Unleashing Athletic Potential with Dynamic Training's Daniel Thomas

Episode Transcript
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Mark Haney (00:01):
And now I am here with Daniel Thomas.
He is the owner of Dynamic Training and this is an incredible opportunity for me because you are helping so many people with Dynamic Training and it's people that are really close to me.
So I want to get to know you better, daniel, but also I want to have have our audience know about this, about this business, because it's it's really cool.

(00:25):
So maybe just a little your background and what the business is all about.

Daniel Thomas (00:28):
Yeah, so the business, dynamic training.
We specialize in speed and agility training.
So we work with my dad calls it P We's to the pros.
So we've got the juniors, which are like five day year olds, all the way to our youth classes, high school and college.
But everything we specialize in is how can we make our athletes the fastest, most explosive that they can be.
So most strength and conditioning programs traditionally are about 75% weight room strength, whether they're doing barbell movements, but they're really focused on power and strength, and then they spend a very little like 25% on speed, mechanics and conditioning.

(01:01):
We kind of flipped so we're the opposite.
So we're about 75, 80% speed, agility, quickness, conditioning and then 25% on the strength and the power side.
So that's kind of what separates.

Mark Haney (01:11):
Yeah, yeah, I want to dive a little bit deeper into that as we get going, because I kind of have a fast coach football and baseball and different sports and I sort of have a fat fascination for young athletes and how to help them develop and, you know, and become who they want to be, because I don't you think that young athletes have these, a lot of them have these big dreams.

(01:34):
They want to become professional.
You know, we turn on the TV and we want to be, you know, michael Jordan or whoever and you know.
So how do you get there?

right, it takes a lot of work 100% it does, and so one of our big slogans that we have plastered all over our gym is that greatness is inside of you, but it's your job to train it to come out.
So we believe that every athlete has something special inside of them, but we try to remind them that the bigger your dream is, the more you have to put in the work and the more you have to be willing to sacrifice and to really dive in, and it would be 100% sold out.

Mark Haney (02:02):
So you know, it's amazing I just want to conversation with somebody a few minutes ago is a lot of times that big dream aspect of our personality.
It gets beat out of us right.
So, as a young person, hey, this guy's a lemon, I can build anything.
I can, you know, be a billionaire, I'll be Michael, like Michael Jordan or something, and then all of a sudden, society encroach, starts encroaching.

(02:27):
We get in line, we do our job, we show up and it's like, oh my gosh, my big, where my big dreams go.
So you're still working with people with these enormous dreams, which I love.
I do that as well with helping entrepreneurs that are going out and trying to change the world through building businesses.
So I love that you are helping these young people keep dreaming and some of them actually achieve a lot of those dreams.

(02:52):
Maybe give me a sense as to like what happens when they walk through the door and maybe a couple of success stories with people who have, you know, really become something.

Yeah, for sure.
And our number one job is never like we don't walk in and sell anybody.
Hey, we're going to get you the pros, but our job is, hey, if you love something and you're passionate, how can we get you to be able to play at the next level in college?

Mark Haney (03:12):
That's our goal.

Our goal is to get kids to college 100% you know and yes there's the benefit is huge for you know, as far as getting a college education, but just the dream to be able to have these kids play at the next level, because the percentage in the amount of people playing in college is so small In this community.
We have so many great athletes and sports is huge in this area, so I think everyone just assumes that you get to go play in college.

Mark Haney (03:35):
But that's really not how it is caught very few you know it's interesting to, because college athletes there's very few, obviously, but people who make it to college and go through and play sports in college, they end up with an understanding of life that I think a lot of us don't have.

(03:56):
You played sports in college, so you have an understanding that I don't have about the kind of dedication and commitment and you know all the different things that it takes to get to that level and finish through that level, because I mean, it's pretty easy to.
I got out of high school, I dropped out, or you know I had not dropped out, I got.
You know, got to get a job, you know, maybe something else, but a lot of people don't even finish high school sports.

(04:19):
So that commitment is a.
I mean, these people make great leaders in business.
That's my.
My sense is, if I can hire people who have played college sports, wow, that's a fine.

Yeah, you know, because people don't realize the amount of grind that there is just to play, not even to be successful at the college level, but just to be a part of a team at a college level.
I played football players.
I played football in college.
Those darn football players are always falling asleep, you know in that class but you know our regiment was we had we'd wake up at 5am.

(04:54):
If you were injured you had to be in doing rehab before 5am.
So we're talking 4am wake up times to do some rehab or prehab on injuries.
You're practicing at 6am.
You're done by 7, 7, 30.
You go to the weight room straight from practice.
Now you're lifting from 8 to 930, then you're showering and we're getting to class at 10am and now I have international to business lot 10am, a class.

(05:17):
That, no offense, maybe a little bit of a snoozefest, right?
So you know you're up at 4am.
You're practicing.

Mark Haney (05:23):
You're running miles, right your body is, so you use yeah and then you're sitting in class and everyone goes.

Look at those darn lazy football players and they're all.
You know, trying to stay awake, and so people don't realize if you're not in the nitty gritty of actually being a collegiate athlete.
You know to be able to go through all of that and then still go to school and then show up after school and then go to film and then have walkthroughs and then guess what you actually want to get good grades now you have to do your homework, you know, and so it's like the actual amount of dedication to get good grades as a student athlete is huge and I think it sets really sets people apart in today's generation for success after sports, like you were talking about.

Mark Haney (06:00):
It takes so much commitment and dedication and stick to it and stick to it.
It's that a lot of people just are never exposed to right there.
For whatever reason, they didn't take that path and that's why I love sports is because within sports you can start that at eight years old and begin to build the big dreams and understand what hard work is all about.

(06:30):
But Riley and Rocco, who we talked about earlier, I know, go to your program and they were.
They rave about it.
Riley is now 12 and she plays volleyball and Rocco is more of a baseball guy.
But they play a variety of sports and they love it, they have fun.
But yet they're seeing their athleticism change right before I'm seeing before their eyes.

(06:54):
Right, they're not necessarily the people that are jumping out of the gym in terms of natural athleticism, but they're a little more springy than they used to be before they started coming to you.
Yeah, 100%.

I mean, you know, the reality of it is is that we're trying to teach kids that if you work hard, you compete and you enjoy what you're doing, that you're going to go far and that you can have success.
In the coaching world today, sadly, there's so many more negative connotations with coaches than positive, right, and so we're trying to create an environment in a place where kids come in, they get their butts worked but they leave smiling because at the end of the day, they know that these coaches are coaches, really care about them and care about their success.

(07:32):
And so I always tell our coaches you know, before you ever correct anyone and give correction or criticism to an athlete, you need to make sure that you start with an encouragement, because kids are so quick to shut down nowadays, especially if they don't know you, and so we really believe that you know they don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.
So to build that relationship, to tell them that they're doing amazing and to keep pushing them in that positive direction and then following up, and now they're willing to receive the correction, receive the proper techniques and critiques that you wanna give them, because they know, hey, coach actually cares about me, so I'm gonna take this into consideration.

Mark Haney (08:08):
So Riley's become a pretty darn good volleyball player.
But my grandson Rocco, who's not gifted in speed and athleticism.
We were doing ladder drills the other day.
I think I captured it on Instagram and I'm like he was keeping up with me.
I used to be pretty.
I'm not good at that stuff, but I can do it.
I crossfit, we do a little bit of that stuff and I was like this guy can do ladder drills, he did the icky shuffle stuff and I'm like how the heck can you do that?

(08:32):
He's you know cause he's not a burner, right, but he's got good footwork, he's at the foundation for building some good footwork and I think it'll really help him.
Maybe walk me through a little bit about what the program is like, and then I wanna talk about confidence as well too.
But maybe we'll just start with what the program is and then you know, cause a great byproduct of achievement and progression is confidence 100%.

So my background before dynamic training actually worked in the recovery business so I was a general manager of at US Cryotherapy over here in Roseville, sierra College and Douglas.

Mark Haney (09:04):
Oh, you know what?
That's probably where I've seen you before.
They've been in there, yeah.

So I worked there for like six or seven years and that was really my passion and I saw I constantly saw athletes coming in with injury after injury.
So when developing and starting the program of dynamic training, I was like, okay, we need to make sure we do a little prehab.
If we can, you know, jump the gun and prepare these athletes before they get injured.
We're gonna help reduce chances of injury.
Because young athletes are training so often and so frequently that now you have 10 year olds, 12 year olds, with tendonitis and arthritis, which never used to be a thing right.

(09:36):
So our start to our every single session we have, we go through a banded warmup and then we do a full dynamic warmup.
It takes about 10 to 12 minutes to get through it before we even hit anything.

Mark Haney (09:44):
So a banded warmup?

describe that to me, yeah so we mostly use mini bands.
So you'll see a lot of people.
They put them around their ankles or right above their knees.
So, we put ours right above the ankles.
We'll do lateral walks, forward and backwards walks to really fire up.

Mark Haney (09:56):
Hips are burning.

Yep, the glutes, the hips, and then really just to help work and strengthen all those small muscles, the tendons, the ligaments, the joints throughout the knees, ankles.
So trying to fire up those little muscles that nobody really thinks about because once we start we're flying, we're all about do what we do, we do it at 100% effort.
Then you recover, because a lot of people think that when they wanna get faster, when athletes are like, how can I get faster?

(10:20):
They put themselves typically through conditioning, and we try to remind athletes that conditioning is not speed training but speed training is conditioning.
Because when you do anything with a high intensity, that heart rate's gonna spike, it's gonna elevate, kinda like people here who say hit training or high intensity training.
It's kind of a similar concept, but focused more towards athletes.

Mark Haney (10:39):
So if I'm a young person maybe listening, or a parent listening, I come in and the speed training when I've done that in the past, your heart rate gets up, but then you get enough time to recover so that you can be at your very best at the next rep or your next opportunity.

Is that right?
So you're not 100%.

Mark Haney (10:56):
Maybe your heart rate's still up a little bit, but you can go 100% on the next rep.
It's gonna go on everything going hard for it 80% and just sort of surviving a 20 minute workout.

Yeah, and with our youth, our younger athletes at nine to 12 year old range, they just wanna go, go, go, go, go, nonstop, cause that's what they've been taught, that's what they think they're supposed to do, and they're just gonna try to keep pushing.
So we actually have to step in as coaches and go stop, breathe, take a second, because I want you to give me 100%.
If you're gonna give me 80%, I want you to rest, because I want you to come in and floor it and give me everything you got, because that's the only way that we're gonna maximize that top end speed.

Mark Haney (11:27):
Work at your maximum more often, versus working at 90% all the time 100%, 100%.

Yeah, and there's studies that have been shown that athletes, when it comes to speed specifically, that if you don't sprint at 90% of your max speed or higher within a five to seven day window, you actually get diminishing returns.
So that's how quickly you can lose top speed.
Is you have to be, as an athlete, sprinting and working at 90% to 100% maximum effort in order to keep that intensity in your pocket?

Mark Haney (11:57):
Okay, so you come in, you do your we'll call it your band work, and then you're doing some speed drills, Right, and those are super high intensity, with enough rest to be at your best.
Then what is that like?
Are you breaking up in like segments throughout a, let's say, is it an hour Two?

hours.
Yeah, so they're hour long workouts and so typically what happens is every workout's a little bit different, but every workout is gonna have some variation of a footwork exercise where we really emphasize kids being able to control their feet, because a lot of times people do footwork and they go as fast as humanly possible, but if you're not controlling what you're doing, your feet are just frantic.
I tell people fast feet, that out of control are just as bad as slow feet, because if you're not actually going where you wanna go.

(12:37):
You're just wasting effort, you're wasting energy because you're not actually doing what you wanna be doing.
So we do a lot of footwork, we do a lot of plow metrics, which is different variations of jump training.
We do a lot of resistance work, right.
So trying to help with athletes who wanna accelerate, because most athletes, once they're running and moving, are pretty fast, but it really separates average to great athletes is how fast can they get to that speed?

(13:00):
Right, that acceleration portion.
So we do a lot of emphasis on acceleration.
And then, with our younger athletes, we do a lot of mechanical work, running mechanics jumping mechanics, making sure that they actually know the proper form.
Sometimes we gotta slow down to learn so that we can speed up down the road.

Mark Haney (13:14):
And I think all of us need some mechanic reminders.
Mechanical training doesn't hurt you, no matter how long you've been an athlete.
Just tighten, clean up your form a little bit and you end up being just a little faster if you go through a few drills.
From what?

I found.

Mark Haney (13:31):
But thinking about that so they don't get into the strength piece.
You said 25% of it was strength.
You're not gonna have a 12 year old doing bench press or squats yeah not in our group classes.

So in our group classes the strength portion is gonna come from body weight movements.
We do push sleds or prowlers, so they are gonna get some lower body build from that.
Through all of our different plow metric jump trainings they're gonna get lots of strength in their lower body from just jumping.
We do from high jumps to broad jumps to quick jumps.
We do all different types of variations there.
And then the resistance training.

(14:02):
Right, if you've ever tried sprinting with someone holding you back or a version of a bungee or a resistance band, that's gonna develop muscles and strength that a lot of people are not used to.
So the younger athletes are getting strength training in different ways than our older athletes would be.
So, like our high school and college athletes now we might actually break out some more into the weight room.

(14:22):
So youth athletes, it's mostly gonna be body weight sleds, plow metric exercises and resistance training.

Mark Haney (14:29):
I've been on your Instagram and I've seen you know you post videos of young people working out and I've seen this accelerate, change your direction and then reaccelerate these drills.
They look like eighth or ninth graders, something like that, but kids are damn quick.
It's amazing.
And then they're going through hopping drills and so on.
It's pretty amazing the kind of things that I didn't do when I was a freshman in high school.

but I see these kids that look like they're probably 14 years old doing yeah, and you know sometimes us as trainers, we have to force athletes to do things that aren't fun, that are a little more boring, which is why you see so much decelerating of athletes actually coming to a stop, and because most injuries happen non-contact.
So if you're playing soccer, if you play football, if you play any sport, that's going to cause, that's going to have you doing a lot of change of direction.

(15:18):
Most knee ankle injuries are non-contact, meaning an athlete's running stops, plants to go, do, go somewhere else, and a knee goes out and ankle goes out, rolls, breaks, snaps, tears, and so the reason for that is everyone trains acceleration.
How can I go faster, go faster, go faster.
But the faster you get, the harder it is to slow down and stop Right.
So a lot of people forget to train the deceleration portion, which is actually the most important as far as knee health and injury prevention.

Mark Haney (15:45):
So one thing that you haven't mentioned yet but I assume it's a piece of the program is mobility and flexibility, those kind of things being strong at the end.
Range of motion Is there an aspect that's kind of helping with?
You know, so people can touch their toes as athletes, you start building some muscles and next thing you know you can't even touch your toes, For sure, yeah, For the younger athletes we don't do nearly as much mobility and stretching work because they're so stinking liberating.

They can put both their legs behind their head and fall back.
You know, kids go coach, can I do this and I go?
Sure, but I can't, cause I won't get up if I do that stretch with you.
For us, with the younger athletes, it's more about just emphasizing and building the importance of it and letting them know, like you said, hey, as you guys get bigger, as you get older and stronger, your muscles are going to grow, they're going to become tight and then we need to lengthen those muscles.
So with the kids, it's more just about harping on and educating right.

(16:35):
With the older athletes, we have to literally force them to do a period of time of stretching because they won't do it.
And I remember when I was in high school sometimes it goes stretch.
Okay, you know you do five seconds and you're like I'm good, but it actually takes about 30 to 45 seconds and holding one particular stretch, to let that muscle fully elongate and relax.
So forcing athletes to stretch, especially our older high school and college athletes, is so important because more mobility means less injuries and means access to more of your body, and the more access you have, the more power you're going to have 100%.

Mark Haney (17:06):
I started yoga two or three years ago and it's amazing you know I do CrossFit and I do yoga and the flexibility, the strength that you have at the end range right A deep squat or some other position that some people can't even get into.
You know, as a guy that's not a big guy, not even very strong, but like can lift more than maybe somebody who's super strong, because they can barely get into that range of motion.

For sure.
It's a huge advantage to have flexibility 100% and, as athletes, the number one area that people don't focus on that actually makes the biggest difference is ankle mobility.
Nobody thinks about that.
But speed is all about angles.
What angle can you have your shin in?
Can you have your foot in to be able to project the direction that you want to project, whether that's laterally or straight?
And if you have too tight of calves, too tight of Achilles, too tight of feet, you don't, you're not able to put yourself in the angle that you want to be in, and so athletes might actually have more speed in them, but they don't have the ability to even access it because of that lack of range of motion.

Mark Haney (18:05):
Have you ever seen that knees over toes guy?

Yeah, totally.

Mark Haney (18:07):
That guy is pretty interesting, so anybody who hasn't seen him, I can't think of his name, but they call him the knees over toes.
Yeah, because when I was a kid and you get taught to do squats, you're supposed to go down to as close to parallel, but keep your.
You know, stay back.
Don't let your knees go over your toes.
Right, that's bad.
And if you're doing a front lunge, don't let your knees go over your toes.
And you know.
But he's.

(18:29):
His theory, which I subscribe to, is be careful.
But if you're not using any way to start, if you can build that flexibility and that some amount of stabilization, strength at the end range and then build, you're going to be able to.
Your hops are going to.
You build a jump a lot better.

For sure and I 100% agree.
I think, as long as people understand that it's a process, that you should start with body weight until you can progress and add load, like he does.
But if you look at any athlete that's in a squat position or an athlete that's about to jump, if you say, hey, I want you to jump as high as you can, try to touch the rim on a basketball hoop, if you look at the angle, their knees are forward, right.

(19:08):
So nobody jumps with their butt hips going back in their knees completely straight up and down the angle of your legs.
Your knees are always pressed forward.
So it's really interesting to think that, as coaches, your teaching kids don't let your knees go forward, don't let your knees go forward.
But then when they're in their sport and they have to run and jump, their knees are always forward.
So we're actually setting them up for failure and to get injured because they're not strengthening the tenons and ligaments needed in the right angles.

Mark Haney (19:31):
It's amazing.
You know people complain about social media and there's good and bad in it, but, like when I was a kid, the way you got your data is you bought Sports Illustrated Magazine and whatever that article happened to be, it got subscribed to.
Next thing you know, the high school football coaches are teaching whatever somebody was talking about in Sports Illustrated Magazine and you didn't have access to these different sciences or these different points of view that are now pretty out there.

(19:57):
So who do you in terms of continuous learning, your continuing education, who do you look to or where do you look for that data, that new info?

So for just straight linear speed, I love a guy named Les Spielman.
I actually went to a conference recently in San Diego with about 90 other strength and conditioning coaches and he was one of the guest speakers there.
He, in my opinion, is the current most popular best coach when it comes to teaching mechanics of sprinting and straight.
Now, he doesn't do a lot of change of direction.

(20:30):
He does mostly like track work, but he works with athletes like soccer players and football players, prepping them for the NFL combine and things like that.
So he's one of my favorite for straight, linear speed.
And then you know from there.
There's so much information out there it's tough for young athletes to really decipher what's for them and what's not.

(20:50):
And, like you said, I think there's access, which is amazing, but at the same time, sometimes kids don't know what the right thing to look at is, like you were saying.
So a big problem or a big thing that I see personally with my high school athletes is they're all lifting and training like bodybuilders, because everybody on TikTok, instagram, you know, youtube is training like a bodybuilder.

(21:10):
So, for example, that means they're doing a lot of isolated movements.
Right Lateral shoulder raises things where they're really strict and moving one body part and isolating one muscle group.
Well, as athletes, you never do that.
Everything as an athlete is full body and you're being as explosive as possible.
So it's not that it's bad because it's going to make you look good.
Shoulders will get a little bit bigger and look nice, but if we want to be athletes, we have to be doing full body, explosive movements that are going to generate power from the ground up.

(21:36):
So if you're doing an upper body shoulder movement, it should start from the ground right, so like, for example, a CrossFit term.
Right would be like a thruster right.
Or a squat to press right.
That would be a better shoulder exercise that I would want to get out of an athlete versus having them do a strict military shoulder press.
Because I'm looking for how can we generate power using our whole body.

Mark Haney (21:54):
Right Makes sense.
Okay, so I love diving into the.
You know the different aspects of the sports, and so one other thing I was going to ask you about was I always think about quick twitch, right.
So, how do you develop those quick twitch muscles?
So I recently started wearing these shoes they are the kind that I found them with from the yoga teacher.

(22:17):
He recommended them, but they're kind of like barefoot shoes and I've been wearing them probably four or five months.
And I went to Cabo the other day and we're walking around and got sore muscles in my calves from walking around too much.
Not a big walker, but I've felt my feet strengthening over the last, you know, three or four months and it's been working my feet in a sort of a different way.

(22:41):
They haven't been worked as much when you've got like regular shoes on.
It's a lot of different kinds of support.
So you walk around in Cabo and then yesterday I ran a mile and I felt myself sort of like bouncier.
Almost reminded me of the back when I was a kid.
I remember when I was a kid I was like well, I always felt like I was a little faster with I was barefooted.

(23:01):
It's like interesting, you know, is there Okay?
So in terms of developing quick twitch in your feet, how important is it to be barefooted, or in certain kinds of shoes that are a little bit less supportive, and does that really matter?
Is that a factor in anything you think about?

I think it does play a factor to a certain extent.
The one reason why I don't overly emphasize athletes to train barefoot often is because they don't play their sport barefoot.

Mark Haney (23:30):
Okay.

So that's the number one reason why I don't push it aggressively.
But I do like to emphasize the fact that strengthening your feet, ankles and your Achilles is extremely important for athletes to be able to maximize their power Right.
So, for example, an athlete that likes to back squat all the time and can back squat, you know, 500 pounds and has huge quads and hammers, hamstrings and glutes If they don't ever focus on strengthening their feet, the arches of their feet and their ankles.

(23:55):
What I try to tell people is your feet are like the tires of a Ferrari and the big muscles are like the engine.
If you have this big old engine but you got no tires, you're not going to go anywhere.
So you have to have strength and power on your feet and ankles, because when you apply force, speed is forced into the ground, which is going to increase your velocity.
So if you don't have the strength to apply all that force from your legs, you're not even maximizing the power that you have in your legs because your feet can't handle it.

(24:21):
So you're either going to get injured because you're going to roll your ankle or you're just going to miss out on speed.
So we've been implementing more and more exercises, and this is actually part of something that I took from Les Spielman recently of doing some barefoot exercises and training to help develop foot and ankle strength.

Mark Haney (24:35):
Interesting- Well, you think about.
I hear they add for the good feet store and all these art supports there's a whole business out of giving you all this extra support for your shoes.
When you think back to where we were, let's say, you know, 10,000 years ago, 20,000 years ago, like people didn't have the kind of shoes that we have today.
So there is something, I guess, scientific around spend a little bit more time strengthening those feet so you can operate barefooted.

(25:02):
Otherwise, we're going to be supporting the good feet store and all that stuff as we get older, which people do, right, yeah, and that's the same thing I tell athletes with with that coming with ankle braces or knee braces.

are you currently injured?
Do you need the extra support?
Oh no, my injury was six months ago.
I just my doctor just tells me to keep wearing it.
Well, now you're going to become dependent on that brace and the goal is that brace is there for a purpose for a particular period of time.
But once that that acute injury is done, we need to work to strengthen it back up so that you don't know you no longer need to be relying on that brace similar to kind of art support.

(25:36):
So I think it's a similar situation.

Mark Haney (25:38):
All right, let's talk a little bit about confidence, which can be really fragile.
So I work with entrepreneurs, as I mentioned, and building a small business is really hard.
Building a big business is really hard, but it can.
It's easy to sort of become dispirited because of setbacks and could be injury.
It could be anything and you know, as people begin to see progress, it gives us more hope and confidence and so on, and that that can act as fuel.

(26:05):
Tell me about that and walk me through what that might look like from your athletes.

Yeah, confidence.
The one thing that I absolutely love and get so excited about is confidence, is the number one thing and the quickest thing that we receive and that we hear about from our athletes that come to dynamic training.
Because a parent will come and after two sessions with their athlete which I think we all know, that two of any type of workout you're not going to actually see a significant amount of growth, right, but what happens is the energy, the love and the confidence that we're instilling into these athletes is making them play faster in their sport, because they're no longer second guessing themselves, they're no longer hesitating before movements.

(26:44):
So much of speed is confidence, because what happens is, if you're hesitating, you're moving slower.
Right, if you don't believe in your abilities, you're going to second guess yourself, you're going to move slower.
So to just have somebody in your corner, that's like you can do this, you've got this, I know what you can do.
You've got more to for a young athlete to be like hey, I, I don't need a second guess myself, I know coach DT, coach Connor, whatever coach it is, they believe.

(27:09):
They told me I can do this, I know I can do it.
So athletes that come to us and after two days, two days of training their parents like they're a new player on the field.
They're so much faster.
We can't week after two days and I'm like and in my head, I know that we didn't necessarily make them faster yet, but what we did was we instilled the confidence in the belief in themselves so quickly and so intensely that they no longer second guess themselves and now they're playing faster on the field.

(27:32):
That's great.

Mark Haney (27:33):
And thinking about the long term effects of confidence and sports.
You know I keep referencing this back to business because that's my world, but I mean, I grew up around sports and I appreciate the value of teamwork and sports and being a part of when learning how to win, learning what working hard is all about.

(27:55):
Those are the kind of attributes that we want for our family members and as we develop our confidence, as you know, is it from a nine year old to a 12 year old to a 14 year old, all of a sudden I've been going to DT for a while and man, it's kicked in now that I'm now the fastest guy in my football team, right, because I've been working at it for a time, in the kind of like reinforcement that that has of like good values for winning in life and being happy in life.

(28:26):
So you must have those kind of success stories.
We've seen progression where that person became all league or something like that 100%.

And, you know, I think more than just the success in the field is being able to see the athletes that were shy and timid grow and become leaders within their team right, because everything, some things are taught, some things are caught right.
So when you're, when you treat these athletes the way that we treat them, when we build that confidence in them, now they have more confidence to stand up and to be more proud and right.
So then now we get to see them treating their teammates and treating their you know coaches and their family members and their everyday life the way that we're treating them Right.

(29:02):
And it's the same way like even though we coach speed and we train athletes.
You know, from the business perspective, I treat my coaches the same way.
I treat my athletes right.
If I want my coach to do something different, I don't come at him and hammer him down into the ground.
I tell him about how, how, make sure he knows how valuable he is.
I make sure they know how much we appreciate them, how great they are at what they do.

(29:22):
And here's also another way that you can take your, take it to the next level as a coach and be better.
You know what I mean.
So that's how we talk to our athletes, the same way I talk to my coaches, and that's the same way.
I hope that you know these kids can take it and then apply it to their job skills.
You know what I mean, how you're talking about business, cause is every the number one thing.
There's so many great coaches and trainers in the world, but there's not good businessmen in the world.

(29:44):
So a lot of people say you hear people all the time oh, I used to be a trainer Once.
Oh, I had a season of life where I was a coach, but not a lot of people can make it sustainable because they don't have the business side of it, but it it intertwined so much.
And if we can just get people to understand and to realize that it's not just sports here and then now this is the world.
If you can take the traits and the things that you've learned as an athlete, you know it carries over so much.

Mark Haney (30:07):
Yeah, and one of those things.
I have a kind of a mantra that I use.
There's a lot of people that start things, but the world needs more finishers and I think we learned that through finishing and playing four years of football or whatever it happens to be, um to to accomplish our order of playing four years of football and high in college, you know another realm, um, those are things that you know we never.

(30:29):
We never lose those and they're so valuable.
So, um, as you two guys talking sports, and for anybody, this can happen in other aspects of life besides athletics, but in people were.
A lot of people are drawn to athletics and it can be really uh, you know, it can be really gratifying and help you.
Yeah.

And in today's world where kids, you know, everybody wants instant gratification, instant likes, instant shares, instant follows, you know, uh, if you're not involved in sports, it's hard to understand that you have to put in work.

Mark Haney (31:00):
If you want to see results.

And so sports is just the easiest way to really show a young person that you want this result, you have to put in this work Right In the regular world nowadays, kids don't, people don't think that, oh, I've been at a job for 90 days Now I should get a raise because I deserve a raise.
Yeah, right, something as basic as that when it's like.
But what are you bringing to the table?
How much, how much work have you put in what you know?

(31:23):
What are you doing to make your business grow so that the person at the head, the owner, the manager wants to give you a raise?
Right, that's the like, little things like that that you learn as a, as an athlete Coach, I want more playing time.
I've been here for a year sitting on the bench.
Shouldn't I be playing now?
Well, what are you doing to improve better to me?
What are you doing to improve?
What are you doing that's going to set you apart from everyone else?

(31:44):
That's going to give you deserving time?
Yeah.

Mark Haney (31:49):
And, I think, encouraging people to stand out at some level too, because a lot of people want to run with the pack and to to make it to college and place football in college at some level.
You stood out in high school.
You stood out so that you got recognized, so that you could play in college.
And I think sometimes, whether it be as in a job, employment or even on the football field, we sort of sprint at the end of practice and we're going to run with the pack, right, we're going to blend, we're going to kind of do do the same as everybody else and those people that come in early, stay late.

(32:18):
We weren't put everything they have into the sprints.
Even though they're hard, they get noticed right, they stand out to a lot of us that are just like.
You know, the coaches always look and type thing in business and or in sports.
Yeah, and I think the biggest thing that I've seen.

now that I've been in the game for a little while now I have I have friends and ex teammates that are now recruiting coaches for colleges.
So they come and they talk to me and we talk about athletes and I now it's pretty fun Now I have coaches that call me hey, I'm looking for a classic 2021 offensive lineman.
What do you got?
So you know, coach is coming to me and it's interesting for me to talk to them and they'll come watch a game that they know you're not going to play in or that it's going to be a blowout, and they want to see how you are on the bench.

(33:03):
Like that's.
That was the biggest surprise to me.
Coaches will.
If you're a big recruit and they're going to offer you a scholarship, they want to come watch you play because they want to see are you a good teammate?
Are you on the sideline clapping for your teammate as a basketball player when they get subbed out?
Or are you just sitting in the corner now because you're not playing and it's all about you?
Like I've been very it's opened my eyes a ton and as I see things and as I learn what coaches are looking for, I try my best to just share that with all my athletes and just remind them of uh and try to just set them up for success.

Mark Haney (33:31):
You know who's not a good fit for your program, cause we're talking about a mindset of you got to have a certain amount of desire to go put yourself through those kinds of workouts.
Um, so I imagine for me I'm like if people don't have desire, maybe they're not a good fit, but I throw that more to you as like who like for me is that if I'm hiring an employee, if they don't have desire, probably not a good fit, but as a customer, who's a good fit and who's not?

(33:55):
So for our younger athletes, we we.

I don't think there's anyone that we that would ever need to be turned away, because, as a, as a young person, potential is endless and, like you said, so much of it is about confidence and instilling that.
Whether that goes into sports or it doesn't, just to be able to instill confidence into a young person is is the number one thing that we want to do, and then everything else is an aftermath.
Right?
The only time that I ever really have a conversation with an athlete about hey, is this for you?

(34:22):
Is when they're a high school athlete, and I have to make that.
I have to have that serious discussion with them of do you want to play and just enjoy your, your, your high school years and have so much fun?
Because if that's the case, I love it.
I'm going to help you.
However, you want to be helped and I'm going to make sure that you get the most out of what you want.
But if that's all you want, then beautiful, I'm not going to push you past your comfort zone.

(34:43):
I'm not.
I'm going to allow you to stay in your comfort zone, because you're here for a purpose to have fun and a purpose to enjoy yourself.

Mark Haney (34:50):
Right, you don't come in and say hey, you're wasting your mom and dad's money.
Of course not, yeah, but the athletes that tell me straight up coach.

I want to play in college.
And then I look at them and I see their work ethic and I go hey, you told me what you want.
This is what the outcome you want.
What you're doing right now is not going to get you there.
If you're cool with playing in high school, you're going to get a high school and just enjoying yourself You're doing great.
If you want to go to the next level, how are you going to stand out Like you talked about?
Right?
How are you going to be different?
And I think that in today's world, where kids and young people want things given to them so easily, it's the easiest time to stand out, cause before everyone was a blue collar worker, right, everybody had to work seven days a week If you wanted to be successful.

(35:27):
Nowadays, people want everything handed to them.
So when an athlete or a young person is showing up early, staying like put in the work, it's so much more noticeable now because the majority of people aren't doing it anymore.
So I try to really let them know that, like, there's, the opportunity is there, you still have to put in the work and seize it, but less people want to put in the work.
So when you put in the work you're going to stand out.

Mark Haney (35:49):
Okay, so I have two questions that were given to you by my grandchildren.

Okay, I love it.

Mark Haney (35:54):
Riley says she's the volleyball player.
She plays softball too and she wants to jump higher.
How do I jump higher?
Yeah?

totally.
So the number one thing I tell kids is first, we got to make sure you know how to jump.
Okay, right, you got to know how to jump properly, because a lot of people have power, they don't know how to maximize it.
So we need to learn how to have good jumping mechanics.
So that's number one.
Number two from there is you have to jump.

Mark Haney (36:20):
And it sounds crazy to say that.

It's crazy to say that, but that's what you have to do.
It's like I tell people.
When it comes to sprinting, people want to do all these cool drills and they're important, and there's importance to foot strength, ankle strength.
But if you want to get faster, at the end of the day you have to make sure you're sprinting often, because if you're not reaching that 90 to 100% threshold, you're not going to get faster.
So with jumping we can do all these different exercises.
It's important to have strength right, it's important to build power, it's important to know how to jump properly, but at the end of the day you have to jump and you have to jump frequently.

Mark Haney (36:48):
So thinking about volleyball and maybe you'd fall up onto her question.
So jump, a lot is volleyball.
You're familiar with all these different sports.
Is that more?
You gotta be more springy, like the bounce, the bounding I'm picturing like box jumps, right.
So you jump up on a box from a standing jump, okay, that's one thing.
But if you jump on and off the box at some level or jump rope or that type, of thing you're more like build it like sort of almost like a springiness which is more important for volleyball.

I would say for one with volleyball, especially with younger athletes, is they need to actually learn their approach, cause volleyball is really big on like how they approach their jumps to the net.
Okay, couple steps in a jump, exactly.
So making sure that they feel comfortable and they're smooth in that, because if you're not comfortable in that approach, you're not going to get anything out of your jump, no matter what.
So making sure that they're comfortable in their approach.
But then, secondly, it's going to be all about how light, how springy and how explosive can we be.

(37:40):
So that's a combination of power right Increasing.
So there's some people have a lot of power, bad, poor mechanics.
Some people have great mechanics but then they lack the power.
You gotta find a sweet spot of both.
So I would say, if you know how to jump and you jump a lot let's add some resistance and some load to your training so that to increase strength.

Mark Haney (38:00):
Would that be a band or some weight?

Depending on how old the athlete is, I would adjust it accordingly, but definitely I'm referring more about strength.
So yeah, so adding load.

Mark Haney (38:12):
Like for a 12 year old potentially, or a 13 year old should be 13, maybe a squat with, like a children's bar, the bar only, or something like that.

Yeah.
Or, for example, I like to simulate the movements too, so like putting holding a dumbbell in each hand right.
And doing a squat jump with the dumbbells right outside their knees.
Oh okay, Like keep a light dumbbell or something like that, Exactly, yeah something that's going to add and make it difficult for them to get off the ground.
So when they let go of those dumbbells, they're now able to they feel lighter, they feel like they're exploding higher, which is a form of resistance training, how you would for sprinting, but now it's for jumping.

Mark Haney (38:43):
Okay, got you Okay.
So Rocco's question is let's hear this one oh, what's your favorite workout?
Oh, my God, what's DT like?

Oh, my goodness, my favorite workout, my specialty back in the day, was my quickness, my ability to change direction very quickly.
So I love drills that are, I wouldn't say, footwork based, but a lot of lateral movement, because I think that in sports 99% of sports, unless you run track, most sports your quickness is more important than your top end speed.

(39:14):
Not that top end speed is not important, but in sports like 5% or less, are you ever going to have an opportunity to open up and run?
In basketball, how often is an athlete not having to move anywhere and just running straight at full speed?
Not that often In football, unless a gaping hole opens for that running back and he has an 80 yard run.
Most of the time they're running, they're cutting, they're jumping, they're twisting and they're having to change direction.

(39:35):
For volleyball, they move in a small five by five foot square where they're forward fact side side.
So for me I absolutely love quick change of direction drills because they're the most game applicable.

Mark Haney (39:45):
Interesting.
So yeah, when I was in high school and youth football and as a way I coach, we had something some people call them jingle jangles or suicides, where you go to like, say, 10 yards and 10 yard back and forth and then you maybe do a sprint out of it or something.
We did that at basketball too and but they're short distance in terms of change of direction.
You're not going 40 yards change of direction, you're going five yards, 10 yards change of direction, real quick back and forth.

(40:08):
Is that what you're talking about?
Yeah, for sure.

And, honestly, the best drills that you can do, especially for youth athletes, are games.
And people, people get so serious about training they forget like playing sharks and meadows, those kids will pull out speed you've never seen to avoid getting tagged by a shark.
And you know.
So their ability to run and someone's coming, ooh, they have to step back, and now they're gonna give you a little shake to try to avoid you.
Those are the most applicable things to actual sports.

(40:32):
That's why, back in the day, you know the best athletes.
What training programs did Barry Sanders have?
He was out on the street playing touch football with his friends, learned how to juke out half the neighborhood.
You know what I mean, and so I think sometimes we get so structured with workouts that we forget that having fun and just and doing things at full speed and being elusive is so important.

Mark Haney (40:54):
So I'm thinking about like the impact that you're making on your offices in Roseville.
We're in Rockland.

Rockland case out off industrial somewhere, yeah, off sunset I think.

Mark Haney (41:04):
I've dropped off or picked up my grandkids there a time or two so I have an awareness where it's at.
But you think about it.
So most of your clientele is probably greater Clashmore County area For the most part yes, and you think about, like the impact you're having on Roseville High School, oakmont High School, delaware, o'grannet Bay you know Lincoln and the long-term impact you're having not only on their athletic programs but on the kind of athlete student athlete that is coming out of your program or that you're complimenting for those organizations.

(41:43):
You ever think about the amount of impact that you're having?

Yes and no.
I think you know I sometimes I think we forget because we get stuck in the daily routine of like it's a fact, like we've almost become like a factory where you know athletes come in, like I think, over the summer we had a day where we had 120 athletes in the door in one day, which is a huge number for us, and so sometimes on the day to day you forget about that.
But then I get to step back and you know someone like yourself will bring it up to me and it's like wow.

(42:10):
You know, we really get to touch 120 people.
Not a lot of people get the opportunity to interact and to work with that many people on a daily basis, so it's really something special.

Mark Haney (42:18):
Yeah, we talked about confidence alone besides athleticism.
Right, that confidence level of you know 100 kids a day, you know, and over years and years and years of doing it, there really is a compounding effect to that for Sacramento, because they're not all gonna live in Lincoln and Roosevelt, rockland, I'm gonna move all over Sacramento, all over the country.

(42:39):
But like the compounding effect of what you're doing is enormous.
I mean that's why I love sports.
It's just, you know, a high school football coach or a high school itty-to-ty coach that's doing it right, with the positivity like what you're talking about, making such an impact.
I mean I don't know that we give those people enough credit, you enough credit.
So I just wanna say thank you for doing that, thank you.

(42:59):
Thank you.
Helpful to growing good people, good citizens.

Yeah, and I think that if you ask anyone that played sports, even if they only played at the youth level, not even in high school if you ask them like, who was someone that impacted you the most in your life?
It was always a coach of some level, like my favorite coaches were when I was in like sixth, seventh and eighth grade.
And you know, I think that as coaches sometimes we forget that, like you're making a lasting impression.

(43:25):
You know, I invited to my wedding coaches that I had in my seventh grade junior pop Warner football team came to my wedding.
You know what I mean.
Like that's the kind of impact that they have, and so it really is awesome and something special to be able to be a part of it and I've seen it growing up, cause my dad actually is the was the co-founder of the Lord's Gym in Roosevelt, Atlanta.

Mark Haney (43:45):
I didn't know that.

Yeah, so when we, when I was growing up, we used to go out to eat and your mom's Cheryl yes, you were telling me earlier.

Mark Haney (43:53):
I went to high school with her crazy.

So I remember, you know, being a young kid and we'd be eating somewhere and randomly someone would go is that Bill Thomas, which is my dad's name and they would just hear his voice from across the restaurant and come over to you, coached me 30 years ago and my dad and they'd had this huge conversation in the young person I'm married now and the things I teach my son, you taught me back when I was, you know, 13 years old, this and the other and I'd be like dad, do you even remember that person?

(44:19):
And I'd be like no, not really, but that's okay and to think like as coaches and people of influence in these young people's lives, it's like you have no idea what that trickle down effect is really gonna have.
So it's really important.

Mark Haney (44:32):
All right.
So last question maybe a longterm vision for the organization, and maybe I'll make a two part question.
And then, after longterm vision, and what advice would you have to maybe a parent who is listening to this and their kids are in sports and thinking about how, accelerating, you know, giving them a little extra boosts, which is a lot of what you do what might they wanna do to give them that?

(45:02):
To maybe come visit you?
Or maybe there's something else that you might advise them.

Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, whatever your kid is gonna do consistently is the best program for them.
That's what I tell people the most.
I hate when people just drop in every four months and do a workout with us because they're not gonna actually see the results that I want them to see, and so the best thing I would tell a parent is it doesn't even matter.
It does matter what program it is, but what's more important than the program is that it's something that they enjoy and that they're gonna do consistently, because parents, you can tell real quick which kids are coming because their parent forced them to show up, versus the kids that are hungry and that enjoy it and so find the program that your kid is going to have a smile and enjoy doing.

(45:41):
You're gonna get more out of them, all right and longterm vision of the organization.

Mark Haney (45:45):
Oh man, that's such a tough question.

I go back and forth all the time, but at the end of the day, the goal is to reach as many people as possible.
So, whether that looks like multiple locations or just one mega large location, we've already reached way more people than I ever thought we would.
This was always a side hustle for me as I was starting my work career, and so the fact that it's become what it is and that people I see people walking around wearing the dynamic training shirts and the logo and it really touches my heart.

(46:14):
So the goal is how can we impact the next generation as much as possible?
And so I don't know what that journey, where that journey is gonna go, but I'm excited.

Mark Haney (46:21):
Daniel Thomas, owner of Dynamic Training, appreciate what you do.
Thanks for coming on the show.
Thanks so much, mark.
I'll see you in a minute.

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