Just Fly Performance Podcast

This week’s guest is Yosef Johnson, owner of Ultimate Athletic Concepts and performance coach with nearly 20 years of experience. Many of the previous guests on the show, as well as contributors to Just Fly Sports, have been mentored by Yosef on Russian training methods and the work of Dr. Michael Yessis.

Yosef has a blend of mentorship and communication from “The Big Three” in Russian Sport Peformance methodology (Dr. Bondarchuk, Yuri Verkhoshansky, Dr. Michael Yessis) that is probably unsurpassed by any performance coaches in the Western world. Out of this knowledge and mentorship has come a wealth of knowledge that has trickled down into the methods and means of coaches at a growing number of NCAA institutions. One of these methods that is gathering more and more notoriety is the 1x20 method, but Yosef also has great knowledge of special strength methods, biomechanics and long-term development amongst others.

One of the main reasons I wanted to get Yosef on the show was that so many other guests I’ve had will point to Yosef as a mentor and consultant of theirs, so I really wanted to get to the source of all this great knowledge, and Yosef has been a conduit of the wealth of information, Soviet and otherwise, in this regard.

On the show today, we’ll be talking about special strength training, long term development, maximal strength training in the scope of athleticism, and more.

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

This week’s guest is Dan Pfaff, head jumps and multi-events coach at ALTIS, and seasoned veteran of the track and field profession. Dan is, in the opinion of many, the greatest educator of our time in the world of track and field, his philosophy and lectures reaching thousands of aspiring and professional coaches.

Dan’s resume includes 49 Olympians with nine medalists, 51 World Championship competitors (also nine medalists), and five world-record holders. He has directed athletes to 57 national records across a multitude of events. He served on five Olympic Games coaching staffs in five different countries and nine World Championships staffs for six different countries. He has lectured in 27 countries and is published in over 20 countries.

It has been a long time goal of mine to have coach Pfaff on the podcast, as well as a chance to have a discussion based on his lectures and work that have shaped a large amount of my own coaching and training philosophy.

For this episode in particular, we go primarily into the role of the weightroom in speed development, special strength, and the addressing of strengths and weaknesses. We also get into a variety of topics after this, including cueing, team sport transference to track and field, planning and organization, and static stretching.

Dan has made the world of track and field a better place throughout his legendary career, and it’s my honor to have him as a guest for the podcast.

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.

This week’s guest is Adam Feit, Director of Sports Performance for Reach Your Potential Training (RYPT) and master class coach at Precision Nutrition. Adam has worked at every level of physical preparation, from youth up to the professional level. He also created the Complete Jumps Training System for coaches.

I had heard of Adam, not only through the Complete Jumps product, but also through Ken Clark’s mentioning of the unique speed training approach at RYPT, as well as seeing great tweets on Adam’s coaching ideals down at a seminar at ALTIS.

This podcast revolves around Adam’s philosophies on speed and jump development, particularly in young athletes. Many of my guests are high level track and field coaches, or performance coaches who work largely with collegiate and professional athletes. Adam has not only that experience, but also has years of training developmental athletes. As Curtis Taylor of Oregon mentioned in a previous podcast, the more age groups in the sport you can work with, the better coach you become.

Adam is a great guy to talk to about jump training. After doing a podcast with Lee Taft, and looking more into everything Lee does on speed (have an intimate understanding of game movement, and build that outward into speed work), it makes good sense to take the same care with jumping and its relation to team sport movement. One of Adam’s unique exercise models is in the realm of hybrid jump training, which unlocks a new world of physical prep possibility.

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.

This week’s guest is Derek Evely, Canadian track and field coach, and renowned expert on training organization. Derek has coached all of the track and field events, but is particularly experienced in the throws. Our talk today centers around the Bondarchuk training method, and its implications for other track events, such as sprints and jumps, as well as physical preparation concepts.

Talk about the Bondarchuk system (responsible for an absurd number of Olympic Gold medalists in the throws) is very popular these days, even amongst non-track and field coaches, such as those coaches involved in the physical preparation of team sport athletes. The thing with Bondarchuk style training, is that it is so different than every other training style, and applying even its principles to team sport situations can be difficult, due to the chaotic workloads of field/court sport practice and play.

Even for those of us in track and field, using a non-waveloading, do the same workout (or 2, maybe 3 workouts) every time you hit the track, seems like a difficult proposition to dive in on. In order to get the most out of this system’s ideals, as well as the direction it is headed, I can’t think of too many people better to talk to than Derek Evely. Nick Garcia, our guest for Episode #6 (it seems so long ago) is also a coach who has great experience with Bondarchuk and traditional methods.

Today, Derek shares with us knowledge of the Bondarchuk system, and a myriad of applicable ideas on long term development, short and long term improvement, individualization and athlete reactions, differences between throwers and sprinters in context of the Bondarchuk system, velocity based training applications, 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.

This week’s guest is Dr. Bryan Mann of the University of Missouri (Mizzou). Dr. Mann is internationally renowned for his work in the autoregulation of strength training, specifically with Velocity Based Training and the Autoregulatory Progressive Resistance Exercise method (APRE).

I’m really excited to have Dr. Mann on the show today. You could say that this podcast can really be whittled down to one ideal: the development of athletic power. Within the realms of developing power for the field of play, the intelligent utilization of barbell velocities is certainly something to invest one’s time in, given the time many athletes spent in the weightroom in modern physical preparation.

In discussing bar speed from different performance specialists, from track and field, to powerlifting, to strength and conditioning, you’ll get different opinions across the board. On one end, you have the thought that athletes get all the “speed monitoring” they need out on the track while sprinting and jumping, and don’t need the added “intensification” of monitoring the weightroom as well. On the other hand, a good number of truly elite coaches who are producing gold medal athletes (for example, Rana Reider) enjoy using barbell tracking in the weightroom. On the show today, I was excited to get Dr. Mann’s take on these variables in building top-end speed and jumping ability.

Bar speed and VBT certainly isn’t the only area of sport performance Dr. Mann is an expert in, and on the show today, we talk about a large number of sports performance topics, such as the neural and muscular adaptations to power training, muscle fiber types and adaptations, squat depth, training and athlete’s strength vs. weaknesses, and more.

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

This week’s guest is Lee Taft, who is highly respected as one of the top athletic movement specialists in the world. He has taught his multi-directional speed methods to top performance coaches and fitness professionals all over the world.

Today’s episode is all about coaching and building speed in a team sport environment.

Through my own journey in learning about the role of vision and reaction in sport this past year, as well as some podcast episodes highlighting reactionary skill as a critical component of the training process, such as Episode #35 with Cameron Josse, I’ve been searching for experts who can lay down solid guidelines on making what we do as strength and speed experts count when it comes to on-the-court play.

One of the most frustrating things as a sports performance coach is working extremely hard to improve athlete’s strength, power and armor, but then watching them struggle to keep up with the movement skill of the opposing team. Lee’s work in multidirectional sport movement helps to fill in that gap. You’ll find great insight particularly from his ideas on reactionary speed, linking movements, sensory roles of the feet in team sport movement, and more.

This is an episode that confirmed some things I’d been hearing from great coaches in the past year, and more importantly, sparked new ideas and thought processes in me, to the effect that I’ve been pouring over slow-motion YouTube videos of the world’s best athletes, as well as creating conversation with my fellow sports performance professionals. Lee is a first-class individual, and whatever your mode of coaching (strength, track and field, physical education) I know you’ll love this episode!

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

This week’s guest is Ron McKeefery, vice president of performance and education at PLAE. Ron is also the author of “CEO Strength Coach”, a bestselling manual for coaches on the art of being a technician, manager and entrepreneur in the field.

Ron has been a part of Just Fly Sports through a text interview in the past, where he answered questions on all facets of the career track of strength and conditioning, such as aspects of the profession not learned in school and the personal qualities required for success in the field.

Ron’s background in the field is extensive and covers all facets of the industry, from the NFL and MLB, to training special forces, as well as several long stints in the NCAA. One thing I’m learning more and more is that long-time strength and conditioning coaches are some of the wisest human beings I know, and Ron’s answers in this particular show are a testament to that.

Today we are chatting on topics of the career track of sports performance, ideas on team culture, perspectives and reflections on Ron’s own career, and much more.

I’m excited to bring you this episode, since I believe that it builds on another fantastic show we did a few months back with Mark Watts, which was about the professional aspects of the field we know as strength and conditioning/sports performance. Lots (and I mean lots) of people want to get into this profession, but do they know what it takes, not only to get a job, but to make a career out of it, and actually “retire as a strength coach”? (not many people 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.

This week’s guest is Dr. Ken Clark, professor of kinesiology at West Chester University, PA. Ken is one of the top experts on speed in the world today, both from a research and practical perspective.

Ken is not only a researcher, but is also a coach and consultant in the world of speed, so he is able to apply this work in a practical setting. I’ve heard Ken on a number of performance related podcasts, so I was excited to get him on mine and answer a number of questions I had in the world of building speed in both the context of track and field, and team sport.

Based on the number of times I’ve heard him on these shows, I can really say that Ken Clark might be the most in demand speed expert in the world.

On the podcast today, we’ll cover a variety of topics, including sprint cues, relationships between top-end speed and acceleration, individualizing speed training, sprint drills, resisted and assisted sprint training, and more. Of particular interest is the in-depth approach Ken takes to addressing speed development in team sport through the compete-technique-compete model, mirror and reaction drills, and more.

This talk is an amazing addition to the already incredible lineup of guests in the world of speed and power development we’ve had thus far.

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.

This week’s podcast features two familiar faces to the show: Chris Korfist and Dan Fichter I gathered these two speed training experts together because the topic of the day is the Inno-sport system and its derivatives, in context of getting athletes faster and stronger.

Back in the mid-2000’s, the “Inno-sport” philosophy started to permeate the training sphere with some very uncommon, and in many cases, never seen before training methods, touting big results in speed and power.

Much of the Inno-sport training was likened to Jay Schroeder’s training methods (although it was not Jay Schroeder) which included lots of isometrics, reactive lifting, plyometrics, and time-based lifting brackets, the same methods that afforded Adam Archuleta a 4.37s 40 yard dash, 39 inch vertical jump, 530lb bench press and 663lb squat.

Some of the sample terminology and concept of the system are as follows:

• Training in two brackets, “An1” (0-9 seconds) and “An2” (9-40 seconds, but generally around 9-25 seconds as far as improving An1 is concerned)

• Classification of movement (really the wiring of the nervous system) into duration, magnitude and rate elements

• Utilization of “drop-offs” that are tagged to particular exercises in the workout, such as sprinting, jumping, or lifting numbers, that indicate when the workout is over, and when is generally an optimal time to train next (dropping off 6% will require around 4 days rest before training the same muscle groups/motor patterns again). You’ll hear Dan and Chris talk about this in terms of “autoregulation”, or AREG, which determines how much work you’ll do in a day (when you drop-off X amount of performance), and when you’ll train again (the more you dropped off, the longer you have to wait until you can train hard again). Let’s say you were running 10 meter flys and wanted to drop off 3% so you could conceptually be good to train speed again in two days. If you ran 1.00 in the 10 fly as your best, then once you ran a 1.03 or worse, you would have “dropped off” and be done for the day.

• The inno-sport system is an entirely neural driven system, not related to the training residuals that classify traditional periodization and planning methods, or on planned overtraining and tapering

Dan and Chris spent a lot of time emailing the creator of inno-sport, who was known as “DB Hammer”, and the information they gleaned was far beyond what was contained in the famous Inno-sport book, that is sadly unavailable today.

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

This week’s guest is Quinn Henoch. Quinn is the head of rehabilitation for Juggernaut HQ and his gym, Paradigm Performance Therapy is located adjacently to the new Juggernaut gym. He is also the founder of The Clinical Athlete.

Although speed and vertical jump based training, largely in the scope of track and field is a regular topic of this podcast, I think it is truly important to engage all aspects of the field of physical preparation and human performance. Today’s episode covers topics that have roots in both physical therapy and strength training, as well as concepts that speed-power athletes and coaches can take away for higher performance.

In that regard, we have the “one-two punch” of strength coach and physical therapist, Quinn Henoch. I can’t think of anyone better to tackle some common questions that physical preparation professionals might have with the flood of corrective exercise and SMR tools available to us and our athletes today.

There are so many therapy options out there in relation to athletes, it’s hard to make sense of best practices. Additionally, there are so many opinions on ideals of stretching, posture and breathing dynamics, this is another swamp to wade through to find the optimal method. Fortunately, Quinn is one of the best, practical coach-therapists out there who gets to the root of what we are looking to “solve” in these scenarios, and how to best manage training practices in light of this information.

Today on the podcast, we’ll talk about things like static stretching, weighted stretching, foam rolling and SMR techniques, the placebo effect in therapy, and much more. Overall, this was an awesome podcast for coaches and therapists, since it covered as many topics that were “in the middle” of the two arenas of performance.

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