Athletic Performance Podcast
The Athletic Performance Podcast: we discuss all things performance-related, with a focus on pushing the boundaries of speed, power, and strength.
Athletic Performance Podcast
015 - Ryan Connor on Speed Development in Youth Athletes
Coach Ryan Connor has been a professional sports performance coach with a focus in helping athletes with speed training since 2015.
As an athlete, his desire to figure out why he was slow sometimes and fast others led to investigation and training experiments on himself. This obsession with speed and higher level performance has never stopped and led to constant study in his pursuit of the best results possible for athletes.
Here's a quick overview of our show:
✅ Balancing physical versus technical development in speed training
✅ How elastic utilization ratios play into physical deveopment
✅ Why he pulled resisted sprints -- and the results he got from doing it
✅ Programming speed versus coaching speed
✅ ..and much, much more
To follow Ryan on the socials, please visit his instagram @ryanconnorspeed or his website at https://takeoversp.com/. Follow us on instagram @coachryanpatrick for more content and athletic development solutions.
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Ryan Patrick:Welcome to the athletic performance podcast today. I have my guest Ryan Connor on the line. I'm super excited to have Ryan here. He is another speed guy that I've been following on Instagram for a while. Uh, we seem to find ourselves in a lot of the same circles, right? So, um, before I start diving too deep into that stuff, can we just, for anyone who doesn't know you, can you start by telling everyone a little bit about yourself?
Ryan Connor:Sure. So Ryan Connor, I've been, uh, coaching for about 10 years now, mostly in the private sector. I have my own gym called Takeover Sports Performance. I'm pretty much the only trainer here. We have one, uh, assistant coach on staff now. So I'm turning into more of the leadership side of things now, which is kind of cool and different. And, um, yeah, that's pretty much it.
Ryan Patrick:That's awesome. So, all right, we'll, we'll jump right in there, man. So let's start, um, with respect to speed development. I think that's where we're going to focus the conversation today. Uh, young athletes in particular. So I assume you, like me, we get a lot of like late middle school, high school age athletes. And you've had many influences, you know, I know you followed a Darian at some points, Les Spellman, uh, J. B. Moran. I mean, I see a lot of their stuff kind of circulated to what you're doing. So why don't you start by just telling me some of your core principles, uh, of your philosophy on how you develop speed for athletes.
Ryan Connor:Yeah, so I think my philosophy comes from so many different areas. So it's hard to really pinpoint. Um, I've learned from as many people as I could. I really try to keep the mindset and have an open mind of, you know, being able to learn from anybody and picking up little things and incorporating them into my system. Um, so much so that sometimes I don't even really know where some of the stuff in my system came from. But, um, yeah, I've kind of assembled all that information into my head and, and spit out the best Program I possibly could for the people I work with, which, as you laid out is, you know, later middle school, early high school, some later high school and college as well. But mostly that population in middle school. And I would say the main thing that is my philosophy is there's technical side of things. There's also the physical side of things, and both of those things kind of need developing. I think some people get too caught up in. All right, let's work on technique technique technique. And then the physical side falls by the wayside. And then the other aspect of that, too much of the physical side, never really touching on technique. So, um, I try to look for, you know, filling, filling in gaps in either 1 of those things is, is my focus and my philosophy and very individualized approach when we do things like that.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, so let's start with like, a young athlete, right? They come in, they're probably. What I would classify as force deficient, you know, just, you know, classically, maybe not a big engine, they're underpowered, certainly lacking on the physical side for this kind of athlete, or for, you know, your conversation with parents about getting them started. What kind of things are you really prioritizing and training for an athlete who's kind of around this age or demonstrates these? physical deficits.
Ryan Connor:Yeah. So we do some jump testing in our program and that kind of lays out if they are force deficient or not. And like you said, they're almost all going to be if they haven't experienced training yet. Um, if they're just a little bit more inexperienced anyway, and, um, it's really that conversation. It's, it's, let's get them physically developed. It's not that we won't sprint or work on technique cause there's still, it's almost, we can always find something in terms of technique to work on. Getting them pointed in the right direction in terms of how they push themselves forward, you know, power developed or not. That's something that we can start practicing now while the physical side of things is developing. I do think that, you know, the conversation with parents sometimes is tough. It's, it's like, all right, we're not just going to fix his arm swing and he's automatically going to be like this, like super athlete. That's not really how it's going to go down. So, um, this is going to take some time. So some, I think sometimes, uh, parents might think it'll be a quicker fix than it actually is. And it's like. No, this is going to be, you know, a few years of training and developing some real relative strength, um, and forced production capabilities over that time, he's going to improve, but to really get where you're telling me he wants to go, it's, it's time. There's a requirement of time.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, the expectation setting is so important because I see a number of people in our local market who talk about making these results crazy fast. I think there, there was even 1 where, um, like, the squat went from, like, 275 to 400 in, like, 6 weeks. I'm like, y'all something ain't right. Like, something is missing here. This is not. Uh, this is not real change, you know, either it was artificially low and there was some kind of technical mastery. I've seen some wild technique that I disagree with and that's neither here nor there. But the point is, I think these changes. Do take a little bit longer than people realize. So, you know, year to year, month to month, what kind of progress do you look for? Do you have certain benchmarks or standards or how are you, how are you looking to implement, like, what do you want to see these athletes do over a period of time?
Ryan Connor:Yeah, that's where it gets tricky. Right. Um, especially with sprinting and jumping, which is like the two main things we look at, there is some, the technique side of that, and I cannot predict. As much as I've tried to look at things and see if there's any kind of correlations to other things, but I really can't predict how quickly somebody is going to pick up technique. I can't predict how quickly they want to pick up technique if they think their technique is bad or not. So, um, that's the kind of stuff that, you know, it's really hard to predict. Um, and that's why we don't really have like set in stone results that we can deliver. Um, a lot of our athletes get good results, but I can't tell you how quickly that's going to happen for, uh, for a number of reasons, really. But most of that is the technique side of things.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, I'm with you there, man. I've tried a number of things inside of like the Excel sheets, like using standard deviations, coefficients of variation, but then, you know, really, it's like, okay, I have a diverse population of athletes. This is not homogenous by any, any stretch of the imagination. So I don't even know if these. Numbers that I'm getting are meaningful if they matter, but in general, I think it's just like I need to see progress. So I want to backpedal before I get too far off track here. You talked about doing the jump testing and using that to identify some of these physical deficits, which I really think of as trainable deficits, which is. hugely important for an athlete coming in who's maybe not hitting the criteria they want, but what kind of jump testing are you using and how are you, uh, mailboxing or putting these athletes into different buckets?
Ryan Connor:Yeah. So in terms of age groups for younger age group, we're just looking at like a jump mat, vertical jump test, very simple arm swing incorporated. Um, we look at that. It's like, well, how coordinated are you with your arm swing? That's going to tell us a little bit about their sprint performance as well. Um, if they can, Coordinate well in a jump. Chances are they're probably coordinated pretty well in a sprint as well. So, um, look at the way they do that jump test. So for a younger athlete, the numbers we just want to see, like, improve over time, right? So we're not necessarily looking for, you know, world records to be set in the jump mat jump, but we want them to, you know, show. proficiency in their movement. And then also just see if we can get a couple more inches out of that. And then as they strength, that's really how we measure as they get stronger. That's how we measure our strength program. We really try to look at if their vertical jump height is improving, then I think our strength program is working. If it's, if it's not improving and their technique seems to be improving again, that's just like a visual thing. Then maybe we need to look at what we're doing in the weight room a little bit more in depth, um, outside things like nutrition. sleep, you know, all that good stuff. If they're recovering from training sessions, are they in season or not? So it's a lot of factors that go into that as well. Um, and then for our older age group, we look at, um, just some different kinds of jumps. We'll look at RSI a little bit. Uh, we'll look at, uh, on the jump mat, we'll look at a hands on hips jump where they pause at the bottom. So like a squat jump, traditional squat jump, we'll look at a counter movement jump with hands on hips and just kind of see what kind of ratios they have between those things. And then we can incorporate more like elastic property style stuff, or maybe some more forced production style stuff in our strength and our speed programming also. But, um, for the most part, I would say almost all of our athletes that we work with are more elasticity deficient than force deficient. Um, we tend to have, especially in like that later high school range, when our football players come in and, you know, they squad 505 or whatever at, at, They're training and then, um, don't have any elastic properties whatsoever. Then it's a pretty easy bucket to fill. You know, like just sprinting is probably going to do a lot for them.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah. It was a painful day when I realized there was a double edge on the strength sword because of, you know, I just wanted to chase, chase maximal strength, max force output for the longest time. And all of a sudden I was like, man, I am, I am like a rhinoceros. Like I just, I am not leaving the ground. I'm a terrestrial mammal. There's not an ounce of elasticity in this. So. I'd love for you to elaborate a little bit on this, like elastic utilization ratio, what you guys are looking for, and then maybe just, just some like very simple instances of like what you're doing from a training application side to improve this.
Ryan Connor:Yeah. So just certain things we're looking for is just the ratio between, you know, their counter movement jump and their pause squat jump. And that ratio, if it's within like 1. 10, Um, it's higher than that. They're going to be like needing more force. If it's lower than that, they're going to need more elasticity. I might have that backwards, but it's in my spreadsheet. Um, and then, you know, the way we train that is we'll incorporate things with shorter ground contact time or longer ground contact time. Simple is that we'll do some jumps where they're starting from a static stop. If they're a little bit more forced efficient, we'll do some jumps where low ground contact time is kind of the goal. Um, all the way up to like an assisted Pogo or something like that, where they're, you know, creating some assistance with their arms, their upper body bands, things like that. Um, and just kind of go in up and down that as much as we need to, until we see that number kind of get to where, where we want it to be, um, It does take time just like anything like elasticity is like a property that needs to be developed and, uh, you know, getting them to understand that it's going to be a longer process and then sprinting also is going to do a lot of that too. Right? So that's already. That's a very low ground contact time activity. So, um, a lot of athletes need exposure to sprinting and it's kind of just as simple as that. And that evens out that ratio a little bit for us. But again, this is more for like our specially specialized athletes, maybe later in high school. Cool. college even, but, um, you know, stuff like that, we don't do as much with the middle school crowd. It's really just not important. It's almost overkill.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, for sure. I, it's like, um, I would say you're not, you're not going to pimp out a smart car, right? So I think of the, the short ground contact times, the, you know, rapid rate of force development type of activities. It's, it's certainly more advanced training in the weight room. And if you just don't have the horsepower to do this, it's like, what are we, what are we trying to accomplish here? Like Speed of contraction for what force, you know, how much can you actually produce? It's like, you don't have enough, you don't have enough horsepower to jump over the, the paint lines on the basketball court. Like we ain't worried about how long it takes you.
Ryan Connor:Exactly.
Ryan Patrick:Exactly.
Ryan Connor:Yep.
Ryan Patrick:Okay. So I want to talk about the practical side of this because More. So you mentioned some of the football guys, they are to some respects in love with low velocity force production. So your classic maximal strength training, the culture, I believe in football is still bigger, faster, stronger. I feel like that element of, you know, using more rapid contractions using faster velocities is still, uh, it's kind of a tug of war at times, at least for me. So how are you? Uh, finessing these guys into actually trusting the process and saying, okay, like I'm going to take some weight off the bar and we're really going to work on this power output side of the equation.
Ryan Connor:Yeah. They really do seem to understand it. Um, you know, since training is kind of built into the culture of football, it's really easy to talk training with football players I've noticed. So, um, when I have athletes that do a lot of that style training on their own or with school, it's usually going to be with their school program. Yep. I'm actually ecstatic because I don't have to do it, so I get all the other time to work on other things, which is really great. So, you know, we do a 90 minute training session here, which seems like overkill for some people. Most people do, like, an hour long training session. Um, and, you know, we try to work on all those things in that 90 minutes. And sometimes I get done and it's like, It doesn't even feel like enough time to get everything that I want to get in. So when I do have those guys who are already doing those max effort, high force production things, uh, I just feel like I have so much more time to develop other qualities. And, um, honestly, it's an easy conversation just by showing them kind of what this can do for their speed. It's, it's really just like something they have to experience and it just takes a few training sessions, a few weeks to really for them to feel that kind of charge, especially cause there are already so developed from a strength context, it's, it's kind of easy. It's they, they pick it up pretty quickly and they feel it right away.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, the football guys are nice because they do have that, like, true off season. You can't just play, like, pickup or 1 on 1. Like, you need a team and pads and a referee. You know, you need all of those things. And so it's like, in between, they're just going to train and they're usually really accomplished at this. So I totally, I totally appreciate that perspective. Um, okay. So I want to kind of move on and ask you a question because. You know, we've talked a lot about training some different applications for different athletes at different phases of development. What do you feel like as an industry that coaches are kind of missing the boat on, like what areas do you feel like we really need improvement? Um, or what was just misunderstood.
Ryan Connor:Yeah. I think kind of what I hit on really early on with the technical side and the physical side kind of needing to be married up a little bit. Um, I think that's a big deal, uh, especially around here. It just seems like there's only one or the other, like I was saying. And a combination of things is really what's required to get people where they want to be. So I think that's a big piece of it. And then within the technique side of things, just simple coordination and simple, um, timing is, is a big deal for sprint performance. And I think that kind of gets overlooked for some of the fancier things. Sometimes, um, I made a post a couple of days ago, I guess it was maybe last week about things that we've, things that we've kind of taken out of the program. Um, like some, some more resisted sprinting. We've kind of. Taken away a little bit from, especially the younger athletes, for sure. They just don't need it. But, um, even all of our athletes have benefited from less resistant sprinting because they're not really necessarily good enough at sprinting to really need to load that thing. Just like any other movement, squatting, uh, you name the strength exercise. Right. So, um, I think. Sometimes we try to look too much from a strength lens at speed. Um, so that's, that's definitely something that I see in just general strength training is going to do enough, uh, for those people that lack force production. Uh, if you feel like an athlete might need to run under resistance, maybe they just need to continue the process of getting stronger and, um, Working on the other side of the coin, which is just running full speed and having some exposure to that amazed by a lot of the athletes that come in and just don't even run full speed at practice anymore. Things like that. They're just kind of doing drills and then walking around talking with the coaches or, you know, doing things that are, you know, skill related, but not even that fast. So getting more exposure. If we work with team sports, getting more exposure to sprinting goes a really long way. And then just in terms of our industry, I think, um, I think it's leveled up a lot over the past couple of years. Like there's a lot of science behind everything, but I think we need to apply that science in a way that matters for our people. Uh, I know I get caught up in trying to learn every little thing I can. Um, but if it's really not something that I can apply to my athletes, is it, is it really that important to learn? Is it really that important to spend time on? So, um, I know that's something that I've personally been more aware of recently. And I just think we could all get a little more aware of what we're learning and why we're learning it.
Ryan Patrick:Absolutely, man. I would, I was hoping you would touch on that resistance sprinting. Cause I did see that post and I thought it was. Uh, some really profound insight and to kind of piggyback on what you said, I saw, I saw another post recently, it was, you know, to, to gain knowledge, add, to gain wisdom, subtract. And I would love for you to talk a little bit more about this resisted running, some of the changes that you've made, because I know a lot of guys who are working with athletes of the same group. Some I see do a pretty high volume of resisted runs. Some I almost see them never do it. So what were some of the things you were noticing as a result of using the resisted sprinting? What kind of resisted sprinting were you using? What were the loads like and what ultimately made you kind of pull this out of the program?
Ryan Connor:Yeah, I think a lot of the times I was seeing a lack of thigh separation really as simple as that. I think that was the main thing I was seeing was, all right, we're, we're shortening our stride a lot. And I understand that that's kind of going to happen with some resistance printing and that's okay. Um, but then if we go into an unresisted sprint and the thighs aren't opening, Then how much is it actually helping? So I think that was a big thing, you know, learning, learning about Ken Clark's research, research on, uh, thigh angular velocity, things like that, that's kind of been like something that I've looked more for in terms of technique and performance and things like that. So, um, when I was seeing a lack of that and then continuing a lack of that into unresisted sprinting, it just kind of like sounded some bells for me. So. It was kind of an experiment. We pulled more and more resistance, resistance out of training. And the more we did, the more we PR. So I was just like, okay, I think there's a little bit something more to this than I think, uh, you know, was my original theory. And, um, you know, things have been good ever since we we've done resistance sprinting with chains. We've done it with sleds. We've done it with run rockets. Um, we've pretty much used anything you can imagine besides a 10 80. And, um, you know, similar results across the board with our high school athletes who are strong. I just don't know if they need it as much. And then with our younger athletes who Um, aren't very force developed anyway, then we're going to probably not improve their strength and like the relative sense, um, any more than we could in the weight room and just getting more relatively strong. So, uh, just trying to keep things separate, honestly, if we're, if we're, if we need to get stronger and we need to get faster, then we need to do unresisted sprints and we need to lift weights. So, uh, just seeing those two things. Over time, kind of combine themselves, uh, in our program, it happens, but, um, I don't, I just don't think it's that important to, uh, you know, a lot of developing athletes and especially from that middle school to high school range, I will say that with some of our older athletes, like our college athletes and. Maybe some professional athletes that we worked with, it does become important. Like we can really dial in like a 50 percent velocity decrement and have them improve acceleration. It's, it's something that, uh, is pretty effective for them, um, because they're already pretty proficient technically, and they already have a background of being strong and a long, a long amount of time in, in real strength and conditioning already. So, uh, with them, it's very effective. And then with other people, it's just, it just hasn't been for us.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah. So it's a resistant sprinting is masquerading as shitty strength training when it comes to young athletes. Is that fair to say?
Ryan Connor:That's kind of what I, what I thought and saw. And, uh, yeah, seems to be looking that way with the, uh, in terms of results here.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah. We ended up at this profound place where we're like, Oh, to run faster, we're going to run faster.
Ryan Connor:Yes.
Ryan Patrick:We try to. We try to intellectualize so much and I've always had the perspective that you touched on before of our athletes are not sprinting. Their, their idea of sprinting is glorified conditioning. So I want to run fast, but I'm not running fast because now we're just doing all these slow resisted sprints. That aren't really carrying over. So, you know, it's extra volume, you know, you've got extra loads. So it's more stressful. Their Achilles take a beating, especially if you get into some of those heavier percentages. It just, I've been feeling the same way and you, you summed it up so nicely in that recent post.
Ryan Connor:Yeah. And you brought up the lower leg thing. I didn't even touch on that. I think, uh, see, like seeing one of our athletes heal, like almost completely flattened out. And I was like, let's just stop right now. Like, let's, let's get you out of that, that belt. And, uh, let's not let that happen ever again. Cause that's just not going to help us a get faster or be stay healthy. So why are we doing it?
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, I've got a, I got a team of guys who are really good. Just, just two coaches. So. Um, you know, it's one of those things you hear somebody talk about it, but I've been across the room and I saw somebody's like, do that. I mean, almost come out of the shoe, right? Because one, these kids don't tie their shoes tight. They got these fly knit shoes that are just absolute garbage for supporting a foot. But I've seen that heel drop out and I'm like, across the room, waving my arms like we are stopping this. right now. This is like no more. Like they can just run next to everybody, but it is not. And again, it was a younger athlete, had some strength deficits, probably could have been using that time doing some, you know, barbell, hip thrust, squats, deadlifts, anything. And we almost put them in a position where we had some extremely negative consequences. Just by not really understanding the big picture. But to your point, like there's a time and a place in a population who this is really advantageous for.
Ryan Connor:Yeah, for sure. And we've seen some results with some of our athletes to speak to that. Um, improving their acceleration is a big deal, right? So a lot of athletes do only sprint 10 yards in a play. Uh, maybe not even that. So getting them to improve. How quickly they can get into a sprint and take their first three steps, how much distance they cover over three steps, the direction of force they apply in those three steps. Like that's, that could be huge. Um, that could be a real missing link for, for a developed athlete.
Ryan Patrick:Absolutely. One, one other area you and I had both been pretty vocal on is the end season athlete. And I think. It is absolutely critical for them to continue training on some level. We know from a basic biological or physiological perspective, that if you don't use it, you lose it, right? There's going to be a decay in fitness qualities over time if we don't have an adequate stimulus To train athletes, and I have preached so much this year for our athletes to find time to continue to train in season, but I would love for you to, to talk more about why this has become such a priority for you, why you've been so vocal about it, and really what are athletes missing out on by ceasing training in season, and why isn't playing their sport going to be enough to retain some of these speed qualities.
Ryan Connor:Yeah, it is so important, and I think the biggest thing, especially if we both look at it from a speed lens, which we both do, we're both kind of steered in that direction of things and see the importance of it, um, your speed's going to deteriorate within, you know, five days of not being used, so that should be pretty alarming enough, sometimes it's not, uh, if you think about somebody who isn't playing varsity, but eventually wants to play varsity, and maybe they're not playing in their football game that week. Um, so they got zero exposure to sprinting throughout the whole week because they went through walkthroughs of practice. They lifted weights, they, um, you know, did those sorts of things, but they never got in the game and actually sprinted even more than a yard. So, you know, now we're setting them back two weeks cause they're going to do the same thing next week. And it's just, Things like that become very important and then the same goes for the starters, right? They might not ever really open up into a full sprint to kind of preserve the amount of, uh, output that's required to sprint full speed and, uh, they can see their performance decrease over time. And then you could also look at somebody like a baseball player, not necessarily speed, but their strength and power development. Um, they're going to hit the ball less far as the season goes on. Like that doesn't seem like a good idea as a team approaches the playoffs. So, um, You know, that's not even discussing injury prevention and how much goes into how much strength goes into that and just keeping kids healthy so that they can play for a long time and stay on the field to get enough tape to maybe attain that college scholarship that they're after. So there's just, there's so many reasons to do it and the, I don't have time reason to not do it. Even just a little bit just seems like not enough. So, um, you know, we are, we are what we make time for. And, uh, if, if being a really good athlete is important, I think training in season has to be a part of it. You're going to do that in college. So you already know in high school that the direction you want to take is. For me to play in college where you're going to be training in season for sure. It's not even a question. So, um, I think just getting used to that idea. And, uh, the other thing we see within our data here that we've collected over, you know, the three years that we've been open is you're not coming back and picking up where you left off. That's just, if, if you think that's, what's going to happen, it's just not true. Um, so we've seen athletes come in train for three months. Come back the following year, and it's not that they're starting from scratch, but they, you know, they maybe get back to the point that they were when they left last time. And it's like, you know, you never really make it up the peak. It's just kind of like levels off drops. Comes back up a little bit. Levels off, drops. Um, and that's really not what development is, right? So development needs to take place all year round so that, you know, even in season, we've seen progress for some of our athletes. We've had a bunch of our baseball players hit PRs in, uh, jumps and various jump performance tests. So, uh, I know that they're keeping their power output high. They're still playing at a high level as playoffs start. So I can see how that will be important. And, um, You know, if I was a coach, I would be promoting that to like, Hey, if we're going to be in the playoffs and when a champ, a chance of the state championship, like we kind of train in season, we got to maintain these power outputs. So, um, not only we can stay healthy, but we can perform when it matters most.
Ryan Patrick:Absolutely, it's 1 of the small sacrifices. I don't think there's a shortcut for and I try to communicate this to a lot of our parents. I, I always tend to explain to people like, we just work best with kids who are on a path. If you want to make it to this level, if you want to go to college, or you want to maintain your position as a starter on 1 of the really elite high school teams in the area, it's going to require some sacrifice. I'm not saying you've got to. Right. You know, shut down fun and you can't do things on the weekend or have a late bedtime past midnight, but you have to carve time for these things. And, you know, I've walked around with my phone in the past week saying, look, you know, the timber wolves just swept the suns and they're training on the road after the game. But inside of that, one of the areas I feel is misunderstood by a lot of the athletes when they're thinking about the time. You've talked about your sessions being 90 minutes long. What is the difference in volume for you out of season versus in season? Because, I mean, you and I know maintaining requires significantly less volume. Yeah,
Ryan Connor:yeah. It's interesting. Um, we do subtract a little bit of volume. I will say that, but generally everybody follows pretty similar plans in season and off season. We're really, um, understanding the fact that a lot of people play their sports all year round. So, you know, during their school season when things matter a lot. Uh, we do decrease volume a little bit, but, um, generally that's just the way we do training. That's just the style of training that we do. Uh, we're going to sprint really, really well with good mechanics for 200 to 500 yards of volume. Um, and then we're going to, you know, lift weights with high power outputs for 20 to 30 reps. And per, you know, in certain body parts, we do a total body training structure. So that's, you know, we're going to hit all, all body parts that we need to. But, um, you know, I think it's, it's interesting and it's, uh, it's good to look at what's required to really get better and it's, it's not a lot of training, it doesn't need to be high volume. That does work and has its place and is important that some parts of the offseason and in season we can reduce volume a lot. But, um, just making sure everything's super high quality. It doesn't need to be high quantity. Um, and then sometimes that can help people understand in season training a little bit more. It's like, okay, well, if 30 reps. And 200 yards of sprint volume is the straw that broke the camel's back. Then there's way more issues at play than, you know, the in season training affecting performance, recovery, things like that. So, um, I think that's a big deal too. It's just kind of explaining why we train a certain way and what you should expect from doing that style of training. And if it is intrusive on your day to day life, then that's, there's other conversations that probably need to be had.
Ryan Patrick:That's super valuable. And I think, would you mind breaking down the sprint volume just a little bit? I know it's not, kids not going to come in and run 50, 10 yard sprints. So what kind of things play into that volume just to give like a bigger perspective?
Ryan Connor:Yeah, we even, we even call sprint volume some of our drills. So, uh, we use drills to warm up and then after that. Uh, that's kind of the end of drills, but, uh, within those things, we might do a few reps of just taking our first 3 steps, um, learning how to attack the ground to accelerate things like that. We might do some, um, you know, certain. bounding activities. We're going to do scissor bounds. We're going to do power bounds, things like that to prepare the central nervous system, things like that. Also improve power output in those exercises as well. But, uh, we kind of all lump that in with sprint volume. Uh, we're going to do laser testing at a few different areas. We do laser testing every training session all year round. And, um, That's kind of how we know, uh, number one, if our system is working, number two, if athletes are recovered and then number three, if they're able to hit, you know, a percentage of their very best PR, then we know that they're generally pretty recovered and can handle the rest of training. So that happens pretty early on in our training session. And then, um, from there, we might do some additional training with just, uh, things like treadmills. If we're looking for some more, you know, vertical, uh, striking emphasis, more top speed emphasis, things like that, or more just practicing getting into a good two point position and accelerating forward just with simple, simple drills because, uh, simple is what works. So I think, you know, total volume with drilling and with sprinting. Shorter distances might equate to 200 yards, maybe 400 and like a really higher volume, um, team training setting where maybe we're bringing a team in. And we know that we're the only place that they're training. And they also need a little bit of conditioning mixed in there as well. We might do some tempo.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, I think that's great. So, I mean, it really paints a picture of there's, you know, practicing the sprint. So, um, sometimes I was, this is, it may be a weird analogy, but I always think about like, uh, you know, learning an instrument, right? There's warmup drills. You're figuring out how to play the frets on a guitar and it's kind of slow, but rhythmic and you're building coordination. And then there's going to be a period of time where you're actually, you know, for a certain percentage of the volume, you're going to really work on, you know, These higher intensity outputs and just trying to maximize the skill and all of this to me, what you've described ties in to what we talked about early is we want to try to replicate the target activity with as is as much specificity as possible.
Ryan Connor:Yeah. Yeah. That's a big piece of it. I like that analogy too. It's, it's, uh, it's true. Like once we start playing, we're just, we're just playing. And then I really try to turn the coaching off at that point and just let them do what they do. It's like, Hey, let's just run this. 15 yard test that we do. Let's run this 20 yard test, uh, run as fast as you can. And then I do more of the coaching and those initial drills and things like that. And we'll try to get them coached up for that. But I have learned to not over coach when they just are there to run full speed. Like it's time to shut up and let them do it.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah. I went through a period where, you know, we were doing a lot of video and we still take a lot of video and we try to break it down. And I'm always like, I think kids are tired of me kind of saying the same things, but it's down to like a handful of cues, either. I'm promoting some kind of projection and I have 2 to 3 cues that I might use for that, or I'm trying to promote some kind of thigh angular velocity and get those limbs to switch. And I have a couple of cues for that. And like, that's it.
Ryan Connor:Yeah, I've really pared it down myself, too. I think I've definitely made the mistake of overcoaching over queuing in the past and trying to get three things to happen when maybe really, you know, it's time for just one thing to happen. And, um, yeah, I've seen that happen to a lot of our athletes and it's hard for them to get better. And then they get frustrated and everyone's frustrated because my coaching is not working and they're not getting better. So I think it's really important to be aware of what we say. And, uh, yeah, How much queuing we're really throwing at athletes. And I even asked the question and sometimes I'm like, am I overcoaching you right now? Like, is this too much? So, uh, I still try to get feedback on, you know, how well I'm doing too.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, you can see as soon as their brain turns on because they slow down and I'm I'm always like, you know What the just what was that? Like what did you just do? Because they're thinking about too many things and all of a sudden like you think and you're not reactive in hindbrain and just go
Ryan Connor:Yeah, yeah, I tell athletes Uh, when that was happening and when I was trying to transition into, you know, my new style of coaching, uh, that they can blame me, like, it's okay. They'll blame me for that last laser test. Cause it was definitely my fault.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, for sure. Okay. I want to kind of kick the can down the road a little bit here and talk about the next topic, which I think is very intimately tied with speed. And I almost think about it as this, you know, intersection between the strength world and the speed stuff and that's power development. So you've talked about using the vertical jumps already as test. We've talked about some, um, you know, different types of training that we can do to improve, you know, the shorter ground contacts, the bar velocities. How are you testing and training and what role is power development playing in the overall program for you as a bridge?
Ryan Connor:Yeah, I think, um, this is another thing I've tried to over, uh, tried to simplify recently, and I overthought probably previously is, um, you know, rate of force development. All that stuff is super important, but generally, they all need to just get relatively stronger. So, um, as as. Development is just like general strength training has been my go to lately. And that's kind of where I started to, I got a little bit lost in the sauce. I would say with, uh, um, trying to bring out certain qualities of athletes when really they're going to get a lot of training in those qualities by, you know, just generally getting stronger and lifting heavy weights. Let's be honest. Like. It is important to lift heavy. It's got to be good quality and it's got to hit the muscles that we want it to be, of course, but, um, getting stronger improves a lot of stuff, uh, is an oversimplified way to say things. Uh, we're going to improve rate of force development by getting stronger. It doesn't need to be fast to, you know, produce those kind of adaptations and sometimes. you know, it's not just like with resisted training. It's not important enough yet to really work on those style of things if they're just not even good at lifting weights yet. So I've kind of simplified stuff in that way for sure. Um, so, yeah, it's changed a lot for me over the years.
Ryan Patrick:No, I think that's perfect. You're in the same boat. I am, you know, you, you love to learn and we get some of these grand ideas or somebody's talking about something and we apply it to a population or an athlete that it is maybe too young or underdeveloped and with the intent of doing well. And it's not that some of these things don't work, but it's like, you kind of come back to this. Almost the simplicity and a very elegant way of, Hey, we've just got to, we've got to continue to push this strike for just a few years longer, you know, not a few months or a few programs, but years actually develop some kind of sufficient base. And from there, we can just start to mold the clay a little bit more specifically.
Ryan Connor:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Within, you know, within those things, within learning how to lift weights and just get generally stronger, we can work on, you know, more eccentrics. Uh, we can work on different phases of lifting for sure. Like that's all good stuff. We can program certain ways and, um, take a more triphasic approach if you're into that. Like all that stuff works really well. So we can do that within a basic strength program that's possible. Uh, but just getting generally strong is, uh, it's gotta be the requirement. It's gotta start with that for everybody.
Ryan Patrick:I love it. All right. So I'm an athlete coming to you on day one. And what, what is this intake process going to look like? Tell me a little bit about your assessment process and how you're evaluating athletes.
Ryan Connor:Yeah. So we'll go through a, um, you know, a jump and a sprint profile session with somebody. And it's very, very basic. We're going to do a short, a medium and a long sprint, and we're going to do a variety of jumps depending on the age. If they're a younger athlete, we're just going to vert test them. And then a little bit of mobility screening in the beginning, like, as I'm warming them up, I'm just kind of seeing how they move through a certain couple of certain mobility exercises that we do just to see where they might be lacking. And then, um, with all the information collected, we can kind of. Draw some conclusions. So, um, you know, if they, if they are an overathlete and we do test their RSI and it's very low and then we can ask them, you know, is changing directions an area that you need to get, uh, you need to improve to improve your speed and your agility and your on field performance because there's a lot of, uh, connections between RSI changing directions vertically is very similar to changing direction side to side. That's like the physical capability is, you know, the RSI style of jump. Um, and then same things with our jumps and our sprints, right? So if they don't have a great vertical jump, but they have decent enough technique, and then we go over and we test their 10 yard sprint, we can draw some conclusions from that, right? It's like, well, they're not physically developed really enough to, uh, really need much technique work in their 10 yard sprint, they just need to physically develop. Although we'll work on technique as well. And then the other side of the coin is we might have a kid who jumps 20 inches on the vert jump mat, which is, you know, for a younger kid is kind of crazy to see. And then we go over and test their 10 yard sprint and it's not great. And it's like, okay, well you have technique work to do. And that's how we draw those conclusions. Same thing with, uh, you know, we try to connect RSI also to your 20 yard sprint. We only have about 30 yards of turf in here. So we're going to do like a 20 yard sprint at the most, but, um, We'll look at that 20 yard sprint. We'll look at their RSI. We'll compare some stuff. Okay. Your, your RSI score was decent. Um, your 20 yard sprint was very poor. So like technique is going to be a big part of getting that, that up. So, um, yeah, just drawing conclusions from the different jump tests, connecting the dots a little bit. And trying to look at where we can make the most improvements. We can have them run really poorly in 10 yards, but then once they pick up speed, do pretty decent in the in the 20 yard sprint. So now we know if we improve their rate of acceleration, improve that ability, then their 20 yard can get even better. And if it's already pretty good, that can be powerful. So I'm just trying to connect the dots with those tests that we do and explaining to parents. You know, your, your athlete falls more on the technical side, more on the physical side, even though we're going to do everything, just want you to know this is how we're going to, you know, prioritize training with them. And since they are doing everything, we're just going to let them know like, Hey, this is, this is the part where you really need to, you know, be paying attention and get to work on. Cause you're, you know, your technique is what's, what's holding you back. Or once we get into the weight room, Hey, this is what I want you to really. Put a lot of effort and emphasis in today. This is the part where we talked about in your assessment that we need to make the most make up the most ground. So, um, those connections have been big for us. And it's just stuff that I've learned over time to look at and see the connections between.
Ryan Patrick:It's so simple, yet thorough and effective and 1 area that you touched on towards the end there that I don't think enough people. Really consider is just coaching the athlete to have intent and what they're doing, right? We are trying to sprint. This is going to be the hardest and fastest that your muscles can track today. So it's like, you know, some people are on the backend, like playing in their spreadsheets or adjusting program. It's like, no, I just. I just need you to haul ass here. Like that's it. Like that's all that's required.
Ryan Connor:Yeah. Yeah. That's coaching. I mean, there's, there's programming and there's coaching and, uh, you can be good at programming and not good at coaching. There's athletes, there's coaches out there who are great at coaching, um, and don't even need that much programming skills. So I try to be good at everything, but I think, you know, putting the most emphasis on coaching is that's what we're doing, uh, really has to be the biggest piece of it is the, is the coaching aspect I'm a coach, um, first. And then. Secondary secondarily, I program the exercises, loads, intensities, volumes, things like that.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, man, this is, this has been great so far. I'm going to finish up with a few just kind of short questions. You can take, um, you know, add as much as you want on this, but I appreciate you being an open book, man. I love talking about all this stuff and it's great to, you know, chat with another guy who I'm pretty aligned with, which is pretty cool. Maybe bad for my biases, but, uh, who understands the big picture has done a lot of work in coaching, understands the complexity of certain issues, but also how to basically coach very simply, which I think is so, so valuable. But my next question for you is, and hopefully we, you have a different answer than the, the resistance sprinting, but what are you doing or testing now? That's different from maybe 6 to 12 months ago.
Ryan Connor:Yeah, I think it would probably be, um, some of the more technical things. I would say looking at an athlete from like a backside mechanic, frontside mechanic standpoint, I've tried to steer not away from that completely, but just making sure they have balance, maybe not emphasizing too much. Like, I think some people are so married to like Having good front side technique. Whereas, you know, it has to come from somewhere. There's something happening on the backside of the body or the other way around and things like that. So I just think having a balanced look at those things, uh, if we're looking really specifically at sprint training, uh, that's probably something that's been a little bit different for me over the past six to 12 months.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, that's huge. Easy to get caught up in the, you know, the technical aspects. Again, you got to put some force in the ground. Okay, fastest 10 meter fly you've seen.
Ryan Connor:So like I said, we only do like a 20, 20 yard test. So we got fastest 20. Fastest 20 is 1. 09 I'm pretty sure. 1. 09. Yeah, so funny enough, that's a baseball player, a pitcher. It's one of the best athletes we've, we've worked with. Um, he's been with us for, for years now. He has, uh, three spots on the leaderboard and first place for our acceleration test, our max speed test. He's tied for first on our vert jump test.
Ryan Patrick:And he's a pitcher. And what's that vert?
Ryan Connor:30.
Ryan Patrick:Whew. Boy, it can soar. Yeah.
Ryan Connor:Yeah. So our football players love that, that there's a baseball player at the, at the top of our leaderboards.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, yeah, for sure. Uh, you can't underestimate those baseball guys. We got a lot in this year and they're, they're athletes and, uh, I'll tell you what, they're, they're rotational power. Like, it doesn't carry over from other sports very well. Like, they have a very specialized skill set with, with that ability to produce some torque.
Ryan Connor:Yes, it's very incredible. Yeah, there's some of our best athletes are baseball guys.
Ryan Patrick:State, stay with baseball. Okay. What's your training look like? Are you doing any of this stuff on yourself? What are you playing with? What does it look like?
Ryan Connor:Yeah, I do a lot of experimenting with, uh, what I'm going to give to athletes with myself. I have to go through it first. I got to see what it feels like or know what it feels like. And I have to, uh, you know, be able to do this stuff in the amount of time that we have to, that's the other thing. So, you know, I do a pretty good amount of sprint training. I do a pretty good amount of lifting. Um, I would say right now, since I'm getting older, like I'm, It'd be 40 in a couple of years, which is kind of crazy to think about. But, uh, I've focused myself more on like the power development side of things. And, um, just trying to maintain as much of my power as I possibly can, as long as I can, because I think we all can stay strong and that's like kind of an easy thing, but to stay fast and to stay powerful as we age, I think is going to be big for a lot of people's health. Um, I'm going to be coaching for a long time. So I need to be able to demonstrate this stuff. Like I always want to be able to get into a two point stance and be able to rip a five yard sprint at least. Um, so that's, I gotta be able to do this stuff myself. So that's kind of where, where I've been focusing my training, a lot of experimentation with what we're going to give to athletes and then just maintain the qualities that I need to.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, I totally appreciate that. I hate, I hate thinking about it in terms of, uh, you know, longevity, but the power development thing is real. I mean, there's a couple of times I've, you know, recorded myself sprinting and I watched it back and I'm like, oh, wow. Like, it's so slow. It's almost embarrassing, but, um. Man, I guess, I guess Father Tom comes for us all. So I have a healthy respect for that. All right. So what's next for Ryan Connor?
Ryan Connor:Yeah, I think what's next for me is developing, um, kind of my own staff. I see myself kind of moving towards more of like a Mike Boyle style role where I'm just like, educating a staff at some point. Um, I'll always work with athletes that'll, that'll never, never be something I can stop. So, uh, I'll continue to do that, but, uh, maybe just try to help the next generation of coaches with all the experience that I've had. I didn't really have that when I started and I wish I did. I think I'd be even further along than I am now. In terms of my coaching development, so I'm just trying to be that person for the next group of coaches is where I'm headed. I think things might change for the business or what I do. And but that's kind of what I feel right now is what's next for me.
Ryan Patrick:Awesome, man. Well, it's, uh, Ryan, it's been a huge honor, man. Thanks so much again for carving the time for me today. Um, but if the listeners want to find out more about you and follow you, what are the best places and what are the user handles?
Ryan Connor:Yeah, so ryanconnorspeed, at ryanconnorspeed on Instagram is probably the best way. Pretty much where I put all my content. I might repurpose some stuff on Facebook and things like that. But, um, all my content really goes on Instagram. That's the thing I gravitated most towards. Um, you can email me as well, though. Like, I respond to any email. It's Ryan at takeover. S. P. dot com. Um. And those are really the best two ways to get ahold of me. And if you're in the Bucks County area, my gym is Takeover Sports Performance. Uh, come see me. We'll assess you for free. We let all of our athletes come in and test for free. Um, and then any, anything, any training you want to do with us, we can figure it out from there.
Ryan Patrick:Awesome, man. Well, thank you so much.
Ryan Connor:Thank you. It was an honor to be here and, uh, really appreciate your time.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah. Take care.