Just Fly Performance Podcast

Our guest today is Bobby Stroupe, founder and president of Athlete Performance Enhancement Center (APEC).  Bobby has directed human performance systems for nearly 20 years.  His coaching ranges from youth athletes to some of the top names in multiple professional sports, including first round picks, as well as Super Bowl and World Series champions.  Bobby is well-known for his work in the physical preparation realm of Patrick Mahomes, quarterback of the recent Superbowl champions, the Kansas City Chiefs.

After doing 235 episodes of this podcast, and opening up my eyes to more and more of the performance space, I’m always excited to find those coaches who are spearheading creative and effective training methods in athletic performance transfer.  When I recently watched Bobby Stroupe’s presentation at the recent “Track Football Consortium” regarding his methods in working with Patrick Mahomes, I was like a kid in a candy shop, viewing training methods that replicated many time and space requirements of sport play without being mechanical or contrived.

Bobby is not only a holistic and open minded coach, but he is also an incredibly thorough and detailed thinker.  There are so many points of carry-over in what Bobby does, I believe that studying his work is essential if we are to reach the point of getting our training to truly transfer to the field of play.  Bobby achieves this transfer in a way that still pays homage to traditional principles of force development and human performance, but is able to add in the tri-planar and chaotic nature of what athletes will encounter in sport.

On today’s podcast, Bobby gets into a variety of his “unorthodox” training methods, including locomotion complexes, tri-planar plyometrics and strength training, complex training, long-term development, and athlete autonomy.  Again, with the interest of transfer to sport in mind, any aspiring coach should be familiar with the work of Bobby Stroupe and Team APEC.

Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster.com and Lost Empire Herbs (www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly).

Our guest today is Rob Assise, track coach at Homewood-Flossmoor High School.  Rob has 17 years of coaching experience, and has been a regular speaker and writer in the realms of track and field, plyometrics and speed training.  He previously appeared on episode #95 and #196 of the podcast.

More show notes at just-fly-sports.com/podcast-235-rob-assise/

One of the more fascinating ideas that I’ve been working with over time, as a coach, has been the idea of using a “long-burst” training movement of around 10-30 seconds, to help improve the power output of “short-burst” movements, such as a jump or short sprint.  Dr. Mark Wetzel spoke about this in depth on a recent episode and his take on it has confirmed things that I’ve seen anecdotally for some time, as well as read up on years ago in the mysterious “Greatest Sports Training Book Ever” by “DB Hammer” with the “AN1” and “AN2” bracket systems.

Rob has taken those bracket systems and has done some creative training work with them recently, where he has also infused “infinity walks” which Dan Fichter talked about on a recent episode, into the mix.  Rob talks about that today, as well as ways that this concept can be taken creatively for track and field athletes.  In the second half of this show, Rob and I talk plyometric concepts, and how to build bounding and plyometric training “from the feet up” and “from ground contact times upward”.

Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs.

Our guest today is Dan John who is a strength coach, track coach, master’s track athlete, best-selling author, and all around sage of wisdom on all-things strength training for athletics and life itself.

More show notes at just-fly-sports.com/podcast-234-dan-john/

Dan’s work has been profoundly impactful on my coaching, and training practice.  The older and more experienced I get as a coach, the more I find his reduction to the essentials, as well as global thinking, extremely valuable.  Dan appeared on podcast episode #96 with one of my favorite conversations since the start of this podcast series.

If you’ve been around elite coaches and athletes for long enough, you start to realize trends that go beyond the sets, reps and training prescriptions that work their way into the results that are being achieved in competition.  Elite athletes are strong enough for their sport, as well as being (hopefully) adequate in general physical measures, but they also tend to have elite levels of relaxation and tension management.  Many times, the best competitors carry a different outlook on competition itself.

For today’s show, Dan covers ideas on the art of “letting go” and achieving better performance through superior relaxation and tension management.  He also gets into some of the creative coaching practices he utilized for his throwers, such as playing unique games, “range” throwing, constraint based turns in the circle, and super-setting kettlebell work with throwing.  Finally, other important elements, such as the importance of being “deprived” of a good training environment, and elastic athletic performance are addressed in this conversation with a strength and track legend.

Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs.

Our guest today is athletic movement specialist Lee Taft.  Lee is one of the most highly respected game speed development coaches in the world, and has taught his methods around the world.  Lee combines an extensive knowledge of sport movement and physical education means and brings this into the physical preparation space in a meaningful way.  Lee has appeared twice prior on the Just Fly Performance podcast and has been a great source of practical ideas and knowledge on speed development for me over my years as a coach.

One of the big things I find more and more coaches looking for is ideas on the long term development of an athlete.  By the time an athlete gets to high school, let alone college and the pro’s, the vast majority of the “ground-work” has been done in regards to the speed and reaction abilities of that athlete-specific to their sport.  Unfortunately, there are many pitfalls for young athletes, who miss many critical windows of early development for a variety of reasons.

This podcast is all about the development of speed from a young age, how velocity rules training (even if technique is “ugly” early on) as well as some varied topics on Lee’s take on warmups for training, and sport, as well as thoughts on vision training and low-box training for athletes.  Whether you work with youth, or established athletes, or are a sport parent, this is essential information.

Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs.

Our guest today is Dan Fichter, owner and operator of WannaGetFast, a sports performance facility in Rochester, New York.  He is one of the leading experts in applying clinical neurology into athletic rehabilitation and sport performance applications.  Dan has been mentored by a variety of elite coaches, therapists, and neurologists, and has trained numerous professional athletes and Olympians across a variety of sports.  He has been a multi-time guest on the podcast, with one of the most popular episodes of all-time being a joint discussion with Chris Korfist on “DB Hammer” training methods (an old-school classic).

It’s somewhat of a “woke” term to mention the nervous system in training, as Matt Cooper said on a recent podcast.  Although it is easy to pay homage to the nervous system as the ultimate controller of training results, it is much more complicated to actually observe and specifically train the CNS.  This is where people like Dan Fichter are awesome resources in regards to being able to take the complex inter-disciplinary work on the subject, and tie it into simple methods we can use in our own practices.

On today’s show, Dan runs through a wide swath of nervous system training topics, centering on isometrics, as well as their role in light of long term athletic development, crawling and the nervous system, infinity walks, as well as his keys to a good warmup from a neurological perspective.  There was a huge amount of practical training gold in this episode.

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

More show notes at just-fly-sports.com/podcast-232-dan-fichter/

Our guest today is Dr. Mark Wetzel, chiropractor and neurology expert based out of Nashville, Tennessee.  Mark has been a guest on the show several times before, speaking about the physiological and neurological elements of the training method of “extreme isometrics” as well as the fantastic results that he achieved from using the method with a high school baseball team.

Isometric holds of all sorts have become very popular in training in recent years, and for good reason.  Where typical “up and down” lifting is a bit of a shotgun approach to performance, isometrics can isolate very specific elements of our physiology, and allow us to devote the body’s resources to these specific elements, rather than a wider array of general elements that we find in more traditional strength methods.

One of the things you may remember Mark talking about on previous shows is the idea of “cycling through the energy systems” while performing a long isometric hold, and if one can make it through all of these energy systems, then a large benefit can be derived by the athlete.  In recent conversations with Mark, he has been taking this further by teaching me how training maximally in one “energy system bracket” can optimize your performance in another “energy system bracket”.

For example, most people in track and field are familiar with the idea of feeling more “warmed up” to do an explosive jump after running a 100 or 200-meter dash maximally.  In the team sport world, playing a pick-up game of basketball is often a better warm-up for explosive jumping than doing basically any sort of “traditional” warmup that you might find.  On the podcast today, Mark and I dig into these concepts, as well as reinforcing many important elements of the isometric hold itself, such as breathing, intention, posture and much more.

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

More show notes at just-fly-sports.com/podcast-231-mark-wetzel/

Our guest today is cricket fast-bowling coach and overall motor learning wizard, Steffan Jones.  Stefan is the last “dual pro” between rugby and cricket, and is an ex-cricketeer turned coach.  He is one of the world leading experts in regards to not only fast-bowling training, but also topics such as training individualization, motor learning and the process of reaching the highest possible level of one’s sport skill.  

Stefan has worked with many of the world’s leading organizations and athletes in his work in the sport of Cricket.  He has written much about his own training process in the many articles that he has put forth on Just Fly Sports, which essentially amounts to a medium sized book.  His synthesis of his motor-learning model he calls “The Skill-Stability Paradigm” which is applicable to any sport skill you can imagine. 

On our last podcast together, we went heavily into the specific strength needed to throw a cricket ball at high speeds, and some of the specialty methods used to train that strength, such as isometric training and isometric-skill complexes.  This podcast builds on that episode by covering the means by which Stefan uses variability to further the training effect, and explore the possibilities of a sport skill to their highest potential.

Topics today include:

A chat on how Adarian Barr’s teachings on collisions factor into fast-bowling

The role of training variability in skill building

The role of fatigue in variability, “second generation” French Contrast

Robustness

How extreme-isometrics and stretch loading means can play a role in helping athletes to higher levels of skill on their sport, in conjunction with the necessary maximal power and elasticity needed.  

This is an awesome show for any coach or athlete interested in training, and goes well beyond cricket itself. 

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

More show notes at just-fly-sports.com/podcast-230-steffan-jones/

Our guest today is Adarian Barr, athletic movement coach, inventor and performance consultant.  Adarian has been a mentor to me for almost 5 years, and opened up my eyes to the movement potential of the human body, how to observe it, and coach it more optimally.  He has been on this podcast for many prior episodes, and has recorded a number of webinars for Just Fly Sports.  The best way I can describe Adarian is that he just sees things that nobody else does in human movement, and creates a wonderful groundwork for us to creatively express those principles in our own training setups.

One of the biggest realizations, that I’m still regularly checking in on the implications of in my day to day coaching and athletic life, is how, when the joints and levers of the body are working optimally in “3D”, we tend to need much less barbell strength than we think we do to reach our highest speed performance potential.  Not only this, but when we only operate in “2D” and don’t use our levers well, we need more weight room strength to be better athletes in that 2D paradigm.

One thing that Adarian does not post about often is weightlifting.  Part of this is because the world of coaching is very hung up on “force” as a binary entity in human movement, and we need more education on joints and movement, rather than how to split hairs on lifting sets and reps.  Adarian’s eye for movement does go well into the weightlifting world, however, and was can learn a lot from his recent observation in the area.

On today’s podcast, we dive into the Olympic lifts in particular, and how they can either foster athleticism, or suppress it, based on the lever systems we use in the execution of the lift.  We get into this, and much more, such as the feet, torque, the drawbacks of hinging in the weight room, crawling, natural learning and much more in this in-depth episode.

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

View more show notes at just-fly-sports.com/podcast-229-adarian-barr/

Our guest today is the owner of SOAR fitness in Columbus Ohio, Mike Kozak.  Mike previously appeared on podcast #184 and has written several articles for Just Fly Sports.  Notably, Mike has mentored extensively under Adarian Barr, and frequently posts the exercise and training progressions based on Adarian’s work.

Speed is always en vogue in the world of athletics, but something important to understand is that running and moving right not only will make athletes faster, but also make them more resilient and robust, reducing injury rates.  When we move as nature intended, and then amplify that in our training, we can make the most out of free-energy return systems.  When we simply “produce more force” and muscle our movements, we may gain some speed in the short term, but we can do it at the cost of higher risks of injury and a lower total athletic ceiling.

Mike has experience, not only with Adarian Barr’s methods, but he also has worked closely with elite physical therapists who have extensive knowledge of advanced methods such as PRI and the work of Bill Hartman.  On today’s podcast, we are looking at the nuts and bolts of Mike’s performance program “from the ground up” starting with how he addresses the feet and an athlete’s posture, and then designs drills and tasks from that standpoint.  We also touch on elements further up the kinetic chain, and how this can impact how we look at the entire athletic system.  This was a fantastic, practical episode that features many important elements that we need to be addressing in the training of our athletes to fully integrate the feet, hips, spine and posture.

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

More show notes at just-fly-sports.com/podcast-228-mike-kozak/

I’m happy to welcome Dr. Pat Davidson back to the podcast.  Pat is an independent trainer, consultant, author, and lecturer in New York City.  He is the author of MASS and MASS2 and is the developer of the “Rethinking the Big Patterns” lecture series, as well as an upcoming book on the same topic.  Pat is one of the most intelligent individuals I know when it comes to human performance, and communicates his knowledge in a manner that makes it easy to understand difficult concepts.  He has been a guest on episodes #88 and #122 of this show as well speaking on topics such as an educated approach to movement screens and re-evaluating the “big lifts” in light of athletic performance.

That combination of intelligence and communication is paramount for the topic we’ll be tackling today, which is pressure systems and their correspondence to our movement patterns.  That sounds kind of complicated, but in reality, it’s as simple as looking at the dynamics of a bouncing ball, or the lungs expanding with air.  Pat has extensive experience learning from leading organizations and individuals in this area, such as the Postural Restoration Institute and Bill Hartman.

The ability to look at the human body as a pressure system is important because it helps us link what is happening in various gym exercises, as well as what we see in particular athletic presentations (internal vs. external rotation for example), and then look at how that fits to an elastic (tendon and static spring) based strategy of movement, and a more muscular strategy. 

In addition to a discussion on pressure, Pat also discusses his take on having a “strength score” for athletes in the weight room that normalizes performance metrics based on things like limb length and height.  He also gets into ideas on how to “de-compress” the athlete who is compressed in a manner that may be negative to their overall performance.  This was a really smart show with some powerful principles for any athlete or coach who wants to navigate the weight room without harming elastic power outputs.

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

More show notes at Just-fly-sports.com/podcast-227-pat-davidson/