Ep. 29 | What If Your Best Path Is Not Basketball | with Chris Ryan

The hard truth about basketball dreams is that effort is only part of the equation. If you’re six feet tall, the NBA path looks different than it does for a 6'7" athlete, and pretending otherwise can waste years of training. We sit down with Chris Ryan, former Division I track and field athlete and longtime coach, to get honest about genetics, consistency, and what “success” should really mean for youth basketball players, parents, and coaches.

We also dig into the modern recruiting world: NIL money, the transfer portal, older Division I rosters, and why you have to think like a pro even before you get recruited. Chris shares practical recruiting advice for international athletes and U.S. players alike, including how to email coaches with clear measurables and why SAT/ACT scores can be a competitive advantage, not an afterthought.

Then we go deep on basketball strength and conditioning. If your program relies on long, slow runs on hard surfaces, we explain why that can crush explosiveness and beat up tall athletes’ knees, ankles, and spine. We talk track-inspired training, CNS intent, ankle stiffness, acceleration and deceleration, and low-impact conditioning options like assault bikes and pool work. We close with performance tests that matter, including vertical jump and broad jump, and why sticking the landing can signal durability.

Subscribe for more Basketball Body And Mind, share this with a teammate or parent, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.

Find out more about Chris Ryan:
https://chrisryanfitness.com/

Need more information about Youth Strength and Conditioning Online?
Visit https://balticmove.net/

Transcript

NBA Reality And Genetics

SPEAKER_02 0:00

If you want to make it to the NBA, let's say, okay, if you're six foot tall, you know, the odds of you making an NBA are like 0.0001%. I hate to say it, no matter how good of a ball handler you are. But let's say you're six foot seven, you have a hell of a chance of making an NBA. Even at the lowest of the low, they are freaking fantastic, right? Even the worst player on the worst team in Division I is an amazing player worldwide, right? Like, call it what it is. A basketball player should be concentrating on like doing more training like a sprinter or a jumper when in track and field, where it's a lot of like muscle memory activating the CNS, the central nervous system, if you will, where it's a lot of like understanding how to get your foot and ankle stronger, right?

Show And Guest Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:48

This podcast is for youth basketball players, their parents and the coaches who develop them. In every episode, we cover topics that determine your success. We talk basketball, body, and mind. I am Stan, strength and conditioning coach and physiotherapist, working with youth basketball athletes around the world. If you are serious about your development and you want to succeed in basketball, this podcast is for you. Let's get it. Hello everyone, and welcome back or welcome to another episode of Basketball Body and Mind. Today is another special episode with special guest Chris Ryan. He is a former Division 1 track and field athlete. Now, as a coach, recognized as one of the top 10 America's trainers. He's featured in men's health, men's fitness, represented uh Nike, Under Armour, Adidas, Polar, and many other big companies. He has over 20 plus years of experience in coaching and has worked with a wide variety of people. Chris, welcome to the show.

Consistency Beats Viral Moments

SPEAKER_00 2:01

So before we start uh talking about our topics that I will explain soon, I wanted to ask you. So, do you have to do something? Because I'm curious, you have been uh doing a great job because probably because you are featured as you as I said in many journals and companies. So my question is, do you have to do something good once, or do you have to kind of be consistent and do great job over and over and over again in order to get recognized?

SPEAKER_02 2:34

I think it's you know, a lot of times when I first started social media was kind of on the the the beginning stages of where it is right now. Like here we are, like I'm in New York City area, you're in in Lithuania, and it's just like so cool that we could be on this podcast together from afar, right? 15 years ago, we couldn't have done this. Um, you know, uh, or if it was, no one would be listening to it because the the the podcast world was burgeoning at that point in time. But I think like consistency, whether it's in training, trying to get good at basketball, trying to get good at math or in any sort of school subject, whatever it might be, trying to be a good spouse or a good father, for instance, you're a new dad, I'm a dad with three children, uh, you know, it's consistency. It's like showing up, realizing that you know you don't necessarily need to be perfect at what you do, but you do need to be consistent in showing up. And if you can be 80%, 90% of the way there consistently, you'll be a thousand percent of the way there at the end game result that you really want.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

Yes, that why I decided to start with this question, because now in this in this era, we kinda look, I will say we, because I don't want to exclude myself from the majority. I will say so we are looking for that kind of night success that somebody like a published like a crazy TikTok video, and then you know, like it's uh massive lots of money, attention, and so on. But uh you have worked, as I said, it's 20 years or more than 20 years, how long have you been? Yeah, 20 years, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:07

Just about right about 20 years, give or take, yeah. Give or take a year, depending on I kind of when I first started out, I kind of was like uh tiptoeing in initially in that first year, so it's been about 20 years now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

Yeah, so this is what I mean by consistency, consistency, and you said like whatever topic or whatever subject, whatever activity we choose, consistency will be the key for success, what whatever we will decide. So that's I wanted to hear from you. But look, so let's start start uh the podcast with three kind of broad topics that I would like to cover with you. First, since you were a division one athlete, I would like to ask about your experience. What was it like? What did uh what did it taught you, what did it uh teach you? Second, I would like to talk a little bit about strength and conditioning and basically what track and field can teach basketball athletes, because there are so many things that we take from the track and field, because for me it seems like probably it is kind of mother of all sports. And to finish.

SPEAKER_02 5:11

We'll get to that subject on that. But I I love where you're going with that, and I couldn't agree with you more.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

Yes, and the third topic would be just to since you have lots of experience, worked with uh thousands of athletes. I want to know a little bit how parents can find a good coach, what would be the red flags, what parents need to know before kind of giving the kid to the athlete. So these would be topics. How does it sound for you?

SPEAKER_02 5:35

Okay, I I absolutely love it. I love it, I love the thought process behind it, and I have very uh uh good good uh you know ideas for people to think about about each of those subjects. They're very near and dear to my heart.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

Yes, I mean you cannot say anything else because it's my podcast, so you know you just have to say something nice.

From Basketball Dreams To D1 Track

SPEAKER_00 5:52

So let's talk, let's talk a little bit about the division one. Lots of if like basketball players are listening, they will probably have this dream. I want to play D1 because D1 is the you know the top. I want to be there, especially now with those little bit of possibilities to earn money. Yes, so so so my question. Yes, my question to you is like, was it your dream always to be a D1 and uh to be an athlete, or did that come later to you?

SPEAKER_02 6:21

Well, actually, this is so super appropriate to be on a basketball podcast because as a child growing up in the 80s and 90s, of course I wanted to be a basketball player. I wanted to, you know, like track and field was nowhere near what I wanted to be. Unfortunately, my genetics peaked me out at six foot, you know, six feet tall. And uh, you know, I was a D I was a very good athlete. Like overall, I played a lot of soccer, a ton of basketball growing up. I grew up in Michigan outside of Flint, Michigan, which is a very big hotbed of elite basketball talent, especially in the 80s and 90s growing up. We had like, you know, the the Flintstones, as they were called, that played for Michigan State, that won the national championship in 2000. Tons of athletes that played at a very high level throughout the 80s and 90s in the Flint, Greater Flint, Detroit, Michigan area era that went to you know universities all around. Like University of Michigan won the championship in '89, you know, Michigan State won it in 2000. They both had storied histories and storied teams throughout University of Michigan, just recently won it a couple weeks ago. And so it's just, you know, one of those things that I always wanted to be a basketball player. Unfortunately, genetics peaked me out at six feet tall. But I think what it was is that when I was about like 14 or so, my dad had a kind of a sit-down conversation with me. He was like, hey, you're very good at basketball, you're very good at at um soccer. He goes, but you have the potential to be great at track. And he showed me kind of like where people were at times and like compatibility of like where I was just due to some natural talent, as well as doing some workouts on my own with my dad's coaching when I was like 11, 12-ish, give or take. Like, we always kind of like messed around with like pull-ups in the gym and our basement gym and like you know, push-ups and sit-ups, and like sprinting around and doing stuff within the sports phase itself throughout my formative years as in elementary school and like you know, age like six to like 10 or 11 and give or take. But then I was around 11, 12, I think kind of like in that puberty stage as a boy, like you're going through it, you you realize like starting to get a little stronger, a little bit faster, like you you and you also start to gravitate towards things that you really like. At least here in America, um, you you can be put on teams that like you might not be in the right area physically, geographically speaking, right? Like Lithuania is a physically much smaller country than America, right? So you there's probably only several basketball leagues, but you have 50 states in America, you have many different cities, municipalities within those states, and some leagues are really great, some leagues at these travel AAU leagues, or you're flying all around as a teenager. Like, do you really want to do that? Or could you run a certain time in track and field? And you could run that time in in Vilnius, or you could run it in New York City, or you could run it in San Francisco or Topeka, Kansas, and you're gonna be, you know, you're gonna either be really great nationally or internationally ranked, or you're not. And so my dad had this sit-down conversation with me like team sports are fantastic, but they can be kind of gray. You might be down the depth chart, your coach might love you and play you a lot, your coach might not like the way that you look, or say that you have an attitude problem, or not like your parents. Who knows? Or have a the coach could have a kid on the team that plays your same position, and that kid will always get the start over you. So you might not necessarily develop. And these are all challenges. I know we're gonna talk about parenting in the third portion of this podcast, but like these are all challenges that you that you know you could face, whether it's in a team sport like soccer or basketball. And unfortunately in the United States, those are problems that are notorious within the team sport travel travel league time frame as well. But when my dad talked to me at 14, I remember thinking about it and I had enough sensibility about myself. I mean, like, I didn't necessarily love track and field, and I definitely didn't love the 800 meters, which I actually excelled in, that was my event. If anyone knows anyone knows anything about track and field, it's like that's probably the least favorite event because it's so damn, it's so damn hard. And I say that with all respect across according to all events, but if you really want to ever talk about like a an event that makes your lungs jump out of your chest, your quads lock up like bricks, and you want to like really see like what you're truly made of as a human being, like run the 800 meters as hard as you can, and then repeat that in an in another relay in a track in the same track meet, and then maybe finish up with a four by four on a relay or a mile run or whatever. Like you you will be seeing God at the end of the day, right? Like it's it's an extremely tough event, and I'll leave it at that. And once again, all due respect to all the sprinters out there, all the endurance athletes in the in the in the longer distance, all the jumpers and throwers. Don't make it me started on the field event. So it's always I always like I always looked at the throwers and the jumpers and be like, that looks fun. Like, what am I doing over here? But unfortunately, like in track and field, you really don't get to pick your event at a certain pinnacle. You kind of get pushed towards that because you show expertise in a certain event. Like, of course, I wanted to be like a sprinter. Like, who wanted to be like a hundred or two hundred meter sprinter, just be like the fastest person on the team or whatever, fastest person in the state or nationally, and that sort of a thing, you know, or or throw something really heavy and far, you know, that's cool, or jump like a Spider-Man or whatever. Like, those are fun events. Like the 800 is just grueling. Um, with all due respect to all the 800 meters out there because all the runners out there because it's just that hard. But um, what it taught me is a good bounce of aerobic and anaerobic training for myself. And I realized that it didn't really matter about necessarily being doing what I loved at first. It was about being great at something, right? So sometimes, like, you know, in in sports in general, you might really like this thing over here. You might really love basketball, but maybe you're really great at some other obscure sport that you never even thought about. Maybe you're just, or you know, maybe you're tall at basketball, but you're not coordinated enough. But maybe you're a hell of a rower and you never rode before, but you have a great engine in you, you know? Um, or maybe you should go to volleyball because for whatever reasons, like you could, like you're you're better at volleyball, right? Like there's a lot of transcendence of like basketball players that necessarily didn't make it in basketball, but they end up being an amazing volleyball player and make it in the Olympics, and they're all super tall, athletic, strong as hell, all of it, right? So just because like you you necessarily don't make in one sport doesn't mean that you can't make it in another sport. And that's why I've always been a fan for your foundation, especially in your formative years, not to jump too much in that third segment, but for all the parents and kids out there, try to play as many sports as possible. Don't specialize too early. If you do like basketball, definitely dribble, like you know, do all the skills as much as possible. But you don't necessarily need to play basketball for seven hours a day at age six, right? I think that's kind of like I think you'd be better off playing at probably playing tag and like maybe building a fort with your friends in the woods or something like that, or or riding a bike and like being a kid and running and jumping and doing everything kids do that will help transcend over to basketball. But with that said, if you really want to be good at basketball, you should probably learn like a soft touch with your fingertips, dribble basketball for 10 minutes a day. I do feel like that, you know, small touches, whether it's a soccer ball, uh basketball, like especially any sort of ball-based sports, the earlier on you can get those like soft touch feels with it. But not so much like an organized practice, but more of like just kind of playing in your backyard or or kicking a ball against the wall so you feel the touch and that sort of a thing. And it doesn't necessarily need to be every day, but like you know, you gotta put in that like small amount of time. I'd rather see instead of one or two or practice like once a week or twice a week, like I'd rather see somebody like practice for 10 minutes every day or every other day with a ball sport, you know, as a kid, just to play with that ball, right, in in some way, shape, or form. And I think that is gonna transcend itself over back to what we talked about originally about consistency and get that there. But you know, with the track with the track side, for me, I really showed like some progress in my my teenage years, especially uh as I got through the puberty stages, got a little stronger, a little faster. Um, and I ended up getting recruited at the University of Florida, amongst some other a bunch of other schools in the United States, which was great. And this is in the late 90s at the time, so there was no NIL, no transfer portal. As you can tell from my gray hairs, I'm not you know 20 years old right now, but it was a lot of fun, and to go to uh University of Florida was fantastic. I ended up getting injured quite a bit. I was my body could only handle so much. Like University of Florida for track and field is a phenomenal program. But I probably there's an old saying here in America, like you outkicked your coverage. It's a football saying, like where you kind of like bit off more than you can chew, right? If that makes sense for your listeners out there, like I got I got a little far ahead of where I was actually at at that point in time, and my body didn't respond no matter how hard I trained. And you know what I was like, do is like when you train an elite athlete, you can tell when someone's really trying, and sometimes when the body just can't give more than they are. And I was always the person mentally that like could push myself a little bit more than probably most people, but my body could only give me so much, right? And you know, I ended up getting really worn down, uh sick, tore my hamstring, you know, sick a lot, like tore my hamstring really badly. Uh, and so I was kind of about 20 years old. I realized like I pushed myself as far as I could, but education was more important. So I turned in my scholarship and I transferred back to Michigan State where my brother was at, and had a great double major and great internship run, and eventually went into business um with my brother and then for myself eventually as well, and you became a serial entrepreneur thereafter and became very successful within the the fitness and health world myself and my passions, you know. But I I used my foundation of understanding sport itself, uh training the rehab process after being injured, departmentalizing that into great training programs and understanding for individuals, whether it's an elite athlete or a regular everyday person just looking to lose weight or build muscle or get in shape or practice mobility or live a healthy life and and you know have longevity.

Injuries Education And Long-Term Goals

SPEAKER_02 16:14

But I do think like for the people out there, division one sometimes as a 16, 17-year-old, seems like that's all I want to do. Realize, like, kind of more of like think more long term of like what does your overall goal and picture look like? In business, you can always start with an end in mind and then build your business plan around that. I want to sell a business for a million dollars or a hundred million or a billion dollars. Okay, well, how are we gonna get there? Like, what does that roadmap look like? Because you kind of have that end result. You got to sit there and say, okay, well, that's the big picture, but what how do I get there? What roads lead to that point? And so if you want to make it to the NBA, say, okay, if you're six foot tall, you know, the odds of you making an NBA are like 0.0001%. I hate to say it, no matter how good of a ball handler you are. But let's say you're six foot seven, well, you have a hell of a chance of making an NBA, right? Compared to a normal person. Now, is it still super hard? Yeah, it's only gonna be like one percent, right? But at least you have a fighting chance, you know. But maybe it's not the NBA, maybe it's playing in the any of the European leagues, or maybe it's just making it the NIL or making it to the NCA Division I and making some NIL money, and you can make in the amount of money these kids are making in this day and age. Wow, you know, it's amazing. So, and you only need to earn that if you're smart with your money for a year or two, and then you could be set for life. And if you you don't like buy a fancy car or you know that sort of thing. If you think of it more as a business, business rather than you know, in a windfall, rather than being like, Oh, I'm always gonna earn this money. Because in pro athletics and collegiate athletics, you're not always gonna earn that money. You do age out of it eventually. So always you know, be conservative with your money as much as possible. I do think like realize what the end goal would be for yourself, and then work back from that position and be realistic with your goals too. Like basketball, unfortunately, it's not soccer where you could have Messi, who's whatever he is, five foot five, but he's an extremely amazing ball handler. And you could have like other guys that are six foot four, and you know, but you can have all soccer players come in all shapes and sizes, right? Yes. Um but for basketball players, they really only come in one shape and size, you know. And if you physically don't meet those dimensions, the odds of you making it at a high, high level, division one even you know, I remember seeing this game here um with uh like some not bad Division I programs, but they weren't like elite, it wasn't Michigan State and Duke or University of Michigan and Michigan State or Duke or North Carolina playing each other, but some very good local programs here in the New York City area. That the the shortest guy on the court was six foot six, and these are just kind of like very like run-of-the-mill Division I programs, very good basketball players, but because of like the NIL transfer portal, most of the guys were like 21, 22, 23. They weren't 17 or 18 years old out on the court, you know. So you got to kind of like figure out like now with the transfer portal, you might not be recruited the way that they used to be recruited because coaches are looking for like one and duns, like kind of like almost I hate the word mercenary, but you really are like a hired hired gun for that championship run, right? Like, call it what it is. Because the coaches' contracts are geared in on making an NCA tournament, winning conference championships, and you know, geared in to like win at all costs. Really, that's what you're doing. You're not necessarily coming in as a four-year student athlete. Yes, yes, and I think anyone that tells you otherwise is really like, yeah, you will take classes because you legally have to be in rolling classes to play that sport, but like for the most part, you're coming in to play that game, and then the classes unfortunately are probably gonna be secondary, but think of it still as a business that you gotta make sure that you get the education, go for it the best that you can because you could get injured, NIL could dry up, you know, whatever it might be.

SPEAKER_00 19:58

But yes, I could take this your answer to any like to many different directions. There are so many things that I could take. Like one, for example, I really liked what you said about that you might really like basketball, but you might be much better at some other sport. So that would be that would be one thing for people to think about. I'm not saying anyone to quit basketball because this is a podcast basketball buddy and mine. But if you if you look at that, for example, your goal is to get education in USA, for example, and you really want to study in USA. Hey, what if to get to that goal you need to give up on basketball and do something like some other sport, as you said, like volleyball, rowing, whatever. So that is very, very um like a smart thing to think when you know what is the end goal that you want. If your end goal is to play basketball professionally, yes, that will be the other steps. Maybe then USA will not be the step that you need to take. So I really also like the second thing that you said about like, hey, what is the end goal and how can we bridge the gap between two? And one more question about the division one.

Recruiting In NIL Era

SPEAKER_00 21:06

So, how much do you think is kind of luck luck involved in getting the scholarship? Like, do you need to have like a good social media account to show yourself off, or are you more like on the uh type of people that would say, hey, if you're good enough, you will get spotted?

SPEAKER_02 21:24

I think that it's a little bit of both, to tell you the truth. In this day and age, I think that being as proactive as possible, especially if you're coming from Lithuania, for instance, like there's scouts all over the world, right? But like if you're not playing in the like, find out your local right tournaments. Like, if you like a certain university, their the email addresses are public. Like, you can email the coaches literally directly. There's actually some random services I've seen advertised before, like where it's almost like AI writes the emails for you and they're gonna ask you for your stats. Like for the foreign born athletes, you are gonna need to take your ACT or SATs. Like, that's a no brainer, you have to. Sure, you have that to make sure that they have that test score. So they at least they know that you know you can handle the educational component, right? Like you might be seven foot tall, but if you can't pass your SAT, yes, then it's gonna be hard to enroll you in that university. There's a roundabout way of doing it, obviously going through the community college route and that sort of a thing, which that's another one we could talk about. Like make it as easy as possible. So like your your your header or your your title is gonna be like you know, stand like villainous Lithuania, six foot seven, um, whatever, six foot seven, like two two forty pounds, whatever 1300 SAT and whatever, like other like a 35-inch vertical, immediately that's gonna kind of like be like, crap, I gotta look at this kid, right? You know, like because the you're making it easy for them. If you just kind of say, Oh, I'm Stan from Vilnius, Lithuania, here's my highlight video, that helps out, but that might get lost in the pile. But if you kind of make it as easy as possible for the administrative assistants and the the coaches to like go through all the emails, then you could like really like make it as easy as possible. Be persistent, be consistent as you are in your training with the contact, too. You know, if you but be also realistic with yourself too. Like if you're only six foot tall and you're not playing in the right tournaments and you're not even the best person on your team, the odds of you playing D1 are not that like realistic, right? Like, let's call it what it is. Like the Division I players are insanely amazing, even at the lowest, like even the last place Division I team, the 120th ranked team in Division I basketball is still phenomenal. Like, yes, like, and that's uh that's what people need to understand. Like, even at the lowest of the low, they are freaking fantastic, right? Even the worst player on the worst team in Division I is an amazing player worldwide, right? Like, call it what it is. So be realistic with your talent and your size, your capability, that sort of a thing, but be consistent and persistent in not only your training, but also the way that you contact the coaches as well. Like, like be, I would say be cordial, but be aggressive with it too, because make it easy for them. Sometimes you're gonna find out, and if you're really a smart kid, sometimes you can really go after like the higher level academic institutions that they're gonna need higher test scores than some of the other schools that will just kind of like if you can just get past that basic point, then they'll recruit you. Other schools are gonna be like, well, we're recruiting a certain academic level first and then backtracking for basketball itself or any other sport, you know. Which at the end of the day, that could even be open up more doors for you professionally down the line, especially as a foreign-born athlete, you know, to come in. And a lot of times too, like the foreign-born athletes, like the Eastern European athletes, for instance, in the math and science, like hate to say it, but like the academics are much harder in Eastern European countries for math and science, as test scores will show you, compared to uh the general American schools. So the odds of like that foreign-born athlete being really smart in math and science compared to the average American kid are probably pretty high. So if you can take a six foot seven kid from Lithuania and he's really smart at math and science, or she's really smart at math and science, then guess what? It might open up some like academic institutions in the D1 level or even D two or D three level that maybe you didn't think about before, you know?

SPEAKER_00 25:29

Yes, um, I really liked that you said that you've done like of course you have to be a great passable player, but also you need to you can attract atta uh attention, uh as you said, with like with school scores. You can attract attention with a vertical jump, you can attract attention maybe with your height, uh meaning like the higher, not like if you're like six uh point oh, you know. So you will attract attention with you don't know uh which uh kind of you need to use your strength. If your strength is uh school scores, so yes, have your SATs and uh have it really high, and maybe that's how you will attract attention, and they will say, Oh, actually you're a decent basketball player. You know, let's

Stop Endurance Training For Bounce

SPEAKER_00 26:10

go. So but if somebody would like to uh improve the vertical jump or explosiveness to attract more attention, so uh you are coming from the track and field, which uh eight hundred meters is not so it is, but it's more like going to that anaerobic uh uh anaerobic kind of uh let's say area, and it's not so much of like a sprinting or Jivelin throw, which is like a pure power uh speed uh um kind of uh what it would be like sport. So if someone would like to improve that first step, the explosiveness, the uh vertical jump, what do you think people need to not to do or avoid? Because there are so many advice.

SPEAKER_02 26:54

All right, uh uh very easy on that one. Too much endurance training. I think too much long, slow endurance training, especially on hard surfaces like like quote unquote pounding the pavement. I've seen this before with like basketball players. Basketball players by and large are very large, tall people. Yes, super long Achilles tendons, big old kneecaps, big femurs, big spines, they're big people, which means that you're gonna put much more torque and tension through their joints and their their tendons and their ligaments and all of it. Everything that a six foot seven or seven foot tall person does compared to me at six foot tall is gonna be arguably harder for that person because they're so damn big, right? Chris, the only thing that's easy that's easy to do. We need to build the cardio. No, and you know what you do is basketball is not a long, slow sport. It is a power sport, it's similar to tennis. And I say this all the time about tennis too, because tennis is another amazing sport. All sports, in my opinion, are awesome. Like I love sports, as you can probably tell, but I love like learning the components of all these different sports. And you had said it earlier when we were doing the intros, is how track and feel is kind of like the granddaddy of like movement, right? And I would I would couple gymnastics in there too. Yes. Well, like gymnastics is like movement itself of like power production, but by and large, like gymnastics is is a great foundation, but track and feel is truly what's gonna be there for most team-based sports out there. Like, if you actually look at tons of training videos and everything in our world, a lot of it comes from the 70s through the 90s, and it actually comes from the Eastern Bloc era of like the Soviet Union era. That's why, like, like you look at some of these training videos, and it tends to be the track and field athletes that we really learned a lot about. And it doesn't necessarily all need to be Soviet bloc era from the 70s, 80s, and 90s, but in general, the way that they trained of like power production and everything else, it was amazing ahead of its time. And a lot of the coaches, like the American coaches and and in like like bad paths of the world, like the if I'm throwing around some names that you don't know, but like the very famous coaches within the within the actual training world that guys like you and me would study, we could nerd out on that very quickly, but like for the the listeners, we don't want to you know do that. But you know, guys like you and me, we we look at sport differently rather than just saying, oh, a basketball player is a basketball player, right? And a football player is a football player, and a swimmer is a swimmer. I love I love to look at sport now. I can't not look at any sport, whether it's a male, female athlete, young or old, or like Olympics or Division I or professional level or whatever it is. I love to look at like how that person moves, like their explosiveness, their endurance levels, whatever it might be, and like kind of like dissect that sport itself. And I can't watch sports the way I used to as a kid, as a just kind of a fan. Now I look at it as a whole different level of person because I'm a coach, right? And coach great coaches can understand the way people move, and that's why like a great scout or a great coach for basketball is gonna be like, oh, I don't I don't like the way that guy moves. Like he's gonna get injured, or that guy he's in playing in some obscure league, but I've never seen someone move that way. And that is an insane talent, and I need to meet him and bring him overseas or whatever it might be, right? Because they can just tell that if like with the right with the right shot, like that person could be an amazing talent. Like, look at Giannis, for instance. He was playing in like you know, obscure, like you know, Greek leagues and like hooping it up on the streets in Greece and everything else, and like you know, got identified by the right, like people just saw that talent and they're like, this guy is a superstar, and you see it, right? Now that's a one in a billion, but like you know, you can see movement patterns. But with track and field, like the explosive, even though I came from an 800 personally, I still studied and I love to watch the field people. I love to watch the sprinters train because actually it's a hell of a lot more fun, um, you know, to see them like do something explosive with a med ball or understand how they like get this like pop off the ball of their foot. And if I could do that as an 800-meter runner, and it's actually transcended more over the middle distance, even the distance runners, of doing like A skips, B skips, understanding basic pliometric style movements, because they know that if you can produce enough power in your stride, your stride will increase in length, not to over stride where your foot is coming well in front of your hips and shoulders, but to strike the ground harder so you can move your pelvis further forward, not to get too much into the physics, but that way you end up producing more force to the ground so you can move further with each stride. So, over the course of even a marathon, if you could increase the distance by a centimeter, guess what? You're running thousands, tens of thousands of strides. And if your stride length could increase by one centimeter because you're that much more powerful because you started doing hex bar deadlifts and some sort of plyometric basic jumps, as a marathoner, all of a sudden you're like 30 to 60 seconds faster in your time, which that's a hell of a lot of time for an elite marathoner, right? And then back but back to basketball, I think that sometimes what I've seen in years past is too much endurance work. Like you can't take a six foot seven, seven foot tall person and tell them to go run pavement. I'm like, that's like the worst thing that you could ever do. A basketball player should be concentrating on like doing more training like a sprinter or a jumper would in track and field, where it's a lot of like muscle memory activating the CNS, the central nervous system, if you will, where it's a lot of like understanding how to get your foot and ankle stronger, right? Understanding multiple movement patterns, not just linear running, but lateral, zigzag, backward, forward running. And also another one that a lot of people don't practice because they only think acceleration is deceleration is almost as important as acceleration in basketball. A basketball court what's that? Yeah, probably more important, right? Yeah, exactly. And basketball, a basketball court with 10 dudes who are six foot six to seven foot tall becomes extremely small. It's small with a bunch of like five, ten to six foot tall people out there, but let alone you put these guys with like wingspans that are seven foot two that are like six foot ten, and like the basketball court shrinks tremendously. You don't need a ton of endurance, right? Back to what I was saying earlier about tennis. As you see this with tennis players, like they should not be running a marathon. They should be understanding how to be repetitive to produce 80 to 90% of their power over the course of a couple hour time frame, right? Like, that's what's gonna make you better. You don't necessarily need to produce 100% of your power like a long jumper does, and then like like relax for the next 10 minutes or 15 or 20 minutes before your next jumper, pole vaulter, right? Because they're putting so much into that movement pattern. Like Mata Duplantis, this this the world's best pole vaulter ever, who constantly breaks the world record, right? Like he's he's such an amazing athlete to watch his the way that he trains and everything else. If you ever want to watch like a truly amazing power sprint style athlete, let alone with gymnastics style movement, watch him in the pole vault. And he's constantly breaking the world record by like a centimeter because each time he does, he gets a bonus. And hats off to it, hats off to him. Keep on doing it. There's not enough money in track and field, so like keep on making your money when you can. I I love it, I love it for him, and I think it's great. Even though I'm sure in training, he's probably like six inches higher than the current world record, and this is like money in the bank for him. Like he's just like, okay, every year it just goes up and up, and like, you know, pay me another quarter million dollars or quarter million euros, and I'll break the record for you again. But I'm sure in training there's probably private videos of him like doing it, and he's probably like six inches ahead of the world record based on how fantastic of an athlete he is. But when you when you take a basketball player and you can produce that force generation, but you can do it in a way that allows them to do it safely, repetitively, that will allow them to be in the game much longer than just like pounding the pavement. I see this too often with athletes, like where you get this, like just because a game's long doesn't necessarily mean it's endurance zone too long. Now, within reason, depending on the athlete, like you if you took Shaq, do you remember when Shaq went to the Lakers? I don't know how old you are, Sam, but you look a lot younger to me. But when he went to the Lakers, Pat Pat Riley loved Pat Riley as a coach, but one of the things that he didn't do with Shaq correctly is Shaq is a big human being. He's he's wide, he's tall, right? He's not Kevin Durant, like wafy, like long arms and skinny, right? You kind of gotta understand each athlete. Like Kobe Bryant would probably be like the right athlete that you could just drive and like get him strong as hell and like sprints and all this other crap and plyometrics and weights and all this stuff. Mac is a different style of athlete. You do not want him burning a bunch of calories because all of a sudden he's he's he's gonna break down, right? Like you need to have he plays best at a certain size, he is never gonna be the ripped basketball player. And I think you gotta like look at the the body style and the temperament of that athlete individually at the elite level and understand like where are they gonna be best? Like, basketball is a team-based sport, and as the best coaches are gonna understand each individual and how they fit in that system. Like, you know, Phil Jackson understood that Dennis Rodman was an integral piece, but he had to let Dennis Rodman be Dennis Rodman, right? Crazy, you know, doing his crazy shit and like whatever else Dennis Rodman would do, right? But if that guy got on the court, you could be guaranteed the guy's gonna pull down like double digits, rebounds, probably 20 rebounds for you, play lockdown defense, and probably be like another defensive player of the year and running candidate for sure, multiple seasons in and out. And you're gonna have to let him have a longer leash of his personal life and that sort of a thing. And Shaq, when he would like when he first got the Lakers, if I recall, like Pat Riley was uh you know, it was one of those things that kind of didn't work well with that system, right? Like at first. Neither here nor there. Yeah. Or wait, was it Pat Riley? I'm trying to remember who was the coach then. I want to say it was uh I believe it was it wasn't Pat Riley.

SPEAKER_00 37:11

No, no, it was a f or was it Phil Jackson then? I believe it was Phil Jackson.

SPEAKER_02 37:15

Yeah, it was Phil, sorry, it was Phil Jackson, sorry. I was getting my uh Pat Riley in the 80s was the Lakers coach. Um, but yeah, so Phil Jackson wanted him to be like really spelt and like trimmed down a little bit, right? Which kind of makes sense. You're like, oh, you're too big, but then he didn't play as well and he became injured, right? Like some players are gonna be better off by having a little bit of like more body armor, if you will, depending on their playing style, right? And let's call it what it is. Basketball, you don't need to be some ripped like Adonis of a God complex person. You need to have super long arms, soft fingertips for great, you know, ball handling skills, and be really tall and be able to like produce force to the ground as quickly as possible to accelerate and decelerate and jump. And if you can do that and move laterally backwards, forwards, if you can do that, you're gonna be an amazing basketball player. And if you can use your hips to box people out and throw people around without pushing them, right, with your hands, because that's a foul. But if you can throw your hips into somebody, you can bet you can bet that Shaq's gonna be able to throw his hips into somebody like he did for a long period of time and get people pushed around. And like like the taller, kind of skinnier guys couldn't hang with him. But the minute Shaq started to lose a little bit of weight, you gotta look at that each athlete individually as much as you can.

SPEAKER_00 38:27

Yes, same same like last question

Condition Hard Without Joint Pounding

SPEAKER_00 38:30

that I had like I really liked. I didn't know that you will say zone two. I could not agree more. I dunno, okay, I cannot say I dunno, but I put sometimes 20-30 minutes uh from um uh 20-30 minutes of zone two cardio, it can be like 10 minutes of uh easy jogging, stretching, then again easy jogging for some of the athletes. However, as you said, it's super important to pay attention to the body type, also to the size. If you are very tall or if you're like heavy, probably it's better for you if you still need to get that. Let's say coach says you need to build your base. Maybe it's better to do some biking or some low impact uh cardio.

SPEAKER_02 39:10

It's funny you said that. So, like that's the rogue echo bike back there, right? You know, the arms move with the legs, yes, yes, you know, the the the Schwin assault yeah, the Schwin assault bike. You know, like yeah, they're terrible. But those are probably like the best things a basketball player can do. Or even like like because running for a basketball player is extremely hard. I actually think like let's say let's say you have about a hundred dollars in equity in your body for each season, right? Like just easy numbers. You the season, the games itself is gonna charge your body sixty dollars in equity that is gonna be extracted because of all the wear and tear on your body. So you have $40 left over at the like throughout that season to spend through practices and strength and conditioning work. How are you gonna spend those dollars as wisely as possible? If you were to tell a six foot eight, 250-pound athlete to go out and run for even 20 minutes, which doesn't sound like much, that $40 will be spent very, very quickly. Yes, right? But if you ask them to get on the bike, it's not gonna be there's no pounding on it. Is it hard, like with his their heart and lungs and on their muscles and stuff? Yeah, but the pounding is what you really gotta be careful of, especially for a long NCA season or a long NBA season, or even a long AAU or travel league season for developing athletes, especially going through puberty and all that as they grow. If you're talking about a lot of these kids can go like six foot tall at 14 and all of a sudden by 16, they're like six foot eight. Like to grow eight inches in a matter of a year or two, that's that's hard on your knees, your Achilles tendons, your ankles, your hips, your spine, all that. So the last thing you want to do is go out and like pound out like ridiculous miles on a hard surface. That's not to say that you shouldn't be in shape, especially in the offseason. I think there's a certain way that you train in the off-season, but there's also a certain way that you train during the season so you don't become, I would even call it, weaker in the season. It's it's like one of those things that every athlete should strength train in the season. Should you do the same thing that you do in the offseason? Absolutely not. The off-season is when you should build and recover in the beginning and then kind of build that foundation and base. But like during the season, you're playing three games a week. You don't need to do a lot of like cardio. You're you're getting plenty of cardio in. You should be doing like recovery in the pool. I'm a big fan of like any sort of like aqua style movements, especially for bigger athletes, because water is so good for you. It's actually hard. There's a resistance, deep water pool running or deep water pool sprints where you're in the deep water, you can't touch for a basketball player, you gotta be in a pretty damn deep pool. But like, you know, like being close in the deep end to the wall, like where you could go vertical position, like literally running in the water, not sinking, right? Yes, and like doing like 30 to 60 second runs in the water, deep water, vertical position, like you're really running. Um, and then like grab the wall, rest for 30 to 60 seconds. You want to get in some good cardio and good, like, you know, quote unquote like cardio strength style training because of the resistance to the water with zero pounding on your body, that's fantastic. And it's also therapeutic because you're in the water. Another one would be like the echo bike, the the assault bike. You're in a vertical position, so you're able to strengthen your hips. The row machine is another one that's very good for basketball players. You know, the concept two erg machine, I think those are great. But I think the bike might be a little bit better just because you're more in a vertical position rather than just a rowing position. But both are fantastic for you. You really want to think about like you only have so much to spend as an athlete. So, how can you spend that as wisely as possible without wearing yourself out in the first place?

SPEAKER_00 42:38

Yes, very, very well said, because we have that kind of limited capacity and we need to pay attention what we are giving. Maybe some coaches really want you uh want to run the players like down to the ground. But uh, some players will respond well and they will get better, some will respond with sore knees and sore backs and so on. But uh, what about if it's uh endurance,

Relative Strength Targets That Matter

SPEAKER_00 43:00

it's clear, but what about then strength? Is it like too much of strength? Can it be too much of strength in your opinion, or like maybe it's always too little and be never strong enough?

SPEAKER_02 43:10

Yeah, I think I think I I love this. This is going to football, but there's some great documentaries on Netflix, has like these great um, I don't know if you've seen them, like receiver or quarterback on um on Netflix, and they're all about like you know, the the the the pros, the pros that are playing those sports, and they're really like the I guess the uh the backstory of their season it kind of carries you through the season of everything that they go through, and you see like, oh, they're injured, like how are they getting around that? Like they're training, and for guys like you and me, I think that's even more fun to watch sometimes than even the game itself. And George Kittle, this great uh all pro tight end who plays for the San Francisco 49ers, he's he's he's fantastic. He's not he's a big guy like in general compared to like a normal human being. But by football player standards, I don't think he's like. Gargantuan for a tight end. He plays tight end, so he's you know, he's a blocking and a receiving position at that position for those that don't know much about American football. But so he's he's got to be strong, but he's also got to be powerful, but he's got to be elusive and fast with great hands. So think of usually the best tight ends played basketball at a very high level. You can really tell, like when people play basketball, because it's such a great footwork meets hand-eye coordination sport, probably the best out there that that involves both lower and upper body as far as like body spacing and understanding like where to be and that sort of a thing, because the court's relatively small compared to a football field, so you don't necessarily need to be as fast as a football player to play basketball, right? But in general, you gotta understand spacing um and and power production tremendously well as a basketball player, right? And also have soft hands and that sort of a thing, so you you know can shoot a basketball properly, catch and throw a basketball and pass and everything else. But anyway, so his thing in the season was during this documentary, it was like he wanted to make sure that he could always front squat two reps at 315.

SPEAKER_00 45:03

Two reps at 315, pretty pretty 150. Let's uh it's like 150 pounds.

SPEAKER_02 45:08

Oh, kilos, yeah, yes, just yeah, exactly. Divide by 2.2, so 315 pounds, about 140, 150 for the kilos for uh the rest of the world that understands the metric system, which Americans speaking for all Americans out there, we should follow the metric system. God knows why we don't. It'd be a hell of a lot easier uh if we did, because and it's funny because even I find myself referencing kilos a lot in lifting, because like you just you when you study the the Europeans, like you're like, uh yeah, that's just what you think about. Like it starts to be in your head, you know. So it's funny how I'm always like, oh yeah, times by 2.2. All right, there we go. All right. So, anyways, but he his whole thing was like if he could do two reps at that, he knew he was strong enough to maintain through the season. And what that meant, and I and I totally get that, and for me, it's on my hex bar. If I can do five reps at 450 on the hex bar, uh whatever that would be, that'd be like 200. 2200, 200 kilos. I'm only a uh I'm like one seven 178 pounds, so that's what is that kilos? 22 or 85 kilos.

SPEAKER_00 46:12

But that would be like if you're like uh close to 200, then it's like 400 plus, so you would be like 2.2 body weight.

SPEAKER_02 46:18

Yeah, 2.2 to about 2.5 times my body weight for a hex bar for five reps. Yes. And I feel like when I can do three rounds of that or even just one round of five, I feel like I'm good with my like overall strength at a f as a 45-year-old man. And it's not a traditional straight bar deadlift, but I've I have my own views on the hex bar. I think the hex bar is much more appropriate. I think that the straight bar is is kind of like a dinosaur style movement that couples over from the uh the the power lifting circuit and the uh Olympic weightlifting circuit from the Olympics because that's all we had access to for a long period of time. But for athletes in general, the hip angle of a hex bar is gonna be much safer and able actually produce much more force by lifting heavier weight off the ground at a higher hip angle. And that's what you gotta do. You gotta think about it. Your goal as an elite athlete should not be to be an elite deadlifter, right? Exactly. It the deadlift transcends over to it, but like you shouldn't be like, oh, I want to I want to deadlift, you know. But there there obviously is a very much of a correlation to be running like a 4.5 second 40, 40 yard dash, for instance, that you use a Latin American football. But like in general, like when you have that and you can say you're below that, like there is a transcendent over to like everyone that can do that, or if you want to jump above 30 inches in a vertical, like almost without saying everyone that can do that has like a 2.5 d deadlift times their body weight, right? Like you can't do those jumps or those times unless you're at least 2.5 times your because you're you're able to produce that much force through the ground initially to do set event, like to to be that fast, to be that powerful. And just for a a little a little uh uh dissection right here on that, who produced the most pounds per square inch ever of force generation through the ground? Let's think about this real quick, back to our track and field. It'll be in recent history, won't be in the last I think it's about 10 or 15 years ago now, but let's think about that for a second. Knowing everything that we know about pounds per square inch, right?

SPEAKER_00 48:29

Either either someone who's very fast or very strong. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 48:33

So who's the who's the who's the fat in a foot race? So not maybe like so this is only sprinting.

SPEAKER_00 48:39

Yeah, so it's then bold.

SPEAKER_02 48:42

Yeah, exactly. See, you know what you're talking about, Sam, because you're you're an amazing coach and you know exactly what you're talking about. So Usain Bolt has produced the most pounds per square inch. Why? Because he has been able to run the world record in the hundred meters. So arguably the shortest race in outdoor track and field, he's been able to do that, right? So in general, Usain Bolt is the strongest pounds per square inch of force duration through the ground, right? At his size and weight. Now, if he weighed 20 pounds more, could he be as fast? No, because his body's gonna find that natural equilibrium. That's why, like a certain like DK Metcalf, who's an amazing uh receiver in the NFL, but he's gargantuan, but for his size, he is so strong and so powerful. But he can't be as fast because he's got too much mass. Now, is he super fast overall? Hell yeah, he's an amazing athlete, like a God's gift to like athletics. But at some point, you can put on too much like hypertrophy in muscle mass to where it becomes too much for you. But for his sport in football, you need to have enough body armor to protect yourself overall. And at some point, you don't need to be Usain Bolt fast to play football on elite level, you need to be fast enough, right? And so the back to basketball, right? You want to make sure that you have enough endurance, right, to play four quarters or two halves, whether it's collegiate basketball or whatever it is, you know, and to play endurance over the course of the season, but also be strong enough. So you got to make sure that you have those certain lifts that whether it's hex bar or front squat, like George Kittle, that analogy with a tight end, and to realize, like, okay, if I can maintain that basic strength level, I'll be okay for the rest of the season. Because your joints, tendons, and ligaments need to be under a certain amount of stress, but they don't necessarily need to be under stress in a way that is a ton of reps. So you don't want to have too much volume. You want to leave enough in the tank to where maybe it's only like maybe during the preseason when you're doing that muscle building phase or whatever you want to call it, like where you're doing sets of five to ten, but maybe during the season you cut those same reps down to like two, right? But you're going more for power. So you're going for to like move the hex bar a little faster in the eccentric. So as you stand up with it, you're trying to produce if you stand up slow with 400 pounds, right? You might produce more power through the ground if you stand up super fast with 200 pounds. And that's where a lot of people don't understand because, especially in America, training comes from a lot of the bodybuilding or powerlifting circuit, where powerlifting could be a really powerful lift, but powerlifting itself is actually a misnomer in the name because power means trying to get something done as quickly as possible. A lot of powerlifting is slow. Like if you've ever seen somebody deadlift a thousand pounds, the bar doesn't come up off the ground like that, right? But if you watch an elite football player train or an elite basketball player train at a very high level, they're drop, they're drop, they they might be working at weights of like 40 to 60 percent, but they're moving them insanely fast because their sport is so fast. So you gotta think back to your sport in general, not just about like I want to be super strong and build a shitload of muscle, because that doesn't matter at a certain point, depending on your sport. For a basketball player, yes, a certain amount of muscle is important. Like Michael Jordan used to be as skinny in the 80s, and then in the night, and then the the bad boys, the Detroit Pistons, having grown up in Michigan, I was a huge, huge uh uh fan of the bad boys era, which actually I have a fun story for your listeners uh on that one. I I'll I'll say in a second. But MJ ended up putting on muscle mass because he knew to compete with the bad boys era to get past the Eastern Conference Finals, to go to the NBA finals, he needed to be a hell of a lot stronger. And and obviously there are some components there that on the teammate side that needed to come into play for him as well. To to make to, but he needed to get he put on whatever it was, 10 or you can see it, like he put on 10 or 20 pounds of muscle, and he needed to because he couldn't physically

Power Training Over Max Lifts

SPEAKER_02 52:40

compete with the roughness of the bad boy's era during that time. Like he got his ass handed to him a lot in the beginning in the 80s and like the early 90s, and then until like you know, the the like the 89-90 time frame, and then he started training in the offseason, he started putting on muscle, and he figured out like he was gonna be a hell of a lot better for it. And then look what happened. The guy, you know, absolutely and this is literally the best basketball player ever. And he knew that he had to step up his training a little bit more in the strength and conditioning world to get past, you know. And this is a guy that in the 80s would be dropping, there was nights he dropped 40 or 50 points, like no big deal. Like, you're like, how the hell? Like, this guy's just an amazing basketball. I remember being a kid being like, wow, but real quick, a fun listen for your reviewers. I actually I popped a three and sunk it over Isaiah Thomas at his basketball camp when I was 11 years old. So Isaiah at the after the second championship, I went down to his basketball camp in a small university in um in Michigan, like where it was like a five-day basketball camp. And then he brought out, like, you know, the campers to the last day, the parents would pick you up, and he brought out a couple campers out of a sea of like 500 kids. Somehow or another, I got picked, right? And this just goes to show you how competitive these guys really are. Oh, so like in front of all the parents, like my parents are there, all the kids are there, the campers are there, and it's like the sweaty little gym in July in Michigan and in some you know, random little university. Me and this other kid were playing, and he like passed me the ball, and I'm like, just shit moment. Like, I Isaiah Thomas is literally guarding me right now. So I didn't know what to do. Like, of course, you know what to do if you're playing like normal, because I was a pretty good basketball player. But I'm like, okay, I'll dribble. I saw I drip, I dribbled in, and he kind of let me dribble in up and I got past him, and I went up for like a layup, like an underhand layup, you know, and all of a sudden, like just like swatted the ball out into the crowd, like laughing and shit. And then like, and then somehow or another we got one more go-around. Like, they they ended up coming in, and like I forget, one of the guys from the Pistons ended up like Isaiah alley hooped at him and dunked it for the crowd, and they gave us like one more go-around. So then, like, we we like passed it. My teammate and I passed it back and forth a couple times, and I just went out and I like I just said, fuck it. I just went out to the three three-point land, and just like for all the glory in the world. And Isaiah was basically like, I'll give it, I'll give it to you, kid. Like, like, go for it if you want to pop it. And I did it, and it went in in a swoosh. And I realized when he like packed me, I had like a bloody finger. Like the guy like like not annihilated my hand when he packed me earlier when I went in for the layup. I went down and I sat down and like Isaiah scratched me, and then I showed him up and I popped the three. But he like kind of gave it, he didn't guard me hard. He was like, okay, if you want to take it out there from like no man's land, you do it. And I did that, and so that's my like my that's my like glory in that regard, too. And another one too, I went to Michigan State's basketball camp when when uh um Tom Izzo was the he was the assistant coach to Judd Heathcote, who won in 79 with Magic Johnson and uh the Greg Kelser era, so that whole the history historical coach. I think he left in like '95 or so. So this would have been like '93, '94 after the Isaiah experience. But Tom Izzo is my coach for the week. And he was so fiery at the time, and people are like, and he's still Michigan State's coach today, right? Just an amazing coach. But boy, even for a bunch of like 13-year-old boys, he would just ran us like we were in the final four. And so I have super fond memories of him. And he was an assistant coach at Michigan State at that time, and he became the head coach, I think, a year or two later. Um, but just a phenomenal coach, and like, but he ran us hard as heck for those like five days. But it was so fun to be under his coaching acumen. So, like the basketball dreams run deep in my veins, but uh, you know, like I said, peaked out at six feet tall. But yeah, so back to the training aspect, you know, those are little those are fun stories for the for your listeners out of that.

SPEAKER_00 56:27

Simple, simple way to like, first of all, I thought, okay, if uh that uh three-pointer was about to happen this year, uh not this year, in this era, everything would be recorded on the phones by then. Nothing, nothing is even recorded.

SPEAKER_02 56:42

Nothing's recorded. I'm like, mom didn't even bring my mom didn't even bring her like you know the big camp corner that would, you know, the thing that's like that big from that that everyone used to have. I'm like, no, there is not one phone, nothing. And I'm like, good lord. So it's only it's only up here, and you can ask my parents, they saw it. Um, yeah, you know, my brother saw it, but like, you know, and five 500 campers. If if anyone has a recording of that that's listening to this podcast from around 1991, uh, you know, let me know.

SPEAKER_00 57:08

Yes, yes. But coming back, coming back to the topic, I really also like what you said about like being too muscular for basketball. I mean for any sport, because if you are carrying more mass, you will need to produce more a kind of force into the ground in order to be faster. Because if you add, just add and add and add, it's even though it's muscle, it will be harder for you to move. Maybe you will be strong, but it will take you two seconds to you know like to perform like a squad. So the simple way how I do, and I believe everyone can measure that, maybe it's not so accurate, so please take it with a grain of salt. But you can when whenever you are doing a vertical jump, measure your body weight and then multiply the height of the jump and your weight. So the whatever the result you will get with uh multiplying dose, you will get a result, say a unit like number. And the next time you will do, maybe your body weight will go up, but your maybe vertical jump will go slightly down. But when you will look at the multiplied like number, you will see actually I got more powerful. So that is the simple way to measure. If you see that your body weight went significantly up, and uh uh the number, if you compare like one to the second one, you see that it went down. Maybe it's a little bit too much of the muscle mass, or maybe it's too much of the strength work, and you need to work a little bit more on the applyometrics and explosive type of uh exercises. What do you mean? What do you think? Do you agree, disagree? I think that's I think that's phenomenal. I totally agree with it. You don't have to agree with me.

SPEAKER_02 58:39

You can't no, I I think it no, I I do because at some point you gotta you gotta think about. I always like to say your body's gonna find its natural equilibrium too. Yes, yes um, and you gotta think about the end goal in mind back to your sport. So, what we talked about earlier in the first part of like what's your goal? Like, like work back from your goal. If your goal is to become like more of like a defensive component meets like rebounder, like a Dennis Rodman style, right? Like if you want to become this like really great defensive player and you know that's your role. Well, maybe like an extra 10 pounds isn't gonna be bad because you're gonna have to go in there and like jockey around for like the positions and everything else. But if your goal is to be like just an elite ball handler and like very finesse style player, you probably don't need that much extra weight. But if you find your body breaking down over the course of the season, maybe you need to like figure out a way to stay strong and powerful, but without adding on that size, because every pound that you put on your body needs to have a purpose. Going up and down hardwood for 50 to 100 to whatever it is, games per year, right?

Mechanics For Tall Athletes

SPEAKER_02 59:50

Or per season. That's a ton, let alone your practices that you're pounding, pounding, pounding, let alone the fact that you're an obscenely tall, long, tall person with big spine, big knees, big Achilles tendons, all that stuff. You're you're you're an unusual person in a physical regard, so that you almost like kind of like a in a like a sports car, but like a classic sports car, like a Mercedes from the 1950s and 1960s. You might still be fast, but you're you can't like drive you from New York to Los Angeles, right? Like you could tour around in the weekend, but you should, you know, working with care in that in that car itself, right? Like you shouldn't just drive it the way that you would drive like a Toyota, right? You know, because you're not like you're an elite athlete, but you're also an unusually big physical specimen and playing an extremely hard sport, running, cutting, accelerating, decelerating, jumping, all of that. You gotta like, I would almost say strengthen your ankles and your ankle stiffness, almost and your and your lumbar spine. If you could have super strong ankle stiffness and super strong lumbar spine, you will probably like have body armor, like whatever you need to do as of for your physical longevity of playing that sport for basketball, for instance, that'll serve you so well because the minute you have your ankle stiffness, you're gonna have better lower extremity power generation, right? Like your Achilles tendon will be stronger, your your knees will have a better guidance tool of which to apply force to the ground, your hips will be better, and if your lumbar spine's better, then your overall spine health is gonna be better. But I do feel like those are probably two like like components that people are like, oh, I want to have like uh bigger deltoids or whatever to look better in like a sleeveless jersey for like endorsements or whatever. Like, I'm like, I think like the lower back and your ankles, like work on those and you will be like phenomenal for longevity purposes. And that's like going back to the strength and conditioning side because sometimes, you know, when I was at the University of Florida, we had an amazing strength and conditioning program, but it stemmed from football. Yes, you can't take football and put it into a middle distance running background. I remember going to we had a like one of the guys, it wasn't the head strength coach, but our head strength coach for the men's track and field program was one of the assistant strength coaches for the football program. All he knew was either elite powerlifting or football. That's great for his world. He knew absolutely jack about middle distance running and how to train a middle distance runner. I remember going in and I'm like training with the sprinters, but we had to go out on the track later on, like six hours later after going to class all day. And I went into my coach, I'm like, Coach, my hands are bloody because I've been doing cleans all morning long with the sprinters. And he's like, What do you mean you've been doing like cleans and I'm starting? I'm like, my back hurts so bad. Like, and like he's like, Oh my god. So we had to redo, like the coaches are so busy doing what they're doing, they don't understand what these other coaches are doing. The other coach wasn't necessarily a bad coach, he wasn't doing the right program for that athlete, which was a middle distance runner. A middle distance runner, like, do a couple cleans, but you don't need to do as many as a football player, and you don't need to be doing as much weight as a football player either. You're gonna kill yourself, right? Like, so you know, I wouldn't be better off doing a little bit more plymetric work, a little bit more strength work. I'm a huge component of even if you're a marathon or should be doing strength training, you know, but like within reason and understand what that strength training entails, because a basketball player is much different than a football player. Just because you know how to train a football player does not necessarily mean you know how to train a basketball player, you know? Um, it just you know, a basketball player is much more in line with probably like a volleyball player, right? Like an indoor volleyball player, not a beach volleyball player, but like an indoor volleyball player, like like very similar sports, like a lot of crossover between the two. Um, and uh and also uh uh an elite sprinter in track and field and an elite jumper in track and field, probably as well. Like there's a lot of crossovers between those sports, or even an elite tennis player, you know, up to a point. Um a lot of crossovers between those sports.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:45

Yes, I mean definitely because they are more similar in the let's say volleyball and basketball, more of the jumping type of movements compared to uh like a football. They do like the need to jump, but it's more about like running and maybe there's like a physical contact and pushing very hard. Okay, it depends on the position. But like even sometimes now I can see that some coaches from USA are saying that we still have that football uh mentality that we're pushing the maximum weights, and uh that other coaches are pushing maximum weights is only about those three kind of king lifts and nothing else. But what we have been talking uh right now, I hope everyone understands that we're talking about the relative strength, meaning like your body weight and the strength level uh is important. That's why I ask you uh what is the reference to your body weight, so we know like a 2.2. I ask for two to two point two to two point five uh in a traw bar deadlift. I have for each movement pattern, like push-ups, squats, uh for every single movement. I have thought by other coaches' experience and what I read in the books or so in the seminars, and then from my own experience, I created like six different levels for each movement so that the person knows like hey, there is an end goal. I don't have to go like stronger, stronger, put more, put five more, put five more, put five more. No, there is a certain goal that you need to reach, and then maybe we will be working more on the other things. Maybe then recovery is an issue, not the strength level is an issue, yeah. Other factors are influencing your performance.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:20

Yeah, I remember even in my um early 30s, I got up when I really got in the hex bar and I I fell in love with the hex bar, I was able to get up to three times. I was able to do at 180 pounds for my size, uh, I was able to do 540. Um and I eventually got up to 560 um for a single backheart. Yeah, exactly. And I was like, it was funny, like at some point I was like, I didn't need to do that. And I'm like realizing like, well, what the hell am I doing this for? Other than like ego. I almost like you probably do this too. You're almost becoming your own science experiment, you know? And I was like, but at some point, like once you get above 2.5, now we could probably like really like break it down according to that individual and probably do more of a like. A program for it depending on that sport. But if you're a basketball player and you could do 2.5 you know times for a for a hex bar, like you're probably gonna be a-okay. And also, as a basketball player, I'm six foot tall. You got to think of your setup position. You might need to pull off some pads or blocks to make it the same height. Like the handle should be slightly below your knees. You should not be pulling from your ankles. So a seven-foot-tall basketball player, if they if you're using my hex bar over there, right? You see my hex bar. Like for me, my setup position is a perfect setup position. That's more for a six-foot-tall person for the type of setup we're talking about. But it's gonna be much different if I was to go to the flip it over and do low handles. It's more of a squat movement. And the same thing with like a super tall basketball player with super long femurs, or if they have really long arms, they'd be able to pull from different positions. So, like, look at your relative pulling, like where you're at. And that's also something else that since this is a basketball podcast that we should talk about, because you're usually very tall with long arms, so your setup position needs to look a certain way to where your hip angle is below a little bit below like a normal jumping height, but not so much below to where it's like you're in a deep squat position, right? You know, that way you can produce enough like strength through your quads, through your hips, but also keep your neutral spine all the way through. You're not rounding your back, that sort of a thing. So once again, it's all about the force through like moving your hips forward to push through the ground as hard as you can to get uh, you know, bigger jump capacity, getting your knees stronger, feet stronger, and all that stuff. And one more thing that we since we're talking about that subject, big fan of barefoot training, not some of um of you know, with safety, like don't drop a weight on your toes, obviously. That goes without saying, but like if you're doing a hex bar, be barefoot, like for real. Like you'll get so much stronger with your foot and thinking about compressing your arch of your foot through the ground to generate force and like a vertical pattern down versus kind of like rolling the ankles back and forth. Because if your shoe is too cushy, like if you're wearing like a an uh like a like an endurance style trainer, for instance, you're in a general running shoe, the slope of your shoe is a big problem for you because it's constantly pushing you forward, and then you're kind of pushing into like a padded, whatever, like like a marshmallow type pad in your sole. Like, once again, you are a basketball player, you are not an marathon who's running 100 miles a week that needs to have this like cushy ass sole. Like, realize that you could lift in socks on a lifting platform as long as you're not slipping around or like on a rubber floor, like lift from that, like you should, like, because that way you're gonna be able to splay your toes, get strong through your feet, even when you're lifting hundreds of pounds off the ground, and it's gonna help out your ankles get a lot stronger as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:45

Yes, yes. I mean, we will definitely need to do the second part because uh there's there's not only the parents part that I did not uh cover, yeah. We did not cover, but there's many other things that like you would just keep on talking, and I'm like, oh, I would like to talk about this, I would like to talk about that. But um but we will definitely do the part two, and uh as as for every episode, I do uh do kind of uh because it is like

Broad Jump Landings Reduce Injury

SPEAKER_00 1:09:12

an hour, a little bit more than an hour now the episode. I would like to give a three key takeaways. What in my opinion, if somebody has like, oh, I did not take any notes, so yeah, if you will like from my side, what I really like what you said, like number one, you were talking about the different sports, and uh I have said this before, but I want everyone to understand success can come in different means and forms that you are not even aware of right now. So, what you said at the very beginning like, hey, I know you love basketball, but if your end goal is, let's say B, you might be better with not doing that and doing something else instead. So that is one that I really like. The second thing that I really really like about the body types and zone two cardio, it's definitely true. Sometimes, like, we are too much of that, like building the base and uh uh going for those longer runs. I know it's a little bit old school mentality, but it still stays kind of in uh even like here in Lithuania that we just you know you start the national camp and then people are jogging for 20 minutes. Like, what's oh my goodness, yeah. So why do you why do you do that? You know, like or in in the camps uh preparation and like pre-season. And the third thing, uh, what we talked at the very end about the relative strength. You can't be too muscular if we're talking about the basketball, maybe for like bodybuilding, you will not be too muscular, but uh I don't know that sport. But in general, like you can be too strong, you can be too muscular, you need to know your body type, as you said. Like, probably not at age 14, 16, or 17. You will know what's your kind of good weight to have. You will need to experiment, see, uh lose a little bit, gain a little bit, see what's the vertical jump, what's the first step. How is your body feeling in general? So this would be my key takeaways. Anything else to add?

SPEAKER_02 1:11:04

Yeah, I think I think the vertical, and we didn't touch on that because there's so much to talk about, but I think the vertical as well as the broad jump should both be tested. One test vertical, they're both technically jumps, but they're both great ways to in the the the one I love about the broad is you gotta stick the landing because that actually they've done so many studies on it. The ability to produce that horizontal pattern of jumping and sticking the landing leads to less injury. So, not necessarily from a performance perspective, I think there's a lot of carryover performance perspective, but the ability to stick that said landing is gonna be so helpful for tall, long athletes out there to make sure that their ankles, their knees can absorb that impact. Back to what we were talking about earlier about deceleration, because the vertical force pattern is a little bit easier because you're just literally going vertical force, right? But the horizontal force is a whole other world of which that your body has to absorb that impact more. That's why like a certain recipe of depth jumps is really good, but you gotta make sure that you're not overdoing depth jumps, right? Because it's so hard on your body, but it's hard in a good way when it's done right. But it's gotta be very, you gotta be very careful on the type of surface you're doing, the amount of volume you're doing on depth jumps, but it can it can offer a great balance to your CNS to get it activated to get yourself stronger. You know, not just like those max loads and acceleration, but the deceleration, which you had said is even more important because you become more elusive at that point as a as a basketball player or any sport athlete at that point. You throw off your defense, right? You know, or if you're playing defense on on offense, you're able to get the ball from the person that much quicker, right? Yeah, you're just you're so hard, you want to be annoying like to that opponent, whatever you're playing, like to where you are just everywhere all the time and they can't get around you in any way, you know. And that's when that's when speed and power production becomes amazing in the deceleration, acceleration phase, the quick first step, if you will, becomes so important for athletes out there.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:58

Yes, I I never thought about this that let's say we are measuring not that kind of jumping distance in general, but we are we are measuring the distance that you can decelerate from. So I never thought about that. You put it in my head. I'm like, that's very interesting. I never thought about that just to measure that deceleration part.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:18

Yeah, and that's why, like, so I forget who who was it? RG3 was a quarterback, just talking about, I know we gotta go, but an amazing athlete, uh, Robert Griffin III. He he was uh almost an I think he was like basically an Olympic caliber 110 meter hurdler, but he was also an amazing uh quarterback. And just talk about athlete, like if you and me could like look at his numbers and just be like, oh my goodness, this guy's like God's gift. But he was also prone to injuries, and unfortunately, his career was shortened from a whole host of injuries. I don't know the whole backstory, but I remember reading this one strength and conditioning coach had talked about RG3, and he said, Because of this, this, and this, I knew that he wasn't gonna be have a long career in the NFL. And a lot of it came down to like I think it was deceleration and the ability to like stick landings and that sort of a thing. His I don't know if his ankles were weaker. If RG3 listens to this, apologies if I don't get it right, because I think very highly of you. Actually, his wife is she's from either Latvia or Lithuania or Estonia. No, she's Estonian. She's Estonian, so up in your neck of the woods. Yeah, one of one of the three countries. I think I'm 99%. She's a track and field athlete from I think she competed at Baylor when he went to Baylor, and I think she was from Estonia, or she's from Estonia, 99% for sure. But, anyways, just a phenomenal athlete in you know in America, but it crossed like a whole host of like spectrums of speed, power, and all that stuff. But unfortunately, his career, you know, he had some injuries and that sort of thing. I don't think it really panned out the way that he would have hoped. But just what an athlete. But I remember reading the strength and conditioning report from some coach, God, I wish I had it in the back of my head. Something stuck out to him when he saw him train, he's just like, oh, this is gonna be a problem. Um, and if you know, we could probably do some Google searches on it. But once again, when you understand movement patterns, you understand movement patterns, and you can kind of see like your crystal ball that you know, coaches, these players are so they're so expensive, right? Like, like the contracts that these guys get are is you know tens of millions of dollars. They're investments, and so you really got to understand your investment as you know, a personnel, you know, as a general manager, for instance, or a head coach of a team, and understand like what that player can and cannot do. And for that player, how can you make yourself you know as invincible as possible, if you will? If you're able to stick a broad jump and you're jumping 10 to 11 feet and you're able to stick that landing, pop it in, and then just like walk off like no big deal, you're pretty strong and healthy to like absorb impact over the course of a season. If you are stumbling around and you're you know on a 10-foot broad jump, maybe you're able to produce that power, but at some point, you gotta be careful because you're gonna have to produce like a more force generation through your feet and get your feet and ankles stronger to absorb that impact in the initial, you know, in that initial jump in the first place. So just because you can do one thing doesn't necessarily mean it's great. You gotta figure out how to like retract back and like stick that landing, if you will. So that's another good thing that comes from the strength and conditioning world for the listeners out there. Just because you can lift a weight, cool. But maybe that weight doesn't need to be lifted as heavy as it is because it's gonna have a component like me going above 3.0. That's so damn stupid for a guy that's 35. Just because you can do it doesn't necessarily mean you should do it, right? You know, like like I was totally fine to lift 2.5 times my body weight and still be fast as hell. Like at some point, it just doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:28

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Hey, that's the reason why we'll need to do that part two. But yeah, of course. I would love to

Where To Find Chris Ryan

SPEAKER_00 1:16:35

thank you. Thank you for sharing your knowledge, thank you for the experience. I know you have a great platform. Please tell the listeners what is it and where they could find more information about you and what you can do.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:45

Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you so much. Uh, so I have an app that's available worldwide. It's actually uh people from all the continents, except in Antarctica, have taken workouts with me over the course of time. It's called Chris Ryan Fitness. It's available in the App Store for both Apple and the Google Play Store for Android users worldwide. There's hundreds of on-demand workouts out there from beginner, intermediate, to advanced level. Um, and things are very basic as far as equipment needs. Yes, I love my Echo Bike, I love my racks, I love my hex bars. Those are all things that are not on the app. It's all dumbbell-based, band-based workouts, some kettlebell workouts in there. But for the most part, it's geared towards like parents that are busy, people that are like 30 to 60 years old that are looking to get in shape in general. There's no there's no training on there for elite athletes that are learning to um get a 40-inch vertical, for instance, right? I think that that type of training tends to be very nuanced. I tell you to seek out an amazing coach in person like Stan or myself, wherever you are at, like in the world, to like really work with a with an amazing strength coach to get you to those levels. But in general, for the vast 99.9% of the rest of the country of the world out there, that's where my app comes into play, right? So it tends to be, you know, there's tons of nutrition on there. Every month there's new nutrition plans out there to eat healthier for both plant and meat-based diets. Um, you know, there's there's so many things in there that are so helpful for, once again, the everyday adults looking to be as fit as possible, as long as possible, and work on their longevity patterns for themselves.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:11

Yeah, so for those parents who are busy traveling with the kids, the tournaments and so on, so find everything in the show notes. You can check here in the podcast. But Chris, thank you one more time. And for everyone uh for everyone else, thank you for listening to this episode. Share it with someone who needs to hear it. This is the best way to support us. But for now, keep training. Basketball, buddy, and mine.