set. One of the guys said, we're done. Charlie doesn't answer. He just racks it. So I take the ninth set, and then the other guys kind of look at each other. They go again.
2:20 Jon
They can't whip out. (No) That's out of the question. What does Charlie do next?
2:25 Ted
Same thing. So I’m thinking, Okay, we're probably going to go to 10, maybe 12, because that's not outside the balance. And we get to 12, and then, like one of my guys Dylan, I think, takes the belt off in a demonstration of we're done. So there you go. Well Charlie jumps right back in. And I'm thinking, all right, we'll go into 16 I know what he's taking. (Yeah) We gave those new kids something, and we always lived by the demonstration. So if we were gonna assign something, we had to live it too. That's just, that's just how it was. I didn't feel that I necessarily had to live that particular demonstration, because we weren't the ones who weren't putting the effort in, (yeah), but nevertheless, we got to 16. 16 sets in, and then, so that's a lot, because the more advanced you get on this speed work, the more fatiguing it is. (Yeah) I remember Dave Tate telling me, 25 plus years ago, you could do anything other than lay on the ground for 20 minutes after doing speed squads, you don't know how to do speed squats in your body hasn't been trained to fire maximally against the resistance, and we found that to be true. So we're on set 16. Two of the guys are like, You know what? This is stupid. You know, we still got to train Monday, (yeah) for a big day coming up. We got a meet coming up, and Charlie just went back up the bar again. And I'm thinking, we're in for a long call. Let's get it. (Yeah) Let's do this kid you want to go. He doesn't say a word, by the way, isn't spoken the whole training session, as he was prone to doing so…
3:55 Jon
Live by the example,
3:57
As we're going through this thing, set after set after set, he does 25 and he's starting to show signs a little bit because when I look at him I know this guy is pretty good at this point. He's a little bit like, and everyone else is done, like, people are going home. We're still in this and we're still going like clock. Like we're not resting eight minutes in between. It’s a speed day. We’re going. So he takes that set and kind of wanders around for a second and I get under and I go again and he yells out. Why won't you die old man? Wasn't even old then, like this was back in 2008 so, yeah, that (that’s terrific) was obviously what he was trying to get me to do, right? So I think we ended up going to, like, 26 sets or something. It was one of those mutually assured destruction moments where we kind of looked at each other after the 26 why we both knew, Okay, we did it. So that's the way that sometimes you can dig in so deep and throw yourself into the work to the point where you don't have a lifeline out and you have no idea where you're going. You're just in the moment. And there's a value in that, because it creates a redefinition of self. And until you've experienced that, in my mind, you don't understand the process of training. You know how to maybe do sets and reps, but you don't know how to go into the unknown. Now, what was cool about that moment is, since that time, that feet have been broken many, many times. I took a new guy, 45 sets deep into speed work. Now, this was a little bit different, what we call a lactic acid tolerance train. So this wasn't like five plates on the squat like me and Charlie doing that day. Like a legitimate speedweight for us Like 25 sets. This was a little bit lighter to where you go in very short rest. But it was someone who was a little cocky, a new guy. He got pulled all the way into the deep but we now had that path, you know, in front of us, and since that time we had done it many, many more times, to where we had done 20 sets, 25 sets, 30 set, to see who could walk that gauntlet and redefine themselves to the process of training the moment. Now, trading purists will say, well, that's just stupid. That's not, that's not how the dynamic everyday works. Blah, blah, blah, do it. It's done this. It's a volumetric progression. It's designed for, yeah, whatever. Right. You know, (got done). It got done and it served multiple purposes. Because sometimes the greater part of training is, where's your mind? Like, what do you have in your brain? How strong are you mentally? Because if you have this thing down advanced trainee, and you're doing speed work per the definition of the work, where you're actually exerting maximum force against a sub maximal object, and you have your volume parameters, and you're literally in as hard as you can. That's now a known quantity. Does that make sense? (Yeah) So you've controlled the variables to the point where now that's what they're in the know. (That's right.) So in order to have something to do happen, you would have to step outside of those parameters, right? Because at first, when you're doing it, like, there's the volume, and it's like, yeah, this is where we scale volume. Here's how we do, all the technical stuff. But then the person has to harden to that work, to where they've walked into those shoes, where now they are fulfilling from the athletes requirement, not the foundational nuts and bolts of training, but what the individual has to bring. Because when you've got that on lockdown. What else can you do? Well that’s up to the individual to determine.
7:43 Jon
We’ll stir the second week in a row, we’re going to let the profound words of Charlie Telesco teach us a lesson.
LISTEN TO MORE EPISODES
LISTEN TO MORE EPISODES
clear
Lifted Academy™ is a high-level coaching platform designed to lift its members to their highest level of fulfillment, purpose, and freedom through the implementation of world-class curricula in the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual planes of experience.
Turn your biggest weakness into your greatest strength.