Welcome to the Reactive Strength Training Paradigm

3 Keys to Excelling in this New Training Paradigm.

Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson carted off after a reactive strength injury (Achilles tendon rupture) against the Cincinnati Bengals, Sunday Oct. 20, 2024. Source

Nick Chubb’s Return to Performance

We were closely following the Cleveland Browns' Week 8 game against the Bengals, as Browns running back Nick Chubb made his highly anticipated return from a severe knee injury. Our plan was to write a positive piece on the NFL, focusing on one of its top players successfully returning to performance. Subscribers may recall that last year, before his injury, we spotlighted Chubb as an example of an athlete who had developed a neurological network of absolute strength—one of the fundamental capacities of Point B.

We've previously discussed a phenomenon we’ve observed firsthand in our work with athletes who possess well-developed neurological networks of absolute strength.¹ These athletes tend to make remarkable returns to performance—recovering quicker than those without such neurology. Their neurological ability to stimulate biological tissues pushes adaptation, accelerating recovery in ways that other athletes cannot match. Chubb's return was the real-life example we intended to highlight.²

However, the NFL’s ongoing Reactive Strength Problem overshadowed this moment once again.

Deshaun Watson: The $16.4 Million Dollar Dead Money Reactive Strength Tax

As we've been writing for over two years—same NFL injury storyline, different day—and no, this time you can’t blame artificial surfaces.³

Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson went to scramble out of the pocket to evade pressure, planting his foot on natural grass to change direction. In that non-contact normal force transmission scenario, we saw the all-too-familiar yielding of abnormal connective tissue architecture.⁴ This is the hallmark of a reactive strength injury—something we at Absolute were the first to identify, define, and offer specific training and treatment solution to.⁵

Source to video.

We jokingly wrote after Dre Greenlaw ruptured his Achilles tendon while simply jogging onto the field during Super Bowl 58 that the NFL would be the 'gift that keeps on giving' in terms of providing real-life examples of reactive strength injuries in normal force transmission scenarios.⁶ Due to the lack of connective tissue-specific reactive strength training and treatment⁷ in NFL facilities, we knew more of these injuries were inevitable. But even we, who recognize this as a billion-dollar problem for the NFL, didn’t anticipate it being this bad.

Reactive Strength Injury Dead Money

We introduced the term Reactive Strength Dead Money to spotlight how much money NFL ownership is losing due to ineffective training strategies executed by their performance staffs.⁸ Billionaires tend to understand the economics of a problem—profits, losses, payroll, etc.—so let’s frame this problem in terms of how much of a limiting constraint this dead money places on the organization.⁹

With Watson now sidelined for the rest of the season, the Cleveland Browns are giving the San Francisco 49ers a real race for what franchise will be paying the biggest dead money bill this season.

Dead Money: A Tax on Organizations

Dead money is essentially a tax on organizations for not having their athletes' connective tissue at Point B. When these injuries are viewed as a financial tax on the organization, billionaires will quickly take notice and run to their accounting departments, demanding them do something to lower it. But that’s the wrong department. They can’t just move some numbers around to avoid this tax—it's an indirect tax, one that results from the injured members on their payroll not being at Point B.

While this tax can’t be completely eliminated, it can be reduced—music to ears of a billionaire, you know it’s true. The only pathway to reduce this tax is by utilizing treatment and training work to stimulate the development of athletes to reach Point B. Subscribers now understand that we as strength practitioners are responsible for getting the payroll to Point B, which means we are the only ones who can lower this indirect tax.¹⁰

Update: The NFL Reactive Strength Problem is very dynamic, and since writing, Dak Prescott has been placed on injured reserve (IR) due to a reactive hamstring injury.¹¹ With an $80 million signing bonus and a base salary of $1.25 million per game, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones just received a 'reactive strength dead tax bill' that he's likely not too pleased to be paying.

The Reactive Strength Paradigm

We are living in a new paradigm—the reactive strength paradigm. It used to be that an athlete's neurology was the main limiting factor in high performance—this is no longer the case.¹² Repetition is key in understanding this shift, so here we are beating the dead horse for the strength practitioner—you’re welcome.

The reactive strength paradigm is frustrating for a strength practitioners who understands the new definition of reactive strength. We see stagnation all around us. Athletes central nervous systems (CNS) are being constrained by suboptimal connective tissue architecture and are being removed from the level of competition. This places them at the only level they can function at, which is the level of adaptation—recall, this is the level that we 'coach' at.

To be clear, training occurs at the level of adaptation and coaching occurs at the level of competition. Watson, McCaffrey, etc. are all at the level of adaption, and the only pathway to get back to the level of competition is to stimulate the development of their connective tissues to get to Point B. There is no other pathway that will get them back to the level of competition.

Note: This problem has driven lots of new traffic and attention to us at Absolute, and so we apologize to long time subscribers—we will cover other topics soon. Rest assured, we are actively exploring the uncharted territory of tissue resonance, with a focused intent to develop innovative treatment and training solutions that push the boundaries of what we do and allow us to thrive in this reactive strength training paradigm. We look forward to sharing this with and getting your essential feedback.

Lowering the Dead Money Tax

One person's problem is another's profit. With the attention and discussions we've been having, it’s clear that this issue is generating opportunities for us practitioners—after all, we are the only ones capable of solving the problem that reduces this tax.¹³

There is no time to waste—we have to rapidly evolve from a primary neurological training paradigm to one that optimally trains reactive strength, ensuring the tissues supporting force transmission generated by CNS outputs are completely unconstrained.

For the optimists like us, this is the future and reality we are working towards—where optimally developed neurology is unconstrained by biological connective tissues. We want a reality where connective tissue enables the neurology to behave in NEW, HIGHER outputs—levels of performance we’ve never seen before.

For the pessimists, understand this: treatment and training is the only pathway out of this problem that reduces this nasty tax. Get on board—there’s room for you.

Keys to Excelling in the Reactive Strength Paradigm

1. Understand Our Definition of Reactive Strength

• Founders Meeting Review: The first thing to do is to watch the Founders Meeting on Reactive Strength. This will help you identify exactly where the blind spots are in the old definition of reactive strength. It puts the pieces of this puzzle together, revealing that the old, inaccurate, and incomplete model of reactive strength only considers the top-down neurological component while completely neglecting the bottom-up ¹⁴biological elements responsible for reactive strength.