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Building Better Athletes

Elite performance podcast

Episode #33 - All Things Movement Part 5 w/ Korey Van Wyk, Shawn Myszka & Tyler Yearby

2/17/2019

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Part 5 of our All Things Movement podcast is back with Korey Van Wyk, Shawn Myszka & Tyler Yearby. 

We attack this episode from a practical application side of things. Each of us share practical concepts we use during our movement training sessions and try to lay out different scenario's we use with our athletes. In past episodes, much of the discussion was on concepts of Ecological Dynamics, Information-Action Coupling, Constraints Led Approach, Repetition without Repetition; but in this episode we try to give the listeners practical examples of how we design our movement practices. 

Favorite Quotes:
  • "I've added a lot more 2v2, 2v3, 3v3, 4v2 scenario's when in the past I did mostly 1v1"
  • "I've done this in the past, but even more this year I'm working to include more athlete involvement. Increasing their voice, input, and ownership in designing tasks"
  • "I started to document each session, so taking 10min after each session and writing detailed notes about the sessions"
  • "A simple addition is adding obstacles and obstructions. Just adding an obstacles - whether it be a human or just a box or hurdle - can add a lot of complexity to an activity"
  • "A question I ask to my athletes is - what is this movement problem saying to you? How is this problem speaking to you?"
  • "My goal is to design a learning environment which facilitates a complex problem for the performer to interact with"
  • "You often see it in games - the defense gets a pick or fumble and both the defense and offense look like fish our of water. The offense doesn't know how to respond and act when the roles are reverse and the defense often looks very uncomfortable with the ball in their hand. So what can we do? If these occur in training, we play them out instead of blowing the play dead. In addition, I try to put my athletes in these specific situations so they gain some experience with these situations."
  • "Constraining to afford. Give the performer a wider range of movement problems for them to seek and search what affordances exist for them in a representative environment"
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Episode #32 - All Things Movement Part 4 w/ Korey Van Wyk, Shawn Myszka & Tyler Yearby

1/19/2019

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We come to you again with Part 4 of our All Things Movement Discussion with my good friends Korey Van Wyk, Shawn Myszka, and Tyler Yearby. 

In this brief talk (only 75min!), Tyler and Shawn talk about some of the themes from their monthly movement meet-ups they've been having over the past ~year. Then we go in-depth about the difference between a stimulus and information, and why the word stimulus falls short of describing the interaction of the mover within their environment. This distinction is important as it helps the coach and performer understand the depth and detail of searching and finding emergent movement behavior. 

We then talk about how we go about designing movement sessions for athletes of different sports, ages, ability levels, etc. How do we tackle not being able to provide an truly representative environment for all of our athletes and what can coaches do who have a diverse population in a single session?

Finally, as the listener, we hope to field some questions from you and give you an opportunity to lead our next discussion. 

Hope you all enjoy!
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Episode #31: All Things Movement Part 3 w/ Korey Van Wyk, Shawn Myszka & Tyler Yearby

12/11/2018

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We're back with part 3 of our All Things Movement talk. In this episode we added Tyler Yearby. Tyler adds great perspective as he's coached both in the public sector at the University of Minnesota and in the private sector. He is currently a Senior Education Consultant at Life Time where he leads the education program of Life Time trainers and he also coaches small groups. 
Like in the past, we go in with no agenda or plan, other than to let the conversation go where it takes us. We ventured into some broad areas such as how the fall went for our athletes and our review of the past 6-months, if S&C coaches are stepping outside of their boundaries by building representative environments in training, where does strength stand in athletic movement, do athletes need to master COD drills before they can be exposed to agility, the perceived silos in S&C and much more.

Favorite Quotes:
  • "I'd like to be able to walk someone further across the bridge rather than leave them halfway and hope they make it to the other side" (In reference to a S&C Coach implementing more representative environments in training)
  • "We're in charge of physical preparation and a big part of that is getting the athlete ready to handle sport movement"
  • "The movement and the way the individual organizes movement in order to interact with environment and the problems within the environment are of vital importance to any coach" 
  • "Sport movement is what connects all us involved with athletes - S&C, sport coach, position coach, athletic trainer"
  • "Does strength in a squat mean the athlete will exhibit strength on the field?"
  • "Ability to express strength is time dependent"
  • "Coaches often misinterpret that the weight room is the only place an athlete can get strong and gain strength. Remember athletes are being exposed to 3-4+xBW in GRF during sprinting, cutting, jumping, landing - so field movement does create a strength stimulus, a very specific strength stimulus"
  • "Facilitate athletes to become better at adapting coordination patterns and gain more abundant movement solutions"
  • "Something as simple as different anthropometric features will result in different affordances for action, so at this very basic level of different body types will mean athletes will address movement problems differently and thus their solutions will be different"
  • "A common question we get is, my athletes haven't "mastered" COD drills yet so I can't progress them to agility or an open environment yet" (Each answer this question, starting at 31:30)
  • Shawn's response from 45:00-
  • "Often times we try to dictate and tell athletes what movement is correct before we actually investigate the problem deeply enough and allow them to come up with their self-organized, emergent movement solution"

Social Media:
  • Korey Van Wyk
    • Twitter - @KoreyVanWyk
    • Instagram - @Korey.VanWyk
  • Shawn Myszka
    • Twitter - @MovementMiyagi
  • Tyler Yearby
    • Twitter - @TylerYearby
    • Instagram - @TylerYearby
0 Comments

Episode #30: All Things Movement, Motor Learning & Skill Acquisition Part 2 w/ Shawn Myszka & Korey Van Wyk

5/17/2018

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As a compliment to Episode #24 - Shawn and Korey come back on to talk about Movement, Motor Learning & Skill Acquisition in this 3-Hour Part 2 Episode!

Yes, 3-HOURS!

Shawn & Korey discuss recent ideas of movement, agility, and motor learning


Favorite Quotes:
  • "Not all compensations are bad - some are actually functional"​
  • "I don't think about it as gaining a skill, we're gaining an experience and exposure to become more attuned and more adaptable"
  • "Poor perception and decisions lead to poor movement execution"
  • "Celebrate mistakes - so much of what I do is error-centered"
  • "Dexterity - finding optimal movement solutions under any context"
  • "Is the goal motor learning or motor performance"
  • "I think any human being, no matter their age, is plastic and capable of change"
  • "In order for a movement to be successful it must be resourceful, rational, abundant"
  • "If we're attuning to the wrong information, at the wrong time, it won't specify how we should act/move"
  • "For a movement to be correct, it must be correct for the performer and the problem as it exists in front of them"
  • "As soon as you add decision-making and perception the mix, movement is NOT the same as they are in closed settings. They may look the same, but they are actually vastly different"
  • "We talked about Saquon Barkley's high 4.20 pro agility, which isn't very impressive, BUT if you looked at his movement on the field, it's clear he exhibits superior movement than his pro agility time would indicate, further demonstrating how flawed and different COD is from actual sport movement"
  • "We need to start making perceptual monsters, rather than this desire to make physical monsters"
  • "We have to understand how important perception and perceptual skills are to allow correct movement strategies"


Social Media:
  • Shawn Myszka 
    • Twitter - @MovementMiyagi
  • Korey Van Wyk
    • Twitter - @KoreyVanWyk
    • Instagram - @Korey.VanWyk
0 Comments

Episode #29: "I Want Great Problem Solvers" w/ Tommy Flanagan & Jamie Smith

5/16/2018

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Tommy Flanagan, the founder of Strength2Strength started the company in January of 2016 in Golden, Colorado. A former collegiate football players, Tommy realized that he played his whole career without ever tapping into his true potential on the field because he did not understand the importance of athletic performance and had never had a mentor to guide him through the training process.Because of this, Tommy became bound and determined to ensure that he could help as many athletes as possible avoid the same mistakes that he had made.
Now, Tommy is dedicated to providing athletes with the athletic coaching and mentoring that he never had so that they can show up to the game and to life in a completely new way.

Jamie Smith is the founder and head physical preparation coach of The U of Strength.  As a former athlete at Merrimack College, he graduated with a degree in Sports Medicine and a concentration in Exercise Physiology. As a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist, he has had the opportunity to coach under some of the most knowledgeable and experienced coaches in the industry. Jamie has coached a variety of athletes from the novice to the advanced levels of preparedness, some of which include current NHL, NBA, and MLS players and the 2011 NCAA Men’s Basketball National Champion UConn Huskies. Through scientific based program design and dietary support, Jamie assists his athletes in reaching their goals on and off the ice, court, and field.

​Favorite Quotes:
  • "Everything is a skill"
  • "We gotta let our athletes take ownership. I used to be the coach that was in control on everything, and I now realize how much I suffocated my athletes"
  • "As a coach, we need to be facilitators"
  • "We video everything"
  • "Letting athletes freely explore not only initiates their creative process and autonomy, but also allows me to see what they really want to revert when out of movement ideas"
  • "We don't call it warm-up, we call it pre-training"
  • "I love seeing athletes when they are fatigued - they can't hide compensations when fatigued and I can see what they'll revert to when fatigued"
  • "We we're training agility, we encourage our athletes to explore, be creative, and experiment with new things. So when we get in the weight room afterwards, we encourage the same thing - trying new squat stances, hangout in positions and shifting around"

Books
  • Principles - Ray Dalio
  • Tri-Phasisc- Cal Dietz
  • Supertraining - Yuri Verkhoshasky
  • Ecological Psychology
  • Dexterity and it's Development - Bernstein
  • GameSpeed - Ian Jeffreys

Podcasts
  • CVASPS
  • Just Fly Performance Podcast
  • All Things Strength and Wellness

Social Meida
  • Tommy Flanagan
    • Instagram - Strength2Strength_tf
  • Jamie Smith
    • Instagram - TheUofStrength
    • Twitter - TheUofStrength
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Episode #28 - Zach Dechant & Dr. Stephen Osterer: All Things Baseball

3/7/2018

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Zach Dechant is the assistant director of Strength & Conditioning at TCU. He heads up the baseball S&C and also works with the QBs and WRs for the football team. Zach previously spent time at the University of Wyoming, Los Angeles Angels, and Missouri State University. He has his CSCS, CSCCa, and USAW certifications. While his main role is handling the baseball and football duties at TCU, he also handles dozens of pro guys that come back to train with him during the off-season because of their trust in him. 

Dr. Stephen Osterer is the co-owner for the Baseball Development Group in Toronto, Ontario. He pitched at Cornell University, but dealt with an elbow injury, and that set him down the path to where he is today. Dr. Osterer is a chiropractor and strength coach at BDG and he his CSCS, SFMA, FMS, DNS, and FRC certifications. He is very well-versed in the medical literature and takes that knowledge and applies it, practically, to the performance world. 

Quotes
  • "We assess everyday that they move"
  • "The assessment process drives our decisions in the weight room and movement training"
  • "We noticed that removing the DB bench and focusing on scapular control relieved a lot of anterior shoulder stress and pain"
  • "We train the push-up from day 1"
  • "We have a general warm-up, then our pitchers have another 10min where they go through individual "correctives" that our staff gives them"
  • "The biggest difference between pitchers and position players in the weight room tend to be the upper body - more focus on serratus, lower trap, less pressing"
  • "After pitchers throw, we pretty much shut them down - we don't like to do more work after they throw"
  • ""During the off-season, we don't want to throw our athletes on 15 different recovery modalities and almost creating a dependency on them"
  • "Recovery for our starting pitchers typically takes place the next day - we will get soft-tissue work, regain ROM, and then lift"
  • "There is a big negative connotation with ice and adaptation, but the research also shows psychological benefits from ice"
  • "We put a lot of emphasis on controllable range of motion, especially at end ranges"
  • "Many kids are focused on weighted balls, but they are icing on a cake that hasn't been baked yet"
  • "We've found that if you clean up arm work, many other technique issues fall into place"

Social Media:
  • Zach Dechant
    • Twitter - @zachdechant
    • Instagram - baseballdevelopmentgroup
  • Dr. Stephen Osterer
    • Twitter - drsosterer
    • Instagram - zachdechant
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Episode #27 - Rich Schimenek: Trois Training

3/2/2018

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Rich is the director of Strength & Conditioning at Trois Training in St. Cloud, MN. At Trois, Rich focuses on training High School & College athletes from various sports like football, hockey, swimming, volleyball, and track & field. He has developed an incredible program at Trois, and created a great training environment. We talk about how he's grown the Trois program and many of the nuances of coaching in the private sector. 
We also talk about how he structures is training programs for athletes in-season vs off-season, and some of his though processes behind his training philosophies. 
This is a great episode and it was great to pick-up ideas from Rich, plus Rich is originally from Wisconsin, so that's always a bonus!

Quotes:
  • "I've found that my marketing degree has helped me a ton"
  • "Everybody loves the coaching part, but you have to get people in the door. Be aware that you'll always be recruiting and selling, it's a necessary evil"
  • "Our social media is about celebrating our athletes - it's not for hard sales or our latest deals - it's to highlight our athletes"
  • "We always end our warm-up with either a sprint, jump, throw - I call it warm-up then wake-up"
  • "When working speed and acceleration with team sport athletes compared to my sprint group is working 360-degrees of movement"
  • "I've noticed when we really started implementing loaded carries with our hockey athletes, they stayed on their feet and absorbed checks better"
  • "I can't say enough about the performance gains we've had from split squat"

Favorite Books:
  • Triphasic Training - Cal Dietz
  • How To Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie

Social Media:
  • Twitter - 
  • Instagram - 
  • Facebook - 

0 Comments

Episode #26 - Justin Moore & Cody Plofker

1/23/2018

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Cody is the co-founder and director of performance at Adapt Performance and Rehab. Justin is the performance education director for Parabolic Performance and Rehab. 
Today Cody and Justin talked about various topics ranging from coaching/intern education, working in the private sector - how they got started in the private sector and how performance and rehab aspects work together, PRI concepts, how they teach set-up and execution in the squat and deadlift, and finally combine training and working for the 40y dash.

Cody and Justin are two great coaches and even better guys. They are very open to discussion and sharing ideas and are two people I look up to for continued education. You'll really like this episode as it's loaded with little nuggets. 

Favorite Quotes
  • "We put together 14 modules for our interns and new coaches that they go through before they step foot on our floor"
  • "It's important for coach and interns to feel what the athletes are doing, so they perform the workouts/exercises as feeling the movements make them better able to coach it"
  • "The first step in our assessment is a long conversation to get to know the athlete, their goals, and really appreciate human behavior and get to know people to start to build trust and communication with the athlete"
  • Most athletes are stuck in an extension position"
  • "The most common thing I see is athletes being limited in Hip Internal Rotation and Hip Extension because they have the pelvis locked in APT and can't find movement in their pelvis and thorax"
  • "Where you place the load in a squat, is very important in terms of getting adequate movement strategies"
  • Setting up the deadlift - "We want to feel the ground with big toe, pinky toe, and heel -> then we actually want the knees to reach forward a little bit -> next we cue a posterior pelvic tilt to neutral -> exhale, get ribs in, back, and down -> finally on the ascend we want to PUSH not pull"
  • "Set-up for any lift is about loading structures before starting"
  • "Mechanical/technical problems are often initiated from poor postures/positions"
  • "PRI has really given me appreciation for the tri-planar nature of movement, all movement operates in all 3 planes of motion"
  • "We talk about PRI and how it's influenced us, but we're not just blowing up balloons and doing PRI correctives all day - the goal is to train and train hard. So all of these PRI correctives may only take 5-minutes of our sessions"
  • "Any time you have the pelvis anterior tilted, you lose movement around the hip, specifically hip flexion. This means you'll lose front side mechanics during sprinting and end up using more backside mechanics"
  • "Many of the mechanical issues we see for acceleration and top-end sprinting speed are actually a result of physical or positional restrictions. So just getting athletes posture and positioning of the pelvis and thorax go a long ways in improving mechanics"
  • "Two huge misconceptions when teaching the 40y dash are staying low and patience"
  • "There is no one answer when it comes to starting stance. Everyone is built different, with different strengths and weaknesses and their stance will mirror that"

Social Media
  • Cody
    • Twitter - @codyplof
    • Instagram - @codyplof
    • Facebook - Cody Plofker
  • Justin
    • Twitter - @jmsb_strength
    • Instagram - @jmsb_strengthtraining
    • Facebook - Justin Moore
0 Comments

Episode #25 - Basketball Roundtable w/ Josh Bonhotal, Ryan Horn, Cory Schlesinger

11/4/2017

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With the college basketball season right around the corner, we decided to do another roundtable discussion with 3 of the best and brightest basketball S&C coaches in the country. From the West Coast we brought on Cory Schlesinger of Stanford University. From the Midwest we had Josh Bonhotal from Purdue University. Finally, from the East Coast we have Ryan Horn of Wake Forest University. 
These guys are some of the brightest and forward thinking S&C coaches in the country and are constantly pushing the needle forward in our profession. Not only that, they are 3 of the most down to earth and giving coaches you'll ever meet, and in this episode they do not disappoint. They don't hold back anything as they describe what they're off-season and in-season training looks like, how they prescribe jumping & sprinting, how they use technology to help their programs, and much more. Seriously, this is one massive episode and these guys don't leave any stone uncovered. I can't thank them enough for being willing to share so much insight and depth into what their roles and how they're helping their basketball athletes. 
You won't be disappointed from this episode, so grab a notebook and be prepared to take a boat-load of notes. 


Favorite Quotes
  • "We have to get guys resilient and robust enough to handle the length of the season"
  • "4-5 months out, I really don't mind breaking the guys, knowing we don't have a game for a long time, with the goal of raising thresholds and their work capacity"
  • "We jump all year round"
  • "You need to look at the type of jumping the athletes are doing on the court because each type of jump produces a different stress and response - so we don't overload them with the same jumps they do on the court, rather we do things like weighted jumps, repetitive jumps, band assisted jumps, release jumps"
  • "We almost always complex our primary lift or Olympic lift with some sort of jump"
  • "I give my athletes a lot of creative freedom and ownership in their training - sometimes I'll just pull out a box and say get up their however you want, create or invent something new"
  • "We've started doing a lot more extensive, low-level plyo's, like ankling or low-level hops. We do them barefoot and on soft mats with the goal to build capacity and stiffness of the lower leg"
  • "Every Monday and Friday are our big sprint days, and all of our other days are structured to get us back prepared for our sprint days"
  • "We mimic what we do in the weight room, with what we do during our sprint work - so during GPP, we're also working on technical/mechanics of acceleration/sprinting; as strength becomes more of the emphasis, we put a ton of emphasis on 0-10m; finally as we get to more power/speed in the weight room, we transition to 20-30m with our sprints"
  • "We train at 100mph, so 80mph is easy - and when you look at basketball, it's really never a sport of top-speed - so if we can raise their top-speed, everything else below that is now easier - so the game slows down and they can repeat those sub-maximal efforts with more ease and efficiency"
  • "Sprinting is a foundational activity for us"
  • "When using technology, make sure the head coach is bought it and it doesn't become a distraction"
  • "Technology has become very important for our return to play athletes. So we now have baseline metrics with force plate readings, GPS readings, and performance metrics and we have a goal or landmark to base where the athlete is during their return to play"
  • "I've seen athletes chasing numbers on the tendo or GymAware, but their movement looks like crap - that's when you know the technology isn't doing what it's designed for"
  • "We'll do a lot of accelerations during our in-season warm-ups. It's been a nice way to disguise training into our warm-ups and micro-dose our accelerations and sprints"
  • "Your training system should account for the style of play your head coach wants"
  • "Use technology, don't let technology use you"
  • "It's amazing what these athletes can do with a ball in their hands, but then how much they struggle with basic movements"

Social Media
  • Josh Bonhotal - Purdue Univerisity
    • Twitter - @JBonhotal
    • Instagram - @JBonhotal
  • Ryan Horn - Wake Forest University
    • Twitter - @RyanHorn45
    • Instagram - @RyanHorn45
  • Cory Schlesinger - Stanford University
    • Twitter - @Schlesstrength
    • Instagram - @Schlesstrength
0 Comments

Episode #24 - All Things Movement, Motor Learning, Skill Acquisition

10/26/2017

1 Comment

 
In this episode, we brought back EPP Alumni - Shawn Myszka owner of Movement Mastery, and Korey Van Wyk S&C Coach at Northwestern University.
The ​​three of us recently attended a conference in Phoenix, AZ that focused around Skill Acquisition so we decided to hop on to talk about all things Skill Acquisition and Movement. During this 75min talk, we discuss everything from what Repetition without Repetition means, misconceptions about Agility, how to progress Agility, the 3-B's of movement, and much more.
​We also discuss concepts like Constraints Led Approach, Non-Linear Pedagogy, Ecological Psychology, and Dynamical Systems and how all of these can be applied to coaching movement and make our athletes take the skills we work on in practice and ensure the have greater transfer and retention. 
Honestly, this was just us talking, without much of a script or outline - just shooting out questions and thoughts as they emerged. We really hope you enjoyed this discussion, and I would love feedback as I hope to make more upcoming podcasts along these lines - so feel free to shoot me over feedback to buildingbetterathletes.bba@gmail.com

Enjoy!

Favorite Quotes
  • Sport is nothing but a problem solving activity, where movements are used to produce the necessary solutions
  • As the problem changes, so does the solution (movement)
  • No 2 problems are never exactly the same, therefore no 2 solutions will ever be the same
  • Behaviors - Sensory Perception; Brain - Cognitive-Decision Making; Biomechanics - Action
  • Perception - Intention - Action
  • We shouldn't throw athletes to the wolves, but we should never study action separated from perception
  • No phenomon can be understood without carefully considering how it emerged
  • People can't even agree to what optimal agility biomechanics are
  • The goal of a coach should be to hand the athletes the keys to the car
  • I hesitate to call things drills, instead I call them activities of exposure and experience because we're trying to shape exposure and experience so the athletes develop movement adaptability and dexterity 
  • We often try to make movement to simplistic, but disregard how complex human movement is
  • We have to seek to be in a more facilitative role rather than a coaching role
  • Professional athletes are the World's best compensators
  • The highest technique is to have no technique
  • ​

Social Media
  • Shawn Myszka - @MovementMiyagi
  • Korey Van Wyk - @KoreyVanWyk
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