Just Fly Performance Podcast

More show notes and transcripts at just-fly-sports.com/podcast-216-paul-cater/

Today’s episode features coach Paul Cater, speaking on his holistic approach to athlete training sessions.  Paul has pioneered a way of training that makes the session a heightened experience on multiple levels, versus a scripted “to-do” list.

Paul is the owner of the Alpha Project, a gym in Salinas, California.  He has worked with a wide variety of athletes, from those at the highest professional level in pro Rugby (London Wasps) and pro Baseball (Baltimore Orioles), to local youth sport athletes, as well as those in the general population in a wide variety of age ranges.  Paul has lived and trained athletes internationally and has a wide swath of cultural experience.  He has been a “partial episode” guest of the podcast on episode #197, where he discussed the art of story-telling in the training session, as well as a return to the importance of sprinting as a cornerstone movement in his years of coaching.  Paul has also written a number of impactful articles on Just Fly Sports over the years on the level of taking the “robotic” elements out of sport preparation and bringing in a holistic, thoughtful, aware, and “human” form of coaching.

Of all the individuals who have had an impact on my coaching and training, I don’t think I can say anyone has had more of an impact on how I run my training sessions than Paul Cater.  Paul has taught me the art of bringing life and energy into a training session, and as well as using a combination of training methods and environment to be completely in the moment of the training itself.  Through my own observation of, and training with Paul, I have gained insight that can make a training session really come to life in the same manner that sport, or a powerful life experience, does.

On the show today, Paul will talk about his philosophy on the flow of a training session, and how his unique model presents athletes the opportunity to grow on multiple levels (awareness, vulnerability, rhythm, variable work modes, etc.).  He’ll get into the “nuts and bolts” of awareness practices, music selection, rhythmic development, and much more.  This is a unique and essential episode, and one that has the potential to really transform one’s coaching practice in a positive way.

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.

Today’s episode features speed coach and human performance expert, Chris Korfist.  Chris is a multi-time guest on the podcast and is back for a solo-interview show where he gets into his recent developments in speed training, as well as a great conversation about mind-body concepts and their relationship to sport, and even life itself.

More show notes at just-fly-sports.com/podcast-215-chris-korfist/

Chris Korfist has been a high school coach in track and football for almost 30 years, with more than 80 All-State athletes.  He owns the “Slow Guy Speed School” that helps develop athletes ranging from World Champion to middle school. He has consulted with professional sports teams all over the world, including the NFL, MLB, NBA, and Rugby League, and is an advisor for Auckland University of Technology’s SPRINZ.  Chris also co-owns the Track Football Consortium, and co-founded Reflexive Performance Reset.

It is always good to sit down and just have a great sprinting/speed conversation, as in so many ways, speed is a universal concept to us as human beings, regardless of our exact sport or movement practice.  Sprinting represents the highest coordination demand output that the human body can do, and improvements in maximal sprint velocity are some of the hardest earned in training, but also some of the most rewarding.  Chris has been on several of my podcasts in the last few years, but we haven’t had a true “speed training” talk since our first episode together around 4 years ago.

In addition to some great novel concepts on speed training covered on this show (such as asymmetrical sprint training and shin-drop methods), Chris also gets into a topic that may be more powerful and relevant for many athletes than particular speed training methods (although we want to do them all well), which is the power of the mind to impact posture, power outputs, sport skill, and attitudes of the opposing team.  If you get all of the speed training right, but get posture and confidence wrong, one’s highest potential will never be reached.

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.

Today’s episode features athletic performance coach, Scot Prohaska.  Scot is distinguished as a nationally recognized sports and executive performance consultant.  Scot runs his performance center out of Los Angeles, California, and works with a wide range of athletes, from professionals and Olympians at the highest level, to scholastic athletes.

Scot has traveled across the globe studying with leading experts in exercise physiology, kinesiology, physical therapy, biomechanics, strength, conditioning, nutrition, mental and emotional focus, as well as strength.  Through his years of coaching, and learning from leaders in multiple fields, Scot has developed the “Six Lanes of High Performance”, which is a holistic view at looking at all elements that go into being an athlete (not just the physical element).  Scot’s athletes not only find success on the field, but are impacted by his work on a holistic level, and often achieve positions of leadership in their subsequent athletic, and life, endeavors.

As I’ve gone further along in physical preparation/athletic performance, I’ve truly realized that there is much more to offer athletes than simply increasing their 1-rep maxes in lifts, or even trying to increase KPI metrics, such as sprint ability or jump height.  These improvements are enjoyable to attain, but I’ve noticed that they don’t always transfer to winning on the field.  Through looking to other elements of athletics, such as the mental-emotional side, perceptual and visual ability, and recovery to name a few, we can offer athletes so much more than simply the ability to increase their muscular strength, and even physical outputs.

On today’s show, Scot will cover some of his key mentors and life experiences that brought him to his current view of sport performance.  He’ll cover the “6 Lanes of High Performance” (Psychology, Sensory Motor, Technical, Tactical, Physical Preparation, Recovery, and Restoration) and get into these distinguishing traits of high performers, as well as how he assesses and trains those traits in his own athletes.  He also gets into the 11 leadership tenets he teaches, which have powerful effects on not only the success of the individual as a part of a team, but also into life beyond sport.

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-214-scot-prohaska/

Today’s episode features strength and athletic movement coach Austin Jochum.  Austin is the owner of Jochum Strength where he works with athletes and “washed up movers” to become the best versions of themselves. He also hosts the Jochum Strength podcast, and was a former D3 All-American football player and a hammer thrower at the University of St.Thomas, where he is now the strength coach for the football team.

In training athletes, amongst many other lessons, I’ve learned two big things in my 8 years as a full-time strength coach.  One is that the athlete experience supersedes the need for a traditional written training structure, and two is that better performances in the “big lifts” are often not an indicator for having better performance on the field of play.  To dissect these issues and achieve multi-lateral development with more potential transfer to sport, an approach that considers emotional and environmental factors in the training process is a must.  Athlete autonomy, decision making, emotional growth, and creativity are universal structures that can find transfer to other areas of life outside the weight room, including sport.

I was a guest on Austin’s podcast a few months ago, and in talking to him, truly enjoyed his approach to holistic athletic development, and his digging into the total process to a much greater degree than simply building up lifts and taking athletes through canned mobility and stability progressions.  Austin is a young coach with a huge passion for finding transferable performance to athletes on all levels.  Through a variety of methods, he gives athletes the maximal opportunity to become the strongest version of themselves through creative methods that prioritize autonomy, emotional development, and decision making. 

On today’s show, Austin covers the experiences he had as an athlete that has impacted his creative approach to coaching.  He goes in-depth on the emotional development of athletes, fostering autonomy, and how each session facilitates a maximal “aliveness” and intention, as it moves from creative/perceptive movement training, into the primary strength work, and then autonomy-driven auxiliary training.

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 podcast episodes at the podcast homepage.

 

Timestamps and Main Points

7:05 Austin’s background as an athlete, how the weight-room directed mindset hurt his ability to fully express his athleticism, and how it has formed who he is as a coach

16:05 Mental toughness as specific to various outputs and game situations, and dealing with an athlete’s weak points

34:05 How Austin encourages problem-solving and athlete autonomy in his training sessions

42:05 Creating a training environment that allows for failure and exploration

51:10 Austin’s split between structured and creative training in his athlete sessions

56:10 How to approach auxiliary work at the end of a training session in a manner that keeps energy and intention up

“This is how I look at it now, 'how can I expose athletes (to their weak points)' ”

“As a strength coach, if I am not competing in a sport, or experiencing the same emotional stress, then I write this perfect program up of squats, bench, output-based.. they jump higher and sprint faster, so “I did a good job as a coach”, but can they process the emotional stuff?”

“Is it output that matters, or is it sport that matters, and what you need to do in the situation?”

“A lot of athletes come in these days and just want to be told what to do, but that’s not what happens, you have to make decisions”

“Giving the athlete the opportunity to make the drill more realistic, the energy in the room went sky high.  The athlete knows that environment better than you”

“When do we fail in training anymore? When do we try to do something that we are not sure that we can complete?”

“The number one coaching advice that I give is, 'figure it out' ”

“The disrespect to the body (the body’s problem-solving ability) is something that drives me nuts a little bit”

“Sometimes with auxiliary lifts, I’ll put 'get spicy' on it, and you have to do a variation of the lift”

About Austin Jochum

@austinjochum

Austin Jochum is the owner of Jochum Strength where he works with athletes and washed up movers to become the best versions of themselves. He also operates The Jochum Strength insider which is an online training platform for people trying to feel, look, and move better. Austin was a former D3 All-American Football player and a Hammer Thrower at the University of St.Thomas, where he is now the Strength Coach for the Football Team.

Today’s episode features biomechanics specialist and rehabilitation expert, David Grey.  David runs the Grey Injury Clinic and helps athletes with injury, pain, rehab, and performance.  David has learned under a great number of mentors, and is influenced greatly by the work of Gary Ward who is a 2x previous podcast guest and the creator of the “Anatomy in Motion” system.  David is also influenced by systems such as PRI and the martial arts.

Through his diverse studies and experience, David is able to get athletes and clients out of pain who have previously been through months of traditional therapy with limited results.  He previously appeared on episode #160 of the podcast where he spoke on the link between pronation and using the glutes effectively.

In training and rehab, we so often look to exercises that strengthen, before we put a priority on biomechanics and joint actions.  The problem is, that in treating pain, unless we fix the biomechanics, no matter how good the strength treatment was, the problem will eventually return.  We know that in performance training, we want to build a “base of technique” because the way our body forms from a myo-fascial perspective as a season of training unfolds is going to be based on our technique.  Bad technique can yield the result of muscles getting active and trained that shouldn’t, and other important muscle groups getting under-developed.  By training the right joint motions, and getting the feet to work properly, we take a huge step in getting athletes to reaching their highest potential.

On the podcast today, David goes through a joint-based approach to working with those who have Achilles pain, and particularly, knee pain.  He gets into the necessary co-contractions needed to help stabilize the knee joint, and why calcaneus mobility is important for both Achilles tendon and knee tendon injury prevention.  We start out the talk with a chat on the feet, how barefoot training might not be all that it’s cracked up to be for some athletes, and the balance between pronation and supination of the foot in performance training.  All this and more is in the latest podcast.

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 podcast episodes at the podcast homepage.

 

Timestamps and Main Points

5:00 The importance of supination in human movement and athletics, as well as why it is more important to think in terms of pronat-ing and supinat-ing rather than pronation and supination.

12:00 How sensation on the sole of the foot is essential for pronating properly and why simply walking around barefoot may not be truly helpful.

26:30 Supination, and its relationship between running, jumping and power in propulsion

36:00 Why joint motion should be the root of our efforts in injury prevention, rather than simply treating the tissue through strength-based exercises

45:30 Major biomechanical issues that show up with those athletes who have knee pain

50:00 The importance of stiffness, when called upon, in preventing knee pain

54:30 Using isometrics to assist co-contractions to help improve knee function

1:04.30 Thoughts on a joint based approach to knee pain

“I would be much happier with you having a flat foot that can experience some pronation and supination, versus a person with a neutral foot who can experience neither”

“People saying that “pronation is bad” is like saying “you shouldn’t bend your spine to the left”

“A collapse and a pronation are two different things”

“I don’t sell posture as a way to fix pain, I only relate to posture as a way to access movement”

“(In regards to tendon pain) If we are always going to presume that the tendon is the problem, then we are always going to assume that strength is the answer… but the problem is not always the tendon”

“We can understand that the body is a reflexive system, and if we can tap into that, we can make big changes very, very quickly”

“(Regarding the prevention of knee pain in athletic movement) Can you get co-contractions that happen around the knee… can you get an isometric at the knee; an inability to get an isometric at the knee is a huge issue for me”

“Pain messes up the timing”

“If the knee extends too soon, then the glutes are not getting a chance to get an active hip extension, the quads are doing all of the pushing, and that is not a happy knee”

“If I ask you to show me stiffness, you should be able to show me that”

“We need that stiffness, but if you are going to change direction, you need to pronate your foot”

“(In an isometric glute bridge) The weaker people will try to lift up higher”

“I try to give the person what’s missing; when a traditional strength and conditioning approach has not worked, we usually see huge limitations at the pelvis, ribcage and feet, and just getting those things to start moving again, combined with strength and conditioning, but with slightly different positions than “chest up””

“The ribcage is huge”

Show Notes

Isometric bridge with incomplete hip extension (for knee co-contractions that mirror what is needed in a sprint stride)

 

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About David Grey

David is a Biomechanics Specialist based in Waterford Ireland.  He helps athletes and everyday people with Injury, Pain, Rehabilitation, and Performance.

David assesses his clients in-depth and breaks their gait cycle down into incredible detail to help restore the movement(s) that they are missing or are struggling to access. A lot of his work begins with training the foot to re-experience the movements that it should be accessing during every single footstep. He believes that certain movements are ingrained into our DNA and that we can expect to see huge positive changes in pain and performance when we give the brain the opportunity to re-experience these movements.

He has learned under a number of great mentors in the world Movement, S&C, Gymnastics, Stretching & Mobility, Chinese Martial Arts, and Biomechanics. He is greatly influenced by the work of Gary Ward, the creator of “Anatomy in Motion.

Webiste: https://davidgreyrehab.com/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCw3pEtC1AbTe3hZ3l6YsyBQ

Intagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidgreyrehab/

Booking: https://davidgreyrehab.setmore.com/david

Today’s episode features Phoenix Suns' head strength coach, Cory Schlesinger (and myself) answering questions on athletic performance training sent in from listeners.  Topics for this show ranged from programming based on athlete-autonomy, to isometrics, to foot training, as well as important questions on blending strength work into a level of high-performance play where sport skill development far super-cedes one’s physical strength development.

Cory previously appeared on this show for episode #138 and is a popular speaker and podcast guest.  Cory’s creative, yet practical style is an “athlete-first” method that gets results and leaves athletes with not only a first-class physical training experience but also facilitates their ownership in the process.

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 podcast episodes at the podcast homepage.

Timestamps and Main Points

4:50 The utilization of tumbling and wrestling means into athletes of various levels of development (college/amateur, up to pro)

22:40 What the “Sun Café” is, and how it deals with the power of autonomy

34:05 Cory’s favorite isometric exercises for athletes

44:10 Achilles tendon injury prevention and gait biomechanics

51:50 Using floating heel work to improve the connection from the foot to the hip

0:58 Progressing an athlete’s strength development in tandem with their skill development

“You genetically gifted athletes who don’t need a lot of bar(bell) work, to be honest”

“Certain people need experiences that are a new experience, or experiences that give them a lot of confidence”

“Your grinders… what makes them confident? Squatting heavy weight, and you have got to give them that, but how do I expose them to things they are not good at to make their human capacities better?”

“You leave breadcrumbs to where you think the athlete needs to go”

“When I saw squat numbers go up, when I saw force place numbers go up… I did not see wins go up!”

“I don’t care what squat pattern a kid does, I really don’t”

“At Stanford, there was an environment where they got to pick the squat pattern, the extension pattern, whatever the meat and potatoes was that day”

“There is nothing more intentful, than them getting to choose what they want to do… having that autonomy is going to drive more results than them getting to predict their own success”

“Just because they do a between-the-legs dunk doesn’t make them a good athlete, that’s just one aspect of athleticism”

“The biggest low hanging fruit to get work done for me, is isometrics”

“My favorite (isometric) is a yielding isometric at the sporting angles that they create the most often”

“One of my favorite movements to load up is safety bar split, with a Hatfield hold (with a floating heel)”

“The one thing I do the most when identifying energy leaks, is super-heavy prowler pushes”

“In isometrics, if you put them in a position for long enough, you are going to see where their energy leaks are”

“The prowler was the original “floating heel squat”, if you do it right (without letting the heels mash down)”

“That’s how most Achilles tears happen (in basketball), is that false step, right into that forward (drive)”

About Cory Schlesinger

@schlesstrength

Cory Schlesinger is currently the head strength and conditioning coach at the Phoenix Suns.  He has over a decade of experience as a strength and conditioning coach, having spent the previous three seasons at Stanford University.  Cory also has experience working at UAB, and Santa Clara University.  Schlesinger also has experience as a coach at the Olympic Training Center and as a sports nutritionist for Major League Soccer’s San Jose Earthquakes.

Cory has worked with NBA and NFL players as well as Olympic Games athletes. Schlesinger served an undergraduate internship at Wake Forest in 2007 and at North Carolina during the 2008 and 2009 seasons, while Haase was an assistant coach with the Tar Heels.

Today’s episode features a special guest interviewer, Josh Hingst, head strength coach of the 2018 Superbowl Champion, Philadelphia Eagles, who interviews me on a number of questions related to training American Football.  I met Josh in Barcelona, Spain back in 2005, and I’m happy that we’ve been in correspondence since that time.  I originally meant to interview Josh for an episode, but Josh flipped the script on me, so to speak, asking if he could interview me for a show.

Josh’s experience before working with the Eagles includes work at the Jacksonville Jaguars, the University of Nebraska, the Atlanta Falcons, and Florida State University.  Josh has experience serving not only as a strength coach, but also in roles as a sports nutritionist, and he is the co-author of the book “The Athlete’s Guide to Sports Supplements” in 2013 while serving as the director of sports nutrition at the University of Nebraska.

I don’t have much experience working in American football specifically, although I’ve been fortunate to be connected with, and be able to interview many experts in this realm in the past several years.  In this interview, it is truly humbling to be interviewed by Josh, whose has such an incredible resume in his work with football on the college and professional level.  It was good to get his feedback to my own responses as we cover many important topics to athletic development pertaining to football, although my answers cover elements that can pertain to all levels of sport development.  In this show, we talk on speed development, hamstring injury prevention, training the foot, biomechanics, isometrics, 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.

Timestamps and Main Points

2:40  My take on sprint mechanics and running drills for athletes in team sports

18:30 How to coach the “squatty run” and how it ties in with acceleration and even top-end running mechanics

22:25 Major concepts I’ve learned from Adarian Barr and how they have impacted my coaching: Foot steering, “millimeters-to-waves”, Achilles tendon concepts, lever-class systems in the foot, and more

32:05 Concepts on the foot in athleticism and injury prevention

47:55 Thoughts on extreme isometrics and oscillatory isometrics

54:00 Hamstring injury prevention in regards to running mechanics and beyond

1:00.10 My take on yearly planning in regards to maximal strength training, as well as how to plan post-season transition periods and athlete autonomy

About Josh Hingst

Josh was named the Eagles strength and conditioning coach during the off-season of 2013. Since that time Hingst has helped the Eagles to pioneer an innovative Performance Science approach to training. Prior to joining the Eagles, Hingst spent the 2012 season as the assistant strength and conditioning coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars. From 2009-2011 Hingst served as the Director of Sports Nutrition at the University of Nebraska and during this time he co-authored the book‚ The Athlete’s Guide to Sports Supplements, which was published in 2013.

His first NFL experience came in 2008 working as the Team Nutritionist for the Atlanta Falcons. Before his stint in Atlanta, Hingst spent five years in strength and conditioning and sports nutrition capacities at Florida State, where he earned his master’s degree in clinical nutrition with an emphasis in sports nutrition. A native of Hooper, NE, Hingst received his bachelor degrees in nutritional sciences and dietetics and exercise science from Nebraska in 2001. He also served as an assistant strength and conditioning coach for the Huskers while enrolled as a student.

Today’s episode features personal trainer and human movement expert, Rocky Snyder.  Rocky is the owner of Rocky’s Fitness in Santa Cruz, California, and is an experienced personal trainer, as well as an accomplished surfer and snowboarder.  Rocky has taken an absolutely immense amount of continuing education in human performance and is the author of four books.  His most recent being “Return to Center” , which featured a unique integration of a joint-based model of training and movement coaching, combined with neurological assessment of effectiveness.

“Return to Center” is the first training book in a very long time (outside of “Even with Your Shoes On” by Helen Hall that I read earlier this year), that I absolutely devoured (both books has heavy inspiration from Gary Ward, who has been a 2 time guest on this podcast, and developed the “Flow-Motion” model of tri-planar joint based analysis of human movement).

When it comes to “functional training” we often think of things like working on balance boards, or perhaps in a more realistic world, things like single-leg training and lots of bodyweight gait-pattern style movements, like crawling and heavy carries.  Even in using these movements which are inherently more tied to human gait, they are often still performed under “manufactured” paradigms that take them outside of the scope of natural human movement and elasticity.  Rocky has an incredible command of human movement principles, and can describe how these principles are showing up (or not!) in any exercise done in the gym, which is really the core of what we might call functional training.

For today’s podcast, Rocky tackles questions regarding his own joint-centered approach to training, as well as specifically how he looks at lunges and single-leg training in relation to the gait cycle, and how doing this optimally will improve joint health, VMO, and glute development, as well as athletic performance markers and injury reduction.  This was a show that is a real key-stone in being able to truly train athletes on an individual level.

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 podcast episodes at the podcast homepage.

Timestamps and Main Points

8:10 Key aspects of Rocky’s journey of movement and learning about the human body

22:40 How Rocky assesses clients using a tri-planar and joint-centered approach

29:10 How Rocky uses lunges in all three planes to assess athletes

45:40 When inward knee travel becomes a problem to Rocky in athletic movement

56:10 How to observe athletes to determine if athletes have excessive medial knee travel in their general movements

59:10 How to train squatting under load with respect to the natural movement

1:03.10 Rocky’s take on bilateral to unilateral/functional work in a training program

Quotes

“When getting the body to move as joints are expected to move, amazing things can happen”

“If we bring the body back into a more centrated place, the brain is going to allow a greater deal of force production”

“If you’re not going to explore how the (frontal and transverse planes) move then it’s going to reduce your ability to produce force in the sagittal plane”

“By knowing how the joints move in any exercise, it can tell the coach exactly what you are missing… the bottom line is that you should know how the body moves”

“The knee, when it pronates, should be flexing and externally rotating… the knee joint itself is rotating towards the midline faster than the tibia… am I seeing that when someone is lunging, or are they keeping it over the second toe because they have been told that it shouldn’t drive inward”

“A lunge is just an exaggeration of a walk, a gait pattern, that’s what a lunge should be”

“(In a lunge) Is the pelvis rotating away from the back leg and towards the front leg”

“There are some people who may clean their movements up by loading them”

“We have got to stop just thinking of the foot when it comes to joint mechanics.  There are pronation mechanics for every single joint, just as there are supination mechanics”

“When the calcaneus rolls forward into pronation, the knee should flex”

“That’s where we want to go is, “do we have oppositional movement in the body” whether it’s the foot, the hips, the skull, or whatever”

“At the bottom of your squat movement, you are still going to have to drive your knees medially to turn on the glutes and everything else”

“You can’t get away from (the knees traveling inwards at the reversal of a squat)”

“When it comes to ACL re-education programs, it all comes down to, can that knee flex and externally rotate.  Can it extend and internally rotate? Can it do it under load?”

“The VMO is usually one of the muscles that doesn’t do its job, because it’s not being trained to do its job properly, because we don’t allow to let the knee to go inward or over the big toe… keep it over the second toe and you’re asking for an ACL tear”

“(In assessing athletic knees through lunges and step ups) I would say mid-patellar should be over the first met-head in loading, before ascension, I want to see it traveling forward and laterally into that spot”

“(With squatting) Is the goal to lift more weight, or is the goal to improve performance?”

“Throughout life, man spends only 10-20% of time moving in a bilateral fashion, the other 80% of the time is spent moving in a contralateral fashion.  I have my program mirror that, having 80% or better doing unilateral, contralateral, and opposing actions”

Show Notes

Bowler Squat

 

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About Rocky Snyder

Rocky Snyder grew up outside of Boston and moved to Santa Cruz in 1991. He met his wife in 1997, and is a proud father to a daughter and son. He is an accomplished and avid surfer and snowboarder, and well known as a regular on KSCO 1080am since 2002, with his Surf and Ski Report every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings at 6:25 am, and every weekday on KPIG 107.5fm at 8:25 am.

Rocky is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist, an NSCA-Certified Personal Trainer, Certified in Applied Functional Science, NASM-Corrective Exercise Specialist, a licensed US Soccer Coach and a USA Weightlifting Coach. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Rocky has written three books on sports conditioning, has been featured in many publications and his fourth book, Return to Center is now available with all major booksellers

Today’s episode features strength coach Christian Thibaudeau.  Christian has been involved in the business of training for the last 18 years, having worked with athletes from 28 different sports.  He is a prolific writer and presenter, having written four books, as well as presenting to top coaches and organizations all over the world.

Christian is also the creator of the Neuro-typing system, which classifies athletes according to the neurotransmitters they seek out.  This system has the categories of 1A,1B,2A,2B and 3, and Christian has covered this topic extensively on this podcast, as well as many other shows.

There are many intersections of the neuro-typing system, as well as other categories of individualization.  As discussed on my recent talk with Ross Jeffs, the “concentric”, “elastic” and “metabolic” sprinter types tend to fit with the 1A,1B and 2A neuro-types in regards to their strengths and optimal training regimen.

One element of training that I’ve been considering a lot is optimal training splits for sprinting and jumping athletes, and reconciling 4-day training splits (or even 6-day) where there is an intensive CNS element, versus more of a “high-low” split that Charlie Francis made so popular.

This new podcast with Christian digs into understanding how to give athletes their best training split by understanding the relationship of adrenaline to overtraining.  It also looks at things like muscle tone as how one can make a better assessment of an athlete, what training they may respond best to, as well as how to assess them on a daily and weekly basis, and make the best training adjustments.  Christian covers this, nutrition, child development and creativity, and much more on this information-packed show.

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.

Timestamps and Main Points

6:25  Christian’s recent thoughts on child development

12:25  The importance of creativity in early age, and how to cultivate it in developmental stages

28:45 Overview and updates of the neurotyping system from a perspective of COMT, serotonin, adrenaline, and methylation

53:15 Muscle tone, neuro-types and training splits

1:17.55 The role of carbohydrates, cortisol, and adrenaline in training

Quotes

“Any type of blue light or screen time is the number one enemy to child development”

“You will always have what I call grinders… they will never become the stars, and the stars are those that have that little extra something, and that comes from creativity”

“That’s one trait of high acetylcholine individuals, they will be more creative”

“Some people will break down adrenaline super-fast, and if they can do that, they can tolerate a lot more training stimulus.  That is why some people naturally can tolerate a boatload of volume”

“COMT is the enzyme that breaks down adrenaline.  The one that is fast will break down adrenaline very quickly after release, on the other hand if I have someone with a slow variation of the COMT enzyme, when you release adrenaline it stays high forever”

“The type 3 is very similar to the type 1a from a genetic perspective.  Both have poor methylation, both have slow COMT, they don’t clear out adrenaline fast”

“Carbohydrates control adrenaline”

“The 1B is only aggressive under high adrenaline… they will be super chill until it counts”

“The 1B if he fails he will just try again.  The 2A, looking foolish is destructive, because what others think of him is super important”

“Anxiety is nothing more than your brain firing too fast for you to control it”

“That person (who has high muscle tone) always has high adrenaline.  To me that person has slow COMT, he doesn’t break down adrenaline fast”

“9 times out of 10 what we call overtraining is a desensitization of the beta-adrenergic receptors”

“If the athletes has a normal muscle tone and all of a sudden he walks in and his muscle tone is low, he may be underloading, but in most cases it’s because they desensitized their receptors.  One sign of overtraining is that the muscle feels softer”

“The higher the muscle tone is, the more stimulated the adregeneric receptors are, or the greater the adrenaline activity in your body, so someone with low muscle tone means that your baseline adrenaline level is low”

“Athletes with lower muscle tone are often more laid back, harder to motivate, more chill.  Athletes with higher muscle tone are more aggressive, bigger mood swings, more jumpy, they will have a higher heart rate at rest”

“If you have low muscle tone, of the best signs you are doing too much is that you have high muscle tone”

“The better your receptors respond to adrenaline, the stronger, faster, and more motivated you are going to be… that is why when you deload for a week, your performances will go up!”

“You don’t supercompensate neurotransmitters, you can recover normal neurotransmitter levels”

“Cortisol increases adrenaline directly.  The more cortisol you release, the more adrenaline you produce.  When we deload, we want to decrease any variable that would increase cortisol, there are 6: Volume, Intensiveness, using RPE scale (not intensity), psychological stress, neurological demands (coordination demand), density, and competitiveness”

“When I train athletes, I prefer to stick to the same exercises for a long time (as to not increase coordination demand and increase cortisol and adrenaline)”

“If you include a lot of new exercises in the program, you had better decrease volume and intensiveness to compensate”

“Carbohydrates can be a great too to decrease adrenaline.  They help you control adrenaline by decreasing cortisol.  When you have a lot of carbs readily available in bloodstream for fuel, you don’t need to mobilize stored glycogen, so you need less cortisol”

“People with excessive muscle tone, these guys will need carbs to bring it down”

“I will have carbs pre-workout if the athlete has high muscle tone or high cortisol… if the person is normal baseline I’ll have carbs after the workout”

About Christian Thibaudeau

Christian Thibaudeau has been involved in the business of training for over the last 18 years. During this period, he worked with athletes from 28 different sports. He has been “Head Strength Coach” for the Central Institute for Human Performance (official center of the St. Louis Blues).

His specialty: being a generalist. He assists his athletes to develop the necessary qualities to increase their performances (eg: muscle mass, power, explosiveness, coordination). His work method enabled him to lead several successful athletes in a multitude of different disciplines.

Christian is a prolific writer with three books published, each of which translated into three languages (The Black Book of Training Secrets, Theory and Application of Modern Strength and Power Methods, High Threshold Muscle Building). In addition, Christian is co-author with Paul Carter in a new book, which will soon be released. He is also the author of two DVDs (Cluster Training, Mechanical Drop Sets).

Christian is also a senior author and head writer for the E-Magazine T-Nation his articles are read by over 200,000 people every week.

He competed in weightlifting at the national level as well as bodybuilding, He was also a football coach for 8 years.

As a lecturer, he has given conferences and seminars in both the United States and Europe, to audiences ranging from amateur athletes to health professionals and coaches of all types.

Christian Thibaudeau popularized the Neurotyping system. Neural optimization supersedes hormonal optimization because the neural response affects the hormonal response. This is essentially the founding principle and inspiration behind Christian Thibaudeau’s Neurotyping System. The bottom line is simple: you are more likely to train hard, be focused and stay motivated if you like the type of training you are doing, and a training that goes against your nature causes a greater stress response that hinders optimal progression. “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” – Albert Einstein

Today’s episode features Feldenkrais practitioner and human movement specialist, Edward Yu.  Edward is a former triathlete, current martial arts enthusiast, and perennial student of Masters Li Xueyi and Ge Guoliang in the art of Bagua.  Edward has worked with members of the US Olympic Track Team as well as those in the Portuguese National Ballet.  Edward is also the author of “Slowing Down to Run Faster” the impetus of which came years after Edward quit running and discovered that conventional approaches to training are not always effective in turning people into better athletes.  Edward’s interest in how people learn and process information has led him to mix the disparate fields of sports, martial arts, dance, psychology, cognitive science, information theory, and political economy into both his teaching and writing.

Learning about human movement and the acquisition of technique in sport skill has been an incredible, yet humbling journey for me.  After hearing cue after cue from coaches that never worked, I was always looking into how we actually process and acquire skills as human beings.  Two areas that I’ve dipped my toe into that I feel are vastly under-appreciated in sports performance are the martial arts, and then the world of movement through sensory awareness (such as the Feldenkrais method).

Today’s podcast is all about exploring human movement and sport technique from a wider lens.  On the show, Edward and I cover many aspects that are particularly human when working on sport skills, such as over-trying, self-sabotage and motivational factors.  Edwards also gets into his ideas on our sensory and motor development has humans, how our skills as adults hinge on things we need to learn as children, and how understanding that can lead us into new territory when it comes to guiding athletes to their optimal technique.

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 podcast episodes at the podcast homepage.

Timestamps and Main Points

6:25 Why people lose the joy of running and turn the action into a shuffle

13:25 The roots of “too much effort” in training and competition and how to combat it

21:55 How adult human beings self-sabotage their movements versus the purity of movements in children

34:40 How to look at motivation in context of our own movement practice, as well as learning to be easier on ourselves

43:10 How to improve one’s technique by learning to “slow down to run faster”

55:55 Ideas on exercises that can foster better learning in regards to running

1:08.25 How to use the slowing down method to gain awareness of the feet in running

“If you don’t feel powerful (running), you aren’t going to enjoy it very much”

“We have a culture that’s really heavy handed with using will power and discipline and pushing to try and get results”

“I think if we look at the individual without looking at culture, and political economy, we are missing a lot.  You have to look at both together”

“The self-sabotage in our culture has a lot to do with habits.  If you just removed (the chair (from our culture) you gain a lot of advantages”

“If something is not learned in childhood, it is going to affect all more advanced/directed movement in the future.  If we don’t go back and try to learn those fundaments, they will not be as efficient as they could be in the future”

“The potential for learning is not as vast (in animals versus for humans)”

“To learn to fun faster, you need to know what it means to learn”

“The way we are often coached is to try to imitate the ideal, but you can’t imitate what you don’t know in your own body”

“The fundaments for learning appear from the time we exit the womb, to the time we are 6,7,8, and a lot of that happens on the ground.  It is very powerful to go on the ground, and explore movement in many different configurations and various constraints on the ground”

“You are always trying to introduce novelty and patterns in the mind”

“The nervous system can only handle so much novelty at one moment”

“You can reduce the noise by slowing down dramatically.  Slowing down does that, getting on the floor does that even more”

“I do that with runners, you test something on the floor, and then you use some of those cues to play with while you are running”

“You can really only pay attention fully to one thing at a time”

“One way (to have more awareness of your feet) is to use your hands to feel the metatarsals”

About Edward Yu

Edward Yu is a former triathlete, current martial arts enthusiast, and perennial student of Masters Li Xueyi and Ge Guoliang in the art of Bagua, a.k.a. Baguazhang. Along with studying Bagua and Taichi, he has sampled enough boxing, kickboxing, and judo to know that sometimes it’s better to run for your life. Edward’s interest in how people learn and process information has led him to mix the disparate fields of sports, martial arts, dance, psychology, cognitive science, information theory, and political economy into both his teaching and writing.  Edward has worked with members of the US Olympic Track Team as well as those in the Portuguese National Ballet (Companhia Nacional do Bailado).

Edward is the author of “Slowing Down to Run Faster” the impetus of which came years after Edward quit running and discovered that conventional approaches to training are not always effective in turning people into better athletes (even if they are often effective in making them discouraged and neurotic). In his free time, Edward likes to roll on the floor, walk in circles, and stare into space.