Just Fly Performance Podcast

Today’s episode (part I of II) is actually three talks in one show, featuring segments with Jeremy Frisch, Rob Assise, and Dr. Tommy John.

In our current world situation, many have found themselves without our typical training structures.  This can be anything from not having a team, or partners, to train with anymore, a lack of gym space, and a lack of a training equipment in general.  It’s times like these that, although tough, can allow us to shave things down, to the essentials of how we are training, and perhaps more importantly, why we are training in the first place.  Each of our guests have had one or multiple appearances on the show before and were those who have a unique perspective on getting to the core essentials of training and movement.

Jeremy Frisch is a former NCAA D1 strength coach who is now the owner of Achieve Performance in Clinton, Massachusetts.  He is a leader in youth training and play, as well as all-around performance coach who works with athletes of all levels.   Jeremy not only coaches physical prep methods, but is also involved in team sport coaching on the youth level.

Rob Assise is a teacher and track coach at Homewood-Flossmoor high school who has written some fantastic articles (How I Deal with the Restrictions of COVID-19 and One Man’s Dive Into Extreme Isometrics) on his use of “Extreme Isometrics” in his at-home workouts, a topic of which we went into detail on for today’s show.

Dr. Tommy John is a chiropractor, author and performance coach who is no stranger to this show.  Tommy has an awesome ability to blend health, training and big-picture ideas into a powerful message in our own performance.  His workout, training style, and overall message is one that brings out our true power as human beings.

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

3:45 Jeremy Frisch’s take on how COVID19 is bringing children back to a more natural mode of play, albeit in context of current restrictions

8:50  The difference between movement and exercise for children, and when they are mature enough to make that distinction

13:35 Jeremy’s own workouts, and what he does to train in his basement gym setup

21:40  What Rob’s workout is looking like with his own daily schedule

29:45  How using extreme ISO’s offers good benefits for endurance of speed and strength qualities to athletes

35:00  Tommy John’s workouts and how they haven’t really changed much since quarantines

45:45  The importance of cultivating a creative practice in coaching

54:00  The inner meaning behind why we train, and the distinction between playing and training

 “(kids) Riding bikes has been brought back from the ashes, which is nice to see”

“I feel there is a silver lining, because of some of the things that are happening out in the world, we have to go back to what we were doing when we were kids”

“While moving is great for kids, they don’t have the maturity to understand what exercise really is”

“I felt like I could feel the (cycling of energy systems) in the last minute, or minute an a half of a lunge.  It’s something you have to try and see”

“I hated doing the 5 minute ISO lunge while I was doing it, but afterwards I felt completely at peace.  I never regretted it afterwards”

“(After doing 5 minute ISO lunges 11x a week) playing “old man basketball”, flat out, I just did not get tired.  I was able to go as hard as I could, for pretty much the whole game”

“My training has not changed much, but my miles in walking have” Dr. Tommy John

“We’re all artists, whether it’s programming or bringing in information in a creative way”

“I love walking because it’s an ever-changing environment, it’s outside… there’s different people, there’s different flowers, there’s different shades of light… it’s almost like a movie”

“When you walk you pump your sacrum… you create a cerebrospinal fluid flush”

“I’m very intentful when I do walk, I’m connecting with ideas, I’m connecting with my body”

“When I watch athletes walk in from their car, they don’t walk well.  The are not fluid… and then you put them into a cross-crawl test and they are discombobulated”

“Training has to be stimulating enough and upsetting enough to change you”

About Jeremy Frisch

@achieve_performance

Jeremy Frisch is the owner and director of Achieve Performance Training in Clinton, Mass. He is the former assistant strength and conditioning coach for the Holy Cross athletic department. While there, he worked directly with the Crusader men’s basketball team, in addition to serving as the strength coach for Holy Cross’ men’s soccer, men’s and women’s lacrosse, baseball, softball, field hockey, tennis and women’s track & field squads.

Prior to joining Holy Cross, Frisch served as the sports performance director at Teamworks Sports Center in Acton, Mass., where he was responsible for the design and implementation of all strength and conditioning programs. He also served as a speed and strength coach for Athletes Edge Sports Training, and did a strength and conditioning internship at Stanford University. Frisch is a 2007 graduate of Worcester State College with a bachelor’s degree in health science and physical education. He was a member of the football and track teams during his days at Worcester State and Assumption College.

About Rob Assise

@HFJumps

Rob Assise is a mathematics teacher and track coach at Homewood-Flossmoor High School. He also has experience coaching football and cross country. He can be reached via e-mail at [email protected] or Twitter @HFJumps.

About Tommy John

With Master Degrees in Health and Exercise Science from Furman University, Tommy John brings over 17 years of health experience to the table. At completion of his studies Tommy played professional baseball for three years with teams such as the Schaumburg Flyers, Tyler Roughnecks and the LA Dodgers.

Tommy was drawn to chiropractic because he realized there was a higher element missing from the healing, performance process and proper function of the human body in the innate intelligence and the nervous system: brain, brain stem and spinal cord.

The primary goal of Tommy John Performance and Healing Center is to provide entire families with integrative, individualized care plans and treatment to improve their quality of life by reducing physical and emotional pain from injury and aging and minimizing the use of pharmaceuticals or surgery.

Tommy John also has a book, “Minimize Injury, Maximize Performance: A Sports Parent’s Survival Guide” which is a unique program: a diet, lifestyle, and movement plan (Rethink. Rebuild. Replenish. Recover) for injury- and performance-proofing young athletes in every sport.  John’s book is a fusion of thousands of hours of research, clinical experience, and personal experimentation he has used with kids and clients alike for years, merged with the same simple philosophy of healing his Dad used 40 years ago. But his book isn’t just about injury avoidance—and it’s more than just sports. It’s about correcting the developmental deficiencies that are happening right now in youth athletes. It’s a return to traditional methods and techniques—through making the right diet, exercise and lifestyle choices—to reestablish the functional movements lost today.

It’s not just about saving an elbow—it’s about saving a life.  And it’s about finally attaching the name Tommy John to something positive again.

Today’s episode features Marc Bubbs, naturopathic doctor, performance nutritionist, and author of the best-selling new book "PEAK - The New Science of Athletic Performance That Is Revolutionizing Sport." An integrated and personalized approach to health, nutrition, training, recovery and mindset.

Marc currently serves as the Performance Nutrition Lead for the Canadian Men's National Basketball Team and has a portfolio of elite and professional athletes in Canada, USA, UK and Europe.  He is also the host of the Dr. Bubbs Performance Podcast, bringing together insights from world-leading experts in health, nutrition, training, recovery and mindset.

Having better health (things such as having good nutrition, a diverse gut-biome, strong immune system, adequate sleep and a de-stressed mind) is impactful for not only athletes, but the general population, and is therefore a distinctly “human” element of the human -> athlete -> specialist sequence.  When it comes to athletics, however, markers of health are not always put as much of a priority compared to training methods and sport skills.  As Mark mentions on the show, consistency as a result of good health is very important when it comes to achieving better training over a period of time.

Topics on this episode include the essential elements of a health-centered approach to athletics and human performance, including sleep, gut-biome & nutrition, mental training and mindfulness in a “screen-time” age, and even concepts on team cohesion revolving around food and nutrition.  This is a podcast that not only helps to fill those gaps between training and the human being, but also is one that helps us to continually have a “human first”, “athlete second” perspective that is so important to the well-being of those we serve in the field.

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

3:40 Marc’s background in the industry of health and athletics

6:10 The crossover between health and fitness/performance and importance of consistency

10:20 When health related decisions (e.g. sleep and nutrition) really start showing up for athletes in their performance

14:40 How cooking, food and the related community is an important part of team  culture and cohesion in sports

19:25 The “triage” list in starting to work with an athlete on prioritizing health before training modalities, and all this well before recovery modalities (Penfold’s pyramid)

24:55 Sleep debt and athletic performance

34:10 How humming and singing provides beneficial adaptations to the human body and can create more grounds for group cohesion

36:10 The importance of one’s gut microbiome in health and human performance

49:40 Mental and psychological training and relaxation methods for athletes

 “When we look at some of the research around national to international competitors (in endurance sports), we see that international level competitors get sick 40% less than national level competitors, so if you can just show up every day in the gym or not miss practice, and just not miss days, at the end of that year or block of four years you are going to be that much further ahead than the competition”

"If you have got a 44” vertical leap and are the fastest guy on the floor, do we really need all these other things, or is just keeping you healthy enough to show up every day the key performance lever?”

“In the UK, half of the grocery bill is spent on processed foods…. If you head to Paris, only 14% is spent on processed foods”

“A lot of (team culture) starts with food (sitting at the dinner table together)”

“The night before a game, athletes tend not to sleep well”

“If a guy is getting less than 6.5 and gets his sleep up to 7.5, he can improve his testosterone by 10-15%”

“Nowadays, everyone is lying there, getting treatment on their phones, so how do we rip the phone out of their hands so they can decompress?”

“We know that if you have a processed food diet, the diversity in your gut is going to be low”

“The higher the fiber in the diet the more robustness we are going to see in the gut bacteria”

“The Hadza tribe is one of the longest living and healthiest tribes in the world (with a phenomenal gut biome)”

“90% of all the decisions we make are based off of emotions and imagery”

“To think that 70 Ph.d psychologists are developing your phone so you’ll always be using it… it’s like (the novel) 1984”

About Dr. Marc Bubbs

@DrBubbs

Dr. Marc Bubbs ND, MSc, CISSN, CSCS is a licensed Naturopathic Doctor (Canada), Performance Nutritionist, and Author of the best-selling new book PEAK - The New Science of Athletic Performance That Is Revolutionizing Sport... An integrated and personalized approach to health, nutrition, training, recovery and mindset.

Marc currently serves as the Performance Nutrition Lead for the Canadian Men's National Basketball Team and a portfolio of elite and professional athletes in Canada, USA, UK and Europe.  Marc is also the host of the Dr. Bubbs Performance Podcast, bringing together insights from world-leading experts in health, nutrition, training, recovery and mindset.

Marc is a Speaker at corporate events and regularly presents at sports, medical and fitness conferences in Canada, USA, United Kingdom and Europe and consults with professional sports teams.  Marc has been working with elite and professional athletes, busy executives and motivated individuals aiming to improve their health for almost two decades, using an evidence-based approach to nutrition, fitness, and lifestyle modifications.

Today’s episode features Rachel Balvokec, a professional baseball hitting coach working with the New York Yankees.  Rachel made headlines when she become a minor league strength and conditioning coordinator and coach for the St Louis Cardinals from 2011-15.  Rachel also has experience working with the Houston Astros, as well as the Dutch national baseball and softball teams, and has also worked with many successful organizations such as EXOS, Louisiana State University, the White Sox and many others.  She is also a former NCAA Division I softball catcher.

When working in any sort of team environment, knowing keys of successful organizational culture is not an option if you wish to be great.  Those of us working in the coaching field often have many different “hats” that we wear, be it strength coach, sport coach, nutritionist, or “unofficial sport psychologist” (or maybe even official sport psychologist).  It’s very easy to get buried in the X’s and O’s of exercise selection and periodization (and it’s good to have these things mastered) but it’s critical to zoom out and look at the greater principles that lead to the success of an organization.

This show is about both of those things.  On the front-end, Rachel talks about what she has learned as a strength coach that she’s carried with her into her time as a hitting coach.  She discusses what spurred her to move “up the ladder” in regards to the amount of change and impact she new she could make on players by moving to sport coach, as she moves towards her ultimate goal of being a general manager.  Ultimately though, this show is really about the second portion, which is high-performance leadership, team culture, and tough love.  It’s about what’s really demanded at the highest levels of competition and performance, whether in a sports, military operations, or business.

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  Rachel talks about her transition from strength and conditioning coach, to hitting coach, and her career aspirations

20:20  How Rachel approaches hitting coaching in light of her former strength and conditioning experience and how helpful it is for sport coaches to have S&C experience

24:40  How Rachel views periodization for working with hitters, and how hitting is  generally behind pitching in regards to the application of sport training principles

32:05  General concepts in regards to what good hitters can do from a weightroom perspective

36:40  Rachel’s rear view thoughts on the strength and conditioning industry and advice for strength coaches

41:35  Rachel’s perspective on what a strength coach offers from beyond a strength, KPI and “X’s and O’s” perspective.  What the heart of being a strength coach really is.

47:00  Thoughts on tough love and culture in winning teams

58:00  Rachel’s take on why Augie Garrido’s “chewing out” of his players an example of tough love and the importance of “high support, high demand” parenting, coaching and leadership

1:12:30 Critical Hardships in Rachel’s life that formed who she is now

"There’s something to be said in having a larger role if you can have an administrative position”

“No matter what was going on in the field, I could go and crush it in the weight room where 1+1 =2”

“It’s not tough (not doing the strength and conditioning workouts anymore) because my passion has always been coaching”

“Being a hitting coach is not that different for me personally (than s&c).  Now I’m just coaching the body to do something else”

“Every strength coach’s dream is to have a sport coach who used to be a strength coach”

“If you were to apply general periodization principles to hitting you would A: have days off, which never happens”

“Hitting is behind pitching in the technology space; the radar gun has been around forever”

“(When coaching a skill) There’s research to show that more novice coaches are going to distal parts of the body and expert coaches are going to the center of the body”

“I still will refer to the strength coach to learn about the character of the athletes, because someone can be very successful on the playing field, but not work that hard”

“At the end of the day, if you are getting groups of people to work together, individualization is one of the most poisonous things you can do.  I don’t believe in a snowflake approach, I believe in a snowman approach”

“If you are in it to win, there has got to be some sort of standard to be held, and it has to be high.  If you are pushing people to the limits of their ability, two things are going to happen.  One is that not everyone is going to be happy, because that is a really uncomfortable place to go.  Two is that you might push them too far”

“The snowman must survive, even if some snowflakes melt away”

“If you had to be successful to save someone’s life, how would you do it differently?”

“It is a privilege to be held to that high of standard (the high demand found in high performing organizations, or the standard held by Augie Garrido)”

“It’s actually the highest form of love to look at someone and say, that’s not good enough”

Show Notes

Augie Garrido Demonstrates Tough Love with His Team After a Loss

 

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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.

Today’s episode features Nick Winkelman, head of athletic performance and science for the Irish Rugby Football Union.   Nick was formerly the director of education for EXOS, and oversaw the speed and assessment component of their combine development program.  Nick is an internationally recognized speaker, and has his Ph.D with a focus on motor learning and sprinting.  Nick also has an anticipated upcoming book called “The Language of Coaching” where he goes in detail on his learnings and methods on the impact that communication has on an athlete’s ability to learn and perform movements.

Just like we’ve mentioned on episodes talking about mental training for sport, the art of communicating with athletes, and how we talk to their conscious and subconscious mind is heralded, but not given much actual attention in our daily processes.  Perhaps its because coaching, and specifically strength & conditioning often seems to draw more numbers and qualitative driven individuals than those concerned with the inherent artistry involved in the coaching profession, and in being a human being in general.  This being said, I’m really excited to have Nick on the show this week, because he is a master of the “conversation” we coaches have with athletes to help lead them to their highest potential on a physical, mental and emotional level.

On today’s show, Nick goes into how he became interested in coaching cues and communication, ideas on coaching cue differences, the importance and effects of using analogies, and much more.  This episode is a must listen, because this is the type of material that isn’t emphasized in modern coaching curriculums, but at the same time, might be the biggest thing holding coaches and athletes back from reaching their highest level of performance and enjoyment in sport and human movement.

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.

Key Points

How Nick got interested in the art of cueing and language to assist in skill acquisition

Why some cues and coaching models cause technique to not be retained well and how we can make our technical coaching practice “stick” better

Some primary differences between internal and external cues

The power of simple awareness versus hardline internal cues

The power of analogies in creating imagery for athletes that assists them in technical acquisition

How creativity is an important element of becoming better at the technical instruction of athletes

"And then I thought to myself, "What's the number one variable, what's the number one coaching strategy that I am using to manipulate how they run?" i.e. the coordination and quality of their movement, and it hit me: my voice, my cuing, my coaching."

"When I say coach I'm really talking about movement professionals in general. So if you teach movement for a living, I'm calling you a coach. Because... ...my definition of a coach is anyone that helps to move others to the place they want to be.”

"I'll define a cue as the last idea that goes in an athletes head before they move."

"If I want to put a little bit more energy behind that cue, I might say, drive the bar away from the bench. So the bench itself has nothing directly to do with the outcome, but by giving that focused thought of, bar away from bench, it allows me to narrow my focus in on a very tangible goal and the environment helps me do that."

"So internal and external cues tend to be literal, they reference the literal body or the literal world around me that I can touch feel and see. But analogies reference the figurative and leverage the mind’s visual system to be able to move 'as if'."

"When it comes to the type of things you should think about while you move, to optimize performance now, but most importantly learning later, the cues that fall on the external and that analogy side, outperform internal language again, and again, and again."

"When I give someone an internal cue and tell them to actively move a joint or a muscle. I am constraining or rather defining that complex movement by that micro component. Conversely if I simply ask you to observe something in motion, I'm not dictating how that motion takes place. And thus from a brain perspective, I'm not constraining the way the movement operates I'm simply asking you to become aware of that movement, possibly spotlighting one region."

"I do think the vast majority of internal language that people feel works the best, actually is in the form of the awareness piece."

"When you're initially teaching a movement, you're going to describe it. You're going to give a longer explanation... ...Then, from a teaching perspective, or again if you're doing video analysis, there's going to be some kind of visual feedback. So either a demonstration, or you're watching a video on a screen… still a form of demonstration.  So we describe it and we demonstrate it, and these two pieces of the communication loop serve to increase our players knowledge of the movement. They're awareness of the movement, and it's in these two pieces that I believe, there's a home, there's a place for internal language."

"The knowledge of what the movement is, and knowing how to do it, I don't believe those are the same thing."

"Analogies are nothing more than little visuals in the mind."

"Ultimately whether I'm seeing something, or hearing something that causes sight, in both of those cases we know they're more effective techniques, because they're brilliant. They hide the detail, giving the conscious mind just the intention."

"Emotions are like hashtags, literally they are. And the more a language is colored with the right emotion, the more memorable the physical words are, and as a byproduct the more memorable the movements they encourage are. "

"At the end of the day, the language we use to coach the movement, can tap into why they are even there moving in the first place, and don't for a second think your language is just building better movement. It is building better relationships between you and the client, and I'd argue better people in the process."

Timestamps:

6:46 Nick Talks About What Got Him Into The Language Of Coaching

19:20 Internal Cues vs. Awareness

27:45 Where Internal Language Fits in the Coaching Equation

33:43 External Cues vs. Analogies And When To Use Them

42:52 Dealing With Over-Thinkers And Being A “Cue Converter”

47:01 Movement-To-Movement Analogy And Using Visually Rich Language

49:57 The Emotional Responses To Analogies

53:40 Nick Talks About His Book: The Language Of Coaching

About Nick Winkelman

@NickWinkelman

Nick Winkelman is the head of athletic performance & science for the Irish Rugby Football Union. Prior to working for Irish Rugby, Nick was the director of education for EXOS (formerly Athletes' Performance), located in Phoenix, AZ. As a performance coach, Nick oversaw the speed and assessment component of the EXOS NFL Combine Development Program. Nick has also supported many athletes in the NFL, MLB, NBA, National Sport Organizations and Military. Nick is an internationally recognized speaker on human performance and coaching science, and has multiple publications through the UKSCA, NSCA and IDEA Health and Fitness.

Today’s episode features biomechanist and foot expert, Gary Ward.  Gary is the author of the book “What the Foot” inventor of the “Flow Motion Model”, and gives his “Anatomy in Motion” clinics throughout the world.  He is a leading thinker in human movement and mechanics, and is a master of getting people to function better through giving them back their joint movement and sensation.  Gary was a guest back on podcast #98 where he went in depth on the importance of proper pronation and how to teach it along with many other concepts on foot health and performance.

The foot (and human body in general) is an incredibly complex structure, and often times we reduce our understanding of it down to “just stretch this muscle and strengthen this other one”, or “let’s try to point those feet or knees in a particular direction that we deem correct”.  At the end of the day, the body is always doing the best that it can, given the sensory information that it has.  When we lack sensory information, we will have trouble moving our joints and bones properly, and things tend to go downhill from there.  Gary helps us to holistically understand the way the body works based on its own incredible ability to interpret information and heal itself.

For today’s episode, Gary and I talk about some performance-driven issues and aspects of foot training.  We start out with a chat about those athletes who tend to walk with the toes “turned out” and if this is something that should be labeled as “dysfunctional” and in need of correction.  We also cover thoughts on athletes with high arches, and elements that are interfering with their ability to flatten the arch and pronate.  We also get into instructing athletes in single leg stance drills and how this relates to the concept of “finding center” (and how the use of wedges, paper or even blocks of cheese can help fill in sensory gaps in stance).  Finally, we cover the idea of pronation versus over-pronation, and how the oppositional action of the foot is an important consideration in the ability to “put on the accelerator without the brake” in movement and gait.

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.

Key Points

Thoughts on athletes whose feet are pointing outwards (duck foot)

What does dysfunction really mean? Gary’s take on the idea of “dysfunction” and how to interpret it instead

How to help athletes with high arches pronate correctly

Gary’s thoughts on “finding center” and what stability really means

How to instruct athletes who are performing single leg stance drills

Pronation versus “over-pronation” in athletes

 

“I never really view anything as a problem, I view things as information”

“I’m not a big fan of the word dysfunction, because it becomes something you want to fix, rather than something you want to understand”

“If you turn your feet out, what you notice is that your foot will pronate”

“The vast majority of muscles in the foot are supinators”

“It’s impossible to externally rotate a femur on a pronating foot”

“A foot that’s turned out will have a rotational influence on the pelvis”

“When I see someone with their foot turned out, rather than think I need to turn that in and be the correction, the information I am getting from that person is that they are turning that foot out to generate that pronation”

“What’s always been exciting to me is to see unconscious change… the more you try the less you get.  You have to get the environment right”

“You don’t want to fight (the body) because we know that fight creates conflict… you need to remove the obstacles and encourage things to do the thing they are meant to do”

“I say that joints give muscles something to do”

“Most people’s feet end up very limited in movement”

“Why do people turn their feet out, they are trying to generate more movement than they have”

“The reason your dorsiflexion is not great is because you can’t lower your arch”

“When high arch people attempt to pronate, what you’ll notice is that they’ll lose the 5th metatarsal head (ball of the pinky toe)”

“The brain will always find a tripod, if you can’t get weight on the first metatarsal head, then you’ll have it in the second”

“If you reach down and have a feel for hard skin, and it’s under the 2nd and 3rd metatarsal head, then that is probably where your tripod is, 2nd and 3rd metatarsal head and the calcaneus”

“We’ll place the wedges to meet the floating metatarsal head bones if you like…. You’ve created the conditions for pronation”

“The higher the arch, the stiffer the bones and the more contracted the tissue under the foot”

“One of the key aspects of the foot is that there is opposition between forefoot and rearfoot structures”

“The spine is the same as the foot, we have to get articulation in every bone of it” (if don’t cut)

“The more we explore the extreme possibilities in our movement, the more we load the tissue.  The more we give tissue something to do, the more that tissue can react, and when tissue on both sides has an equal reaction to movement, then you can stand in a rested, centered position”

“An over-pronating foot is an everting foot, we need to make sure there is opposition between the forefoot and the rearfoot in three dimensions” (you are not overpronating as long as you have opposition)

About Gary Ward

Gary Ward is the author of “What the Foot” and founder of “Anatomy in Motion”.  He is known for bringing individuals out of pain when all other options had failed.  A former ski-boot fitter, Gary is known for solving unsolvable pain in minutes, not months.  His passion for the foot hugely influenced his interpretation of human movement. Increasingly sought after by all types of practitioners in the fitness and therapy industry, he teaches an evolution that start with the foot and results in whole body integrated movement solutions.

Today’s episode features coach, biomechanist and inventor, Adarian Barr.  Adarian Barr is a unique mind in the world of sport movement who has not only given me dozens of paradigm shifting, “aha” moments, but has also retooled the way that I personally think about human movement and the related coaching process.  Adarian has coached at numerous Universities, and continues to train and consult athletes, as well as educate coaches through his work at barrunning.com.   He has been on four previous episodes of this podcast, each one with unique and paradigm-shifting ideas on how we approach athletic movement, these being:

Episode #64 on Biomechanical Myths and Truths in Sprinting

Episode #105 on Power in Athletic Asymmetry

Episode #132 on Ground Impulse as a Biomechanical Lynchpin in Sprinting and Athletic Movement

Episode #147 on Foot Pressure and “Arch-Centered” Athletic Performance

Many times in athletic movement, we see the fastest athletes doing things that are just a little different than the slower athletes, and I think that we subconsciously recognize these elements.  Often, athletes who can sprint fast and jump high move effortlessly and gracefully, but also with a little bit of “swagger” and bounce to their movement.  Today we are taking a deep dive into the bobbing that elites exhibit, and how this is a function of their relationship to the fall of gravity to better load, and unload joints.

On today’s show, Adarian goes in depth on how athletes can learn to work “with gravity” and falling better, and also avoid interrupting the proper work of gravity through knowing how many coaching cues and drills can create problems.  We also go into how the fastest sprinters are using gravity to accelerate faster than their competitors.  In the back half of the show, we get into the idea of muscle isometrics as the ultimate fast-twitch “brake” of the body, how this works in sprinting, and how we can harness it in the weight room.

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.

Key Points

A description of the essential “two falls” that are happening during running and sprinting

How common sprint cues or instructions can actually interfere with the way that we should be working with gravity in running

How using gravity to “fall farther” in athletic movement can create faster sprinting and higher jumping

Methods to move with gravity better for better sprinting and jumping

How and why muscles will selectively fire isometrically to stop a joint in human movement

Using isometrics and oscillatory isometrics in the weightroom as a compliment to athletic movement in sport

How the body can use isometric muscle actions in top-end speed to increase the stride length

 

“The things people are missing out on is: falling is it”

“If you only fall an inch (while accelerating) there’s not much to it”

“Instead of things working in pairs or tandems, we seem to make things conflict”

“You have to understand you are falling first, and not interrupt it, second thing is you have to figure out how to fall faster”

“When you try to punch the ground yourself (while running), the brain is not expecting that”

“Those that fall the farthest (working with gravity in athletic movement) will run the fastest and jump the highest, it’s that simple”

“There is a big difference between running 1 inch and 5 inches”

“If you really want to work stairs or hills, you have to squat down low to get the (gravity) effect”

“The pull gets you into the fall… if you go to push, it makes you stand up.  You are trying to pull yourself into the fall”

“The first step is to be aware of gravity, so we don’t interrupt it”

“A skips and B skips are great interrupters (of gravity) because I am being trying to get my leg back down so fast before I get a chance to fall”

“We have to teach you how to fall again, and to trust the fall”

“Once the big toe gets loaded, you are coming off of it”

“It takes less energy to keep falling then to “interrupt a fall, start a fall, interrupt a fall, start a fall”

“Toe drag (in sprinting) is a fall, when you fall, your toe is scraped behind you.  You don’t have to intentionally do it, you just have to fall at a fast rate and it just happens”

“ISO is the best fast-twitch system ever, because I don’t want to hold (a joint position”) forever…. how do you stop something from lengthening? ISO.”

“You’ve got to put the brakes on at some point in time, and if I want to stop something from lengthening and I don’t want to shorten it, ISO is your best friend”

“ISO’s at a certain position is the strongest that we get”

 

Show Notes

Men’s USATF 60m Indoor Final: Note Coleman (In Black, Lane 5)  and Kemp’s (Yellow, Lane 3) “Falling” and “Diving” Actions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4DfjjyX0cY

Traditional “Borzov Jumps” (I’ve seen these done with someone holding the rear leg, however).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKp4aE5XyHs

Modified Borzov Jumps Emphasizing the Downward Fall of Gravity

https://www.instagram.com/p/B85H4zzHwZT/

Oscillatory Isometric Split Squat (Yielding to Gravity)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2rdbIpZZ30

 

About Adarian Barr

Adarian Barr is a track coach and inventor based out of Woodland, California.  His collegiate track and field coaching stops have included UW-Superior, Indiana State, UNC Pembroke, Yuba City Community College.

He has invented 9 devices from footwear to sleds to exercise devices. Adarian is a USATF Level II coach in the sprints, jumps, hurdles and relays. He has a master’s degree in Physical Education.

Adarian’s unique coaching style gets results, and his work on speed and biomechanics is being adapted by some of the top coaches in the nation.

Today’s episode features Grant Fowler, owner of Fowler Fitness in The Woodlands, Texas.  Grant is a creative coach and performance consultant who has been getting some fantastic results with his athletes in the realms of strength, speed and power.  Grant is a different thinker who has a distinctive “non-linear” and adaptable style to his training program design, where exercises and their variations are changing from week to week in a manner that allows for regular personal bests.  Recent podcast guest Kevin Foster has been training under Grant’s program on his run for the 2020 Olympic Trials, and has been easily breaking many lifting and performance personal bests since working with Grant.

I haven’t had a lot of episodes on writing training programs, yet programming for training is one of my favorite things to talk about.  It’s good to have a show periodically where we really get into the nuts and bolts of a training program, since this is the most “raw” form of conversation, in regards to what actually happens in training and the subsequent results.  The art and science of writing a training program (yes, there is a significant element of art to it) is a multi-factorial venture considering the different physical and psychological systems of the body.

On the show today, Grant gets into the fine details on his approach to a fluid training model where exercises and variations of exercises change from week to week in a model inspired by Westside Barbell, but adapted for the needs of athletes.  Grant will specifically get into how he rotates the “big lifts” in a max effort format, versus his rotation of the smaller lifts in the program over time.  We talk about how the stress level of a given session, including mental fatigue, impacts how often exercises are rotated across the breadth of a training month, and beyond.

The thought that resonates in my mind with Grants system is similar to my time working in an old beat “Mixing” program called “Fruity Loops” where various tracks are laid over each other to provide a song.  Some lines are brought in more frequently, others less, to create the art-form of the audio experience.  In my last 5 years of coaching particularly, I’ve been using a lot of 14-day training cycles, so it was awesome to get inside Grant’s programming mind in creating a variable training stimulus.

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.

Key Points:

Grant’s non-traditional start to his coaching career and it’s impact on his creativity

The biggest influences Grant has had in the way he approaches the creation of training methods

How Grant has utilized some themes from Westside Powerlifting in regards to the rotation of exercises, in creating his own system for training athletes

How Grant rotates “big lifts” versus dynamic and auxiliary exercises in his program

Thoughts on the differences between repeating the same workout frequently (such as the Bondarchuk method) versus not repeating the same workout in a 2-3 week time span

How Grant programs for those who are tapering, peaking, or in-season

How Grant uses and cycles long-duration isometrics in his program

Examining a sample monthly training period in Grant’s system

 

“Nothing in a complex system behaves in a linear way”

“We are changing the way we do our core exercises (i.e. squat, bench) every week”

“The athletes are coming to the gym and always able to hit some type of PR”

“The “dynamic effort” days are almost more variable, we’re always cycling exercises and tempos on that dynamic effort day”

“The way we implement variation is based on what I feel they haven’t done in a while; if they hit a heavy 8, they won’t hit a heavy 8 the following week, they might do a heavy 3”

“A lot of our workouts are written,

Today’s episode features Evan Peikon.  Evan is a coach, physiologist, and educator at the Training Think Tank HQ in Atlanta, GA. He has experience working with athletes on-site and remotely across the U.S. and internationally.  Evan is a former track and field athlete and has learned from world-leading experts in applied muscle physiology and performance.

I’ve recently found myself thinking about the topic of lactate as a factor in training, and how we should look to manage higher repetition training sets (such as 1x20, or the Inno-sport “AN2” bracket of work), longer sprints and lactate buffering work in general, in athletes.  I’ve also recently read Pavel Tsatsouline’s book “The Quick and the Dead”, presenting an “anti-lactate” view on training, but then think about contrasting this to the results Mark Wetzel (and many others) have gotten from doing long duration extreme isometrics with their athletes in the realms of strength and work capacity.

I also think about ideas from the track and field world, such as Boo Schexnayder looking for a mild to moderate dose of lactate as a result of dense power training (such as 12x30m sprint accelerations) in some training periods, as well as Andy Eggerth mentioning how some athletes need to have some longer sprints present in peaking portions of the year, where they are accumulating a little bit of lactate.

Evan Peikon is a fantastic source of information in this regard, as he has had tremendous mentors in the energy system world (such as Aaron Davis) and is regularly synthesizing his wealth of knowledge in working with a population where lactate is an ever-present reality, that of cross-fit competitors.

On the show today, we talk about energy systems in an applied manner, and in a holistic manner that shows oxygen saturation as a rate-limiting factor that supercedes the thought process of lactate levels in muscle in regards to training effects and how long recovery processes will take.  This show is great for learning more about training individualization, as we go in depth on all things running, strength training, fast-twitch recruitment, 1x20 method and more, in regards to muscle oxygen, lactate and how it impacts our programming and methods.

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.

Key Points

Evan’s background as an athlete and what drew his interest in lactate and oxygen’s role in assessing training differences in athletes

What it means to have good or poor respiratory versus oxygen delivery in athletes

Why having high muscular tension can reduce the ability of the heart to deliver oxygen to the muscle

Thoughts on training the aerobic system for a short-burst power athlete

How athletes can self-regulate workouts in a manner where they avoid staying in muscle hypoxia (in order to maximize their ability to recover from the workout)

Thoughts on “Anti-Glycolytic Training” or training with the distinct purpose of not training to the point where significant lactate accumulates in the muscle

Ideas on a “sweet spot” of sustained muscular work and physiological response

Training for the sake of preferential improvement of fast twitch fibers

Using an “ends to middle” style approach where power and aerobic work are trained early, and the lactate buffer zone is trained later in training

 

“I think the 800m run lends itself well to being that event that sparks your curiosity (on how such a spectrum of body types and training styles can excel at it)”

“What is one man’s junk (running) volume, is another man’s great training tool”

“I like the term “delivery” instead of cardiac output”

“A delivery limitation is kind of a battle between the heart and local muscle physiology.  The muscle could vaso-dilate more than the heart could pump against (due ...

Today’s episode features neurology expert and personal trainer, Scott Robinson.  Scott is an Applied Movement Neurology (AMN) master practitioner and the creator of AMN Neuro-Flexibility.  He has worked successfully with all levels of neurological complexity in his time training and coaching a wide variety of clients.  Scott is a specialist in dealing with a variety of neurological issues, such as weakness, pain, compensations, range of motion and trauma to the emotional systems, amongst many others.  Scott is a former athlete in Taekwondo and has more than 20 years of experience in Applied Movement Neurology.  Scott also runs the Instagram account @the.brain.guy and is a presenter and practitioner at integrated vitality retreats.

The nervous system is always an important and popular topic in the world of not only athletic performance, but human performance and development in general.    Our emotions and subconscious state, as well as our bioelectric network are all substantial players in how we train and recover, as well as stay healthy in the process.  Good coaches know these elements intuitively, but we are now starting to be able to point out the science and ideas behind it all.  Today’s show takes a step back from sets, reps and exercises, and looks at these higher-order influences on athletic performance from a perspective of the brain and nervous system.

On the show, Scott talks about inhibitive factors of the nervous system, as well as the important leap in looking from athletes only in a chemical perspective, and to a bioelectric perspective, which has implications running into things like fascial performance and therapeutic modalities.   He also gets into the role of emotions and beliefs and their impact on training, as well as methods that can be used to help clear these inhibiting factors.  Finally, we get into an awesome talk on the critical factors by which learning can take place in a session, and how this impacts our entry point into the workout itself, drawing a lot of parallels with my prior show with Rafe Kelley.  This show starts great, and just gets better as we go along, and has tons of gems throughout that are truly game-changing for any coach or athlete.

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.

Key Points

Scott’s background as a distance runner and martial artist, as well as how he got into neurology and brain-science and its connection with athletics

Elements that hold the nervous system back from producing the strength it is capable of (bioelectric dysfunction, nociception, etc.)

How Scott looks at a client from a bioelectric perspective

How foam rollers really work in regards to the body, the nervous system and performance

The role of emotions in training and how emotion plays a role in adapting to exercise

The use of emotional freedom technique to help clear limbic trauma that is inhibiting performance on the sporting field

Why the “Haka” is so powerful for the All-Blacks, but also an unfair advantage in regards of it’s emotional impact on the other team

Ways that we can allow our brain to learn better, particularly in context of physical activity

The role of attention and novelty in athlete learning

How to use novelty in warm-up games to stimulate and drive urgency and attention and drive better learning

 

“Bioelectricity underpins everything in the nervous system… I work with that bioelectricity and anywhere in the body there is dysfunction or pain or weakness, or anything that’s not quite right, you’ll find that there will be an altered bioelectric charge”

“Medical science tends to look at the body almost from a chemical perspective”

“The extracellular matrix is kind of like the body’s wi-fi network”

“One of the biggest things I see in terms of chan...

Today’s episode features Logan Christopher, strongman, author, owner of Legendary Strength and CEO of Lost Empire Herbs.  Logan previously appeared on episode 111 where he discussed mental training in depth, including the utilization of hypnosis and mental anchors.

Alongside his athletic and business pursuits, Logan has also written several books including “Mental Muscle” and “Powered by Nature”, both of which I have found impactful reads.  Logan is a master of using the natural machinery of the body and our environment to help us reach our highest potential as humans.

I wanted to get Logan back on the show for a few reasons.  One was that he lives only an hour and a half away from me in Santa Cruz, and I knew that it would be a blast to train with him prior to recording the show.  Secondly, I had took some inspiration from my past show with Logan and started using his mental training hypnosis tracks prior to my training sessions, along with using his herbs, primarily his “Phoenix” formula (containing herbs such as Ant Extract and Pine Pollen) as well as an adaptogenic mushroom tincture I put in my morning coffee.  The results, were profound.  Although I don’t like to pin training gains on one thing only, I managed to jump higher that year at age 35 than I had in the last 5 years.  My training and overall strength had found rapid improvement, and I knew there was something special to this process.  Finally, I had been reading Logan’s articles around the time I started using his herbs and came across a drawing he referred to as the “Pyramid of Strength” (see show notes), and with everything I head learned about training the last few years, this made perfect sense to me, so I wanted to explore it in depth.

On today’s show, we cover just that, the Pyramid of strength, and get Logan’s take on each layer (Mental, Training, Sleep, Diet,Herbs/ Supplements, Spiritual) of what makes us thrive as athletes and human beings.

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.

Key Points

How awkward objects and kettlebells can add value to a training sessions

The layout and inspiration behind Logan’s “Pyramid of Strength”

How mental state in the gym and training filters over into one’s sport

How Logan approaches sleep and recovery in his own training

An overview of performance herbalism and how herbalism differs from chemically driven supplements

The drawbacks of typical chemical pre-workouts and herbal alternatives to these

The primary herbs to look at for athletic performance

Logan’s coffee additives (or replacement) for a more natural energy source

 

“For most guys the color pink is actually going to weaken them”

“Every single (training) system out there is a limited collection of movements and if we are looking at health, all around athleticism, the more different movements you’ll do, the better off you’ll be”

“We are thinking and feeling beings; that involves everything we are doing.  There is often a cursory acknowledgement of mental aspects of training, but there often isn’t a dialing into that and a mental understanding”

“For performance, diet is not the most important thing, because how many Olympic athletes are eating Cheetos and crap food?  Most of these athletes are younger guys, so there is a period you can do that, but if you want long term performance, that is not a sustainable thing”

“I would say that everyone is visualizing before an exercise, but they may not be aware of it, period”

“Often, people think of just getting to this ideal technique, but there are layers and layers of improving your internal technique and how you are talking to yourself, things that are going on inside, and that’s still all technique as well”

“Music is used to control state,