Just Fly Performance Podcast

Today’s show is with Rob Gray, professor at Arizona State University and Host of the Perception & Action Podcast.  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.  Rob 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”. When it comes to anything we do athletically: playing a sport, sprinting, lifting weights, even holding an isometric position; all of these things are learned skills.  So often, the various compartments of athletics, the sport coach, the strength coach, the rehab specialist, are relatively disconnected, and there is often no common playbook when it comes to athletics and the learning process. The principles of the way we learn, and how this learning fits with our movement strategy and ability, are universal.  By understanding what it takes to be a better mover via the learning process, we have an understanding of the general process of athletic performance training from a broader frame of mind. On today’s show, Rob Gray speaks about the fallacy of training a “perfect technique” via drills or repeated cues.  He talks about why using a constraints-led approach to help shore up any key movement attractors (technique) is an ideal way to facilitate skill development.  Rob will get into his take on how to approach learning the “fundamentals” in any sport skill, and also get into important concepts of variability in sport, the differences between novice and elite in variability, and then how there can be “good” or “bad” variability in sport training.  Finally, Rob covers the role of variability in injury prevention, and talks about the sport coach/strength coach relationship in light of variability and the constraints led approach to skills. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Inside Tracker, and Lost Empire Herbs. For 25% off of an Inside Tracker order go to info.insidetracker.com/justflysports For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 5:05 – The story of Tim Tebow, and how he was so dominant on the NCAA level, but why his NFL career was very unsuccessful from a perspective of throwing biomechanics 9:08 – Rob’s take on the idea of “perfect technique” 13:47 – Approaching the “fundamentals” in any given skill, in the learning process 23:37 – Looking at drill-work in sport and its original intended purpose 25:33 – How much variability elite versus amateur athletes exhibit in their skills 28:59 – Variability across a spectrum of skills, such as running in football versus running on a track in sprinting 32:42 – Using variability in “basic” sports such as track and field or swimming 39:17 – How variability changes as one moves from novice, to intermediate, to expert, particularly on the level of an individual sport, like track and field 45:28 – Rob’s take on variability and injury-prevention 50:57 – The idea of donor sports and how those sports can offer helpful variability to one’s eventual sport specialization 56:35 – How strength coaches might be able to use variability in the gym that might connect to skills athletes are trying to improve on the field “There can’t be one perfect, ideal way, because the world is not staying the same around you” “Being skillful is not about repeating the same solution to the problem, it’s about repeating coming up with solutions to problems” “I like to think about giving athletes problems to solve instead of the solution” “The process of solving problems is how you become skillful” “So instead of trying to give them these attractors first, then plugging it into the actual action, I’d rather start with the action, and then pull back with constraints as a coach” “The fundamental issue with dribbling around cones is, there is no problem there” “Experts do tend to be more consistent in certain aspects of their movement, but it depends on what type, there is good and bad variability” “Good variability is any variability that keeps you on your goal; it allows you to adapt” “Experts tend to have this functional motor synergy, things working and varying together, is what we mean by good variability” “On the surface, we want to say those (poor athletes with no facilities) are at a disadvantage, but it’s counter-productive to make (their facilities) perfect” “I would really like to see some variability all of the time (even in individuals sports like track or swimming)” “I’m a believer in basketball, deliberately trying to shoot the ball off of the back rim so that it comes back to you… doing that requires you learn the relationship to your movement, in given the new problem to solve; so we’re not going for here’s the one solution, do it over and over, let’s learn to solve related movement problems” “Broad variability is just changing pitches and varying the speeds, focused variability is like getting a batter and saying “I only want you to swing at these pitches”” “Doing (specific/focused variability) with a young athlete is kind of a waste of time… on the elite end, you are trying to squeeze that last little bit out” “Sometimes we make things boring in sports for no good reason” “Learning is about being challenges, and making mistakes, it’s about being in an environment when you look bad sometimes” 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 show is with performance director Daniel Bove.  After spending several seasons with the Atlanta Hawks and Phoenix Suns, Daniel is now the Director of Performance and Sports Science for the New Orleans Pelicans, and is also the author of the book, “The Quadrant System, Navigating Stress in Team Sport”. As Michael Zweifel has said previously on the podcast, every coach should have the opportunity to work with youth athletes, and pro sports, at some point in their career.  I’ve done a lot of shows talking about youth sport concepts, as well as principles of training through the lens of a child development, but I haven’t done as many shows detailing some of the nuances of working with a pro population specifically. When it comes to that other end of the spectrum, with professional athletes, the art of strength & conditioning is largely the art of “load management” and stress consolidation, especially over the course of long competitive seasons.  This art of training athletes at the highest level is certainly interesting if you are in the small percentage of coaches who work in this group, but the concepts and ideas behind it can be helpful to understand, regardless of what population you end up working with. Daniel has come up with a unique system of load consolidation, working with an NBA population that makes a lot of sense.  Not only is “The Quadrant System” a wise method for pro athletes, but understanding the Quadrant System is also helpful from the perspective of understanding “high-low” style training in general (making high days truly “high” and low days, truly “low”), as well as the art of dealing with monotony over the course of long training periods.  On the show today, Daniel gets into his four quadrants of training (recovery, repetition, speed and of course, strength), and how he utilizes these methods of loading through different points in an in-season training schedule, as well as off-season. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Inside Tracker, and Lost Empire Herbs. For 25% off of an Inside Tracker order go to info.insidetracker.com/justflysports For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 4:23 – How Daniel categorizes load for athletes that he works with 14:48 – How the quadrants might alter as athletes get further down away from the pro-level 15:58 – How high-low training and undulation of the type of stimulus players get offers substantial benefits for players, particularly those in the course of long playing seasons 20:22 – Daniel’s take on the “speed day” in the quadrant system, and how that balances with the explosive work and speed players are doing in their practice 25:48 – How the quadrant system may change when the strength coach doesn’t have a “seat at the table” of the sport coaches and practice volumes 32:05 – Validating heavy lifting in season, on the terms of what Daniel is seeing from data and force plates, and what types of volumes athletes are doing for heavy strength work in season 37:05 – How to approach heavy lifting after game-day if players had a poor game 40:24 – Daniel’s experience with buy-in and the spectrum of players responses in regards to heavy lifting on game-days 43:01 – Nuances of the heavy strength day and how Daniel chooses to load athletes on that day 44:45 – How Daniel approaches tendon health and the repetition day/quadrant 2 47:58 – How the quadrant system changes when athletes are in the off-season or in developmental cases in-season 50:14 – Daniel’s view on a daily micro-dosing program, versus a high-low, quadrant system oriented program, and common movements that may actually be micro-dosed in the pro/NBA setting 55:04 – How Daniel uses work that creates more movement potential within the hips, as a preparation for players to use that range of motion effectively on the court 57:01 – How Daniel views the role of rhythm in training “That’s the goal of the book, how do we consolidate stress, and how do we manage chaos” “I matched up strength with high intensity high volume (in the quadrant system), and those are our game days typically” “Repetition days tend to fall at least two days out from competition and those are for tissue quality” “Quadrant 3’s (speed days… anything above .75 m/s) tend to fall the day before the contest” “My population views heavy lifts as the most stressful, which is why I place it after a game day” “In practices that are extremely high load, high intensity, they become your quadrant 4 (heavy strength day) and your game days become your quadrant 3” “I can’t just do isos with them every single day, because they have 82 games, and they’ll want to rip my head off” “(By lifting heavy loads in season) I do think you are setting the athlete up for success to be a more robust athlete… when athletes do start to take 1-2 weeks off of lifting, you do start to see force plate numbers go down, the things that help you buffer ground reaction force start to change” Athletes, in my opinion, are more receptive to training hard on the days that are supposed to be hard…. It’s a lot easier to get them (for heavy lifting) on the day that they are already pumped up” “On a quadrant 4, we are typically going with a hex bar (on quadrant 2, repetition and tissue health, it’s a more squat, or hatfield squat oriented day)” “You have to come to grips with, is this player's limitation physically oriented, or is it skill oriented?” “The monotony of micro-dosing wouldn’t be great in the (82 game) NBA season” “One thing I do like for micro-dosing at the NBA level is Lee Taft style change of direction work” “I like things that involves reciprocal AFIR on both sides, maybe I pair a kettlebell deadlift with a kettlebell self-pass” Show Notes Kettlebell Self-Pass Lunge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOcal46KrEA About Daniel Bove After receiving a B.S. in Kinesiology from Penn State University and an M.S. in Exercise Science from University of South Florida, Daniel began his career as an NBA physical preparation coach.  After spending several seasons with the Atlanta Hawks and Phoenix Suns, Daniel is now the Director of Performance and Sports Science for the New Orleans Pelicans.

Today’s show is with coach Brady Volmering.  Brady is the owner of DAC Performance and Health. After starting out in the world of baseball skill training, he’s since moved into the human performance arena, putting the focus on increasing the capacity of the human being.  Brady looks at what “training the human being” actually means and how that relates to increases in specific sports performance. Ever since I’ve been in a formal weight room training setting for athletes, I’ve really wondered about the thought process of how the various barbell and dumbbell exercises were going to help athletes actually be better at what they do on the field.  I’ve always tried to keep a close eye on elements of gym training that could possibly link to athletes who were more successful in their actual sport. It’s important to ask the question: “what is training?”, and realize that the answer includes “how” just as much as “what”.  Weights are just one tool, or manifestation of the ability to be strong, and if we zoom out from the tool of barbells and dumbbells, we can look at the process of training and adaptation on a broader level.  Muscle tension (and relaxation) can be achieved in a wide variety of ways.  If we take a close look at the mental, emotional, and physical components can be put into the simplest of exercises, we can make then a better conduit by which to improve the whole state of the athlete’s system. On today’s podcast, Brady gives us his experiences with training athletes on a “human” level.  He goes into the tool of isometric holds, and how to modulate those to draw out different intentions, into ideas on learning the way a child does, the importance of menu systems, as well as “breaking the rules” with higher repetition training schemes (and the qualities it takes to adapt to “unreasonable” training loads).  This is an “outside the box” episode that covers a lot of important concepts in training the total human for sport and beyond. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Inside Tracker, and Lost Empire Herbs. For 25% off of an Inside Tracker order go to info.insidetracker.com/justflysports For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 4:51 – How Brady started in the specific skill training of baseball players, and how he transitioned into more “human level” training and performance 9:09 – How Brady views the transfer of training ideology in light of the “human layer”, or GPP layer of performance 15:35 – Different intentions Brady prescribes during exercises, particularly isometric type exercises 22:31 – Elements Brady notices that transfer between human-level skills and how an athlete is performing in their sport 29:22 – The mentality by which children make rapid progress in skills, and how to harness that developmental ideal 39:16 – How Brady looks at menu systems for athletes, and giving them the power of choice 47:49 – Brady’s take on “breaking the rules” with high volume training experiences 58:36 – Thoughts on the balance and handing of high volume training versus the minimal effective dose of work 1:02:32 – “Human level” principles of athletes who can absorb and adapt to training volume on a higher level 1:07:58 – What an average training session looks like for Brady in light of the principles discussed in the show 1:11:50 – How to look at sets and reps, versus the construct of time, to direct intention of the athlete 1:14:07 – Some single-joint, high rep modalities that Brady enjoys using at the end of training sessions “When I’m training a human, I’m not thinking at all about transfer to their sport” “The goal is the deep pushup is for them to direct their intent into whatever it is they are doing; the pushup is just one way to practice that” “That’s where the human aspect of things is “how can we go into the human and take off inhibitors so they can direct themselves towards anything in the best possible way”” “That’s one intention, is you are going to hold (the iso) as long as you can… or as long as you can maintaining an exhale that’s twice as long as an inhale” “The best athletes in the world aren’t there because they did the right superset, or whatever, they are there because the level of their system is leveled up” “That’s been something that’s been on my is that training doesn’t equal weight room, training equals changing the human” “If we can take away those stories and get into the athlete being able to go inside themselves, and feel exactly what they need, as they are connected to that intention of the goal that they have, of the outcome that they want, their body is going to tell them what they need” “Some athletes don’t know how to feel what their body is telling them, because there is so much junk that has gotten in the way” “You take the athlete where they are at, you find out where their lowest functioning system is, and you level that up” “High volume isn’t the goal, it’s meeting the athlete where they are at” “Where we get lost a little bit in strength and conditioning is we only have a small box we look through of exercise, of weight room, of barbell, of exercise, of whatever… if we take all that away, we look at “what is training”, training is taking the human and making them better.  To do that, we need to input a stimulus that challenges whatever is inhibiting them right now so that inhibitor gets taken off and now they are at a high level.. that might be something in the weight room, it might not” “Every way you could challenge a human being is going to be on that (training) menu” Show Notes Lessons from 661 depth drops https://www.instagram.com/p/CXCu9GRsjrm/ About Brady Volmering Brady Volmering is the owner of DAC Performance and Health. After starting out in the world of baseball skill training, he’s since moved into the human performance arena, putting the focus on increasing the capacity of the human being.  Brady looks at what “training the human being” actually means and how that relates to increase in specific sports performance.

Adarian Barr, a seasoned coach and inventor known for his unique insights into human movement, dives into the world of rotational forces and their vital role in athletic performance. He emphasizes the importance of 'tumbling' actions for speed enhancement, challenging traditional linear movement perspectives. The discussion covers the mechanics of levers, optimal training methods, and the interconnections of upper and lower body performance. Adarian highlights how understanding biomechanics can revolutionize coaching techniques and improve overall athletic capabilities.

Today’s show is with Angus Bradley.  Angus is a strength coach and podcast host from Sydney, Australia.  He coaches out of Sydney CBD, co-hosts the Hyperformance podcast with his brother, Oscar, and is also an avid surfer.  Angus appeared previously on episode 249 of the podcast, talking about compressive strategies in weightlifting, as well as the impacts of those compressive effects on narrow infra-sternal angle individuals in particular. Angus is one of the most brilliant, and practical individuals I know in the world of strength training biomechanics, and connecting it to movement and practical outcomes.  When it comes to making sense of how our body structure and pressure systems fit with different setups in the weight room, and how this might apply to dynamic movement, Angus is a top individual to learn from. So often in the weight room, we will say that it is all “general” (which technically it is) but then use that as an excuse not to understand the movements we are utilizing in detail that fit with greater concepts of the gait cycle.  Connecting strength work to the gait cycle is key in better strength training practices, as well as individualization. On the show today, Angus covers the dimensions of exercises based on center of mass position relative to the foot, and how this connects with the gait cycle, as well as how much an athlete is being “pushed forward” (and why that is important).  He’ll cover delayed knee extension in both lifting and sprinting (and how they might connect), concepts of foot shapes, and gait, as well as his take on “floating heel” work not potentially being everything it’s cracked up to be.  Angus will also give some practical ideas on giving more sensory information to athletes unable to access early stance well, how far to take wide and narrow ISA types in terms of “balancing their weaknesses”, and much more. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Inside Tracker, and Lost Empire Herbs. For 25% off of an Inside Tracker order go to info.insidetracker.com/justflysports For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 4:25 – How doing the “wrong” intervention in training can still lead to positive results 11:30 – Understanding the implications of working through the various positions of the center of mass in relation to the position of the feet, and what this means for degrees of freedom in movement 18:30 – Some performance implications of wide-vs. narrow ISA’s in regards to mid and late stance, and jump technique 23:15 – The idea of “hamstring curling” one’s self out of the hole of a squat in order to delay knee extension 28:45 – Where Angus sees the benefit in “floating heel” training, and where he finds it not very beneficial 34:45 – How to re-train athletes to “let their femurs be” in squatting when they’ve been taught to shove their knees out in the past 39:30 – Thoughts on oscillatory squatting (and split squatting) and its impact on the mid-stance phase of lifting 43:30 – A discussion on developing mid-stance, narrow ISA’s and single leg squatting 49:00 – Flat vs. high arched individuals and what this means for how this impacts athletes in early vs. late propulsion 56:50 – How Angus’s lockdown sprint work went, and lessons he learned with squatted running 1:02:00 – Thoughts on the role of the adductors in movement, why some people may feel them more (or less) in sprinting, and how to train them in the gym “You can grab (IR and ER) if you just start pulling athletes back… heavy lifting just has a tendency to shove people forward” “A sign of a good athlete to me, is they will respond to their environment” “You can simplify it by looking at where they are in the sagittal plane and looking at that map of the foot, looking at where they are in relation to that base of support… if the center of mass is over the toes, you are going to be in that propulsive ER, if the center of mass is over the mid foot, you are going to be in that compressive IR, that mid-stance, and if you get them further back behind that base of support, they are going to be in that early stance and have nice access to that yielding ER” “From a performance perspective, I probably only need to pull (a wide ISA) back to midstance (instead of early stance) for a lot of them, just get them back a bit” “What everyone needs when they suck at anything is more external stability” “That’s why I love Hatfield squats, you just shove the arms out in front of you to keep the ribcage back” “I’m very high on goblet squats” “I think there is an association that slow, stiff people are stuck in their heels, and I just don’t see that” “If you just want to lift a massive weight, do a deadlift” “You are not necessarily helping an athlete develop their strengths and you are drawing all these mid-stance qualities out of them in the weight room, but maybe you are just making them a more well-rounded player” “Triple extension and that spring off the ground, that’s the byproduct of the push, the push happens on the ground with the flat foot, and that sets up that beautiful late stance” “(Squatted running) was allowing me to get into those sprinting shapes and get a sense of what mid-stance tastes like” “(To train adductors) Can they center themselves over their stance leg well, and can they do a hip shift well” 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 is a Q&A with Joel Smith.  It’s a lot of fun to see the questions you all have, and putting together a list of answers. Some major themes in this show included the dynamics of how an athlete learns and acquires a skill, how to give athletes ideal constraints to learn a skill better (particularly on the level of the arms in sprinting and step-action in jumping), and then questions on training the spectrum of the force velocity curve. There also were a lot of questions and answers that lent to training individualization based on the individual structure of the body and if one is a “power or speed” based athlete, which relates to an athlete’s ribcage structure and ISA bias, and of course, a lot of speed oriented questions. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Inside Tracker, and Lost Empire Herbs. For 25% off of an Inside Tracker order go to info.insidetracker.com/justflysports For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 1:15 – The difference in training fascial vs. elastic athletes 7:33 – How to train a “power” sprinter with poor top end speed 13:40 – Thoughts on training at different points on the force-velocity curve 24:06 – Arm action in sprinting, and constraint-driven coaching versus “positional” coaching 34:14 – Structuring a weight training and performance program for speed and acceleration 36:32 – Why some athletes have a long vs. short penultimate step in jumping 40:45 – Thoughts on in-season programming for team sports 46:56 – Dealing with a toe-sprain and learning to feel other parts of the foot 48:30 – Frequency of training with bodyweight iso holds 49:37 – Thoughts on “inside edge” vs. “outside edge” in movement and training 54:35 – Fascial awareness in movement 55:42 – Is concentric power building in the weightroom worthwhile? 57:01 – How to use falling/slipping/stumbling reflexes to our advantage in training About Joel Smith Joel Smith is the founder of Just Fly Sports and is a sports performance coach in Cincinnati, Ohio.  Joel hosts the Just Fly Performance Podcast, has authored several books on athletic performance, and trains numerous 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 post-graduate professional swimmers, as well as tennis, water polo, and track and field.  A track coach of 11 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. Joel has coached 2 national champions, multiple All-Americans and school record holders in his time as a track coach. In the realm of strength and conditioning, his programs have assisted 5 athletes to Olympic berths that produced 9 medals and a world record performance at Rio in 2016. In 2011, Joel began Just Fly Sports with Jake Clark as a central platform to promote information for athletes and coaches to reach their highest potential.  In 2016 the first episode of the “Just Fly Performance Podcast” was released, now a leading source of education in the sports performance field.  The evolving mission of Just Fly Sports is focused on teaching athletes to realize their true, innate power, and achieve the highest joy in their training, competition, and in the community.

Today’s show welcomes back running coach and biomechanist, Helen Hall.  Helen is the author of “Even With Your Shoes On”.  She is an endurance athlete, minimalist ultra-distance runner, 6 times Ironman and credited with being the world’s first ‘barefoot’ Iron(wo)man.  Helen is the owner of the Perpetual Forward Motion School of Efficient Running, as well as a running injury clinic, using the latest movement science and gait analysis technology to help people find solutions for their pain and injuries.  She appeared on episode 180 speaking on all things joint mechanics and technique in running. One of the most common things I hear (and have seen, especially in my club track years) about athletes is those who have a heavy heel strike when they run.  Excessive passive forces in athletic motion is never a good thing, but it’s always important to understand binary concepts (you had a heel-strike or you didn’t) in further detail.  There is a spectrum of potential foot strike positions in running, and nobody stays on their heel in gait, as we always move towards the forefoot. On the show today, Helen goes in depth on heel striking and the biomechanics of the heel in the running cycle, as well as the difference in heel striking motions in jogging versus sprinting.  One of the topics I frequently enjoy covering is how the human body can interact with nature and natural features to optimize itself (which includes optimizing running technique) and Helen speaks on how one can use uphill and downhill grades to help athletes and individuals self-organize their own optimal running technique. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Inside Tracker, and Lost Empire Herbs. For 25% off of an Inside Tracker order go to info.insidetracker.com/justflysports For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 5:27 – Why Helen feels individuals heel strike in the first place 11:33 – Helen’s “happy medium” when it comes to socks in running 14:28 – Helen’s view on the heel bone and pronation in the initial strike in running 21:03 – How Helen would help an athlete who heel strikes in a sprint when it is not desired 29:28 – The importance of relaxation and “letting” the body move and react, versus trying to force the body into motion 38:41 – Nuances of using uphill and downhill running, what to notice, and how to integrate that into one’s stride 45:29 – How un-even surfaces can create grounds by which individuals can self-organize their stride and foot action 48:35 – How to leverage hills to optimize the function of the glutes in running “I never change somebody’s first point of contact; their bodies change their first point of contact themselves” “There can’t be a right or wrong, since there are so many people whose first point of contact is the heel, and they are not in pain” “If you land in front of the heel, then you get the eccentric loading of the Achilles and what it attaches to” “People decide they are in “this camp” or “that camp” and thereby the camps run parallel to each other and never exchange ideas” “You want to be landing, not in a pronating foot.. in the context of running… the descent is arguably a posteriorly tilted calcaneus because you are landing in a supinating foot… unless your foot is going to go “splat” immediately” “You want to land on a foot that is relaxed enough to give” “They are reaching for the step, and by reaching on the step through hip flexion, they are ending up on their heel first, and that may be giving them more control as they go through the forefoot” “In my experience, people do not go back to the heel-strike, and all you need is a slope (to correct it)” “If you want to slow down, the most natural thing in the world is to shove your foot out, and brake with your heel” “You have to be relaxed for the response in your unbelievably complex system to happen in .2 seconds” “When you go downhill on a heel strike that you don’t feel on the flat… so you get to feel what it’s doing on the flat that you didn’t know before” “If you are aware of the terrain, the brain to body connections will take care of themselves” “Even if you are an athlete who operates on a pristine soccer pitch, if you can get out in nature and operate your body and ask it to do natural things, you are going to be more resilient towards the injuries of “everything has to be perfect” “You can’t clench your glutes when you run, if you clench your glutes, you go backwards” “You know you are stacked when you have maximum head rotation” About Helen Hall Helen Hall is the author of “Even With Your Shoes On”, a comprehensive manual on teaching running in a natural manner based on the sensory capabilities of the human body.  She is an endurance athlete, minimalist ultra-distance runner, 6 times Ironman and credited with being the world’s first ‘barefoot’ Iron(wo)man.  She has completed “the hardest ironman in the world”, Ironman Lanzarote in 2011. Helen is the owner of the Perpetual Forward Motion School of Efficient Running, as well as a running injury clinic. She specializes in the solving of chronic pain and repetitive injuries, be they in the neck, shoulder, back, hip, knee, ankle or foot and connected to sports or not. Helen uses the latest movement science and gait analysis technology to help people find solutions for their pain and injuries.  She is a cofounder of Barefoot Audio, an audio tool merging evocative coaching cues to inspirational music composed specifically with efficient running in mind. She is the author of the YMCAfit Barefoot/Efficient Running course and manual and was the coach to the inov-8 Natural Run program. Helen is qualified as an Anatomy in Motion Level 4 Practitioner, has multiple CHEK certifications, as well as certification in lymphatic therapy.

Today’s show welcomes back JB Morin.  JB Morin is currently full professor and head of sports science and the physical education department at the University of Saint-Etienne.  He has been involved in sport science research for over 15 years, and has published over 50 peer-reviewed journals since 2004.  JB is a world-leading researcher on all things sprint related, having collaborated with and analyzed some of the world’s best sprinters, such as Christophe Lemaitre. JB also does lots of sprint research that is highly applicable to team sport settings, such as information that can be gleaned from force-velocity profiling.  He has been a 2x previous guest on this podcast, speaking on elements of heavy sled training, force-velocity profiling, and much more. When it comes to sprinting from point A to point B, the time on the clock does not necessarily represent the strategy an athlete used to get there.  Athletes who can direct their sprint forces in more of a horizontal vector are going to be able to reach higher top velocities, and be more resilient towards injury. The question then becomes, how do we assess, and train athletes in respect to the direction they are producing sprint forces?  In today’s episode, JB speaks on how the specifics of an athlete’s force production (in the horizontal vs. vertical direction) will highlight elements of how fatigued that individual is, and their predisposition to injury in the short term.  JB also goes into how to measure force production in sprinting, new research on joint actions in early and late acceleration, hill training vs. sleds, hamstring research, and more. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Inside Tracker, and Lost Empire Herbs. For 25% off of an Inside Tracker order go to info.insidetracker.com/justflysports For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 5:00 –  Some new work that has come out in sprint research recently, showing the importance of the hip and ankle outputs in sprinting, even in the first few steps of acceleration 16:20 –  Thoughts on sprint technique, or force-velocity profiling and how that might link to potential injury in team sport situations 24:00 –  The relationship (and differences) between one’s maximal horizontal force, and their maximal sprint speed, and what it means for injury risk 30:50 –  How having a poor maximal horizontal force output can show up in the biomechanics of how an athlete is sprinting 37:15 –  How elite athletes will start to change their force-production orientation (less horizontal, over time) once fatigue starts to set in during a training session 45:00 –  How hill training compares to heavy sled training in terms of forces and velocity 50:30 –  New studies and thoughts on hamstring injury in athletics 54:20 –  Thoughts on training the feet and lower leg for the sake of sprinting 58:40 –  JB’s thoughts on how to set up good research on sprinting in athletics “75% of the energy that is generated to run is generated at the hip and calf level” “Team sport is so chaotic, it’s the worst way to assess an athlete’s acceleration capability, the game environment is not reproducible” “Our studies show that pre-season maximal force output is not related to (injury risk) but when you measure that maximal force output throughout the season, the last measurement is related to the risk of injury in that measurement period” “You need to measure (force/velocity) regularly, not only in the pre-season period… there are so many changes throughout the season” “You can have people with the same 25 meter splits, but different profiles at the beginning of the spectrum or the end of the spectrum” “If you take two athletes with the same magnitude of ground reaction force, the best in acceleration will be the most horizontally oriented vector” “The last studies a-posteriori connected very clearly (horizontal force output) to the hamstring and glutes muscle function capability” “If you are more quad dominant, and push vertically, you will not go to a very high top speed” “I’ve seen some professional rugby players coming back from a few (off) days or weeks, because of an injury, and sprinting (pr’s), because they were chronically overloaded” “Most of the sprint related (hamstring) injuries, occur at high speeds, but also in linear movements” About JB Morin Jean-Benoit (JB) Morin is currently full professor and head of sports science and the physical education department at the University of Saint-Etienne.  He was formerly full Professor at the Faculty of Sport Sciences of the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis (France), and has been involved in sport science research for over 15 years, and has published over 50 peer-reviewed journals since 2004.  He obtained a Track & Field Coach National Diploma in 1998 and graduated in Sport Science at the University of Besançon, France in 2000. He obtained his PhD in Human Locomotion and Performance in 2004 at the University of Saint-Etienne, France (Prof. Alain Belli), in collaboration with the University of Udine, Italy (Prof. Pietro diPrampero). JB’s field of research is mainly human locomotion and performance, with specific interest into running biomechanics and maximal power movements (sprint, jumps). He teaches locomotion and sports biomechanics, and strength training and assessment methods. JB’s has collaborated with French sprinter Christophe Lemaitre and his group/coach, and he is member of the French Soccer Federation research group, teaching professional coaches about sprint mechanics and training for acceleration. He also collaborates with New-Zealand professional and national rugby teams, and with professional soccer clubs in France and Spain. He practiced soccer in competition for 10 years, practiced and coached track and field (middle distance and 400m hurdles) for 8 years, and he is now enjoying trail running, road cycling and triathlon.

Today’s show welcomes back Randy Huntington for a “part 2” of the recent episode #282 , speaking on the success of Chinese sprinter, Su Bingtian, and the third podcast with Randy in total.  Randy is a track and field coach who has spent his recent years as the national track and field coach for the Chinese athletics association and has over 45 years of coaching experience. Huntington is rated as a USATF Master Coach in the jumps, has been the coach for many world-class athletes over the years, including eight Olympians and seven World Championship Team members.  Mike Powell and Willie Banks set world records in the long jump and triple jump, respectively, while under his tutelage. In the last podcast, Randy spoke on several elements of the training methods that helped Su Bingtian to become the fastest accelerator of all time, such as sled and resisted sprint training, special strength work, and more.  There was still a lot left to cover after the last episode, so for this show, we will dive back in (literally, in regards to the water training) to Randy’s training methodology. For today’s episode, Randy speaks in depth on Su Bingtian’s weekly training setup, and how he spaces out the weekly work, with a focus on rest and recovery.  He will get into the topic of training density, and how this can be modulated with training cycles of various lengths (as opposed to only sticking with a traditional 7-day cycle).  Randy will get into elements of water training, tempo sprint training, his version of over-speed work, and much more.  This is an awesome compliment to the popular “part 1” of my recent chatting with Randy, and great material for coaches in any discipline. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Inside Tracker, and Lost Empire Herbs. For 25% off of an Inside Tracker order go to info.insidetracker.com/justflysports For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 4:39 –  Details on Su’s weekly training setup, and how “work + rest = adaptation” 11:17 – Thoughts on how much, and how often to apply tempo work to team training 15:35 – How various cultures can have an impact on the type of training that athletes in that culture will optimally respond to 18:56 – The importance of water training for recovery, and recovery training in general, in Randy’s program 36:51 – Why the biggest need in coaching is on the level of youth coaches, and not those who work with elite athletes 42:06 –  How Randy isolates the specific focus of his training sessions, not doing too much work all in one session 46:06 – Individual factors in elastic vs. muscular athletes in the construction of a training program 51:51 – The power of being able to move athletes around selectively amongst training groups in individual sports 55:21 – How Randy looks at long term training and seasonal shifts in training emphasis 59:51 – Principles on going beyond a typical 7-day weekly training cycle, into 9 and 10 day cycles. 1:04:51 – How Randy utilizes the “bigger players” in a training year (such as intense training methods, heavy lifting, intense plyos, etc.) and how he measures and manages recovery 1:12:06 – How Randy applies overspeed training with his athletes “I look at work, but I put the rest in first in the week, and then I follow it back up with what work we are going to do prior to the rest” “I like using pulse (for tempo training), I’d rather use SMO2 (when I can)… that gives me a very accurate appraisal of when to go again” “I make our strength coaches run (tempo) with the sprinters” “In China, you can’t give them a lot of time off, they fall apart very quickly if they have a lot of time off (Koreans were like the too)” “How do you increase density without (going to steroids)… that’s how I arrived at (water training)… my whole approach has been recovery based first, I’d quit before I’d ever go to (steroids)… the water for me, serves for Su, the density of training I need him to do” “If the pool is accessible, I’d go there after every session” “There is almost no better way to do hip flexor work than to get in the water” “Because water is denser too, you find the best pattern, you groove your movement pattern even better” “Deep water is pure recovery work to me…. Tempo is still work; is it recovery? I wouldn’t make a steady diet out of it.. there is only so much gravity based training you can take” “You can refresh that (coaching) spark by going back down to middle school and high school” “You can destroy elasticity pretty easily by overtraining” “I tend to put the jumpers on a 9 day cycle, the sprinters on a 7 day cycle, and the 800m is on a 7-10-10-5 cycle” “We go to 9 day cycles if we need to fit in everything I need to fit in” “You only extend a training cycle for recovery, in 7 days, you are creating density but you are not taking time to recover… you start thinking density more than intensity or volume” “3-day cycles are the easiest to figure out; so you got acceleration, weight training, speed… or acceleration, weight training, recovery” “Rolling 3 days are pretty easy to program” “If you want to get scientific with anything, get scientific with adaptation.  Get scientific with sympathetic/parasympathetic balance” “I don’t do over-speed training, I do assisted-speed training… that’s the thing you look at; where am I in my ability to apply force to the ground without creating blocking forces” Show Notes Su Bingtian’s Sprint Training Schedule: Monday: Acceleration Tues: Lift (power) Wed: Short Speed Endurance (ASSE/GSSE) working into pure speed day over time Thursday: Lift (upper body + 1 power style lift) Recovery Circuits in Afternoon Friday: Acceleration Sat: Lift (max strength) plus longer speed endurance session About Randy Huntington Randy Huntington is currently the national track and field coach for the Chinese athletics association and has over 45 years of coaching experience.  Huntington is rated as a USATF Master Coach in the jumps – one of only five in the U.S. He has been the coach for many world-class athletes over the years, including eight Olympians and seven World Championship Team members. Mike Powell and Willie Banks set world records in the long jump and triple jump, respectively, while under his tutelage. Six of his athletes have been in the U.S. all-time top ten in their respective events. Huntington coached Powell to the Olympic Games in 1988, 1992 and 1996, where Powell won a pair of silver medals in the long jump. On Aug. 30, 1991 in Tokyo, Powell broke Bob Beamon’s 23-year-old long jump record that was expected to never be broken, leaping 29-4 1/2 (8.95m) – a record that still stands. Willie Banks, who Huntington coached to the 1988 Olympics, broke the world triple jump record with a mark of 58-11 1/2 (17.97m), June 16, 1985 in Indianapolis, and under Huntington’s coaching twice jumped over 18 meters, which is the longest in American history. Huntington has also coached Olympians Joe Greene (long jump bronze medal in 1992), Sheila Hudson (American indoor and outdoor record-holder in the triple jump), Al Joyner, Darren Plab, Tony Nai and Sharon Couch. At least one of his athletes has competed in every summer Olympic Games since 1984. Powell, Greene, Hudson, Couch and Nai were all World Championship team members that he coached, along with Kathy Rounds and Kenta Bell. Huntington has also worked with professional athletes in other sports, notably football. He has worked as a conditioning and/or speed consultant for several teams including Indianapolis, St. Louis, Miami, Denver, Philadelphia and Cincinnati, and has worked with numerous individual players including Trace Armstrong, Terry Kirby, Henry Ellard and Ed McCaffrey. He has also worked with college football programs at Florida, Oklahoma and Notre Dame including training for the NFL combine, working with athletes such as Kyle Turley and Grant Wistrom.

Our guest for today’s show is Dr. Edythe Heus.  Dr. Heus is a nationally known chiropractor utilizing kinesiology with 22 years of experience.  She is the founder of the RevinMo, a unique corrective exercise program and co-author of ProBodX.  Dr. Heus is a thoughtful investigator whose diagnosis and treatment is based on specialized knowledge of the body's interconnectedness. Dr. Heus has enjoyed great success, and works with many professional and Olympic athletes. When training individuals, it’s easiest to focus only on “outputs”, such as the load on the bar, or how fast an individual ran through sprint gates.  In taking a full-view at training, it’s also important to understand more subtle inputs, and how the body organizes movement from a fascial perspective. I’ve routinely noticed in the world of track and field, and swimming, a cycle where athletes experience an injury, have to do “rehab” (subtle) work (and also get a deload from the typical intense work they are doing) and come back to their sport to set personal bests within a few weeks or months.  As such, it’s worthwhile to study the full spectrum of “rehab to outputs” in human and athletic performance, and how we can organize each of these methods through a training session, or one’s career. On the show today, Dr. Heus will speak on balance and proprioceptive training methods, such as pipes and slant boards, advanced foot training concepts, and information on the fascia and how it responds to various training methods.  This is an important concept for anyone, and particularly those individuals who wish to learn more about the “softer” side of performance that can make a large impact on one’s function and resistance to injury. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Inside Tracker, and Lost Empire Herbs. For 25% off of an Inside Tracker order go to info.insidetracker.com/justflysports For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 6:00 – How Edythe got into a more “alternative” position on exercise and training in her career 19:30 – Deeper thoughts on balance training, and how it benefits the nervous system 38:30 – From a balance perspective, what athletes should be able to do from a fundamental movement perspective 56:00 – Assessing the feet and the abdominals in the course of balance-oriented training 1:02.00 – Using slant boards to train the feet 1:06:00 – Edythe’s thoughts on toe strength 1:21:15 – How Edythe can feel the fascial system working in a particular exercise, and what exactly is “fascial training” “A quality of a person’s life is directly related to the health of their feet” “I see what I do, whether it is treatment or training, because I don’t separate those, as a collaborative team effort (between myself and the client)” “(I want to know) why are we not getting the response from the nervous system or the fascia that is possible?” “Balance, for me, isn’t just standing on unstable surfaces” “Balance is a form of novelty, and the brain thrives on novelty… I also challenge them textually” “Instability just simply, makes the cerebellum work” “Balance comes in so that your inner and outer environment can better communicate with each other” “One of the components I think is critical in training is a perception of risk” “Do some of my stuff before the lift, do it after, and then your lift is going to be better, and you are going to build on what you gained from that lifting, so heavy weight stuff definitely has to be on a stable surface” “I don’t think that without an unstable surface, that you are going to get all parts of your being integrated” “We want to automate as much as possible so there is not much thinking involved, so when you do have a skill you actually want to learn, you’ve got more bandwidth for that skill, so that you are not using all your bandwidth (for your sport skills)” “Let’s automate everything that we can, our body is designed for automation” “The thing I teach is, “are people able to be in their feet”” “The fascia has a spiral design; if you had to train a single plane of movement, it would be rotation” “I will allow people to struggle with that “arch downhill” just a little bit, because when they get it, it’s solid” “The arch uphill is the least needed of the four slantboard positions” “Anyone with a pronation problem, I ask, “what’s going on with your pelvic floor”… you aren’t going to get the feet working properly if you got pelvic floor issues” “(the fascia) doesn’t like held positions; holding a posture more than 10-15 seconds straightens out the collagen fibers, and you lose the waviness that lends to elasticity” “Some shoes are very rough, and they create problems all the way up, from the texture of the shoes” “Be very particular about the (physio) ball having the same tone that you would want in your tissues, which means that there is elasticity and give, not tension that feels unpleasant… I can’t even look at someone on a deflated (physio) ball” Show Notes Pipe Training https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyceUFmvlEo Slantboard Training Methods https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITXRchznLz4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TS9ENhUH1a4&list=PLGlTos0mCZTytU-Y4pk7mPG2vtSiBU0vP   Win a 3-Pack of Virtual Classes with Dr. Edythe Along with the show today (depending on the time you are reading this) you can win a free 3-pack of virtual classes with Dr. Edythe, and to get in on that deal, you can follow these instructions: Select 3-Pack on RevInMo Virtual Classes(scroll all the way down to see packages) Make account on MindBodyOnline When shopping cart comes up, there will be a field to enter promo code, enter “FLYREV” and the shopping cart should be at $0. About Dr. Edythe Heus Dr. Edythe Heus is a nationally known chiropractor utilizing kinesiology who during 22 years of experience has embraced a holistic concept of health. She is the founder of the RevinMo, a unique corrective exercise program and co-author of ProBodX.  Dr. Heus is a thoughtful investigator whose diagnosis and treatment is based on specialized knowledge of the body's interconnectedness. Finding the point of origin of injuries, she uses appropriate sequences of exercise to improve performance and keep patients from coming back with the same recurring injuries. Dr. Heus has enjoyed great success, and works with many professional and Olympic athletes. Throughout her career, Dr. Heus has lived by the mantra, “Challenge what’s possible.” And that is what her clients see her do every day.