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Kaiser Serajuddin: Kaiser here on another issue of Super-Trainer where I introduce you to the brightest and the best in the fitness industry and today, I have exactly that. A trainer with one of the most diverse and probably coolest training practices that I’ve ever seen with a huge training business, working with professional football players and a Nike sponsorship himself. You’ve got to say he’s doing it all. Of course I’m talking about Jason Hadeed. Welcome Jason.
Jason Hadeed: Hey. How are you guys doing?
Kaiser Serajuddin: Good, good. I mean I talked about all the things you do. I mean if it sounds like I’m gushing over you, I’m a fan of yours, it’s because I am. I mean you got to be in this business to really appreciate what you did. I mean you also were a strength coach on the Olympic level with the ‘96, ‘98 bobsled team and a coach of the Ravens and the Redskins in the NFL. Now, that’s the first thing I want to get out of the way.
I think a lot of new trainers, they’re going to be intimidated by your resume and may not even want to get started or get too active at all. So can you just explain to me how did you get started as a trainer first off?
Jason Hadeed: Well, I have enough pretty funny stories when I was coming out of high school. I came from a very big football school and I was like the – kind of give it to you now, like the movie Friday Night Lights. Small town, football is everything. The expectation to win was very high and training was something that we had to do from ’88 to ’92 when I was in high school and somehow became very passionate but when I got through college, I entered my major as pre-dentistry.
Kaiser Serajuddin: Wow.
Jason Hadeed: My uncle at the time and still is, is an orthodontist and a periodontist and I just figured, you know what, I was really good at science and understood and that maybe told us what I was going to pursue. I eventually met the guy who really changed my training philosophy, John Philbin, the summer I believe of ’93 and went through a camp that he was putting on and was teaching high intensity training principles. And in about a six-week period, I literally transformed my body more than I have in the past four years of [0:02:18] [Indiscernible] football.
I was really intrigued by it and then trying to understand the basic science and applications and the reasoning behind it. I’ve never – I was never given a reason to why we did what we did in high school but that was fine. We’re dealing with football coaches and they were doing their best and there were some darn good football coaches.
But there was really never a reason why we do – why certain exercises are on certain days and I didn’t know anything about recovery. I thought more was better. So I started learning. I became really interested in this and that all of a sudden sparked like my passion for dealing with athletes. Part of that was more bodybuilding for me because I was just trying to look good for the ladies. I was fine.
Kaiser Serajuddin: Yes.
Jason Hadeed: [0:03:01] [Indiscernible]
Kaiser Serajuddin: All right.
Jason Hadeed: So that really began like the actual passion for me, I mean, right there.
Kaiser Serajuddin: OK. And then just for building your resume, how did that actively start to grow? I mean did that just come out of your passion or did you really have a plan for what you want to do in this business?
Jason Hadeed: Well, when I got to the University of Maryland, I was sitting with my adviser and they would ask you what your ultimate goal is. My ultimate goal was to work in the NFL and it was something that I was [Indiscernible] my other passion. Football is – I love it. I love it. I love it at all levels and I really wanted to get to that goal because if you’re on strength and conditioning – at least I believe in making them [0:03:48] [Indiscernible] coach is the ultimate position to hold and was [Indiscernible]. That’s where I wanted to go.
So my plan was to really travel and learn from as many NFL training coaches and strength coaches alike at every level to figure out why what they do works for them. And ultimately I guess I decided that I was going to put together my own plan, my own strategy to approaching and developing athletes with the underlying principles of using high intensity training. But from what I gathered from a lot of different strength coaches, whether it was a strength coach that used Olympic list as a foundation for his program or traditional method of multi-set progressions, I found that everybody had success. It was just from a different approach.
So if you took all those models and somehow fuse them and use variety as we all preach as the underlying principle, your progress can almost be amplified.
Kaiser Serajuddin: OK.
Jason Hadeed: And that’s really what my strategy was to learn from everybody and I was actually really fortunate to learn from Dr. Benton Botnick [0:04:59] [Phonetic] who was from the Soviet Bloc who had a firm grasp of plyometrics and I think it’s – I don’t want to stand up on a pedestal. I think it’s funny and you see a lot of your trainers. They really don’t even understand what the word plyometric means, more or less how to apply plyometrics in a progressive setting.
Kaiser Serajuddin: OK.
Jason Hadeed: And I learned from him and that was a good experience.
Kaiser Serajuddin: Oh, yes. That’s a really amazing story. I mean you’re really proactive and so it helped your career. I just want to point out to everyone that you’re still in your early 30s. It’s not like you’re 80 years old like Mike Boyle. You’re …
Jason Hadeed: No, no.
Kaiser Serajuddin: No.
Jason Hadeed: Yes, I’m …
Kaiser Serajuddin: You’ve really done a lot.
Jason Hadeed: Well, no. And thanks to guys like Mike Boyle. I mean they surely opened the door [0:05:41] [Indiscernible]. I guess I’m like the youngest but I’m 33.
Kaiser Serajuddin: Yes.
Jason Hadeed: Those are the guys that opened the doors for us and made this truly a profession.
Kaiser Serajuddin: Yes.
Jason Hadeed: So my hats off to those guys that came before us.
Kaiser Serajuddin: In terms of a home base – just to everyone, Jason is the owner of Elite Athlete Training System in Germantown, Maryland not far from DC. That’s not your average training business, Jason. You cater to both what we would call the general population and to elite athletes in one place. Can you just talk a little bit about how you train and practice, how it’s set up?
Jason Hadeed: Yes. Well, one of the things I learned especially as I got older, you don’t want to lose like who you think you are. What I mean who I think I am, I still think of myself as an athlete. I still play basketball in the mornings with my buddies from high school and it’s early in the morning now because we all have jobs but we still think we’re pretty athletic. What I get turned off to is when people try to peg at my age range or a little higher just to where all of a sudden now it’s sedentary. We have to do things a little less active and so my goal early on was to market my services to athletes with the idea that people my age …
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