Just Fly Performance Podcast

Our guest for today’s show is Austin Jochum.  Austin is the owner of Jochum Strength where he works with athletes and “washed up movers” to become the best versions of themselves.  He is also the host of the Jochum Strength Podcast.  Austin was a former NCAA D3 All-American football player and a hammer thrower (MIAC weight throw champion) at the University of St. Thomas, where he is now the speed and strength coach for the football team.  Austin has appeared on episode 213, and also has written numerous articles for Just Fly Sports. One common theme of this podcast for so many years has been finding ways to make one’s training transfer to sport more, not just on the physical and mechanical level, but also on the mental and emotional level, and on a perception-reaction level.  At some point, the hair splitting that happens in regards to weight room exercises (arguments on what set-rep scheme to use, single leg vs. bilateral lifting, etc.), or the minutia of biomechanics, can start to take away from developing other important components of athletics. Austin Jochum is a pioneer in the blending of sport elements into the traditional gym setting for athletes.  He is a meathead, but also a die-hard athletic-mover, and passionately trains in a way that encompasses both the archetypes of strength, and performing ideally in one’s sport and movement practice. For the show today, Austin speaks on the art of developing a love for movement and play in athletes, how to build a “scorer’s” mentality, as well as how to optimize game-based scenarios in the gym to help improve transfer to the field.  He then gets into an excellent discussion on exposing athletes to their weaknesses in a gym-game setting, and finishes with how he sets up his own training programs from not only a physical, but also a mental/emotional perspective, moving from external to internal states, relating each type of training stress to the emotional state of the athlete. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs.  For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 5:00 – A story of two different soccer coaches and their approaches to training with their groups 11:00 – The link between love of movement/sport, obsession, and subsequent greatness, 15:30 – How to preserve, and grow, love for movement in coaching athletes 18:30 – Thoughts on “leveling up” on the levels of movement, as well as mental and emotional levels, in a training session 27:30 – How to set up games in a training session that can help to build a “scorer’s mentality” in athletes 29:00 – How to modulate the space of the field, and 1v1, or 2v2 type situations that can help athletes 36:00 – How to transfer between what athletes are really good, and really bad at, in their sport in order to create more robust athletic ability 44:30 – Insecurities that are wrapped up in not being able to expose one’s self to failure 51:30 – The importance of being on the fringe, and evolving the field, and realizing that no one individual has all of the answers 59:30 – The line between order and chaos within a training session, and how a strength session looks for Austin, and how he moves from fun, to funneling the energy into outputs or skill, then taking the athletes into themselves “If you listen to really really good athletes talk, I look at my own past successes, it is because you are obsessed with it… and how do you become obsessed with something? You gotta fall in love with it” “Something we’ve been doing is saying, “if this kid scores”, it’s worth two points, so now the stud who is always scoring is going to find a way to give the ball to someone else, he is going to expand the field” “Watch when your athlete, the first time you meet your athlete, watch how they walk into the gym, because you’ll know right away, almost 100%, what they are thinking in that moment, who they are, how they interact with the world” “(To create a scorer’s mentality) let them score from all angles, in all situations” “Let’s say you have a really fast athlete that is struggling with some change of direction stuff, then you make the space wider and shorter” “We’re talking about sets and reps, and this exercise selection, and it doesn’t matter if you aren’t looking at it on the field” “Conjugate style your games, expose them to as many games as possible, and then ebb and flow between what they are good at and then what they suck at” “Maybe there is an arrogant athlete… expose them to something they suck at… and how do they handle that? I would much rather you lose in this (gym) setting” “There are so many fringe pieces that we can experiment with, but our egos don’t let us” “Joy, looking forward to training and learning a skill is really important for skill retention.  In the weight room, having freedom has a ton of benefit with things like soreness, then what do you do with that energy? Now we funnel it into something we want to work on that day” “Now, how can we ebb and flow back into, how can I hold this position for 5’, or doing 1000 drop-catch reps… now they have to internally focus, and can you bring them back out of that?” “Not very many athletes are good at going internal; in those iso’s, they want to move, they want to twitch, in that stillness practice… so expose that to them a ton until they do master it, and have conversations about it” Show Notes Eli Franke water polo story https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9SBkUA-Iwg About Austin Jochum Austin Jochum is the owner of Jochum Strength where he works with athletes and washed up movers to become the best versions of themselves. He also operates The Jochum Strength insider which is an online training platform for people trying to feel, look, and move better. Austin was a former D3 All-American football player and a hammer thrower (MIAC weight throw champion) at the University of St.Thomas, where he is now the speed and strength coach for the football team.

Our guest for today’s show is Katie St. Clair.  Katie is a strength and conditioning coach out of Charleston, SC who has been training general population and athletes for over 20 years, and is the creator of the Empowered Performance Program. She is passionate about helping everyone reclaim movement and find joy and reduction of pain using sound biomechanical principles alongside proper breathing.  Katie has embarked 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. In my last few years as a coach, I’ve become more and more aware of the underlying physical and structural characteristics of athletes that work to determine biomechanics that show up when they perform various sporting skills.  I’ve really enjoyed having a variety of coaches on this show who have gone in detail on the biomechanics of the human body, (the pelvis, ribcage, breathing, etc.) and then have linked that up with what we might see in athletic movement, such as sprinting and jumping to name a few. Katie is an expert in human performance, and the fine details of human movement.  On today’s show, she takes us on an approach to forward pelvic tilt, breathing mechanics, abdominal function, the feet, proper squatting, plyometrics and more that comes from a perspective of the underlying function of the human body.  Katie helps us understand the “inside” mechanisms that are so often leading to compromised movement seen on the “outside”. So often we have athletes who just can’t seem to “find” the right joint motions in their movement, and this is when we need to have the ability to go a level deeper in our coaching, or our ability to know when to “refer out” to experts better able to cater to those areas.  The more you know from “the inside out”, the greater the bandwidth of athletes you can serve in your efforts. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs.  For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 4:45 – What led Katie into working in fitness and performance 10:15 – Katie’s “inside out” view, of helping athletes acquire better technique via changes on the level of the thorax, pelvis and rib-cage 15:45 – The art of coaching humans in a manner that helps them self-organize and learn to move effectively 18:45 – How being biased, or stuck, in anterior tilt impacts one’s ability to move, and how to help athletes get out of that position 25:45 – How to use inhalation and exhalation to neurologically reinforce supination/ER and pronation/IR 42:15 – General primers on how to start working with breathing and breath for clients 45:50 – Ideas on how compression can drive expansion on the opposite side of the body, and ideas on “functional” abdominal muscles 49:50 – Katie’s view on building strength at length with the abdominal wall 55:50 – Why some athletes (particularly female swimmers) often have a lot of spinal extension patterning in a pushup movement, and then what to do about it (if it is even a big deal in that group) 1:00.05 – Hypermobility as systemic laxity, versus adaptations that can lead to acquired hypermobility in the limbs via proximal stiffness 1:05.35 – The dichotomy between accessing the heels, and then moving into the forefoot in the process of squatting 1:14.50 – Dynamics of “no-toes” squatting and what it can do for athletes, and how it zeros in on the mid-foot 1:17.50 – The balance between being able to keep the heel down and pronate, and then get off the heel to make the foot a second class lever, in squatting and even in running/jumping 1:29.50 – How to help people who struggle to yield to gravity be able to do so, and achieve better glute activation in the process “I realized I was looking at everything from the outside in, instead of from the inside out…. I would see these patterns all the time, but just coaching it didn’t change it, I had to alter the mechanics of their thorax and their rib-cage and pelvis to be able to create the change that was necessary” “(Athletes) are creating compensations that are really genius” “The trees, the way the rocks are, the seashells… (nature) gives you an appreciation for what the human form is” “The foot diaphragm and the thoracic diaphragm are going to alter the ability for the foot to do its’ thing too” “You have to have enough expansion to create compression…. if you don’t have enough range you are going to compensate to get it” “They do need to learn the fundamentals of getting the diaphragm to dome up, both the pelvic diaphragm and thoracic diaphragm, and to use the breath to leverage that position” “If I can use the breath, then I can create a neurological change in the brain” “If I am on my heels, that is going to generate that internal rotation, the increase in all the curvature… now I can do the complete opposite by going to my toes, tucking under, and decreasing the spinal curvature by inhaling and allowing the chest to rise” “If the ribs don’t move, the spine is not going to move” “Expansion where you need it does require holding tension on one side to drive expansion on the other, so if I gripped my abs, and held them down and took an inhale, the pressure is going to push back into my ribs and create some expansion” “We have to manage the leaks in the system to push the pressure elsewhere” “I almost think the athletes who can lengthen the abdominal wall and create tension, are the ones who are impressive… that’s a very athletic body to me, when you can create tension in a lengthen position, that’s the jam” “If you suck at lengthening and eccentrically loading  position, try exhaling when you are all the way out in that lengthened state (not allowing yourself to go into an excessive extension pattern) exhale, then pull back and inhale” “You see this a lot, people can’t pronate or supinate, so the arch of their foot is not as dynamic as it should be, so they create a lot of mobility at the ankle joint because the midfoot is so rigid” “Allowing the knees to go forward, and more pressure into the mid-fore foot, to allow for internal rotation… that is much needed, and so if you are always elevating your heels, how are you ever getting that, so I think it makes sense to bring a person down to the lowest range they can work with at that time, plus doing other activities to get the thorax over the pelvis” “We need that moment of the knees jutting forward, and the arch coming down and the calcaneus tipping without going onto the toes and missing that, so when you try to squat with your toes off of something, there is no cheating it” “Not doing a quick jump, holding a heavy yielding isometric, and then sinking into the ground, doing a depth drop, but instead of a reactive jump you are sinking into it, I’ve used it in my programming and 9/10 the people that can’t feel their glutes in the bottom of a squat and utilize that, that’s when they tell me “I finally felt my glutes”” 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.

Today’s show features Dr. Chris Gaviglio.  Chris is a current senior strength and conditioning coach for the Queensland Academy of Sport, working with Olympic-based sports and athletes.  Chris has been involved with elite sport for over 15 years working across multiple Olympic sports and professional football in both the northern and southern hemispheres.  Chris provides applied sports science projects for the athletes he works with, particularly in the areas of salivary hormones, passive heat maintenance, blood flow restriction training, warm-up strategies, and power/strength development. I don’t often do shows that center around a piece of training technology, and the main reason for that is simply accessibility.  If a training tool costs thousands of dollars, it isn’t something a large proportion of the athletic, and even coaching population can rationalize having in their training arsenal.  The nice thing about blood flow restriction training is that it is available at a relatively low price point, with common units starting around $300USD.  Other setups using squat wraps, for example, can be done basically for free, but I would recommend using an automated system for the safety and precision of band tightness (see show notes regarding safety considerations and contraindications to BFR, such as concussions or deep vein thrombosis). Blood Flow restriction training has been a training tool that has been on my radar for a long time.  After seeing the results that a high-level Olympic swimmer I worked with got from them, and then hearing some results from Nicolai Morris having a 1.5 second drop in the 100 freestyle of a swimmer as well, as well as several of my coaching colleagues using the method, I knew that there was absolutely something to BFR that I needed to get further into.  In using the AirBands from Vald performance myself, I continued to realize how beneficial this training stimulus is to our physiological response. For today’s show, Chris takes us into many topics of BFR, including its mechanisms and many benefits.  As opposed to methods of mechanical stress (such as plyometrics, sprinting, heavy strength training methods) which tend to dominate this shows podcasts) BFR is a physiological stressor, and through this discussion, we can gain an appreciation for the contrast of physiological stress to more mechanical means.  Chris finishes the show talking about how coaches and athletes can integrate BFR training, and gives many anecdotes and points of research, on how BFR can improve strength and speed recovery. Finally, our sponsor, Simplifaster is doing a Blood Flow Restiction cuff giveaway (Vald Airbands) so if you would like to get in on that, until November 11th, you can sign up for a chance to win a free pair of cuffs at bit.ly/freebfr . Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs.  For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 6:00 – Chris’s experiment during quarantine using lighter, or minimal weights in an at-home training setting 17:00 – Discussion on using lighter implements and bodyweight in developing one’s athleticism 20:30 – What blood flow restriction training is, and where it originated from 27:00 – How the metabolic stress from BFR creates beneficial responses, similar to high-load lifting 35:25 – What BFR definitely helps with, and what elements of performance it is not as helpful for 41:25 – How BFR can help with creating “mild to moderate” doses of lactate – Using BFR style work in warming up for a training session 53:10 – If there are any similar places in sport where athletes will experience situations similar to what is created with BFR means 57:00 – How to get as close to BFR as one can in a gym without any sort of cuffs or wraps 1:00:00 – Anecdotes on how to integrate BFR in performance and rehab based situations 1:10:00 – Where to get started for those interested in BFR “BFR is a metabolic stress” “BFR is a method of strength training with the addition of pressure” “What is BRF doing, we are partially restricting blood flow, and what that allows us to do is you are actually restricting the venous return of the blood from your muscles, so the blood flows freely into the muscle, but you are restricting it coming back out” “The first (benefit of BFR) is an increase in concentration of metabolites” “The second (benefit of BFR) is (anabolic) hormonal response” “The third (benefit of BFR) is intramuscular signaling, we are talking here heat shock proteins, myostatin, mTOR pathways” “They had two groups, they did not lifting, but one used heat sheets to heat the muscles and the second had none, and the group that used heat got stronger…. BFR can also stimulate this” “The fourth (benefit of BFR) is intracellular swelling, or “the pump” The fifth (benefit of BFR) is muscular recruitment, our slow twitch fibers tire out earlier than normal, and our fast twitch fibers get innervated” “Normally in an injury or rehab scenario, that’s where we see a lot of BFR… “In athletic populations, load is still king, but could we dial that percentage down a little bit, still use the BFR cuffs, and give them a little juice in the tank to perform their speed session the next day, could we be smarter with that?” “In long term structural adaptations, there has been some research to show that lactate increases collagen synthesis in fibroblasts, which is essential for blood vessel formation and wound healing.  Also correlations have been shown between increased lactate levels and concentrations of growth hormone and noradrenaline after BFR training” “Usually if we are going to lift above 80% of 1RM, traditionally we have (the cuffs) off… I did have one athlete who was doing heavy step ups with the cuffs on, he felt he would have a good 400m time the next day” “The bands will get you (to lactate) faster, and with less mechanical stress on the system” “I have some colleagues who will do over-reaching, and in their recovery weeks, they will do a lot of BFR, high reps” “Everyone thinks the first time I have an athlete I stick a BFR cuff on them, but it’s not true” “(BFR) is a stress, and we are using metabolic stress instead of mechanical stress” Show Notes Although BFR has been proven safe, there are some safety considerations and contraindications concerning BFR to be aware of: Thebarbellphysio.com/blood-flow-restriction-training-safe/ Performancehealthacademy.com/blood-flow-restriction-training-101.html Theprehabguys.com/blood-flow-restriction-training-in-a-nutshell/ Notes on protocols and usage with Dr. Jeremy Loenneke Informfitness.com/podcast/64-blood-flow-restriction-training-with-dr-jeremy-loenneke/ About Dr. Chris Gaviglio Dr. Chris Gaviglio is a current senior strength and conditioning coach for the Queensland Academy of Sport, working with Olympic-based sports and athletes.  Chris has been involved with elite sport for over 15 years working across multiple Olympic sports and professional football codes in both the northern (Bath Rugby) and southern (Wallabies – Australian National Rugby Union team and Gold Coast SUNS – Australian Football /AFL) hemisphere. During his time in the UK (Bath Rugby), Chris was involved with UKSport in multiple applied sports science projects.  His major project involved monitoring salivary hormones (testosterone and cortisol) responses to competition and training in rugby union and culminated in his thesis. Chris has several papers already publish as a result of this work and other collaborative work with other applied sport scientists. Aside from an interest in using salivary hormones as a marker for training and competition, he continues to provide bespoke applied sports science projects for the athletes he works with, particularly in the areas of: Passive heat maintenance Blood flow restriction training Warm-up and peri-competition strategies Power and strength development Chris is also an entrepreneur and enjoys designing training products that compliments his strength and conditioning passion. The first two products he produced were back mobilization tools in the Thera-wedge and then the Backsak. More recently he designed the Sports Rehab Tourniquet to be used for Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) training. This is a total body training system for both the upper and lower body. As a progression from designing this BFR training tool he has developed training workshops and instructional videos to help educate users.

Today’s show features Frank Forencich.  Frank is an internationally recognized leader in health and performance education. He has over thirty years of teaching experience in martial art and health education. Frank holds black belt rankings in karate and aikido and has traveled to Africa on several occasions to study human origins and the ancestral environment. A former columnist for Paleo Magazine, Frank is the author of numerous books about health and the human predicament, including “The Exuberant Animal”, the book I read that originally led me to Frank’s work. We live in a time where early sport specialization and pressure has led to burnout and high injury rates amongst athletes, but the “rabbit hole” to a dis-satisfaction with sport and movement in general for so many, goes much deeper than that.  As much as we fall prey to the stress-laden, year-round competitive schedule that leads athletes to higher pressure situations at younger ages, we also have “forgotten” our roots as athletes, and more importantly, as human beings, in so many senses of the word.  We miss out on both training results, satisfaction and longevity by failing to study our ancestral nature. On today’s show, Frank Forencich goes into many important elements of our humanity that can help athletes not only recover and train better, but also help increase enjoyment of the training process.  These elements include human biorhythms, dance, play and exploration, getting in the dirt, benefits of training in nature, purpose driven movement, and more.  This podcast was truly important on the level of helping us use the principles of nature that define who we are, to help us in training, and far beyond. If you bring drums into your gym, or for your workout after this episode, PLEASE let me know. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs.  For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 5:20 – Key trends seen in the animal kingdom, in physical movement that humans should pay attention to our own movement practices 11:50 – “Effortful striving” in human training versus more of a purpose-driven approach that is characteristic to non-human animals 20:30 – What the idea of “dancing being the original PE” means to athletes and all-human 28:20 – How play and exploration influences how we adapt to movement and training 33:50 – Frank’s thoughts on when to specialize in a sport, or movement practice 35:20 – The difference between the “jungle animal” and the “desert animal” and what this means for humans, training and moving in context with their environment 38:35 – The impact of bioregion on movement practice 40:40 – The impact of training in nature, versus training in an indoor gym setting, and then the “Bio-Philic” need of humans in regards to connection with nature 45:45 – Jim Thorpe’s primal and natural training methods 48:20 – The importance of getting “in the dirt” and actually connecting with dirt and the earth itself for the sake of the micro-biome 54:05 – Low hanging fruits on how to deal with stress better in context of our human biology 58:05 – The role of the athlete in modern society 1:01:55 –  How to build a total training day based on the rhythms and mechanisms of the human being “There is no emphasis on appearance (regarding movement and “exercise” as observed in the animal kingdom)” “It’s important to remember that sports are movement specialties” “In human athletics, there is constant striving all the time that is divorced from habitat; it is almost as if we are training in a bubble” “For the playful athlete, the motivation is purely intrinsic” “We’ve lost sight of the fact that the dose makes the poison, the dose makes the medicine… the wisdom lies in remembering the shape of the inverse U-curve” “I don’t think we give our animal bodies enough credit for knowing what’s going on… I think we just need to listen more” “(Dancing) is not sagittal movement, it’s transverse plane movement” “There’s rhythm everywhere, drumming and dancing are fundamental for all of us” “At various weightlifting facilities, bring drums in and use them, that would an easy thing to add that would increase enjoyment and it would increase performance too” “Play is deeply wired into the primate-mammal body” “If you isolate rodents (from being able to play) they will grow up to have huge social deficits and dysfunctions” “What I’ve tried to do with people is have a bio-regional approach to athletics” “Native people always identify with habitat, and that is something we have lost a lot of in the modern world” “The blue collar stuff is really under-rated (for physical fitness)” “Our microbiome now is completely out of whack, and the way to get back to that is to put your hands in the dirt and actually contact the soil, or run barefoot, or go climbing (outside)” “(Modern ambient noise) is an assault on the autonomic nervous system” Show Notes Oregon State football dance-battle (rhythm and dance is foundational) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vafso7rClUY   One of Frank’s movement classes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2bcq3769ps About Frank Forencich Frank Forencich is an internationally recognized leader in health and performance education. He earned his BA at Stanford University in human biology and neuroscience and has over thirty years of teaching experience in martial art and health education. Frank holds black belt rankings in karate and aikido and has traveled to Africa on several occasions to study human origins and the ancestral environment. He’s presented at numerous venues, including the Ancestral Health Symposium, Google, the Dr. Robert D. Conn Heart Conference, and the Institute of Design at Stanford University. A former columnist for Paleo Magazine, Frank is the author of numerous books about health and the human predicament. He’s a member of the Council of Elders at the MindBodyEcology Collective and a Diplomate member at the American Institute of Stress.

Today’s show welcomes back coach Michael Zweifel.  Michael is the owner and head of sports performance for “Building Better Athletes” performance center in Dubuque, Iowa.  Building Better Athletes focuses on building the athlete from the ground up by mastering the fundamentals of movement mastery, strength/power training, recovery modalities, and promoting ownership in athletes.  Michael is also a team member of the movement education group, “Emergence”.  He has been a frequent guest on this podcast, speaking on topics of perception-reaction, exploration in the weight room, creativity and more. As I’ve grown as a coach (and a human mover/athlete) it’s been really enjoyable to experience sport, and movement in different ways.  In working in a college weight room, it was also very interesting to pay attention to the defining characteristics of the best athletes.  They weren’t always the strongest, or even the fastest, but they could move and react incredibly well in context of their sport… and they loved to play.  One of the things I’ve been enjoying doing recently, is coaching youth sports (5 year olds, to be exact) and it’s a learning experience that impacts my philosophy, all the way up the chain into high level performers. With play and exploration at the core of athleticism and sport, why is it that the culture of the gym (and in many sports performance settings) completely the opposite?  So much of modern sport acts like athletes are robots, a culture based on lines and whistles, and a perception of needing to do everything one particular way. On today’s show, Michael Zweifel goes into a deep dive on how his warmups fit with the key characteristics of elite athleticism. He speaks on how he connects his warmups to core human instincts and needs, and talks about how to develop a love for movement and play that transcends organized sport play.  Michael and I also take on a broad-scope discussion on the over-structuring that is rampant in sport (and our culture in general).  This show is truly important in light of our modern sport culture. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs.  For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 4:50 – Michael’s thoughts on trail running, longer runs, and elasticity 13:20 – Michael’s biggest changes in his warmup process over the last decade 16:30 – What Michael would take back with him in terms of his warmups and training if he returned to the university sector of training 21:50 – Comparing “routine” warmups (lines, movement prep, etc.) versus a more dynamic and adaptive form of warming up for a training session 28:50 – Speaking on the different stages of the warmup defined by Emergence: Ownership, exploration and attunement 33:50 – If there are any general warmups that Michael’s athletes will actually do, and how he approaches that type of work 35:50 – A broader-scope discussion on coaching, creativity versus militaristic coaching 48:00 – What age groups and settings Michael feels sports performance coaches should work with to optimally learn the nature of training sport 52:50 – The critical nature of play for human beings, and how professional athletes are very play driven 1:05.35 – How Michael might lead up to a more output driven day in the gym from a warmup perspective 1:07:50 – Some more specific changes in the warmup process that Michael has made in the last few years: Applying “levels” in sport and human movement 1:14:50 – The sad reality of kids quitting sports early, and without preparedness for how to enjoy life from a movement practice at that point 1:20:50 – Key differences in what Michael has in the warmups of different age groups (elementary school, middle school, high school, etc.) “What transitioned my warmup was being in the private sector.  In the private sector, each and every day I have to win my athletes over… in the college sector my athletes will be back no matter what I do” “If you think about the basic dynamic warmup, with the lines, we never do any of that stuff anymore; I think there is so much more opportunity to engage our athletes in a deep level…. We’re attacking the warmup from a perceptual standpoint, we are attacking the warmup from an emotional and social standpoint, we are attacking our warmup from a technical/tactical standpoint” “The transition to transforming my warmups has been hard; every day is about reading the room, asking questions, giving certain athletes autonomy and ownership; the warmups are alive” “If I value my athletes being adaptable, and I value my athletes being creative and having abundance in movement solutions, how is doing the same warmup day in and day out building that capacity? It’s not, it’s restricting it” “Our three stages (of warming up at Emergence) are ownership, exploration and attunement” “For youth athletes, exploration is the key to learning” “I’m a big fan of allowing each athlete’s individualism to stand out, and ost team sports try to kill that” “(speaking on militaristic warmups) What you are doing in a non-contextual environment is going to have no bearing what is going on in a game” “People think people like Saban and Bellichek are really militaristic; if you actually study those guys, they are a lot more lenient, and give freedom and autonomy and they let individual styles show out, much more than people think” “Do you think athletes are going to turn a switch, in our on fields sessions, and are going to turn this switch, and be this adaptable, creative, abundant mover, when in the warmup we stripped away all this stuff? I think that is why a warmup is a really, extremely important thing for our athletes” “All my professional athletes, that’s all they want to do (play), at the end of the day, sports is just a game, it’s just play… we each have this deep, inherent desire for play” “The big thing with our youth athletes, is they get superpowers… find ways for people to feel special in certain moments” “What makes video games successful… they are inclusive, they tell a story, there are levels… so how can I do some of these things in my games, my warmups, so I try to tell more stories in how we design our activities” “60-70% of kids are quitting (sports) by 12-13 years of age” “As athletes get a little older, middle school, high school, that ownership piece will expand” About Michael Zwiefel Michael Zweifel is the owner and head of sports performance for “Building Better Athletes” performance center in Dubuque, Iowa.  Michael is a CSCS, IYCA certified practitioner, and was the all time NCAA leading receiver with 463 receptions in his playing days at University of Dubuque.  He is also a team member of the movement education group, “Emergence”. Building Better Athletes (BBA) is committed to an evidence based practice towards sports performance, and attaching physical preparation from every angle possible – physical, mental, nutritional, soft-tissue, mobility.  Our focus is building the athlete from the ground up by mastering the fundamentals of movement mastery, strength/power training, recovery modalities, and giving athletes ownership of the Other 23. Using these methods and principles, BBA has been fortunate to help athletes to: 5 NFL Players 1 CFL Player 1 Gatorade State Player of the Year (Basketball) 7 Collegiate All-Americans 12 Conference Player of the Year 11 Division I Athletes 52 All-Conference Athletes

Today’s show is with Kibwé Johnson.  Kibwé is the director of track and field at SPIRE Academy, in Geneva, Ohio, and the founder of FORTIUS performance.  Prior to SPIRE, Kibwe coached throws at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida for 4 years. In his time as an athlete, Kibwé established himself as one of the USA’s best hammer throwers by being ranked first or second for over a decade, and his personal best of 80.31m/263’5” in 2011 the best mark by an American hammer thrower in over ten years.  He also owns the world’s all-time best HT/DT/WT combination of distances. Kibwé has personally worked with some of the most well regarded coaches in the US and internationally.  His coach for his final 10 years, Dr. Anatoliy Bondarchuk, greatly influenced the development of Kibwé’s own methodologies.  Kibwé’s coaching philosophy is built on communication and cites his experiences as a husband and father with learning how to become more effective as a coach. In my time as a coach, I’ve learned that technique and skill are more than a set of instructions, or a final “model” to shoot for through a series of drills and cues.  Although these instructions can certainly be helpful for lower level performers, once an athlete gets to a more advanced level of performance, drills lose their luster, and we must become more attuned to the actual interaction between the athlete and their environment (implements, the ground, gravity, etc.). On the show today, Kibwé talks about his experiences as an athlete, particularly with Dr. Bondarchuk that helped him develop as a thrower, and in his eventual career as a coach.  He talks about the unique, high velocity and cyclical elements of the hammer that demand a particular relationship to the instrument, and things we can take from this relationship that can transfer to other skills, or life itself.  Finally, Kibwe speaks extensively about drills, vs. holistic skill performance, and the many “subtle” elements, such as awareness, that go into enhancing holistic performance on the highest levels. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs.  For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 6:40 – Kibwé’s evolution as an athlete, and what led him to his philosophy of “The Tao of the Hammer” 10:25 – Kibwé’s experience in working with Dr. Bondarchuk and how the communication barrier actually helped Kibwé to figure out his throw without the use of words or cues 18:20 – How the hammer throw in track and field is unique in respect to other throwing events due to its unique, very high velocity rotational dynamics 21:10 – Kibwé’s take on teaching athlete’s fundamental positions vs. letting them figure out skills in a different manner (or on their own), particularly in context of the hammer throw 26:40 – How acquiring the “feeling” of a good throw is helpful to scale to throws of all distances 32:25 – How people tend to want a “list of things” when doing something, and the battle of getting an athlete outside of a list of cues, and to facilitate them figuring things out on their own 34:40 – How to learn, from a “Tao of the Hammer” perspective, and what awareness in a hammer throw means to Kibwé 46:40 – Examples of elite athletes who have had their mechanics “fixed”, as per a “technical model” and had poor seasons or failed to improve 51:25 – How Kibwé would address a “mistake” in an athlete’s throwing, and portions of an athlete’s technique 56:40 – Where drills fall short in training a complex movement, such as the hammer throw 1:02:40 – Reactivity as needed between the hammer and the athlete, and how to “do less” in the course of a throw from a perspective of actively putting force into the implement “It really came down to trying to find the words to explain how I was feeling when I felt my best; because I wasn’t seeing that anywhere” “It’s pretty typical that a coach will use a whole lot of words, but in all of those words, there is no space for that athlete to fill that with their own natural instincts, or nests.  What makes that own individual amazing gets tripped away with a ton of words, in my opinion” “In track and field and the technical disciplines, the athletes who were allowed to grow and evolve and change on their own, are more artists in a way, if that makes sense” “There is an importance to teaching a base level, “how do you move, kind of thing”…. But there is part of me what says, “why not?”” “Hammer throwers who started at 10 or earlier, it is beautiful to watch” “My thing there is when an athlete is essentially connected to that feeling, and they can maintain that through the throw, you can have that feeling no matter how hard you throw” “The next day, the feeling they received from that cue that you gave them (the day prior) is different, for an innumerable number of reasons” “Both are needed, masculine and feminine, yin/yang.  Both are needed, but then there are points when one is not needed versus the other, or vice versa, and trying to work that out for yourself” “It’s just being intentional with my movement, and that in itself is meditation.  With hammer and movement, it’s as simple as that, and it’s basically opening yourself up to really feeling what’s happening with your body in space.. and your mind too honestly, instead of not knowing how you got there” “We lose so many athletes to (a highly technical coaching system) because we have this one-size-fits-all system that we are thrown into, and some have “success”, but the artists, they just fall off, never to be seen from again” “When I trained with Dr. B I felt like I couldn’t do anything else, but throw a hammer… I found it funny” “The hammer doesn’t go just because you want it to go far.  You have to work with it, and you have to be part of it… it doesn’t care how strong you are” “By removing myself, the hammer is free to do whatever it needs to do” “I don’t understand why you would coach everyone the same way, train everyone the same way, everyone’s different” “Between eight and thirteen 80 meter guys, not one of us looked the same, (Dr. B) allowed for everyone’s individual-ness to come through, and everyone threw really far” “When the opportunity is kind of stripped from you, you lose that opportunity to learn about yourself” About Kibwe Johnson Kibwé Johnson is the director of track and field at SPIRE Academy, in Geneva, Ohio.  He is also the founder of FORTIUS performance which focuses on track and field throws training.  Prior to SPIRE, Kibwe coached throws at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida for 4 years. In his time as an athlete, Kibwé established himself as one of the nation’s best hammer throwers of all time by being ranked first or second for over a decade. In that time, he secured 5 US titles, 4 US runner-up, and numerous US national teams.  He has personally worked with some of the most well regarded coaches in the US and internationally in Don Babbitt, Bob McKay, Stuart Togher, 4x Olympian Jud Logan, and lastly Dr. Anatoliy Bondarchuk.  Kibwé deeply values his 10 years spent with Dr. Bondarchuk as their time together greatly influenced the development of Kibwé’s own training methodologies. Kibwé’s winning toss and personal best of 80.31m/263’5” at the 2011 USA Outdoor Championships was the best mark by an American hammer thrower in over a decade, making him only the fourth American to ever to go beyond the mythical 80-meter line. Boasting a personal best of 65.11m/213’6” in discus, and 25.12m/82’5” in weight throw, Kibwé is the most versatile throws athlete of all time (All-Time World Best HT/DT/WT combination). Kibwé’s coaching philosophy is built on communication and cites his experiences as a husband and father with learning how to become more effective as a coach.

Today’s show is with Alex Effer, owner of Resilient Training and Rehabilitation.  Alex has treated and trained a variety of clients, from professional and amateur athletes, to a wide spectrum of the general population, ranging from those with certain medical conditions, to postoperative rehabilitation and individuals with chronic and complex pain.  Alex has experience as an exercise physiologist, a strength and conditioning coach, and has consulted with a number of elite and Olympic organizations.  Alex has taken a tremendous amount of continuing education courses and is on the leading edge of modern training theory. There are loads of different continuing education courses and theories, each carrying methods to train athletes from perspectives on breathing, corrective exercise, and exercise variations, to name a few.  It is in the process of getting to the core principles that define these many training systems, that we can gain a greater level of wisdom to make better decisions in exercise selection and training organization. For today’s podcast, Alex speaks on his continuing education journey, and core principles that many current courses in human performance/assessment and biomechanics tend to have in common.  He speaks on how to dial up, or down, points of contact in a movement to help an athlete achieve better mastery over a skill or core human function. In the second half of the show, Alex gives some analysis and progressions with functional training movements, such as crab walks, and bear crawls, and then talks about how some “meathead” oriented exercises are actually more functional than we give the credit for.  Finally, Alex talks about exercises that either “push an athlete backwards in the chest” or “push them forwards” from the back, and how those ramifications can go into, not ony the way we select exercises, but aso the way that we periodize and organize our training programs. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs.  For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 5:15 – Common trends that Alex found in his educational process, having taken “all the courses” 13:30 – How Alex looks at force vectors in training and movement, and the difference between walking and running when assessing gait and looking at these force vectors 20:15 – Where Alex has gotten most of his information in training when considering PRI versus other educational systems (such as DNS or SFMA) 22:15 – Why it may be a faulty method to try to compare babies to adults in terms of baseline movement patterning 30:00 – How to transition a client from 12 points of contact, to only 2, and how to use the extra points of contact to improve one’s movement ability when athletes may struggle with standing motions 44:30 – Assessing crab walks, and explaining (or regressing) why athletes might not be able to lift their hips up while performing the crab walk 51:15 – Why some “fitness/bodybuilding” movement can have athletic movement applications, such as a tricep kickback or arm curl coupled with head turn 56:15 – How athletes doing exercises in a manner that “feels good” often times is an optimal method of them doing that movement, versus whatever the commonly accepted technical model for that exercise might be 1:00:00 – Alex’s theory on periodizing training based on early, mid and late stance oriented movements 1:12:15 – Viewing training intervention as either “pulling someone back” or “pushing them forward” “When you take every single course, you kind of get mind-blown by them the first time… and then you hit a client that totally goes against all the algorithms and everything they say, and you have to pivot” “(all the continuing education courses) believe in some sort of respiration and how that affects the body” “You got two phases of respiration, so you got inhale which is more external rotation, and exhale which is more internal rotation.  You also have the three phases of gait, two of the phases are external rotation so you’ve got to believe there is some semblance with inhalation, and then you’ve got one of the phases, mid-stance which is more pronation, so you have to believe that is going to be more exhalation” “If this person is limited in internal rotation, they must be limited in exhalation in that area” “As I pronate my foot, I’m going to have an internal rotation force go all the way up near my head” “If I can’t get the air in certain parts of my ribcage, or certain parts of my pelvis, then I am going to induce more muscle tone in that area… I now have to use a muscle strategy in order to pull the air in; I use my lats, I use my pecs, I use my SCM, I use my traps” “Go into the anatomy app, and remove all the muscle, and start with “how do the bones move” “So, position, breathing, gait, and force vectors: To me, those are the main things that I think about based on all of the different systems I’ve taken that influence me today and dictate how I may program and what I’m looking at from an assessment standpoint” “Internal rotation is a downward force into the ground” “Why do we pronate? Why do we internally rotate? Because we are hitting a ground that does not visibly deform when we hit it? “What I really like from DNS, or what I took was the developmental sequences (lying on your back, side, quadiped, half kneeling) going from 12 points of contact to the ground, to just having 2, and how to manage that” “You can get so sucked into the algorithm that you take thinking out of the equation” “With every exercise I do on the ground, I try to have the feet involved” “When I’m doing an assessment I ask, “how far forward on the toes is this person”? “For me, the supine is going to help me gain range of motion, to be able to try something with more range of motion, and has more gravitational demand to it” “Toe off and heel strike are more of a horizontal force vector” “(In crab walking) I’m not able to flex my one shoulder as I’m walking forward; I can’t bring my arm forward because that rib cage doesn’t have the ability to flex… they are more sagittal plane driven and they don’t have the ability to rotate” “Let’s say you do a crawling sequence, first you do a forward bear crawl, then a reverse bear crawl, then a crab walk, and see how that improves (because that is going to open up the manubrium).  Then if that still doesn’t work, side planks are going to help, tricep kickbacks are going to help” “Bicep curls (with a simultaneous head turn) open up space in the upper back” “Doing lower reaching or heel elevation exercises can bring me into a heel strike bias, which is going to open up some shoulder flexion, internal and external rotation, and then I can move onto a mid-stance phase; force production and strength” “The first phase of an off-season is more heel strike, it’s more hypertrophy, let’s build some muscle mass, let’s restore range of motion; and then we move into more strength in the second phase… that phase is more mid-stance, I need to start producing force” “Landing exercises are going to be more heel-strike bias, because that is deceleration” “BFR, how expansive is that? That’s going to promote some external rotation for sure in those areas” “In order to understand programming, at the top of the page, write heel strike, mid-stance, toe-off.  Then write down all different lunges, then squats, then deadlifts, then presses” “A flexed thorax (more heel strike) is something we should be searching for… most people are being pushed from behind and going onto their toes, so we need to push them back.  I am asking, am I trying to pull this person back, or am I trying to push them forward?” Show Notes Supine cross connect https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb1bVUNx-OM   Walking cross connect https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgugFWN3Gao   The manubrium https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eltLjT8j1r0   Erik Huddleston’s chart on training expansion and contraction About Alex Effer Alex Effer is the owner of Resilient Training and Rehabilitation, a name that emphasizes Alex’s unique approach to fitness, which is one that combines both aspects of normal fitness and rehabilitation principles to achieve long- lasting pain free results. Alex uses his comprehensive knowledge and passion in exercise science, autonomics, respiration, rehabilitation, and biomechanics to develop programs that promote injury prevention, sports performance, and rehabilitation through quality of movement. Alex has gained extensive clinical and practical experience treating and training a variety of clients from professional and amateur athletes, high profile executives, older adults, individuals with certain medical conditions such as Stroke, Parkinson’s, Multiple Sclerosis, Congenital Heart Disease, Postoperative rehabilitation and individuals with chronic and complex pain. Alex’s experience includes: Head Exercise Physiologist at Ace Sports Clinic Inc; Director of Return to Performance and Head Strength and Conditioning Coach for the Varsity Baseball, Women's Lacrosse, and Golf team at the University of Toronto; Consultant for the Varsity Blues Football, Hockey, Swimming Team; Head Exercise Physiologist for Balance Physiotherapy; and consultant to Olympic Swimming Athletes, and NBA players. Alex earned his Bachelors of Kinesiology from the University of Toronto, obtained a Post-Graduate Certificate in Exercise Science for Health and Performance from Niagara College and is a Certified Exercise Physiologist, Certified Strength and Conditioning Coach, and EXOS Performance Specialist.

Today’s show is with Lance Walker.  Lance is the Global Director of Performance at the Michael Johnson Performance Center where he designs and implements performance training programming for local and international youth, collegiate, and professional athletes in all sports. Prior to MJP, Lance served as Director of Performance Training at Integrated Athletic Development, as well as having served as an assistant strength coach with the Dallas Cowboys, as well as the University of Oklahoma.  Lance is also a current Registered Physical Therapist in the state of Texas, giving him a unique blend of skills and lenses by which to observe athletic performance. In looking at what makes athletes operate at a high level, we can’t go too far without looking at the actions of the pelvis and spine.  As both a strength coach, and physical therapist, Lance has detailed knowledge of both the anatomy and fine-tuned function of this region, as well as more global concepts, linking it to sprinting and general strength training. For today’s show, Lance takes us on a journey of hip function, and how that function ties into sprinting and athletic movement.  He goes into pelvic dynamics in the weight room (including some important points on split squatting and the hips), as well as how using horizontal resistance combined with vertical exercises can drive unique and more specific adaptations.  Finally, talks about some key strength movements to achieve better pelvic function for speed and resiliency. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs.  For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 5:30 – How Lance looks at the action of the pelvis in sprinting and human movement 19:00 – Pelvic dynamics in bilateral sagittal plane activity (squatting and deadlifting) versus sprinting, and helping athletes determine their own individual squat depth 21:30 – How a rear foot elevated split squat can create lumbo-sacral torsion that could provoke injury in the pelvis 34:30 – How to help athletes who are not reciprocal in the pelvis improve their pelvic action in sprinting, and Lance’s view on core and trunk training for athlete 38:00 – The role of hip flexors in training for speed and athletic performance 50:30 – How adding horizontal band resistance can dynamically change strength training exercises 54:30 – The idea of hip separation in fast sprinters (front knee and back knee distance) and if this is a good idea to specifically train in practice “That pelvis motion, rotation and listing, that’s my focus now, both from a dysfunction standpoint and a speed standpoint” “The body needs to set up and list the pelvis to be fast” “Optimized motion should probably be the approach, and let’s just not stabilize the tar out of it and make everything move around this stable, fictitious pelvis” “It’s like you are setting the spring so when you throw it, it abducts, externally rotates and extends, and when it hits the ground, it’s still rotating” “There was this incredible increase in pubic symphysis issues… there was this mad rush to load this split stance stuff, because, nobody hurt their back anymore, and “it’s more functional”” “Hip flexor strength is a thing!” “Just stretching the hip flexors, and strengthening the abdominal wall doesn’t help (anterior pelvic tilt) those people” “When you are doing your leg drop series, don’t put your hands under your pelvis” “(Regarding the supine leg drop test without the low back arching up) The one’s that have a lot of issues, the bottom 10-20%, chronic hamstrings, spondy, all those things, yeah that’s a test (that failing fits with getting hurt more often)” “That’s a key concept in hamstring rehab is training the hamstring while training the hip flexor” “We worked with elite distance runners at MJP, and the more elite they were, the more positive their Thomas test was (poor hip flexor mobility)” “Fast freaks are not putting a lot of pressure into the ground after neutral… the ones that suck, they are the ones still putting pressure into the ground after center” “These elite sprinters are not hitting directly below their body, they are hitting 6” in front of their body” “I’m anti-deceleration, we are doing a dis-service by teaching others to slow down” “All of us that get to work with athletes, or patients, we are shepherds to this adaptation, we are not driving adaptation.  Don’t kid yourself; the human body, that is the magic maker” About Lance Walker Lance Walker is the Global Director of Performance at the Michael Johnson Performance Center in McKinney, Texas where he designs and implements performance training programming for local and international youth, collegiate, elite, and professional athletes in all sports. Lance previously served as Director of Performance Training at Integrated Athletic Development and was responsible for the training and/or physical rehabilitation needs of over 150 active professional athletes from the NBA, NFL, MLB, PGA, CBA, and CFL. Lance served three seasons as Assistant Strength and Conditioning Coach with the Dallas Cowboys. Prior to joining the Dallas Cowboys, Lance held strength & conditioning positions at the University of Oklahoma and Casady School, Oklahoma City, where he worked directly with athletes across many sports, including football, basketball, track, golf, gymnastics and wrestling. Lance also holds a Bachelor's degree in Physical Therapy and a Master's degree in Exercise Physiology from the University of Oklahoma. He has contributed to over 20 professional publications in sport science and presented at over 15 national conferences. Lance is a former Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist and a current Registered Physical Therapist in the state of Texas. Combining his sports medicine and rehab sciences background, with 23 years of performance training experience, Lance is recognized globally as a leading expert, innovator, and pioneer in youth athlete development, high-performance training systems integration, and multi-disciplinary sports performance training methodology.

Strength coach Christian Thibaudeau discusses power training complexes and athletic skill development. He explores periodization and assigning the use of complexes, as well as creating the purest possible adaptation for athletes. Thibaudeau also talks about training stimulus and his double and triple progression systems. The talk focuses on what not to do, rather than what to do, when it comes to training. Other topics include the influence of genetics on athletic development, performance herbalism, progressive overload, velocity-based training, strength training methods, and the relationship between volume, muscle mass, and athletic performance.

Today’s show is with Gavin MacMillan, sports performance coach and founder of Sport Science Lab. Growing up in Toronto Canada, he participated in 7 high school sports, and received a tennis scholarship from San Jose State University.  In 2001 Gavin founded Sport Science Lab where he has experienced a great deal of success training athletes and teams at every level in multiple sports. I’ve personally had a mixed relationship with barbells in the course of my own athletic career.  I’ve had positive (squatting sub-maximally 1x a week being a staple in my best athletic year), but also several negative experiences, one of which was my surprise at age 20, I had spent fall of work increasing my best clean from 225 to 245lb, yet high jumped only 6’1” the first two meets of the year (my PR from high school being 6’8”).  In my first few years as a college track coach, I learned quickly that an athlete who learns to lift barbells better is not necessarily a faster athlete. When I was 21, I stumbled across a book called “Pro-Bod-X” by Marv Marinovich and Edyth Hues.  The training methods within were like nothing I’d ever seen, incorporating a lot of unstable surfaces, and they didn’t use heavy weights.  Doing the workouts for just over a month, I was pleasantly surprised by just how easily I was moving and jumping in my pickup basketball games. Gavin MacMillan does not use barbells in his training program, and yet gets incredible results on the level of building speed, reactivity, jumping ability, and tremendous resistance to injury.  He has a strong use of balance and proprioception based movements in his training program.  Regardless of where you stand in closeness traditional weightlifting/lifting maxes as a form of progress in a program, you will be a better coach by understanding Gavin’s approach to training athletes, as well as his own experiences as an athlete that led him there. On the show today, Gavin shares his background as an athlete, his results using a non-barbell based training program, concepts on force-production training without using barbells, foot training, and the role of athletic balance training that can be merged with resistance training means for big improvements in reactive outputs. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs.  For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 6:15 – Gavin’s athletic background (which included ballet and figure skating), and how he got into sports performance coaching 12:30 – Gavin’s experience with traditional barbell weight training, and how he ended up going away from these methods in his own training, and with athletes he worked with 21:15 – Taking a step away from traditional barbell training, and how Gavin was able to transform the injury-reduction factor of a professional Rugby team, setting the record for the fewest player minutes lost 29:15 – Gavin’s answer to the question on, how to train an athlete who needs to get generally bigger and stronger, without using traditional barbell methods 33:00 – Gavin’s thoughts on how to train strength and force for people who don’t have access to advanced training machines 46:30 – Talking on what one sport might be able to offer another from an explosive perspective, such as the impact of figure skating in Gavin’s upbringing 52:00 – Elements of a fast transition to the ball of the foot 54:00 – How squatting with a foot on a balance disc fundamentally changes the exercise adaptation, soreness, and athleticism 1:04.15 – The various surfaces that Gavin uses with his athletes, that optimizes their interaction between the foot and the ground 1:10.30 – How Gavin uses isometrics to produce high rates of force development, without generating large amounts of muscle soreness 1:20.30 – Ideas on the rhythm of moving a load in training “What a gift (ballet) was, because now I was taught balance, I was taught flexibility, I was taught to control my body in space.  And then in figure skating, I really had to find different ways to balance on small blades, and I was skating circles around people” “If a system (such as barbell training) is relying on your form being perfect to work, that’s flawed from the outset” “To be able to handle my own bodyweight at a higher velocity is imperative” “In rugby for instance, the scrum is 2% of the game, so I’m not going to spend the entire training platform more than he’ll actually need it” “You are not going to improve the ability to move an external load unless you move external loads; have you ever tried to bale hay in your life? I’d rather a guy is flipping tires than back squatting” “A human can only produce force properly at certain joint angles” “We’ll incorporate a balance element into almost all the strength work we do” “The foot is so important because it’s a suspension system that the rest of the body has to stretch against, and the foot has flex as well” “I don’t think people understand what balance is; balance is keeping your body in a centered position, no matter how it’s challenged” “Great athletes control their limbs in space, in every range and plane of motion better than other people” “Last year’s combine, every one of our linemen (vertical jump) went up 6 inches in 6 weeks, in whatever we had them for” “People don’t’ understand that having just a standing vertical, this is not going to correlate to a moving vertical” “If you don’t have the balance to control yourself at slow speeds, you sure as heck aren’t going to have the balance to do it at high ones” “The best athlete not only can create contact well, they can avoid contact better” “In figure skating, you had to hold these bent knee positions, and propel yourself the length of the ring to pass your exam” “Your body is going to try and find the most efficient way it can (in athletic movement, including squatting)” “We don’t just have strength at any position, we have optimal power positions (90 degree angles)” “That’s one of the thing we really talk about when we talk about baseball hitting; you can’t have your head moving when you have objects being thrown at you at 100 miles per hour” “DOMS is created from heavy eccentric loading, which our body never does, think about it.  Eccentric range, we either ballistically load it, or we hold it isometrically, we never load it slowly eccentrically, never happens” “Where the strength business is going to go, is it is going to go where you need to increase the velocity of the load eccentrically” Show Notes SSL Foot Work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khuz-KRg2HY   SSL Strength Work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF1wNq-A5hc   About Gavin MacMillan Gavin grew up in Toronto, Canada. While in high school he participated in 7 sports, ice hockey being his main and favorite. He received a tennis scholarship from San Jose State University and graduated with a B.S. Degree in  Economics. In 2001 he founded Sport Science Lab where he has trained athletes and teams at every level in multiple sports. He has also been approached by various sporting teams and committees around the world to advise on conditioning and rehabilitation strategies. Of late he often works with boxing legend Freddie Roach preparing fighters for events, Over the last 21 years he has accumulated a noticeable client list which includes Miguel Cotto, Will Blackmon, Troy Polumalo, Manny Pacquiao, George St.Pierre, Dominick Cruz, Will Blackmon, LA Sol women soccer team ...the list goes on and on!