SHOP TALK - Episode 8: Why Strength is the Foundation for Athleticism

On today's episode of Shop Talk, Tyler and Trevin discuss the importance of strength training for athletics. Deep diving into the science behind strength, power, speed, rate of force development, and the force-velocity curve. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to Shop Talk. I'm Trevan. I'm Tyler. We are here to break down the latest trends in rehabilitation, strength, and conditioning. All through the lens of evidence-based practice. Our goal is simple cut through the noise in the fitness industry and talk about what actually works, why it works, and how you can apply it. On today's podcast, we will be discussing strength and its application to performance. And before we get started, I think we have a trend here where we start to ask each other questions just to kind of break the ice before the episode starts. So my question for Tyler today is if you had to survive a zombie apocalypse with one type of athlete, who are you picking? With one type of athlete.

SPEAKER_02 0:50

It's funny, my first thought was like strongman, right? Because I'm like, well, they could carry a lot of stuff, they could be strong. But think about how quick they would gas out. Oh, yeah. Right? Their events aren't crazy long or anything. Um I don't want like an endurance guy, like just straight endurance, like marathon runner. Um this is crazy. Um probably. Oh no, I can't, I can't say powerlifter, man, because then everyone's gonna be like, well, yeah, then you just choose you, right? But uh, okay. This is a great question. This caught me off guard. Honestly, if somebody, I don't want to say like CrossFit, but like it's funny, we talk about high rocks a lot, right? Like when when me and you are here, right? But the fact that you can be endurance based, right? And like be able to run a 1K and then back to a station and do some sort of like lift or like endurance-based strength movement or sled pushes, sled poles, things like that, and then run a 1K again. I think that's really important, honestly. So that's probably who I would choose because they're probably really well rounded. For me, I start thinking about power lifting. I'm like, yeah, they're really strong and they could fight off a ton of zombies or whatever's happening, but I would get gassed out after like maybe 10 hits with like a baseball bat or whatever my weapon is. So yeah, that's a that's a tough question.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Who would you choose? I I'm kind of in line with what you said. You'd have to have an athlete that is pretty well rounded. They have a decent level of cardiovascular fitness, but they're also strong as hell, right? So I thought, yeah, like a hybrid athlete, something like a high rocks athlete, a crossfitter is not a bad way to go about it. I'm obviously gonna bias the tactical athlete just because we have to be so well rounded and we spend a lot of time shooting guns. There you go. Yeah, it depends on what the weapon is, right? So, I mean, a lot of people are gonna look at us as athletes per se, but I definitely do. But yeah, I had the same thought. I'm like, well, you could have somebody really strong or really endurance-based, but there's just cons to both of those. So finding a good middle ground between the two of them. If I was gonna do like a field sport athlete, I'm honestly like lacrosse or soccer, where they have they're basically aerobic a lactic, where they have a great engine, but they also have to sprint, change direction, they have to be relatively strong.

SPEAKER_02 3:12

Kick hard, like strong, like legs and everything like that, too. That's what I think about, right? Everyone just thinks soccer truly is just endurance. But think about the power development when you are going for a far kick, you know what I mean? So I I think about that stuff too, but that's really interesting tying it into a zombie apocalypse situation because that's not something that I've thought about. Um that's funny. Good, good, I like it. Does that loosen me up a little bit?

SPEAKER_00 3:35

Something easy to break the eye.

SPEAKER_02 3:36

Yeah, something easy as my brain's going a million miles an hour. I'm like, I don't know. Well, cool. Um, so I wanted to kind of start out because I have some surface level stuff, and then Trevin's gonna dive into some deeper topics about athleticism, rate of force development, force velocity curve, all of that stuff, right? That's your wheelhouse for sure. Yep. But I wanted to talk, first of all, about the topic, okay, and just kind of explain the basis of it. So strength is how much force you can produce. Power is how fast you can produce, produce that force. If you're not focusing on strength, power will ultimately suffer, right? Your ceiling is a little bit lower, right? You can train power, you can train power, you can train power, right? But if you're not building from the bottom and developing really just strength in general, then power is limited by that, like how much you can pull from that bucket. I remember you sent me that that DM. That guy explained it really well. Yeah. Pulling water from that same bucket, but it's like, how efficiently can you do that? So that's kind of what you know I'm trying to tie in here. For athletes, this is important because power is how they perform, how they hit the ball, how they accelerate from the blocks, how they tackle someone or change direction on the field or kick a ball, whatever the sport may be. Athletes need to optimize their strength in order to optimize performance. Some people might be thinking, well, yeah, that's duh, like that's why I lift. I want to be strong. I want to be a good athlete. But it also comes down to how you periodize and program throughout the season. Building strength in the off-season is, in my opinion, the most important building block because then you transition it more to the power phase to prepare for the season, and then you can actually apply it on the field in season. So that's a big part of it too. And we'll we'll dive a little bit more into you know your topic, like how strong is strong enough and if we have to cut it short and stuff like that. But along with transitioning to power to prepare for sport, in this phase, sorry, in this phase builds improved motor control, force output, tendon stiffness, and tissue resilience. So that's why strength is important, but then that that initial transition over to being able to produce that force quicker is also super important for athletes, right? Because that's how you become more athletic, right? So let's take the example of accelerating out of the blocks. How important is tendon stiffness, right? So and just force development, especially in the acceleration phase. Exactly. Exactly. Because like if everything's just soft and and I don't know, more flaccid, if you will, right, you're more so absorbing that force rather than producing it and driving off the ground. So um, let's see where I was here. Oh, okay. That's why being strong from the beginning is so important because it sets up the next level of training at a higher capacity. If you're an athlete and just prioritizing skill work and plyos, you're approaching training 100% incorrectly, in my opinion. Sorry. Strength should be your absolute best friend. And then it just raises your ceiling for better force output, better motor control, precise movements, and improved athletic performance. Speed, jumping, change of direction, agility is all about how you control your force and how much force you actually have to begin with. And to build that control effectively, you have to be strong and build it to the point where you can handle, and all of your tissues and joints can handle that high force output. So that's kind of the whole basis. I ran through a few paragraphs there, but I want to know what you want to tack onto that and then start diving into some of your topics.

SPEAKER_00 7:21

Absolutely. So strength has an influence on a large list of skill and neuromuscular characteristics. So you have power, rate of force development, change of direction, and sprint performance. In addition with the motor skill development, stronger athletes have displayed greater results in jump height and distance, faster acceleration and sprint times, and better performance and change of direction when compared to their weaker counterparts. Basically, meaning the stronger you are, the better you're going to perform in these neuromuscular skill performance metrics, right?

SPEAKER_02 7:54

Yeah. Should we just end it right there? Yeah. There we go. Like, truly, if you if you're working on that strength, everything else tends to follow in place, if that makes sense. Like acceleration is the biggest one for me. I tell these track athletes, I tell these track coaches that truly, if these athletes are stronger and regularly strength training, that's what's going to help their acceleration the most. You can work skills and skills and skills and staying low and your initial drive out of the blocks, but it's like, how much force are you putting into that ground in order to accelerate? That's the most important part. So didn't want to dive too deep, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:29

Yeah, strength is never a weakness. There you go. Training for muscular strength also has a pause has positive implications towards athletic performance, right? So with this information, strength coaches should ensure that athletes meet the strength requirements of the sport to maximize performance, especially for those whose skill or sport demands um, they demand a high level of power, rate of force development, potentiation, change of direction, and again, sprint performance. So if any of those are a part of your sport, strength is going to always be the foundation of that. The stronger you are, the higher potential you have to improve performance through adding plymetrics, through adding sprint and agility and change of direction work, things like that. There are a lot of fancy drills out there on social media, and there's a lot of cool things that you can get into for sure. But unless you have a really great level of strength before you do those things, the potential for those to actually improve performance, they're they are there. It's just not going to be as high. Suboptimal is what I like to say.

SPEAKER_02 9:36

Yeah, suboptimal. Truly, you're you're putting in all this time and this effort into these plyos and these these skill drills, but it's like your ceiling is still maxing out because your strength is not where it should be. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

So yeah. Well, I think it's that's a good segue, right, into how strong is strong enough. Right. But before we get into that, I also wanted to discuss injury prevention, which obviously is your wheelhouse.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:03

But yeah, the injury prevention effect of strength training for athletes. So research indicates that sport injury can be reduced to a third and overuse injuries to almost half by introducing strength training into a program. Yep. Coaches or trainers working with time-constrained individuals can help aid in injury prevention just through the implementation of strength training alone.

SPEAKER_02 10:26

I love it. I love that. That and you might have heard me clapping in the background because truly that is such an important part of what I educate my patients on, right? I see a lot of runners here, a lot of endurance-based athletes. And I'm like, listen, with how repetitive your sport is, your tissues have to accept that. Your joints have to accept that. How do we do that? Like to make sure that you have good bone density, your cartilage is under control, like all of that, strength training. Truly. If if coaches and trainers were to focus just on adding in some strength and being consistent with it, that improves everything, even for runners, right? Because I know runners are usually smaller, more lanky guys, and and they're just focused on their times, right? But I'm so glad that you said that because injury prevention is everything for athletes. They want to stay on the field, they want to stay running as much as possible. So it's like, okay, the two things that you can do in my mind, and I talk to every patient about this, sleep, right? Sleep and recovery both go hand in hand, and then strength training. That is huge. Um a little side note and not trying to toot my own horn here, right? But in football in high school, way back in the day, I guess at this point, I'm kind of old. Um I loved hitting really hard. I played both sides of the ball. I played kickoff, I played pond, whatever. Okay. And everyone always asked, truly, all of the parents would ask me, like, how do you stay healthy? Because my kid took a hit and his shoulder dislocated, or my kid took a hit and now his oblique is strained, right? Things like that. It was because I was in the gym all the time. My tissues were resilient, right? And then this is this is a big one for every athlete out there listening in terms of ACL. If you have really strong hamstrings, that will only help keep your ACL, I guess, um, reinforced. Your hamstrings help pull the tibia posteriorly, right? So every time you go to cut or turn or stop, your hamstrings have to help hold that tibia there. So if your hamstrings are weak, you're more likely to tear your ACL. There you go. Plain and simple. So, anyway, I could talk about that for a long time, but I know that you have tons of info, but I'm just very happy you mentioned it.

SPEAKER_00 12:53

Yeah, I mean, really, I I wanted to start that off right at the beginning, just because, like you said, if we are dealing with injured athletes, then performance kind of goes out the window, anyways. So that's the very first thing we need to approach is how can we keep this athlete healthy? Yep. And if we can do that through just the addition of strength training, we're kind of killing two birds with one stone. I love it. So love it. So, how strong you need to be is it strongly depends on an individual's training goals, their training age, needs analysis of their sport or their profession, and tolerance or availability to continuously make improvements in strength. So, strength may be supplemental to some sports, some that rely primarily on the aerobic system. In this case, strength may improve performance through improved rate of force development and economy of movement, but it isn't necessarily the primary neuromuscular characteristic of the sport. And these types of athletes that I'm thinking of are distance runners, cyclists, triathles, things like that. Strength's gonna help aid in injury prevention, right? Improving rate of force development and improve economy of movement, but strength isn't necessarily the foundation of those sports. That way it's kind of flipped where aerobic capacity is gonna be the foundation of that sport because so much more time needs to be spent training the conditioning side of things just because we don't have enough time in the day to train both, right? Right? Nobody can recover from that. We get interference effect.

SPEAKER_02 14:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

And we don't necessarily need to go into that.

SPEAKER_02 14:26

And that's why you got to sprinkle it in, right? Like as simple as that makes it sound. But for runners, you're right, that's not their main priority. Yes. And I get it, like everyone is just focused on, like I said, their times, right? And like how quick they're doing a marathon or whatever distance they're doing, the mile time, whatever, right? But I'm really glad I want to talk more about the running economy stuff. Um to simply state it, and you can add to this, yeah. It is easier to maintain a specific pace for longer because you're demanding less of your system if you are stronger. Purely. Absolutely, right? Everyone's worried about getting too buff or whatever, being an endurance athlete. But it's like, no, that actually helps your running economy because you're not taxing your system as much. So you can stay at that like top gear for a lot longer. So anyway, you can you can add on to that, but I I have that in my notes too.

SPEAKER_00 15:21

Yeah, I mean, so you're putting more force into the ground, improving your stride length, stride frequency, and overall time at similar VO2 max or percentage of your heart rate while you're running as you were previously. And there are gobs of research looking at the difference between endurance athletes that don't strength train and then endurance athletes that do strength train. And time and time again, you see improvements in in running economy, and it has it doesn't even play an effect on the strain on their heart or their cardiovascular system. That's awesome. That just goes to show how important strength training is and even apply metrics to the endurance athlete. Yeah. Like you talked about the importance of tendon strength, right? So the more strong and stiff your tendons and muscles are, the more force you can put into the ground. It's not getting released as heat, right? There's more elastic energy, which you're gonna just an easy way to put it is you're just gonna be more springy when you're running. So you're improving that stride length, improving that stride frequency, and it doesn't take any more effort because that energy is just coming from that tension that's in your tendons and in your muscles. Exactly. It's just elastic energy that you're using to improve your performance. It's like performance enhancement right there.

SPEAKER_02 16:37

So and and let's dive a little bit deeper into that tendon stiffness stuff, because this is uh time and time again, I've seen so much of it like Achilles tendinopathy, right? Like one of the most common tendinopathies, along with um um like shin splints, because that's a form of tendinopathy as well. But Achilles tendinopathy um one of the protocols that's used in physical therapy actually came from a doctor who he was a runner, right? But he started experiencing like this tendon pain. This was way back in the day, right? I can't even remember the dates, to be honest with you. But he was like, I'm so sick of this pain. It happens every time I run, and it's been for years and years and years. He's like, I'm just gonna try to rip it. He's like, because then they can sew it back together, and then it'll be stronger when it repairs and all of that. He's like, I'm going to actually try to tear my Achilles tendon. So the way he did that was loading super heavy kettlebells, right? Going up with two, down with one, up with two, down with one, and trying to do that and really trying to build as much tension in that tendon to get it to pop, right? Over time, what he found is that wow, my tendon got stronger and it actually got rid of his pain. So that's an actual protocol that we use. And it's it's about doing uh approximately 180 calf raises with eccentric lowering under heavy load every single day. Don't get me wrong, it's very excessive in my opinion, but it is a protocol that is taught in like rehab programs for runners. It's actually crazy because you are just improving that tendon strength, that muscle strength in order to absorb those forces better, but then also have that stiffness to be able to spring off the ground. So yeah, I think that's a really fun story to tell people.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

That's cool. Not to go into a rabbit hole, but I love that you mentioned up with two, down with one eccentrically, just because we can produce more force eccentrically than we can concentrically, right? So going up with two but coming down with one allows you to really focus on overloading that tendon to like optimal capacity. Yes, and opposed to relying on, you know, both at the same time. So I love that.

SPEAKER_02 18:53

And anyone at home can try it, right? Load up some heavy dumbbells or kettlebells and see how many full single legs that you can do one day, right? Just up and down with a single leg, versus how many times you go, of course, up with two and then lower down. You feel like you can lower down forever. You could do millions of reps because honestly, we are so strong in that eccentric portion of any lift. So the muscles just gas out a lot quicker when you're doing concentric single legs. So that's the reason for that two up, one down. But yeah, very, very important.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

Yeah. So to continue, so many sports require the development of multiple neuromuscular and skill characteristics: muscular strength, power, endurance, speed, agility, jumping, aerobic, and anaerobic endurance, right? So although strength raises the ceiling for the expression of force, we may not be able to dedicate all of our time to just one singular characteristic. This is sport and professional dependent. For example, tactical athletes need to train almost all neuromuscular and skill characteristics, right? I can't spend all of my time focusing on strength because I would be neglecting other characteristics that are arguably just as important to tactical performance. Sometimes it comes down to time availability and the demands of the sport or the job. But you must also consider strengths and weak weaknesses as well. If I have an athlete who is already strong and is meeting strength benchmarks for a sport, it would be a better use of my time to train characteristics they that they may not be, that they might be underperforming in or below a certain benchmark. So for me, again, just to bring it back to my world of tactical strength and conditioning, we don't have an off-season, right? And we have a list of skills that we have to maintain and improve throughout the entire year to optimally perform at our jobs. So although strength is a huge part of that, there are just other neuromuscular characteristics that you have to train, and that just takes time. So although strength is an important and it is the absolute foundation of performance, I can't spend all of my time doing it. Whereas if we look at a sport like powerlifting, it is strength. We look at the force velocity curve, it's like purely force, it's max force development, right? Like it doesn't really matter how fast you squat the bar, you just need to squat it, right? And so it really is just going to depend on the sport and the needs analysis of the sport, and honestly, the time availability you have to train those. You talk about athletes that have uh an off-season, pre-season, and post-season, you can spend a little bit more time building strength because you have the time for it, and then you're also peaking for a certain competition. Some professions and sports don't have the luxury of peaking for anything, they have to be prepared right now. Yep. So that's just kind of the difference there between profession and I guess an athlete. Yep. Right? Because we train both. We have people that were peaking for sports, we have the luxury. Of building super huge foundations of strength, but then there's other people. It's like we just need you to be strong enough for the sport, but there are other characteristics that are just as important. Like I would rather have you be a B student across the board in all characteristics than be an A student in strength, but then suck at everything else. Yeah. If that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 22:20

Yeah. Um, couple comments. Number one, I love how you said that about power lifting. The name powerlifting is really funny because it's not it's not based on speed. You're absolutely right. It doesn't matter how fast you bench the bar or how fast you pick up your deadlift or anything like that. It doesn't matter. It's how much you can actually move, even if it's really, really slow. And that's not power, that's just strength. So I think the name powerlifting is really funny because it's not like my power. It's not power, right? So I think that's super funny. But hey, I think it's a little late to change that at this point. And I don't think two guys talking in a room could change that. But um, so that was the first thing. Second thing is if your athlete's already hitting benchmarks, um, I'm really glad you mentioned that because that's something I actually spend a lot of time on. So in our CSCS book, right? You know, that huge table, dude, it has every age group and every sort of athlete in there of what benchmarks they should be hitting at certain times. And like, oh, okay, they're D1, this is what they should be like benching, this is what their vertical should be, right? And it's like, I've spent a lot of time looking at that chart because of the athletes that I've trained. There's some trainers that don't care. They're just like, yep, we just need to get you stronger, stronger, stronger, right? But you're right. If there is a time where they're in the offseason and we are building strength, building strength, and they're already above those benchmarks, it's like, okay, that's that's good. We can still work a little bit on strength, but let's work on now transitioning that to okay, some skill work, but mostly just power and agility and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

So absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, no, and that segues great into my last point here on how strong is strong enough, and that's the window of adaptation. And by that, what I mean is so excluding athletes competing in sports that revolve primarily around force production alone, like power lifters, there is a point of diminishing returns in relation to athletic performance. Once an athlete has reached a high level of strength, the opportunity cost of pursuing additional maximal force production may outweigh the transfer benefits, making it more advantageous to emphasize other characteristics such as rate of force development and velocity. So, like you said, there are our benchmarks, and I'm going to talk about a couple of them here in a little bit. But we also need to look at how are they performing outside of the weight room, not just in the weight room. Like we can chase after these PRs on a back squat within the gym, and that's awesome. But at what point are we seeing great improvements in acceleration and top speed performance from training that strength?

SPEAKER_01 25:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

And it's a weird game to play because we know as our training age gets higher, we're okay with like 1% increase in performance. Yeah, statistically that sounds bad, but 1% in performance on a 40-yard dash for somebody that's been training for 10, 15 years, like that's amazing. Right. So we have to understand, okay, how much is improving strength actually benefiting performance on the field? Yeah, that transfer, right? That transfer of it into skills. Understanding where maybe the right time to transition into more power type work or velocity-based training, right? And we're gonna get into that here in a second when we talk about force velocity curve, right?

SPEAKER_01 25:45

Um, which would be fun.

SPEAKER_00 25:47

So one of your favorite topics. Yeah, it's great. Um, so so the strength does play a role in power development and athletic performance. So, first, I just wanted to define power a little bit. I know you did previously, um, but power is the ability to express force quickly and is the product of force and velocity. Strength is expressed as maximal force, and the stronger the athlete, the higher the ceiling is for power development. But strength alone is not concerned about the speed of movement at all, right? Whereas power has everything to do with how quickly that force is expressed. So, again, so power is force times velocity. Yep. So strength alone represents a major component of the power equation. Increases in maximal force elevate the entire force velocity profile of an athlete, the entire thing. This allows for greater production of force at a variety of different velocities. But once sufficient levels of strength are achieved, further performance, further performance improvements may depend more heavily on rapid force expression and velocity-specific neuromuscular adaptations. And so, what this means is for your novice or beginner athletes, the majority of their time should be spent training strength due to the large effect it has on performance enhancement alone and increasing that ceiling for transfer of performance. The more advanced we become in expressing force, the more we need to focus on velocity-specific movement. You can't necessarily ignore other characteristics altogether, but the primary emphasis for most athletes should revolve around strength development until a sufficient level of strength is met, or strength improvements are no longer transferring to performance metrics. So 40R dash, you know, their acceleration speed, change of direction, whatever. So some good benchmarks to use for this, and I took this right out of the CSES National Strength and Conditioning book, is a back squat of two times your body weight, a bench press of 1.5 times body weight, and a power clean of 1.25 times body weight. If you're hitting those benchmarks in terms of strength, it is pretty appropriate to start transitioning into more power and velocity specific movements. So, great example is if you're running somebody on a linear periodized training program, where if we're looking at the offseason, we're going to do some hypertrophy work, then we're going to transition into some strength work. And the way it is taught is you go from strength and then you transition into power and then you start transferring into more sport-specific or sport velocity specific type movements. Well, if I'm training a novice or intermediate athlete, then I'm still building their strength and it is still increasing their force velocity curve. They are still performing and increasing their 40-yard dash and performance on the field. Why would I why would I transition them into power and velocity-based training when I'm still kind of milking that strength, like for all that I can get out of it?

SPEAKER_01 28:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:56

So that is where I think individualization of training comes into play, where you have to understand, okay, if this person's advanced, I do have to train strength. I have to maintain certain levels of strength, and then I can transform into power and velocity specific movements. But the lower the training age, why would you not just spend the majority of that time, even in the preseason or in season, developing that strength? Yeah. Right? Because again, that's going to raise the ceiling for performance on the field.

SPEAKER_02 29:27

I love it. So I love it. Um once again, just proving why I love strength. I use strength as a treatment for most of my PT patients, right? I'm a very movement forward, strength forward type of physical therapist. Um, there's other things in my field that I will, of course, do to help with that. But then on my training side with my CSES, dude, strength is everything. So shout out to my volleyball player that I've been treating for a while now. Treating, it's funny. Not treating, I guess training is the better term. She has been very, very consistent, and we mostly focus on strength. Some of the movements we do, don't get me wrong, we're focused on acceleration. We're like, hey, let's move this quick, right? It's a lighter weight, we're moving it quick. We got heavier weight, we're moving that quick, and she's progressed really well. But now I've told you that she's looking springy. You know what I mean? Like everything is a lot more tight and stiff, if that makes sense, in the way that she rebounds off the ground when we're doing pogos or change of direction, because volleyball players still have to change direction on the court constantly. So, anyway, that's my little tidbit that I wanted to throw in is we are still, I like the term you used, milking the strength part of that, right? Like, I'm not just gonna throw that to the side because I'm like, oh, yep, let's just do power forever now because now this is the section we're in, the the part of the block that we're in. It's like, no, I'm still seeing benefits on the coaching side, and she's still seeing benefits on the field side, right? Or court side, where it's like, why would we take that away? We still have we still have, I guess, a few more steps to go inside the strength block alone.

SPEAKER_00 31:11

So yeah, it's great. If strength didn't improve performance, strengthing edition coaches at the collegiate and and professional level wouldn't exist. If you're a volleyball player and you just jumped and did volleyball drills and that's all you needed to do to improve performance, then we wouldn't have strength coaches. Yeah, you can't just do agility drills and sprint drills. Like you can and you're going to improve, but your ceiling is so much lower than it would be if you added strength training to that. Yeah. There's a reason that we train these different neuromuscular characteristics because they all play off of each other. They all work together as one. Can't necessarily neglect one or the other.

SPEAKER_02 31:51

Yep. I love how you said that, dude. Like uh you wouldn't have a job, right? You wouldn't, because guess what? Every athlete would be getting better just during practice, then, right? And of course, skill-wise, they are. They're their running routes better, their their footwork is better, whatever, right? But take, for example, that volleyball player, how much she's jumping during practice or a game. If that's all you needed to do to improve performance and make her jump higher, react quicker, things like that, then yeah, we we wouldn't be here talking about it, right? We really wouldn't because they would just be out on the court jumping all day long. But you can't do that. So I love it.

SPEAKER_00 32:31

So sprinting, right? For example, is the most sports-specific rate of force development method that you can train within the gym for field sport athletes. But it is extremely important to note that so speed improvements are greater when combined with strength training in comparison to sprint training alone. And that is um, I have the um citation for that because that came from research, right? So I'll say it again that speed improvements are greater when combined with strength training in comparison to sprint training alone. So you take two different groups, you have one group just sprint train, and then you have a different group sprint train and do resistance training in the same training program. The one that added resistance training got better. They had a higher ceiling for adaptation. So I just kind of worried about that.

SPEAKER_02 33:19

Yeah. And dude, what's funny is like I'm not necessarily a power athlete, or um, my job, of course, doesn't require me to be powerful or quick or anything like that. But the people I train and the people I treat, they do, right? But strength is such an important side of it for me and my background and now like running the gym and everything. Strength has always just been my thing. I've always been strong and I've always loved it. But I love all of the research now that comes out and it's just saying, Oh, yeah, if if you just do some strength training, it it fixes so many problems, not only in the PT world, but like athlete world too, right? And it just it takes performance to another level that I don't think people realize because they think of strength training as just like, well, yeah, I'm lifting weights, right? I'm lifting weights, I'm doing some resistance training, I'm going to golds and using the pec deck, right? It's like, no. Like, so I like the the benchmarks earlier. I didn't mention this that you you brought up. So bench press, also, I don't know if you saw the metrics or not. Are they updated? No, no, no. Those are those are still the metrics, but I was hoping that, and I don't know if it's in the book, but overhead press. I wish that was involved in that, in that as well. So I'm not sure if there's a benchmark for that. But bench press, squat, and then power clean, which is amazing because not a lot of people do that or train that, but they should, especially athletes. So that's great.

SPEAKER_00 34:50

Yep. Oh, we'll get into that here shortly. So trust me. Yeah. So the the next point that I had is so rate of force development. I said it a couple times and I want to define it for people so they understand it a little bit in more depth. So rate of force development refers to the speed at which forces are expressed and is considered to be more relevant than peak strength for rapid athletic movements, such as sprinting, jumping, and throwing. This is because these movements occur too quickly for athletes to express maximal force, making rate of force development critical to performance. So maximal force production takes about 300 to 600 milliseconds. Okay. But the majority of actions in sport occur between 50 and 250 milliseconds. So athletes don't typically have enough time to express maximal force. Right. That doesn't mean that for or that doesn't mean that you shouldn't train strength because you need rate of force development, right? Because strength improves that ceiling. But when we're talking about strength and its effect on rate of force development, we just need to understand that rate of force development is important for sport, not just strength alone. Yeah. We love strength. Strength is the foundation, but we also need to be able to express that force quickly.

SPEAKER_02 36:12

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 36:12

Right?

SPEAKER_02 36:13

Yes. And before you move on to that, so would you agree then? Because this is this is your wheelhouse. Like this is your topic, and and you know more about this than I do. So I'm gonna ask, that's why those transition phases are important, right? Absolutely. Building strength initially, if you can, of course, but then you transition to quicker movements where you're not producing max strength anymore. Yep, you're now working on speed and like how quick you can develop that and react and all of that stuff.

SPEAKER_00 36:39

Absolutely. Okay. And strength alone does have the ability to improve your rate of force development, but there's a ceiling for that. Yes, right? And that's when you transition transition into more velocity and power specific movements. It's not saying that you can't get improvements in rate of force development by just training strength, but there is a ceiling for that. And that's where we try to make that transition. Yep. Cool. Which again, this goes perfectly into my next point. And this is talking about the force velocity curve. Your favorite thing of like it. So it's just fun to learn about. So for those of you that don't know force what the force velocity curve is, I'm gonna try my best to keep it as simple as I can, right? So there is an inverse relationship between force and velocity, which means as force demands increase, movement velocity decreases. As velocity demands increase, the force demands decrease. This means muscles cannot produce maximal force and max velocity at the same time. They're inverse. On one end of the force velocity curve, you have maximal force production at low velocity. On the other end of the curve, you have maximal velocity at low force. So heavy intensity loads allow for maximal force production, moderate intensity loads allow for maximal power production, and low intensity loads allow for maximal velocity production. The force velocity curve demonstrates that the variety of all athletic movements happen somewhere along the curve, and depending on the needs of the sport or profession, the athlete may need to train at a variety or specific points along this curve in order to improve athletic performance or reach a specific training goal. So neuromuscular adaptations are highly specific to the force and velocity demands of the movement. So the adaptations are gonna meet the demands of the velocity of which you're moving the bar. This means that heavy slow training is going to improve high force capabilities, and explosive training primarily improves rapid force expression and movement velocity. The adaptations are going to be different. They are very velocity specific. So the primary categories along this force velocity curve are maximal strength, which is gonna be your heavy compound lifts, strength speed, which is heavy Olympic lifting and their derivatives. Peak power is you can achieve through loaded squat jumps, moderate loaded Olympic lifting, and ballistic strength training, speed strength, which is gonna be more like medicine ball work, plymetrics, light Olympic weightlifting and their derivatives, and then max velocity, where you're gonna be talking about sprinting, reactive plymetrics, change of direction, and high speed sport movement. So it's important to understand how so how do we train rate of force development effectively for athletes? So we do it by training the entire force velocity curve, right? So it starts with having a strong foundation of maximal strength. So you have to have the potential to express greater forces within a given time frame. The stronger you are, the more force you can put into the ground within a shorter period of time. And because we know the ground contact time of most athletic movements are too quick to express maximal force, we must train the system to contract high threshold motor units very quickly. And this can be done by using what's called, it's called explosive intent during heavy lifts. So this doesn't mean the weight has to move objectively fast, but your intent to move the weight must be max effort and explosive. So when we talk about like training strength movements to improve rate of force development, what this explosive intent means is that when I'm doing this repetition, I might be moving it so slow, but every intent within myself, within my neuromuscular system, is to move this thing as fast as humanly possible. It might not look like it's moving fast at all, but your intent has to be maximal effort. And that is how you improve rate of force development through heavy strength training. This isn't doing stuff where we're like a couple reps in reserve, where we're kind of just a slow, slow, concentric contraction where it's kind of controlled pace. Like that's not going to improve rate of force development. That might improve muscular hypertrophy. You might get some strength benefits, but when we're trying to activate those high threshold motor units, we have to train freaking heavy and the intent to move that thing has to be strong AF, dude. Like has to be as hard as you freaking can. Yes. Right.

SPEAKER_02 41:20

I love I love that you were specific in saying it might not look like it's moving fast, but the intent behind it is pure explosiveness. Right. Yeah, you are trying to move it as quick as possible. So uh shout out my cousin Chance, who is talking shit on my video about working my my speed and power, right? So I'll like squatting 365, right? I was doing sets of three, but my intent was moving that bar as quick as possible down, right? Nice and controlled, but I was trying to explode up as quick as I possibly could, but the bar not moving that crazy quick, right? Yeah. Because it's not like I would just want to squat with like what 25s on each side or something. Because I could move that no problem and explode out of it, but that's not really doing anything. That's just training like close to like what it was, what's the one right before max velocity? You said it was speed strength or something like that. Yep. Yeah, see, that's not even enough load to really target that. You know what I mean? So there's there's a there's a point, and I think, of course, every athlete's gonna be different, and that's why individual individualization is important. But athletes, if you're listening, it's also about your intent. It is about your intent with every single lift that you're doing. Because me as a coach, I can tell you, yes, you need to put max effort into this lift right now. You need to pick this up as quick as you can. But then the actual development comes from you saying or or recruiting everything necessary to explode up out of that deadlift, like trap bar deadlift off of a deficit or anything like that.

SPEAKER_00 42:53

Yeah, it's it's neural, right? And so the reason I said you have to train heavy here is because typically when we're training with heavy loads, compound lifts, and we're training more of that force side of the force velocity curve, in order to do that with maximal intent quickly, it has to be pretty heavy unless you're using some accommodator resistance like a band. Like it has to be heavy. And we're gonna get into that a little bit with different exercises along that force velocity curve. But the biggest takeaway here is even if you're in a strength phase and you're an athlete and the intent is to improve your rate of force development through improving muscular strength, it has to be done with explosive intent, always always has to be intentional. Um, yeah, that's the end of that. So I love it. I love it. Quick side note. Yeah, well, and it's funny you said your uh your homie was giving you shit, but like that was specific to your sport. So to improve performance and powerlifting, you still have to have great rate of force development. And we talked about ground contact times for athletes. You don't have to worry about ground contact times as a power lifter. It's just move the weight. Exactly. But that doesn't mean that rate of force development doesn't play an effect in performance because it does.

SPEAKER_01 44:08

It does.

SPEAKER_00 44:09

Because rate of force development is just how quickly can I activate those fast switch muscle fibers to get going. And you need that quick as a powerlifter, right?

SPEAKER_02 44:16

Yes. And and you got to think um, everyone thinks change of direction um like on the field, right? Change of direction. How quick can you cut? How quick can you stop? Right. And that's typically what most people are talking about. But like in my sport, change of direction is how quick you can get from the bottom of a squat to the top. Yeah. Right. Like you are changing direction. I understand that it's not the athletic type, but in my sport, in my competition, it's like I need to fire quick, right? I need to get out of the hole because that is the least advantageous spot in the entire lift.

SPEAKER_00 44:48

So prioritization phase.

SPEAKER_02 44:50

Exactly. So it's like, how quick can you lower down controlled? Of course, you don't want to just bounce into the bottom of a squat. But from being in the bottom of the squat, aka the hole, being in the hole of the squat and coming out of that, yeah, rate of force development is crucial. There's a there's a power lifter. This is my little side note. I forget his name. I'll try to remember for next time if my brain isn't fried. But um a power lifter set multiple world records, and he did like a full this was gosh, probably 10, 15 years ago. And somebody brought a camera in and was just recording his entire squat session. He was he was repping like 900 pounds, right? And he was raw. So he just had sleeves, belt, like that's it. And in between his sets, you know, taking breaks and stuff, the camera guy is like, what are you thinking? Like in these heavy movements. He's like, I'm thinking about moving that bar as quick as I possibly can. He's like, I'm not thinking about like, oh, slow, concentric, oh, so like coming up out of the hole. He's like, no, I'm trying to move this weight as quick as I possibly can. And he kept it that way from his very first warm-up set. So with the bar to 135 to 220, everything up to like 900 pounds. He was moving as quick as he possibly could. So I thought that was a really cool side note because yeah, it's not like we're very athletic in terms of power lifters, right? But we are trying to get as explosive as possible.

SPEAKER_00 46:15

It's a skill, and turning that amortization phase has almost everything to do with rate of force development, right?

SPEAKER_02 46:21

Yep. I'm glad you can say that word because I can't. It's yeah. Atomorization phase, dude. I can't say that. There's been some words I've butchered on here too. So my gosh. I cannot say that when I'm explaining plyos to people in in the clinic. I'm like, yeah, we're trying to get rid of that middle phase, is what I say. The transition phase. I can't say that atomization phase. Amortization. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 46:42

Amortization. That's hilarious. But anyway. So yeah, so getting back to how do we train rate of force development effectively for athletes or for just anybody that's trying to improve their rate of force development, right? We just talked about like primarily the most important thing is to improve muscular strength through explosive intent, heavy compound movements. The next thing I have here is using ballistic strength training. So this allows you to accelerate a movement through its entire range of motion with minimal deceleration and high velocity. So, what this means and what ballistic strength training is, and so for those of you that don't know, there's a lot of co-contraction happening when we're training at like sub-maximal loading. So imagine you're on a bench press and you're you're only training like 70, 80% water at max, you're having to slow that bar down the last probably half quarter, you know, or the last quarter of the movement to slow it down enough so the bar isn't flat of your hands. So you're not training that rate of force development through the entire range of motion. So a ballistic strength training is is you're contracting a muscle through that entire range of motion, and you can do this right through exercises like a barbell jump squat where you're putting a bar on your back and you're just jumping up in the air. Medicine ball throws, like medicine balls are a great use or great tool for ballistic strength training, trap bar jumps, or even using some kind of accommodated resistance with bands during conventional exercises like a deadlift that allow you to accelerate through that entire range of motion, right? You're adding a band to a trap bar deadlift or to a bench press. I can now contract that full range of motion without having to worry about that bar flying out of my hands, right? The next tool here that I have for improving RFD is plyometrics to improve tendon stiffness, reactive strength, and decrease the amortization phase of movement, like we just talked about. Plyometrics are amazing at training short ground contact times. So we're talking about poggle hops, bounds, hurdle hops, damp jumps, you name it, plyometrics are great for this upper and lower plymetrics, right? And to bring it back to our earlier conversation about tendon stiffness and improving tendon stiffness allows you to express that elastic energy a lot quicker.

unknown 48:59

Right.

SPEAKER_00 49:00

Hopefully, on another episode, we can get into um, you know, ply metrics as a whole and talk about the stretch shortening cycle and make plyometrics make a little bit more sense to people. But uh and the next one that I have for you guys is is sprinting. Um, and again, it's the most sports-specific rate of force development exercise that you can do for most athletes. Acceleration. So when you're training acceleration, right, which is the beginning part of a sprint, you're you're training horizontal force application and longer ground contact times. And then when you're training velocity type sprinting, like top end speed, you're doing a lot more vertical force application and shorter ground contact times. Um, a lot of people, though, are they're only focusing on speed and agility, right? So, yes, this is extremely important. Yes, it's very sport specific, but to optimize them for performance, they must be in addition to a good strength program. That's why I'm putting this towards the bottom of the list. I'm not saying this sprinting isn't important, it is very important for sport. But again, strength is the foundation.

SPEAKER_02 50:03

Strength is the foundation, and if you want to be, I don't know. You can disagree here, right? But here you go, ready? Uh the stronger you are, um, and of course you you've talked about the science about like force velocity and everything like that, tend and stiffness, I get that. But to put it in the most simple terms possible, because I tell people this and then they're shocked. Um if you get stronger, you will get faster. Absolutely. People want to work, oh, I need to just run more. I just need to run more. I need to, I need to work on quick feet, quick feet, quick feet. I'm like, dude, just go squat. Like, go lift some heavy weight, like do some explosive movements, right? And of course, like I I dive into it a little bit with him, but I just say, truly, if you get stronger, you're gonna be a faster sprinter, you're gonna be quicker, you're gonna be able to produce more force. I've said it so many times, but like that's how simple it can really be, at least in my mind. I know for you, you're thinking of all these curves, the inverse relationship and all that. But if someone's just talking to me and an athlete, let's say, walks in the door right now and there's they say, Hey, how can I get faster? I'm not gonna make them do some foot drills and some hurdle stuff or whatever that I'm gonna be like, how often are you strength training? Yeah. That's the that's the foundation for me at least. And that's what the I guess the research shows. That's what our book shows. That's so I don't know if there's anything you want to add on to that, but that's my favorite thing to tell people.

SPEAKER_00 51:30

One thing I will add on is not one time in my graduate class or any of my classes, or in the CSCS textbook or any research that I've seen does it talk about quick feet drills? Just so y'all know. Yeah. So you can do all the quick feet agility ladders, whatever, cool dance moves, whatever you're doing. But show me the application to sport when you're doing that. Maybe soccer, but why not just go dribble a soccer instead of doing these ridiculous like ladder drills? I think the ladder drill can be an effective tool, like maybe in the offseason to just change up your training. But like you have these wide receivers and DBs and like skill positions in different field sports doing these like quick feet ladder drills. It's like Mofo, just go get under a squat, improve force development. You're gonna be way faster that way. Again, you need quick feet for your route running and but they're getting that in practice. But you're getting that in practice. Yeah, and we talked about this just before we started the podcast of like if how do you train a three-sport athlete? How do you train a high school three-sport athlete? Well, you develop strength because all the speed and agility, or all the speed, agility, skill-specific work that they're doing, they're already getting in practice year around. Yep. Basketball, football, baseball, soccer, track and field, wrestling, whatever, they're touching on these in practice every single day. So, what the hell am I doing as a strength and conditioning coach if I'm having them do more of that work in the gym when I could just improve their ability to express force by just getting them stronger? Yes.

SPEAKER_02 53:03

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 53:04

Like, holy cow. I love it.

SPEAKER_02 53:05

I love it. And both of us are so passionate about this, it's actually insane because it drives us nuts. Um man, skill work is important. I ranted about this. I was gonna make a post on the on the physio shop Instagram about it, because I I just sat down in front of a camera and I was like, I am so sick of seeing um coaches and trainers and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever, just doing these random skills all the time. And it just, I'm like, oh my gosh, yeah, it looks fancy for Instagram. It looks great, right? It it brings people in the door. But I'm like, if these athletes really want to get faster, if they really want to build neuromuscular control, if they want to improve force output, they want to get faster and stronger and more resilient, they need to strength train. Truly, period point blank. Like we could leave it at that. Absolutely. I mean, yeah, just yeah, and do it well with maximal intent and maximal intent, right? And and make sure it's periodized and and that you know what you're doing, not just getting under an insane load all of a sudden and just thinking you can squat that for whatever. It's it's about building that capacity.

SPEAKER_00 54:11

Yeah. So and one of my last points here is we need to understand that not all movement in sport is speed and agility. You have to think about all of the skills, techniques, movement patterns that are associated with sport. Strength improves all of those, right? You won't get improvements in but in like transverse plane movement or shedding a block or doing whatever skill you have to do in sport by just doing speed and agility work. Like, I think of football players, right? And I think of all the speed and agility camps and whatever else. But I'm like, who's who's getting you stronger so you can like actually get into open space so you can utilize those skills? Nobody. So like you can train all these pretty fancy speed and agility drills all you want, but if you're not training foundational movement patterns and strength in all planes of movement, you're screwed, man. You're not even gonna be able to have the opportunity to express these quick feet skills that you've learned because you're not even strong enough to get to that point. Right. Right. So I think of offensive linemen or linebackers or even like wide receivers getting off the line of scrimmage or DBs, you know, keeping them from getting off line of scrimmage. Like there's strength, there's pushing, there's pulling, there's transverse plane like movements. You're not getting any of that when you're just on the field doing ladder drills. Yep. So strength isn't just like we talk about sprinting and agility law, and yeah, like there's a lot of sprinting and and sport, but all athletic movements are in multiple planes of motion, really awkward, you know, positions. You got to train strength in all of those positions. Yeah, right. So I love it. Yeah. And uh just my last thing here I have in terms of improving rate of force development, and we've talked about it a lot, so I won't go super into depth, but it's Olympic lifting and their derivatives, right? So the reason I love these exercises is because the literature supports them as some of the highest measures of power output in resistance training literature. So one of the most effective ways at improving rate of force development and athletic performance is what's called mixed methods training. And that's where you're training different points in the force velocity curve with it within either one training session or within the entire training week. So I'm doing some high velocity stuff, I'm doing some power stuff, and I'm doing some high force stuff. Whether it's in the same training session or same training week, I'm now training this entire force velocity curve to be more well-rounded and improving rate of force development because there's so many different parts involved in this. When you're doing Olympic lifts, they allow you to train that entire force velocity curve just by in like changing, for example, like if I'm trying to do like a heavy velocity movement, I'm just gonna do like a high hang power clean, like high hang just from the hip, right? If I'm gonna do more power, I'm just gonna do like a power clean from the blocks. Yeah, if I'm training high force, I might just do a heavy deadlift, like and a pull, like a heavy, like clean pull.

SPEAKER_01 57:05

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 57:05

Right. So just to bring it back, it's like Olympic lifts allow you to surf that entire force velocity curve with one exercise. Just talking about the versatility of learning these movements. I know it takes some time, but in terms of training that force velocity curve, you could just do Olympic lifts, and I they're just amazing, right?

SPEAKER_02 57:25

So, dude, I'm with you. I mean, some of the most athletic people that you will ever meet are people that do Olympic weightlifting. Yeah, honestly. I know it's crazy because that's not my realm, even a little bit. Like I'm I'm pretty bad, right? Like my clean was really good. I'm still really strong. I train it sometimes, right? But that's not my focus. Yeah. But some of the most athletic people, man, they are just full power clean, split jerk, snatch, like all of those kinds of Olympic lifts, right? Which are, I guess, the main derivatives. But um on top of that, I wanted to mention do you know the name Clarence Kennedy? Do you know him? Okay, I'll have to send you him. Um insanely strong dude, but he only does Olympic lifts. But he randomly entered into a powerlifting competition and won all of it because he's so powerful and strong. But dude, like he he's power cleaning. Um, I think he got up to like 500 something, and I'm just like, and and he's lighter than me. He's just an absolute unit. So I have to send anyone else, look him up. His name's Clarence Kennedy, he's an awesome dude. Um, somewhere in like Sweden or something like that. But yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:33

Um, but yeah, I mean, they produce high high power outputs and it trains triple extension, which is extremely important. It teaches neuromuscular coordination. Um, and you can train it a variety of loads and velocities, right? So, which you can't do with a lot of different training methods. Like we talked about, for instance, like if I'm training like strength speed, so let's say I'm doing power cleans and like 80% one RM max. If I'm doing 80% one RM back squat, we talked about the co-contraction of having to slow that concentric movement down at the top end of the lift. You have to do that unless you're using some kind of accommodated resistance. Right. So if I want to train that part of the far that part of the force velocity curve, I'm almost better training an Olympic lift that allows me to accelerate through a full triple extension and opposed to like an 80% back squat where I'm not actually getting to accelerate to triple extension here. Yep. And I'm not saying back squat's not an effective tool for improving strength. It is absolutely with explosive intent. Right.

SPEAKER_02 59:33

But it's it's more of just the pure strength, it's not like the speed strength, right? Because you're not getting the triple extension.

SPEAKER_00 59:38

And that's where we have these different tools like ballistic strength training, plymetrics, speed and agility work, Olympic weightlifting, things like that. Yep. But just to bring it back to the beginning, like it all starts with being strong. It all starts with having a good foundation of strength. All of the tools that I just listed, past building strength, are almost useless if you don't have a good foundation first. Love it.

SPEAKER_02 59:58

So, dude, this episode so far has been one of my favorites for sure. That's great. I love it. Um, yeah. And and everyone, we think of these topics on a week-to-week basis. We basically text each other and say, What's the topic this week? And then we start diving into it, make our own notes and and kind of where we want the direction to go. But um, you can tell that we were very passionate about this topic, right? Because we've been athletes ourselves. We've done the skill works, we've done the speed camps, we've spent money on all of that stuff. But it's just like, wow, if I would have known kind of like our previous episode, I wish I would have known then what I know now.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:35

Just get strong, just work strength and then dive into some of the stuff that Trevin talked about, look up the force velocity curve, rate of force development, all of that stuff, because that will only help you in the long run if you truly care about being athletic and you're trying to go places, right? Like if you want to go play college ball or whatever, go play college volleyball, soccer, or anything like that. It's like this will only help you as an athlete.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:57

Absolutely. Yeah, for young athletes listening to this, if you just, like Tyler said, just focused on strength, you can supplement some ply metrics and sprint drills like you should, because it's part of sport. But I promise you, if you just focus on strength, all of those things are probably going to improve, anyways. And just let like your skill work at practice kind of drive those adaptations and speed and agility, anyways. Like you only have so much time and so much free time outside of your sport, especially if you're a three-sport athlete to do additional training. Don't waste any time, just really focus on getting strong in all the foundational movement patterns, right? Learn how to squat, learn how to hinge, learn how to push, pull, do some stuff in like a rotational movement pattern, transverse plane of movement. Just get strong in those foundational movement patterns, and it's gonna go so much further than wasting additional training time doing speed and agility drills for days. For days, there's room, there's room for that, absolutely. If you're in the offseason and you're not playing a sport, whatever. But from what I understand, like kids these days are just doing stuff all the time. It's seven-on-seven football, it's like soccer year-round, it's baseball year-round, it's yeah, whatever, it's basketball, travel basketball, whatever. You guys are doing this training already in sport. You have to remember that.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:14

And you can't sorry, you can't mimic that in the gym either. With how quick the sport movements are, you cannot mimic that in the gym. So why not focus on something that is actually going to transfer to your sport?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:25

So I just wanted to add that. Yeah, and that's why where when we talk about periodization, the closer an athlete gets to like in season, the less a strength and conditioning coach has to do with this athlete. It's kind of like a hands-off approach. It's like, hey, my goal here is to maintain your level of strength. Because you gotta keep the main thing, the main thing, which is getting good at your sport. So why would I be wasting any additional time, especially training young athletes, not just getting them stronger, especially if I have them in a million freaking sports, which most parents do nowadays, right? Yeah. So which I love.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:01

It makes kids athletic, it makes them resilient. But yeah, it's sometimes you gotta you gotta realize all the skill work is coming from the field and from the practice. And and sometimes, yes, I understand, like um, we talked about it, wrestling might not transfer to like football or whatever, right? I get that. But depending on what season is coming up, that's what you can start to prep for with the skill work, with the little bit of skill work that you actually need. But it's like, let's build the foundation first.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:30

And you know, like, and I think too, of just the difference between high school and college. High school, you're you haven't chosen a specific craft. You're playing multiple sports that are allowing you to express athleticism in multiple different things. That is why it's okay to just focus on strength outside of that. When you start to specialize and you get into college and you're playing one sport, you do have an off-season, a preseason, a postseason, all of these different things. You're not getting the opportunity to express that level of athleticism in different ways. That's when you need to start doing speed and agility work with your strength coach, like velocity-based training, Olympic weightlifting, things like that, where you're actually training the entire force velocity curve. And we're also dealing with athletes that are closer to their genetic potential. Not there, but they're closer than they were when they were in high school, right? And so there's just a huge difference there. So my advice just would be for young athletes, high school athletes, is when you're in the weight room, just focus on getting strong. Just lift heavy with strong intent, be careful about it and be safe. And then just go have fun playing your sport and get good at your sport at practice because I know you guys are spending a lot of time doing that anyways.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:36

Yep. So I love it, dude. Um, I think that's it for me. Yeah, that's it. I think that's a perfect place to end it. So um, thank you all for listening and hopefully you guys learned something because this is a very passionate topic for for both Trevan and I. So um, we will see you guys next Monday. Hit us up with any questions. We appreciate you, everyone who's listening. So have a great rest of your day. Great rest of your Monday. Yeah, Jesus. See ya.