Just Fly Performance Podcast

Today’s show is with Conor Harris.  Conor is a strength & conditioning coach specializing in biomechanics and movement quality. He is the founder of Pinnacle Performance in Portland, Oregon where he trains all levels of athletes and general population clientele. He has worked in a wide variety of environments such as D1 Collegiate Baseball, EXOS, High School, and private performance training facilities. If there is one big element that is infiltrating modern training and performance right now (at least I hope it is), it is the attention to the quality of movement, and the particular impacts that doing one type of lift (say rear foot elevated vs. front foot elevated split squat) will have on an athlete.  So often, we just move through a variety of movements in a training program, without really thinking about the experience that those training methods are actually giving to that athlete’s body. Conor Harris is a young coach who has really zeroed in on the impacts of various movements on an athlete, and how those movements fit in with what an athlete is missing (or on the flip-side, is already strong in) in their gait pattern.  At the end of the day, every training movement we utilize should come back to how an athlete moves, or intends to move, in their sport.  The training we use should have the capacity to fill in any needed “gaps” in a movement profile that may be pre-disposing an athlete to pain, or injury. On today’s show, Conor will take us through concepts of late vs. early stance dominance in athletes, and how split squat variations will preferentially engage those stance dynamics for the purposes of injury prevention, or enhanced performance.  We’ll get into how squatting with heels elevated, or hinging with the toes elevated, can benefit the athlete through rotation of the leg bones, and finish with some great ideas on how to help restore internal rotation to athletes, as well as some big rocks of athletic glute activation. 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 5:20 – Elements that help athletes pronate in the gym with more “common” exercises 12:40 – How to differentiate between a “late stance” and “early stance” dominant individual 19:20 – Why the sport of basketball emphasizes “late” stance more than many other sports 23:00 – Ideas on when to actually intervene with an athlete if you suspect an imbalance or movement inefficiency 38:00 – How foot position in a split stance exercise impacts rotation and joint dynamics 45:30 – Thoughts on split squatting with a (hard) balance disc in the front foot 49:15 – Conor’s big rocks in helping to restore an internal rotation deficit in athletes 56:00 – How to squat for maximal glute activation, via stretch-loading the glutes “Your joint positions, your tests all reflect that you spend a lot of time in late stance; a basketball player is a perfect example, someone who is constantly on their toes to be athletic.  These people often present with a certain foot presentation where their toes are pointing away from the midline of their body” “If you strike the ground and you don’t have that nice heel reference then it is going to be more difficult to get your heel forward, if you are starting in the position where you can’t get the pronation to resupination” “Anything that drives the knee over the toe a lot is going to allow for that internal rotation of the tibia to occur, as well as pronation of the foot.  That heel elevated split squat can be a really good way to do that” “When I think of a contralateral load, I think of that as a reference to find your heel or midfoot.  An ipsilateral load is better to find mid-foot to toe-off.  If I wanted to find that earlier phase of pronation I’m a fan of using that contralateral load (it will pull them in towards the midline of their foot)” “A lot of times, these narrows (narrow ISA) will be biased towards heel strike, originally” “Think of how often a basketball player needs to be on their heels, it’s not very often” “When we run, it’s more of a mid to late stance transition” “Let’s say this person does need to find more of that heel strike mechanics, that will help restore more of the variability in their body as a whole” “Let’s say they can’t hinge very well; take that heel wedge, and flip it around, so now their mid-foot and fore-foot is slanted upward, that can help them hinge backwards, and now you are providing more internal rotation to that hip” “Let’s say you have someone who is bilaterally extended on both sides, what that person is really trying to do is create an internal rotation, force producing strategy” “Getting them back on their heels can give them something to (internally) rotate to” “As you get deeper in the squat, you need some level of internal rotation and pronation of the foot (to reverse and push upwards)” “True opening of the hips is being able to get in your hip through internal rotation” “If you know what kind of joint positions we need to have, and how we get there, then muscles are easy” “Simply by being in a split stance position you are going to be biasing more external rotation and “supination” of the front hip and front foot” “Vertical tibia = mid-stance” “I love to restore internal rotation through positions like hinges” “Hold a ball that keeps your knees in line with your toes, squat to 90 degrees, and come out of it; that ball is providing a reference for your pelvic outlet; your pelvic floor is going to open up and your pelvic inlet is going to become more closed, your pelvic outlet is going to become more open” “Wide stance squats use less glutes than narrow stance, toes straight ahead” Show Notes Internal Rotation Exercises https://youtu.be/ZIiONQEAtqo https://youtu.be/qSlOus-fPc8 https://youtu.be/w-DmasVjuac   https://youtu.be/ZVg4Ox4gQV0 https://youtu.be/NNzR4_YaIuQ https://youtu.be/qVkmuRzk8ow https://youtu.be/CGmMgtqIImk About Conor Harris Conor Harris is a strength & conditioning coach that specializes in biomechanics and movement quality. He is the founder of Pinnacle Performance in Portland, Oregon where he trains all levels of athletes and general population clientele. He has worked in a wide variety of environments such as D1 Collegiate Baseball, EXOS, High School, and private performance training facilities.

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.” “I’m basically trying to get people to move with less effort and just kind of bounce off the ground.” “I want to just get them to a point where I like how it looks; where we have decent posture, decent relaxation, which is subjective obviously but… if we have an athlete do a 60-meter sprint with 90% effort, we’re hoping we can be not gassed after that. We want this to be pretty easy, pretty repeatable, like you could go do it again two minutes later.” “You don’t want to chase the RSI by doing two foot plyos and getting your squat up, you want to chase speed, sprint a lot, and because of that you have this lightness on your feet, and then you do the RSI test without having to even train it and now you’re just better at it.” “I don’t want to have to alternate between strength training and non-strength training, it’s more of something that just comes out of necessity.” About Dan Back Dan Back is the founder of “Jump Science” and is 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.  Dan has been a constant source of coach and athlete education in the last decade through his website and social media channels.

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” “It doesn’t take long to develop the strength that you are after; but developing speed with young athletes (is critical)” “Every day I was working on the farm, or playing sports, that was my original training mate” “85-90% of my training is proven methods, but I always like to experiment with the other 10%” “When my fighters are going into training camp, those eccentric loads are so high, I use oscillating training methods to freshen them up” “I use oscillating movements more for accessory movements at the end (of a workout) (i.e. start with banded hex bar deadlift, then go down to split squats for speed)” “I’ve used that on team sport scenarios where you have timed sets one day, you have oscillating movements on another day” “If you don’t have to run into brick walls, then you can use more of these oscillating movements (and less maximal strength)” “A lot of foot stuff will depend on how your hips move… I’ll probably address the hips first” Show Notes Cal Dietz’s Reflexive Tri-metrics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw6epBVpRYM   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Graeme Morris (@graeme_morris) Graeme demonstrating a basic oscillating hop drill used as a warm up   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Graeme Morris (@graeme_morris) About Graeme Morris Graeme Morris is a performance coach that consults for a variety of field based 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. He has a experience designing and implementing strength and power in the gym, as well as speed, agility and conditioning on the field.  Graeme holds a degree in Human Movement with Honours in Exercise Physiology, a Master’s degree in Strength and Conditioning and is a level 2 qualified Australian Strength and Conditioning Coach (ASCA).

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” “The eversion you are looking for in the rearfoot, should happen the moment where you get the tripod on the ground” “The focus in the industry is always towards the stiffening side” “95% of the muscles in the foot are actually supinators, so we have to pronate in order to stimulate 95% of the muscles” “What interests me is not how much pronation, but the quality of the pronation… the quality of pronation will always be most optimal when the foot has a resting position of neutral, so everyone who does not have that resting position of neutral will always be compromised to some extent” “The pressure change when you pronate, will move anterior, and medial (forward and towards the big toe)” “Placing a finger, in front of the calcaneus in the back of the arch, you should feel pressure on that finger when someone bends the knee” “I get it nearly every week at least, people are in context with Achilles issues, Sever’s disease, bumps on the back of the heel and they are always on the level of the TCJ, and it’s simply too much talo-crural movement and not enough rear-foot accompaniment” “More length in the plantar fascia through better rearfoot movement is likely to take pressure off excess lengthening in the Achilles” “(With getting calcaneus movement) You can roll a sock up and place it in the back of the arch to see if they can compress it a little bit, it’s not about flattening it to the floor, it’s about “can I get more contact on it”” “What you’ll find is that the heavier the weight, the less pronation there is, the more there is a rapid, knees-in movement at the very bottom…. so you have this whole extensor chain is able to light up; the heavier you get, the more and more of a requirement that is” “Teach you to pronate, teach you to supinate, teach you to flex and extend your knees, teach you to anterior and posterior tilt your pelvis, make sure you can have a pronating leg and supinating leg, and go and experience that, and then go squat…. You need to continuously remind your body of how it should move” “Don’t you think the idea of a squat feeling effortless is overlooked”? “The 5th rule of movement is that the brain is hard-wired for perfection” Show Notes Calcaneus Tilt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yulwH_9e21k High Jumper pronation video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7qIo_xOLqA Olympic lifter with inwards knee travel in squatting (see 3:00) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdY78tvKlxA Helen Hall COG video https://vimeo.com/244973290 About Gary Ward Gary Ward 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).  He is known for bringing individuals out of pain when all other options had failed.  A former ski-boot fitter, Gary is known for solving unsolvable pain in minutes, not months.  His passion for the foot hugely influenced his interpretation of human movement. Increasingly sought after by all types of practitioners in the fitness and therapy industry, he teaches an evolution that start with the foot and results in whole body integrated movement solutions.

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 reward) outputs, the scope for improvement is enormous” “If we set a clear, coherent intention, then the brain is going to work to adhere itself around that…. Maybe we just have silence for a while… but then the words come, because the subconscious is figuring it out” “Whatever the intention needs to be… set that, and then give yourself space for it to come out; your subconscious will be working away, and the information will come to you” “If you look at yourself as a training variable, it means I need to keep myself in good mental and emotional shape” “Thought is an energy, and energies maintain fields…. all of us are walking around maintaining thought fields, and they create an atmosphere of belief” “The coach has a big influence on (success) not just out of the instructions they are giving, but also on what’s given off (from a thought-field/culture/atmosphere perspective)” “We just need to make it OK to celebrate… when (they) score a goal or put together a good passage of play, I encourage them to show me their celebration” About Scott Robinson AMN Teaching Faculty member, Master Practitioner & Coach, as well as; Mentor to AMN Practitioners. Scott is the creator of AMN Neuro Flexibility & has worked successfully with all levels of neurologic complexity. Scott’s approach is to first assess & then bring each individual’s nervous system towards a state of balance. If resolution of a complex neurologic or pain presentation is the objective, then achieving this (homeostatic) balance is often key. Where Movement is the primary objective, then achieving this balance within the body prior commencing a training program gives the individual’s body every chance of progressing towards their movement or functional goals, as opposed to progressing towards injury, which is often the case when training with pre-exisiting imbalances in the nervous system. Scott’s knowledge & skill set means that he is capable of transforming a person with a nervous system of a degraded output, into a person who is capable of achieving advanced calisthenics strength, flexibility and skills. As an AMN master practitioner, Scott is a specialist in dealing with: movement compensations, muscle weakness, muscle control, range of motion & sensation, historic injury & surgical compensations, pain complaints, all manner of musculoskeletal dysfunction, trauma to the emotional system, respiratory, gastrointestinal & immune systemic issues, circadian biological function & sleep disturbances, disturbances to the balance system, the emotional motor system, stiffness or dysfunction to myofascial & other connective tissues, post concussion syndrome, stroke, Hay fever, TMJ dysfunction, coordination, posture & memory. All of the above, along with many other issues, can all potentially be normalized. This is all achieved via a utilization of the entire AMN system, from assessment to calibration of the brain & the nervous system. A former elite athlete in Taekwondo & athletics, a personal trainer of more than 20 years experience & a master practitioner with knowledge of the entirety of the AMN system along with being both a teacher and a mentor within the AMN education. Scott is ideally placed to help you get your body, your movement capabilities or your skillset as a practitioner, to where it needs to be.

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, and then stall out later in their career, is that there is really no change in the means that are applied to them” DiMarco “We’re going to do explosive pin squats for sets of 3, until you drop by .1 seconds average velocity, and he did 14 sets.  But when he went back down to New Zealand and tested his max, it had increased by 45 pounds” Wenham-Flatt “You would be surprised just by how much some athletes need, and just how little some athletes need” Wenham-Flatt “In the early days of experimenting with this at London Wasps, I had one guy do 3 sets, and one guy do 17 sets (with a .1 drop-off in squat speed)” Wenham-Flatt “Fly 10’s: if a guy runs a PR on a first rep, he is going to shut him down” DiMarco “Putting a cap on it, for the (sprint) speed work is helpful… but set a bar speed, and I’ve squatted 90% of my max 30 minutes in a row” DiMarco “I’m not huge on the actual use of repeat sprint ability within the training session; we’ll do a lot aerobic work and tempo based stuff early on, we’ll do speed on the other end of the spectrum, and those two things make people very good as repeat sprint ability” DiMarco “All sport preparation, tactically, technically, physically, psychologically, you are trying to answer the question “have I been here before”… and if you haven’t been here before, that’s when things start to break down” Wenham-Flatt “Most of the time (injury) happens to people who don’t handle volume successfully” DiMarco “Can a over-zealous sport coach make them 5% weaker within a day of dumb training? Yeah… the greatest return on your effort as a practitioner should probably be on the education, and collaboration on everyone who touches that athlete rather than looking at the perfect rehab exercise (of course what you do in a rehab program is going to be important)” Wenham-Flatt “From the parkour standpoint, we do some sort of tumbling variation, 3 times a week probably.  Almost every single play ends up with somebody on the ground, so teaching something as simple as how to roll forward, backwards, right, left, is important, just to teach them how to land effectively and how to roll out of things, it might be able to able to prevent one injury here or there… it teaches them general skills they might find enjoyable most of the time” DiMarco “You have these guys who consistently outperform what their testing metrics say they should do, because of their ability to play the sport, and react, and end up in the right positions” DiMarco About Nick DiMarco Nick DiMarco is the director of sports performance at Elon University, a position which he has held since 2018.  Nick 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. With a thorough understanding of training loads, and the components behind transferrable agility training, Nick has a unique array of insights he brings to the coaching table.   Nick received his undergraduate degree from William Penn, and Master’s from California University of Pennsylvania, both in the sports performance sector.  He is on track to finish his PhD in Health and Human Performance at Concordia University of Chicago by early 2020. About Keir Wenham-Flatt Keir Wenham-Flatt is a strength and conditioning coach and educator who has worked with professional teams on 4 different continents.  Keir has expertise in weight room-based strength and power development, speed, agility, conditioning, and close integration with the football staff to monitor training load, offer sport science insights, and assist in the management of the training process.  He is the founder of the Strength Coach Network and Rugby Strength Coach, and has been a prominent figure in coaching education. Wenham-Flatt 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. Among his career highlights are a fourth-place finish at the 2015 Rugby World Cup with Los Pumas Argentina and a 2014 World Club Challenge win with Sydney Roosters Rugby League.

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, but in rugby everyone has that, so I had to find a way to differentiate myself or just evolve myself.” “I was working with these kids… and I just started implementing things based off feedback from parents that there was a disconnect between speed training, performance training, [and] their actual game.” Questions Jeremiah gives his athletes to reflect upon and talk about: “What are my goals? What do I enjoy about sports or about the game I play? What do I want from this? What are my strengths and what are my weaknesses?” “My job [as a strength coach] is to put a smile on kids’ faces and you’re going to be happy because you’re getting stronger and because you’re getting faster but you’re also going to have fun and play games that may have a lot of relevance to your sport, or maybe they don’t and it’s fun because it’s just a game and you’re generally enjoying moving your body and reacting!” “We time every time we’re at the field… and during the pandemic, we brought the Vertec to the track. Honestly, it was really up to them… We don’t really put that much thought into it because, again, we use it as a confidence tool. Like okay, you’ve leveled up, how are you going to apply it?” “If they can express themselves autonomously, they can also self-soothe and recover by themselves.” “Our warm-up is usually either a series of different isos or we’ll just play a small-sided game for a couple of minutes and it usually depends on the demeanor of the athletes, the way they come in. If they’re really bogged down by playing tournaments that they’re already doing, we’ll spice it up.” About Jeremiah Flood Jeremiah Flood @coach_jflood 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. With his playing days behind him, Jeremiah focused on developing athletes of the future. His philosophy in the development of growing athletes is that there is more to sports performance than just power, speed and agility.  Although these skills are extremely important, He also looks to enhance the soft skills, such as decision-making and confidence in training the speed of the mind and body.

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” “Landing is the least of my worries when it comes to plyometrics” “The most difficult thing with plyometrics is asking “what am I stretching to shorten”?” “One thing about tissue tolerance is, is your tissue tolerant to folding up?” “When I do a plyo, and I jump and land, to me, when I hit the ground again, I am going to stretch something, and I am going to stretch it to end range” “Play should be the greatest form of training” “A skate board activity fits the definition of a plyometric, so why not do it?” “Part of collision is managing that ground-reaction force, at the foot” “If the ankle locks up at the right time, and the ground decides to push me back, then I’m going to take advantage of it” “It cracks me up when people talk about positions and shapes… you need to feel the position; and I’m thinking, no, you need to feel when the ground is about to do something to you, and what are you going to do about it” “I’m doing a start and I got my hands fixed in (this) position, well then my feet are doing; they are fixed in (this position) too, well then when my foot hits the ground it’ll be too stiff, the ground reaction will be too fast” “Arches will work, but having arches work is not the same as having a stiff foot” “How does the foot transition from class 1 to class 2? Calcaneus has to shift” Show Notes: Jonathan Edwards 18.43m triple jump “extending the collision” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmUJ2GfVkKY Christian Taylor with an 18m jump with slightly less “drop” into the collision as Edwards https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAIqV5yJnkU Simone Biles “Double Yurchenko” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKZNkCtgPJ4 Miltos Tentoglou 28’2” long jump (foot flop and reactivity)   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Jumpers World (@jumpers.world) Falling Bunny Hops https://youtu.be/-hfztsEIM4k About Adarian Barr Adarian Barr is a track coach and inventor based out of Yuba City, California.  His collegiate track and field coaching stops have included UW-Superior, Indiana State, UNC Pembroke, Yuba City Community College. He has invented 9 devices from footwear to sleds to exercise devices. Adarian is a USATF Level II coach in the sprints, jumps, hurdles and relays. He has a master’s degree in Physical Education. Adarian’s unique coaching style gets results, and his work on speed and biomechanics is being adapted by some of the top coaches in the nation.

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... they’re to adjust the little bits of the system so instead of just having to contract a muscle more, we could actually sometimes even lengthen, just slightly, something around a joint or spine or on the mid-section of the body and by creating that little bit of length, we add that sort of elastic, and maybe we can say fascial, strength. Sometimes we can actually get stronger not just by contracting harder but by lengthening, just naturally.” “The more lift-dominant programs seem to have more of the folks that started to stack up injuries, even if they weren’t on the spine. I don’t think it’s just the lifting, I think it’s maybe something of the mentality but also I think it has a lot to do with the fact that there aren’t that many ways that people have in their standard coaching/strength and conditioning toolbox to really open that up… Everybody knows how to compress something… but pulling it apart is a little bit more nuanced.” “That’s sometimes what I’ll do, unbeknownst to the person I’m working with, when I’m trying to work somebody back from an injury and I want them to go all out, is I’ll do something in the days before or in the warm up that’s going to take a bit of juice out of the system so they’re going to feel 100% but they’re not actually going to be running as fast as they can.” “There are ways to engage posture without just throwing more tension on the system.” “We talk a lot about internal and external cueing, but I don’t think the distinction is as clear cut as people make it out to be because there’s also imagery that will allow you to almost be thinking about your body parts and your limbs as if they are external, even though they’re on the inside of the body.” “Especially people these days, because everything is so visual, so technological, but we need people to go back into their bodies more and more and more and be able to actually feel where they are in space, feel where their limbs are in relation to each other. If we can do that through movement, that’s wonderful, but sometimes we also need to just affect the way someone’s mind is working and kind of cut off some of those outside distractions. Otherwise, we have no place to go with this stuff.” “You can be the [first lines of defense] for yourself, before you ever get into the other stuff, if you know yourself, if you can go inside a little bit. I think people are realizing that.” “The way you start and end something is the way you remember it.” Show Notes Sam Wuest postural drills inspired by the martial arts   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Sam Wuest (@way_of_sam) Tommy John extreme isometric lunge hold https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfEdRv7utNA&t=199s About Sam Wuest Sam Wuest, L.Ac., M.Ed., 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. Please visit wayofsam.com or IG: @way_of_sam to hear more about his training philosophy.

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 research topic… because time is of such high value.” “We can create these great protocols in the lab, gold standard equipment, but then what’s the use if teams don’t have the budget or time or resources or facilities to conduct these tests? So there needs to be a lot of technological advancement that we can get… with less testing, a good idea of what’s going on. That would be the end goal.” “There’s supportive biomechanical evidence for lengthening the angle of peak torque in the hamstrings with range of motion training… additionally, that your range of motion is moderately correlated with how much mechanical strain or lengthening past optimal length takes place during sprinting.” “We shouldn’t just consider the hamstrings, we should consider other muscles that influence the hamstrings that modeling studies have shown that muscles that basically can pull contribute to lengthening the hamstring... and the hip flexors are the most famous for it.” “Right now, it seems that there are benefits of increasing both of it, fascicle length and pennation angle, depending on what head we’re talking about in the hamstrings.” “I really want to emphasize that my PhD focuses on soccer, so therefore, these are the categories we have interest in this context. We have four main categories that we thought would realistically fit into schedules and screening protocols, so that would be posterior strength testing, range of motion, lumbopelvic control, and the last one is sprint mechanical output testing.” About Johan Lahti Johan Lahti 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. Physiotherapist Jurdan Mendiguchia functions as an external supervisor.