Just Fly Performance Podcast

This week’s guest on the podcast is Mark Watts. Mark is the former education director at EliteFTS, a strength coach of 15 years, served in the USMC, and is one of the most well read, and wisest guys I know in this field. He currently serves as a 5th grade school teacher in Columbus, Ohio.

Most of the material on this podcast has to do with biomechanics, sets, reps, periodization, and similar material. I wanted to go a bit of a different direction this episode, but to something more global, which is coaching, leadership and personal development. For that topic, I couldn’t think of anyone better than Mark Watts. Many coaches are familiar with Mark’s columnist work on EliteFTS, particularly his ideas on professional aspects of sports performance.

This episode is all about the sports performance industry, coaching, leadership, and making the biggest impact you can on your athletes.

The longer that I’ve been a coach, the more and more I realize that real “success” is not defined by your win and loss record, although that is important (especially if you want to keep your job, in many cases), but by the effect you have on the lives of your athletes.

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.

This week’s guest is Jonas Dodoo head coach and founder of Speed Works, a high level training facility in the UK. Jonas has been mentored by some of the top track and field coaches in the profession, such as Dan Pfaff and Stu McMillan, and works with some of the fastest track athletes in the nation, as well as rugby players.

Jonas has trained some really elite sprinters, such as Chijindu Ujah who has gone 9.96 for 100m, and has an incredible depth of training knowledge when it comes to building speed in track and team sports. Some of the things that Jonas taught me on the show will stick with me, not only in my work with track athletes, but even in my aquatic and ball-sport S&C work as well (such as skill stabilization, and year to year iterations). The implications for training speed are often universal.

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 Boo Schexnayder. Boo is a legendary jump, speed and power coach, as well as educator, and is also one of the most generous coaches I know in terms of sharing his knowledge.

I’m not going to use up too much of this shown notes intro other than saying that Boo one of the biggest influences on a lot of things that I do in my own work, and I’m thrilled to have him on the show this week.

Boo’s trademark is not only his innovation in building fast and powerful athletes, but also his no-nonsense, practical approach to it all that has produced a multitude of NCAA champions in the jumps.

This episode is a must listen for any coach who is interested in getting athletes faster and more powerful. Although we talk a lot about track and field, there are tons of applications for coaches of any sport.

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 Jeff Moyer, owner of Dynamic Correspondence (DC) Sports Training in Pittsburgh area, Pennsylvania. Jeff is a relentless learner with great knowledge in a variety of training methods.

Jeff has experience with some relatively new, but very effective training ideals, such as the 1x20 strength system, modern research and philosophy on cueing and skill acquisition, vision training, and more.

The team that squats and benches the most doesn’t win the game. The team that has talent, and trains in a way that transfers properly to the field of play will win. Of course, being strong is of huge importance, but how do you get strong in a way that leaves maximal adaptation to other vital athletic qualities? Also, how do we engage the brain in the way it might be processing information on the field in regards to our basic vision and movement skills?

Fortunately, Jeff is a guy who has found a lot of ways to train that transfer from the gym to the field, particularly in the areas of skill acquisition and vision, not to mention an efficient strength training ideal that leaves athletes jumping higher and running faster.

To be completely honest, with my own tennis players, if I had a choice between increasing their vertical jump or improving some agility test, or… increasing their vision and ability to see and process the tennis ball in a variety of situations, I’d pick vision hands down.

This talk between Jeff and I is great for strength and sport coaches alike.

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 JB Morin, a French researcher doing some of the best, and most applied work in the world in regards to sprinting and jumping.

JB has produced, and been involved with, some landmark studies that are helping track and speed coaches to understand more about what makes elite athletes so fast, and how we can train this type of athleticism.

Today, we’re going to talk about some awesome research and application on speed, acceleration and vertical jump training. Topics include:

• Force-Velocity profiling in jumping

• Over-speed jumping

• Training the ankles for jumping and sprinting

• Acceleration efficiency

• Heavy sled sprints

• And more!

There were a few cool pieces that I picked up in this interview that I actually went and used myself immediately in the week following this podcast recording. One of the things I did some heavy sled training in the weightroom, combined with the Freelap BLE timing system, and found an instant and noticeable improvement in my sprint acceleration ability 2 days later. I am most definitely an athlete who lacks force in my acceleration, and if you listen to the interview, you’ll know why this is just the ticket for so many athletes.

Giving the CNS what it needs, when you do it right, has instant ramifications.

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 Carl Valle of spikesonly.com.

Carl is, amongst other sprint and hurdle coaching talents, a speed technology expert. A current trend in athletic performance is jump testing, both as a means of assessing physical progression over the course of a training year, as well as a way of seeking to balance out athletes for the prevention of injury, and potential optimization of performance.

The vertical jump is the greatest display of power that an athlete can generally produce, so it does make good sense to have an adequate knowledge regarding testing and assessing the movement. After all, “what you measure, you improve”.

There are a lot of opinions on the best way to test power through the vertical jump, so Carl and I cover a lot of ground on this topic in this 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.

Ryan has an unbelievable amount of experience with all the modern tech tools available to the modern strength coach, but more importantly, has a perspective on all of it that goes well beyond his years in the field.

It’s easy to find yourself on one side or the other, in regards to technology in sport, saying that it is either the absolute solution to the needs of the sports performance field, or that it is an intuition robbing, “keep up with the Joneses” field that universities and top professional institutions feel they must have to be current and modern.

Ryan’s talk helped me really to understand the heart of a coach using technology and monitoring within the scope of still being a coach first and foremost. People who poke fun at the hyper-monitoring high-performance directorship that some of athletic performance is turning towards sometimes blind themselves to the fact that, at the heart of the matter, coaches who are using technology to assist them, are mostly great coaches before they are tech users.

Ryan and I talk about that balance on the show today, in addition to a lot of other awesome training info that you’ll see within the key points area of these show notes, including plyometrics, jump training, training load for players of varying heights, energy system development for basketball, and much more!

This week’s guest is sprint coach Ryan Banta. Ryan is the author of the upcoming “Sprinter’s Compendium”, which at its completion will be the most exhaustive resource to date on speed training. Ryan is also a highly successful high school sprint and performance coach out of Ballwin Missouri, and a frequent contributor to Just Fly Sports.

Ryan has some great training insights for sprinters, as well as sport performance in general. Training track and field athletes always drives questions that any coach can and should consider when working with their own athletes for maximal performance.

The idea of “short to long” alone is a great conversation that isn’t just for track coaches, but references the way that any athletes trains and adapts over a full season of training.

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.

If you are into getting athletes faster and stronger (which I assume you are since you are reading this right now), then you need to know the name Dan Fichter.

When it comes to anything regarding the nervous system and training speed and power, Dan Fichter is the man. There are few out there who have as broad of experience as him in the realm of training the nervous system for athletic enhancement. I’ve never learned so much about the brain and nervous system, and its relation to speed and power from doing a single podcast thus far.

Dan Fichter owns and operates WannaGetFast Power/Speed Training, a sports performance training business in Rochester, NY and Tampa, FL that offers training to elite athletes. Fichter’s clients have included pro hockey players Chris Thorburn (Winnipeg Jets), Stanley Cup champion Brian Gionta (Buffalo Sabres), Ryan Callahan (Tampa Bay Lightning, US Olympic Team), Shane Prince (Binghamton Senators), Olympic track and field star Victoriya Rybalko from the Ukraine, NY Yankee shortstop Cito Culver, UFC fighter Mike Massenzio, Oakland A’s 2nd baseman Andy Parrino, Washington Nationals Infielder Chris Bostick along with Washington Nationals pitcher Brian Dupra. Dan has coached athletes in all sports from all over the country. Dan is in two different Halls of Fame for his own athletic prowess in football.

Fichter is presently the head football coach at Irondequoit High School in New York.

If you enjoy track and field, I can almost certainly guarantee that you have come across Jimson Lee’s fantastic site, speedendurance.com. Much of my own formation as a coach has come as a result of the internet age, and discovering sprint training ideas, and more from Speedendurance has played a large role in my own development.

Jimson Lee has been around track for a long time. There aren’t too many facets of sprint training, or history, that you won’t find somewhere on his website. One of the things I’ve always enjoyed in any aspect of sport is not only knowing the science and practice of training, but also the history of where it all came from.

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.