Just Fly Performance Podcast

Rett Larson, a physical preparation coach, discusses the integration of various aspects of sports performance in the warm-up process. Topics include coaching styles across different countries, the importance of data and focusing on the best players, finding intrinsic value in exercises, leveling up in real life, the evolution of warm-up exercises, and incorporating strength exercises into warm-ups.

John Kiely, senior lecturer in Performance and Innovation at the University of Limerick, discusses the impact of belief, perception, and placebo in training. He highlights the importance of communication, athlete engagement, and creating a connection between training and long-term goals. The podcast explores the power of belief in athletic performance, the role of perception and attention, and the significance of belief screens and coaching in training programs.

Today’s episode features Jamie Smith, founder and head sport preparation coach of The U of Strength.  Jamie is a passionate coach and learner, who strives to help athletes incorporate the fullness of perceptual, social and emotional, elements in the course of training.  Jamie has been a multi-time guest on this show, speaking on his approach to training that meets the demands of the game, and settling for nothing less. The further I get into my coaching journey, the more I understand and appreciate the massive importance of stimulating an athlete on the levels of their physiology, their emotions and social interactions, and their perception of their external environment.  Coach Jay Schroeder had his term called the “PIPES”, referring to the importance of a training session being stimulating Physiologically, Intellectually, Psychologically, Emotionally and Spiritually”.  I certainly agree with those terms, but they could also be re-ordered, as per today’s conversation “Physiologically, Individually, Perceptually, Emotionally, and Socially”.  (Individual referring to individual autonomy). On the show today, Jamie goes into how he “stacks” games, play, perception & reaction type work onto more traditional training methods, for greater “sticky-ness” to sport itself.  Through today’s conversation, he’ll get into concepts of variability in training as it relates to sport, driving intention and learning through a training program, older vs. younger athlete response to game play with potentiation, and much more. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Lost Empire Herbs, and the Elastic Essentials online course. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 3:30 – How Jamie infuses “play” into basic exercises and warmup movements 21:50 – How infusing meaning into movement improves intention, immersion and movement quality 49:00 – The role of play in helping infuse natural variability in athletic development 33:38 – How the goal of play and variability changes through a training week 43:17 – Menu systems and autonomy within the scope of games and training sessions for athletes 49:39 – How Jamie’s approach to “High CNS”, max velocity days and how layers of challenge are added on, as athletes grow and mature 1:02:53 – What gym work and warming up looks like for Jamie’s athletes when those athletes are already playing their sport a lot outside of the weightroom (and how to help use social/emotional elements to create a more restorative stimulus) 1:15:34 – “Sticky-ness” of skill in training, created by blending “training” with gameplay “Play hits those missing pieces of the strength and conditioning model” “Game play can create athlete driven approaches to movement and strength and conditioning” “We teach them for the first few weeks, just so they have a general understanding, “what is a crawl”… but once it gets to the point where they understand what it is, lets layer on challenges” “A big thing with the gameplay, is we never repeat the same thing twice in a row” “I believe in exposing them to a wide range of situations so they can see what works, and what doesn’t work” “It’s all about intent, and when you add intent, it changes everything” “(With play) I’m talking about focused variability, having a purpose” “They are trying to solve a problem while getting pushed, shoved, knocked off balance; I call that kind of “sticky strength” qualities” “On the low CNS days I am looking at the gameplay, the emotional side of things, the social emotional side of things” “The social-emotional does have an immediate impact on (performance), it does influence the strength, the speed, the power qualities” “You’re working with a 7th, 8th, 9th grader, you are going to see way better speed qualities emerge when that kid is trying to evade a trailing defender, compared to doing a band-resisted acceleration from one cone to another cone” “If you’re in 11th grade, 12th grade, college, we are going to do our flying 10’s, you are going to hit that one rep (you have one opportunity) we are going to record it, and after, we are going to put that in an environment that is going to allow you to express that as well; after that we always put them into a contextual situation” “Who is the individual in front of you, and what are the missing pieces” “The input needs to be thought of, and managed, just as much as the output” “In season, there is so much stress put on these kids so that, all I care about is that, when they leave, they feel better” “If it’s “im exhausted, my dog died, I crammed for a test”, it’s definitely game based, long duration isometrics, exposing the foot to a ton of tactile information, and that’s about it” “If you look at a whole year, and are doing the same thing over and over again, you are not pushing learning, you are not pushing their development” “With older athletes 92-96% of the time their (vertical improved after playing a game).  With the younger athletes… when they went back to jump again, their (jump) actually went down… I thought it was really fascinating with the experienced athletes using the game play to potentiate, but the younger athlete with it being constantly changing” “Stickiness; that’s where these small sided games, blending it with traditional environments and the weight-room, that’s where you can connect them” About Jamie Smith Coach Jamie Smith, CSCS, is the founder and head sport preparation coach of The U of Strength, LLC. He is passionate about guiding his athletes through their developmental process and discovering unique ways that blend physical preparation and skill adaptation. As a former athlete at Merrimack College, Jamie graduated with a degree in Sports Medicine and a concentration in Exercise Physiology. As a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist, he has had the opportunity to coach under some of the most knowledgeable and experienced coaches in the industry. Jamie 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.

Today’s episode features sports performance coach and sport scientist, Joel Reinhardt.  Joel joined Stanford Football’s staff as the assistant sports performance coach and applied sports science coordinator in 2022.  Prior to Stanford, has spent time at UMass and Nicholls State working in sports performance and sports science roles. One of the great things about the sports performance/strength & conditioning field is that it is interdisciplinary in nature.  Within the field itself, we have the elements of anatomy/physiology, biomechanics, pedagogy, team culture & coaching, training arrangement, and long-term development. We also have the integration of sport science, which quantifies the complex nature of the ways players are loaded in their sport.  When the nature of this load is understood; many relationships can be noticed between a football practice week, for example, and the way a track sprints or jumps coach may set up their training week.  The more areas we see training loads and adaptive trends, the more we can understand the dynamics of the human organism, and how to facilitate the training environment. On today’s show, Joel Reinhardt goes into his role in helping to build out the work-loads of football players at Stanford through his sports science role.  He’ll talk about what specific training weeks look like, how the strength training complements those weekly micro-cycles, and then primary pitfalls that can happen in loading athletes throughout a training week.  Without good integration of sport volume, and weight-room volumes, athletes are almost always going to end up doing more total work than what they need, and that’s why conversations like these are so valuable. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Lost Empire Herbs, and the Elastic Essentials online course. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 5:16 – Recent job updates, and Joel’s role at Stanford University as a sports coach and sports science coordinator 8:01 – Joel’s role in building the workloads for sport practice at Stanford 18:01 – How Joel draws out football practice loads, and how it relates to track and field loading patterns 26:53 – Specific weekly microcycle loads Joel helps facilitate for football practice 36:14 – How Joel looks to complement football loading volumes with strength training 49:10 – “Pain points” and practice elements that could lead to a greater incidence of injury 1:00:22 – Thoughts on “conditioning finishers” at the end of a practice period “I wanted to be very intentional about not coming in and being the person who was saying “you need to do less”” “My role as sports science coordination is utilizing the data to help guide our planning on the front end to play as much football as we possibly can while still being healthy for Saturday” “You want to understand what (practice) scenarios relate to the physical outputs that you are wanting to track; and start to influence where those fall within a week, within a day, within a month” “Day 1 is more constrained by the type of drill they are in, and Day 2 is just playing ball, there is a lot of open scenarios, and it ends up being very game like; that second day is the most open” “The third day is most volume, most time on feet” “That second day is where you expect to see the highest intensities” “It’s not black and white; all this happens on this day, all of this happens on the other day” “In camp we lifted once for every 3-day cycle; we lifted on day 2, the highest intensity type day.  In season we lift Monday, Wednesday, Friday” “In terms of when they lifted, in the racks, during camp, it was only twice a week, but how often they worked with the sports performance staff, it was every day, just in small doses” “If you get those big rocks in place of the sport practice and how we are managing that load, you can get away with peeling back in other areas and not losing those higher level qualities, because they are not getting drowned out by excessive fatigue” “The level of detail to predict those total volume loads; the only piece of information you really needed was total time on feet; to predict intensity you needed a bit more granular detail” “In camp, if the daily volume was in a normal range, 4 practices in a row created an un-sustainable well that these guys fell into” “Knowing we were not going to practice 4 days in a row, it gave us more wiggle room within those 3 days” “I boil it down to, "Is this going to effect the number of team football reps we are going to be able to execute before our first game'” About Joel Reinhardt Joel Reinhardt joined Stanford Football’s staff as the assistant sports performance coach and applied sports science coordinator in 2022. He will oversee Stanford’s sports science and data tracking for Cullen Carroll’s football sports performance staff. Prior to Stanford, Reinhardt worked at UMass as the assistant sports performance coach since 2019. At UMass, Reinhardt oversaw sports science, practice planning and return to play for football, while also leading all aspects of women’s lacrosse and men’s soccer’s performance training. He previously worked at Nicholls State in Thibodaux, La., where he helped design and implement a comprehensive strength and conditioning program for football. He was also responsible for the implementation of all agility work for the team’s off-season development program. He also worked with women’s track and field, women’s soccer, softball and both tennis programs at Nicholls State, in addition to organizing and analyzing Playertek GPS data. Reinhardt arrived at Nicholls State following an internship with the Minnesota Football program. Reinhardt graduated from Springfield College, where he earned a Master of Science degree in Strength and Conditioning in 2017. While studying at Springfield College, Reinhardt worked as a graduate assistant strength and conditioning coach. He earned his undergraduate degree from St. Olaf College (Northfield, Minn.) in Kinesiology and Exercise Science in 2015. Reinhardt’s strength and conditioning expertise also includes internship tenures with Total Hockey Minnesota (2013), Springfield College Athletics (2015), the UConn Athletic Department (2016) and Western Michigan football (2016).

Today’s episode features movement coach, inventor and innovator, Adarian Barr.  Adarian has been one of the absolute biggest influences on me in my coaching, as well as my own personal movement and training practices.  You will be hard pressed to find an individual who sees movement in the detail that Adarian does, while also having the experiential and coaching knowledge to back it up. One of the biggest things I’ve learned from working with Adarian is improving my understanding of how joints work in the scope of human motion.  From the first time I met Adarian, I remember him discussing the spiraling actions of movement to take the slack out of the system, and how he prefers discussing movement on the motion of joints, rather than muscles.  I remember working on what happened when my joints were in flexion, rather than trying to resist, or “punch” my way through movement, the results of which were numerous post-university sprinting bests, and a quantum leap forward in the way I coached athletes. “Stiffness” is a commonly discussed term in the world of athletic movement.  Athletes are generally instructed to “be stiffer” in their lower body to jump higher and run faster.  The truth of the matter though, is that in motion, there must be something in the body that deforms, and the ultimate stiffness is a limb in a cast. On today’s podcast, Adarian takes us through what he considers true joint “stiffness” to really be, when it comes to human motion and movement, and throughout the discussion, creates the grounds for better terminology on the level of the coach, when we speak about joint deformity, stress and strain, in the scope of sprinting, jumping, track and field, and beyond.  This is a podcast that will powerfully impact your mindset on the nature of plyometric exercises, sprinting motions and constraints, and how athletes move ideally in their sport. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Lost Empire Herbs, and the Elastic Essentials online course. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 4:50 – Adarian’s background in his college studies in the realm of music and athletic movement 10:30 – What “ankle stiffness”, or being “stiff” in the context of athletics, means to Adarian 24:20 – The dynamics of strain passing through joints in movement 26:30 – How much strain exists in various joints throughout acceleration and upright sprinting 36:00 – Horizontal and vertical forces in sprinting, in relationship to levers and friction 39:40 – Long to high bounding and hurdling dynamics 44:20 – How to train an athlete who needs to get up off the ground more quickly in regards to strain and quickness 55:40 – How stress and strain fit with the biomechanics of sprinting, using straight leg bounding as an example “Stiffness to me means you aren’t moving very well, you aren’t moving fluidly… it’s not a good term… at some point in time, it means that joint’s not moving” “If there’s movement at the ankle joint, how can it be stiff?” “You got to get things to work together in pairs” “How we operate in the air, is different than how we operate on the ground” “Any type of force is stress.  The strain is resistance to that force… that’s how I engage in these things; the stress, the strain and the amount of deformity I get” “Class 1 low strain low resistance, lots of movement at the ankle joint; class 2, very little deformity, very little movement at the ankle joint” “At the start, things have to fold up, at top-end, things don’t have to fold up as much” “At the start, the first thing I have to do is get to a class 2 lever, but it doesn’t take much strain to resist that force, since there isn’t a large amount of force yet” “Once I get going (in a sprint) the stress level starts to go up, so the strain level (need to resist at the ankle) goes up” “The good triple jumpers have a whole lot of resistance at the ankle joint, and not a lot of resistance at the hip joint.  The not so good triple jumpers have a lot of resistance in reverse ways, a lot of resistance at the hip joint, and not a lot of resistance at the ankle joint” “If I try to dorsiflex the foot as the shin is coming forward, I am resisting, now we got some strain going on” “When we go back to levers, we have two things going on, perpendicular and parallel.  The greater the perpendicular, the greater the parallel can be” “I need this vertical, perpendicular, to create friction (against the ground which is the horizontal)” “Don’t base horizontal (force/projection/etc.) on the shin, because horizontal is friction” “The more you press down, the more friction you get, which allows me to dictate the direction I want to go” “Where the hip is when the foot comes off the ground will dictate what direction you are going to go” “If I do a straight leg bound, I want the deformity at the hip.  If I am sprinting, I want the hip to take the blow” Show Notes: Old School Popping and “Tutting” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkOgfhlWhO4   Sydney Mclaughlin in 400h (High over the hurdles, modulating stress and strain) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIlpFhU3P-M   Chest Jumper Strategy Example   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by DAC- Online Coach (@kingdac)   Ideal Point of Deformity in Triple Jump (The Hip)   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Topjumps (@topjumps)   About Adarian Barr Adarian Barr is a track coach and inventor based out of Yuba City, California.  His collegiate track and field coaching stops have included UW-Superior, Indiana State, UNC Pembroke, Yuba City Community College. He has invented 9 devices from footwear to sleds to exercise devices. Adarian is a USATF Level II coach in the sprints, jumps, hurdles and relays. He has a master’s degree in Physical Education. Adarian’s unique coaching style gets results, and his work on speed and biomechanics is being adapted by some of the top coaches in the nation.

Today’s episode features biomechanics specialist, David Grey.  David is the founder of David Grey Rehab, where he works with clients from all walks of life. David’s specialty is assessing his clients gait cycle in depth to develop a plan to help restore the movement or movements they struggle to perform.  David has learned under a number of great mentors in the world of human movement, athletic development, gymnastics, Chinese martial arts, and biomechanics, and is an expansive thinker, blending many elements of human movement together in a down to earth way we can all resonate with. Humans absolutely love to categorize things, and put things in boxes.  For those in their initial learning stages, this can really be helpful to the learning process, but at some point, we need to see the grey, or continuum-like nature of things, and how training interacts on its different levels.  When we put things in the box of simply being a “corrective” exercise, for example, it loses touch with many of the helpful principles of training and overload that come in more “standard” training exercises.  When we can see things from an expansive viewpoint, we can start to gather the wisdom regarding how different pieces of training work together. On today’s show David, puts many things together in regards to good functioning of the kinetic chain for not only knee health, but also better movement.  We talk about the muscles of the lower leg, where he stands (and how he has changed) on the level of more “bodybuilding” oriented training methods, keeping things simple in exercise progression (and how putting “corrective exercise” in a box is a bad idea), sensory awareness and fatigue contrasts, and finally, a ridiculously good summary on how David approaches knee rehab and health from a multi-factorial perspective. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Lost Empire Herbs, and the Elastic Essentials online course. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com Find out more about the the online course, Elastic Essentials, by heading to justflysports.thinkific.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 3:48 – David’s experience in his United States tour 11:56 – Discussing the muscles of the lower leg, and their importance in movement 21:16 – Simplifying some exercise methods that improve hamstring calf interaction 25:30 – Where muscles sit on the “joints act, muscles react” end of the spectrum in the sense of simply training a muscle to alleviate joint pain or optimize the kinetic chain 36:10 – How to keep things “simple” in a rehab and “corrective exercise” space, and the “sensory to intensity” scale 41:55 – David’s use of “fatigue contrasts” in training and working with longer-ground contact plyometrics 57:27 – David’s current multi-lateral keys to knee training and rehab as he sees it and summarizes it “With movement, you can talk about it all you want, but they need a chance to experience it and feel it” “Even with slower running, the soleus has a lot of load going through it” “If you think going for a jog is easy, it’s easy for a lot of muscles, but it’s not easy on the soleus” “The gastroc has a lot of pre-activation before the foot hits the floor, the soleus has very little.  But when the foot hits the floor, the gastroc cools down and the soleus goes through the roof” “A muscle like the soleus and glute max takes time to produce force, because of the shape of the muscle, but they are way stronger… there are other muscles that can contract quicker, but they are not as strong” “Those types of (roller bridge) exercises open you up to a lot of sensation” “Before full body strength work, that’s where we start to isolate a lot of muscles (for those who have inhibited muscles)” “I use the foam roller bridge as a test; if someone can’t hold that for 5 seconds, I look at them and say “your hamstrings should be stronger” “I’m moving more towards the bodybuilding side of things with just getting the muscles working” “I’m a big fan of drop jumps; especially in rehab because it’s very structured” “I like to think of the scale of sensory to intensity; that’s what we are working towards” “I will use fatigue contrast; it might be something like we do some leg extension, hamstring curl, calf raises, and then I do the hop, and then it feels better.  If you bring those tissues to quite a bit of fatigue; the brain or nervous system has to figure out a new way to bring those muscles together” “When we get into plyometrics, it’s important to work with short ground contact times, but that doesn’t mean we can’t work with the spectrum of other joint ranges and ground contact times” “We don’t just think of movement from slow to fast; you can have faster movement through a large range of motion in certain areas; you don’t have to wait for all the parts of your body to catch up as well” “With a knee issue; I need people to be able to straighten their knee, and bend their knee, which involves rotations.  Those rotations involve motions at the foot and the hip” “One of the earliest skills I teach in the workshop is transitioning from early stance to mid-stance, and that is, allowing the shin to drop forward” “A lot of people with knee issues rush towards their toes, and don’t know how to stay in middle on a bent knee” “A big skill is how to get an active hip extension; hip extension without knee extension” “I want them to learn how to push their knees back without letting their knee fully straighten” “Life just doesn’t feel as good if you can’t bend your knees” About David Grey David Grey is a biomechanics specialist and expert in injury rehabilitation and performance based in Ireland. He is the founder of David Grey Rehab, where he works with clients from all walks of life. David’s specialty is assessing his clients gait cycle in depth to develop a plan to help restore the movement or movements they struggle to perform. His work often starts with training the foot to re-experience the ingrained movements that it should access during every single footstep. David has learned under a number of great mentors in the world of human movement, athletic development, gymnastics, Chinese martial arts, and biomechanics. He is greatly influenced by the work of Gary Ward, the creator of “Anatomy in Motion.” He has developed a program called Lower Body Basics, designed to be a holistic lower-body strength and mobility program that helps his clients move efficiently and without pain.

Today’s episode features Jarod Burton.  Jarod is a human performance specialist, chiropractic student, and health coach.  He got his coaching start working with Brady Volmering of DAC baseball, and has spent recent years coaching, consulting and running educational courses in the private sector.  Jarod focuses on engaging all aspects of an athlete’s being, providing the knowledge for the individual to thrive in their domain. In the world of coaching and human performance, the road to success is often thought of on the level of do “A”, in “B” amount, so you can accomplish “C”.  The focus on typically on numbers, exercises, and (often) a linear cueing process for those said movements.  We are so quick to judge programs entirely based on numbers and exercises. What we don’t consider often enough is the complex factors surrounding the volume that is administered.  There are elite athletes who have won gold medals and set world records who do a lot of volume that would “crush” other athletes (think the athletes that survived the Soviet or Bulgarian training systems, or modern-day athletes, such as Karsten Warholm, the 400m hurdle world record holder).  We need to ask ourselves, “what is the difference, or elements, that allowed the athlete to tolerate that?”.  Is it that their musculo-skeletal system was somehow just “better” than the other trainees, or are there other additional elements to consider?  The more elite coaches I’ve had the opportunity to work with, the more I realize that good coaches intuitively key into the mental and emotional state of the athlete, as well as the physiological management. On today’s podcast, Jarod chats on managing high training volumes, work capacity dynamics, the critical role of boredom/interest in training, athlete self-discovery, and much more.  This is a podcast that causes you to ask questions, and gives us a new and interesting perspective on the dynamics of training. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Lost Empire Herbs, and the Elastic Essentials online course. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 4:10 – The nature of Jarod’s training experiment, where he only performed extreme iso holds and dunking (in his quest for a higher vertical jump) 9:45 – Thoughts on the process of assessing athletes, and drawing out physical and emotional weak-points 12:15 – How “obsessive” or “unreasonable” training, such as bounding every day, could actually be a powerful performance tool, and how we actually classify fatigue in training 28:45 – How to manage higher volume training so athletes don’t get injured or decrease their performance 42:30 – The role of self-discovery and creativity in athletic performance training 45:36 – Thoughts on mixing game like activities with specific training outputs (such as a 10m fly or dunking a basketball) 57:28 – Mental associations, boredom/interest, and training principles 1:05:55 – Jarod’s thoughts on the “Easy Strength” mentality on weights and barbell training “As I was holding the isometrics, I was creating the reality of: “what would it feel like as I dunk”” “How do you meet an athlete where you are at in their current state; how do you expose them, and how do you draw out they creativity within them” “The more awareness they have, the more ability they have to create.  The goal is for them to be the captain of their own ship” “The amount of volume that kids or athletes experience in a game is 5 to 10 times the amount of actual stimulus that we even give them in the training aspect; I follow along with the idea that the training must be more intense and strenuous than the actual activity itself” “The biggest thing, regardless of how you train, is whether the athlete buys into what they are doing… it comes down to, how does the athlete see it, how does it fit into their reality currently, and how does it fit into the reality that they are trying to create” “I found research papers back to the 1930’s that DNA, teeth, vertebra, your skin, is all run off of piezoelectricity, so this crystal form” “I learn that the muscles behave like water, so if I want to learn about fatigue, I need to learn about water” “I can take somebody; they are sprinting; and maybe they start slowing down and feeling fatigue, but all of a sudden they play football; and I roll a football out as if it’s a fumble recovery, and then they jump back up again…. Now I can manipulate how the body is being fatigued or not by including different scenarios that are either going to peak their arousal or cause them boredom” “I look at a lunge; and I look at how somebody compensated within a lunge, then I take a video and those same compensations that are showing up in the isometric are showing up when you sprint” “The center focus of my training as well, is to challenge the athlete to figure out who they are as a person” “How you think about yourself, and how you speak to yourself, is going to directly influence how you perform, and maybe even what injuries you get” “(When there are external goals) the brain turns off of forced work, and now you are just responding to the environment, and your mind starts turning off, and you start seeing people run fast” “Depending on how the person perceives the event depends on how their body is going to react to that” “There is no perceived threat playing football with your friends, there is no perceived threat in chasing a frisbee” “It’s so silly to put it in this tiny box and say “you can only run 10 sprints”… then the athletes starts believing the fact that, if I run more than 10, I’m going to break down” “You can train the body in a way that actually gives the body more energy” “A lot of times when you don’t like an aspect of a person; it’s an aspect you don’t like in yourself” “Then we go to the skill work side, and you can throw all (the “max intent”) work out of the window, you don’t need to focus on the max exertion; now you just need to figure out how you can find flow, find rhythm” About Jarod Burton Jarod Burton is a performance specialist, chiropractic student, and health coach.  He got his coaching start working with Brady Volmering of DAC baseball , and has spent recent years coaching, consulting and running educational courses in the private sector.  Jarod focuses on engaging all aspects of an athlete’s being, providing the knowledge for the individual to thrive in their domain.

Today’s episode features performance coach and breathing specialist, Leo Ryan.  Leo is the founder of Innate-Strength.com.  Leo has studied from many elite personal training, physical therapy and breathing schools including Dip. Buteyko Method, Wim Hof, Oxygen Advantage Master Instructor, Fascial Stretch Therapist, Strength and Conditioning Specialist and Pilates.  Leo previously appeared on episode 219 speaking on many elements of breath training for athletic performance including nose vs mouth breathing in training, breath hold time as a readiness indicator, and more. The use of one’s breath for training and overall well-being has become more and more on my radar with each passing year.  From my foray into the endurance end of the competitive spectrum (Spartan Racing in 2019), to understanding the role of rib cage expansion in movement biomechanics, to breathing for energy and recovery, to the training practices of the old-school strongmen, in each year of my life, understanding and training the breath becomes more substantial. On today’s show, Leo Ryan returns to dig into the role of breath training, and its role in recovery, both within the workout itself, and in day-to-day recovery from training efforts.  We often talk about having an adequate “aerobic base”, but for some reason, the actual core of that aerobic base, which is “breathing”, is rarely considered, and Leo goes into making capacity workouts even more effective through breathing mechanics, physiology and rhythm.  Leo will also cover the role of CO2 and CO2 tolerance in human and athletic function, rhythmic aspects of breathing in athletic performance, and then some dynamics on breathing in the scope of strength training sessions. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Lost Empire Herbs, and the Elastic Essentials online course. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 4:57 – Thoughts on Irish Dancing and athletic performance, from Leo’s perspective residing in Ireland 13:00 – Getting deeper into the role of breathing and breath-work in helping athletes recover from intense workouts 27:00 – The state of world health and strength on the human level, in the scope of modern society 32:00 – How one’s breathing throughout the day can dictate one’s recovery from training 41:27 – The specifics of Leo’s breath training that helped his training group to drastically improve their recovery in a 10-day period 46:00 – The dynamics of breathing rhythm on health and performance 52:20 – Controlled exhale dynamics and the importance of CO2 tolerance in athletic development 1:05:40 – Thoughts on breathing in the scope of heavier strength training, from a recovery and pressure dynamics perspective “There is a lot of footwork, a lot of high kicks, and a lot of fast feet (in Irish dancing) so for improving your speed for sport, it’s absolutely incredible” “Paul Chek said it beautifully that “every summer has its winter” and if you don’t take your winter, winter is going to take you” “The breath is a phenomenal window into how your whole body and mind is working; and then you can use the breath to upregulate or downregulate the system as needed” “(After over-using coffee) when you have your morning coffee, you are just getting yourself up to baseline” “The breath is a beautiful guide to rebuilding your baselines, and making sense of where you are in the world” “My idea of breath training is restoring your breath back to baseline” “They ran (12 minutes max) their way first; then they trained for 10 days in nasal breathing and breath techniques, and then they ran it again; and they ran it my way.  What I found was a 1-2% performance improvement, but I found a 40% recovery improvement” “I found the real genius in training your breath is not to get faster, but to recover quicker” “Breathing, as you are there (not training) should be subtle, imperceptible, not noticeable (you don’t feel the hairs on your nose move)” “The yogic structures brought me into imperceptible breathing, of the subtleness” “Butyeko relies very much on balancing out CO2 in the body” “You need CO2 to help oxygen get into your cell, you need CO2 to help cellular health, but you don’t get that because you are in a vicious cycle of getting rid of (CO2) without realizing it (by routine over-breathing)” “I found the idea of restoring the diaphragm, the muscles of the chest, and the exhale, to be let go, is really important” “Is your diapraghm supple, and can you use it well, can you use your upper chest well, and can you let go of your exhale?” “The likes of the Wim Hof and the rhythmic breathing are very very powerful techniques for feeling emotions” “(Regarding breathing) There are the mechanics, the physiology, and the rhythms” “If you exhaled every time your left foot hit the floor (in running) then you would develop over-use patterns…, so (it’s helpful) learning to exhale on alternate foot patterns” “You can extend your exhale to every 5th, every 7th, every 9th footstep” “What I find my workouts are for is solving creative problems in life” “You want to push really hard in training in your set, but outside of your set, you want to be recovering hard; and the best way to recover hard is to latch your mind onto your breath, slow your breath down, calm it down” “If you are loading up your body with a maximal weight; and you don’t have a big enough reserve in your breathing system, then you won’t be able to create the pressure that you need to lift that weight and you’ll have compensation mechanisms” “Once you’ve restored your breathing back to baseline; that’s it, you don’t need to worry about it again, you don’t need to be thinking about it the whole time; you can use specialized techniques for special purposes, but you don’t need to be doing breath training for the rest of your life” Show Notes Alex Collins NFL Running Back and Irish Dance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0XI3NbmOg0 Breath: By James Nestor https://www.amazon.com/Breath-New-Science-Lost-Art/dp/0735213615/   About Leo Ryan Leo Daniel Ryan is a Performance Coach and Breathing Specialist. He is the founder of Innate-Strength.com. He has studied athletic training, health and breathing since he healed himself of asthma in 2004. After graduating with a MSc from University College Dublin, he continued to educate himself prolifically throughout his professional career in Ireland and internationally. He has attained multiple diplomas and certificates from many elite personal training, physical therapy and breathing schools including Dip. Buteyko Method, Wim Hof Instructor, Oxygen Advantage Master Instructor, Fascial Stretch Therapist, Strength and Conditioning Specialist and Pilates teacher. Leo Daniel’s love and experience for health and physical performance has seen him research more than 70 breathing techniques, mentor with coaches to Olympians, UFC Fighters and World Champions and he undertook several internships with the world-renowned Dr. Eric Serrano.

Today’s episode features strength and track coach, John Garrish.  John is the director of athletic development at North Broward Preparatory School in Coconut Creek, Florida, and the school’s head track coach.  John was recently voted the 2022 National High School Strength Coach of the Year by the National High School Strength Coach’s Association.  John appeared previously on the show discussing his speed training approach in episode 182. The symbiosis of track and football is often discussed in the process of training, and importantly so.  What is talked about less, are some of the specifics of what track has to offer, not just in the sprints, but also in events like triple jump, that can enhance an athletes speed, power, elasticity and overall movement profile, in their other sports. John was a hammer thrower in his college years, as well as a former football player.  The hammer throw is, of all the throws, the one that requires the greatest symbiosis and harmony with the implement.  The triple jump (bounding) requires a tremendous symbiosis with the ground, and how one interacts with it.  You can easily see John’s experience and intuition of track and S&C concepts emerge in his progression of bound, skip, hop and overall elastic training with his athletes. On the show today, John covers thoughts on hand position and “elastic/rigidity” vs. “muscular” sprint strategies in athletes as they move from youth to high-school levels.  This sets the stage for his talk on his galloping, skipping and bounding progressions, and how he keeps movement quality and velocity at the core of the progression.  John talks about how he keeps the training fun and intentional, and how he changes emphasis as athletes move from middle school, to high school years.  This show is a beautiful fusion of team sport S&C, and track and field concepts, and can be used to help any athlete develop more fluid, dynamic power outputs on the field of play. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Lost Empire Herbs, and the Elastic Essentials online course. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com Find out more about the the online course, Elastic Essentials, by heading to justflysports.thinkific.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 3:50 – What a typical workout looks like for John, and how he does bounds, skips and gallops himself to be a better coach in those movements 8:29 – Thoughts on hand-position in young athletes vs. older athletes, the use of rigid, splayed fingers, and how that rigid-open-hand strategy might change, as athletes get older 28:36 – How John evolved skips and gallops from elementary school, into their middle and high school years 37:21 – John’s take on more traditional extensive hops, in light of his use of skips, gallops and hops 44:37 – Different constraints and emphasis of skips and bounds are that John utilizes in his scholastic and open-large group training sessions 54:07 – How to give athletes balance in their skip and gallop profile without diminishing their “superpower” 1:00:59 – John’s thoughts on when to get bounding in the mix for athletes, and how to progress it 1:15:17 – Using backwards single leg hops for athletes, its benefits, and potential link to being able to bound forward for distance “I felt that unless I at least had the comfort of the ability to demonstrate, or perform these movements (bounds, gallops, skips) myself, then I felt there was no way I could verbalize it to my athletes; or find lesser cues, or a tactile cue to get the athlete to feel it as well” “Some of the fastest girls I’ve seen at track meets do display that splayed hand position (when sprinting)… but as they progress in middle school you see less dominance of that hand position” “It’s an opportunity of our students to experiment with something, and then come out of that experimentation with the ideal (technical) model… of how they are going to sprint to the best of their ability” “The best triple jumper I ever coached was a near 48 footer in high school, and he just did some really really weird things that presented itself in his hand (positions)” “Testing some of these things (hops, skips, gallops, etc.) are the ideal way to put yourself in the athlete’s shoes” “The most important thing about skips and gallops, is that skips and gallops are fun.  I’ve never seen an athlete skip race against another kid and not have a smile on their face” “Skips, gallops and hops we use throughout the year.  The traditional hops in place; that is a good way to prepare the feet, ankle and shins for these skips, gallops and hops… where I use (traditional hops) is at the end of the session, closing the envelope, and accumulating that volume, not taking away from other things we want to do” “When we are doing skips with the middle schoolers, it’s in class, it’s more dexterity based and coordination based.  We’re cautious in our implementation of bounding; hopping 5x on the left, and 5x on the right continuously” “When we get to the high school level, not only is that when we really start to introduce bounds, that’s when we use slightly different cues (on skips and gallops) to excite something in the athlete that helps them make a change” “Gallops are a little bit easier for an athlete to feel what I’m trying to say with those high hips, quick ground contacts” “If I tell an athlete to gallop, but to be as quick off of the ground as possible, they find it a lot easier than they do the power skip with much briefer ground contact; so gallop has been a little way to introduce it” “You’ll see our young athletes gallop for height naturally, gallop for height squatting down into it; then maybe a gallop for height as quick as possible off the ground, and then let’s revisit a gallop for height, seeing what comes naturally.  Given a few sessions, athletes may start to feel something new and start to adopt it” “It’s not just about the progress they made in their event (triple jump), it’s about the progress they made in their other sport, whatever it may be.  I felt as if coming off of a season of triple jump, I saw a lot of our football athletes, basketball athletes, or whatever, showing really good things” “If an athlete gains comfort with hopping for distance, that’s half the battle” “One of the best constraints we go through with hops; where it becomes a very good teaching point, is, tell kids “hop for speed”; hop 15m as fast as possible, the athlete is going to be more inclined towards forefoot and forward posture.  Then I would say, “hop for distance”… then there will be more of a hindfoot contact. “Definitely I would say those athletes who did hops backwards were our better bounders” “The beauty is, pretty much everything you can do forward, you can do backwards” Show Notes Usain Bolt Hand Positioning (Left “soft”, Righter “somewhat rigid”).  See Lemaitre with a more rigid hand action. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fjC1Oim0UQ   Yohan Blake Sprinting with Rigid Hand Positioning (See 3:20.  Note Walter Dix, more muscle-oriented sprinter with “soft” hands: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k45Mlpvuwk About John Garrish John Garrish is the Director of Athletic Development & Performance at North Broward Preparatory School in Coconut Creek, Florida, and the school’s Head Track and Field Coach.  John was recently voted the 2022 National High School Strength Coach of the Year by the National High School Strength Coach’s Association.  A graduate of Wagner College and the University of North Texas, he is certified through the NSCA as a CSCS and through USAW as a Level-1 Sports Performance Coach. In addition to his role at North Broward, John has previously served as the Director of Athletic Performance with the Florida Rugby Union’s High-Performance Program 7’s team and as a volunteer coach with Delray Beach Sports’ Exhibitors. Coach Garrish has spoken at state and national events and serves as the National High School Strength Coaches Association Regional Board Member for the Southeast.

Today’s episode features strength coach and biomechanics educator, Katie St. Clair.  Katie been training general population and athletes for over 20 years, and is the creator of the Empowered Performance Program.  She is one of my go-to sources of knowledge for all things biomechanics, and the finer details of human movement.  She previously appeared on episode 279 of the podcast, speaking on biomechanical facets of running, lifting and athletic movement. Humans explore movement in a variety of ways as they grow from youth to adulthood.  We skip, run, sprint, throw, bend and twist with substantial variability, all through the medium of self-learning.  For some reason, as soon as weight lifting enters the picture, variation tends to go by the wayside, and a rigid bilateral (or even unilateral) method of moving that is pasted onto all athletes, is applied.  Human beings are complex, we differ from one another, not only in our builds and structures, but also in how our bodies have compensated and compressed in particular ways over time.  In this sense, our weightlifting programs should offer at least some room for each individual to learn more about the nuances of how each lift might be set up, or tweaked, in a manner the athlete could be optimally responsive to. On today’s show, Katie goes in detail on staggered-stance squatting and deadlifting, and how it can be leveraged based on the asymmetrical nature of an athlete’s body.  She also gets into detail on single leg lifting, and how turning into, or away from the leg being worked can emphasize various elements of the exercise.  She finishes by touching on hinging, posterior compression, and the link between high, rigid foot arches and what is happening upstream in the body.  Throughout the conversation, Katie highlights how each of these lifting variations can be utilized to bring the athletic body into greater balance, where needed. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Lost Empire Herbs, and the Elastic Essentials online course. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 4:22 – The ideology behind staggered stance squatting, and how it can fit with athlete’s natural asymmetry 10:35 – What types of individuals would be the best candidates to give a left leg back, staggered squat to, in training 15:35 – The role of biofeedback in exploring squat and deadlift stance 25:00 – Thoughts on doing the stagger in a squat or deadlift one way, vs. both ways with athletes 31:06 – How to set athletes up, in a high-performance training program, to help them learn more about how their bodies work in a manner that will help them for a lifetime 44:11 – Single leg squat training with a turn at the top of the bottom to bias various elements of the gait cycle 48:30 – How to improve one’s pistol squatting on the left leg if an individual lacks the ability to internally rotate their left hip 58:25 – Katie’s thoughts on narrow and wide ISA’s, and how to look at deadlifting and hinging from that perspective 1:10:49 – Where to start with someone with high arches, or “banana feet”, and how the pelvic floor plays into that 1:21:38 – Using the pigeon stretch for clients with posterior compression in wide ISA’s vs. narrow ISA’s “Because of our natural asymmetry and organ position, the pelvis starts to turn to the right” “There are so many ways that the body is clever about maintaining that forward motion” “I used to do drills where I would reset my pelvis more back to the left, to get myself in a good position, and then go squat, but it still didn’t feel right….(but instead) In adding load and pulling my left foot back and sensing the outside of my left heel and inside of my right heel; just that little tiny maneuver, it’s just a game changer.  I use it on all my squats” “If somebody doesn’t have issues with squatting, I don’t mess with (putting the left foot slightly behind)” “(Reasons to add in the staggered stance left-leg back squat) If every time they squat, it irritates some area, or if they have a big shift into the right, or as a repositioning activity for people higher in their training age who don’t want to do breathing drills’ “A regular deadlift with a barbell, sometimes I’ll take just a tiny step back and off-set that” “Doing a split clean where athletes can create more sensory awareness naturally, because they are not in a bilateral stance, is super useful” “(After giving a large group different variations of an exercise) I’ll say, on this last set, pick which one felt better for you” “When you have athletes who are stronger and more resilient, you might not need all of this (biomechanics) stuff” “You can’t go where to already are, if you are shoved forward” “Creating stiffness is good if you already have a lot of suppleness and laxity” “In a split squat, if the left side is in anterior tilt and outflared, when I go down in that mid-range of a split squat I am getting back internal rotation of the pelvis naturally” “If I go down in a single leg/split squat, and turn towards that leg, I am getting even more of that internal rotation” “If I turn towards the leg on the way up, I am biasing external rotation” “A lot of people are going to be horrible at left leg pistol squatting” “I would do a heel elevated on the left to get your pelvis underneath you; in terms of the internal rotation component, you want to get into a mid-range split squat and drive that internal rotation…. Some people are good at the top and the bottom, but they are limited by that mid-range” “Skaters are great if you are tighter on the backside, and you are a narrow and you have more of an ER bias, because they are more of a hinge position; as you are hinging down you are opening up the back of the pelvis naturally” “Keep the big toe on the floor as you turn away, and don’t just let the knee cave in” “The assessment test I use mostly now is standing rotation” “A wide ISA without a lot of compensations who moves really well, can typically deadlift pretty easily… having said that, there are wide’s with a multiple layers of compression who have a tight pelvic floor, and when they go to hinge they are equally creating those strategies of hinging the back or rounding the back… because they cannot open up the back-side of the pelvis” “Narrows are generally going to be more compressed on the backside of the pelvis so they are going to have a really hard time with a hinge” “Over-arching I see more in someone who is already in an extension pattern, and so their go-to is to go into more lordosis and hinge from the lumbar rather than letting the sacrum tilt forward” “She (Stacey) has people put a foam roller on the wall, and has them push their knee into the foam roller (facing the wall) so they stay over the mid-foot and then hinge back… so you are maintaining that dorsiflexed mid-foot stance while your hips go back” “That’s where I’ll have people breathe if they have tight pelvic floors (in a hinge position)” “Just try to contract your pelvic floor and touch your toes, you are not going to be successful” “If you are tight in your external rotators in general, you are going to be living on the outside edge of your feet” “As I lift up the big toe, the heel goes back, and that helps close-pack the talus up into the tib-fib to create that rigid structure to push you off” “(If tight pelvic floor is causing high-arch banana feet) I’d recommend pigeon stretches” “(Toes up wedges) is taking the slack out of the windlass mechanism and allowing the calcaneus to tilt forward” “There’s some “roll the bottom of your foot”; I would try that too, and then do some of the pronation drills with your foot to try and get more out of them” “If I got my wide ISA with a flat butt, tight external rotators and a sway back, they are getting a pigeon stretch all of the time… if they are a narrow ISA, I’d prefer for them to do more of a hip shift type of exercise, because a pigeon is producing more external rotation” Show Notes Staggered Stance Squat https://www.instagram.com/p/Cg4UOslFxNc/   Tight Posterior Pelvic Floor Description and Releases https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNWkhMkDwEA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMovhOulIWM About Katie St. Clair Katie is a wife, mom, strength coach, educator, business owner, and lover of all things movement. After 20+ years in the industry, Katie decided to create an educational program based on her passion for seeing other women excel in the industry as leaders and educators. There was a time when life got in the way and she couldn’t be the professional she wanted to be because she had to put her family first. She has spent the past 5 years embarking on a journey of learning and combining that knowledge with her love of athletic movement, as well as her passion for empowering female movement professionals, with the intent to elevate the entire industry standard.