Just Fly Performance Podcast

Today’s episode features Dr. Keith Baar, professor at UC Davis and renowned tendon training researcher and expert.  Professor Keith Baar received his PhD from the University of Illinois where he discovered the molecular signal that causes load-induced muscle hypertrophy.  Keith is currently the head of the Functional Molecular Biology Laboratory (FMBLab) at the University of California Davis.

Over the last 15 years, Keith has worked with elite athletes, as the scientific advisor to Chelsea Football Club, USA Track and Field, Paris Saint-Germain Football Club, British Cycling, The English Institute of Sport, Leicester Tigers Rugby, and the Denver Broncos.  He also spent time as an assistant strength coach with the University of Michigan football team where he was an undergraduate.  Keith’s current work is focused on how loading and nutrition alter tendon/ligament/ECM health and performance.

Tendon training is a vital aspect of athletics, and we’ve had several previous podcasts covering this topic, such as with Dr. Ebonie Rio that were tremendously successful.  Tendon training is one of the most important emerging topics in the athletic performance field.  To that end, Dr. Keith Baar is a leading researcher on tendon training, and his methods are getting athletes serious results.  Whether you are looking at rehabbing injured tendons, determining the best course of training for avoiding muscle strains, or getting better elastic performance in healthy athletes, this is an incredible and information dense podcast.  Topics span all ends of the spectrum on tendon action in isometric training, tendon rebuilding, nutrition and modes of loading.

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.

Dr. Keith Baar's Key Points

What got Dr. Baar interested in tendon health and performance research

New ideas in tendon health and regeneration

The dynamics of muscles and tendons in isometric training exercises

Tendon stiffness and compliance, and how training impacts those factors

Fast versus slow exercise and effects on tendon tissue

How to balance fast and slow training for a total effect on the tendon

How maximal overcoming isometric exercises work from a muscle-tendon perspective

Fundamental differences between static stretching and long isometric holds

Why and how loading is critical for tendon health and rehab

The role of nutrition in tendon health and performance

The drawbacks of a vegetarian or vegan diet on tendon health and performance

Dr. Keith Baar Quotes

“If you load (muscle-tendon tissue) faster or slower, you are going to get different mechanics”

“Tendon remodeling is actually extremely fast…. there are dramatic changes that can happen in these tissues in a very short period of time”

“(The tendon) is like a tree, the first few years you are building the inner rings.  The other rings you are adding on, you make the tree bigger and stronger as it ages, that tissue is more dynamic.  The center, core part of it isn’t as dynamic unless you have an injury”

“As you have more crosslinks, you have more stiff collagen”

“The cross-link component is something that we change dramatically with our activity, what we eat, and how much enzyme activity we have”

“The more lysyl oxidase you have, the more cross-links you have, the stiffer the tissue… what we do when we exercise, any type of exercise we do, we are going to increase the amount of lysyl oxidase we have, that is going to add in cross-links”

“When we are doing activities, we have the capacity to break down our crosslinks.  When we pull on a tendon fast, it’s stiffer, and when we pull on it less fast, it’s less stiff.  If I load my tendon quickly, all the collagen in my tendon works as a sheet, and it pulls with the muscle… it’s working as one unified grouping.”

Today’s episode features track coach and acupuncture student, Sam Wuest.  Sam is finishing his acupuncture degree at New England School of Acupuncture and is a track and field coach at Tufts University.

Sam is a former NCAA DI athlete, and holds multiple certifications in strength and conditioning and track and field.  Sam has worked with a diverse array of athletes and has also studied under Ukranian Olympic coach, Alex Ponomarenko.  He coached the recent NCAA DIII high jump champion in the 2018 indoor season, Stefan Duvivier who jumped 2.20m.

Sam has blended Western sport performance with Eastern practices, such as acupuncture, Chinese medicine, Zen Meditation, qi gong and tai chi.  When it comes to Sam’s coaching philosophy, as well as this podcast in general, the goal is always to find a blend of ideas from different ends of the spectrum, from the quantitative, data-based realms, to the qualitative and intuitive end.  To this end, this episode is largely about Sam’s outside the box thinking in coaching and recovery.  From his incorporation of multiple planes into basic track and field drills, to feel-based integration of Frans Bosch style stick drills, to avoiding the visual bias in athlete feedback via iPhones and iPads, Sam has a coaching style that is holistic and effective.

Sam also has connected training with common concepts in Chinese medicine, including his thoughts on recovery modalities, as well as linking of the seasons and human response into our own models and thoughts on training organization (noting the similarities observed in the practices of Dr. Yuri Verkhoshansky).  Another coach who has done just this was the late Charles Poliquin, an absolute legend in this field.  We’ll get into these topics and more on a show today that is certain to expand your perspective on training athletes.

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

Ways to incorporate and create awareness of rotational mechanics in sport movement

The faults of a “brace” oriented core movement model in athletics

Sam’s utilization of various sensory feedback drills in sprinting

How Sam utilizes rhythm and timing in his programming and why we tend to be “over-visual” in how we train and coach athletes

Sam’s utilization of recovery modalities

Things Chinese medicine has taught Sam about training and recovery

Ideas on periodization and training organization based off of seasonal effects on athletes from a holistic perspective

Sam Wuest Quotes

“If you watch the best sprinters in the world, they are not going straight forward and back, there is a rotational element”

“There are a whole lot of extensions going on when you push off the ground, and one of them is that lateral plane, and if you aren’t not getting that, you are operating with shorter legs than you need to”

“The same still frames that you got from USATF level whatever back in the 90’s is still true, you have to make sure that what happens in between (tri-planar actions) we really optimize”

“There are only so many KPI’s that you can show statically.  There are other KPI’s that are going on that you can’t show (on a single frame) because they are dynamic, they are a motion”

“If you are holding a stick on your shoulders, you know where your shoulders are, you know where their hips are”

“Sometimes in order to get an athlete to change what they need to do, you need to put them in an environment where that bad habit no longer works, and they have to feel that”

“I almost never do stick (on the back) drills, and (finish) on a stick drill….. I’ll have the kids drop halfway through”

“If your timing is off, there is no chance you are going to hit (the position you want)”

“If you are not hitting a rhythm when you jump,

Today’s episode features writer and personal trainer Tim Anderson.

Tim has been a personal trainer for over 20 years.  He has written and co-written many books on the subject of primal bodyweight movements, including The Becoming Bulletproof Project, Habitual Strength, Pressing RESET, and Original Strength Performance. When it comes down to it, his message is simple yet powerful: We were created to feel good and be strong throughout life.

Several years ago, I bought one of Tim’s books on Kindle, and was totally floored with the simple, but powerful concept of crawling as an essential athletic, and human performance tool.  As an athlete who has lost a significant amount of my innate speed and power ability through my late 20’s and early 30’s, despite lifting more weights than ever, I have always been on the search for ways to reclaim the inner power and movement ability of my youth.  One thing that I’ve found to be a cornerstone in this reflexive or innate strength has been taking on the training methods of Tim Anderson and Original Strength.

Today’s podcast is about just that: helping athletes to reclaim their reflexive strength.  Tim gives his take on how he first got interested in crawling and acquiring reflexive strength, the basics of crawl-based training, guidelines on breathing and rolling, and how learning “Original Strength” has changed Tim’s view of corrective exercise and addressing movement dysfunction (and why we should shy away from those terms).

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 Tim got into crawl training

The basics of “reflexive strength”

How Tim’s relationship with traditional barbell oriented training has changed as he has gone through reflexive and crawl based training methods

How Tim starts his clients in their training program

Tim’s take on common crawl variations and add-ons

Ideas on working with athletes who have a lot of lateral “sway” while crawling

Tim’s take on the learning process in athletic movement

Basic guidelines in Tim’s process for getting athlete’s breathing back on track

Ideas on using crawling as a preferential mode of conditioning

Rolling as the foundation of our gait pattern

How original strength means have changed Tim’s view of “corrective” exercise

Tim Anderson Quotes

“(Crawling) was almost like an elixir”

“What I noticed that (after crawling) I was so much stronger at all the other stuff I was doing (weight training)”

“Reflexive strength is the strength we are all designed to have that is supposed to be our foundation, it is both reactive strength and proactive strength; where your body is able to respond when something happens to it, but it is also able to anticipate the need to move before something happens to it… it is supposed to be extremely fast and without thought”

“Crawling ties the body together in such a way, that it connects everything about you and gives you a great foundation of reflexive strength”

“To me, strength is the ability to live your life the way you want to and do what you want to do, without strength you don’t have health”

“There are huge gaps in traditional strength training (in terms of transfer to movement quality on the field)”

“Probably 90% of what I do is original strength, pressing reset through crawling and the other resets”

“So when I’m talking about looking to see if they have their reflexive strength, it is about how beautifully, and how easily and how pretty they can move”

“I don’t even worry about how long they can crawl, it’s more about can they crawl pretty, does it look good? does it look like poetry?  If it looks anything less than that, we got some work to do”

“The core is instinctual, and intuitive and reactive, and it knows what to do.

Today’s episode features Keegan Smith, strength coach and founder of the RealMOVEMENT Project.

Keegan has worked with the Premiership winning Sydney Roosters in the Australian National Rugby League (NRL) along with 5 other professional teams. He spent 6 years sleeping on floors living in third world communities looking for solutions of how to make a difference.   He has a way of looking at human performance from a growth-oriented perspective, frequently utilizing calisthenics, juggling and other bodyweight challenges.  Keegan is an insightful, wise and experienced individual who makes a serious effort to walk the talk.

For this show, we dig into life experiences and philosophy, growth-mindsets, and how this filters into training athletes to reach their highest potential.  This podcast has always tried to get outside the box, and Keegan’s work is definitely helping coaches raise their awareness of not only athletic needs, but also that of society at large when it comes to strength and physical culture.

On today’s show, we discuss Keegan’s background and experiences in the sports performance field, as well as his diverse life experiences.  We get into his take on what an athlete centered performance model really looks like, and where to start when looking at the training and life environment that’ll yield best results.  He’ll get into his outside the box take on skill development, and finally chat a bit on barbell training and where he’s headed with REALMOVEMENT project.

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.

Keegan Smith Points

Keegan’s background in sports performance and strength training

Keegan’s thoughts on his time away from strength and conditioning to travel and learn in disadvantaged countries, and how this changed his philosophy on training athletes

Thoughts on an athlete-centered performance model in a high performance training environment

How diversity and getting “outside the box” in GPP can be the key to continued athletic gains

Keegan’s thoughts on barbell training and Olympic lifting

The next direction Keegan is heading in his career

Keegan Smith Quotes

“Everybody needs to feel like they are an important part of a social system, not feeling like you are part of a community is going to massively negatively effect (your) performance”

“You are not going to train the same unless you see (athletics) as a vehicle for social change”

“In strength and conditioning, thinking of someone as a human is often too zoomed in, start thinking of the requirements of a plant, and you might start to get better results with people”

“This is where strength and conditioning needs to start, the level of a living organism, the level of a living organism, the level of human psychology and human psyche”

“You can’t separate psychology from physiology”

“If everyone is fighting for their piece of impact, then that athlete is getting pulled all over the place… having a lot of coaches can be harder in a sense… less team members is probably better”

“I feel like I’m always the biggest limiting factor on the people that I work with, if I can jump a little higher, if I’m a little bit leaner, if I’m a little bit stronger, then everyone I work with will get pulled in that direction as well, by osmosis, by culture…. It’s pressure, but it’s also opportunity”

“It’s a shame for days to be passing when you don’t know what you are building”

“If you lose your ability to be a human, if you lose your ability to move in multiple directions, you become fragile and your peak will be lower”

“I don’t think you can get to the peak of physical performance by overly specializing”

“The stupider you feel about it, the more you should probably do it”

“I think of Olympic lifting as throwing and catching barb...

Today’s episode features Nick DiMarco, director of sports performance at Elon University.

With a thorough understanding of training loads, and the components behind transferable agility training, Nick has a unique array of insights he brings to the coaching table.  As a former professional athlete (NY Jets and Baltimore Ravens outside linebacker in 2014), Nick is well versed in the intuitive aspects of what it takes to be a high achieving athlete.  Nick is on track to finish his PhD in Health and Human Performance at Concordia University of Chicago by early 2020.

When it comes to agility and change of direction training, there are a lot of questions on the context and integration of perception/reaction work.  At the end of the day, the more elements of sport we as coaches can engage and overload, the better, and this area of the field has exciting possibilities for transfer to athletes.

This concept follows up to the last show with Mike Guadango on the evolution of the strength coach and the sports skill industry as a whole:  Where does the role of the strength coach in terms of reactive agility training fit in the grand scheme of things?  How do we intermix the different layers of the Bondarchuk pyramid in terms of training transfer?  Does “basic agility technique” outside of reactive stimuli need to be trained or considered?

Nick covers many of these concepts and more in today’s show, as well as describing his system of categorization of perception and reaction work.   He also shares ideas on assessing the results of such a training system, which is a question that many coaches have when considering implementing the work and gauging their progress.

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

Nick’s background in perception/reaction style work

The categorization of perception/reaction elements in programming

Nick’s take on the hard skill vs. soft skill argument in agility training for sport

How Nick integrates the perception/reaction work into a training day and week

What is Nick trying to overload in the perception reaction space that athletes are not getting in their specific sport practice

How Nick’s perception reaction work fits in the grand scheme of sport coaching

Assessing the results of a perception/reaction based program

Nick DiMarco Quotes

“We had guys who were great at a 5-10-5 or 3-cone drill, and then they would get on the field and were terrible football players”

“What are you trying to do in any field sport: you are either trying to evade a defender, or stay in front of an offensive guy and try to score or not let them score”

“(In regards to perception/reaction) We have a mirror category, we have a dodge category, we have a chaser category and we have a score category”

“You are never going to use that exact technique (of canned agility) no matter how engrained it is in you, when you are reacting to the environment versus a drill”

“(Regarding implementation of agility work in the week) With Tuesdays we’ll do a mirror category and chaser category, and then on Friday we’ll do a mirror or chaser category, and a score category.”

“The options in perception/reaction are limitless”

“In every sport the 1 on 1 situations are pretty critical so we’ll focus on that a lot”

“For basketball with your guards and forwards playing on the perimeter, if they can get more blow-by’s and prevent more blow-by’s as a defender, then that is a huge deal for them, so for them focusing on the mirror drills, and tight spaces (is important)…

“(In terms of training transfer, you are) trying to make the scenarios as close to the sport as you can, you’re not the sport coach, but at close as you can where it’s going to have some carryover”

“In the grand scheme of things,

Today’s episode features Mike Guadango, coach and owner at Freak Strength in Oakland, New Jersey.  Mike has mentored under coaching legends such as Buddy Morris, James “The Thinker” Smith, and Joe DeFranco.  He has coached athletes from NFL, MLB, NBA, MLL, Rugby League, Rugby Union and Olympic medalists to pre-pubescent athletes.  including 10+ NFL Super bowl Champs, 10+ All-Pro/Pro-bowl selections, 5+ College National Champions, 10+ Division 1a All-Americans, 20+ Collegiate All-Americans & players from every Division 1 conference.

Mike’s coaching success aside, he is one of the most authentic and transparent coaches in the industry.  As a field, we are always looking to push forward into more efficient and effective systems that serve athletes to a greater capacity.  Mike has been transforming himself into a “one stop shop” as a coach, and upcoming acupuncture practitioner that allows him a greater versatility in his role in the high performance spectrum.

If you listen to this show often, you know that I value real and authentic conversations, and this talk is the epitome of that.  For this episode, Mike talks extensively on the role of the strength coach in context of high performance sport coaching, and the potential of the physical preparation industry to evolve into something greater.

He also discusses things like his own personal journey in sports performance, and how he now views athletic development and training.  This show ties into James Smith’s global dynamics model (of which many previous podcast guests are evolving towards) and offers great insight into the future of sport training from a philosophical perspective.

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.

Key Points

What led Mike into getting a degree in acupuncture as a sports performance coach

Mike’s journey over the last decade that have changed his thoughts on the goal of sports performance

How little we actually know of training in regards to the grand scheme of things

How Mike’s views on barbell and maximal strength training has changed over time

Mike’s view on the role of a strength coach and who should be assigning GPP exercises and work loads in a high performance program

How Mike performs his movement training for his athletes to help them feel and perform at their best

Mike Guadango Quotes

“The bigger a business gets, the more inefficient it becomes”

“More tools in the tool box, now there are less people that need to man the tools”

“If you asked me a question 6 years ago, I had an absolute answer”

“It takes 10 years to start learning someone else’s techniques, then you spend another 10 years developing your own techniques, then it takes another 10 years you spend honing your techniques, and then you teach”

“The whole industry is a big salesy industry, and no-one is doing anything new”

“Unless you know your why, there’s no reason to be doing it”

“Isn’t that the goal, use as little stimuli as possible to yield the same result”

“Getting stronger is as easy as falling out of a boat and hitting water….As long as you aren’t dealing with weightlifters and powerlifters, let’s not overcomplicate it”

“If you get one leg strong… aren’t you getting both legs strong? We are splitting hairs here with so much stuff.”

“Because we don’t know enough, stay the f^@k out of their way and let the athlete perform”

“What is the true measurement of the exercises we are doing, why are we doing them, why are we so married to them, what are they going to do?”

“If an actual skills coach was able to learn and apply what we do we (strength coaches) are done; from a general standpoint I don’t think there is a need for a strength coach.”

“The skills coaches should be able to acquire this information with relatively little effort,

Today’s episode features Mike Salemi.  Mike specializes in human performance and is a sought after international presenter in the field of health and fitness. He has a diverse background in strength and conditioning and has competed over the course of 15+ years at an elite level in Powerlifting and Kettlebell Sport.

Through his own path of resolving sport-related injuries, Mike understands the importance of integrating the body, mind and spirit as a means to foster high performance for the long term.  His motivation is to help athletes, fitness professionals, and coaches discover their own potential from the inside out.  He has extensive experience learning from Paul Chek, and integrating this into a holistic method of athletic performance.

For this podcast, which was recorded in-person, Mike takes us through how his injuries in his athletic experience provided a gateway for him to learn more about his body and move into another realm of movement.   One of the big things Mike shares with us is his use of “working in” (as opposed to working out), which he learned from Paul Chek, and how to use this as a means to improve athletic recovery and psychological performance in competition.  Mike and I worked out together prior to this recording, and I was able to experience first-hand his integration of breathing into various athletic movements with a HIRTS band and the Bulgarian (Suples) bag.

Mike also shares with us thoughts on tonic vs. phasic muscle system balance, and how to fix it (which has striking resemblance to the performance of extreme ISOs in Jay Schroeder’s system), as well as how he incorporates ELDOA stretching into his practice.

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.

Key Points

How Mike has utilized band work as a creative, flow based series to train the body

What Mike has learned coming off of powerlifting in terms of training the body from a functional perspective

Working out versus working in and the impact of working in on holistic high performance

Psychological and recovery benefits of “working in” techniques

How to get started with “working in”

Tonic vs. Phasic system imbalances and how to assess and correct them

Mike’s use of ELDOA work in his training

Mike Salemi Quotes

“The link between grip and shoulder stability, I’ve seen a lot of people working with these tools (Suples Bag) increase shoulder stability in overhead movements and such, because they can irradiate the tension from the grip all the way through into the shoulder joint”

“When it comes to sport specific qualities, you need to have freedom of movement, and integration with the breath”

“Uncontrolled deceleration is where I see most all the injuries happen, especially in the planes we don’t train”

“Rotation is probably one of the most important patterns for day to day living and sport, and we never train it”

“Through every injury, is what I found is it opened to the door to understanding myself better and what I was missing in my own training"

“Paul (Chek) put an emphasis on balancing the body not only structurally, but energetically”

“A working out exercise is an energy expenditure activity, working in is an energy cultivating activity”

“If you teach someone something but you don’t live it, I think people pick up on that”

“You can pick a very familiar movement (for working in) done bodyweight, you take that movement, and then there are four criteria that show if you are working out and in a sympathetic state: Number one is if you are sweating; if you are sweating you know you are working out.  Two is digestion, if you can’t do the working in exercise on a full stomach, then you know it’s not activating the parasympathetic nervous system.  The third is the tongue should stay moist, and the fourth/fifth is the heart rate and respiratory rate shoul...

Today’s episode features Max Aita, head coach of Team Juggernaut weightlifting.

Max has been involved in the sports of Weightlifting and Powerlifting as a coach and athlete for the better part of 2 decades.  Having trained under legendary coaches Ivan Abadjiev and Steve Gough for weightlifting and alongside the likes of Mark Bell for powerlifting, Max’s experience and knowledge is extensive.

Max is a masterful coach who has studied Soviet training systems extensively, and has coached National Record holders in Weightlifting (such as Alyssa Ritchey who recently set the US record in the 49kg category in Olympic weightlifting) as well as All Time world record holders in Powerlifting.

One of the things that I’ve always enjoyed is chatting training with coaches of various disciplines, in general physical preparation, track and field, baseball, swimming, and in this case, Olympic weightlifting.   A quote I like is “not being able to read the label while you are inside the bottle”, and by that I feel that by not talking with coaches processes outside our own particular field, we lose insights our own field may not have considered due to contextual restrictions and habituation.  By talking to expert coaches of all individual sport disciplines, we can better understand the global training process and Max is an incredible coach we can all learn from, regardless of our corner of the field.

Although many coaches would look at a chat regarding Olympic lifting in terms of potential transfer to non-strength sport athletics (we do talk about this on the first 1/3 of the show), this episode is really about Max’s training process for Olympic weightlifters, his periodization, and how he approaches special and maximal strength.  For those familiar with this podcast, and/or, Soviet training methods, the Bondarchuk influence on Max’s system is significant, and concepts from Max’s training organization can be carried over to any sport process.

On today’s episode, Max talks about Olympic lifting in context of training non-strength sport athletes, the use of the Olympic lifts (and any other non-primary sport movement) as a tool, what Max has learned from the Bulgarians and beyond, as well as the nuts and bolts of his own training design and sequencing.

This podcast was recorded in person at Max’s Gym in Emeryville, California.

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.

Key Points

Max’s description of the Bulgarian system

The hardest training time period Max has gone through

How Max would approach utilizing (or not utilizing) the Olympic lifts in a non-strength sport environment

Exercise sequencing and selection for Olympic lifting and subsequent principles for training any athletes

What Max has learned from training with the Bulgarians and what his training looks like currently

What Max’s periodization for his Olympic lifting program looks like

Max’s deconstruction and reconstruction of the Bulgarian system into his own training process

The importance of rest and recovery in Max’s system

Max’s thoughts on the squat-weight bias in the Western training world relative to other sport skills

Max Aita Quotes

“Coaches biggest problems is that they construct a framework around their thinking, and then try to fit situations into their framework”

“You (some elite athletes particularly) can get away with an enormous amount of unproductive work”

“(In the aftermath of Bulgarian style weight training) Now my perspective is how can I do less, how can I maximize training to be the most effective it can possibly be”

“Some people are trying to fix things all the time, but they are not even in the right (athletic) position”

“If you just try to pull the bar as high as you can or go as heavy as possible, you might get benefits from that in the short term that seem prod...

Today’s episode features Ben Patrick ("Knees Over Toes Guy"), coach and founder of the “Athletic Truth Group,” a gym and online training service based out of Clearwater Beach, Florida.

Ben overcame debilitating knee and shin pain, as well as subsequent surgeries through a personal journey taking knee and foot strength training means to their fullest potential.  Ben transformed his basketball career, going from being continually injured and under-achieving to having a successful junior college stint by improving his own knee health and performance. This culminated for Ben with a scholarship offer to Boston University for basketball, but due to NCAA eligibility rules, Ben turned it down and began training athletes.

I’ve been aware of Ben’s training group for some time, but a string of friends and colleagues in the field who have been recommending Ben’s methods as completely transformative in their knee pain has pointed my eyes more closely to his work.  If you look through Ben’s social media, you can see how passionate he is about health and human performance.

For today’s episode, Ben keys us into his progression in knee training and how it transformed his basketball career.  He also shares some important ideas on long-term vertical jump training and health, and how a hip-centered focus, although useful for short-term gains, can actually set an athlete backward in the long run by ignoring critical links in jumping.

Ben also talks about his four pillars of performance, as well as foot training concepts.  It’s always fun to connect dots in this field, and much of Ben’s ideas resonate with things I’ve learned from Jay Schoreder’s system, such as strength through length, terminal end-range strength, in movements, fixing compensation patterns, and more.

Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, a 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 Key Points

6:30 Ben’s athletic journey from knee pain, surgeries, and injury to pain-free performance

12:47 How Ben got started with the “knees over toes” idea with the late Charles Poliquin

18:40 How it is crucial to bulletproof the ankles and knees as part of a vertical jump training system

26:31 The four pillars of Ben’s athletic training system

31:37 How to progress knees-over-toes training for knee health, strength, and performance

46:07 How Ben approaches footwork in his training

Ben Patrick, “Knees Over Toes Guy", Quotes

“(Throughout performing knees over toes training) In the course of the season, everyone else lost inches on their vertical, I gained 3”

“I do more exercises involving my feet than my knees…. I do the most volume for my feet, second most volume for my knees, third most volume for my hips because if it was the other way around, having an amazing deadlift is awesome, but the less proportionate now you are going down to knee and ankle strength, then when you go to plant and jump you have a higher chance of pain”

“It’s (feet and knees as a priority) a long term approach, but in the scheme of things, I run into athletes all the time who aren’t jumping higher than they were 5 years ago”

“I’m not a fan of only flexibility and without having strength in that range”

“As I get athletes more strength through length, they become less likely to get hurt and they get more strength in the process”

“At the end-ranges themselves, we get freakishly strong”

“I go backwards with the sled, every single day (for knee health and strength)… it takes quicker steps for a beginner to feel a burn in the VMO and the feet, while an advanced person can take bigger steps….. when in doubt, we go slow in one direction, and then we go back quickly”

“The second progression after the sled is the sissy squat”

“The reverse sled work is a foundation for the foot”

Today’s episode features coach, biomechanist and inventor Adarian Barr.

Adarian has had a number of appearances on this podcast, speaking on common sprint and jump training myths, athletic asymmetry, and the foot.  As long as I’ve known Adarian, it’s as if I am talking to someone coaching many years in the future where we have a more thorough and integrated understanding of movement.  I’ve never came across a coach or training equipment manufacturer that has gotten me the results I’ve found with Adarian’s methods, while at the same time alleviating my injury symptoms.

Adarian is a coach of “fast”, which is fundamentally different than the process of strength development, since it requires the ability to “connect the dots” on many pieces of human machinery, many of which we know relatively little about (i.e. the foot, pressure, joint articulation, breathing, etc.).

In this episode, we continue our discussion on the foot, this time specifically digging into the training of the arches, and particularly, the transverse arch of the foot.   In the world of foot training, we tend to see a lot of talk on various ways to strengthen muscles, or even see interesting devices that separate or even spread the toes, but we’ll see limited or even backwards gains by following many of these routes.

To reach an ultimate level of performance, an intimate understanding of our direct link to the ground, the foot and its arch system, is needed.  In this episode, Adarian covers that, as well as concepts of angular force application and pressure regarding the foot and squatting, and also “same-side” coaching and motor learning strategy.

Adarian Barr will be teaching out of Santa Clara, CA on June 22 and 23, you can sign up for that here: Rewire 2019 Registration

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.

Key Points

How the best athletes can create a large amount of foot pressure in a small space

The importance of the transverse arch of the foot in jumping, sprinting and athletic movement

How to sprint fast from an arch oriented perspective

How to get all three arches of the foot to activate

How the straightness or turn-out of the foot can determine the outcome of the movement

“Same-side” strategy in sport movement and motor learning

Adarian Barr Quotes

“A million people wear Nike shoes… one blows out, it does not make it a bad shoe”

“If I have 1000lb of force, and an area of 10 square inches, that will be divided up into the area, so now I technically am putting out 100lbs per square inch.  What if I can put the whole 1000lb through 1 inch?   The return is going to be so much greater than the 10 square inches.”

“When I straighten the foot out, I reduce the pressure, and I don’t go as fast”

“A lot of times we look at the end product, but we have to look at how the end product came about”

“If I slam my foot down, that is going to press the foot into dorsiflexion… at that point I’ll collapse the ankle, which is why I am not a fan of slamming the foot into the ground”

(Regarding the shin in accelerating and sprinting) “How fast is it going to move, how far is it going to move, and once it does move, you are done with it (i.e. don’t over-extend/triple extend)”

“If I stomp too hard (in sprinting), the force will come back too me too fast”

“When the transverse arch hits, you have to do more work to anchor that thing to the ground (regarding squatting when accelerating and sprinting)”

“There is nothing happening (in terms of pressure) from a tall position”

“Based on your shin range, it is going to dictate what lifts you are going to do”

“When it comes to being fast, how can I make the shin drop faster, what can I do to get the arch to anchor faster”

“Your arches don’t work automatically, you need to do something to get them to work; when you a...