Just Fly Performance Podcast

Today’s episode features Greg Potter.  Greg is a former sprint coach (he has written some fantastic Q and A pieces for Just Fly Sports in the past regarding all things sprint training) who is now a Ph.D and expert on Circadian Rhythms and their impact on our health and well-being.

Greg is the former content director at HumanOS.me and now works as the chief scientific officer of a health-tech startup.  Greg’s work at the University of Leeds on sleep, diet, and metabolic health was featured by the likes of the BBC World Service, the Washington Post, and Reuters. As a sprint coach, Greg coached a sprinter to four gold medals at the European Championships. Greg has also worked with groups such as The United States Naval Special Warfare Command on health and performance optimization.

Today’s show is all about our body’s “clocks” (Circadian Rhythms) impact our health, metabolism, ability to train, and our ability to recover via sleep.  It’s important to know how to train, but it’s also critical, especially in our modern digital age, to understand how to better recover and live based off of our innate wirings.

Topics addressed on today’s show include the basics of circadian rhythms and impact on nutrition, sleep, training, and metabolism (fat loss).  Greg also gives plenty of tips and ideas on how to optimize our lives based off our own circadian rhythms.  The back half of the show in particular has a lot of great concepts on training optimization based on time of day.

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

What circadian rhythms are and what they mean to us

What the modern lifestyle (in terms of artificial light cycles and ever-abundant foot availability) means for our health and function

The metabolic advantages of early day, time restricted eating

Nutritional concepts in a non-training day for a speed-power athlete who wants to stay lean

Greg’s take on the ketogenic diet

Ideas on timing multiple workouts in a day with various emphasis

Variation in VO2 max based on time of day

The importance of naps for strength and power performance

The importance of body temperature in speed and power performance

Artificial light and its impact on our daily rhythms and clocks

How to use light-based products and apps to help synchronize the body clock

 

“The most important time cue in resetting our biological rhythms with the 24 hour day is the light/dark cycle and the problem of course is that now we live these 24/7 life cycles where we have artificial light cycles at night, we spend too much time indoors during the day time, we have round-the-clock food access, and because of all these different factors we behave in a way that is discordant with our biological rhythms”

“Our bodies are best set to digest food in the daytime”

“Insulin sensitivity is higher in the daytime than the nighttime, our bodies are primed for eating during the daytime”

“Skipping breakfast is associated with negative health outcomes and eating at nighttime is associated with negative health outcomes”

“(For time restricted eating) I would stick to a 6-12 hour caloric period that finishes at least 2 hours before you plan to go to bed, but earlier than that is probably better.”

“What we want is a nice high-amplitude rhythm in core body temperature… it’s generally highest in the late afternoon, which is the best time for strength and power exercise for that reason”

“I think it’s smart to give our digestive tracts a break each 24 hours”

“(Peripheral clocks) seem to be primarily set by our food intakes each day”

“I would recommend that your final meal of the day is relatively small compared to others”

“When people consume regular meals at scheduled times,

Today’s episode features founder of Achieve Performance, Jeremy Frisch, and guest co-host, Tommy John.  Both of these individuals are making a big difference in not only the world of youth sports, but also in teaching the importance of global human movement skills, as well as in bringing the importance of movement as a necessary and healing force to the general population.

Jeremy Frisch has been a past guest on episodes 100 and 134, and Tommy John has been a guest on 101 and 139.   These two guys both have a passion for redeeming what our sports industry has become in regards to not only sky-rocketing injuries, but also restoring the core of what it means to be a kid, an athlete, and a human being, which is creativity, play, and free movement, before external parameters, competition, stress and judgment are all added through early specialization and over-coaching.

We spend a lot of time zooming in on things like sets, reps, exercise modalities and training blocks.  At the end of the day, these factors are important, but the long term process by which athletes are facilitated, and the joy that happens when this is done correctly, is an area of our industry that truly demands our focus and attention.  Knowing how to progress youth athletes, and also how to integrate sport coaching with physical preparation on all levels of performance helps us all become more aware and well-rounded in our coaching process.

On today’s show, Jeremy, Tommy and I discuss changes in coaching emphasis from youth through adult, the importance of a thorough warmup that covers a variety of movement skills, how Jeremy’s experience as a youth sport coach has helped his process and integration in physical preparation, the importance and relevance of free play for children vs. organized coaching, and much more.

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

 View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage.

Key Points

How perception of watching adult athletes changes when you have experience watching children learn and play

How moving non-injured body parts and joints is critical in the process of injury and recovery

How coaching changes from working from youth to high school, to adult trainees

How to structure a warmup to provide a powerful strength and movement stimulus, as why this is the most important part of the total workout in many cases

Jeremy’s experiences as a youth sport coach (e.g. football, baseball, tennis), how he incorporates physical preparation methods, and how this work has impacted his physical preparation coaching

The reasons that un-structured play is superior to organized sports for athletic (and personal) development in children

Why pickup basketball is crucial for creative development in basketball players, even if it seems like a “lazy” pace

Is it possible to build skills later in life if a kid missed the window of development early on

“When we were kids, when we got hurt, what did we do? As quick as we could we got back outside trying to play… it’s like we knew intuitively that moving around makes you heal”

“When he got done squatting, when they took the cast off his arm, his arm had more muscle on it than when he started… he did 20 rep breathing squats and that… like 3x a week (being unable to train his arms in that time period)”

“The majority of young athletes coming in, their feet are shot, and if their feet are shot, their hips are going to be shot”

“When you start with a  kid, the change from play to more organized stuff starts when he or she is ready… I’ve had kids who are just studs physically, are they are the most immature kids in the whole world, so I pulled them back because if I tried to organized things to much, they shut down and they don’t come back.”

“For ages 13,14,15 it’s more technical based, for ages 16-19 we are cleaning,

Today’s episode features javelin coach and athlete Kevin Foster.  Kevin is a former Division I javelin thrower for the University of Connecticut. He is currently training to compete post-collegiately as an athlete for the 2020 Olympic Trials in the javelin event.  Kevin works as a private trainer and consultant, specializing in javelin.

A young coaching prodigy, Kevin is one of the brightest and holistic young minds in the field.  He has been a prolific writer for Just Fly Sports in the last couple of years, and owns the popular Instagram page @javelin.anatomy.  Kevin is integrating ideas from many great minds in training, such as former podcast guests such as David Weck, Ben Patrick and Adarian Barr.  He is also familiar with ideas from DNS (Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization) and Ido Portal, alongside many others.

This episode is all about getting to the core of what it means to be athletic.  Kevin clearly asks the question of what are we missing out on by just thinking about force from a quantitative perspective, and ignoring the total design and abilities of the body in respect to movement.  The more we know and understand about what makes the best athletes in the world the best, the more we can infuse this into our own coaching process.

On today’s show, Kevin talks about some technical aspects of the javelin throw and throwing in general from a perspective of the feet, elbows and hands.  He gets deep into the elastic potential of the body from a perspective of waveforms and body segments, essentially, things that make an elite athlete able to transfer energy properly.  Of a particular focus on this show is Kevin’s take on the feet, hips and spine in making the ultimate elastic athlete. If you don’t care about javelin throw, or throwing concepts skills in general for that matter, you may want to skip to around 20-25 minutes into the talk.

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 coiling the body shows up in Kevin’s training for javelin

How “pistol finger” works to lock the front big toe in throwing

How the tongue works to direction tension to different parts of the body in athletics

Examples of how Kevin trains throws from the perspective of the feet

The importance of spinal segmentation in athletic performance and practical training

What inspired Kevin to consider training on the level of energy and waveforms

How to unlock the bodies elastic potential and why it is important to do so before optimizing other forms of training

 

Kevin Foster Quotes

“How you conceptualize the throw matters, if you just view the throw as a series of body parts moving you are going to set yourself up for very thinking brain, very rigid movement”

“With the opposite hand when you are throwing, you need to be thinking about pronation in the hand of the reaching arm”

“The tongue can direct tension to different parts of the body, so if you look at pictures of Jan Zelezny on his javelin release, you’ll see his tongue pushing into different parts of his mouth”

“Movement is more than muscle… focusing on (squat routines and VBT) is focusing on the 1% compared to the 99%”

“The feet and the hips and the spine are all connected in a much bigger way than we normally give credit for, so getting strong arches and capsular hip internal rotation, those are two ways to take slack out of system, so that’s how become fascially dominant as an athlete, to get that slack out of the system, it’s that neurofascial remodeling that takes place”

“You need spinal segmentation, you need to be able to move every vertebrae to transfer energy optimally”

“In order to unlock fascia driven movement, you need to strengthen the arches, you need to develop the ability to internally rotate your hips,

Today’s episode features Dr. Ben House.  Dr. House has a Ph.D. in Nutrition from the University of Texas at Austin, is also a Nutritionist (CN), Functional Diagnostic Nutritionist (FDN), and Certified Functional Medicine Practitioner (CFMP).

Functional Medicine is Ben’s life’s passion. He has studied under some of the best in the world and continues to regularly attend and present at conferences and seminars around the world.  As a strength coach, House has worked at both the high school and collegiate levels, including time under Coach Wright at the University of Texas Basketball. Besides practicing Functional Medicine, coaching, and writing articles for Functional Medicine Costa Rica, House has numerous publications in peer-reviewed, high-impact scientific journals.

I first found Ben’s work on the Train Adapt Evolve website several years ago, and seeing his journey to practicing functional medicine and leading retreats in Costa Rica in the time since been nothing short of inspiring.  Ben is a versatile and exciting guest because of his experience and knowledge of multiple aspects of human beings, from nutrition, to physiology, to training concepts, to meditation, restoration and recovery.  Ben has a tremendous knowledge of the associated research, and how this fits in with many current training trends.

On today’s show, Ben talks about meditation, recovery methods to calm athletes down from training, his take on the concept of training from a hormonal perspective, and also how to simplify corrective methods such as PRI into a user-friendly training session.

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

Quick thoughts from Ben on the Westernization and use of meditation

Means of getting athletes in recovery mode post-exercise session

How to use breathing and other integrated means to get athletes calmed down post workout

Sympathetic and parasympathetic states and training

Types of training and effects on the anabolic and hormonal processes of the body

Differences between males, females and testosterone (or lack therof)

Simplifying and integrating PRI based ideals into a training program

“We’ve really westernized meditation”

“People who have been meditating for 25 years, they kind of rest on that default mode network, so they are more present, less reactive”

“People would generally rather shock themselves then sit in silence”

“You could turn (post-workout box breathing) into a repositioning exercise… there are so many different ways you could take it, you could do body scans, you could do a Feldenkrais class”

“For some people who really like to train, their only stress reliever in life is another stress reliever… we have to give them other tools.  I find that a lot of people that I coach have two stress relievers, one of them is food, and another one is exercise.  Those are two coping strategies that I really don’t want people to use with stress”

“Our mindset around stress is very important, if we believe we are going to break, stress is very debilitating”

“I would never chase something happening in the endocrine system with my training”

“Females generally can put 85% of the muscle on as men, relatively they can put on (almost) as much muscle as men and they have 1/20th of the testosterone”

“Unfortunately, we’ve been looking at a good indicator of over-training or over-reaching for a really long time, and none of the hormones really pan out as far as a 2017 meta-analysis”

“What is the best marker we have for over-training?  It is an increase in training volume or training intensity, met with a decrease in performance”

“Just sciency enough, just bothers me so much, because a lot of people are trying to sell a simple story with science”

Today’s episode features nutrition consultant and performance coach, Matt Cooper.  Matt is a bright young mind who I’ve had many conversations with in my recent journey of human performance.  He was the guest for episode #121 where he talked about many training concepts, including the potential neurological drawbacks of excessive training under heavy barbell loads.

Today’s show is a chat about holistic training integration, where Matt covers the elements of stress, recovery, nutrition and energy systems.  Being a masterful coach represents knowing not only the “big rocks” of training, but also excelling at the subtle aspects of training athletes.  I believe that success is found in a mastery of the subtleties, and today’s episode covers a great many of them.   This is definitely a show for dedicated coaches, athletes and trainees who want to cover all bases in their training process.

Topics Matt will specifically get into include all things stress, light, energy systems, mitochondria, caloric restriction, ketogenic implications for athletes, nutrient intake and hormonal fluctuations, and finally, the impact of nutritionally derived inflammation on pain and injury.

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

Where Matt starts with nutrition

How to determine if you are oxidative or sugar burning using breathing measurements

Nutritional stress and the workout window

Matt’s take on nutritionally supporting the nervous system through nutrition

How to have a robust mitrochondrial density

How to approach fasting and calorie restriction from an athletic perspective

Nutrient intake throughout the day and it’s impact on branches of the autonomic nervous system/carb backloading

The impact of nutritionally derived inflammation and injuries

“A big mistake is having guys load in nutrients closer to when guys are going to be more in the sympathetic state”

“You might have someone take oscillating days of higher carbohydrate and lower carbohydrate temporarily, just based on what energy system they are using”

“If you are mainly nasal breathing, you are more aerobic dominant for the most part, and that is going to keep you from going into an excess state of fight or flight, but if you are more of a mouth breather, that is probably going to make you transition your gears to go into more of a sympathetic state sooner, which is going to result in you utilizing more of that precious stored glycogen reserve that you have”

“You are still using all of the energy pathways at once, the question is “which one are you going to be most dominant in””

“High grade Omega 3-Fish Oil can really tune parts of the nervous system”

“I like getting guys on a really comprehensive either plant or ocean mineral blend to help motor neuron volley and transmission”

“(In regards to having a robust mitochondrial density) Sleeping enough, getting in a nutrient dense diet, respecting your light cycles.. making sure you see morning light, making sure you see evening light, being respectful of the light cycles you see later in the day”

“A lot of the basic supplements out there don’t have great bio-availablity”

“(In caloric restriction) you are actually resetting some of those insulin receptors that help with some of that “gun-clip” type storage of carbohydrates”

“Energy system development  needs to be looked at from a nutritional perspective, not just a training perspective”

“That keto(genic) ratio that was invented… was more for medical cases”

“Metabolic flexibility is the goal”

“Don’t forget that most soft tissue injuries are exacerbated by nutrition, basically via inflammation of the nerves causing pain”

“When you fix someone’s diet (in terms of inflammation),

Today’s episode features Jake Schuster, sports performance coach, consultant and researcher hailing from Boston, Massachusetts

Jake has his MSc from renowned Loughborough University in the UK and completed work towards his doctorate in New Zealand with the national Rugby Sevens teams through the Rio Olympics. He has published in the on both rugby and force velocity profiling and has several ongoing research projects further detailing what exactly it is that makes people fast, and how they can get faster.

Jake has spent that past year working as the Senior Sports Scientist for Vald Performance, traveling the world visiting elite sporting clients and getting a unique insight into global best practices.

Jake previously appeared on episode #109 where he talked at length on how he was integrating cutting edge exercises and technology into a training model for track and field athletes, particularly sprinters featuring his utilization of Alex Natera’s isometrics and force plate analysis.  Jake’s knowledge and abilities are a very impressive blend of both understanding science and data trends, while also having a creative and integrative coaching mind.  This integrative ability is just one thing that makes me thrilled to have Jake back for another episode.

On today’s show, Jake and I discuss the optimal relationship between sport science and coaching (if you aren’t in a high performance department you may want to skip to around the 30:00 mark in the show), speed development and hamstring injury prevention, evolving thoughts on Frans Bosch work, robust running and water bags, concepts from force plates that show up in acceleration, and more.

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

View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage.

Key Points

International differences in sport science utilization

How Jake sees the optimal relationship between sport science/data and the art of coaching

Speed development and hamstring injury prevention in the context of team sports

Jake’s evolving thoughts on the work of Frans Bosch and waterbag training

Force plate’s transfer to other skills aside from vertical jumping and landing

Aspects of force plate measurements that transfer highly to acceleration

Questions and topics for this year that Jake is considering

“The best and first question (in a sport science/monitoring situation) is to talk to the athlete”

“(Regarding the interaction of sport science and coaching) People don’t talk to each other now, we are always on our phones, looking at numbers”

“The teams that have very few injuries, especially running soft tissue injuries, they make darn sure that their athletes are exposed to maximum velocity running very often.  At least once every 5 days.  The teams that say “80%’s fine… they often have more (hamstring injuries)”

“The eccentric hamstring question… if anyone thinks it’s still a question, then they are paying too much attention to twitter”

“We have one identified, modifiable risk factor for hamstring injuries in the literature and that is eccentric hamstring strength, and we have a whole lot of research underneath that that shows that it is fascicle length that is one of the main morphological determinants and we can affect that with eccentric hamstring training”

“One of my favorite variables on a force plate is eccentric deceleration rate of force development; how fast we can brake”

“The countermovement test (on a force plate) is an idiot proof test of neuromuscular status”

“Concentric rate of power development gets absolutely caned on twitter for whatever odd reason… it’s a brilliant metric… if they just named it acceleration nobody would say anything because we are looking at watts per second… when we saw that go up in sprinters their 60m improved and their coach said they were getting b...

Today’s episode features Irish biomechanics specialist, David Grey.  David is highly integrative, and has been influenced by many of the top minds in the world as he creates solutions to get clients to fix their movement, get out of pain, and in turn run and perform better.

I’m not sure what got me turned onto David’s videos on Instagram (where I first found him), but as soon as I started watching them, I instantly realized that something special was happening based on these other guests I’ve had and what David was doing, and I could tell his work had many ties to previous guests such as Gary Ward and Adarian Barr.  David has been strongly influenced by Gary, as well as having learned under a number of great mentors in the world of movement, S&C, gymnastics, stretching & mobility, Chinese martial arts and biomechanics.

Today’s episode is all about pronation, the feet and an integrated view of biomechanics and muscle action.   David’s specialty is restoring pronation to the foot (and the body, since pronation is a full body action).  It was actually a video of Will Claye triple jumping that he commented on regarding the pronation that was happening that was the last straw in me knowing I had to get David on the show.

Once you understand pronation, it’s like you just took the red pill in the Matrix, and everything and every way you look at things like weightlifting and sprint drills all change.  On today’s show, we talk about the mechanics and restoration of pronation, toe gripping, training the hands, foot differentiation, co-contractions, and also David’s take on the “stable/mobile” joint idea.

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

What’s drew David’s interest to the foot, his background, and his mentors in the field

The dynamics of pronation, and how David observes this when athletes run and jump

The adverse effects of toe gripping in squatting and running

Methods to get pronation back in athletes

How to train the hands for better upstream performance

Foot differentiation and how the forefoot and rearfoot work in opposition

David’s take on stable-mobile joint paradigms

Co-contractions in athletic performance

David Grey Quotes

“Pronation is where all three arches of the foot are flattening to the floor at the same time.  Pronation is a full body movement”

“(Delayed knee extension) is a big thing”

“Knee extension is a supination movement”

“If the knee comes back too early, you can’t pronate, everyone out there is obsessed with extension, triple extension, and all I want to do with any lower limb injury with anyone is delay knee extension as long as possible”

“Your pronation is done once that knee has started to straighten”

“(Early) knee extension is putting the hip to end range very early, and gives the glute no room left to work”

“The glutes work from internally rotated to externally rotated; if you want (functional) glutes, stop going from neutral”

“There’s a mental block with people towards pronation”

“I have no problem with squatting or anything in the gym, but as soon as it messes up your biomechanics, you’re done”

“If you are squatting heavy, you don’t want to be pronating very much; you don’t want the knee coming miles inside, you want the bones stacked on top of each other.  That’s not pushing the knees miles out, that’s just being neutral”

“Gripping the ground with your toes it not a stable base, the head of your first metatarsal is off the floor”

“Toes are just a brake…. Gary (Ward) says the toes are like the last line of defense”

“People will be racing into the forefoot, and then their toes have to grip, they have no choice”

“Gripping that toes is not an arch, that’s just a sagittal plane movement,

Today’s episode features myself in a question and answer episode where I discuss questions from listeners on a variety of athletic topics.  This podcast has had such incredible guests in the last several months that I hadn’t done one of these episodes in some time, but having been asked when I was going to do the next one, I decided it was time.

These episodes are a great chance for me to reflect on my own training processes, synthesized with the things I’m learning from the many guests on the show as well as my own mentors in training.  Today’s Q&A has a lot of questions on extreme isometrics, training arrangement, the foot, and more.  

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

View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage.

Key Points

The correlation of sprint drills into full sprinting

My process when I start working with a new athlete

Integrating extreme isometrics into team sport training

Athletic performance training coming off powerlifting training

Training the arch of the foot 

“Shin splints” and tendon refractory 

Maintenance based strength training for dunk training

Thoughts on training intense sprinting and jumping in states where the nervous system is not 100%

Timing of strength and skill work in a training program

Improving lift technique with 1x20

My take on foam rolling and SMR in general

Getting off the ground quicker in high jump

About Joel Smith

Joel Smith is a NCAA Division I Strength Coach working in the PAC12 conference.  A track coach of 11 years, Joel is also a coach for the Diablo Valley Track and Field Club, and also has 6 years of experience coaching sprints, jumps, hurdles, pole vault and multi-events on the collegiate level.

Joel has coached 2 national champions, multiple All-Americans and school record holders in his time as a track coach. In the realm of strength and conditioning, his programs have assisted 5 athletes to Olympic berths that produced 9 medals and a world record performance at Rio in 2016.

In 2011, Joel began Just Fly Sports with Jake Clark as a central platform to promote information for athletes and coaches to reach their highest potential.  In 2016 the first episode of the “Just Fly Performance Podcast” was released, now a leading source of education in the sports performance field.

Prior to working in the PAC12 conference, Joel spent 6 years in the realms of coaching, college lecturing, personal training, and thesis research.  Joel’s certifications include Neurological and Physical Typing from BATI, CSCS, MAT Jumpstart, and NKT level 1, as well as USA Track and Field credentials.  Joel is also well-versed in the Be-Activated protocols as taught by Douglas Heel, and has been extensively mentored by sprint and sport movement coach Adarian Barr.

Today’s episode features JB Morin, who returns to the show after being guest #12, 3 years ago. JB is a world-leading researcher in the world of sprint biomechanics and forces, as well as resisted sprinting, force-velocity profiling and sprint injury factors. He is currently Full Professor at the Faculty of Sport Sciences of the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis (France). There he is a member of the Laboratory of Human Motor Function, Education Sport and Health. On our last podcast, JB went in depth into force-velocity profiling for sprinting, as well as the role of heavy sled sprint training and much more.

JB is currently working to bring more clarity to the puzzle of sprint enhancement and hamstring injury prevention. As research is quickly shedding more light on various factors in human performance, especially in the sprint sector, I was excited to bring JB back for another show.

On this episode, JB picks up where we left off, going over recent updates in sprint research and force velocity profiling. The main focus of this show is digging into sprint mechanics, fatigue, and hamstring injuries in sport. We’ll also get into ideas on correlation vs. causation in interpreting statistics and research, as well as recent ideas on the role of the foot and ankle in sprint performance.

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

• What’s new in resisted sprint training research over the last few years

• Strength training in regards to the force velocity curve in sprinting

• Correlation versus causation with strength training and sprinting ability

• What are we seeing with sprint technique and hamstring injuries according to recent research

• Core strength/rotation and sprinting in regards to hamstring injury rates

• The roles of fatigue in hamstring injuries

• Recent research on the foot, ankle stiffness, injury and performance

• Clarification of the causation/correlation effects in jump tests and sprinting

 

JB Morin Quotes

“Sprinting is catching up with the velocity based training that is well known in the gym”

“When you sprint only once, then you cover the entire force velocity spectrum”

“There is not a lot of work published on how gym work influences sprinting force/velocity profile”

“Don’t interpret transfer of training from correlations that are cross-sectional (correlation does not equal causation)”

“If you train a couple of school kids and they improve their level of strength and you assess that at the gym, yes they will improve their sprint times, but at some point you are not dealing with school kids anymore”

“We have some very high level rugby players tested, and there is no correlation between vertical F0 (equivalent of their 1RM in half squat) and their F0 in sprinting… there is no correlation in these trained people”

“Jumping shouldn’t be the first information we collect if we are dealing with sprint people, it should be so obvious”

“It’s easier to measure jumping variables in sprinters rather than sprint, and for that single reason in my opinion, we explain some of the misconception (why so many people want to use jumping as a sprint assessment or predictor)”

“It is much easier to measure your hamstring strength, rather than exploring and measuring and detailing your sprint technique”

“I will name two (factors with sprint technique and hamstring injury) the first one is trunk lateral motion…. Future injured players in rugby tended to have more lateral trunk flexion in swing phase…. The core muscle activity (mainly trunk, glutes, superficial muscles) is clearly lower in soccer players who sustain a hamstring injury during the season when they sprint”

“One track research we have is around pelvic tilt angle, how your pelvis is tilted when you enter the swing phase of ...

Today’s episode features Jake Tuura.  Jake is a collegiate strength and conditioning coach, currently working at Youngstown State University.  Prior to YSU, Jake was an assistant S&C coach at the University of Minnesota-Duluth.  Jake runs the website jackedathlete.com which helps athletes gain copious amounts of muscle, hit PRs in the weight room, and improve athletic performance.

Jake recently wrote one of the most popular articles of the year on Just Fly Sports “Jacked and Athletic: Training Wisdom for Simultaneous Muscle and Performance Gain” where he laid out a fantastic blend of ideas on muscle, strength and tendon training.   He is also well known on his Instagram where he frequently deadlifts over 600lbs, dunks basketballs, and shows means of how he integrates the work of great minds like Adarian Barr and Dr. Keith Baar.  As with many young coaches who are helping to push the field forwards, training themselves is a huge portion of the equation.

Jake is actually a big reason that I got Dr. Keith Baar on the show, as the results he’s gotten from Dr. Baar’s methods have been outstanding in helping him resolve his tendon and knee pain.  He also has great practical thoughts on the fundamental differences between athletic movement and what happens in most barbell lifts as they are traditionally coached.  On today’s show Jake and I chat about hypertrophy and muscle building in the context of athletic development, Jake’s case against the “hypertrophy phase” of training, barbell cluster training for athletes, and his vertical jump training ideas.

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 to increase muscle mass while trying to stay as athletic as possible

Jake’s case against the “hypertrophy phase” in sports performance programs

Utilization of cluster training for performance

Jake’s own experience with tendon training methods and means

How Jake used squatting every day to reduce his knee pain

Case studies and examples of implementing Keith Baar’s tendon health session trainings

Jake’s recent experience in jump training and “meathead dunks”

 

Jake Tuura Quotes

“(In barbell squats) If you take someone at 75% and make them do a set of 10, you are going to get some pretty ugly compensation to get all those reps”

“(As an athlete) If you are going to do things that involve training to failure, try isolation type movements”

“(For hypertrophy-clusters with an athletic emphasis) Instead of traditional 4x10 at a load where you are grinding it out and it feels terrible, you do double the sets and half the reps”

“If you are killing yourself in the weightroom with grinding reps, you are not going to be able to go and perform high quality skill work”

“For 2 months I squatted every single day, go in do few warm up sets, max out… after this, I went to the court to play basketball… no knee pain”

“Load your tendon over and over… load it in the morning and load it in the evening… if you give me an excuse to lift twice a day, I’m going to use it”

“I feel much more sturdy doing (long duration extreme ISO’s), by doing them I can manage my tendon pain so much… I dunked every day for 10 days with no pain”

“(Regarding Jake’s tendon pain) rest did not help one bit”

“Band assisted jumps are not the movement of dunking a basketball… maybe you are not going inside edge… maybe your timing is way off.  It’s not just physiology there are so many components to athleticism that you are missing if you are not going and doing it”

“(2 Things to improve jumping and dunking) … getting on the court more often, and doing the tendon stuff to stay healthy”

About Jake Tuura

@jaketuura

Jake Tuura, MS, CSCS is a collegiate strength and conditioning coach.