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Building Better Athletes

Elite performance podcast

Episode #23 - Scott Meier: The HS S&C

10/18/2017

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Scott is the Head Strength & Conditioning Coach at Farmington HS in Farmington, MN. Scott has been at Farmington HS for 19 years as their Strength & Conditioning Coach, making him, likely, one of the first HS Strength and Conditioning Coaches in the country. 
During this time, Scott has grown and developed his program to fit the school structure and to also compliment the growing enrollment at Farmington HS. Scott and his staff work with hundreds of HS athletes on a weekly basis, ranging from sports like football, lacrosse, hockey, baseball, softball, basketball, wrestling, tennis, etc. 
In this episode, Scott discusses how he runs his programs and structures them to fit within the trimester system his HS uses. Scott also talks about some of the common problems he see's in HS athletes and how he tackles those problems. He talks about some of the things his athletes do on a daily basis, and how he attempts to structure training so each athlete gets the appropriate training stimulus, especially the challenges of working with 9th graders, who may have never touched a weight, and 12th graders who have been in his program for 5-years. 
​

Favorite Quotes:
  • "We still go heavy in-season, we just reduce the volume"
  • "Our athletes will squat and hinge everyday. We really hammer away at those two movements"
  • "One of the most successful programs we've implemented has been our middle school strength class. Now our middle schoolers are going through our Block 1 progressions and teachings, which helps a ton when they arrive in high school"
  • "Kids today just don't know how to run"
  • "Kids also don't know how to fall or brace at landing. So we try to expose them to different falls and landings and teach them how to fall, land, and/or roll safely so they don't just fall on their shoulder or something"
  • "An area we've started to do more and more is unilateral training. Much of the common weight room lifts are bilateral, so we've been adding more and more unilateral work to our programs"
  • "This year we've really started to add reactive agility work and get away from some of the closed drills. Our kids absolutely love it, and we've seen a huge improvement"

Books:
  1. Triphasic Training - Cal Dietz 
  2. Fact & Fallacies of Fitness - Mel Siff 
  3. Conscious Coaching - Brett Bartholomew 

Social Media:
  • Twitter - @FarmingtonPower
  • Instagram - @FarmingtonPower
0 Comments

Episode #22 - Cameron Josse: Speed Profiling

9/10/2017

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In this episode, we talk with Cameron Josse, director of sports performance for Defranco Training Systems. Cameron is one of the best up and coming coaches in our field, especially in regards to speed development. We talk about how he sprint profiles is athletes and uses tools like the 1080 sprint to evaluate the acceleration and top-end speed abilities of his athletes. Cam shares great detail into the data the 1080 sprint gives back, how this information can be made practical, some of the most common mechanical errors he see team sport athletes make, and we even touch into agility and the movement based training he uses. Overall it was a great discussion, and Cam held nothing back into the insight and information he shared. 

Favorite Quotes:
  • ​"They don't teach you practical info and application in school, that's why it was so important for me to coach right away afterwards"
  • "You can never get complacent in your learning"
  • "The best sprinters are front-side dominant from start to finish"
  • "At the first step, my fast athletes are around 60-65% RF, and at 10y at about 30-35% RF"
  • The 5-10-5 and L-Drill is basically a choreographed dance"
  • "One of the most successful top-end sprinting drills I've found is to have the athlete hold a medicine ball (4-6lbs) in front of their body at waist level, and think about trying to "knee" the ball with each stride while still running as fast as possible"
  • "You don't want to force horizontal force during acceleration because guys then hunch over and run in these awkward  positions" 
  • "One of the great aspects of the 1080 sprint or other modes of sprint profiling is we can specifically look at where an athlete is strong and weak during a sprint. Are they strong accelerators or do they have great top-end speed. Two guys could run a 4.5sec 40y dash, but how they got there could be completely different"
  • "I see heavy sleds as a specific strength drill - not neccesarily something that will help a 40y dash - instead help a RB run through an arm tackle or help 1st step orientation and positioning"
  • ""Focus drill structure on what the intention is behind a drill - so instead of saying - today we're working on a hip turn, instead say - today we're working on starting to the side to chase a player that got behind us"

Books:
  • Game Changer - Fergus Connolly
  • Conscious Coaching - Brett Bartholomew
  • Game Speed - Ian Jeffreys
Dinner:
  • Sir Isaac Newton
  • Fergus Connolly
  • Leonardo DaVinci
Social Media:
  • Twitter - @CamJosse
  • Instagram - @CamJosse
0 Comments

Episode #21 - Max Schmarzo: Strong By Science

8/30/2017

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Max is a sport scientist and athlete, who currently works within the Applied Sports Science department at Stanford. Max is also the co-author, along with Matt Van Dyke, of the new book - Applied Principles of Optimal Power Development. This book outline all things power development, and has caused a ton of good thought and discussion into theories and application of power development. 
In this episode, Max discusses some of the details of this book, the benefits of isometric training, how coaches can profile different qualities in their athletes, and how he'd go about training for vertical jump in a perfect world. This is a great episode and Max goes into some deep discussion that will have your mind shaking!

Favorite Quotes: 
  • ​"Improve transfer of kinetic energy by doing more continuous or extensive plyometrics. We get really good at doing a single depth jump or hurdle hop - but continuous bounds, jumps help improve an athletes ability to transfer energy"
  • "Start with low volume when you begin more extensive plyometrics - don't sacrifice GCT and quality"
  • "I like to have people ramp-up for 2-seconds, and then hold for 4-6-seconds, and then ramp down for 2-seconds on explosive isometrics"
  • "Early RFD is predicated neural and tendon aspects"
  • "Late RFD is predicated contractile properties of the muscle themselves" 
  • "The stiffer a tendon is, the less compliant it is and the more readily available it is to produce motion"
  • "Muscle slack is the speed at which you can make a tendon taut, so it can transmit force onto the bone"
  • "The sooner a tendon can become stiff, the quicker it can transfer/transmit force - which is why it may be important for early RFD"
  • "The qualities that dictate a squat jump differ from the qualities that dictate a CMJ and thus the CMJ may not be a good indicator of early RFD"
  • "Long muscle length isometrics tend to cause different hypertrophic adaptations"
  • Short muscle length isometrics tend to cause more local strength adaptations"

Books:
  • Science and Practice of Strength Training - Vladimir Zatsiorsky
  • Supertraining - Yuri Verkhoshansky
  • Applied Principles of Optimal Power Development - Max Schmarzo & Matt Van Dyke
  • Strength and Conditioning: A Biomechanical Approach - Gavin Moir
  • Special Strength Training: A Manual For Coaches - Yuri Verkhoshansky
 Dinner:
  • Yuri Verkhoshansky
  • Max Schmarzo
  • Family

Social Media:
  • Twitter - @strong_science
  • Instagram - @strong_by_science
  • Website - strongbyscience.net 
0 Comments

Episode #20 - Ryan Faer: The Platform To Change Lives

4/11/2017

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Ryan is the Arizona Performance Coordinator for the Cleveland Indians and is one of the best young S&C coaches out there.  Previously, Ryan spent time as DeLand HS S&C coach, volunteer and assistant at Stetson College, minor league S&C coach for the Las Angeles Dodgers, and also spent time in the private sector.Overall, Ryan brings a wealth of knowledge and experience working with many types of athletes, but he really known for his work in baseball.  In this episode he shares some of the things he does with baseball players in terms of weight room adjustments, pre-game warm-ups, arm care practices, etc. 
Ryan also goes into depth about his experience at the HS level, and some of the challenges and benefits of coaching HS athletes. 

Favorite Quotes: 
  • ​"We have a platform to impact and change lives"
  • "You may have a weight room while playing on the road (talking about coaching professional/minor league baseball), so you have to be adaptable"
  • "Trunk/core stability and postural awareness is the main area I saw lacking in my young HS athletes"
  • "I really feel stability is the biggest issue in HS athletes - not mobility"
  • "I do a lot less cuff work with my baseball players.  I think many baseball players overdue the amount of direct cuff work they perform"
  • "With OH  athletes, I add more reaching exercises than cuff work"
  • "With my athletes, especially pro and minor league guys, is try to get them to develop good/positive daily routine"
  • "In-season is all about managing stress"
  • "I try to learn something every single day"

Books:
  • Advances in Functional Training - Mike Boyle 
  • ​Periodization - Tudor Bompa 
  • Sports Injury Prevention and Rehabilitation - David Joyce  

Dinner:
  • Dave Grohl
  • John Calipari
  • Dan Patrick

Social Media:
  • Twitter - @Ryan_Faer
  • Instagram - @Ryan_Faer
  • Website - Ryanfaerblog.com
0 Comments

Episode #19 - Brett Bartolomew: Conscious Coaching

3/27/2017

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Picture
Brett Bartholomew is a strength and conditioning coach, author, consultant, and founder of the performance coaching and consulting company, Bartholomew Strength. His experience includes working with collegiate teams, professional teams, businesses, and individual clients. Taken together, Brett has coached a diverse range of athletes from across 23 sports at levels ranging from youths to Olympians. He’s supported Super Bowl and World Series Champions, along with several professional fighters, including those competing in the UFC. He has also worked with members of the United States Special Forces community. His coaching and speaking has spanned the globe, from China to Brazil and numerous other stops in between.

​Brett also recently released a new coach
Conscious Coaching.  It has been a huge hit within the S&C community and a must read for coaches. 

Favorite Quotes:
  • "You are an expert at the invitation of the athlete"
  • "Authenticity outweighs empathy"
  • "I failed a lot earlier than most coaches"
  • "Information is a poor motivator"
  • "Give ground to get ground"
  • "You get 7-seconds to make a 1st impression"
  • "You're not teaching until the athlete learns"
  • "If we have an athlete that doesn't want to listen or is confrontational - we usually blame it on the athlete and say it's something wrong with them instead of thinking something is wrong with your approach"
  • Context is king"

Books:
  • 48 Laws of Power - Robert Greene
  • How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie
  • The Upside to your Dark Side - Todd Kashdan

Dinner:
  • Ben Franklin
  • Napolean
  • Dr. Dre

Social Media:
  • Twitter - @coach_brettb
  • Instagram - @coach_brettb
0 Comments

Episode #18 - James Wild: Assessing, Evaluating & Improving Speed

3/19/2017

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James is a strength and conditioning coach, researcher, professor, and consultant - mainly for all things speed, agility, and power development. In this episode we talk about his work with team sport athletes and how he goes about assessing, evaluating, and then improving speed.  He also talks about how mechanics and technical aspects of sprinting differ between team sport athletes and actual track athletes. 
Overall, this is a great episode and James is very knowledgable in the the mechanics and literature for speed development. 

Favorite Quotes
  • "Strength training is only a part of the much bigger picture when it comes to speed"
  • "Drills are there to reinforce technical positions"
  • "Speed = Magnitude of force, direction of force, RFD"
  • "Most speed training over-emphasizes the magnitude of force and neglects the direction and rate of those forces"
  • "I evaluate F-V profiles, hip extension torque for horizontal vs vertical profiles, and reactive strength/ankle stiffness in my athletes. This way I know specifically what their strengths and weaknesses are, and how to attack them"
  • "Sprint drills should create context and feeling.  Attach a feeling, use film, and bridge the drills to later sprints"
  • "Team sport athletes typically lack hip flexion angles, body angles, RFD compared to track athletes, but we also have to understand that sometimes these are a product of the sport and obtaining ideal sprinting technique isn't conducive to team sports"
  • "I'd bring Arny (Arnold schwarzenegger), Steven Seagal, and Jean Claude Van Damme to dinner - some kick ass dudes"

Social Media
  • Twitter - @widly_jj
0 Comments

Episode #17 - Elite Performance Clinic Preview

3/10/2017

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On Saturday, April 1st - we are hosting our 3rd Annual Elite Performance Clinic.  We have a great line-up of coaches, practitioners, and scientists to share a wide variety of Strength and Conditioning, fitness, nutrition, and rehab topics.  

In this episode, our speakers give us a short introduction and preview of the topic they'll discuss on April 1st. 

Here's a reminder of our line-up

Line-Up
  • 8:15-8:55am - Registration and Check-In
  • 9:00-9:50am - Concussions: The Injury, The Research, The Future – Dr. Matthew Rogatzki 
  • 10:00-10:50am – Limiting Factors Towards Speed Development - Matt Gifford
  • 10:00-11:50am - Hands-On Sessions
    • Catering Your Warm-Up To Your Training Session – Korey Van Wyk
    • Med Ball Progressions To Develop Rotational Power  – Stephen Vassalotti
  • 11:50-12:30pm – Lunch (Provided)
  • 12:30-1:20pm – Grading The 10 Most Popular Supplements: What Is Useful and Useless? – Sean Casey
  • 1:30-2:20pm - The Science of the Squat: Implications For All Areas of Sport Performance – Michael Zweifel
  • 2:30-3:20pm – Hands-On Sessions
    • Correcting The Hip Hinge – Mike Mandot
    • Training The Neck To Reduce Concussions – Jacob Ricketts
  • 3:30-4:20pm – Hands-On Session
    • The Athletic Stance: A-Z - Matt Gifford
    • How To Correctly Use Bands To Enhance Mobility - Brad Gerein
  • 4:30-5:00 – Q & A with Speakers
  • 5:00pm - Social​
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Episode #16 - Kendrique Coats: Youth Athletes and Athletes With Special Needs

3/5/2017

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Kendrique is a Strength and Conditioning Coach and Track Coach in Pontiac, IL.  He does great work with many with youth athletes in his community and has a really refreshing look at how he approaches training young athletes. 
A really special program Kendrique runs is his work with youngsters with special needs.  Kendrique started this program 2-years ago, and it's had a huge impact on him as a coach and person.  I think it's just a wonderful program he runs and very cool to see the impact Kendrique has on these young kids and the impact this fitness program has on these youngsters. 


Favorite Quotes
  • "Sometimes we get so wrapped up in our own lives, that we forget how we can impact our athletes lives"
  • "Parents get bent out of shape trying to pursue an athletic scholarship, when they'd be better off trying to pursue an academic scholarship."
  • "Do you know if your athlete has sibling?  What their favorite music is?  When there birthday is?  What their favorite sport team is?  These things all play into athletic performance but often forgotten because X's and O's are more popular."
  • "Coach I bench pressed X-Amount of weight!  Well how does that improve your sport and overall movement quality?"
  • "Coaches need to be better interviewers."
  • "Our services include educating athletes and parents - Educating is the #1 thing I do with parents and athletes"
  • "How does getting little Johnny or little Suzy puking and beat tired making them a better athlete?"

Social Media
  • Twitter - @KendriqueCoats
  • Instagram - @CoatsPerformance
  • Facebook - Coats Performance
  • Website - https://coatsperformance.wordpress.com/
0 Comments

Episode #15 - Shawn Myszka: Movement Mastery

1/22/2017

1 Comment

 
Shawn is the owner and founder of Movement Mastery: The Art of Optimizing Movement.  He's a movement coach for a dozen NFL athletes and continually looks to push the envelop on what makes great athletes - great!  To him, and I agree, this means movement - not necessarily strength, or weight room numbers, or power, or motor performance - rather great movement qualities, attuned perception and action coupling, free and creative thinkers/movers, and refined motor learning processes. 
In this episode we discuss everything from…
  • What a movement first approach means
  • How coaches can tweak agility training for better outcomes
  • What reactive agility really is
  • How warm-ups could be better structured for the subsequent tasks of sport
  • Mistakes coaches make during practices in terms of removing messiness, mistakes, and creativity
  • Where he found his roots in dynamic systems theory, a constraints led approach, and ecological psychology
  • We talk about the greatest mover of all-time - Barry Sanders
  • Much More

Favorite Quotes:
  • "My only goal with athletes is getting them better when and where it counts, which is in the arena of sport"
  • "Sport is a problem solving activity"
  • "If the perception is inaccurate or wrong - the action won't be appropriate"
  • "I don't refer to it as a warm-up, but a movement preparation scheme.  Warming-up is general; I'm trying to prepare behaviors"
  • "A major mistake I see is the training environment is not truly representative that of which happens in the sporting environment"
  • "An offensive player and a defensive player have much different requirements in sport - so should their warm-up, training, and patterns"
  • "I try and learn from different fields - I've gone to watch dance instructors, martial arts instructors, teachers - it should come as no surpass that we can learn from various disciplines" 
  • "Often we gets athletes so restricted on reproducing what we deem an ideal movement pattern, that we don't even know if it's ideal or optimal for that respective athlete.  Instead we should help guide and be a facilitator rather than an instructor"
Books:
  • The Coordination and Regulation of Movements - Nikolai Bernstein
  • Non-Linear Pedagogy in Skill Acquisition - Keith David 
  • Perception - Cognition - Decision: Training the Quiet Eye - Joan Vickers

Social Media:
  • Twitter - @MovementMiyagi
  • https://footballbeyondthestats.wordpress.com/
  • http://www.optimizemovement.com/sq/35323-movement-mastery-intro
1 Comment

Episode #14 - Coaching In The Public vs Private Sector

1/18/2017

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In this episode, we have a special roundtable discussion with fellow coaches to discuss the various aspects of S&C coaching in the public and private sectors.  In this great podcast we have the following coaches
  • Steve Brown - UW-Oshkosh
    • Twitter - @CoachBrown19
  • Zach Cahill - Northern Illinois University
    • Twitter - @CoachZCahill
  • Matt Gifford - NXLevel Performance
    • Twitter - @GiffUsStrength
  • Korey Van Wyk - Northwestern College
    • Twitter - @KoreyVanWyk

Topics Covered
  • Caliber of Athlete
  • Freedom Allowed - Freedom of programming, freedom from sport coaches, freedom of the facility, freedom of equipment, freedom of space, freedom of time/hours
  • Job Stability/Security
  • Typical Schedule/Hours
  • Salary/'Compensation

Favorite Quotes
  • "Much of my day is running around like a chicken with my head cut off, working with athletes of every make and model"
  • "As a strength coach, I'm support staff, but I've found that the better my relationship with the sport coach - the more freedom and trust they give me in the weight room"
  • "Much of my job was educating the parents - they often just wanted to see Jimmy and Johnny sweating, but if we're doing pure speed work, the athletes might not be sweating"
  • "I have many friends, who I know are good, quality coaches who are out of jobs because their team didn't have the wins.  The higher the level, the less job security"
  • "Being a good Strength coach isn't enough anymore - you have to branch out and find 1-2 other areas of speciality like speed & agility, technology, nutrition, rehab, etc"
  • "Definitely a benefit of most public sector positions is the benefits like health insurance, retirement, life insurance, etc.  When I worked in the private sector, my salary was basically the same as it is now, but the benefits I now receive make my current job more worth while"
  • "A hidden part of being at my University longer and longer is I always seem to be roped into more and more committees - whether it be a hiring committee or leadership committee or coaching committee - these add to additional meetings/hidden hours"
  • "When I was in college, I didn't know until my senior year, that our Strength coach did summer training for free.  His contract didn't include the summer and wasn't paid to be there - I'm now in that situation with maybe a small stipend"
  • "Do an internship in the college setting, do an internship in the private setting - every situation is different and you won't know what you'll like unless you spend valuable time in each setting"
  • "You better love it, you better have a why to what you're doing"
  • "We do such a good job in our own weight rooms of building people up, but we could do a better job building up people in our S&C community"
  • "How many athletes are totally healthy?  In my experience, not very many, so spending time to figure how to work with injured people because it's a huge part of the job"
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