Just Fly Performance Podcast

Eamonn Flanagan, lead S&C consultant at Sport Ireland Institute, discusses plyometric progressions, jump testing, and optimizing training. He emphasizes the importance of tailoring tests to athletes and implementing plyometric training for reactive strength. The chapter also explores the relevance of sprinting and jumping in athletic performance and the benefits and drawbacks of single leg testing.

Today’s show brings on Angus Bradley.  Angus is a strength coach and podcast host from Sydney, Australia.  He coaches out of Sydney CBD, and co-hosts the Hyperformance podcast with his brother, Oscar.  After focusing primarily on weightlifting for the first half of his career Angus finds himself spending as much time “outside of his lane” as possible trying to identify the principles that transcend all human movement.  Like many guests on this show, Angus has been well-educated in the compression/expansion training ideals proliferated by Bill Hartman that are pushing our industry forward.  Angus is frequently sharing next level knowledge from his social media platform and podcast, and he works with a diverse crowd from strongman to surfing and everything in between. I’ve always been trying to “figure out” weightlifting in context of athletic performance.  There are coaches with a lot of different opinions on which lifts athletes should do, and some elite sports performance professionals have athletes do little to even no traditional barbell work.  In my own journey, I found myself a much more powerful, but slightly less elastic athlete in my mid-20s after 12 years of loading my body through squats, Olympic lifts and the like.  On the flip-side, I’ve had athletes who I honestly believe would struggle to achieve their highest peak without some solid help from barbell work.  Rather than only assigning more, or less lifting to a particular athlete, I enjoy knowing the binding principles of barbell work and different body types. In my search for answers, Angus Bradley is a huge wealth of knowledge.  He is highly experienced in weightlifting methods and has a deep understanding of the principles of compression and expansion in a variety of exercises, and in determining strategies based on body type.  On the show today, Angus talks about squatting and hinging from ribcage and pelvic floor perspectives, the importance and impact of pressure management in how “strong” athletes are at various lifts, and how to train and manage various body types in light of preventing un-wanted compensations and shape changes in the body.  This is a podcast I wish I had listened to myself, 15 years ago. 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 6:30 Breaking existing paradigms in the performance training industry, and how Angus thinks of the “necessary patterns” of squat, hinge, push, pull for training athletes 12:45 How a squat differs from a hinge from a pelvic floor pressure management perspective 17:00 A re-hash of “expanded” vs. “compressed” types of athletes, as well as a chat on compressive strategies in the big lifts 28:15 The compressive strategies by which athletes actually lift increasing weights in training vs. an increased activation of relative motor units and other factors that tie more readily into athletic performance 44:05 How to look at an athlete who wants to increase vertical jump in light of an athlete’s pressure management strategy 52:30 Some rules of thumb in navigating the day by day process of adding weight in strength training without piling on compressive compensations in athletes 59:15 The errors we have made in posterior chain training, and how to address the posterior chain in context of compression and expansion strategies 1:05.45 How an athlete becomes “quad dominant” and how to work with that in light of pressure systems “The S&C world has always looked to powerlifting, and said, “well you are the squat guys, can you tell us how to squat?” “But there is a certain kind of quality that we are trying to capture when we prescribe a squat or a hinge…. it’s no longer about where the bar is on your body, but what is the muscular strategy at the thorax and the pelvis” “The two different opposing strategies as I see them when it comes to the thorax and the pelvis, it doesn’t squat, it doesn’t hinge, it just compresses and expands” “What we look as a squat is pure vertical translation of a pelvis… and then hinge is pushing the pelvis back, horizontally in a straight line” “When you reach parallel, the femurs are about as IR’ed as they are going to get in that squat” “The squat is an expansion dominant strategy…. the hinge is just the opposite” “The deadlift is a pure compression movement” “If you have a narrow ISA you have a “blown up soccer ball” in your ribs”” “Supination is the inflated ball, pronation is that ball as its mushing into the ground” “As you are descending (in a squat) inhaling can really facilitate those hip flexion mechanics by expanding the pelvis” “People who can’t throw their guts back up (at the bottom of a squat) will lean forward… you don’t want to do that in a squatty context because we are not practicing falling forward there” “The laying down of more muscle tissue over time is more compressive in nature” “(Referring to my subpar deep squat history) You are a good squatter the way I define a squat, which is your ability to yield… your ability to yield is your strength as an athlete” “There is so much pressure in there (in the thorax and pelvis)” “There is such a reciprocal relationship between the pelvic floor and the thoracic diaphgram that you can make a lot of good assumptions about what is going on at the pelvic floor (and the foot) based on what is going on at the ribcage” “For most people, you want to find, not what they have tried to turn themselves into, but what they have tried to be from the get-go” “When I put load on you (a narrow infra-sternal angle individual), there are going to be parts of your body that are going to over-compress” “For an expansion person, try to drive as much expansion as possible; you can build a lot of strength with those expansion strategies… acknowledge what they are, what direction they are heading in, and then act accordingly based off that” “You can chase heavy weights to an extent while driving a yielding strategy, you just have to stack the deck more, you can elevate the heels” “With your muscle driven athletes, you can keep compressing them (with lifting), given they aren’t losing their movement options” “The hedge (if you are unsure what to do) is throw a little weight on someone and drive an expansion strategy (via heels elevated vertical squatting)” “That the narrative I was born into, (back training) was seen as this ultimate hedge… you can’t go wrong, strong back!  But then you get all these people where the lats have squeezed all of the air out of the back of your ribcage and then they have absolutely no ability to rotate” “The bones are the constraints for the pressure system to flow through” “Due to limitations in proximal structures, some people are unable to truly train their hamstrings” “The idea of a compensation is that there is a reward for the thing you exchange for it, so it is just making sure you are getting a good deal for your compensations” “If you are an expanded axial skeleton, then that biases you into ER, and then you like to be on the balls of your feet, which is like concentric ER… that’s how some people find a sneaky compensation strategy over that overall inhaled skeleton” “It’s a lot of coordination to keep that pelvis over the pelvic diaphragm and drive those guts down into it to expand the pelvis” “Your body just wants to stop you from falling over and peeing your pants” About Angus Bradley Angus Bradley is a strength coach and podcast host from Sydney, Australia.  He coaches out of Sydney CBD, and co-hosts the Hyperformance podcast with his brother, Oscar. After focusing primarily on weightlifting for the first half of his career Angus finds himself spending as much time ‘outside of his lane’ as possible trying to identify the principles that transcend all human movement.  He works with a diverse crowd from strongman to surfing and everything in between. Angus has been mentored by Jamie Smith from Melbourne Strength Culture, and formerly dropped out of his major in journalism to tour Australia with his band.

Today’s show brings on Jamie Smith, founder of the “U of Strength”.  Jamie Smith has coached a variety of athletes from the novice to elite skill levels, including several NHL, NBA and MLS athletes.  He has been a prior guest on the podcast, as well as having done an extensive webinar for Just Fly Sports, speaking on perception-action topics and building robust athletes in a manner that transcends simply getting them “stronger”. As long as I’ve been in the sports performance profession, I’ve realized just how important it is to look at every way you can impact the performance of an athlete, on the levels of strength, speed, mentality, perception, decision-making, special-strength, and more.  Jamie is the epitome of a coach who is truly passionate about making athletes better at the sports they play through a comprehensive approach. In the modern day, a comprehensive approach is truly important, since we relate athlete response to that of a machine.  Athletes are so heavily coached, scheduled and instructed, that they rarely get the autonomy and creative license they need to reach their own optimal performance.  Coaches also tend to mis-place their actual role in the process of working with athletes, and don’t allow athletes enough ownership and say in the training process to the point where they will struggle in achieving their ideal training result, overcoming stressful competition situations, and even in life beyond sport. Last podcast, we went into the perception-action component of making a well-rounded athlete, and this episode we get info full-circle development by means of training variability, the use of nature and natural surfaces, menu systems and athlete autonomy, competition, long-term athletic development, and more.  Jamie takes the art of the coach as a guide seriously, and in the world of over-coached and robotic athletes, Jamie is a beacon of light for young athletes looking to reach high levels of not only performance, but also self-efficacy, confidence and life-preparedness. 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 04:23 – The benefits of training in nature for young and older athletes 12:02 – The importance of conscious risk-taking in training 13:23 – Thinking about a child’s future in sport, and how training in nature will impact it 17:30 – Improving happiness in youth sports by incorporating fun and playfulness 24:11 – How to integrate nature into training athletes 28:37 – Thoughts on coaching as a dynamic partnership 33:51 – The role of observation in coaching and focusing on strengths instead of weaknesses + A big misconception of coaches 44:53 – What a training session looks like for Jamie’s athletes, and the art of using menu-systems 56:07 – Competition options in older athletes 57:45 – The role of athlete interest and collaboration in the results of a training program “At the beginning of every day, me and my assistant, I brief him and we go over what the objective is, what we need to improve on as coaches or as a whole, as a program, and one of the things we talk about is who can say the least amount of words.” “A lot of people, to wake up the feet, would roll with a sensory ball or spikey ball, shit we did isometrics, we did different gate patterns walking up and down, walking tall, walking in a tunnel… completely barefoot walking through the rocks.” “The big thing I tell athletes is: we want you to become comfortable in uncomfortable situations.” “[Barefoot training is] not great if you’re on a wood floor or a totally flat floor where there’s zero sensory information coming in. It’s really not a whole lot better than being in shoes, to be honest. You have to have these little sensations or irritations and you combine that with different weights.” “The whole idea of safe uncertainty… I think that’s something that is ignored and I think is one of the most powerful things that we can give an athlete.” “There’s more to this sports performance realm that the sets and reps and perfect form on a back squat or how high you jump.” “When you look at the physical, the psychological, the emotional, and the social and you understand that those four are connected and you can’t leave one of them out, it’s a pretty powerful stimulus for athletic development.” “When you have autonomy and you enjoy what you’re doing, everything gets better.” “We should go with the strengths. Yes, there’s going to be weaknesses and there’s going to be a time and place for that, but I think instead of going right to the weakness or right to the error, let’s go to the strength and what the athlete’s good at. That’s a strategy I have with new athletes.” “Children are not just miniature versions of adults but they have definitive needs for play and self-expression and autonomy. This athlete you have in front of you… is not just the product of your beautiful programming and periodization but they’re the product of everything they had before them all the way along the line.” 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 show brings on elite physiotherapist David O’Sullivan.  Dave has worked as sports physio with England Rugby Union in the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan and with England Rugby League in the 2017 Rugby League World Cup in Australia.  Dave is the founder of the ProSport Academy and now teaches his step by step pro sport approach that he uses with his own sporting and non-sporting patients in private practice to therapists all over the world. Dave’s mission is to empower people to restore control through their body and minds so they can truly live.  He has been a mentor to some well-known coaches/therapists such as previous podcast guest, David Grey. Knee pain and lower limb injury prevention are important topics.  Nearly every coach (and clearly therapist) will deal with either preventing or treating these issues with their athletes.  I enjoy learning about how to prevent knee or Achilles tendon pain, but I truly enjoy these conversations when we can take these principles of performance and scale them up to modes that can be used in late rehab or full-scale performance training. In today’s talk with Dave O’Sullivan, we’ll go into the basic muscle firing patterns that set up the baseline for performance in any bridging activity.  Dave will get into the importance of the Soleus muscle as a lower-body lynchpin, and how to optimally coordinate this muscle, along with the hamstrings in a spectrum of bridging exercises with specific cues for the feet.  We’ll take this all the way to how Dave utilizes jump training methods and drivers, along with foot cueing, to help athletes achieve a seamless and confident return to play.  Whether you are a therapist, strength coach or track coach, this is an information packed and truly relevant episode. 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 Discussing the systems that have influenced Dave the most in his career as a physiotherapist, and how he has synthesized them into his current system 12:20 Dave’s thoughts on the spectrum between basic rehab, and high performance return to play methods in the actions of the foot 22:40 How Dave wants the foot, and mid-foot to engage through various squatting actions, including the “split slouch” exercise 33:10 Mid-foot supine bridging drills as a regression for athletes who cannot tolerate proper load standing on the hamstring and soleus muscles 43:30 A discussion on cueing the mid-foot and how to cue the foot in rehab exercises, versus dynamic movements such as running or sprinting 50:30 Comparing low-hip position hip bridges with standard weighted hip thrust exercises, as well as the role of heel vs. mid-foot pushing in glute bridge work 1:01:30 How to know when to move athletes past supine bridges and slouches pushing through the mid-foot, and into more advanced work 1:08:45 Using “drivers” to help athletes with various jump landings in a return to play situation 1:17:00 When you actually do want to have athletes push through the big toe, versus when to leave it alone “When they go into the real world; the stress and movement, there is so much stimulus going into the nervous system, it’s so much different than being in the physio room doing 3 sets of 10 or a breathing exercise” “I just want to put load on these tissues, and let the system self-organize” “When that foot hits the floor, the soleus (muscle) is the king…. if you had to have one muscle for knee pain, that’s it…. the soleus takes between 6 and 8 times the bodyweight” “That’s an awareness to me that a lot of athletes have skipped, the mid-foot… athletes who stay on their heels or on their toes miss that mid-foot” “The interesting thing with the mid-foot and the soleus is that the soleus has to work with every other muscle in the lower limb” “When you squat, on the way down I want the weight through the heel, and on the reversal, on the way up I want it through the mid-foot/fore-foot” “If you keep the knee straight, that makes it harder to get onto the mid-foot” “It is so much harder to relax than to contract; that’s important for people with consistent pain” “Those top-down cues (squish oranges through the midfoot) are good, but ideally what we want are bottom-up cues where we don’t have to cue them… I wouldn’t have an athlete “squash oranges” running” “By the time that foot hits the floor at that speed (sprinting) the brain and nervous system has a strategy in place, and it’s not caring about turning a muscle on, it cares about not falling over” “We don’t want the bum to come too far up in a single leg bridge, because if you do you are going to start using your back; the lower the bum is the more you are going to use your leg” “I think a lot of those people that got more (EMG in glutes) through the heel… if they did the mid-foot bridge, I’m confident they would cramp in the hamstring or soleus” “You are going to feel (bridges through the midfoot) in your hamstrings for a few weeks, and then you’ll feel them in your glutes (after you build the proper hamstring co-contractions)” “It all goes back; have they got the ability to develop tension? When you are hip thrusting, if I don’t tolerate load through my soleus and hamstring, I am definitely going to use my heels to get up there” “If you want to put more load through the quad, push through the heel” “Continuous bounds, to me, that’s the pre-step to high speed running” “I want them to leap and land on the midfoot (in return to play jumping drills)” “If you push through the pad of the big toe you are going to get a massive calcaneus supination” “I wouldn’t be going out with a (healthy) athlete and be like “I’m going to strengthen your (Flexor Hallucus Longus) today” Show Notes: Supine Bridge:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYD4Jx_IXSw Slouch Exercises in Split Stance:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0COfbIzkIY About Dave O’Sullivan Dave O’Sullivan is a Chartered Physiotherapist and founder of the ProSport Academy. Dave has worked as sports physio with England Rugby Union in the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan and with England Rugby League in the 2017 Rugby League World Cup in Australia. Dave also has a private practice in Huddersfield where he built it up from scratch to now having a leading clinic with over 10 staff that help people who have failed traditional approaches every single day. Dave now teaches his step by step pro sport approach that he uses with his own sporting and non-sporting patients in private practice to therapists all over the world. Dave’s mission is to empower people to restore control through their body and minds so they can truly live. Dave is achieving this mission personally through his clinic and also through his vision with ProSport Academy. Dave’s vision is to support and guide over 1500 therapists in over 50 countries all over the world help millions of people in pain by having the confidence and clarity to help people who have failed traditional approaches. This all starts with understanding the ‘WHY’ behind everything you're doing and having a structured step by step system in place that gives repeatable outcomes and takes the emotion out of the decision making for therapists in private practice and pro sport.

Today’s show brings back Rafe Kelley, owner of Evolve, Move, Play.  Rafe has experience with dozens of movement styles, playing many sports, including gymnastics, learning dance, exploring parkour and studying many forms of the martial arts and MMA styles. When it comes to human movement, and the story and history behind our movement, Rafe is my go-to expert.  Rafe’s students have ranged from world-class parkour athletes, to MMA fighters, to untrained grandmothers.  He has been a two time guest on this podcast, and offers knowledge from a source that is largely un-touched by mainstream strength and athletic development. On previous shows, I have talked with Rafe about our movement roots, structured vs. unstructured training, play based training, and emotional and cognitive links between play, performance and adaptation.  Episode #174 was one of the most transformative episodes I had done in terms of how it immediately impacted my work in my own group training sessions afterwards. On this show, I wanted to tap into more of Rafe’s knowledge of human movement in terms of his experience with martial arts, fighting and modern dance.  The sports performance industry talks about force a lot, but it is critical to look at the best athletes in the world on a level comparing to them with dancers, instead of powerlifters, to get a fuller understanding of the required timings and rhythms.  Today’s podcast is a wonderful experience in discussing the deeper movement qualities that really make elite athletes and how we can consider those qualities of rhythm and fluidity in our own training designs. 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 6:20 Discussing complexity in training, and how to get more work and effectiveness in a shorter period of time 13:49 Quantifying fatigue in basketball and parkour, and concepts on how risk increases session fatigue, and extreme depth landings in parkour 23:34 Philosophy on movement quality in the martial arts, parkour, and athletic movement in general, and questions on if Rafe takes time out of parkour itself to spend time on movement quality 35:53 Rhythmic qualities of movement in athletics, and how to improve athletic performance from a rhythmic perspective 55:16 Points on the use and relationship of dance and ethnic dance styles, to athletic performance 1:00:08 Animal forms and flow in training and human movement “The neurological fatigue associated with a parkour session is not simply associated with how many approach runs did you do, or how big were the jumps.  It was more associated with how much risk, or how threatened your nervous system was by the jumps that you were taking on” “One of the master-keys for re-covering the capacity of my lower limb was tibial rotation drills” “When you are working with a novice athlete, a lot of times the answer is just that they need to do the thing more.  But when that doesn’t fix it, you have to ask, “why isn’t self-organization working”.” “If I initiate a punch, I want that punch to land, and I want my hand to be hard, and my body to be hard as the punch lands, but any time is it hard before it lands, is slowing me down, and wasting my energy…. how sensitive is the foot when it is hitting the ground” “The timing of force production is massive; it’s the harmony of the body as its hitting the ground; the ability to find that moment.  You have do (purposefully) do things, to get (timing)” “I think of it, kind of like music.  Every set of movements or a solution to a problem is like a set of beats.  You can have an optimal set of beats, or you can have noisy extra beats that aren’t contributing to the harmony of the piece” “What (Josef) talked about the first time I talked to him was: “When an athlete has their rhythm, break their rhythm… make them find it again”” “So often, really great athletes have a dance background, and fighters tend to do well in dance, and dance often exists within fighting circles” “I think that, for me, you get the same benefits, and it’s more interesting (than basic crawling) by doing modern dance ground work” “I found that dancing an achy body part, fixes it… when there is something I am studying in my body or trying to release I find (that) to be particularly useful” Show Notes: David Belle Jumps and Landings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x98jCBnWO8w Isreal Adesanya Dance and Fight Methods https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6QL3ue1Tag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJs7pbWK8ms Athletic African Tribal Dance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX0H85tj1yU About Rafe Kelley Rafe Kelley is the owner of Evolve, Move, Play, a business designed to use movement practice to develop more resilient and embodied humans. Raised by two yoga instructors, he was a basketball player and gymnast (and gymnastics coach) in his teens.   Rafe started in the martial arts at 6 years old, studying Tang Soo Do, Aikido, Kung Fu, Kick Boxing, Brazilian Ju Jitsu and Muay Thai. Rafe also has experience in modern training disciplines such as sprinting, gymnastics, crossfit, FRC, modern dance and many others.  His primary specialization is in parkour, the practice of navigating obstacles by jumping, running, flipping or swinging over them, a skill set he primarily taught himself by watching videos and training deep in the woods. Rafe co-founded Parkour visions at age 23, and eventually left to form Evolve, Move, Play.  His students have included world-class parkour athletes and MMA fighters, as well as untrained grandmothers.  His passion to is help people build the physical practice that will help make them the strongest, most adaptable and resilient version of themselves in movement and in life.

Today’s show brings back guests Kyle Dobbs and David Grey for an epic meeting of two biomechanical minds.  I’ve learned a lot from both Kyle and David on and off of this podcast.  Both David and Kyle’s prior episodes have been in our all-time top-listened shows, and I’m excited to get them together for a show. Kyle Dobbs is the owner and founder of Compound Performance which offers online training, facility consulting and a personal trainer mentorship.  He a leading expert in integrating complex movement principles into physical training methods for multiple human disciplines.   David Grey is a biomechanics specialist based in Waterford, Ireland.  He is the creator of the “Lower Body Basics” programs, and has learned under a number of great mentors in the world of movement, S&C, gymnastics, mobility, martial arts, and biomechanics. One element of human performance I’m always looking to become better versed in is breathing, posture, pressure dynamics and how these elements impact our movement and performance potential.  From lifting, to running, to changing direction explosively, how we “stack” and align our pressure centers and body structures makes a big impact on how well we can perform those skills and be free of injury. On today’s podcast, Kyle and David go in depth on rib cage dynamics, breathing and pressure management in context of crawling and running.  We’ll also touch on posture, training the frontal plane, and finish with some talk on the feet, plantar fasciitis, and thoughts on coaching preferential foot pressures in movement. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly for 15% off of your purchase! Timestamps and Main Points 6:05 How Kyle and David look to explain and sequence breathing work within the course of a session 15:05  Ways to observe groups in crawling and locomotion exercises, and how to observe links between those movements and rib cage and breath action 23:50 How Kyle and David address the reciprocal action of the ribs seen in locomotion in breathing and breath work 32:35 What you might see in a crawl or squat that shows that an athlete is compressed, as well as compensation patterns that lead to stiff lumbar spine actions 39:55 How a “ribs first” mentality is critical when it comes to posture and spinal alignment 45:55 Discussing the frontal plane in athletic movement and how muscular strategy switches to respiratory strategy as one moves from lifting to sprinting to distance running 55:25 Training the breath in various exercises outside of ground-based positions 1:06:25 Advice and ideas on dealing with plantar fasciitis in athletes, as well as dynamics of calcaneal motion and how it fits with the rest of the kinetic chain 1:15:25 Thoughts on preferential pressures on different portions of the foot for athletic movements “I will ask my clients to do a toe touch, squat, range of motion, and then we’ll try a positional breathing drill that makes sense in my mind, and if we re-test, it should be better… if it’s not better we are doing the wrong thing” Grey “Your body, from an autonomic position, is going to prioritize breathing over everything else” Dobbs “If you are already in an extended position, and posteriorly compressed in that position, then you don’t have any more extension to actually be able to leverage, so we talk about getting more of a neutral posture, more flexion so that you actually have a larger bandwidth to drive extension when needed” Dobbs “When you look at a 90/90 breathing position, you flip it over and put someone in a crawling position, and it’s basically a 90/90 with a reach up into the sky” Grey “If we can get the rib cage moving, and get people to feel their body and be aware of their body, the breathing can be the result of that sometimes” Grey “The amount of people I’ve had who have never taken a full exhale, ever, is pretty high” Dobbs “If someone is exhibiting compression strategies, you are going to see it in all of their movements…. I can probably guess what their ISA is like from that, and what their gait looks like” Dobbs “When you get a good eye, the table test is really more for the client than you” Grey “If I cannot get expansion through the right side of my rib cage, I will not be able to get my weight over my right leg very well” Grey “Just get them into positions, and get them to breath, and it will happen without those million, billion cues, you know?” Grey “Driving air into the posterior thoracic, will allow for the rib cage to retract back over a pelvis, especially if we can find heels and a little bit of knee flexion, which will allow for a relative posterior tilt, which will get us back to neutral, and again, neutralize that lumbar spine back into its natural curvature” Dobbs “People who can’t (use breath to drive movement into the ribs) they’ll fake it by just flexing and extending through some parts of their spine…. internal and external rotation of the ribs should drive movement into the spine, not the other way around… we use breath and ribs and position to drive movement into the spine” Grey “(When working frontal plane) people take too wide and too long of stance usually, so they cannot get their center of mass over the foot, it falls between both legs” Grey “If I want to drive frontal plane in terms of something that looks like running mechanics, from a weight room perspective, that front foot split squat that David is describing, load that ipsilaterally on the front leg and it is going to pull your pelvis over that foot” Dobbs “If somebody is posteriorly compressed, front load them.  If somebody has a hard time getting a pelvis and a rib cage over an instep, load them ipsilaterally on that side, it’ll drag em’ over there” Dobbs “I can’t get frontal plane movement at the calcaneus if I can’t get sagittal plane movement first” Grey “If we are treating (the foot) like a brick and we are trying to find the outside edge or inside edge on every single thing we do in isolation, we are not appreciating the dynamic nature of the foot” Dobbs “Change of direction for me, when we get into speed of movement, which is about sagittal plane stiffness, which sounds funny, but if someone can’t get co-contractions around the knee joint, they are going to sink down into the movement too much” Grey “Whenever we can bring in tasks when there is speed of movement involved, that’s the goal too” Grey Show Notes: Adductor Drawback Exercise https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3P-SOoRJysM 90 90 Breathing and Postural Work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xps551NcLqA About Kyle Dobbs Kyle Dobbs is the owner and founder of Compound Performance which offers online training, facility consulting and a personal trainer mentorship. Kyle has trained 15,000+ sessions, been a legitimate six-figure earner as a trainer, managed and developed multiple six-figure earners, and has experienced substantial success as a coach and educator.  Kyle has an extensive biomechanics and human movement background which he integrates into his gym prescriptions to help athletes achieve their fullest movement, and transferable strength potential. About David Grey David is a Biomechanics Specialist based in Waterford Ireland.  He helps athletes and everyday people with Injury, Pain, Rehabilitation, and Performance. David assesses his clients in-depth and breaks their gait cycle down into incredible detail to help restore the movement(s) that they are missing or are struggling to access. A lot of his work begins with training the foot to re-experience the movements that it should be accessing during every single footstep. He believes that certain movements are ingrained into our DNA and that we can expect to see huge positive changes in pain and performance when we give the brain the opportunity to re-experience these movements. He has learned under a number of great mentors in the world Movement, S&C, Gymnastics, Stretching & Mobility, Chinese Martial Arts, and Biomechanics. He is greatly influenced by the work of Gary Ward, the creator of “Anatomy in Motion. Webiste: https://davidgreyrehab.com/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCw3pEtC1AbTe3hZ3l6YsyBQ Intagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidgreyrehab/ Booking: https://davidgreyrehab.setmore.com/david

Today’s show features Cal Dietz.  Cal has been the Head Olympic Strength and Conditioning coach for numerous sports at the University of Minnesota since 2000, has worked with hundreds of successful athletes and team, and is the co-author of the top-selling book “Triphasic Training”.  Cal has a multi-time guest on this show, most recently appearing in episode #168 (one of our most popular episodes of all time) on single leg training methods alongside Cameron Josse and Chad Dennis. Cal’s ideas on complex training (French contrast and potentiation clusters) have made a huge impact on the formulation of my own programs and methods.   French Contrast as a training ideology and method has probably been one of the most consistent elements of my training for many years now.  Cal is never one to sit still, and has recently made further advances in his complex training sets as they relate to our neurological and technical adaptations to these movements. On today’s show, Cal talks extensively about his new methods in complex training for improving sprint speed.  As Cal has talked about on previous episodes, even bilateral hurdle hops have the potential to “mess athletes up” neurologically, and so Cal goes in detail on how his complex training sets are now adjusted to address that.  Ultimately, Cal has formulated his gym training for the primary purpose of improving sprint speed and sprint mechanics.  We will also get into Cal’s take on block periodization, and how Cal uses 5,10 and 20 yard dash markers to help determine an athlete’s primary training emphasis for the next block of work. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 05:10 – Breaking a lot of eggs to make a cake: Training Cal and Joel has utilized in that past that may not have worked out so well for the athlete in the process of growing as a coach 12:52 – Cal’s experience with various methods of training + How he trained his son during covid-19 19:56 – Using running and speed to assess athletes, and creating the required adaptations 25:53 – What led Cal to utilizing block method training and block overloads 29:51 – Interpreting and discussing maximal velocity as a training lynchpin 31:45 – Using squats + Examples of “sprint-centric” exercise sets Cal uses 41:34 – What Cal’s working on: Optimizing exercises for your athletes as individuals + Exercises that are best for your brain 43:09 – Quad-dominant vs. Posterior chain dominant athlete assessments + Cal’s 5-10-20 tool 50:45 – The 5-10-20 tool simplified 54:00 – Exercises Cal would assign for Joel, as someone who needs isometric strength? + The best single leg exercise for building leg strength “Usually I had a download (de-load) week and then I’d change the exercise. Then, I started changing the exercises in the download week so the volume was low… that matched the following week so they didn’t get sore starting with the higher volume… I found that when I implemented a new exercise, that’s when they got sore.” “I trained an agonistic muscle with an antagonistic muscle… so what happened was, it didn’t cause a compensation pattern and it kept the global neurological sequence of the nervous system in the right pattern the whole time and it optimized it.” “Running is one of the greatest assessments of any athlete.” “I call it global neurological sequence, it’s just the order and sequence your body moves.” “Max velocity is an indicator of potential in the nervous system, let’s be honest.” “I would start my first set with my quad-dominant athletes at the rear posterior chain exercise and then cycle through everything, which is actually better, Joel, for my weight room functioning.” “I was able to create a tool off a 10-20-yard dash that told me what their weakest link was in training. So, it’s an indicator of what they need for the next two to four weeks in training.” “At what point are we wasting biological resources by doing stuff we don’t need to in the weight room?” “The best single leg exercise for leg strength I’ve ever seen… is a single leg rack deadlift… it will make athletes so strong.” Show Notes: Single leg rack deadlift https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HhqZo-dlgw About Cal Dietz Cal Dietz has been the Head Olympic Strength and Conditioning coach for numerous sports at the University of Minnesota since 2000.  He has consulted with Olympic and World Champions in various sports and professional athletes in the NHL, NFL, NBA, MLB, and Professional Boxing.  During his time at U of M, he help founded and chairs the Sport Biomechanics Interest Group with its purpose to explore the physiological and biomechanical aspects of advanced human performance encompassing the various aspects of kinesiology, biomechanics, neuro-mechanics and physics.  Dietz has also given numerous lectures around the country, as well as publish several scientific articles and dozens articles on training. Most recently, Dietz co-authored the top selling book, Triphasic Training: A systematic approach to elite speed and explosive strength performance.  You can find Cal’s excellent book via his website: xlathlete.com.

Today’s show features Jeremy Frisch and Calin Butterfield.  Jeremy is the owner and director of Achieve Performance Training in Clinton, Mass, has been a multi-time guest on the show with all-things youth and creative training, game-play and long-term development.  Jeremy is not only a strength coach, but also has skin in the game as a youth sports coach, and provides an incredible holistic perspective on the entire umbrella of athletic development.  Calin Butterfield is the high performance manager at U.S. Ski & Snowboard.  He worked for EXOS for about 8 years as a Coach across all different spaces including Phoenix, Dallas, SF at Ft. Bragg, Adidas America, and the Mayo Clinic.  Calin and Jeremy are working together now on concepts related to long term development of ski and snowboard athletes. So often, we have our “standard plyometric battery” in performance training, but we cling to these fundamentals hard when we would be served well to be observing jump training and movement in a variety of mediums to create ideas for our plyometric progression.  Studying athletes in sports that demand fast reactions, impactful landings, high risk, and rewards for creativity have a lot to offer when it comes to looking at our own training designs for the athletes we serve. Together, Jeremy and Calin will talk about their collaboration together with skiing, the use and progression of games with young athletes up to college level, plyometric progressions and advancing complexity, and how the natural warmup process in ski and snowboard (terrain park) can give us ideas that we can port over into how we can prepare athletes for sport.  There is a lot of great information in this podcast that can be useful for sport coaches, strength coaches and skiiers alike. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 05:25 – The background of Calin and Jeremy’s careers and collaboration 08:30 – How does gameplay fit into a sport like skiing? 16:42 – When people tend to peak in skiing and snowboarding and how this fits into proportion of game play at different ages 24:18 – The power in connecting to the outcome and having multiple avenues to get to that outcome 27:02 – Attrition from training + creating enjoyable training experiences for kids 36:48 – How autonomy and feedback in the warm-up process changes as athletes get older and the reality of “perfect landings” in plyometric exercise 41:52 – The relationship between landing variability and chronic sport landing overload 45:57 – Reducing training down to information + plyometrics and progressions in skiing and snowboarding 48:03 – Long-term development in skiing and supplementing with traditional land-based training 52:37 – What it looks like to build an athlete up in high-adrenaline sport training 55:22 – How the aerial nature of skiing and snowboarding have an impact on Jeremy and Calin in their training process “[Skiing is] an early engagement sport, technically, like there’s skills that you have to learn from a sliding perspective, but that oftentimes turns into really early specialization and spending too much time skiing.” “The mentality of most of the athletes that make it to a high level in ski racing or free skiing… is intense, it’s almost like dare devil, formula one… The game aspect and how it translates into sport, I think, is very much on the physical side. I think the mental side is completely unique.” “What we try to do… is really just force environments that get them to explore their bodies, their joints, how to maneuver around certain objects or other people, and really just try to get the out of their comfort zone and using games, it’s a lot more fun for them.” “We so underestimate the difference between a child and an adult and keeping people in flow states. I just think that’s such a mistake that’s proliferated.” “The stuff that we do with younger athletes… that’s their workout, like that’s their session for the day… when they get older, we take what those kids did and condense it to the warm-up.” “Then they’ll go into more high-intensity stuff, where we’re doing plyometrics… but even now I’m trying to get away from your traditional, perfect landings… I want these guys jumping off boxes and spinning in the air and landing, trying to get as creative as we can there because… I don’t like these perfect ‘stick the landing’ things all the time.” “[Kids] hate doing things over again because that’s old news. That hop and stick is old news, dude, let’s add some more! The more you can give them, the more you can layer pieces on top of each other, the better for them. I think they’ll enjoy training more and be more apt to give you better effort.” “When they’re excited about their workout and the things they’re doing, they’re going to have more intent, they’re going to put their effort into what they’re doing more and you’re going to get a higher level of training effect.” “Once an athlete is able to do something, change it.” “In free ski/snowboard it’s not about being form-perfect and executing the perfect flip or spin, it’s about steeze, it’s about the style, it’s about throwing the hardest trick you can with that signature style you have on it.” About Jeremy Frisch Jeremy Frisch is the owner and director of Achieve Performance Training in Clinton, Mass. He is the former assistant strength and conditioning coach for the Holy Cross athletic department. While there, he worked directly with the Crusader men’s basketball team, in addition to serving as the strength coach for Holy Cross’ men’s soccer, men’s and women’s lacrosse, baseball, softball, field hockey, tennis and women’s track & field squads. Prior to joining Holy Cross, Frisch served as the sports performance director at Teamworks Sports Center in Acton, Mass., where he was responsible for the design and implementation of all strength and conditioning programs. He also served as a speed and strength coach for Athletes Edge Sports Training, and did a strength and conditioning internship at Stanford University. Frisch is a 2007 graduate of Worcester State College with a bachelor’s degree in health science and physical education. He was a member of the football and track teams during his days at Worcester State and Assumption College. About Calin Butterfield Calin Butterfield is the high performance manager at U.S. Ski & Snowboard.  He worked for EXOS for about 8 years as a Coach across all different spaces including Phoenix, Dallas, SF at Ft. Bragg, Adidas America, and the Mayo Clinic Calin has been with U.S. Ski & Snowboard for 4 years, where he works closely with the sports medicine team as an ‘athletic development’ coach on long-term rehabs and return to performance cases (all sports).  Calin leads the integration with U.S. Ski and Snowboard clubs/academies to support talent and athlete development pathways, and lead business development and education with medical partners.

Today’s show welcomes back coach Bobby Stroupe.  Bobby Stroupe is the Founder and President of Athlete Performance Enhancement Center (APEC) and has directed human performance systems for nearly 20 years, working with a full range of athletes from youth to professional. In my search for higher-transfer, holistic methodology in sports performance training, I’ve met few coaches who have covered more bases than Bobby Stroupe.  On our last show, which aired just over a month ago, we talked about several of Bobby’s “unorthodox” methods in training speed, power strength and more in light of athletic needs, and I still had about half of the questions left on my own list to ask him. Bobby is back on the show to cover the rest of the questions we missed last time.  He will discuss his influences and how he got to where he is today as a coach, including some of the mentors and coaches that have influenced the way he trains. Bobby explains how he incorporates heavier strength training into his sessions and how his single set mentality is a huge impactor on performance (and a defining factor of great athletes).   Finally, Bobby shares his views on upper body training, as well as training the foot and the relationship between the two. In the middle of the show, Bobby gets into the “8 factors” by which a strength coach can impact an athlete, which was such gold! I hope you come away from this show as excited as I was about coaching my next training session. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly for 15% off of your purchase! Timestamps and Main Points 04:41 – The story behind DJ Stroupebob 06:01 – How Bobby differentiates himself and his unorthodox training system from other coaches 07:30 – Influential mentors and coaches Bobby has learned from + Lessons learned from studying animal movement and mastering gravity and space 14:49 – How much time do you spend on heavy-weight lifting versus other types of training? 19:52 – Lifting is like a drug + Metrics Bobby measures and pays attention to 23:17 – From 7-day cycles to 14 or 21-day cycles in assigning the frequency of heavy strength work 24:42 – Bobby’s thoughts on the single set mentality 29:20 – How to get improve your athletes’ single set mentality, especially for overly analytical athletes 31:19 – Applying Parkinson’s Law to athletes 34:36 – Ideas on partnering with sport coaches and incorporating sports specific movements in training 37:01 – Having a holistic influence to make our value seen: 10 ways coaches affect athletes 40:27 – Bobby’s perception of other successful coaches + How to expand your coaching capabilities 43:35 – His approach to and evolution with upper body training for athletes + The relationship between the feet and upper body 46:11 – How do you use weighted gloves, clubs, maces and other training tools? 50:25 – When you should not use weighted balls and gloves 54:12 – Complexities in training the foot + Basic foot functions to see before elevating training 1:01:43 – What is a driver? “There’s no doubt that knowing what gets your athletes going is part of your job.” “You can do high-level, max strength work and have minimal volume on that in the course of an entire training curriculum over time and still get incredible results with a little less of some of the effects of overdoing strength training that you really don’t want… strength training is more effective when it’s not overdone.” “You can see how these different animals with their physiology and their climate and their environment approach tactical movement strategies and technical movement strategies… and for me, in watching that, I think you can learn a lot about how to utilize gravity as a resource instead of relying on strength.” “If strength is what you do most, your body is going to want to solve problems with the concept of solving strength and weight at that speed of movement.” “We found [the single set mentality] to elevate performance physically and psychologically.” “I don’t like the term strength conditioning coach. If all I did was strength conditioning, then that would just make me sad… Those two attributes don’t affect every play and they don’t affect the culture of everything else. What I look at is, we affect performance on a high level.” “I think people in our position should be valued as assistant head coaches, should be valued as assistant athletic directors… Here’s 8 ways we affect every athlete: mental, emotional, spiritual, physical, nutritional, creative, tactical, technical, mechanical, and neurological.” “I love that you can break up those movements into different positions that are going to help with stability, then those things can turn into skillful movements that require a combination of mobility and skill, technically, and strength.” “Your body needs exposure to different types of resistance; internal, external, distal, proximal… variation is your friend.” “Physiology dictates technique, not the other way around.” About Bobby Stroupe Bobby Stroupe is the founder and president of ATHLETE Performance Enhancement Center (APEC). Stroupe and his team built APEC from a grass field in 2005 to a worldwide training leader in human performance today. He serves as the president for APEC, making strategic decisions, designing training systems, and guiding an elite team of coaches that power two locations (Tyler and Fort Worth). Coach Stroupe directed human performance systems for nearly 20 years, while expanding his influence as an author, consultant, speaker, and educator. His experience includes working with school systems, collegiate teams, professional teams, businesses, corporate fitness, and individuals. His coaching ranges from youth athletes to some of the top names in multiple professional sports, including first round picks and Super Bowl and World Series champions. APEC has been a part of developing over 20 athletes who trained with its system from grade school all the way to the professional ranks. Stroupe and his team currently support over 100 athletes in the NFL and MLB alone. He has been credited with supporting arguably some of the best in the game of baseball and football, including NFL MVP Patrick Mahomes. Coach Stroupe has been featured as a top trainer for multiple sports and athletic performances in Sports Illustrated and USA Today and on ESPN, NFL and MLB networks, STACK, Bleacher Report, and many more. Stroupe presented on various human performance topics at notable coach’s clinics internationally, including the NIKE Roundtable and the China City Bowl tour. He launched the CAPEC certification at Nike World Headquarters, in addition to doing work with Nike Training and the Nike Young Athlete division. Stroupe serves on the Advisory Committee for Wellness and Exercise at Tyler Junior College, where he and his staff powered strength and conditioning during TJC baseball’s four-times-in-a-row National Championship run. Coach Stroupe belongs to an elite group of physical therapists, athletic trainers, and human performance practitioners as a Fellow of Applied Functional Science. He has also been named an RSCC*D by the NSCA due to his 10+ years of demonstrating high standards and professional practice.

Justin Moore and Michael Camporini discuss the impact of heavy lifting on athletes, strategies to overcome challenges, returning to athletic activities after an injury, shift in training approach, hip and pelvic alignment's impact on movement, stiffness and elastic energy, and assessing body shape and movement patterns.