Today’s episode features guest Cody Plofker, Co-Founder of Adapt Performance and Rehab in Lawrence Township, New Jersey.   Cody has worked with athletes of all levels and ranges, including those in the NFL and collegiate ranks.   He is an expert in blending PRI principles with modern athletic performance methods.  For those of you who enjoyed the lifting concepts talk with Justin Moore, this will be another incredible episode along the same lines of thought.

About a year ago, I first got introduced to the Postural Restoration Institute (PRI) through a seminar put on at the US Olympic Training Center.  Since then, I’ve realized that the biggest piece missing in my coaching paradigm for my collegiate population is an intimate understanding of the spinal engine, posture, respiration, and how to optimally assess and correct athletes based on these concepts.

So often as strength coaches, we get in to reductionist thinking of just rolling and stretching tight muscles, to achieve better movement patterns, but the fact of the matter is that the body is a more complex system, and the brain will increase the tone of particular muscles for a reason.  This is where Cody’s experience is such an incredible help for athletes, as well as educating coaches.

Cody Plofker has been a student of not only PRI for many years, but also has experience using common assessment systems of the FMS and SFMA, as well as Functional Range Conditioning.  Since these are very common tools in the sports performance and personal training world, I’m excited to chat with someone as intelligent as Cody in regards to which aspects of which systems he finds useful, and how his athlete assessment currently plays out.

On today’s podcast, we will talk about Cody’s assessment methods, blending aspects of PRI and SFMA, as well as dealing with common athlete issues such as “tight” ankles, internal rotation deficits, and extension pattern problems.  We’ll also get into optimizing hip extension and talk a great deal about squatting progressions and patterns.  One of the amazing quotes of Cody’s that I think sums things up well is:

“You gotta go after the pelvic position first; I’m not going to stretch something until we get that”

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

View more show notes at Just-fly-sports.com/podcast-82-cody-plofker

Today’s episode features a special coaching roundtable featuring three experts in the implementation of the “1x20” training system: Jeff Moyer of DC Sports Training, Matt Thome of Michigan Tech University, and Ryan Bracius of Wisconsin Whitewater.

Most folks familiar with Just Fly Sports and the podcast know of Jeff Moyer, as he has been a frequent guest and writer, and is also the first guy to really get me intrigued by the 1x20 system, and its benefits for athletes. Since then, Jeff has been a huge contributor to Just Fly Sports, and I’ve had a number of coaches ask me about the 1x20 system since our first episode together. I met Matt Thome and Ryan Bracius in person at the Track Football Consortium VI in Chicago this past December. Matt is the head strength coach at Michigan Tech, working with football and basketball, and Ryan is developing some of the best football athletes in NCAA Division III at Wisconsin Whitewater. Both are getting fantastic results with rock-bottom injury rates. Matt had the idea of talking not just about “1x20”, but particularly about “life after 1x20”, or how to transition athletes to the next step in their training after the 1x20 system has run its course. It’s important to realize that coaches using the 1x20 model use much more than just this singular set and rep scheme.

For those unfamiliar with the 1x20 system, a simple explanation is as follows:

Start athletes out with 5-8 exercises, with 1 set of 20 reps each, building up to around 18-23 exercises over time. Instead of pushing the gas pedal down the first day with the intensity, the exercises are “slow cooked” by gradually adding weight over time. When athletes reach adaptation (stop improving) on the sets of 20, then the next phase is 1x14, and finally 1x8. This system was taught to many coaches today by Yosef Johnson who was mentored by the inventor of the system, Dr. Michael Yessis. Coaches who have used the system have noted good to great gains in strength, but also in athletes explosive KPI’s compared to other systems, as well as a reduction in injury rate.

On the episode today, we go in depth on each coach’s introduction to the 1x20 system, how they implement it, and what kind of results they are getting. We’ll also talk about why the 1x20 works so well from a physiological and neural level. The second half of the episode talks about the transition from the 1x20 system into other training methods, such as velocity based, and special strength training.

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

View more show notes at Just-fly-sports.com/podcast-81-moyer-thome-bracius/

Today’s guest is Cal Dietz, returning for his second appearance on the Just Fly Performance Podcast. Two of Cal’s books, Triphasic Training (the original) and then the Triphasic Training manual for Football (written with Chris Korfist) have had a huge impact on my program writing. I’ve seen Cal speak several times, and have always walked away with great new ideas on training and performance.

Cal Dietz has been the Head Olympic Strength and Conditioning coach for numerous sports at the University of Minnesota since 2000. He has consulted with Olympic and World Champions in various sports and professional athletes in the NHL, NFL, NBA, MLB, and Professional Boxing. He runs the website xlathlete.com, and is one of the founders of the RPR (Reflexive Performance Reset) system. Cal has been a mentor to dozens of up-and-coming strength coaches in the field, including 2-time podcast guest, Matt Van Dyke.

In this episode, we get into a lot of nuts and bolts of Cal’s views on speed training, particularly assisted and resisted methods, jumping and plyometrics, cueing in the weightroom, as well as all topics of lifting and the posterior chain. We’ll also get into training the feet, which has been a large interest of mine in the past year.

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

View more show notes at Just-fly-sports.com/podcast-80-cal-dietz

Today’s guest is Håkan Andersson, elite Swedish sprint coach and consultant. Håkan has more than 30 years of experience, has had periods of serving as the national sprint and relay coach, and is or has been the personal coach for many successful track and field sprinters. He also involvement in speed and power in other sports, such as swimming and boxing, and has consulted with many professional organizations.

Looking at how good the Swedish sprinters are, with as small of a population as the country has, and how poor the climate is for sprinting (sunlight is generally a big indicator of speed, just look at how great of percentage of the USA’s best sprinters are from Florida, Texas and California), you know that Håkan is really doing some great things. Looking at some of the progressions of these athletes, such as Peter Karlsson going from 11.70 to 10.18 in the 100m, and you know something special is happening in his training groups.

Everything I’ve heard from Håkan in the past is the “top of the line” in terms of combining knowledge of speed and power research into good practice. With his many years of coaching experience, as well as creativity on training his athletes in the far North, to excellent results, Håkan is a guest I’ve been looking forward to having on the show for some time.

On this episode, we’ll be talking about a spectrum of speed training topics, ranging from sprint mechanics and forces, to all means of strength training and their relationship to speed, and finally, breaking down actual sprint training programming.

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

View more show notes at Just-fly-sports.com/podcast-79

Today’s guest is Justin Moore, performance education coordinater at Parabolic Performance & Rehabilitation.  We’ve had some prodigious young coaches on this show, such as Matt Van Dyke, Cameron Josse, and Max Shmarzo, and Justin is no exception to that rule.

I first came across Justin’s work on Darkside Strength, and it has been one of my top resources this past year in terms of applying Postural Restoration (PRI) Institute principles into my strength and conditioning practice.  For those not familiar with PRI, it is a way of looking at the body from a standpoint of respiration, and its impact on joint position.

I’ve found over the years that athletes who tend to thrive more, as they gain weight room strength, in terms of their performance in track, or swimming, are those who have alignments that are closer to optimal.  Athletes who have poor position of the thorax will generally hit glass ceilings of their sport performance, or even go backwards when heavily loaded over time.

In my mind, those coaches that are integrating PRI into strength and conditioning based practice are pushing the industry forward in a big way, and can help all of us give our athletes the positioning, and subsequent training they need to reach their highest level, and prevent injury in the process.  Today on the podcast, Justin shares his knowledge on PRI principles, cueing strategies, squat and deadlift sequencing, the role of the hamstrings in lifting, 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 show notes at Just-fly-sports.com/podcast-78-justin-moore/

Today’s guest is coach, writer and speaker Christian Thibaudeau.  If you are familiar with T-Nation, and don’t live under a rock in general, you are likely aware of Christian and his work on strength and human performance.

Although Christian is often looked at as a bodybuilding type coach, he is very much a strength, power and athletic performance coach, and a great one at that.  If you haven’t read his book, “Theory and Application of Modern Strength and Power Methods”,  you are really missing out on some great work in the realm of explosive athletic preparation.

In the last few years, one of the biggest areas of intrigue for me, and possibly the biggest “game changer” I’ve been utilizing in coaching is that of neuro-typing athletes.  I started with the Braverman test several years ago, read the “Edge Effect”, and then recently I’ve been listening to some of the new work that Christian has come out with on the level of neuro-typing focusing on three general athlete classifications, five in total, that really make great sense when considering what has worked, or hasn’t worked, for me or athletes I coach.  I’ve been devouring everything Christian has written on the topic, and it has made true changes in my coaching for the better.

The five types coach Thibaudeau will discuss are type 1A and B (neural/dopamine types), type 2A and B (muscular/adrenaline types) and type 3 (serotonin type).  This podcast goes in depth into individualizing training programs based on these types, and how to get the best results you possibly can for each individual.

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

View more show notes at Just-fly-sports.com/podcast-77-christian-thibaudeau/

Today’s podcast is a special roundtable episode on sport movement, featuring an expert panel of Shawn Myszka, Scott Salwasser and Michael Zweifel. Each of these coaches has a unique area of application and insight into making athletes better at reacting to actual sport stimuli, making plays, and ultimately winning games.

Shawn Myszka is a movement specialist working with many NFL athletes, and has a large background in physical preparation.

Scott Salwasser is the director of speed and power at Texas Tech university and is making his third appearance on the Just Fly Performance Podcast. Scott is not only a great linear speed coach, as we’ve seen through his talks and writing on the topic, but also is constantly pioneering sport-applicable movement training through his own athletes and interaction with other movement specialists in the field.

Michael Zweifel, who has written some tremendous articles for Just Fly Sports in the past, is the owner of Building Better Athletes Performance, is an NCAA record holding wide receiver. Michael is an industry leader in reactive training for athletes, particularly in the scholastic population, and where specialization is not possible.

“Agility” is a word likely most used in marketing, and getting parents to buy in that a particular sports performance institution will make their child better at reacting in their sport, but this is rarely, if ever the case in the manner that the majority of these training interventions are implemented.

For today’s podcast, we simply cover the ideas of what “agility” training really is, and best practices in creating training to allow athletes to become more reactive movers on the field of play.

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

View more show notes at Just-fly-sports.com/podcast-76-myszka-salwasser-zweifel

Today’s guest is Nick Davis, head women’s track and field coach at the University of Wisconsin, LaCrosse. Nick Davis has been a successful track and field coach with multiple stops on the NCAA Division I and III levels, has experience in research, lecturing and course instruction, and has also published 5 original research papers.

I share an affinity with Nick, as we were both competitors in very similar event classifications (track and field jumps and javelin) and are both from the great state of Wisconsin. About a year ago, I ran across Nick’s USTFCCCA presentation on mental skills training for athletes and was blown away by the depth and content (http://www.ustfccca.org/assets/symposiums/2016/Davis-Nick-2016.pdf)

Coach Davis’s coaching resume includes work at MIT and Marquette University. He was named the 2015 USTFCCCA New England Region Men's Assistant Coach of the Year in 2015 and 2016. Nick competed as an athlete at UW-Milwaukee, where he was a 10-time Horizon League individual champion in the high jump and javelin. At UW-Milwaukee, Davis was named the 2004 Horizon League Athlete of the Year. He was a four-time NCAA Division I Midwest Regional Qualifier in the high jump and javelin for the Panthers while setting the school record in the high jump (indoor and outdoor) and javelin.

The more time I spend with great coaches, the more I realize that one of the biggest separation points that they have is their ability to understand what makes athletes tick from a mental perspective, and how to motivate and prepare an athlete accordingly. The mind drives the body, and I feel that not enough podcasts have episodes that are dedicated to mental skills, when we know through research of its effectiveness.

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

View more show notes at Just-fly-sports.com/podcast-75-nick-davis

Today’s guest is Joseph Coyne, exercise physiologist and sport scientist from Gold Coast, Australia.  Joseph is a well-rounded performance coach who has spent a lot of time recently in the realm of training world-class track and field sprinters and jumpers in China.

I don’t remember exactly how I came across Joseph’s work, but the quality of his training videos are first class and I know he has also had tremendous mentors in the field, such as working with Randy Huntington.  From altering the paradigm on jump mats and testing, to resisted and assisted training, as well as special strength work in the gym, I’d been really looking forward to having Joseph on this podcast for some time.

Joseph is currently the Physical Preparation Coach for the Chinese Athletics Association's jump & sprints section; where he handles the rehabilitation and strength & power training for China’s best track & field athletes.  Many of those he worked with had world top-20 marks.  Previously, he was the Performance Manager at the Chinese Olympic Committee’s National Sports Training Centre in Beijing in the lead up to the Rio Olympics.  He also spent time as a performance manager with the Chinese Olympic committee through EXOS, and had a long-running performance clinic in Queensland.

Topics we’ll cover today are numerous, and will include sand sprinting, special strength for sprinters and jumpers, ideas on maximal strength for sprint athletes, complex training, ideas on jump training and the “maximal displacement” theory, hamstring training, and Joeseph’s work with the 1080 sprint and kBox.

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 show notes at Just-fly-sports.com/podcast-74-joseph-coyne

Today’s guest is Dr. Donald Chu, performance coach and physical therapist, as well as legendary track and field coach at UC Hayward in the 1980’s.  Dr. Chu wrote the landmark book “Jumping Into Plyometrics”, which was one of the first in my own bookshelf that I had even in high school.  The special exercise of doing a depth jump into a basketball dunk was one that inspired many creative variations of my own doing and with my athletes.

Dr. Chu has developed an extensive reputation in the field of sports rehabilitation and in the areas of fitness and conditioning. He has been credited with bringing "Plyometric Training" to the attention of the athletic world through his application of theoretical knowledge into practical demonstrations.  

I’ve heard from more than one experienced track coach in the last few years just how successful Dr. Chu’s jumpers were at UC Hayward, and I was very excited to ask him questions regarding his training methods.  If I’ve learned anything over the years, it is that “if a method works, it works”, and the science will eventually catch up with it.  I think there is a lot of gold that came out of the 1980’s in training and coaching that we are missing out on today.  If you just look at some of the national and state record books, you can see so many outstanding performances from this era, despite all the “training advances” we have gone through. 

On the show today, Dr. Chu and I talk about quantifying and implementing plyometrics, jump training, Russian training methods, keystone workouts, and much more.  For anyone interested in defying gravity, as well as paying respect to the prime training methods of decades past, this is an amazing show.

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

View more show notes at Just-fly-sports.com