Just Fly Performance Podcast

This week’s guest is UK senior athletics coach, Steve Fudge. Steve had initial training and experiences in strength and conditioning before he began training track and field sprinters in the UK. It is this combination that has helped him create a unique and incredibly effective way of seeing the development of the sprint athlete, according to each athlete’s own biochemistry and physical abilities. Steve has worked with two sub-10 sprinters in addition to other great athletes.

Taken from an article on www.mcmillanspeed.com, “Steve is the epitome of the ‘lateral thinker’. With expanding interests in therapy, nutrition, philosophy, and neuro-science, as well as a background in strength & conditioning and massage, Steve has been able to successfully apply his studies to the science of his sport.”

I really enjoy speaking with coaches who have had a variety of backgrounds, as each sport or discipline we work with adds to our view and understanding of singular disciplines. In my own path, my experience as a strength coach has benefitted my knowledge of track and field coaching tremendously, and my work with swimmers and exactly what does transfer from the weightroom to the water has globally enhanced my coaching abilities.

Listening to Steve, is it awesome to hear his multi-disciplinary background filtered down into simple, practical and effective answers that have big ramifications for us as coaches working with athletes interested in running faster, jumping higher and moving better. This was a particularly enjoyable episode to record and edit on my own end, and I the information is practical to virtually any type of coach or athlete out there.

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 Daniel Martinez, founder of Entheos Athletics. Daniel has a master’s degree from Edith Cowan University and is one of the brightest young coaches in the industry. I first met Daniel at the Central Virginia Sports Performance Seminar two years ago, and had some great conversations with him on strength and sport performance.

Daniel has a great combination of practical training experience and integration into the research and technology component of physical preparation. In today’s podcast, Daniel goes into detail on the finer points of utilizing technology to assess vertical jump ability, relative to one’s sporting needs.

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. Mike T Nelson, exercise physiologist, trainer, speaker and all around expert on the human body. I’ve had the pleasure of speaking to Mike on a variety of topics related to human performance and gait in the past, and have also gotten a lot out of the many podcasts where he has talked about nutrition and specifically, metabolic flexibility, or the balance between the body’s ability to use fats or carbohydrates for fuel.

The majority of the guests I have on the podcast are coaches in the speed and power realm, but I strongly believe that to be a great coach (not just a good coach), you must be familiar with all facets of performance, such as nutrition, basic physiology, recovery and psychology. If we spend all our effort splitting hairs over exercise and periodization concepts, we miss out on a vast world of global performance enhancers.

Some common nutrition questions for athletes that come up frequently are things like:

• How much protein should I be having?

• What should my breakfast be like for muscle growth?

• How do I recover faster from my workouts?

In many cases, athletes end up making nutrition decisions on their own based on what their friends are doing, or the ad they saw on the internet, which is unfortunate when a little education on the part of their coaches could really make a big difference in recovery and performance.

It is for this reason that I’m really excited to have Mike T Nelson on the show today. We’ll be talking on a variety of nutrition and physiological concepts that have application to any coach or athlete. Mike also does a great job breaking it down to a point where we can easily understand and apply the information.

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 Hansen. Derek is the head strength coach at Simon Fraser University, and is a renowned speed expert and consultant. He is the director of SPS consulting, and owns the site www.strengthpowerspeed.com.

Derek is a Canadian coach who was mentored by Charlie Francis and is well-respected as one of the top speed and strength experts in the world. He wrote the chapter on speed training in the book “High Performance Training for Sports”, which many sports performance professionals are familiar with.

If you haven’t noticed, a recurring theme on this podcast is that of strength, speed and power development. I’m happy to have Derek on due to his long-running experience in strength and conditioning and track and field.

As with most experienced and successful coaches, Derek has taken a lot of complicated ideas and funneled them down to simple and effective principles. Today on the show, we talk about Derek’s philosophy in application towards linear speed testing, sprint drills, general vs. specific strength, bar speed monitoring, 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 Matt Van Dyke. Matt is the associate director of sports performance at the University of Denver and the author of “Triphasic Lacrosse Training Manual”.

Matt is the youngest coach I’ve had on the podcast so far at age 27, but in his short time in the field, he is already making a big impact, having written 2 books (Triphasic manual for high school and Triphasic Lacrosse), and having been mentored under some of the great strength coaches of our time.

About a month ago, Matt showed me his ideas on training proper glute function in athletes that has slashed soft-tissue injury rates, and I was completely blown away. I’ve been familiar with the use of neuromuscular resetting for the glutes (Be Activated/RPR/MAT/NKT), as well as the idea of various exercises to aid in motor patterning, but I was really impressed by how Matt had formed a hierarchy to this model, starting with structural issues and working down the line (you can read about the full sequence with all related exercises in the Triphasic Lacrosse manual).

Seeing it all in place, it made a lot of sense to me based on everything I’ve seen in my past experience, and knew that this work was going to change how coaches thought about glute training and function for a long time.

At the University of Denver, Matt works heavily with lacrosse, alpine ski, volleyball, tennis and swimming. His prior experience included 6 months at the University of Minnesota working under Cal Dietz, as well as working at St. Cloud State, and interning at Iowa State.

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 Curtis Taylor, sprints coach for Oregon University track and field. Curtis has assembled one of the most dominating collegiate women’s sprint groups in history, featuring the likes of 2016 Olympians Ariana Washington (also 100/200m NCAA champ this past year), Deajah Stevens, and has consulted other successful athletes and Olympic competitors.

Curtis also coached Hannah Cunliffe to a big PR with a sub-11 second 100m dash in her sophomore year as a transfer from Oklahoma.

Curtis is one of the best sprint coaches in the nation, and I’m thrilled to have him on the podcast. Back to back with Henk Kraaijenhof (ep 20), this could be considered one of the best “sprint doubles” in history!

In this episode we go inside Curtis’ training philosophy and learn some things that have led to his sprint coaching successes.

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 Henk Kraaijenhof. Henk is one of the smartest coaches/consultants out there in the world of training and conditioning, with years of experience training many of the fastest sprinters in the world and consulting and training a broad array of other sports.

I first heard him speak at the Central Virginia Sports Performance Seminar in 2014, where he gave the best presentation I had ever seen on building speed in athletes. After the seminar, Henk gave me some really good thoughts on how athletes generally do better training towards their strengths rather than their weaknesses. Sprinters are designed to sprint fast, and slow-twitch distance runners are built to run further. Subjecting either to a type of training they aren’t designed for an extended period of time won’t yield the results many coaches are hoping for.

Henk might be the best guy out there to talk about athlete centered training regimens. If I ever have a question on muscle-twitch types and training, or training athletes based on psychological differences, Henk is an amazing resource.

Henk has also just finished a new book, “What We Need is Speed”, which is a compilation of Henk’s thoughts on speed in context of technique, motor learning, genetics, fiber types, strength training, training programs and more. I couldn’t recommend it more if you are interested in getting athletes faster.

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.

About Henk Kraaijenhof

Henk Kraaijenhof coaching credentials include Nelli Cooman, Merlene Ottey, Troy Douglas and Tennis star Mary Pierce. His specialties are the physical and mental coaching, in particular stress and stress management and the methodology or training. When you consider both Ottey and Douglas ran world class times in their 40’s, something is working.

Henk Kraaijenhof currently works for Vortx and his blog is helpingthebesttogetbetter.com.

He has published work in performance, training systems and protocols for elite athletes and has also conducted research in the development and application of scientific training systems. Henk is also involved in scientific research projects in human sports performance in Norway, Estonia, Italy and the Netherlands. He is currently also working as a mentor for the Olympic coaches and Olympic talent coaches in Holland.

This week’s guest is Jeremy Fischer, USA Track and Field lead coach at the Chula Vista Olympic Training Center. Jeremy works with Olympic medalists, Brittney Reese and Will Claye, as well as Paralympic performers.

Jeremy is also active in the USATF coaching education program, and is a great resource for anyone looking at getting athletes more explosive.

Jeremy’s experience as an athlete was a high jumper, and at 5’9, he leapt 7’6”!

One of my earliest memories as a young track athlete was going to “The Shell” in Madison, Wisconsin, and watching Jeremy jump 7’4”. Although he was the smallest guy in the competition, his unbelievable power on the runway and aggressiveness in the takeoff was something I had never realized was possible. It was like I was watching superman.

Now, years later I have the good fortune to interview Jeremy on many aspects of speed and power training, as well as ideas on training for the track and field jumps. I really enjoy discussing training with jumps coaches, since the events are the pinnacle of explosive power development, and has implications for nearly any other athletic activity.

Make sure you listen all the way to the end of this one, as a highlight of this whole podcast series was listening to Jeremy chat about his ideas on the “two-minute drill”, which he got from Willie Banks.

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 Keenan Robinson, national team high performance director for USA Swimming. Keenan is a coach who is fusing modern S&C and sports medicine practices with swim performance, and has worked with prominent swim programs such as The University of Michigan, North Baltimore Aquatic Club, and Arizona State University, not to mention being the 2016 head athletic trainer for the USA Olympic contingent in Rio. He is also the strength coach for Michael Phelps, arguably the most successful Olympic athlete of all time.

The world of strength training for swimmers is emerging quickly, yet hardly gets the discussion and social media presence that strength for other popular sports, such as football, basketball, baseball or general speed training harness. I’m excited to host Keenan on today’s episode, as I hope it to facilitate some important discussions in the field that can lead to healthier, and faster athletes in the water.

I know that many coaches who listen to this podcast may not work with aquatic athletes, but I have found over the years that the challenge of learning what makes aquatic athletes fast from a functional, dryland perspective, makes you look “under the hood” into the subsystems, and deep stabilization network of the body more than any other sport, and forces an honest diagnosis of training transfer on a regular basis. It also brings up great lines of discussion as to the ideas of general, specific, and coordinative aspects of training transfer and athletic well-being.

I believe there is a good reason why all athletes (those looking to do other sports in high school/college) should have some experience swimming at a young age before they move along the path of specialization.

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 Cal Dietz. Cal’s work has literally changed my experience as a strength and conditioning coach. His system has filtered itself into nearly every training program I write in some form, not to mention all of the lessons and ideas that I’ve learned from him in the last few years.

I’ve spent a lot of time learning and listening to Cal, so I also have been conjuring up some good questions to ask him in this particular episode.

Cal is a wealth of information, and does a great job of using training data to back up is methods, so I always enjoy and use concepts he shares in our conversations. One of the most interesting things I’ve heard Cal speak on in the last few years are his updates to the original Triphasic model, particularly using supramaximal training to improve tissue quality, amongst other great benefits.

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.