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
026 - Alan Murdoch on Building Back Better: Enhancing Speed During Rehab
In today’s episode, we’re joined by Alan Murdoch, a Speed & Agility Expert and the founder of Elevate Speed & Rehab. Alan is also the creator of the Fast to Fit method—a groundbreaking approach to lower body injury rehab that emphasizes high-intensity movements earlier in the recovery process, helping athletes return to the field faster and more confidently.
I’ve personally taken multiple courses with Alan, including his renowned 360 Speed Mentorship. His deep knowledge of sprint mechanics and his expert coaching eye make him one of the top coaches in the industry. Having him on the show is a real privilege, and I know you’ll get a ton of value from our conversation.
In this episode, we explore:
- Alan’s non-negotiables in rehabilitation.
- The Fast to Fit framework and its success in speeding up recovery times.
- How Alan bridges the gap between performance coaches and rehab practitioners using data to drive decisions.
- The often-overlooked concept of stiffness and why it’s crucial to speed development.
This episode is packed with actionable insights, so grab a notebook!
If you enjoy this episode, please take a moment to rate and review the podcast with 5 stars. Your support helps us reach more coaches eager to learn from the best in the sports performance world, and it helps our incredible guests like Alan share their groundbreaking work.
Follow Alan on Instagram at: @elevate_speed_rehab
To join my Speed Simplified workshop, save your sat using this link.
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Alan Murdock is a speed and agility expert coaching high level athletes at his company Elevate Speed and Rehab. He is the creator of the Fast Fit Method of Rehabilitation, a novel approach biasing high intensity actions earlier in the rehabilitation of lower body injuries to help athletes get back to the pitch faster and with more confidence. I have taken numerous courses from Alan, including his 360 speed mentorship. He's a fantastic coach with a deep understanding of the nuances of sprinting and one of the best coaching eyes in the game to have him on today was a huge honor, and I know you're going to love this interview. We dive into his non negotiables of rehabilitation, his fast fit framework, and how he's used that to help athletes return in record time. We talk about some of the gaps between performance that coaches and practitioners. Have and how data can help intervene this process in drive decision making. We also unpack the idea of stiffness and what most of the industry misses when it comes to this. Overall, we talk all things speed at this interview and it's chock full of nuggets. When you finish, please rate and review this podcast with five stars. It really helps me as a creator. Spread this podcast to more coaches who are hungry for information from great thinkers and the sports performance industry, and it helps my guests spread the word of the good work that they're doing. If you've already reviewed us, thank you. Now let's get to this interview. Coach, before we jump in, I want to share a training that I'm doing very soon. And the best part, it's totally free. My training called Speed Simplified Building Fast Athletes Faster takes place on October 1st. We're going to cover a framework for systematically building speed for your young athletes, whether it's change of direction, acceleration, or breakaway top end speed. I want to share with you my thoughts on how you can easily assess, correct, and improve the speed of your athletes. Can't make it? Not to worry. I'm gonna record this meeting and I'll share the link with you after. To save your C visit, go dot nk y fitness.com and sign up today. That's go go dot nk y fitness november kilo yankee fitness.com. See you there.
Ryan Patrick:I know I had like three back to back yesterday. So it's just like talking. Yeah. All right. Well, Alan, welcome to the show, man. I'm super excited to have you here. You are a huge influence on my own coaching, especially when it comes to speed training and speed training, um, and reintegration of people who have been injured, especially with like ACL. So I know that's a big background of what you're doing with elevate, but for those who are unfamiliar with you, can you just start by giving us a little. Background on you.
Alan Murdoch:Yeah, sure. Well, thanks for having me on. Um, this is, uh, it's kind of the first time we've spoken in person face to face, so I can see you. So that's nice. Um, but yeah, my name is Alan. So I run a private facility called elevate and elevate as a rehab consultancy form and I. operate across quite a bunch of different domains. I work in professional sport and consult out to, to big major league, uh, teams in soccer, rugby, um, and across different kind of countries as well from England to Germany and the Bundesliga and out in Australia and places like that. So, um, it's quite far reaching. And then I also do and deal with rehabs for kind of the semi pro athlete who are, um, you Typically kind of mid stage to late stage and use up very much this thing that I've been calling a speed based approach to, to make that happen. And prior to starting my own company, I was, I was head of rehab, a professional rugby team. Um, and I kind of got dropped in the deep end during that job. I'd kind of come through the ranks as a younger coach and, um, As is in pro sport quite common, like a lot of people got fired. Um, so I was like, I was almost like the last man standing if you like. Um, so I just got given and dropped into this, uh, this job and I was a bit like, oh shit. Um, so I had to reach out to so many people that I respected and had heard from and listened to on podcasts like this one, um, to try and upscale myself and eventually did that through four or five years, um, in the job. And then that was what, that was what led me to, to move privately, um, away from that job. I recognized that perhaps in a club where you're dealing with 20, 25, maybe if you're unlucky, maybe like 25 plus guys who have picked up injuries. Um, it's very difficult to do a, really a world class job, you know, with that many people. Um, and that would frustrate me on a daily basis. And that's really why I moved into the private world to, to try and have a bigger impact on those people on a one to one basis. And then that's where we, that's where we find, or I find myself today.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, I love working with some of the higher level athletes and I can't imagine the frustrations of some of these, uh, professionally employed coaches, because it seems like every athlete, you know, on a professional team has their guy outside of there that they're going to see anyway. And, you know, the amount of time you get to work with them is limited the constraints, the priorities and ultimately, like, I think, to your point, like, there's some survivorship of who, who can be the last man standing. And a lot of it doesn't even have to do with. What our skill set is, you know, it's whether or not the team can actually win and the coach who's, you know, your guy is still around or not. But, um, but I want to dive into an area that you and I both spend a lot of time on and that's ACL rehab. It's been a big focal point for my business, especially since COVID coming out of that. I feel like a lot of athletes were just physically underprepared. We saw a massive spike in the amount of athletes that we were working and it's just kind of continued in an area that we really found as a niche. But before we dive deep, I would like you to expand on your four big non negotiables, because I think it's really important that people kind of understand, uh, where, where you're coming from and what some of your, your biases are.
Alan Murdoch:Yeah, for sure. So similar to you, I operate heavily in the ACL rehab space. Um, and that came about from, um, really when I was in the rehab spaces, uh, in pro sport, um, um, Honestly, doing a pretty crappy job. Um, I utilize a very traditional approach. I'm sure it's different in the U S but over here in the UK, a lot of the guys in my position will have done something called the UK SCA accreditation. That's basically the strength and conditioning accreditation. And they gloss over and cover over kind of rehab and a bit of speed and agility, etc. And they suggest and kind of showcase that it's done in a certain way. So as a young coach, age 22, 23, you kind of go with what your governing body is saying. And I was delivering these rehabs and guys were, and some of these people were the best athletes in the world at their, at their particular job in rugby. They are fantastic athletes. And I would rehab them through an ACL rehab in nine months. And they would come back and they would not really. Be the same athlete. Like I'm a huge rugby fan, so I would be excited to see them come back, see what they could do on the patch. They'd go for the first game, second game, third game, and they wouldn't be, they'd basically be a bit of a shadow of their former selves. Um, and that got me thinking and got me kind of sparked on the idea that actually is this the right way to be doing things? And spoke to a whole bunch of different people about processes and systems and thought processes around, are we actually. Why are we trying to get guys really, really fit first and then ticking the box on speed for those guys at the end of their rehab? Why don't we utilize the time that we have in these big long rehabs and actually try and get them moving incredibly efficiently, get them moving with pace and speed and elasticity and, and basically be very reactive athletes before then worrying about getting them fit further down the line. And this is where this whole fast effect kind of approach was, was born from. Um, And the four non negotiables that you asked about that have held that process in really, really good stead and they're really basic, like they're super basic. So if there's a young coach who's listening to this, or maybe an old coach who's really experienced, they, they still work. And the first one is that you're operating in the realms of no pain. So pain is a different, difficult one, I think. because different people perceive pain in different ways. You could have the same, the same stimulus go in and one person perceive it completely differently to the other person. So I think traditionally we've used like a four out of 10 pain scale. So on the pain scale, where are you? And if you're below a four, you're good to go. And if you're above a four, then, Oh my God, pull the pen. Um, I actually use something slightly different. So I just call it awareness versus danger. If you feel like what you're doing is dangerous, Tell me and we're gonna pull back. If you have a slight awareness, well, we know that injuries is predominantly a brain injury Especially for these big surgical injuries. You're gonna have some kind of Awareness or message that's coming from your body back to the brain and vice versa to say hold on a minute Just take it steady there bud because you know, this tissue in the site has been badly, badly damaged. Um, so that would be the first one. And it's like, like I said, it could not be any simpler, but if you abide by that, I think you, you'd struggle to go wrong. Um, the next one off the back of that is no response. So that's more so from like a, an actual physiological response, a fusion loss of range and joint function. And that's acutely in the moment. Um, it's in the evening and then it's 24 hours post. So I have check into my athletes to make sure that we haven't lost anything there. And you'd be amazed how Much that simple question just a whatsapp. Like I work one to one so it's not via questionnaires or anything Um, we'll pick up and you realize and especially if you've operated this baseline plus one model that I use which is Find stability in the thing that you're doing and then one by one add on something new If you add 10 things on at once and they have a bad response Well, you have no idea what caused it. So if you have this baseline plus one and you use no response as your kind of marker to understand how it's going, then you understand very quickly whether what you're doing is, is tolerable for that athlete. So that's important. And then the final two are physical output. So I do a lot of objective testing with my athletes. So like every SNC or rehab guy, I've got force plates, I've got video analysis, I've got motion and I've got everything you can possibly imagine. And if I've deemed the exercise important enough, um, then I'll look at the physical output of those exercises. And I typically don't do anything that's going to cause more than a 25 percent discrepancy between limbs. Because, and especially in the world of, when I work with a lot of amazing, amazing athletes who are, who are really trying to be the best in the world at what they do, they will find a way around Um, to, to complete that exercise and if there's a 25 percent deficit in the objective, the objectivity that I'm looking at, I can be almost guaranteed that they're not training what I want them to train. So that's it, that's the third one. And then the final one is this technical threshold type approach where I have in my head a very clear technical model of what I'm looking for my athletes to achieve and. Within a bandwidth and very damn pathy, but in a bandwidth of acceptability and movement, a movement bandwidth, if they're miles outside that bandwidth, well, once again, they're rerouting away from whatever the weakest link in the, in the chain is, you know, so, um, just simply using those four non negotiable rules, I think it's very hard to go wrong in rehab. Now, you might not do the world's best rehab and you might not get somebody coming back in record time just using those. I don't think you'll cause any harm. And I think for a lot of coaches, that's the starting point because there's so many people that I see on a daily basis who are coming off the back of a re injury, a re injury, a re injury because those basic principles haven't been adhered to. So those would be my non negotiables, they're dead simple, they're dead easy, but they stand me in good stead for, for really kind of challenging my own decision making on a, on a daily.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, absolutely. We work with a lot of younger athletes. So their starting point is often what I feel deficient. You know, when you have high level athletes, they, they were at an elite level of speed, power and strength. And so they come in and you kind of rebuild them. And I like that. Some of the athletes I work with. They're younger females who maybe have a training age of zero. And like you, I almost feel handcuffed in a sense by some of the, the clinicians and, and what their protocols are, especially in America, we're just very like strength oriented. It just seems to be this pedestal that we put everything on. Right. And so it's, it's easy to measure things like get ISO K numbers and make a judgment, but when I look at. Iso K numbers in the context of rehab. To me, this is just a measure of how much capacity does this athlete have? What are they actually capable of in terms of their ability to produce strength left and right, but it is not at all an indication or representation of, of how I'm actually going to see them. So, you know, to your point, it goes back to like point number four is I know what their physical outputs are, but maybe their technical outputs aren't matching up with what I'm seeing on the other side. And so, you know, and as an extension of this, I feel like we have. A lot of blind spots, perhaps even gaps in the assessment of our rehab process because there just isn't enough in depth of these high intensity actions. I try to, one of the things I talk about to people, I'm like, look, fitness, like conditioning. This happens on the shortest timeline in terms of physiologic response. You can get a guy in shape in four to six weeks, getting stronger, building speed, building overall, just, you know, high power outputs. Those take much more time. And so I'd like to, for you to dive into this, you know, fast to fit model and talk about just how you've reverse engineered this process. of assessing and developing these high intensity actions during rehab.
Alan Murdoch:Yes, it's an interesting one. It's clearly the same UK, US, wherever, just name a country, Australia, name your country, it's the same. Um, and while you were talking there, I actually brought up, um, I'm going to be presenting on, I was really fortunate to Be involved in a case where it was a very, very short turnaround for an ACL for a high level athlete who potentially was going to win gold, um, at the Paris Olympics just gone. Um, and we had to turn that around in like five and a half months, um, so that she could get selected, uh, to even have a chance of being in the team. Anyway, long story short, she dead and she won gold. And it's the coolest thing I think I've ever been involved in. But the reason I bring it up is. We're talking about strength and strength sitting at the hierarchy of clinicians decisions. Now, I think everybody loves dichotomy. I try and stay away from that as much as I can, but in general, everybody loves, I'm either on this team or I'm on that team and there's, I'm not in the middle, but that's really dumb. Um, So, one of the things that we had for this girl for the, for this, uh, this kind of Olympic project was, well, she's done her ACL, we need to have really, really strong and stable ankles, hips and knees. Those are, those are non negotiables, and we had some measures that I'm not going to bore you with that kind of dictated whether we would achieve that or not. But it was actually the fifth checklist down. on a number of things that we determined were actually more important than that, that status. So if I just read them to you quickly, so they were, we, we called it world class basics. We wrote it up on a wall and the world class basics where she had to have a quiet knee throughout the whole process. The second thing was that she had to recover harder than she trained. The next was that movement efficiency. And this kind of speed based approach, but basically movement efficiency, how you move is going to be the most influential thing on whether you actually achieve this dream of yours or not. Then we had skill level, which was skills and basic skills that would dictate whether or not she could compete at a high level. And then down on the fifth rung of the ladder, we had strong and stable ankle, knees, and hips. That's how I view it. I think in terms of a hierarchy progression, it's still really, really, really, really important to make sure you've got the force qualities to support stability and support. you know, force output and all those things that we know as S& C coaches are important for performance, but it is not the most important thing. It's not. Um, and she was able to turn it around in five and five and a half months and go to the Olympics and win gold. And it's just proof pudding that it's just part of the story. It's not the story. Um, so to answer your actual question. What the kind of how do I go back and reverse engineer? So I have these high intensity actions, um, which are for me, their acceleration, their deceleration, change of direction and maximal, maximal speed or maximal sprinting speed. And each of those things are, are outputs or, and, and skills associated with that. So there are abilities. Um, And underneath that, you've got, okay, well, to be able to accelerate, you have got to have extremely high rates of force through your proximal chain. You've got to have brilliant levels of stance leg stiffness. You've got to create massive separation between your thighs, and so on, and so on, and so on, and so on. Um, If you understand that, and you understand the underpinning demands of this thing that you think is important, well then, excuse me, I thought I turned my calls off, but apparently I had not. Um, well then, if you, if you can reverse engineer that, it makes the whole process of creating frameworks that are going to get you to your end destination so much easier. If you know that you've got to be able to flex and extend, extend through your stance leg and flex through your free leg, and do it while creating a whole bunch of pelvic stability, um, well then. Actually, training for that on week 3, week 4 actually becomes quite easy, as long as you've got the drills and you know what you're doing. If you don't have that, and you just say that the top of your pyramid is we need to be able to ISO K X, well then your program looks like just a hell of a lot of leg extension. And, As I said before, it's just a part of the system. It's not the whole system. So I think by putting high intensity actions at the top of your pyramid, it means that what you do as a process is just so much more holistic to actually performing on the pitch, not just having a strong knee. Because if having a strong knee meant that you were amazing, It would mean that all the world's strongest men and women would be out there running around on the track. Not the case. So, that's why reverse engineering from these really, really key skills is, is, is vital.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, one thing I want to touch on is creating some of this elite level stiffness. I do see a lot of clinicians want to spam the leg extension. And because we work with a lot of females, I sometimes see almost a, an exaggerated representation of the screw home mechanism where you've got this, you know, tip exaggerated, like tibial ER in a femur. That's kind of a little bit too IR. So you can almost. Look at a athlete straight on. You can see that knee coming in. It's like their foot going out. I'm like this, this is like ACL mechanism 101, right? This opposite opposition of twist. I'm like, you know, are we doing the best thing by just repeatedly like driving screw home, screw home, screw home. And I know they need to get extension and they need strength there. But one area that. I see a lot of athletes have some apprehension and some challenges recovering. I would say is this attacking of the ground, this thigh angular velocity, this ability to, to want to create stiffness and punch the ground. So I'd love for you to talk about some of the ways you're rebuilding that physically, but also from kind of the mental standpoint of an athlete having the confidence to attack
Alan Murdoch:elite level stiffness. I think stiffness is literally the most misinterpret thing in sports performance. Everybody wants to be Shikari Richards and Steph, right? Like just bouncing on and off the ground. If you look at that, she uses her elastic system and she is mega stiff on the ground, my god, it's impressive. But she covers so much distance by using it. Now, go on the flip side and look at somebody who's done their ACL and they are, they're going through a regular rehab and they're at month 7 and they start doing their lateral work. Their leg will be stiff because their body doesn't want to allow them to bend into knee flexion really, really aggressively. Because why would it? Because the knee's been compromised. But if you look at how far they displace themselves off that really stiff contact, they don't go anywhere. So there's a very big difference between stiffness and reactivity. Reactivity is stiffness that displaces you. Stiffness is just stiffness. It means you're, you're unyielding. And that's not necessarily a good thing. Quite often in the ACL world, all that means is that you're just massively inhibited and guarded. Um, so I think there is a, there's a lot of value in, in teaching when we're talking about stiffness or reactivity, actually, there's a lot of value in, in moving through range, teaching people how to flex and extend out of all sorts of positions so that when it comes to creating force really quickly on the ground, whether that be change of direction, acceleration, or max velocity, the body and the brain actually allows that knee to flex under that much duress and that much force so that you can utilize your elastic system. I think that's something that gets misinterpreted all the time. Um, and we do so much of this work around, I actually, it was on Instagram actually, I saw, um, It was, uh, it was the Australian netball team and they were doing a warmup. And again, the girls look like they're unbelievable athletes, but everything that I saw in that warmup was very sprinty, sprinty, sprinty based. So your classic pogo's, ankling, mini scissor drills, um, like hurdle hops, but with a really stiff contact on the floor. Now those qualities are important. Like if you follow Verkoshansky or you follow any kind of Russian literature like that, those types of trainings clearly have value. But. If you look at the landing mechanism of a lot of these girls that play netball and the subsequent ACL risk and injury that these girls are, are kind of, um, exposed to, you'll see that actually a lot of the go to, the go to stance is this really, really stiff, high hip position. Um, Like, if you, if I'm doing a seminar, I'll get everybody to stand up and go, right, lock your leg out and now twist over the top of it. Can you feel the stress in your knee? Yes. Now bend your knee. Now twist over the top of it. Can you feel the stress in your knee? No. The degree of freedom's gone up. So I think when we're talking about stiffness and ACLs and all this type of stuff, There's so much value in actually coaching away from what people seem to think they want to do, which is just be super stiff, stiff, stiff. Um, so yeah, I don't know if I've absolutely said they've gone completely on a tangent, but that was my, that came to my head.
Ryan Patrick:No, I'm getting Dan Path vibes here, right? Because the rudiment series. Is one of the more fundamental things that a lot of people do it in a lot of athletes, because they're low level, they want to be very toey with it. They don't want to have any level of deformation when they hit the ground. And so our constant, you know, we're preaching to them, look, land with that flat foot, because I want a coordinated bending of hip and knee. But I don't want you to be on the ground too long and that process of watching even an able bodied athlete try to navigate that Has just been an extreme challenge. And again, we've got younger athletes, but is this kind of what you're you're alluding to? Yeah,
Alan Murdoch:yeah for sure for sure It's just I think when the topic of stiffness comes up everybody wants to talk plyometrics It happens all the time. I get asked about it a lot. Like, what's your plyometric kind of progressions, etc. Um, how are you creating stiffness and elasticity in your athletes? And I think that there are, I actually think that's not too difficult. It's just exposure and good progression to exercise and stress. But we never talk about the flip side. We never talk that reactivity is still, is the ability to flex and extend. Not just extend off a stiff leg, you know. Um, So, yeah,
Ryan Patrick:what was your, what was your other question? Shoot, man. I've, you know, we're good ground. Yeah, I think it was. Yeah, it was about and okay. All right.
Alan Murdoch:Attacking the ground. Okay, so Thigh Angular Velocity, I break it down. Firstly, for those that don't know, Thigh Angular Velocity is basically just the range and the speed that your legs travel through. So if you go and you watch really elite sprinters or fast people, typically their thighs move through more range. And they do it quicker. So they're able to create bigger shapes and they rip in and out of those big shapes really, really quickly. Um, it's why watching sprinters is so impressive when they really kick into top gear and you see these giant front side ranges and the speed at which those legs exchange is just, it's incredible, especially if you see it in person. Um, and I break down my, so I do a lot of video analysis and I break down my running cycle into like a quadrant. So if you can imagine, Watching somebody side on and it's splitting that person into a quadrant or their leg action into a quadrant. And we've got when their legs at the top, when their leg comes down to hit the floor, that's early extension. When their leg hits the floor and then pushes all the way back to toe off, that's late extension. And then from that moment, they've got to rip that leg back forward again. So halfway between, so the easiest way on a podcast to explain it is when the other leg touches down on the floor, that back leg is now coming forward, that would be early flexion, and then finally late flexion would be from that opposite leg touching the floor to the leg going right up to the top. So there's kind of four phases, and I'm lucky enough that I've got some software that I can actually plot. Those four points and they lay over each other in a kind of quadrant, um, and like a radar graph. And I can see the different triangular velocities and the different phases of left versus right and what we see And in keeping with the ACLs because that's what we're talking about today. You're gonna see basically two things You're gonna see a lack of early extension velocity so that means your willingness to go down and get the floor because It's kind of like throwing a punch, man. If you've broken your wrist, why would you throw a huge punch? Cause all you're going to do is break your rest even more. So your body kind of works on that assumption that if you've got some damage in that knee, well, why would I do more to it? So it's always inhibited to kind of going down to the floor. Then typically there's a little limitation and getting back off the floor from late extension to early flexion. That's the whole ability to pull yourself back through with your back leg, your kind of elasticity, and also some qualities around your rectum. So if I'm seeing those which are consistent pretty much with ACLs, I have certain exercises I know that I'm going to use as preparation, which is what I call my prep with purpose framework. So it's a bunch of, bunch of exercises kind of directed at the different quadrants of triangular velocity to target that. And then I'll also change their gym program in terms of the compound and the big strength left. So if you can imagine you lack early extension velocity. So they attack into the floor, your hips inflection. And you're coming down to the ground with a slightly inclinated trunk. Well, if I do a moderate height step up with a whole bunch of load, it's the same movement. It's much, much slower, but it's the same movement and coaching the body and teaching the body that actually. Having a hell of a lot of force going through my knee and through my limb here in this position going down and extending to the ground is fine. And once I'm good with that, then I'll do some kind of switches from high boxes to low boxes and all these different exercises that coach that ability. And I think the big thing that this does is yes, it does teach the physical qualities and it does drive strength or force. But the biggest thing out of everything it does is it turns off the rate limiters of the brain. It tells the brain that, you know what, buddy, it's okay. It's okay to do that action. And all of a sudden we see a jump in thigh angular velocity. And it probably sounds quite, if it's something you're not familiar with, I imagine that sounds a bit like, Jesus, what's he talking about? But basically, basically the biggest influence it has is breaking it down like this means that if you can bridge the gap between left and right, the other leg does not overwork. And this is why, and I'm absolutely convinced by this, that if we, we deal with ACL and we deal with these injuries, you often hear stories of the other leg picking up a soft tissue strain or even worse, the other leg picking up another ACL injury. And it's because of these thigh angular velocity deficits that the other leg ends up being so neuromuscularly fatigued because it's doing all the work. And if we can do everything in our power when they start to return to run, or just before they return to run, to try and close those gaps using that system, I think we see way less. Like I've never had, I've never had another athlete or a athlete, and this is in four years, re injure when they've done their ACL rehab. Now that might be coincidence, but I don't think it is. I think it's, I think it's because by addressing the deficient side and being really meticulous around it, the other side does not need To overwork and create stress and then break down when they go back to play or even back to train
Ryan Patrick:when you start looking. This is almost like a kind of slap your forehead moment, but if the athlete's going to go back and do a high intensity action, I feel like this is really where we should be assessing. Right? Um, are they are they attacking with the ACL? Like, do they actually create as much step length or displacement? Transcribed at the hip when they're running, you know, when they go into cut, what is their ground contact time and the turnaround? What are the angles they're hitting? These are the things that to me, like we have to start assessing early. And I, and I feel like a lot of people are afraid to touch some of these things because they're happening fast or, you know, they feel dangerous. So I would, you know, with this in mind, what are some of the other high intensity actions? In things that you're looking at, like, for example, we use force plates. We look at breaking rate of force development. We look at some of these other areas, but I would just like to hear you just elaborate on maybe just a few things that you find really valuable that maybe a lot of guys are just.
Alan Murdoch:You touched on it there, like, some people are scared to, to kind of get their hands dirty with this stuff. And I think this, often, I'm very fortunate in that I have the ability to objectify almost everything that happens inside my facility. But I actually think it's not as necessary as what everybody in our industry thinks it is. So, You talked about eccentric rate of braking force in a counter movement jump, say. Well, if you just watch that person from side on and from behind and you look at their willingness to drop into knee and hip flexion and what's happening at the trunk, is it laterally swaying over to one side so they can corkscrew back out or does it completely fold over so they can use back extension to jump? Yes, it's nice to be able to create a report with graphs and shiny numbers, etc. But you can be rest assured that the, the athlete's capacity for eccentric braking, or even their capacity to just be in those positions at deep angles, is limited. Therefore they're coming up with movement dysfunctions or movement aberrations to try and compensate for that. And just because it's change of direction or max speed or acceleration or deceleration, it's all the same stuff. The task is a little more complex and a lot of shit happens, but it's the same thing. So if you watch a, if you watch a lateral shuffle drill, which is One of the ones that I use for, for progress to go into my agility stuff. A lateral shuffle drill is done by PE teachers across the world, with like four year olds. But I use it, and I look at it from a side on and a front po like a frontal position, and I want to look at, okay, well, what's happening with that inside breaking or penultimate leg? Is it willing to cross the midline? And then if I flip my view to the side and I look at exactly what we've just spoken about, the jumping position, so that real, that outside leg right at the bottom of its, of its position of deceleration, what does the knee flexion and the hip flexion look like? And does it look like it's inhibitively stiff and just super guarded, or does it look like the opposite and it's completely crumbling under all laterally? And I can make massive assumptions. Off just literally something as simple as that and I don't need to put the Vicon on it. I don't need to put the motion analysis on it. But the only thing is I've just got to understand the patterns I'm looking for in some of these simple tasks. And if I know those and I can, and I do it regularly, I think honestly, we can do just as good a job doing that as we, as we can with, like, you could put, you could put 10 force plates down in a row. And you could do that lateral shuffle, and you could look at the eccentric rate of forces, you could look at the peak forces, the impulses, you could look at everything, it would still tell you the same story if they've got a really high hip, and they don't want to cross the midline with a penultimate leg, and as a result they've got to flex more with their outside leg to sink, absorb, and then push, Well, the peak forces are going to be way higher on the outside non injured leg, and we can fix it by going after that ACL penultimate leg, which is all eccentric and movement competency based. So there's, I think I, as I get older and I coach more and the people that I coach are probably higher up in terms of their, their level of sport, I become more confident and comfortable saying, do you know what? I don't need. a massive report of a list of numbers that nobody else can read. I just need to be able to articulate it to the athlete and their coach that this is the stuff that's a gap and this is how you go about fixing it. Um, and, and I think that's a really powerful Possession to be in, because sometimes I think it is a little bit death by data.
Ryan Patrick:I love it because we, we, this is exactly what we talked about off air before we started is having this coaching eye of putting your teeth and actually putting in work and observing stuff. So one of the things I think that is really true that you started to allude to is this influx of technology, especially that's a more rapidly commercially available to the consumer is going to democratize the information. All athletes are going to be able to access this stuff. We have a lot of baseball players in America. They have looked at every single metric imaginable when it comes to throwing or hitting a baseball. But at the end of the day, as a coach, you have to be able to make informed decisions. And for many guys, if you're just relying on the data, And you don't pay attention to what you're actually looking at. You don't have a framework of what your model should be. I just feel like you're missing the boat and it is going to be death by data.
Alan Murdoch:Well, it's a PhD conundrum, right? Like when I was in pro sport, there was a influx of individuals that came into our team who are. Bro, they were so smart. They could recite you any literature and publication and methodology known to man, and then you drop them in front of a senior international level athlete and ask them to coach them, get them better, and they just crumble and wither away down the cracks. Like, there's got to be a balance. You've got to be, I think you've got to spend time on the ground and the, and the cool face. coaching, making mistakes, figuring out what works, what language works for certain types of people, what drills work and give people feelings and understandings as to what you're then going to verbalize outside, all of this stuff. And then if you can back up your decision making, By some great data, which is either collected by yourself, which is preferable or collected by other people, but you can make good inferences across to your practice, then you become a great coach. But if all you're going on is the data, the data says this, so therefore I do this. We've got it the wrong way around. You should do this. And they look to back it up with the data because how'd you ever become a better coach? You just become a better mathematician that that's my, that's how I, that's how I approach my, trying to develop myself anyway.
Ryan Patrick:I'm working on this all the time. I can't tell. So if you're listening, I take screen recordings routinely when guys like you or Jonas or, or any number of the sprint guys are posting videos. Anytime there's a world class, you know, video, like especially this year with the Olympics. I have so many screen recordings where I'm just watching this stuff in slow motion. I want to see what they're doing. Think about how I would coach that. Uh, especially when it comes to younger athletes, like I just want to get the reps in and You know, I think data gives the illusion that you can shortcut this process.
Alan Murdoch:Yeah, agreed. Did you see the, um, did you see the race between the, um, uh, what, uh, what is it? Warholm and, um, uh, is it Duplantis and, uh, the Polvolter? Yeah, I can't remember his name. And he run 10. 37 and the 400 meter guy run, I think it was 10. 57, 10. 47, something like that. Incredible. But if you watch off the blocks, you watch the start, and you see that it's the first 20 30 meters that the race has won by the pole vaulter. And you see just the influence that being able to apply horizontal force for longer. Switching your limbs more aggressively for longer versus standing up and being quite erect or spiny driven and not quite as posterior chain driven and what that does to where you direct your force and you start to realize, shit, like, these are two world class athletics competitors. But if you race two team sport guys next to each other or girls next to each other, you will see some type of similarity between those two athletes. Sure, they're maybe not going to run 10 3 7. They might run 11 3 7. But you start to see things that are like, wow, there's a lot of commonalities that are going on between my team sport or high sport or high school people. And what's happening at the absolute elite level of the spectrum. So the more you watch, the more you pick up, the more you learn. Um, and I think that's, that was definitely in my early days. I, I think also as well, working in private practice, you, you go from being in a team sport world where you're so busy and there's so much demand on you. And then you go to private practice and you get three hours with one person and you get to scrutinize their movement and their video. You can't help, but start to notice the patterns and learn more about movement. And I think that's when, that's when your coach's eye really starts to go up a level. Like there's no magic. There's no magic kind of formula for this. You just got to, you got to do the reps.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah. I think having an ideal framework of what let's just call it textbook technique looks like, you know, there are commonalities. Among fast guys, but you have to have the reps and the experience, I think, to understand what some of these individual variances are going to look like based on somebody's anthropometrics based on, uh, their, you know, their limb length based on just how their nervous system is wired, what their force producing capabilities are. Like, I think you have to have a model to start with, and then you can start to see some of the bandwidth that actually exists within that. And again, it goes back to Well, it's probably somewhere in the middle and it's going to vary person to person.
Alan Murdoch:I use, um, so a lot of the time, regardless of level, man, like younger kids, super pros, I use snails and bananas, which everybody laughs at because it's like super basic. It's like child's language. Um, and if you're a snail, it's not alluding to the fact you're slow. It's alluding to the fact that you want to be more ground based. You probably, you know, look to produce force over a slightly longer duration of time. Um, you're probably more muscularly driven or, or made up. And then your bananas are the guys that want to get up and get out and get airborne, um, really, really quickly, you know, so they are the really elastic types. And if you recognize that there are those two kind of profiles, just as a very basic profile, and people do fluctuate. Especially younger people who are moving, whose bodies are changing and whose physiology is changing, you can move from profile to profile. But if you know that those are two just very basic profiles, you can start to coach and cue and speak in a language that makes more sense to that person. Um, And you can play around with it. Like what happens if for six weeks, I'm going to, I'm going to coach my snail. So my muscular ground based athlete, and I'm going to coach them more like a banana. I'm going to ask them to be super short on the ground. I'm going to ask them to generate more air time. I'm going to ask them to punch more than they push. What happens to that person's profile? Does it completely go to shit or does it start to nudge the, to almost like a middle ground and vice versa for the, for the really elastic guys, what if we ask them to push more, how does that compromise their ability to get up and get bouncy, which is what they're good at. And all of a sudden you start to recognize there's, there are buckets of people and there are types of coaching and language and constraints that we can use. to nudge them slightly back to the middle to what might potentially be more optimal. You just got to measure it to see if it is optimal or not. We can make change. Every single coach can make change. Only the good ones make change for the positive, right? And you got to measure whether or not you're doing it.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah. At a simple level, fill empty buckets. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, man, I want to be respectful of your time and I got some stuff coming up after this. So, um, you know, let's talk cause we, we've talked around, you know, this data versus young coach versus developing your coaching eye. What is the best piece of advice you have for young coaches who are maybe overwhelmed? Um, especially when it comes to getting their hands dirty with ACL rehab.
Alan Murdoch:We um, we kind of talked about it like a couple minutes ago, but honestly, just go and film people moving and go and watch it and go and figure out what's good. Like, this is a great thing about Instagram and YouTube. You don't even need to be there. You can just go on the internet and watch people be awesome and figure out what you think it is. What are the commonalities that make those people awesome? Then look at your own athletes and go, These people are not as good. They're clearly not as good in this one domain. Let's say it's change of direction. What's the difference? Ah, I've noticed that actually they don't put their foot as far outside of their base of support. They don't look as comfortable leaning and orientating at an angle. It could be anything and start to do it for every single high intensity action you can get your hands on. And I wish that I had started doing that when I became a coach and it wasn't until probably six years in that I started to realize that that was probably the most valuable CPD that I could possibly do at that time. So if you're a young coach, just literally go and absorb everything you can from a movement perspective. And then when you get stuck, when you don't know what the difference between good and bad is anymore, because you're, you're now looking at pretty good athletes versus good athletes. And the difference isn't so big. Go and seek people out to have a conversation five minutes, 10 minutes, And actually understand how they are able to detect those changes and then go away for another six months and try and work on those things. And by the time you spent two or three years doing that, I think people are shocked when they hear that timeline. They want like a six week change doesn't doesn't exist like two, three, four or five years doing that, then you're going to be somebody that is respected for for what you're looking at and seeing and implementing as a coach.
Ryan Patrick:Get your reps in kids. Yeah, I also do that. Yeah,
Alan Murdoch:100%.
Ryan Patrick:All right, man. So I know you're traveling, you're working in the private sector now. What does your training look like? I'm curious.
Alan Murdoch:Oh God. Uh, currently, like right now, um, I am playing a lot of tennis. I do at least a couple of speed sessions a week courtesy of, of doing it alongside some of my clients. Um, and I try, uh, for the very most part to actually just get outside and move around for, for at least every single day. Um, I'll probably play tennis like four times a week. So that takes care of four days. Um, I'll get in the gym once, sadly. I used to be a Olympic weightlifter. Um, but now those days are fully gone. Um, but at least I'll get in and I'll do some kind of, um, some kind of circuit and single leg stability stuff that, that kind of helps me and makes me more than anything. Like I'm only 35. I'm not old. Um, But it makes me like, it makes me feel good. Like, at least I feel somewhat strong and um, I feel somewhat stable when I go to play my sport. So, so that's what, that's what I do.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah. I'm a little bit older than you. I'm 38 and I'm like, at this stage, it's like, hang on to every bit of youthful athleticism that I can. It is a game of retention right now.
Alan Murdoch:It is, man. I try and I jump, I jump at least once a week. I sprint at least once a week. Um, I don't have the balls to measure it because I know I'm going to get slower, but uh, and then, uh, and then, yeah, as long as I'm, as long as I'm playing tennis and I've got some competitive outlet in the week, I'm, I'm pretty good.
Ryan Patrick:We're like converting every tennis court in America to pickleball. Is it a thing? And
Alan Murdoch:so it's, it's, it's coming. It's coming. So paddle is probably more, is more prominent than a pickleball. Um, but it's, it's coming. Like I've seen up at the tennis courts, there's, there's like pop up a pickleball and it does look like good fun. So I need to give it a go.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah. So this is a side note. I think there's a Instagram page, maybe functional tennis, but they, they post some stuff of tennis guys sometimes. And I just love watching. Some of these really long rallies that the change of direction in tennis is just, it's so amazing to me.
Alan Murdoch:It is. Um, but like, if you want to study how you change direction laterally, like as a technical model, just go and go and watch Carlos Alcaraz. Go and watch Novak Djokovic, it is, go and watch Emma Raducanu, it is unbelievable how they are able to find stability through a leg that is so far outside their base of support, with their centre of mass so low, and still be able to dissociate their torso. And execute skills off it. Like I try, I'm like, I'm meant to be the movement guy. So I'm meant to be like, I should be able to demo this stuff. And you would not believe how skillful those, those people are at being able to do that. It's crazy.
Ryan Patrick:Love it. Okay. So you already talked a little bit about, you know, the gold medal. I didn't realize the timeline was so short that I'm, I'm, out of everything we've talked about, I am most shocked about that. That's crazy impressive. So kudos to you, but just talk to me. How did it feel, man? Just guiding somebody to that.
Alan Murdoch:Oh man, it's so cool. So I can absolutely not take full credit for this. Pete Hughes is the medical lead for, for New Zealand rugby. Um, he reach out to me to, to really influence what happened in those kind of six, seven months that it took. And, um, yeah, it's as a coach, I think a world cup and Olympic gold medals, like it's, that's as good as you, that's as good as you're going to, going to get maybe a super bowl for, for, for the American guys. Like I'm just the, I know the pride, you know, like in the person that's done it, but also in, you know, The fact that somebody has put their trust in you to be able to kind of guide them to their, and it's actually paid off. And, and hopefully now I can kind of use that experience to help other coaches and, and kind of learn my system and be able to do that with other people. Cause it's so cool, man, to be able to watch that was, was awesome.
Ryan Patrick:That's awesome. What a fortunate opportunity for an athlete like that to have it one, give it one more go because, you know, super bowls are great, but they happen every year. The Olympics, like you only get a, you only get a few shots. Two, maybe three, depending on the sport you play. So, and that's if you're born in the right year. So, all right, man. Well, what's, what's next for Alan Myrtle?
Alan Murdoch:Oh, what is next? Uh, I, um, so I will be releasing a bunch of, ACL stuff, I'll be releasing a ACL, like an actual program. So it's going to be. Almost like a education piece for athletes and coaches. Um, so I'll be doing that. I'm going to be busy working on that over the next few months. I've got, I'm actually releasing my own podcast, um, which I, I'm going to be taking tips of you, Ryan. Uh, so that'd be cool. And that's going to be a, I think, extremely selfish venture for me to reach out to people that I want to. ask very detailed questions about things that I currently am solving in my world, and I hope that that will help other people. Um, and then the other side of it is I'm very lucky with some of the athletes that I work with. They're, they're incredible athletes at the top of their, their game and their respective sports. So I'll be talking to them about their rehab journeys and getting a bit of a, getting a bit of an athlete's feel. Cause I think all we, we, we love to talk to the coaches and the coaches kind of ideas and systems and how they deal with it, but actually. When you get to the top level of being an athlete, like people who are winning Olympic gold medals, world cups, number ones in the world, you start to recognize that they are, they are as if not more exceptional people than the coaches are. And those are the type of people that we'll be having conversations with. So that's, that's going to be cool. Um, Uh, and then yeah, then it's, it's going to be Christmas time and I'll be taking a little break.
Ryan Patrick:Sounds good, man. I'm excited for the podcast. I know, um, I saw you put something out the other day, so I'll be looking forward to that.
Alan Murdoch:No, thanks.
Ryan Patrick:But man, it's, it's been a huge honor. I appreciate your time. I appreciate you talking about, um, a lot of things that, You know, I've been wondering about and um, I guess if somebody wants to find out more about you, what's the best place to look online?
Alan Murdoch:Uh, just Instagram is probably always the best one. So elevate underscore speed, underscore rehab. Um, that's the thing I'm most, uh, kind of prevalent on, um, or most active on. Um, so yeah, if you've got a message or you want to connect, just send me a little message and I'll always get back to you.
Ryan Patrick:All right, man. Just hang on the line until we upload and I appreciate your time. Take care. Thanks for having me.