Just Fly Performance Podcast

Today’s episode features a question and answer session with Joel Smith. On the show today, I answer questions related to “are there any bad exercises?”, sport speed concepts, jump training, “switching” sprint drills, and much more.  I love being able to highlight and integrate information from so many of the past guests on this podcast into my own training, coaching, and ultimately, the answers I provide on this show.  In many senses of the word, this is truly an “integration” episode of the podcast series. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 3:16 –Is there any such thing as a bad exercise? 17:19 –How do we speed up soccer players? 30:25 –Do you find value in spending time on switching drills? 45:07 –Athletes who take too many steps in a start or acceleration. 53:19 –Does walking affect fast-twitch fibers? 54:45 –Setups for high jump off-season/yearly plyo program for high level jumpers? 1:01:36 –How to speed jump like elite high jumpers? 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 episode welcomes back to the show, Rob Gray, professor at Arizona State University and host of the Perception & Action Podcast.  Rob Gray has been conducting research on, and teaching courses related to perceptual-motor skill for over 25 years.  He focuses heavily on the application of basic theory to address real-world challenges, having consulted with numerous professional and governmental entities, and has developed a VR baseball training system that has been used in over 25 published studies.  Rob is the author of the book “How We Learn to Move: A Revolution in the Way We Coach and Practice Sports Skills”. You cannot separate the world of athletic development, even pure “power” training, from concepts on motor learning.  If we look at interest in athletic performance topics by “need”, speed training will typically be first on the list.  At its core, sprinting, lifting (and every other athletic skill) has its roots in how we learn. The great thing about motor learning knowledge, is that it can both allow you to have a better training session on the day, as well as month to month, and year over year.  Training done only on the level of raw “power” as a general quality, and explicit instruction will create early ceilings for athletes in their career.  Understanding motor learning allows for more involved daily training sessions, and better flourishing of skills that grow like a tree, over time.  Whether you work in sport, in the gym, or as a parent/athlete, understanding how we learn goes a massively long way in becoming the best version of one’s self athletically and from a movement perspective. In episode 293, Rob got into the constraints-led approach to movement vs. “teaching fundamentals”, and in this episode, he goes into CLA’s counter-part: differential learning.  Rob will get into the nuances of differential learning on the novice and advanced level.  In the back end of the show, we’ll talk about “stacking constraints”, games, exploration, using the “velocity dial” as a constraint, and finally, the promising results of Rob’s research showing the effectiveness of a variable practice model. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 5:07 – How differential learning is different than the constraints led approach in athletic development 12:10 – Using differential learning as a recovery tool from intense training means 15:51 – Using constraints within the scope of differential learning and vice versa 21:28 – If and how differential learning or the CLA led approach can be too “widespread” vs. focused towards a movement goal 25:02 – Some games Rob would specifically utilize in training tennis players using constraints and differential learning 28:11 – The advantage of free flowing sports with limited rules and setups for children in the process of youth sports 36:05 – How performing exploratory movements in the weight room can fit with differential learning concepts 41:55 – Rob’s take on the innate ability of athletes to figure out movement on their own, and when to dig into constraints more deeply to help determine why they may not be solving a problem well, and the integration of analogies into the process 44:23 – Thoughts on manipulating velocity and time as a constraint, and the relationship between intensifying constraints, and the amount of movement solutions 53:30 – How using variable learning and constraint led approaches can improve players ceilings in long-term development 59:52 – The specifics of Rob’s landmark study with baseball players and long-term development “The constraints led approach is a bit more focused… you have a rough idea of where they want to be, and you want to help guide them” “Differential learning has the same goals (as the CLA), but instead of adding a constraint to push you a certain way, we are going to have you do a different thing every trial.  So maybe I’ll get you to do different stances, feet close together or far apart, different shaped barbells, different surfaces… we are trying to get you try a bunch of different things with the hope that you will find the solution space on your own, rather than trying to push you a certain direction” “Differential learning is more variability for variability’s sake” “Learning a skill (in a differential manner) actually reduces the incidence of injury” “You would never do differential learning where you did a task on a computer screen” “I would add differential learning on top of (the constraint of trying to hit a ball over a fence) by using different bat weights” “Now what I do is start (learning) with games, and if you do it right, that stroke will come along on its own” “There are certain key variants that have to be there, if not, you have to step in as a coach” “We’re doing this with the idea that we are all moving towards an elite sport endpoint… why can’t we teach kids that moving around is fun? Not everybody can be elite” “When you really ramp up the constraints, short times, high force, it really amounts of the amount of solutions you can do… so when a person is really struggling how to do something, there is really not that many options… increasing velocity can really push people, but not beyond what they can handle” “Once you work with an athlete who has the basic pattern, then you are adding in variability to optimize it” “So the group that got more variable conditions, they did better in the tests after the study, they did better their next season of high school, and they got drafted more often” About Rob Gray Rob Gray is a professor at Arizona State University who has been conducting research on and teaching courses related to perceptual-motor skill for over 25 years. He received his MS and PhD from York University in Canada with a focus on the visual control of movement. An important aspect of his work has been applying basic theory to address real-world challenges which he has done in positions with Nissan Motor Corp, the US Air Force, serving as an expert witness for driving accident cases, and consultant roles with several sports teams and organizations. In 2007 he was awarded the Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology from the American Psychological Association.  Rob is the author of the book “How We Learn to Move: A Revolution in the Way We Coach and Practice Sports Skills”. One of the accomplishments he is most proud of is the baseball batting virtual environment/virtual reality that he developed over the course of several years and which has been used in over 25 published studies. In 2017 (Gray, Frontiers in Psychology) he published the results of a 10-year study using a virtual reality training protocol which led to clear evidence of transfer of training to real performance. In his career, Gray has strongly emphasized the communication and dissemination of scientific knowledge. In 2015, he started the Perception & Action Podcast (perceptionaction.com) to help bridge the gap between theory and the field. With over 350 episodes and 2 million downloads, it has become a critical resource for individuals working in areas including coaching, talent development, training and rehabilitation.

Today’s episode features Kyle Dobbs.  Kyle is the owner and founder of Compound Performance which offers online training, facility consulting and a personal trainer mentorship.  He has an extensive biomechanics and human movement background (having trained 15,000+ sessions), and has been a two time previous guest on this podcast. In the world of training and performance, it’s easy to get caught up in prescribing a lot of exercises that offer a relatively low training effect in the grand scheme of things.  Healthy and capable athletes are often assigned a substantial load of low-level “prehab” style and corrective exercises that they often do not need.  In doing so, both a level of boredom, fatigue and just simply wasting time, happens in the scope of a program. For my own training journey, I’ve seen my own pendulum swing from a relatively minimal approach to the number of movements, to having a great deal of training exercises, back down to a smaller and more manageable core of training movements in a session.  As I’ve learned to tweak and adjust the big lifts, and even plyometric and sprint variations, I realize that I can often check off a lot of training boxes with these movements, without needing to regress things too far. On the show today, Kyle will speak on where and when we tend to get overly complex, or overly regressive in our training and programming.  He’ll talk about what he prioritizes when it comes to assigning training for clients, as well as a “macro-to-micro” way of thinking in looking at the entirety of training.  Kyle will get into specifics on what this style of thinking and prioritization means for things like the big lifts, speed training, and core work, as well as touch how on biomechanical differences such as infra-sternal angle play a role in his programming. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 3:41 – How Kyle’s run training has been developing, since he has been getting back into his two years ago after being a high level college 400m runner 7:41 – Kyle’s thoughts on where we tend to get overly complex in the physical preparation/strength & conditioning industry 11:58 – How Kyle prioritizes exercises based on the task requirements of the athlete 16:19 – Thoughts on working macro-to-micro, versus micro-to-macro 28:50 – How Kyle will avoid trying to regress individuals to a low-level, rudimentary version of an exercise if possible, and his take on “pre-hab” work 36:50 – The usefulness of hill sprints as a “macro” exercise for glutes, lower legs, and hip extension quality 40:56 – The spectrum of perceived complexity as athletes move from a beginner to a more advanced level 48:40 – Kyle’s take on some gym movements that “check a lot of boxes” in athletic movement 56:01 – How much of Kyle’s programming ends up being different on account of being a wide vs. narrow infrasternal angle “If we can’t match the stress that an athlete is going to be encountering in their actual sport, it isn’t going to have a huge return” “I want to be able to pick the biggest return on investment from a training perspective; those are going to go into my primary buckets from a programming perspective” “If I have somebody who really needs to zoom into the micro, and we really need to get into the biomechanics weeds and decrease the training stress, those are people that we refer out to another specialist… having a good network allows you to focus on the things that you are good at and that you really like to do.  I learned early in my career that, I don’t like to be the rehab guy” “That’s my problem with the biomechanics led approach, is we take biomechanics down to such a low stimulus” “Passive assessments really don’t give me a lot of information that’s useful” “If a person is pain free, I’m not going to take them through our “glute firing patterns”, I’m just going to re-leverage their strength patterns to create a better pattern for hip extension” “I will do pretty much anything I can to not regress somebody” “The term “pre-hab”, and the way it’s been marketed, I have more of a problem with… if you have a well-rounded program that is individualized to the person in front of you, that’s about as much injury prevention as you can achieve” “The thought process of “pre-hab” I don’t mind that much, it’s the marketing I have a problem with” “You start watching (kids play games with no warmup) and you realize, I might not need to be doing all of the things that I am doing just to prepare to train, and if I do need to be doing those things, then I probably need to change my goal to get to the point where I don’t need to do as much of them” “The end goal of corrective exercise or prehab should be to not have to do it anymore” “Hills in general are the most under-utilized, high yield exercise that more athletes could be using” “I’m a huge proponent of sled pushes, lateral sled drags, backwards sled walks” “For upper body movements, for my athletes, we’re doing a lot of alternating reciprocal stuff” “When I look at pelvis and ribcage orientation, I sneak that in with ab work” “If I can reinforce (my wide ISA needs) from an ab perspective, that’s a much easier and more applicable drill to me than doing some of the classical respiration exercises; and I’m still going to be applying some strategic exhalations while I’m doing those” 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.

Today’s episode features swim coach Andrew Sheaff.  Andrew is an assistant swimming coach at the University of Virginia, winners of the last two NCAA women’s championships.  In addition to swim coaching, Sheaff has an extensive background in strength and conditioning, including an internship under Buddy Morris.  A collegiate swimmer at Pittsburgh, Sheaff was named the Senior Athlete of Distinction. He was a four-time Big East Academic All-Star and a four-time University Scholar Athlete.  He writes on numerous aspects of coaching education at his website, coachandrewsheaff.com . A quote on Andrew’s blog that made a lot of sense to me was a quote by former cricket player and ESPN writer, Ed Smith, that “Because the important things are hard to coach, it is tempting to take refuge in the small, irrelevant things because they are easy.”  I find this to be extremely relevant to many approaches to athletic development where drills are often over-emphasized and over-controlled, while the actual sporting skill is often left relatively un-changed from season to season. I have found it a common theme, in modern coaching, to attempt to overly “control” an athlete’s technique through the over-use of drills, exact positions, and discrete instructions.  This can range from cues in the weight room (butt back, chest out, through the heels!) to the track (heel up, knee up, toe up!) to exact arm positions for swimming movements. On the show today, Andrew speaks on elements of control vs. athlete empowerment in coaching.  He talks on training methods that lead to lasting change in technique and performance, with an emphasis on the constraints-led approach.  This podcast was a fun cross-pollination of ideas between the worlds of swimming, track and physical preparation, with important concepts for any coach or athlete.  Whether you are interested in speed training, technical development, or just overall coaching practice, you are sure to find this a really informative conversation. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Lost Empire Herbs, and the Elastic Essentials online course. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com Find out more about the the online course, Elastic Essentials, by heading to justflysports.thinkific.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 4:51 – Why Andrew got into both physical preparation/S&C, as well as swim coaching, in his coaching career 6:35 – Why Andrew believes swim training remained so “old school” (based on large yardages and distances) for so long, compared to track and field 8:53 – Why so many coaches take refuge in the small/easy/controllable things, when more focus is needed on bigger, but more rewarding, real problems in athletics 12:10 – How coaches seeking “too much control” plays out in the world of swimming 15:36 – Basics of how Andrew uses constraints to allow swimmers problem solving opportunities, vs. trying to control smaller elements of the stroke 23:46 – Bondarchuk’s “Push the Hammer” cue, and the power of slightly ambiguous coaching instructions that don’t over-control the athlete’s movements 31:28 – How the unique situation of training in a 25 yard or 50 meter pool, can create more interesting training options for swim athletes in terms of constraints 35:13 – How Andrew uses constraints that are purely for exploratory perspective, versus constraints from a timed perspective 41:23 – How fatiguing particular body sections or muscles can offer a unique constraint in both swimming, or land activities such as plyometrics 46:04 – The spectrum of “boredom tolerance” between athletes, and how Andrew manages this in practice 51:58 – Why and how Andrew thinks more “standard volume” type training methods can be successful, and if they are sustainable or not 55:12 – The importance of not taking away individuals “athletic identities” away (such as excessive weightlifting or speed-endurance work) if the athlete identifies with it 58:54 – How Andrew specifically creates engagement for swimmers in his training process 1:01:32 – How looking at athlete’s overall states of readiness can become overly-mechanistic, compared to simply asking an athlete how they are doing, and comparing it to their training times 1:11:47 – How to help athletes to “undo” a poor technique, when they first start working with Andrew “A lot of times, there is a focus on the nuances, little things that are almost asthetic, but they don’t really determine performance” “(Small changes the coach can see) don’t really get down to the fundamentals that actually matter” “In swimming, the things to work on are kind of subtle and not really obvious” “You give them a puzzle to figure out, and you use constraints to take away some of the options that they would use to cheat it, and then the only way they can solve that problem is to move in different ways….. they may not figure it out in today, a week, or a month but whenever they do figure it out, you know that you have made a change that matters” “I think your training should be your technique work, and that’s where those constraints come in” “Bondarchuk had one cue: “Push the hammer”” “You focus on the one or two things that matter, and you have to ignore everything else, and you don’t give them feedback on anything else, and you make sure they just get that one thing… if you take that approach, you have to know what the fundamental thing is, and you have to apply that” “In the short term you might think you are getting more out of it by telling people exactly what to do, but in reality you aren’t really addressing the real problem” “From an exploration standpoint; as soon as they get the right idea, we are training” “When you time stuff, it’s not always maximal, but its fast enough to be relevant” “Short-term fatigue can be really useful for challenging skills too, because you are going to have to figure out a way to move differently” “If you give people success, and they see results from what you are doing, they will do pretty much anything” “In general, you need to be careful of taking away people’s identities as athletes, or as groups” “You’re not going to be able to change everything (in an athlete’s technique) so pick the thing that’s going to have the biggest impact” “Most people don’t change anything (technically), ever, they just change some cosmetic stuff” “(An athlete might not have a technique issue) they might just be out of shape” “Sometimes you have to be more extreme, and that comes with more risk… you have to put them in situations where they can feel new ways of moving, versus just telling them what to do” About Andrew Sheaff Andrew Sheaff is an assistant swimming coach at the University of Virginia, winners of the last two NCAA women’s championships.  Andrew carries a background in strength and conditioning, and writes on numerous aspects of coaching education at his website, coachandrewsheaff.com . Andrew helps coaches tackle the problem of faster swimming for every athlete, examining all opportunities to improve one’s coaching practice.  Andrew believes that our answers lie in the questions we ask.  He is interested in the relationships between components, rather than the components themselves. Prior to Virginia, Andrew was the associate head coach for Northwestern men’s swimming from 2012-2017, where he also handled dryland and strength training duties for the team, particularly the sprinters.  Andrew also served in coaching at Bucknell, Maryland, and the Bison Aquatic Club. Sheaff has an extensive background in strength and conditioning. In 2007, he worked as an intern at Pittsburgh before interning with the Cleveland Browns throughout the summer. A collegiate swimmer at Pittsburgh, Sheaff was named the Senior Athlete of Distinction. He was a four-time Big East Academic All-Star and a four-time University Scholar Athlete.

Today’s episode features Rob Assise.  Rob has 19 years of experience teaching mathematics and coaching track and field at Homewood-Flossmoor High School. He also has coached football and cross country, and is also the owner of the private training business, Re-evolution athletics.  Rob has appeared on multiple prior episodes of the podcast, speaking on his unique approach to jumps training that combines the practice with many sport-like elements. Track and field offers us a great insight as to the effectiveness of a variety of training methods, because each method will be ultimately judged by how fast an athlete ended up running, how far or high they jumped, or how far they threw.  In track and field, we combine power alongside technical development in the process of achieving event mastery. Rob has a creative and integrative process to his own training methods, and on today’s show, he speaks largely on some “crescendo style” adjustments to common plyometric and sprint drills that he uses to help athletes improve their technique and rhythmic ability over a period of time. On the show Rob talks about his recent sprint-jump complexes, use of asymmetrical plyometrics, and where he has gone with the “minimal effective dose” style of training.  He also shares his thoughts on tempo sprints in the role of jump training, and as we have spoken on in other podcasts, manipulating velocity in a movement in order to improve not only one’s speed, to help them clear up technical issues. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 4:17 – How Rob’s last track season turned out, and an overview of some things he changed and learned 7:15 – The purpose, and implementation of “crescendo” style plyometric training 23:05 – Specific “nuts and bolts” of “crescendo” style plyometrics in terms of sets, reps and intensities 28:20 – Thoughts on the crescendo effect, and wave-loading for fly-10 sprints, and then in the weight room 34:09 – Rob’s ideas for using basketball hoops with his track and field jumps group, and ideas for a warmup and training circuit blending basketball and track ideas 38:54 – Some of Rob’s training complexes that mix top-end speed, and controllable jump takeoffs 42:31 – How biomechanical issues in sprinting and jumping could be potentially solved via increased velocity 46:34 – How Rob has moved away, within his training group, from the “minimal effective dose” idea, especially in the volume of his long-jump approaches 50:35 – Rob’s take on tempo training and long sprints with his training group 57:34 – How Rob has been using asymmetrical skips and bounding to better replicate some jump takeoffs, and then to help teach bounding better “That skill (how to bounce) isn’t necessarily there with athletes” “We brought (the crescendo principle) into all of our regular plyos, the bounds, the gallops, the skips, the run-run-jumps” “If an athlete isn’t getting the RSI I want, I’ll make it a “speed gate golf” game, and we’ll (try exactly for a lower RSI) for a few sets, and then they’ll come back and hit a PR” “Something I need to more of that has a lot of power is the single leg bounds or hopping… with the crescendo style, that’s something I’m going to focus on more, moving forward” “If I played basketball, and I could only make layups or 3 pointers, there may be a role for me, but it would be better if I could hit a mid-range jumper, right?” “Whenever I write up a practice plan, it’s all a complex” “Now days I have no problem with having athletes take 10 long jump approaches in a session, where before, I may have capped it at 4” “I get a lot of benefits of tempo from doing jump type circuits; you’ll take a couple short approach jumps, then do a couple wicket runs, then a jump rope run, then an isometric hold, one to the next, and we are working through that circuit for 30-40 minutes… that’s how I handle tempo; and I don’t have a lot of wear and tear issues when the jumpers” “I’m not opposed to tempo, but I am opposed to abusive tempo” “It’s a good bridge, you are going to do the asymmetric skip for distance with your left, and then your right, and now you are going to do a traditional skip for distance” “Some athletes really aren’t ready to bound, like a max power bound, but they can handle it (going asymmetrically)” About Rob Assise Rob Assise has 19 years of experience teaching mathematics and coaching track and field at Homewood-Flossmoor High School. He also has coached football and cross country, and is also the owner of the private training business, Re-evolution athletics. Additional writing of his can be found at Simplifaster, Track Football Consortium, and ITCCCA. He can be reached via e-mail at robertassise@gmail.com or Twitter @HFJumps.

Today’s episode features Will Ratelle.  Will is a strength coach, at the University of North Dakota, working with football, basketball, volleyball and tennis athletes. He is also the owner of “W2 Performance”.  Prior to working in the performance field, he spent time as a professional football player, spending time with the Atlanta Falcons, Kansas City Chiefs, and Saskatchewan Roughriders (CFL). In the supportive role of physical preparation/S&C, it is very easy to partition the process of weightlifting away from the actual needs and demand of explosive, chaotic sports.  It’s also easy to get carried away with excessive auxiliary work, or “atomizing” facets of power work/RFD that don’t end up transferring to actual explosive sport skills.  In this sense, it’s helpful to personally spend time in sport, in skill acquisition, and in strength development one’s self, to intuitively understand the balance, and synergy, between athletic components. Will’s athletic background, love for sport and play, and raw “horsepower” is a unique combination.  He was a semi-pro athlete, can clean and jerk 198kg, dunks a basketball with ease, and also loves to play a variety of games and sports.  Will has an analytical process to his performance programming, and asks important questions that have use really dig into the why of what we are doing in the gym (and beyond). On the show today, Will talks about his athletic, game-play and strength background, and how despite being more than physically capable, did not make the pro level of football.  Will then goes into ideas on what we should actually be looking to improve/intensity in the gym setting.  He chats on how to avoid training things that really don’t matter in the grand scheme of everything an athlete is asked to do.  Will finishes with his thoughts on the specificity of potentiation, jump and sprint variability training, and then a great take on the “Olympic lifts vs. loaded jumps” debate. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 3:40 – How many “Bang” energy drinks Will believes the typical strength coach should consume daily 4:51 – Will’s background in athletics, sport, and athletic performance 9:53 – The importance of play in fitness and boosting overall athletic qualities 16:02 – Why Will, despite being athletically physically superior to many other football players, did not make it as a pro-football player and what he has learned from that 21:35 – Will thoughts on things he would choose to intensify in the gym, such as barbell velocity 27:17 – Thoughts on “generalized” power training methods 33:39 – Will’s take on not wasting time in the gym, and how to avoid redundancy in the course of training 47:58 – Will’s thoughts on heavy strongman work, squats and deadlifts and the optimal potentiation for sport skills 55:15 – How Will approaches jump and sprint variability in his warmups for training 1:03:46 – Will’s take on loaded jumps versus Olympic lifting, and the utility of Olympic lifting in sport preparation “It’s really difficult to get people,who are my peers, on a Saturday afternoon, to go play racquetball, or go play pickleball, or something like that…. When you do get a group of people to go play a game like that, they always say, “we should do this more often”” “I think a lot of times (playing) is going to have a better training effect than going in the gym for an hour” “I didn’t have the (tactical) ability that would have been required for me to play at that level… the general perception action abilities were right up there with anybody else, I just didn’t have the specific perception action abilities” “I think it’s a good idea to improve your ability to produce outputs, and once you reach a certain threshold of producing these outputs, we need to improve the context by which you can produce those outputs” “I think a lot of extensive plyos is kind of a waste; it depends on the sport, but take basketball, I don’t think they need to do any extensive plyos because that’s what basketball is; submaximal contacts up and down the court” “I do not like the rationalization of doing loaded jumps to improve “rate of force development”… I like to think of them as “you are improving jumping competency”” “I do not like the comparison of loaded jumps and Olympic lifting…. In Olympic lifting you are interacting with an external body of mass” “I try to teach snatch before clean, for a variety of reasons” “The reflexes are being trained much faster in Olympic lifts, than if you are going to do repeated, loaded jumps” About Will Ratelle Will Ratelle is a NCAA Division I strength and conditioning coach at the University of North Dakota, working with football, basketball, volleyball and tennis athletes. Prior to working in the performance field, he spent time as a professional football player, spending time with the Atlanta Falcons, Kansas City Chiefs, and Saskatchewan Roughriders (CFL). He has a passion for solving problems to issues and questions with his athletes regarding performance issues. He takes a principled approach to his training philosophy while also critically thinking about important topics in the field.

Dan John, strength coach and writer, discusses the importance of whole movement training in explosive sports like volleyball. He emphasizes the value of creativity and variability in athlete training, while cautioning against overwhelming athletes with too much information. The podcast also explores bridging the gap between training and competition, the significance of rules in a training program, and the importance of fundamentals and basics in improving athletic performance.

Today’s episode features coach and inventor, Rolf Ohman.  Rolf was born in Sweden but grew up in Brisbane, Australia. He has worked for over 40 years in international sports, as an athlete (Decathlon) and as coach at International and National level.  He was the Head Coach for the Dalian Olympic Sports Center 2016-17 and Assistant Head Coach Chinese National Team Sprints/Jumps 2018-19.  Rolf is the inventor of the 1080 Technology (such as the 1080 sprint device), and has substantial experience in both the data-based and practical aspects of coaching and training. In the recent Randy Huntingon podcasts, Randy spoke about how doing hurdle hops over too high of hurdles had the tendency to “kill elasticity”.  Rolf Ohman has worked with Randy, and has substantial experience linking the ground contact times in plyometric exercises, as well as the impulse times of various movements in the weight room, to what is observed in athletics.  Track and field athletes have faster impulse needs than team sport athletes as well, and Rolf has worked with both populations, and understands which metrics should be optimized in training for different situations. On today’s podcast, Rolf will speak on the specific drawbacks to using too high of hurdles in bilateral plyometric training, and gives his specific recommendations for which heights he feels are maximally beneficial for both track and team sport individuals.  He’ll speak on various elements of transfer in the weight room, such as the progression of the Olympic lifts, as well as thoughts on the transfer present in different elements of gym training, such as the impulse dynamics of lifting seen in elite athletes.  Rolf finishes with some thoughts on youth and long term development on the terms of speed and power.  Ultimately, this episode helps us to better understand closing the “gap” we often see between the gym, and the forces present on the field of play. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Lost Empire Herbs, and the Elastic Essentials online course. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com Find out more about the the online course, Elastic Essentials, by heading to justflysports.thinkific.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 4:42 – Rolf’s take on the height in hurdle hops, and how it impacts the elasticity of the exercise, as well as drawbacks to using too high of hurdles in the movement 11:13 – What the typical hurdle heights Rolf uses for track and non-track athletes in plyometric training 17:50 – Why Rolf chooses to progress the Olympic lifts in the course of training like he does 24:37 – Rolf’s use of partial vs. full ranges of motion in strength training for athletes 38:29 – Thoughts on oscillating isometric exercises with lifts, compared to a Keiser or air-powered machine setup 52:08 – How contact times and hurdle hop heights change for team sports vs. track 58:59 – How limb speed gets “set” before the age of 15 in athletes, and if athletes miss critical speed windows of training, they will be in a limited place in future performance “There aren’t a lot of guys around who can produce any sort of RSI index from 1 meter drop jumps… when I use high hurdle hops, which I rarely do, it might be in a setting when I’m seeking some kind of force production” “If I build maximum strength for my long jumpers with contact times in the 250-300ms range, is that going to help me?” “If whatever you’re doing in training is on one end of the spectrum, and competition is on the other end of the spectrum, that is “gap-osis”… if that gap is too big, you are going to be in trouble” “In the first 100-150 milliseconds (of a lift) the athletes who are the best really shine there” “We’re coordinating the neural system (in the weight room) we are creating the same coupling times that we see in competition…. It makes no sense in choosing weight room exercises that causes velocity to go to the other end of the spectrum” “Peak power comes much much earlier in normal mass, than what we thought.  The normal consensus is that, once you jump off the ground, you hit peak power just when you leave the ground.  But when you are lifting a bar, you have to slow the bar down before you reach the top, so you are reaching peak power much much earlier in the lift vs. the end” “If you put 140kg on a bar, vs. 140kg on a Keiser, you are going to generate about 25% less power (on the bar) because the weight is not getting lighter as you move” “(In hurdle hops) for me, I virtually never use anything over 30 centimeters” “You build sprinters at the age of 8-13,15, that’s where you build speed.  Whatever windows you open up, or shut down, in that age bracket, that’s what you’ve got to work with later on” “When you get to age 12-13, that’s when you have the highest limb speed you will ever have…. After that you can’t increase limb velocity anymore, it’s set” About Rolf Ohman Rolf Ohman was born in Sweden but grew up in Brisbane, Australia. He has worked for over 40 years in international sports, as an athlete (Decathlon) and as coach at International and National level.  He was the Head Coach for the Dalian Olympic Sports Center 2016-17 and Assistant Head Coach Chinese National Team Sprints/Jumps 2018-19. Rolf has worked extensively with training and testing of physical performance of individual athletes in Track & Field as well as professional soccer and ice-hockey teams. He worked with the Italian National Football Team Fitness Staff in 2012, Udinese FC Serie A Italy in 2013-14, and tested Everton FC in 2015. He has lectured in coaching and sports testing in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Switzerland, Germany, Australia, USA, England, China and Italy. Rolf is the inventor of the 1080 Technology (such as the 1080 sprint device), and has strengths in both the data-based and practical aspects of coaching and training.

Today’s episode features Tim Anderson.  Tim is the co-owner of the Original Strength Institute, and has been a personal trainer for over 20 years.  He has written and co-written many books on human performance including The Becoming Bulletproof Project, Habitual Strength, Pressing RESET, and Original Strength Performance. When it comes down to it, his message is simple yet powerful: We were created to feel good and be strong throughout life. It is because of Tim that I’ve developed a fascination with crawling, and largely, a fascination with bodyweight training in general.  So often, our thought on bodyweight training is one that revolves around ways to produce copious amounts of muscle tension, such as in gymnastics, which is great, and do so in volumes that can produce slabs of muscle.  At the same time, bodyweight training is much more than simply looking for alternative ways to seek hypertrophy.  Training with one’s bodyweight allows for a variety of reciprocal movement actions, where energy is stored and released, transmitting itself through the hands, spine, pelvis and feet.  Training with one’s bodyweight also allows us to hone on rudimentary and reflexive movement skills, such as crawling. Tim appeared on episode #154 of the podcast, talking about the power of crawling and reflexive movement.  On the tail end of that show, Tim discussed rolling for a few minutes, but I wanted to get him back to dig more thoroughly into that topic. On today’s show, Tim goes into the benefits of rolling, and how he progresses and instructs it for his clients.  He speaks about rolling on the level of the vestibular system, joint rotation (particularly internal rotation), the gait cycle, sensation and awareness, and more.  At the end of the show, we talk about modulating speeds and rhythms in ground-work, and finally, Tim gets into how his own personal workouts and training have progressed over time, and how rolling plays an important part of his own daily strength routine. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 3:28 – The purpose of rolling for human performance, and how Tim progresses it for clients 7:09 – The possibility of rolling to improve balance, coordination and dexterity through stimulation of the vestibular system 13:46 – Tim’s description of segmental rolling and how to progress it over time 23:30 – How much rolling Tim prescribes for various clients and individuals 26:53 – The specific elements in the process of rolling that helps to “connect the X” of the torso 32:21 – Ideas on using rolling or similar connective movements between more intensive main training sets 39:17 – How Tim looks at rolling and similar movements in light of their capacity to help improve internal rotation in individuals 46:44 – Addressing various speeds or rhythms to training movements 50:27 – What Tim’s early workouts looked like, and what his training has transitioned to now that he has gotten into his Original Strength workouts 58:29 – Ideas on super-slow crawling and the benefits of controlled bodyweight movement 1:04:02 – What the head and eye position should be like in the course of rolling “Our skin is our largest tactile organ, and when we roll, we are stimulating the skin a lot” “If you could imagine that your body is a sponge, and everything out there is information; so when you are rolling on the ground, you are trying to take that sponge and soak in the information everywhere” “If we do these three things, we’ll more than likely stay healthy throughout our lives: The first one is breath properly with your diaphragm, nasal breathe, keep the tongue on the roof of your mouth.  The second is aggravate your vestibular system, and you can do that through eye and head rolling, things like that, and the third is to activate your gait pattern” “When you add in the extra information that the brain is not getting that the nervous system is looking for; it really takes the brakes off of everything” “A roll should look graceful and beautiful; a lot of people look like a log, they move like one whole piece, rather than a piece at a time” “It’s the soft stuff that allows you to do the hard stuff better, safer, more free” “If the body is a big “X” and when we roll, a great way to do it is to take your right shoulder towards your left hip” “People want to do things too fast, most of the time I am trying to get them to slow down” “I love using slow movements to fill in the gaps so people can demonstrate full control over how their body moves” “When people really have control over their body, fast movement still looks beautiful” “I spend every morning, 30-40 minutes rolling around, or rocking on the floor” “In my regiment, super-slow crawling is a part of it, and it is literally how slow can I crawl and control every facet of the ground.  And sometimes only two limbs are on the ground for a long time” “When a child is rolling, they have an intention (something they are reaching for)” “We try to teach crawling in a way where if a leopard is crawling, it should look beautiful, so if a human is crawling, it should look just as beautiful” “What you are seeing at the zoo is the truth of movement, while what you are seeing at the gym is the well-intentioned, misguided, notion of exercise” Show Notes Segmental Rolling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HBzwAfLscI&t=167s About Tim Anderson Tim is the co-founder of Original Strength, and has been a personal trainer for over 20 years. He is an accomplished author and speaker and is known for streamlining complex ideas into simple and applicable information. He is passionate about helping people realize they were created to be strong and healthy. Tim has written and co-written many books on this subject including The Becoming Bulletproof Project, Habitual Strength, Pressing RESET, and Original Strength Performance. When it comes down to it, his message is simple yet powerful: We were created to feel good and be strong throughout life.

Today’s episode features Rafe Kelly and Charles St. John.  Rafe is the owner of Evolve Move Play, and has studied and taught a multitude of movement practices spanning gymnastics, parkour, martial arts, weightlifting, Cross-fit and more for decades.  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.  Charles has been training parkour since 2009, and coaching it since 2012. He carries multiple parkour coaching certifications and is a certified personal trainer for general fitness, while he currently coaches at the APEX Denver Parkour (Apexdenver.com) and Circus facility in Colorado. Motor learning is the worldview by which you keep yourself from over-compartmentalizing elements of a total training program.  It’s how you discover the window, or lens by which an athlete acquires mastery in their sport, and also determines how you go about constructing a training session with the “whole” in mind.  It allows one to see the forest from the trees in the process of athletic mastery.  If we only listen to “speed”, “output” and “drill” oriented material, and leave out the actual over-arching process of motor learning in any sort of athletic performance discussion, we end up with a more over-compartmentalized, less sustainable, less effective, and less enjoyable model of training On the podcast today, Rafe and Charles speak in the first half, on games they particularly enjoy from a true “generalist” point of view; games that encapsulate the most essential elements of “human-ness” in movement.  These game principles can be plugged into either general (for the sake of better outputs for the subsequent training session), or specific warmups (for the sake of “donor” learning to the main session).  In the second half, we get into a detailed discussion on dynamic points of learning and coaching, speaking on points of drill vs. holistic approach to skills, frequency of feedback (and types of feedback), working with highly analytical athletes, checking the effectiveness of one’s cues, and much more. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 4:41 – Why Rafe and Charles love rugby as a multi-dimensional game that encapsulates a lot of human qualities and opportunities 14:12 – “Hybrid” games that coaches like to play as a generalist warmup to a strength training session, and the emergence of “king of the course” 23:21 – How to craft a “donor” activity to prepare for your primary training activity 32:49 – What the balance is, in parkour, on teaching actual technique, vs. decisions 52:08 – How to properly tell stories and frame skills to an athlete, without letting words get in the way 1:02:11 – How many efforts to let an athlete perform, before coaches should seek to intervene in the form of a cue or instruction, and how to help athletes be better self-learners 1:14:34 – Cueing and instructing athletes who may desire more structure than others 1:22:37 – Thoughts on velocity of a movement, and the transferability of drills, or slower versions of skills, versus fast movements 1:27:02 – “Feeding the Error” and principles of variable learning that can assist in skill development 1:32:38 – How to improve learning by reducing potential “fear” constraints in sports with a potential risk element “I would contest that (rugby) is the best designed ball sport… it’s the only sport I played that allowed for a range of body types” “Team sports have all of (generalist fitness) demands in them… and you have to do it in a team manner, you have to cooperate with other people” “I think that rugby and football are under-rated as self-defense arts” “For kids, having a free flow based sport as their base is really important, and it’s difficult (for them) to deal with all the stoppage in play (in more structured sports)” “Making everybody miss (tackling you) seems like such an extraordinary expression of athleticism” “The fundamental things we think you should be able to do are: martial arts, parkour, some sort of team sport element, and be able to manipulate objects… sticks, balls, ropes… and you shouldn’t just be competent in each of those areas, you should be able to blend them” “If you think about the goals of (your sport) you can try to abstract a game from those goals rather than just trying to warm up through lighter technical variations of the same technique you are going to be covering anyway, it becomes less redundant and a lot more fun” “You gotta warm up the brain and the emotions.  You are going to have a better lift if you have a game and are laughing, before you get to the lift” “When I was training in nature, because that was where I was training, what I found is that a lot of the movements that I had expected to have to decompose for people and give them a lot of cues to get them through, they automatically self-organized” “A lot of times we think they need technical fixes, and it is a physical problem, or is it just like an awareness issue? When its’ awareness, athletes are thinking of the skills as independent expressions, rather than having expression towards something.  So what I like to do is teach principles, before techniques.” “Instead of saying, here’s why you should step your leg fully to the ground, I introduce the idea of having full control of the rhythm of your movement” “I can tell you what you did, or what you should do, but that doesn’t mean that on the next repetition you’ll be able to do it.  There is a little more problem solving that goes into that, so how can we set up a constraint for you that can allow you to start expressing the behaviour that you are trying for” “Sometimes it is a mechanical problem; you need to get the mechanic to fix the thing.  So as coaches, we need to think in these levels of systems.  Is it because the glute can’t fire well, or the tibia can’t glide at all?  Or is it because it’s a habitual pattern the athlete has and there is no physiological limitation, we just need to do differential learning or feed the error so they can start doing some kinestheic mapping to control the position” “Pick the highest progression of the skill that can be failed safely” “That really does matter to people, your ability to empathize with their journey” “Something as high order as actually doing martial arts skills, can give you mobility.  But you can spend years trying to perfect your mobility and have no physical skills to show for it” “I try to avoid giving a cue until I see someone do something at least 3 times” “Check your cues with your athletes.  Just like they need feedback in your movement, you need feedback on your coaching” “If you work with high school and college athletes who are part of a team of coaches who are probably variable in terms of competency.  So if you can install in students, respectfully a way to know what works for them, to be able to say, thanks but no thanks, to that cue, it’s going to help a lot in athletes being able to sustain themselves in that maelstrom that getting input from 6 different coaches can be” “That’s the problem I think we have with that type of (hyper-analytical) personality; how can we get them to be more focused on the perceptual information in the environment, and getting an autonomous relationship to it in the expression of their sport” “A huge issue with those absolute maximal jumps is that they are very easy to break athletes with” Show Notes King of the Course https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqJpiAMuz0w   Bill Boomer Water Flow Exercise https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAslSR8-Etc&t=147s   Mountain Goats Climbing a Near Vertical Face https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfTH1VHqmUU   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. About Charles St. John Charles describes himself somewhat paradoxically as a fitness industry professional and an athletic amateur, in the literal sense of the word. He dabbles in a variety of disciplines for the love of movement, but takes a very academic and business-oriented approach to both his digital marketing for fitness businesses and his coaching and personal training. Most relevant to our conversation today, he has been training parkour since 2009, and coaching it since 2012. He carries multiple parkour coaching certifications and is a certified personal trainer for general fitness as well. He currently coaches at the APEX Denver Parkour (Apexdenver.com) and Circus facility in Colorado.