The LuHi Pod
A podcast for LuHi students, families, and our community.
The LuHi Pod
April 7 - Myths about Strength Training in High School with Coach Smock
Coach Nate Smock, who leads our Team Strength classes, joins the pod this week to discuss common fallacies he hears around training high school athletes. We cover everything from game-day readiness to over and under-training.
It's hard to believe, but the LuHi Pod has hit the 75th episode mark! We actually hit it a couple episodes back, but just realized it during this recording. Zoeller and Hannah discuss it, and a new list .... and really nothing else.
What new segment do you want to hear?
1) This is allegedly healthy
2) Teach me something new
3) My best idea ever was...
4) Go back to Lukewarm Takes
Vote now - email podcast@lhsparker.org.
Our intro, outro, and segment music were written and recorded by Mr. Matt Zoeller. You can find us on most of the socials under the Lutheran High School handles.
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You can find chapters for each episode and transcripts here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2228322
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I'm Caitlin Reese and I'm in tenth grade. Some upcoming announcements are Admissions is hosting a new family welcome meeting for all the newly enrolled families on April 10th at 6 30 PM. There will be no school on April 18th or April 21st for Easter weekend, and prom is just round the corner on April 26th. So be sure to encourage your junior or senior students to get their tickets for that event. The verse of this week is Jude 24 through 25. Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy. To the only God, our Savior through Jesus Christ, our Lord, be glory, magist majesty, and dominion and authority before all time and now and forever. Amen.
SPEAKER_02:Hey everybody, thanks again for listening to the Lou High Pod. Excited for today's podcast because I have Coach Smock with us today, and he runs and manages and owns all the things of all the strength training and the weight room. Um so yeah, we're just gonna get right into it. Thanks for being here, Coach.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, it's my pleasure. I'm excited to be on.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Um, and you always have such great things to say. You've been on one other episode, so if you have if you guys haven't listened to that, you can go back and listen. Um, but just for people who don't know you, can you go ahead and reintroduce us to your role?
SPEAKER_01:So I am the director of strength conditioning or team strength here at Lutheran High School. Uh, and my role is pretty much to manage um all of our classes of all of our students and sports within strength conditioning. This goes into detail of whether they are a varsity athlete, a freshman trying to just learn the basics, or even your non-um athlete-based kid that just wants to try to learn how to live a good quality-based life.
SPEAKER_02:Nice. Yeah, and you, your background, you came from Landout. Am I saying that right?
SPEAKER_01:Yes, I came from uh Landout Sports Performance. Cool. And that's where I kind of got to after college, I got to learn a lot of pretty cool things um from working with um NFL Combine, NFL Hall of Famers, MMA fighters, uh, some world champions in the UFC, to um some pitchers in the major leagues, and then even just plenty of other high school kids, uh youth kids all the way down to ages six, probably. Oh my gosh. To your your just average 30, 40-year-old man that wants to just work out and live a good life. So I've gotten uh blessed to get to kind of experience all different niches. Oh, cool. Um, and hopefully that has helped me to blend this in here at Lutheran to put the best I can for the kids to be successful.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think your background is like plays a huge role in just the knowledge you bring to the table and your experience. It's it's awesome that our kids get to be around someone with as much experience as you.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you. I appreciate that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Okay, so let's just get right into it. Um can you just go through a few we're gonna call them misconceptions, like common misconceptions uh people have about strength training in the high school setting?
SPEAKER_01:Yes. So the first one that comes to my mind is uh stunted growth. Um that that is a Oh really? Yeah. So uh growing up, for me, I remember we we always talk about, oh, we don't want you to hit your legs uh when you were in fifth, sixth, seventh grade, whatever. Yeah. Uh because they were scared of stunting your growth. And now I know I'm not the tallest person, so it probably isn't not a best example. But uh the research shows that that is now a theory. That that's not true. Okay, weight training does not stunt your growth. Now, however, it could lead to increased risk of injury if not done properly at a young age. Absolutely. Yeah. Um so um it's not a bad thing to start a sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth grade kid in the weight room.
SPEAKER_04:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:However, what is your approach with that in the weight room too? Are they learning the fundamentals, basic movement patterns? And it's uh for a lot of them, it's not about how much weight's on the bar.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_01:Um, so I kinda like to think like this. So when you hit the weight room for the first time as a young kid, um, it is almost the exact same thing as learning a foreign language. Oh, okay. So think think about this. Uh we grew up as young kids just learning English, right? And that came natural to us because it's the household we grew up in. Yeah. Now learning Spanish is a very step-by-step process if you weren't grown up if you weren't born in a Spanish-speaking household. Uh, and so you have to take these little baby steps, and then eventually you conjugate the verbs, and then you're speaking sentences in Spanish, and then um you're all of a sudden over time speaking it fluently. Yeah, mm-hmm. It's the exact same thing in the weight room. You gotta learn little pieces of the language and build upon that.
SPEAKER_04:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Um, and so once you can do that with a young kid and they become efficient within the weight room with good technique, good mechanics, then now you can advance those kids to, you know, more hardcore training that you probably see on Instagram.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, so the first one is it won't stunt your growth.
SPEAKER_01:What else? There is some people, I don't know if it's much of an as misconsumption, but some people are concerned that um it's again just make you stiff and not mobile.
SPEAKER_04:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:That it's just gonna make you too blocky. And there's a lot of research that actually shows that you can easily increase your mobility again with the good technique, good range of motion based training. Yeah. Um, just because you're getting larger doesn't mean you're gonna lose your range of motion, or that you're gonna be more likely to get hurt and pull a muscle because you're bigger. Okay. That that's not necessarily true. Okay. Um, actually, a lot of times those muscles are pulled because they're weak and they're not strong enough. Yeah, um, but what we need to understand, like we can't just assume things again. You gotta look at the grand scheme of why did this person pull this muscle?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And what else are they doing supplementing within it? There's so many variables. So we have these assumptions of you're big and you can pull something because you're big. That's not always true.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Um so even things like uh what you're eating and even your sleep can impact you in the weight room.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. So uh th think about it like this when uh when you don't sleep well or you don't have a good diet, um, based off our hormones in our body, our cortisol levels increase. Our cortisol levels essentially tell your body that you need to protect yourself, rest, and recover.
SPEAKER_05:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:So if I have a and that means it has an inverse relationship though with testosterone. If cortisol is high, testosterone is usually gonna be low. If testosterone levels are high, cortisol levels are gonna be lower.
SPEAKER_04:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Obviously, to have good hard training, you want your testosterone levels higher.
SPEAKER_04:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:But after, say, maybe a really hard workout and you're tired and exhausted and sore, your cortisol levels increase, your testosterone levels might drop for a short period of time. Not it's not dangerous, it's not bad. Just but your body cortisol levels are high because your body's saying, You're tired, you need a rest, you need to chill out. And that's how it can recover. And then once you get your rest and nutrition, now your body builds back up bigger and stronger, essentially, and then cortisol goes down, testosterone levels go back up.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. You obviously we have a lot of kids in season, out of season, you see it all. So if they are going in for a game day or even a recovery training session, what are some best practices that you'd recommend?
SPEAKER_01:So this is where it gets to be a really broad spectrum with the amount of kids I have. Yeah. Um so for the first, I'd like to tackle the misconception about game day training or in-seasons training. Okay, yeah. So uh this is where I'm gonna have to say tackle soccer as a great example.
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Um, soccer, we understand this with high school kids in soccer. It is a year-round sport. The only time it's not going is probably I would say pretty much December and January.
SPEAKER_04:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Maybe the second half of November, kind of like that winter eerie time, right? That's about from what kids have reported me, the time that they have off.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So they're not doing indoor.
SPEAKER_01:So you've got 15, 16-year-old kids that are actually essentially they're doing as much as almost an MLB season. Like an MLB, but think about it, they're going nine months of the year, that's about a major league baseball season. Wow. Now there's obviously more running in soccer, but yeah, you are going nine months of the year doing the same exact activity over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_03:Wow.
SPEAKER_01:And so that leads to the question when do I get you strong? And so so many kids say, Hey, I've got this club game here, and then I got another club game, and then I've got Lou High practice, and there's so much soccer, right? Yeah. And so, and they're like, I don't want to be sore. So now I gotta look here as a strength conditioning professional. I gotta pick my battles and say, well, which games are more important? And I'm not trying to put kids in harm's way.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, totally.
SPEAKER_01:It's it's more of I understand that if I don't build your gas tank in the weight room to get bigger, faster, and stronger, your skill set's gonna plateau.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So think about it. The skill set of soccer, they're doing day in and day out. Eventually, doing that skill set and over and over, they're gonna get more close to a plateau of it, and it gets even harder and harder to get better at that skill set the more you do it. Okay. So, in order for me to help them maximize their skill set, I need to increase their foundation of strength conditioning. Because if they can become faster or stronger or more enduranced, now that increases the capacity of their skill set.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_01:So sometimes you gotta take things with a grain of salt and say, I'm sorry, bud, but we gotta push the weight down because we gotta get strong at some point. I can't just adapt to every single game. Now that's also the other reason why with a lot of our young athletes for game day training, um, unless I'm worried about injury. Um, but for the most part, that's why I try to branch it and have a cutoff and say, varsity athletes only.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:This type of game day thing. And it's not to be mean or anything, but it's because the majority of those varsity athletes, we want them to be peaked for performance. Yeah. Because we we want to see them do their best on the varsity level. And that's when scouts and everyone is really looking. So that's when I want to make sure they're prepared. Now, JV and freshman and all those games are very important too for developing skill set. Uh, but it's also those are the developmental levels, right? For the varsity level. Right. So that's when I can say, we can get away with a good workout before this event. Yeah. Right. Because I'm trying to prep you for the future, not right now. Yeah. My job is to make you the best you can be two years from now at the varsity level. Not the best that you can be tomorrow. Right. I want you to do well tomorrow.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But we gotta look at the long-term picture.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Oh, that's so good. And that's so hard for adults, but also for high schoolers to think big picture long term. You know, it's it's easy to get in the the mode of like, I want to look awesome out on the field tomorrow, but thinking about like, no, my end game is to make varsity and and get out there, you know, do it my junior, senior year.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly, exactly. And then you get those weird in-between ones that are really naturally gifted.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So that's when I have to have a talk with them. I I know you're gifted on the field, but we still need to kind of find some things. You're still a young little one. We gotta get you because I can't let you plateau and be the same skill in your soccer game or lacrosse game two years from now. I want you to be a higher skill set still, even though you made varsity as a sophomore. Yeah. Um that's good. And the other thing about game, so game day training. So we've got that of I shouldn't lift on game day. Well, you need to to build a foundation. The other is so now let's talk about our more advanced athlete. Um, maybe our more advanced high school athlete. Um, let's just say we have a, for example, a high school football player that's had three, four good years in the weight room, they're on your senior year. Yep. Now that's where that approach takes a little bit of I'd say even more scientific approach. And I've got to use my science-based background of what my knowledge is to make sure they're good on game day. So I I already know I'm not gonna get you any stronger. So that's football's an easy one because early in the week they play on Fridays. It's not like it's not like the other sports where they are Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. Right. Well, football's an easy example, and I can say, okay, I know I can get good squats in to maintain strength early in the week on Monday. Okay, because that's early in the week, and I know we've got five days until your your football game. Yeah. So I can get you on Monday, Tuesday, your good strength work. Now I've got to look at things on come Wednesday. I understand this. If I lunge you or if I squat you, or any what we call eccentric based loading exercises, okay, uh, which is lengthening the muscle fiber, those can create soreness.
SPEAKER_04:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:And if I create soreness on those fibers and they feel sore on Friday, well, now one, they feel soreness. So now I already made them worried about if they're gonna be okay on game day. And two, with that soreness, they're probably not fully recovered. And my job is to make sure they're at their feeling their best on Friday. Got it. And interesting. So that's when come Wednesday, I gotta say, I gotta take that stuff out. I can't afford to make them sore. And so maybe I'll give them something more like an explosive-based exercise. Okay. Um, on Wednesday, you know, like a med ball throw. It doesn't make you sore, but it's quick. It's explosive. It's similar to the game of football where it's a quick, violent burst. Okay. And it has your mind ready. It's getting your body prepped for game. It's it's uh stimulating your nervous system essentially to be ready to be explosive on Friday. Oh, cool. And then on Thursdays, you essentially could do very similar things. Or I can do Thursdays, we can do some, whether it's mental prep, whether it's getting a walkthrough in, or that could be um maybe some core work, some mobility stuff, just stuff like make you feel good.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um, and it could also be a placebo too. The placebo effects real with kids. Like sometimes I like to find their personality too. Like um, so it kind of you gotta play the gray area as well.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, yeah. What do you mean by like placebo?
SPEAKER_01:So I'll have some kids that might like some explosive work the day before a game. They want to feel like they're getting there, right? And then maybe like, no, that's gonna mess with me. So I'm like, I know doing a little explosive the day before might be okay if it's very mild.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah, but I don't want to the head game.
SPEAKER_01:The head game, right? So that makes sense. And maybe in their head, just some stretching, some core work feels better on them. So you kind of got to get a feel for your environment. And that's not just football, that's any kid. Yeah. Uh but I do like to try to get them some explosive work uh just before a game. And so on my science background, this I don't have the sheet in front of me, but we let me explain it like this for high school kids kind of a better and saying, Yeah. It's something around 28 to 30 days, you will maintain your conditioning. You'll maintain so that means if I was to say, hey, we're done conditioning, in 28 to 30 days, that's about when your conditioning is gonna start to deplete.
SPEAKER_02:Really? I always thought it was like a week later. Like if you're not continuing to lift or run or whatever it is, like within a week you're gonna be able to do that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so for conditioning, that's your longest lasting thing because that's the aerobic system. The aerobic system can last a lot longer. Oh, okay. Now, when we go into uh so think about it like this too: the more higher nervous system expenditure, the quicker it goes away. Conditioning doesn't make your nervous system work as hard. Oh, okay. Okay. Uh-huh. Now we go to what I would say size work, hypertrophy-based work.
SPEAKER_04:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:And I need to double check the exact numbers on this, but I'm gonna go on a limit. I think it's somewhere around 20 to 24 days about that. You can maintain muscular size without hitting it, before touching on it, before it starts to deplete. Okay. So when muscular size goes, it's somewhere around 21 to 24-ish days. Now you're without me touching it, now it will start to atrophy after around that time. Okay. Then the next level is your strength work. So strength, I I consider like how much your muscle fibers can recruit with your brain to pick up heavy lifting.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:That is somewhere between um seven to ten days until that goes away. Wow. And then power is only three days. Oh my god. So if I don't touch on power work for three days, it can start to go away. What do I know the most important thing is in the majority of sports? Power.
SPEAKER_03:Power.
SPEAKER_01:So why do you think I hit it on Wednesdays for like a Friday night football game? That's why I hit your power work on Wednesday. I want to make sure that power has been just tapped into a little bit just to maintain it in season.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, that's so interesting.
SPEAKER_01:So let's see. That's why um, that's why, too, I gotta pick and choose my battles of when I hit that hypertrophy work with my in-season athlete. So um it's to say if it's another athlete and they're like, I really don't want my size to go down. Now don't forget, they're already running a ton. They're gonna lose weight in season. It's already a battle. Yeah. But if I want to try to maintain some muscle mass, I gotta understand that's about 21 to 24-ish days that I have to hit that at least one time to try to maintain it. Okay. Well, right. To some degree in season, not perfectly just to maintain it. Yeah. So I go, shoot, what's a good day for me to maybe hit some high rep work?
SPEAKER_05:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_01:And I'll be like, all right. Monday it is, it's not ideal, and the kids are gonna be mad that they're sore. But and but this is gonna maintain your size. Yeah. And the same thing with the strength work. I go, okay, what's the best day to hit strength work because or heavy lifting, because I need to maintain your strength so you can perform well, but I can't hit it on Friday. I can't hit it on this day. So I gotta hit it sometime within that seven to ten day window before we can start to lose it. So there's a science behind when should I hit this exercise per competition? Um which also leads into now why when I have large groups, football's easy. Because that's one day a week. We know when everybody's going. But what about the other kids? When we've got this kid's got a baseball game, this kid's got a soccer game, she's got a soccer game, they have track and field, so that's why I pick safe and simple exercises for pre for pre-game um competition, like a med ball squat pull. All you do is squat down, jump, throw the ball up as high as you can. It's fast, it's explosive, and it doesn't cause, it doesn't have a high injury risk. Right? Or that's why I might give them like a dumbbell step up or a hex bar squat. Because it's a way to tap into the strength or the power three days, four days before game without creating a much soreness, and it's safer.
SPEAKER_02:So interesting.
SPEAKER_01:Um, there's some studies that will say, like, no, you should lift even heavier than that, and maybe you should do this exercise at 90% one rep max three days before a game. But now I gotta say, okay, I'm working with high school kids. Right. Let's be safe here. They're talking about a professional athlete whose job day in, day out is to do this. Yeah, yes. I'm working with the high school kid and 50 other kids. I'm gonna try to pick some safe options on game day.
SPEAKER_02:So, do you just love summer strength training because you don't have to worry about people having games and you can just really like we're gonna get after it. Like this is the time to get it. Yeah, I love it. That's that's my time.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's my time to really get after it. Um now when we do start getting closer to camp, though, it's still kind of like Oh yeah, you know, but that those first I'd say that first four weeks in June, yeah, it's kind of like awesome. Let's go. It's like you're mine. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Do you feel like kids really see like see the benefit and see the increases in that month time frame in June?
SPEAKER_01:I think yes and no. I think it depends on their training age. Yeah. It depends on how much they're doing. So yes and no, as freshmen, absolutely, freshmen and sophomores, yes. Juniors and seniors, it is harder.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Because they've spent more years, they already have two years, maybe three years in the weight room. And they are also doing a lot of things too.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:They uh they might have they're going to the pool, they're sleeping overly long. Like they're kind of like staying up late, yeah. Yeah, on the weekends. Yeah. So it starts to get freshmen are like sponges, so they just absorb it, right?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:That's true. Juniors and seniors, if they're taking the right approach, absolutely, but it can't just be the weight room with those older kids, too.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It's now be has to become a lifestyle. I need to eat, sleep, hydrate, everything.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Uh, and not to mention it's 90 degrees outside. That's yeah, exhausting on the body. So if you want it to recover well, well, you better make sure you're sleeping, hydrating, eating a lot.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um, so it depends on if they can keep up with those other external variables as well.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. To to wrap it up, can you just share a little bit about the science behind and then your specific philosophy around building high school athletes?
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. So um, this is where it kind of gets a little tricky for me because I'm also an assistant football coach.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah. Yeah, which is awesome.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, which I I love doing, but at the same time, I have to cut off my lane of what am I gonna be strength coach or am I football coach? Oh, and so that means when I'm gonna go strength, since we're talking about strength conditions, I cut off my lane, I go, I'm strength coach right now. And that is I need to develop them on the most fundamental stuff, which is can you squat, can you lunge, can you hinge, can you do the fundamentals well? Can you sprint well? Can you cut well? Can you change uh direction? Can you react well? All the fundamental things, can you do it well? And that is my job is to become get the kids to become masterful at the simplistic things.
SPEAKER_02:Cool.
SPEAKER_01:Because sports-specific training is also to go back on another misconception to a degree. Your skills coach is your sports-specific coach.
SPEAKER_04:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Kicking a soccer ball is sports-specific. You don't want me to teach you kick a soccer ball. That's not gonna go well. Okay. Uh, I my job is to get you bigger, faster, stronger, and more competent and kinesthetically aware with the human body.
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:That way, if you have all the basics together, yeah, then now I hand it off a kid that understands his body well, and that gives the sport coach much better capacity to give them to develop their skills to a higher level. So think I'm like the generalist and they are the specialist.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I have to generally get them bigger, faster, stronger, and then their coach turns them into the skill master.
SPEAKER_02:Cool.
SPEAKER_01:Uh that's how I like to think about it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I like that framework.
SPEAKER_01:And the only way to do that is um kids might get bored with it, but it's boring. Do the same thing over and over and over and over again. If I say one day we're gonna do 20 squats, the next day we're just gonna go do this weird exercise the next day. I'm not giving them a chance to get better. Yeah, I have to give them the same stuff week in, week out, and have a scheduled process. And it's funny, people are like, why doesn't the coach mix it up? The it's like, what do your soccer coaches do? Yeah, you guys have the same structure to your practices every week in most sports. Yeah, what what their coaches do, they make little tweaks in those practices each week. Yeah, same exact thing in the weight room. I'm not trying to give you these shock method P90X workouts. I'm trying to get you really good at the basics so you can get really good at the skill sets that your coaches give you.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um so that is essentially my first philosophy. And that is can I can I teach you how to squat well, move well, run well, understand the body. Now, if they're an older athlete, things can get more tricky of what is what we consider as sport performance or uh sorry, not sport or uh sports specialized, like those exercises, we start to get them, the more advanced athletes that are more sport specific. Okay, but it's still nothing is as specific specific as going to your actual practice. Practice, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Like spiking, you're not gonna be in the way you're teaching them how to spike a volleyball.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. Yeah, and I gotta give you what you're not gonna get. Yeah, philosophically speaking. So um people are like, why why don't we run soccer more? And it's like, yeah, we should run them to a degree, but what do I know about soccer? I keep using soccer as an example, but um what do I know about soccer? They go nine months of the year about yeah, what do you think every single club soccer coach wants to do? And then high school soccer coach. They want to run them a lot because they need to be in shape. So what do I not need to do?
SPEAKER_03:Run them.
SPEAKER_01:Run them. Yeah, I gotta get them strong because they're gonna run.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I don't need to worry about it. They're gonna run them.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Um, that's the same thing with like lacrosse or things like that, right? Because I know I have to give you what you're not gonna get. Because it's not like you go practice getting strong on a lacrosse field.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_01:I gotta get you strong so you can be more explosive on the lacrosse field.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Totally. I don't need to condition you more. Yeah. Your coaches are gonna do plenty of that. Now I can guide you on, I can guide coaches on how to give maybe a good um conditioning program to build upon their capacity and build it up so they don't overtrain.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um, but yeah, that's that's the reason why I actually don't do too much conditioning and team strength unless it's a very uh specific sport. Wrestling's one of those weird ones. Mixed martial arts is another one where there's different types of conditioning that you want to tweak in. Okay. Um but yeah, that's a very like hard thing for people to understand. It's like, yeah, why should I give you more of a chart to get in a ton of?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, totally.
SPEAKER_01:I've gotta make sure I maximize my time.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. You mentioned overtraining. Would you say with our athletes, it's a bigger, like our kids are more likely overtrained or more likely undertrained? Or none of the above?
SPEAKER_01:Uh it's you're you're gonna have two extremes, I believe, actually. Okay. I'm gonna say if they are, um I'd say for most sports of kids that are involved in club sports, they are overtrained. Absolutely. Okay. Now, for kids that aren't involved in club sports, um and or they're not a sport participant, they're probably undertrained.
SPEAKER_05:Undertrained.
SPEAKER_01:Um, but I'd say the majority of your club sports athletes are overtrained. Uh, because what we have, we have they are one, they're getting on airplanes a lot more in this day and age. They are traveling like crazy. Um and so volleyball, for instance, you're on your club volleyball team, you get on an airplane for the weekend, you go travel, and they're your body jumps. They play four or five games, something like that. They jump over hundreds of times in a game. Not to mention on the female body, which is crazy different. The female bodies uh because how their hips are made, yeah, much more likely to tear an ACL. Oh, yeah. Because how their hips, but now they're jumping so much. So much. They're traveling, they're not probably getting the best food. Now you fly back home on Sunday night. Now you gotta wake up early for school. You gotta stress about homework. And then you've got to go to another volleyball practice, and then your volleyball coach wants you to go to a their private trainer, they do more jumping, they do more lifting.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, wow.
SPEAKER_01:And all of a sudden we're wondering where this injury epidemic of ACLs is coming from in the last 10 years. One of your biggest things that's come out is club sports have increased. So interesting. While club sports can be great for development, we have to be careful with how we're dosing the kids because um, what was the I can't remember the basketball coach's name. He's a very famous uh female basketball coach. And he talked about how he's got better athletes than ever, but they're not as good at their skill anymore. Oh, because all they do is play games. They don't practice enough and work on the very basic fundamentals to become masterful in the game.
SPEAKER_04:Wow.
SPEAKER_01:And they just play hundreds of games. Now your quality of repetition to master things in practice is going down. You're just playing game, game, game. Yeah, eventually you're exhausted, and now you're just going through wasted motion. So that's so interesting. Again, club sports have a very good place because it develops skill and we want kids to be active. It's better than them doing a lot of other things, right? Um But we got I I do believe we've got to be better though. How do we dose the kids though?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And how do we make it where it's less just game heavy and make it where how can we master their skill set so their games are really worthwhile?
SPEAKER_02:Right. Yeah. And that would be the end result. Like things you're doing makes you better, not just I don't know. I just feel like there's this lie of like, oh, the more I do it, the more I get seen, the more I'm out there, like I will just naturally be getting better. But it sounds like no, like you have to have intention behind what you're doing.
SPEAKER_01:More is not better. More is better. By all means is not better. I mean, sometimes maybe again, everything's with a grain of salt.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um, I'm just a firm believer of how can we better manage these kids so they can get a really good skill set practicing, play a good amount of games where one, they're enjoying it, yeah, not getting a burnout.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And two, also getting our money's worth in club sports because they are expensive. That's expensive. And then three, how are we gonna integrate good, proper strength conditioning?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And that's very hard because you got people from all different angles though.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:But I think this is a really like helpful way to think about it, especially that we you're already getting it somewhere else, so we need to, you know, just build the foundation and make sure your your student is getting better in the areas that they're not getting out on out in the club world.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and and it's hard. And I'd say it was something I learned as a new father, as a father of a two-year-old, I've learned things like parents absolutely love their kids. Oh, yeah. And like uh I think it was Matt Zelger that told me you'll never know how much God loves you until you have your own kid. And so, shout out to you on that, Matt, because that absolutely holds true. Yeah, and so that's hard for parents too, too, with their kids, because they want their kid to have fun, they want to see their kid play as many games as possible, yeah, enjoy their experience while they can. Yeah, and so absolutely I apply. Applaud them on that. But again, we also got to make sure we're looking out for the safety of our kids. Yeah. And just manage their time well because we want them to have fun. Right. But we don't want burnout either.
SPEAKER_02:Right. Or injury. And it's just a reframing of like, you want what's best for your kids, so do we. Let's get on the same definition of like what is best for the kids.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yes. And it's just a very hard thing because we're all in different worlds. We're all in different areas. Yeah. And it's like no one's doing anything bad. Yeah. It's just that's my job as the strength coach, is to educate people. That's my realm to educate so we can help make the kids better.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And I to end it off, that's where I deal with the extremes of the kid that wants to absolutely do nothing.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And to the kid that wants to do too much, I'm like, dude, no, no, no, no, no. You gotta chill out today.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um, and so that's the fun and hard part of the job.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. You manage it so well. Nate, this was awesome. We end each show with like three little simple rapid fire questions just to get to know you. Cool. Are you down to play?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, let's do it.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, cool. Um what are you listening or reading? Are you are you reading or listening to anything right now that you would recommend? And you can say no.
SPEAKER_01:Uh I actually just started a 90-day Bible study with our football coaching staff. Oh, cool. Um, which is actually great for me because the cool part is it's not very long each day, but it's I I love the group part because it's held me accountable to make sure I'm putting God in within my day.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, I love that. And what a cool example to your football guys if they can see the coaching staff modeling that for them. That's true. I love that. Um, cool. Second question is favorite restaurant.
SPEAKER_01:Oh man. I gotta say Texas Roadhouse. Okay. I mean, and probably any fancy steak restaurant, but Texas Roadhouse is one of those, like it's not overexpensive. You get a ton of food.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and the rolls are always really good.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, but I mean, there's plenty of fancy steakhouse, but yeah, a place with a steak.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, nice, cool. Um, last question is if you could travel anywhere in the world that you haven't been to yet, where would you go?
SPEAKER_01:New Zealand.
SPEAKER_02:Oh wow. Absolutely New Zealand.
SPEAKER_01:I just think that uh the the weather looks amazing. Yeah, uh the beaches out there look incredible. Yeah, the wild, the wildlife scenery. It's just a uh pretty wild, yeah, cool looking place that's nice to see.
SPEAKER_02:Well, Nate, this was so good to have you on. It's always fun to talk to you, and you're so knowledgeable and you're clearly passionate about what you do and you're passionate about the kids. So we just we're so blessed to have you here.
SPEAKER_01:Well, thank you very much. I appreciate you having me.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, I have some exciting news.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Uh I don't I don't know what number we're on now, but we have done more than 75 episodes of the podcast.
SPEAKER_06:Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_02:I know, right? That's a lot.
SPEAKER_06:I've probably been on ten of them.
SPEAKER_02:No.
SPEAKER_06:Eleven. No. 74%. 74% of them. Um, what are do we have any zephyrs in the mailbag?
SPEAKER_02:We do. We do. Because that's why we're here. Yeah, and I'm delighted to share it because uh I love a good zephyr, and this is like cream of the crop. So my little sister, Maggie, sent a zephyr and it just said, and this would be in reference to the music trivia, it just said, your new segment with Zeller is not funny. Find something different.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah. So that's but that's one voice of many. So lots, we don't need to read all of them.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I do have uh, I have recently found about two listeners that I didn't know about. So we can also now shout them out. We've tripled. And it's not Michelle Schulteis, who we have not shouted out in a long time. So hey Michelle, yeah, how's it going? Um, okay, it's uh Mrs. Hurl Trish. Do you know Addy? Yep. Yeah, she listens and she said, she told me, she said something along the lines of, and I don't want to misquote her, but it was somebody along the lines of like you and Zeller, it's like comedy hour.
SPEAKER_06:And you said, can you say that again as I call my mom? Yeah. Because we're so we're so cocky now that we come into the segment with nothing. Absolutely nothing.
SPEAKER_02:Uh and then the other one is the longtime friend of Lou High, Colleen Brewer.
SPEAKER_06:Oh, yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, she listens. I don't know if she listens to our segment. She didn't bring that up specifically, but she thinks the podcast overall is very informative.
SPEAKER_06:Oh, nice. Yeah. Yeah. The only thing she left out is she was talking about the Joe Rogan podcast. Oh, yeah. But she loves the podcast. She's like great celebrities, lots of insight, health tips. Oh, you guys have one too.
SPEAKER_02:How quaint.
SPEAKER_06:No way. Colleen's well, those are pretty two solid uh solid votes. I thought so too. The one thing that's hard about this is that the chronology of production and posting, or whatever it's called. When you drop a new episode, like we didn't record it an hour before or even the day before. Right. Sometimes weeks before.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_06:And so I feel like we try to avoid saying at this current time, yeah, with Easter tomorrow or whatever. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yes.
SPEAKER_06:Right? Because that could be confusing and not true. At one point in the recent history, we said we're gonna put out a poll and let the people vote on the segments. Yeah, we did say that. And by people, we mean all four people. We just talked about what you vote is you run into Hannah casually. Yes. Somewhere in the town of Parker. You want to just list all the places you go to? Uh-huh. That's probably the most efficient way to vote. Yeah, just come over to my house. She'd be better. She buys groceries. What else do you do? She does some yoga. Yeah, that's they have a dog.
SPEAKER_02:So yeah, sometimes I'm on a walk.
SPEAKER_06:Uh-huh. Yeah. Just remember the voting is still open. It's still open. Or it's not because I don't know what date it is. I don't know.
SPEAKER_02:This is chaos.
SPEAKER_06:But let's say no one voted, or they said we like the idea, but we need some more options.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. Good. Okay, perfect, because you have uh more options.
SPEAKER_06:Oh, would that be helpful if I did?
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_06:Oh, well, that's perfect. Oh, geez, Hannah, put me in the spot. Let me just see what I can find. Alright, so just I want to be let everyone know that intentionally I just write down the bare minimum and then I don't come back to it. So it might be you and me looking at the evidence left behind trying to decipher this map. Perfect. Like um Nicolas Cage trying to rescue the Constitution. Is that a national treasure? I never actually saw the movie, but yeah, I was trying. I was going for that. Trying to rescue the Constitution. Um my understanding of the movie is they're trying to read this map so they can get to the animal shelter and find all the feral, misplaced, stray constitutions that and then they have to rescue one before it gets put to sleep.
SPEAKER_02:That is right. You don't need to see the movie, you just perfectly describe the plot line. I think I get it.
SPEAKER_06:And then they tell all their hipster friends in Portland, like, we we just got a constitution. Oh, what kind? Um it's a rescue.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, the list, the list. Okay, you ready?
SPEAKER_06:On the segment we write, I guess this would be only a one-off segment.
SPEAKER_02:It's perfect. The one-off segments are going really well.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, the Christmas one was a blast.
SPEAKER_02:That was a blast. That was so great.
SPEAKER_06:Um we write, we finish and write the country song that we started. Put me in Wranglers when I died.
unknown:I forgot about that.
SPEAKER_06:Which I believe was uh your mom's lukewarm take about wearing sweatpants or athleisure wear in public.
unknown:Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_06:And then uh somehow we landed on put me in sweatpants when put me in wranglers when I die. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I guess the the joke would be I'm such a cowboy that even though I sleep in pajamas.
SPEAKER_02:Bury me in wranglers. Yeah, don't let anyone know. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_06:Change me into wranglers before you call the Mortician.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Is that who comes first? Cor coronary. Cor uh coroner. Coroner.
SPEAKER_06:Who comes first?
SPEAKER_02:The police. First responders.
SPEAKER_06:Whoever comes first, they're gonna see Wranglers. Yeah or yeah, change just leave a note. Yeah. I don't know. Does our narrator live alone? Or is he talking to his uh wife?
SPEAKER_02:I think we could ask AI to just write the song for us.
SPEAKER_06:Well, there, and then there goes that one. Okay, here's another one. Do a challenge during the week, then we report back. Like, use the word zephyr in casual conversation without explaining it. Uh, here's another one. Oh, yeah. We pull a quote, and Hannah guesses if this is something she actually said or something AI made up. This is a good idea. Yeah. Highlighting her memory. Okay, here's uh I don't know why I thought this was even a list. Okay, we had we attended this um thing recently. All the teachers did a nurturing the faith conference. And as part of that, we had to answer a lot of introspective questions. And I kind of like doing that, and then you talk about it or you don't afterwards with your tables, but I could not get over this question. Not the answer to the question, just how funny the question is itself. And I don't know what this would look like as part of a segment. This is very vague and half baked. But asking just asking people this question has been fun for me ever since. Excellent. And it's not because what's the answer? It's because, like, what how do you even interpret what this question is?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, I can't wait. This is so good.
SPEAKER_06:What's the best idea you've ever had?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, what's the best idea you've ever had? I think this this could be it. Because we already were doing that with lukewarm takes. I would just walk up to people with the microphone and be like, talk to me, please, and I'll just replace what you what do you feel you know, lukewarm about with what is the best idea you ever had? And the best part would be we could get no context, and then you and I are just filling in the blanks.
SPEAKER_06:We could try it.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, we have to we should try it. No more poll. We're just doing this.
SPEAKER_06:Okay, thanks for the votes.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, come back next week for well, okay, probably actually come back in two weeks.
SPEAKER_06:So today is May 4th. Tomorrow's Easter. Yeah. So put up your Star Wars flags because we're gonna be having some ribs tomorrow. And then as soon as you're done with that, go to the dog uh store where Hannah will be buying some dog food for her dog constitution. Yes. And then vote on the segment.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, come back in a couple weeks because we will do the best idea, worst idea segment, and then you can all vote on that. Maybe.
SPEAKER_06:By the time we get a solution, an answer, school's out for the summer.
SPEAKER_02:So true. And then next year, maybe this podcast will be dead.
SPEAKER_06:You never know. Let's do it.