Just Fly Performance Podcast

More show notes at https://www.just-fly-sports.com/podcast-306/

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 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

More show notes at https://www.just-fly-sports.com/podcast-305/

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

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 found is that a lot of the movements that I had expected to have to decompose for people and give them a lot of cues to get them through, they automatically self-organized”

“A lot of times we think they need technical fixes, and it is a physical problem, or is it just like an awareness issue? When its’ awareness, athletes are thinking of the skills as independent expressions, rather than having expression towards something.  So what I like to do is teach principles, before techniques.”

“Instead of saying, here’s why you should step your leg fully to the ground, I introduce the idea of having full control of the rhythm of your movement”

“I can tell you what you did, or what you should do, but that doesn’t mean that on the next repetition you’ll be able to do it.  There is a little more problem solving that goes into that, so how can we set up a constraint for you that can allow you to start expressing the behaviour that you are trying for”

“Sometimes it is a mechanical problem; you need to get the mechanic to fix the thing.  So as coaches, we need to think in these levels of systems.  Is it because the glute can’t fire well, or the tibia can’t glide at all?  Or is it because it’s a habitual pattern the athlete has and there is no physiological limitation, we just need to do differential learning or feed the error so they can start doing some kinestheic mapping to control the position”

“Pick the highest progression of the skill that can be failed safely”

“That really does matter to people, your ability to empathize with their journey”

“Something as high order as actually doing martial arts skills, can give you mobility.  But you can spend years trying to perfect your mobility and have no physical skills to show for it”

“I try to avoid giving a cue until I see someone do something at least 3 times”

“Check your cues with your athletes.  Just like they need feedback in your movement, you need feedback on your coaching”

“If you work with high school and college athletes who are part of a team of coaches who are probably variable in terms of competency.  So if you can install in students, respectfully a way to know what works for them, to be able to say, thanks but no thanks, to that cue, it’s going to help a lot in athletes being able to sustain themselves in that maelstrom that getting input from 6 different coaches can be”

“That’s the problem I think we have with that type of (hyper-analytical) personality; how can we get them to be more focused on the perceptual information in the environment, and getting an autonomous relationship to it in the expression of their sport”

“A huge issue with those absolute maximal jumps is that they are very easy to break athletes with”

Show Notes

King of the Course

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqJpiAMuz0w

 

Bill Boomer Water Flow Exercise

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAslSR8-Etc&t=147s

 

Mountain Goats Climbing a Near Vertical Face

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfTH1VHqmUU

 

About Rafe Kelley

Rafe Kelley is the owner of Evolve, Move, Play, a business designed to use movement practice to develop more resilient and embodied humans. Raised by two yoga instructors, he was a basketball player and gymnast (and gymnastics coach) in his teens.   Rafe started in the martial arts at 6 years old, studying Tang Soo Do, Aikido, Kung Fu, Kick Boxing, Brazilian Ju Jitsu and Muay Thai.

Rafe also has experience in modern training disciplines such as sprinting, gymnastics, crossfit, FRC, modern dance and many others.  His primary specialization is in parkour, the practice of navigating obstacles by jumping, running, flipping or swinging over them, a skill set he primarily taught himself by watching videos and training deep in the woods.

Rafe co-founded Parkour visions at age 23, and eventually left to form Evolve, Move, Play.  His students have included world-class parkour athletes and MMA fighters, as well as untrained grandmothers.  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.

About Charles St. John

Charles describes himself somewhat paradoxically as a fitness industry professional and an athletic amateur, in the literal sense of the word. He dabbles in a variety of disciplines for the love of movement, but takes a very academic and business-oriented approach to both his digital marketing for fitness businesses and his coaching and personal training.

Most relevant to our conversation today, he 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 as well. He currently coaches at the APEX Denver Parkour (Apexdenver.com) and Circus facility in Colorado.

More show notes at https://www.just-fly-sports.com/podcast-303/

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

More show notes at https://www.just-fly-sports.com/podcast-302/

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

More show notes at https://www.just-fly-sports.com/podcast-301/

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.com 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

More show notes at https://www.just-fly-sports.com/podcast-300/

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.com and Lost Empire Herbs.

For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to https://lostempireherbs.com/justfly.

To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: https://justflypinepollen.com

Find out more about the the online course, Elastic Essentials, by heading to https://justflysports.thinkific.com

More show notes at https://www.just-fly-sports.com/podcast-299/

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.

(though this podcast have been more on the side of CLA approach etc. but no matter where you are on the drill to CLA spectrum, you can learn a ton from tony’s 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

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 from talking to them from a human aspect, and not an athlete aspect”

“If you have that high trust level with your athletes, I’ve seen more guys make it, versus those athletes that I didn’t spend the time and get to know them on that human level”

“Instead of buying new books, go back and read the books you already bought”

“If you are still fighting over, “should we front squat or back squat”, then we will not progress as a field”

About Kurt Hester

Kurt Hester is Currently the Director of Strength and Conditioning for University of Tulane Football, and was previously the head strength coach at Lousiana Tech University from 2013 to 2022.  He is the author of the book: ”Rants of a Strength and Conditioning Madman”.

Kurt served as a National Director of Training for the D1 Sports Training Center in Nashville, Tenn. since 2008, and worked with training several professional athletes in many different sports.  Concurrent to his tenure at D1 Sports Training, Hester also worked as the Director of Training at the Manning Passing Academy as he designed a training program for over 1,300 high school athletes and delivered a specific training seminar for high school and college coaches.

From 1997-2008, Hester was the owner and Director of Performance at HS2 Athletic Performance in Mandeville. He developed and mentored area coaches for college and professional coaching careers with several going on to BCS-level schools and NFL teams. Over 500 athletes he worked with received collegiate scholarships during that time as he oversaw the development of over 400 junior and senior high students per day.

Hester was an assistant strength coach at LSU from 1995-98, working with the speed development program for then-football coach Gerry Dinardo and worked primarily with the LSU baseball team as it won two national championships under legendary coach Skip Bertman. Hester also worked with the men's basketball, women's soccer and women's golf programs as well as with the varsity cheerleaders.

Kurt graduated from Tulane University in 1995 with a Bachelors of Science degree in exercise physiology. He also served as a graduate strength coach at Tulane for two years.