Today’s guest is Nick DiMarco.  Nick has been the director of sports performance at Elon University since 2018, and is a leader in the realms of high-performance ideology.  He is both a former professional athlete (NY Jets and Baltimore Ravens outside linebacker in 2014), and has a Ph.D in Health and Human Performance.  In addition to being well versed in the intuitive aspects of athleticism, Nick is skilled at applying logical models to a high-performance training environment.  He has been a guest on multiple episodes of this podcast, speaking on the physical preparation process with a focus on American football.

In the preparation of an athlete, all roads must ultimately lead towards the specificity, chaos and decision making of the sport itself.  The days of putting outputs on a pedestal (such as a squat max or “canned” SAQ score), are still with us, but integrative coaches are seeing the higher-links within the total training equation, and the win-loss column.  Ultimately, a good sports performance program never loses sight of the ultimate goal, which is to prepare players towards their sport as well as possible.  If you caught the recent episode with strength coach, turned football coach Michael Zweifel, this message likely hits on an even deeper level.

On today’s show, Nick gives an overview on the Elon football team’s performance over the last few years, and the integrative factors that contributed to their recent success and low injury rates.  He gives his evolving take on the important elements to cover in preparing players for the speed and movement demands of the game of football, including acceleration, maximal velocity and agility/change of direction.  In this episode, Nick goes in depth on his weekly speed and strength training format, talks about the metrics he measures, gives his take on deceleration training, and much more.  Nick’s ideas are both cutting-edge, and incredibly pragmatic, useful for any sports performance coach.

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Timestamps and Main Points

2:41 – An overview of how the last season went for Elon football

4:50 – What strength/sport coach interactions need to be prioritized for the high performance model to be maximally effective

12:47 – Nick’s updates or thoughts on the game-speed agility model that in the last several years

23:19 – Psychological aspects of perception-based game-speed training for Nick’s athletes

28:54 – Nick’s weekly offseason training format, and his balance of more traditional “tempo” running, versus more specific sprint conditioning for his players

40:18 – What metrics Nick measures and gives feedback to the players on

45:38 – How Nick looks at things like “deceleration training”, relative to chaotic change of direction

51:23 – Nick’s take on the agility categories (mirror, dodge chase, score) in context of other sports, such as court sport

53:57 – Where Nick recommends sports performance coaches to expand their knowledge base, in regards to the breadth of the field, as well as the sports they are working with

57:42 – How being a father to young children has impacted Nick’s athletic performance process

1:02:18 – If Nick had to pick between wearing a shmedium polo shirt, waving a towel, or warming up with jumping jacks on the whistle, which would he pick, and why?

Nick DiMarco Quotes

“We had very low injury rate for us, and I think strength coaches want to pat themselves on the back and say that was their job, but it goes hand in hand with our head coach, he does a great job with his practice design, and doing everything to maximize our weekly layout, keeping guys at healthy and fresh as possible”