Just Fly Performance Podcast

Today’s show is with Sam Wuest.  Sam is the head coach and manager of Intention Athletic Club based out of South Florida.  A licensed acupuncturist and former collegiate track & field coach specializing in the jumping events, Sam owes much of his unique perspective to apprenticeships with Ukrainian Olympic Hurdle Coach Olex Ponomarenko and several master acupuncturists as well as his continued education within Daoist Gate’s martial arts and meditation programs.

Sam has been a writer of some of the most popular articles on Just Fly Sports, on the importance of rotation in sprinting, jumping and sport jumping movements, such as dunking a basketball.  Sam is a holistic, outside the box thinker who has been able to blend several unique worlds of thought into his own process of training integrated athleticism.

So much of our modern thought on sports performance comes from “Western thought”, which focuses largely on forces, muscles, and things that can be easily quantified in training.  You’ll often hear things like “producing the most force in the least time” or “maximal stiffness” as common pursuits in athlete training.  It’s not that these ideas aren’t important, but what we don’t consider is the other “side” of training that involves things that are harder to quantify, such as timing, fluidity, connectedness of the body and mental-emotional factors.

On today’s show, Sam gets into the fine points of posture and expanding joint positions, what it means to train an athlete from a “fascial” perspective, and how his influences from the martial arts have made a major impact on how he goes about training athletes.  He also closes with a bit on how to balance a training program from a philosophical perspective of “yin and yang”.

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

5:42 - What can martial arts teach us about movement quality?

10:39 - Why we talk about fascia & What “fascia” means from a performance perspective

13:55 - Why focus on postural cues in athletes?

17:34 - The role of contractile elements in the body & The importance of timing in jumping

21:21 - Posture, the long spine, & The Alexander Technique in relation to athletic performance

31:53 - Fascial stretching & coming back from an injury

38:03 - Engaging the anterior of the body & Internal vs. External cueing

42:04 - Martial arts drills, mobility exercises, and mindfulness techniques Sam uses to expand the long spine and the tensegrity system

58:29 - The yin and yang of a training cycle: What a week of training for Sam’s athletes looks like

1:10:02 - Why you should finish your day with a parasympathetic cool-down

“All these different movement styles, martial art styles… especially the ones that say they’re internal, you’ll see that they’ll use the body in a different way because they’re not trying to use them in the same way as an external martial art… because you’re using different sections of your body in a particular way and you might be mobilizing different things that I think, in strength and conditioning, we don’t often assume can or should move.”

“When we talk about the fascia, it’s adjusting one area of the body to check the tissue length in the other area of the body. So when we talk about tendon strength versus maybe muscle strength, we’re talking about adjusting big muscle strength in the gym, usually if you see a body builder… their biceps are not big all the way through the upper arm.... Whereas someone who has more of a tendon or even elastic structure… you’ll often see that the muscle is almost more spread out because the tendons and the connective tissue at the joint level has also developed.”

“A lot of the little postural adjustments are to adjust the tensegrity... they’re to adjust the little bits of the system so instead of just having to contract a muscle more, we could actually sometimes even lengthen, just slightly, something around a joint or spine or on the mid-section of the body and by creating that little bit of length, we add that sort of elastic, and maybe we can say fascial, strength. Sometimes we can actually get stronger not just by contracting harder but by lengthening, just naturally.”

“The more lift-dominant programs seem to have more of the folks that started to stack up injuries, even if they weren’t on the spine. I don’t think it’s just the lifting, I think it’s maybe something of the mentality but also I think it has a lot to do with the fact that there aren’t that many ways that people have in their standard coaching/strength and conditioning toolbox to really open that up… Everybody knows how to compress something… but pulling it apart is a little bit more nuanced.”

“That’s sometimes what I’ll do, unbeknownst to the person I’m working with, when I’m trying to work somebody back from an injury and I want them to go all out, is I’ll do something in the days before or in the warm up that’s going to take a bit of juice out of the system so they’re going to feel 100% but they’re not actually going to be running as fast as they can.”

“There are ways to engage posture without just throwing more tension on the system.”

“We talk a lot about internal and external cueing, but I don’t think the distinction is as clear cut as people make it out to be because there’s also imagery that will allow you to almost be thinking about your body parts and your limbs as if they are external, even though they’re on the inside of the body.”

“Especially people these days, because everything is so visual, so technological, but we need people to go back into their bodies more and more and more and be able to actually feel where they are in space, feel where their limbs are in relation to each other. If we can do that through movement, that’s wonderful, but sometimes we also need to just affect the way someone’s mind is working and kind of cut off some of those outside distractions. Otherwise, we have no place to go with this stuff.”

“You can be the [first lines of defense] for yourself, before you ever get into the other stuff, if you know yourself, if you can go inside a little bit. I think people are realizing that.”

“The way you start and end something is the way you remember it.”

Show Notes

Sam Wuest postural drills inspired by the martial arts

 

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A post shared by Sam Wuest (@way_of_sam)

Tommy John extreme isometric lunge hold

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfEdRv7utNA&t=199s

About Sam Wuest

Sam Wuest, L.Ac., M.Ed., is the head coach and manager of Intention Athletic Club based out of South Florida. A licensed acupuncturist and former collegiate track & field coach specializing in the jumping events, Sam owes much of his unique perspective to apprenticeships with Ukrainian Olympic Hurdle Coach Olex Ponomarenko and several master acupuncturists as well as his continued education within Daoist Gate’s martial arts and meditation programs. Please visit wayofsam.com or IG: @way_of_sam to hear more about his training philosophy.

Today’s show is with athletic performance coach and hamstring injury research specialist, Johan Lahti.  Johan is an S&C coach (CSCS) at R5 Athletics & Health in Helsinki, Finland. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. on a multifactorial approach for hamstring injury risk reduction in professional soccer under the supervision of Professor JB Morin and Dr. Pascal Edouard via the University of Cote d’Azur.  Johan is a practitioner who truly has a hand in both the worlds of the art and the science of athletic development.

Hamstring strains are not only one of the most common muscular injuries in sport, but also will be more likely to happen once an athlete has had this issue in the past.  The human body is a complex organism, and as easy as it can be to pin the cause of an injury to one source, we most always take a broad and holistic approach to these issues.  Johan recently did a fantastic explanation of his hamstring injury prevention methods for a Simplifaster interview, where multiple causes and solutions to hamstring problems were addressed, such as running technique vs. hamstring strength training, mobility and hamstring risk, pelvic tilt and more.

In today’s podcast Johan and I chat about an athlete’s strength vs. their raw technique when it comes to lifting, and what resistance training exercises have the greatest impact on the hamstrings from a prevention standpoint.  We talk about running technique and hamstring injury, mobility and flexibility, and proprioception, and cognitive demand, all related to hamstring injury risk prevention.

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

5:31 - What inspired Johan to research hamstrings & His greatest mentors

8:05 - Strength vs. Running technique in hamstring injury prevention

12:43 - Factoring in ultra-specific hamstring training, like Nordic exercises

17:57 - Efficiency in hamstring research and technique

19:59 - Running mechanics: Correlations between on-field running techniques and hamstring injury

23:25 - Factoring in sports that require holding something in your hands while running, like a field hockey stick

24:55 - Stretching and strength training in hamstring injury prevention and mobility/range of motion

32:07 - If you just do max velocity sprint work, will your hamstrings organically get better at end range?

36:48 - Fascicle testing & Sprinting vs. Isolated exercises

42:48 - The best protocol for preventing hamstring injury and keeping hamstrings healthy

44:43 - Lumbopelvic movement measurements & Sprint mechanics

50:41 - Starting at a young age: Building better postures and movement in sprint techniques

53:12 - Thoughts on posterior chain training

“Looking at the hamstrings particularly, it is amazing, not only the sagittal plane or the front to back, but also the rotational component of this muscle group and how it works to help us perform as athletes is absolutely amazing.”

“Let’s say if you’re doing a squat, a force plate can read a specific Newton output but they can produce that force by different strategies so… the end result is the same in terms of Newtons, but are they technically producing strength for different tasks even though it’s defined as a squat? So that is really interesting and I think that should be discussed more. That’s why I don’t like to separate strength and technique… but evidently it needs to be done in terms of research.”

“It’s difficult to answer that question of ‘what is the optimal exercise?’ I think if you’re ticking those boxes, then you could argue that some exercises are doing enough if you have other exercises ticking the rest of the boxes.”

“There’s so much money going into hamstring research, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone picked [time efficiency] up as a research topic… because time is of such high value.”

“We can create these great protocols in the lab, gold standard equipment, but then what’s the use if teams don’t have the budget or time or resources or facilities to conduct these tests? So there needs to be a lot of technological advancement that we can get… with less testing, a good idea of what’s going on. That would be the end goal.”

“There’s supportive biomechanical evidence for lengthening the angle of peak torque in the hamstrings with range of motion training… additionally, that your range of motion is moderately correlated with how much mechanical strain or lengthening past optimal length takes place during sprinting.”

“We shouldn’t just consider the hamstrings, we should consider other muscles that influence the hamstrings that modeling studies have shown that muscles that basically can pull contribute to lengthening the hamstring... and the hip flexors are the most famous for it.”

“Right now, it seems that there are benefits of increasing both of it, fascicle length and pennation angle, depending on what head we’re talking about in the hamstrings.”

“I really want to emphasize that my PhD focuses on soccer, so therefore, these are the categories we have interest in this context. We have four main categories that we thought would realistically fit into schedules and screening protocols, so that would be posterior strength testing, range of motion, lumbopelvic control, and the last one is sprint mechanical output testing.”

About Johan Lahti

Johan Lahti is an S&C coach (CSCS) at R5 Athletics & Health in Helsinki, Finland. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. on a multifactorial approach for hamstring injury risk reduction in professional soccer under the supervision of Professor JB Morin and Dr. Pascal Edouard via the University of Cote d’Azur. Physiotherapist Jurdan Mendiguchia functions as an external supervisor.

Today’s show is with James Wild.  James is a coach, an applied researcher and a performance consultant.  Currently, James leads the speed program for Harlequins rugby men’s team and is Head of Performance for England Women’s Lacrosse.  He also leads modules in skill acquisition and strength & conditioning at the University of Surrey.  James is in the final stages of completing a PhD in the biomechanics and motor control of team sport athletes during sprint acceleration and is the author of “Strength Training for Speed”.

When it comes to speed, it’s always helpful to look at things from both the perspective of the coaching eye and applied biomechanics, and then on the other end, from more raw perspectives of strength and data points.  When we look at both the qualitative and the quantitative, we can get a fuller total picture of what it takes to maximize an athlete’s speed potential in a manner that sticks over time and gets results.  James is not only great with sprinting data points, but he has also been in the trenches coaching athletes for 20 years with many high level athletes, and his combination of the data, as well as in the art of coaching offers valuable insight for any coach.

On the show today, James and I talk about his process of building an acceleration profile for athletes, rate vs. stride-length dominance, foot vs. hip dominant strategies in sprinting, resisted sprinting, minimal explosive strength standards for sprint performance, and more.

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

4:38 - James’ main objective with his PhD work

6:30 - The results of James’ sprint acceleration polls on social media

9:53 - The effects of acute, verbal interventions on sprinting improvement

13:34 - How to analyze and experiment with athletes’ sprinting using continuums

17:45 - How to allow athletes to experience continuums

23:47 - Running with low knees vs. high knees & Variability in performance

27:11 - The importance of incorporating experiential nature into training

29:05 - Key markers and components of acceleration profiles & Cluster analysis

34:58 - 4 main strategies for sprinting & Exploring athletes’ reliance

39:36 - The quickest way James has facilitated change in sprint acceleration performance

44:46 - The role of technical changes vs. improving strength qualities

51:51 - 3 strength measures & Single leg jump in place test

55:56 - Analyzing hip and foot-dominance in athletes

1:00:12 - How does DRF help project horizontal force or convert force to a horizontal acceleration? & Using a sled to train

“It’s certainly not been my experience that there is this one size fits all, classical model [of sprinting] that we can shoehorn everyone into and that they will run faster as a result.”

“One of the things I do will be to longitudinally track their spatial/temporal variables and try and look at essentially what it is that they’re doing when they’re running their fastest. So, it’s this concept of finding out the athlete’s reliance.”

“If I’m working with an athlete for the first time or the first few sessions… whilst I’m collecting that data, I want them to experience what it feels like to move along that continuum of greater step length or greater step rate so that by the time I’ve finished some kind of analysis and have an understanding of where their reliance is at… they’ve got prior experience now with adjusting according to that continuum, so it just makes coaching a lot easier.”

“They’re never gonna sprint the same way twice in a game, really, so they need to be able to adapt to those novel situations… they’re never going to produce exactly the same step… there’s going to be variability in everything they do, so sometimes exploring that variability is quite important.”

“You’ll never find a single strength quality that’s going to be repeatedly related to sprint acceleration performance across all athlete groups.”

“Some of the regression analysis I’ve conducted; big hip extension torque, single leg reactive strength index, and peak power during a squat jump, for example, those three measures combined seem to consistently relate to a reasonable amount of variation in sprint performance.”

About James Wild

James is a coach, an applied researcher and a performance consultant using a blend of strength & conditioning and biomechanics techniques with skill acquisition and motor learning principles to help address sports performance problems.

He has worked with coaches and athletes across a full spectrum of abilities over the last 20 years, including medal winning teams and athletes at major international competitions. Currently, James leads the speed programme for Harlequins rugby men’s team and is Head of Performance for England Women’s Lacrosse.

He also leads modules in skill acquisition and strength & conditioning as part of the University of Surrey’s BSc in Sport & Exercise Science degree programme. James is in the final stages of completing a PhD in the biomechanics and motor control of team sport athletes during sprint acceleration, is a book author (‘Strength Training for Speed’), and has published several articles within scientific journals”

Today’s show is a Q&A with Joel Smith, answering your questions on training and human performance.  It’s great to see what’s on everyone’s minds from a training perspective, as well as be able to synthesize thoughts on each question.

On the Q&A today, we have a wide range of questions, but the focal points are things like speed training for athletes new to training, coaching speed in a manner that doesn’t cause negative compensations, isometric training, weightlifting, and even swimming.

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

Today’s show brings on coaches Andrew Cormier and Joel Reinhardt.  Andrew Cormier is a sports performance coach at the University of Massachusetts, working with the men’s lacrosse, women’s soccer, and softball programs.  Joel Reinhardt is the Assistant Director of Sports Performance at the University of Massachusetts, working with football and women’s lacrosse.  Together, Andrew and Joel run the sprint-jump-throw.com website, as well as the Sprint Jump Throw Performance Podcast.

Speed training, on the surface is a very simple venture.  High quality sprinting efforts in a fresh state is key to getting faster.  For track and field this is quite simple, but for team sports, this becomes more difficult, since it’s harder to control fatigue, as well as address the many facets of speed displayed in the course of a game, compared to a simple linear sprint race.

Andrew and Joel are two young coaches with a view on speed training for sport that blends “Feed the Cats” ideologies, into their progressive system that seeks to eliminate the noise from an athlete’s regimen.  On the show today, Andrew and Joel talk about a speed-based model that they utilize in their team sport preparation, running technique and options in the course of game play, and their model of cueing and instructing athletes.

Andrew and Joel have taken on an approach to “rank-record-publish” in speed-based training that gives athletes unique motivation in regards to improving this critical component of athleticism.  Throughout the podcast, we also chat about the role of visual field, perception and body language in the development of game speed, as well as diversity in running “options” that high level athletes display.  We finish this chat with Andrew and Joel’s take on the utilization of tempo in resistance training, and how much we really need to rely on the weight room for power if speed-based ranking systems are being utilized outside of it.

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

6:05 Andrew and Joel’s history in working together as coaches and how their podcast came together

11:05 How Andrew and Joel are building a “feed the cats” model of speed development in the context of team sports

18:35 How to replace linear-extensive tempo and long runs with more coordination driven, locomotion-complex style running for field sport athletes

27:50 What KPI’s Andrew and Joel are looking to boost throughout the year in regards to team sport physical needs, and how maximal sprints are ranked-recorded-published

39:35 How to work with athletes who are regularly in the last places in speed-based measurements

42:20 How Andrew and Joel consider change of direction ability in their training regime

57:55 Approaching running technique in light of the needs of team sports and the various types of running that may be present in team sports

1:09.20 Ideas on approaching bar tempo in a weightroom setting

“It’s prioritizing the high speed components of the game, and then filling in the cracks elsewhere” Reinhardt

“If we are trying to build some sort of physical stimulus, we always go back to “how can we build this playing lacrosse” Reinhardt

“Instead of (traditional tempo or a long boring run for soccer players) now we are throwing a bunch of different movements at them (such as gallops)” Cormier

“In season we only supplement fly 10’s (for field sport athletes)” Reinhardt

We track (fly 10’s) as soon as we are done tracking it, I rank them, send it in the group message, put it top to bottom, color code it, green to red, mark PR’s on there, and they get all excited about it… the slight shift in language even within the team, instead of girls asking “how can I get in better shape” they ask, “how can I get faster” Reinhardt

Team average we put 1.5 mph on their (lacrosse) average max velocity, in season, over 14 weeks (Reinhardt)

“With female athletes, I’m not too worried about introducing more tone to the system” (Reinhardt)

“They are doing some sort of high intensity lacrosse (and therefore change of direction) almost always, I’ve been working with them almost 2 years now and I have not done a single change of direction drill.  (Reinhardt)

“(Instead of change of direction drills) I do strictly intense plyometrics in multiple planes, and then say, “just play your sport” Cormier

“We are going to start doing sprint training where now we are going to stare at a point off to the side, but we are going to run in a straight line, and you are going to learn to track being in a good position and the only thing we are changing is the actual physical demand” Cormier

“(In regards to Cal Dietz’s work, neural perplexity, and attention management) What correlated most with the guys who went to the NHL was the guys who were able to do math while they were skating” Cormier

“For me, a lot of the weight room based movements are so general, that if you are not allowing yourself to be in a good position, then you are probably causing more harm than good, so I force tempo on a lot of exercises…. I know you are getting a ton of eccentric stress from all of your change of direction sprinting that you are going to do in practice, so I am not going to throw much more at you” Cormier

“We do a ton of alactic, 7-10 second (isometric) hold sets for almost every single exercise” Cormier

“I even, this year, took away… we used to do a decent amount of groin prehabs stuff… adductor/abductor stuff, to be honest with you I kind of stopped doing it this semester, and we hit more big-pattern, end-range isometrics, and we still didn’t have any nagging groins and hip flexors” Cormier

About Andrew Cormier

Andrew Cormier joined the University of Massachusetts Department of Athletics as a sports performance coach in July 2019 and works directly with the men’s lacrosse, women’s soccer, and softball programs. He came to UMass from Holy Cross, where he was an assistant strength and conditioning coach for the Crusaders’ men’s and women’s lacrosse, women’s volleyball, and men’s and women’s tennis programs. Cormier’s prior stops include a sports science internship at the University of Minnesota, a graduate assistant coaching position at Amherst College, a sports performance internship at the University of Denver, and a strength and conditioning internship at his alma mater, Springfield College.

Cormier co-runs the sprint-jump-throw.com website and the Sprint Jump Throw Performance Podcast alongside Joel Reinhardt. He earned both his degrees at Springfield College: a B.S. in Applied Exercise Science in 2016 and an M.S. in Exercise Science and Sport Studies in 2018.

About Joel Reinhardt

Joel Reinhardt is the Assistant Director of Sports Performance at the University of Massachusetts, working with football and women’s lacrosse. He has previously served as an assistant at Nicholls State University, and as a GA at Springfield College.  Reinhardt co-runs the sprint-jump-throw.com website and the Sprint Jump Throw Performance Podcast alongside Andrew Cormier.

He earned his undergraduate degree from St. Olaf College (Northfield, Minn.) in Kinesiology and Exercise Science in 2015.  Reinhardt’s strength and conditioning expertise also includes internship tenures with Total Hockey Minnesota (2013), Springfield College Athletics (2015), the UConn Athletic Department (2016) and Western Michigan football (2016).

Today’s show brings on Ryan Banta and Derek Hansen.

Ryan Banta is a coach with more than 19 years of experience and the author of the Sprinter’s Compendium. At the high school level, Ryan has numerous state champions and finalists, and he is a frequent contributor to many top platforms in athletic performance.

Derek Hansen is an International Sport Performance Consultant that has been working with athletes all ages and abilities in speed, strength and power sports since 1988.  After a long career as a university strength coach, as well as track and field coach, Derek now serves as a performance consultant to numerous professional teams in the NFL, NBA, MLS and NHL, as well as major NCAA Division 1 programs throughout North America.

Both Ryan and Derek were very early guests on this podcast, and I’m happy to have them back to discuss a subject that I think has a lot of far reaching implications into one’s total performance program, which is “tempo training”.  Tempo is an age old method of sprint training, and generally refers to repeated, submaximal sprint efforts, such as 8x200m, or 5x300m, on relatively short rests, with limited recovery.  For team sports, it could mean running a series of shorter, but more numerous sprints, on incomplete rest intervals.

Pendulums swing in all fields, and the sports performance field is no exception.  As with many tools, tempo has been abused by track and team sport coaches alike to the point where athletes do not make beneficial adaptations in power or maximal speed, so a reversal (such as what we see in systems such as Tony Holler’s) was well warranted.  It’s always important view training constructs from all sides, and talking with these two wise coaches is important to gain a greater understanding of this element of training, and its proper use.  Derek and Ryan get into the usefulness of tempo running for both physiological and technical adaptations, and then get into appropriate training prescriptions for track and team sport alike.

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

7:42 – A Question: “If you were running a sprint program for building absolute speed, would you pick strength training or tempo running outside of your short sprint practice?”

10:25 – The benefits and misconceptions of submaximal (60-70%) effort running

18:03 – Experimenting with volume and intensity in tempo running

24:12 – Building structure and capacity through circuits vs. submaximal running & Safe training for injured athletes

31:30 – Flooring/surface dependence for tempo running and circuits

33:47 – The significance of the type of athlete in volume in tempo running

40:51 – Implementing tempo running into team sport training

46:28 – Why coaches and trainers have moved away from tempo training in their sport preparation

50:23 – The role of specificity in tempo training

52:49 – Speed development in tennis preparation and the role of tempo sprint training

54:46 – How Derek prescribes tempo volumes in track and team sports

1:00:55 – Incorporating muscle dominance and intervals in tempo running & Making it relatable to the athlete

1:08:10 – Final advice on tempo running

“Basically [tempo running] is just running with incomplete recoveries at a submaximal pace and, as we all know, this method is very frequently abused by a lot of coaches.”

“Working at different velocities obviously gives you some flexibility around the effect you’re going to have in terms of energy systems and building foundations around the athlete.”

“A tempo run with short recovery allows for the body to use that hydrogen ions or lactate as a fuel. It allows the body to increase its ability to buffer the waste so that you’re not necessarily using that workout to get better at your absolute efforts, but you’re supporting the body to be able to withstand those absolute efforts.”

“The BCDE workouts are critical when you do have somebody injured and then you also have to take in the nature of where is the injury located and what are they capable of doing? Not having that stuff set up ahead of time is, in my opinion, pretty dangerous.”

“If I have a compressive athlete, then yeah, my length of my efforts is going to be shorter, my intensities are going to be lower, and it’s going to look much more like a high-low day, but I don’t take that stuff out because I feel like there’s a lot of value there.”

“It is a complicated process of going through each sport and understanding how much of what tempo work they need based on what their practice or their game is fulfilling versus what you could provide. It’s not easy.”

“I would rather work with, what I feel comfortable with, is the minimum effective dosage of everything and then build a more robust athlete through repetition and maybe an increase in volume as you move through the season as opposed to starting with this monster volume, and just like a train, moving your way down the tracks.”

“As soon as you flip the switch and make it a game or just give them something to distract from what they’re actually doing, just everything changes and I’ve always taken that to heart.”

“Just know what you’re doing and understand the context… before you’re willing to criticize or cut someone or to reject someone’s ideas, I think you need to understand their environment, their situation, and what is the competitive ask of the sport that makes them choose the choices they make for training.”

About Ryan Banta

Ryan Banta is a coach with more than 19 years of experience and the author of the Sprinter’s Compendium. At the high school level, Ryan has produced 135 All-State medalists, including 10 state champions and 15 runners-up. His teams have won 12 district championships and 5 top five state finishes in the last nine seasons.

He has been elected Missouri Track and Cross Country Coaches Association (MTCCCA) president and served on the Missouri State High School Activities Association (MSHSAA) advisory board.  Ryan is a frequently appearing podcast guest and writer on many popular track and field, and athletic performance platforms.

About Derek Hansen

Derek is an International Sport Performance Consultant that has been working with athletes all ages and abilities in speed, strength and power sports since 1988. His coaching career started in Track and Field, providing instruction to sprinters of all ages eventually working with collegiate sprinters, hurdlers and jumpers. His career evolved rapidly working closely with some of the top performers in the world as a coach and a consultant – including Olympic medalists, world record holders, Canadian National team athletes, and professional athletes from numerous sports.

Derek worked as the Head Strength and Conditioning Coach for Simon Fraser University for 14 years, the first non-US member of the NCAA. He also serves as a performance consultant to numerous professional teams in the NFL, NBA, MLS and NHL, as well as major NCAA Division 1 programs throughout North America, specializing in speed development, strategic performance planning, return-to-competition protocols and neuromuscular electrical stimulation programming. Derek is asked to speak on speed development and high performance training on a regular basis for major events around the world and has also authored a number of books, chapters and journal articles on these subjects.

Today’s show brings on Eamonn Flanagan.  Eamonn is the lead Strength & Conditioning Consultant with the Sport Ireland Institute where he manages the S&C support to Ireland's Olympic and Paralympic athletes. Amongst other areas of expertise, Eamonn is a leading coach in both the science and practice of jump training and plyometrics, has a PhD. in Sports Biomechanics and previously worked in professional rugby over a decade.

Plyometrics and jump training is a common, and enjoyable training topic, one of the reasons being that leaping ability is generally a sign of superior athletic ability.  Jump training goes far beyond simply being able to dunk a basketball or reach the top-10 of a highlight series however; as it’s also a useful predictor of various athletic qualities, and if those qualities are actually being improved (often times, we see a lifting related quality improve without moving the needle on important jump related qualities).  The data-based approach to jump monitoring can come across as mundane, but Eamonn approaches it from a practical perspective that represents his coaching intuition, as well as that of his sport science abilities.

On today’s show, Eamonn talks about what stiffness is, and isn’t in plyometrics, and what makes a good athlete from a plyometric and reactive perspective.  We talk about plyometric progressions, and some points of intent Eamonn looks for in plyometric activity that most coaches overlook.  Eamonn also talks about the fallacy that coaches can get into when jump testing, and how the test can no longer “be the test” when you use it too often.  He also covers what “stiffness” really is in plyometrics, single vs. double leg metrics in jump testing, and how to optimally manage jump testing history in uncovering puzzles of injury.

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

05:55 – What drew Eamonn to jump testing and plyometrics in sports science?

08:50 – How Eamonn experimented and learned all aspects of plyometrics simultaneously

09:37 – What does the ideal athlete looks like from a plyometric perspective?

12:20 – How to go about training an athlete’s jump-based weaknesses and the idea of a “minimal reactive strength”

19:07 – Stiffness and reactive strength in the context of jump testing

28:12 – Determining what jump tests to use with certain athletic groups & what tests to use for an explosive short-burst acceleration athlete

40:55 – How often concentric jump testing could or should be done

44:47 – Eamonn’s four phases of plyometric for improving raw metrics & the role of finding relaxation in training

51:58 – One of the biggest mistakes strength coaches make in plyometric training

56:59 – Insights into single leg vs. double leg reactive strength testing & the importance of record-keeping in sports performance and training

“When we’re talking about jump testing… I like to keep things pretty simple. So, while I might have access to tools like force plates, when I think about jump testing, I’m more thinking about incredibly simple metrics and I’m more thinking about a variety of different jumps rather than these incredibly in-depth metrics from a single jump.”

“I think the beauty of looking at athletes’ plyometric ability is that, for me, there is no one way to do things, there is no ultimate because ultimately, what it’s about is performance. It’s about outcome… and there is an infinite number of ways to achieve that.”

“In terms of addressing weaknesses… if you feel that there’s really some areas there where it’s not so much a weakness as a real deficiency, then I think you want to get after that.”

“The device you use to measure, as well as the surface on which you perform the tests, can be quiet variable in terms of their impact on the output.”

“It’s about not putting too much importance on a single metric or a single test and it’s also about not just looking at the number at the other end of the test but what you’re seeing with your eyes at the same time. These reactive strength tests can be quite useful, quite meaningful, but you want to be looking at them alongside the sporting outcome, the speed scores, the concentric only jumping, the countermovement jumping…”

“There shouldn’t be a standard battery that you just use with everybody. It’s got to be about, what is the problem in front of you? What’s the questions that you’re trying to answer?”

“One of the most important things, when you think about frequency of any test, is that the more often you test, the less influence you’re going to have from just noise… whereas if you test very infrequently, let’s say once in week 1 and once again in week 12, the relative effect of any noise in those tests is quite high.”

“The exact problem that I’ve definitely had… is that coaches come from more of a strength background than an athletic track and field type background… I think that is the default mistake that a lot of us can make. It’s easy to look at plyometric work and to fall into the same reps and sets and intensities that we use for back squats and power cleans… it requires some bravery to use your training time for some of that submaximal stuff that is a little bit more about feel, posture, being relaxed, the right force in the right direction... because it’s not as measurable and it’s a little bit more subjective for the athletes.”

About Eamonn Flanagan

Eamonn Flanagan is the lead Strength & Conditioning Consultant with the Sport Ireland Institute where he manages the S&C support to Ireland's Olympic and Paralympic athletes. Amongst other areas of expertise, Eamonn is a leading coach in both the science and practice of jump training and plyometrics. He has a PhD. in Sports Biomechanics and previously worked in professional rugby over a decade, working with Scottish Rugby Union, Edinburgh Rugby, and the Irish Rugby Football Union.

More show notes and timestamps at: https:/www.just-fly-sports.com/podcast-249/

Today’s show brings on Angus Bradley.  Angus is a strength coach and podcast host from Sydney, Australia.  He coaches out of Sydney CBD, and co-hosts the Hyperformance podcast with his brother, Oscar.  After focusing primarily on weightlifting for the first half of his career Angus finds himself spending as much time “outside of his lane” as possible trying to identify the principles that transcend all human movement.  Like many guests on this show, Angus has been well-educated in the compression/expansion training ideals proliferated by Bill Hartman that are pushing our industry forward.  Angus is frequently sharing next level knowledge from his social media platform and podcast, and he works with a diverse crowd from strongman to surfing and everything in between.

I’ve always been trying to “figure out” weightlifting in context of athletic performance.  There are coaches with a lot of different opinions on which lifts athletes should do, and some elite sports performance professionals have athletes do little to even no traditional barbell work.  In my own journey, I found myself a much more powerful, but slightly less elastic athlete in my mid-20s after 12 years of loading my body through squats, Olympic lifts and the like.  On the flip-side, I’ve had athletes who I honestly believe would struggle to achieve their highest peak without some solid help from barbell work.  Rather than only assigning more, or less lifting to a particular athlete, I enjoy knowing the binding principles of barbell work and different body types.

In my search for answers, Angus Bradley is a huge wealth of knowledge.  He is highly experienced in weightlifting methods and has a deep understanding of the principles of compression and expansion in a variety of exercises, and in determining strategies based on body type.  On the show today, Angus talks about squatting and hinging from ribcage and pelvic floor perspectives, the importance and impact of pressure management in how “strong” athletes are at various lifts, and how to train and manage various body types in light of preventing un-wanted compensations and shape changes in the body.  This is a podcast I wish I had listened to myself, 15 years ago.

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

Today’s show brings on Jamie Smith, founder of the “U of Strength”.  Jamie Smith has coached a variety of athletes from the novice to elite skill levels, including several NHL, NBA and MLS athletes.  He has been a prior guest on the podcast, as well as having done an extensive webinar for Just Fly Sports, speaking on perception-action topics and building robust athletes in a manner that transcends simply getting them “stronger”.

As long as I’ve been in the sports performance profession, I’ve realized just how important it is to look at every way you can impact the performance of an athlete, on the levels of strength, speed, mentality, perception, decision-making, special-strength, and more.  Jamie is the epitome of a coach who is truly passionate about making athletes better at the sports they play through a comprehensive approach.

In the modern day, a comprehensive approach is truly important, since we relate athlete response to that of a machine.  Athletes are so heavily coached, scheduled and instructed, that they rarely get the autonomy and creative license they need to reach their own optimal performance.  Coaches also tend to mis-place their actual role in the process of working with athletes, and don’t allow athletes enough ownership and say in the training process to the point where they will struggle in achieving their ideal training result, overcoming stressful competition situations, and even in life beyond sport.

Last podcast, we went into the perception-action component of making a well-rounded athlete, and this episode we get info full-circle development by means of training variability, the use of nature and natural surfaces, menu systems and athlete autonomy, competition, long-term athletic development, and more.  Jamie takes the art of the coach as a guide seriously, and in the world of over-coached and robotic athletes, Jamie is a beacon of light for young athletes looking to reach high levels of not only performance, but also self-efficacy, confidence and life-preparedness.

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

04:23 – The benefits of training in nature for young and older athletes

12:02 – The importance of conscious risk-taking in training

13:23 – Thinking about a child’s future in sport, and how training in nature will impact it

17:30 – Improving happiness in youth sports by incorporating fun and playfulness

24:11 – How to integrate nature into training athletes

28:37 – Thoughts on coaching as a dynamic partnership

33:51 – The role of observation in coaching and focusing on strengths instead of weaknesses + A big misconception of coaches

44:53 – What a training session looks like for Jamie’s athletes, and the art of using menu-systems

56:07 – Competition options in older athletes

57:45 – The role of athlete interest and collaboration in the results of a training program

“At the beginning of every day, me and my assistant, I brief him and we go over what the objective is, what we need to improve on as coaches or as a whole, as a program, and one of the things we talk about is who can say the least amount of words.”

“A lot of people, to wake up the feet, would roll with a sensory ball or spikey ball, shit we did isometrics, we did different gate patterns walking up and down, walking tall, walking in a tunnel… completely barefoot walking through the rocks.”

“The big thing I tell athletes is: we want you to become comfortable in uncomfortable situations.”

“[Barefoot training is] not great if you’re on a wood floor or a totally flat floor where there’s zero sensory information coming in. It’s really not a whole lot better than being in shoes, to be honest. You have to have these little sensations or irritations and you combine that with different weights.”

“The whole idea of safe uncertainty… I think that’s something that is ignored and I think is one of the most powerful things that we can give an athlete.”

“There’s more to this sports performance realm that the sets and reps and perfect form on a back squat or how high you jump.”

“When you look at the physical, the psychological, the emotional, and the social and you understand that those four are connected and you can’t leave one of them out, it’s a pretty powerful stimulus for athletic development.”

“When you have autonomy and you enjoy what you’re doing, everything gets better.”

“We should go with the strengths. Yes, there’s going to be weaknesses and there’s going to be a time and place for that, but I think instead of going right to the weakness or right to the error, let’s go to the strength and what the athlete’s good at. That’s a strategy I have with new athletes.”

“Children are not just miniature versions of adults but they have definitive needs for play and self-expression and autonomy. This athlete you have in front of you… is not just the product of your beautiful programming and periodization but they’re the product of everything they had before them all the way along the line.”

About Jamie Smith

Coach Jamie Smith, CSCS, is the founder and head sport preparation coach of The U of Strength, LLC. He is passionate about guiding his athletes through their developmental process and discovering unique ways that blend physical preparation and skill adaptation. As a former athlete at Merrimack College, Jamie graduated with a degree in Sports Medicine and a concentration in Exercise Physiology. As a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist, he has had the opportunity to coach under some of the most knowledgeable and experienced coaches in the industry.

Jamie has coached a variety of athletes from the novice to the elite skill levels, some of which include current NHL, NBA, and MLS players and the 2011 NCAA Men’s Basketball National Champion UConn Huskies. Through adaptive, creative, and experience-based program design, Jamie assists athletes in reaching their full potential on and off the ice, court, and field.

Today’s show brings on elite physiotherapist David O’Sullivan.  Dave has worked as sports physio with England Rugby Union in the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan and with England Rugby League in the 2017 Rugby League World Cup in Australia.  Dave is the founder of the ProSport Academy and now teaches his step by step pro sport approach that he uses with his own sporting and non-sporting patients in private practice to therapists all over the world. Dave’s mission is to empower people to restore control through their body and minds so they can truly live.  He has been a mentor to some well-known coaches/therapists such as previous podcast guest, David Grey.

Knee pain and lower limb injury prevention are important topics.  Nearly every coach (and clearly therapist) will deal with either preventing or treating these issues with their athletes.  I enjoy learning about how to prevent knee or Achilles tendon pain, but I truly enjoy these conversations when we can take these principles of performance and scale them up to modes that can be used in late rehab or full-scale performance training.

In today’s talk with Dave O’Sullivan, we’ll go into the basic muscle firing patterns that set up the baseline for performance in any bridging activity.  Dave will get into the importance of the Soleus muscle as a lower-body lynchpin, and how to optimally coordinate this muscle, along with the hamstrings in a spectrum of bridging exercises with specific cues for the feet.  We’ll take this all the way to how Dave utilizes jump training methods and drivers, along with foot cueing, to help athletes achieve a seamless and confident return to play.  Whether you are a therapist, strength coach or track coach, this is an information packed and truly relevant episode.

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 Discussing the systems that have influenced Dave the most in his career as a physiotherapist, and how he has synthesized them into his current system

12:20 Dave’s thoughts on the spectrum between basic rehab, and high performance return to play methods in the actions of the foot

22:40 How Dave wants the foot, and mid-foot to engage through various squatting actions, including the “split slouch” exercise

33:10 Mid-foot supine bridging drills as a regression for athletes who cannot tolerate proper load standing on the hamstring and soleus muscles

43:30 A discussion on cueing the mid-foot and how to cue the foot in rehab exercises, versus dynamic movements such as running or sprinting

50:30 Comparing low-hip position hip bridges with standard weighted hip thrust exercises, as well as the role of heel vs. mid-foot pushing in glute bridge work

1:01:30 How to know when to move athletes past supine bridges and slouches pushing through the mid-foot, and into more advanced work

1:08:45 Using “drivers” to help athletes with various jump landings in a return to play situation

1:17:00 When you actually do want to have athletes push through the big toe, versus when to leave it alone

“When they go into the real world; the stress and movement, there is so much stimulus going into the nervous system, it’s so much different than being in the physio room doing 3 sets of 10 or a breathing exercise”

“I just want to put load on these tissues, and let the system self-organize”

“When that foot hits the floor, the soleus (muscle) is the king…. if you had to have one muscle for knee pain, that’s it…. the soleus takes between 6 and 8 times the bodyweight”

“That’s an awareness to me that a lot of athletes have skipped, the mid-foot… athletes who stay on their heels or on their toes miss that mid-foot”

“The interesting thing with the mid-foot and the soleus is that the soleus has to work with every other muscle in the lower limb”

“When you squat, on the way down I want the weight through the heel, and on the reversal, on the way up I want it through the mid-foot/fore-foot”

“If you keep the knee straight, that makes it harder to get onto the mid-foot”

“It is so much harder to relax than to contract; that’s important for people with consistent pain”

“Those top-down cues (squish oranges through the midfoot) are good, but ideally what we want are bottom-up cues where we don’t have to cue them… I wouldn’t have an athlete “squash oranges” running”

“By the time that foot hits the floor at that speed (sprinting) the brain and nervous system has a strategy in place, and it’s not caring about turning a muscle on, it cares about not falling over”

“We don’t want the bum to come too far up in a single leg bridge, because if you do you are going to start using your back; the lower the bum is the more you are going to use your leg”

“I think a lot of those people that got more (EMG in glutes) through the heel… if they did the mid-foot bridge, I’m confident they would cramp in the hamstring or soleus”

“You are going to feel (bridges through the midfoot) in your hamstrings for a few weeks, and then you’ll feel them in your glutes (after you build the proper hamstring co-contractions)”

“It all goes back; have they got the ability to develop tension? When you are hip thrusting, if I don’t tolerate load through my soleus and hamstring, I am definitely going to use my heels to get up there”

“If you want to put more load through the quad, push through the heel”

“Continuous bounds, to me, that’s the pre-step to high speed running”

“I want them to leap and land on the midfoot (in return to play jumping drills)”

“If you push through the pad of the big toe you are going to get a massive calcaneus supination”

“I wouldn’t be going out with a (healthy) athlete and be like “I’m going to strengthen your (Flexor Hallucus Longus) today”

Show Notes:

Supine Bridge: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYD4Jx_IXSw

Slouch Exercises in Split Stance: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0COfbIzkIY

About Dave O’Sullivan

Dave O’Sullivan is a Chartered Physiotherapist and founder of the ProSport Academy. Dave has worked as sports physio with England Rugby Union in the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan and with England Rugby League in the 2017 Rugby League World Cup in Australia. Dave also has a private practice in Huddersfield where he built it up from scratch to now having a leading clinic with over 10 staff that help people who have failed traditional approaches every single day.

Dave now teaches his step by step pro sport approach that he uses with his own sporting and non-sporting patients in private practice to therapists all over the world. Dave’s mission is to empower people to restore control through their body and minds so they can truly live. Dave is achieving this mission personally through his clinic and also through his vision with ProSport Academy. Dave’s vision is to support and guide over 1500 therapists in over 50 countries all over the world help millions of people in pain by having the confidence and clarity to help people who have failed traditional approaches. This all starts with understanding the ‘WHY’ behind everything you're doing and having a structured step by step system in place that gives repeatable outcomes and takes the emotion out of the decision making for therapists in private practice and pro sport.