Just Fly Performance Podcast

Today’s episode features track and sports performance coach, Ross Jeffs.  Ross is a sprints, jumps and hurdles coach at the Aspire Academy in Doha, Qatar.  He formerly worked in the Netherlands as a sprints and jumps coach at Atletiek Trainingscentrum Rotterdam, and has also coached under the guidance of Jonas Dodoo within the Speedworks system.   Ross has also worked with a number of athletes from a range of sports including a grand slam tennis player, professional boxers, Olympic medallists from basketball and rugby sevens, and World Cup finalists in rugby.  Ross appeared on the podcast recently in episode 145.

In the training of athletes, be it in track and field or team sports, not all athletes respond to the same stimulus in the same way.  Give 20 random athletes a diet of fast sprinting and heavy weightlifting, and some will respond amazingly well to it, others average, and some poorly.  The same thing could be said of a plyometric focused program, as well as other types of setups.  I first remember this idea of individualization in reading how the late Charlie Francis had mentioned some athletes liking heavy lifting, others plyometrics and bounding, while others responded well to the use of tempo training.  Since then, I’ve been able to dig into things like Christian Thibaudeau’s neurotyping system, as well as Ross Jeff’s “trainers vs. racers” ideas on designing programs for athletes based on how far or close they can get to their competitive best in a practice environment.

Ross Jeffs is one of my favorite coaches and thinkers when it comes to training setups and organization to get the most out of athletes.  He is continually asking questions and getting outside the box in order to help coaches and athletes understand training, adaptation and peaking better.  Our conversation focus today is on sprinting, and how the differences of “concentric oriented”, “elastic oriented” or “metabolic oriented” are going to impact how these athletes are best trained and coached.  This episode is also incredibly valuable for team sport coaches, where there is guaranteed to be more diversity than in a single track and field event in the process of coaching.

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

3:20 An overview of Ross’s classifications of concentric, elastic and metabolic sprinters

18:15 How the different sprint types (concentric, elastic, metabolic) might fit with Christian Thibaudeau’s neurotyping system

26:00 The squatted element of how concentric runners tend to enjoy the weightroom, squatting, and are better at sprinting and accelerating with lower centers of mass

30:30 How to help concentric dominant athletes become better at their weakness, which is top-end velocity running

35:25 Unpacking the need for variety in rhythmic upright running in elastic runners

49:10 Strength training ideas in regards to elastic sprinters

53:40 Metabolic sprinters and stride length/frequency concepts

56:10 How big of a factor nature vs. nurture is in the different types of sprinters

1:00:10 Rules of thumb in training strengths versus weaknesses based on sprint type

1:03.00 Thoughts on sprint typing and working in team sports

1:06.25 If the ideas of “trainers” vs. “racers” fits into the sprint typing model at all

Quotes

“Concentric sprinters run fast because of their strong strength and power capabilities.  These are usually your 60m and 100m specialists.  They perform very well in countermovement jumps and have a deeper lowering phase”

“Concentric sprinters prefer less lactic tempo running”

“They like to do jumps which utilize long stretch shortening cycle mechanisms”

“They also seem to respond well to full-range heay movement”

“When we sprint and strike the ground, the majority of energy is produced by the lower limb and in the foot and ankle complex.  (Elastic sprinters) have a unique ability to reuse energy from that area of the body”

“(Elastic sprinters) will dominate more in the maximal velocity phase of the (100m dash) 40-70m when upright, around their maximal velocity”

“(Elastic sprinters) have a higher flight time and a lower ground contact time.  They will dominate drop jump tests and have higher RSI’s”

“(Elastic sprinters) seem to like variation and if you do too much of one program for too long, they will be stagnant.  They like work that utilize short SSC mechanisms.  They usually don’t need big heavy loads on the spine (in the weightroom)”

“The gym is as much for bulletproofing as it is for output with (elastic guys)”

“(Metabolic sprinters) will dominate because of how they use energy.  Their style relies on economy”

“(Metabolic sprinters) are the easiest to get wrong for the modern sprint coach”

“If you try to make (metabolic sprinters) too frontside, then you take away their strengths and kill the beast”

“(Metabolic sprinters) tend to have a more cyclical and less aggressive looking acceleration style, it’s more about getting their steps down efficiently”

“(Metabolic sprinters) generally need a higher of volume of running in their program.  These athletes need to be fit before they are fast”

“Certainly an athlete’s previous training history will influence (what you might need to put in their program now) even if they are a different type”

“When you squat heavy, you prep the neuromuscular system to have tension in your anterior chain”

“(Elastic guys) have more tone and feeling around their ankle complex.  You can only feel that if you have more space in front of you to strike the ground”

“Do enough of (training their weakness) so it can reach a level where it’s not poor, but not so much that it hurts what makes them great”

“When you’ve trained to your strength and you have that tonus, your skill acquisition is better as well”

“For me, that is a different box, if you are a racer or a trainer”

Show Notes

Concentric Sprinters: Coleman/SAFP

Christian Coleman 60m 6.34

Shelly Ann Fraser Pryce 100m 10.76

(Note SAFP next to Dafne Schippers who is more of the elastic-metabolic type)

Elastic Sprinters: DeGrasse, Jeter

Andre De Grasse 200m 20.19

Carmelita Jeter 100m 10.64

Metabolic Sprinters: Michael Johnson, Allyson Felix

Michael Johnson 400m 43.18

Allyson Felix 200m 21.88

About Ross Jeffs

Ross Jeffs is a sprints, jumps and hurdles coach at the Aspire Academy in Doha, Qatar.  Ross formerly worked in the Netherlands as a sprints and jumps coach at Atletiek Trainingscentrum Rotterdam.  He has worked with a number of athletes from a range of sports including a grand slam tennis player, professional boxers, Olympic medallists from basketball and rugby sevens, and World Cup finalists in rugby. He also spent time coaching under the guidance of elite British coach Jonas Dodoo within the Speedworks system coaching national and international level track and field athletes.

Today’s episode features Boo Schexnayder, current strength coach and former jumps coach at Louisiana State University.  Boo is regarded internationally as a leading authority in training design, possessing 37 years of experience in the coaching and consulting fields. Most noted for his 12 years on the Track and Field coaching staff at LSU, he is regarded as one of the world’s premier coaches, having developed 19 NCAA Champions and 10 Olympians.  Boo is one of the world’s leading authorities on training for speed and power on a variety of levels.

I get a lot of requests on the show to talk about training organization and programming, and we had a great chat with Grant Fowler for episode #190, but outside of that show, talks on programming have been a bit sparse, so I was really excited to get Boo back on the line to have a great chat on programming and organization.

This show gets into it.  It’s one of the best talks I’ve had on straight-forward planning and organization for speed and power training.  Although Boo’s deepest and most well-known experience is with track and field, there is a huge gold-mine of information for working with team sport athletes as well.  For the episode Boo takes us far into his thoughts on how he builds a power development program through the year, from his “home base” power workouts, working into his more intense work and “trump cards” that he selectively plays when he wants athletes to be their best.  We also get into a lot of great information on recovery workouts, de-loading schemes, plyometric training for team sport athletes, full vs. partial range thoughts, and much more.  This is not an episode that you casually listen to, it’s one that you really study.

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

6:20 How Boo approaches changing themes in year round training for speed and power athletes, as well as Boo’s take on “proprioceptive staleness”

11:00 How Boo cycles his power training means throughout the year and how he leaves himself work to build on, as well as his “home base” workouts versus his high intensity power workouts

24:20 Boo’s take on training novice versus advanced athletes from a power perspective

25:20 Boo’s favorite “trump card” workout sets to use when peaking athletes for maximal performance

30:30 Boo’s take on building work capacity and how to optimally use recovery days

39:40 How to look at training a team sport athlete from a jump training and plyometric perspective versus a track and field athlete

45:55 Loading to deloading ratios throughout the year for various athletes

51:40 Using higher frequency work in training days, and how that fits in on the periodization timeline

57:25 Thoughts on unilateral work, bilateral work and range of motion in lifting

Quotes

 “Mental staleness is something all good athletes have to trudge through, but physical staleness is a problem”

“I think variety in training has a lot to do with proprioceptive shortness”

“A lot of times I change (exercises) for the sake of change and variety”

“Ultimately, my goal is to get the intensities in my power training as high as I possibly can.  I always say that the intensity you reach is the level of performance you are going to get”

“There is going to come a time when athletes have seen everything you have and you have to use variety, you have to use creative set-rep loading schemes to move them along”

“I save most of the things I use for variety and variance like trump cards at critical spots”

“Lower ends of power development provide support for the more intense bouts of reaching that you do: Things like acceleration development, light Olympic lifts, rudimentary plyometrics, those types of things are always in my program from day 1 to day last”

“With older athletes, I do a lot of rollover training (Day 1 is neural day.  Day 2 is a high-end speed power training day.  Day 3 is a restoration day)”

“(Regarding “trump cards” in training) The single biggest one is the single rep max work in the Olympic lifts is something I like to use as a high level stimulant.  Most of my other trump cards are complexes”

“I’ll take 6 different bars with 6 different weights and put them on the platforms, and they have to do squat jumps with all 6 bars”

“Mastery is not what makes improvement, the struggle to attain mastery is what makes improvement”

“If something is going to be part of your training program, it needs to be part of your training program in some remedial form at the very beginning”

“When I hit my highest levels of intensity, I’m hitting max velocity, in doing depth jumping, and I’m doing Olympic lifting where they are going 100%... I’m hitting those types of sessions and those types of units every 10 days or so depending on the athlete.  If I’m going to be intense, your exercises have to be simple”

“You can be fancy, or you can be intense, you can’t be both… so I have to be simple”

“In restoration days, I try to be as diverse as I possibly can, again, to try and alleviate the potential for repetitive movement syndromes and such”

“He will do really high intensity plyometrics with his basketball players, once every 17 days.  If you look at that 17 day window, there is one day you can fit in a depth jumping session, about 30 contacts or so”

“Change of direction is very plyometric in nature, when I see change of direction and jumping, to me those things are more alike than they are different because of the eccentric”

“If you are looking at the high intensity days I have, I start with 3 a week and then I progress to one every 10 days (depth jumping/maximal velocity) as the intensity increases”

“I look at the key variable to progress being density”

“De-loading enables loading, if you look at my work weeks, they are kind of scary, but if you look at my deload weeks, they are also kind of scary.  The higher the highs, the lower the lows”

“I work on 3 weeks hard, one week easy.  My easy week, the whole week all we do is test.  We won’t do any sprinting, but we’ll have a time trial.  We don’t do any plyometric work but we might have a jump test, we don’t lift per say but we might max out on an exercise”

“To be a good coach it isn’t so much about your program, but rather, what’s the appropriate play at this point in time.  It’s like a card game.”

“Everything I do that’s slow, I try to go full range of motion… if I’m squatting, you know it’s going to be a deep squat”

“There are two reasons you are going to go partial range of motion (in the weightroom) the first is specificity…. the second is output.  As far as partial vs. full, full is my default”

“Doing half squats excessively causes all kinds of problems”

About Boo Schexnayder

 Boo Schexnayder is a current strength coach and former jumps coach at Louisiana State University, and is regarded internationally as a leading authority in training design, possessing 37 years of experience in the coaching and consulting fields. Most noted for his 12 years on the Track and Field coaching staff at LSU, he is regarded as one of the world’s premier coaches, having developed 19 NCAA Champions and 10 Olympians. Schexnayder has coached multiple World Championship and Olympic medalists and has been on several national team staffs, including the staff of Team USA at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He also possesses 13 years of experience in NFL player development and combine preparations. He frequently lectures and consults domestically and internationally in the areas of speed and power development, training design, motor learning, and rehabilitation. He has operated Schexnayder Athletic Consulting and serves as director of the USTFCCCA’s Track and Field Academy and Thibodaux Regional Medical Center’s performance division. Prior to his collegiate and international career, Schexnayder was a successful prep coach for 11 years, coaching football, track, and cross country.

Today’s episode features Max Shank, fitness coach and owner of Ambition Athletics in Encinitas, California.  Max has written 3 books, taught over a hundred courses in countries around the world and is the creator of the “5-minute-flow”.  Max is an avid learner, having picked up guitar, piano, and drums as an adult, in addition to the dozens of physical movement skills he has acquired.   As a personal trainer, Max has moved his focus from basic strength training to a holistic approach of overall fitness and health.

One thing that I’ve really enjoyed in observing Max’s work over the years is his passion for movement and learning.  Max is a coach who is the epitome of getting outside the box, and taking a holistic approach to coaching, training and human development.  His methods of working towards becoming an “athletic ninja” have relevance towards the goals of any trainee.

On today’s show, Max gets into skill training from a practical and philosophical perspective, music’s relationship with training, using play dance in training, developing elasticity, training the foot, and much more.  This is a fantastic show that blends a lot of different elements of life itself, to get a deeper view on our training practice.  Whether you deal with only athletes, or work heavily in general fitness, there is a ton of 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.

View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage.

Timestamps and Main Points

3:50 How music fits in with physical music in Max’s philosophy

10:50 Why doing work that is more engaging emotionally is a more sustainable practice in exercise

21:20 Why a diversity and love of movement is often lacking in a strength and conditioning environment

25:50 What an exercise program means to Max and why we should pick means of training that come from intrinsic motivation rather than looking a particular way

40:45 How Max views the relationship between play and training

50:25 The mind-body relationship when it comes to difficult work and the sustainability of difficult training protocols

58:00 Some of Max’s favorite tools for strength and movement

1:02.45  How Max views elasticity and elastic strength development

 “The use of a metronome is outrageous.  Playing too slow, playing too fast.  Doing it deliberately wrong, and seeing if you can work your way back into it.  Being able to express emotional content into what you are doing, whether it’s tennis or boxing, or wrestling or something, and doing the same thing with an instrument, there are so many parallels”

“There’s the part from Bruce Lee in “Enter the Dragon” where he tells the kid to put emotional content (into his physical practice)”

“Music is relationships and ratios put together in time”

“Dancers are savage athletes who have a huge variety of skills and ranges of motion, and fantastic body control”

“You have two hearts, and one of them is your feet.  You don’t get amazing venous return from your lower extremities without movement”

“That’s the point of training is for it to be intrinsically enjoyable, so the experience right now, itself should be fun, and it should be something that you would want to do if you didn’t get any results from it… if you didn’t build one muscle fiber from it, would you still do the thing.  That’s a pretty good indicator that it’s a rich experience”

“If you are just doing the pushups so your arms will get bigger, then you are sort of trapped.  Pick something that you would be happy to do even if it didn’t build muscle or lose fat”

“I probably do at least a few minutes of drumming before I get my training done… it’s just fun, it feels good.  All of my training is that way.”

“(Regarding training and play) Ideally you would want to structure your training playfully, so you look forward to it.  So you look forward to the stimulus you are trying to elicit, and create games around that, to get the training effects that you want… that’s what I would say”

“One thing a person can do is take all of the movements they are doing right now on one end of the spectrum, doing them painstakingly slow, and then try to see how quickly you can do them with as little effort as possible”

“You don’t get any points for extra effort (in training) if your goal is performance.  If your goal is maximum hypertrophy at the cost of everything else and your goal is to be Mr. Olympia, then in fact, you are probably best served by grinding through those last couple repetitions.  For the average person, if anything, you want to do your movements as effortlessly as possible.”

“The goal isn’t to suffer and have a lot of effort, the goal is to move as smoothly as possible”

“If the average person took some of their workout time and did a bit of singing and dancing, they would feel a ton better.  And I would add… to create some music”

“Don’t live as if you would die tomorrow, live as if you would happily repeat that day 10,000 more times”

“By far the best piece of (training) gear is another human being”

“If you have an enthusiastic partner and a place to hang, you can pretty much get it all done in the best way possible”

“(How to build elastic development) dance for 5 straight minutes”

“If you want to play the long game elasticity is by far the thing you want the most… what’s the opposite of elasticity? Rigid. Brittle.”

Show Notes

Bruce Lee on emotional content

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usUS4gEzm-c

About Max Shank

@maxshank

Max Shank is the owner of Ambition Athletics in Encinitas, California.  Since starting out as a personal trainer, Max has switched his focus from basic strength training to a holistic approach of overall fitness and health.  Max has written 3 books, has taught over a hundred courses in countries around the world and is the creator of the “5-minute-flow”. These experiences have allowed him to help 10's of thousands of people across the globe improve their lives through physical fitness.

Max is a firm believer that everyone should be strong, capable, and confident to handle any situation regardless of age or gender. Apart from being very active in Martial Arts, Max plays tennis regularly and recommends that adults spend more time in physical “play.” Max Shank has also received an Official Commendation from the United States Marine Corps for services rendered in the course of enhancing the athletic readiness of the 1st Anglico at Camp Pendleton.

An avid experimenter and learner, Max has picked up guitar, piano, and drums as an adult. Recently, he built his dining room table with his own two hands using no screws or nails.

Today’s episode features strength coach and gym owner, Eric Cressey.  Eric Cressey is the president and co-founder of Cressey Sports Performance (CSP), with facilities in both Hudson, MA and Jupiter, FL.  Behind Eric’s expertise, CSP has established itself as a go-to high-performance facility to both local athletes and those that come from across the country and abroad to experience CSP’s cutting-edge methods.  Eric also works with the New York Yankees as the Director of Player Health and Performance.  In the past five years, 125 CSP athletes have been selected in the Major League Baseball Draft, and CSP works with players from all 30 MLB organizations.

The field of sports performance is rapidly evolving, especially in the private sector where sport skills and specific strength are becoming increasingly blended.  Compared to a decade or more ago, strength and sports performance coaches are learning more and more about the specific biomechanics and KPI’s that lead to success of their athletes on the field.  Additionally, ideas on shoulder injury prevention and rehabilitation for athletic populations are also changing fast.  Modern sport coaching is also getting better, albeit more slowly than what athletes would like, in methods to develop an optimal specific work capacity for their players rather than old school methods of slogging laps.

To keep up in a fast-changing world, I was really excited to catch up with Eric Cressey and see how his process has evolved in his years as a coach and business owner.  As a man who works with many of the top athletes, coaches and therapists in the world, seeing how Eric’s process has grown over the years is an enlightening conversation.  Some of the areas we get into specifically involve the blend of sport and strength coaching, shoulder health, work capacity, maximal strength training, and more.  This was a brief, but information dense episode that coaches and athletes of any sport (but particularly over-head and throwing sports) can get a lot out of.

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

5:55 How Eric got into coaching strength training and performance for baseball players

9:40 Eric’s transition into getting into the technical and biomechanical side of pitching

20:25 How getting into pitching mechanics has had an impact on Eric’s strength program

23:25 How Eric’s thoughts on strength training and powerlifting in working with athletes have changed over the years

27:55 How Eric’s thoughts on shoulder training and injury prevention have evolved over time

35:55 Pros and cons of using fixed vs. free scapular movements with athletes

36:55 Indicators from watching athletes move in the weightroom as to their chances of a acquiring a shoulder injury in sport

38:55 Building work capacity in baseball players

44:55 How Eric looks at asymmetry in baseball players

 “I wrote up a weighted ball and extreme long toss program, and I got a text when he had thrown live against the hitters at Harvard, he said I was 91-94mph, then we saw some 95s and 96s, he had a life changing velocity jump”

“A strength and conditioning coach is writing a throwing program, that’s never happened”

“Weighted implements had been around for a long time, but they haven’t been utilized… it got me thinking about weighted balls, medicine balls (for throwing enhancement).  Training in those middle grounds seemed to have a lot of value”

“There are things that are being coached mechanically that are well intentioned but they don’t take into account the limitations that an athlete has, he just can’t get into the positions they need”

“Pitching mechanics are actually the most heavily debated topic out there”

“We want to prepare our athletes for a chaotic world, a lack of predictability”

“When you have a powerlifting background, you have to emotionally separate yourself from those things that have been fun for you when training rotational athletes”

“(For shoulder training) What you are going to do for a 65-year old man who has been sitting at his computer his whole life is a lot different than what you need to do for your athletes who are in extension-rotation sports”

“You can’t just pin your scapula down on a bench and expect it to carry over (to sport)

“When you train your elbow at your side, you’re not actually training it in a functional position, you want it to be strong in positions that really matter”

“Don’t just work cuff strength, work cuff timing”

“(With overhead athletes) When people do a lot of vertical presses, they often feel better”

“We should be looking at free vs. fixed scapular pressing, and how much vertical vs. horizontal pushing and pulling, everyone needs something a little bit different”

“I really don’t like floor presses because your shoulder blades are still stuck against the floor”

“(As a shoulder risk indicator) We’ll see people get a lot of arm motion because the scapula isn’t moving enough”

“Work capacity is incredibly specific”

“I think there is a need for a strong aerobic base.  For most athletes, getting a heart rate under 60 means that you are in a pretty good spot”

“I like to train mobility circuits (for an aerobic base)”

“Right-handed individuals tend to have more extreme asymmetries.  Your lefties tend to find more ways to work out of it”

About Eric Cressey

@ericcressey

Eric Cressey is the president and co-founder of Cressey Sports Performance (CSP), with facilities in both Hudson, MA and Jupiter, FL.  Behind Eric’s expertise, CSP has established itself as a go-to high-performance facility to both local athletes and those that come from across the country and abroad to experience CSP’s cutting-edge methods.  Eric also works with the New York Yankees as the Director of Player Health and Performance.  In the past five years, 125 CSP athletes have been selected in the Major League Baseball Draft, and CSP works with players from all 30 MLB organizations. In 2017 alone, CSP was off-season home to both the American League and National League Cy Young Award winners.

Cressey received his Master’s Degree in Kinesiology with a concentration in Exercise Science through the University of Connecticut Department of Kinesiology. At UCONN, Eric was involved in varsity strength and conditioning and research in the human performance laboratory.  Previously, Eric graduated from the University of New England with a double major in Exercise Science and Sports and Fitness Management.

Eric has been an invited guest lecturer in six countries and more than 25 U.S. states, and is a presenter on the Perform Better Tour, widely regarded as the premier lecture circuit in the fitness industry.  Cressey has written over 500 articles and five books, and co-created four DVD sets; these products have been purchased in over 60 countries around the world. In addition to regularly consulting for professional sports teams, Eric also serves as a baseball consultant to New Balance. Eric served as the strength and conditioning coach to the USA Baseball Under-18 National Team that won the gold medal at the 2015 World Cup in Osaka, Japan.

A record-setting competitive powerlifter himself, Cressey has deadlifted 650 pounds at a body weight of 174 and is recognized as an athlete who can jump, sprint, and lift alongside his best athletes to push them to higher levels – and keep them healthy in the process.

Today’s episode features strength coach and consultant, Dr. Matt Jordan.  Matt is a strength and conditioning coach/performance consultant for elite athletes with six Olympic cycles of experience. He holds a Master of Science in Exercise and Neuromuscular Physiology, and a PhD in Medical Science from the University of Calgary. Matt has consulted with more than 30 Olympic and World Championship medalists and provides expertise to high performance organizations in the NHL, NBA, NFL, and military. He is currently the Director of Sport Science at the Canadian Sport Institute Calgary and leads the Sport Science/Sport Medicine program for Alpine Canada.

In training athletes, it’s very easy to simply get caught in the way of thinking that we were brought up into in our own time as athletes and as young coaches.  If we don’t ever get some sort of data behind the methods we are performing week in and week out, it’s hard to know what to change and why.

When it comes to making meaningful decisions on key performance metrics, reducing the noise in a system, and using simple and consistent measures to help guide performance, Dr. Matt Jordan is the guy that you want to talk to.  On today’s episode, Matt gets into this subject, particularly on the topics of periodization and training organization, as well as data collection and the use of vertical jump profiling as a measure of performance fatigability.  He also gets into the job of a strength coach in context of a total high performance system with the idea of reducing noise in the system in mind.

Ultimately, this show is about helping coaching learn to make their training decisions and their data collection more simple, meaningful and integrated to help improve clarity in programming, and results.

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

3:15  Positives and negatives to the traditional model of periodization

12:30 How ideas on periodization might change when moving from a sport of high complexity to one of low complexity

21:00 Some thoughts on reducing the noise in a high performance system when there are multiple practitioners working with the athletes (strength coaches and team sport coaches)

36:00  How vertical jump profiling can fit into the bigger picture of an athlete’s total training for their sport

45:20  How performance fatigability differs from how well the competitive exercise is improving

 “There is not a lot of good data to support periodization, but as anybody who has done this in the real world, we understand that sequencing and organization of training stimulus, and interference effects are very much real things and therefore require some thought which is the cornerstone of periodization”

“In all disciplines, whether you are a teacher or a physician, there is a very big struggle to override your experience and the way you’ve always done things, rather than a data-driven approach”

“Weather shaped how people trained for decades, even after they didn’t have weather to contend with”

“If (as a strength coach) you can’t adapt to the culture (of a team sport) you can’t give those athletes what they need to succeed”

“If you don’t have trust, you can’t have impact”

“With an alpine skier, it’s really tough to pull a number out that says “this is how well you are performing today”

“Performance fatigability is the effects of fatigue on performance”

“In a lot of sports, the competitive exercise (CE) is just super complex”

“I say to coaches, “what is your pan evaporation?”,  Find your simple metrics, repeatable over time, stick with them.  They help bring clarity to a complex world that we are trying to understand”

“It’s really tough to understand things when you start noisy”

About Matt Jordan

@JordanStrength

Dr. Matt Jordan is a strength and conditioning coach/performance consultant for elite athletes with six Olympic cycles of experience. He holds a Master of Science in Exercise and Neuromuscular Physiology, and a PhD in Medical Science from the University of Calgary. Matt has consulted with more than 30 Olympic and World Championship medalists and provides expertise to high performance organizations in the NHL, NBA, NFL, and military. He is currently the Director of Sport Science (Strength & Power/Mountain Sports) at the Canadian Sport Institute Calgary (CSIC) and leads the Sport Science/Sport Medicine program for Alpine Canada. Matt provides science-based education courses for strength, fitness, and performance coaches of all levels through jordanstrength.com.

Today’s episode features Alex Natera, senior athletic performance specialist at the GWS Giants of the AFL.  Alex has over twenty years of experience in high performance sport including time spent as a professional sportsman, a technical coach, a sport science lecturer, a published scientific researcher and his primary role as strength & conditioning coach.  Prior to the Giants, Alex was the senior strength and conditioning coach at Aspire Academy.

Alex’s original article on isometric training that was specific to training sprinters “broke the internet” several years ago.   In it, Alex laid out an approach to training sprinters (and speed in general) in the weightroom in a manner that was very novel to anything coaches had seen before, using isometric exercises to hone specific elements of the run cycle.   This was followed up by podcast #86 where Alex took us in the nuts and bolts of the training system for sprinters.

Since our last podcast, Alex, has spent a lot of time working with, not sprinters, but team sport athletes.  As much as the specificity of Alex’s isometrics to running still ring true in the scenario of training team sport athletes, working with this population versus sprinters is really a different “beast” than sprinters, who are more or less fresh all of the time and are athletic freaks.  On today’s show, Alex gets into the fine points of how he is incorporating his system into a team sport training regime.  Other topics we will cover will be Alex’s take on hamstring training for team sport athletes vs. sprinters, as well as a fun story regarding how the run-specific isometric protocol originated in the first place.

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

6:00 The history of Run-Specific isometrics, and the necessity that sparked the protocol that has now become very popular and effective in training sprint velocity

26:00 Strength norms for the knee, hip and ankle in run specific ISO’s

30:05 Some of the big differences in applying run-specific isometrics in team sport athletes, specifically Australian rules football, versus pure sprinters

42:00 How Run-Specific isometrics have a strong impact on running efficiency in team sport athletes who have long distances to navigate with each game

50:40 What Alex does when force plates are not available for Run-specific isometric training

52:30 Some of Alex’s methods in addressing hamstring injuries in team sport athletes

Quotes

 “I was involved in isometric training, back to when I was a little kid in the martial arts”

“I attest my strength in the scrum as a player completely to isometrics”

“Our guys were getting a training effect from (weekly) mid-thigh pull assessments”

“(A modern pentathlete) got 25% stronger in isometric mid-thigh pull, and then things like contact time at race pace, running economy, these things had a really positive shift”

“I agree, isometrics are the safest mode of lifting work”

“There is this minority group that can ruin themselves doing too much maximal isometric work”

“(For the modern pentathlete) We did 3 sets of 3x4 second pushes (in the single leg isometric mid-thigh pull), mostly around the 90% effort mark”

“It’s about 5x bodyweight for knee ISO push, for ankle ISO push, it’s about 3.5x bodyweight, for your hip ISO push, now it’s system mass, and it’s 3.5 times the system mass”

“When it comes to team sports (versus sprinting), it’s a whole new level with fatigue; they are always fatigued”

“The challenge is how do you incorporate isometrics into that program in a team sport athletes where the bucket it already full? Something has to come out of the bucket to put it back in”

“The easiest thing to take out of the program is the volume of traditional lifting”

“We certainly give small doses of isometric work, in some of our athletes, before they even go out on the training field”

“If you are going to do a big isometric knee push, one of the best ways to get warmed up for that is to do some squatting”

“You can use isometrics as a complex exercise.  You can do an isometric calf, and go straight into drop jumps for example”

“A good sprinter, they’ve never failed at looking like they could hold a Nordic hamstring forever.  We need more research on sprinters, because they don’t fit it”

“I prefer to work in variety (in hamstring training for sprinters) around their proximal hamstring work throughout the season”

“What (team sport athletes) are missing is that sprint exposure, and the careful manipulation of sprint exposure and isolated hamstring work like in a Nordic hamstring curl, for example”

“Team sport athletes ankles aren’t great, compared to a sprinter… focus on making them more reactive, and how that applies to the rest of the running cycle and gait is absolutely essential”

Show Notes

Run Specific Isometrics Original Article:

Modern Speed Training: Q&A with Alex Natera on Isometrics for Running Performance

About Alex Natera

@alex_natera

Alex Natera has over twenty years of experience in high performance sport including time spent as a professional sportsman, a technical coach, a sport science lecturer, a published scientific researcher and his primary role as strength & conditioning coach.  Alex is currently the Senior Athletic Performance Specialist at the GWS Giants in the AFL.  Alex was prior the Senior S&C Coach of Aspire Academy Athletics where he specialized in the sprints events. Alex had responsibility for the physical preparation of track & field athletes for the past eight years but he has also been fortunate enough to ply his trade, and learn his craft, from influences working across the globe in a variety of sports including Premier League Soccer and Championship level Rugby Union. Along with his current role he continues to provide technical leadership in Rugby Union as Head Coach for Doha Rugby Club playing in the West Asian premiership.

As a previous S&C coach for both the English Institute of Sport and the South Australian Sports Institute, Alex has done extensive applied work in over a dozen Olympic and Commonwealth games sports, including Sprint Cycling, Canoe-Kayak and Modern Pentathlon. Notably, Alex has played his part in preparing multiple Junior and senior sportsmen for World Championship performances, Olympic Medal successes and World Records throughout his career. Alex holds a Bachelor’s degree in Sport Science, a Master’s degree in Applied Sport Science, the ASCC from the UKSCA and the CSCS from the NSCA and he is currently completing his PhD where he is investigating a novel aspect of power development- high volume power training and repeat power ability.

Today’s episode features sports performance coach Scott Salwasser.  Scott has been a multiple time guest on this show, talking about speed training in football, force-velocity profiling, and perception/reaction work.  Scott is currently the assistant director of strength and conditioning for football at the University of South Carolina.   Scott has worked as a sports performance coach for nearly 2 decades, and has worked at a number of NCAA DI universities, as well as in the NFL, and in the private training sector.

When it comes to training, Scott is one of the most practical and grounded coaches that I know, and has an incredible ability to take complex concepts, and create a simple and effective training solution.  Scott works with a variety of technologies, such as force plates, GPS, 1080 Sprint technology, and more, and is able to break things down to simple terms as to how he is utilizing them, and the tangible results he is seeing with his players.

Today’s show covers a number of important topics such as going into Scott’s speed program for lineman, what tendencies they have from a force-velocity perspective, as well as giving more perspective on the nuts and bolts of his perception-action and agility program.  A highly relevant aspect of today’s show is Scott’s experience in helping athletes get back to a high level of performance in a short period of time after a layoff, which is very pertinent to many situations coaches will be finding themselves in, in the near future.  While working at Cal, Scott helped a key player who was down with a virus for the majority of spring training get back to competition shape quickly in the summer, using a variety of feedback tools, and goes in depth on his methodology in today’s 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 podcast episodes at the podcast homepage.

Timestamps and Main Points

8:30  Scott’s transition from working with skill players in football to working with lineman

14:30 How the NFL combine, although limited in transfer to the game, does at least provide a level of comparison from year to year

17:30What Scott’s speed program looks like for a lineman

21:30 How Scott’s perception/action work has progressed throughout the year and his movement of closed into progressively more reactive movement scenarios

35:45 How Scott has leveraged GPS, heart-rate and force plates to help an athlete get back and ready to play fall football in a very short period of time in summer after the athlete was sick for a large portion of the spring training season

54:50 How Scott has been using force-velocity profiling, specifically with football lineman

 “What I do like about (predictable agility drills) is that they are very high-speed, high-force.  It’s like exposing someone to high speed sprinting in many ways, it’s an overload”

“(Perception/Action) isn’t just putting them out there and having them play tag”

“Initially, you might work on closed cuts, that’s a predictable response.  Then you start layering on and adjusting the environment, adding a reactive component to that response”

“You then start to integrate (agility) into more real life situations, closer to the sport, it might be adding bodies,  it might be manipulating the area, it might be manipulating the rules of the drill”

“The need for (perception/action) drills are more or less necessary depending on what the coaching staff is doing.  You want to focus on what the players are not getting”

“The better we can understand each other’s specialties (in a high performance system) the better we’ll all be as a whole”

“(My special teams coach) was able to start at a more advanced stage in special teams education because I had already done a lot of the introductory drills that he had planned on doing”

“If you have a great decision maker who can’t move properly, then you have to get him to move correctly.  If you have a guy who moves great, but can make decisions, then you have to be able to get him to make decisions better”

“Lineman typically struggle to produce sufficient horizontal force (in force-velocity profiling)… they have the strength they just need to be taught how to direct it”

“Load to a lineman is broken at the hip, choppy, that’s why when we do our technique work for the linemen, specifically for sprinting, I tell them that for this period of time you are a sprinter”

About Scott Salwasser

@CoachSSal

Scott Salwasser is currently the assistant director of strength and conditioning at the University of South Carolina Football.  Previously, Scott has worked as the Head Strength Coach for Football at Texas State University, the Director of Speed and Power Development at Texas Tech University, as well as on the strength and conditioning staffs at UC Berkeley, Sparta Performance Science, University of Louisiana-Lafayette, Sacramento State and the Oakland Raiders. He competed nationally in Weightlifting as a graduate student at Sacramento State, and played intercollegiate Football as an undergraduate at UC Davis. He has a Master’s Degree in Kinesiology and is CSCS certified, among other distinctions. He and his wife Katie have two daughters, Stella and Charlotte.

Today’s episode features Jeff Moyer, owner of Dynamic Correspondence Sports Training in Pittsburgh, PA.  Jeff has been a multi-time guest on the show, appearing as a solo guest in two shows, and on three roundtables.  His expertise includes elements such as Soviet training systems, motor learning, skill acquisition, pain reduction and reconditioning.  Jeff is highly driven by learning and is continually on the cutting edge of the industry, yet is also highly practical and results driven in his coaching and training.

ACL injury prevention, and injury prevention in general, is a massive portion of the job of a sports performance coach, yet, it is important to ask, is a good injury prevention program any different  in nature than a good performance training program? Jeff Moyer has gotten tremendous results, not only in the injury rates of his athletes, but also in the speed by which he assists athletes in their return to play.  Jeff has been known to help athletes get back on the field, 5 and a half months after ACL surgery, but the tools he uses to do so are not far removed from his primary philosophy on strength training, biomechanics and performance.

In today’s show, Jeff takes us inside his methods when it comes to a deeper look at ACL injury factors, as well as how his reconditioning and rehabilitation program mirrors his performance program elements.  We also get into some essential details of some unique weightlifting elements, plyometric training, as well as his use of the “Total Motion Release” system, which harnesses the cross-over effect in the brain to help athletes move and function better

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

3:50 Jeff’s take on promoting a training program specifically as an “ACL Prevention Program”

11:50 How Jeff is developing athletes from a perceptual standpoint, that can not only improve performance but also with the potential to reduce injury

19:50 Key performance indicators in change of direction that can keep athletes healthier and performing better

25:15 Philosophy of training tempo in weightlifting, as well as utilization of the 1x20 program and other training means that are useful in a reconditioning setting

36:50 Jeff’s take on plyometric and jump training, and how it compliments his lifting program

38:50 A look inside Jeff’s rapid-reconditioning program, working reconditioning alongside, ACL rehab

47:40 Jeff’s use of the Total Motion Release System in reducing pain and improving performance, and discussing the power of the cross-over effect in the brain

 “There was a perceptive aspect to the (ACL) injury, and defensive players were more likely to tear their ACL than offensive players”

“I think it’s crap to say that we have a prevention program and a rehab program or whatever, I think they are all one and the same (performance and prevention).  I think a prevention program is something that doctors pitch to make money”

“That’s how I do my workout, 50% of it is weights, and 50% is the perceptual side”

“I want the outside leg being the leg we plant and cut off of (in change of direction)”

“Our training and rehab program are similar, we both start on 1x20; exercise selection is a missing conversation I don’t hear a lot when other people talk about 1x20, they just talk about sets and reps”

“I find that the kBox is more joint friendly than traditional barbells”

“Not early on in a training career is eccentric training important, you should look more to general strength”

“The first thing (in an injury) is I seek to fix what is being protected.  Scars can be very disruptive to fascia or meridian lines”

“That is a cheap and easy tool to use (in rehab) just go lie on the grass a half hour a couple of times a day”

“Square 1 System has been a game changer for me”

“What is the biggest predictor for a future injury? It’s a previous injury”

“I just had (an athlete) do a bunch of exercises on her right arm and her (left arm) shoulder pain went down to a 0, I didn’t even touch her”

“For anyone who has pain, this is part of their warmup, they do it first thing in the morning (working the “good side” of their body)”

“Any training program is going to be a good rehab program, is going to be a good prevention program”

About Jeff Moyer

@dcsportstraining

Jeff Moyer is the owner of Dynamic Correspondence Sports Training, whose motto is, “We Build Better Athletes.” At DC Sports Training, athletes work on the physical, mental and visual aspects to the sports. Their goal is to deliver the athletes of the greater Pittsburgh area the highest, most efficient results year after year of training with us. We will exhaust our means in order for our athletes to achieve the highest results, and to create a system model that will develop our athletes both physically and intellectually. Education must be the road to which will help us set this standard. Our results will be the vehicle which to drive us.

Jeff graduated in 2004 from Hartwick College where he was a two sport athlete (Football & Track & Field). Jeff has been a sport coach (Basketball & Football) at the youth, JV, Varsity and College level for football for over 10years. Jeff has been in the strength in conditioning industry for over a decade, having worked in the medical, private, team, high school and collegiate settings, training clients from youth development, to rehabilitation and sport performance.

Jeff has a relentless passion for all things physical preparation. His pedagogy is heavily influenced by Eastern Bloc sport science, while apprenticing under Dr. Michael Yessis and Yosef Johnson of Ultimate Athlete Concepts. Jeff has also been fortunate enough to extensively study with and work with Dr. Natalia Verkhoshansky, Mike Woicik of the Dallas Cowboys, Louie Simmons of Wesitside Barbell and Fellowship under Dave Tate of EliteFTS.

Today’s episode features sports psychologist, Simon Capon.  Simon is a hypnotherapist, Master NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) practitioner, as well as the author of the book "It’s Time to Start Winning." Since 2006 Simon has worked with professional athletes, using variety of techniques including skills from NLP and hypnotherapy.  He has inspired athletes, footballers and numerous others to achieve national, international and world titles. Simon’s philosophy is simple, create self-belief and your behaviors and actions will change and so will your results, this will have the effect of reinforcing your belief as a winning performer. Belief in your ability is imperative at high-level competitive sport.

For all of the time we spend on learning about training our muscles and nervous system, we probably look into the impact of our mind and belief systems on our results with about 1/100th of the intensity.  This is ironic, because the linchpin for so many athletes in their sport success is one of a limiting self-belief, rather than gaining a few more inches on one’s vertical jump or tenths of a second in sprinting speed.  Not only this, but one’s belief systems have a massive impact on how we train and condition our bodies to the point where a stronger mind can create better physical training results as well.

I found Simon Capon’s book after coming across his hypnosis for sprinting (his is the only one I’ve been able to find across the entire world-wide-web).  Shortly thereafter, I read Simon’s book, and found it a tremendous source of information, particularly on using our physiology in a positive way to impact our mind.   On the show today, Simon talks about his process of assessing mental training needs, the link between our body and mind (and how to “hack” into our deeper emotional brain), how to unwire limiting belief systems, and the importance of the present moment (and how to live there, rather than in the past or future).  This was an awesome show that has relevance far beyond just the field of play.

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

6:00 Simon’s introduction to Sports Psychology and Neuro-linguistic Programming

14:20 Simon’s process of assessing mental skills and needs

23:50 The link between our body, our posture, and how it connects with our minds and our performance

34:20 Methods for using one’s body language and posture to create a mental and emotional response

44:15 How we can get a better handle on our emotional brain to keep our performance consistent and at a high level

55:45 How to unwire one’s thoughts caused from prior negative feedback from a coach

1:00.30 How athletes can fully engage themselves in the present moment

 “I had a great fear of what people expected from me as a player”

“If I was more mentally prepared, I would have fulfilled my full potential (as a player)”

“We need to create a state of mind that is exactly the same as whatever we are doing.  So whether we are training or in a competitive state it makes no difference.  The reality is that we are creating habits and automatic responses, so whatever you are doing, it is the same response time after time”

“Whenever there has been a poor performance, we get a piece of paper and write all the ways we can make the next performance better… We don’t ask “what went wrong””

“We have to fail to be able to improve.  Failure is a must and it must be accepted as feedback”

“It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do, there is always someone who will come along and take the top spot”

“Whenever I come out, you either get all of me, or none of me, and my confidence comes purely from my physiology: proud, tall, shoulders back, head held high, confident in each step”

“If you can put your focus onto your state (your physiology) and your actions, the energy and the results, will take care of themselves”

“If you said to yourself “I will not let myself go below an 8 (in enthusiasm) just imagine how much more productive you will be in your training session”

“If you fall below an 8 (in enthusiasm), the first thing to do is to create some emotion”

“Our (emotional/limbic) brain is designed to avoid failure”

“Anxiety is very much based on things that have gone wrong in the past, or a perceived problem in the future.  When we are in the moment, we can think about the job at hand”

“Golf is about playing one shot multiple times.  When you tee off, you will tee off like it’s the only shot you are going to play all day“

About Simon Capon

Simon Capon is a sports psychologist, NLP Master Practitioner and NLP Trainer, as well as a Hypnotherapist. Since 2006 Simon has worked with professional sports men and women. He is committed to his clients achieving the goals and ambitions they strive for.

Simon has the ability to make huge psychological changes in an astonishingly fast time. He uses a variety of techniques including skills from NLP and hypnotherapy. His beliefs are that everyone has the resources to change the programmes they run in their minds so they become focused, confident and generate total self-belief. Many clients including established professional sports people have battled for years to overcome the psychological problems of coping with pressure of match play.

Simon has inspired athletes, footballers and numerous others to achieve national, international and world titles. He has written articles about his work for Tennis life UK magazine, and is the author of the book “It’s Time to Start Winning”.  He has a selection of mind programming recordings available on MP3 downloads from Amazon, iTunes and Nokia.

Today’s episode features segments with Paul Cater, Rachel Balkovec and Rafe Kelley in part II of our mini-series on perspectives in this time of social distancing and staying-at-home on coaching, training and becoming the strongest version of ourselves.

Paul Cater is the founder of the “Alpha Project” in Salinas, California, and has over 18 years of experience as an international strength and conditioning coach.  Paul has worked with the London Wasps Premier Rugby Team, the Baltimore Orioles, USA Rugby, as well as numerous high school, college and professional athletes.  Paul has written a number of popular articles on Just Fly Sports on the topics of coaching, creativity and service, and makes his first appearance on the podcast.

Rachel Balkovec is a pro baseball hitting coach, working with the New York Yankees.  She has made history in acquiring her role in her current position, as well as when she become a minor league strength and conditioning coordinator for the St. Louis Cardinals from 2011-15.  Rachel has also worked in strength and conditioning for the Houston Astros, as well as the Dutch national baseball and softball teams as well as many other successful organizations.  She recently appeared on episode 194 of this podcast talking about coaching and organizational leadership.

Rafe Kelley is the owner of Evolve, Move, Play, and was a guest on episode 174 of the podcast.  Rafe’s primary specialization is parkour, and he also has experience in modern training disciplines such as sprinting, basketball, gymnastics, crossfit, FRC, modern dance and many others.  Rafe’s passion to is help people build the physical practice that will help make them the strongest, most adaptable and resilient version of themselves in movement and in life.

This episode furthers our topic from last week, which is lessons learned from our “downtime” from in-person coaching, as well as how we are training and learning without our typical gym facilities.  Times where things “contract” (as opposed to the typical expansion), as well as times of necessity are always powerful learning experiences, and I’ve learned something valuable from each of the 6 coaches in this short series, and I know you will as well.

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

3:00  How spending so much time running a business had taken Paul Cater away from the core of training itself

7:45  Expanding the idea of storytelling in a training session and the importance of creativity in coaching

18:00  How sprinting should be a solid root of an athlete or even coach’s movement and training practice

25:20  How Rachel Balkovec has been adjusting her training routine since being taken from her typical gym

31:20  How Rachel maintains awareness, as well as trains, her breathing in various situations

38:50  Things Rachel is learning in general in this time period

43:20  How Rafe’s personal practice hasn’t been altered due to his “atypical” training environment

53:20  How a typical play session in nature can shake out for Rafe

58:20  Comparing the physical effects of natural parkour to other barbell practices

1:03.50  How introducing obstacles and challenges into running can improve engagement and variability

 “It’s been a blessing to be forced to stay home” Paul Cater

“Most of the coaches I know and respect will put more of a priority on the barbell rather than the “sprint first” mentality, it’s the path of least resistance…. It’s harder to go outside and have a really in depth sprint session” Paul Cater

“Every training session really, is an experience.  Within that every day is a story, an epoch, a saga of overcoming.  Hill running is a metaphor… there’s something about running up a hill” Paul Cater

“There is something in animal intuition to ascend and to climb” Paul Cater

“I’m not the star of the story, I have to make the athlete the protagonist” Paul Cater

“I never pull a hamstring when I’m trying to catch a football” Paul Cater

“My goal is to have everyone leave the gym (inside or outside) with a story to tell and an own, and some sort of own discovery of creativity and that boils down the the warmup” Paul Cater

“These kids coming out of college are severely ill-equipped for teaching and engaging.  It’s just a memorization game and a certification game” Paul Cater

“Holding your breath underwater while you are performing physical tasks is… really hard! You get out of the water from this training and you are exhausted, but your body doesn’t feel “it”.” Rachel Balkovec

“Holding your breath increases your CO2 tolerance” Rachel Balkovec

“When I have time to myself, I really have more of an aware relationship with my breath” Rachel Balkovec

“While I’m running, I’m trying to stay nasal breathing as long as possible” Rachel Balkovec

“I try to take note of my breath and let that be the indicator of what’s going on with me physiologically speaking” Rachel Balkovec

“Your body is so intelligent and often times will give you a signal of what is going on before you can process it… a lot of time we’re not cognitively aware, but our body is responding” Rachel Balkovec

“I don’t think you have to study coaching to be better as a coach, sometimes… being a well-rounded human gives you perspective, I want to always understand a big picture global view and be able to relate to a lot of people ” Rachel Balkovec

“That’s the level we are interested in: How do you make someone good at solving movement problems” Rafe Kelley

“We evolved to move through (information rich) environments” Rafe Kelley

“Why do you warm up? You need your body temperature to go up, you want to go through big ranges of motion, then you warm up also to get your nervous system and arousal up to an appropriate place and your emotions tuned in” Rafe Kelley

“No plan survives contact with the environment” Rafe Kelley

“Fundamentally it’s about being able to see the space, perceive it, and move through it… how do we improve the capacity of the athlete to move in their environment” Rafe Kelley

“The outdoor environment is a forgotten aspect of our culture” Rafe Kelley

“We fundamentally think that the purpose of your movement practice is the growth of you as a human being”

Show Notes

Evolve Move Play FREE Guidebook to Natural Parkour and Play

Evolve Move Play Natural Parkour Course 50% OFF Membership

About Paul Cater

Founder of The Alpha Project

Salinas High School, Varsity Baseball, Football 1995

UC Davis: Studied pre-law while playing UC Davis Varsity Football 2000

NSCA, Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist 2001

Poliquin Certified Level, 2

Internships include UCLA, San Jose State, San Francisco 49ers

Graduate Degree Exercise Science, Human Performance, Brunel University, London 2010

MSC Strength & Conditioning from Middlesex University, London 2011

Over 18 years of experience as an International strength and conditioning coach working with London Wasps Premier Rugby, Baltimore Orioles, USA Rugby and consulting numerous other High School, College & Professional Athletes

Late Stage Rehab Specialist

Phd Candidate focusing on Eccentric Overload through Rotary Inertial Flywheel Training, Recovery and Performance

About Rachel Balkovec

@rachel.balkovec

Rachel is a professional baseball hitting coach working with the New York Yankees.  She was formerly a minor league strength and conditioning coordinator and coach for the St Louis Cardinals from 2011-15 (as the first female strength and conditioning coordinator in pro baseball), then switched to the Houston Astros Latin American strength and conditioning coordinator. She worked with the Dutch national baseball and softball teams in the past year while studying for her second master’s degree.

Rachel is also an international speaker, and entrepreneur.  She has worked with some of the most successful organizations in sports such as EXOS, Louisiana State University, the Chicago White Sox, Arizona State University, Los Tigres Del Licey Beisbol, the St. Louis Cardinals the Houston Astros, and the New York Yankees. Rachel has two master’s degrees in human movement and performance, and is a native of Omaha, Nebraska along with being a former NCAA Division I softball catcher.

About Rafe Kelley

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

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

Rafe co-founded Parkour visions at age 23, and eventually left to form Evolve, Move, Play.  His students have included world-class parkour athletes and MMA fighters, as well as untrained grandmothers.  His passion to is help people build the physical practice that will help make them the strongest, most adaptable and resilient version of themselves in movement and in life.