Just Fly Performance Podcast

Today’s episode brings back Rick Franzblau, assistant AD for Olympic Sports Performance at Clemson University. In his two decades in athletic performance, Rick has worked with a wide variety of sports, as well as gained an incredible amount of knowledge in both the technology, and biomechanics ends of the coaching spectrum. Rick, as with many other biomechanics topic guests on this podcast, has been a mentee of Bill Hartman, and has appeared previously on episode 94, talking about force/velocity metrics in sprinting and lifting. There is a lot of time spent, talking about an “optimal technique” for various sport skills (such as sprinting). We also tend to look for “optimal lifts” or exercises for athletes, as well as optimal drills athletes are supposed to perform with “perfect form” to attain an ideal technique. What the mentality described in the above paragraph doesn’t consider is that athletes come in different shapes and structures, which cause what is optimal to differ. Wide ISA athletes, for example, are fantastic at short bursts of compression, have lower centers of mass, and can manage frontside sprint mechanics relatively easily. On the other hand, narrow ISA individuals use longer ranges of motion to distribute force, have a higher center of mass, rotate more easily, and can use backside running mechanics better than wide-ISA’s. Additionally, there is a spectrum of these athletic structures, and not simply 2 solid types. On today’s show, Rick goes into detail on the impact and role of compression in human movement and performance training, the strengths and weaknesses of the narrow vs. wide ISA archetypes, what differences show up in locomotion and sprint training, as well as how he approaches strength training for the spectrum of wide to narrow individuals. Today’s show reminds us (thankfully) that there is no magic-bullet for all athletes, and helps us with the over-arching principles that can guide training for different populations to reach their highest potential. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Lost Empire Herbs, and the Elastic Essentials online course. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com Find out more about the the online course, Elastic Essentials, by heading to justflysports.thinkific.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 4:00 – How the direction of Rick’s performance testing and KPI’s has changed over the last few years 8:00 – How structure and thorax build will play a strong role in what Rick is seeing from them on rate of development on the force plate 23:00 – What to give to a compressed narrow individual to help them in a vertical jump 25:00 – Narrow vs. Wide ISA acceleration mechanics 34:00 – Thoughts on how to help a narrow ISA improve their ability to get lower and achieve better compression in sprint acceleration, and why Rick has gotten away from heavy sled sprints for narrow ISA athletes on the 1080 44:00 – How a coach’s own personal body structure can create a bias for how they end up training athletes they work with 47:00 – Wide ISA athletes, and why they may have an easier time accessing front-side mechanics in running 56:00 – Narrow ISA athletes and backside sprint mechanics, as well as attaining appropriate range and sprint bandwidths for each athlete 58:00 – How force plate data and structural bandwidths determine how to train team sport athletes for the sake of injury prevention and sport specific KPI’s 1:10:00 – How Rick alters weightroom training for narrow vs. wide ISA athletes 1:17:00 – Rick’s take on oscillatory reps in the weightroom, and quick-impulse lifts, especially for narrow infra-sternal angle athletes “(Regarding infrasternal angle archetypes) It’s not to claim buckets that people fall into; it’s a spectrum…. You can have wide ISA’s, somewhat narrow, and narrow as hell” “Understanding where an athlete’s center of gravity is, forward, back, left, right…. And how they get there is affected by their structure… from there what shapes can they and can’t they produce, through their foot, their pelvis, their thorax, and all these things influence how they produce and dampen force, and their idiosyncratic movement in sport” “A narrow (ISA) is going to be really good at rotation; they have leverage through the external obliques, pulls the ISA down, compresses the viscera, which pushes the guts into the pelvic inlet which opens up and allows them to rotate better” “So if I take a skinny tube of toothpaste and I squeeze it; compress it from up top… that’s the only way a narrow, narrow person will be really good at high force in short windows” “If I’m a wide (ISA) I’ll have more of a nutated sacrum… so I’ll have all of this space to move into posteriorly, that’s why a wide is better at deadlifting” “If I’m a narrow, that’ll create a concentric posterior pelvic floor and an eccen

Today’s episode brings back Alex Effer. Alex is the owner of Resilient Training, and has extensive experience in strength & conditioning, exercise physiology and the biomechanical function of the body. He also runs educational mentorships teaching biomechanics to therapists, trainers and coaches. Alex was recently on the show talking about the mechanics of the early to late stance spectrum and it’s implications for performance training. Something that has been dramatically under-studied in running, jumping, cutting and locomotion in general is the role of the upper body. Since the arms don’t directly “put force into the ground” and the world of sports performance and running is mostly concerned with vertical force concepts; the role of the arms gets relatively little attention in movement. This is unfortunate for a few reasons. One is that sport movement has strong horizontal and rotational components that demand an understanding of how the upper body matches and assists with the forces that are “coming up from below”. Two is that the joints of the upper body tend to have a lot in common with the alignment and actions of corresponding joints in the lower body. When we understand how the upper body aligns and operates, we can optimize our training for it in the gym, as well as better understand cueing and motor learning constraints in dynamic motion. Today’s topics progress in a trend of “expansion to compression”, starting with a chat on the expansive effect of aerobic training (as well as the trendy thera-gun) and Alex’s favorite restorative and re-positioning aerobic methods. We then get into rotational dynamics in squatting, focusing on the actions of the lower leg, and finish the chat with a comprehensive discussion on the role of the upper body in sprinting, how to train propulsive IR for the upper body in the gym, as well as touching on improving hip extension quality for athletic power. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 5:00 – Why Alex thinks that the Theragun is actually a useful tool in the scope of training 15:00 – Thoughts on the use of aerobic training, and blood flow as an “inside out” expansive stimulus to the muscle and the body in general 22:30 – The importance of tibial internal rotation, and how it fits in with the ability to squat and bend the knee 33:30 – How to restore tibial internal rotation for improved squatting and knee mechanics 38:15 – Talking about Chris Korfist’s “rocker squats”, and viability in regards to specifically improving tibial internal rotation 44:00 – Isometrics and work done at shallower knee angles for knee health in respect to the vastus lateralis and vastus medialis muscles 51:00 – The importance of hip and shoulder internal rotation in sprinting, and the role of the upper body in helping the lower body to get off the ground more quickly. 1:07:30 – Narrow vs. Wide infra-sternal angle athletes in regards to upper body dynamics , and general biomechanics in sprinting 1:13:00 – Alex’s take on hip extension in sprinting and how to improve it 1:22:00 – The role of hill sprinting in improving hip extension, as well as the benefits of walking down the hill in terms of priming the body to leverage the glutes better on the way back up 1:24:00 – Why Alex likes hip thrusts with the feet elevated, relative to hip height 1:28:00 – Some key exercises to improve shoulder internal rotation for sprinting “The vibration aspect of the Theragun I really like; if you slow the landing of running or sprinting, you will see a vibration or wave-like effect of the muscle upon impact” “Whatever my upper back or torso is going to do; I am going to have similar changes at the pelvis” “My favorite (aerobic/expansive) tool now is the elliptical. For the elliptical I cue a heavy heel the whole time; it’s going to keep you back in more of a mid-stance, internal rotation type of range; I’ve used that to improve mobility significantly to some people” “That tibial internal rotation allows the patellar tendon to be in a position to absorb force; and allows the VL to be in an eccentric position…. It allows me to bend my knee so the (tibial tuberosity) turns inwards” “To stretch the Achilles is un-necessary because if you feel your Achilles is tight and needs to be stretched is because your foot isn’t dynamic enough, or because your knee can’t bend. Your Achilles will naturally stretch like an elastic band when I’m able to dorsiflex properly, and pronate properly, as well as bend my knee” “Like 9/10 people (this is anecdotal) don’t have (tibial internal rotation) because external rotation gets us off the ground faster… but not spend enough time on the ground which is what IR does” “You have to roll to the inside edge of

Today’s episode features a question and answer session with Joel Smith. On the show today, I answer questions related to “are there any bad exercises?”, sport speed concepts, jump training, “switching” sprint drills, and much more. I love being able to highlight and integrate information from so many of the past guests on this podcast into my own training, coaching, and ultimately, the answers I provide on this show. In many senses of the word, this is truly an “integration” episode of the podcast series. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 3:16 –Is there any such thing as a bad exercise? 17:19 –How do we speed up soccer players? 30:25 –Do you find value in spending time on switching drills? 45:07 –Athletes who take too many steps in a start or acceleration. 53:19 –Does walking affect fast-twitch fibers? 54:45 –Setups for high jump off-season/yearly plyo program for high level jumpers? 1:01:36 –How to speed jump like elite high jumpers? About Joel Smith Joel Smith is the founder of Just Fly Sports and is a sports performance/track coach in Cincinnati, Ohio. Joel hosts the Just Fly Performance Podcast, has authored several books on athletic performance, and in 2021, released the integrative training course, “Elastic Essentials”. He currently trains clients in the in-person and online space. Joel was formerly a strength coach for 8 years at UC Berkeley, working with the Swim teams and professional swimmers, as well as tennis, water polo, and track and field. A track coach of 15 years, Joel coached for the Diablo Valley Track and Field Club for 7 years, and also has 6 years of experience coaching sprints, jumps, hurdles, pole vault and multi-events on the collegiate level, working at Wilmington College, and the University of Wisconsin, LaCrosse, along with his current work with master’s, high school and collegiate individuals. Joel has had the honor of working with a number of elite athletes, but also takes great joy in helping amateur athletes and individuals reach their training goals through an integrative training approach with a heavy emphasis on biomechanics, motor learning, mental preparation, and physiological adaptation. His mission through Just Fly Sports is: “Empowering the Evolution of Sport and Human Movement”. As a former NAIA All-American track athlete, Joel enjoys all aspects of human movement and performance, from rock climbing, to track events and weightlifting, to throwing the frisbee with his young children and playing in nature.

Today’s episode welcomes back to the show, Rob Gray, professor at Arizona State University and host of the Perception & Action Podcast. Rob Gray has been conducting research on, and teaching courses related to perceptual-motor skill for over 25 years. He focuses heavily on the application of basic theory to address real-world challenges, having consulted with numerous professional and governmental entities, and has developed a VR baseball training system that has been used in over 25 published studies. Rob is the author of the book “How We Learn to Move: A Revolution in the Way We Coach and Practice Sports Skills”. You cannot separate the world of athletic development, even pure “power” training, from concepts on motor learning. If we look at interest in athletic performance topics by “need”, speed training will typically be first on the list. At its core, sprinting, lifting (and every other athletic skill) has its roots in how we learn. The great thing about motor learning knowledge, is that it can both allow you to have a better training session on the day, as well as month to month, and year over year. Training done only on the level of raw “power” as a general quality, and explicit instruction will create early ceilings for athletes in their career. Understanding motor learning allows for more involved daily training sessions, and better flourishing of skills that grow like a tree, over time. Whether you work in sport, in the gym, or as a parent/athlete, understanding how we learn goes a massively long way in becoming the best version of one’s self athletically and from a movement perspective. In episode 293, Rob got into the constraints-led approach to movement vs. “teaching fundamentals”, and in this episode, he goes into CLA’s counter-part: differential learning. Rob will get into the nuances of differential learning on the novice and advanced level. In the back end of the show, we’ll talk about “stacking constraints”, games, exploration, using the “velocity dial” as a constraint, and finally, the promising results of Rob’s research showing the effectiveness of a variable practice model. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 5:07 – How differential learning is different than the constraints led approach in athletic development 12:10 – Using differential learning as a recovery tool from intense training means 15:51 – Using constraints within the scope of differential learning and vice versa 21:28 – If and how differential learning or the CLA led approach can be too “widespread” vs. focused towards a movement goal 25:02 – Some games Rob would specifically utilize in training tennis players using constraints and differential learning 28:11 – The advantage of free flowing sports with limited rules and setups for children in the process of youth sports 36:05 – How performing exploratory movements in the weight room can fit with differential learning concepts 41:55 – Rob’s take on the innate ability of athletes to figure out movement on their own, and when to dig into constraints more deeply to help determine why they may not be solving a problem well, and the integration of analogies into the process 44:23 – Thoughts on manipulating velocity and time as a constraint, and the relationship between intensifying constraints, and the amount of movement solutions 53:30 – How using variable learning and constraint led approaches can improve players ceilings in long-term development 59:52 – The specifics of Rob’s landmark study with baseball players and long-term development “The constraints led approach is a bit more focused… you have a rough idea of where they want to be, and you want to help guide them” “Differential learning has the same goals (as the CLA), but instead of adding a constraint to push you a certain way, we are going to have you do a different thing every trial. So maybe I’ll get you to do different stances, feet close together or far apart, different shaped barbells, different surfaces… we are trying to get you try a bunch of different things with the hope that you will find the solution space on your own, rather than trying to push you a certain direction” “Differential learning is more variability for variability’s sake” “Learning a skill (in a differential manner) actually reduces the incidence of injury” “You would never do differential learning where you did a task on a computer screen” “I would add differential learning on top of (the constraint of trying to hit a ball over a fence) by using different bat weights” “Now what I do is start (learning) with games, and if you do it right, that stroke will come along on its own” “There are certain key variants that have to be there, if not, you have to step in as a co

Today’s episode features Kyle Dobbs. Kyle is the owner and founder of Compound Performance which offers online training, facility consulting and a personal trainer mentorship. He has an extensive biomechanics and human movement background (having trained 15,000+ sessions), and has been a two time previous guest on this podcast. In the world of training and performance, it’s easy to get caught up in prescribing a lot of exercises that offer a relatively low training effect in the grand scheme of things. Healthy and capable athletes are often assigned a substantial load of low-level “prehab” style and corrective exercises that they often do not need. In doing so, both a level of boredom, fatigue and just simply wasting time, happens in the scope of a program. For my own training journey, I’ve seen my own pendulum swing from a relatively minimal approach to the number of movements, to having a great deal of training exercises, back down to a smaller and more manageable core of training movements in a session. As I’ve learned to tweak and adjust the big lifts, and even plyometric and sprint variations, I realize that I can often check off a lot of training boxes with these movements, without needing to regress things too far. On the show today, Kyle will speak on where and when we tend to get overly complex, or overly regressive in our training and programming. He’ll talk about what he prioritizes when it comes to assigning training for clients, as well as a “macro-to-micro” way of thinking in looking at the entirety of training. Kyle will get into specifics on what this style of thinking and prioritization means for things like the big lifts, speed training, and core work, as well as touch how on biomechanical differences such as infra-sternal angle play a role in his programming. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 3:41 – How Kyle’s run training has been developing, since he has been getting back into his two years ago after being a high level college 400m runner 7:41 – Kyle’s thoughts on where we tend to get overly complex in the physical preparation/strength & conditioning industry 11:58 – How Kyle prioritizes exercises based on the task requirements of the athlete 16:19 – Thoughts on working macro-to-micro, versus micro-to-macro 28:50 – How Kyle will avoid trying to regress individuals to a low-level, rudimentary version of an exercise if possible, and his take on “pre-hab” work 36:50 – The usefulness of hill sprints as a “macro” exercise for glutes, lower legs, and hip extension quality 40:56 – The spectrum of perceived complexity as athletes move from a beginner to a more advanced level 48:40 – Kyle’s take on some gym movements that “check a lot of boxes” in athletic movement 56:01 – How much of Kyle’s programming ends up being different on account of being a wide vs. narrow infrasternal angle “If we can’t match the stress that an athlete is going to be encountering in their actual sport, it isn’t going to have a huge return” “I want to be able to pick the biggest return on investment from a training perspective; those are going to go into my primary buckets from a programming perspective” “If I have somebody who really needs to zoom into the micro, and we really need to get into the biomechanics weeds and decrease the training stress, those are people that we refer out to another specialist… having a good network allows you to focus on the things that you are good at and that you really like to do. I learned early in my career that, I don’t like to be the rehab guy” “That’s my problem with the biomechanics led approach, is we take biomechanics down to such a low stimulus” “Passive assessments really don’t give me a lot of information that’s useful” “If a person is pain free, I’m not going to take them through our “glute firing patterns”, I’m just going to re-leverage their strength patterns to create a better pattern for hip extension” “I will do pretty much anything I can to not regress somebody” “The term “pre-hab”, and the way it’s been marketed, I have more of a problem with… if you have a well-rounded program that is individualized to the person in front of you, that’s about as much injury prevention as you can achieve” “The thought process of “pre-hab” I don’t mind that much, it’s the marketing I have a problem with” “You start watching (kids play games with no warmup) and you realize, I might not need to be doing all of the things that I am doing just to prepare to train, and if I do need to be doing those things, then I probably need to change my goal to get to the point where I don’t need to do as much of them” “The end goal of corrective exercise or prehab should be to not have to do it anymore” “Hills in general a

Today’s episode features swim coach Andrew Sheaff. Andrew is an assistant swimming coach at the University of Virginia, winners of the last two NCAA women’s championships. In addition to swim coaching, Sheaff has an extensive background in strength and conditioning, including an internship under Buddy Morris. A collegiate swimmer at Pittsburgh, Sheaff was named the Senior Athlete of Distinction. He was a four-time Big East Academic All-Star and a four-time University Scholar Athlete. He writes on numerous aspects of coaching education at his website, coachandrewsheaff.com . A quote on Andrew’s blog that made a lot of sense to me was a quote by former cricket player and ESPN writer, Ed Smith, that “Because the important things are hard to coach, it is tempting to take refuge in the small, irrelevant things because they are easy.” I find this to be extremely relevant to many approaches to athletic development where drills are often over-emphasized and over-controlled, while the actual sporting skill is often left relatively un-changed from season to season. I have found it a common theme, in modern coaching, to attempt to overly “control” an athlete’s technique through the over-use of drills, exact positions, and discrete instructions. This can range from cues in the weight room (butt back, chest out, through the heels!) to the track (heel up, knee up, toe up!) to exact arm positions for swimming movements. On the show today, Andrew speaks on elements of control vs. athlete empowerment in coaching. He talks on training methods that lead to lasting change in technique and performance, with an emphasis on the constraints-led approach. This podcast was a fun cross-pollination of ideas between the worlds of swimming, track and physical preparation, with important concepts for any coach or athlete. Whether you are interested in speed training, technical development, or just overall coaching practice, you are sure to find this a really informative conversation. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Lost Empire Herbs, and the Elastic Essentials online course. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com Find out more about the the online course, Elastic Essentials, by heading to justflysports.thinkific.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 4:51 – Why Andrew got into both physical preparation/S&C, as well as swim coaching, in his coaching career 6:35 – Why Andrew believes swim training remained so “old school” (based on large yardages and distances) for so long, compared to track and field 8:53 – Why so many coaches take refuge in the small/easy/controllable things, when more focus is needed on bigger, but more rewarding, real problems in athletics 12:10 – How coaches seeking “too much control” plays out in the world of swimming 15:36 – Basics of how Andrew uses constraints to allow swimmers problem solving opportunities, vs. trying to control smaller elements of the stroke 23:46 – Bondarchuk’s “Push the Hammer” cue, and the power of slightly ambiguous coaching instructions that don’t over-control the athlete’s movements 31:28 – How the unique situation of training in a 25 yard or 50 meter pool, can create more interesting training options for swim athletes in terms of constraints 35:13 – How Andrew uses constraints that are purely for exploratory perspective, versus constraints from a timed perspective 41:23 – How fatiguing particular body sections or muscles can offer a unique constraint in both swimming, or land activities such as plyometrics 46:04 – The spectrum of “boredom tolerance” between athletes, and how Andrew manages this in practice 51:58 – Why and how Andrew thinks more “standard volume” type training methods can be successful, and if they are sustainable or not 55:12 – The importance of not taking away individuals “athletic identities” away (such as excessive weightlifting or speed-endurance work) if the athlete identifies with it 58:54 – How Andrew specifically creates engagement for swimmers in his training process 1:01:32 – How looking at athlete’s overall states of readiness can become overly-mechanistic, compared to simply asking an athlete how they are doing, and comparing it to their training times 1:11:47 – How to help athletes to “undo” a poor technique, when they first start working with Andrew “A lot of times, there is a focus on the nuances, little things that are almost asthetic, but they don’t really determine performance” “(Small changes the coach can see) don’t really get down to the fundamentals that actually matter” “In swimming, the things to work on are kind of subtle and not really obvious” “You give them a puzzle to figure out, and you use constraints to take away some of the options that they would use to cheat it, and then the only way they can solve that problem is to move in different ways….. they m

Today’s episode features Rob Assise. Rob has 19 years of experience teaching mathematics and coaching track and field at Homewood-Flossmoor High School. He also has coached football and cross country, and is also the owner of the private training business, Re-evolution athletics. Rob has appeared on multiple prior episodes of the podcast, speaking on his unique approach to jumps training that combines the practice with many sport-like elements. Track and field offers us a great insight as to the effectiveness of a variety of training methods, because each method will be ultimately judged by how fast an athlete ended up running, how far or high they jumped, or how far they threw. In track and field, we combine power alongside technical development in the process of achieving event mastery. Rob has a creative and integrative process to his own training methods, and on today’s show, he speaks largely on some “crescendo style” adjustments to common plyometric and sprint drills that he uses to help athletes improve their technique and rhythmic ability over a period of time. On the show Rob talks about his recent sprint-jump complexes, use of asymmetrical plyometrics, and where he has gone with the “minimal effective dose” style of training. He also shares his thoughts on tempo sprints in the role of jump training, and as we have spoken on in other podcasts, manipulating velocity in a movement in order to improve not only one’s speed, to help them clear up technical issues. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 4:17 – How Rob’s last track season turned out, and an overview of some things he changed and learned 7:15 – The purpose, and implementation of “crescendo” style plyometric training 23:05 – Specific “nuts and bolts” of “crescendo” style plyometrics in terms of sets, reps and intensities 28:20 – Thoughts on the crescendo effect, and wave-loading for fly-10 sprints, and then in the weight room 34:09 – Rob’s ideas for using basketball hoops with his track and field jumps group, and ideas for a warmup and training circuit blending basketball and track ideas 38:54 – Some of Rob’s training complexes that mix top-end speed, and controllable jump takeoffs 42:31 – How biomechanical issues in sprinting and jumping could be potentially solved via increased velocity 46:34 – How Rob has moved away, within his training group, from the “minimal effective dose” idea, especially in the volume of his long-jump approaches 50:35 – Rob’s take on tempo training and long sprints with his training group 57:34 – How Rob has been using asymmetrical skips and bounding to better replicate some jump takeoffs, and then to help teach bounding better “That skill (how to bounce) isn’t necessarily there with athletes” “We brought (the crescendo principle) into all of our regular plyos, the bounds, the gallops, the skips, the run-run-jumps” “If an athlete isn’t getting the RSI I want, I’ll make it a “speed gate golf” game, and we’ll (try exactly for a lower RSI) for a few sets, and then they’ll come back and hit a PR” “Something I need to more of that has a lot of power is the single leg bounds or hopping… with the crescendo style, that’s something I’m going to focus on more, moving forward” “If I played basketball, and I could only make layups or 3 pointers, there may be a role for me, but it would be better if I could hit a mid-range jumper, right?” “Whenever I write up a practice plan, it’s all a complex” “Now days I have no problem with having athletes take 10 long jump approaches in a session, where before, I may have capped it at 4” “I get a lot of benefits of tempo from doing jump type circuits; you’ll take a couple short approach jumps, then do a couple wicket runs, then a jump rope run, then an isometric hold, one to the next, and we are working through that circuit for 30-40 minutes… that’s how I handle tempo; and I don’t have a lot of wear and tear issues when the jumpers” “I’m not opposed to tempo, but I am opposed to abusive tempo” “It’s a good bridge, you are going to do the asymmetric skip for distance with your left, and then your right, and now you are going to do a traditional skip for distance” “Some athletes really aren’t ready to bound, like a max power bound, but they can handle it (going asymmetrically)” About Rob Assise Rob Assise has 19 years of experience teaching mathematics and coaching track and field at Homewood-Flossmoor High School. He also has coached football and cross country, and is also the owner of the private training business, Re-evolution athletics. Additional writing of his can be found at Simplifaster, Track Football Consortium, and ITCCCA. He can be reached via e-mail at [email protected] or Twitter @HFJumps.

Today’s episode features Will Ratelle. Will is a strength coach, at the University of North Dakota, working with football, basketball, volleyball and tennis athletes. He is also the owner of “W2 Performance”. Prior to working in the performance field, he spent time as a professional football player, spending time with the Atlanta Falcons, Kansas City Chiefs, and Saskatchewan Roughriders (CFL). In the supportive role of physical preparation/S&C, it is very easy to partition the process of weightlifting away from the actual needs and demand of explosive, chaotic sports. It’s also easy to get carried away with excessive auxiliary work, or “atomizing” facets of power work/RFD that don’t end up transferring to actual explosive sport skills. In this sense, it’s helpful to personally spend time in sport, in skill acquisition, and in strength development one’s self, to intuitively understand the balance, and synergy, between athletic components. Will’s athletic background, love for sport and play, and raw “horsepower” is a unique combination. He was a semi-pro athlete, can clean and jerk 198kg, dunks a basketball with ease, and also loves to play a variety of games and sports. Will has an analytical process to his performance programming, and asks important questions that have use really dig into the why of what we are doing in the gym (and beyond). On the show today, Will talks about his athletic, game-play and strength background, and how despite being more than physically capable, did not make the pro level of football. Will then goes into ideas on what we should actually be looking to improve/intensity in the gym setting. He chats on how to avoid training things that really don’t matter in the grand scheme of everything an athlete is asked to do. Will finishes with his thoughts on the specificity of potentiation, jump and sprint variability training, and then a great take on the “Olympic lifts vs. loaded jumps” debate. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 3:40 – How many “Bang” energy drinks Will believes the typical strength coach should consume daily 4:51 – Will’s background in athletics, sport, and athletic performance 9:53 – The importance of play in fitness and boosting overall athletic qualities 16:02 – Why Will, despite being athletically physically superior to many other football players, did not make it as a pro-football player and what he has learned from that 21:35 – Will thoughts on things he would choose to intensify in the gym, such as barbell velocity 27:17 – Thoughts on “generalized” power training methods 33:39 – Will’s take on not wasting time in the gym, and how to avoid redundancy in the course of training 47:58 – Will’s thoughts on heavy strongman work, squats and deadlifts and the optimal potentiation for sport skills 55:15 – How Will approaches jump and sprint variability in his warmups for training 1:03:46 – Will’s take on loaded jumps versus Olympic lifting, and the utility of Olympic lifting in sport preparation “It’s really difficult to get people,who are my peers, on a Saturday afternoon, to go play racquetball, or go play pickleball, or something like that…. When you do get a group of people to go play a game like that, they always say, “we should do this more often”” “I think a lot of times (playing) is going to have a better training effect than going in the gym for an hour” “I didn’t have the (tactical) ability that would have been required for me to play at that level… the general perception action abilities were right up there with anybody else, I just didn’t have the specific perception action abilities” “I think it’s a good idea to improve your ability to produce outputs, and once you reach a certain threshold of producing these outputs, we need to improve the context by which you can produce those outputs” “I think a lot of extensive plyos is kind of a waste; it depends on the sport, but take basketball, I don’t think they need to do any extensive plyos because that’s what basketball is; submaximal contacts up and down the court” “I do not like the rationalization of doing loaded jumps to improve “rate of force development”… I like to think of them as “you are improving jumping competency”” “I do not like the comparison of loaded jumps and Olympic lifting…. In Olympic lifting you are interacting with an external body of mass” “I try to teach snatch before clean, for a variety of reasons” “The reflexes are being trained much faster in Olympic lifts, than if you are going to do repeated, loaded jumps” About Will Ratelle Will Ratelle is a NCAA Division I strength and conditioning coach at the University of North Dakota, working with football, basketball, volleyball and tennis athletes. Prior to worki

Today’s episode features strength coach, track coach and writer, Dan John. Dan is a legendary contributor to the world of human performance, having written numerous top-selling books in strength development, such as “Easy Strength”, as well as having coached and taught athletes for decades. He has been a multi-time guest on this podcast, and is one of the greatest influences on the way I see the process of sport performance today. In the world of athletics, it becomes very easy to dissect elements of performance or biomechanics down to a level of minutia where things can actually lose effectiveness, efficiency, or both. In large, fast, multi-joint movements, for example, we reap value that is often times “greater than the sum of its parts” when we are talking about the best way to achieve functional lower body development (such as using a squat or deadlift, rather than several machine based exercises to train the same muscles). Fast sprinting is a more effective way to train the hamstrings than breaking hamstring training down into a series of strength exercises (although you can certainly do both). In a similar vein, a game like volleyball or basketball is often times better than the sum of its parts in terms of agility and plyometric training. Within the scope of complexity and velocity, the human body is forced to adapt to a higher level than a “broken down” versions. In his vast experience, Dan John has been able to see what “big things” in training are truly important, and how we can close the gap that so often appears between common training practices and competition. He knows how to combine key elements in training and one’s life outside of training to create synergistic effects. On the podcast today, Dan speaks whole-part-whole teaching, and how training get actually get dissected to the point where we are creating gaps in actual competitive performance. He will talk about the role of games (not specific to one’s primary sport) in athletic performance, in the off-season, in-season, and as a form of conditioning. From there Dan goes into motor learning wisdom in coaching, and how he uses elements of velocity, complexity, rhythm and relaxation to help athletes adapt to better technical proficiency, as well as dealing with over-analytical athletes in this process. Finally, Dan finishes the show with some practical wisdom on sets and reps in the grand scheme of program design, as well as some thoughts on periodization. It’s always an honor to have Dan on, and listen to his coaching wisdom from decades in his craft. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 4:00 – Whole-Part-Whole teaching, and principles of not overly dissecting movements in the process of athletic development 9:19 – Principles on synergy, and the “sum of the parts” being greater than the individual elements, when it comes to a sport or major human movement 16:08 – The importance of games in athletic programming, and how game play can fulfill many conditioning needs of athletes without over-complicating the process 22:21 – How the “fundamentals” of free play and overall athleticism are critical in the general development of athletes 28:50 – What Dan’s throw practices look like in terms of the proportion of drills or constraints vs. traditional throws 33:45 – How giving athletes more complexity can be a cure for “monkey brain”, or over-thinking athletes 43:43 – Dan’s take on the “Rewzon study” on variable long jump training, and how it carries into his throws practice 54:23 – Advanced, or “magic” drills in track and field, or sports performance 1:04:10 – Dan’s thoughts on where to get started with “sets and reps” in the world of sports performance/strength & conditioning 1:07:41 – Dan’s take on periodization, strength and “power” phases in his training organization “I wasn’t a very good basketball or soccer player, but those two sports taught me triangles, they taught me spacing, and they really helped me as a strong safety (in football)” “Most of these (elite Soviet Union athletes) in the offseason either played volleyball extremely seriously, or soccer extremely seriously. Volleyball is what the explosive sports did in the Soviet union to the point where a lot of the guys would push off their jumping for a while, because they had a volleyball tournament, and that tournament was more important than off-season triple jump” “I think (physioballs) are a waste of time and energy, but here is what you use it for; we play two games. One is no-goalie soccer, and the other is not ultimate-frisbee, but ultimate-swiss ball… I throw that game into our training deep into the season” “Playing always makes you speed up your skill-set” “The drills I teach are important, when I t

Today’s episode features coach and inventor, Rolf Ohman. Rolf was born in Sweden but grew up in Brisbane, Australia. He has worked for over 40 years in international sports, as an athlete (Decathlon) and as coach at International and National level. He was the Head Coach for the Dalian Olympic Sports Center 2016-17 and Assistant Head Coach Chinese National Team Sprints/Jumps 2018-19. Rolf is the inventor of the 1080 Technology (such as the 1080 sprint device), and has substantial experience in both the data-based and practical aspects of coaching and training. In the recent Randy Huntingon podcasts, Randy spoke about how doing hurdle hops over too high of hurdles had the tendency to “kill elasticity”. Rolf Ohman has worked with Randy, and has substantial experience linking the ground contact times in plyometric exercises, as well as the impulse times of various movements in the weight room, to what is observed in athletics. Track and field athletes have faster impulse needs than team sport athletes as well, and Rolf has worked with both populations, and understands which metrics should be optimized in training for different situations. On today’s podcast, Rolf will speak on the specific drawbacks to using too high of hurdles in bilateral plyometric training, and gives his specific recommendations for which heights he feels are maximally beneficial for both track and team sport individuals. He’ll speak on various elements of transfer in the weight room, such as the progression of the Olympic lifts, as well as thoughts on the transfer present in different elements of gym training, such as the impulse dynamics of lifting seen in elite athletes. Rolf finishes with some thoughts on youth and long term development on the terms of speed and power. Ultimately, this episode helps us to better understand closing the “gap” we often see between the gym, and the forces present on the field of play. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Lost Empire Herbs, and the Elastic Essentials online course. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com Find out more about the the online course, Elastic Essentials, by heading to justflysports.thinkific.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 4:42 – Rolf’s take on the height in hurdle hops, and how it impacts the elasticity of the exercise, as well as drawbacks to using too high of hurdles in the movement 11:13 – What the typical hurdle heights Rolf uses for track and non-track athletes in plyometric training 17:50 – Why Rolf chooses to progress the Olympic lifts in the course of training like he does 24:37 – Rolf’s use of partial vs. full ranges of motion in strength training for athletes 38:29 – Thoughts on oscillating isometric exercises with lifts, compared to a Keiser or air-powered machine setup 52:08 – How contact times and hurdle hop heights change for team sports vs. track 58:59 – How limb speed gets “set” before the age of 15 in athletes, and if athletes miss critical speed windows of training, they will be in a limited place in future performance “There aren’t a lot of guys around who can produce any sort of RSI index from 1 meter drop jumps… when I use high hurdle hops, which I rarely do, it might be in a setting when I’m seeking some kind of force production” “If I build maximum strength for my long jumpers with contact times in the 250-300ms range, is that going to help me?” “If whatever you’re doing in training is on one end of the spectrum, and competition is on the other end of the spectrum, that is “gap-osis”… if that gap is too big, you are going to be in trouble” “In the first 100-150 milliseconds (of a lift) the athletes who are the best really shine there” “We’re coordinating the neural system (in the weight room) we are creating the same coupling times that we see in competition…. It makes no sense in choosing weight room exercises that causes velocity to go to the other end of the spectrum” “Peak power comes much much earlier in normal mass, than what we thought. The normal consensus is that, once you jump off the ground, you hit peak power just when you leave the ground. But when you are lifting a bar, you have to slow the bar down before you reach the top, so you are reaching peak power much much earlier in the lift vs. the end” “If you put 140kg on a bar, vs. 140kg on a Keiser, you are going to generate about 25% less power (on the bar) because the weight is not getting lighter as you move” “(In hurdle hops) for me, I virtually never use anything over 30 centimeters” “You build sprinters at the age of 8-13,15, that’s where you build speed. Whatever windows you open up, or shut down, in that age bracket, that’s what you’ve got to work with later on” “When you get to age 12-13, that’s when you have the highest limb speed you will ever have…. After that you can’t increase limb velocity any

Today’s episode features Tim Anderson. Tim is the co-owner of the Original Strength Institute, and has been a personal trainer for over 20 years. He has written and co-written many books on human performance including The Becoming Bulletproof Project, Habitual Strength, Pressing RESET, and Original Strength Performance. When it comes down to it, his message is simple yet powerful: We were created to feel good and be strong throughout life. It is because of Tim that I’ve developed a fascination with crawling, and largely, a fascination with bodyweight training in general. So often, our thought on bodyweight training is one that revolves around ways to produce copious amounts of muscle tension, such as in gymnastics, which is great, and do so in volumes that can produce slabs of muscle. At the same time, bodyweight training is much more than simply looking for alternative ways to seek hypertrophy. Training with one’s bodyweight allows for a variety of reciprocal movement actions, where energy is stored and released, transmitting itself through the hands, spine, pelvis and feet. Training with one’s bodyweight also allows us to hone on rudimentary and reflexive movement skills, such as crawling. Tim appeared on episode #154 of the podcast, talking about the power of crawling and reflexive movement. On the tail end of that show, Tim discussed rolling for a few minutes, but I wanted to get him back to dig more thoroughly into that topic. On today’s show, Tim goes into the benefits of rolling, and how he progresses and instructs it for his clients. He speaks about rolling on the level of the vestibular system, joint rotation (particularly internal rotation), the gait cycle, sensation and awareness, and more. At the end of the show, we talk about modulating speeds and rhythms in ground-work, and finally, Tim gets into how his own personal workouts and training have progressed over time, and how rolling plays an important part of his own daily strength routine. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 3:28 – The purpose of rolling for human performance, and how Tim progresses it for clients 7:09 – The possibility of rolling to improve balance, coordination and dexterity through stimulation of the vestibular system 13:46 – Tim’s description of segmental rolling and how to progress it over time 23:30 – How much rolling Tim prescribes for various clients and individuals 26:53 – The specific elements in the process of rolling that helps to “connect the X” of the torso 32:21 – Ideas on using rolling or similar connective movements between more intensive main training sets 39:17 – How Tim looks at rolling and similar movements in light of their capacity to help improve internal rotation in individuals 46:44 – Addressing various speeds or rhythms to training movements 50:27 – What Tim’s early workouts looked like, and what his training has transitioned to now that he has gotten into his Original Strength workouts 58:29 – Ideas on super-slow crawling and the benefits of controlled bodyweight movement 1:04:02 – What the head and eye position should be like in the course of rolling “Our skin is our largest tactile organ, and when we roll, we are stimulating the skin a lot” “If you could imagine that your body is a sponge, and everything out there is information; so when you are rolling on the ground, you are trying to take that sponge and soak in the information everywhere” “If we do these three things, we’ll more than likely stay healthy throughout our lives: The first one is breath properly with your diaphragm, nasal breathe, keep the tongue on the roof of your mouth. The second is aggravate your vestibular system, and you can do that through eye and head rolling, things like that, and the third is to activate your gait pattern” “When you add in the extra information that the brain is not getting that the nervous system is looking for; it really takes the brakes off of everything” “A roll should look graceful and beautiful; a lot of people look like a log, they move like one whole piece, rather than a piece at a time” “It’s the soft stuff that allows you to do the hard stuff better, safer, more free” “If the body is a big “X” and when we roll, a great way to do it is to take your right shoulder towards your left hip” “People want to do things too fast, most of the time I am trying to get them to slow down” “I love using slow movements to fill in the gaps so people can demonstrate full control over how their body moves” “When people really have control over their body, fast movement still looks beautiful” “I spend every morning, 30-40 minutes rolling around, or rocking on the floor” “In my regiment, super-slow crawling is a part of it, and it is literally

Today’s episode features Rafe Kelly and Charles St. John. Rafe is the owner of Evolve Move Play, and has studied and taught a multitude of movement practices spanning gymnastics, parkour, martial arts, weightlifting, Cross-fit and more for decades. His passion to is help people build the physical practice that will help make them the strongest, most adaptable and resilient version of themselves in movement and in life. Charles has been training parkour since 2009, and coaching it since 2012. He carries multiple parkour coaching certifications and is a certified personal trainer for general fitness, while he currently coaches at the APEX Denver Parkour (Apexdenver.com) and Circus facility in Colorado. Motor learning is the worldview by which you keep yourself from over-compartmentalizing elements of a total training program. It’s how you discover the window, or lens by which an athlete acquires mastery in their sport, and also determines how you go about constructing a training session with the “whole” in mind. It allows one to see the forest from the trees in the process of athletic mastery. If we only listen to “speed”, “output” and “drill” oriented material, and leave out the actual over-arching process of motor learning in any sort of athletic performance discussion, we end up with a more over-compartmentalized, less sustainable, less effective, and less enjoyable model of training On the podcast today, Rafe and Charles speak in the first half, on games they particularly enjoy from a true “generalist” point of view; games that encapsulate the most essential elements of “human-ness” in movement. These game principles can be plugged into either general (for the sake of better outputs for the subsequent training session), or specific warmups (for the sake of “donor” learning to the main session). In the second half, we get into a detailed discussion on dynamic points of learning and coaching, speaking on points of drill vs. holistic approach to skills, frequency of feedback (and types of feedback), working with highly analytical athletes, checking the effectiveness of one’s cues, and much more. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 4:41 – Why Rafe and Charles love rugby as a multi-dimensional game that encapsulates a lot of human qualities and opportunities 14:12 – “Hybrid” games that coaches like to play as a generalist warmup to a strength training session, and the emergence of “king of the course” 23:21 – How to craft a “donor” activity to prepare for your primary training activity 32:49 – What the balance is, in parkour, on teaching actual technique, vs. decisions 52:08 – How to properly tell stories and frame skills to an athlete, without letting words get in the way 1:02:11 – How many efforts to let an athlete perform, before coaches should seek to intervene in the form of a cue or instruction, and how to help athletes be better self-learners 1:14:34 – Cueing and instructing athletes who may desire more structure than others 1:22:37 – Thoughts on velocity of a movement, and the transferability of drills, or slower versions of skills, versus fast movements 1:27:02 – “Feeding the Error” and principles of variable learning that can assist in skill development 1:32:38 – How to improve learning by reducing potential “fear” constraints in sports with a potential risk element “I would contest that (rugby) is the best designed ball sport… it’s the only sport I played that allowed for a range of body types” “Team sports have all of (generalist fitness) demands in them… and you have to do it in a team manner, you have to cooperate with other people” “I think that rugby and football are under-rated as self-defense arts” “For kids, having a free flow based sport as their base is really important, and it’s difficult (for them) to deal with all the stoppage in play (in more structured sports)” “Making everybody miss (tackling you) seems like such an extraordinary expression of athleticism” “The fundamental things we think you should be able to do are: martial arts, parkour, some sort of team sport element, and be able to manipulate objects… sticks, balls, ropes… and you shouldn’t just be competent in each of those areas, you should be able to blend them” “If you think about the goals of (your sport) you can try to abstract a game from those goals rather than just trying to warm up through lighter technical variations of the same technique you are going to be covering anyway, it becomes less redundant and a lot more fun” “You gotta warm up the brain and the emotions. You are going to have a better lift if you have a game and are laughing, before you get to the lift” “When I was training in nature, because that was where I was training, what I

Today’s show features biomechanist, coach and author, Rocky Snyder. Rocky is the owner of “Rocky’s Fitness” in Santa Cruz, California. Rocky is an accomplished personal trainer with an absolutely immense library of knowledge in multiple disciplines of human performance, such as biomechanics, exercise selection and neurology. Rocky is the author of the book “Return to Center” and has a track record on being able to restore functional movement ability to even the most difficult client cases. In the world of training, we have a “muscle-centric” approach, and then a “joint-centric” approach to performance. I have found that while training and centering one’s efforts on muscles and their actions can definitely be helpful, an approach that can serve a greater percentage of clients in a sustainable manner is one that understands joint mechanics, and how muscles will respond to one’s joint positions. Muscles that are long, short, weak or tight are as such, because they are responding to an individual’s joint mechanics, and therefore the related demands they are constantly placed under. Today’s episode focuses on the joint mechanics of the feet and hips. Rocky starts by highlighting elements of proper pronation and supination (with an extra emphasis on the action of the foot’s transverse arch in movement, it’s link to glute function and how we can assess how well it is being utilized) and how we can look for a deficiency in either area. Rocky then gets into practical exercise interventions in the world of lunge motions, standing twists, and why Rocky favors spiraling single leg training to glute-bridge oriented exercises for a functional glute training effect. Finally, Rocky gives his take on how loaded carries fit with the gait cycle, and can “balance out” and restore athletes from compressive gym work. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com Find out more about the the online course, Elastic Essentials, by heading to justflysports.thinkific.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 4:28 – How Rocky got started in fitness, and the different areas of the field he has layered onto his approach, such as biomechanics, neurology and breathwork (evolution from outdoor athlete, to gym rat, into functional fitness/neurology/biomechanics) 10:43 – Rocky’s experience in coaching youth sports 13:39 – What Rocky thinks on the idea of “over-pronation” and what that term means to him 22:30 – The importance of “anchoring the transverse arch” on pronation mechanics and glute utilization in gait 34:26 – How to improve pronation, and solve the issue of “over-pronation” in an athlete 40:17 – Considering barbell hip thrusts in light of knowing more about pronation and spirals in the body, to activate glutes 46:48 – What Rocky is looking for on the level of the pelvis when it comes to pronation 53:35 – The link between sprinting, anterior and posterior pelvic tilt 58:05 – What Rocky is looking at in a reverse glider lunge exercise in terms of pronation and supination 1:03:30 – The importance of a straight back leg in the isometric lunge exercise in terms of the reciprocal action of the body 1:07:52 – The importance of supination in the foot, and how to create a balance of pronation and supination in the feet in various exercises 1:16:45 – How loaded carries fit with expansion bias and functional core strength, for the human body “I couldn’t stand gyms when I was growing up, I grew up in the backwoods of New England, I grew up doing rock climbing, cross country skiing, whitewater canoeing, but I was also a gymnast and got into wrestling” “My work originally started with muscular-centric loading… but now there’s also motor neurology and being a biomechanist, that’s where I am today” “In pronation we need to have opposition in the sagittal plane between the rearfoot and forefoot, in the frontal plane, as well as transverse. If somebody is lowered in all of those places, that would be over-pronation, where they are not able to re-form to a neutral position where there is some shape of arches to the foot” “In order for pronation to occur, the heel rolls inward while the forefoot is level with the ground, for the most part” “We need to see there to be a difference of motion between the rearfoot and the forefoot” “If you can anchor down 1st and 5th met-head, and let the heel move the way it should, you are going to have really great foot mechanics” “When you look at Roman architecture, you see a keystone at the top of the arch, it keeps the arch rigid, and when there is weight coming down onto that arch, there is even more rigidity… the three arches (of the foot) have three points of contact, and they have keystones… and when we are talking about the transverse arch, there is the middle cuneiform (keystone)” “

Today’s show features a roundtable discussion featuring Jeremy Frisch, Austin Jochum and Jake Tuura. Jeremy is the owner of Achieve Performance Training, Austin runs Jochum Strength, and Jake is the owner of “Jacked Athlete”. All three of these individuals were previously strength coaches of NCAA DI institutions before getting into the private sector of training. Recently Jake hosted Austin on his podcast, having a conversation about quitting their jobs as NCAA strength coaches to venture into the private sector. I found that talk very interesting, as I’ve recently been in the same situation, and I think a lot about the way that modern sport and university “systems” are put together. Often times, we are victims of either in-effective, or over-structuring in organizations, in a way that can leave us disconnected and/or overly-compartmentalized. In a variety of “private sector jobs”, people tend to wear more hats. In sports performance, this could be: strength coach, skill coach, fitness coach, and physical educator to name a few. Today’s show isn’t so much about quitting a scholastic strength coaching job, but more-so on the experience of now-private sector coaches who wear those multiple-hats. It’s on how that helps us view the predicament of modern sports in a new way, along with engineering solutions. Despite our coaching setting, we all should aspire to be problem solvers. On today’s episode, our panel speaks on paths away from the college training sector, and how getting into the private sector has allowed them to really focus on the pressing needs in modern sports, such as the “lost” art of physical education, play and then a greater understanding on building robustness and keeping athletes healthy. Whether you are a scholastic or private coach, this is a great show to step back and take a more zoomed-out perspective on effectively training athletes for long-term success. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 3:22 – Jeremy, Austin and Jake’s story of transitioning into the private sector of performance 12:30 – How the extra work a college strength coach puts in can fall to the wayside when a sport coach doesn’t listen or runs a poorly designed practice plan 22:12 – What are some of the big elements of change that have come with moving from the college gig to the private sector 36:10 – “Weaponizing” what you are passionate about in training and performance 38:12 – What Jeremy Frisch has seen from 12 years of being in the private sector, how much he feels kids can get back if they miss critical movement skills early on 42:44 – Where Austin and Jake see their process moving in the next 10 years as coaches, now that they have more freedom to explore things they want 51:35 – Jeremy’s take on the importance of physical education for strength and sport coaches 58:34 – Questioning old narratives of warmups and training in sports performance 1:03:46 – Closing thoughts on the integration of sport and strength and conditioning “Why is everything so isolated in sports, why do we have so many people who specialize in one thing” “My first month (as a DI strength coach) I realized that a lot of athletes had limitations that I wasn’t going to fix, and over time that sort of got to me, and I realized I could really make a difference if I went back and worked with younger athletes” “When I was at Holy Cross I had 15 teams throughout the year” “We have to earn our jobs with new tools, with new shiny toys we present to the sport coach” “I never feel like I am dying in a game when I am going out to catch a pass, I’m pretty recovered, we don’t have to run to death…. Now I don’t have to worry so much about what the head coach or anyone above you (is thinking) being in my own facility you can make those decisions you need to make and not worry about who is looking over your shoulder” “I started realizing, if I would have just had this kid a few years earlier, it would have made a huge difference” “Being a dad of 4, I’m so much more patient than I used to be” “I do less strength and conditioning now, and more sport skills training now” “(When being a private sector coach) Winning is not your customer anymore, now that athlete is your customer… you actively get rewarded for getting better” “(In the private sector) There is nothing to complain about, if I’m in the private sector, it’s all on me” “If you can teach kids these movement skills before they hit puberty, you are really going to help them out a lot… when their body they are really going to hold onto those things” “Kids that have done gymnastics or just any movement based background, they pick up new skills faster… how can you get people better at picking up new skills? I think that’s where the spo

Today’s show welcomes back track coach Randy Huntington, a track coach who has spent his recent years as the national track and field coach for the Chinese Athletics association. Randy has coached numerous Olympians, gold medalists, and world record holders in his time as a track coach, and one of his recent successes was training Su Bingtian, Asian record holder in the 100m dash. Bingtian, en-route to his 9.84 second run, covered 60m in 6.29 seconds and 40 yards in 4.08 seconds as per NFL combine timing. The past shows with Randy have been loaded with the wisdom of an elite coach and have been very popular. For this episode, Randy took listener questions, and gives his answers on a variety of topics. Some particular trends for this show included his specific speed training workouts and intensities, his thoughts on traditional strength and hypertrophy methods for speed and power, coaching relaxation and sprint technique, as well as Randy’s thoughts on the ever-debated Nordic hamstring exercise (and hamstring injury prevention training in general). This and much more is covered on this tremendous Q&A episode. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. 4:11 – The importance of intuition in coaching and performance 7:33 – How understanding the response of animals can help coaches gain better intuition with training human athletes 11:27 – How to “rig” a seated calf machine to attempt to replicate the Keiser seated calf machine 15:23 – Randy’s thoughts on strength development for speed 22:49 – Randy’s favorite top speed and acceleration sessions 28:25 – How does Randy teach relaxation in sprinting, and his thoughts on mini-hurdles/wickets 31:03 – Why Randy doesn’t have his athletes train flying sprints at their maximal speed 37:02 – Considerations in how Randy uses “time of task” sprints, versus simply sprinting a distance for time 42:35 – A recap of how Randy uses water and general strength based recovery methods 45:17 – More thoughts on how and why Randy doesn’t train his flying sprints at maximal velocity each week 48:09 – How Randy’s training has evolved over his years as a coach 52:46 – Teaching acceleration mechanics to young athletes who don’t have much physical strength yet 54:56 – What key data points does Randy use to assess his athletic process 1:00:00 – Randy’s thoughts on overspeed “wind-shield” training such as used by Marcell Jacobs 1:06:39 – How Randy alters strength training when sprinters are in-season 1:07:51 – How Randy would train an athlete who is naturally weak, and if he plays to an athlete’s strengths, or works primarily to bring up weaknesses 1:11:38 – Randy’s thoughts on hamstring injury prevention and Nordic hamstrings “I try not to do too hard of strength training, until people can execute the technical (speed) component I want them to, unless that technical component needs strength to happen. I don’t look at strength training as a way to create anything, because I first want them to be able to get them to move through the (skill) positions that are necessary, and then we add strength on top of that” “We still interpret power as force only… mostly because we haven’t had very effective ways to test it” “My basic pattern is heavy sled, 50% of bodyweight or higher, then 1080, using 15-20% of bodyweight, then unloaded” “We mostly use 6” mini-hurdles” “I rarely go above 95% (of max speed) (in flying sprints in training)” “I use (time of task) sprints specifically for testing” “I only test the 30m fly (max) at most every 6 weeks, and usually every 2 months” “Flying 30 is my big (“data oriented”) test” “I don’t look at the weight of the clean, I look at the power of the clean” “100 guys get the 40 (second test), 200 guys get the 45 (second test)… I won’t take Su past the 20 second test” “The horse trailer behind a car (overspeed) gives the opportunity to run so relaxed” “If I am doing (hypertrophy) I would do 1 day a week, over a 3 week cycle, if we did two cycles. It’s not a steady diet of it; you substitute one with a little more hypertrophy stuff to get this kid to get a better cross sectional area to express more force along with the elasticity he has” “(Nordic hamstrings) are too much for a track athlete unless you are barely doing any running at all” “If (Nordics) were the key for being fast and performance, Su would have trouble with 15 kilos and my female long jumper would knock out 30 kilos… I like it for injury prevention, but the Keiser moving fast and powerfully; you got a really nice injury prevention going on there” “I use the Keiser leg curl, really fast (for hamstring training)” About Randy Huntington Randy Huntington is currently the national track and field coach for the Chinese athletics association and has over 45 years of coa

Today’s show welcomes back Bobby Whyte. Bobby is an athletic performance and basketball skill enhancement trainer operating out of northern New Jersey. Bobby recently appeared on episode 178 of the podcast https://www.just-fly-sports.com/podcast-178-bobby-whyte/, speaking on his integration of strength and skill training for basketball. The world of sports performance can easily suffer from isolationism in the realm of strength, speed and movement skill. In the recent podcast with Tony Villani, the difference between 40-yard dash speed, and actual game speed in the NFL was made very clear. We need to understand more about the nuances, and principles of movement in sport to prepare athletes for it, instead of over-focusing on linear speed mechanics. When we understand the over-arching principles of learning and movement, we can apply them to any sport or skill. Throughout this podcast, we’ve had intelligent minds like Adarian Barr speaking on biomechanical principles, and then folks like Michael Zweifel, Tyler Yearby, and Rob Gray talking about foundational principles of learning and skill acquisition. Bobby Whyte has been using those principles, and tying it all together in his basketball performance program. On the show today, Bobby Whyte speaks how he has taken concepts picked up from Adarian Barr and applied them to movement training and acceleration in the game of basketball. He shares his thoughts on key physical abilities in basketball, and how he uses motor learning principles to help athletes improve their specific skill array for the game. Bobby will speak on how he has taken motor learning principles into landing mechanics and common injury prevention themes in training, and finally Bobby will talk about how he specifically seeks to develop the all-important confidence level in his players in his training sessions. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com Find out more about the the online course, Elastic Essentials, by heading to justflysports.thinkific.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 5:21 – What Bobby has been learning and integrating since his last time on the podcast 2 years ago 6:45 – How Bobby has integrated some of Adarian Barr concepts directly into basketball speed and movement training 18:49 – How basketball, and related movement training, has universal application into many other sports, such as football 24:44 – Key physical abilities on the basketball court that can transfer into great gameplay 28:33 – The importance of chaos in basketball qualities and carryover 35:26 – How Bobby views landing and landing mechanics for his basketball athletes, and how good general strength training can go a long way in helping prevent injury without needing to do plyometrics where athletes need to move a “certain way” 42:45 – Bobby’s take on feedback and instruction in the course of coaching his athletes, and avoiding over-coaching 51:54 – How confidence in one’s specific game and skill abilities is a key and defining factor in athletes that make it to the next level of performance 59:01 – What is a “good drill”? 1:03:14 – Bobby’s thoughts on the benefits and drawbacks of the vast amount of information available to athletes today “The best athletes can maintain (Adarian Barr’s) athletic posture until… it’s time to cut, it’s time to shoot, etc.” “When I’m falling (to drop into a basketball move), I’m almost pulling myself down” “A lot of players will go into that horizontal fall, and there will be a pause before they get moving… our goal is to smooth that out” “They players that struggle with (coming up off the knees into an acceleration) struggle to get on their arches” “All of those physical abilities just give me more action capability; the athletes who succeed are the ones who understand how to apply their physical gifts in an effective way where they are making decisions in their sport” “I look at everything, not as a race to speed, but as a race to position” “If you spend all of your time shooting alone in the gym, with no chaos, it’s not going to hold up, so you have to experience that chaos” “We can’t train perfectly for a game that’s imperfect” “Give me an athlete that can do a 360 layup, and he’s not bad at finishing, it’s going to be hard to find one” “I try to have those opportunities to let athletes figure things out themselves” “The last thing I want to think of when I’m jump shooting is where my elbow is” “If there’s a hiccup, there’s a hitch (in a shot) there’s a whole bunch of things that simply adding speed will correct and make it fluid” “I don’t want you to have an emotional attachment to the goal (making the shot)” “This is what moves the needle more than anything, if you can rewire a player’s mind” “The best players I have, the ones that

Today’s show welcomes Tony Villlani, sports performance coach and owner of XPE sports in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Tony has coached over twenty #1 finishes in the NFL combine and is the creator of the Game Speed and Separation Movement Web. Tony has worked with many of the top NFL players in the league, but will tell you that his learning from those athletes was a much bigger deal in Tony’s development than the fact that he “trained them”. Clearly you have to have a level of speed that’s well above average to be successful at many high level sports. At the same time, the fastest athletes in sports where having a level of speed is important, such as at the NFL combine, are not the successful ones in pro-football. Interestingly, the fastest receivers in the history of the combine have never had truly successful careers. This brings up the question, not only why this is, but also, how can we distribute our training efforts over time to optimize the way that athletes actually move on the field? Clearly, we need to work to get athletes fast in a linear sense, but how much are we helping if we overly focus on linear speed (and spend lots of time hair splitting linear speed in twitter arguments) and don’t address the types of speed utilized in sport. Tony deeply understands the nuances and categories of direction change in sport, and actively trains these components in his sessions. This isn’t to say that Tony doesn’t love traditional speed training (just look at his combine success) but he also loves building speed that gives athletes the highest chance of success in their sport. On the show today, Tony talks about how he “ratios” linear speed training to game-speed training, as well as how he frames NFL combine style training in light of game speed to those trainees. He’ll get into why he feels that the fastest athletes in the history of the combine have never been the best actual football players, and then gets into a substantial layout of his key points in change of direction training. Tony also lists some key aspects of offensive and defensive agility, as well as how agility can differ between sports. This was a podcast that you’ll never forget if you train any type of athlete for speed in their sport. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 6:07 – How having young children has taught Tony about the process of athletic development 7:47 – Tony’s take on the balance of how linear and game-speed training should progress as an athlete develops 23:48 – Tony’s thoughts on why the very fastest NFL receivers in the combine actually never had a good playing career 29:22 – Approaching linear speed development when an athlete is truly not as fast as they need to be from that perspective 36:14 – Tony’s take on the inverse relationship between the 40 yard dash times and 3-cone/shuttle events in the NFL combine 41:29 – How Tony feels the NFL combine agility tests transfer to performance, and what he does for agility instead 54:12 – Comparing types of game speed between athletes, and the general zones of speed pro football athletes will use in competitions 59:58 – Tony’s finer-point breakdown of change of direction technique 1:07:42 – How Tony views “first chance” opportunity in change of direction (one point of attack opportunity) in football vs. basketball or soccer “Everyone should get as fast as they can possibly get with their own genetics, but after that, I turn off the (linear) speed switch” “With our combine athletes, it’s, unfortunately, how to teach them to run out of control… I always tell our combine athletes, quit thinking of football, think track and being out of control” “It’s not that hard to (cut .2 off a 40 yard dash) you just have to shut down everything else and get them fast” “We spend about 30% of our time on linear speed training, but it’s not our holy grail anymore” “The younger you are, the easier it is to win with speed…if someone has always won with speed, and then they get on the field of play where they can’t win with speed, they are not equipped to” “I think increased speed hurts your agility” “I see too many coaches working on acceleration drills with kids but you need force to accelerate” “Watch us prepare 30 guys for the combine every year, and you’ll see the fastest guy require the most time on the 3-cone shuttle” “For the shuttle and 3 cone, we have to do it the perfect way, those are planned steps. When we are out in the field (of play) we don’t know when those planned steps are going to change and we have to find 3-4 ways to do the same thing” “I call that “playing basketball”… you’re in a wide base, you’re shuffling. When you are playing zone and man to man you want to “play basketball” as long as you can” “Anyone wh

Today’s show welcomes back chiropractor and neurology expert, Dr. Mark Wetzel. Mark has been on this show numerous times talking about the effectiveness of long isometric holds, as well as digging into many aspects of their performance. So often in the training and performance field, we just look at exercises, sets, and reps, but then don’t desire to dig into the nuance of those movements we are programming. With isometrics, we can certainly get results by simply having athletes hold positions indiscriminately, but we can multiply those results by understanding the underlying mechanisms that help make isometrics more effective. One of the beautiful things about isometric holds is that the lack of movement brings one’s awareness to a high level, and one’s ability to focus on things like breathing, posture, and muscle tensioning, on a higher level. One’s mental and emotional state has an extremely close correlation with the length of time that you can hold the movement. Holding isometrics for extended periods of time also has an impact on the fascial lines of the body, and even the meridian lines (if your belief system takes you that far). Isometrics are truly a “total body”, functional experience. On today’s show, Mark Wetzel gives his thoughts on how a positive mental state can increase one’s ability to hold an isometric position (or increase muscle endurance in general). He’ll speak extensively on the postural and muscle-tone aspects of holding an isometric, as well as speak on the connections made between the fascial/meridian lines, electric signals, and organ function. Finally, Mark gives his take on what he feels “neurological” strength truly is, and how this is manifested in a program. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 5:24 – Mark’s thoughts on the mental and emotional aspects of fatigue (and perceived fatigue) during a difficult or taxing movement such as an isometric 14:34 – What it means to be “in position” as an athlete gets into an isometric hold 24:47 – Why some athletes have a lot of trouble “pulling down” into an isometric position and discussing the use of “constraints” such as a band around the shin, to help an athlete pull down into an isometric 34:19 – Using a one-arm bench press hold to help improve the pushing ability and breathing of individuals who struggle with isometric pushup holds 42:01 – What “good posture” means for Mark 47:05 – Mark’s take on organ health, meridian lines, and reflexes, particularly in light of utilizing isometric exercises 57:52 – What it means to have “neurological strength” from Mark’s perspective as a chiropractor with neurological training 1:05:35 – Depth jumps and drop landings as an assessment of neurological efficiency Dr. Mark Wetzel's Quotes “When I am in those moments (of fatigue) I try to bring up some sort of happiness or joyful emotion to try and take my mind off of it” “The “fear based” mentality is almost a traditional way of training” “Posture comes back to the breath; typically when people have bad posture it is because they have bad breathing mechanics” “When you do a bunch of calf rebounds in a row, your body will position you in a way that (you have to be in to keep breathing under fatigue)” “You can accomplish so much in an isometric exercise by focusing on “where is my breathing”” “I always back up (a chiropractic adjustment) with exercise” “The meridian lines are all connected to an organ” “What’s cool about an isometric is that you are creating a lot of tone throughout the whole body” “If the brain is telling a muscle to stay weak, then it is going to stay weak no matter what you do” “The more you can stay calm, breathe, smile to yourself while you are going through that discomfort, I feel that transfers more to what that neurological strength is” “Where your intention is, is where your energy goes” Show Notes Single Arm Bench Press Hold https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsAlxydk9Lw Inner Smile Meditation for Increased Muscle Endurance (and Vitality) https://www.amazon.com/Inner-Smile-Increasing-through-Cultivation/dp/1594771553 About Mark Wetzel Dr. Mark Wetzel is a Chiropractor based in Nashville, TN. Dr. Mark received his Doctorate of Chiropractic from Northwestern Health Science University in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Dr. Mark has diverse experience and is an expert in the neurology branch of chiropractic care and sports performance. He completed his undergraduate studies at Indiana University while competing for the Indiana University Men’s Swimming and Diving Team. Dr. Mark has a passion for treating and educating people who want to achieve a healthier lifestyle and enjoys helping them reach their health and fitness goals.

Today’s show is with performance coach, Kurt Hester. Kurt is currently the Head of Football Preparation at the University of Tulane, and was previously the head strength coach at Lousiana Tech University from 2013 to 2021. He has decades of experience coaching in both the collegiate, and private sectors, and is the author of the book: ”Rants of a Strength and Conditioning Madman”. When it comes to the results we get out of a training program (or the experience an athlete has in a sport organization), we usually think on the level of sets, reps and exercises. What we typically don’t consider as much, is how an athlete perceives the training from an emotional and sub-conscious, perspective, and how important building the right relationship is to the holistic success of the program. Kurt Hester is the kind of strength coach I wish I had when I was a young athlete. When we talk about what it means to be a coach, and to be a servant-leader, Kurt is one of the first individuals that comes to mind. He not only has been studying and living the art of physical training for almost half a century, but he also has a focused sense of how to train individuals on both the athlete, and human levels. On the show today, Kurt talks about how he connects with his athletes on the “human” level, to help improve their total experience as an athlete, gain trust, and improve the quality of training sessions. He’ll talk about how he uses games and fun activities to improve, not only the emotional content of the training sessions, but also the total effort level of the athletes. Finally, Kurt digs into some details around the sports performance industry itself, what he considers “mental toughness” to truly be, and gives his advice on developmental practices in leadership and communication. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 5:31 – How Kurt started to survey his athletes to learn more about them, and how this helped him to connect with athletes on a stronger level 10:14 – How to command a room in a coaching setting, while still getting to know athletes on a more personal level 13:27 – How players at Kurt’s former university rated the importance of the “strength coach” so high, in regards to why they attended the school 17:432 – Why Kurt uses games as a critical portion of his physical preparation program, as well as the injury prevention benefits of using game-based agility training 29:17 – Kurt’s learnings in his training with elite track and field athletes in the 1980’s and how many “modern” training methods have been around for a long time 32:14 – How strength coaches should have good all-around GPP, and be able to play games, do dynamic warmups, and demonstrate sprinting 40:15 – What Kurt would re-brand the field of sports performance 48:53 – What Kurt considers “mental strength” and “toughness” to truly be, in light of sports performance training 58:32 – Kurt’s advice on helping coaches to be able to understand athletes and lead them on a better level “You can’t serve who you don’t know” “The athletes who trusted me, and I had the best relationship with, those were the ones who excelled the most… the closer I had a relationship with them that was not about (sports) where they trusted me at a very high level, they developed at a faster rate than an athlete I wasn’t close to” “A lot of strength and football coaches think that, if you have fun, that you are not working hard or at a proficient, high level, and I never wanted to be in this field, to not have fun” “Most athletes don’t like to train, and that’s what most strength coaches don’t get… 99% of strength coaches do not understand that fact, they are not you! So that’s always in the back of my mind, how can I make it fun” “(In games) you are never going to get that out of a regular drill; that speed, that force into the ground in moving” “Most people would rather play (ghetto-ball) than their true sport” “(In a game) they will run harder than they will ever run on a timed sprint, or a tempo run” “Tag games was (track coach Brent MacFarlane’s) GPP” “From the 60’s to the 90’s, it was heavy, heavy on the lifting aspect, 70% was lifting, and 30% was running dudes to the ground, on the glycolytic level” “We’re still stuck in “lifting is more”; we have destroyed our DB’s and wide receivers over the years, and made them non-reactive because of so many years of them spending time in the weightroom; once you get to a certain level of strength, it’s not going to help you at all” “You are not going to beat an athlete into the ground, and make him a tougher person” “What will happen is (the bottom 10% of athletes who fold or quit in conditioning work) they’ll be a better conditioned 10%, but they are not mentally tough” “We changed their entire life, but we weren’t beating it out of them, it was

Today’s show is with coach and educator, Dan Cleather. Dan is a reader in strength and conditioning and the programme director of the MSc in strength and conditioning at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, UK. Dan began coaching at Cal State Long Beach, and then worked at the English Institute of Sport. He has coached national and international medalists across a wide range of sports, and in particular has worked with World and Olympic champions. Dan is the author of several books on the topics of science and sports performance, including “Force”: The Biomechanics of Training, and “The Little Black Book of Training Wisdom”. Dan has published over 40 peer-reviewed and scientific articles, and is a founder member of the UK Strength and Conditioning Association. When it comes to performance training, coaches often cite a disconnect between what they are coaching, and what actually happens when an athlete competes. We can gain a greater understanding of this issue by simply looking at how movement actually happens in sport, and how athletes actually manage forces. Many control points in coaching tend to revolve around slow, or easily observable aspects of movement (usually the end-points), when the complex reality of movement renders coaching around these endpoints obsolete, if not counter-productive. On the show today, Dan will share with us how he views common coaching practices revolving around scientific terminology, such as “force absorption”. He’ll go into some fallacies around force-based principles involving landing dynamics in sport, deceleration training, and how coaches go about instructing Olympic weightlifting. Dan will speak on where science, and “evidence-based” practices fit in with one’s coaching philosophy and intuition, and will share his thoughts on the link between gardening plants and coaching athletes. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 4:37 – Dan’s background as an athlete and what got him into strength and conditioning 7:58 – Dan’s take on learning skills as a coach, in order to be a better learning (and coach) of skills 15:11 – Dan’s thoughts on what applying science to training actually is 22:42 – How coaches tend to frame “force-absorption” in athletics, and what it actually is 32:47 – Thoughts on the body dealing with forces from a perspective of being a “machine” or from a self-organizing perspective 41:27 – Dan’s thoughts on any sort of deceleration training for sport, and how coaches tend to spend too much time on versions of movement that are too reductionist 48:20 – The link between seeds, plants, gardening and athletic performance 52:58 – Dan’s take on traditional Olympic lifting practices in light of force development “The more skills you learn, the better you get at learning skills” “Evidence based doesn’t mean that the science is prescriptive, we see 8 parts of a 30 piece jigsaw puzzle, which are the bits of evidence we are getting from the science, and we work out the rest of what that puzzle looks like based on our experience, our discussions with the coaches, etc.” “The scientific evidence is an important part of our philosophy but it’s our philosophy that guides the decisions that we make” “If you do something because your previous coach did it, that’s the evidence of what they did” “Coaches find out what works, and 25 years later, the sport scientists come along and explain why… if you had to wait for the science before you were prepared to make a decision then you wouldn’t be able to do very much” “Absorption implies that there is something you have got that is being sucked up by something, and can be released later” “We call a softer landing with more flexion of the knees and hips “force absorption”, but we are not actually absorbing force when we do that, we are reducing the likelihood that we will have high peak forces” “Your muscles don’t absorb force when you land, they produce force… if you didn’t produce force you would collapse into the floor” “There is research that landing drills with at-risk populations will decrease their injury risk” “We have to remember that, in many cases, landing slow, in competition is a disadvantage” “I think it will be those kids who haven’t done that sort of play (jumping and dropping off of things in play) where you have to do more regressive things and teach landing mechanics” “As a profession I think we tend to over-teach things, we want to drill and control movement, where you need to make sure that your athletes are safe, but once you’ve done that, letting them work things out for themselves is more effective” “I’m not sure we’re mitigating much injury risk by having 80 players do something that most of them do fine (regressive drills)” “If things look too pretty, the athlete isn’t being challenged enough and they aren’t learning anyth

Today’s show is with Boo Schexnayder. Boo is a current strength coach and former jumps coach at Louisiana State University, and is regarded internationally as a leading authority in training design. Boo has been a two-time previous guest on the podcast talking about speed and power training setups. In a world of complexity, and nearly infinite ways to train athletes, Boo knows the art of managing athletic performance by using training means that are not more complex than they need to be. In my coaching (and athletic) years, I have loved looking into all of the complexities, and details of the human body, training, motor learning and biomechanics. It’s always been a swinging pendulum in terms of digging in to understand important training nuances, but then zooming back out, to pull along the key pieces of what it really important, both in general, and for each individual athlete. When we over-complicate training, over-coach, and give out exercises that require too much distraction from actual outputs or muscular adaptations, we create a diminished experience for the athlete, and also create a program that is harder to learn from as a coach. Knowing how and when to make the complex simple is a mark of an accomplished coach who can really transmit training to an athlete in a way that allows them to self-organize to their highest potential, both on the level of skill development, and maximal outputs. On the show today, Boo goes in detail on his own upbringing and mentorships in coaching that have led him to become the coach he is today. He speaks particularly how his work in the rehab process gave him increased confidence in his regular coaching abilities. Boo will speak on the process of how far he will go on the complexity rung in the gym, and how he balances coaching skill and technique with the self-organizing ability of the athlete. Finally, Boo gives some of his thoughts on training that focuses on an athlete’s strength, and his take on heavy partial lifts in the gym in respect to the total training system. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 5:02 – Boo’s early development as a coach, early mentors, and his work in rehab that led him to where he is now 15:30 – Some specifics that Boo learned from the world of rehabilitation that intertwined with his performance coaching practice, and how rehab and training follow the same principles and draw from the same well 21:50 – Boo’s advice on arriving at the place where things can be made optimally simple in coaching 25:10 – Why coaches end up chasing things in athletics that aren’t that important 36:28 – Where Boo draws the line on complexity in the weightroom to the point where exercises aren’t helping to accomplish the primary goal of training 40:26 – The extent of complexity Boo would utilize for single leg movements 46:01 – How athletes must train their strengths in order to potentiate their weaknesses 52:48 – A discussion on how the Buffalo Bills didn’t squat in season and still experienced substantial success 57:20 – Boo’s take on heavy quarter squats and partial step ups in performance training (vs. full range of motion) “The earliest (change) is when I finally understood specificity and I developed a healthy non-respect for coaching culture, I realized that a lot of coaching is traditional and needs to be evaluated” “Another bright light that came on is when I got involved in the rehab field” “I think the key thing to keeping things simple is understanding what you are trying to accomplish” “So much of what we do in traditional coaching cultures is just filler work” “I feel that one thing that holds back lots of coaches is technology, there is so much technology out there that so many coaches have been data collectors, but they really don’t know what they are doing” “Coaches are obsessive over (small pathological issues) don’t understand that those lie outside of the boundaries of what we try to teach” “Once you get athletes in (movement bandwidths) you have to trust them to do what they do…. I never had to coach athletes to perfection, I only had to coach them close to perfection and then allow their movement organization processes to take them the rest of the way and that’s how you keep it simple” “If athletes are training in the right direction, just shut the hell up, and let the athletes movement processes take over and trust them the rest of the way, and get involved when things aren’t going so well” “For everything I coach, I have got it down to 3 or 4 boxes that need to be ticked… I’ve developed this philosophy that all these things are not that complicated, what you are trying to do is build a body in the way to best execute those things” “Feedback addiction is a real thing; it’s not the healthiest thing for you to say something every single time” “When I

Today’s show is with Nick Winkelman. Nick is the head of athletic performance & science for the Irish Rugby Football Union. Prior to working for Irish Rugby, Nick was the director of education for EXOS. Nick is an internationally recognized speaker on human performance and coaching science, and is the author of the book, “The Language of Coaching”. Nick previously appeared on episode 193 of the podcast where he went in detail on internal and external cues, analogies, and what it takes to make cues more effective. One of the major shifts in my coaching career and personal movement/training practice has been understanding the “art” of coaching on the levels of psychology, motor learning, and how we actually go about instructing athletes in the course of the training session. As coaches, we all tend to start out with a combination of what we did ourselves as athlete, and then whatever training frameworks we learned in our education process. When we look at any training session, whether it is sport skill or gym work, it’s par for the course to look at it on the level of tactics, sets and reps, which drills to use, or x’s and o’s. It’s far more rare to look at the session on the level of meaning and engagement, and how we can work cohesively with athletes to better communicate with them, direct their attention, and allow them to understand, on a deeper level, what improving their sport technique feels like (and not to just intellectualize the process). Improving one’s ability in this “soft” side of the coaching equation will help improve the long term success and sustainability of the training process. On the show today, Nick speaks on principles of attentional focus, and how factors such as motivation and novelty can direct an athlete’s attentional focus in training. Nick will discuss cueing dynamics on a level of meaningfulness and embodiment to the athlete, moving past simply intellectualizing instruction (and how we can improve our dialogue in that process). Finally, Nick will give his take on how coaches can become better story-tellers to their athletes in communicating ideas and instruction. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 5:03 – Why Nick believes that the “soft” practices in athletics (communication/cueing/motor learning/etc.) are less-traveled in the process of performance training 2:19 – Dynamics of attention, motivation and novelty in athletic performance 29:03 – “Survival” oriented coaching situations as a means to gain the attention of athletes 31:41 – How to go through the process of making coaching and cueing more meaningful to the athlete through listening to the athlete 43:14 – How the shortcoming of internal cues can teach us more about how we learn and function as humans, and how cues and attention placed external to the body can help the “one-ness” of movement fully form 52:12 – Nick’s take on the place and context of internal cueing in the process of coaching athletes 57:33 – How “noticing”/awareness of one’s body in the midst of movement fits in with the cueing eco-system 1:01:28 – Nick’s take on personal practices for coaches that can help them paint better pictures with their words when they are actually coaching “Over time, every coach who is attentive and self-aware to the journey, starts to pick up on “a weak signal”, and they start to realize, that “hold on… not everyone responds to programming the same way, so I might have to individualize… and not everyone responds to the same communication style” “What are we trying to get people to do: We are trying to get people to focus their attention on the right things, in the right way, at the right time” “Attention is like a spotlight, and we can’t actually increase the size of the spotlight, and I we want to change, we have to change what we point the spotlight towards” “Attention will switch to the stimulus in the environment that is most likely to inform me of my survival odds” “Our attention floats to things that are novel, interesting, or things that we are motivated by” “Cues need to be both accurate and interesting; we are talking about seedlings of communication here” “Even though motivation powers attention in the long term, in the short term, we know that novelty, things that are kind of salient, things that stand out, that are unique, they are very good at grabbing attention” “To the individual, you will rarely find someone who doesn’t enjoy solving a problem” “When you are giving the athletes something that aligns with an individuals preferences, likes and desires, I think some of that reciprocity is paid back in a “hey coach”, we’ll listen to you a little bit better” “Over time I realized, the athlete is the painter, ultimately they are the one who needs to be able to understand the coaching cue, has to resonate with it, and need

Today’s show is with Rob Gray, professor at Arizona State University and Host of the Perception & Action Podcast. Rob Gray is a professor at Arizona State University who has been conducting research on and teaching courses related to perceptual-motor skill for over 25 years. Rob focuses heavily on the application of basic theory to address real-world challenges, having consulted with numerous professional and governmental entities, and has developed a VR baseball training system that has been used in over 25 published studies. Rob is the author of the book “How We Learn to Move: A Revolution in the Way We Coach and Practice Sports Skills”. When it comes to anything we do athletically: playing a sport, sprinting, lifting weights, even holding an isometric position; all of these things are learned skills. So often, the various compartments of athletics, the sport coach, the strength coach, the rehab specialist, are relatively disconnected, and there is often no common playbook when it comes to athletics and the learning process. The principles of the way we learn, and how this learning fits with our movement strategy and ability, are universal. By understanding what it takes to be a better mover via the learning process, we have an understanding of the general process of athletic performance training from a broader frame of mind. On today’s show, Rob Gray speaks about the fallacy of training a “perfect technique” via drills or repeated cues. He talks about why using a constraints-led approach to help shore up any key movement attractors (technique) is an ideal way to facilitate skill development. Rob will get into his take on how to approach learning the “fundamentals” in any sport skill, and also get into important concepts of variability in sport, the differences between novice and elite in variability, and then how there can be “good” or “bad” variability in sport training. Finally, Rob covers the role of variability in injury prevention, and talks about the sport coach/strength coach relationship in light of variability and the constraints led approach to skills. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Inside Tracker, and Lost Empire Herbs. For 25% off of an Inside Tracker order go to info.insidetracker.com/justflysports For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 5:05 – The story of Tim Tebow, and how he was so dominant on the NCAA level, but why his NFL career was very unsuccessful from a perspective of throwing biomechanics 9:08 – Rob’s take on the idea of “perfect technique” 13:47 – Approaching the “fundamentals” in any given skill, in the learning process 23:37 – Looking at drill-work in sport and its original intended purpose 25:33 – How much variability elite versus amateur athletes exhibit in their skills 28:59 – Variability across a spectrum of skills, such as running in football versus running on a track in sprinting 32:42 – Using variability in “basic” sports such as track and field or swimming 39:17 – How variability changes as one moves from novice, to intermediate, to expert, particularly on the level of an individual sport, like track and field 45:28 – Rob’s take on variability and injury-prevention 50:57 – The idea of donor sports and how those sports can offer helpful variability to one’s eventual sport specialization 56:35 – How strength coaches might be able to use variability in the gym that might connect to skills athletes are trying to improve on the field “There can’t be one perfect, ideal way, because the world is not staying the same around you” “Being skillful is not about repeating the same solution to the problem, it’s about repeating coming up with solutions to problems” “I like to think about giving athletes problems to solve instead of the solution” “The process of solving problems is how you become skillful” “So instead of trying to give them these attractors first, then plugging it into the actual action, I’d rather start with the action, and then pull back with constraints as a coach” “The fundamental issue with dribbling around cones is, there is no problem there” “Experts do tend to be more consistent in certain aspects of their movement, but it depends on what type, there is good and bad variability” “Good variability is any variability that keeps you on your goal; it allows you to adapt” “Experts tend to have this functional motor synergy, things working and varying together, is what we mean by good variability” “On the surface, we want to say those (poor athletes with no facilities) are at a disadvantage, but it’s counter-productive to make (their facilities) perfect” “I would really like to see some variability all of the time (even in individuals sports like track or swimming)” “I’m a believer in basketball, deliberately trying to shoot the ball off of the back rim so that it comes back to you… doing that requires you learn the relationsh

Today’s show is with performance director Daniel Bove. After spending several seasons with the Atlanta Hawks and Phoenix Suns, Daniel is now the Director of Performance and Sports Science for the New Orleans Pelicans, and is also the author of the book, “The Quadrant System, Navigating Stress in Team Sport”. As Michael Zweifel has said previously on the podcast, every coach should have the opportunity to work with youth athletes, and pro sports, at some point in their career. I’ve done a lot of shows talking about youth sport concepts, as well as principles of training through the lens of a child development, but I haven’t done as many shows detailing some of the nuances of working with a pro population specifically. When it comes to that other end of the spectrum, with professional athletes, the art of strength & conditioning is largely the art of “load management” and stress consolidation, especially over the course of long competitive seasons. This art of training athletes at the highest level is certainly interesting if you are in the small percentage of coaches who work in this group, but the concepts and ideas behind it can be helpful to understand, regardless of what population you end up working with. Daniel has come up with a unique system of load consolidation, working with an NBA population that makes a lot of sense. Not only is “The Quadrant System” a wise method for pro athletes, but understanding the Quadrant System is also helpful from the perspective of understanding “high-low” style training in general (making high days truly “high” and low days, truly “low”), as well as the art of dealing with monotony over the course of long training periods. On the show today, Daniel gets into his four quadrants of training (recovery, repetition, speed and of course, strength), and how he utilizes these methods of loading through different points in an in-season training schedule, as well as off-season. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Inside Tracker, and Lost Empire Herbs. For 25% off of an Inside Tracker order go to info.insidetracker.com/justflysports For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 4:23 – How Daniel categorizes load for athletes that he works with 14:48 – How the quadrants might alter as athletes get further down away from the pro-level 15:58 – How high-low training and undulation of the type of stimulus players get offers substantial benefits for players, particularly those in the course of long playing seasons 20:22 – Daniel’s take on the “speed day” in the quadrant system, and how that balances with the explosive work and speed players are doing in their practice 25:48 – How the quadrant system may change when the strength coach doesn’t have a “seat at the table” of the sport coaches and practice volumes 32:05 – Validating heavy lifting in season, on the terms of what Daniel is seeing from data and force plates, and what types of volumes athletes are doing for heavy strength work in season 37:05 – How to approach heavy lifting after game-day if players had a poor game 40:24 – Daniel’s experience with buy-in and the spectrum of players responses in regards to heavy lifting on game-days 43:01 – Nuances of the heavy strength day and how Daniel chooses to load athletes on that day 44:45 – How Daniel approaches tendon health and the repetition day/quadrant 2 47:58 – How the quadrant system changes when athletes are in the off-season or in developmental cases in-season 50:14 – Daniel’s view on a daily micro-dosing program, versus a high-low, quadrant system oriented program, and common movements that may actually be micro-dosed in the pro/NBA setting 55:04 – How Daniel uses work that creates more movement potential within the hips, as a preparation for players to use that range of motion effectively on the court 57:01 – How Daniel views the role of rhythm in training “That’s the goal of the book, how do we consolidate stress, and how do we manage chaos” “I matched up strength with high intensity high volume (in the quadrant system), and those are our game days typically” “Repetition days tend to fall at least two days out from competition and those are for tissue quality” “Quadrant 3’s (speed days… anything above .75 m/s) tend to fall the day before the contest” “My population views heavy lifts as the most stressful, which is why I place it after a game day” “In practices that are extremely high load, high intensity, they become your quadrant 4 (heavy strength day) and your game days become your quadrant 3” “I can’t just do isos with them every single day, because they have 82 games, and they’ll want to rip my head off” “(By lifting heavy loads in season) I do think you are setting the athlete up for success to be a more robust athlete… when athletes do start to take 1-2 weeks off of lifting, you do start to see force plate numbers go down, the things that h

Today’s show is with coach Brady Volmering. Brady is the owner of DAC Performance and Health. After starting out in the world of baseball skill training, he’s since moved into the human performance arena, putting the focus on increasing the capacity of the human being. Brady looks at what “training the human being” actually means and how that relates to increases in specific sports performance. Ever since I’ve been in a formal weight room training setting for athletes, I’ve really wondered about the thought process of how the various barbell and dumbbell exercises were going to help athletes actually be better at what they do on the field. I’ve always tried to keep a close eye on elements of gym training that could possibly link to athletes who were more successful in their actual sport. It’s important to ask the question: “what is training?”, and realize that the answer includes “how” just as much as “what”. Weights are just one tool, or manifestation of the ability to be strong, and if we zoom out from the tool of barbells and dumbbells, we can look at the process of training and adaptation on a broader level. Muscle tension (and relaxation) can be achieved in a wide variety of ways. If we take a close look at the mental, emotional, and physical components can be put into the simplest of exercises, we can make then a better conduit by which to improve the whole state of the athlete’s system. On today’s podcast, Brady gives us his experiences with training athletes on a “human” level. He goes into the tool of isometric holds, and how to modulate those to draw out different intentions, into ideas on learning the way a child does, the importance of menu systems, as well as “breaking the rules” with higher repetition training schemes (and the qualities it takes to adapt to “unreasonable” training loads). This is an “outside the box” episode that covers a lot of important concepts in training the total human for sport and beyond. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Inside Tracker, and Lost Empire Herbs. For 25% off of an Inside Tracker order go to info.insidetracker.com/justflysports For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 4:51 – How Brady started in the specific skill training of baseball players, and how he transitioned into more “human level” training and performance 9:09 – How Brady views the transfer of training ideology in light of the “human layer”, or GPP layer of performance 15:35 – Different intentions Brady prescribes during exercises, particularly isometric type exercises 22:31 – Elements Brady notices that transfer between human-level skills and how an athlete is performing in their sport 29:22 – The mentality by which children make rapid progress in skills, and how to harness that developmental ideal 39:16 – How Brady looks at menu systems for athletes, and giving them the power of choice 47:49 – Brady’s take on “breaking the rules” with high volume training experiences 58:36 – Thoughts on the balance and handing of high volume training versus the minimal effective dose of work 1:02:32 – “Human level” principles of athletes who can absorb and adapt to training volume on a higher level 1:07:58 – What an average training session looks like for Brady in light of the principles discussed in the show 1:11:50 – How to look at sets and reps, versus the construct of time, to direct intention of the athlete 1:14:07 – Some single-joint, high rep modalities that Brady enjoys using at the end of training sessions “When I’m training a human, I’m not thinking at all about transfer to their sport” “The goal is the deep pushup is for them to direct their intent into whatever it is they are doing; the pushup is just one way to practice that” “That’s where the human aspect of things is “how can we go into the human and take off inhibitors so they can direct themselves towards anything in the best possible way”” “That’s one intention, is you are going to hold (the iso) as long as you can… or as long as you can maintaining an exhale that’s twice as long as an inhale” “The best athletes in the world aren’t there because they did the right superset, or whatever, they are there because the level of their system is leveled up” “That’s been something that’s been on my is that training doesn’t equal weight room, training equals changing the human” “If we can take away those stories and get into the athlete being able to go inside themselves, and feel exactly what they need, as they are connected to that intention of the goal that they have, of the outcome that they want, their body is going to tell them what they need” “Some athletes don’t know how to feel what their body is telling them, because there is so much junk that has gotten in the way” “You take the athlete where they are at, you find out where their lowest functioning system is, and you level that up” “High volume isn’t the goal,

Today’s show is with coach and inventor Adarian Barr. Adarian has spent decades coaching in the college and private sector, and currently consults with a variety of coaches in multiple sports. Adarian has been a guest on this podcast many times, and has a unique, connected, and incredibly detailed perspective on the drivers of human movement. One piece of movement that we haven’t made a theme for this show yet is getting into rotational, “tumbling” actions of joints. When we think of “rotational force” in movement, we often just think of “twisting in the weight room”, or training “transverse plane”. When it comes to “front to back” movements, it is common to simply think in terms of perpendicular forces in terms of movement. With perpendicular actions, think of a coach telling an athlete to stab or drive their shin straight down to the ground in acceleration, for example, or any coaching cue that has to do with “pushing the ground away”. In any sport movement, however, the tumbling, or “pitching” motion of body segments (such as the shins) are going to be massively important when it comes to speed. It’s easy to load hundreds of pounds on a calf raise (a perpendicular force) but to be fast, think sprinting and throwing, rotation is inevitable, so it pays to be familiar with it to make better sense of movement coaching, and building better drills and constraints for athletes. On today’s episode, Adarian will speak on perpendicular versus rotational aspects of movement, and what it means for exercises, especially common sprint drills. He’ll talk about the actions of the various lever systems in the body, and how to optimize the way we load these levers for a variety of movements (with sprinting as the primary example) as we use rotation to move with speed. Adarian will talk about the ideas of “big and small wheels” as well as how not to make the wheel action of limbs a square one, as well as other interesting universal movement concepts. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Inside Tracker, and Lost Empire Herbs. For 25% off of an Inside Tracker order go to info.insidetracker.com/justflysports For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 5:20 – Looking at a “lever based approach” as opposed to a “force based” approach to biomechanics and movement 12:55 – The scope of true “perpendicular” movements in training, such as in-place pogo hops, in light of athletic movement that is rotational in nature 16:56 – A discussion on the hamstrings, and their role in rotational torque 22:01 – How to treat “perpendicular” oriented movements in regards to their transient, isometric nature 28:59 – The nature of the glutes and their rotational properties 30:55 – How to maximize “class 3” lever actions in the body as speed multipliers 33:30 – Squatty running and single leg bounding as rotational assessments and training paradigms 36:44 – Adarian’s take on upper body equivalents to folded running 46:13 – The principle of “big and small wheels” in movement, as well as why a circular wheel is superior to a square wheel 50:37 – How athletes will shift their “wheel size” when it comes to different athletic outcomes 55:44 – What is a “good” big wheel, and what things happening make a wheel “poor”, as well as how many sprint drills don’t actually train rotation 1:03.42 – A recap on the types of levers present in movement 1:05:20 – Looking at rotation and class 3 opportunities in the weight room 1:10:40 – What roller skating can teach us about levers and human movement “There is no way to move without a rotational component being added in there” “Everything we do is rotational, but the math is hard” “When we talk about sagittal, frontal and transverse plane, that is a location… a better term is pitch, yaw and roll” “If you move in a strictly linear fashion, you had better be strong as @#$^” “Levers don’t work well with just perpendicular input” “I do need perpendicular, because if you put a wrench on the bolt, the perpendicular secures the wrench on the bolt… if I do perpendicular, that is a good setup to use the parallel” “The closer you get to the fulcrum, the less effective the lever is” “Class 3 levers work best as their shortest” “Think about Nordic hamstrings… you are trying to strengthen something that is designed to multiply speed” “Gravity helps you to create the perpendicular” “You see this a lot of the time… people get to the toes, and they go up (using a class 1 lever poorly)” “Gravity creates perpendicular, but the upper body can add on to that perpendicular” “The scapulas can help you load the legs, which gives you a better rotationa component and can increase the output” “At the point where the arm is the longest, the scapula is in a power component” “If I’m going to start, I want a small wheel, I don’t want a big wheel, I want to spin the small wheel. But once I get going, I need a bigger wheel” “T

Today’s show is with Angus Bradley. Angus is a strength coach and podcast host from Sydney, Australia. He coaches out of Sydney CBD, co-hosts the Hyperformance podcast with his brother, Oscar, and is also an avid surfer. Angus appeared previously on episode 249 of the podcast, talking about compressive strategies in weightlifting, as well as the impacts of those compressive effects on narrow infra-sternal angle individuals in particular. Angus is one of the most brilliant, and practical individuals I know in the world of strength training biomechanics, and connecting it to movement and practical outcomes. When it comes to making sense of how our body structure and pressure systems fit with different setups in the weight room, and how this might apply to dynamic movement, Angus is a top individual to learn from. So often in the weight room, we will say that it is all “general” (which technically it is) but then use that as an excuse not to understand the movements we are utilizing in detail that fit with greater concepts of the gait cycle. Connecting strength work to the gait cycle is key in better strength training practices, as well as individualization. On the show today, Angus covers the dimensions of exercises based on center of mass position relative to the foot, and how this connects with the gait cycle, as well as how much an athlete is being “pushed forward” (and why that is important). He’ll cover delayed knee extension in both lifting and sprinting (and how they might connect), concepts of foot shapes, and gait, as well as his take on “floating heel” work not potentially being everything it’s cracked up to be. Angus will also give some practical ideas on giving more sensory information to athletes unable to access early stance well, how far to take wide and narrow ISA types in terms of “balancing their weaknesses”, and much more. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Inside Tracker, and Lost Empire Herbs. For 25% off of an Inside Tracker order go to info.insidetracker.com/justflysports For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 4:25 – How doing the “wrong” intervention in training can still lead to positive results 11:30 – Understanding the implications of working through the various positions of the center of mass in relation to the position of the feet, and what this means for degrees of freedom in movement 18:30 – Some performance implications of wide-vs. narrow ISA’s in regards to mid and late stance, and jump technique 23:15 – The idea of “hamstring curling” one’s self out of the hole of a squat in order to delay knee extension 28:45 – Where Angus sees the benefit in “floating heel” training, and where he finds it not very beneficial 34:45 – How to re-train athletes to “let their femurs be” in squatting when they’ve been taught to shove their knees out in the past 39:30 – Thoughts on oscillatory squatting (and split squatting) and its impact on the mid-stance phase of lifting 43:30 – A discussion on developing mid-stance, narrow ISA’s and single leg squatting 49:00 – Flat vs. high arched individuals and what this means for how this impacts athletes in early vs. late propulsion 56:50 – How Angus’s lockdown sprint work went, and lessons he learned with squatted running 1:02:00 – Thoughts on the role of the adductors in movement, why some people may feel them more (or less) in sprinting, and how to train them in the gym “You can grab (IR and ER) if you just start pulling athletes back… heavy lifting just has a tendency to shove people forward” “A sign of a good athlete to me, is they will respond to their environment” “You can simplify it by looking at where they are in the sagittal plane and looking at that map of the foot, looking at where they are in relation to that base of support… if the center of mass is over the toes, you are going to be in that propulsive ER, if the center of mass is over the mid foot, you are going to be in that compressive IR, that mid-stance, and if you get them further back behind that base of support, they are going to be in that early stance and have nice access to that yielding ER” “From a performance perspective, I probably only need to pull (a wide ISA) back to midstance (instead of early stance) for a lot of them, just get them back a bit” “What everyone needs when they suck at anything is more external stability” “That’s why I love Hatfield squats, you just shove the arms out in front of you to keep the ribcage back” “I’m very high on goblet squats” “I think there is an association that slow, stiff people are stuck in their heels, and I just don’t see that” “If you just want to lift a massive weight, do a deadlift” “You are not necessarily helping an athlete develop their strengths and you are drawing all these mid-stance qualities out of them in the weight room, but maybe you are just making them a more well-rounded player” “Triple

Today’s show is a Q&A with Joel Smith. It’s a lot of fun to see the questions you all have, and putting together a list of answers. Some major themes in this show included the dynamics of how an athlete learns and acquires a skill, how to give athletes ideal constraints to learn a skill better (particularly on the level of the arms in sprinting and step-action in jumping), and then questions on training the spectrum of the force velocity curve. There also were a lot of questions and answers that lent to training individualization based on the individual structure of the body and if one is a “power or speed” based athlete, which relates to an athlete’s ribcage structure and ISA bias, and of course, a lot of speed oriented questions. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Inside Tracker, and Lost Empire Herbs. For 25% off of an Inside Tracker order go to info.insidetracker.com/justflysports For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 1:15 – The difference in training fascial vs. elastic athletes 7:33 – How to train a “power” sprinter with poor top end speed 13:40 – Thoughts on training at different points on the force-velocity curve 24:06 – Arm action in sprinting, and constraint-driven coaching versus “positional” coaching 34:14 – Structuring a weight training and performance program for speed and acceleration 36:32 – Why some athletes have a long vs. short penultimate step in jumping 40:45 – Thoughts on in-season programming for team sports 46:56 – Dealing with a toe-sprain and learning to feel other parts of the foot 48:30 – Frequency of training with bodyweight iso holds 49:37 – Thoughts on “inside edge” vs. “outside edge” in movement and training 54:35 – Fascial awareness in movement 55:42 – Is concentric power building in the weightroom worthwhile? 57:01 – How to use falling/slipping/stumbling reflexes to our advantage in training About Joel Smith Joel Smith is the founder of Just Fly Sports and is a sports performance coach in Cincinnati, Ohio. Joel hosts the Just Fly Performance Podcast, has authored several books on athletic performance, and trains numerous clients in the in-person and online space. Joel was formerly a strength coach for 8 years at UC Berkeley, working with the Swim teams and post-graduate professional swimmers, as well as tennis, water polo, and track and field. A track coach of 11 years, Joel coached for the Diablo Valley Track and Field Club for 7 years, and also has 6 years of experience coaching sprints, jumps, hurdles, pole vault and multi-events on the collegiate level, working at Wilmington College, and the University of Wisconsin, LaCrosse. Joel has coached 2 national champions, multiple All-Americans and school record holders in his time as a track coach. In the realm of strength and conditioning, his programs have assisted 5 athletes to Olympic berths that produced 9 medals and a world record performance at Rio in 2016. In 2011, Joel began Just Fly Sports with Jake Clark as a central platform to promote information for athletes and coaches to reach their highest potential. In 2016 the first episode of the “Just Fly Performance Podcast” was released, now a leading source of education in the sports performance field. The evolving mission of Just Fly Sports is focused on teaching athletes to realize their true, innate power, and achieve the highest joy in their training, competition, and in the community.

Today’s show welcomes back running coach and biomechanist, Helen Hall. Helen is the author of “Even With Your Shoes On”. She is an endurance athlete, minimalist ultra-distance runner, 6 times Ironman and credited with being the world’s first ‘barefoot’ Iron(wo)man. Helen is the owner of the Perpetual Forward Motion School of Efficient Running, as well as a running injury clinic, using the latest movement science and gait analysis technology to help people find solutions for their pain and injuries. She appeared on episode 180 speaking on all things joint mechanics and technique in running. One of the most common things I hear (and have seen, especially in my club track years) about athletes is those who have a heavy heel strike when they run. Excessive passive forces in athletic motion is never a good thing, but it’s always important to understand binary concepts (you had a heel-strike or you didn’t) in further detail. There is a spectrum of potential foot strike positions in running, and nobody stays on their heel in gait, as we always move towards the forefoot. On the show today, Helen goes in depth on heel striking and the biomechanics of the heel in the running cycle, as well as the difference in heel striking motions in jogging versus sprinting. One of the topics I frequently enjoy covering is how the human body can interact with nature and natural features to optimize itself (which includes optimizing running technique) and Helen speaks on how one can use uphill and downhill grades to help athletes and individuals self-organize their own optimal running technique. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Inside Tracker, and Lost Empire Herbs. For 25% off of an Inside Tracker order go to info.insidetracker.com/justflysports For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 5:27 – Why Helen feels individuals heel strike in the first place 11:33 – Helen’s “happy medium” when it comes to socks in running 14:28 – Helen’s view on the heel bone and pronation in the initial strike in running 21:03 – How Helen would help an athlete who heel strikes in a sprint when it is not desired 29:28 – The importance of relaxation and “letting” the body move and react, versus trying to force the body into motion 38:41 – Nuances of using uphill and downhill running, what to notice, and how to integrate that into one’s stride 45:29 – How un-even surfaces can create grounds by which individuals can self-organize their stride and foot action 48:35 – How to leverage hills to optimize the function of the glutes in running “I never change somebody’s first point of contact; their bodies change their first point of contact themselves” “There can’t be a right or wrong, since there are so many people whose first point of contact is the heel, and they are not in pain” “If you land in front of the heel, then you get the eccentric loading of the Achilles and what it attaches to” “People decide they are in “this camp” or “that camp” and thereby the camps run parallel to each other and never exchange ideas” “You want to be landing, not in a pronating foot.. in the context of running… the descent is arguably a posteriorly tilted calcaneus because you are landing in a supinating foot… unless your foot is going to go “splat” immediately” “You want to land on a foot that is relaxed enough to give” “They are reaching for the step, and by reaching on the step through hip flexion, they are ending up on their heel first, and that may be giving them more control as they go through the forefoot” “In my experience, people do not go back to the heel-strike, and all you need is a slope (to correct it)” “If you want to slow down, the most natural thing in the world is to shove your foot out, and brake with your heel” “You have to be relaxed for the response in your unbelievably complex system to happen in .2 seconds” “When you go downhill on a heel strike that you don’t feel on the flat… so you get to feel what it’s doing on the flat that you didn’t know before” “If you are aware of the terrain, the brain to body connections will take care of themselves” “Even if you are an athlete who operates on a pristine soccer pitch, if you can get out in nature and operate your body and ask it to do natural things, you are going to be more resilient towards the injuries of “everything has to be perfect” “You can’t clench your glutes when you run, if you clench your glutes, you go backwards” “You know you are stacked when you have maximum head rotation” About Helen Hall Helen Hall is the author of “Even With Your Shoes On”, a comprehensive manual on teaching running in a natural manner based on the sensory capabilities of the human body. She is an endurance athlete, minimalist ultra-distance runner, 6 times Ironman and credited with being the world’s first ‘barefoot’ Iron(wo)man. She has completed “the hardest ironman in the world”, Ironman Lanzar

Today’s show welcomes back JB Morin. JB Morin is currently full professor and head of sports science and the physical education department at the University of Saint-Etienne. He has been involved in sport science research for over 15 years, and has published over 50 peer-reviewed journals since 2004. JB is a world-leading researcher on all things sprint related, having collaborated with and analyzed some of the world’s best sprinters, such as Christophe Lemaitre. JB also does lots of sprint research that is highly applicable to team sport settings, such as information that can be gleaned from force-velocity profiling. He has been a 2x previous guest on this podcast, speaking on elements of heavy sled training, force-velocity profiling, and much more. When it comes to sprinting from point A to point B, the time on the clock does not necessarily represent the strategy an athlete used to get there. Athletes who can direct their sprint forces in more of a horizontal vector are going to be able to reach higher top velocities, and be more resilient towards injury. The question then becomes, how do we assess, and train athletes in respect to the direction they are producing sprint forces? In today’s episode, JB speaks on how the specifics of an athlete’s force production (in the horizontal vs. vertical direction) will highlight elements of how fatigued that individual is, and their predisposition to injury in the short term. JB also goes into how to measure force production in sprinting, new research on joint actions in early and late acceleration, hill training vs. sleds, hamstring research, and more. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Inside Tracker, and Lost Empire Herbs. For 25% off of an Inside Tracker order go to info.insidetracker.com/justflysports For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 5:00 – Some new work that has come out in sprint research recently, showing the importance of the hip and ankle outputs in sprinting, even in the first few steps of acceleration 16:20 – Thoughts on sprint technique, or force-velocity profiling and how that might link to potential injury in team sport situations 24:00 – The relationship (and differences) between one’s maximal horizontal force, and their maximal sprint speed, and what it means for injury risk 30:50 – How having a poor maximal horizontal force output can show up in the biomechanics of how an athlete is sprinting 37:15 – How elite athletes will start to change their force-production orientation (less horizontal, over time) once fatigue starts to set in during a training session 45:00 – How hill training compares to heavy sled training in terms of forces and velocity 50:30 – New studies and thoughts on hamstring injury in athletics 54:20 – Thoughts on training the feet and lower leg for the sake of sprinting 58:40 – JB’s thoughts on how to set up good research on sprinting in athletics “75% of the energy that is generated to run is generated at the hip and calf level” “Team sport is so chaotic, it’s the worst way to assess an athlete’s acceleration capability, the game environment is not reproducible” “Our studies show that pre-season maximal force output is not related to (injury risk) but when you measure that maximal force output throughout the season, the last measurement is related to the risk of injury in that measurement period” “You need to measure (force/velocity) regularly, not only in the pre-season period… there are so many changes throughout the season” “You can have people with the same 25 meter splits, but different profiles at the beginning of the spectrum or the end of the spectrum” “If you take two athletes with the same magnitude of ground reaction force, the best in acceleration will be the most horizontally oriented vector” “The last studies a-posteriori connected very clearly (horizontal force output) to the hamstring and glutes muscle function capability” “If you are more quad dominant, and push vertically, you will not go to a very high top speed” “I’ve seen some professional rugby players coming back from a few (off) days or weeks, because of an injury, and sprinting (pr’s), because they were chronically overloaded” “Most of the sprint related (hamstring) injuries, occur at high speeds, but also in linear movements” About JB Morin Jean-Benoit (JB) Morin is currently full professor and head of sports science and the physical education department at the University of Saint-Etienne. He was formerly full Professor at the Faculty of Sport Sciences of the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis (France), and has been involved in sport science research for over 15 years, and has published over 50 peer-reviewed journals since 2004. He obtained a Track & Field Coach National Diploma in 1998 and graduated in Sport Science at the University of Besançon, France in 2000. He obtained his PhD in Human Locomotion and Perf

Today’s show welcomes back Randy Huntington for a “part 2” of the recent episode #282 , speaking on the success of Chinese sprinter, Su Bingtian, and the third podcast with Randy in total. Randy is a track and field coach who has spent his recent years as the national track and field coach for the Chinese athletics association and has over 45 years of coaching experience. Huntington is rated as a USATF Master Coach in the jumps, has been the coach for many world-class athletes over the years, including eight Olympians and seven World Championship Team members. Mike Powell and Willie Banks set world records in the long jump and triple jump, respectively, while under his tutelage. In the last podcast, Randy spoke on several elements of the training methods that helped Su Bingtian to become the fastest accelerator of all time, such as sled and resisted sprint training, special strength work, and more. There was still a lot left to cover after the last episode, so for this show, we will dive back in (literally, in regards to the water training) to Randy’s training methodology. For today’s episode, Randy speaks in depth on Su Bingtian’s weekly training setup, and how he spaces out the weekly work, with a focus on rest and recovery. He will get into the topic of training density, and how this can be modulated with training cycles of various lengths (as opposed to only sticking with a traditional 7-day cycle). Randy will get into elements of water training, tempo sprint training, his version of over-speed work, and much more. This is an awesome compliment to the popular “part 1” of my recent chatting with Randy, and great material for coaches in any discipline. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Inside Tracker, and Lost Empire Herbs. For 25% off of an Inside Tracker order go to info.insidetracker.com/justflysports For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 4:39 – Details on Su’s weekly training setup, and how “work + rest = adaptation” 11:17 – Thoughts on how much, and how often to apply tempo work to team training 15:35 – How various cultures can have an impact on the type of training that athletes in that culture will optimally respond to 18:56 – The importance of water training for recovery, and recovery training in general, in Randy’s program 36:51 – Why the biggest need in coaching is on the level of youth coaches, and not those who work with elite athletes 42:06 – How Randy isolates the specific focus of his training sessions, not doing too much work all in one session 46:06 – Individual factors in elastic vs. muscular athletes in the construction of a training program 51:51 – The power of being able to move athletes around selectively amongst training groups in individual sports 55:21 – How Randy looks at long term training and seasonal shifts in training emphasis 59:51 – Principles on going beyond a typical 7-day weekly training cycle, into 9 and 10 day cycles. 1:04:51 – How Randy utilizes the “bigger players” in a training year (such as intense training methods, heavy lifting, intense plyos, etc.) and how he measures and manages recovery 1:12:06 – How Randy applies overspeed training with his athletes “I look at work, but I put the rest in first in the week, and then I follow it back up with what work we are going to do prior to the rest” “I like using pulse (for tempo training), I’d rather use SMO2 (when I can)… that gives me a very accurate appraisal of when to go again” “I make our strength coaches run (tempo) with the sprinters” “In China, you can’t give them a lot of time off, they fall apart very quickly if they have a lot of time off (Koreans were like the too)” “How do you increase density without (going to steroids)… that’s how I arrived at (water training)… my whole approach has been recovery based first, I’d quit before I’d ever go to (steroids)… the water for me, serves for Su, the density of training I need him to do” “If the pool is accessible, I’d go there after every session” “There is almost no better way to do hip flexor work than to get in the water” “Because water is denser too, you find the best pattern, you groove your movement pattern even better” “Deep water is pure recovery work to me…. Tempo is still work; is it recovery? I wouldn’t make a steady diet out of it.. there is only so much gravity based training you can take” “You can refresh that (coaching) spark by going back down to middle school and high school” “You can destroy elasticity pretty easily by overtraining” “I tend to put the jumpers on a 9 day cycle, the sprinters on a 7 day cycle, and the 800m is on a 7-10-10-5 cycle” “We go to 9 day cycles if we need to fit in everything I need to fit in” “You only extend a training cycle for recovery, in 7 days, you are creating density but you are not taking time to recover… you start thinking density more than intensity or volume” “3-day cycles are t

Our guest for today’s show is Dr. Edythe Heus. Dr. Heus is a nationally known chiropractor utilizing kinesiology with 22 years of experience. She is the founder of the RevinMo, a unique corrective exercise program and co-author of ProBodX. Dr. Heus is a thoughtful investigator whose diagnosis and treatment is based on specialized knowledge of the body's interconnectedness. Dr. Heus has enjoyed great success, and works with many professional and Olympic athletes. When training individuals, it’s easiest to focus only on “outputs”, such as the load on the bar, or how fast an individual ran through sprint gates. In taking a full-view at training, it’s also important to understand more subtle inputs, and how the body organizes movement from a fascial perspective. I’ve routinely noticed in the world of track and field, and swimming, a cycle where athletes experience an injury, have to do “rehab” (subtle) work (and also get a deload from the typical intense work they are doing) and come back to their sport to set personal bests within a few weeks or months. As such, it’s worthwhile to study the full spectrum of “rehab to outputs” in human and athletic performance, and how we can organize each of these methods through a training session, or one’s career. On the show today, Dr. Heus will speak on balance and proprioceptive training methods, such as pipes and slant boards, advanced foot training concepts, and information on the fascia and how it responds to various training methods. This is an important concept for anyone, and particularly those individuals who wish to learn more about the “softer” side of performance that can make a large impact on one’s function and resistance to injury. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Inside Tracker, and Lost Empire Herbs. For 25% off of an Inside Tracker order go to info.insidetracker.com/justflysports For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 6:00 – How Edythe got into a more “alternative” position on exercise and training in her career 19:30 – Deeper thoughts on balance training, and how it benefits the nervous system 38:30 – From a balance perspective, what athletes should be able to do from a fundamental movement perspective 56:00 – Assessing the feet and the abdominals in the course of balance-oriented training 1:02.00 – Using slant boards to train the feet 1:06:00 – Edythe’s thoughts on toe strength 1:21:15 – How Edythe can feel the fascial system working in a particular exercise, and what exactly is “fascial training” “A quality of a person’s life is directly related to the health of their feet” “I see what I do, whether it is treatment or training, because I don’t separate those, as a collaborative team effort (between myself and the client)” “(I want to know) why are we not getting the response from the nervous system or the fascia that is possible?” “Balance, for me, isn’t just standing on unstable surfaces” “Balance is a form of novelty, and the brain thrives on novelty… I also challenge them textually” “Instability just simply, makes the cerebellum work” “Balance comes in so that your inner and outer environment can better communicate with each other” “One of the components I think is critical in training is a perception of risk” “Do some of my stuff before the lift, do it after, and then your lift is going to be better, and you are going to build on what you gained from that lifting, so heavy weight stuff definitely has to be on a stable surface” “I don’t think that without an unstable surface, that you are going to get all parts of your being integrated” “We want to automate as much as possible so there is not much thinking involved, so when you do have a skill you actually want to learn, you’ve got more bandwidth for that skill, so that you are not using all your bandwidth (for your sport skills)” “Let’s automate everything that we can, our body is designed for automation” “The thing I teach is, “are people able to be in their feet”” “The fascia has a spiral design; if you had to train a single plane of movement, it would be rotation” “I will allow people to struggle with that “arch downhill” just a little bit, because when they get it, it’s solid” “The arch uphill is the least needed of the four slantboard positions” “Anyone with a pronation problem, I ask, “what’s going on with your pelvic floor”… you aren’t going to get the feet working properly if you got pelvic floor issues” “(the fascia) doesn’t like held positions; holding a posture more than 10-15 seconds straightens out the collagen fibers, and you lose the waviness that lends to elasticity” “Some shoes are very rough, and they create problems all the way up, from the texture of the shoes” “Be very particular about the (physio) ball having the same tone that you would want in your tissues, which means that there is elasticity and give, not tension that feels unpleasant

Our guest for today’s show is Erik Huddleston. Erik was recently on the podcast, on episode 269, speaking about important elements of squat technique based on individual frames of the athlete. After the show, I had some other important questions left over that I wanted to discuss, and also in that time, Erik has made a career transition to working in the NBA. Erik is currently an assistant sports performance coach with the Indiana Pacers and head performance coach for their G-League affiliate, the Ft. Wayne Mad Ants. He is the former director of performance at Indianapolis Fitness & Sports Training (IFAST), along with having NCAA D1 experience. When we program training for athletes, what factors are we considering when we select exercises? Do we just pick movements that are novel and random, or do we have a greater philosophy that helps us decide what types of movements to use, and when? What about timing, such as exercise selection in the training sessions coming off of, or leading them up to competitions or tough practice periods? Or, do we ever ask ourselves about what an athlete’s development level (youth vs. pro) might mean for them with the types of exercises we are prescribing from a compression and expansion perspective? On the show today, Erik speaks on organizing exercise selection based on an athlete’s training schedule (such as post or pre-competition periods of the training week, or even training year), how to use weight placement to train various athlete body types, and some critical differences in training, from an expansion/compression perspective, regarding youth vs pro level athletes. It’s so easy to fan-boy (or girl) over the workouts of “elite” athletes, but the key to good coaching is always knowing how to engage an athlete where they are at in their own development. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Inside Tracker, and Lost Empire Herbs. For 25% off of an Inside Tracker order go to info.insidetracker.com/justflysports For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 5:28 – How to organize training based off of periods of “expansion” and “compression” 11:42 – How Erik quantifies what players are experiencing in practice and games from a “expansion/compression” perspective, and how to give them what they don’t have then, in a gym setting 14:54 – Exercise selection principles that help athletes optimally reset in their “off” days 21:55 – How to adjust exercises to help them ramp up to a game or competition situation 24:20 – What a pre-season training load looks like compared to in-season in professional basketball 29:00 – What pre-season training looks like in high school sports where athletes have a lot more time to prepare without high volume sport loadings 34:41 – Situations where more compression will help an athlete, vs. situations where it will potentially hurt an athlete 39:25 – How to set up training for “pylon” shaped individuals to help their reversal ability in jumping and athletics 46:20 – How “flipping the pylon” of the torso, and having wide shoulders impacts squatting selection 52:06 – How the shape of one’s torso impacts the types of plyometric exercises that players should utilize 54:46 – How to prescribe jump programming to individuals who have a hard time yielding in their movement relative to the ground 59:10 – How to approach plyometrics and jump training for youth athletes vs. elite athletes who are already at a relatively high level, and playing jump oriented sports constantly “Keeping player assets on the court is the most important part of my job” “Give them some of what they don’t have that they are getting from the training and the basketball stimulus” “I have to assume that the vast things that are occurring on the court are output driven… that’s where we get into that compression end of the spectrum” “My training before a game is really really output driven, it’s really force production driven… ramping them up like that is the appropriate thing to do” “When they have an off-day, that day is generally going to be an input day, or this expansive quality that we are looking for… how do I restore position that allows them to recover well”? “When things are intense, when training loads in the court are high, we try to match that with a high intensity in the weight room also” “When you are prescribing your compression in the right way, it doesn’t take a lot of it to move the needle forward in terms of force output… but it quickly on the back end can take away from some expansive qualities” “Muscle mass by nature, is compression… and whether that is positive or negative is a case by case basis” “If I’m looking to bias the inhaled portion on a split squat, I’m going to coach an inhale” “That traffic-cone shaped individual, they just don’t have the base in their thorax to be able to re-direct pressure and volume… so obviously that’s somethin

Our guest for today’s show is Randy Huntington. Randy is a track and field coach, who has spent his recent years as the national track and field coach for the Chinese athletics association and has over 45 years of coaching experience. Huntington is rated as a USATF Master Coach in the jumps, has been the coach for many world-class athletes over the years, including eight Olympians and seven World Championship Team members. Mike Powell and Willie Banks set world records in the long jump and triple jump, respectively, while under his tutelage. More recently, Randy has had tremendous success coaching in Asia, a capstone of which has been Su Bingtian, who recently set the Asian 100m dash record of 9.83 seconds at age 31. En route to his 100m record, Su broke the world record in the 60m (as a split time) with a 6.29, which converts to around a 4.07s 40 yard dash. When a teenager, or relatively untrained individual takes a few tenths off of their 40 yard dash, or drops a half second in the 100m dash over several years time, this is a normal and natural occurrence, and isn’t something that really demands digging far into. On the other hand, when an already elite athlete, who is at, or slightly past their “prime” years, moves into their 30s and smashes sprint records, this is something that is truly worth putting a close eye on. On the show today, Randy Huntington speaks on some of the training elements that helped sprinter, Su Bingtian achieve his recent results. Randy goes into his views on special strength training for speed, particularly on the level of the lower leg, and speaks on the use of banded and wearable resistance in speed training, as well as some nuts and bolts on resisted and sled sprint work. On the back end of the show, Randy gets into training the elastic and fascial systems of an athlete, and how to optimize an athlete’s elastic response to training in plyometrics and beyond. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Inside Tracker, and Lost Empire Herbs. For 25% off of an Inside Tracker order go to info.insidetracker.com/justflysports For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 5:02 – What’s been happening with Randy in his last 4 years of coaching, particularly with Su Bingtian and his success 12:24 – Some of the big training elements that helped Su Bingtian get down to 9.83/6.29 from 10.0/6.50 in his time working with Randy 18:37 – Using banded and wearable resistance methods for improving speed and “bridging” the gap between the weight room and the track 25:58 – Randy’s advice for using sleds/heavy sleds in training 32:59 – The “train your frame” system and the importance of body proportions and structure on optimal sporting events for athletes 37:01 – How Randy uses sleds for contrast training, as well as concepts on wave-loading and how many sets in a row to utilize 40:25 – The importance of elastic energy in athletic performance, and how under-estimated the elastic contribution to performance is, as well as how important dynamic elastic ability is for running endurance 50:44 – The nature of the advanced spikes and track surface used in the Tokyo Olympic games, and its impact on athletes 55:04 – Randy’s take on optimizing the elastic and fascial systems of an athlete, as well as a chat on ground contact times in plyometrics 1:06.28 – How improved foot strength played into Su’s improvement in the 100m dash, as well as in various portions of the race, as well as how Randy trained Su’s foot strength 1:08:26 – The role of harmonics and resonance between one’s foot/body and the running surface, especially in the course of a 100m dash race 1:19.56 – How to increase the eccentric rate of development in standard exercises, such as a partner pushing a partner down into an exercise 1:28.10 – Randy’s take on jumping off of an angled surface, versus a flat surface in jumping, or in jumping machines “(In 2016) I took (Su) over to the Kaiser seated calf, and tested him, his power output was 735 watts, which was weaker than my weakest female triple jumper… so our first goal was to get that soleus strength as high as we could get it… now he is in the 26-2700 watt range” “Even though (Su) was a quick starter, he wasn’t a fast starter” “Elasticity wise, (Su) couldn’t rebound off the ground… so we got him into low amplitude single leg rebounding and slowly brought it up” “I see 3 things that are my best teaching tools, the 1080 (sprint) and the sled… then the exogen, and then the activator belt (a belt with tubing attached to limbs)… those are the 3 most important integration tools, integrating the weight room to what you are doing on the track” “When we do drills, we’ll do activator belt, exogen, off” “You can’t underestimate the need for the psoas the other hip flexors to be really powerful and strong” “If you are going to use external loading, you had better be prepared to rest a whil

Our guest for today’s show is Logan Christopher. Logan is a strongman, author, owner of Legendary Strength and CEO of Lost Empire Herbs. Logan previously appeared on episode 111 and episode 187, where he discussed mental training in depth, as well as the “6 layers” of strength. Logan has also written several books including “Mental Muscle” and “Powered by Nature”, both of which I have found impactful reads. Logan is a master of using the natural machinery of the body, our mind, and our environment to help us reach our highest potential as humans. An interesting saying you hear over and over again is that “the game is all mental”, or it is “90% mental” by many elite athletes. Although there are general physical standards to be successful in many sports (think of the body type of a runner or a jumper, or the long arms that are very helpful in making it to the NBA) it is impossible to overlook the role of the mind, especially in elite performers. Perhaps one’s genetic structure can help one to “get in the door” in the sport they are most suited for, but it is always going to be the mind that allows them higher levels of success. On the show today, Logan talks about many facets of both physical and mental training. He starts with an important facet of coaching we haven’t gotten much into before, and that is on the language a coach uses to describe exercises, and training in general, and how these can impact training outcomes. He also speaks on specific learning styles that can also be used in one’s visualization routines, as well as his take on the use of analogies and imagination in athletic skill performance. Logan also goes into elements of old-school strongman training, as well as a quick take on why testosterone has dropped across the world over the last 50-100 years by a substantial margin. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 5:40 – Talking about managing training in context of holding back and achieving balance in order to have continual progress 11:10 – How the language a coach uses in the course of a workout can impact the outcome of the training (especially on the level of over-training) 14:25 – The four learning styles, and how to leverage these learning styles for better training results 20:40 – How to specifically optimize the auditory learning style in training 23:10 – How to approach strengths vs. weaknesses in terms of the four learning styles and physical training 32:00 – How analogies, as spoken about by Nick Winkelman, can be effective for athletes in light of Neurolinguistic programming philosophy 33:40 – How imaginatory ability impacts one’s physical and athletic abilities 39:10 – If Logan could pick only one mental training tool for himself now, and then 10 years ago, what he would utilize 43:10 – How much mental training Logan does now that he has over a decade of mental training under his belt 50:10 – Some old school strongman lift performances from the past that haven’t been touched in the last 50 years 55:25 – Speaking on the link between breathing and strongman training 59:10 – Why testosterone has dropped so much in the last 50 years “Typically I don’t even refer to my workouts as workouts, I refer to them as “training”” “I like to use the word “severety” for “effort” instead (of intensity)” “Words do matter, this is going to change the results we get” “(With language) taking a small thing and compounding it over time is going to be a big difference” “The four (learning) styles are visual, auditory, kinesthetic and digital” “Most people in sport tend to be kinesthetic learners…. The visual and kinesthetic are common in athletes” “As a coach, we are going to coach predominantly in our own style” “Very often, we find the audio component is completely missing from internal imagination, but there is tremendous power in the potential of audio to “boost the signal” (related to a physical performance)” “The quality of your audio matter, more-so than the words you are saying to yourself” “If you can’t (scream “I am the greatest”) you can imagine it, and you can feel that energy as if you are saying it out loud with that sort of tone or belief behind it” “Beliefs structure what we do” “Mental training is not a “then and there” kind of thing, but also a building thing over time” “Here’s the thing, you are mental training whether you think it or not, because you may not have the awareness, but thoughts are going through your head, visualizations are going through your head, you may have to step back and tweak it to make it work well” “If people want to get really good results, you are going to have to learn some things about mental training, and then practice” “You are doing mental training whether you think you are or not, so some people are going to by default be better at it… going under the hood

Our guest for today’s show is Austin Jochum. Austin is the owner of Jochum Strength where he works with athletes and “washed up movers” to become the best versions of themselves. He is also the host of the Jochum Strength Podcast. Austin was a former NCAA D3 All-American football player and a hammer thrower (MIAC weight throw champion) at the University of St. Thomas, where he is now the speed and strength coach for the football team. Austin has appeared on episode 213, and also has written numerous articles for Just Fly Sports. One common theme of this podcast for so many years has been finding ways to make one’s training transfer to sport more, not just on the physical and mechanical level, but also on the mental and emotional level, and on a perception-reaction level. At some point, the hair splitting that happens in regards to weight room exercises (arguments on what set-rep scheme to use, single leg vs. bilateral lifting, etc.), or the minutia of biomechanics, can start to take away from developing other important components of athletics. Austin Jochum is a pioneer in the blending of sport elements into the traditional gym setting for athletes. He is a meathead, but also a die-hard athletic-mover, and passionately trains in a way that encompasses both the archetypes of strength, and performing ideally in one’s sport and movement practice. For the show today, Austin speaks on the art of developing a love for movement and play in athletes, how to build a “scorer’s” mentality, as well as how to optimize game-based scenarios in the gym to help improve transfer to the field. He then gets into an excellent discussion on exposing athletes to their weaknesses in a gym-game setting, and finishes with how he sets up his own training programs from not only a physical, but also a mental/emotional perspective, moving from external to internal states, relating each type of training stress to the emotional state of the athlete. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 5:00 – A story of two different soccer coaches and their approaches to training with their groups 11:00 – The link between love of movement/sport, obsession, and subsequent greatness, 15:30 – How to preserve, and grow, love for movement in coaching athletes 18:30 – Thoughts on “leveling up” on the levels of movement, as well as mental and emotional levels, in a training session 27:30 – How to set up games in a training session that can help to build a “scorer’s mentality” in athletes 29:00 – How to modulate the space of the field, and 1v1, or 2v2 type situations that can help athletes 36:00 – How to transfer between what athletes are really good, and really bad at, in their sport in order to create more robust athletic ability 44:30 – Insecurities that are wrapped up in not being able to expose one’s self to failure 51:30 – The importance of being on the fringe, and evolving the field, and realizing that no one individual has all of the answers 59:30 – The line between order and chaos within a training session, and how a strength session looks for Austin, and how he moves from fun, to funneling the energy into outputs or skill, then taking the athletes into themselves “If you listen to really really good athletes talk, I look at my own past successes, it is because you are obsessed with it… and how do you become obsessed with something? You gotta fall in love with it” “Something we’ve been doing is saying, “if this kid scores”, it’s worth two points, so now the stud who is always scoring is going to find a way to give the ball to someone else, he is going to expand the field” “Watch when your athlete, the first time you meet your athlete, watch how they walk into the gym, because you’ll know right away, almost 100%, what they are thinking in that moment, who they are, how they interact with the world” “(To create a scorer’s mentality) let them score from all angles, in all situations” “Let’s say you have a really fast athlete that is struggling with some change of direction stuff, then you make the space wider and shorter” “We’re talking about sets and reps, and this exercise selection, and it doesn’t matter if you aren’t looking at it on the field” “Conjugate style your games, expose them to as many games as possible, and then ebb and flow between what they are good at and then what they suck at” “Maybe there is an arrogant athlete… expose them to something they suck at… and how do they handle that? I would much rather you lose in this (gym) setting” “There are so many fringe pieces that we can experiment with, but our egos don’t let us” “Joy, looking forward to training and learning a skill is really important for skill retention. In the weight room, having freedom has a ton of benefit with things like soreness, then what do you do with that energy? Now we funne

Our guest for today’s show is Katie St. Clair. Katie is a strength and conditioning coach out of Charleston, SC who has been training general population and athletes for over 20 years, and is the creator of the Empowered Performance Program. She is passionate about helping everyone reclaim movement and find joy and reduction of pain using sound biomechanical principles alongside proper breathing. Katie has embarked on a journey of learning and combining that knowledge with her love of athletic movement, as well as her passion for empowering female movement professionals, with the intent to elevate the entire industry standard. In my last few years as a coach, I’ve become more and more aware of the underlying physical and structural characteristics of athletes that work to determine biomechanics that show up when they perform various sporting skills. I’ve really enjoyed having a variety of coaches on this show who have gone in detail on the biomechanics of the human body, (the pelvis, ribcage, breathing, etc.) and then have linked that up with what we might see in athletic movement, such as sprinting and jumping to name a few. Katie is an expert in human performance, and the fine details of human movement. On today’s show, she takes us on an approach to forward pelvic tilt, breathing mechanics, abdominal function, the feet, proper squatting, plyometrics and more that comes from a perspective of the underlying function of the human body. Katie helps us understand the “inside” mechanisms that are so often leading to compromised movement seen on the “outside”. So often we have athletes who just can’t seem to “find” the right joint motions in their movement, and this is when we need to have the ability to go a level deeper in our coaching, or our ability to know when to “refer out” to experts better able to cater to those areas. The more you know from “the inside out”, the greater the bandwidth of athletes you can serve in your efforts. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 4:45 – What led Katie into working in fitness and performance 10:15 – Katie’s “inside out” view, of helping athletes acquire better technique via changes on the level of the thorax, pelvis and rib-cage 15:45 – The art of coaching humans in a manner that helps them self-organize and learn to move effectively 18:45 – How being biased, or stuck, in anterior tilt impacts one’s ability to move, and how to help athletes get out of that position 25:45 – How to use inhalation and exhalation to neurologically reinforce supination/ER and pronation/IR 42:15 – General primers on how to start working with breathing and breath for clients 45:50 – Ideas on how compression can drive expansion on the opposite side of the body, and ideas on “functional” abdominal muscles 49:50 – Katie’s view on building strength at length with the abdominal wall 55:50 – Why some athletes (particularly female swimmers) often have a lot of spinal extension patterning in a pushup movement, and then what to do about it (if it is even a big deal in that group) 1:00.05 – Hypermobility as systemic laxity, versus adaptations that can lead to acquired hypermobility in the limbs via proximal stiffness 1:05.35 – The dichotomy between accessing the heels, and then moving into the forefoot in the process of squatting 1:14.50 – Dynamics of “no-toes” squatting and what it can do for athletes, and how it zeros in on the mid-foot 1:17.50 – The balance between being able to keep the heel down and pronate, and then get off the heel to make the foot a second class lever, in squatting and even in running/jumping 1:29.50 – How to help people who struggle to yield to gravity be able to do so, and achieve better glute activation in the process “I realized I was looking at everything from the outside in, instead of from the inside out…. I would see these patterns all the time, but just coaching it didn’t change it, I had to alter the mechanics of their thorax and their rib-cage and pelvis to be able to create the change that was necessary” “(Athletes) are creating compensations that are really genius” “The trees, the way the rocks are, the seashells… (nature) gives you an appreciation for what the human form is” “The foot diaphragm and the thoracic diaphragm are going to alter the ability for the foot to do its’ thing too” “You have to have enough expansion to create compression…. if you don’t have enough range you are going to compensate to get it” “They do need to learn the fundamentals of getting the diaphragm to dome up, both the pelvic diaphragm and thoracic diaphragm, and to use the breath to leverage that position” “If I can use the breath, then I can create a neurological change in the brain” “If I am on my heels, that is going to generate that internal rotation, the increase in all the curvature… now

Today’s show features Dr. Chris Gaviglio. Chris is a current senior strength and conditioning coach for the Queensland Academy of Sport, working with Olympic-based sports and athletes. Chris has been involved with elite sport for over 15 years working across multiple Olympic sports and professional football in both the northern and southern hemispheres. Chris provides applied sports science projects for the athletes he works with, particularly in the areas of salivary hormones, passive heat maintenance, blood flow restriction training, warm-up strategies, and power/strength development. I don’t often do shows that center around a piece of training technology, and the main reason for that is simply accessibility. If a training tool costs thousands of dollars, it isn’t something a large proportion of the athletic, and even coaching population can rationalize having in their training arsenal. The nice thing about blood flow restriction training is that it is available at a relatively low price point, with common units starting around $300USD. Other setups using squat wraps, for example, can be done basically for free, but I would recommend using an automated system for the safety and precision of band tightness (see show notes regarding safety considerations and contraindications to BFR, such as concussions or deep vein thrombosis). Blood Flow restriction training has been a training tool that has been on my radar for a long time. After seeing the results that a high-level Olympic swimmer I worked with got from them, and then hearing some results from Nicolai Morris having a 1.5 second drop in the 100 freestyle of a swimmer as well, as well as several of my coaching colleagues using the method, I knew that there was absolutely something to BFR that I needed to get further into. In using the AirBands from Vald performance myself, I continued to realize how beneficial this training stimulus is to our physiological response. For today’s show, Chris takes us into many topics of BFR, including its mechanisms and many benefits. As opposed to methods of mechanical stress (such as plyometrics, sprinting, heavy strength training methods) which tend to dominate this shows podcasts) BFR is a physiological stressor, and through this discussion, we can gain an appreciation for the contrast of physiological stress to more mechanical means. Chris finishes the show talking about how coaches and athletes can integrate BFR training, and gives many anecdotes and points of research, on how BFR can improve strength and speed recovery. Finally, our sponsor, Simplifaster is doing a Blood Flow Restiction cuff giveaway (Vald Airbands) so if you would like to get in on that, until November 11th, you can sign up for a chance to win a free pair of cuffs at bit.ly/freebfr . Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 6:00 – Chris’s experiment during quarantine using lighter, or minimal weights in an at-home training setting 17:00 – Discussion on using lighter implements and bodyweight in developing one’s athleticism 20:30 – What blood flow restriction training is, and where it originated from 27:00 – How the metabolic stress from BFR creates beneficial responses, similar to high-load lifting 35:25 – What BFR definitely helps with, and what elements of performance it is not as helpful for 41:25 – How BFR can help with creating “mild to moderate” doses of lactate – Using BFR style work in warming up for a training session 53:10 – If there are any similar places in sport where athletes will experience situations similar to what is created with BFR means 57:00 – How to get as close to BFR as one can in a gym without any sort of cuffs or wraps 1:00:00 – Anecdotes on how to integrate BFR in performance and rehab based situations 1:10:00 – Where to get started for those interested in BFR “BFR is a metabolic stress” “BFR is a method of strength training with the addition of pressure” “What is BRF doing, we are partially restricting blood flow, and what that allows us to do is you are actually restricting the venous return of the blood from your muscles, so the blood flows freely into the muscle, but you are restricting it coming back out” “The first (benefit of BFR) is an increase in concentration of metabolites” “The second (benefit of BFR) is (anabolic) hormonal response” “The third (benefit of BFR) is intramuscular signaling, we are talking here heat shock proteins, myostatin, mTOR pathways” “They had two groups, they did not lifting, but one used heat sheets to heat the muscles and the second had none, and the group that used heat got stronger…. BFR can also stimulate this” “The fourth (benefit of BFR) is intracellular swelling, or “the pump” The fifth (benefit of BFR) is muscular recruitment, our slow twitch fibers tire out earlier than normal, and our fa

Today’s show features Frank Forencich. Frank is an internationally recognized leader in health and performance education. He has over thirty years of teaching experience in martial art and health education. Frank holds black belt rankings in karate and aikido and has traveled to Africa on several occasions to study human origins and the ancestral environment. A former columnist for Paleo Magazine, Frank is the author of numerous books about health and the human predicament, including “The Exuberant Animal”, the book I read that originally led me to Frank’s work. We live in a time where early sport specialization and pressure has led to burnout and high injury rates amongst athletes, but the “rabbit hole” to a dis-satisfaction with sport and movement in general for so many, goes much deeper than that. As much as we fall prey to the stress-laden, year-round competitive schedule that leads athletes to higher pressure situations at younger ages, we also have “forgotten” our roots as athletes, and more importantly, as human beings, in so many senses of the word. We miss out on both training results, satisfaction and longevity by failing to study our ancestral nature. On today’s show, Frank Forencich goes into many important elements of our humanity that can help athletes not only recover and train better, but also help increase enjoyment of the training process. These elements include human biorhythms, dance, play and exploration, getting in the dirt, benefits of training in nature, purpose driven movement, and more. This podcast was truly important on the level of helping us use the principles of nature that define who we are, to help us in training, and far beyond. If you bring drums into your gym, or for your workout after this episode, PLEASE let me know. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 5:20 – Key trends seen in the animal kingdom, in physical movement that humans should pay attention to our own movement practices 11:50 – “Effortful striving” in human training versus more of a purpose-driven approach that is characteristic to non-human animals 20:30 – What the idea of “dancing being the original PE” means to athletes and all-human 28:20 – How play and exploration influences how we adapt to movement and training 33:50 – Frank’s thoughts on when to specialize in a sport, or movement practice 35:20 – The difference between the “jungle animal” and the “desert animal” and what this means for humans, training and moving in context with their environment 38:35 – The impact of bioregion on movement practice 40:40 – The impact of training in nature, versus training in an indoor gym setting, and then the “Bio-Philic” need of humans in regards to connection with nature 45:45 – Jim Thorpe’s primal and natural training methods 48:20 – The importance of getting “in the dirt” and actually connecting with dirt and the earth itself for the sake of the micro-biome 54:05 – Low hanging fruits on how to deal with stress better in context of our human biology 58:05 – The role of the athlete in modern society 1:01:55 – How to build a total training day based on the rhythms and mechanisms of the human being “There is no emphasis on appearance (regarding movement and “exercise” as observed in the animal kingdom)” “It’s important to remember that sports are movement specialties” “In human athletics, there is constant striving all the time that is divorced from habitat; it is almost as if we are training in a bubble” “For the playful athlete, the motivation is purely intrinsic” “We’ve lost sight of the fact that the dose makes the poison, the dose makes the medicine… the wisdom lies in remembering the shape of the inverse U-curve” “I don’t think we give our animal bodies enough credit for knowing what’s going on… I think we just need to listen more” “(Dancing) is not sagittal movement, it’s transverse plane movement” “There’s rhythm everywhere, drumming and dancing are fundamental for all of us” “At various weightlifting facilities, bring drums in and use them, that would an easy thing to add that would increase enjoyment and it would increase performance too” “Play is deeply wired into the primate-mammal body” “If you isolate rodents (from being able to play) they will grow up to have huge social deficits and dysfunctions” “What I’ve tried to do with people is have a bio-regional approach to athletics” “Native people always identify with habitat, and that is something we have lost a lot of in the modern world” “The blue collar stuff is really under-rated (for physical fitness)” “Our microbiome now is completely out of whack, and the way to get back to that is to put your hands in the dirt and actually contact the soil, or run barefoot, or go climbing (outside)” “(Modern ambient noise) is an assault on the autonomic nervous system” Show

Today’s show welcomes back coach Michael Zweifel. Michael is the owner and head of sports performance for “Building Better Athletes” performance center in Dubuque, Iowa. Building Better Athletes focuses on building the athlete from the ground up by mastering the fundamentals of movement mastery, strength/power training, recovery modalities, and promoting ownership in athletes. Michael is also a team member of the movement education group, “Emergence”. He has been a frequent guest on this podcast, speaking on topics of perception-reaction, exploration in the weight room, creativity and more. As I’ve grown as a coach (and a human mover/athlete) it’s been really enjoyable to experience sport, and movement in different ways. In working in a college weight room, it was also very interesting to pay attention to the defining characteristics of the best athletes. They weren’t always the strongest, or even the fastest, but they could move and react incredibly well in context of their sport… and they loved to play. One of the things I’ve been enjoying doing recently, is coaching youth sports (5 year olds, to be exact) and it’s a learning experience that impacts my philosophy, all the way up the chain into high level performers. With play and exploration at the core of athleticism and sport, why is it that the culture of the gym (and in many sports performance settings) completely the opposite? So much of modern sport acts like athletes are robots, a culture based on lines and whistles, and a perception of needing to do everything one particular way. On today’s show, Michael Zweifel goes into a deep dive on how his warmups fit with the key characteristics of elite athleticism. He speaks on how he connects his warmups to core human instincts and needs, and talks about how to develop a love for movement and play that transcends organized sport play. Michael and I also take on a broad-scope discussion on the over-structuring that is rampant in sport (and our culture in general). This show is truly important in light of our modern sport culture. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 4:50 – Michael’s thoughts on trail running, longer runs, and elasticity 13:20 – Michael’s biggest changes in his warmup process over the last decade 16:30 – What Michael would take back with him in terms of his warmups and training if he returned to the university sector of training 21:50 – Comparing “routine” warmups (lines, movement prep, etc.) versus a more dynamic and adaptive form of warming up for a training session 28:50 – Speaking on the different stages of the warmup defined by Emergence: Ownership, exploration and attunement 33:50 – If there are any general warmups that Michael’s athletes will actually do, and how he approaches that type of work 35:50 – A broader-scope discussion on coaching, creativity versus militaristic coaching 48:00 – What age groups and settings Michael feels sports performance coaches should work with to optimally learn the nature of training sport 52:50 – The critical nature of play for human beings, and how professional athletes are very play driven 1:05.35 – How Michael might lead up to a more output driven day in the gym from a warmup perspective 1:07:50 – Some more specific changes in the warmup process that Michael has made in the last few years: Applying “levels” in sport and human movement 1:14:50 – The sad reality of kids quitting sports early, and without preparedness for how to enjoy life from a movement practice at that point 1:20:50 – Key differences in what Michael has in the warmups of different age groups (elementary school, middle school, high school, etc.) “What transitioned my warmup was being in the private sector. In the private sector, each and every day I have to win my athletes over… in the college sector my athletes will be back no matter what I do” “If you think about the basic dynamic warmup, with the lines, we never do any of that stuff anymore; I think there is so much more opportunity to engage our athletes in a deep level…. We’re attacking the warmup from a perceptual standpoint, we are attacking the warmup from an emotional and social standpoint, we are attacking our warmup from a technical/tactical standpoint” “The transition to transforming my warmups has been hard; every day is about reading the room, asking questions, giving certain athletes autonomy and ownership; the warmups are alive” “If I value my athletes being adaptable, and I value my athletes being creative and having abundance in movement solutions, how is doing the same warmup day in and day out building that capacity? It’s not, it’s restricting it” “Our three stages (of warming up at Emergence) are ownership, exploration and attunement” “For youth athletes, exploration is the key to learning” “I’m a big fan of allowing e

Today’s show is with Kibwé Johnson. Kibwé is the director of track and field at SPIRE Academy, in Geneva, Ohio, and the founder of FORTIUS performance. Prior to SPIRE, Kibwe coached throws at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida for 4 years. In his time as an athlete, Kibwé established himself as one of the USA’s best hammer throwers by being ranked first or second for over a decade, and his personal best of 80.31m/263’5” in 2011 the best mark by an American hammer thrower in over ten years. He also owns the world’s all-time best HT/DT/WT combination of distances. Kibwé has personally worked with some of the most well regarded coaches in the US and internationally. His coach for his final 10 years, Dr. Anatoliy Bondarchuk, greatly influenced the development of Kibwé’s own methodologies. Kibwé’s coaching philosophy is built on communication and cites his experiences as a husband and father with learning how to become more effective as a coach. In my time as a coach, I’ve learned that technique and skill are more than a set of instructions, or a final “model” to shoot for through a series of drills and cues. Although these instructions can certainly be helpful for lower level performers, once an athlete gets to a more advanced level of performance, drills lose their luster, and we must become more attuned to the actual interaction between the athlete and their environment (implements, the ground, gravity, etc.). On the show today, Kibwé talks about his experiences as an athlete, particularly with Dr. Bondarchuk that helped him develop as a thrower, and in his eventual career as a coach. He talks about the unique, high velocity and cyclical elements of the hammer that demand a particular relationship to the instrument, and things we can take from this relationship that can transfer to other skills, or life itself. Finally, Kibwe speaks extensively about drills, vs. holistic skill performance, and the many “subtle” elements, such as awareness, that go into enhancing holistic performance on the highest levels. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 6:40 – Kibwé’s evolution as an athlete, and what led him to his philosophy of “The Tao of the Hammer” 10:25 – Kibwé’s experience in working with Dr. Bondarchuk and how the communication barrier actually helped Kibwé to figure out his throw without the use of words or cues 18:20 – How the hammer throw in track and field is unique in respect to other throwing events due to its unique, very high velocity rotational dynamics 21:10 – Kibwé’s take on teaching athlete’s fundamental positions vs. letting them figure out skills in a different manner (or on their own), particularly in context of the hammer throw 26:40 – How acquiring the “feeling” of a good throw is helpful to scale to throws of all distances 32:25 – How people tend to want a “list of things” when doing something, and the battle of getting an athlete outside of a list of cues, and to facilitate them figuring things out on their own 34:40 – How to learn, from a “Tao of the Hammer” perspective, and what awareness in a hammer throw means to Kibwé 46:40 – Examples of elite athletes who have had their mechanics “fixed”, as per a “technical model” and had poor seasons or failed to improve 51:25 – How Kibwé would address a “mistake” in an athlete’s throwing, and portions of an athlete’s technique 56:40 – Where drills fall short in training a complex movement, such as the hammer throw 1:02:40 – Reactivity as needed between the hammer and the athlete, and how to “do less” in the course of a throw from a perspective of actively putting force into the implement “It really came down to trying to find the words to explain how I was feeling when I felt my best; because I wasn’t seeing that anywhere” “It’s pretty typical that a coach will use a whole lot of words, but in all of those words, there is no space for that athlete to fill that with their own natural instincts, or nests. What makes that own individual amazing gets tripped away with a ton of words, in my opinion” “In track and field and the technical disciplines, the athletes who were allowed to grow and evolve and change on their own, are more artists in a way, if that makes sense” “There is an importance to teaching a base level, “how do you move, kind of thing”…. But there is part of me what says, “why not?”” “Hammer throwers who started at 10 or earlier, it is beautiful to watch” “My thing there is when an athlete is essentially connected to that feeling, and they can maintain that through the throw, you can have that feeling no matter how hard you throw” “The next day, the feeling they received from that cue that you gave them (the day prior) is different, for an innumerable number of reasons” “Both are needed, masculine and feminine, yin/yang. Both are needed, but then

Today’s show is with Alex Effer, owner of Resilient Training and Rehabilitation. Alex has treated and trained a variety of clients, from professional and amateur athletes, to a wide spectrum of the general population, ranging from those with certain medical conditions, to postoperative rehabilitation and individuals with chronic and complex pain. Alex has experience as an exercise physiologist, a strength and conditioning coach, and has consulted with a number of elite and Olympic organizations. Alex has taken a tremendous amount of continuing education courses and is on the leading edge of modern training theory. There are loads of different continuing education courses and theories, each carrying methods to train athletes from perspectives on breathing, corrective exercise, and exercise variations, to name a few. It is in the process of getting to the core principles that define these many training systems, that we can gain a greater level of wisdom to make better decisions in exercise selection and training organization. For today’s podcast, Alex speaks on his continuing education journey, and core principles that many current courses in human performance/assessment and biomechanics tend to have in common. He speaks on how to dial up, or down, points of contact in a movement to help an athlete achieve better mastery over a skill or core human function. In the second half of the show, Alex gives some analysis and progressions with functional training movements, such as crab walks, and bear crawls, and then talks about how some “meathead” oriented exercises are actually more functional than we give the credit for. Finally, Alex talks about exercises that either “push an athlete backwards in the chest” or “push them forwards” from the back, and how those ramifications can go into, not ony the way we select exercises, but aso the way that we periodize and organize our training programs. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 5:15 – Common trends that Alex found in his educational process, having taken “all the courses” 13:30 – How Alex looks at force vectors in training and movement, and the difference between walking and running when assessing gait and looking at these force vectors 20:15 – Where Alex has gotten most of his information in training when considering PRI versus other educational systems (such as DNS or SFMA) 22:15 – Why it may be a faulty method to try to compare babies to adults in terms of baseline movement patterning 30:00 – How to transition a client from 12 points of contact, to only 2, and how to use the extra points of contact to improve one’s movement ability when athletes may struggle with standing motions 44:30 – Assessing crab walks, and explaining (or regressing) why athletes might not be able to lift their hips up while performing the crab walk 51:15 – Why some “fitness/bodybuilding” movement can have athletic movement applications, such as a tricep kickback or arm curl coupled with head turn 56:15 – How athletes doing exercises in a manner that “feels good” often times is an optimal method of them doing that movement, versus whatever the commonly accepted technical model for that exercise might be 1:00:00 – Alex’s theory on periodizing training based on early, mid and late stance oriented movements 1:12:15 – Viewing training intervention as either “pulling someone back” or “pushing them forward” “When you take every single course, you kind of get mind-blown by them the first time… and then you hit a client that totally goes against all the algorithms and everything they say, and you have to pivot” “(all the continuing education courses) believe in some sort of respiration and how that affects the body” “You got two phases of respiration, so you got inhale which is more external rotation, and exhale which is more internal rotation. You also have the three phases of gait, two of the phases are external rotation so you’ve got to believe there is some semblance with inhalation, and then you’ve got one of the phases, mid-stance which is more pronation, so you have to believe that is going to be more exhalation” “If this person is limited in internal rotation, they must be limited in exhalation in that area” “As I pronate my foot, I’m going to have an internal rotation force go all the way up near my head” “If I can’t get the air in certain parts of my ribcage, or certain parts of my pelvis, then I am going to induce more muscle tone in that area… I now have to use a muscle strategy in order to pull the air in; I use my lats, I use my pecs, I use my SCM, I use my traps” “Go into the anatomy app, and remove all the muscle, and start with “how do the bones move” “So, position, breathing, gait, and force vectors: To me, those are the main things that I think about based on all of the different sys

Today’s show is with Lance Walker. Lance is the Global Director of Performance at the Michael Johnson Performance Center where he designs and implements performance training programming for local and international youth, collegiate, and professional athletes in all sports. Prior to MJP, Lance served as Director of Performance Training at Integrated Athletic Development, as well as having served as an assistant strength coach with the Dallas Cowboys, as well as the University of Oklahoma. Lance is also a current Registered Physical Therapist in the state of Texas, giving him a unique blend of skills and lenses by which to observe athletic performance. In looking at what makes athletes operate at a high level, we can’t go too far without looking at the actions of the pelvis and spine. As both a strength coach, and physical therapist, Lance has detailed knowledge of both the anatomy and fine-tuned function of this region, as well as more global concepts, linking it to sprinting and general strength training. For today’s show, Lance takes us on a journey of hip function, and how that function ties into sprinting and athletic movement. He goes into pelvic dynamics in the weight room (including some important points on split squatting and the hips), as well as how using horizontal resistance combined with vertical exercises can drive unique and more specific adaptations. Finally, talks about some key strength movements to achieve better pelvic function for speed and resiliency. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 5:30 – How Lance looks at the action of the pelvis in sprinting and human movement 19:00 – Pelvic dynamics in bilateral sagittal plane activity (squatting and deadlifting) versus sprinting, and helping athletes determine their own individual squat depth 21:30 – How a rear foot elevated split squat can create lumbo-sacral torsion that could provoke injury in the pelvis 34:30 – How to help athletes who are not reciprocal in the pelvis improve their pelvic action in sprinting, and Lance’s view on core and trunk training for athlete 38:00 – The role of hip flexors in training for speed and athletic performance 50:30 – How adding horizontal band resistance can dynamically change strength training exercises 54:30 – The idea of hip separation in fast sprinters (front knee and back knee distance) and if this is a good idea to specifically train in practice “That pelvis motion, rotation and listing, that’s my focus now, both from a dysfunction standpoint and a speed standpoint” “The body needs to set up and list the pelvis to be fast” “Optimized motion should probably be the approach, and let’s just not stabilize the tar out of it and make everything move around this stable, fictitious pelvis” “It’s like you are setting the spring so when you throw it, it abducts, externally rotates and extends, and when it hits the ground, it’s still rotating” “There was this incredible increase in pubic symphysis issues… there was this mad rush to load this split stance stuff, because, nobody hurt their back anymore, and “it’s more functional”” “Hip flexor strength is a thing!” “Just stretching the hip flexors, and strengthening the abdominal wall doesn’t help (anterior pelvic tilt) those people” “When you are doing your leg drop series, don’t put your hands under your pelvis” “(Regarding the supine leg drop test without the low back arching up) The one’s that have a lot of issues, the bottom 10-20%, chronic hamstrings, spondy, all those things, yeah that’s a test (that failing fits with getting hurt more often)” “That’s a key concept in hamstring rehab is training the hamstring while training the hip flexor” “We worked with elite distance runners at MJP, and the more elite they were, the more positive their Thomas test was (poor hip flexor mobility)” “Fast freaks are not putting a lot of pressure into the ground after neutral… the ones that suck, they are the ones still putting pressure into the ground after center” “These elite sprinters are not hitting directly below their body, they are hitting 6” in front of their body” “I’m anti-deceleration, we are doing a dis-service by teaching others to slow down” “All of us that get to work with athletes, or patients, we are shepherds to this adaptation, we are not driving adaptation. Don’t kid yourself; the human body, that is the magic maker” About Lance Walker Lance Walker is the Global Director of Performance at the Michael Johnson Performance Center in McKinney, Texas where he designs and implements performance training programming for local and international youth, collegiate, elite, and professional athletes in all sports. Lance previously served as Director of Performance Training at Integrated Athletic Development and was responsible for the training and/or physical rehabilitation

Today’s show is with Christian Thibaudeau. Christian has been a strength coach for nearly 2 decades, working with athletes from nearly 30 sports. He has written four books and has pioneered multiple educational courses, including the Neuro-typing system, which goes in-depth on how to train athletes in the weight room (and beyond) based on their own individual dispositions. I have had Christian on the podcast many times talking about neuro-typing, but more recently I’ve been digging into his knowledge of various types of training repetitions (Omni-rep) which we talked about on podcast 221. As per any strength coach I am aware of, Christian has the greatest knowledge of set-rep schemes and combinations available for training, and, as such, I have really enjoyed the chance to speak to him on the terms of training complexes and schemes. On the show, Christian gets into power training complexes, and the possibility of utilizing sport skills in the total framework. He also talks about how to periodize and assign the use of complexes, as the method “costs” more in terms of the adaptive resources of the athlete. Finally, Christian spends time talking about training stimulus, and how to create the “purest” possible adaptation for an athlete with the minimal amount of noise in the system, ending with a description of his double and triple progression systems. The interesting thing with this talk was that it was almost more about what not to do, than what to do. In times like these, where coaches are armed with a massive arsenal of possibilities at their fingertips, the need for wisdom on how to actually utilize and progress the methods, without adding excess noise to the system, is at a premium. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 5:45 – Recent insights from Christian on watching his children grow and mature in regards to sport preference, behavior and physical abilities 13:30 – Christian’s thoughts on introducing specific sport skills into power training complexes 25:45 – Why more movements in a complex is more neurologically demanding, and how to choose how many exercises in a complex, based on the type of athlete you are working with 32:15 – Christian’s take on when to use (or not use) power complexes in a training year, based on the athlete 47:45 – How to increase training stimulus, and how to progress in training without adding volume, or even weight 59:45 – Why it is important not to give a client what you, as a coach, are currently in love with in terms of training methods 1:05:45 – How to make training the “purest” it can possibly be, reducing all un-necessary noise in a program to help athletes adapt in as direct of way that is possible 1:12.00 – Christian’s take on using bar-speed monitor units for athletes in light of adrenaline increases and intensification factors 1:22.00 – Using very simple lifts, such as a leg press, in order to put minimal stress into a training program where an athlete is doing a non-strength sport 1:28.00 – Christian’s simple-strength progression method, the “triple progression method” that offers a low level of noise and a long-term progression potential for an athlete “The simple fact that it feels lighter (doing a light set, after doing a heavy set), it will make you more confident, and you will produce more force” “The closer both movements are together, the easier the brain will connect both (for the brain to transfer to sport skill)” “That’s one of the issues with complexes is that they will raise adrenaline more than any training benefit you can find; which is a benefit in the short term… the downside of that is the more adrenaline you produce in training, the more likely you are to suffer from training burnout” “I prefer top range of motion (lifting) in the transfer phases; studies have shown that partial squats have much more impact on speed and jumping capacity than full squats” “The more stations you have (in a circuit) the easier the transfer is” “If you have the natural capacity to transfer gains easily, athletes who can take the gains in the gym and transfer them to the field, well you only need two stations because transfer is easy for you, you might not even need to do a complex. But the reality is that many athletes are not that gifted when it comes to transferring the gains they make in the gym to the field. They will need more stations in the complex, or periodizing their complex” “Remember, the more stations in the complex, the harder it is on the nervous system, so if I can get away with only two stations in a complex, I will take that option” “I’ve had people who will increase 5kg on their squat and jump higher and run quicker. Others will increase their squat 30kg and not improve… those who are naturally explosive are normally those who transfer strength very easily

Today’s show is with Gavin MacMillan, sports performance coach and founder of Sport Science Lab. Growing up in Toronto Canada, he participated in 7 high school sports, and received a tennis scholarship from San Jose State University. In 2001 Gavin founded Sport Science Lab where he has experienced a great deal of success training athletes and teams at every level in multiple sports. I’ve personally had a mixed relationship with barbells in the course of my own athletic career. I’ve had positive (squatting sub-maximally 1x a week being a staple in my best athletic year), but also several negative experiences, one of which was my surprise at age 20, I had spent fall of work increasing my best clean from 225 to 245lb, yet high jumped only 6’1” the first two meets of the year (my PR from high school being 6’8”). In my first few years as a college track coach, I learned quickly that an athlete who learns to lift barbells better is not necessarily a faster athlete. When I was 21, I stumbled across a book called “Pro-Bod-X” by Marv Marinovich and Edyth Hues. The training methods within were like nothing I’d ever seen, incorporating a lot of unstable surfaces, and they didn’t use heavy weights. Doing the workouts for just over a month, I was pleasantly surprised by just how easily I was moving and jumping in my pickup basketball games. Gavin MacMillan does not use barbells in his training program, and yet gets incredible results on the level of building speed, reactivity, jumping ability, and tremendous resistance to injury. He has a strong use of balance and proprioception based movements in his training program. Regardless of where you stand in closeness traditional weightlifting/lifting maxes as a form of progress in a program, you will be a better coach by understanding Gavin’s approach to training athletes, as well as his own experiences as an athlete that led him there. On the show today, Gavin shares his background as an athlete, his results using a non-barbell based training program, concepts on force-production training without using barbells, foot training, and the role of athletic balance training that can be merged with resistance training means for big improvements in reactive outputs. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 6:15 – Gavin’s athletic background (which included ballet and figure skating), and how he got into sports performance coaching 12:30 – Gavin’s experience with traditional barbell weight training, and how he ended up going away from these methods in his own training, and with athletes he worked with 21:15 – Taking a step away from traditional barbell training, and how Gavin was able to transform the injury-reduction factor of a professional Rugby team, setting the record for the fewest player minutes lost 29:15 – Gavin’s answer to the question on, how to train an athlete who needs to get generally bigger and stronger, without using traditional barbell methods 33:00 – Gavin’s thoughts on how to train strength and force for people who don’t have access to advanced training machines 46:30 – Talking on what one sport might be able to offer another from an explosive perspective, such as the impact of figure skating in Gavin’s upbringing 52:00 – Elements of a fast transition to the ball of the foot 54:00 – How squatting with a foot on a balance disc fundamentally changes the exercise adaptation, soreness, and athleticism 1:04.15 – The various surfaces that Gavin uses with his athletes, that optimizes their interaction between the foot and the ground 1:10.30 – How Gavin uses isometrics to produce high rates of force development, without generating large amounts of muscle soreness 1:20.30 – Ideas on the rhythm of moving a load in training “What a gift (ballet) was, because now I was taught balance, I was taught flexibility, I was taught to control my body in space. And then in figure skating, I really had to find different ways to balance on small blades, and I was skating circles around people” “If a system (such as barbell training) is relying on your form being perfect to work, that’s flawed from the outset” “To be able to handle my own bodyweight at a higher velocity is imperative” “In rugby for instance, the scrum is 2% of the game, so I’m not going to spend the entire training platform more than he’ll actually need it” “You are not going to improve the ability to move an external load unless you move external loads; have you ever tried to bale hay in your life? I’d rather a guy is flipping tires than back squatting” “A human can only produce force properly at certain joint angles” “We’ll incorporate a balance element into almost all the strength work we do” “The foot is so important because it’s a suspension system that the rest of the body has to stretch against, and the foot has flex as well”

Today’s show is with athletic performance coach and long-term athletic development expert, James Baker. James is one of the co-founders of the LTAD Network and is currently a Strength & Conditioning coach and Performance Support Lead at the Aspire Academy in Doha, Qatar. James has a unique blend of skills and experience as an S&C coach, PE teacher, sports scientist, and researcher. So many times in sports performance, and particularly in the sub-set of speed and power training, we look to focus on the most high-intensity methods we can possibly utilize to achieve adaptations in athletes. Or perhaps, we inquire about the optimal technical or tactical methods for the sport in front of us. Unfortunately, we don’t tend to look much at the entire, long-term process of an athlete achieving their best possible result in a sport, as well as being well-balanced outside of their sport-specific ventures. To give athletes the best training experience, we need to have a thorough understanding of how they might respond to various training methods at different points in their athletic journey. Look at the long-term process; look at the love of movement and play outside of one’s specific sport, and better understand the entire umbrella of what it means to be both human and an athlete James Baker's Topics of Discussion On today’s show, James will discuss the difference between early specialization and early engagement, and the need for athletes to love and appreciate other forms of movement and play as their sport career unfolds. He will also take on free-moving sports like parkour in relation to ball sports, and then deliver some great ideas on progressing plyometric and strength training means over the course of an athlete’s development. For those of you who don’t work directly with growing athletes, realize that by learning more about how young athletes develop, you can learn a lot more about the mature athlete in front of you, and the process that led him or her there. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 5:02 – What key changes James feels could help young athletes as they go through the levels of sport without burning out 8:49 – The importance of athletes learning to love and appreciate other forms of movement practice outside of their primary sport 14:23 – James’ thoughts on early specialization versus early engagement in a sport 22:05 – Thoughts on early specialization and mental burnout in sport 24:44 – James take on using other/alternative sports in the course of a traditional sports training program 31:01 – When to incorporate, and then intensify strength training in young athletes 34:23 – Standards to “earn the barbell” in the training of young athletes 40:00 – How an athlete’s peak-height-velocity timing will impact whether or not strength training will be helping them to benefit explosively as an athlete 46:45 – How athletes who have less muscle mass may respond less favorably to strength training to improve speed and power outputs across a full spectrum of age ranges 48:07 – How peak-height-velocity will impact an athlete’s reactivity and ground contact times 51:06 – Plyometric progression ideas for young athletes in regards to pogo hops and depth jumps James Baker's Quotes “The danger of athletics is kids wrap up their identity with being a sportsperson” “If anything needs to change, it’s the support network around those kids (that don’t make the next level) and helping them transition” “I think it’s a case of early engagement versus early specialization (especially in “high skill” sports)… getting them in front of good coaches early, but not having that be the only thing they do” “(Regarding how early success does not correlate heavily with later success in “physical sports”) The physical qualities create a big advantage to those that have matured earlier in the teenage years, but they are not necessarily the ones who go on and progress…. Myself I played a high level of rugby, I didn’t pick up a rugby ball until age 15” “The trick is getting early engagement without having an athlete specialize in that sport” “You are going to gamify training a lot more with younger kids… gamification is still important but has a much less amount of time allocated to it at the professional level” “Strength training can be started at any age, but it’s important to understand what the most appropriate starting point is…. It’s about earning the right to progress by demonstrating technical competency” “Sometimes these younger athletes have the capability to do some of these (strength training) movements with load, but they don’t tolerate doing these things with frequency” “Pre-PHV (Peak Height Velocity), what they showed is that it is the plyometrics and the speed work at improving outcome measures like sprint time a

Today’s show is with athletic performance coach, Erik Huddleston. Erik is currently the Director of Performance at Indianapolis Fitness & Sports Training (IFAST) and a performance consultant for a number of professional baseball & basketball teams. Erik previously spent time at Indiana University & Texas Tech University with the men’s basketball teams. So often in the course of using barbell methods for athletic performance, there are often movements that are considered sacred cows of training. There also tends to be common thoughts as to how these lifts should be performed, such as all athletes needing to squat heavy “ass to grass”. In reality, athletes come in all shapes, sizes and structures. Athletes of varying shapes may respond to various types of barbell lifts differently, and there are ways to optimize training for performance, and robustness when considering structural differences of athletes. Advanced and elite athletes will tend to utilize the feet, and stance in different ways as well. Knowing how an athlete is leveraging the gait cycle, and what points they are particularly biasing to achieve their performances, is important when thinking about which lift variations we might want to utilize with them over time. For today’s episode, Erik takes us on a deep dive into squatting and how it relates to the “reversal ability” of athletes, given their individual shapes and structures. He also relates the phases of gait (early,mid,late stance) to squatting and jumping concepts, to help us better understand how to give athletes what they need at particular points in their career. Erik cover important elements of single leg squatting as well, in this highly detailed chat on performance training. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 4:00 – Some of the things Erik has learned from spending time in both the collegiate and private sectors of training 9:00 – Things that Erik looks at in training video that he may be addressing in the gym setting 15:00 – Managing squatting and squat training in light of the various phases of stance 25:20 – How to “bucket” athletes based on need in squatting, in terms of depth and heel-elevation, particularly those with wider hips and narrower shoulders 35:00 – How an athlete’s body shape and structure will tend to determine their functional ability and biomechanics 49:00 – Self-selection principles when it comes to strength and power exercises and coaching 52:00 – Shin angle principles in light of squatting and reversal power 55:00 – How single leg differs from double leg training in terms of pelvic-sacrum action and pressurization 1:00.30 – What Erik is looking for in the stances of the foot when an athlete is jumping or dunking 1:05.30 – Why banded work can cause athletes to “over-push” in jumping, and the impulse related nature of “point zero” in a jump 1:11.30 – More talk on jumping in regards to single leg jumping and accessing late-stance, and why advanced athletes tend to be more late-stance dominant 1:22:00 – Erik’s take on athletes who are early-stance dominant, and how to help them overcome resistance, create compression, and ideally get to mid and late stance more easily “An ability to translate through the phases of gait is something that I look at (when assessing video)” “Some kids are naturally not going to be able to get lower in that athletic stance” “Gait is a constant falling and catching yourself as you go forward” “If the tibia moves forward and your heel is on the ground, you are moving towards the middle phase of propulsion…. as soon as the calcaneus breaks the ground you are in a later phase of propulsion” “(Internal rotation) doesn’t allow for a lot of general movement qualities… or a fluid variation in movement. IR is compression, IR is force production, it is not necessarily fluidity of movement, it is meant to block things from happening; to compress and produce force” “If someone is at that (max IR) point, and you ask them to change levels, then there is going to be a compensation” “A lot of the higher end athletes I work with are biased towards this middle or late propulsion, so for them to squat, I need to bring the ground up to them (through a slant board)” “Having only half of your foot, or just your heel on the slant, doesn’t put you in an early position (with heels on plates, the bias is still towards IR)” “If they are spending too much time, and they are too shoved forward into middle and late stance, access to early (stance) is key” “3rd world squatting, sitting on your heels is very early stance biased” “Compensation is not a poor choice, you just need to have resources outside of that compensation” “From a strategic standpoint it is difficult to get (narrow shoulder/wide hip individuals) to come out of the bottom of the squat with qual

Today’s show is with Ben Askren, former mixed martial artist and wrestler, who is now a wrestling coach (amongst his other ventures). Ben is one of the most successful wrestlers, and MMA fighters of all time, known for his unique style and technical skills. Ben’s NCAA career consisted of a 157-8 overall record. His final two years were dominant with an 87-0 record capped by back-to-back national championships (2006 & 2007). Ben was a four-time all-American, and two-time recipient of the Dan Hodge Trophy (the college wrestling equivalent of the Heisman). Askren was the former Bellator and ONE Welterweight Champion, remaining undefeated for over a decade before competing in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, and had a final win-loss record of 19 and 2. Ben has co-founded Askren Wrestling Academy (AWA) with his brother Max. They currently operate 5 gyms. I am perpetually fascinated by elite talent in sport. In training athletes, so often we take for granted, the long term process, the mental process, and the creativity that makes some athletes so elite. It is very easy to get “sucked in” to sets, reps, exercises and positions, and fail to nurture both the individual creative and mental processes that are going to help athletes succeed as the level of competition rises. On today’s podcast, Ben takes us through his early life in sport, and about when he made the transition from multi-sport athlete to specialist in wrestling. He shares about the grounds the led to some big leaps in his creative ability as an athlete, and the balance between creativity and structure in the development of a young athlete. Finally Ben shares lots of information on developing one’s practice of mental composition for athletic performance. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 4:53 – What inspired Ben to make the jump from wrestling to MMA fighting in his career 8:52 – Ben’s athletic background from a young age, starting from a multi-sport perspective, and how that eventually funneled into specializing in wrestling 15:52 – Prime coaches and mentors in Ben’s athletic career that impacted his formation as an athlete 18:16 – Ben discusses his practice of study in his own development into an elite wrestler and fighter 21:24 – The balance between creativity and structure in training wrestlers as they go from youth to a mature athlete 22:59 – How Ben’s wrestling academies teach children with individual facets of performance in mind 25:56 – Thoughts on teaching athletes to deal with adversity in their sporting careers, and as they advance in level of competition 33:14 – A conversation on the value of submaximal lifting versus heavy strength training in performance training 44:04 – Development of young wrestling athletes, and how early success is not a requirement for later successes 50:17 – How to educate parents to buy into the long term vision of success for their athletes, and why the youth sport system (and monetization) is not set up in favor of long term athlete success 55:40 – How to manage stress and anxiety in big competitions 58:03 – How Ben approaches mental training in practice and competition 1:03:49 – Tactics to minimize anxiety in competition “(When I made the decision to specialize in Wrestling after freshman year of high school) At that time, that was totally unheard of… all specialization was much more limited at that point in time” “I try to not let the parents push the kid into more participation, I want it to be the kid’s choice” “I know there are some people who say you should never specialize, and I strongly disagree with that… at my academy, there are certain kids who going into their freshman year are 92 pounds, what other sports can they play?” “A lot of (creativity) was me and my team-mates. My team-mates were spurring innovation that happened, bouncing ideas off each other” “I barely every studied opponents; I kind of saw it as a waste of time (compared to studying elite fighters instead)… my best end form is not highly tied to me needing to win this match” “Inevitably when you compete at a higher level in sport, you are going to find adversity; when you find that adversity, how do you succeed from there?” “Great champions have multiple ways to win” “A lot of wrestling programs think the only solution is doing things more and doing things harder” “I think I would go back and take away a lot of heavy lifting; it is not necessary for me to be an elite athlete” “Most parents only pay attention to the year above and the year below their kid” “Most youth coaches are not incentivized to do what is good in the long term for the kid… the incentive for the kid, and the incentive for what their bank account says is two different things” “Don’t be too stuck on one method that is going to get you to the top; if you are really goi

Today’s show is a Q&A with Joel Smith. We are back again for a series of your questions and my best answers. Today’s show is by theme “The Speed Show” with a ton of questions on speed, acceleration, max velocity, muscle-relaxation speed, and even working with distance runners. Sprinting is always going to be a synthesis of so many elements of human performance, and is one of the highest-reaching challenges for any coach in athletic coaching (which is why it’s also such a rewarding puzzle to solve). Outside of the common speed questions; I also had an interesting question on how to assess “swings in the pendulum” of training methods. The awareness by which we get to our own coaching biases is important, so I’ll dig into some ideas there as well. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 1:59 – How to fix heel-striking in athletes 12:56 – A step by step process on helping athletes improve hip extension and delay knee extension 19:50 – Thoughts on flat feet being an advantage since you enter mid stance more quickly? 22:16 – The top 2-3 faults, issues I commonly coach as it pertains to start out of blocks, acceleration in those first 2-3 steps, and common drills I utilize for correcting said issues. 33:57 – How to periodize maximal velocity work. Once intensity is at the max and assisted/overspeed is touched upon sporadically, where do we go from there? 43:18 – Thoughts on setting up a weight room/jumping/sprinting program for high school XC runners. Training age with me 1-3 years. 50:44 – How do you balance your stance/beliefs when training philosophy and paradigm swings like a pendulum? 56:54 – In regards to the Soviet research on muscle relaxation times being the differentiating factor between their elite and non-elite athletes, what are some methods to train relaxation times? Show Notes Dave O’Sullivan Slouches https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYD4Jx_IXSw Usain Bolt Warming Up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aW9GxrrSDFg&t=163s About Joel Smith Joel Smith is the founder of Just Fly Sports and is a sports performance coach in Cincinnati, Ohio. Joel hosts the Just Fly Performance Podcast, has authored several books on athletic performance, and trains numerous clients in the in-person and online space. Joel was formerly a strength coach for 8 years at UC Berkeley, working with the Swim teams and post-graduate professional swimmers, as well as tennis, water polo, and track and field. A track coach of 11 years, Joel coached for the Diablo Valley Track and Field Club for 7 years, and also has 6 years of experience coaching sprints, jumps, hurdles, pole vault and multi-events on the collegiate level, working at Wilmington College, and the University of Wisconsin, LaCrosse. Joel has coached 2 national champions, multiple All-Americans and school record holders in his time as a track coach. In the realm of strength and conditioning, his programs have assisted 5 athletes to Olympic berths that produced 9 medals and a world record performance at Rio in 2016. In 2011, Joel began Just Fly Sports with Jake Clark as a central platform to promote information for athletes and coaches to reach their highest potential. In 2016 the first episode of the “Just Fly Performance Podcast” was released, now a leading source of education in the sports performance field. The evolving mission of Just Fly Sports is focused on teaching athletes to realize their true, innate power, and achieve the highest joy in their training, competition, and in the community.

Today’s show is with Jake Tuura. Jake currently works at Velocity Training Center as a strength and conditioning coach. Prior to Velocity, Jake was a collegiate S&C coach for 7 years. Jake is the owner of jackedathlete.com where he teaches athletes and coaches principles on muscle gain, jumping higher, and rehab from jumper’s knee. Training for things like vertical jump and sprinting are enjoyable to discuss, but we need to always be zooming out into more global concepts of performance. For example, you may tweak every ounce of your training to help an athlete jump 4” (10cm) higher, but what if that athlete just got into a really good community where athletes were doing various dunks, and found that simply being in that environment unlocked 4” of jumping gain, that was eventually able to filter over into their permanent results? Or perhaps look at the formation of jumpers who are obsessed with jumping as youths, doing dozens, if not hundreds, of jumps each day? Also, understanding how to be consistent as per staying healthy is not often considered as it should be, particularly for jump-related sports. Jake Tuura has been on a journey of sport performance exploration for years, and offers grounded solutions for those seeking muscle gain, performance increase and pain reduction. On the show today, Jake talks about what he has been learning since leaving the university sector in strength and conditioning, as well as updated knowledge in the vertical jump training space. Jake also talks about how to use games as the ultimate warmup (and workout, when combined with sprints and jumps) for athletes, and finished with some great points on knee pain and rehab, and points where isometric exercises might not be the panacea that it is so often offered as. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 4:56 – Some of the last things Jake learned as a college strength and conditioning coach 16:31 – What Jake has learned working in the private sector of sports performance since moving beyond his university coaching job 18:44 – Thoughts on using games with pro-level players versus younger athletes 25:29 – Things that Jake has been compiling in the last few years in regards to vertical jump training 38:21 – What Jake has noticed in elite dunking athletes in regards to their training history and jumping volumes 46:22 – The importance of using sport play as either an advanced warmup or potentiation for jumps or even sprints 51:59 – Thoughts on penultimate length in a running two leg jump” 58:13 – Looking at isometric training, versus kinetic chain training and general strength conditioning when it comes to knee rehabilitation and injury prevention “When you are a college strength coach, you think that everyone really wants to be in (the weightroom)” “You are warming up their bodies, but are you thinking of how you are impacting their brains?... they are like zombies” “If you are a college strength coach, there are 1000’s of kids who will do your job for free… and you have to impress the head coach” “I think we need to start vertical jump training with the objective starting point of physics, and then you can create a good plan” “Can you get stronger by just jumping? Yes you can; but… some people are just not built for that, and they need extra training… sometimes freak athletes, they may not need the extra training, they were just born for it” “(In regards to knee pain) Jumping as high as possible for a decently high volume… would a caveman do that?” “The pro-dunkers, would jump every day (growing up) and as they get older and increase outputs, they do not jump every single day; and they always get into strength training” “Having the people to do dunk sessions with is huge; we had like 10 guys at an LA Fitness out here one Friday night, and everyone’s vertical jump was up, like 4 inches” “If you can start playing pickup basketball for 30-60-90 minutes, that is the best warmup to dunk” “If you can stimulate the system with gatorball, you will feel a lot better going into your sprints” “You just do not know the story to be giving these canned technique tips to people; they shouldn’t exist” “Isometrics, heavy isometrics like a leg extension, are going to be huge for the patellar tendon, and the quad tendon, and Osgood Schlatter, is will be great for that, but that heavy isometric will not be good for patella-femoral pain; someone who has general knee pain” “Iso lunges, Spanish squats, all those are going to give you immediate (tendon) relief. If you do those exercises, and you don’t have immediate relief, then you probably don’t have a tendon issue” “There is correlation from having lack of dorsiflexion and having jumper’s knee” About Jake Tuura Jake Tuura, MS, CSCS currently works at Velocity Training Center as a strength and conditioning c