Today’s guest is Joe DeFranco, owner of DeFranco’s gym.  Joe was one of the first coaches I remember reading and learning from in the world of performace training, and his adaptations of the Westside system to athletes make up some of my earliest memories of performance training.  Joe, and DeFranco’s gym has become wildly successful, training many top combine performers and draft picks, as well as branching out into MMA and professional wrestling.

Many know Joe, but not many know of his beginnings in the industry, and what made his original 500 square foot storage unit gym stand out against the big speed training players in the area.  How Joe took this gym to such a level of success carries with it lessons that any coach, or athlete can find useful.

I love talking to coaches like Joe DeFranco, because they have an “in-the-trenches” mentality, are straightforward, genuine, and are fantastic at finding their answers “In the gym”.  Today’s coaching field is utterly dominated by the era of the internet which means that coaches are always looking over their shoulder at what others are doing, continually measuring themselves against peers, or scrambling to read that latest article on training.

It is unfortunate that there is a large number of coaches fail to truly be present in the gym and in their training sessions to the point of continual growth.  There are also a large number of coaches who are present, but fail to adapt and evolve their system over time as Joe has.  In speaking with Joe, you realize what has allowed him the success he has achieved with his athletes and his business, and this was a truly enjoyable interview.   In today’s chat, Joe shares this mentality, as well as the story of his early gym setup and training techniques, as well as other topics of training, such as upper body training for athletes, foot training, and even 50 rep rhythm squats.

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

Today’s episode is yet another question and answer episode, which is the fulfillment of a call for questions I put out on Instagram. The themes of this question and answer series revolve around the feet and fascia, speed and vertical jump training, as well as general coaching questions of the strength and conditioning/human performance/track and field arenas. As the host of the show, it’s always fun to offer my thoughts on important questions in the industry.

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

Today’s guest is Mike Robertson, President of Robertson Training Systems and co-owner of IFAST in Indianapolis, Indiana. Mike currently coaches a handful of professional athletes during their off-season, and is the physical preparation coach for the Indy Eleven professional soccer team. He is the creator of “Complete Single Leg Training” (completesinglelegtraining.com), “Physical Preparation 101” (physicalpreparation101.com), “Bulletproof Athlete” (bulletproofathlete.com), and many others.

One of the first websites I started looking through way back when, in my own journey as a performance coach, was T-Nation, and one of the first authors I remember reading was Mike Robertson. Fast forward a decade, and I’m an avid listener of Mike’s “Physical Preparation Podcast”. (robertsontrainingsystems.com/blog/category/podcast). Mike has delivered a vast amount of knowledge to the S&C community in his years as a coach.

In the past few years, I’ve started to attend some Postural Restoration Institute Seminars, and the ideas in the aftermath led to some researching that led me right to Mike’s articles on topics, such as “addressing the sagittal plane first”, and based on my questions I’ve had relating postural work to athletic performance, both in a linear and team based setting, I knew I had to get Mike on the show to learn more about the integration of these ideals with athletes.

Ever since my podcast with Mike Boyle, I’ve also had ideas and questions on the utilization of single leg training with athletes on the levels of progressions, as well as when and why to really emphasize it. On today’s podcast, in addition to performance posture training and single leg elements, Mike also talks about his departure from powerlift based training for athletes and ideas on maximal 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-70-mike-robertson/

Today’s guest is Scott Salwasser, director of speed and power development at Texas Tech University. Scott was the first guest on the podcast over a year ago, and has written some fantastic pieces on linear-lateral training just-fly-sports.com/scott-salwasser-interview, as well as force-velocity profiling in the preparation of NFL pro-day athletes just-fly-sports.com/training-based-individual-force-velocity.

Scott is one of the most driven, dedicated, and genuine guys I know in the industry, and I’m thrilled to have him back on the show. He has been getting athletes fast as a private and NCAA strength coach for well over a decade. His knowledge of speed training, both in general and in context of football is second to none, and his network includes some of the best in the field in arenas of motor learning, biomechanics, data-screening, and practical program design.

Scott has worked with a number of force testing applications over the years, and the most recent is his work with the MySprint app, along with the associated heavy sled training. Scott put together some great results out of his NFL pro-day group last year, and talks about the how and why of this type of work in today’s episode.

For today’s podcast, we are going to talk about Scott’s reflections on speed training in college football over the past few years, as well as his utilization of heavy sled training, force-velocity profiling as well as creating training that yields better transfer to the field of play versus canned drills. You could say that the theme of this episode is really “force”, what it means to football athletes, and how we best train it. This is an excellent episode for football, S&C, and track enthusiasts alike.

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

Today’s guest is Robbie Bourke, host of the “All Things Strength and Wellness” podcast. Robbie is a Strength and Conditioning Coach, Neuromuscular and Physical Therapist, Functional Diagnostic Nutritionist, and Holistic Health and Wellness Practitioner based in Glasnevin, Dublin.

In listening to Robbie’s podcast over the last year, I’m really amazed by the amount, and diversity of knowledge that he has in realms of not only sports performance, but also nutrition, physiology, psychology and more. It’s always been my own quest to be well rounded, so seeing another podcast host younger than myself with the knowledge that Robbie has is inspiring.

In talking to Robbie recently, we both realized that we were both excited about learning more about the same training modality: isometrics. Although a method as old as time, Robbie and I both think that many coaches and athletes are missing out by not considering this method in their regimes. Additionally, in this podcast, Robbie covers ideas on high-low, or the “barbell method” of training (Taleb), individualizing factors in training, training the nervous system, and periodization and training residuals.

It’s always great talking with Robbie, and this was a wonderful conversation on many training topics of interest that are often hot with debate.

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

Today’s guest is Chong Xie, founder of “Secret of Athleticism” (Secret-of-athleticism.com) and foot training expert. The Secret of Athleticism is a website and discussion group founded to understand more about the foot, and its relationship to athleticism, as well as best training practices. Chong has a computer science degree and has been working as a technical analyst in the software industry for the last 10 years. His interest in the foot was piqued by seeing the large discrepancy in athletic performance, and Chong has spent many years on a quest to unlock the “secret” of athletic performance that is hiding beneath our shoes.

As I’ve found in the last few months, what Chong Xie is doing might be the next big thing in sports performance training., but it’s funny, since it’s something all amazing athletes do naturally and without thinking about it.

That “thing” is the action and morphing of the foot over time, to maximize ground contact stiffness, fascial tensioning, and upstream muscle activation. Many strength coaches don’t get farther than “your ankles are immobile in your squat, so let’s do some banded distraction work”, let alone looking at foot instrinsics. This is a shame, because even low level foot training, such as big toe crunches, have been shown to significantly improve jump height! How much more can we do with knowledge of a full, integral model?

To this end, Chong Xie, even though he is not a full-time sport coach, is one of the most intriguing guests I’ve had on the podcast. Not only because he has poured in tons of research and case study in training on the foot, but also because he comes from a non-biased background, of which his is martial arts. Everything modern strength and performance coaches are taught is generally above the ankle, so the foot doesn’t fit into our holistic athletic assessments and training processes.

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.

Today’s guest is former professional cricket and rugby player, and sports performance coach, Steffan Jones. Steffan is a master, integrative trainer for fast-bowlers (“pitching” at up to 100mph in cricket, not rolling a 16lb ball at 10 pins), and has incorporated knowledge from the world’s top coaches to form a cutting edge system that yields massive improvements, and has applications for technical or strength coaches in any sport. He is the owner of the website CricketStrength.com.

Steffan is the former Somerset, Northamptonshire, Kent and Derbyshire fast bowler who forged a career out of getting the best out of himself physically. He is an ex-pro cricketer of 20yrs, and is the last dual pro between rugby & cricket. He is the leading coach in England on teaching and using heavy ball contrast training for fast bowler development. When it comes to exercises for fast bowlers, Steffan is the go to coach.

For those Americans listening to this show who don’t know much about Cricket, it is the 2nd to 3rd most popular sport in the world, depending on which stats you look at. I love learning about new sports, how they are trained, and how we can integrate these ideas into our own training and coaching. Fast-bowling is a complex skill that has facets of sprinting, javelin throw and baseball pitching, all rolled into one. How Steffan coaches these athletes can be described as nothing short of a masterpiece.

In the show today, Steffan discusses ideas on isometric strength training for potentiation and skill development, integrating all forms of training into a singular model, general vs. specific strength, the role of ankle stiffness in fast bowling (and as a universal model), cueing, and more.

For those track coaches listening to this, there are tons of implications for the javein throw event.

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.

Find more show notes at Just-Fly-Sports.com

Today’s guest is strength and conditioning coach, Mike Boyle. Mike Boyle has the trifecta of being one of the most well-known, well-loved, and most-hated strength coaches, all at the same time. He is one of the foremost experts in the fields of Strength and Conditioning, Functional Training and general fitness. In 1996 Michael co-founded Mike Boyle Strength and Conditioning, one of the first for-profit strength and conditioning companies in the world. He is the author of “Functional Training for Sports”, “Advances in Functional Training for Sports”, and “New Functional Training for Sports”.

Mike Boyle is incredibly popular for his work in training revolving around the needs of the athlete, but has become incredibly unpopular due to his dis-use of the bilateral barbell squat exercise. Many people are familiar with the fact that Mike doesn’t bilateral barbell squat his athletes, but most people will make a decision right there as to not look into how and why Mike got to this point, and continue doing everything they have been doing, as normal. Additionally, they don’t look at the results that Mike can get in athletes in markers such as vertical jump, without utilizing heavy compressive barbell work.

Even if you are the vast majority of coaches who bilateral barbell squat your athletes (myself included), there is a lot of great thought processes and stories in this podcast with a legend in our field that will make you really, truly think about every piece you have in your training system, and if you might be able to get the same, or better results without it.

For today’s episode, Mike covers his mentors and influencers in the field, the long-term process by which he stopped utilizing barbell squatting, performance advantages of deadlifts vs. squats, the results Mike can get in performance markers without squatting, and even Mike’s current personal workouts.

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.

Additional show notes at Just-fly-sports.com

Today’s guest is track and field coach, and inventor, Adarian Barr. Adarian Barr is based out of Woodland, California. His collegiate track and field coaching stops have included UW-Superior, Indiana State and UNC Pembrooke. He has written a number of sprint articles for Speedendurance.com

Adarian has invented 9 devices from footwear to sleds to exercise devices. He is a USATF Level II coach in the sprints, jumps, hurdles and relays. Adarian’s unique coaching style gets results, and his work on speed and biomechanics is being adapted by many coaches who want a deeper understanding into the innate function of the body.

I’ve spent the last year talking to Adarian, as well as learning from him in person, so I’m excited to have him as a guest on the podcast for today. His perspective on human movement is extremely unique, insightful and intelligent. I haven’t met any coach like him in my 12 years in the field, and I can say that, when watching elite athletes in action, what he says makes perfect sense. His work has changed my coaching for the better, and I’m excited to share some of that with you for the podcast today.

Topics for this chat will include Adarian’s background, his ideas on sprinting and timing, why a variety of modern coaching cues and ideas on sprinting don’t work (and how athletes often revert to their innate form when going 100%), sprint posture and breathing, foot strike, and more. This is a great chat for the coach with the hungry mind, and since it goes against the grain, it also promotes good thinking and questions.

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.

Today’s guest is Cameron Josse, back for his second appearance on the Just Fly Performance podcast, and this time we’re talking about his results, experiences and lessons learned from heavy sled training, as well as a multitude of other topics on speed training for football players, or anyone else whose sport demands fast accelerative abilities.

In our first show together, Cameron highlighted use of the 1080 sprint to create a very specific force based overload to an athletes acceleration ability (as well as general protocols for the speed and velocity range a heavy sled should land an athlete). This show tied together many facets of Cameron’s speed building ideology, along with some of the directions that he has taken Joe DeFranco’s legendary training templates. This is a fantastic episode for anyone interested in speed, or who trains team sport competitors.

In this episode, we’ll be covering Cameron’s lessons from his heavy-resisted sled training cycles, special strength for speed, top exercises for speed specific to acceleration with technical considerations of common football sprint patterning, lifting progressions from high school to college and the pro’s, and more.

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.