Today’s episode features track coach and acupuncture student, Sam Wuest.  Sam is finishing his acupuncture degree at New England School of Acupuncture and is a track and field coach at Tufts University.

Sam is a former NCAA DI athlete, and holds multiple certifications in strength and conditioning and track and field.  Sam has worked with a diverse array of athletes and has also studied under Ukranian Olympic coach, Alex Ponomarenko.  He coached the recent NCAA DIII high jump champion in the 2018 indoor season, Stefan Duvivier who jumped 2.20m.

Sam has blended Western sport performance with Eastern practices, such as acupuncture, Chinese medicine, Zen Meditation, qi gong and tai chi.  When it comes to Sam’s coaching philosophy, as well as this podcast in general, the goal is always to find a blend of ideas from different ends of the spectrum, from the quantitative, data-based realms, to the qualitative and intuitive end.  To this end, this episode is largely about Sam’s outside the box thinking in coaching and recovery.  From his incorporation of multiple planes into basic track and field drills, to feel-based integration of Frans Bosch style stick drills, to avoiding the visual bias in athlete feedback via iPhones and iPads, Sam has a coaching style that is holistic and effective.

Sam also has connected training with common concepts in Chinese medicine, including his thoughts on recovery modalities, as well as linking of the seasons and human response into our own models and thoughts on training organization (noting the similarities observed in the practices of Dr. Yuri Verkhoshansky).  Another coach who has done just this was the late Charles Poliquin, an absolute legend in this field.  We’ll get into these topics and more on a show today that is certain to expand your perspective on training athletes.

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

Ways to incorporate and create awareness of rotational mechanics in sport movement

The faults of a “brace” oriented core movement model in athletics

Sam’s utilization of various sensory feedback drills in sprinting

How Sam utilizes rhythm and timing in his programming and why we tend to be “over-visual” in how we train and coach athletes

Sam’s utilization of recovery modalities

Things Chinese medicine has taught Sam about training and recovery

Ideas on periodization and training organization based off of seasonal effects on athletes from a holistic perspective

Sam Wuest Quotes

“If you watch the best sprinters in the world, they are not going straight forward and back, there is a rotational element”

“There are a whole lot of extensions going on when you push off the ground, and one of them is that lateral plane, and if you aren’t not getting that, you are operating with shorter legs than you need to”

“The same still frames that you got from USATF level whatever back in the 90’s is still true, you have to make sure that what happens in between (tri-planar actions) we really optimize”

“There are only so many KPI’s that you can show statically.  There are other KPI’s that are going on that you can’t show (on a single frame) because they are dynamic, they are a motion”

“If you are holding a stick on your shoulders, you know where your shoulders are, you know where their hips are”

“Sometimes in order to get an athlete to change what they need to do, you need to put them in an environment where that bad habit no longer works, and they have to feel that”

“I almost never do stick (on the back) drills, and (finish) on a stick drill….. I’ll have the kids drop halfway through”

“If your timing is off, there is no chance you are going to hit (the position you want)”

“If you are not hitting a rhythm when you jump,