Mark Hoover Episode 17 "Know Your why and VBT Principles"

On Episode 18 I Sat down with Mark Hoover Director of Strength and Conditioning at York Comprehensive School. Mark first shares his background and in doing so shares many of the ways in which he has grown and adapted over time. One of the main areas that was covered in almost every conversation piece was utilizing evidence based practices and knowing your why behind everything that you prescribe in training. Mark does a great job of describing that evidence based could mean research or anecdotally based. Personal reflections and the observation of your athletic population are what lend them self best to the service of the athletes before you. We discuss some of his ideas and methodologies based around Game day lifts and how he would stack it given differing scenarios. We spend the majority of our conversation centered around VBT and the V max pro. We discuss the different metrics that the device offers and how he utilizes it to not only observe the bar path of his advanced athletes, but how it has become a powerful tool for the betterment of his block 0(fresh) athletes. We discuss the different measurement metrics and how they can help regulate and build intent into given methodologies. We discuss the zones he roughly likes to stay around based upon the given focus(max strength, speed strength, peaking, etc.) We discuss some of the better exercises choices for differing adaptations, such as elevated trap bar pulls, clean pulls, the jerk, speed squats, etc. We also discuss some of the bumps that a first time user might encounter such as the need to set proper displacement measurements to ensure reps are counted accurately. As well as some of the issues that can go on with calibration of the device and how to ensure that it is properly calibrated. Mark's a great coach very giving of his time as I am writing this coach has sent me some of the parameters for the eccentric portion that we discussed on the episode. Give Coach Hoover a follow on twitter and also check out some of his writings on the simplifaster blog.