Just Fly Performance Podcast

Today's podcast is with Tyler Yearby. Tyler is the co-founder and director of education at Emergence, a leading company in sport movement and skill development education. He is a Former NCAA strength coach who has delivered over 200 domestic & international continuing education courses, workshops, and conference presentations in 12 countries. Tyler has worked with a wide range of athletes, from youth to professional, and is currently pursuing his doctorate in sport and exercise at the University of Gloucestershire (UK). Sport (and the subset of physical training) is defined by how we build and adapt skills over time. Ultimately, both the joy of movement and its eventual mastery are rooted in motor learning and skill acquisition. The sign of coaching where these elements are applied effectively is not just "using textbook principles" but, more so, a total feeling of aliveness and joy in the process of mastery. This is where learning and skill acquisition transcends being something learned in a classroom and is a regular, interactive experience on the part of the coach and athlete. For today's podcast, Tyler goes into important topics that cross the worlds of motor learning and coaching in general. He discusses his take on learning "the fundamentals" for athletes, the significance of "prompts" over traditional "commands" during training sessions, and explores these ideas for both the weight room and sports skills alike. Tyler also delves into the concept of self-organization, examining when it's beneficial and when it could hinder performance. This fantastic conversation has implications for both strength and skill coaches or anyone who wants to understand movement and skill building on a deeper level. Today’s episode is brought to you by Lost Empire Herbs, TeamBuildr and the Plyomat. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for free (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com. The Plyomat is a functional, intuitive, and affordable contact mat for jump and plyometric training and testing.  Check out the Plyomat at www.plyomat.net TeamBuildr is an online software for coaches and trainers.  I’ve continued to hear great things about the Teambuildr platform, and whether you are looking for an in-house training portal or an online training hub, be sure to check out Teambuildr training software. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 3:15 – Some recent developments with Tyler in his trajectory into the motor learning and skill development aspects of athletic performance 4:37 – The “donor sport” viability of “rough-housing,” free play type activities, such as tackle-basketball 9:40 – How Tyler has learned about learning and skill development from being a father 13:59 – Tyler’s take on the “fundamentals” and what that actually means in movement mechanics and training 20:10 – Prompts and open-ended questions versus commands in a coaching and learning situation 35:29 – Exploring squat and jump-based movements, considering the principle of a base of support 39:17 – How do we know if an athlete’s self-organization strategies continue to help them or if they may be stagnating/using detrimental self-organization and need another form of coaching intervention? 52:25 – Tyler’s doctorate work and the perceived impact and value of education of ecological dynamics in coaching Tyler Yearby Quotes “A lot of times a game is co-created with (kids), and it is designed for them to fall in love with movement” “I’ve learned to be more patient (of a coach) as a father” “(On the level of teaching the 'fundamentals' to athletes) I want them to create a functional fit with an environment, which means starting from a point where they can orient their degrees of freedom, what their thoughts are, and what they are intending to do in a situation” “No man ever steps in the same river twice, because it’s not the same man, and it’s not the same river” “A command is 'do it this way,' where a prompt is illuminating areas that could be.  A lot of how my instruction has changed as a coach is, athletes are not going to be successful if they have one way to do something…. We want to develop adaptable movers, not ones that are more stable, if you will” “I still view (coaching a lift or a basic acceleration start) as helping them to explore different ways” “You can make a game out of showing them how to perform the movement, without (directly) telling them how to do it” “Kids need a chance to not only be kids, but even professional movers need a chance to explore a little bit, play a little bit” “When I am harnessing what is comfortable for them (from exploring jump stances), their (squat) numbers go up right away” “When do I step in? A lot of literature is going to talk about, if 75% of the time they are scoring a point, avoid a tackle, something in that realm, then I want to let them run with it (with the 25% of mistakes being fine in that situation), but if it’s more than that, and continually more than that, that’s where a coach needs to step in, and that’s where there is true value in the constraints led approach” “I’m trying to educate their attention to the space around them; by opening the space, and then adding a question to it, that is helping guide their search.  Now I might see them start to self-organize in a functional way” “I am finding many coaches (in recent years) who are finding value in a co-adaptive relationship,.. basically, inviting the athlete to their party” “(when using ecological dynamics concepts in coaching) My players enjoy it more, and I have more fun as a coach” “We need to start using different words to capture the same idea, and one of those words is 'making training more alive' on a scale with 1-10, how alive is it?” Show Notes “Alive” Movement Problem Solving Checklist Skill Acquisition Studies: Applying an ecological approach to practice design in American football: some case examples on best practice Being Water: how key ideas from the practice of Bruce Lee align with contemporary theorizing in movement skill acquisition (Re)conceptualizing movement behavior in sport as a problem-solving activity Emergence Website: emergentmvmt.com About Tyler Yearby Tyler Yearby, M.Ed., is Co-Founder and Co-Director of Education at Emergence, and the Director of Sport Movement Skill Enhancement at Inspire Movement in Minnesota. With more than 13 years of experience, Yearby has taught 200+ training courses in more than a dozen countries, spoken at Olympic training centers, and been featured on a range of podcasts. He currently works with athletes ranging from youth to professional and is a former strength and conditioning coach for the University of Minnesota football program, as well as a former American football running back and strength & conditioning coach at Northeastern State University. Tyler is currently pursuing his doctorate in sport and exercise at the University of Gloucestershire (UK), exploring the perceived impact on the professional work of sports coaches and practitioners after interacting with online coaching education underpinned by an ecological dynamics rationale, with a particular focus on the theory-practice link and understanding the strengths and limitations they perceive in their craft after applying the ideas in practice.

Biomechanics and rehab specialist, Alex Effer, discusses force production strategies, lunge dynamics, and base of support concepts. They explore the relationship between joint position and force production, the impact of bowlegged posture on sprinting, using swings and squats for mobility and range of motion, and the benefits of kettlebell swings and lunges.

Movement coach Aaron Cantor discusses the outer and inner game of athleticism, emphasizing the importance of connecting with the body and environment. Topics include dynamic movement exploration, playful training for autonomy, and enhancing performance through joyful creativity. The conversation explores arm movement intricacies, collaborative feedback, and the balance between focus and letting go for high-performance feats.

Clifton Harski, with over 20 years of experience in human performance, discusses the importance of movement, variability, and adaptability in the strength and conditioning industry. He shares insights on rotational kettlebell training concepts, the role of movement coaching, and the significance of rhythm in training. Clifton emphasizes the need for diverse certifications and discusses training strategies for specific goals like dunking and knee pain prevention. Overall, this episode explores the holistic approach to human performance and athleticism.

Today's podcast features Jarod Burton. Jarod is a performance specialist, chiropractic student, and health coach. He got his coaching start working with Brady Volmering of DAC baseball and has spent recent years coaching, consulting, and running educational courses in the private sector. Jarod focuses on engaging all aspects of an athlete's being, providing the knowledge for the individual to thrive in their domain. In Jarod's first appearance on the podcast, he spoke on work capacity development and the limits of how far athletes can push themselves on a level of training volume, with many mental concepts as a vital governor. In considering training, it is constructive to look at the complete bio-psycho-social factors before going too far into judging what an athlete can and cannot do. As Jarod said on the last show, "It's so silly to put it in this tiny box and say, 'You can only run 10 sprints.' Then the athletes start believing the fact that if I run more than 10, I'm going to break down." On today's episode, Jarod goes into a topic that he touched on in the last episode: the role of perception in building game speed and athletic ability. The level of the bio-psycho-social and perceptive elements strongly influences speed, and game-like stimuli can dramatically affect an athlete's sprint capacity. We dig further into these concepts for today's show and talk about game-specificity in speed training, impacts of environment perception on movement, variability and randomness in training, the role of play and exploration relative to outputs in training, and more. Today’s episode is brought to you by Lost Empire Herbs, TeamBuildr and the Plyomat. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for free (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com. The Plyomat is a functional, intuitive, and affordable contact mat for jump and plyometric training and testing.  Check out the Plyomat at www.plyomat.net TeamBuildr is an online software for coaches and trainers.  I’ve continued to hear great things about the Teambuildr platform, and whether you are looking for an in-house training portal or an online training hub, be sure to check out Teambuildr training software. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 3:37 – The origins of Jarod’s views on the importance of perception and environment, in conjunction with speed and performance training. 10:20 – What big factors exist in how Jarod looks at how an athlete is considering and framing the training session. 22:20 – Thoughts on how specific we need to be with relating all perceptual information in training to one’s specific sport. 29:25 – Rotating the pieces of play, exploration, and output within the scope of training. 43:22 – Jarod’s take on modeling the principles of nature in sprint based or gym movements where an athlete may not know how far or long they are going in a set. 50:56 – The impact of randomness on the training environment. 1:02:46 – Thoughts on athletes who may struggle in a practice vs. a game environment and how to adapt training based on these factors. Jarod Burton Quotes “When someone was nasal breathing, the neurons inside of their brain would fire faster, and if they were mouth breathing, the neurons would fire slower” “One of the things I would always look for in weight room training was a cramp, and then they had to work through the cramp” “(With perception/action) Once you know what they are afraid of, that’s the scenario you need to create” “Every time she threw a softball, her arm hurt, but if we threw a football her arm didn’t hurt.  So we basically had her throwing with a football, and we had different games, and then we would go to a baseball, then we’d go to a softball, and blend all this stuff through different games; and within a month she was throwing 100 (softball) pitches, pain free” “We were able to put down mats that made the play area look smaller, and if they play areas looks smaller, it looks like you can achieve the distance faster” “You watch and learn how people move; are they running curved, are they typically running 12 or 5 yards; once you start seeing patterns, that’s how you set up your timing gates; now you are starting to tie in whatever happens in the game, into your training experience” “Just because the S&C standard is a flying 10, or a 10, it’s OK to be more specific than that (for team sport)” “I’m looking for an athlete, regardless of external focus, to be able to put 100% into every rep” About Jarod Burton Jared Burton is a performance specialist, chiropractic student, and health coach.  He got his coaching start working with Brady Volmering of DAC baseball , and has spent recent years coaching, consulting and running educational courses in the private sector.  Jared focuses on engaging all aspects of an athlete’s being, providing the knowledge for the individual to thrive in their domain.

Internationally recognized coach Boo Schexnayder discusses athletic development topics such as proprioception, reflexive leg action, Olympic lifting, and pelvic mechanics. They also touch on the benefits of contrast training, motor learning, and herbal supplements for performance enhancement.

Today’s podcast features a question and answer series with Joel Smith.  Questions for this podcast revolved heavily around the transfer of various strength protocols and systems to speed and athletic performance, as well as many elements on speed training, jumping and footwear/fascia concepts. Today’s episode is brought to you by Lost Empire Herbs, TeamBuildr and the Plyomat. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for free (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com. The Plyomat is a functional, intuitive, and affordable contact mat for jump and plyometric training and testing.  Check out the Plyomat at www.plyomat.net TeamBuildr is an online software for coaches and trainers.  I’ve continued to hear great things about the Teambuildr platform, and whether you are looking for an in-house training portal or an online training hub, be sure to check out Teambuildr training software. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 3:00 – How to get strength training to transfer better to speed and sprint outputs on the track. 6:30 – My take on the “Functional Patterns” training system. 9:15 – Sprint workouts for horizontal jumping events. 13:30 – Can the weight-room make you faster? Where can it not help, or go too far? 23:49 – How “quad dominant” athletes can become better through their foot and hips. 29:30 – How to look at “fascial” training, in light of the other systems of the body in movement. 35:55 – My take on reactive, drop-catch squat type motions. 43:10 – How to sprint in a gym with less space availability. 47:10 – Thoughts on the value of moving light weights fast, versus using heavier weights and sprints and plyometric training. 51:25 – The most valuable thing I’ve learned coaching U5 and U6 kids in soccer. 58:20 – The importance of maximal velocity training for distance running athletes. 1:02:40 – Do I see value of concentric loaded jumps in sprinting. 1:04:10 – The role of minimal shoes in basketball play. About Joel Smith Joel Smith is the founder of Just Fly Sports and is a sports performance/track coach in Cincinnati, Ohio.  Joel hosts the Just Fly Performance Podcast, has authored several books on athletic performance, and in 2021, released the integrative training course, “Elastic Essentials”.  He currently trains clients in the in-person and online space. Joel was formerly a strength coach for 8 years at UC Berkeley, working with the Swim teams and professional swimmers, as well as tennis, water polo, and track and field.  A track coach of 15 years, Joel coached for the Diablo Valley Track and Field Club for 7 years, and also has 6 years of experience coaching sprints, jumps, hurdles, pole vault and multi-events on the collegiate level, working at Wilmington College, and the University of Wisconsin, LaCrosse, along with his current work with master’s, high school and collegiate individuals. Joel has had the honor of working with a number of elite athletes, but also takes great joy in helping amateur athletes and individuals reach their training goals through an integrative training approach with a heavy emphasis on biomechanics, motor learning, mental preparation, and physiological adaptation.  His mission through Just Fly Sports is: “Empowering the Evolution of Sport and Human Movement”.  As a former NAIA All-American track athlete, Joel enjoys all aspects of human movement and performance, from rock climbing, to track events and weightlifting, to throwing the frisbee with his young children and playing in nature.

Today’s podcast features sports performance coaches Rich Burnett and John Garrish. Rich Burnett is the President and Director of Athletic Development for Triple F Elite Sports Training in Knoxville, TN. He is also the Co-Founder and CEO of Athletic Assessment Technology, known more commonly as Plyomat, and has over 10 years of experience working in high school, and NCAA DI strength and conditioning.  John Garrish is the Director of Athletic Development & Performance at North Broward Preparatory School in Coconut Creek, Florida, and the school’s Head Track and Field Coach.  John was voted the 2022 National High School Strength Coach of the Year by the NHSSCA and has been a two-time guest previously on this podcast, speaking on a variety of plyometric and speed training topics. The standing vertical jump, or “countermovement” test is a very popular method of assessment for athletes and has been for some time.  What the standing vertical leap test doesn’t tell you, is how fast an athlete gets off the ground, which is generally what matters in sport, more so than how high an athlete can reach.  Reactivity is also a general coordination ability where athletes can both anticipate the ground and coordinate the proper muscle activation sequences to rebound themselves back into the air, which is critical for a variety of athletic jumping, throwing, cutting, and overall movement tasks. On today’s show, Rich and John will get into how they train reactive ability in plyometrics, with respect to ground contact times, and the function of power that being able to get off the ground quickly provides.  We also discuss the differences between double and single-leg reactive strength tests and measurements, and how they correlate to athleticism, as well as the differences between simple plyometric movements based on contact time, versus more complex and coordinated movements, such as skips and gallops. Today’s episode is brought to you by Lost Empire Herbs, TeamBuildr, and the Plyomat For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for free (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com. The Plyomat is a functional, intuitive, and affordable contact mat for jump and plyometric training and testing.  Check out the Plyomat at www.plyomat.net TeamBuildr is an online software for coaches and trainers.  I’ve continued to hear great things about the Teambuildr platform, and whether you are looking for an in-house training portal or an online training hub, be sure to check out Teambuildr training software. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 4:39 – What “Reactive Strength” is, and how Rich and John use it in the scope of their training programs. 18:32 – Comparing Double vs. Single-leg reactive strength measurements, and how single-leg RSI is a “gold standard” of explosive athletic ability. 35:00 – How Rich and John go about coaching or referencing ground contact times in plyometric exercises. 48:56 – Links between bilateral reactive strength scores, trap bar deadlift ability, and core strength. 58:07 – Thoughts on more “compressed” and simple, intense plyometrics, relative to more long, rhythmic, and coordinated plyometric-type movements. Rich Burnett and John Garrish Quotes “RSI provided a lot of value to the sprinters, triple jumpers, and athletes that had a high level of success at the state level, go figure, had the highest RSI values” Garrish “Just because a kid is good at the bilateral (RSI), doesn’t mean they are good at the single leg (RSI) and vice versa.  One of our best pogo kids on the 5 hop is not good at the single leg one” Burnett “I have for sure noticed with the single leg RSI hop (single leg forward, onto one leg on the mat, land on two feet), that has had a huge correlation with my population with speed, with every sprint, in every split… even the early phase” Burnett “With a more advanced population, maybe there is more of a shift to where the elastic part shows out more in the back end; it’s also not a cyclic test (the single leg RSI)” Burnett “An athlete who had a high RSI value, or a high value in power skips for distance, that was an athlete who was going to succeed on the runway, or in athletics in general, regardless of sport” Garrish “If we using RSI, an athlete is going to use a more forefoot contact; if we are going out and trying to skip for height or distance, the ground contact is going to be more hind, or mid-foot” Garrish “.2 seconds is the threshold for me for bilateral ground contact times” Burnett “If I don’t have a jump mat, and want to see what athletes are elastic, have them jump rope, have them do a (speed) ladder” Burnett “A lot of (RSI) had a correlation with trap bar deadlift too, these same female athletes who were scoring really high (on RSI) were some of our highest relative trap bar deadlifters too, and Stu McGill did a study comparing RSI to core strength; lo and behold they are highly correlated with each other” Burnett Show Notes Single Leg RSI Jump Test https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6b3DVUtOico About Rich Burnett Rich Burnett is the President and Director of Athletic Development for Triple F Elite Sports Training in Knoxville, TN. He is also the Co-Founder and CEO of Athletic Assessment Technology, known more commonly as Plyomat. Rich came up with the idea to start Plyomat in the Spring of 2020 to be able to quantify Plyometric tasks in a simple and affordable way for himself, his athletes, and coaches all over the world to use. Rich came to Knoxville after a 6-year stint at Greater Atlanta Christian School outside of Atlanta, Georgia. At GAC, Rich trained 300+ High School student-athletes a day as Head of GAC’s renowned Performance Training program, which he took over from his mentor Gary Schofield Jr. Prior to joining the Spartans of GAC, Rich spent 5 years at the Division 1 level in his hometown of Corpus Christi, TX. He began his professional career as an Islander in 2010 as a Graduate Assistant S&C Coach. The Athletics Director then created a position of Assistant S&C Coach in order for Rich to stay in 2012, then Rich was eventually promoted to Head S&C Coach for the TAMU-CC Islanders from 2014-2016. During this span, Rich saw the program grow to be one of the premier programs in the Southland Conference. As a product himself of the Island University, Rich also worked in the NSCA-recognized Kinesiology department as an Adjunct professor and researcher, growing the S&C profession through sport science and curriculum design. About John Garrish John Garrish is the Director of Athletic Development & Performance at North Broward Preparatory School in Coconut Creek, Florida, and the school’s Head Track and Field Coach.  John was recently voted the 2022 National High School Strength Coach of the Year by the National High School Strength Coach’s Association.  A graduate of Wagner College and the University of North Texas, he is certified through the NSCA as a CSCS and through USAW as a Level-1 Sports Performance Coach. In addition to his role at North Broward, John has previously served as the Director of Athletic Performance with the Florida Rugby Union’s High-Performance Program 7’s team and as a volunteer coach with Delray Beach Sports’ Exhibitors. Coach Garrish has spoken at state and national events and serves as the National High School Strength Coaches Association Regional Board Member for the Southeast.

Chris Scott, a strength and parkour coach with a degree in Sports Therapy, discusses the impact of high depth drops in parkour training, the benefits of depth jumps in improving performance, and the effectiveness of incorporating depth jumps into winter training. They also explore the concept of seasonality in training and discuss the importance of play and exploration in parkour.

Trainer DJ Murakami explores the impact of disconnection from reality on physical training. They discuss gamifying training with storytelling, generating a tougher mindset, incorporating human interaction, exploring archetypes and stages of life, and the connection between mind and physical exercise.