Latest / The Strength In Numbers Podcast / EP 32: Tommy Hansen | The Volleyball Performance Blueprint

Transcript

EP 32: Tommy Hansen | The Volleyball Performance Blueprint · The Strength In Numbers Podcast

• 0:00
  Performance and injury prevention are two sides of the
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  same coin. So whether you're training for
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  performance or you're training for injury prevention, all it is
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  is a spectrum of stress management.
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  Whatever the priority is, that is the thing you're going to get
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  better AT and you can't just dabble in a bunch of different
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  things and expect great results in all those things.
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  There's deep tier pogos, leaping, bounding, any of that
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  stuff. We like to get as much variety
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  as possible within our warm up with all the athletes and
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  whatever they can handle. One, it's fun. 2, we're building
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  all those angles. Once we get to the important
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  stuff, which is going to be depth jumping, Max stuffer
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  hurdle jumps, our freestyle jumps, whatever we end up doing,
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  that stuff is done in a way where the only option is Max
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  output. And then that variability in
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  that bandwidth of what what angles you can do them in shrink
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  tremendously. The biggest advice that I have
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  is that whether you have 300 followers or you have 500,000
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  followers, your your followers should never ever be able to
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  tell a difference in you or who you are as a person.
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  And as that status changes, you are still the same person behind
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  that screen, still the same authentic person that you were
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  training the few athletes that you had when you had zero money.
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  Welcome to the Strength in Numbers podcast.
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  I'm your host John Bloom and today's guest is Tommy Hansen.
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  Tommy's the owner performed for life along with being the
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  Director of sports performance at Top Flight Volleyball Club.
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  Now on Instagram, his handle is Freestylejum guy and he really
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  secializes in training volleyball players and also in
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  jum training. We have an incredible
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  conversation on all things volleyball training, what injury
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  prevention actually is, true landing mechanics, what his
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  Sprint training looks like for volleyball players, and
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  navigating the youth and club sports landscape.
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  Tommy also lays out how he grew his Instagram from 5000 to
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  45,000 followers, what actually drives true business growth for
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  him, and where he wants to build his business too long term.
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  Enjoy the episode Tommy. Man, I'm pumped to get to have
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  this conversation with you today.
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  I've been following your stuff and really enjoying just
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  learning from the content you put it out and also just seeing
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  that you do a really, really good job about training and
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  communicating what you do. So man, I appreciate you being
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  here, No. Problem man, I'm looking forward
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  to this stuff as you get into it.
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  So just real quick, for people who don't know you are Tommy,
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  could you just give a little background on kind of who you
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  are and what you do? Yeah.
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  So my name is Tommy Hanson, Instagram.
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  I'm known as freestyle jump Guy, which is kind of my tag name.
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  So I grew up, I played four sports, soccer, basketball,
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  baseball, and I kicked on the football team in high school,
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  ultimately played college baseball.
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  I always loved to train, but so yeah, I always loved the train.
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  So that was always something that was important to me.
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  One, because even though people see a lot of the content I put
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  out now that I'm relatively athletic now as a 27 year old, I
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  was always athletic growing up, but there was always a missing
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  piece. And I always wondered why there
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  was always people that were more athletic than I was.
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  And just like any other strength coach that gets into the field,
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  usually they're good athletes that aren't elite athletes and
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  try to figure out how to get there.
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  I was one of those guys. And so from now or since I've
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  been in high school, I've been training a lot.
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  Once I graduated college, ultimately played baseball in
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  college. I spent a lot of time with my
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  strength coach, Jake Alward in college.
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  And I know you talked about that as well as we talked on before,
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  before we hopped on here. I learned a lot from my strength
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  coach in college. That's kind of where I built my
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  even more interest for training. And then once I graduated, it's
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  just been self experimentation, taking multiple internships.
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  I took an internship at Northern Illinois University Huskies.
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  That's my hometown team. Then I spent some time at TCU
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  under Coach Zach Dakin in Texas and that was one of the best
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  experiences I've ever had and kind of ultimate kick started my
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  career in the private sector, even though it was a public
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  sector internship. And then I spent a little bit of
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  time as a as a trainer in a commercial gym and trained old,
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  older clients, about 40 to 70, just genpop clients with a few
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  athletes. And then eventually about four,
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  just under four years ago, I started my own business called
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  Perform for Life. And then that's kind of built up
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  over the last few years. Now I owned my own facility and
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  trained about 90% volleyball players and kind of do mostly
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  vertical jump stuff. But I do also train athletes
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  from all different walks of life.
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  So I have youth groups that are fifth grade and below that it's
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  basically recessed when they come in.
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  I've got other or college football players, college
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  baseball players, but online, if you see anything, what I do,
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  it's pretty much a lot of vertical jump in volleyball.
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  So that's kind of been how I've came to be as what I do now.
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  It's been a lot of self experimentation, a lot of taking
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  and stealing ideas from other people, and then it's molding
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  and kind of what I am now. Yeah, that's awesome.
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  And you, like you said in the beginning about maybe being a
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  little more athletic now and just learning.
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  And I know that's something I was thinking about like, man,
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  like I could go back and like train myself or change some of
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  the things when I was an athlete.
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  Like I'd love to go back and do that.
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  Like as I feel like the that pursuit of like getting better
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  individually, whether it's why you're an athlete even now, like
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  that has always led to the most insight and and knowledge and
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  understanding from myself is like actually trying to figure
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  these things out for myself. Yeah, I agree 100% with that
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  because I was the guy growing up where I think I spent like 10
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  grand of my own money buying resources and courses and all
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  this stuff because I always thought like, oh, the next book
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  is going to get me the solution. The next course is going to give
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  me the solution. I can't tell you that any book
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  or resource, even though it's putting me kind of in the right
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  direction with training and make me not do stupid stuff.
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  Experimenting and doing stuff on my own and understanding how
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  everything feels, how I recover, how it feels in year 1 versus
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  Year 5, how to understand how my body works.
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  That has taught me more and helps me relate more to my
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  athletes than any certification or any course or any class that
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  I've ever taken in college. So I know this might be a little
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  off topic, but like for any coaches out there that want to
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  really nail down a certain niche or a certain skill, the best
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  thing you could possibly do is just immerse yourself in that.
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  Even if you suck at it at first, you might not become world class
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  at it, but you will learn so much in the process and you and
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  your athletes will benefit from that.
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  And that's the best thing that I've ever done, getting it to
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  like when I first started, I could not hop on one leg to save
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  my life. When I was in high school, my
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  Achilles felt like I wanted to explode anytime I jumped off one
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  leg. Now, after doing it for 3-4
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  years, understanding how to progress it, I'm pretty darn
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  bouncy on one leg. And I always told myself I was
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  not a one leg jumper. I've gotten pretty darn good at
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  it. And so that's the one thing, if
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  you want to get good of something, immerse yourself
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  fully into it. And it's hard.
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  You might not succeed as much as you think, but you will learn so
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  much along the way, in any in every facet.
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  Yeah. And I think, you know, as you
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  talk about like, especially if you're trying to get in a niche,
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  like you're talking about volleyball and like I do a lot
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  of basketball triggered my volleyball.
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  But especially when you're thinking about that sport, I
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  feel like even if you're really trying to experiment and train
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  yourself, like just in the strength conditioning aspect,
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  immersing yourself in the actual sport too can be so valuable.
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  Like I know for me, like when I'm really playing basketball
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  and feeling like what that's what that's like to play that
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  sport while trying to do the training.
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  And it's like, oh, now I really, I kind of understand why, you
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  know, maybe these athletes are feeling these things or don't
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  want to do these things or want to do these certain things.
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  And that's, you know, I understand what I'm actually
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  asking of them and can make maybe a little more those finer
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  tune adjustments that I need and just have a more understanding
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  of the whole picture versus just like I'm training myself, but
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  I'm not including this whole other half of the the scenario
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  there. Yeah, I agree.
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  And especially if you're a young coach, you should be immersing
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  yourself and all that stuff. Yeah.
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  So like for me, I'm known online as kind of the volleyball
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  vertical jump guy. I haven't played volleyball my
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  entire life. Yeah.
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  So I get a lot of heat for that online from some stuff because
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  I'll post videos and kind of rage bait and be like, oh, look
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  at me, I got a 40 inch vert and I can do this and I'm hitting on
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  a women's net. It's rage bait and people are
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  roasting for it. But The thing is like last
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  Friday like, or should I say the last month, I've been getting
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  into some open gyms. I've been playing some sand
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  leagues. I'm trying to get into the game
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  a little bit. That way I can speak the
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  language even better. Even though I understand kind of
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  what's going on. I don't understand rotations.
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  I don't know what ball is supposed to be mine on the
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  court. I don't know where I'm supposed
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  to be going. I can just analyze how my kids
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  move and how I can improve that training.
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  But the more and more that I play, the more and more that I'm
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  putting some of these things together and I'm like, OK, once
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  they when an athlete tells me this, this is what they want to
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  get better at. Now I have felt what they are
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  telling me. Now I can come to come up with
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  some other ideas for that. And so any way you can create
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  any sort of relatability with your athletes and can talk to
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  them, it's a really good thing. And I think that's why a lot of
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  athletes come to strength coaches with a lot of their
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  issues is because I've had a lot of kids who will go to like APT
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  or a doctor or some somebody else who is very specialized in
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  their own realm, but they have zero clue at all about workload
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  management's on the court, what these athletes are feeling and
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  they cannot relate to these kids.
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  And so like some kids will come to me and like, Hey, we want you
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  to rehab his ankle. I'm like, I'm not qualified to
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  do that type of thing. But I mean, I understand what
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  you're saying, like you want someone who can relate to me or
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  their kid and what they're feeling on the court.
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  That's why I think any physios, any PTS, if you can immerse
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  yourself and don't and don't do it just for the sake of buy in.
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  Do it for the sake that you genuinely want to improve your
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  knowledge. That way you can create your or
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  sharpen your craft even more over time.
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  So I think you should fully immerse yourself, especially
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  when you're young. It can make mistakes without
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  getting hurt all the time. I think you should do that
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  because you'll build a lot of wisdom along the way with it as
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  you get older. Yeah, no, that's, that's super
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  good time. I couldn't agree more.
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  You know, you talk about running your business now and and you're
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  also the director at top flight volleyball club, right.
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  And and I know with that you were talking about four that's
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  one of the biggest in your area with the most number of
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  athletes. So I can only imagine you have
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  lots of volume going in through there and, and might be a little
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  bit different scenarios than what you see in your actual
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  business from a number at a standpoint at a time.
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  How especially in that where maybe it can't be quite as
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  individualized. Like how are you scaling the
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  coaching you're doing when you might have some that maybe they
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  train with you and they know how to train like they know your
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  system. Maybe you have some that are
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  brand new to training. You have different ages,
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  different outside schedules of school schedules and and what
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  they're doing there. Like how are you trying to give
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  each person what they need? Oh, luckily.
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  So you answered a little bit in your question there.
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  But when it comes to the population that I work with when
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  it comes to youth volleyball, it is all play in nearly zero
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  training for a lot of these girls.
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  And so The thing is I'm lucky that I'm in a situation where
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  everybody is so under trained that most things work for most
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  people. And so the athletes that have
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  trained with me at my facility and do so in the offseason when
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  we get to say if they play a top flight, I have a lot of athletes
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  from tons of different clubs. But if they come and they play
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  at the club that I'm working with a top flight, they know
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  like when I'm doing some stuff with other kids, they know the
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  little modifications they need to make that I know that they
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  know I would tell them in my private facility.
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  But The thing is, all the other athletes that have that don't
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  train the outside of it that are that are new because every year
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  I get a new batch of athletes depending on who wants to play
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  at the club. The general things tend to work
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  for most of them. I think as coaches, we get
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  really caught up in really trying to nail down like, oh,
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  this is the exact adaptation I want with this kid.
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  When you have someone who's under trained, if you just give
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  them a baseline program with good execution behind it, it's
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  going to work. Like it doesn't matter what you
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  give them, it will work. And so for me, with all the kids
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  that I work with, even though they might have high school
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  liftings, they might have outside trainer liftings.
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  You'd be surprised as qualified as many of these people are to
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  coach people, the the very basic principles of what makes
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  programs work still aren't being taught in a lot of these places.
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  And so for me, I'll teach this is how you do a Pogo, this is
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  how I want you to do a top jump. This is how quickly I want you
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  get off the ground. This is kind of how I want you
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  to feel when we're hopping. What part of your foot are you
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  landing on? Am I cycling my leg?
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  Am I keeping underneath me, my knee straight or my knees
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  bending? Like those details are not
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  taught 90% of environments and the ones that are, they get
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  really good results. And so when you combine in one
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  more thing before I move on the when it comes to lifting, I have
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  trained, I think if you combine privately and publicly, probably
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  400 to 500 volleyball players in under 4 years.
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  So it's been a lot. I have had zero kids move a bar
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  with speed without me telling them.
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  I'm the first set that I've had that I have them do an exercise.
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  I don't care if it's a goblin squat, a bench, a chin up.
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  I've had 0 athletes if I tell them to do one set of five, I've
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  had zero out of four to 500 kids move a bar with speed.
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  That's the first telltale sign. I'm like, oh, if you've been
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  training with someone for two years and you don't know that
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  bar speeds important, then a lot of the training you're doing
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  with that person is probably useless.
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  And so obviously we know you don't always need maximum bar
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  speed if you want to slow tempos down.
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  There's obviously adaptations that are beneficial for that,
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  but that's a telltale sign for me if they don't hop very
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  efficiently, if they don't do things very well, that's a sign
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  for me that hey, these are low hanging fruits and these are
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  very easily scalable in large environments.
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  Move a bar fast land like this jump this far.
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  Your foot should hit the ground this way.
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  Let's do it for six months. Good things will happen.
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  So when it, when it, when it comes to like scaling large
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  group environments, as as long as you have rapport with the
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  athletes that have been with you for a long time, I can just look
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  at them and like, give him a nod and they know, okay, he wants to
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  jump a little bit higher. So like there, there are ways of
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  doing that. It does take a little bit of
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  time to, to build that rapport with some of your athletes.
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  But once you have a system down, that's kind of how we scale
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  things. We don't, we don't really track
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  weights that much. I have like different tests.
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  So they know what range of weights to put on for different
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  stuff. But especially at that age with
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  that low of a training age, like as long as it's moderately heavy
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  and they're trying to move a quick, they're going to get
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  stronger, they're going to get better.
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  So it's it's not as complicated as people think it is.
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  And like, as I, as I've moved into kind of similar setting in
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  the private setting with a lot of these youth athletes, I've
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  viewed it much less from like a specific periodization scheme
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  versus just like we're constantly trying to push and
• 13:53
  progress skills and abilities and like continue to raise the
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  needle and push, you know, push it a little bit further versus
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  having, you know, these obviously we have a plan at
• 14:03
  different phases, but it's like, like you're saying, it's like,
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  can we continue just like push it?
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  I don't know. I don't know if that's kind of
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  like where you're at a little bit too, or if that makes sense.
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  But yeah, it's like, I know it's like some of these athletes,
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  they just need to keep doing it a little bit better and maybe
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  add a little bit more weight and learn like you're saying, these
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  details of intent and and how to actually train at a high level.
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  Yeah, I think a lot of coaches get very exercise happy where
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  they try to like change things all the time.
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  I've had, I've had kids. So I have a group of girls that
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  have trained with me privately and now some of them, now that
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  they're going into high school, they're going to be playing or
• 14:35
  training with me at top flight. They, it's funny because they
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  have asked me like, oh, when are we going to change exercises?
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  I've had them for 15 straight months.
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  Squatting has not left the program once.
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  But you can do it a bunch of different ways.
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  During times of year, we have a faster eccentric.
• 14:49
  During certain times of years we have a double pause where we're
• 14:52
  pausing core of the way down, all the way down with extreme
• 14:55
  tempos. We're doing it a bunch of
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  different ways. So it's not necessarily the
• 14:59
  exercise all the time. It's am I changing the stimulus
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  I'm getting from that specific exercise.
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  And so that's The thing is we chose one bilateral lift and
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  then either another bilateral lift like a deadlift or even
• 15:09
  like a split squat. And sometimes we'll do it fast,
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  sometimes we'll do it flow, but we've done it so ridiculously
• 15:15
  consistently that they've gotten really, really, really good at
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  it. And since they were young, that
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  stimulus is still really potent for them.
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  And we haven't changed it. And I think people get some
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  people, some people think I'm a little crazy when I say that if
• 15:27
  you go, you can go 15 months in a row with squat never leaving
• 15:29
  the program. Like you can do that.
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  You don't have to do this CSCS thing where you every four to
• 15:35
  six weeks you go from strength to hypertrophy.
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  You don't have to do that even with novices, you don't have to
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  do AGPP to this, to this, to this, to this, because a lot of
• 15:44
  times the workloads they have concerned that they play around,
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  it doesn't work in that landscape.
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  Like you probably see it in the private sector.
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  So much stuff is going on with people, schedule changing,
• 15:54
  random pasta parties that these kids got to go to.
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  Like you never know what's going to happen.
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  You have to be making decisions on the fly and if you to keep it
• 16:03
  consistent and so they know what they're doing that way you can
• 16:06
  get a lot of high. What I'd rather do is I'd rather
• 16:09
  give a kid eight or nine sets on a squat rather than change it up
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  every four weeks and let them adapt for two weeks so that
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  they're not sore because we haven't done reverse lunges in
• 16:18
  four months. I'd rather keep it really
• 16:19
  consistent, slightly change the stimulus of that and get really,
• 16:22
  really good at that until I'm like, OK, we've been doing it
• 16:25
  for really, really long. You know, it's time to change
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  it. So that that's the way that I
• 16:28
  look at it and it works really, really well.
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  And so people look at a lot of the plyometrics that I do that
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  changes quite a bit. It looks kind of hectic and
• 16:35
  chaotic, but there's a lot of structure to that as well.
• 16:37
  And we do the same things all year.
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  So I mean, it's, it's, it's not, it's not that complicated.
• 16:42
  You just have to execute it with intent and you have to keep your
• 16:45
  kids healthy so that they're actually doing it weekly because
• 16:47
  as soon as they have an injury and they're out for a few weeks,
• 16:49
  getting back into it's really, really tough.
• 16:50
  So it's about consistent consistency and executing.
• 16:53
  And I mean, that's the boring stuff.
• 16:54
  But as we know, that's what works.
• 16:55
  Yeah, no, man, I couldn't agree more.
• 16:58
  Like, like you're saying like we're taking just the squats,
• 17:00
  like if you're trying to change the squat variation or change
• 17:03
  the exercise, some, like some athletes can pick that up real
• 17:05
  fast, but some it's like changing their whole world and
• 17:08
  they've got to go through this whole phase of actually getting
• 17:10
  to a point where they can get an adaptation out of it.
• 17:12
  But if we're just keeping the main foundation of the lift the
• 17:16
  same and then just laying in different variables, you know,
• 17:19
  laying different pieces of how we're executing that, it's like,
• 17:22
  like you're saying, we're getting different adaptations,
• 17:24
  but the vessel for that stays the same and allows it to be
• 17:27
  simpler delivered to them and without having to change that.
• 17:31
  And even just from, as you get more and more athletes in the
• 17:33
  building, if you're trying to change it all the time and
• 17:36
  different people get on different, you know, schedules
• 17:38
  and stuff, it's like it's, it gets much harder to deliver.
• 17:41
  I feel like if you have different programs and trying to
• 17:43
  do that versus OK, we know what we're doing.
• 17:45
  We have a relationship where I can tell you how we're going to
• 17:48
  execute it, but you actually know what you're doing
• 17:50
  consistently. Yeah, they know what to expect
• 17:52
  when they come in. It's not like, because, because
• 17:54
  I, I have seen personally with some other trainers and gyms
• 17:57
  around here that those programs are changing so much that the
• 18:01
  kid will hop in. Like, so like when I run my
• 18:03
  business, I require people to sign up for minimum a month at a
• 18:06
  time, whereas I, I refuse to do the thing where people like, oh,
• 18:10
  here's a drop in session. That's just a disaster waiting
• 18:12
  to happen because kids will drop in one week, they'll do a lunge,
• 18:14
  they'll drop in another week, do a deadlift, they'll drop in
• 18:16
  another week, they'll run 3 sprints and then they'll drop in
• 18:18
  another week and do conditioning.
• 18:19
  And they're like, what are you even getting out of any of that?
• 18:22
  And so I'm like, OK, when you come in here, you're going to be
• 18:24
  here for minimum a month. This is what you're going to
• 18:26
  expect. These are lower body lifts that
• 18:27
  we do. The temple might change
• 18:29
  depending on what you have going on, how much, how much jump
• 18:32
  volume you have. All these different things are
• 18:34
  going to make a difference in what I give you.
• 18:37
  But you, you already know what you're going to get when you
• 18:38
  come in here and you know exactly how I want you to
• 18:40
  execute it. If you're able to do that one,
• 18:43
  they're going to pick up those skills really, really quickly.
• 18:44
  And since the stimulus is similar, those minor
• 18:47
  fluctuations aren't going to make them sore.
• 18:49
  And so the, and The thing is, especially in the private
• 18:50
  sector, you brutally make, you make someone brutally sore on
• 18:54
  day one. If you like for me, I'll offer
• 18:56
  like a one, one session trial for new people that come in.
• 18:59
  I have to be very careful with how much I give them because if
• 19:02
  they leave that first session and they're, Oh my God, I
• 19:04
  couldn't even walk the next thing, even if I only gave them
• 19:06
  like 1 Sprint and two sets on a squat, but they don't do
• 19:08
  anything. So like anything's going to make
• 19:10
  them sore. I have to tiptoe that line
• 19:12
  because if I make them really sore, they're like, Oh no, this
• 19:13
  ain't going to work. If they're this sore every
• 19:15
  single time, there's no way we're going to be able to train
• 19:17
  anymore because they got to go to practice.
• 19:19
  They got to perform a practice. I'm like, guys, if you're here
• 19:21
  for if you're here for two weeks, all that goes away.
• 19:23
  That's come, that's going to be, but you have to tiptoe that
• 19:26
  line, especially in the private sector, because that's one way
• 19:28
  to lose a sale with somebody is make them feel brutally sore the
• 19:31
  next day. And their parents are like, no,
• 19:32
  no, no, no, no, no. This is way too much, way too
• 19:34
  hard. Even though the kid left the
• 19:35
  session, like I feel like I barely did anything, you know?
• 19:37
  So it's definitely, there's definitely a lot of factors and
• 19:41
  the more consistent you can be with that programming, it just,
• 19:44
  it works, but it also makes everybody happy because they
• 19:46
  know what to expect and they can go do their other things without
• 19:49
  feeling like trainees detracting from any of that.
• 19:52
  Yeah, yeah. No, I couldn't be more.
• 19:53
  I also do it, you know, they have to sign up 28.
• 19:57
  I have a 28 day billing cycle. So it's like I don't want to I
• 19:59
  don't want to sell a package of 10 where you show up once this
• 20:03
  week, come come couple weeks later and it's like 6 months
• 20:05
  later and you sell sessions left.
• 20:07
  Like I'm not I'm not doing like it.
• 20:08
  You're going to come consistently or else like it's
• 20:11
  not worth it on either of our ends to do this thing.
• 20:14
  OK, every volleyball player. I feel like when you, if you
• 20:18
  probably talk to them about their goals, you know, if I talk
• 20:20
  to their goals, they're like, I want one of them's going to be,
• 20:22
  I want to get my vertical higher right.
• 20:23
  And that's a big part of what you do.
• 20:25
  How are you balancing though training for performance and
• 20:30
  outputs while also training for longevity and durability for
• 20:35
  them, Especially when you know with club and seeing like
• 20:38
  they're they're doing such such workload throughout the year
• 20:41
  with all that other stuff and balancing it with the training
• 20:43
  we're doing. Well, the first thing that I
• 20:45
  make sure that I tell them is that performance and injury
• 20:48
  prevention are two sides of the same coin.
• 20:50
  So whether you're training for performance or you're training
• 20:53
  for injury prevention, all it is is a spectrum of stress
• 20:57
  management. That's all it is.
• 20:58
  Oh, many people think injury injury prevention is going to
• 21:02
  be. I'm going to do isometrics.
• 21:03
  I'm going to do some sort of rotator cuff drills with a band
• 21:06
  that's it's my injury prevention.
• 21:08
  But if that's the only thing that you do and you do not load
• 21:10
  your tissues with greater stressors, you are by definition
• 21:14
  making yourself less resilience injury.
• 21:17
  So The thing is, ironically, if you're a track sprinter, if you
• 21:20
  don't sprints and then you go sprints on game day, your
• 21:23
  likelihood of getting injured sprinting is going to be a lot
• 21:27
  higher. Sprinting itself is the probably
• 21:29
  the highest likelihood you were going to hurt your hamstring.
• 21:32
  But then what is also the greatest protector against that
• 21:34
  doing that thing? And So what I try to tell my
• 21:36
  kids is I'm like, hey, because in volleyball, the biggest fear
• 21:40
  any jumper has is I do not want to land on one leg because
• 21:43
  that's going to tear my ACL. That is, that is the number one
• 21:46
  fear of all of them. Getting that out of their head
• 21:48
  is 1 very difficult, but 2 is extremely empowering to them if
• 21:53
  you can get them to believe that my body can handle any stressor
• 21:56
  whatsoever. And just that mentality is part
• 21:59
  of injury management as well. So it's not, I'm going to sit
• 22:01
  here and I'm going to do some different banded TK ES on my
• 22:04
  knee or anything like this. Getting them to understand that
• 22:07
  putting your body through the wringer in an intelligent way is
• 22:10
  injury prevention. So when I'm doing exercise with
• 22:13
  my athletes, if, if they're out and they're just doing approach
• 22:16
  jumping on the court and that's all that they're doing.
• 22:18
  And then they come in and I have them just do like tuck jumps in
• 22:21
  a lion and I see that every time they hit the ground, they splat
• 22:25
  and have no reactivity whatsoever.
• 22:27
  That's that. By getting better at reactivity
• 22:30
  off the ground, that's not just performance and making them more
• 22:32
  elastic, that's also injury prevention.
• 22:34
  So it's all, it's all the same thing.
• 22:37
  It's just that you have to be able to observe what you're
• 22:39
  seeing in front of you and be able to adjust based on what
• 22:41
  you're seeing. And so when it comes to the one
• 22:43
  leg landing and ACL injuries, The thing is, is that it's not
• 22:46
  just the act of landing on one leg 1.
• 22:49
  And so we talked about the mentality of landing on one leg,
• 22:52
  but have I trained on one leg? Have I done altitude drops off
• 22:55
  one leg with a stick? Have I done hopping in multiple
• 22:57
  directions? Can I actually yield and go into
• 23:00
  deep knee bending and deep tier plyometrics and actually control
• 23:04
  myself all the way down to the ground in deeper knee bends?
• 23:06
  Those are the questions I don't ever see being asked in the
• 23:09
  volleyball population. It's I'm going to avoid landing
• 23:11
  on one leg because that hurts or that's or that's going to get me
• 23:14
  hurt. And ultimately that mentality
• 23:17
  alone, if you're afraid of doing something, your brain is
• 23:19
  probably going to try to protect you.
• 23:21
  And one, either not do it or if you're more likely to get
• 23:25
  injured because you avoided for so long.
• 23:26
  And the one time it happens, you're going to get injured.
• 23:28
  And so you as a coach, you have to be very, very good at
• 23:31
  articulating your message and trying to build bulletproof
• 23:34
  mentalities. And it doesn't happen right
• 23:36
  away. Just by telling someone, that
• 23:38
  someone who has had a previous ACL, they're not going to listen
• 23:41
  to you right away and be like, hey, I'd laid in that one leg
• 23:43
  and tore my ACL. Like it's going to take some
• 23:45
  time for me to get confidence back on this knee.
• 23:47
  So I had a girl just about a year and a half ago who went
• 23:50
  through this exact thing. She landed on one leg.
• 23:52
  She tore her ACL. Then that was before I came in.
• 23:55
  I came in, I talked to her. I'm like, hey, what have you
• 23:56
  done since your ACL injury? She's like, I don't feel like I
• 23:59
  quite have the bounce that I used to.
• 24:00
  I used to be real bouncy. I could jump really high.
• 24:01
  I was a good high jumper. I just don't have the same
• 24:03
  spring off of it. I'm like, OK, have you gone to
• 24:05
  rehab? And she's like, yeah, I've gone
• 24:06
  through rehab. Like what have you done?
• 24:08
  We've done bridging. We've done monster walks, the
• 24:10
  typical PT like that, that type of real low level, early stage
• 24:15
  return to play. I'm like, have you hopped on one
• 24:17
  leg before? And she's like not in surgery
• 24:19
  and she's out playing already. So like she hasn't even done
• 24:21
  that as part of a rehab. I'm like, I can see why your
• 24:23
  brain doesn't want to do that. And so I was like, OK, I'm going
• 24:25
  to start you on some real low level stuff.
• 24:26
  I had her do some band assisted hops and we got into some
• 24:29
  hopping her knee after about four or five months, she's like,
• 24:31
  this is the best it's felt in a long time.
• 24:33
  She's like, I don't, I'm not scared of landing it anymore.
• 24:35
  So when it comes to injury prevention and in your ultimate
• 24:38
  question, it's understanding that everything's a part of
• 24:40
  everything and don't think of it as injury prevention versus
• 24:42
  performance. Think of it as what stresses can
• 24:45
  I tolerate right now and how do I increase that threshold to
• 24:48
  handle those things? And by doing both of those
• 24:51
  things, one, you'll increase your performance and you will be
• 24:54
  more resilient to injury just because you can handle with or
• 24:56
  withstand greater stressors. Man, that, that's really, really
• 24:59
  good. You know, I've, I've been
• 25:01
  running one of your pro volleyball programs through
• 25:04
  Trainer Oak, been really enjoying it.
• 25:06
  And you know, I see a lot of the influence of Matt Mckennis
• 25:09
  Watson in his his plyo tiers. As you know, you mentioned a
• 25:13
  little bit like like deep tier stuff, like tier medium tier
• 25:16
  stuff. As we, as we talk about like,
• 25:19
  you know, some people think, OK, we got to teach landing
• 25:22
  mechanics and, and how to, you know, maybe land on one lane on
• 25:25
  two. Do do you view it more as like
• 25:28
  let's expose them to this consistent variability of
• 25:32
  landing through, you know, giving them a variety of light
• 25:36
  to your stuff, a variety of deep to your stuff where they have to
• 25:38
  get in deeper ranges in different positions and through
• 25:41
  basically helping them build their skill library of this vast
• 25:44
  amounts of landings and different depths, speeds,
• 25:47
  heights. Now when they are out there,
• 25:50
  whether it's a 1 foot landing, 2 foot landing, now they're ready
• 25:53
  for basically whatever, whatever comes out them and can can adapt
• 25:56
  to that because of their foundation of.
• 25:59
  Skill there. You just outlined my exact
• 26:01
  philosophy. That's exactly, that's exactly
• 26:04
  what we do. So it's funny.
• 26:05
  I got a funny story about that. So I have a college athlete who
• 26:08
  came back. No, didn't come back.
• 26:09
  She left for school and she called me one day after one of
• 26:14
  her practices and she's like, dude, I think all the freestyle
• 26:18
  crazy jumps that we do has made me super resilient and that I
• 26:22
  can land however I want and I'm completely fine.
• 26:25
  She's like, I landed on someone's foot today.
• 26:27
  I ran into someone today. And The thing is whether or not
• 26:30
  that actually works and I'm a genius for it or it's a mental
• 26:34
  thing that she has built from doing those things.
• 26:37
  Either way, it's a benefit. And So what I like to do is
• 26:40
  through my submaximal ply metrics to get back to what
• 26:43
  you're saying, I like to build as much variety as possible as
• 26:47
  the competency of what? So like if they cannot do a Pogo
• 26:50
  stationary, I'm not going to have them do it multidirectional
• 26:53
  because it's just going to turn into shit.
• 26:54
  But if they, if they can do a tuck jump, a hop, anything
• 26:57
  stationary or in a straight line and everybody shows competency
• 27:01
  in doing that, the warmups that we do, I might change them
• 27:04
  weekly. It's like I said, it's the same
• 27:05
  exact exercise Week 1. Maybe we'll do a forward hop.
• 27:09
  Week 2, two small hops, a big one, two small hops, a big one.
• 27:12
  Week 3, I'll do a slalom hop. Maybe we're bounding back and
• 27:15
  forth like this as we go, but it's all the same principles
• 27:18
  executed the same way in a bunch of different ways.
• 27:20
  So you're exposing your brain to new movement skills, new
• 27:23
  landings, new angles. It's a that that, and then once
• 27:27
  you get to the point to where you're actually trying to push
• 27:29
  adaptation and jump higher, that bandwidth becomes way shorter.
• 27:33
  Because if you're doing like a Max effort tuck jump and you
• 27:37
  want to be real reactive and quick off the ground, you can
• 27:39
  either only do that forward or you can only do a vertical.
• 27:42
  The moment you go side to side, you're going to have more knee
• 27:44
  bend, you're going to have a lot more deceleration demand from
• 27:47
  different angles and it's not getting the same thing.
• 27:49
  So like what we like to do is with our whether it's deep tier,
• 27:53
  ho goes leaping, bounding, any of that stuff, we to get as much
• 27:56
  variety as possible within our warm up with all the athletes
• 27:59
  and whatever they can handle. One, it's fun 2 we're building
• 28:02
  all those angles and as the session progresses, other and
• 28:05
  then once we get to the important stuff, which is going
• 28:07
  to be depth jumping, act stuff for hurdle jumps, our freestyle
• 28:10
  jumps, whatever we end up doing, that stuff is done in a way
• 28:13
  where the only option is Max output.
• 28:16
  And then that variability and that bandwidth of what, what
• 28:18
  angles you can do them in shrink tremendously.
• 28:21
  And so as you, you basically just lined out our exact
• 28:24
  philosophy and what we do. And The thing is, once you teach
• 28:27
  them, so like, I don't know which program you got.
• 28:28
  I don't know if it was the Kickstarter program.
• 28:30
  Is that is that the 1:00 you got?
• 28:31
  One you just put out. OK, Yeah.
• 28:32
  So that one teaches everything, as you saw from the ground up of
• 28:36
  like this, how we Pogo this, how we do this, and it's like 10
• 28:38
  minute breakdowns and we'll take a few weeks with all of our
• 28:40
  athletes to teach all that. But once they know how to do
• 28:43
  that, if I tell them to hop in a slalom in fashion or do I don't
• 28:47
  have to say anything, They know that those general principles of
• 28:49
  how to hit the ground with their foot, how far, if they jump far
• 28:53
  enough and they sink, they know, OK, that's way too far, how to
• 28:55
  adjust and just becomes me telling them, hop this way.
• 28:58
  And I just watch, I just watch the show unfold.
• 29:00
  So it's like those small principles at the beginning
• 29:02
  really matter. But then once they have those
• 29:04
  down, that variability you can create.
• 29:06
  And then as the intensity increases, the bandwidth of the
• 29:10
  angles you can do decreases. And then then you're really
• 29:12
  pushing outputs. That's all we do.
• 29:14
  And, and we do that as long as we can consistently do that two
• 29:17
  days a week and we can do that for 6 to 12 months, good things
• 29:20
  tend to happen. Yeah.
• 29:21
  And I, I feel like where where you're kind of hitting both
• 29:24
  sides of that with the more extensive variety and skill.
• 29:28
  And then also the intensive part where you're decreasing, you
• 29:30
  know, you're putting constraints in place where it's like it's
• 29:33
  just output. I feel like sometimes there's
• 29:36
  been a push, maybe like feed the cat type stuff where it's like
• 29:39
  we're just going to have some lower volume of just Max outputs
• 29:42
  and kind of missing that variability, that extensive
• 29:45
  stuff. And I think that leaves a lot
• 29:48
  off the table from obviously the things you just talked about
• 29:51
  from a skill standpoint, but I think also just a health
• 29:54
  standpoint where I feel like it kind of balances out and allows
• 29:58
  you to build just those athletic foot contacts, like a volume of
• 30:02
  that that builds that resiliency to balance out.
• 30:05
  OK, If I'm just going to send it for however many times, because
• 30:08
  I feel, I feel like if we're just sending that, you know,
• 30:10
  we're maybe we're doing like 4-5 sets of however many reps of
• 30:13
  just Max output, you start to break down a little bit.
• 30:16
  And, and especially these really underdeveloped athletes, like
• 30:19
  the extensive stuff can help them to such a degree because
• 30:22
  they're, they're missing that whole foundation, especially
• 30:25
  maybe less free play and all that stuff nowadays where they
• 30:28
  don't have that underlying foundation of just tissue
• 30:30
  quality and tissue resiliency and just the skill of landing
• 30:34
  and jumping and doing it all these different directions.
• 30:37
  I'll give you a perfect example of that that'll illustrate that.
• 30:40
  So what I'll tell my kids and what I, what I've noticed myself
• 30:44
  is sprinting more isn't always the solution to sprinting
• 30:48
  faster. And so like, cuz if you watch
• 30:50
  any volleyball player try to Sprint 20 to 25 yards, it ain't
• 30:54
  pretty. Not, not only, not only because
• 30:57
  like they don't ever have to do that in their sport.
• 31:00
  But if you have any general kid, whether they're volleyball or
• 31:04
  not, and you watch them run in a straight line and their foots
• 31:07
  just clomping on the ground and they're hitting the ground hard,
• 31:09
  more sprinting like that is not going to get them that much
• 31:13
  faster. They might accumulate a little
• 31:15
  bit better skill of sprinting and that might help a little
• 31:17
  bit. But if they do accumulate more
• 31:20
  volume in these extensive contacts of lower level hopping,
• 31:24
  lower level bounding, build some of that elasticity from the
• 31:27
  ground up before you know, and that and that's what happened to
• 31:29
  me too. When I had an ankle injury in
• 31:31
  college, I used to be. So when I played college base,
• 31:33
  when I was at Community College, I used to be a pretty darn good
• 31:36
  base dealer. Like I was quick and then I had
• 31:38
  an ankle injury my junior year when I was at university and I
• 31:42
  never felt like I had that same pop off of that ankle And I was
• 31:45
  like, OK, what? I'm not running that fast.
• 31:48
  I'm running sprints, but I'm not, I don't feel like I'm
• 31:50
  getting back to where I was. And then once I graduated, I did
• 31:54
  actually less sprinting. I still did it a few reps a few
• 31:57
  times a week, but I did so much more hopping, so much more
• 32:01
  bounding. And I let that.
• 32:02
  But that stuff takes a lot of time to adapt.
• 32:04
  So like tendons take a long, long time to adapt to training.
• 32:07
  That's why I mean, if you build a little bit of muscle and some
• 32:09
  of you hasn't trained before, like they can shoot through the
• 32:11
  roof and jump 3 inches higher and I'm because they've never
• 32:13
  done it and muscle and muscle will grow and adapt much quicker
• 32:16
  than a tendon would. But like for me, after doing
• 32:19
  that for 6 to 12 months, I'm like, hey, I'm 10 lbs heavier
• 32:22
  than I was and I'm running just as fast now as I was in
• 32:24
  Community College. And I'm like, the solution
• 32:26
  wasn't a Sprint more the solution was these plyometric
• 32:28
  contacts. And so when you have these kids
• 32:30
  who are very underdeveloped, like I just had someone in this
• 32:32
  morning where she's a relatively good jumper for being tall, but
• 32:37
  I had her hopping at a real low level this morning and her foot
• 32:40
  was splat, splat, splat, splat, splat.
• 32:42
  I'm like, even though she's a 2 foot jumper on the court, that's
• 32:46
  a general quality, a general human quality that is just that
• 32:49
  just transfers to all aspects of athleticism.
• 32:52
  If she gets better at that, just general reactivity in general
• 32:56
  will get better for her. And so that's why it was the
• 32:58
  hard part, especially with volleyball.
• 33:00
  And I know you work with basketball is where do I fit
• 33:03
  those in when these kids have extremely chaotic schedules?
• 33:07
  Because the last thing that you want is to tip them over that
• 33:09
  scale of stress. And if you do, then you can't do
• 33:11
  any plyos because they have they have flare ups and they have all
• 33:14
  this stuff. It's a very fine line that you
• 33:16
  have to tiptoe. So for me, it's that depending
• 33:19
  on the time of year that they're in, we're going to have more or
• 33:22
  less. But for all the plyometrics that
• 33:24
  like the Max output stuff, that'll always be in there.
• 33:27
  But when it comes to the extensive volume, if they don't
• 33:30
  play over a weekend, I'm going to steal some of that on Monday
• 33:33
  when they come back in and play this weekend.
• 33:35
  If they played a three day tournament, I'm not going to
• 33:37
  give them that a day or two after that.
• 33:39
  Like so it depends on what they're getting, but as long as
• 33:41
  they're getting that weekly stimulus of it overtime when it
• 33:44
  comes to plyometrics, it's not about how much you do in a given
• 33:46
  day. It's am I repeating this stuff
• 33:48
  over and over and over again two to three days per week
• 33:50
  hopefully. And that's that's when you start
• 33:52
  to see the results. But yeah, like you said, those
• 33:54
  extensive contacts, especially for younger kids who do not have
• 33:57
  control over their body and lack some of that reactivity, whether
• 34:00
  it's because they played one sport only grown up and they
• 34:03
  don't have a lot of that general athleticism from the playground
• 34:05
  ever there was. Whatever the reason is, doesn't
• 34:07
  matter. But if you see it in front of
• 34:09
  you and you can observe that there's something lagging there,
• 34:12
  it needs to be addressed. And usually those sub maximal
• 34:14
  contacts are the way to do that. Why, why Sprint volleyball
• 34:18
  players when they're not opening up and sprinting, you know, and
• 34:22
  they're in their court and, and I do it too, and maybe less
• 34:25
  after you go into why you, why you do Sprint, How do you fit in
• 34:29
  'cause I do like to Sprint my volleyball players too.
• 34:32
  But sometimes I think like, OK, like how much do we do?
• 34:35
  How much time do you want to take out of our are the limited
• 34:38
  time we do have to do this We're still getting what we want out
• 34:43
  of it, but not taking away from the other things we need to do.
• 34:46
  So where do you kind of found that?
• 34:47
  Like why do we do it? How much do we do?
• 34:49
  Where do we fit it in so? For us, when it comes to
• 34:51
  straight line linear sprinting, no more than 5 minutes that
• 34:55
  that's what we do with ours. So the reason that we do it is
• 34:58
  extremely general, which is just it's the fastest thing that we
• 35:02
  can do from a global perspective on our body.
• 35:04
  Now swinging your arm is going to be faster than that, but it
• 35:08
  doesn't require the same systemic effect of the nervous
• 35:11
  system. Now we're doing that just to, I
• 35:13
  mean, it's the most athletic and highest stimulating thing you
• 35:16
  can do as an athlete. And two, as we talked about the
• 35:19
  injury prevention versus or injury prevention versus
• 35:23
  performance, exposing yourself to that high of speeds, whether
• 35:27
  it's hamstrings, quads, hip flexors, the speeds that you're
• 35:31
  getting from sprinting is going to be faster than pretty much
• 35:33
  anything you're getting from anything else.
• 35:35
  So by definition, that's going to be injury prevention because
• 35:37
  you're exposing your body to the quickest contract and relax
• 35:40
  speeds that you're going to get. So that's why we do it.
• 35:42
  But when we structure our speed training, we do, we don't do
• 35:45
  like a linear speed day, then a change of direction day, then a
• 35:49
  Max V load A we don't do Max V load with our volleyball
• 35:51
  players. Well, what main reason is
• 35:52
  because I only have 25 yards of space in my facility.
• 35:54
  So that's as much as I can use. So the Max will do is a 10 yard
• 35:57
  build, 10 yard fly. So that's the most we'll do.
• 35:59
  But within that, every single day that we're in, as long as
• 36:03
  they didn't come off of a tournament with tons of change
• 36:05
  of direction stuff, we will do about 5, maybe 8 minutes maximum
• 36:11
  of change of direction work. And then we'll run one or two
• 36:14
  sprints. Then we're done.
• 36:15
  And then the next day we'll do some sort of change of direction
• 36:18
  work. Doesn't matter what it is,
• 36:19
  whether it's forward and back, linear side to side, lateral,
• 36:21
  whatever you want to do, do something that's quick because
• 36:24
  they get a lot of those. This is where what we were
• 36:26
  talking about before. How do you balance output versus
• 36:29
  these extensive contacts when they're on the court?
• 36:32
  If they're higher level players, they're getting some pretty
• 36:35
  sharp change of direction, reacting to different things.
• 36:37
  If you have some youth players, if you ever watched a youth
• 36:39
  volleyball game, even the highest of levels of the 8th
• 36:41
  grade volleyball, they're not moving that fast.
• 36:44
  So like the, the game is not played at a high enough speed to
• 36:46
  get this strong Sprint stimulus or the strong even sometimes a
• 36:50
  strong jump stimulus because the sets aren't in the right spot.
• 36:54
  So no one's actually jumping as high as they can.
• 36:56
  And so you have to know what population you're working with
• 36:58
  and what they're getting on the court and kind of supplement
• 37:01
  that in training. So sometimes for some of my high
• 37:03
  school players, if they, if I know they're on the top team at
• 37:06
  their club, I might not do as much change of direction work
• 37:08
  for them, especially if they've played a lot.
• 37:09
  They've got a lot of that over the weekend or during practice
• 37:12
  during the week. But if I have younger 6th, 7th,
• 37:14
  8th grade players who if you go watch sometimes can barely get
• 37:17
  the ball over the net and can't even do a lot of things, they're
• 37:19
  not getting any sort of strong stimulus from any of that.
• 37:22
  So we're doing hard change of direction work and fast
• 37:25
  sprinting and we're doing that as consistently as you possibly
• 37:27
  can. So, so to wrap that all up, it's
• 37:29
  we do change of direction work every day as long as the week
• 37:33
  allows for it and what they've done.
• 37:35
  And then every change of direction, we'll finish with
• 37:37
  either one or two sprints between 15 to 20 yards.
• 37:40
  And that's what we do. And we try to do that at least
• 37:42
  two days a week. That was a great explanation.
• 37:44
  With those sprints, are you are you worried about teaching them
• 37:49
  much depth of technique or you basically just put the
• 37:53
  constraints where we can output in a Safeway, just let them get
• 37:55
  the output without obviously risking anything but?
• 37:59
  Now, if it looks like something bad's about to happen, it's that
• 38:03
  bad that I'm like, hey, like stand up a little bit more.
• 38:06
  Don't, don't run like Sonic the Hedgehog with your hands back
• 38:09
  here. Like if it's that glaringly
• 38:11
  obvious, then I'll step in and say something.
• 38:14
  But if it looks generally OK, usually just the consistency of
• 38:18
  letting them Sprint, they'll pick up a good enough Sprint
• 38:21
  skill acquisition that it'll be fine.
• 38:24
  That's usually the case. Tommy what?
• 38:25
  What do most people get wrong about development?
• 38:28
  That's a very broad question. I don't think I've ever been
• 38:30
  asked that question just in general or any population
• 38:32
  specifically or just in general. I mean, you could take it to
• 38:35
  your population if you want, whether that's in the weight
• 38:37
  room, whether that's holistically with overall skill
• 38:40
  development or sports skill, strength development, anything.
• 38:44
  You think that when it comes to development in general, whether
• 38:47
  it's skill or it's strength, conditioning, it's that whatever
• 38:51
  the priority is, that is the thing you're going to get better
• 38:54
  AT. And you can't just dabble in a
• 38:56
  bunch of different things and expect great results in all
• 38:58
  those things. So which is very, very common in
• 39:01
  volleyball where you'll have somebody that says, hey, I only
• 39:05
  I have a college camp coming up in 12 weeks.
• 39:08
  I need to jump higher and you need to be better.
• 39:10
  What should I do for training? I'm like, OK, what does your
• 39:13
  schedule allow for? And they'll be like, well, we
• 39:16
  have some other camps. This is the big one, but we have
• 39:18
  a few other ones that we want to go to.
• 39:20
  We have 4 private lessons over the next few weeks.
• 39:22
  We have 3 practices. I think we can get to you about
• 39:26
  three times in the next 7 weeks. And I'm like, what do you want
• 39:29
  me to do? Like is this a priority for you
• 39:31
  or do you just wanna come in, get a little bit of work and
• 39:34
  have me teach you something and hope that you figure it out
• 39:36
  along the way? Like I think that people in
• 39:39
  coaches fall culprit to this too, because what happens is
• 39:42
  even a lot of not our club does a really good job because we
• 39:45
  have a really good communication system.
• 39:47
  The owners that we have the the directors, they're really good
• 39:50
  about talking to me about what they're doing on the court.
• 39:52
  I can communicate all my issues of them.
• 39:54
  They understand that what happens on the course
• 39:56
  influencing training, it needs to be a priority.
• 39:58
  So we sent a lot of time to it. Not all clubs do that.
• 40:01
  What will happen is coaches will go out and they'll say we want
• 40:04
  you to jump higher, but they have 3 practices a week and then
• 40:06
  they're pushing their kids that private lessons on their off
• 40:08
  days and their private lessons on their off days consist of 100
• 40:11
  to 150 jumps that are under fatigue cuz they're throwing
• 40:14
  balls up and they're hitting, they're hitting, they're
• 40:15
  hitting, they're hitting written and the.
• 40:17
  Workload management is just something that isn't thought of.
• 40:19
  So when it comes to development, if you do not prioritize
• 40:23
  something, it is not going to get better.
• 40:24
  For me, all I have prioritized over the last five years is
• 40:28
  physical development. I went out last Friday night and
• 40:30
  played against some dudes in volleyball.
• 40:32
  I suck. I need more skill.
• 40:34
  If I played a lot of volleyball but my vertical was lacking and
• 40:37
  I want and if I was on the other side of the spectrum, I would
• 40:40
  have to pull away from the court a little bit.
• 40:42
  That way I have more energy for adaptation and go train three to
• 40:45
  four days per week. IF when you have this even keel,
• 40:49
  I'm going to play volleyball and that's going to be or baseball.
• 40:52
  Whatever sport is doesn't matter, applies to all sports.
• 40:54
  If I am doing the same thing year round and the sport is the
• 40:58
  priority year round, physical development would never reach
• 41:01
  its peak. If there isn't these
• 41:02
  fluctuations. It's like the the score I've
• 41:05
  heard in the Gallup and talk about this.
• 41:06
  You have 10 points, you have a 10 point system, you have
• 41:09
  business, you have family, you have health and you have a
• 41:11
  social life. If you put a 2 1/2 on each of
• 41:15
  those, you will never get the most out of any any of those
• 41:17
  things. If you want to prioritize
• 41:19
  business, you might have to go 6 business, three family, one on
• 41:23
  your health, and then zero on your social life.
• 41:26
  That is how you get results. There has to be these
• 41:28
  fluctuations in the priorities throughout the time of year.
• 41:31
  Luckily now a lot of my athletes are in college and now they
• 41:34
  understand and they can see that these off seasons are extremely
• 41:37
  valuable. The high school athletes,
• 41:39
  though, if they're playing their sport year round and they never
• 41:42
  take a little bit, they don't have to stop playing their
• 41:45
  sport. They just have to allow for
• 41:47
  training to do its work so that they can actually read the
• 41:49
  benefits of it. And here's the last thing.
• 41:50
  I know I'm rambling at this point, but here's the last
• 41:52
  thing, is that this is the problem that I see a lot of my
• 41:56
  volleyball players is in. I mean, if you're in basketball,
• 41:58
  it's probably the same thing. Baseball's very heavy on this
• 42:01
  too. These camps, it's like, oh, I
• 42:03
  got to go to this camp. I got a performance.
• 42:04
  Do or die you, if you're planning out your camps a year
• 42:07
  in advance, if you go to these camps, likely they're only going
• 42:10
  to be looking at the top few kids that are there.
• 42:12
  The rest of it is just a money grab.
• 42:14
  They're going to give you this letter that says, hey, this is
• 42:17
  the coach at Ohio State University.
• 42:19
  We want you. We want to personally invite you
• 42:21
  to come out to our camp because we think you have what it takes
• 42:24
  to play at the next level. We want to see you in action to
• 42:26
  see if you're a good fit for our program.
• 42:28
  Average parent coach sees that they're like, Oh my God, I need
• 42:30
  to go to this place. But they realize that when they
• 42:32
  get there is that if you're not one of the top performers,
• 42:34
  whether it's skill wise or you don't have some sort of
• 42:37
  athleticism to broadcast, they're not even going to look
• 42:40
  at you. They're going to talk to you as
• 42:41
  a group, but they're going to go right over here to the few kids
• 42:43
  that are studs. And so when it comes to
• 42:45
  volleyball, what I've seen is that parents are planning all
• 42:49
  these different camps these kids need to go to and they're
• 42:51
  playing so much volleyball. But if you go and you're a
• 42:53
  hitter, if you're going to big time college camps and you're
• 42:56
  not close to 10 feet, nobody's looking at you.
• 42:59
  If you're touching 9495 and you're going to a Division One
• 43:02
  camp as a hitter, you're better off not going to any camps.
• 43:05
  If, especially if you're a freshman or sophomore, don't go
• 43:08
  to any camps for the next year. Hone in on training.
• 43:11
  You jump 3 to 4 inches higher. Now you're turning some heads a
• 43:13
  little bit, but or you can just keep doing the same thing you've
• 43:16
  been doing and get the same results you keep getting.
• 43:18
  And that's why a lot of kids stall in their development.
• 43:21
  So that's that. That's my spiel on what's wrong
• 43:23
  with development. But yeah.
• 43:24
  No, no, I love it. You know, those, the way you're
• 43:27
  talking about, there's something I really think about a lot.
• 43:29
  And obviously you, you probably have a lot of those
• 43:31
  conversations trying to help the clients and their families make
• 43:34
  decisions. And that's something I do too.
• 43:37
  And it's, it is, it is hard because I feel like like you're
• 43:39
  talking about you, you've been training the physical side and
• 43:42
  then you're lacking skill though for you personally.
• 43:45
  And, and that's the same thing some of these families might
• 43:48
  think if if they go play another sport athlete and they don't do
• 43:51
  year round, they're going to fall behind.
• 43:53
  If they just train physically and they're not playing year
• 43:55
  round, they're going to fall behind because of these skill
• 43:57
  levels that are being pushed in these sports nowadays.
• 44:01
  So how do we help the those families?
• 44:03
  They're like, I don't want my kid to fall.
• 44:05
  I understand this isn't best for them, but I don't want them to
• 44:08
  fall behind from a skill standpoint.
• 44:10
  How do we communicate and how do we help them make the best
• 44:13
  decisions and find the balance of that one thing?
• 44:16
  Ever. Even though many people don't
• 44:18
  wanna hear it, they do appreciate just being honest to
• 44:21
  people, being honest with the parent or an athlete.
• 44:23
  But usually what it takes is a rude awakening to really prepare
• 44:27
  to really propel that. So if they go to one of these
• 44:30
  camps and they get absolutely obliterated by better
• 44:32
  competition, they're like, I'm not ready for it.
• 44:35
  And I'm like, hey, this is something I've tried to tell you
• 44:37
  before now, now that you've seen it in real time, let's talk
• 44:41
  about it. And then usually once they've
• 44:42
  had that moment of he, either Tommy was right or we haven't
• 44:46
  had this conversation before. But now I'm realizing it in real
• 44:49
  time. So now that becomes much more
• 44:51
  powerful because they have lived that experience and now that
• 44:55
  message might resonate much better with them because of
• 44:57
  that. So you got to be honest with the
• 44:59
  parents and be like, hey, if you really want your kid to play at
• 45:01
  the next level, this might be what it takes.
• 45:03
  I had this exact conversation with a basketball player this
• 45:07
  from a few years ago. So he just graduated this year,
• 45:10
  but he was somebody who as a freshman and sophomore for he
• 45:15
  was not super tall, but he was very out of control with his
• 45:17
  body and suddenly was banging his knee on the ground.
• 45:20
  You know how to fall like he was kind of.
• 45:22
  And then he had some knee injuries, whether it's from
• 45:24
  contact hitting the floor or just because he was so out of
• 45:26
  control that his joints were always hurting because he had 0
• 45:28
  control. His his mom reached out to me
• 45:30
  because she had saw that I trained some volleyball players
• 45:32
  and she was like, hey, my son is very uncoordinated.
• 45:34
  Like he's not a bad basketball player, but he definitely needs
• 45:37
  some work on controlling his body.
• 45:38
  And so we worked on it a little bit.
• 45:40
  He did pretty well and then he came back to me after his
• 45:44
  basketball season and he's like, hey, like I felt a lot better,
• 45:46
  but he's like, how do I really get a hold of this?
• 45:49
  And so he was in on it and I was like, OK, this is what I want
• 45:52
  you to do as as I'm not telling you what to do, but I'm telling
• 45:54
  you if you want the ideal scenario of how to maximize your
• 45:58
  senior year, this is probably the route you're going to want
• 46:00
  to take. And so he was somebody who
• 46:01
  played as a junior, but he wasn't really like a big
• 46:04
  difference maker on the team. I was like, hey, if you want to
• 46:07
  be non recognizable next year, this is what you need to do.
• 46:10
  And I was like, we need to one, we need to realize that the
• 46:13
  biggest thing for you right now is getting away from playing
• 46:17
  useless basketball, which just means don't go to these stupid
• 46:21
  open gyms at La Fitness. Don't go to these other things
• 46:23
  that are just making you tired and not be able to adapt from
• 46:26
  training very well. You are going to train with me
• 46:28
  four days a week and you are going to do skills, but you are
• 46:30
  not going to do any full core on court.
• 46:32
  You're doing skills training and you're doing training for the
• 46:35
  not for the time being. And so he ended up finding
• 46:37
  somebody that was like a former WNBA player in the form for
• 46:40
  someone from the area that was, she played high level basketball
• 46:42
  and she was a really, really good coach.
• 46:44
  And so we learned, worked alongside, I worked alongside
• 46:47
  with her and he was communicating between the two of
• 46:48
  us. And he did that for like 6 to 8
• 46:51
  months. And then so he even didn't even
• 46:53
  go to any of his high school open gyms.
• 46:55
  Like they're like, oh, you need to come to open gym.
• 46:56
  He's like, Nope, this has been, this is what I've been doing
• 46:58
  this all I'm doing. And so two or three weeks before
• 47:01
  the season, he just went to some open gyms just to get his win
• 47:03
  back up, just to get a little bit of conditioning.
• 47:05
  And he was the best player on the team that year.
• 47:06
  And everyone's like, what have you done this year?
• 47:08
  And he's like, while I worked on my skills, I got way better at
• 47:10
  shooting. I can dribble, I can handle the
• 47:12
  ball. And now, now I can actually
• 47:13
  control my body within space. And none of that was play more
• 47:17
  basketball on the court. And so that's what a lot of
• 47:19
  people have to realize. And it's really hard
• 47:20
  articulating that with. And The thing is, he's a prime
• 47:23
  example of I went through that. I hurt myself several times.
• 47:27
  I was fed up with it. I'm willing to do what it takes
• 47:29
  to change it. The secret sauce is how do you
• 47:32
  get kids to do that without having to go through that
• 47:35
  experience and wasting a year going through that experience?
• 47:37
  That's the hard part. Yeah, yeah, that's, yeah.
• 47:42
  That, that is, that is the hard part.
• 47:44
  Like I was just having a conversation with with one of
• 47:47
  the high school basketball players I work with.
• 47:49
  And you know, he was, he was, he was working with me because he
• 47:52
  was, he was pretty sore and beat up leading into this other
• 47:56
  tournament or, or, or school tournament.
• 47:59
  And I was talking and he's like, my hamstrings were so sore like
• 48:01
  Monday or Tuesday. And I'm like, you're there.
• 48:03
  They had two games Saturday. I'm like, they just, you feel
• 48:06
  them on Monday. And he's like, no, I was like
• 48:08
  after, after Monday and like, what'd you do on the weekend?
• 48:11
  He's like, well, I had AU practice on Sunday.
• 48:14
  I'm like, why, why are we doing AAU right now?
• 48:16
  Like and if you think about that.
• 48:18
  Let me guess, what was his AAU practice?
• 48:21
  2 1/2 hours of scrimmaging. Because that's what all.
• 48:24
  My kids say that's all. My kids, they practice once a
• 48:27
  week and that's all they do. Yeah, exactly.
• 48:29
  And it's like you got to, you got to, I know it's like that
• 48:33
  they you cat coaches like basically making them, but I'm
• 48:35
  like, you got to make a decision what's best for you.
• 48:37
  Like do you want to be your best for the school team right now,
• 48:42
  which is what the priority is? And honestly, do you want to be
• 48:46
  your best long term? Because if you do that seven
• 48:47
  days a week, every week like you are, you're going to break down,
• 48:50
  right? Your shins bother you sometimes.
• 48:52
  Like you're not going to be the player.
• 48:53
  And this is a player that is really skilled shooter needs to
• 48:56
  get more athletic. Like is running all day on
• 48:59
  Sunday after multiple games going to get you where you want
• 49:02
  to go? But then it's also talking like,
• 49:03
  I understand you're in a hard position from where you're being
• 49:06
  pulled in these different things, but you've got to, you
• 49:08
  know, you've got to make a hard decision there ultimately.
• 49:11
  Yeah, and I think coaches need to do a better job one US of
• 49:15
  communicating that, but also on the other side, the sport side,
• 49:18
  they also need to understand that what they do on the court,
• 49:21
  if you're working or your players, if you're preaching
• 49:24
  your players that they need to train and get better, you as a
• 49:26
  coach need to set up your practice plans or something or
• 49:31
  do or give in some fashion. If you think that think that the
• 49:34
  conditioning in the training and physical development is a
• 49:37
  priority. You need to give something
• 49:39
  within your practice. It's not just and and so here
• 49:41
  and here's the thing. When I played baseball in
• 49:43
  college, one of our coaches would always say if you're hurt
• 49:47
  or he would always say if you're not in the training room, you're
• 49:50
  going 100% of practice. I get the mentality on that.
• 49:53
  But if you have somebody that's been out for a while and they've
• 49:56
  been cleared to play, there needs to be some sort of ramp up
• 50:00
  or a given practice because of that circumstance.
• 50:03
  And I think many coaches, I know that's a different example, but
• 50:06
  it's the same message of if you want something to work on the
• 50:10
  court and in training at the best of both worlds, there has
• 50:13
  to be some sort of tug of war that's going on that's
• 50:16
  communicated by the coaches on where we're shifting at
• 50:20
  different times of year. Otherwise, it's a battle for
• 50:22
  both people. If you're in in this.
• 50:24
  And this becomes a disaster with private coaches because if my
• 50:27
  living is to prove my results, I need to train my athletes hard.
• 50:31
  Otherwise, nothing's going to happen.
• 50:33
  Yeah. If you're on the skill side, you
• 50:35
  want to prove to parents that your kids got a really good
• 50:37
  workout, so you're going to work them really, really hard.
• 50:40
  And So what happens is a lot of these skills trainers will
• 50:43
  exhaust their players to feel accomplished, and then that's
• 50:46
  going to ruin their physical development.
• 50:48
  And then also the same time, like even though they feel
• 50:50
  accomplished after what they're doing, they may have not
• 50:53
  actually got any better at skill.
• 50:54
  They just feel like they got a workout in at their skill.
• 50:57
  So they're, I think as a field, as an overarching field, whether
• 51:00
  it's medical or if you're a doctor, PT or you're a strength
• 51:05
  coach, there needs to be just a systemic way or a systemic urge
• 51:11
  to understand fundamentally the entire realm.
• 51:15
  And if you don't understand it, go talk to somebody who does.
• 51:19
  Like for me, that's what the coaches at Top Fight do a really
• 51:21
  good job of. When we, when I first came in, I
• 51:24
  was kind of like, I would come and be like, Hey, if you're
• 51:26
  going to do that, there's no way this training is going to work.
• 51:28
  And then they're like, what do we need to change?
• 51:29
  And so over time, there's been a dialogue of, OK, after
• 51:34
  tournaments, I'm going to modify training, We need to modify
• 51:36
  practice. And so that's the stuff that is
• 51:38
  slowly happening. And I like what I'm seeing now
• 51:42
  going into Year 3, but that's it's one that's going to be
• 51:44
  built on relations with who you're who you're, who you're
• 51:46
  working with. But also like there has to be a
• 51:49
  willingness on both sides to make that compromise.
• 51:52
  Otherwise everybody's screwed. Nobody's going to give what they
• 51:54
  want. Yeah.
• 51:54
  No, those are those are huge points.
• 51:56
  And I love the way Paul favorites PGF performance talks
• 52:00
  about he's like, if you're a skills coach, you got to
• 52:02
  understand that you are also a Plios coach and an agilities
• 52:05
  coach, right? And it's you can't just separate
• 52:08
  those things. And just because it's working
• 52:10
  basketball, it doesn't or volleyball doesn't mean we're
• 52:12
  not working those other things. I mean, yeah, like the
• 52:14
  individual sessions, the load of those per minute are so far
• 52:18
  beyond most most anything else. Because like you're saying, like
• 52:20
  if it's just one-on-one with the person and those parents are
• 52:24
  paying you for that, you can't just have them sit there and
• 52:28
  wait. You know, you're not and feel
• 52:30
  like you're just not getting the most for what they're paying for
• 52:33
  is like, OK, I'm going to just go, go, go.
• 52:34
  And it's just like you're saying it's like conditioning
• 52:36
  basically, which is, I mean, I like it.
• 52:39
  It's a hard situation. He's like, are you going to have
• 52:41
  him wait, you know, 30-40 minute between everything and then oh,
• 52:45
  what do you know, what am I paying for?
• 52:46
  But it's also like what is what is best for the individual in
• 52:49
  those situations? That, that's one thing that I've
• 52:51
  had a few times with parents is that if you come train, like if
• 52:56
  you, if anybody watches the videos that I put out, it looks
• 52:59
  kind of chaotic and fast-paced. It's not always that way.
• 53:02
  So if you come watch a training session, like a lot of parents
• 53:06
  anticipate before they come in, that it's going to be you're on
• 53:08
  the line, you're doing this, you're going to be tired.
• 53:10
  We're going to be doing everything in order.
• 53:12
  Everything's going to look perfect.
• 53:13
  It ain't like that. There's times where we'll do
• 53:15
  like 15 pogos and then we'll sit there in a circle and we'll talk
• 53:19
  for for three minutes and then we'll do it again and then we'll
• 53:22
  do it again and then we'll do it again.
• 53:24
  And I can tell that whether it's an athlete or sometimes parents
• 53:27
  watching some for some reason, there's like this uneasiness
• 53:30
  about something not being done and getting some kids over that
• 53:34
  is kind of a fun experience sometimes.
• 53:37
  And but overtime I'm but I'm like, Hey, this is how we've
• 53:40
  done things. We have the track record and I
• 53:42
  have the proof of 100 of kids that this is this has worked for
• 53:45
  us. If you want something that's
• 53:47
  really fast-paced and intense, I'm not your guy.
• 53:49
  Like this is not, this is not going to work.
• 53:51
  And I think when it comes to the skill side too, when you were
• 53:54
  saying like, because I love Paul Favors, he's actually the first
• 53:57
  guy, one of the first dudes that I ever followed on Instagram.
• 54:00
  And I still watch all this stuff to this day.
• 54:02
  Yeah. One thing that I heard him talk
• 54:03
  about this past week is that when there there's a very big
• 54:07
  shift in there, anything in strength conditioning in sport
• 54:11
  always goes into this thing is the best thing ever.
• 54:13
  And then it drips off and then people come to their conclusions
• 54:16
  and find the happy medium in the middle.
• 54:18
  And he was talking about the other day about small sided
• 54:20
  games. I don't know if you saw that
• 54:21
  one. Yeah.
• 54:23
  Yeah. And I know that's what you were
• 54:24
  referring to with some of these private lessons is that if you
• 54:27
  have a few people in doing small sided games, he's like, you are
• 54:30
  getting more hard accelerations and decelerations in those small
• 54:34
  sided games, then an NBA game by four or five times in a matter
• 54:39
  of an hour. So in A and over the course of a
• 54:41
  2 hour NBA game, you're getting, I think he said 20 to 25 hard
• 54:46
  excels hard D cells. I can't remember what he said.
• 54:48
  It was something like that. If you're doing these small
• 54:50
  sided games and the pace is high, you're getting 75 to 100
• 54:55
  of those, which is the greater than the actual sport.
• 54:58
  And you're doing that three or four days a week.
• 55:00
  Like that is absolutely absurd. And that's why I think that
• 55:03
  message is so powerful as if you're a volleyball, well coach
• 55:06
  in my realm, if you're doing hitting lines for 30 minutes,
• 55:09
  you're getting more Max effort jumps and swings by 5-6.
• 55:13
  I'd like to bet 7X you're getting in the course of a game
• 55:18
  and a three set match. And so that's what even even
• 55:20
  though practice and training is going to, is supposed to build
• 55:23
  you up and be a little bit above the threshold of the game to be
• 55:26
  prepared, it's not meant to be that far ahead.
• 55:30
  So you're not preparing yourself for war.
• 55:32
  You're preparing yourself a little bit above the threshold
• 55:34
  at which you're supposed to, at which you're supposed to perform
• 55:36
  in your sport. And so that's why I think as a
• 55:39
  sport coach, go out of your way to learn from people that
• 55:42
  understand workload management. And as doctors and PTS go out of
• 55:47
  your way to talk to sport coaches and strained coaches.
• 55:49
  That way you understand everybody's world and
• 55:52
  everybody's relatable to everybody.
• 55:54
  Yeah, that, yeah, that's great. I don't know if just to sign up,
• 55:57
  but I don't know if you know who Tim Doyle is.
• 56:00
  He's the head volleyball coach at BCU.
• 56:02
  He's he's been a guest on here. He's been a great friend, but
• 56:04
  he's he was at William and Mary when like here, when I'm flat
• 56:09
  Eric Quorum. All of them, if you're familiar
• 56:11
  with them, were there and they got him all into understanding
• 56:14
  the breakdown of what volleyball actually is, the demands of it
• 56:18
  and track and all that. And he he doesn't a phenomenal
• 56:20
  job now of like tactical periodization, like playing out
• 56:23
  his practices weeks and like understanding all of this
• 56:27
  aspect. So he might be someone you check
• 56:29
  out, but he he's awesome. Just want to throw that out
• 56:30
  there. Go to Dan Mesky from Louisville,
• 56:33
  Louisville. He's the head coach for
• 56:35
  Louisville. And he has said this himself.
• 56:36
  And he's he's amassed a pretty large social media following and
• 56:39
  he's the head coach of Louisville, Louisville
• 56:41
  volleyball. But he puts out threads every
• 56:43
  once in a while about what they do on the court.
• 56:45
  And he's like, if there's one message I can give, I don't want
• 56:48
  to miss. Say what he said before, but he
• 56:50
  said something along the lines of like, if you were a
• 56:52
  volleyball player, whether you're developmental or you're
• 56:54
  in the college setting, why are you running more than 10 yards
• 56:57
  at a time? He's like, and, and so his
• 56:59
  message was just, it wasn't that you shouldn't Sprint like 10 to
• 57:03
  20 yards, like I run 20 yards sprints, my athletes.
• 57:05
  His message was, why are you running suicides?
• 57:08
  Why are you running down the backs?
• 57:10
  Why are you doing this mindless conditioning when the sport
• 57:13
  doesn't require anything like that?
• 57:15
  Why aren't you sprinting 10 yards, resting, sprinting 10
• 57:18
  yards, resting? Why aren't you change the
• 57:20
  direction for five to 10 seconds, resting, Change the
• 57:22
  direction for five to 10, five to 10 minutes or five to 10
• 57:24
  seconds and resting. He's like, if you have any sense
• 57:28
  of just like any observant ability at all, you can look at
• 57:32
  the sport and be like, why would I run 30 Downing backs with my
• 57:36
  volleyball players? Like, why would I even do that?
• 57:39
  That doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
• 57:40
  And so like he he was just getting the point across of
• 57:42
  like, and so that message, I mean, being who he is probably
• 57:45
  expanded to a lot of people and helped a lot of people.
• 57:47
  But what I'm saying is that more and what you're saying is more
• 57:50
  sport, coaches need to really hone in on that.
• 57:53
  And meanwhile us get in the game and even if you're playing
• 57:57
  recreationally or you just hop into practice to mess around
• 57:59
  with your players, get in there and feel what it's like cuz you,
• 58:02
  everybody will learn from that and everybody will become better
• 58:05
  because of it. This being really great comments
• 58:08
  from this, I wanted to ask you a few questions on more the
• 58:11
  business side of stuff. Also, I saw an interesting story
• 58:15
  you put out about how you went from 5000 to 45,000 followers in
• 58:20
  like 18 months. Could you could you touch on on
• 58:22
  on that story for yourself? What went into growing your
• 58:26
  Instagram following there? Yeah, so when I when I first
• 58:30
  started, I would always look up online like how to grow your
• 58:33
  social media really fast. And they all said the same
• 58:36
  thing. It'd be like post everyday, do
• 58:39
  this, do that. And so, I mean, you have to post
• 58:41
  consistently, but what I've learned is that if you don't
• 58:45
  speak to people, nobody will care what you have to say.
• 58:48
  And so like, there's plenty of people out there that are
• 58:50
  posting training content. I mean, it's the most diluted
• 58:52
  field out there when it comes to personal training.
• 58:55
  Like good luck. As a dude in online fitness
• 58:59
  trying to amass some sort of attention from people, it's
• 59:01
  extremely difficult. Unless you have somebody of high
• 59:04
  status that knows you and puts you on, it's really difficult to
• 59:07
  do so. Like for me, I mean, I was, I
• 59:10
  was friends with or I mean, I worked with Zach Dick and he had
• 59:12
  a good following. But like it's not like he put me
• 59:15
  on or anything. Everything that I've built
• 59:17
  through my social media had just been organically through myself
• 59:20
  in my little shack in a small town that I've somehow managed
• 59:22
  to like a good following. But what I've done, the X's and
• 59:26
  O's of it is I would always originally I posted really
• 59:29
  general stuff. And so I have a friend, his
• 59:31
  name's Braden Gomerak. He's he's he's called the Run
• 59:34
  Strong coach. He's from BYU.
• 59:36
  He trains professional runners and Olympians.
• 59:39
  And he, I, I, I think I managed, it took me like a year and a
• 59:42
  half to go from like 500 to 5000.
• 59:44
  So I was going real slow. He decided to start posting and
• 59:47
  he within nine months had already gotten like 12,000 from
• 59:50
  like 300. And I was like, OK, like, what
• 59:52
  are you doing? And he's like, dude, he's like,
• 59:54
  your stuff is so general. You do not put captions on the
• 59:57
  front of your videos of exactly what you're going to tell people
• 1:00:00
  you want to the message that you're going to tell them.
• 1:00:03
  And three and this like he didn't say this one, but I, I
• 1:00:06
  asked him about it. I'm like.
• 1:00:07
  Tommy Hanson, I have the most general name of all time.
• 1:00:11
  It's like 5. There's like 5000 of me.
• 1:00:13
  No, I mean, that's not going to send me a party.
• 1:00:15
  He's like create a cool name for yourself.
• 1:00:16
  I'm like, OK, so I just put freestyle jump back and it's
• 1:00:18
  stuck. Like it's way cooler than Tommy
• 1:00:20
  Hanson. I'll tell you that.
• 1:00:21
  But but so I put that out and then immediately I started
• 1:00:25
  posting just volleyball, but I didn't do it in a way that's
• 1:00:27
  what most people are doing, which is I'm going to post my
• 1:00:30
  volleyball players training and just put things like volleyball
• 1:00:33
  speed and agility and then put boom, boom, boom, boom.
• 1:00:35
  This is what it is. Because The thing is, if you
• 1:00:37
  want a girl on social media, people either to find value from
• 1:00:40
  what you're doing or you have to train somebody of high status
• 1:00:42
  that people want to people want to see.
• 1:00:44
  So if you train LeBron James, I could just put a video with no
• 1:00:47
  caption of LeBron James training and that's going to go crazy.
• 1:00:50
  But if you don't have that, you have to find some reason to get
• 1:00:53
  people to trust you when they have no idea who you are or
• 1:00:55
  don't know, have any idea who any of your athletes are.
• 1:00:57
  And So what I started doing was I was like, OK, so my, my
• 1:01:00
  population is primarily club volleyball.
• 1:01:02
  How do I get that to become a message that other club
• 1:01:05
  volleyballs want to engage with? But the thing was, but I noticed
• 1:01:08
  was nobody was posting videos of club volleyball players in
• 1:01:13
  action on the court and those same athletes in training doing
• 1:01:18
  the things that I'm showing on the court and then logging the
• 1:01:22
  progress of those exact kids over time.
• 1:01:25
  And so would by doing all four of those things think.
• 1:01:29
  And then and then obviously some of the the headlines or some of
• 1:01:32
  the captions from my videos, you have to put something that's a
• 1:01:35
  little bit click baity, like you have to play the game a little
• 1:01:37
  bit. So like I would do that and then
• 1:01:39
  I would post that. And then I think it's just, it
• 1:01:41
  was just so relatable to so many kids.
• 1:01:44
  And I was speaking to a population that didn't felt like
• 1:01:47
  they were being spoken to directly.
• 1:01:50
  And over time, it just got shared more, more, more, more,
• 1:01:52
  more. And I don't know if anybody is
• 1:01:54
  really posting stuff about volleyball players freestyling
• 1:01:56
  over hurdles or doing hopping drills or doing any of that
• 1:01:59
  stuff. So it was a little bit new and
• 1:02:01
  it was very, and it was speaking directly to some people.
• 1:02:04
  And then that population just grew.
• 1:02:06
  And I haven't stopped doing that.
• 1:02:07
  So I've been doing that since and it just keeps going, keeps
• 1:02:10
  going, keeps going, keeps going. So like I'm recycling the same,
• 1:02:14
  the same ideas of we hop, we bound, we jump, we freestyle, we
• 1:02:17
  do all these different things, but I choose something in
• 1:02:20
  volleyball that's relevant to them and I tell a story in a
• 1:02:24
  different way because you can either educate, you can
• 1:02:26
  entertain, but we're regardless of what you do, the story that
• 1:02:29
  you tell is the only thing that matters.
• 1:02:31
  So I can say the same things that I'm saying now, but if I
• 1:02:34
  articulate it in a way that people drown out after the first
• 1:02:37
  second of seeing my video, no one's going to want to watch it.
• 1:02:40
  You have to create some sort of emotional connection, a hook or
• 1:02:43
  some sort, and then tell the story in a way with different
• 1:02:46
  punctuation, different tones. And so if you go back and watch
• 1:02:49
  some of my early audio videos, like my voice is so monotone,
• 1:02:53
  it's not very good. You go back and listen to it.
• 1:02:55
  And then over time, like I'm louder at certain points in the
• 1:02:58
  video, I'm talking faster. Like there's certain things that
• 1:03:00
  I've caught onto on some of my videos that have done well.
• 1:03:03
  And once you find what clicks, just never stop doing that.
• 1:03:06
  And that's kind of what I've done for the last year and a
• 1:03:08
  half. Yeah.
• 1:03:08
  No, no, that's great. And that's really practical for
• 1:03:10
  people. As that has grown, what value
• 1:03:13
  has that brought you? Is that more in selling some of
• 1:03:16
  your online programs and stuff like that or has it also helped
• 1:03:20
  attract in person business for you?
• 1:03:22
  All the above. Well, like originally.
• 1:03:25
  Like as most private sector trainers do.
• 1:03:28
  When you get into it, the ideal scenario is you're probably
• 1:03:32
  going to start with in person people because you have to have
• 1:03:35
  proof of the concepts that you're putting out there
• 1:03:36
  actually work with in the real world with real people.
• 1:03:39
  But over time, I think everybody slowly wants to shift to an
• 1:03:43
  online presence to where you don't have to work every hour of
• 1:03:47
  the day training people on the training floor.
• 1:03:49
  And you can work the amount of hours that you want.
• 1:03:52
  But then the supplemental online income that you get is going to
• 1:03:55
  offset that. And that's going to give you a
• 1:03:57
  little bit more Peace of Mind. And that allows you to have a
• 1:03:59
  little bit more freedom. Now, The thing is, what that's
• 1:04:02
  marketed is as online as you just create a platform and
• 1:04:05
  people buy your stuff and it's passive income.
• 1:04:07
  It's anything but passive. All I've done for the last four
• 1:04:10
  years, I've had very little social life.
• 1:04:12
  It's been 10 to 14 hours of work per day.
• 1:04:15
  Getting a facility up and running, getting this proof.
• 1:04:17
  Like at the beginning of it, when I only had one or two
• 1:04:20
  athletes, it would take me an entire month to put one reel
• 1:04:22
  together because I didn't want my athletes just feeling like
• 1:04:24
  they were a film star in my video.
• 1:04:26
  And I have my phone out the entire session.
• 1:04:28
  So I'll take one or two videos every session.
• 1:04:30
  And then after a month, I finally got enough to get a
• 1:04:32
  minute video put together. And so it's very difficult to
• 1:04:35
  do. But to go back to answer your
• 1:04:36
  question, when it comes to the online stuff, originally it was
• 1:04:41
  no. Down the line if this works,
• 1:04:44
  this is going to add a lot of value online to one-on-one
• 1:04:48
  training selling programs that'll that's going to take
• 1:04:50
  care of itself if it grows. But what I've learned in
• 1:04:53
  business is that anytime I have put my business in some sort of
• 1:04:57
  local like pamphlet or brochure or sports like sports packet at
• 1:05:03
  some of the local events that has done absolutely nothing for
• 1:05:06
  me. I've got 0 return on any of
• 1:05:08
  those things, showing the athletes online on Instagram and
• 1:05:11
  tagging them and them sharing it because they feel like it's
• 1:05:14
  valuable to them. That's much more personal than
• 1:05:17
  me putting my name in some packet and hopefully someone
• 1:05:20
  reads it and says I want to call this person for training.
• 1:05:22
  The more personable that you can make whatever is that you're
• 1:05:25
  doing and more authentic that you can make it feel it's going
• 1:05:28
  to work. And Instagram, especially with
• 1:05:30
  the younger population, I mean there's kids with that are 1011
• 1:05:33
  years old that have Instagram now.
• 1:05:35
  So like, if they get a hold of that and they see this Division
• 1:05:37
  One player trained with Tommy, like I want to go do that.
• 1:05:40
  Like, even though that's not necessarily why I did it in the
• 1:05:43
  first place, that's a result of what's happening.
• 1:05:45
  And so I think so, I mean, and then as my as my followers have
• 1:05:50
  gone up, more outreach online has gone up.
• 1:05:53
  My in person, my in person business become much more
• 1:05:55
  competitive to get into because there's so many players in the
• 1:05:57
  area that want to do it now online.
• 1:05:59
  It's the more followers I've gotten, the more income I've had
• 1:06:02
  from it. So it's a benefit on both sides.
• 1:06:05
  But what I'll tell the biggest advice that I have is that
• 1:06:08
  whether you have 300 followers or you have 500,000 followers,
• 1:06:12
  your, your followers should never ever be able to tell a
• 1:06:15
  difference in you or who you are as a person.
• 1:06:17
  And as that status changes, you are still the same person behind
• 1:06:21
  that screen, still the same authentic person that you were
• 1:06:24
  training the few athletes that you had when you had zero money.
• 1:06:27
  If the, if that changes you and you become some sort of entitled
• 1:06:31
  brat because of it, you were in it for the wrong reasons to
• 1:06:33
  begin with. And so whether my athletes, the
• 1:06:36
  ones that have been in me since day one, they come in, I'm the
• 1:06:38
  exact same person. I'm not changing who I am.
• 1:06:41
  I'm even though the situations have changed and the online
• 1:06:44
  stuff is grown a lot, I'm not treating my in person people any
• 1:06:48
  differently. And I, I understand that those
• 1:06:50
  people are the reason that I've been able to amass the following
• 1:06:54
  that I have now. And I will never do anything to
• 1:06:56
  sabotage that. If that means that no one wants
• 1:06:58
  me to film a video of them for the next month, I won't post for
• 1:07:00
  a month because I understand those people are way more
• 1:07:02
  important than getting a video out.
• 1:07:04
  So if you're not in it for the right reasons for that, then
• 1:07:06
  you're not going to win in the 1st place because eventually
• 1:07:08
  someone's going to detect that you're not in it for the any
• 1:07:11
  authentic reason whatsoever and you're in it for yourself.
• 1:07:13
  That's so good. And I think those are some
• 1:07:15
  really, really key things to hold on to as something
• 1:07:19
  together. Feel like sometimes like, hey,
• 1:07:20
  we're focused on growing the business or growing Instagram
• 1:07:22
  and you can get caught up in caught up in us as a coach
• 1:07:25
  versus like, what are we actually doing it for?
• 1:07:27
  And like, why are we trying to grow this so we can serve more
• 1:07:29
  people. So I think holding on to that is
• 1:07:32
  so important. So I appreciate you emphasizing
• 1:07:35
  that as you talk about, OK, the goal is to be able to shift a
• 1:07:38
  little more online and get some of that more time and and
• 1:07:42
  financial freedom there a little bit like what are you building
• 1:07:44
  to long term? Is the goal to shift more and
• 1:07:47
  more into education and online training unless where you have
• 1:07:51
  to be in the gym physically because obviously it can be
• 1:07:54
  harder where especially with youth athletes a lot of times
• 1:07:56
  it's late evenings and all that like.
• 1:07:58
  Is that the goal long term for you business wise?
• 1:08:01
  Yeah, so like, that's why I love doing these podcasts.
• 1:08:03
  I love the idea of art, just articulating thoughts and
• 1:08:07
  talking and consulting type things.
• 1:08:09
  One thing that I'm going to be setting up pretty soon here is
• 1:08:11
  because I get a lot of DMS of people asking to hop on phone
• 1:08:13
  calls and do different stuff. I'm probably going to start some
• 1:08:15
  different consulting where people pay me for like per hour
• 1:08:19
  to just have a conversation, ask questions, something like that.
• 1:08:22
  I really enjoy doing that type of stuff.
• 1:08:24
  Like, I mean, if we ran this all day, I would be here for three,
• 1:08:27
  three hours talking. It's like, I really do enjoy
• 1:08:30
  having like discourse like this. So like for me, I'm at the point
• 1:08:33
  like in the summers, I'm on the training floor 10 hours
• 1:08:35
  straight. Like I have 10 sessions in a row
• 1:08:37
  starting from 6:00 AM and I go all the way to 6:37 PM
• 1:08:40
  sometimes. Now I can do that.
• 1:08:42
  I'm 27, I'm in good shape. I'm not going to be able to do
• 1:08:44
  that when I'm 40. No way.
• 1:08:45
  So like the the goal is can I build something that's
• 1:08:49
  sustainable to where I because The thing is, there's nothing I
• 1:08:52
  like more than the actual coaching in person.
• 1:08:55
  So that will never fully go away.
• 1:08:56
  I don't ever see myself ever being a full time online coach
• 1:09:01
  or a consultant. I don't see myself doing that as
• 1:09:03
  the main thing. I want to be at the point where
• 1:09:06
  I can train a decent amount of kids maybe a few hours a day
• 1:09:10
  online income can supplement that.
• 1:09:12
  And then the rest of my time is helping people who wants to try
• 1:09:15
  to build something that I've done.
• 1:09:17
  And I'm, I'm far from that. Like, so I'm not saying that I'm
• 1:09:20
  at any point to where I'm at cruise control.
• 1:09:22
  I'm only 27. This is the first year, I'll
• 1:09:24
  admit this, the first year I've made money in my business.
• 1:09:27
  Like it takes, especially when you own a facility.
• 1:09:29
  It took me 3 years till I saw a positive in that.
• 1:09:32
  That's, that's The thing is people see all followers.
• 1:09:34
  People see all these different things.
• 1:09:36
  They don't see the struggles. And you've been like, you know
• 1:09:38
  what, it is even worth it anymore.
• 1:09:39
  Like, do I want to spend X amount of money on a business
• 1:09:43
  and and a training facility that I don't even know is going to
• 1:09:45
  work? Like those are all the thoughts
• 1:09:46
  that go on. What people see is the passive
• 1:09:49
  income of of the online following that comes with so
• 1:09:52
  much struggle and people don't even understand people's stories
• 1:09:54
  half the time. But The thing is, I do not, I
• 1:09:57
  never want to get to the point where I'm like, Oh, I'm on a
• 1:09:59
  beach. Just type in programs and doing
• 1:10:01
  that now that that that doesn't appeal to me at all.
• 1:10:03
  I love coaching. I want to be in the coaching
• 1:10:05
  environment. I want to be with athletes that
• 1:10:07
  I want to train and want to be there and are good people and I
• 1:10:10
  can selectively train however many people, whatever that
• 1:10:13
  number ends up being in a in several years, whether that's
• 1:10:15
  5-10 years down the road, I don't know.
• 1:10:16
  Online is supplementing that income.
• 1:10:18
  And then anybody who wants to talk and talk shop and stuff
• 1:10:21
  somehow set up some sort of consulting thing and do a little
• 1:10:23
  bit of all three because I enjoy all three of them.
• 1:10:25
  But there's nothing more than I don't enjoy anything more than
• 1:10:28
  just being on the floor coaching and playing spike ball with my
• 1:10:31
  kids, you know? Yeah.
• 1:10:32
  So, yeah, well, that's cool though.
• 1:10:34
  I think you'd do a really good job with the consultant aspect.
• 1:10:37
  I think you communicate and articulate what you're doing,
• 1:10:40
  reasoning really, really well. So I think I think you'd be
• 1:10:43
  successful at that. Last question I have for you, as
• 1:10:45
  you think about that long term vision, the places you're trying
• 1:10:47
  to build, what skills do you feel you need to build or
• 1:10:51
  enhance to get where you really want to get long term?
• 1:10:54
  So I would say when it comes to in person stuff, think where I'm
• 1:10:57
  at, it's a pretty good, a pretty good spot.
• 1:10:59
  But from the online stuff, you'd be surprised, even if you have a
• 1:11:03
  very, very large following, getting people to physically buy
• 1:11:06
  those products and those services online is still a very,
• 1:11:09
  very difficult task to do. So like, I don't know if you
• 1:11:12
  listen to Alex from Mosey at all.
• 1:11:13
  Like I listen to a lot of his stuff and he's like, there are
• 1:11:16
  people that have 4000 followers that make $20,000 a month online
• 1:11:21
  and then there's people who have 100,000 followers that make
• 1:11:23
  $1000 a month online and you're like, where's the disconnect?
• 1:11:26
  So like for me, I've marketed a few things a different way
• 1:11:29
  depending the programs that I'm selling.
• 1:11:31
  I put things out there a little bit differently to see what
• 1:11:33
  hits. I'm still trying to find like
• 1:11:35
  how do I sell to more people online?
• 1:11:38
  And so I'm trying to listen to all for Mosey stuff, read any
• 1:11:41
  business resources that I can about generating and and
• 1:11:44
  capturing more attention online and trying to get people to buy
• 1:11:47
  more resources online. That is 1 area where as much
• 1:11:50
  followers as I have, I'd like to do better in that area and I
• 1:11:53
  know and so I guess the skills side on that would be my not
• 1:11:58
  when it comes to online. Do I need to put more shoutouts
• 1:12:02
  in some of my reels? Do I need to have a better
• 1:12:05
  landing page on my on my programs?
• 1:12:09
  Do I need to have better and easier accessible navigation
• 1:12:13
  from my post to my links to my products to selling?
• 1:12:17
  All those are different things that I'm experimenting with.
• 1:12:19
  I'm trying to find what works best, but it is a game and it's
• 1:12:23
  actually really, really hard. As good as you can articulate a
• 1:12:25
  thought, you still got to somehow consciously get somebody
• 1:12:29
  to put their finger on their phone screen and buy your
• 1:12:32
  product. And that's not an easy thing to
• 1:12:33
  do. Yeah, it's yeah.
• 1:12:36
  We all aren't quite at Hormosey's level, where he's
• 1:12:38
  having $105 million book launch. Sale.
• 1:12:44
  Maybe one day I'll. Figure that out, I'll call you.
• 1:12:47
  I'll let you know when I get the $105 million training program
• 1:12:50
  solo. But well, Tommy, man, this has
• 1:12:53
  been this has been really, really good.
• 1:12:55
  I think on on different aspects, both for athletes, parents,
• 1:12:58
  coaches in the youth training standpoint, but also just
• 1:13:01
  business has been great for me listening.
• 1:13:03
  So man, I appreciate you doing this.
• 1:13:05
  Where, where can people check you out?
• 1:13:06
  Now you mentioned your, your username for instrument a little
• 1:13:08
  bit. Where can they check you out?
• 1:13:09
  Where can they check out your programs and maybe you know be
• 1:13:13
  in the waiting for accounted if you do start that consulting
• 1:13:15
  stuff down the line so. Everything that I have I've so
• 1:13:19
  my business is perform for life. If you type in on perform for
• 1:13:22
  life on Google, it's probably going to be one of the first two
• 1:13:25
  searches that you'll find on there.
• 1:13:27
  So you guys look it up or usually Instagram.
• 1:13:30
  Tommy Hanson freestyle jump guy is where I post most my stuff.
• 1:13:33
  I do have TikTok and Twitter, but I don't use it as much.
• 1:13:36
  I'm much better at Instagram. Maybe that's another thing a
• 1:13:38
  skill I need to get better at is learning how to use use X to
• 1:13:42
  market some of my stuff too. But anyway, if you just look up
• 1:13:45
  Tommy Hanson on Instagram, hopefully or freestyle jump guy,
• 1:13:48
  more likely to find me because as I said, Tommy Hanson, you'll
• 1:13:51
  probably find the professional baseball player from from the
• 1:13:54
  Mets from like a decade ago. So I have a very general name.
• 1:13:57
  But if you just look up Perform for Life, Tommy Hanson,
• 1:13:58
  freestyle jump guy and socials, you'll probably find me.
• 1:14:01
  But when you find my programs, all of them are just in the
• 1:14:03
  links and all the BIOS, all the typical stuff.
• 1:14:05
  But yeah, that's where you can find me.
• 1:14:07
  Awesome Tommy Man, again, this was awesome.
• 1:14:09
  I learned a lot. You're doing really great things
• 1:14:12
  obviously with, I can tell with the athletes that you're
• 1:14:14
  training in person, but also just sharing stuff overall for
• 1:14:17
  lots of people that are taking a ton from you.
• 1:14:19
  So keep doing that man. Keep it back to people and
• 1:14:22
  appreciate you for being on here.
• 1:14:23
  Appreciate you letting me come on here, this is fun.