Just Fly Performance Podcast

Today’s episode features James Smith, owner of the “U of Strength” in Tyngsboro Massachusetts.  

James has coached a variety of athletes from the novice to the elite skill levels, some of which include current NHL, NBA, and MLS players and the 2011 NCAA Men’s Basketball National Champion UConn Huskies. Through adaptive, creative, and experience-based program design, Jamie assists athletes in reaching their full potential on and off the ice, court, and field.  

We have had several coaches on this podcast previously in the world of perception and reaction.  At the end of the day, barbell training is nice, but it can only help an athlete improve by a particular amount in their sport, and honestly, getting athletes strong is easy to do.  

What separates a great coach from a novice is the ability to see patterns in the gym (and turf warm-up) that indicate an athlete is actually going to see playing time in their sport rather than riding the pine.  How many athletes have we seen get stronger and even faster but still not make an impact in their actual sport?

This quote by James says a lot.

“We used to have your typical dynamic warm up and it wasn’t productive”

James Smith is the epitome of a forward thinker in the field.  He realized that canned warmup drills and simply getting athletes strong wasn’t giving them their best chance of success in sport, which led him down the path of reactive training that mimicks the dynamic athlete-to-athlete decision making process.  

On today’s episode, James talks all things perception and reaction, how he got to the point he is now, and how it is making a big difference for his athletes.  At the end of the day, the best athletes in sport should probably be the best at the exercises you are selecting for the brunt of your training program.

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 “skill gap” that exists in the way that many high school sports are coached

James first steps in implementing perception and reaction based work

How and why athletes lose creativity through over-coaching and too much robotic drill work

How perception-action work can transfer globally to sport play

How to make weightlifting reps more variable and “game-like”

What James is seeing through the implementation of perception/reaction based work instead of canned agility training

“I believe at the younger level you can have a big impact on anticipation, pattern recognition; that part of their developmental process”

“At some point (regarding the closed agility drills) I just took them out”

“In the off-season we run 2-3 days of “problem solving” activities (we don’t call them agility)”

“I still find a ton of value in our sprint work… if you want to talk about on the turf on the basketball court before we get in the weightroom, we always start with a problem solving activity”

“We design the activity based on situations, 1v1, 1v2, 2v2, basically small sided games”

“When you work with a younger athlete you have to be very careful on how you say things”

“We used to have your typical dynamic warm up and it wasn’t productive”

“(Regarding perception/action constraints) the defense is mimicking the jumping pattern of the offense”

“I’ve seen a big difference in decision making, anticipation (in using perception/reaction work)”

“One of the consequences of doing all these pre-planned robotic drills is that athlete’s creativity is gone”

“Your activities, drills, etc. needs to be as representative as possible, but sometimes logistics/facilities can be an issue; when I’m training these skills it’s opponent on opponent… I want them in offensive and defensive situations”

“We train every quality throughout the year, the only thing I change is the volume”

Today’s episode features track coach Tony Holler, famous for his “Feed the Cats” training system for high school sprinters.  He is also the coach of Marcellus Moore, a rising junior and one of the top sprinters in the nation with a 100m personal best of 10.31 ran as a high school sophomore.  

Tony is a teacher and coach at Plainfield North High School with 35 years experience coaching football, basketball, and track.  He is a member of Illinois Track & Field Hall of Fame and appeared on episode #61 where he spoke on his essentials of the “Feed the Cats” sprint philosophy that prioritizes maximal speed training, rest and low-dosage work.  

Training is much more than X’s and O’s, as the environment coaches create has a massive impact on the athlete.  The environment the “Feed the Cats”/Rank-Record-Publish model provides for Tony’s sprinters is so powerful, it has drawn the interest of not only other sports, but also interest to it’s application of life in general (especially on my end).

Recently, Tony put out an article highlighting his experience implementing the “Bigger Faster Stronger” strength training program and how has related the “PR” model that BFS incorporates into his speed training this year.  Setting a practice or competition PR is powerful, and Tony has great insight on ways to harness this. We also get into topics on coaching phenoms, strength training and the nuts and bolts of a training environment that is maximally conducive to speed building.  

Check out Tony's "Feed the Cats" DVD with Championship Productions.

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 “Feed the Cats” and “Rank, Record, Publish” has filtered into football and basketball coaching

Recent lessons Tony has gained from training a phenom (Marcellus Moore 10.31 100m dash as a HS sophomore)

How kids doing what they like (instead of what they are forced to do) is a game changer

How Tony got to his position where he doesn’t utilize weight training for his sprinters and his background in Bigger Faster Stronger

Bigger, faster, stronger and the concept of “constant PR’s” in training

Tony’s “speed cycle” in sprint training that was inspired by BFS

How to maintain dopamine levels through training structure

What Tony has been doing with X-Factor training recently

Tony Holler Quotes

“Prioritize speed #1, prioritize rest #2, those are the two fundamental principles of feed the cats”

“(Marcellus) is much smoother, much more consistent.  His top end speed hasn’t improved much, but he holds it a lot better…. He hasn’t missed a race in 2 years… he is the opposite of a flexible kid”

“Most of the time, phenoms are the hardest kids to coach”

“Cats have fun racing somebody, they have fun running the fastest 10m fly they’ve ever run”

“Cats don’t run 3 miles, and they don’t see “now what” either.  They like to get out of practice early”

“Kids are really really good at what they like; they wouldn’t cheat it they liked what they did.  They’ll read like crazy if they like what they are reading”

“The further away from kids in education you get, the more money you make”

“The grind is not the right religion for people; instead we need to get really good at things that we love”

“My non-football players don’t lift after practice, but I tell them to do 100 pushups a day.  Looking frail is no way to live your life”

“I do like strength, I just don’t see a difference in between kids who lift in their sprinting, and kids who don’t lift in their sprinting, if there was a difference, I would change my mind”

“When you micro-dose, you’ll never ruin the next day, and that’s critical to “Feed the Cats”

“When we micro-dose in the weight room, we would lift, but we would not lift to soreness… Charlie Fran...

Today’s episode features sports performance coach Jeremy Frisch.  Jeremy is a leader in training young athletes, and has developed a training style revolving around play in favor of robotic or overly specific work for this population.

Jeremy is the owner of Achieve Performance Training in Clinton, Massachusetts.  Prior to that he served as a strength coach for Holy Cross, working with basketball, soccer, lacrosse, baseball, softball, field hockey, tennis and track and field.  He was part of the panel of coaches on episode #100 of the podcast, talking about the injury and burnout crisis in youth sports today related to a lack of play in tandem with early sport specialization and over-coaching.

For today’s podcast, Jeremy gets into the nuts and bolts of his own system with his youth athletic populations. We get into the roots of the skill acquisition and diversity that allows young athletes to become elite performers later in life, as well as concepts that can help adult athletes have more rewarding and effective training.  

It’s very easy to have tunnel vision with older athletes, not considering where they have been at points in their development.  As Jeremy talks about his program, it’s easy to see that athletic development is absolutely a long-term process, and there is a lot of fun to be had along the way.  Many times, play and fun is the answer to breaking out of a rut while staying healthy.

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

Child development and the role of observation of older athletes and modeling

What are the key skills that young athletes should be able to perform and how Jeremy creates an environment for kids to attain them

How to train athletes to play in a “deep” position

Dan Pfaff’s “Alternative methods for developing strength power and mobility” article and how Jeremy has incorporated it into his work with athletes

How sports played early on can give athletes skills in their bank to use later

How “strength” gained from sports such as wrestling (grappling) can show up in the weightroom

The importance of play in total athletic development

“My youngest child learned by watching the other ones; he has done everything earlier than the other two boys.  He has watched them more, so he mimicks them”

“Beng able to take what the athlete learns when they are younger, and putting it towards one specific thing in the end will yield a higher result”

“The first things we are going to attack are those fundamental movement skills: simple stuff like skipping and hopping, shuffling, backpedaling, sprinting and leaping and those type of movements, we are going to figure out ways for those kids to practice it”

“If you play enough sports or play with your friends enough, you’ll develop those other skills, like catching, throwing, being able to stop a ball, dodge a ball, things like that”

“That’s something I look at; what drill can we do where kids can do these movements (such as squatting) and not even know they are doing it”

“Those (movement quality drills) have always been there in PE, it’s sort of lost but it’s funny to see it in strength and conditioning now”

“I just love the connection between PE and strength and conditioning, it’s there you just have to dig it up”

“We played a game of tag, but you had to run in a lunge… really low to the ground.  I did it with them, it felt like an ISO extreme lunge… it was a great way for young children to develop strength in their legs, they are doing it without even realizing it”

“Dan talks about doing duck walks and low lunge walks and things like that; and when athletes get really good at those things, it really cleans their (running form) up without practicing running”

“I’d say in the last 2 years,

Today’s episode features Jérome Simian, French physical preparation coach. Jérome is a coach who not only has been trained by some of the best minds in the world (Jay Schroeder and Charles Poliquin) but also works with some of the greatest athletes in the world, notably Kevin Mayer, the new decathlon world record holder who broke Ashton Eaton’s old mark with an incredible score of 9126.

After Kevin Mayer broke the record, Jérome wrote a fantastic article on Strength Sensei about some of the training that allowed Kevin Mayer to overcome back and foot issues, as well as a weak start in his races to progress to a point where he is now the world record holder.  

One of the big issues with physical preparation is that the higher the level the athlete is, the less weightroom and barbell lifts will transfer to that athlete’s on-field performance.  All too often forgotten is that it is not what you do but how you do it. Jérome is truly a master of the how.  This episode is a must-listen for any track and field or strength coach, as what Jérome did with Kevin Mayer is truly phenomenal.  

On today’s episode, Jérome will cover his approach with Kevin Mayer, how he fixed some of Kevin’s imbalances, his approach to maximal strength training (and then eventually a lack thereof) with Kevin in his lead up to setting the world record.  There are also many tips to the nuances of exercise performance within this episode.

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

Jérome’s training of Kevin Mayer, world record holder in the decathlon

How Jérome approaches basic barbell strength training for athletes in terms of posture, position and muscle firing

Kevin Mayer’s initial performance needs when he came to Jérome

Why Jérome decided to stop doing any significant barbell lifting in Kevin’s training for a period of many months

Why exact exercise selection is not nearly as important as how you do what you are doing in the weightroom or track

Jérome Simian Quotes

“Strength training and resiliency are not separate qualities”

“Kevin’s muscles were fighting each other in lifting… it was more a coordination problem”

“There is constant control around the joint at all times; there is no time where the muscle is completely relaxed”

“You want to pull (down) with your hip flexors when you squat”

“For the RDL I’ll pinch the skin on the lumbar spine… and that teaches them how to get into the proper position… I don’t like telling them pull with this, think about a muscle, etc.”

“Extreme ISO’s are supposed to be movement”

“(When he came to me) Kevin was more a kangaroo than a racehorse”

“We never get very far from ATG squats because that keeps his hips loose”

“(Regarding a period of time in Kevin Mayer’s training) No (heavy) squatting no deadlifting at all from October to March”

“It’s the concept of metaphors; if you are producing 300lbs one way, but resisting 75lb the other way, you are better off producing 200lb one way and zero the other way (in terms of building efficient movement)”

“If you want to lift and be good for sport you have to have a healthy disregard for the amount of weight on the bar”

“Do you want to be strong, or do you want to lift heavy weights, they are not necessarily the same”

About Jérome Simian

Jérome Simian started his coaching career in 1998. Since then, he has coached athletes to compete in seven Olympic games, to World and European medals, as well to national records and dozens of national championships. His experience ranges from track and field to professional rugby, to figure skating, to mention only a few.

In a country where good athletes are helped for free and coached by the federal system, his private practice was built on helping those who did not f...

Today’s episode features Adarian Barr, biomechanist and inventor.  Adarian is a unique coach who sees human movement in a fresh new light.  His methods and insight has highlighted the majority of my own learning on sprinting, jumping, throwing and everything in between in the past 2 years, and I’m thrilled to have him back on the show.

Today, Adarian is going to take us on a deep dive into the single most fundamental element of human movement and locomotion, the impulse the body delivers to the ground (or when the ground pushes back on you).  

When we coach athletes in various sporting skills, we will usually start with some sort of big, obvious external position, for example: knees up, or eliminate that backside sprint mechanic.  The problem is that giving these cues, absent from the impulse that facilitated them will throw off an athletes timing and often positioning.  This inevitably leads us on the trail of “keep doing this and eventually you’ll be faster”, but when athletes need to be fast, they’ll just do what they’ve always been doing!  

To this end, understanding the dynamics of the feet, the ankle, the way the body creates impulse into the ground, and how the mechanics of sprinting, jumping and everything else is built around the impulse, we can really start to dig into the core of movement, and why athletes sprint and jump the way they do.  

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

Adarian’s history in training the foot

Defining the impulse that projects athletes in sprinting or jumping

How to assess an athlete’s impulse

Impulse in relation to plyometrics and deceleration training

Fundamental differences in athletes with athletes who depress the ankle very little or a lot in running steps

How impulse impacts knee lift in sprinting

Foot steering and how it impacts impulse and direction of force

Adarian Barr Quotes

“My question is, when does the ground push you back.  If you don’t know when the ground is pushing you back, it’s a lost conversation”

“The least amount of movement and the fastest movement is the best (in regards to the impulse and unloading of Achilles)”

“If you can move a joint a quarter inch, faster, you can get a lot more out of it”

“You can’t get a bigger step because (the impulse) is not going to throw you that far”

“When the impulse releases, that’s your max speed”

“If all you do is extend, extend, extend, when it’s time to run and jump, you don’t get the fold up portion”

“Deceleration is already built into the movement”

“The more the heel travels in a negative action towards the ground, the longer it is going to take to be returned to you, and as it returns, you need to make sure the swing leg matches that speed”

“Your block start settings should be based off of the speed and depth of your impulse”

“The four things to the impulse assessment is which way the feet steer, the depth of the shin angle change, the knees track and the magnitude of the impulse… with those four things we can determine how to set you up for any sport”

“If you have a slow and long impulse, you have a high knee lift.  If you have a short and fast impulse, you won’t have as high of knee lift.  The knee rises as the heel drops”

“You don’t want to get rid of backside mechanics, because it’s tied to the impulse”

“(In sprinting) If we are talking about a push the ground person, we do want to get rid of backside mechanics… if we are talking about an impulse person, we don’t want to get rid of backside”

“If you punch the ground, the impulse comes back so fast, you aren’t ready for the next step”

“If the foot is turned out, then the heel must also turn out”

“(with the foot turned out in athletes) the impulse is not going to come from the heel dro...

Today’s episode features strength coach Sheldon Dunlap, one of the most creative strength coaches I’ve met who is doing big things with strength training for speed enhancement.  

Sheldon has been a strength coach at UC Davis 3 years, one of his primary sporting assignments being track and field.  Prior to UC Davis, Sheldon was a strength coach for the NBA D-league Erie Bayhawks and was an intern at Duke University.

I first met Sheldon at  the First Annual “Bay Area Sports Performance Seminar” put on by Dr. Ramsey Nijem, as we sat at a table together while listening to presentations.  In learning of some of the things that Sheldon was doing in the weightroom with his track athletes, and the impact it was having on their performances, I discovered I was sitting next to a young pioneer in our field.  

Today’s show is all about Sheldon’s strength system for track, which has unique ideas in the sequencing and integration of oscillating reps, as well as training methods for the hip flexors (TFL in particular) and the feet.  This is an awesome “nuts and bolts” episode with training ideas that anyone can instantly integrate into their own system (as I have).

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 Sheldon is doing with his track program’s strength and conditioning

How Sheldon got into tendon elasticity considerations in his program

How Sheldon replaced the isometric phase of Triphasic Training with an oscillating isometric phase

The types of lifts Sheldon used in his program

Sheldon’s approach to hip flexor work, specifically TFL work

How skateboarding impacted Sheldon’s long jump takeoff

Sheldon Dunlap Quotes

“Tendon elasticity is the name of the game in track and field”

“I replaced the isometric phase (of Triphasic Training) with oscillating work… we had our Blue and Gold meet that year and people were getting PR’s left and right, left and right”

“The first time around I did this we did two weeks of eccentric, two weeks of oscillating, and then they went home, and I used 5-3-1 for their concentric phase while they were at home”

“I want a “black mini band” type of athlete (an athlete who produces more movement power respectively through the power of the fascial system”

“(After a deep oscillating squat phase) I felt like lightning coming out of the bottom of the squat, but I got stuck halfway up”

“After going TFL pops, the next day after bounding, my TFL had never been so sore in my life”

“The stronger your TFL is the less you have to rely on your psoas”

“In skateboarding you are able to produce a lot more elasticity because you are putting your foot on the ground with a great amount of force in a small amount of time”

Show Notes

Oscillating squats

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

TFL Pops

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su4xw9h4pKc&feature=youtu.be

About Sheldon Dunlap

Sheldon Dunlap has been a strength coach at UC Davis 3 years, one of his primary sporting assignments being track and field.  Prior to UC Davis, Sheldon was a strength coach for the NBA D-league Erie Bayhawks. Prior to the Bayhawks, he spent 2.5 years as an intern at Duke University.  Sheldon attended Appalachian State University and is certified by the NSCA.

Today’s episode features physical preparation coach Pat Trainor, who is currently the Minor League Strength and Conditioning Coordinator for the Tampa Bay Rays baseball organization.  In his current role, he oversees the physical preparation of the Rays player development system, consisting of about 175+ athletes and 8 staff members.

Pat is a coach in the pro baseball ranks who is a master of context.  When it comes to training high-level athletes who already have a high degree of sport skill; enough for them to get paid for it, there is never just one solution for every athlete.  

On top of this, integration of one’s training system into the grand scheme and vision of the sport coaches is critical to success, something Pat does a great job of and goes in depth into in today’s episode.  Pro sports are often a tradeoff of skills as well, if you get faster and quicker, you may lose some hitting power, so managing what to change and how to do it is important.

In today’s episode Pat goes in detail into how he builds his physical preparation program around the needs of his players, and in context of their skill demands.  He also goes into the importance of the feet, his approach to maximal strength development as well as how to approach agility development in baseball.

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 Pat integrates his physical preparation work in context of what the skill coaches are wanting to accomplish

The importance of the feet in training baseball athletes

Maximal strength considerations in context for minor league baseball

The differences in physical readiness between players of different cultural backgrounds (USA and Latin America)

Building speed and agility in baseball players and lynchpins that determine an athlete’s ability to move properly

Pat Trainor Quotes

“In field/court sports you don’t have this one variable you can point to and say “that’s what made this guy better”

“We need to be able to train athletes to handle practice workloads”

“The number one thing we can have the largest impact on is speed/acceleration (for baseball)”

“We as physical preparation coaches always have goals, we want to make sure we spend some time on players weaknesses, but don’t want to spend so much time we take away from their strengths”

“If we want to work on defense and speed, that’s part of the pie we are taking out of that guy’s day”

“We use the 5-10-5 basic pro agility… it can be used as a measure of strength… we don’t use a 3 or 1 rep max test (outside of maybe January)”

“Our outfielders may not need to do as much decelerative work as our infielders”

“Agility is really weird in baseball… for me it more comes down to a mobility standpoint”

“If players lack internal rotation, that’s saying something along the lines of that’s wrong from a tissue standpoint or a bony process”

About Pat Trainor

Patrick Trainor is currently the Minor League Strength and Conditioning Coordinator for the Tampa Bay Rays baseball organization.  In his current role, he oversees the physical preparation of the Rays player development system, consisting of about 175+ athletes and 8 staff members.  Prior to joining the Rays in his current role before the 2017 season, he has spent time with the San Diego Padres and Cleveland Indians, as well as a previous stint with the Rays as an assistant strength and conditioning coach at the Minor League affiliate level.  Outside of professional baseball, he has held positions at the collegiate level with Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, PA (2007-2009) as well as Queens College in New York (2012), overseeing the physical preparation of varsity sports.

Today’s episode features Cal Dietz and Chris Korfist, two highly regarded individuals in the world of sports performance who are no strangers to this show.  

I was excited about getting Cal and Chris on the show together since they created one of my favorite sports training book on the market: Triphasic Training for Football.  In this manual, French Contrast training is used heavily throughout the entire training cycle, and the results of the program on high school football athletes were huge gains in sprinting and vertical jump abilities.  

We’ll kick off today’s show chatting about how the Triphasic Football Manual came together, as well as the idea that French Contrast training is something that isn’t just for peaking situations.  From there, we get into something that Chris and Cal have been working heavily on, and that is training the foot. A good athletic foot requires more than simply doing calf raises, and Chris Korfist in particular has a variety of isometrics specially designed to train the foot in different aspects of gait.   

Cal Dietz is well known for his use of oscillating repetitions and the great results he gets form them, and we also cover the use of oscillating repetitions, not just in peaking situations, but their effectiveness to bring out explosive strength in athletes to a greater degree than standard repetitions.  We’ll also touch on the Exogen weighted fusiform technology that is revolutionizing technique and special strength training for sports.

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 creation of Triphasic Training for Football

Tissue change in deep squatting

Importance of the foot in athletic performance/vibration pickup

Elastic contribution to movement in athletes and animals

Foot strength training progressions

Usage of oscillatory reps in strength training in non-peaking situations

Use of the Exogen gear in sprint training

Cal Dietz and Chris Korfist Quotes

“If you consistently do deep squats, then the pliability of that quad tendon becomes less; and then you have altered a ton of free energy return that is a quick and explosive contraction”

“The foot dissipates about 30% that comes into the body so you can properly deal with it”

“When the foot hits the ground, it’s absorbing vibrations of what the ground is”

“Your gait changes momentarily when you switch from one running surface to another; the best athletes can change and adapt quickly”

“We wouldn’t have knee problems if we ran on air… the foot is the problem”

“The basis of the foot is getting the isometric strength down first… if you don’t have the isometric strength, it’s just not going to work very well”

“The true value of oscillatory reps is very specific stress”

“Start using Exogen with the calf sleeves…. you are talking about rotational inertia”

“The common thing you’ll see with people doing a high knee action is to throw their torso forward”

About Cal Dietz

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.  During his time at U of M, he help founded and chairs the Sport Biomechanics Interest Group with its purpose to explore the physiological and biomechanical aspects of advanced human performance encompassing the various aspects of kinesiology, biomechanics, neuro-mechanics and physics.  Dietz has also given numerous lectures around the country, as well as publish several scientific articles and dozens articles on training. Most recently, Dietz co-authored the top selling book, Triphasic Training: A systematic approach to elite speed a...

Today’s episode features Dr. Emily Splichal, podiatrist and human movement specialist.  When it comes to the foot, many coaches and athletes realize its’ importance, but due to its’ complexity, we often don’t dig much further than realizing it is important to spend less time in socks and shoes, and more time moving around bare footed.

Dr. Emily Splichal’s background in fitness and training offers a 1-2 punch that makes her an extremely valuable resource to the sport and exercise community.  She is also the creator of Naboso technology, which offers textured surfaces to train on, such as exercise mats and insoles.

Getting the feet to work properly is more than simply going barefoot, however, it is about understanding how the feet pick up sensory information, and then how to use that in exposing athletes to training environments that maximize the sensory capability of the feet.  Too many times we will label a foot as “weak” when it really wasn’t sensing something it needed to in order for the proper muscles to fire and tense up the fascia that spirals up to the legs and trunk.

In today’s podcast, Dr. Splichal will cover the ways that the foot picks up sensations, and how to manipulate training surfaces (and shoes) to maximize these sensations and improve performance.  She also goes into the role of vibration in foot sensation, as well as how athletes must pick up on this vibration to deliver a proper impulse to the ground through the body.  Finally she’ll give us her take on balance based work and the feet, as well as talking about Naboso technology.

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

Different types of nerves within the body, interoceptors and exteroceptors

Ways the skin picks up sensation in the foot and the difference between slow and fast receptors

How to utilize knowledge of the sense receptors in our footwear selection

How vibration and surface type plays in to the athletes relationship with the floor

Balance work in relation to foot sensation and adaptation

Naboso Technology and textured insoles

Dr. Emily Splichal’s Quotes

“The four main mechanoceptors are broken down into two different classifications, two adapt to the stimulus slowly… the other two are fast adapting, which means that they respond to the stimulus and then they shut off… so they need a continuous on/off of a stimulus”

“First slow adapting is Merkel disc and is slow adapting, sensitive to two-point discrimination (best analogy is braille)”

“The second slow adapting is Ruffini ending, which is skin stretch”

“Fast adapting, FA1 and FA2 are sensitive to vibration”

“The vibratory mechanoreceptors are super important because they are tuned to the stimulus of impact… 70% of the receptors in the bottom of the feet are to pick up vibration”

“If cushion in the shoes takes away vibration, it took away some of my athlete’s potential energy”

“(On properly using elastic energy) You don’t want to be using your muscles for work, to take each step, when you do that you fatigue the muscular system and cardiovascular system”

“Every surface vibrates differently”

“Surfaces need to be a symbiotic relationship between the foot and the ground”

“Dancing with the ground is the art and science of impact forces”

“You have to have a sense of your body in space, how hard you are striking the ground, the rhythm of your movement patterns, the grace”

“If you wear socks, wear as thin of a sock as possible… as much as I can I encourage people to go without a sock”

“Surface hardness is really important, the softer the surface starts to become the more you disconnect the stimulus between surface, foot and brain”

“Plantar fasciitis,  Achilles tendonitis, IT band syndrome,

Today’s episode features Chris Chase, who is currently the Director of Performance for the Memphis Grizzlies.  When it comes to working with professional athletes, the world of sports performance is literally a “different ballgame” compared to what happens in the training of high school or even collegiate athletes.

In keeping players on the floor throughout long and grueling seasons is not a mathematical equation, and coaches must create their own menu systems to ensure that athletes are encountering minimal risk in the weight room while getting maximal benefit to their tissues for resiliency on the field of play.  In learning how coaches such as Chris cater to the needs of these athletes, we can all learn more about how to cater to our own athlete’s needs, regardless of training population.

Chris Chase is the epitome of a coach who has honed his menu system for the needs of his athletes.  In this episode, we’ll go into Chris’s go-to training methods and means for keeping his NBA players as healthy as possible while minimizing risk.

We’ll also go into some of his squatting progressions, which has gotten a big influence from the Postural Restoration Institute, and how this is centered around hitting the right muscles in the right positions without inducing risk.  Finally, Chris keys us in to how he approaches speed and movement training in this extensive episode on NBA physical preparation.

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 role of a pro strength coach versus college or developmental ranks

How Chris approaches barbell training with his NBA athletes

Why and how Chris uses machine training in the NBA population

Chris’s trainable exercise menu for his athletes

How much of Chris’s menu is dedicated to health versus performance KPI’s

How Chris uses the four jump for his NBA players

Chris’s use of PRI in his performance program

Squatting progressions for NBA players

Speed and movement development for NBA populations and common causes of movement related injury

Chris Chase Quotes

“My job as a strength and conditioning coach is to put you in good, trainable conditions that maximizes the good and minimizes the bad”

“A lot of barbell work is not on our guys’ trainable menu’s but that’s not to say that it won’t be at some point”

“The dirty little secret (to performance and injury prevention) is consistent loading of tissues in the right way”

“Sport is not health and wellness”

“You need to do things that are more about the person in front of you than your own program”

“My S&C performance work is very much just respecting position”

“I just want to do the thing I can load you the most in at the time… I’m putting my athlete on the wall (to squat) because it is the only way he is going to feel his legs”

About Chris Chase

Chris Chase is currently the Director of Performance for the Memphis Grizzlies. Chris has previously served as a S&C Coach for the Atlanta Hawks, University of Southern California & the University of Rhode Island, catering to a variety of Olympic sports.