Just Fly Performance Podcast

Today’s show is with athletic performance coach, Dan Back.  Dan Back is the founder of “Jump Science” and is also a coach at Xceleration sports performance in Austin, Texas.  Dan reached an elite level in his own vertical jump and dunking ability, and has been helping athletes run faster, jump higher and improve overall physical performance for over a decade.  I first met Dan in my own time at Wisconsin, LaCrosse, where I was working on my master’s degree in applied sport sciences. When it comes to sports performance training, the two “KPI”s we are routinely searching for, are undoubtedly sprint speed and jumping ability.  Improvements here are harder to come by than simply improving a barbell strength exercise that is brand new to an individual.  On top of this, the higher velocity the movement, generally, the more difficult it is to improve. This is where there is a big difference in simply knowing information about training, and spending time talking to coaches who have been working hard on this skill themselves for years, and then have transmitted that knowledge into working with others.  Dan is a coach who really embodies what he is teaching on a regular basis. On today’s show, Dan talks about how his plyometric programs have changed over the years, where his plyometrics volume has shifted, volume in performing variations of various sport jumps, as well as in submaximal plyometrics, where big rocks like depth jumps fit in now. Key elements Dan looks at when coaching speed that fit with reactive abilities RSI, Strength/speed alternation, and knowing that you aren’t losing too much “explosive or maximal strength in the pursuit of speed Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs.  For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 4:41 – Dan’s evolution as an athlete and coach & how he became interested in sports performance 9:52 – Making jump training a sport: Is low rim dunk training the most effective for young athletes? 14:10 – Sport jumps vs. “Fun” jumps & How have your views on plyometrics evolved over time? 17:24 – Filling in the gaps in athletic history 20:01 – What staple plyometrics do you use in your training besides jumping? 25:34 – Building up from small, quick, easy movements 31:05 – Are there plyometrics Dan don’t use anymore? 32:38 – How Dan utilizes sprinting, warmups, and other exercises in athletic training 39:51 – Measuring RSI in sprinting and how to “reverse engineer” RSI from a “sprint first” perspective 46:33 – Dan’s approach to elimination and reintroduction of strength training and how to ensure one is not losing their maximal or explosive strength abilities when working on speed “I love [low rim dunk training] and I do think there’s a superiority there compared to just trying to touch the rim or touch the back board. One, because it’s just more fun. Two, to have success in the training, but then also there’s just this component of it’s not like a workout.” “Having that fun and even that creative, ideas-based, like oh I’m gonna try this dunk or I’m gonna try to dunk off one leg or whatever… having that fun, creative environment definitely makes a difference for the motor learning side of things and the motivation side of things.” “Hurdle hops are good but this is like a complimentary, forced development exercise. We want to have the base be not plyometrics, but the base be fun jumping and hopefully even diverse fun jumping.” “I believe in jump technique, I don’t overdo it… Sometimes if they don’t have those key skills, it’s like you’re kinda getting strong and not realizing any of it.” “Nowadays, really I would say sprinting is the plyometric that I have gravitated the most toward trying to make sure that is included in an athlete’s overall workload.”

Today’s show is with strength coach, Graeme Morris.  Graeme is a performance coach that consults for a variety of team sport and combat athletes including world and Australian champions in Muay Thai. He is also the head strength and conditioning coach for the AFL umpires and has previously worked in rugby league for 6 seasons. Graeme has experience learning from many leading coaches, and has integrated it into a balance that he sees fit for his own training populations. There are so many topics in the world of sports performance in regards to speed and strength.  I often get a lot of questions on how I end up integrating much of it into a practical training session.  At the end of the day, seeing the art of how coaches take information, and use it practically with athletes helps tie the content in the many conversations I have together. On today’s show, Graeme takes us into his own integration of the two most common interests of performance coaches: Game-speed and strength/power development.  Graeme speaks on his usage of closed versus open agility work, and lateral speed development, linear speed, and “robust running” ideas for team sport players.  He also goes into his strength methods for athletes, how “specific” to get in the weight room, and particularly how he gets into various oscillatory strength methods to help his athletes maximize their power outputs, and finally, some ideas from training combat athletes. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs.  For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 4:15 – Graeme’s mentors and influences on his sports performance philosophy 5:45 – Graeme’s take on closed vs. open agility training for his athlete populations 19:00 – Talking about linear speed drills, “switching”, mini-hurdles, and more in the development of speed for team sport athletes 27:45 – A discussion on working in small vs. open spaces and its impact on how an athlete’s muscle groups and energy systems are impacted 30:45 – How Graeme’s role as a strength coach fits into game speed, in respect to the coach’s technical/tactical plans for the team 35:15 – The story of “never go full Bosch” and Graeme’s approach to more “specific lifts” in the weightroom 40:30 – Where Graeme stands on the 1x20 lifting spectrum 43:00 – Graeme’s experience with oscillating lifting reps for a variety of athlete populations 58:00 – Working with Cal Dietz’s “reflexive trimetric” training method 1:04:00 – Core foot training movements that Graeme utilizes in his programming “If an athlete doesn’t have multiple tools to begin with; it’s hard to select the right tool… I look at shuffle positions, crossover step, basic backpedaling.  We are starting in a closed scenario, maybe resisted to slow it down a little more” “When you look on social media, you always see the best athletes…. It’s always great to see what people are doing online but they are always putting the most talented athlete; people are afraid to show the least talented” “When players reach where I am trying to get them to (from a linear speed perspective) then I will sprinkle in robust running methods… I find people will skip that initial step and go right into (robust running)” “I think you can get a lot of game speed in your technical/tactical drills” “In defense we are trying to take away space from the competition, in attack, we are trying to create space… you know these guys, you know they are not quick, but they always seem to have time on the field” “We need to have these drills that are executed at game speed, or above” “When you are working in a short space, that is going to put more stress on the calf, groin and glute area.  When you work in a more open space, that is going to put more stress on the hamstrings, and it’s often more aerobic”

Today’s show is with biomechanist Gary Ward.  Gary is the author of “What the Foot” and founder of “Anatomy in Motion” (as well as the “Wake Your Feet Up” and “Wake Your Body Up” courses).   Gary is known for solving unsolvable pain in minutes, not months, and his passion for the foot hugely influenced his interpretation of human movement. Gary’s foot wedges and training system have had a massive impact on my approach to training athletes in a single leg setting, and between Gary’s influence, and that of running coach Helen Hall (a student of Gary’s), my approach to gait, running and the foot is forever changed for the better.  Gary has been a previous 2x guest on this podcast, speaking on the topics of human movement principles, pronation, “duck feet” and much more. In my ever-running interest in the foot and lower leg, and its role in human movement, I have been very interested in the role of the rear-foot in the past few years.  Initially, I found that I was able to rid myself of plaguing Achilles tendon issues by mobilizing my calcaneus bone, which tuned me into the importance of looking beyond “foot stiffness” as a cover-all in lower leg performance.  From there, I’ve become increasingly more interested in the role of the rearfoot in not only injury prevention, but also athletic performance situations. On the show today, Gary Ward is back to take us on a deep dive into concepts of forefoot-rearfoot opposition and the role of the heel bone in pronation, supination and gait mechanics.  He’ll go into how a well-functioning rear-foot plays into the gait cycle, and how this also works with the ability to get into the ball of the foot well in athletic movements.  Gary will give some practical examples on how to check one’s rearfoot function, and we conclude the show getting into some nuts and bolts of squatting mechanics in light of 3D human movement. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs.  For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 6:37 – A recap on foot opposition, and how the twisting and spiraling of the foot works into human movement 22:03 – Gary’s take on how rearfoot mobility and foot opposition plays into the ability to get to the ball of the foot well in athletic movement 37:39 – How pronation and supination changes as ground speeds increase from walking to sprinting 49:10 – How to check for limited range in the rear foot, and how to get the rearfoot moving 58:52 – How the body will compensate upstream if it is getting too much or too little movement in the foot 1:04:12 – How arch height in barbell squatting impacts the athletic result of a barbell lift, and if the arches should flatten in a barbell squat 1:10.09 – Squatting and effortlessness in human movement “The rearfoot is the calcaneus and the talus” “When the calcaneus moves down, the navicular moves up” “If there was a midfoot bone, I would say the cuboid is a midfoot bone… out of the 26 bones, we’ve got one midfoot bone.  Otherwise, what we are really looking at is the forefoot opposing the rearfoot, and it does it in all three planes” “The lowering of the arch is an opening of the joints at the base of the foot” “If you roll pressure towards the inside edge of the foot, then you will initiate an eversion in your rear foot, but if I take the 5th metatarsal head off the ground, then what you lose is the opposition” “There’s only one way to get the shin forward, and keep the heel on the ground for too long, and that’s to maintain a pronated foot position” “If your foot does not pronate at the time it is supposed to, then the body will continue to pronate the foot until it reaches the amount of pronation it needs” “You do need to get that (calcaneus) eversion to get into that toe rocker of the push-off phase”

Today’s show is with Scott Robinson, neurology expert, consultant and personal trainer.  Scott is an Applied Movement Neurology Master practitioner and has worked successfully with all levels of neurological complexity in his time training and coaching a wide variety of clients.  Scott is a specialist in dealing with a variety of neurological issues, such as weakness, pain, range of motion and trauma to the emotional systems, amongst many others.  Scott is a former Taekwondo athlete and has more than 20 years of experience in Applied Movement Neurology. Scott previously appeared on episode #188 of the podcast, and on the last show, talked about inhibitory factors of the nervous system, the importance of belief systems on training, fascia and foam rolling, and also how to optimize novel motor response in a training session. The role of the brain and nervous system in an athlete’s performance is of absolute importance in the role of training and competition.  We must regularly draw neurological links between the two, instead of living in the isolated environment of the exercises or drills we are teaching or coaching.  By understanding more about what makes elite athletes tick from a body-mind perspective, we can really dial in on how to optimally set up each and every training session and competition preparation. In this podcast, Scott gets into ideas on a “neurological checklist” in the midst of training or competition for athlete to utilize.  He also talks about dopamine and reward in athletic training and performance, “celebration” as a neurological learning tactic, the importance of intention setting in coaching and athletics, 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 www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 5:30 – How to get further into the “present moment” in training or competition, and how to go through a mental checklist to get in the ideal mental zone 15:30 – How celebrating one’s performance can draw the brain’s attention to desirable outputs 32:30 – How to build up dopamine and reward responses in athletes, via celebration or intermittent rewards for athletes 44:00 – How to set intentions as a coach (or athlete) to help maximize one’s effectiveness and gain new insight on a situation 1:01:50 – How celebration of performance is a characteristic of an elite athlete, and how to practically put celebration into day to day training “If you are trying to learn a new skill, the first thing the brain will do is search its’ memory-bank and look for relevant data… when it finds some relevant data and it believes it can put together a movement from memory and experience, that may not be what you are looking for” “When I changed the focus and got the brain to acknowledge the errors and correct, there was a very different result, and to me, that is your present moment awareness” “The brain hates an open loop, it hates loops that are unclosed” “What you are doing (when you celebrate) is draw the brain’s attention to a desirable output” “You can celebrate with a fist pump, but you want to make it novel, you need to create attention” “Attention, urgency and alertness are the 3 keys for neuroplastic change…. Add emotion to things and it’s like a fuel source, it supercharges the moment” “You don’t “build” strength, your nervous system grants you strength” “If you have access to 100% of the nervous system, then you can see maximal strength” “The brain also receives dopamine for a “near-win”… gamblers brains can’t tell the different between a win and a near-miss” “You can withhold the celebration, you can withhold the reward, and then the brain will look to solve that problem by giving more, by increasing the output even further” “If you are actually prepared to play with some of these (withheld ...

Today’s show is with sports performance coaches Nick DiMarco and Keir Wenham-Flatt.  Nick DiMarco is the director of sports performance at Elon University.  He is a leader in the NCAA University coaching system in the realms of high performance ideology.  As a former professional athlete (NY Jets and Baltimore Ravens outside linebacker in 2014), Nick is well versed in the intuitive aspects of what it takes to be a high achieving athlete. Keir Wenham-Flatt is a strength and conditioning coach and educator.  He has a background in American football and experience within professional rugby for nearly a decade in five different countries: the U.K., Australia, China, Japan, and Argentina. Keir is the founder of the Strength Coach Network and Rugby Strength Coach, and has been a prominent figure in coaching education.  Both coaches have been prior guests on the podcast, speaking on topics ranging from perception-reaction and training transfer, to mental resiliency. The art of preparing athletes in team sport goes far beyond strength development, and even linear speed.  Knowing which elements of physical preparation are the “lowest hanging fruit” for each athlete, and how to appropriately progress them through their careers is a trademark of an experienced and thoughtful coach.  Many athletes in college football will barely improve in speed versus their high school abilities, especially after their first year of college strength training. On the show today, Nick and Keir will get into the finer points of off-season and pre-season training for American football, and how to place players in training priority groups based on need, such as strength, speed, or body mass-composition factors.  They also speak on how to utilize auto-regulation to make the process of maintaining (or improving) performance factors as quickly as humanly possible.  Finally, topics of specific conditioning means and methods to meet the demands of the game are discussed in depth, and particularly in how collision sports differ from contact sports in this regard. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs.  For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 5:15 – Off-season and pre-season training emphasis in American football physical preparation 16:36 – Nick’s different programs and “buckets” for various needs of his NCAA football athletes 22:11 – How to auto-regulate strength, power and speed markers once an athlete already has the pre-requisite levels of maximal strength for their sport – Thoughts on the demands of long-drives and the extreme ends of game speed-endurance and its impacts on how coaches should go about a conditioning program 48:24 – Keir and Nick talking about the “Robustness Bucket” in working with athlete populations 56:10 – How Keir and Nick steer training into reactive game-speed oriented tasks as the pre-season nears “Why do they break in camp? It’s not from a lack of exposure to heavy weight-training” Wenham-Flatt “Ask yourself, “What do you get most tired doing, what do you do most often, what is tied most to the outcome of the game?” that is the stuff that you need to be a master of, and robust to, in context of your position” Wenham-Flatt “With regard to the developmental stuff, where-ever possible, the answer would be auto-regulation; if you are auto-regulating every set in a target ability, you are hitting the maximum productive value of that session” Wenham-Flatt “There are anthropometric barriers to entry you must clear as you if you want to thrive in your position, and they go up, as the levels go up” Wenham-Flatt “1RM barbell strength is going to transfer to explosive movement to a point, and it’s lower than people think” Wenham-Flatt “I think one of the reasons most athletes make a lot of progress early on,

Today’s show is with sports performance coach, Jeremiah Flood.  Jeremiah is the owner of Flood Sports, a sports training company in Southern California whose mission is to facilitate the development of mindful and adaptable athletes.  Jeremiah is a former NCAA D1 defensive back at FIU where he earned his B.S. and M.S. in Exercise Science. After becoming a CSCS and working with Women's Volleyball and Soccer at his Alma Mater, He found the sport of Rugby, spent some time in USA rugby academy and garnered a professional contract.  Jeremiah looks to enhance the soft skills, such as decision-making and confidence in training the speed of both the mind and body in training. Strength is a relatively easy quality to develop in athletes, while speed on the other hand, is a more complex, but in many ways, more rewarding venture.  In the realm of athletics, “speed” is multi-factorial, and just because an athlete is fast over 20,60, or 200 meters, does not mean that they will be equally as fast in the speed of a game.  Game-speed involves complex decision making processes, mixed in with emotional management and confidence under a variety of stressful conditions.  To be skilled in facilitating means to improve game speed requires a holistic and dedicated approach. On the show today, Jeremiah takes us through his unique approach to building the speed of the mind and body.  On the physical level, we talk about his approach to testing and training linear outputs, such as sprinting and jumping.  On the mental level we get into the facilitating of the development of self-awareness, confidence and specific reactivity in athletes as it pertains to sport, and how speed and power can be blended with mental elements.  Finally, Jeremiah gives us some great “nuts and bolts” talk on how a daily training session unfolds under his process. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs.  For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 5:55 – How Jeremiah pivoted his training as a result of the covid-19 pandemic 7:30 – Training athletes when there’s no official tournaments or competition 10:08 – How to play “Gatorball” & why it’s a great game for young athletes to play 15:05 – Why blend cognitive development with physical development? & Jeremiah’s experience evolving as a college athlete 17:52 – How Jeremiah gives feedback to athletes on self-talk, self-reflection, and having a routine 22:32 – Jeremiah’s thoughts on working with an athlete who doesn’t seem motivated to formally “train” or do particular exercises or drills 27:17 – How often is pure speed the limiting factor for athletes to reach their goals? 33:06 – Basic “game speed” principles and practices 37:25 – The duties of a strength coach for high school and middle school athletes 40:48 – Jeremiah’s approach to testing athletes’ performance 49:44 – Toughness & the significance of doing things you don’t want to do 57:05 – Neural-perplexity: Challenging an athlete’s cognitive load and speeding up the brain’s reactivity 1:02:42 – What does an average training session look like for Jeremiah and his athletes “If I could go back in time, I would loved to have had a physical preparation coach who not only could’ve helped me in my physical abilities, as I loved, but also to tie that in with the mental and emotional, perceptive and reactive, all those elements that, holistically speaking, can help us maximize our outputs in the games we play.” “When I was transitioning from college football to rugby, it’s obviously a huge difference in skillsets, perception, action as far as catching, keeping your eyes ahead of you and passing… it really forced me to build that ability to scan the field. I didn’t have that when I first tried to play rugby and I thought I could just use my speed and physicality,

Today’s show is with sport movement expert Adarian Barr.  Adarian has been a many-time guest on this podcast, and has been my primary mentor in the world of sport movement and biomechanics.  Adarian has many years of coaching experience on the college, high school, club and private level of track and field, as well as in private sports training and movement analysis. There is a lot of talk in sports performance circles about “absorbing force”, as well as being able to “decelerate” in order to “accelerate”.  Although it is certainly helpful to speak outside of concentric/pushing muscle actions only in athletics, a key point is that sport movement is much more than simply accelerating and decelerating things.  Moving outwards to another layer of awareness, sport is much more about re-directing momentum than it is abruptly stopping and starting it.  Many top experts in speed training now are putting much less emphasis on deceleration, and more on change of direction. Change of direction concepts can be taken into much more than just running, however, but can be looked at in jumping, throwing, and pretty much any sport skill an athlete will undertake.  When we look at the dynamic work we are doing in training from a “collision” perspective, it helps us to appreciate athletic movement, and movement transfer to a higher degree. On today’s show, Adarian Barr talks details on setting up and managing collisions in sport movements, as well as lots of plyometric considerations.  We finish off the show with a brief chat on how this applies distinctly to the foot and sprinting from a timing and lever-based perspective. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs.  For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 6:13 Adarian’s take on training landings and a criticism of “snap down” exercises to train landings 14:44 Why it takes guts to hit a big collision in sport, and Adarian’s top collisions for athletic performance ability 21:35 Discussing the “ultimate” collision in sport, the javelin-throw final step 31:13 Considerations on setting up, and managing collisions in sport 34:30 Thoughts on using small boxes to manipulate jump takeoffs in track and field 40:25 Low rim dunks in basketball, in respect to collision management 44:55 Adarian’s thoughts on if “landing training” is a good idea for athletes 46:25 What plyometrics actually transfer well to setting up and managing collisions 53:40 Squatting and folding up in context of plyometrics and sprinting 1:01:13 How we can get to the ball of the foot at an optimal rate in sport movement “There is something people don’t understand about collisions; the impact force at the feet is not the same as what is being transferred to the rest of the body” “I’m not trying to absorb (the collision) I’m trying to manage (the collision)…. We are not taught to manage the collisions, we are taught to absorb.  If you are practicing to absorb collisions, you had better be strong” “There’s very little times where you are going to come to an abrupt halt in a landing (like a snap-down)” “When I chew my food, I do a plyometric” “If you want to build up that (collision management ability) teach everyone to triple jump” “What do athletes do better than anybody else, they manage collisions better than anybody else, because they don’t have fear” “As soon as you have fear in the equation, all of a sudden, you can’t manage the collision and you have problems” “People miss, more than anything, is how you set up the collision; and snap downs don’t teach you to set up the collision” “Two things to know: 1. How do I set up the collision, and 2. How do I manage the collision” “When the (cricket bowler) takes that big leap (4 steps out from the plant), that’s where it all starts”

Today’s show is with Sam Wuest.  Sam is the head coach and manager of Intention Athletic Club based out of South Florida.  A licensed acupuncturist and former collegiate track & field coach specializing in the jumping events, Sam owes much of his unique perspective to apprenticeships with Ukrainian Olympic Hurdle Coach Olex Ponomarenko and several master acupuncturists as well as his continued education within Daoist Gate’s martial arts and meditation programs. Sam has been a writer of some of the most popular articles on Just Fly Sports, on the importance of rotation in sprinting, jumping and sport jumping movements, such as dunking a basketball.  Sam is a holistic, outside the box thinker who has been able to blend several unique worlds of thought into his own process of training integrated athleticism. So much of our modern thought on sports performance comes from “Western thought”, which focuses largely on forces, muscles, and things that can be easily quantified in training.  You’ll often hear things like “producing the most force in the least time” or “maximal stiffness” as common pursuits in athlete training.  It’s not that these ideas aren’t important, but what we don’t consider is the other “side” of training that involves things that are harder to quantify, such as timing, fluidity, connectedness of the body and mental-emotional factors. On today’s show, Sam gets into the fine points of posture and expanding joint positions, what it means to train an athlete from a “fascial” perspective, and how his influences from the martial arts have made a major impact on how he goes about training athletes.  He also closes with a bit on how to balance a training program from a philosophical perspective of “yin and yang”. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs.  For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 5:42 - What can martial arts teach us about movement quality? 10:39 - Why we talk about fascia & What “fascia” means from a performance perspective 13:55 - Why focus on postural cues in athletes? 17:34 - The role of contractile elements in the body & The importance of timing in jumping 21:21 - Posture, the long spine, & The Alexander Technique in relation to athletic performance 31:53 - Fascial stretching & coming back from an injury 38:03 - Engaging the anterior of the body & Internal vs. External cueing 42:04 - Martial arts drills, mobility exercises, and mindfulness techniques Sam uses to expand the long spine and the tensegrity system 58:29 - The yin and yang of a training cycle: What a week of training for Sam’s athletes looks like 1:10:02 - Why you should finish your day with a parasympathetic cool-down “All these different movement styles, martial art styles… especially the ones that say they’re internal, you’ll see that they’ll use the body in a different way because they’re not trying to use them in the same way as an external martial art… because you’re using different sections of your body in a particular way and you might be mobilizing different things that I think, in strength and conditioning, we don’t often assume can or should move.” “When we talk about the fascia, it’s adjusting one area of the body to check the tissue length in the other area of the body. So when we talk about tendon strength versus maybe muscle strength, we’re talking about adjusting big muscle strength in the gym, usually if you see a body builder… their biceps are not big all the way through the upper arm.... Whereas someone who has more of a tendon or even elastic structure… you’ll often see that the muscle is almost more spread out because the tendons and the connective tissue at the joint level has also developed.” “A lot of the little postural adjustments are to adjust the tensegrity...

Today’s show is with athletic performance coach and hamstring injury research specialist, Johan Lahti.  Johan is an S&C coach (CSCS) at R5 Athletics & Health in Helsinki, Finland. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. on a multifactorial approach for hamstring injury risk reduction in professional soccer under the supervision of Professor JB Morin and Dr. Pascal Edouard via the University of Cote d’Azur.  Johan is a practitioner who truly has a hand in both the worlds of the art and the science of athletic development. Hamstring strains are not only one of the most common muscular injuries in sport, but also will be more likely to happen once an athlete has had this issue in the past.  The human body is a complex organism, and as easy as it can be to pin the cause of an injury to one source, we most always take a broad and holistic approach to these issues.  Johan recently did a fantastic explanation of his hamstring injury prevention methods for a Simplifaster interview, where multiple causes and solutions to hamstring problems were addressed, such as running technique vs. hamstring strength training, mobility and hamstring risk, pelvic tilt and more. In today’s podcast Johan and I chat about an athlete’s strength vs. their raw technique when it comes to lifting, and what resistance training exercises have the greatest impact on the hamstrings from a prevention standpoint.  We talk about running technique and hamstring injury, mobility and flexibility, and proprioception, and cognitive demand, all related to hamstring injury risk prevention. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs.  For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 5:31 - What inspired Johan to research hamstrings & His greatest mentors 8:05 - Strength vs. Running technique in hamstring injury prevention 12:43 - Factoring in ultra-specific hamstring training, like Nordic exercises 17:57 - Efficiency in hamstring research and technique 19:59 - Running mechanics: Correlations between on-field running techniques and hamstring injury 23:25 - Factoring in sports that require holding something in your hands while running, like a field hockey stick 24:55 - Stretching and strength training in hamstring injury prevention and mobility/range of motion 32:07 - If you just do max velocity sprint work, will your hamstrings organically get better at end range? 36:48 - Fascicle testing & Sprinting vs. Isolated exercises 42:48 - The best protocol for preventing hamstring injury and keeping hamstrings healthy 44:43 - Lumbopelvic movement measurements & Sprint mechanics 50:41 - Starting at a young age: Building better postures and movement in sprint techniques 53:12 - Thoughts on posterior chain training “Looking at the hamstrings particularly, it is amazing, not only the sagittal plane or the front to back, but also the rotational component of this muscle group and how it works to help us perform as athletes is absolutely amazing.” “Let’s say if you’re doing a squat, a force plate can read a specific Newton output but they can produce that force by different strategies so… the end result is the same in terms of Newtons, but are they technically producing strength for different tasks even though it’s defined as a squat? So that is really interesting and I think that should be discussed more. That’s why I don’t like to separate strength and technique… but evidently it needs to be done in terms of research.” “It’s difficult to answer that question of ‘what is the optimal exercise?’ I think if you’re ticking those boxes, then you could argue that some exercises are doing enough if you have other exercises ticking the rest of the boxes.” “There’s so much money going into hamstring research, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone picked [time efficiency] up as a researc...

Today’s show is with James Wild.  James is a coach, an applied researcher and a performance consultant.  Currently, James leads the speed program for Harlequins rugby men’s team and is Head of Performance for England Women’s Lacrosse.  He also leads modules in skill acquisition and strength & conditioning at the University of Surrey.  James is in the final stages of completing a PhD in the biomechanics and motor control of team sport athletes during sprint acceleration and is the author of “Strength Training for Speed”. When it comes to speed, it’s always helpful to look at things from both the perspective of the coaching eye and applied biomechanics, and then on the other end, from more raw perspectives of strength and data points.  When we look at both the qualitative and the quantitative, we can get a fuller total picture of what it takes to maximize an athlete’s speed potential in a manner that sticks over time and gets results.  James is not only great with sprinting data points, but he has also been in the trenches coaching athletes for 20 years with many high level athletes, and his combination of the data, as well as in the art of coaching offers valuable insight for any coach. On the show today, James and I talk about his process of building an acceleration profile for athletes, rate vs. stride-length dominance, foot vs. hip dominant strategies in sprinting, resisted sprinting, minimal explosive strength standards for sprint performance, and more. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs.  For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 4:38 - James’ main objective with his PhD work 6:30 - The results of James’ sprint acceleration polls on social media 9:53 - The effects of acute, verbal interventions on sprinting improvement 13:34 - How to analyze and experiment with athletes’ sprinting using continuums 17:45 - How to allow athletes to experience continuums 23:47 - Running with low knees vs. high knees & Variability in performance 27:11 - The importance of incorporating experiential nature into training 29:05 - Key markers and components of acceleration profiles & Cluster analysis 34:58 - 4 main strategies for sprinting & Exploring athletes’ reliance 39:36 - The quickest way James has facilitated change in sprint acceleration performance 44:46 - The role of technical changes vs. improving strength qualities 51:51 - 3 strength measures & Single leg jump in place test 55:56 - Analyzing hip and foot-dominance in athletes 1:00:12 - How does DRF help project horizontal force or convert force to a horizontal acceleration? & Using a sled to train “It’s certainly not been my experience that there is this one size fits all, classical model [of sprinting] that we can shoehorn everyone into and that they will run faster as a result.” “One of the things I do will be to longitudinally track their spatial/temporal variables and try and look at essentially what it is that they’re doing when they’re running their fastest. So, it’s this concept of finding out the athlete’s reliance.” “If I’m working with an athlete for the first time or the first few sessions… whilst I’m collecting that data, I want them to experience what it feels like to move along that continuum of greater step length or greater step rate so that by the time I’ve finished some kind of analysis and have an understanding of where their reliance is at… they’ve got prior experience now with adjusting according to that continuum, so it just makes coaching a lot easier.” “They’re never gonna sprint the same way twice in a game, really, so they need to be able to adapt to those novel situations… they’re never going to produce exactly the same step… there’s going to be variability in everything they do,