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Today’s show features Cal Dietz.  Cal has been the Head Olympic Strength and Conditioning coach for numerous sports at the University of Minnesota since 2000, has worked with hundreds of successful athletes and team, and is the co-author of the top-selling book “Triphasic Training”.  Cal has a multi-time guest on this show, most recently appearing in episode #168 (one of our most popular episodes of all time) on single leg training methods alongside Cameron Josse and Chad Dennis. Cal’s ideas on complex training (French contrast and potentiation clusters) have made a huge impact on the formulation of my own programs and methods.   French Contrast as a training ideology and method has probably been one of the most consistent elements of my training for many years now.  Cal is never one to sit still, and has recently made further advances in his complex training sets as they relate to our neurological and technical adaptations to these movements. On today’s show, Cal talks extensively about his new methods in complex training for improving sprint speed.  As Cal has talked about on previous episodes, even bilateral hurdle hops have the potential to “mess athletes up” neurologically, and so Cal goes in detail on how his complex training sets are now adjusted to address that.  Ultimately, Cal has formulated his gym training for the primary purpose of improving sprint speed and sprint mechanics.  We will also get into Cal’s take on block periodization, and how Cal uses 5,10 and 20 yard dash markers to help determine an athlete’s primary training emphasis for the next block of work. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 05:10 – Breaking a lot of eggs to make a cake: Training Cal and Joel has utilized in that past that may not have worked out so well for the athlete in the process of growing as a coach 12:52 – Cal’s experience with various methods of training + How he trained his son during covid-19 19:56 – Using running and speed to assess athletes, and creating the required adaptations 25:53 – What led Cal to utilizing block method training and block overloads 29:51 – Interpreting and discussing maximal velocity as a training lynchpin 31:45 – Using squats + Examples of “sprint-centric” exercise sets Cal uses 41:34 – What Cal’s working on: Optimizing exercises for your athletes as individuals + Exercises that are best for your brain 43:09 – Quad-dominant vs. Posterior chain dominant athlete assessments + Cal’s 5-10-20 tool 50:45 – The 5-10-20 tool simplified 54:00 – Exercises Cal would assign for Joel, as someone who needs isometric strength? + The best single leg exercise for building leg strength “Usually I had a download (de-load) week and then I’d change the exercise. Then, I started changing the exercises in the download week so the volume was low… that matched the following week so they didn’t get sore starting with the higher volume… I found that when I implemented a new exercise, that’s when they got sore.” “I trained an agonistic muscle with an antagonistic muscle… so what happened was, it didn’t cause a compensation pattern and it kept the global neurological sequence of the nervous system in the right pattern the whole time and it optimized it.” “Running is one of the greatest assessments of any athlete.” “I call it global neurological sequence, it’s just the order and sequence your body moves.” “Max velocity is an indicator of potential in the nervous system, let’s be honest.” “I would start my first set with my quad-dominant athletes at the rear posterior chain exercise and then cycle through everything, which is actually better, Joel, for my weight room functioning.” “I was able to create a tool off a 10-20-yard dash that told me what their weakest link was in training. So, it’s an indicator of what they need for the next two to four weeks in training...

Today’s show features Jeremy Frisch and Calin Butterfield.  Jeremy is the owner and director of Achieve Performance Training in Clinton, Mass, has been a multi-time guest on the show with all-things youth and creative training, game-play and long-term development.  Jeremy is not only a strength coach, but also has skin in the game as a youth sports coach, and provides an incredible holistic perspective on the entire umbrella of athletic development.  Calin Butterfield is the high performance manager at U.S. Ski & Snowboard.  He worked for EXOS for about 8 years as a Coach across all different spaces including Phoenix, Dallas, SF at Ft. Bragg, Adidas America, and the Mayo Clinic.  Calin and Jeremy are working together now on concepts related to long term development of ski and snowboard athletes. So often, we have our “standard plyometric battery” in performance training, but we cling to these fundamentals hard when we would be served well to be observing jump training and movement in a variety of mediums to create ideas for our plyometric progression.  Studying athletes in sports that demand fast reactions, impactful landings, high risk, and rewards for creativity have a lot to offer when it comes to looking at our own training designs for the athletes we serve. Together, Jeremy and Calin will talk about their collaboration together with skiing, the use and progression of games with young athletes up to college level, plyometric progressions and advancing complexity, and how the natural warmup process in ski and snowboard (terrain park) can give us ideas that we can port over into how we can prepare athletes for sport.  There is a lot of great information in this podcast that can be useful for sport coaches, strength coaches and skiiers alike. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 05:25 – The background of Calin and Jeremy’s careers and collaboration 08:30 – How does gameplay fit into a sport like skiing? 16:42 – When people tend to peak in skiing and snowboarding and how this fits into proportion of game play at different ages 24:18 – The power in connecting to the outcome and having multiple avenues to get to that outcome 27:02 – Attrition from training + creating enjoyable training experiences for kids 36:48 – How autonomy and feedback in the warm-up process changes as athletes get older and the reality of “perfect landings” in plyometric exercise 41:52 – The relationship between landing variability and chronic sport landing overload 45:57 – Reducing training down to information + plyometrics and progressions in skiing and snowboarding 48:03 – Long-term development in skiing and supplementing with traditional land-based training 52:37 – What it looks like to build an athlete up in high-adrenaline sport training 55:22 – How the aerial nature of skiing and snowboarding have an impact on Jeremy and Calin in their training process “[Skiing is] an early engagement sport, technically, like there’s skills that you have to learn from a sliding perspective, but that oftentimes turns into really early specialization and spending too much time skiing.” “The mentality of most of the athletes that make it to a high level in ski racing or free skiing… is intense, it’s almost like dare devil, formula one… The game aspect and how it translates into sport, I think, is very much on the physical side. I think the mental side is completely unique.” “What we try to do… is really just force environments that get them to explore their bodies, their joints, how to maneuver around certain objects or other people, and really just try to get the out of their comfort zone and using games, it’s a lot more fun for them.” “We so underestimate the difference between a child and an adult and keeping people in flow states. I just think that’s such a mistake that’s proliferated.”

Today’s show welcomes back coach Bobby Stroupe.  Bobby Stroupe is the Founder and President of Athlete Performance Enhancement Center (APEC) and has directed human performance systems for nearly 20 years, working with a full range of athletes from youth to professional. In my search for higher-transfer, holistic methodology in sports performance training, I’ve met few coaches who have covered more bases than Bobby Stroupe.  On our last show, which aired just over a month ago, we talked about several of Bobby’s “unorthodox” methods in training speed, power strength and more in light of athletic needs, and I still had about half of the questions left on my own list to ask him. Bobby is back on the show to cover the rest of the questions we missed last time.  He will discuss his influences and how he got to where he is today as a coach, including some of the mentors and coaches that have influenced the way he trains. Bobby explains how he incorporates heavier strength training into his sessions and how his single set mentality is a huge impactor on performance (and a defining factor of great athletes).   Finally, Bobby shares his views on upper body training, as well as training the foot and the relationship between the two. In the middle of the show, Bobby gets into the “8 factors” by which a strength coach can impact an athlete, which was such gold! I hope you come away from this show as excited as I was about coaching my next training session. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly for 15% off of your purchase! Timestamps and Main Points 04:41 – The story behind DJ Stroupebob 06:01 – How Bobby differentiates himself and his unorthodox training system from other coaches 07:30 – Influential mentors and coaches Bobby has learned from + Lessons learned from studying animal movement and mastering gravity and space 14:49 – How much time do you spend on heavy-weight lifting versus other types of training? 19:52 – Lifting is like a drug + Metrics Bobby measures and pays attention to 23:17 – From 7-day cycles to 14 or 21-day cycles in assigning the frequency of heavy strength work 24:42 – Bobby’s thoughts on the single set mentality 29:20 – How to get improve your athletes’ single set mentality, especially for overly analytical athletes 31:19 – Applying Parkinson’s Law to athletes 34:36 – Ideas on partnering with sport coaches and incorporating sports specific movements in training 37:01 – Having a holistic influence to make our value seen: 10 ways coaches affect athletes 40:27 – Bobby’s perception of other successful coaches + How to expand your coaching capabilities 43:35 – His approach to and evolution with upper body training for athletes + The relationship between the feet and upper body 46:11 – How do you use weighted gloves, clubs, maces and other training tools? 50:25 – When you should not use weighted balls and gloves 54:12 – Complexities in training the foot + Basic foot functions to see before elevating training 1:01:43 – What is a driver? “There’s no doubt that knowing what gets your athletes going is part of your job.” “You can do high-level, max strength work and have minimal volume on that in the course of an entire training curriculum over time and still get incredible results with a little less of some of the effects of overdoing strength training that you really don’t want… strength training is more effective when it’s not overdone.” “You can see how these different animals with their physiology and their climate and their environment approach tactical movement strategies and technical movement strategies… and for me, in watching that, I think you can learn a lot about how to utilize gravity as a resource instead of relying on strength.” “If strength is what you do most,

Our guests today are Justin Moore and Michael Camporini.  Justin is a master instructor and the professional development manager at Parabolic Performance and Rehab.  Justin has been a popular guest on the podcast many times in the past, discussing advanced biomechanical principles in regards to things like breathing, positioning in strength training, and much more. Michael Camporini, "Campo", is a sports physical therapist in Phoenix, AZ, and previously worked with athletes of all different levels and ages with experience as a strength coach at Parabolic.  He has completed internships with Resilient Physical Therapy and IFAST, as well as completing a clinical rotation with Bill Hartman. You may have heard me speak on the drawbacks of doing too much strength and barbell training many times in the past.  Unless we have some ideas of the exact, negative structural changes that happen with excessive barbell lifting strain (and how to reverse them) we might potentially live in a world where heavy weightlifting is some sort of bogey-man we can’t quite define the effects of.  This is important because some athletes need heavier training, while others do not. Recently, Justin Moore (who has a long history of heavy strength training) had a significant knee injury that occurred while demonstrating a skipping exercise (he had injured his knee multiple times in the past), that led him to reach out to Mike Camporini to help him create an intervention program, which led Justin to playing flag football pain free and moving extremely well.  On the podcast today, Justin and Campo talk about the intervention, the issues Justin had from years of too much lifting strain, and how they reclaimed his range of motion and athletic ability.  This podcast goes into many concepts of human function, stretch shortening cycle dynamics, compression versus expansion, defining what “stiffness” really is in context of sport skill, and much more. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly for 15% off of your purchase! Timestamps and Main Points 6:35 Justin’s history of knee injury, and his athletic pursuits that contributed to not being an optimally functional athlete 21:35 How Justin would approach taking compressive lifting away from an individual, and what might warrant the need to avoid bilateral lifting in a program 30:35 What KPI’s in terms of range of motion are Justin and Campo looking at for field based athletes who need to run, jump and change direction 40:55 Thoughts on lifting strategies that produce excess stiffness in an athlete’s system, and how stiffness and stretch-shortening action can be specific to athletic action 52:25 Why being overly “stiff” in a standing vertical jump will negatively impact jump height and resiliency and topics on being “expanded” vs. “compressed” 1:13.45 Some of the tests and corrective strategies that Campo and Justin went through to help fix some of Justin’s faulty mechanics 1:24.35 The use of yielding and oscillating work to help improve the quality of Justin’s movement strategy “Those elements, those compressive training strategies that you do over years to build the strength, to build the muscle.  Those lead to structural changes and certain biases that you need to give time to create any adaptation in the other direction” Moore “When we look as an individual’s situation, we say, what does this person need to reach their goals, where is their endgame, and then we establish things we need to track and we don’t want to lose” Campo “There is a stretch shortening cycle in Olympic lifting or Powerlifting, it is just going to be different compared to throwing a baseball” Campo “How he is behaving and creating these motion deficits is also influencing how he is absorbing energy, or can potentially absorb energy within his elastic tiss...

Our guest today is Steven Kotler, best-selling author and renowned Flow-State expert.  Steven is the author of 9 best-selling books (3 of which are NYT Best-Sellers), which include The Art of Impossible, Stealing Fire, The Rise of Superman (Rise of Superman was my initial introduction to Steven’s work) and others.  His work has been nominated for two Pulitzer Prizes, translated into 40 languages, and has appeared in over 100 publications. Steven is the executive director of the Flow Research Collective, and is one of the world’s leading experts on human performance.  He has been involved in a number of extreme sports, such as surfing, downhill mountain biking and skiing, and has learned (and participated with) from a number of the world’s greatest athletes in this arena. One element of athletic performance that I’m adamant about pursuing is the idea that we must get outside the known field of “athletic performance” and into other fields of human performance to maximize our service to the athletes we train.  We can only grow so much without “getting outside of the box” of our typical field education and integrating more global concepts of human performance. In this podcast with Steven Kotler, we discuss numerous elements of neuro-biology and flow as it relates to goal setting, burnout, skill progression, career progression, and much more.  This was a podcast that truly integrates many concepts coaches (hopefully) are familiar with, and helps us to understand them more fully from a biological perspective, as well as one we can also integrate into our daily lives. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly for 15% off of your purchase! Timestamps and Main Points 5:50 Steven’s favorite extreme sport memory in his years of working alongside many elite athletes 10:10 How risk of injury (or death) impacts a sport from multiple perspectives 14:35 Goal setting for athletes, with a perspective on general biological principles 25:50 Motivational factors for athletes across their career, and why some athletes may burnout 34:55 How solving multiple problems at once is a key to getting more flow out of mundane activities 41:40 Clarifying how coaches can disturb progress in regards to mastery as a motivational tool 45:30 Challenge-skill balance in sport training and optimal progression models in regards to flow states 53:25 The importance of social support networks in facilitation of flow and athletic performance 57:10 How to manage flow with strength work, and how having one big flow day can impact the next few weeks of your training 1:02.50 How to manage the “dial of flow” in regards to daily practice “I always say, “If you can’t get seriously injured, it’s not really a sport” and I know a lot of people who play tennis or golf would disagree with me, and I’m happy for the argument… I do think it’s a different game when that is the stakes” “The interesting thing about peak performance is that, it doesn’t matter if you are going after capital “I” Impossible, or you are trying to improve your tennis game, or you are trying to be a little better at work, the biology is the same, the tool-set is the same, and how you get there is the same” “(In extreme sports with potential mortal consequences) On the inside, it doesn’t feel like that, it feels like progression in any other sport” “We live in a reality that is shaped by 2 things, our fears and our goals” “For sure you need 3 levels of goals in your life… Mission levels goals (I want to be a great runner), high-hard goals (1-5 year step, run the New York Marathon), then you need clear goals, your daily to do list” “Clear goals are one of the pre-conditions that lead to flow” “Properly set high-hard goals will increase motivation by 11-25%” “The biggest driver for humans is meaningful pro...

Our guest today is Nicolai Morris, strength and conditioning specialist with High Performance Sport, New Zealand.  Nicolai is the lead S&C with the New Zealand Women’s (Field) Hockey Team (Blacksticks) as well as coaching an international elite high jumper.  From Nicolai’s athletic career origins as a swimmer, she has honed her eye for movement through a wide range of land and sea-based sports and athletic situations. Nicolai has previously worked with New Zealand Rowing in the elite and U23/Junior pathways as well as, multitude of sports in her role as strength and conditioning specialist at Sydney University including swimming, track and field, rugby, rugby 7’s, water polo and soccer. She also worked as the Head strength and conditioning coach for the Australian Beach Handball team and the NSW Women’s State of Origin team. Nicolai is a ASCA Level 2, Pro-Scheme Elite coach, and a Masters in Strength and Conditioning with over a decade of coaching experience. We talk on this podcast often about going beyond simply looking at, and emphasizing weightlifting maxes for athletic performance improvement; moving into some of the finer biomechanical details of speed, jumping and athletic technique.  At the roots of all technical ability in sport is baseline human ability to sense and coordinate ourselves in space.  Although we have had good conversation on the importance of developing body control and coordination in regards to training children, it’s not often we speak on how to integrate gymnastic and coordinative ability into training with mature athletes, despite the fact that there are so many “poor movers” on this level, whose base line functioning often leaves them pre-disposed for injury. On today’s podcast, Nicolai speaks about her transition as a swimmer to strength coach, as well as a deep-dive into the role that gymnastics and rough-housing work plays in the developmental process of her athletes.  She also speaks on building buy-in and belief from her athletes (and team management/head sports coaches) from a female perspective, and we close out the show with a brief chat on blood flow restriction training (BFR). Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly for 15% off of your purchase! Timestamps and Main Points 3:40 How Nicolai went from a swimmer to a physical preparation coach 7:45 How Nicolai incorporates gymnastic work and general work to improve movement quality across sports and age groups 21:00 Progressing gymnastic work based on their ability and sport needs 28:05 Correlations between gymnastic movement ability and some of the best athletes Nicolai has worked with 31:15 How Nicolai integrates gymnastic and movement training into her own regimen 36:10 Integrating roughhousing work into training, and differences between genders in this type of work 51:25 Buy in/attitudes of males/females vs. coaches in working as a female 1:01.40 How Nicolai made a big impact with a team by focusing on the needs of her team versus traditional coaching expectations 1:05.40 Nicolai’s experience with blood flow restriction training and the benefits for middle-distance energy system athletes “If a squat would make all athletes Olympic champions, then we would have more people who squat well performing at a higher level… we have to get that transfer and that connection” “You’d ask people to say “what’s the coolest thing you can do into the foam pit”, and they’d do backflips, and gainers…. they’d push their body to a place that it had never been before” “My main 3 gymnastics elements that I use are tumbling, hanging variations, and handstand variations, and depending on what athletes I got, it has a higher relevance… I’m in hockey right now and it has more relevance for my goalies” “The only thing that took my shoulder pain away was gymnastics...

Our guests today are Mike Guadango and Alex Brooker.  Mike and Alex (“Brooker”) met when Alex interned for Mike at DeFranco’s gym a decade ago, and they now have a podcast together, “The Mike and Brooker Show”, in addition to their coaching careers. Alex is the owner and operator of Pathfinder, a private training service focused on performance psychology and physical preparation for professional athletes.  In addition to traditional schooling, Alex is now pursuing his PhD in Self-Hypnosis at the University of Bern.  Mike is currently a Coach, Writer & Owner at Freak Strength.  He has been mentored by coaching greats such as Buddy Morris and James Smith, and started his career working at DeFranco’s gym.  Mike has coached levels of athletes from many different professional sports to Olympic medalists to pre-pubescent athletes, as well as consulting for high caliber athletes and coaches worldwide. As an ever-optimistic individual, it’s important for me to have conversations with those who have a different way of looking at what actually works in the world of sports performance.  In the coaching world, it is extremely easy to have worked with an athlete who has achieved a high result, and then rationalize the factors that led to their success.  It is very easy for us all as coaches to think of our own training as highly optimal, but a question to ask is how often and effectively we truly challenge our reasoning? In looking at training closely, it is helpful to fully understand the power of belief, as well as placebo effects in not only training, but also pain science and rehabilitation.  Understanding human adaptation to training and rehab stimulus requires, not only an understanding of the body, but also of the mind. In today’s podcast, Mike and Alex “Brooker” talk about how they have evolved themselves as coaches, moving into the realms of hypnosis/mental training, acupuncture and rehabilitation.  We spend a lot of time chatting about the power of belief and the ability of the mind to supercede a “poor” training program, and how the fundamentals of adaptation style can be seen in rudimentary rehab.  Finally, Mike, Brooker and I spend some time discussing some training points such as play, competition in training, and training transfer.  This was a fun show with speakers of 3 clearly diverse viewpoints, which always makes for great discussion. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly for 15% off of your purchase! Timestamps and Main Points 6:15 Mike and Brooker’s moves into more alternative forms of human performance, and a philosophy of when to move on from hair splitting in strength training methods 15:00 Thoughts on a system that prioritizes play and autonomy as a substantial shift in a positive direction towards the sports performance industry 32:30 Thoughts on whether or not gym training should carry mental, emotional and physical elements of what is required of a person in their sport 46:25 How and why our interventions in strength, performance or pain reduction actually work, and how much we really know about these mechanisms 55:55 How Mike and Brooker diverted from the traditional routes of strength, performance and data in athlete performance training 1:05:30 More on Mike and Brooker’s “skill stacking” in their human performance pursuits 1:13:10 Mike and Brooker’s use of high-transference exercises to athletic performance 1:15:30 In 10-15 years, where do Mike and Brooker picture themselves “Even if there is a difference between the two (exercises), and transferability, how much of a difference is it really?” “15% of who you are as an athlete, you actually have some type of control over” “The more high talented people you work with, the room to improve them in the gym gets smaller,

Our guest today is Pat Coyne, coach and owner of Black Sheep Performance in Cincinnati, Ohio.  Pat started helping clients of all levels reach their fullest potential after his career as a 4-star high school football recruit ended in college due to injury.  Pat started Black Sheep Performance in 2018 on the side of a house in Cincinnati, OH. Within 3 years BSP organically outgrew itself, working from renting gym space, to a barn, to a state of the art 11,000 sq. foot training facility. Pat has mentored under some of the top coaches in the nation, is a progressive thinker, and gets great results with his clients in his fast-growing business.  When I moved back to Ohio in July, I connected with Pat shortly thereafter and have gotten several training sessions and conversations in with him since then.  Pat has a training style that fuses many of the elements I consider essential: A great environment, room for exploration/creativity, competition and reaction, as well as an integration of modern speed training methods, such as those taught by multi-time podcast guest, Adarian Barr. As such, it was only a matter of time until Pat and I sat down together and recorded a podcast.  Two of the big things that Pat and I are both passionate about are being life-long learners and then looking at (and experiencing) the holistic effects of things like the training environment, athlete autonomy/creativity, and the effects of music, rhythm and reactions on performance.  On this podcast, Pat and I go into his background as an athlete and coach, his thoughts on structured vs. unstructured/open training, his progressions on speed training, rhythm, timing, how he challenges athletes on a holistic level, and some deeper discussion on the evolution of the human/sports performance industry. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly for 15% off of your purchase! Timestamps and Main Points 5:30 Pat’s medieval gear in his gym, as well as his background as a top-ranked high school quarterback, and his transition into strength and conditioning 11:15 What Pat believes held him back from being successful on the college level after being very successful (and physically fit and gifted) in high school, and what he would tell his younger self from his place now as a coach 16:00 How Pat uses games and a holistic approach to connect dots in his training programs/process 27:40 Ideas on how structured versus unstructured training, as well as the importance of being in the moment without expectations, in the training setting 46:50 How Pat’s speed training process has changed over his years as a coach 54:15 A chat on rhythm and timing in coaching speed and athletic movement, as well as using musical beats to time up various training movements 1:04.00 What Pat sees as the evolving purpose of the profession of a strength coach and the deeper purposes of training and coaching in the physical realm 1:14.15 Three things that go into Pat’s mind before each training session that tell him “this is what will make a great session” “(To my younger self) I would go and spend time doing everything that I didn’t want to do” “You have these training sessions which are comfortable and build people up, and it’s very ego driven to where you have your athletes feeling to where they crushed the day, and there is truth in that.  But.. how uncomfortable did you make your athletes in a healthy way, in a safe environment, to where they could fail, to where you could see how resilient that athlete is becoming” “I want to see the full human being first, then we can smack the weights” “I feel like you make the most progress when you are having fun… why does a kid make progress so fast.  Why do we throw that out when we are working with a pro athlete?” “They may have got their asses kicked,

Our guest today is Bobby Stroupe, founder and president of Athlete Performance Enhancement Center (APEC).  Bobby has directed human performance systems for nearly 20 years.  His coaching ranges from youth athletes to some of the top names in multiple professional sports, including first round picks, as well as Super Bowl and World Series champions.  Bobby is well-known for his work in the physical preparation realm of Patrick Mahomes, quarterback of the recent Superbowl champions, the Kansas City Chiefs. After doing 235 episodes of this podcast, and opening up my eyes to more and more of the performance space, I’m always excited to find those coaches who are spearheading creative and effective training methods in athletic performance transfer.  When I recently watched Bobby Stroupe’s presentation at the recent “Track Football Consortium” regarding his methods in working with Patrick Mahomes, I was like a kid in a candy shop, viewing training methods that replicated many time and space requirements of sport play without being mechanical or contrived. Bobby is not only a holistic and open minded coach, but he is also an incredibly thorough and detailed thinker.  There are so many points of carry-over in what Bobby does, I believe that studying his work is essential if we are to reach the point of getting our training to truly transfer to the field of play.  Bobby achieves this transfer in a way that still pays homage to traditional principles of force development and human performance, but is able to add in the tri-planar and chaotic nature of what athletes will encounter in sport. On today’s podcast, Bobby gets into a variety of his “unorthodox” training methods, including locomotion complexes, tri-planar plyometrics and strength training, complex training, long-term development, and athlete autonomy.  Again, with the interest of transfer to sport in mind, any aspiring coach should be familiar with the work of Bobby Stroupe and Team APEC. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly for 15% off of your purchase! Timestamps and Main Points 6:15 What Bobby and I have learned about coaching from being fathers of young children 11:00 Bobby’s take on working with athletes from a young age, and how his team approaches long term athletic development 21:05 Bobby’s thoughts on being able to follow elite athletes for an extended period of time, as many professional athletes have been working at APEC since they were quite young 23:25 How human locomotion is taught using “locomotion complexes”, triplanar and scalar breakdowns of basic motions such as skips, caraocas, and gallops 36:40 Multiplanar jumps and how Bobby will complex these movements in with more static strength training means 46:35 Using different body alignments in strength training movements, as well as Bobby’s work with lunge matrixes using different foot positions 56:26 Bobby’s background with therapeutic education, and how that has impacted his work as a strength/physical preparation coach 1:04:00 Bobby’s take on the efficacy of technology for training athletes “What we want kids to say is, APEC is so fun we went up there and played for an hour and I wish I could come every day” “If someone comes up and tells us what we want them to do with their kid, we tell them that generally, it’s not a good fit” “Typically, middle school, with what we do, the girls are fairly dominant by the time they are in 7th grade” “We want to educate the individual on what makes them unique, what are their gifts?” “You will not find more variance than (coaching 40 middle school kids in one session) that in any training situation” “The number one rule of locomotion is “you do not restrict an athlete in space”” “There’s no better way to (calibrate) than letting the body move through space on i...

Our guest today is Rob Assise, track coach at Homewood-Flossmoor High School.  Rob has 17 years of coaching experience, and has been a regular speaker and writer in the realms of track and field, plyometrics and speed training.  He previously appeared on episode #95 and #196 of the podcast. One of the more fascinating ideas that I’ve been working with over time, as a coach, has been the idea of using a “long-burst” training movement of around 10-30 seconds, to help improve the power output of “short-burst” movements, such as a jump or short sprint.  Dr. Mark Wetzel spoke about this in depth on a recent episode and his take on it has confirmed things that I’ve seen anecdotally for some time, as well as read up on years ago in the mysterious “Greatest Sports Training Book Ever” by “DB Hammer” with the “AN1” and “AN2” bracket systems. Rob has taken those bracket systems and has done some creative training work with them recently, where he has also infused “infinity walks” which Dan Fichter talked about on a recent episode, into the mix.  Rob talks about that today, as well as ways that this concept can be taken creatively for track and field athletes.  In the second half of this show, Rob and I talk plyometric concepts, and how to build bounding and plyometric training “from the feet up” and “from ground contact times upward”. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly for 15% off of your purchase! Timestamps and Main Points 6:35 Catching up with the struggles of being a high school coach in this period of history 9:50 How Rob has been creating workouts with complementary energy system brackets (i.e. a speed-endurance energy system work recovering a sprint system, and vice versa) 18:50 Ideas on how to optimize track and field events based off of game play and opposing energy systems 28:35 How Rob has observed warmup preferences and tendencies based on an athlete’s neurotype 31:35 Rob’s take on teaching bounding and bound progressions, as well as ideas with bounding with different foot strike emphasis 50:05 Using power metrics in conjunction with bounding using the Muscle Lab Contact Grid, as well as contact time based bound teaching ideas 56:55 How Rob manages contact times for depth jumping, hurdle hops and traditional plyometrics 60:40 How Rob’s thoughts on speed training have evolved over the last few years, as well as “bleed” versus “blast” methods in working flying 10 sprints “A typical thing we’ll do right off the bat; we’ll do an altitude drop, something intense, then they’ll go into doing something like a speed Russian lunge for 30 seconds, and then they’ll go into doing an infinity walk, or crawl or carry, for about 90 seconds, and then they’ll do something to failure, like hanging from a bar or doing a cross-crawl superman or something like that; something that falls into one exercise recovering another” “One thing that might be overlooked the most on the infinity walk is the vision component” “I’ve thought about the idea of, do a couple of (high or long) jumps, then go to a basketball court and play 3 on 3 real quick (and then come back to do more jumps)” “We would just give athletes at the start of practice on a Friday an option to do whatever they wanted to do in the warmup.  The type 1’s would always do something where they were competing.  The Type 2’s, it would depend who they were hanging out with.  The type 3 would literally go through the same warmup they would go through every day… if you just give athletes 10 minutes and watch what they do, it tells you basically what they are” “We work heel to toe on a low intensity (to teach bounding)” “I think you have to rotate through the ball of the first metatarsal when you are doing the lateral bound; you are also getting more of the lateral sling involved with it” ...

Our guest today is Dan John who is a strength coach, track coach, master’s track athlete, best-selling author, and all around sage of wisdom on all-things strength training for athletics and life itself. Dan’s work has been profoundly impactful on my coaching, and training practice.  The older and more experienced I get as a coach, the more I find his reduction to the essentials, as well as global thinking, extremely valuable.  Dan appeared on podcast episode #96 with one of my favorite conversations since the start of this podcast series. If you’ve been around elite coaches and athletes for long enough, you start to realize trends that go beyond the sets, reps and training prescriptions that work their way into the results that are being achieved in competition.  Elite athletes are strong enough for their sport, as well as being (hopefully) adequate in general physical measures, but they also tend to have elite levels of relaxation and tension management.  Many times, the best competitors carry a different outlook on competition itself. For today’s show, Dan covers ideas on the art of “letting go” and achieving better performance through superior relaxation and tension management.  He also gets into some of the creative coaching practices he utilized for his throwers, such as playing unique games, “range” throwing, constraint based turns in the circle, and super-setting kettlebell work with throwing.  Finally, other important elements, such as the importance of being “deprived” of a good training environment, and elastic athletic performance are addressed in this conversation with a strength and track legend. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly for 15% off of your purchase! Timestamps and Main Points 6:00 Things Dan thought was under-appreciated or went under the radar in the original “Easy Strength” book, (and a discussion on the idea of what is truly important in training, and not digging too far into details until basic standards of performance are met) 13:00 The usefulness of games for track athletes in regards to their overall conditioning with a level of specificity to their sport, and examples of games that Dan would play with his track athletes 17:00 The power of not having expectations in having one’s highest performance 24:00 Thoughts on the “right amount” of effort in one’s skills and events in competition 0:36 The art of deprivation, etc. in regards to training equipment or commonly used exercises 45:00 A chat on the integration of kettlebell training into athletic movement 50:50 The art of relaxation in throwing, sprinting and even weightlifting exercises, as well as a unique coaching system for varied tensioning in the athlete’s body during lifts “I coach the hands and feet, I try to make them like mini-trampolines (a lot of bounce to the hands and feet)” “The shoulders and the hips, I use the old Chinese medicine term, the “4-knots” tight enough to stay on, loose enough that you can un-string them” “We as Americans have this love affair with these dressed up fancy programs on a spreadsheet… and it’s all crap… until they are throwing over 200,210 (feet) we don’t have to worry about the small details” “With my throwers, we do almost zero conditioning, but on Friday’s, we always play a game” “When you have no expectations, you let things happen (specifically in context of track and field throwing)… life at its highest end.. it’s effortless” “It’s the art of practicing letting go… I think that a true meditation might be as good as (that extra little bit of conditioning) because practicing letting things happen, especially in track and field (is important).’ “Track and field is nothing but “bows and arrows”. When you high jump, you turn various parts of your body into a bow and arrow,

Our guest today is athletic movement specialist Lee Taft.  Lee is one of the most highly respected game speed development coaches in the world, and has taught his methods around the world.  Lee combines an extensive knowledge of sport movement and physical education means and brings this into the physical preparation space in a meaningful way.  Lee has appeared twice prior on the Just Fly Performance podcast and has been a great source of practical ideas and knowledge on speed development for me over my years as a coach. One of the big things I find more and more coaches looking for is ideas on the long term development of an athlete.  By the time an athlete gets to high school, let alone college and the pro’s, the vast majority of the “ground-work” has been done in regards to the speed and reaction abilities of that athlete-specific to their sport.  Unfortunately, there are many pitfalls for young athletes, who miss many critical windows of early development for a variety of reasons. This podcast is all about the development of speed from a young age, how velocity rules training (even if technique is “ugly” early on) as well as some varied topics on Lee’s take on warmups for training, and sport, as well as thoughts on vision training and low-box training for athletes.  Whether you work with youth, or established athletes, or are a sport parent, this is essential information. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly for 15% off of your purchase! Timestamps and Main Points 6:10 What coaching athletes in the private sector was like in the 1990’s, as well as the state of athletes in that time period, versus the 2010’s and beyond 10:40 Some of the big rocks that have caused young athletes time to get taken up, and increase pressure and strain 15:40 Fun games and warmup ideas for athletes 28:55 How Lee designs his warmups and creates a competitive situation with reactive tracking work 32:30 How Lee links his warmups to the rest of his workouts, and how he will utilize games that fit with the greater theme of the session 35:10 Key performance indicators that Lee looks at in regards to how well his game-speed training is transferring 45:40 Some things that are doing a disservice to athletes early on in their development of game-speed, etc., and the importance of maximal velocity training for young athletes, and how skill development can come along gradually 57:00 Advice for an athlete in their warmup for a sport game (versus warming up for a practice) 59:55 How Lee looks at vision training from a “raw” perspective 1:09.10 How “low-box” training works and how Lee uses it in his performance regimen “Back then, it was really common for parents to say “Lee, we need something for our kids to do, what do you got? Now days, it’s the opposite” “We talk about ACL’s now, like we talk about drinking water… it was this big news (back in the 1990’s)… mentally kids are not absorbed in any one process, because they can’t” “I could get results quicker back then (in the 1990’s), just through sound training, because (the athletes) had more to give me.  Now, you take one step forward, you take another step back” “Sometimes I don’t want then thinking… just go play, react!” “I love soccer related things for athletes that don’t play soccer, it’s tremendous for the groin and adductors, especially when they aren’t used to doing it” “Kids don’t know how to read spin (on a ball) unless they are exposed to it” “Days vary, because if I sense the athletes are fatigued, tired, bored, upset, we play a lot… I’ll sprinkle in teaching while they are playing, but that will be the bulk of the workout” “We’ve put them in situations where they have to make good decisions, and that’s how I judge (KPI’s for game-speed transfer)”

Our guest today is Dan Fichter, owner and operator of WannaGetFast, a sports performance facility in Rochester, New York.  He is one of the leading experts in applying clinical neurology into athletic rehabilitation and sport performance applications.  Dan has been mentored by a variety of elite coaches, therapists, and neurologists, and has trained numerous professional athletes and Olympians across a variety of sports.  He has been a multi-time guest on the podcast, with one of the most popular episodes of all-time being a joint discussion with Chris Korfist on “DB Hammer” training methods (an old-school classic). It’s somewhat of a “woke” term to mention the nervous system in training, as Matt Cooper said on a recent podcast.  Although it is easy to pay homage to the nervous system as the ultimate controller of training results, it is much more complicated to actually observe and specifically train the CNS.  This is where people like Dan Fichter are awesome resources in regards to being able to take the complex inter-disciplinary work on the subject, and tie it into simple methods we can use in our own practices. On today’s show, Dan runs through a wide swath of nervous system training topics, centering on isometrics, as well as their role in light of long term athletic development, crawling and the nervous system, infinity walks, as well as his keys to a good warmup from a neurological perspective.  There was a huge amount of practical training gold in this episode. 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. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 7:00 The top 3 things Dan learned from Jay Schroeder that have stuck with him over his years as a coach, particularly that of isometric exercise and intention 13:30 How isometrics specifically help create a condition for the body to solve a functional problem 20:30 How Dan’s exercise distributions have been altered over time (isometrics, bodyweight and traditional lifts) 27:00 Where Dan fits on the “5 minute hold” to shorter isometric hold spectrum 31:30 Questions on, “are isometrics alone enough to help an athlete overcome their injuries” 34:45 Crawling and links to neurology, as well as why it’s important to crawl in an extended posture position and the head up 39:45 How sensory stimulation precedes motor output in athletes, and the importance of stimulating athletes on a sensory level 47:00 The power of infinity walks in empowering an athlete on a neurological and sensory perspective, and how this can tie into, and be complexed with, other athletic skills 54:45 Things that Dan finds essential in the warmup process for his athletes 56:25 The electrical ramifications of tapping the heel in an athletic movement “As Jay says, “everybody is fast, and everybody is strong, they just can’t display it”” “Every step you take, the body finds the easiest and safest path, to complete the task” “When it comes to neurology, you have to hit it perfect, and when you hit it perfect, magic things happen” “Jay used to say this all the time “water will find the crack”” “One of my most favorite things I’ve learned from Jay’s was “quick style” exercises; my favorite exercise is a towel curl press, where they curl (the towel) up, they press it over their head, they pull it down, and then they extend their triceps, so there is everything about upper body movement in one exercise, and as Jay says, it’s recovering you while its training you” “When you get into studying the brain, it’s a flexion/extension synergy” “When you trace a complex movement, your cerebellum lights up like it’s nobody’s business” “For a 10 year old, I have them hold isometrics as long as they can… the younger you are the longer we’ll hold it.  The older you are,

Our guest today is Dr. Mark Wetzel, chiropractor and neurology expert based out of Nashville, Tennessee.  Mark has been a guest on the show several times before, speaking about the physiological and neurological elements of the training method of “extreme isometrics” as well as the fantastic results that he achieved from using the method with a high school baseball team. Isometric holds of all sorts have become very popular in training in recent years, and for good reason.  Where typical “up and down” lifting is a bit of a shotgun approach to performance, isometrics can isolate very specific elements of our physiology, and allow us to devote the body’s resources to these specific elements, rather than a wider array of general elements that we find in more traditional strength methods. One of the things you may remember Mark talking about on previous shows is the idea of “cycling through the energy systems” while performing a long isometric hold, and if one can make it through all of these energy systems, then a large benefit can be derived by the athlete.  In recent conversations with Mark, he has been taking this further by teaching me how training maximally in one “energy system bracket” can optimize your performance in another “energy system bracket”. For example, most people in track and field are familiar with the idea of feeling more “warmed up” to do an explosive jump after running a 100 or 200-meter dash maximally.  In the team sport world, playing a pick-up game of basketball is often a better warm-up for explosive jumping than doing basically any sort of “traditional” warmup that you might find.  On the podcast today, Mark and I dig into these concepts, as well as reinforcing many important elements of the isometric hold itself, such as breathing, intention, posture and much more. 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. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 5:05 Why do an “extreme isometric” for 5 minutes, instead of just 2-3 minutes in length 17:40 What Mark sees in the midst of fatigue in an extreme isometric hold and how this resonates with what happens in sport and life itself in uncomfortable circumstances 26:00 The role and sequence of breathing in isometrics and exercise in general and how it contributes to one’s results and recovery from other bouts of training 33:00 Staying in a parasympathetic state, and letting the body choose when it wants to go sympathetic 35:00 The role of intention and focus in isometric lunges and beyond 43:50 Thoughts on the idea of using one energy system to recover another, and how a longer duration burst can improve a lower duration burst and vice versa “The last 2 minutes (of a 5 minute extreme isometric) is when you can really tap into that Cori cycle” “When we lose focus during (those last minutes of an extreme isometric lunge), we have to restart the (energetic) process” “It’s not so much like, I need to grunt it out and hold that 5 minutes because it’s going to make me better at what I’m doing.  It’s more about how much can I stay focused and how much can I hold the intention of what I’m doing in that 3-5’ window is going exponentially make you more successful at whatever you are trying to accomplish outside the isometric” “When you talk to yourself (positively) you release dopamine; and dopamine is going to help you hold on (to the isometric) slightly longer.  Changing how you view yourself is going to help you hold on to that isometric” “When visual people start to suffer (in an isometric) their eyes start wandering… if you are an auditory person, you are going to yell a lot, and if you are kinesthetic, those are the figety ones” “Isometrics will teach you to keep calm through real life situations”

Our guest today is cricket fast-bowling coach and overall motor learning wizard, Steffan Jones.  Stefan is the last “dual pro” between rugby and cricket, and is an ex-cricketeer turned coach.  He is one of the world leading experts in regards to not only fast-bowling training, but also topics such as training individualization, motor learning and the process of reaching the highest possible level of one’s sport skill.   Stefan has worked with many of the world’s leading organizations and athletes in his work in the sport of Cricket.  He has written much about his own training process in the many articles that he has put forth on Just Fly Sports, which essentially amounts to a medium sized book.  His synthesis of his motor-learning model he calls “The Skill-Stability Paradigm” which is applicable to any sport skill you can imagine.  On our last podcast together, we went heavily into the specific strength needed to throw a cricket ball at high speeds, and some of the specialty methods used to train that strength, such as isometric training and isometric-skill complexes.  This podcast builds on that episode by covering the means by which Stefan uses variability to further the training effect, and explore the possibilities of a sport skill to their highest potential. Topics today include: A chat on how Adarian Barr’s teachings on collisions factor into fast-bowling The role of training variability in skill building The role of fatigue in variability, “second generation” French Contrast Robustness How extreme-isometrics and stretch loading means can play a role in helping athletes to higher levels of skill on their sport, in conjunction with the necessary maximal power and elasticity needed.   This is an awesome show for any coach or athlete interested in training, and goes well beyond cricket itself.  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.  View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 6:00 What Steffan has been busy with lately in regards to his coaching, and how he tests his ideas on himself first prior to integration with athletes 7:45 What one thing Steffan is using now as a coach that he would “train” his former self with as an athlete 17:45 Maximal rigidity in limbs in athletic movements versus a more “controlled collision in training” 24:45 The role of general strength means in Steffan’s program 31:30 How extreme isometrics and stretch-loading impacts proprioception 36:30 How Steffan measures outputs and drop-offs in fast-bowling and isometrics 40:50 How Steffan adds variability into his training and exercise sessions 50:30 The “Two-Minute Drill” invented by Jeremy Fischer and how that can utilize fatigue to help athletes increase the amount of elastic elements in the movement 57:00 Thoughts on “second generation” contrast, and some of Steffan’s samples for using this method to improve the skill of fast-bowling “Technique underpins everything, you cannot run away from poor technique” “The fascia does determine the success of a skill that does happen as fast as a skill such as quick bowling does” “Adarian said, it’s not about deceleration (on front foot contact) it’s about controlling the collision and maintaining momentum, and that to me, shifted my mindset” “For me, concentrics, there’s no purpose for training sport.  Sport happens too quickly for a concentric contraction” “For me, isometrics should be the number one exercise.  Alex Natera is doing some good work and the skill stability feeds off of that”  “I always have some sort of number when I’m doing isometrics” “Cognitive fatigue only affects submaximal work; cognitive fatigue doesn’t affect high intensity work” “Same but different, medicine ball work in my same drop and block position.

Our guest today is Adarian Barr, athletic movement coach, inventor and performance consultant.  Adarian has been a mentor to me for almost 5 years, and opened up my eyes to the movement potential of the human body, how to observe it, and coach it more optimally.  He has been on this podcast for many prior episodes, and has recorded a number of webinars for Just Fly Sports.  The best way I can describe Adarian is that he just sees things that nobody else does in human movement, and creates a wonderful groundwork for us to creatively express those principles in our own training setups. One of the biggest realizations, that I’m still regularly checking in on the implications of in my day to day coaching and athletic life, is how, when the joints and levers of the body are working optimally in “3D”, we tend to need much less barbell strength than we think we do to reach our highest speed performance potential.  Not only this, but when we only operate in “2D” and don’t use our levers well, we need more weight room strength to be better athletes in that 2D paradigm. One thing that Adarian does not post about often is weightlifting.  Part of this is because the world of coaching is very hung up on “force” as a binary entity in human movement, and we need more education on joints and movement, rather than how to split hairs on lifting sets and reps.  Adarian’s eye for movement does go well into the weightlifting world, however, and was can learn a lot from his recent observation in the area. On today’s podcast, we dive into the Olympic lifts in particular, and how they can either foster athleticism, or suppress it, based on the lever systems we use in the execution of the lift.  We get into this, and much more, such as the feet, torque, the drawbacks of hinging in the weight room, crawling, natural learning and much more in this in-depth episode. 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. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 6:00 The redundancy of “coaching up” natural-skill-based human strength movements 16:45 Adarian’s history with weightlifting as a football player and track and field athlete 24:50 Deconstructing the Olympic lifts in regards to what transfers to athletic speed and what does not 33:40 Good and poor “class 1” levers of the foot 41:25 Thoughts on the initial stages of the pull off the ground in athleticism 45:25 Using the hands more effectively to change the emphasis of exercise to the body 50:10 Full catches in the Olympic lifts, foot pressure and internal rotation, and how these can be optimized for athletic transfer 57:10 Why Adarian is not a fan of hinging from a foot loading perspective “The feet are pointing out for a reason in (natural) squatting, because the calves are rotating them” “A lot of people equate lifting to athletic ability, that the lift makes you athletic.  The biggest thing is when I see the levers…. Some people when they (Olypmic) lift to get strong, I see them shrug, then they do a plantar-flex, which is a class 1 lever, then they catch the bar.  That’s not going to transfer over (to athleticism) they are probably just going to get stronger” “What do they say, look at the (lift) numbers he is doing that’s what made him fast.  No! He can do those (lift) numbers because he is fast!” “I used to think (Olympic lifters) were bumping the bar with their hips.  What do you actually see? When they hit the bar with class 2 (foot position) it bumps them backwards (class 2 being advantageous for athleticism)” “If the Achilles (tendon) isn’t working, you will be quad dominant or hamstring dominant” “There are two “class 1” motions, there’s inversion/eversion, and there is plantarflexion dorsiflexion.  Those ones that use inversion/eversion are going to really do som...

Our guest today is the owner of SOAR fitness in Columbus Ohio, Mike Kozak.  Mike previously appeared on podcast #184 and has written several articles for Just Fly Sports.  Notably, Mike has mentored extensively under Adarian Barr, and frequently posts the exercise and training progressions based on Adarian’s work. Speed is always en vogue in the world of athletics, but something important to understand is that running and moving right not only will make athletes faster, but also make them more resilient and robust, reducing injury rates.  When we move as nature intended, and then amplify that in our training, we can make the most out of free-energy return systems.  When we simply “produce more force” and muscle our movements, we may gain some speed in the short term, but we can do it at the cost of higher risks of injury and a lower total athletic ceiling. Mike has experience, not only with Adarian Barr’s methods, but he also has worked closely with elite physical therapists who have extensive knowledge of advanced methods such as PRI and the work of Bill Hartman.  On today’s podcast, we are looking at the nuts and bolts of Mike’s performance program “from the ground up” starting with how he addresses the feet and an athlete’s posture, and then designs drills and tasks from that standpoint.  We also touch on elements further up the kinetic chain, and how this can impact how we look at the entire athletic system.  This was a fantastic, practical episode that features many important elements that we need to be addressing in the training of our athletes to fully integrate the feet, hips, spine and posture. 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. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 5:30 How adjusting to outdoor workouts with no weights due to COVID restrictions created a unique and effective training environment for Mike and his athletes 16:55 How Mike does not have a formal strength and conditioning background, and how his own experience as an athlete, as well as his physical education experience, formed the base of how he now trains athletes 22:20 Staples of Mike’s program that he learned from Adarian Barr, starting from the level of the foot, and how he works his way up the kinetic chain 27:15 How Mike works on dorsiflexion (or doesn’t) and how he emphasizes the action of the foot as a second class lever in athletes 40:35 How Mike teaches the foot working as a second class lever to improve the efficiency of the Achilles tendon, as well as the preservation of kinetic energy 53:00 Ideas on the transverse arch of the foot and how this applies to athletic performance 58:00 How the feet relate to what is happening upstream in the kinetic chain (hip internal rotation, expansion, compression, etc.) “The start of our session used to be foam rolling, honestly just to take attendance (we don’t do that anymore).  Let’s use the start of our session to do something these kids never do” “To me, level 1 is, do you have any idea what your feet are doing, and most kids do not… if I can get kids to now understand the tripod, not be a toe gripper, and then can I effectively get them on the inside edge (unless you are over-pronated)” “The main thing I try to get across to my kids is, “shin’s going down, heel’s coming up”” “If they (the athlete’s) do it already, I don’t have any reason to fill their minds with information they don’t need.. they are already there!” “If the shin keeps moving forward, and the heel stays down, you are staying in first class, you are just stretching the Achilles.  If you are someone who has a lot of dorsiflexion range, then your athletic posture has to dial you into a start stance that gets that heel to pull up faster” “A person who has less dorsiflexion range may strike (in accel...

I’m happy to welcome Dr. Pat Davidson back to the podcast.  Pat is an independent trainer, consultant, author, and lecturer in New York City.  He is the author of MASS and MASS2 and is the developer of the “Rethinking the Big Patterns” lecture series, as well as an upcoming book on the same topic.  Pat is one of the most intelligent individuals I know when it comes to human performance, and communicates his knowledge in a manner that makes it easy to understand difficult concepts.  He has been a guest on episodes #88 and #122 of this show as well speaking on topics such as an educated approach to movement screens and re-evaluating the “big lifts” in light of athletic performance. That combination of intelligence and communication is paramount for the topic we’ll be tackling today, which is pressure systems and their correspondence to our movement patterns.  That sounds kind of complicated, but in reality, it’s as simple as looking at the dynamics of a bouncing ball, or the lungs expanding with air.  Pat has extensive experience learning from leading organizations and individuals in this area, such as the Postural Restoration Institute and Bill Hartman. The ability to look at the human body as a pressure system is important because it helps us link what is happening in various gym exercises, as well as what we see in particular athletic presentations (internal vs. external rotation for example), and then look at how that fits to an elastic (tendon and static spring) based strategy of movement, and a more muscular strategy. In addition to a discussion on pressure, Pat also discusses his take on having a “strength score” for athletes in the weight room that normalizes performance metrics based on things like limb length and height.  He also gets into ideas on how to “de-compress” the athlete who is compressed in a manner that may be negative to their overall performance.  This was a really smart show with some powerful principles for any athlete or coach who wants to navigate the weight room without harming elastic power outputs. 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. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage Timestamps and Main Points 4:40 Pat’s history of athletics and his recent thoughts in regards to normalizing weight room outputs across a variety of athletes with different heights and levers 30:40 Implications of athletes who “over-lift” in dynamic outputs and what physiological elements are playing a role in diminished movement abilities 35:30 Expansion and compression rules in regards to the movement of the human body 44:30 From a rib-cage perspective, what happens when the body becomes too compressed from a front-to-back perspective that often happens from excessive bilateral lifting 51:00 My personal journey in barbell squatting and Pat’s analysis of my tendencies towards compressive forces that allowed me to retain my elasticity well (and how I ended up hurting that elasticity later on) 1:12.10 How to work with athletes with substantial anterio-posterior compression to get into becoming more elastic and robust “Who measures the distance (of a lift), nobody measures the distance.  It’s half of the equation of work” “You get punished in many ways, in the reward system of the weight room.  If you go full range, and have to use less weight, that’s a “punishment”.  If you have to do less reps, that’s a “punishment”.” “You are going to want to make progress so much (in the weight room) you will lie to yourself (by subtly cheating lifts)” “You can recognize people that have done a tremendous amount of strength training; it’s visually obvious.  Watch wrestlers or bodybuilders go out for a jog.  The whole body turns like a refrigerator” “Movement goes older than biology, it’s pre-biological.

Today’s podcast features speed and strength coach Brandon Byrd.  Brandon Byrd is the owner of Byrd’s Sports Performance in Orefield, Pennsylvania.  Brandon is an alumni of the University of Pittsburgh and has learned from elite coaches such as Louie Simmons, Charlie Francis, Buddy Morris and others. Brandon’s unique blend of rotating training stimuli, and his competitive, PR driven environment has elicited noteworthy speed, power and strength gains in his athletes. If you follow Brandon on social media, you’ll see the regular occurrence of sprint and jump records from his athletes.  Brandon has some of the highest-output training out there in his ability to cultivate speed and strength. I always enjoy digging into the training of elite coaches, into the nuts and bolts that drives their systems.  Some of the running themes on this show have been ideas such as the rotation of big training stimuli from week to week (such as in EP 190 with Grant Fowler), the power of resisted sprinting (EP 12 and 63 with JB Morin and Cameron Josse), overspeed sprinting (EP 51 with Chris Korfist), and then the power of competition and PR’s (EP 135 with Tony Holler). This episode with coach Brandon Byrd truly brings all of those elements together in a way that gets some of the best training results you’ll find.  On today’s podcast, Brandon goes into the core of his system, and how he rotates his sprint efforts based on the needs of the athlete, to get the most out of their system.  He also goes into his background with Westside Barbell, and the elements he learned from Louie Simmons that go into his training, as well as strength pre-requisites he carries for his athletes to optimize their readiness for the strength and speed program. (Note that when Brandon is talking about fly 10’s he is talking yards, not meters) 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. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage Timestamps and Main Points 5:00 Brandon’s main influences in athletic performance and speed training 11:30 How principles of West-side Barbell training show up in Brandon’s sprint training system 22:45 How Brandon rotates uphill and downhill sprinting to blast personal bests in speed 29:30 How Brandon uses wickets in context of his speed and sprint training 39:30 Concepts in using resisted sprinting, as well as jump training in Brandon’s program 45:20 More specifics on how Brandon rotates and progresses his speed and sprint training throughout the training year, and also how he modulates this for stride length, vs. stride frequency style athletes 58:50 What Brandon’s weekly sprint setup looks like for athletes 1:07.20 The power of “PR”s in Brandon’s system and how that feeds into his entire training session “Once you can control 90% of the force-velocity curve, you can create great athletes” “I don’t think the FMS is a great thing, because when you are sitting statically and not under high forces or high loads, everyone is going to look great, but once you are high speeds in sprinting, or high loads in lifting, you are going to see some weaknesses” “I believe your technique in sprinting is determined by your weaknesses… once you fix their weaknesses, then it is easier to fix technique” “Glute, hamstring, and opposite QL, those must fire explosively and fast, and they all must be strong… when I start an athlete, the first thing I do test is that QL” “In my gym, if you can’t do so much in a 45 degree hyperextension, I can’t put a bar on your back” “The body is scared to go faster… it hates change, so you have to force change by changing modalities… regular sprinting can’t do all those things (in context of using uphill, downhill and resisted sprinting to help break barriers)” “65-75% of the kids I get are heel strikers; they have to run fo...

Today’s podcast features Grant Fowler and Kevin Foster. Kevin Foster is a former NCAA DI javelin thrower training for the 2021 Olympic trials.  He is the owner of the Javelin Anatomy Instagram page, a regular writer for Just Fly Sports, and was the guest on episode #164. of the podcast. Grant Fowler is the owner of Fowler Fitness in The Woodlands, Texas.  Grant works as a private training and online performance consultant and specializes in program design and injury prevention.  Grant is a different thinker who has a distinctive “non-linear” and adaptable style to his training program design and previously appeared on episode #190 of the podcast. In one of my recent chats with Kevin, he mentioned how his training for javelin had exploded in his time working under the GPP programming of Grant Fowler.  As we chatted about on episode #190, Grant has a rotating-PR version of training for performance, and uses a unique non-linear style in his work.  Kevin’s strength and athleticism reached new levels using this method, and so on the podcast today, we dig into some of the specifics and philosophies that went into building Kevin’s training program. In addition to Kevin’s training for javelin throwing, we also get into some great discussion on mobility training, training holism and reductionism, general strength and capacity, and much more. 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. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage Timestamps and Main Points 6:20 What Kevin Foster has been learning in regards to the importance and specifics of what a general foundation should look like for an athlete, and the negative aspects of skipping this type of work in favor of maximal power work too soon in a system 12:20 How much mobility do athletes really, truly need in their programs? 14:20 The possibility of looking at training “too” holistically, and never doing any specific isolated work to approach weak points 24:20 Ideas on time spent actually working on one’s maximal strength capabilities, and then how rotating those movements fits into continual progress with less effort 33:20 How Kevin’s training progress exploded while utilizing Grant’s training system in regards to lift strength and short-approach javelin throws 41:20 How Grant structured Kevin’s training program utilizing a rotation of maximal effort lifts, and any adjustments that have come in since last program 56:20 Ideas on individualizing workouts on a day in favor of athletes being able to make PR’s and create incremental progress 1:00.35 How to taper in a program where you have a non-linear progression 1:04.50 Kevin’s take on getting the needed general tools to achieve the highest specific mastery in sport, and considerations on where too much focus on maximal strength could potentially be a drawback 1:15.50 Grant’s two favorite recovery modalities for athletes “We go straight into these programs that revolve around powerlifting and Olympic lifting, max vertical jumps, velocity-based training, this that and the other, but we ignore the foundation of isolated joint mobility, getting your hips moving, spine moving, spinal segmentation” Foster “There are some people who look at training, almost too holistically.  There was a point in time when it was almost too reductionist” Fowler “I think that stretching goes hand in hand with relaxation, and too many athletes have the ability to turn off their muscles.  Relaxation is the single most under-appreciated elements of athleticism out there right now” Foster “We maximal strength train people for 20-30 minutes, maybe at the most, and in-between that we are doing a lot of other things” Fowler “When I go in the gym, it’s easy to pick an exercise, pick a rep scheme you haven’t done in a while,