Latest / The Platform: a Michigan High School Powerlifting Association Podcast / Coaches Roundtable P2: Nick Lundquist & Nick Lusk Peaking, RPE & Technique | The Platform Ep 22
Transcript
- Chris Whittaker: Welcome back to the platform where the stories weigh a ton. This is where some of the MHS PLA's best tell real stories about what it takes to build themselves and their teams under the bar. I'm your co-host, Chris Whitaker. We're glad you're here. If you're just joining us, this is part two of our coaches roundtable with Coach Nick Lundquist and Coach Nick Lusk. Both of these gentlemen have won state championships in their time. And we sit down again with them for part two, Coach Gillam and myself. And in part one, we talked all about intensity, safety, and programming for the multi-sport athlete. So if you missed it, go back, start there, listen to part one, and then come back here for part two. Just a quick reminder, please subscribe, follow, and leave a review wherever you listen to this show, Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Amazon Music, and many more. and send our guest guest topics, guests or topic ideas to info at mhspla.com. In part two, the four of us dig into auto-regulating intensity day-to-day, RPE versus percentages, peaking and tapering for the state meet, and budget-friendly fixes that these guys lean on to clean up technique. So let's get back to it here on the platform. So step up. The bar's loaded for episode 22, part two, with Coach Lundquist and Coach Lusk. Hit the intro music. Nick Lusk: working with the multi-sport athletes, you know, because they bring, they bring a little X factor in sometimes. Nicholas Lundquist: Yeah. Nick Lusk: so yeah, if I got a kid that can only show up, you know, we go five days a week. We're Monday, Wednesday, Friday in the weight room. And then Tuesday and Thursday, we're on one of our like gyms or decks and Tuesday will be core work and know cardio. So six half court sprints for power lifters, you know, nothing crazy. Just get a move in. then Thursday is all mobility and stretching. Right. So for my multi-sport athletes, I'm like, I need you really the days I need you here on Monday and Friday. And a lot of times they can make they make sure that happens because Monday we get our volume in Friday. We get our intensity in and we do all three of the So they're getting that specific training they need to be successful on the platform. Chris Gilliam: Okay, so Coach Lusk everybody. He's training his kids for the pentathlon. Where most kids at power lift, it's the triathlon. It's squat, punch, and deadlift. There's no running involved. Or or plyometrics. No, I I'm with you. I did I did the same thing. even though we did four day a week training, I still made him come in on a Wednesday and we would we would focus on plyometrics and some sprinting and stuff and the kids hated it. And but I'm like, well some of you play football for me, so we're gonna do some agility ladders. And we're gonna do some of this stuff too because I knew that they weren't in my class, so I had to make sure they were getting some of that stuff. And I think like box jumps are great explosive movements for lifters in general anyway. So I liked using those. And sometimes that fifth day helps you Put it into the routine. How about you, Coach Lunaker? Nicholas Lundquist: See, I make real quick, I make all my kids do their sprints on upper body days and do their jumps on lower body days. That's the first thing they have to do before they get to lift the weights. So they're Chris Gilliam: yeah. Nicholas Lundquist: like, you I gotta go do sprints first. I'm like, no, I don't care if you're a power lifter, football player, basketball player, you're doing your sprints and you're doing your jumps first before you touch any of the weights. Chris Gilliam: Yeah. You're not gonna wanna sprint after you do this leg workout, people. Nicholas Lundquist: Yeah. All right. So they do that first. Chris Gilliam: Yeah. Well that's great. How about you, Coach Whitaker? Chris Whittaker: That's that's how we do it too. I mean we're there we're training like athletes. You Chris Gilliam: Mm-hmm. Chris Whittaker: know, our and I'm sure we'll probably get to it further down down the way, but we just keep training in our program and keep running our stuff and then when we get about three weeks out from a meet, it's a dynamic effort wave with the free squat. usually going into the first one and then our last one going in the state meet usually with the varsity kids is Circumax. We're twenty one days out taking a sixty five, seventy percent band tension. super heavy squat, that then has that d delayed transformation effect. Two or three days where us you're an in season athlete training on our program. and you know, we're gonna get you better for whatever sport you're playing. Chris Gilliam: Yeah. That's good. Chris Whittaker: So, next one, next category is practical intensity tracking. man, my freaking Chris Gilliam: Nice. Chris Whittaker: the keyboard button didn't work, Coach Gillum. So we're trying to use some I Chris Gilliam: Yeah, your timing's getting off a little bit, Coach. Chris Whittaker: I hit the button. I hit the button, it didn't come up. All right, you got it all. You you got you know Chris Gilliam: there there we go. Practical intensity tracking. Here we go. Chris Whittaker: Yeah. teenagers have wildly unpredictable schedules, sleep, nutrition. How do you do you prefer using strict percentages? or do you teach them subjective tools like RPE, you know, rate of perceived exertion? Kick off Coach Gillum. You Chris Gilliam: Musk. Chris Whittaker: start one. Chris Gilliam: I'm not a big RPE guy, to be honest. I'm I'm come to the percentages kind of thing. But you know, in a roundabout way you're you're always using an RPE concept because if it's seventy five percent and and you should be able to do, you know, five or six reps and all of a sudden like you struggled to get three or four, the rate of perceived exertion is this was harder than seventy five percent. Right. But I'm not gonna tell that's a seven RPE and stuff like that. I just would be like, Yeah, you're just not having it today. So I mean they all kind of intertwine a little bit, but you know, to me I th the goal is we want to get into a rep range. I mean, even though I gave you a specific amount of reps, I wasn't one to program rep ranges. I don't know if you guys ever did that, but I'm I'm more of a you know, set to five. Some sets of four, but I did a lot of sets of three and sets of one and a little bit of sets of two, you know, and I would change like the number of sets. That's how I adjusted volume as much as possible. But yeah, I wasn't big into the RPEs myself, but I know it's a a big thing that's been going on for about ten years or so now. How about you, Coach Lusk? Are you an RPE guy? Nick Lusk: No, not really. And the reason that is, is kids don't know what that means. Brand new kid. Good luck. Yeah, Chris Gilliam: Yeah, you're more of an R E guy, aren't you? Nick Lusk: yeah. I've had a lot of those. Chris Gilliam: He he's an MRE guy, meals ready to eat, coach, from the military. Chris Whittaker: Okay. Nicholas Lundquist: Okay. Nick Lusk: Yeah. No, but like with the, how it, some kids don't know what real struggle is. So they walk in there and they're lifting and they're like, yeah, that was tough. And you're like, that was a great warm up, you know, cause we know what it, what it should look like. The effort should look like, and then there's the flip side, right? Probably me when I was in high school and coach Lundquist when he was in high school. Cause I trained them like every set, every rep we're dying under the bar. Right? Like. no, I got five more in me coach. We're good. So for me, I don't want to use that because I can't, every kid's different, you know? Nicholas Lundquist: Yeah. Nick Lusk: so I do, I do percentage base cause it gives a kid a ballpark idea. And then after meets we can plug our maxes in and give us, good estimates. but like you said, every day, like we've all talked about, we're always adjusting on the fly. If the bar is moving slow, we're going to back down. If the bar is moving real fast, we might jump up a little bit. Chris Gilliam: Yeah. Well I I kinda found like you know, let's say kid starts to work out really well and then all of a sudden they're petering out during the workout. I mean, first question I usually ask them is, Well, did you eat breakfast today or did you eat lunch? And for a lot of kids, no breakfast, no lunch. It's like you haven't ate since last night and you went through a whole school day and now you're doing this workout. No wonder you're out of energy. You know? Nick Lusk: Yo. Chris Gilliam: So I mean the main thing for me is like the kids like that usually was the number one solution for those that were dragging butt at practice is they hadn't been eaten right. You know, so th then we would have the nutrition talk 'cause th that that was the most important thing to discuss. How about you, Lun Lundquist? Are you an RPE guy? Nicholas Lundquist: No, no, no. same thing with what you guys are saying. Like a lot of the problem is is is they don't get enough sleep. They don't eat enough food. So they really don't know, you know, what the what the struggle is. I'm a percentage guy, especially when it comes to like Thursdays, Fridays or Dina dynamic effort day. if that bar's moving slow, we'll have that conversation about, hey, why do you think it's moving slow? Did you eat good? Are you hydrated? Did you get sleep last night? Or you stress stuff like that and if we need to peel, you know, five per five to ten percent off that bar so that bar that that speed is maintained, then we'll do that, but not our not an RPE guy, no. Chris Gilliam: Yeah, I gotcha. Coach Whitaker? Chris Whittaker: It's a little blend of both, I think, for us. It's max effort days very and and actually even before we get to that. What do I need to tell a kid to get the goal? Right? Do I need to say, hey, you need to hit over ninety percent? Or hey, you need to give me a nine out of ten. Chris Gilliam: This is the same. Yeah. Chris Whittaker: Whatever gets it, we know it's the same. Nicholas Lundquist: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, same, yeah. Chris Whittaker: Whatever gets the kid to understand that, right? Like much like Lunkwist talking about dynamic days, we're doing fixed percentages, right? It it's it's thirty percent bar, twenty five percent band. That's what should be loaded on the bar and you should be changing plates for each other, you know, and then moving it at a specific speed. Chris Gilliam: Yeah. And that to me that's like if the bar speed doesn't match what it should based on the percentages, then that's for me as a coach to decide, all right, either we have you at too high of a a percentage right now, your max isn't really where where we thought it was, you know, so let's let's see how it is next week. And then you know, okay. We've had a couple bad workouts in a row. And we've addressed nutrition, we've addressed sleep. You know, maybe it's time to adjust the the max so the the percentages don't change, but the weight will. Does that make sense? Chris Whittaker: Yeah, take the t the the starting point down that you're working off of. Chris Gilliam: Yeah. Chris Whittaker: Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. Chris Gilliam: And you you with your bands, dude. I've I I use bands, but I used them for stretching. But Nick Lusk: Thank Chris Whittaker: That's a whole other that's a whole nother episode we can do too. Nicholas Lundquist: A no. Chris Gilliam: I know, but I know a lot of people that train with them and I found it very fascinating and I've experimented with it, you know, but it's it's kinda like whatever no matter what it is, until you feel like you're knowledgeable to f fix the potential problems. you're really hesitant to dive into it one hundred percent. You know, and and so that's how I've always been. And I think that's what probably a lot of coaches are. It's like if you don't have the answers to the potential problems, man, you just gotta be comfortable enough to that you can resolve the issues. And so you just gotta learn more about it before you kinda dive into it more. But I I we we did more stuff with bands with deadlift than probably anything. That's probably the only area that I Nick Lusk: Okay. Chris Gilliam: felt comfortable using bands for training. Chris Whittaker: Stand on it or do do you guys have the platform where you could attach to the sides? Chris Gilliam: both, you know, 'cause in our weight room at Birch Run we had four deadlift platform areas, but we'd have people off the deadlift platform doing it as well because you know we only had four of So, you know, if they were on the platform we could attach it to stuff. If they weren't, then they stood on So Chris Whittaker: We we use both of that. With the bands and chains thing is just every dynamic effort day for the most part we're using some sort of accommodating resistance. Band band or chain. But that that's a whole nother whole other podcast beginning. Get on with Chris Gilliam: without a doubt. Yeah. Nicholas Lundquist: Mm-hmm. Chris Whittaker: that. Chris Gilliam: One of the best female squatters I've ever seen for high school. her name was Izzy Figueroa. She did a lot of band stuff, but she did it like you were talking earlier, Chris. So she would overload her weight and then put the bands to help take some of that weight off to help her Chris Whittaker: Lightness. Chris Gilliam: l feel comfortable with going down with it. It was harder. And then Chris Whittaker: Yep. Chris Gilliam: you know, helped her to come up with speed to give her that confidence, which I totally understood that. And I wasn't gonna argue the science behind it 'cause she could like squat a house. So I'm like, Hey, it worked for you, man. It worked for you. So it but it was interesting to see that and talk to her dad about it. is it my Chris Whittaker: Well, what's the most what's the most intimidating part about a lift? As soon as Chris Gilliam: Gone down. Chris Whittaker: as soon as you walk out or as soon as you take it out, Chris Gilliam: Yeah. Chris Whittaker: crap. Right. Well now you're getting to train Nick Lusk: you Chris Whittaker: in your hands in the bench press, on your back at the top of the squat with the light and method, a weight that's heavier than you can actually do. So Chris Gilliam: Yeah. Chris Whittaker: you get that that feel there. One of the many other benefits of it, but sorry, coach. We we again Chris Gilliam: No, that's great. Chris Whittaker: Start spinning down all kinds of rabbit holes here with this Chris Gilliam: Yeah, for sure. We gotta get through this episode here. all right, so w we're kinda been hitting Nick Lusk: Thanks. Chris Gilliam: this a lot, but I think that this is pretty common, especially for, you know, smaller schools where kids are gonna be multi sport athletes, you know, but what's your go to method for auto regulating scaling back their intensity? Like what's what's the one the first thing you always try, guys? Like I kinda told you what I kinda I try. What's the first thing you always try to auto regulate for them when they're dragging? Go ahead, Lundquist. Sorry, Joe. Nicholas Lundquist: I just I just do that. I just communicate with them. It's like usually it's not it's not anything to do with, you know, the lift or or you know how their bite's just the the feeling, the tired feeling. So that's why the first thing's always that communication aspect. Say, hey, we always talk. What do you think's going on? Are you getting enough sleep, eating enough, hydrating enough, all that kind of stuff? and then I'll do, you know, I'll back the percentages off. Or I'll say, Hey, Chris Gilliam: Is one of this? Nicholas Lundquist: yep. percentages on the especially on the dynamic effort days. Cause we always do like the two by two or ten by two, ten by two, eight by two. Or we'll do, you know, so I'll say, hey, let's back the percentages off of that. Or the nine by three for bench. and then or half the half the accessory work or whatever it may be for that session. Nick Lusk: Thank Chris Gilliam: Yeah. How about you lost? Nick Lusk: Yeah, gosh We're picking back and off each other. it's always communicate with the kid first figure out what's what they think is going on and then Yeah, I just dropping the weight always seems to be the number one thing that helps out the most dropping that weight down I do have to want give one big apology. that's the coach Lundquist when he was an athlete there was no such thing as dropping the weight. There was no Hey, I'm sorry you're not feeling this good today. Like we're going to be mentally tough in everything. It was young coach lust that had a lot of learning to do. And I'm really sorry about some of the ways that I always treated you well. Don't get that. I don't want that to get misconstrued. Nicholas Lundquist: Yeah. Nick Lusk: Like I love that guy, but there were no days off Chris Gilliam: You just you ruined his career with that mentality. Nick Lusk: at all. There was no dropping intensity. It was fine. Another level. Nicholas Lundquist: Yeah. Chris Gilliam: Yeah. Lundquist doesn't know who this guy is that's talking right now 'cause you're nothing like the guy that touched him. that's hilarious. Nicholas Lundquist: Right, I s you guys get the soft lusk, man. He softened up a little bit, man, since I've had him, man. He was hard Nick Lusk: Yeah. Nicholas Lundquist: nosed. But hey, without that, I wouldn't have com accomplished as much as I have. I'm telling ya. I'm telling ya. You did a lot. Chris Gilliam: Yeah, I I believe you. All right, Whitaker, I mean are we beating a dead horse with you talking about your go to because Chris Whittaker: Yeah, I mean we're gonna well first we're gonna train, right? And sometimes it's they come in completely exhausted and as Coach Lusk is alluding to, they are. It it's it's in their head. Right? Especially sometimes, you know, we've all dealt with a kid, you know, that might be a little as we say in New York, soft. S A W F T soft. Chris Gilliam: Yeah. Chris Whittaker: and you know, soft is sin. Sometimes it's a s like and even on a max effort day too, right? Like if they're and and this question doesn't talk about in season kid so for assuming it's an off you know, an out of season kid, like, hey, just work up and strain on that bar. If you get over ninety percent of what you've done with that bar before, we call it a win and we back. Nicholas Lundquist: Mm-hmm. Chris Whittaker: Right. If if you're not able to do that, well, okay, well maybe we need to drop it to a a a belt squat or a sled drag or pull it out altogether and just run accessory work. That's Chris Gilliam: Yeah. Chris Whittaker: kinda that's kinda how we we do that. Chris Gilliam: Yeah, my go to is I just dropped volume. That was my go to on whatever it was. You know. we're supposed to be five sets of three today. You know, maybe we'll just go to three sets of three. you struggled on your first set. Okay, now we'll drop percentage. You know, be load the weight a little bit. That that was you know, trial and error, every kid's different. Some kids can push through it still, 'cause, you know, they could have that Michael Jordan in Yeah, I got the flu, but I can actually still hit this jumper to win the game. You know, they have that in in the workout too. They just weren't feeling it. You know. So we gotta find your limits a little bit. So I'm like Nicholas Lundquist: Mm-hmm. Chris Gilliam: old Coach Lusk a little bit, you know. Nick Lusk: Thank Chris Gilliam: We're gonna we're gonna give one hundred percent effort now and forever. All right. Coach Whitaker. Chris Whittaker: all right, so we're getting we're getting close to the end of the you know of our training cycle here. We're going to the big competition. How are we structuring our peaking and tapering phases? or and do we think about the high school academic calendar or the regional meet schedules or both and when we do that? So peaking and tapering. What are you considering both around the life of the kid and in the room? Chris Gilliam: Coach Whitaker, you started this one. Chris Whittaker: Hey, so it's one, the high school academic calendar really doesn't become an issue for us. We we run semesters and you know I don't think half of our kids don't even get finals in their classes anymore. so I'm not that worried about about that side of things. More it's the regional meet schedule. so if we're going say we we usually go to Grass Lake in December with kids that weren't fall athletes. So we start them about four weeks out and build everything in to that. Everything's in three and four week waves for us. that first meet, they're probably gonna take a ninety-four percent opener Monday and Tuesday, upper or lower, and then go into the into the meet. Second meet, usually about the same thing when we get there, and we're running those dynamic effort waves with the free squat into both of those for the specificity of the free squat. along with speed pulls after that. and as we alluded to ear earlier, right, when now we're gonna go, I didn't do it with my JV kids this year. but the varsity kids will run Circomax into the final meet of the year with with the delayed transformation cycle. Chris Gilliam: Yeah. Coach Lundquist. Chris Whittaker: So within the training within the training we delo every fourth week usually with like ten set to ten, pull out the max effort work or do some high volume work. Chris Gilliam: Coach Lockwells? Nicholas Lundquist: Yeah, s yeah, so during during season a lot of it we do a lot of our s stuff like like he was saying for squat. we'll do we'll go to free squat instead of our box squats and speed dynamic effort days and we'll follow it with a speed pull. I'll be honest with you. I I rotate exercises you know, every week I on my ex effort days, and then we we run in three week waves. I don't always have a flat bench programmed on Monday. It may be that incline. So they might not even touch that flat bench until Satur Saturday again. But it does they don't falter. So I haven't had a problem with with any of that. so I just we kinda keep the train rolling with our exercise selection and how we rotate exercises throughout the season. I haven't experienced or experimented with the circumax, but I might do that this year. That might be something I look looking look into doing, yeah. Chris Gilliam: Right. How about you, Coach Lask? Nick Lusk: Yeah, no, we will taper in the season, right? Leading up into a meet. And for us, it's towards the beginning of the season. It's only that Friday that will vary. you know, dropping the number of reps, increasing the intensity level on that, getting them ready for the meet. But then midway through the season on Mondays, that's when we'll start dropping some of the volume for squat and deadlift. Um to help with that taper process and just the you know, the wear and tear of the season Uh, but we try to you know every year we try to host our home meet either the week of or the week Af or the week before finals. Um So that way Whether we're prepping or deloading however, that's playing out. It always seemed to work out well for us. So if it's the week Before finals sweet we get everything out of the way the week of finals when they're super stressed out we're deloading relaxing Or vice versa if we had to run at the week of the meet or of finals I should say We just really worry about that Monday opener practice and then the rest of it's pretty simple They take all their finals normally they have Friday off or they're halfway, you know done halfway on Friday We set up for the meet and we're good to go. So yeah our taper in seasons three to four weeks depending when the meats line up. Chris Gilliam: Gotcha. I now just to get through this little bit. When I was at Birtrun, we were on trimester, so it worked out with the sports seasons really well. But for for me, I would look at the state meet and so I would have a nine week program in place to get to the state meet 'cause it always worked out with the new year, it would be nine weeks. So I would ch put three weeks, three three week cycles together. But the first cycle, what was unique then what I did is if we had set goals for the state meet that they were wanting to do, one way I could check their progress was the first when they set their goals, then we would determine what their opening attempts would be based on that goal at the state meet, using percentages. I'm a lower percentage opener. Everyone thought I sandbagged, but our kids usually were around eighty-seven to eighty-eight percent on their openers. But so that first cycle, they trained everything based on their opening attempt. Everything checks off, boom, we're into phase two. That was off our projected second attempt at the state meet. And we trained through. we're meeting everything. But if at any time during that they were struggling, we knew that that was a not realistic goal. Right? So we would adjust that goal. And then you know, if everything's staying on track that last three weeks. That that training was based on where they were for their third and final goal attempt. And it really worked well for us and our kids. I mean we I had about fourteen state champs, so it worked really well with that mentality, especially for squat and deadlift. Bench probably wasn't our strongest, you know, but kids Nick Lusk: Thank Chris Gilliam: did get better at it. I would say the one thing that I would probably change a little bit more is like if it was a twelve week thing, I would just make it four weeks because I still liked the concept of the three phases, you know. And with my oldest daughter, it worked really well because she competed internationally, and these things kept her going from MHS PLA to high school nationals, and then transitioned into the summer for her to compete internationally. And so it was a training cycle that really worked well for her. And I figured it might as well work for the rest of them too, you know. So th that's kind of how I did it. and it worked, but you know, the details of it, if you're ever interested, I can talk to you about it. But that was just kind of a nutshell for it. Coach, you you asked that one, so it's mine, right? All right. Chris Whittaker: Yeah, but the next category is exercise selection and variation. Chris Gilliam: Yeah. So bridge exercises. You know, how do you take a raw beginner from a general physical fitness level to a competition type specific power lifts? Like how do you train the po the posterior chain, especially for the newbies? I guess is what I wanna know. Coach Lusk? Nick Lusk: Yeah, so we all know hinging is this very foreign concept to a lot of kids, right? So there's a whole bunch of different ways to teach it. I heard you guys talk about the foam roller. I've tried that before. I do the wall tap drill where they're all like a foot away from the wall. We push our butt back. We get a little further. Every kid is just going to be a little bit different. But a good exercise I found, it's an old school one, but the Nordic, right? but what we'll do is we'll do it as an isometric hold. So a lot of times what we'll do, you'll see it kids going down, okay, fight, fight, fight. And then when you can't fight no more, then push yourself back up. They either give up way too early or they're not getting enough out of it. I just, I was not getting what I wanted from it. So was it this year or last year? One of the two I implemented, we're just doing it. I think it was this year. We're just doing an isometric hold. So we would put it as part of our circuit and You're just holding for 30 seconds. But the key part is you're shooting your hips like you're at the top of your lockout on deadlift. So your glutes are clenched, right? Your hamstrings completely activated. And I told some of them, like some of you, you're just going to straight up and down for the whole 30 seconds. You're not even going to lean at all. And then as they start to get a little stronger, maybe a little lean here, a little lean here. But that's one way I found where if you don't have a ton of equipment and you know, sometimes they're not just not. getting how to hinge or anything like that to develop those hamstrings, it works great for us. Chris Gilliam: Awesome. Coach Whitaker? Chris Whittaker: G HR, reverse hyper, sled drag. Those those are things like to to build up a posterior chain with us. And of course, you know, we box squatting all the time with different bars. That's really how we we wind up doing it. We don't ever take G HRs out. We don't ever take reverse hypers out. We just wave volume with those and and keep in. Program the whole time. Chris Gilliam: Yeah. Well, and if even for our coaches that don't have that equipment, there's ways to mimic those movements. just gonna take, you know, a lot more of the kids helping each other, being the anchors and and stuff, so that they can train and and do like a a glued ham raise without the actual piece of equipment. There's ways to do that. how about you cook. Nick Lusk: Yeah, we don't have, real quick to piggyback off that. We don't have reverse hypers or anything like that at Athens. We just don't have enough space in the weight room. So we'll do reverse hyper hold where we'll just lay flat on the bench, your hip bones right at the tail end of that bench. And you're getting, you're just holding that for that 30 seconds. So any coaches listening to this where you're like, I just don't have the equipment to do a lot of this stuff, or I don't know what to do. Please reach out to me. I'm a very old school kind of guy where I don't have a lot of that equipment, but we still find ways to make it happen. Chris Gilliam: Yeah, for sure. I appreciate it. That Coach Lanquist? Nicholas Lundquist: very same to to Coach Whitaker. you know, reverse hyper, VHR, all those things, sled drags. a lot of I do I found that doing a lot of high like high volume band hamstring work works really well too. Like seated band tri seated hamstring curls banded or laying down. a lot of single leg hamstring curls as well. I found really active activates the hamstrings. But yeah, r I'm preacher of the reverse hyper. That is By far like my favorite. So Chris Gilliam: Sure. No, yeah. I I mean the reverse hyper, once we got some, I mean I thought it was a game changer because that that's actually one of the ways that we would change the our deadlift stuff when kids were like getting tired. We just put more of an emphasis on the reverse hyper, to take some of that stress off of their back, especially kids that were starting to have sore backs and issues, so Yeah, that's great. Coach Whitaker, go for it. Your next one. Chris Whittaker: The given limited school budgets and standard gym equipment, what are your favorite budget friendly variations or accessories to fix common technical flaws? Chris Gilliam: example would be like the the hips rising too fast in the squat. What's something old school coach loss that you would do to help fix and train that? Nick Lusk: Let's see here. Yeah, I mean, I'm a big PVC pipe guy. I do a lot of work with PVC pipe and we have technique issues arising. I'll tell a kid to go grab a PVC pipe and we'll start breaking some stuff down. So that's a big one that we use. yeah, for our kids with the hips rising early, again, going back to technique, are they pushing too much on the heels and stuff like that, right? When that's what's causing the hip to rise up. but then we might just switch it up where you're not back squatting for a little bit. Maybe you're more in a front squat, something that's going to make you keep that chest up big and strong. And we'll just do that variation for a little bit. No, no extra equipment needed. Chris Gilliam: Good. Coach Lanquist? Nicholas Lundquist: Yeah. Yeah, I would say the same like front squat, like that kid that forces you to keep your chest up. Right. So that is definitely one of those things, like that's if you have a kid that's always popping his hips up or her hips up, that's one of those tools that you can you can put right in. It doesn't require any extra equipment, n really no additional setup. It's right there ready to use. You have if you have a squat rack and a bar, it's there. You know, so that's one of the in my opinions of the best things that I found. Chris Gilliam: Good. Coach Whitaker? Chris Whittaker: in an effort to not say the same things as as what our other two guys have said. Well I guess I'll talk about we've talked with the the bands, right? Like if we're gonna talk about a budget friendly variation or a budget friendly option, right? The bands are relatively cheap compared to the other stuff we have in our room. And we'll utilize that stuff with different exercises with those and the way we track progress on them is number of reps with a given band. We give a range once you can do more than a certain number of reps. Well now it's time to go to a bigger band. so like the the bat upper back coming unlocked in the bench. Well we'll do more band tear apart variations with that. Coach Lunk was talked about utilizing for hamstring and glute development high r volume leg curls. All of our leg curl variations that we have are banded. High band on top of the rack, seated lying over a foam roller and leg curl like all of our leg curl stuff that we have is is banned band related stuff. When it comes to when and with with that we're strengthening the weak points. And when you strengthen the weak points, usually those technical flaws can be coached out of it. And for us that gets coached out of it on the speed day. Chris Gilliam: Awesome. Yeah, I mean we're probably gonna find a lot more common stuff than we have differences, but yeah, well that's because we're all pretty similar my mindsets, I think. That's why we gravitate towards each other at meets and have discussions. But yeah, that's great information. I mean, I think if for nothing else, we're giving people maybe some confidence that what they're doing is the right thing. You know, they just gotta give it some time and stick to it. Nick Lusk: Thank you. Chris Gilliam: Yeah, I think that's probably one of the main things. But there there's gonna definitely be some subtleties and differences and and things. like Coach Whitaker likes to use bands a lot. And so people that are interested in that should reach out to Coach Whitaker to get more details. 'Cause talking to me, I'm just gonna steer you in his direction you know, because I'm you know, I'm familiar, but I'm not an expert and I don't have all the answers, that's why I never fully implemented them into anything but deadlift, Nick Lusk: Thank Chris Gilliam: you know. And it was still one of those things for me, Lundquist, that I rotated it in. You know, and rotated Nicholas Lundquist: Mm-hmm. Chris Gilliam: it out. I didn't it wasn't like a staple all the time. You know? And when it was during the season I would do that stuff less because I wanted to stick with what I was most comfortable with being able to fix an answer. So all right. Coach, I think we probably need to end this one right now because of the girls. Can you guys join us later this week to finish this? Nicholas Lundquist: Whenever if you have a time or a day. Nick Lusk: Yeah, yeah Chris Gilliam: Yeah, I Nicholas Lundquist: Yeah. Chris Gilliam: would like to because I mean we're about ha we're not Chris Whittaker: That does it for part two in the coaches roundtable with Coach Nick Lundquist and Nick Lusk here on the platform. Big thanks to both coaches for opening up the playbook. And as they said, a lot of good coaching comes down to strengthening the weak points and sticking with it long enough to see it work. If you've got something out of this, please subscribe, leave a review, send your questions and topic ideas to info at mhspla.com. We'll load the bar again next time with our next guest for episode 23. We'll see you then.