The Conjugate Edge #09: Defining a Conjugate Programming Sequence
How Olin Kreutz Sequences an NFL Lineman's Nervous System and Biology—and What It Would Take to Finally Kill Malik Nabers' Mosquito
Welcome to Installment #09 of The Conjugate Edge. Each month, we publish one essay designed to help programmers in strength and clinical settings step off the linear path and onto our conjugate strategy—one that propagates athletes from Point A→ Point B. This is the programmers go-to source for the most up-to-date thinking on Conjugate—not as a method, not as a system, but as a living programming strategy that treats and trains concurrently in real time. Want to join the conversation? Become a paid subscriber to access comments and our private chat. Want to go deeper? Check out our online course: The Art & Science of Programming.
In Conjugate Edge #08, we made the case that concurrent is conjugate—programming methods together inside one training week is what conjugation means. That piece was about structure: which methods, run together.
This piece is Conjugate Edge is about order.
What It Means to Sequence
Concurrent and sequenced are not the same thing. Concurrent means multiple treatment and training inputs—thermodynamic cycles of propagating work—running together. That work is programmed at a retaining or stimulatory intensity; never at a detraining one.
Sequenced means you’ve organized the order those inputs run in. You can’t sequence something that isn’t concurrent—but running things concurrently doesn’t mean you’ve sequenced them. This is why the Soviets termed it a Conjugate Sequencing System. They were signaling something specific: sequence is what makes the difference.
Uncertainty to Order to a Conjugate Sequence
We’ve told you there is uncertainty in programming—here’s the case in point. As a programmer, you don’t know the right order on day one. A single day only shows you what the inputs do in real time and how the individual responds to them. You need a handful of sessions across a week to select which inputs you need, based on what your Point A findings are telling you.
Once you have that information flow—how the trainee is responding to each input—you decide which ones stay in, which Point B capacities need more attention than the others, and from there you sequence the inputs and iterate on that sequence using those same inputs.
At Absolute, this is what we mean by conjugating inputs.
Conjugating—definition (Absolute Sport Science): Liking multiple inputs that are each propagating work toward Point B, and sequencing them together on purpose so they produce a cumulative, multifaceted effect—rather than the isolated effect each would produce on its own.
We like all the inputs we have in. They’re all propagating work, each moving the athlete toward Point B. The question becomes how we sequence them to create that cumulative, multiplicative effect. You’ve got the inputs—now you iterate with them to actualize that effect. Push it to the edge. Stack stimulatory onto stimulatory onto stimulatory, and find where the edge is.
Understand: To get more, you’ve got to move that edge.
An NFL Lineman Programming Other NFL Linemen’s Training Work
Here’s what that looks like in real life, in 2026. Olin Kreutz programs the first training work that constrains and uses the nervous system to maximally output its neural network of absolute strength into a joint. He does this to prime the joints he’s identified, on film, as being a limiting constraint on the emergence of a special strength of blocking. His best Point A feedback loop is scanning the film for fragility in the lineman’s ability to get violent at the Level of Competition.
He overlays that film read with an up-to-date, objective physical assessment of reactive strength and joint function—the biological capacities for Point B. Integrating those two feedback loops tells him exactly which joints and tissues need propagating training work.
After the scan, he observes what’s missing on the field from either a joint or a tissue perspective. Does the athlete have a dysfunctional joint that needs to be normalized? Is the joint functioning normally but the tissue is abnormal, resulting in a reactive strength deficit?
It’s normally both to some degree (see, more uncertainty)—an untrained, dysfunctional joint paired with a reactive strength deficit. He knows this firsthand, not just from the film and the assessment data, but from fourteen-plus seasons in the NFL: that biological limiter, if not removed, can prematurely end a playing career where the neurology is still there but the biology isn’t.
Once the neural network has voluntarily and maximally output into the joints, he transitions directly into building toward a training max on a box squat or press. So: stimulatory work for the joint and reactive strength first, then stimulatory work to scale up the neural network of absolute strength. That’s exactly what’s happening, and understand: it’s not an accident—he sequenced it that way by intent. He wants to find the limiting joint function and reactive strength deficiencies the football field exposes, and resolve those before adding more nodes into the neural network. Joint function and reactive strength get added to that network first.
This is strategy, this is discipline. Scan for trainable weaknesses from the Level of Competition and leverage the programming strategy to acquire the capacities that fill those weaknesses. Be aggressive with programming. Find the edge—push the edge until you get what you want, then drop back and hold. Integrate. Be patient when you want to get aggressive, and use that aggression to acquire a capacity you don’t have yet—one that changes the game. This type of programming work rewards in non-linear ways. Once again, he knows this via skin in the game.
The sequence doesn’t stop there. It keeps going—into special practice, into the punch, into the biological tissue work that comes right after it—and that’s where Olin’s cascade actually finishes multiplying and compounding.
If you stop reading here, you get the setup. You don’t get the sequence.
Paid subscribers get the rest of Olin’s cascade—how he sequences practice, the punch, and biological tissue work on top of everything above, the full Conjugate Programming Sequence definition earned through his example, his weekly structure, and a live walkthrough of his logic applied to Malik Nabers.
