Latest / Just Fly Performance Podcast / 398: Mark McLaughlin on The Art of Total Athlete Development

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398: Mark McLaughlin on The Art of Total Athlete Development · Just Fly Performance Podcast

So he was a junior in high school when I
started with them.
I think he weighed like 200, 205 pounds.
So we just, you know,
basically cut the volume almost by two thirds.
And within the first month,
his vertical increased like five inches.
And again,
it wasn't and it wasn't what I was doing with
them.
It's a lot, you know,
we weren't doing with them.
That was Mark McLaughlin and you're listening
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Welcome to another episode of the podcast.
Thanks for tuning in.
It's great to have you here.
I'm excited to welcome back to the podcast
Mark McLaughlin.
He is the founder of Performance Training
Center and he works as a strength coach in the
Lake Oswego School District in Oregon.
Mark was recently on the show speaking on his
creative and wide ranging approach to athletic
performance with an emphasis on athlete
learning, movement training,
long -term development and also the importance
of the aerobic system.
Mark is known in the coaching industry for his
ability to get results.
And on today's podcast,
he'll be going into a case study of an athlete
he recently worked with who in just over two
years time put two feet on a standing long
jump, 11 inches on his vertical.
And within that case study,
Mark will be speaking on the important aspects
of athlete autonomy,
the appropriate pacing and progression and
training for not just short -term,
but long -term results in that long -term
viewpoint of performance.
He'll be talking about plyometrics and jump
training, hill
sprints and capacity and so much more.
I really enjoy speaking with Mark.
He has such a heart for athletic development
and helping athletes get the most of their own
journey of performance training.
And that being said,
let's get onto the show here,
398 with Mark McLaughlin.
Mark, welcome back to the show.
It's really great to have you back on and I'm
excited to chat today.
Yeah, Joel, thanks a lot.
I love that we're having this reoccurring
podcast going here.
I love it.
Yeah, yeah, well, I mean,
I've just been really like a combination of
both intrigued,
especially with what you're doing more on the
aerobic, the tempo, the hard way side.
And then I just love seeing like a lot of the
athletic movements and athletic qualities,
you know,
physical education and escalating that to the
needs of athletes.
And one of the things I think, you know,
we talked about last time was like aerobic and
tempo and that that's okay.
I think so.
You know, pendulum swing pretty hard.
And you had a really good case study of a
young athlete who you had worked with who just
put an extraordinary amount of strength and
speed on his frame.
And you had a multi -part blog series on that.
And I'd be curious for you to just share one
just just about the first maybe the gains the
individual did make because I think it's nice
to have that precedent.
And obviously all athletes are, you know,
we're going to have the bell curve of gains
and responses.
But share a little bit of that and then get
into what you did with this young individual
and how that training unfolded.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I wrote a three parts series on with an
athlete that I had trained Hunter Kavanaugh
and Hunter was exclusively an American
football player.
And I was fortunate to start with him when he
was a sophomore in high school.
And that was actually my first year at Lake
Oswego.
And so then, you know,
the series kind of covered what we did,
what him and I did together over those,
you know, three years.
And, you know, his gains were, I think,
you know, out of the ordinary for, you know,
a lot of high school kids, like,
he started with me as I believe his vertical
was like 27 inches.
And then he went to this lineman challenge
this past summer.
And his vertical tested out at 38 .5 on a just
jump mat.
And then when I started with him,
his standing long jump,
I think was eight something.
And at the same camp, he jumped 10 feet,
two inches.
And at that camp, he went on for 13 years.
And, you know,
those records that stood for 13 years,
and he broke both of those two.
And it,
I think it just kind of showcased to me,
just being, you know,
patient with these athletes,
especially with Hunter, kind of understanding,
you know, him at the beginning as a person,
because he was already very dedicated.
You know,
I could tell that in the first moment I met
him.
And so the challenge to be was, you know,
really kind of trying to put the brakes on
him.
So he didn't get any over training, you know,
where he was, you know,
maybe doing a lot of extra stuff outside of
what we were doing,
and kind of educating him on kind of my
thought process on training,
letting him tell me what he wanted to do,
accomplish as an athlete,
and then just kind of move the process
forward.
And just kind of, I mean,
at the end of the three years,
he trained 460 times with me.
And as you and I were talking about prior to,
you know, starting year this morning,
my goal is to get them to want to come back
each session.
And so I think, you know, Hunter's work ethic,
the fact that I think we made it fun for each
other, you know, to work collaboratively,
I think at the end of the day,
and the results kind of proved that with him,
it worked extremely well.
You have that combination of having fun,
athlete feeling like they have a voice and the
autonomy of the athlete and that process or
the ownership.
And then consistency.
It's like, if you have those three things,
I think you can go so far.
And it's just kind of funny because I think
that the main thing that a lot of people
probably think about those three is just well,
consistency, which is really important.
But when you, it's like, well,
what does it take to be consistent?
You know, do you have to force it?
I mean, and on some level maybe,
but like there's other things that can really
make that consistency just feel like a joy and
not like a grind, you know, all the time.
Yeah, and kind of my philosophy within,
you know,
the constraints that I have at the school,
because there's, you know, we're,
we're kind of restricted on facilities
sometimes, whether it be weather teams,
whatever.
And so, you know,
you and I were talking about constraint led,
you know, coaching with athletes, well,
as a coach,
sometimes I'm kind of constraint led as well.
And so kind of the,
some of the things that I did to facilitate,
you know, fun and progress was, you know,
I started a gymnastics program per se within
the athletic development model that I have
there.
And all the kids love it.
So number one, and that's part of the warmup.
So that's one to get them there.
The other thing that we do prior to training
is game based.
So they could play team handball,
they could play ultimate football,
ultimate frisbee.
I mean, we, you know, we have a rugby ball,
you know, soccer.
So some of these other things to get them
there.
And then at the beginning,
have the training be easy.
So we get a lot of bodyweight circuits at the
beginning.
I think we had a year and a half.
I don't know if I even touched on it that much
in the article series, but you know,
you had Vern Gambetta on, I think,
a couple of weeks ago, Joel,
and the people haven't listened to that
podcast, they really should.
But we used a lot of Vern circuits at the
beginning.
And I think building that easiness,
the structure of it,
bodyweight mastering some of this stuff and
knowing Hunter's personality,
how he did want to master even the basics.
Like he wanted to come back every day to try
to, you know,
do something different or improve.
And, you know, at some points, it's like,
okay, man,
I'm just going to let you do what you want to
do today because, you know,
you don't even need me.
You just want to be here so much.
And that's just what you said is so important
is the athlete eventually like doesn't need
you there.
And I think a lot of coaching can breed this.
It's almost like it can create a situation
where, you know,
the athlete feels like they need you to tell
them exactly what to do or exactly what cue or
technique or wait to put on.
And unless some level of autonomy becomes to
be called or becomes cultivated in that
package,
I just think that's such an important piece as
well.
And you just mentioned it there.
So I thought it was certainly worth saying.
Yeah.
And because coach team sport coaches,
and you hear it a lot,
they want these kids to be leaders on the
field.
They want them to show their teammates what to
do.
And my thought process,
and I totally get that,
it's a skill that's learned.
And so they need to have time within their
day,
where someone's not telling them what to do,
because they have the teachers doing that all
day.
They have their parents doing that.
So how can I foster a culture that allows them
to have their voice,
do what they feel they need to be doing and
make these make mistakes sometimes,
but then also, you know, have a big success.
And they have to learn how to be leaders.
And in order to do that, you have to do it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So within the training,
I know something that you had said a long time
ago.
I think it was a case study or you may have
just been talking about an athlete's training.
This may have been almost a decade ago.
I'm not really sure.
But you had talked about something to the tune
of delaying like the depth jump exercise for a
long time,
like not doing depth jumps until an athlete
was 18 or something like that.
I forget the exact age,
but I think it's so common.
Hank Kryanhof,
and I think Jeff Moyer was the one who had
pointed me out to Hank's term acceleritis.
We suffer in this country from acceleritis.
Everything and like the barbell stuff.
Okay, we got these middle schoolers.
Let's get them on the 531 and triphasic or
whatever.
You know, whatever advanced lifting program,
it's just,
it's pasted into younger and younger and
younger athletes training.
And the same thing with biometric work or
whatever training you are doing.
And so I wanted to ask you,
because you were just kind of talking about
how your training is patient,
either as you just mentioned or even before we
pushed record.
And I wanted to go over a little bit about how
you approach some of those modalities.
And maybe we could talk about strength first,
like how,
and obviously the results spoke for themselves
there.
And we've talked about some of the results
you've gotten on the last podcast as well.
But tell me a little bit about the patients in
the strength development that you took with
him.
And so where you started barbell work,
like squatting, deadlifting,
times throughout the year it may or may not
have been in the program.
And so there.
Yeah, part of what,
and I'll talk specifically to just kind of
broad strokes here,
and then I'll kind of narrow it down with
Hunter,
kind of my philosophy throughout my career as
a coach, which is, you know, 25 years now,
has been to just let the kids develop through
movement at the beginning.
And one of the reasons,
because in society now, people say, well,
you know, kids don't play enough, you know,
they're not outside, blah, blah, blah.
And maybe that's true for some.
So as a coach,
and when I'm starting off with kids that are
younger, it's like, okay, if that's the case,
then let's have them move.
Let's have them do gymnastics.
Let's have them do crawling.
Let's have them do jumping.
Let's have them do sprinting.
Let's have them chase each other.
Let's have them play tag.
I mean, the, I mean,
you can build strength with these kids and
just a number of different areas.
And so you're developing those general
qualities.
And then as they begin to get older,
and you know, through the coaches,
I and everything, and you're watching them,
you know,
then maybe you begin to build in some skill
acquisition within the weight room.
So, you know, strength training literacy.
So, you know, can they hinge?
Can you teach them how to squat?
Can they lunge?
And that's why Vern's body weight circuits are
such a piece of art,
because you're incorporating all that stuff,
plus you're facilitating some physiological
demands on the athlete.
And they're getting these movement skills.
So,
there's a lot of things that are being solved
within four exercises.
And then as they get older, I don't know,
freshman or sophomore in high school,
and I'll kind of narrow it down here to
Hunter, his brother Hayden, who was, I think,
two or three years older than him,
was a really good weightlifter.
And so he taught Hunter, I think,
some of these skills, because when he,
when I asked him to squat, even body weight,
he was really good at it.
So,
I didn't have to spend a lot of time teaching
that he already kind of had this literacy
built in.
But, and then with other athletes,
kind of the same thing, I, you know,
we need to teach them those skills.
And then as they progress, then later on,
if depth jumps and with Hunter,
it was very basic,
like we did a lot of jump squats with barbells
and dumbbells,
we did do some depth jumps at the end,
and a little bit of contrast training.
But, you know,
he didn't need a lot to get those results at
the end.
Yeah,
I know Christian Thibaudeau had talked about
like contrast training is that and every
athlete's going to be different.
Like he had talked about some athletes who
just naturally are very skillful,
very athletic.
They might need less of that than somebody
else who's just needs more like in the middle
to fill in the gaps.
And it does kind of speak to,
I think almost the skill of learning what you
don't need to use.
You know,
I think that's the skill just as much as
learning what you do need to use.
I mean, I guess it's the same thing kind of,
but I think that's a skill we don't talk about
so much.
Hey, we, hey, I didn't need to use this.
This guy was a girl is already a good athlete.
Like we just did just did this instead,
you know,
versus it's much easier to just unload the
kitchen sink on every athlete.
Yeah, I mean,
I learned really early on from one of my
mentors, Bowne Medsedkin, who, you know,
his quote was, you know, the exercise is,
you know,
not as important as when and how you apply it.
And so that's always kind of stuck with the,
like, yeah, squatting is good, but okay,
how can we use it to develop this athlete?
You know, do they need more slow twitch work?
Do they need more fast twitch?
What does the sport require?
And I wrote a, I wrote,
I had three different athletes that I wrote a
series on.
This is back in 2006,
when I had my own training facility,
I always kind of felt back then I was kind of
like the last stop shop with some of these
athletes who had just been destroyed.
And the series was like doing when, when,
when less is more.
And, you know, the first kid I talked about,
Matt, how he was over trained, like,
I think in a classical sense,
kind of what we didn't do with him.
Owen Marecic,
who ended up playing for the Cleveland Browns,
I started with him when he was a junior in
high school.
Same thing,
like he was training 14 times a week.
The results we got from him.
And then Kevin Boss,
who ended up playing for the New York Giants,
won a Super Bowl with him.
You know, kind of his, his journey, you know,
through a two or three year period there where
we were, it's the same thing.
It's what we weren't giving him,
which I felt kind of lend,
lend itself for him to develop.
So, you know,
there's a lot of different ways to coach.
And like you just said,
sometimes it's what you don't do that is more
beneficial.
Yeah, I'm sure being able to track, I mean,
I think any athlete that comes in and says,
yeah, I've been training 14 times a week.
I don't think you necessarily need a metric or
a monitor to be like, hey,
you're over trained.
But I'm sure it's interesting to also be able
to, as they do start to detrain from that,
so to speak, or just to train appropriately,
I'm sure it's nice to have an Omega wave and
things to be like, OK, here's where we were.
Here's where we are now.
And as you're able to move their training
load, I actually,
before I wanted to ask you a little bit more
about, you know, within Hunter's case study,
you had talked about a time in the year where
I think it was like the only lifting he was
doing or barbell work he was doing was bench
pressing.
I do want to get to that.
But actually,
I am curious in the context of what you just
said, what did you do?
So those athletes who came in who were 14
times a week, I mean, did you have them like,
hey, I'll see it twice a week or something?
And, you know, like,
what was the process there to kind of get them
out of that over training state?
Because I think there's a lot of athletes in
that bucket, obviously, today.
Yeah.
So the one thing that I think about those is
you're dealing with a, I think,
a North American mindset of,
I have to do more.
I have to do more.
And so part of the challenge from a
psychological standpoint is trying to sell
them on training less.
So that was the biggest challenge at the
beginning on all three of them.
And for example, with Owen,
we took him down to three days a week of
lifting.
Maybe it was two more aerobic work.
And so he was a junior in high school when I
started with them.
I think he weighed like 200, 205 pounds.
So we just, you know,
basically cut the volume almost by two thirds.
And within the first month,
his vertical increased like five inches.
And again, it wasn't,
and it wasn't what I was doing with him.
It's a lot, you know,
we weren't doing with him.
And then, you know,
so fast forward at the end of six months for
his senior year, he was 235.
And, you know, he,
he squatted 365 pounds 20 times at one of his
school tests, you know, which was stupid.
But and then he went on to play at Stanford.
He played both ways there.
He scored an offensive touchdown and a
defensive touchdown against Notre Dame in
consecutive plays.
I think the only college player to do that.
And then played three years with the Browns.
So, you know, I mean, and with Hunter, this,
you know,
just trying to build up from a training
standpoint,
the reason I only did legs at the beginning
and lower body stuff was building up those
tendons and ligaments was kind of my,
just getting him durable to then be able to
withstand training as he got older with the
lower body.
And what high school kid doesn't like to bench
press?
Of course.
So.
Yeah, I think that is something that, I mean,
you can make all the cases against Bench Press
from whatever perspective.
And to be honest, at some point,
I think around age 36, I had,
I finally did my shoulder in a little bit from
what we were doing.
It was a lift every day type program thing.
It was actually was working pretty well at the
time, but my shoulders just didn't destroy.
But I mean, outside of that,
I just think at some point,
with high school boys,
like Bench Press is Bench Press.
You know,
like you could make excuses for why not to do
it, but it's kind of like,
it's just something that they love doing.
Like you said, it's something they love doing.
So I think that's part of the equation, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean,
I would let the kids write their own upper
body training once a week.
Really?
It's like, okay,
I'm just here today to be a safety monitor.
You guys design the training, how you want it.
I, you know, go for it.
Yeah, that's awesome.
This is a little bit of a random question
because I did want to go back to a little bit
of that strength question, but you mentioned,
you know, two way football player at,
I was thinking about Travis Hunter from
Colorado, like, you know,
placed both offense and defense.
And I don't think that's, I mean,
I don't know of many other players who do
that.
And I'm not like, I mean, maybe there are,
but what I'm trying to say is,
I like people who gather the player loads for
those players, they'll be like,
their player load is like so off the charts.
It's like so far in the danger zone.
It just doesn't make sense, you know,
it from one perspective of things, I guess,
from just a purely mechanical,
but I wonder sometimes if there's like
something that's like mental psychological
about those players,
almost like maybe like a love for the game or
I don't know.
Do you know what I'm saying?
I'm just curious if you have seen anything
generally from those players that maybe goes
beyond just like just workload numbers or
anything like that.
Yeah.
And again,
I've had two athletes that played at the D1
level both ways.
So my sampling is very small here.
So N equals two.
What I can say from a physiological
standpoint,
because both of them I tested with Omega wave
extensively,
at least physiologically from what I saw
within those tests,
like their ability to recover and their
durability from an autonomic standpoint was
phenomenal.
So just their ability to recover from session
to session is off the charts.
I think that's number one.
And number two,
to your point on the mental side,
does that robustness and recovery ability lend
itself to their personality to just want to be
able to go, go, go.
Because Owen,
as he got healthier and as we got into College
and Pro,
like his workload when we did put a lot of
stress on him was, I mean,
we had sessions where he was hitting 30 to 35
,000
pounds of tonnage on squad at like 85% plus of
his maximum.
And the next day he was coming back and was
ready to go again.
So yeah.
It's interesting to think about what is it
that creates that almost like superhero level
of recovery.
You know,
like is it like what what in the physiology or
what in the mentality that goes hand in hand
with the physiology?
Yeah, I don't know what the answer is.
I'm genuinely curious.
Yeah, because I mean, you know,
then there's other athletes who, you know,
and they're older.
Because I got a couple D1 athletes that
couldn't make it through a couple body weight
circuits.
It's like, okay,
like they actually spent a scholarship on you
and you can't get into this.
Which then Glenn felt for the skill itself is
so, you're just so good at what you do.
It doesn't matter just how bad you are on the
physical side.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is great.
Yeah,
the spectrum of what you see is pretty wild,
like with that.
Yeah, so back to the strength piece,
because I did wanna ask you a little bit
about,
I just think one thing that intrigues me that
I find interesting is, like,
while you're an athlete and there's a weight
room, so you're gonna do like squats,
deadlift, bench clean, bench,
or I said bench twice,
but you're gonna do all these,
you're gonna do all these main lifts you're
around,
because there's a weight room and you're just,
you know what I'm saying, but like,
I found this actually just kind of intuitively
growing up was, I think,
in my time with basketball and track,
there'd be these times in the year where just,
I guess just intuitively I was like, you know,
I'm strong,
I think I'm just not gonna lift for the next
month or two of the season, and,
or maybe even in basketball, I'd be like,
you know, I usually go down and lift weights,
some weights in my basement after practice in
the evening for a little bit,
but practice is tough,
I'm just gonna take a little break here,
and I think it was some of those times,
especially those maybe like three week stints
where I just had too much going on and had to
take a break,
but then I found like my performance would be
extremely explosive in that short -term break,
that gave me the confidence to do that,
but I think it's, I don't know,
it's unless you've been through those
situations, though,
either personally or through coaches that have
kind of had, you know,
been able to let off like that,
even in my time working with swimming at Cal,
the coaches,
the taper process in swimming is like almost
like a sacred thing.
It's way bigger of a deal than it is in track,
I've found, and each athlete, you know,
coaches go to great lengths for each athlete,
okay, this person needs to stop lifting here,
this person needs more rest, this person,
and it's very intuitive of a process,
but it was always very interesting because
it's, you know,
if you're the strength coach and you see this
swimmer who's like, well,
I haven't seen this swimmer in the weight room
in like three weeks and they just killed it,
you know, in their championship or whatever,
and it's always intriguing to,
it puts pieces in your mind as to what should
be and where, how long could you rest from it,
how long could you rest from heavy lifting?
Anyways, all I'm trying to say is, you know,
I was just gonna ask you a little bit more
about, you know, barbells throughout the year,
more circuit or general training throughout
the year, how did things change on that front?
And what?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, that's a, that's a great question.
And that really kind of goes to performance is
just so nuanced within, you know,
an athlete sport,
the culture within those schools or sports.
So regarding like kind of the cycles
throughout the year,
especially at the beginning,
when they're really young, like, you know,
freshman, sophomore,
like just trying to get them exposed to as
much movement as we can get them.
So they're, you know, this zone zero of,
you know,
it's not even going to be really taxing at
all.
You're just going to move,
you're going to get fitter,
you're going to get healthier,
and you're just going to get used to kind of
using your own body.
And then we're going to build up these skills
within the weight room or jumping or whatever.
And then as they kind of progress and you kind
of see maybe are some athletes, you know,
reaching that puberty face sooner, you know,
rather than later.
Okay, so now maybe you start in, you know,
introducing them to a little bit more
external, you know, stress,
whether it be through dumbbells or barbells.
And then, you know,
are they playing other sports?
How are they coming into training?
Like, are they, you know, getting better?
Do they feel like they're, you know,
accomplishing things so that maybe you can
build up the load, maybe a little bit more.
And just watching them and understanding that
the process at this time throughout,
even with some kids like a month, like,
you know, on January 1st, they're 110 pounds.
And, you know, January 30th,
now all of a sudden they're 120,
they grow and say, you know,
two inches or something.
And, you know, they can hardly walk, you know,
without falling down.
So there's a lot of these things that I'm kind
of looking at that is kind of helping me maybe
build the training a little bit, you know,
differently.
Because strength to me is like the easiest
quality to improve, bar none.
So I just want them to be able to move good
and to be able to explore these movements that
are, I think,
going to help them within the sport
themselves.
If that answers your question.
Yeah.
So within, like you said,
there was that time period where the only
barbell movement Hunter was doing was bench
press,
which I think there's there's something to do
that too.
And the sense of sprint training, for example,
with like Charlie Francis and Ben Johnson and
using bench press as a potentiation tool.
It's something that's very,
if it's meaningful and activates a lot of
motor units, then it's I think, you know,
just that almost just the very general that
you could call like the the organism strength,
like just that general nervous system.
And you're doing other basic lower about like
the game battle leg circuit,
all sorts of calisthenics and gymnastics.
It seems like I guess you would ask the
question at this stage in the game,
do you need to for this block of time,
do you need to squat right now?
You know,
do you need to do heavy deadlifts right now
and anything like that?
Yeah.
And I think it's like, like with me,
it's like with Hunter,
because I knew that we would squat later on.
So, you know, there were times where,
you know, we would do, you know,
we would do gymnastics or a game,
and then we would do some, you know,
isometric stuff.
And then he would do some leg circuits.
And then we would do, I don't know,
for four weeks,
he would do a block of like teaching squat
where the load was, well,
although he already knew how to squat pretty
well, but the load was relatively low,
say like 95 to 135 pounds.
And he was just practicing that feel,
are we getting the depth right?
Does he feel good?
Is he locked in?
And we would do that once or twice a week.
And, you know, then I taught him, you know,
the, you know, hard to yell.
So, you know,
teaching him some of this basic stuff that I
knew that we would be using later on.
And it was sprinkled out throughout the year.
So it's not the likely never did it.
But it never really was the focus.
And actually,
a lot of things just were never the focus.
It was everything is the focus at this point.
Yeah, I like that.
And the lifting we,
and the lifting we do is very basic.
Like we're not doing a lot.
We will do squat.
We will do our exercise portfolio with the
basics is maybe 10 to 15 at the most.
And just trying to master those as well as we
can.
And then I can use them throughout their
careers,
they get older to try to drive some of these
physiological adaptations that we want to try
to achieve.
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Yeah,
you had mentioned Verengan Betta's podcast and
the discussion on creativity.
I think we all have it in us that we wanna be
creative.
I think the interesting thing happens though,
like for you and I,
so much of that creativity is expressed
through movement,
through gymnastics or calisthenics or just
skilled body weight activity.
And I think if you aren't doing something like
that then a lot of the creativity might be
like, all right, well, like you said,
do you have 15 basic or major movements in the
gym or barbell movements?
It might become, all right, well,
that 15 might become 30, you know?
And then you aren't doing the creativity,
the actual like more athletic you could say,
and you could certainly be athletic with a
barbell but the more like body weight
athletic, calisthenic,
gymnastic then that the,
I just think that in general physical
preparation like leave some creativity to go
around, you know?
That's like you said in everything.
Otherwise I think when just the barbell work
takes the creativity,
I think that maybe at least a little bit of
over intensification too because you kind of
have no choice, you know?
It just, if you're gonna,
because it's hard to probably be creative with
a barbell type situation and not have it just
escalate more quickly than it's probably ideal
for the athlete.
Yeah.
And I view like when kids go to play their
sport, like I want to try again,
try to make them as robust and durable as
possible.
And strength training is part of the equation.
But then there's, you know,
how do you get out of bad situations?
Like there's that picture of my home.
I think over the weekend, you know,
or he's in that weird position.
I go back and yeah, yeah.
And, you know, people are like, well,
you know, you know, he was lucky.
And but, you know, hey, as part of that,
the reason you didn't get hurt was just part
of his upbringing through a multitude of,
you know, training experiences.
And so I feel like the more experience I can
give the athletes and moving and getting out
of situations,
maybe when they get in bad situations in a
game,
they're able to respond in a way that keeps
them out of the risk of injury,
not preventing it.
Again,
I'm not saying that what I'm doing or anybody
else is doing is preventing it.
But again, maybe it's giving them a chance.
So, you know, and again,
when you get the kids,
I think this is part of coaching in this
country that is just,
it's just bad to me is we're never asking the
athletes what they like.
How do you feel about the training?
Do you like what we're doing?
No, I don't.
Okay.
Then let's figure out what you do like to keep
you coming back.
I mean,
I did a I do a questionnaire with every team
twice a year to find out through my program,
like what they like, what they don't like,
my coaching style,
so I can then refine this thing year to year
to make it truly athlete centered.
Yeah, I was gonna,
the next escalation question was gonna be
about how you progress the plyometric program,
but I'll skip to the,
with basically what you just said, actually,
I will skip to the aerobic and tempo
component.
Both, I guess, of Hunter's program, but also,
and I know,
because we talked about that last time,
is people,
in today's age of social media or whatever,
at the way trainees have said,
like the pendulum swing, and you might think,
oh, well,
the aerobic system isn't important at all.
Let's just ignore it and only train, you know,
only train power, only train speed.
Um, and I know that wasn't,
that's been an important,
the aerobic piece is an important component of
your programs.
And obviously it wasn't hurting, um,
Hunter's ability.
Uh, but I was gonna ask you, like,
that seems like an interesting thing with,
because that's the part of the program,
it would seem like,
at least not for every athlete.
There's a lot of workhorses out there,
you know, or if you think of athletes,
if they're like, you know, cats,
dogs or horses, or, you know, or whatever.
I guess a cat,
a cat probably wouldn't like the, you know,
the aerobic part or the temper part,
but there's some athletes who love it,
probably too much, honestly.
Um,
so I'm just curious how that breaks down with,
how do you fit, um,
how do you fit that conditioning side to what
the athlete likes?
I'm really curious with that one.
Yeah,
I'm not the that's another great question.
I and I'll kind of go back to my progression
as a coach.
So You know, I started off,
you know following You know,
Louis Simmons on you know strength and Dave
Tate So, you know elite fitness, you know,
Louis Simmons like You know bands chains like
that's how I started and I think within my
peer group You know land in Evans and and some
of these other coaches, you know,
who I still You know talked to that's kind of
how we started now on the speed side.
It was charlie charlie francis and You know
charlie was you know,
he's short the longer or long the short and
you know,
thankfully dara canson is you know really You
know kind of taken what charlie taught him and
put us out put it out to us now and in such a
great um man or that, you know,
charlie will you know continue to live on but
You know charlie had did a lot of tempo work
with the sprinters So that was that was kind
of how I started And then as I started to
learn more about the aerobic system recovery
Then I met vall at omega wave.
You started understanding the autonomic
nervous system and so it's always been a part
of the plan And the kind of my philosophy And
then I've been able to test a lot of athletes
that did a lot of this work or didn't do any
To continue to kind of formulate why it worked
And then if you for your listeners if you go
back and listen to randy huntington's podcast
with you In randy's fortunate where he can do
a lot of pool work with his,
you know athletes But you know even randy
talks about the aerobic system and as a
recovery tool So I'm looking at it more as We
did a hard workout on monday that was very cns
intensive for lack of a better term How am I
going to get hunter to then be able to come
back on wednesday?
to Go hard again or come back on friday And
through my career that tempo work bike work
aerobic work has always set The athletes up to
continue to build that capacity to then
recover To be able to do higher workloads
higher intensity come back better the next day
So that's How I think about it.
I mean I have a A navy seal right now.
I'm working with Who like his workload is like
so high And you know he's doing five or six
hours a week of aerobic work He can run a sub
six minute mile And he can deadlift like 500
plus pounds And he's a 200 pound athlete so
You know I mean that's I don't know if that
answers your question joel,
but I've never seen it hinder anybody ever
Yeah, yeah,
it is especially to I think the individuals
that it does it hurts is It's just like
coaches who apply it with no nuance and just
more is better And they're probably taking
athletes to to a level of like lactate within
that aerobic work constantly as well It's um,
I don't maybe too.
I did want to kind of get in and maybe maybe
talk it about The exact nature of some hunter
sessions because I think that would give a
little bit more Um clarity.
I think a lot of people might hear aerobic and
they might think like the worst work out there
coach made them did or or Or those of us who
work with athletes who go off to their sport
coach and just get creamed,
you know with whatever aerobic conditioning
just like silliness Maybe they're mixing
crossfit in there or something and I think we
all know those athletes who have to deal with
that stuff Yeah,
and so what yeah tell me a little bit about
your I know you talked about last time But
about some of that nuance and maybe get into
the um,
you know what you were doing with hunter in
that realm
Yeah, so with the kids,
I'm always educating them.
So I will talk briefly about the aerobic
system and the autonomic system and
mitochondria and just the basics of why this
work is important.
And if they want to just be beef from first
quarter to fourth quarter,
this is why this work is important.
And so I started off at the beginning in
Hunter's career as a sophomore, like,
you know, we were doing, I don't know,
12 to 1600 yards a session with Tempo twice a
week, I think, and it was, you know,
that's 28 to 3200 yards.
I mean,
that's not that's like half a mile total for a
week.
Yeah.
So, you know,
and when people get upset about doing that
work, it's okay, well,
you have bigger issues than what you're doing
with the athlete, you can't even program that.
And so, you know,
starting them off doing that very simple work.
And then as the years progressed,
and his workload on the field became more like
it through his junior and senior year,
because he was playing both ways.
And if you kind of look at practice data with,
you know, total yardage running practice,
how much he was running, you know,
potentially in a game,
like they need to get that time on their feet,
you know,
throughout the week and kind of learn how to
withstand that from a durability standpoint.
So, I mean,
at the height of his training through his
junior and senior year, like, you know,
we he was doing like 7200 yards total in a
week.
And some of that was, you know,
in 10th of a tempo,
just because that's the way practice is.
Yeah.
But he thrived within those sessions.
And I can back it up with kind of how he
looked on HRB for training.
I could tell, you know,
what his resting heart rate was doing,
you know, throughout these, you know,
heavy periods of training,
on top of testing him within the power work
that we were doing,
whether it be through vertical jump or
standing long jump.
And there was no hindrance to his performance.
And so, again,
it's understanding the demand of the sport,
building these athletes up, you know, slowly,
giving them the context of why it's important,
and then getting feedback from them, like,
how do you feel during practice now?
Oh, you know, it's hard, but it's not hard.
And then you look at game film and all this,
and they're, you know, playing extremely well,
they're recovering.
And so,
all these things that I think goes on social
media of you should never condition aerobic
work is worthless comes from a, I think,
a uneducated point from a physiological
standpoint on what humans need to kind of
thrive in these high stress situations.
Yeah,
I think some of it too can come from kind of
like,
like almost if that quality has been taken to
the point of abuse,
like you could even say like bilateral
squatting or bilateral deadlifting taken to
the point where athletes are getting injured,
like pendulum swinging all the way the other
way or seeing athletes who are over
conditioned,
which is certainly or especially over
conditioned at the expense of speed and power
and and even like play and things that are
joyful in nature and like that.
I think that can, you know,
that's I think a pretty common rationale,
but it is it is interesting for me because
that's something I've I've thought about.
I thought about,
especially in the scope of like track and
field.
Well,
do you is active recovery best on those off
days or is doing nothing?
And I think sometimes I almost wonder too, I,
I,
and this is where I think having you have those
monitoring tools is that fantastic way to help
answer that.
Well,
because I've heard of coaches who do both of
those things.
Some who just do complete rest and I,
it's for me personally, I, I know,
I think maybe I come from in a lot of place
where I just personally enjoy doing something
like I,
I like just going out and moving my body or
whatever it is.
Even then the best,
I would say almost the best recovery day for
me was actually playing racquetball.
It's just like fun.
You know,
track a ball and it's like low level and like
that was, that was always really fun.
It's kind of like it all.
And there's,
I'm sure there's so many possible ways to do
it, but that was a,
that is a thing I still do consider from time
to time is what makes it ideal to do one of
those or the other total day off versus an
active day and aerobic day and things like
that.
Yeah, and I think again,
talking to the athlete on what they like to
do, what they prefer, you know,
Hunter would go up for hikes on the weekend,
you know.
And I, you know, because high school kids,
like,
I think if any group should have consistent
monitoring with HRB,
I honestly think it's high school kids because
of the school load.
And I've done surveys with them,
like on average,
I think our kids spend 28 to 35 hours a week
in school, in school.
And then, you know,
it varies two to eight hours a week of
homework.
And then you have your sport.
So, you know,
just the overall general stress that's imposed
upon them is quite high.
And you need to understand we're dealing with
human beings here.
And so, you know,
just because you have a training session
planned,
it doesn't mean that they're going to be able
to, you know, benefit from it because they're,
you know, they're just overworked.
Yeah.
And track and field, I don't know,
there's just some sports like track and field
is just, it's just so, I mean,
the kids just get beat up so bad.
It's like they're in a contact sport,
at least in the high school.
So,
Yeah,
I know for me when I first got to college and
I didn't have to go to class all day,
I was like, this is amazing.
Like whatever, there's a spent all my life.
Like, yeah,
it's sometimes I think you take that for
granted.
So I'd like to get into the plyometric piece
and then a few other questions.
So you mentioned you eventually got to depth
jumps,
but how do how does the plyometrics unfold in
maybe talk about you got to depth jumps with
Hunter like what's the end game with what you
look for in your plyo program?
Yeah, so like when he was younger,
it was a lot of rudimentary jumping,
so jump rope and skipping and skipping with
the jump rope and ice skater jumps,
pogo jumps.
I mean, just a lot of low -level things.
And then even within the gymnastics program,
there is quite a bit or there can be quite a
bit of jumping if guys are trying to do back
flips consistently.
And so just organically,
they're getting a lot of it.
And so that's kind of how we started it out.
And then like into his junior year,
then it became a little bit more structured.
So, okay,
we're going to do two or three series of 30
box jumps at varying heights with specific
rest periods.
But again,
just kind of basic jumping up and seeing how
he landed and all those types of things.
And then maybe we start going to some low
hurdle jumping.
So whether it be on a 7 or 12 inch hurdle,
working on some more reactive stuff off the
ground,
we may even go to a low depth jump from there
at the beginning.
So maybe dropping off a 6 or 12 inch box and
just teaching him how to kind of get off
there.
And more on a horizontal pattern with those
things at the beginning.
So I think that's a good thing.
I also would have them just practice dunking a
basketball if they could or trying to dunk it
with a tennis ball because they love it and
the intent is like extremely high.
And I mean, this past year,
I bought an adjustable hoop for the weight
room.
So we were doing different dunks and different
jumping activities.
And so,
but then kind of going back to Hunter and then
as he got into preparing for a senior year,
it was okay,
now we're going to do jump squats with 30,
40% of his back squat.
So now we're intensifying this and he's doing,
I'm tracking it with a bar monitor to make
sure that his speed is good.
And then we're starting to do depth jumps at
higher heights.
So we're going from, you know,
I think I started him at 18.
I think the highest that Joe I got at the end
was, I think he dropped off a 30 inch box.
And at first it would be drop down and jump
up.
And then as it got closer to the season,
I mean, I don't know,
specificity is really pertains here,
but then it was more of okay,
drop and then jump out.
And then okay, drop,
jump out and then jump up.
And so there was even more complexity.
And then we did at some point,
some hurdle bounding from higher hurdles.
I think he was doing 24 inches.
I think we were doing like five to six.
And we would do those to a sprint as well.
And so, you know,
that's kind of how we talked out at,
and that was like three weeks before that
competition that he went to.
And you could just,
like he could just tell by the way he was
moving and everything that his response to
this stuff was just like unbelievable.
So, you know, I knew that he was capable of,
you know, jumping quite far.
Yeah,
you mentioned the the low room hoop and it
made me think any intent and it made me think
a little bit of bench press.
So it's almost like if you had to pick only
two things for high school boys to do in
training that they would be the most
passionate about doing.
I feel like bench press and low room dunks
maybe trying to dunk on each other.
Like one guy tries to block it and one guy
tries to dunk.
That might be the that might be the two.
I think that might be a solid two to put in
the training program for a lot of individuals.
You got the lower and upper body, you know,
and the the intent is going to be there.
Yeah.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
I mean, I grew up with three younger brothers.
We had a dunk who it would raise from like
eight and a half to, you know,
nine and a half feet.
And, you know, you would watch Julia serving,
you know, dunk on somebody, then, you know,
you're trying to go out and dunk on your
brother, you know, the same way he did it.
And so these, yeah, these kids, I mean, it's,
it's fun.
And like you said, those two things, I think,
yeah, you could have,
you could run your bowl training based off of
those two things.
I think it would be, you know,
it would be so interesting.
Back when I did my master's thesis was on,
it basically the role of intent in how does it
change the depth jump.
I had people just do a depth jump and just
jump as high as you can.
Like you're not trying to go over a hurdle or
touch anything.
You just jump in space and then the other
constraints were as you jump over a hurdle or
you jump up and touch a vertex.
And when there's,
when there's goals or an intention,
you jump higher or faster.
But it would have been interesting to do a
meaningful constraint, you know?
Like, okay, here's a hoop.
Now let's do it.
All right.
Now here's a hoop and someone's going to try
to block you.
You know, I just,
I don't know if I can capture that in the lab.
But, and that,
but that would be so interesting to see
because I would be willing to bet that for,
especially if you've played basketball and
it's not just a vertex,
like it's a hoop and someone's going to try to
block you.
Like,
I think there's going to be some higher rate
of force development there.
And that's the contact.
Yeah, I mean,
so we have I have two tether balls at the
school that I throw over the power racks and I
pull them up, and I'll have kids, you know,
run and jump up and try to head those,
you know, like a soccer header.
So the intent on that,
like you haven't just jumped up and try to
touch the top of the power rack,
then you put the ball up there and watch them,
like how they look at the ball,
like their run up to, I mean,
it's like it looks like it's the intent has
gone up like a thousand exponentially,
just simply hanging a little something up
there to try to get them to attain.
It's like,
why wouldn't you try to expose and that's why
play and go back to this.
That's why within the play structure with your
friends, like that's constantly there.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
And that's where this has gradually hit me
more and more each year,
but weighing everything done in training
against, especially like agility,
change of direction, like short speed stuff,
weighing whatever you do against what you see
happening in a game, you know,
the intensity and the speed and everything.
And it's like, just because, you know,
if I'm doing like an agility drill of some
sort with some cones laid out,
and just because I might make a cut that is,
you know, quote unquote, correct,
if it's 10% slower than what I did at the
game, I don't know,
sometimes I just think about the stimulation
and what my body is getting out of that thing,
you know, versus actual game, game speed,
game,
or just things that are there that are motivating
or just finding something in that drill that
is motivating enough to get that extra power
output to adapt to.
Yeah,
I don't know if you're if you follow hockey at
all.
But there was a hockey players from Russia,
Pavel Dotsuk.
They call him the magic man.
And if people don't follow Mark O'Sullivan on
Twitter, like I would highly recommend it.
He's a researcher in Norway right now.
I think he's originally from Ireland.
But him and a colleague did a study on Pavel.
How he how Pavel learned hockey growing up in
the Soviet Union.
And so one of the games so Pavel liked to when
he was playing with his with his friends,
like they tried to make the game the
constraint they put on themselves to make it
harder or more and more enjoyable.
Like it's extremely fascinating.
And so one of the things that Pavel liked to
do was he liked to play ice hockey and felt
boots on the ice and he played with a bouncy
ball.
And so it was it was creating, you know,
a totally different game that they had that he
had to start and stop differently.
And so Mark O'Sullivan and I forget the guy's
name that wrote the paper with them,
but they did a full research study on these
constraints and economic constraints.
And, you know,
they didn't have a lot of money for sticks.
So Pavel, you know,
he didn't do a lot of slap shots because if
his stick broke,
he didn't know when he would get another one.
So that economic constraint was an advantage
for him on how he built his his game.
And so I constantly think about this on the
kids and how we're training them,
like trying to put or have them put their own
constraints within some of these things to
just give them a totally different experience.
Yeah,
kind of like what you and I were talking about,
about the the five rules that you were working
working with on the high jump.
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Yeah, yeah, for sure.
It is, you know,
it's funny because actually that was, um,
like there's the gift of inaccessibility so
many times, like even high jump,
we spent more time doing, um, you know, that,
uh,
constraint based jump drill to warm up where
we just did four or five different types of
high jump.
And every time you completed them,
we'd raise the bar.
It was, um, just the, the area,
it had just rained.
And so I didn't want them doing circle running
drills, uh,
to warm up with just their tennis shoes on.
Usually I do those with tennis shoes.
I could have had them do it their spikes on,
but I was like, you know,
I'm just going to take advantage of,
we're just going to put the spikes on and have
some fun.
And you know, it's, it's those,
sometimes the environment or rainy day or
whatever it is, uh, even, you know, um,
when I was, um, my first depth jump program.
So speaking of early intensification,
you mentioned, you mentioned that you,
you know, you,
you're holding off like the highest depth
jumps till later on.
And so I, um,
I had done like the high repetition jump
programs earlier in my like freshman year of
high school, like eighth grade,
like the arrow alert,
like like the do 150 squat jumps type thing.
Well,
what's interesting is people would see a program
like arrow art where it's just like the only
way up is numbers and say, Oh,
that's a horrible program.
It's just going to destroy your knees.
Well,
I actually never made it through the whole
program,
but the first two or three or four weeks of
the program actually gained quite a bit on my
jumping because it was, wasn't absurd yet.
You know, and it's like, yeah, do it.
If you haven't been trained, like, I mean,
for me, I hadn't been squat trained.
So yeah,
doing two sets of 30 or two sets of 40,
like half squat body weight jumps was actually
really, really good for me.
Once it got up to a certain number,
it was too much.
But, um, anyways, I,
I got this book called the science of jumping
or program.
I think it's probably still out there.
It's, I mean, this was like 1999 or 2000.
And it was a depth jump program.
Basically it was like,
and it had some stuff you'd mentioned,
like depth jump to long jump was in there.
Um, also depth jump variations.
That was the program that actually told me
don't do a, uh, like distance running.
If you are vertical gains and up until then I
like love distance running because my dad did
it and I did it.
I mean, I wasn't like 30 miles a week,
but I was running.
I'd go out and run like two or three miles at
a time in eighth grade.
And so stop doing that.
Uh, I do love caveat though with the aerobic.
I do tempo, tempo sprints for me are,
are especially over hurdles where it's kind of
fun.
That is my bread and butter,
like seven by 200 over hurdles at like tempo
pace.
That's, that's my jam helps me recover.
But anyways, the, the depth jump,
I had the economic constraint of, well,
my dad built these boxes for me that were
like, not the world's greatest boxes,
but I basically had two heights.
So I didn't have like nice adjustments,
but so I had to be kind of specific when I
wanted to make the jump to the bigger box,
but I started to figure out,
and this is just me in my backyard on grass.
And I started to figure out on my own,
like I will jump higher if, oh, hey,
there's a tree branch over here.
If I go jump up and try to touch this tree
branch, I think it feels more explosive.
And so I would just like drag the boxes over
to a tree and whatever branch seemed
attainable,
I would just go and jump and try to touch
that.
And you know,
and then maybe I'd find it would change on the
day because, you know, it might rain,
the tree branches are hanging lower,
the tree grows or whatever.
Like, but it's just kind of funny because,
but I'll tell you, like,
I think there was something about that
autonomy and that program too,
and kind of making it my own.
I mean, on that program,
I went from getting maybe my wrist,
this is at age 16.
My wrist probably like maybe a couple inches
over the rim,
maybe three inches over the rim to elbow at
the rim in about maybe like a,
I would say about a three or four month time
span with like the depth jumped.
I would say maybe I was,
I'll give myself a little more credit before
on a good day.
Maybe I could have got my wrist like maybe
three or four inches over, but it was, I mean,
it was unbelievable how much I improved in a
short period of time.
And I do think the program and the buy into
the program was substantial,
but there was also something to, oh,
another thing I did was they had medicine ball
throws and vertical medicine ball throws.
And in the backyard,
I had like these kind of telephone pole lines
that I was a weird neighbor.
I didn't throw it.
I didn't throw it over them.
I think that would have been silly.
I might have tried to once,
but I always tried to throw it like up to the
line, like wherever the line was,
I would try to just throw it up, you know,
to the level of the line.
And so I had a lot of stuff kind of like that.
Funny enough.
And, you know,
in the hindsight of being better at my sport,
which I was trying to dunk for basketball,
I should have had constraints for basketball.
But I ended up becoming a high jumper.
So I guess, you know,
it all worked itself out.
But I always loved those stories.
Also reminds me too,
just one other thing quickly is the book of
balance.
Yeah.
It was one of the first books I read on
training and performance.
It was like the fastest table tennis player in
all of England,
like the fastest meaning like literally his
hand looked like it was probably like in the
matrix or something where it's like,
it's just like so fast back and forth.
That guy grew up playing where the room wasn't
big enough.
And so he didn't,
he had to literally just butt up against the
table and he didn't have the luxury of like
doing those big jumping shots that you see
like in the highlight reels.
He just had to react faster.
And that's why he was so fast.
It was an economic constraint.
And I like those are so cool because those are
like the underdog.
So it's like Rocky.
It's like Rocky training in Siberia.
Hey, what do I got here to train with?
You know, there's something that's just,
it's a story and we don't talk about those
things in training nearly as much as we should
because that's what makes so much of it fun
and meaningful.
And oh, hey,
you remember that gym we used to have to train
in or like Joe DeFranco's 500 square foot
closet.
I remember him talking about that.
You know,
when he was on the podcast a long time ago and
all the great results he got training out of
that with individuals.
So you got me on kind of on a little bit of a
tangent, but it's a good one.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I think, Joel,
what you need to do is you need to have,
you need to market your tree branch telephone
wire.
Somehow,
you come up with a name and you can mail out
tree branches and wire to your potential
customers.
Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure.
Or maybe it's like the ancient samurai method
or someone's like as the grass grows,
like you jump over it every day or something.
Right, right, right.
It's hard to, I don't know how much, you know,
you could just like charge for that, you know,
because it's like, well,
you just kind of find a field and just have at
it.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Those are, those are, yeah, it's, or like,
yeah, the, the,
the picking of the Milo picking up the,
the calf as it grows up or whatever.
This.
So it's,
it's just so cool to think about all that.
So just a couple more things here, Mark,
before we finish up.
One,
I did want to ask you more about the hill,
the hill sprints and some adaptations with
hill sprints.
Oh, I did want to say too, I had this thought,
as you had mentioned,
plyometrics being more horizontal in nature
initially, I believe.
And I was just going to make a comment is I
think that's,
that in itself is a constraint I think is
really cool because it,
it keeps the contact times pretty quick.
You know,
it keeps things more bouncy and you don't even
have to necessarily tell an athlete, hey,
be quick off the ground in these vertical
pogos that we're going to do in this
variation.
It's just like, hey, if you're,
if you're covering horizontal distance,
it kind of takes care of that itself.
Um, so I just thought that was, you know,
I just wanted to bring that up because I
thought that was really, um,
I think that's something that makes it a
little easier and cleaner in that perspective
of things.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
So anyways, with the,
so I wanted to ask you about Hill Sprints,
but I did want to say, because I,
I know you go into this in the article,
the UF3 part, I believe,
blog on Training Hunter,
and you have like the breakdown of how you did
the weeks and things like that.
I'm curious, like what,
what did a typical week look like?
How did this come together in a training week?
And how did that progress over time?
I'm sure it wasn't always the same, right?
And you know, there was input on his end,
but just generally speaking.
Yeah, yeah.
So, at the, like,
kind of the weekly template at the beginning
was, you know, we had three days.
So like Monday, Wednesday, Friday,
where it was, you know, leg circuits,
you know, sprinting, you know,
basic jumping when he was, you know, younger,
like sophomore year.
And so, you know, on Monday, Friday,
it may be, you know, multiple circuits of,
you know, the body weight squat to a lunge,
to a step up, to a pogo jump.
And the volume on that would range anywhere
from like three to five circuits.
And then if you look at Vern's progression,
you know,
over time I would try to get Hunter to do
those circuits multiple times without any rest
in between.
So I think at the end, you know,
I have to say, I don't know,
four to eight weeks,
he could do five circuits without any rest.
And then from there, then I would, you know,
we would move on to maybe a little bit more
complex.
On Wednesday,
the circuit was a little bit different.
So it was more,
so we would actually use some resistance,
like through dumbbells, we would do, you know,
isometrics on those given days.
But three days a week where it was, you know,
lower body focus.
And then prior to that,
we would maybe do some gymnastics at the
beginning.
He would do games with his friends, you know,
with the team,
and then we would do some sprinting.
And the way that the school is set up and the
weather out here in Oregon is like it's hit
and miss.
So at the beginning, if weather was nice,
we would run hills.
And we would start off with 10 yards.
I have like two hills that, you know,
range from like 10 to 30 yards.
And so, you know,
we'd start off with say six or eight of those
and, you know,
do that two or three times a week,
weather permitting.
And then as he got older, you know, after say,
you know, a year, year and a half, you know,
then the lifting on, you know,
Mondays and Fridays would be intensive,
I guess, for lack of a better term.
And then Wednesdays would be more of an
alactic jumping day.
You know,
almost like a Warner Gunther progression on
the extensive side.
And then as he got into a senior year,
it was kind of the same setup,
but it was just kind of how intensive those,
you know, those Monday, Friday sessions were.
And then his junior and senior year,
I actually started using like oxidative work
with the lower body,
throws so through like tempo squats at the end
of this session to kind of add more layers to,
you know, his aerobic capacity, you know,
to build up his work capacity.
So that was,
and then tempo runs on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
And then as,
and I know we'll talk about it here shortly,
but then we would do Hill Sprints, you know,
as a conditioning stool,
which I can talk more about on kind of why we
did that and kind of how I progressed it with
him.
So that was kind of the basic week.
Yeah.
Yeah,
let's let's finish up with that then because
the the hill sprints for conditioning.
I think there's some specific adaptations
you're looking for.
So yeah,
tell me a little bit about that usage versus
just pure speed.
Yeah, so in 2007,
Balmsted can gave a seminar at my training
center.
And this is where I first learned about
oxidative capacity of the fast twitch fiber.
And that term,
the adaptations that Bal talked about at that
point, it was like a watershed moment.
I think as coaches,
we maybe have two or three of those ah -ha
seminars or things that happen that you read.
And so that seminar that Bal gave us changed
the way that I thought about training and
still kind of think about it today.
And so the method that I use is it's an all
out sprint either uphill or for what the sled
for less than five seconds.
So you're recruiting as much fast fibers as
you can, but because the duration is so short,
you don't want to exceed your anaerobic
threshold that it's purely aerobic.
And that's going to lend itself to
repeatability within these team sports.
And so that was,
and that still is kind of the basis of these
still sprint sessions that I do with the
athletes.
But then you also get, I think,
some residuals on the speed side as well.
So it's kind of a byproduct of that because
there's times at school where I can't do any
sprinting on the field because we just don't
have access to it because of lacrosse or
baseball or track and field is using it.
And so the constraints of what I can and can't
use kind of, okay,
I have to do this because...
Yeah.
I was gonna say with like a quick note there.
Yeah,
so I was gonna say you had mentioned even the
speed residuals.
And it is interesting because I think if you
had mentioned like okay,
we're gonna do if it's a lot of sprints and
it's a short recovery time,
I think it's easy to only think, well,
that's only endurance,
that's only speed endurance.
But I found that I mean,
I wouldn't make this the only workout,
but if you've been doing a lot of just more
shorter emphasis workouts, just short,
high quality,
a little bit more typical when we think of
speed training and you've kind of hit a
plateau.
I found workouts like that,
like you mentioned the sled, like this past,
just this past year.
I remember I started this because there was
one day in the gym myself that I didn't have
time.
It was a speed day just for my own training
and I just didn't have time.
And so I can strain and I had like 15,
20 minutes.
So I hooked myself up to a sled and I did
every minute on the minute sprint for it was
probably about 15,
20 yards with the space I had.
And so I mean, that was not that long.
It definitely didn't go into lactate for each
one.
You know, it's pretty short burst,
but it's every minute and you recover enough
that you aren't you again getting into that.
You said anaerobic threshold, but it's,
you know,
with the next day or two after that workout,
I was like, man, she feel pretty good.
Like,
and I started putting stuff like that in some
client workouts and it was always met really
well.
It actually made me think there was one day
this was back to like, you know,
I think we talked about conditioning coaches
and what was the worst workout and I will say
my freshman year of college,
the distance coach was like the head track
coach or the cross country coach.
So of course,
all the workouts were like way longer.
And honestly, I had a really, I mean, I,
there was a lot of adjustments as being a
freshman, but that was not a good year.
I didn't jump as high as I did in high school
for the most part.
Slower, long jump was way worse.
Not playing basketball anymore either hurt a
lot, but yeah.
So a lot of like just longer running that
really wasn't that helpful or effective.
And one of the workouts we did though,
I'll never forget it.
It was in the fall and we only did it once.
And any workout you only do once is kind of
like a, here we go.
Like, you know, it's like, oh,
the mental it's like,
let's do a hundred hundreds or something.
But it was a 20 minute hill run where you
sprinted up this hill that was, I don't know,
maybe it was like 80 meters and then jogged,
walked jog down.
I think you had to jog back down.
And it was high intensity.
Like I was racing this guy, uh,
one of my training partners up each time.
And it was brutal.
I mean, I was like dying at the end,
but then the next day I was screwing up,
like just in the gym shooting around and I
went to do some dunks.
And I was like flying and I was like,
I don't know what that did yesterday.
But something good happened.
And I wouldn't say it wasn't one of those
things where I would say, I wouldn't say,
oh yeah, do that every week or twice.
So I think it kind of loses whatever it gives
you then.
I think it's almost just one of those things
where it just kind of digs into the,
the muscles in a just different way,
just due to the repeat nature.
And maybe there's some elasticity stuff in
there too, you know, but ever since then,
I was always a little bit more open to that
idea of like, yeah, that right repeat path.
And I think that's just the power,
not just for the, you know, the obvious,
but also for, you know, a little bit,
just a little bit of that plateau breaking
when you've kind of tapped out all the pure,
the pure speed stuff.
Yeah, absolutely.
And with the team sport athletes, you know,
I mean, and it's all the rage now,
like how fast you run in a game, or you know,
I'm hitting 23 miles an hour.
I mean,
that's just like it's it's clickbait on,
you know, social media.
And again, I mean, obviously, man,
speed is important.
I'm not saying that.
But within sports of like football,
lacrosse basketball, it's about repeatability.
And you have to build that repeatability
through durability.
And and if you don't, then, you know,
when it means something at the end of the
game,
you just may not have the speed to be able to
do it.
And so with those field sprints,
like one of the things that I've done in the
past is I've used the pre lap before I've used
some other GPS tracking just to, okay,
you know, we're going to do, you know,
four quarters of this,
you're going to do 10 per quarter.
Like,
what is the speed and degradation through
that?
And, you know, when do you start hitting,
you know, when do you start slowing down?
And so to me,
that data is important then to build,
go back and start building some even more
specific training to try to improve that
capacity.
And,
and I've even had Moxie monitor on the athletes
that do that, it's like, okay,
we're going to have GPS,
we're going to have heart rate monitor,
and now we're going to have a Moxie,
we're going to have a timing gate,
and we're really going to see really narrow
this focus down on, you know,
when stuff starts to go awry and why it's
doing that, how it's doing that.
And, okay,
how can I build the training to try to,
you know, improve those qualities?
Yeah.
For the Hill Sprint workouts,
what would the sample be of?
You said like four or five second bursts.
How many would the rest be?
Like what's the typical volume?
Is there a drop -off performance you're
looking at?
So with so with the football guys at the
beginning,
like when I start those and we can typically
start them in like May, you know,
we'll do 20 reps of that, you know,
so I think it ends up being 20 to 25 meters
for all the guys and the rest is 50 to 60
seconds.
And then, you know,
I usually take the volume up to like 40 within
those time frames.
With with just the regular rest period.
And then as we get into the summer and now it
becomes more specific to how we play the game,
it's going to be, you know, 15 to 20 yards.
So even now,
it's probably less than four seconds or three
seconds even.
And it's going to be a 30 second rest period.
So it's specific to the no huddle offense that
we run.
And then we'll work up to 50.
Yeah.
So with breaks in between like quarters and
and and half.
Gotcha.
So with the 40 years saying before,
like it's about a minute each.
So like that's like a 40 minute workout or so.
Yeah, yeah.
And that method is Victor Selyanov.
And I don't know if you've ever talked about
him on his,
but that Val's method that he taught us,
he got from Victor, who was doing that work,
I think back in the mid 90s.
And so that's where the, you know,
the training that training method originally
came from.
And so those are the recommendations that I
typically use there.
Yeah, you know,
I don't know if you were at the seminar.
It was J.
DeMayo seminar with it was him.
Yeah, I was like, oh nice.
Yeah, that's awesome.
Yeah, I remember my in.
My intern at the time, Jake Jensen, I think,
translated Victor's top.
Yeah,
I remember one of the things I remember very
clearly about that is like,
you know Victor I think it was kind of a povel
satsaline has talked about I believe is like
the basically lactates bad don't you know It's
gonna burn up something in the muscles or
something like that and then Val was like I
disagree And I was like this is like who do I
believe I'm you know I mean this was like a
decade ago for me, and I had no idea.
I don't know who to believe here
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I mean, I'm not to say that like,
you know, I don't think that by any means,
I'm sure it doesn't invalidate anything with
the actual method.
It's just what happens, you know,
what happens if you have lacked, you know,
like, it isn't.
I mean, I know for me, I always feel like,
like that little bit of lactate, you know,
maybe it's more like how much, you know,
like a little bit of lactate, good,
a lot of lactate, probably a,
and there's also like that discord nation that
comes with it.
I, yeah, I, something I'm still,
I still think about every now and then,
but just practically,
I guess I kind of like that, you know,
slight lactate here and there feeling.
Yeah.
And I mean,
when you put the moxie on these athletes and
have them, I mean,
it's all about at least like how much oxygen
down during, you know,
these bouts of exercise,
are they getting and not getting.
And then you can kind of dictate the rest
periods.
Because I mean,
Randy talks about using humon with, you know,
the Chinese athletes.
And it's really not fish on the recovery time.
Because I think Randy talked about in your
podcast where I think one of his athletes like
needed like a minute 30 rest,
because it was very individualized.
And I think it said Sue needed like three
minutes.
Yeah.
So it's not even necessarily the workout
itself, but more about okay,
how are they recovering from those workouts to
repeat it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
A hundred percent.
Yeah.
I remember when Randy was talking about that,
it's it actually makes me want to dig my off.
I have a Moxie, but the laptop,
I didn't have a non Mac laptop to run it off
of.
So I bought a cheap one that didn't work well
and it's still sitting here in my basement.
But I might have to go try that, honestly.
But anyways,
I know that's I think that's about the end of
the questions mark that I had for you here.
You know,
someday I'm sure I'll have a round three.
I think actually I probably have a few I have
to run back at you at some other point.
But man, a great talking to you again.
I always enjoy these conversations and I will
I'll make sure I post in the show notes the
Hunter Kavanaugh series and just so everyone
can also just give me more details there.
Yeah, and then you can market your tree bench.
Yeah, I'll be working on that.
I actually made, I think I made a note here.
I'm going to call it the economic constraints
force or something.
How to constrain yourself.
That sounds really good.
That's what it'll be.
So, all right.
Well, thank you so much, Mark.
I appreciate your time, man.
Thank you, Joel.
Thanks for tuning in to another podcast.
I will see you next week.