Just Fly Performance Podcast

• 462: Matt Aldred on Advancing Athlete-Centered Training Concepts

  Today's podcast features Matt Aldred. Matt is the head strength and conditioning coach for basketball at the University of Michigan. He has international expertise and a diverse background in sports he has worked with through his previous stops in NCAA strength and conditioning. In addition to his strength and conditioning experience, he is certified in fascial abrasion technique and Frederick stretch therapy, in addition to a sports massage background. Matt has also co-authored the Fascial Mechanics for Sport course alongside Danny Foley. In building a performance program, it must ultimately be centered around the needs of the athlete. Athletes need to be as ready as possible on game day. Some athletes need more mass and physical strength. Others need more conditioning and body composition management. Others need more fluid and adaptive movement capabilities. Many athletes enjoy and benefit from providing their input into the program. These facets of performance make athletic development more dynamic than just “get them strong and I did my job”. On today’s podcast, Matt talks about many aspects of building an athlete-centered program, highlighting training the spectrum of muscular strength and tissue quality, over to dynamic, high-velocity training with a priority on athletic qualities. He also speaks on training variability (such as “every rep different”), multi-planar training, basketball game demands, athlete autonomy, wearable resistance training, and much more. This show puts many pieces into place of a comprehensive approach to athletic development, encompassing so many facets of improvement in the field. Today’s episode is brought to you by TeamBuildr’s GymStudio. For a Gym Studio 14-day free trial, head to gymstudio.com Use the code “justfly25” for 25% off any Lila Exogen wearable resistance training, including the popular Exogen Calf Sleeves. For this offer, head to: Lilateam.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. (https://www.just-fly-sports.com/podcast-home/) Main Points 3:41- Functional Training for Athletic Performance Enhancement 7:34- Peak Performance Training for Athletes 12:49- Position-Based Athletic Programming for Optimal Performance 18:14- Enhancing Athletic Performance Through Varied Training 22:39- Position-Specific Basketball Training Programs 25:04- Game-Specific Training for Peak Performance 27:25- Dynamic Training Approaches for Athletic Performance 37:11- Strategic Micro-Dosing for Athlete Performance Optimization 46:00- Sticking to Basic Exercises for Effective Training 47:46- Enhancing Athletes' Adaptability Through Varied Workouts 49:33- Tailored Training Zones for Athletes in Weight Room 51:13- Optimizing Player Performance Through Varied Training 55:28- Amorpho Gear Enhancing Basketball Performance Sessions 1:08:25- Functional Movement Training with Light Weights 1:14:54- Functional Movement Training for Athletic Performance Quotes (00:07:34) "The game is so intense and it's so movement-based. We have to replicate that in the weight room. We can't just be weight and warriors because we've all had that athlete that's super strong and looks amazing. And I'm looking at the opposition team in a warm up going, who is that!? And then they don't play." - Matt Aldred (00:13:50) "The longer I've done this, the more I really lean into an athlete's intuition." - Matt Aldred (00:20:40) "There are certain exercises like a chin-up we're probably going to want to go full range of motion. I want you to hold at the top with Tempo down. But if we're doing a horizontal row, man, I can be elbow wide. I can be really quick reps. I can hold at the top. I can do a split stance with an anchor on a Kaiser pull-down. We can make that horizontal roll whatever we want to do." - Matt Aldred (00:24:29) "I don't think that we put the athlete in the box like no man, like whatever you are, I'll program towards that." - Matt Aldred

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• 461: Bob Thurnhoffer on Formative Sprint, Strength, and Plyometric Concepts

  Today's podcast features Bob Thurnhoffer, Assistant Track & Field Coach at the University of Louisville. Bob brings nearly two decades of NCAA Division I coaching experience, with past stops at New Mexico, Loyola Chicago, and UIC. His athletes have earned multiple All-American honors, NCAA qualifications, and school records. Bob is also known for his deep knowledge in training for jumps and is a respected voice in the track and field coaching community. On today’s episode, Bob speaks on the formative experience of his past work training speed and power at an NCAA DI school in the confines of a hallway. He also goes into plyometric training concepts, and acceleration development, as well as some of his key complex training methods in the weightroom. Bob also digs into the importance of general strength in his program, along with the nuts and bolts of his weekly training setups for sprint and jump athletes in this fantastic resource on speed and power development. Today’s episode is brought to you by TeamBuildr’s Gym Studio and the Just Fly Sports Online Courses. To learn more about the Sprint Acceleration Essentials, Elastic Essentials, or Speed ID courses, go to justflysports.thinkific.com Use the code “justfly25” for 25% off any Lila Exogen wearable resistance training, including the popular Exogen Calf Sleeves. For this offer, head to Lilateam.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. (https://www.just-fly-sports.com/podcast-home/) Timestamps 6:02- Bob’s Early Experiences as an Athlete and His Early Mentors 18:55- Innovative Training Solutions for Limited Spaces 29:38- Enhancing Athletic Performance Through General Strength Training 34:55- Individualized Workouts for Optimal Athletic Development 39:14- Foundational Elements in Athletic Performance Training 41:41- Peak Velocity Training for Jumpers 56:44- Intensive Cycle Variation for Optimal Performance 58:51- Force Plate Metrics for Athlete Performance Tracking 1:05:43- Mentorship Impact on Athlete Training Mindset Quotes (17:21) "I do think it's like limitations breed creativity more than freedom of possibilities. Unlimited situations don't create creativity as much as limitations do." - Bob Thurnhoffer (18:05) “(Training in a Hallway) I can do acceleration, I could do plyometrics. I can get very strong in the weight room. And try to learn how to be truly great at these things that I can do. Because I knew that the things I could do I had to be better than everyone else at” - Bob Thurnhoffer (29:38) “I still work general training a very, very large degree. Probably more than most coaches even. Yeah, I remember Brooke, the pole vault coach at Louisville. She said to me at the start of the year how she really liked how much general strength I do. She's like, yeah, I don't know. Coaches never do that anymore” - Bob Thurnhoffer (41:00) “Interestingly enough, I actually, at New Mexico I almost entirely went to Monday, Tuesday neural, Wednesday, Thursday general, Friday neural. The whole two years I was there for everyone. And it worked great” - Bob Thurnhoffer (47:30) “I almost always finish a neural lift with med ball throws; to restore proprioception after heavy lifting” - Bob Thurnhoffer (49:13) "I think like long jump you gotta, it's all about displacement, smoothness, being a passenger, letting the natural inherent reactivity that you've developed in training and it's inherent in the human body do the jumping for you." - Bob Thurnhoffer (1:02:01) "It's the quick ground contact time with the vertical displacement. That's what I'm looking for." - Bob Thurnhoffer About Bob Thurnhoffer ​Bob Thurnhoffer is an accomplished track and field coach specializing in jumps, currently serving as the Assistant Coach for Jumps at the University of Louisville. He joined the Cardinals' coaching staff on July 31, 2023, bringing with him over 18 years of Division I coaching experience across multiple institu...

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• 460: Austin Einhorn on First Principles for Building Unbreakable Athletes

  Today's podcast features Austin Einhorn. Austin is a movement specialist recognized for his pioneering work in athlete development and injury prevention. As the founder of APIros Performance, Austin's coaching philosophy emphasizes biomechanics, human function + evolution, and adaptability to build resilient athletes who can withstand the demands of high performance. He has worked with athletes across major sports leagues, including the NFL, MLB, NBA, and Olympic programs, and is continually pushing the boundaries of athletic performance and injury prevention systems for athletes. There are a wide variety of systems and available philosophies on athletic performance and injury prevention. With so much information available, assembling a human-centered viewpoint of how we innately move and adapt is a critical step in forming a better lens of coaching and training. On today’s episode, Austin discusses his first principles when it comes to athlete assessment and training intervention. He digs into aspects of athletic hip extension, pushup and overhead patterning, and foot motions, along with the variability concepts in training and performance. This was a thought-provoking podcast with one of the brightest minds in the industry and is a must-listen for anyone looking to build more robust, adaptive athletes for any discipline. Today’s episode is brought to you by TeamBuildr’s GymStudio. For a Gym Studio 14-day free trial, head to gymstudio.com Use the code “justfly25” for 25% off any Lila Exogen wearable resistance training, including the popular Exogen Calf Sleeves. For this offer, head to: Lilateam.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. (https://www.just-fly-sports.com/podcast-home/) Timestamps 2:15- Influential Mentors in Problem-Solving Training 6:53- Optimizing Hip Extension for Athlete Performance 8:28- Optimizing Athletic Performance Through Anatomy Assessment 30:30- Muscle-Centric Approach to Musculoskeletal Health 35:10- Performance Optimization through Diverse Movement Strategies 45:56- Enhancing Tendon Resilience with Varied Loading 48:57- Enhancing Performance Through Varied Training Approaches 53:10- Enhancing Athletic Performance with Innovative Tools 57:25- Optimal Shoulder Blade Tilt for Push-Ups 1:01:15- Optimal Shoulder Blade Movement in Bench Press 1:03:25- Optimal Shoulder Blade Positioning in Movements 1:08:31- Enhancing Shoulder Strength for Overhead Athletes 1:10:00- Enhancing Shoulder Strength for Overhead Athletes Quotes (4:53) "A lot of the students that I teach, where they start with just imitating and imitation is such a great way to learn." - Austin Einhorn (11:19) "It's amazing what your brain can do to accomplish a task, but it'll use structurally different elements to do so." - Austin Einhorn (17:00) "One area that is neglected is the transverse interior arch, basically the arch that's underneath your knuckles and it's responsible for 40% of your foot stiffness. But what's more important there is where that stiffness gets created. And it's in that ground contact phase in dorsiflexion" - Austin Einhorn (19:17) "All non-contact injuries are preventable and solvable. And that just requires a little bit more critical thinking." - Austin Einhorn (48:57) "My maybe favorite way to get that long time under tension is put on a rucksack and go hike for three hours. Yeah, like the variable terrain is going to do a little bit more for the peroneals, the posterior tib, the in the toe flexors on the inside of the ankle than just a calf raise" - Austin Einhorn (51:32) "When you have a big, thick, cushy shoe, it's you think of as an exoskeleton. You can export the work to the foam. And so your leg doesn't need to bend as much. It's stiffer." - Austin Einhorn (57:25) "So push-up is a quadrupedal movement. We're gonna have to look at how quadrupedals do that. The other thing that I like to look at is break dancers.

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• 459: Laurent Meuwly on Strength and Speed Concepts in Dutch Sprint Development

  Today's podcast features Laurent Meuwley. Laurent is the Head Coach for sprints, hurdles, and relays for the Netherlands. A former Swiss national coach and European Athletics Coach of the Year, he’s known for guiding world-class athletes like Femke Bol and Dutch relay teams, pioneering the “Flyers vs. Diesels” sprint-type analogy and his comprehensive approach to training. Often in sprinting and speed training education, we get a small piece of the equation based on our social media algorithms or our immediate training culture. To fully understand speed training, we must look at both speed and environmental coaching concepts that span cultures. On today’s podcast, Laurent discusses speed building on the level of the weight room, overspeed, speed endurance, and individual training factors. Laurent also talks about building a relay-based culture and a powerful training environment, along with many more nuances of building elite sprinters. Today’s episode is brought to you by TeamBuildr’s GymStudio. For a Gym Studio 14-day free trial, head to gymstudio.com Use the code “justfly25” for 25% off any Lila Exogen wearable resistance training, including the popular Exogen Calf Sleeves. For this offer, head to: Lilateam.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. (https://www.just-fly-sports.com/podcast-home/) Timestamps 2:31- Team Dynamics and Specialties in Athletics 21:15- Enhancing Speed with Rear Leg Propulsion 24:43- Efficient Cluster Training for Hypertrophy Goals 29:54- Explosive Training with Kaiser Machines and Variations 31:59- Individualized Sprint Training for Speed Development 35:12- Speed Reserve Optimization in Sprint Training 41:44- Individualized Training Approaches for Sprinters' Profiles 52:37- Aerobic System Impact on 400m Running 54:38- Optimizing Nervous System through Training Schedule Quotes (4:50) "In the second phase of the preparation, athletes are working more on individual exercises. And those are based on a test they do called the tensomeography test, where we check all the muscles individually and see how fast or slow they are, how strong or weak they are, how quickly they react, they can be activated or not." - Laurent Meuwly (13:14) "Because a lot of strength program are thought in terms of which muscles are specifically used for the movement. But we also have to think in which kind of muscle contraction, what kind of Muscle contraction is then used and for different muscle groups it's a different contraction. It might be concentric for some, eccentric for others, isometric for some muscles. So in the specific work this needs to be taken into account." - Laurent Meuwly (16:37) "If I take a hamstring exercise, when someone has struggled to activate the hamstrings quick enough, they might have an exercise where they are standing, laying on their shoulders up, one leg on the skateboard, the other leg in the air and they have to bring the skateboard back and forth under their butt as fast as possible." - Laurent Meuwly (22:07) "The propulsion phase is really important in running and especially in sprinting." - Laurent Meuwly (23:43) "The individualization in the gym is more to the way athletes are reacting in terms of hypertrophy. Some athletes would go a bit quicker away from max strength exercises, hypertrophy to be more in a velocity-based training, more in power than in strength development." - Laurent Meuwly (33:00) "I think in Europe we are using overspeed quite more than in the US at least in track and field, I would say every 10 to 14 days." - Laurent Meuwly (42:20) "A “flyer”, an athlete who is more speed based needs to be fast. And because speed is his or her strength, they also are going to recover from speed or even strength or whatever stimulates highly the nervous system quicker than athletes who are more endurance based and who are less talented for speed." - Laurent Meuwly

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• 458: Anthony Cockrill on Squat Dynamics in Explosive Strength Development

  Today's podcast features Anthony Cockrill. Anthony is the Director of Volleyball Sports Performance and Assistant Director of Olympic Sports Performance at SMU. Previously at the University of Houston, he’s coached athletes across multiple sports and has a strong focus on explosive strength development, getting notable vertical jump training results with volleyball athletes. There are different layers to the strength equation, and not all types of lifting will offer equal adaptation for athletes. In understanding key differences between full and partial ranges, as well as a focus on the concentric, isometric, and eccentric adaptations to the lift, we can better design a program that allows athletes a maximal bandwidth to adapt to the demands (and chaos) of their sport. On today’s podcast, Anthony discusses the nuts and bolts of his training program, with a specific focus on squatting methods, range of motion concepts, and building strength, particularly through the eccentric phases of a lift. He also covers yearly planning, plyometrics, gymnastics, in-season training, and the physiology concepts behind his methods. This was an informative, and incredibly practical podcast on all things vertical jump and explosive strength development for athletes. Today’s episode is brought to you by TeamBuildr’s GymStudio. For a Gym Studio 14-day free trial, head to gymstudio.com Use the code “justfly25” for 25% off any Lila Exogen wearable resistance training, including the popular Exogen Calf Sleeves. For this offer, head to: Lilateam.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. (https://www.just-fly-sports.com/podcast-home/) Timestamps 11:30- Enhancing Squat Mechanics with Zercher Squats 17:07- Heel Elevation for Enhanced Squat Performance 19:32- Enhancing Back Squat Performance Through Torso Training 29:00- Eccentric Overload Back Squat Training for Volleyball 31:23- Deep End Range Exercises for Volleyball Performance 38:05- Optimizing Strength Through Deep Range Training 40:58- Enhancing Strength Through Deep Range Isometrics 44:33- Deep Squat Training for Enhanced Strength 46:26- Enhancing Strength Through Deep Squat Positions 55:29- Enhancing Athlete Performance Through Gymnastic Movements 1:06:05- Utilizing Muscle Spindles and Titan for Power 1:06:05- Eccentric Emphasis for Enhanced Athletic Performance 1:09:21- Enhancing Performance Through Deep Range Plyometrics 1:21:56- Optimizing Performance: Athletic Training Strategies Quotes (13:00) "The torso is always the limiting factor when trying to load the legs." - Anthony Cockrill (14:30) "I've moved away from a ton of front squatting. I do do it, but only maybe for a three-week period. I used to do it like exclusively instead of Zerchers, but It's a little more technical than a Zercher as far as like getting kids into that front rack position." - Anthony Cockrill (15:58) (For Zercher Squats) "The fat bar is obviously like the more surface area, the more you're touching it kind of dissipates that pain in the elbow from the thin bar. But if you don't have fat thick bars. Yeah, we'll just use fat grips." - Anthony Cockrill (21:00) "Within the Zercher and you're like protracting those shoulder blades out and the amount of like stress you get within the upper back and in the rhomboids, that's probably the area most kids like feel it the most within those first three weeks. Because again most people are really underdeveloped between the shoulder blades." - Anthony Cockrill (31:30) "We do a ton of single leg as we get in season." - Anthony Cockrill (35:50) "The biggest range of motion movements that are probably gonna, from A structural standpoint involve the most amount of contractile tissue." - Anthony Cockrill (40:40) "The idea is to have a massive bandwidth to handle chaos. So I think if you can get into those deep end ranges and not just produce force, but various forces, whether it's leveraging,

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