Today’s episode features Cal Dietz and Chris Korfist, two highly regarded individuals in the world of sports performance who are no strangers to this show.  

I was excited about getting Cal and Chris on the show together since they created one of my favorite sports training book on the market: Triphasic Training for Football.  In this manual, French Contrast training is used heavily throughout the entire training cycle, and the results of the program on high school football athletes were huge gains in sprinting and vertical jump abilities.  

We’ll kick off today’s show chatting about how the Triphasic Football Manual came together, as well as the idea that French Contrast training is something that isn’t just for peaking situations.  From there, we get into something that Chris and Cal have been working heavily on, and that is training the foot. A good athletic foot requires more than simply doing calf raises, and Chris Korfist in particular has a variety of isometrics specially designed to train the foot in different aspects of gait.   

Cal Dietz is well known for his use of oscillating repetitions and the great results he gets form them, and we also cover the use of oscillating repetitions, not just in peaking situations, but their effectiveness to bring out explosive strength in athletes to a greater degree than standard repetitions.  We’ll also touch on the Exogen weighted fusiform technology that is revolutionizing technique and special strength training for sports.

Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.  

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Key Points

The creation of Triphasic Training for Football

Tissue change in deep squatting

Importance of the foot in athletic performance/vibration pickup

Elastic contribution to movement in athletes and animals

Foot strength training progressions

Usage of oscillatory reps in strength training in non-peaking situations

Use of the Exogen gear in sprint training

Cal Dietz and Chris Korfist Quotes

“If you consistently do deep squats, then the pliability of that quad tendon becomes less; and then you have altered a ton of free energy return that is a quick and explosive contraction”

“The foot dissipates about 30% that comes into the body so you can properly deal with it”

“When the foot hits the ground, it’s absorbing vibrations of what the ground is”

“Your gait changes momentarily when you switch from one running surface to another; the best athletes can change and adapt quickly”

“We wouldn’t have knee problems if we ran on air… the foot is the problem”

“The basis of the foot is getting the isometric strength down first… if you don’t have the isometric strength, it’s just not going to work very well”

“The true value of oscillatory reps is very specific stress”

“Start using Exogen with the calf sleeves…. you are talking about rotational inertia”

“The common thing you’ll see with people doing a high knee action is to throw their torso forward”

About Cal Dietz

Cal Dietz has been the Head Olympic Strength and Conditioning coach for numerous sports at the University of Minnesota since 2000.  He has consulted with Olympic and World Champions in various sports and professional athletes in the NHL, NFL, NBA, MLB, and Professional Boxing.  During his time at U of M, he help founded and chairs the Sport Biomechanics Interest Group with its purpose to explore the physiological and biomechanical aspects of advanced human performance encompassing the various aspects of kinesiology, biomechanics, neuro-mechanics and physics.  Dietz has also given numerous lectures around the country, as well as publish several scientific articles and dozens articles on training. Most recently, Dietz co-authored the top selling book, Triphasic Training: A systematic approach to elite speed a...