March 27, 2024 • 31 mins
In this episode of the ASAP Athletic Strength and Power podcast, our host, Ed Cicale, engages in an insightful conversation with Ethan Reeve, a prominent name in the strength and conditioning industry with deep ties to wrestling. This episode, sponsored by The CBD Healthcare Company, covers vast areas related to athlete conditioning, personal athletic experiences of Reeve, and his coaching philosophy.
Reeve, a seasoned professional with an illustrious wrestling and coaching career, illustrates the influence of wrestling on strength training. He underscores the need to teach correct training methodologies to young athletes, the art of making athletes tougher and more agile, and applications of these insights on all sports and training programs. He includes wrestling as a support sport to football, highlighting the physical fitness, tenacity, and kinesthetic awareness it imparts.
Harnessing his vast professional wisdom, Reeve shares valuable advice for coaches, stressing the need to progressively build the strength of athletes, emphasizing on their technique over merely amplifying their maximum weight. Though his approach extensively prioritizes athleticism, he acknowledges the necessity of power building, wrapping up every session with an athletic activity.
As a former four-time SEC champion, Reeve also provides us with an in-depth reflection on wrestling as an integral part of physical training, describing it as an anaerobic sport that inherently fortifies several muscle groups.
Get inspired and educated from our conversation with Ethan Reeve as he unfolds his expansive experience in the health and fitness realm. This podcast is filled with wisdom accrued from a distinguished career and Reeve's enthusiasm for assisting others in their fitness pursuits. It's an essential listen for budding coaches, athletes and fitness enthusiasts.
Ethan is currently Director of Strength and Athletic Performance at Mondo Sports Flooring and encourages all to contact him: ereeve@mondousa.com
Former President of the CSCCa | MSCC, SCCC | 44 years as a Coach in College and High School
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
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This is Ed Scali with Athletic Strength and Power Podcast.
Joining me today from Chattanooga, Tennessee.
I believe it's a Whole Foods there. And there's Ethan Reeve.
He's joining us. He's a longtime strength and conditioning professional.
He also coached wrestling. He was a wrestler himself coming up through grade
(01:02):
school and then at the collegiate level at the University of Tennessee.
But we're going to let him give us a little bit of background on himself,
and then we're going to get rolling.
We're going to talk about some coaching aspects and how to get your athletes in the peak condition.
It starts at an early age. It started at an early age for you, Ethan. Yeah, I did.
(01:23):
I mean, wrestling has always been a big part of my life since seventh grade.
I've always done strength training, push-ups, the chin-ups and stuff.
Got into a little bit of the Olympic lifting at the collegiate level when I
was at the University of Tennessee and used that basically when coaching my wrestlers.
I coached wrestling for well about 13 years or more and then got into strength
(01:47):
and conditioning but my thing was i took a lot of the philosophy that i took from wrestling,
And then applied a lot of that to coaching athletes.
There's a big factor. A big factor for me is, yes, I want to make it more athletic.
I'll be as honest with you that I love Olympic lifting, powerlifting,
(02:12):
bodybuilding, kettlebells, medicine balls, all the speed and agility, all of it.
Anything that's going to make our guys or gals more athletic, I want to use.
But I don't use like we have
standards in our training like you know like what we'll say football if I'm
a high school football strength coach I'm going to do maybe power cleans at
(02:36):
225 that would be a standard for us staying clean at 225 and what I try to do is get more kids.
Doing those standards front squat at 225 back squat at 250 deadlift at 300 whatever
whatever that standard is then my job is to get more kids doing that.
Because if my average athletes can beat your average athlete, then we're going to win.
(03:02):
And that's the way I was in the wrestling realm. I mean, if you had 10 weight
classes, I wanted all my 10 guys to step up on the mat and be chopping competitive.
So I applied that a lot to strength training at the high school and collegiate level.
Wrestling and strength training, they kind of married to each other the way
they're, you know, it's like they go hand in hand.
(03:24):
Really do. I, you know, if I could give advice to a high school football coach,
I'd say, hey, look, take your offensive line, your defensive line,
your linebackers, your tight ends and fullbacks.
And if they're not playing basketball, they're going to be on the rest of the
team because it's going to help them to be more athletic, to be tougher or physical,
(03:45):
have that kinesthetic, the spatial awareness, that body awareness they need
out on the football field.
And football and wrestling together, those two sports together,
I'm telling you, you're a tough individual. You can do both worlds.
Now, you, we've talked before, and you started a lot earlier than the average kid.
You actually, something propelled you to, you know, do running and like a sixth,
(04:12):
I don't know, I guess you were in sixth grade and doing all kinds of running
in seventh grade, saying push-ups.
You were doing push-ups and sit-ups like crazy. Tell us a little bit about what
motivated you to do that as a sixth grader, unless sixth graders,
seventh graders aren't into that.
Yeah you know i it's it's a
tough thing i mean i was in grade school and i
(04:33):
was using remember the springs the chess pool that kind
of set the man grippers and doing chin-ups and we had in physical education
we were doing the the climbing boards you know the with the pegs oh yeah yeah
we did all those kind of things and we did that in physical education I don't
know what got me into running,
(04:54):
but my idol is a guy named Jim Ryan,
who's a Milo from the University of Kansas.
By the sixth grade, I was running six miles a day. I started running when I
was in the third grade and I just loved it.
When we were in the seventh grade, I got into wrestling and then I mean,
for about five years, eighth grade through 12th grade, I was doing 500 pushups a day.
(05:16):
I had a way of doing it so that they were good. try to be perfect push-ups when you do it.
It really helped me in my wrestling and football and anything else.
High school-wise, you wrestled in Ohio. It's a powerhouse.
A lot of the kids that are involved in wrestling programs in Ohio go on and wrestle collegiately.
(05:37):
Just an incredible thing.
It all culminates in Columbus, Ohio with the state championships.
You were involved in that too. Tell us a little bit about that.
I mean, in high school, you know, we really didn't have a weight room,
but I would do, I'd go to the YNCA and I'd get up and I was getting up like at 3.15 every morning.
(05:58):
And I was doing 500 pushups, 100 gennads, doing that kind of stuff.
A lot of gymnastic type stuff, calisthenics. I thought that that really did
help me. Of course, we did.
We also did a lot of farm work and harvesting for hay and baling hay and that
kind of stuff to get strong. We didn't really have a program.
(06:18):
You're talking about the early, late 60s, early 1970s.
And even at the University of Tennessee, where I went to school,
you know, we had a weight room, but it was just a couple of platforms and some bars.
And I actually learned how to do the lifting from a lot of our throwers.
The throwers on the track team were really good at weightlifting.
(06:40):
And they taught us how to do it, taught me how to do it.
Yeah. Yeah, now, you know, as a coach, and for our coaches out there,
we've got a lot of listeners that come into our podcast. They're coaches,
and a lot of them, of course, are working with the high school athletes and
some of the younger athletes. Where do you start?
What's a starting point, you know, age-wise? And then what kind of exercise
(07:04):
do you like throwing out?
Now, you definitely like the bodyweight exercises and things like that,
but what age and what are some of the exercises that you throw into your program?
Yeah, if I was running, let's say I had a system from first grade to the 12th
grade for a lot of these high school coaches, how you bring them along.
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My feeling is physical education, you know, where they were climbing ropes,
doing pegboards, doing chins and dips and bodyweight squats and lunges and doing
tumbling every day and doing a lot of speed work and ladders and agility drills. and things.
From the first year, at least the fifth grade, I would continue with some of
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that, but I'd start introducing in the sixth grade, I'd start introducing kettlebells and dumbbells.
Even with those kettlebells and dumbbells.
Squatting movements, Olympic weightlifting movements, lightweight.
None of this is heavyweight. It's more about the technique.
Teach them technique, how to do things correctly. And if you put it in your
(08:12):
program, then you want to make sure that it's in your program.
You coach it, you teach it, and then you correct it if it's not right.
You can't just watch kids do things wrong. You've got to step in and help them get it right.
And then in the seventh grade, I would start including the barbell,
(08:33):
on and i would start teaching how to you know
how to press how to squat how to
pull how to do planes and jerks and
snatches again with appropriate weight
in their seventh grade eighth grade it's more about their technique now some
kids can handle a little more weight you want to let them do that yeah but it's
(08:54):
not about limit weight you're not trying to get that kind of thing it's just
like with high intensity training the one set for failure I don't really,
that's not really what I'm trying to do.
Mine is more to develop athleticism and teaching them technique.
And what I found was that if you teach them difficult things,
(09:15):
then once they master those things, everything else becomes easy.
And the other most important thing about it is if I teach them difficult things
in the weight room, then what happens is I have a coachable and teachable athlete.
And that's what every sport coach wants. He wants somebody that's going to observe
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the way you're teaching something and then emulate what you're teaching.
So don't do easy things in the weight room. Do things that are difficult.
There's a challenge to them and get them to master those skills.
I spent some discussions with a veteran strength and conditioning coach. His name's Joe Kent.
And he talks about the process of slow cooking as athletes,
(09:59):
taking it from step one, even when they got to the collegiate level,
that he spent some time a lot of collegially before he went on and did things in the NFL.
But he, these players would come in on day one in June or whatever,
whenever they'd get there, and he would almost go back to day one and just really
(10:22):
making sure that these guys know exactly the form and the techniques that are
involved in that particular exercise.
And he was also really big on getting the athletes constantly,
no matter what they were doing, like you're saying, a lot of athletic type of moves.
But he was really into that athletic position.
(10:43):
He would constantly have athletes working out of that type of a position and then going from there.
But that's why he liked a lot of the things they did.
Well, you know, it's Joe and I agree on a lot of things.
My thing is that we're training athletes. And the big thing is whatever we're
doing has to transfer to the athleticism of the athlete into the skill of the sport.
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If it's not doing that, it's not always a strength coach's fault.
It might be the athlete. It might be the coach.
How do they teach the school of the sport?
And that's something that I really have nothing to say about. mind
is to make them as athletic as possible and then encourage them
to really focus on the sports skill and
(11:30):
hopefully they can transfer that but i
don't really do that my thing is to again make
it more athletic so if i'm running a workout we do
athletic warm-ups so we'll we
will tumble these gymnastic type things tumbling we will
do hip mobility vernal drills agility drills
you know anything that makes them athletic off the
(11:52):
platform off the lifting and then what we do is we have
a little warm-up that we'll do with resistance and
it could be with a kettlebell a barbell that kind of stuff
and that's all prior to when we start doing our
lifts and then i just believe in doing athletic lifting but we have to do some
training where they're they're going to get strong you got to get them strong
(12:13):
to do but the emphasis more everything about athleticism and then And I always
try to finish with something athletic as well.
You know, one of the cool things about, you know, you were involved a lot with wrestling, but.
One of the cool things that you probably found is the fact that wrestling,
the actual nature of the sport, the actual out on the mat during a practice
(12:36):
or during an actual competition, it's almost like a strength training workout in itself.
Because you're out there and almost every one of your muscles,
you're using every one of those muscles in a pattern.
And it's not a fixed pattern. It's kind of like a pattern that you're just constantly
(12:57):
shifting and readjusting, and it's kind of a strength training workout in itself.
Agree? It is. It is, yes. I mean, wrestling is a tough sport.
I know it only lasts six minutes in high school, seven minutes in the collegiate
level, but it is pure anaerobic.
(13:20):
It is tough to get through it. If you've ever wrestled before, you know the feeling.
And anytime I see those years on those young guys, those are the guys I'm going
to, hey, come over here, put a hand around them, or make them my friends.
I don't want them to be my enemies.
Well, I got brought into the fire when I was at Ohio State.
(13:43):
As a physical education student, we had to take a wrestling course.
And let's just say it wasn't one of the easy courses. It was the opposite of, you know,
of anything that was deemed easy. Yes. Yeah.
But either way, I will tell you, wouldn't it be great if every kid had to go
(14:07):
through at least once or twice a four-week course in physical education in wrestling?
It had to do maybe in high school to understand how that feels,
what it's like to wrestle and roll around.
It's such a great tool. Or look how popular wrestling has become with the women in this country.
(14:29):
It's the fastest growing sport in the country. It is really a great sport for all of us.
My daughters would have wrestled, but back in those days, it was guys and gals wrestling.
And we didn't put them to wrestle. They played soccer.
And I would have loved them to wrestle. Yeah, of course, for our listeners,
we do have to remind our listeners that, Ethan, you were a SEC champion at the
(14:54):
University of Tennessee, I believe.
Yeah, I was a four-time SEC champion.
Four-time SEC champ. So, yeah, SEC, we know all about the SEC.
It just means more what they say on their commercial.
Yeah. It does. It seems to. Well, they really get after it.
(15:16):
You know, after you had your collegiate experience at the University of Tennessee
down there in Knoxville, then you, I think, I believe you headed over to Chattanooga?
Yeah, when I finished in 77, I stayed a couple of years and helped our coach,
Gray Simons, at the time for two years.
And I went back to my high school, but I really spent a few years here in my 20s,
(15:41):
to basically study other wrestling coaches.
I'm a big believer in having mentors and having people around you that can help you and stuff.
Look, the term in wrestling is champions come in pairs. You'll never be a champion by yourself.
You better have a good workout partner and partner with you.
So my thing is to have those guys that's really good at what they did and then
(16:05):
follow up and learn from them.
And I spent my 20s doing it. But when I was 30, then I got the job,
head coaching position.
That was back in 84. And that was at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. I got you.
And then that worked out great for a while. And then you saw an opportunity
at, I believe, Ohio University, was it?
(16:28):
Yeah, I spent about five years at a high school where I was kind of a co-coach,
but also as an assistant athletic director. and the first director of strength
and conditioning at this prep school in Chattanooga.
And then in 95, I went to Ohio University to become the first director of strength
and conditioning at Ohio University.
Now, at that high school level, you probably sat with these guys down,
(16:52):
these girls, and started talking about the techniques involved in clean,
hang cleans, front squats, some of the things you mentioned.
Are there certain ages that you go with or you're starting at such a lightweight
that, you know, it teaches the actual techniques that you're looking for?
(17:14):
Yeah. Look, it's just like what Joe Ken would tell you.
I mean, you start with your body weight, go to the bar, the kettlebells,
dumbbells, and you teach technique with a little more resistance.
And then you can add a little more. But it has to be age appropriate.
I don't really worry so much about the weight eventually i want to see a little
bit of straining they have to in order to get stronger you can have to put enough
(17:36):
weight on there to to actually feel it but right if i will share this this is
i do a thing called density training.
That i started developing from doing the push-ups and chins and power cleans and all that but.
If you look at the range, like you have speed, speed is like from 10% to like 65% or whatever it is.
(17:59):
And then from about 70 to about 80 to an half, 85% is what we call power.
That's the power zone. And then you have 95 to 100, which is strength,
peaking strength, you know, into your one rep mat.
Matt, if you spend all your time at the 85% and above, you're going to get a
(18:21):
little more powerful. You'll definitely get stronger.
But what happens is you're moving the bar so slow, your training slows.
But down, you're not going to get a lot faster.
If you spend all your time at speed, the speed jump, you'll get faster and you'll
get a little bit more powerful, but you're not really increasing your strength.
(18:43):
What are some yeah what are some
of your go-to kettlebell exercises i like
the kettlebell swing i like this i like the kettlebell
clean to a press i like the kettlebell snatches i like a kettlebell like clean
or a thruster like a clean to a press i mean squat to a press and i like it
(19:04):
doing usually if i can as much as i can one hand and one kettlebell now the
Spoons you use two hands.
But what happens is that forces you to balance and get stronger on both sides
of the body or around the body.
Yeah. And all this, you can start incorporating this late ninth grade,
(19:24):
10th grade, definitely.
You can do kettlebells in the sixth grade.
Oh, okay. And just keep it light.
And just, again, work on more technique. Well, you, you want to teach the techniques
when they're weak, when they're really weak.
So they have to use good technique in order to do it and you teach them that way.
(19:48):
Okay. And then along your career, you went, then you ended up at Ohio U,
down in Athens, Ohio with the Bobcats. That's right. For six years.
Yeah, six years there. And then you moved into the, I guess it's the ACC with Wake Forest. Yes. Yeah.
So Wake Forest for about 16 or 17 years, I can't remember, but it's quite a few years.
(20:12):
I was the Director of Strength and Athletic Performance there for one of the years.
Yeah, great. I've had some great experiences, great stuff. Yeah.
Athleticism, you talk a lot about athleticism and developing athleticism,
and you use a whole lot of those exercises to actually, you know,
rather than just sitting there,
(20:33):
maybe sometimes, you know, machine work, you're kind of just sitting there,
maybe doing an overhead press or whatever, seated position,
but then you really like incorporating the standing and on the ground.
But is that something you would do?
Well, especially when they're young, when they can do these things,
(20:53):
teach them those skills when they're very… Look, there was a bodybuilder named
Mike Mentzer, and he wrote a book, it was the last book that he wrote,
that he proved two weeks before he died.
There was a chapter in there, and he talked in a couple of paragraphs about
the importance of a clean and a press, overhead press.
(21:14):
And he says, that's the first thing that they should learn how to do,
how to do a clean to a press.
Now, I'm asking the audience, I said, who do you think said this?
Everybody said Boyd Epley, this Olympic lifter, this Olympic weightlifting coach.
I said, no, Mike Mentzer.
And he approved this book two weeks before he died. But he was actually on a
(21:37):
platform doing a clean and a jerk.
And everybody thinks, oh, well, he's high intensity, but he doesn't disagree
about doing those kind of lofts, especially when you're young.
Now, as you start getting older, you want to maintain strength in your joints,
but any kind of resistance is going to be good, you know, doing something.
(21:58):
But especially when you're young, you should be able to move that weight with power and athleticism.
You know, one exercise you've already brought up and that you can definitely
get kicked off at the middle school level is the lunge and the walking lunge
and backward backstep lunge,
(22:20):
the front foot elevated rear lunge.
If you can't expand on some of those lunge exercises, the equipment that you
need, you don't hardly need any.
You need a couple of kettlebells or some dumbbells or whatever.
I'll give you an idea. My wife was doing one of the steppers,
(22:41):
and she's on the stepper, and she's all bent over.
But she could go forever on the thing. And I took her over to where I was at
Macaulay School in Chattanooga. I said, let's walk these steps.
See how you feel totally different when you do that then a stepper that's actually
doing the work for you so we got her up there and she was doing and oh my gosh
(23:04):
she said she pulled her legs and her hips and everything else look if those
kids can do walking lunges,
and they do a lunge where they step out and step back they can do back step
lunges side lunges It was like, yeah, those are, that stuff is so good for these kids to do.
You know, it's just, it's very athletic. And when you put that foot down and
(23:28):
all that weights on that way, eventually you can add weight to that.
But I don't get really caught up in body weight. Actually, like you're doing a chin up.
My thing, doing chins is tough enough. I don't think you need to add all the
weight to it. If you can do a chin-up, good for you.
Because there are a lot of people that can't do one chin-up.
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And so my thing is, I just like that.
I love that they did a study, I think, in the Soviet Union. They found that
their best wrestlers were the ones that got in a stance.
And then they dropped down to their chest, belly, thighs, on the mat,
and got up the quickest back to that stance.
The ones that did that the quickest were their better wrestlers.
(24:12):
They're athletic. Getting on the ground and get back up. It's so athletic.
Doing a forward roll, getting up and making a move.
Those are things that are very athletic. That kinesthetic and spatial awareness is so important.
So important. But doing body weight, it starts with doing body weight things.
And you got to start them. The younger, the better.
Especially in these day and age. These kids are scrolling on our Instagrams
(24:37):
more than they're rolling on a mat.
Well, you can start this before kindergarten.
They can start having you do a crab crawl and a bear crawl.
It's not to burn them out. That's what they have to say with these coaches.
Don't do so many reps where you're trying to break them. It's not a conditioning
(24:58):
thing. It's an athleticism thing. them.
And if we're doing it incorrectly, correct them and get them to do it right.
Excellent. Yeah, I like it. And then, so Wake Forest and you went from Wake
Forest and then you, I believe you did some things with the CSCCA or?
I worked on the board of directors for the CSCCA for 10 years.
(25:22):
I was the president of the CSA for my last five
years and then but during that
time i came back to chattanooga and i was
kind of a mentor in wrestling and i started a little helping a little bit with
strength conditioning and i i was back in chattanooga where i started coaching
wrestling and uh so it was a great fit and then they asked me to be correct
(25:45):
so i was a director for about two years and then i got on with mondo low after that.
So it is looking at a great career. It was fun.
My thing is now to do like what we're doing right now.
Anything I can do to help coaches because those coaches are going to affect
thousands and thousands of kids, hopefully in a positive way.
(26:07):
But anything I can do to help them philosophically, planning,
organization, whatever, I'm here to help any way I can.
Tell us a little bit about what you're doing now. What do you got to do nowadays
and using all the what you learned over the years and everything and what you have to do now?
Well, I basically, my job is I don't really sell the flooring.
(26:31):
We have dealers and salespeople to do that.
I try to make the connection with the strength coach.
And then what I'll do is some universities, I'll go in and talk to their interns,
do a PowerPoint presentation.
You know, whatever we can do. GAs, assistant coaches take people to lunch and
that sort of thing and introduce them to our dealers and our salespeople.
(26:52):
So mine is to give them a little bit of education on our flooring and what we're
doing with our flooring that can help the strength.
That's really kind of what I'm doing. But I go to state high school clinics.
I go to national conventions and all that sort of just to meet coaches, strength coaches.
A lot of relationship building and trying to develop some trust with a lot of
(27:19):
the coaches that are out there and getting your methods across about what your company does.
I was one of them. I was starting out at Ohio University, 658 athletes, 700 athletes.
It was me and a VA. So I'd be there 530, like seven o'clock at night.
(27:40):
Very tough that i loved it did
that for about six years and then got on at
wake force when i walked in wake force they only had 440 athletes and i had
two assistants i thought i was in heaven but oh my gosh this is great but when
i left uh about eight years ago or so we had like 13 strength coaches and nutrition
(28:01):
a couple nutritionists so it's growing and more More people are getting involved.
But it's still the same thing. You have to teach and you have to coach.
For some of the young coaches and athletes that are out there listening to our
podcast today, if they wanted to get in touch with you or whatever and talk
to you about training, because you've got a wealth of knowledge about this,
(28:23):
when they go through, do you have social media?
Do you have email? What's a good way to get a hold of you? Do they look up my
Monday? What should they do?
I'll give you my email right now. That's eread at MondoUSA.com.
So eread at MondoUSA.com. They'll contact me.
(28:44):
Look, sometimes somebody will contact me. I'll go right to their school.
I go talk to the coach, take him to lunch or breakfast or whatever it is,
and just try to get to know him.
I'll try to answer any questions I can.
If they want to send me videos for me to review, if they want to send me workouts
and let's talk about it. But my thing is to help them in any way because they're
(29:08):
helping ourselves and they're helping our athletes.
So please contact me. I'll help you any way I can.
And I imagine your flooring can obviously take on the heat of dropping wigs
all over it and all that kind of stuff all the time.
It's made for that. It's like I told you before, if I've got a kid that I'm
(29:30):
coaching, that first thing I'm trying to do is not so much what I give him.
It's a lot of the bad habits that he's doing to take away from him, take those habits away.
Got to put him in the right posture, the right position, and everything he's
doing, teach him the correct way, but get rid of the negatives.
And that way, he never does that again.
(29:51):
And we can do that. That's the start. And what we've done in Mondo is to take
away some negatives that we've had and just try to help that coach.
But yeah, our thing is built for dropping weights. That's what we did, dropping the weights.
Sounds good. Coach Ethan Reeve, he is a longtime wrestling coach,
(30:13):
strength and conditioning professional.
He did sports performance coaching at the grade school, high school, collegiate levels.
He's been around folks and uh unfortunately time
flies while we're having fun uh this interview
went pretty quick and we're gonna have
to have you back coach okay thank you very much ed i appreciate what you're
(30:35):
doing is you're helping a lot of coaches by doing that so i really appreciate
what you're doing yeah and you know i imagine you might be down at the cscca
convention this this year in Fort Worth? Yes. I'll be there.
You're going to be there?
Yeah. And also, I'm sure, you know, a lot of the collegiate and high school
coaches that are going to be attending that will be able to bump into you down
(30:59):
there on the show rhythm or walk in the hall. Tell them to come down to the booth.
Tell them to come down to the booth. We'll go into the lab, the teaching lab.
Anything we can do to help them in any way we can, just send them our way. We'll have a booth.
All right? Well, there it is. This is Ethan Reeve, strength and conditioning professional.
Ethan, thanks for joining us with this ASAP Athletic Strength and Power podcast.
(31:23):
It was recorded live from Cincinnati, Ohio and Chattanooga, Tennessee.
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(00:41):
This is Ed Scali with Athletic Strength and Power Podcast.
Joining me today from Chattanooga, Tennessee.
I believe it's a Whole Foods there. And there's Ethan Reeve.
He's joining us. He's a longtime strength and conditioning professional.
He also coached wrestling. He was a wrestler himself coming up through grade
(01:02):
school and then at the collegiate level at the University of Tennessee.
But we're going to let him give us a little bit of background on himself,
and then we're going to get rolling.
We're going to talk about some coaching aspects and how to get your athletes in the peak condition.
It starts at an early age. It started at an early age for you, Ethan. Yeah, I did.
(01:23):
I mean, wrestling has always been a big part of my life since seventh grade.
I've always done strength training, push-ups, the chin-ups and stuff.
Got into a little bit of the Olympic lifting at the collegiate level when I
was at the University of Tennessee and used that basically when coaching my wrestlers.
I coached wrestling for well about 13 years or more and then got into strength
(01:47):
and conditioning but my thing was i took a lot of the philosophy that i took from wrestling,
And then applied a lot of that to coaching athletes.
There's a big factor. A big factor for me is, yes, I want to make it more athletic.
I'll be as honest with you that I love Olympic lifting, powerlifting,
(02:12):
bodybuilding, kettlebells, medicine balls, all the speed and agility, all of it.
Anything that's going to make our guys or gals more athletic, I want to use.
But I don't use like we have
standards in our training like you know like what we'll say football if I'm
a high school football strength coach I'm going to do maybe power cleans at
(02:36):
225 that would be a standard for us staying clean at 225 and what I try to do is get more kids.
Doing those standards front squat at 225 back squat at 250 deadlift at 300 whatever
whatever that standard is then my job is to get more kids doing that.
Because if my average athletes can beat your average athlete, then we're going to win.
(03:02):
And that's the way I was in the wrestling realm. I mean, if you had 10 weight
classes, I wanted all my 10 guys to step up on the mat and be chopping competitive.
So I applied that a lot to strength training at the high school and collegiate level.
Wrestling and strength training, they kind of married to each other the way
they're, you know, it's like they go hand in hand.
(03:24):
Really do. I, you know, if I could give advice to a high school football coach,
I'd say, hey, look, take your offensive line, your defensive line,
your linebackers, your tight ends and fullbacks.
And if they're not playing basketball, they're going to be on the rest of the
team because it's going to help them to be more athletic, to be tougher or physical,
(03:45):
have that kinesthetic, the spatial awareness, that body awareness they need
out on the football field.
And football and wrestling together, those two sports together,
I'm telling you, you're a tough individual. You can do both worlds.
Now, you, we've talked before, and you started a lot earlier than the average kid.
You actually, something propelled you to, you know, do running and like a sixth,
(04:12):
I don't know, I guess you were in sixth grade and doing all kinds of running
in seventh grade, saying push-ups.
You were doing push-ups and sit-ups like crazy. Tell us a little bit about what
motivated you to do that as a sixth grader, unless sixth graders,
seventh graders aren't into that.
Yeah you know i it's it's a
tough thing i mean i was in grade school and i
(04:33):
was using remember the springs the chess pool that kind
of set the man grippers and doing chin-ups and we had in physical education
we were doing the the climbing boards you know the with the pegs oh yeah yeah
we did all those kind of things and we did that in physical education I don't
know what got me into running,
(04:54):
but my idol is a guy named Jim Ryan,
who's a Milo from the University of Kansas.
By the sixth grade, I was running six miles a day. I started running when I
was in the third grade and I just loved it.
When we were in the seventh grade, I got into wrestling and then I mean,
for about five years, eighth grade through 12th grade, I was doing 500 pushups a day.
(05:16):
I had a way of doing it so that they were good. try to be perfect push-ups when you do it.
It really helped me in my wrestling and football and anything else.
High school-wise, you wrestled in Ohio. It's a powerhouse.
A lot of the kids that are involved in wrestling programs in Ohio go on and wrestle collegiately.
(05:37):
Just an incredible thing.
It all culminates in Columbus, Ohio with the state championships.
You were involved in that too. Tell us a little bit about that.
I mean, in high school, you know, we really didn't have a weight room,
but I would do, I'd go to the YNCA and I'd get up and I was getting up like at 3.15 every morning.
(05:58):
And I was doing 500 pushups, 100 gennads, doing that kind of stuff.
A lot of gymnastic type stuff, calisthenics. I thought that that really did
help me. Of course, we did.
We also did a lot of farm work and harvesting for hay and baling hay and that
kind of stuff to get strong. We didn't really have a program.
(06:18):
You're talking about the early, late 60s, early 1970s.
And even at the University of Tennessee, where I went to school,
you know, we had a weight room, but it was just a couple of platforms and some bars.
And I actually learned how to do the lifting from a lot of our throwers.
The throwers on the track team were really good at weightlifting.
(06:40):
And they taught us how to do it, taught me how to do it.
Yeah. Yeah, now, you know, as a coach, and for our coaches out there,
we've got a lot of listeners that come into our podcast. They're coaches,
and a lot of them, of course, are working with the high school athletes and
some of the younger athletes. Where do you start?
What's a starting point, you know, age-wise? And then what kind of exercise
(07:04):
do you like throwing out?
Now, you definitely like the bodyweight exercises and things like that,
but what age and what are some of the exercises that you throw into your program?
Yeah, if I was running, let's say I had a system from first grade to the 12th
grade for a lot of these high school coaches, how you bring them along.
(07:25):
My feeling is physical education, you know, where they were climbing ropes,
doing pegboards, doing chins and dips and bodyweight squats and lunges and doing
tumbling every day and doing a lot of speed work and ladders and agility drills. and things.
From the first year, at least the fifth grade, I would continue with some of
(07:49):
that, but I'd start introducing in the sixth grade, I'd start introducing kettlebells and dumbbells.
Even with those kettlebells and dumbbells.
Squatting movements, Olympic weightlifting movements, lightweight.
None of this is heavyweight. It's more about the technique.
Teach them technique, how to do things correctly. And if you put it in your
(08:12):
program, then you want to make sure that it's in your program.
You coach it, you teach it, and then you correct it if it's not right.
You can't just watch kids do things wrong. You've got to step in and help them get it right.
And then in the seventh grade, I would start including the barbell,
(08:33):
on and i would start teaching how to you know
how to press how to squat how to
pull how to do planes and jerks and
snatches again with appropriate weight
in their seventh grade eighth grade it's more about their technique now some
kids can handle a little more weight you want to let them do that yeah but it's
(08:54):
not about limit weight you're not trying to get that kind of thing it's just
like with high intensity training the one set for failure I don't really,
that's not really what I'm trying to do.
Mine is more to develop athleticism and teaching them technique.
And what I found was that if you teach them difficult things,
(09:15):
then once they master those things, everything else becomes easy.
And the other most important thing about it is if I teach them difficult things
in the weight room, then what happens is I have a coachable and teachable athlete.
And that's what every sport coach wants. He wants somebody that's going to observe
(09:36):
the way you're teaching something and then emulate what you're teaching.
So don't do easy things in the weight room. Do things that are difficult.
There's a challenge to them and get them to master those skills.
I spent some discussions with a veteran strength and conditioning coach. His name's Joe Kent.
And he talks about the process of slow cooking as athletes,
(09:59):
taking it from step one, even when they got to the collegiate level,
that he spent some time a lot of collegially before he went on and did things in the NFL.
But he, these players would come in on day one in June or whatever,
whenever they'd get there, and he would almost go back to day one and just really
(10:22):
making sure that these guys know exactly the form and the techniques that are
involved in that particular exercise.
And he was also really big on getting the athletes constantly,
no matter what they were doing, like you're saying, a lot of athletic type of moves.
But he was really into that athletic position.
(10:43):
He would constantly have athletes working out of that type of a position and then going from there.
But that's why he liked a lot of the things they did.
Well, you know, it's Joe and I agree on a lot of things.
My thing is that we're training athletes. And the big thing is whatever we're
doing has to transfer to the athleticism of the athlete into the skill of the sport.
(11:08):
If it's not doing that, it's not always a strength coach's fault.
It might be the athlete. It might be the coach.
How do they teach the school of the sport?
And that's something that I really have nothing to say about. mind
is to make them as athletic as possible and then encourage them
to really focus on the sports skill and
(11:30):
hopefully they can transfer that but i
don't really do that my thing is to again make
it more athletic so if i'm running a workout we do
athletic warm-ups so we'll we
will tumble these gymnastic type things tumbling we will
do hip mobility vernal drills agility drills
you know anything that makes them athletic off the
(11:52):
platform off the lifting and then what we do is we have
a little warm-up that we'll do with resistance and
it could be with a kettlebell a barbell that kind of stuff
and that's all prior to when we start doing our
lifts and then i just believe in doing athletic lifting but we have to do some
training where they're they're going to get strong you got to get them strong
(12:13):
to do but the emphasis more everything about athleticism and then And I always
try to finish with something athletic as well.
You know, one of the cool things about, you know, you were involved a lot with wrestling, but.
One of the cool things that you probably found is the fact that wrestling,
the actual nature of the sport, the actual out on the mat during a practice
(12:36):
or during an actual competition, it's almost like a strength training workout in itself.
Because you're out there and almost every one of your muscles,
you're using every one of those muscles in a pattern.
And it's not a fixed pattern. It's kind of like a pattern that you're just constantly
(12:57):
shifting and readjusting, and it's kind of a strength training workout in itself.
Agree? It is. It is, yes. I mean, wrestling is a tough sport.
I know it only lasts six minutes in high school, seven minutes in the collegiate
level, but it is pure anaerobic.
(13:20):
It is tough to get through it. If you've ever wrestled before, you know the feeling.
And anytime I see those years on those young guys, those are the guys I'm going
to, hey, come over here, put a hand around them, or make them my friends.
I don't want them to be my enemies.
Well, I got brought into the fire when I was at Ohio State.
(13:43):
As a physical education student, we had to take a wrestling course.
And let's just say it wasn't one of the easy courses. It was the opposite of, you know,
of anything that was deemed easy. Yes. Yeah.
But either way, I will tell you, wouldn't it be great if every kid had to go
(14:07):
through at least once or twice a four-week course in physical education in wrestling?
It had to do maybe in high school to understand how that feels,
what it's like to wrestle and roll around.
It's such a great tool. Or look how popular wrestling has become with the women in this country.
(14:29):
It's the fastest growing sport in the country. It is really a great sport for all of us.
My daughters would have wrestled, but back in those days, it was guys and gals wrestling.
And we didn't put them to wrestle. They played soccer.
And I would have loved them to wrestle. Yeah, of course, for our listeners,
we do have to remind our listeners that, Ethan, you were a SEC champion at the
(14:54):
University of Tennessee, I believe.
Yeah, I was a four-time SEC champion.
Four-time SEC champ. So, yeah, SEC, we know all about the SEC.
It just means more what they say on their commercial.
Yeah. It does. It seems to. Well, they really get after it.
(15:16):
You know, after you had your collegiate experience at the University of Tennessee
down there in Knoxville, then you, I think, I believe you headed over to Chattanooga?
Yeah, when I finished in 77, I stayed a couple of years and helped our coach,
Gray Simons, at the time for two years.
And I went back to my high school, but I really spent a few years here in my 20s,
(15:41):
to basically study other wrestling coaches.
I'm a big believer in having mentors and having people around you that can help you and stuff.
Look, the term in wrestling is champions come in pairs. You'll never be a champion by yourself.
You better have a good workout partner and partner with you.
So my thing is to have those guys that's really good at what they did and then
(16:05):
follow up and learn from them.
And I spent my 20s doing it. But when I was 30, then I got the job,
head coaching position.
That was back in 84. And that was at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. I got you.
And then that worked out great for a while. And then you saw an opportunity
at, I believe, Ohio University, was it?
(16:28):
Yeah, I spent about five years at a high school where I was kind of a co-coach,
but also as an assistant athletic director. and the first director of strength
and conditioning at this prep school in Chattanooga.
And then in 95, I went to Ohio University to become the first director of strength
and conditioning at Ohio University.
Now, at that high school level, you probably sat with these guys down,
(16:52):
these girls, and started talking about the techniques involved in clean,
hang cleans, front squats, some of the things you mentioned.
Are there certain ages that you go with or you're starting at such a lightweight
that, you know, it teaches the actual techniques that you're looking for?
(17:14):
Yeah. Look, it's just like what Joe Ken would tell you.
I mean, you start with your body weight, go to the bar, the kettlebells,
dumbbells, and you teach technique with a little more resistance.
And then you can add a little more. But it has to be age appropriate.
I don't really worry so much about the weight eventually i want to see a little
bit of straining they have to in order to get stronger you can have to put enough
(17:36):
weight on there to to actually feel it but right if i will share this this is
i do a thing called density training.
That i started developing from doing the push-ups and chins and power cleans and all that but.
If you look at the range, like you have speed, speed is like from 10% to like 65% or whatever it is.
(17:59):
And then from about 70 to about 80 to an half, 85% is what we call power.
That's the power zone. And then you have 95 to 100, which is strength,
peaking strength, you know, into your one rep mat.
Matt, if you spend all your time at the 85% and above, you're going to get a
(18:21):
little more powerful. You'll definitely get stronger.
But what happens is you're moving the bar so slow, your training slows.
But down, you're not going to get a lot faster.
If you spend all your time at speed, the speed jump, you'll get faster and you'll
get a little bit more powerful, but you're not really increasing your strength.
(18:43):
What are some yeah what are some
of your go-to kettlebell exercises i like
the kettlebell swing i like this i like the kettlebell
clean to a press i like the kettlebell snatches i like a kettlebell like clean
or a thruster like a clean to a press i mean squat to a press and i like it
(19:04):
doing usually if i can as much as i can one hand and one kettlebell now the
Spoons you use two hands.
But what happens is that forces you to balance and get stronger on both sides
of the body or around the body.
Yeah. And all this, you can start incorporating this late ninth grade,
(19:24):
10th grade, definitely.
You can do kettlebells in the sixth grade.
Oh, okay. And just keep it light.
And just, again, work on more technique. Well, you, you want to teach the techniques
when they're weak, when they're really weak.
So they have to use good technique in order to do it and you teach them that way.
(19:48):
Okay. And then along your career, you went, then you ended up at Ohio U,
down in Athens, Ohio with the Bobcats. That's right. For six years.
Yeah, six years there. And then you moved into the, I guess it's the ACC with Wake Forest. Yes. Yeah.
So Wake Forest for about 16 or 17 years, I can't remember, but it's quite a few years.
(20:12):
I was the Director of Strength and Athletic Performance there for one of the years.
Yeah, great. I've had some great experiences, great stuff. Yeah.
Athleticism, you talk a lot about athleticism and developing athleticism,
and you use a whole lot of those exercises to actually, you know,
rather than just sitting there,
(20:33):
maybe sometimes, you know, machine work, you're kind of just sitting there,
maybe doing an overhead press or whatever, seated position,
but then you really like incorporating the standing and on the ground.
But is that something you would do?
Well, especially when they're young, when they can do these things,
(20:53):
teach them those skills when they're very… Look, there was a bodybuilder named
Mike Mentzer, and he wrote a book, it was the last book that he wrote,
that he proved two weeks before he died.
There was a chapter in there, and he talked in a couple of paragraphs about
the importance of a clean and a press, overhead press.
(21:14):
And he says, that's the first thing that they should learn how to do,
how to do a clean to a press.
Now, I'm asking the audience, I said, who do you think said this?
Everybody said Boyd Epley, this Olympic lifter, this Olympic weightlifting coach.
I said, no, Mike Mentzer.
And he approved this book two weeks before he died. But he was actually on a
(21:37):
platform doing a clean and a jerk.
And everybody thinks, oh, well, he's high intensity, but he doesn't disagree
about doing those kind of lofts, especially when you're young.
Now, as you start getting older, you want to maintain strength in your joints,
but any kind of resistance is going to be good, you know, doing something.
(21:58):
But especially when you're young, you should be able to move that weight with power and athleticism.
You know, one exercise you've already brought up and that you can definitely
get kicked off at the middle school level is the lunge and the walking lunge
and backward backstep lunge,
(22:20):
the front foot elevated rear lunge.
If you can't expand on some of those lunge exercises, the equipment that you
need, you don't hardly need any.
You need a couple of kettlebells or some dumbbells or whatever.
I'll give you an idea. My wife was doing one of the steppers,
(22:41):
and she's on the stepper, and she's all bent over.
But she could go forever on the thing. And I took her over to where I was at
Macaulay School in Chattanooga. I said, let's walk these steps.
See how you feel totally different when you do that then a stepper that's actually
doing the work for you so we got her up there and she was doing and oh my gosh
(23:04):
she said she pulled her legs and her hips and everything else look if those
kids can do walking lunges,
and they do a lunge where they step out and step back they can do back step
lunges side lunges It was like, yeah, those are, that stuff is so good for these kids to do.
You know, it's just, it's very athletic. And when you put that foot down and
(23:28):
all that weights on that way, eventually you can add weight to that.
But I don't get really caught up in body weight. Actually, like you're doing a chin up.
My thing, doing chins is tough enough. I don't think you need to add all the
weight to it. If you can do a chin-up, good for you.
Because there are a lot of people that can't do one chin-up.
(23:49):
And so my thing is, I just like that.
I love that they did a study, I think, in the Soviet Union. They found that
their best wrestlers were the ones that got in a stance.
And then they dropped down to their chest, belly, thighs, on the mat,
and got up the quickest back to that stance.
The ones that did that the quickest were their better wrestlers.
(24:12):
They're athletic. Getting on the ground and get back up. It's so athletic.
Doing a forward roll, getting up and making a move.
Those are things that are very athletic. That kinesthetic and spatial awareness is so important.
So important. But doing body weight, it starts with doing body weight things.
And you got to start them. The younger, the better.
Especially in these day and age. These kids are scrolling on our Instagrams
(24:37):
more than they're rolling on a mat.
Well, you can start this before kindergarten.
They can start having you do a crab crawl and a bear crawl.
It's not to burn them out. That's what they have to say with these coaches.
Don't do so many reps where you're trying to break them. It's not a conditioning
(24:58):
thing. It's an athleticism thing. them.
And if we're doing it incorrectly, correct them and get them to do it right.
Excellent. Yeah, I like it. And then, so Wake Forest and you went from Wake
Forest and then you, I believe you did some things with the CSCCA or?
I worked on the board of directors for the CSCCA for 10 years.
(25:22):
I was the president of the CSA for my last five
years and then but during that
time i came back to chattanooga and i was
kind of a mentor in wrestling and i started a little helping a little bit with
strength conditioning and i i was back in chattanooga where i started coaching
wrestling and uh so it was a great fit and then they asked me to be correct
(25:45):
so i was a director for about two years and then i got on with mondo low after that.
So it is looking at a great career. It was fun.
My thing is now to do like what we're doing right now.
Anything I can do to help coaches because those coaches are going to affect
thousands and thousands of kids, hopefully in a positive way.
(26:07):
But anything I can do to help them philosophically, planning,
organization, whatever, I'm here to help any way I can.
Tell us a little bit about what you're doing now. What do you got to do nowadays
and using all the what you learned over the years and everything and what you have to do now?
Well, I basically, my job is I don't really sell the flooring.
(26:31):
We have dealers and salespeople to do that.
I try to make the connection with the strength coach.
And then what I'll do is some universities, I'll go in and talk to their interns,
do a PowerPoint presentation.
You know, whatever we can do. GAs, assistant coaches take people to lunch and
that sort of thing and introduce them to our dealers and our salespeople.
(26:52):
So mine is to give them a little bit of education on our flooring and what we're
doing with our flooring that can help the strength.
That's really kind of what I'm doing. But I go to state high school clinics.
I go to national conventions and all that sort of just to meet coaches, strength coaches.
A lot of relationship building and trying to develop some trust with a lot of
(27:19):
the coaches that are out there and getting your methods across about what your company does.
I was one of them. I was starting out at Ohio University, 658 athletes, 700 athletes.
It was me and a VA. So I'd be there 530, like seven o'clock at night.
(27:40):
Very tough that i loved it did
that for about six years and then got on at
wake force when i walked in wake force they only had 440 athletes and i had
two assistants i thought i was in heaven but oh my gosh this is great but when
i left uh about eight years ago or so we had like 13 strength coaches and nutrition
(28:01):
a couple nutritionists so it's growing and more More people are getting involved.
But it's still the same thing. You have to teach and you have to coach.
For some of the young coaches and athletes that are out there listening to our
podcast today, if they wanted to get in touch with you or whatever and talk
to you about training, because you've got a wealth of knowledge about this,
(28:23):
when they go through, do you have social media?
Do you have email? What's a good way to get a hold of you? Do they look up my
Monday? What should they do?
I'll give you my email right now. That's eread at MondoUSA.com.
So eread at MondoUSA.com. They'll contact me.
(28:44):
Look, sometimes somebody will contact me. I'll go right to their school.
I go talk to the coach, take him to lunch or breakfast or whatever it is,
and just try to get to know him.
I'll try to answer any questions I can.
If they want to send me videos for me to review, if they want to send me workouts
and let's talk about it. But my thing is to help them in any way because they're
(29:08):
helping ourselves and they're helping our athletes.
So please contact me. I'll help you any way I can.
And I imagine your flooring can obviously take on the heat of dropping wigs
all over it and all that kind of stuff all the time.
It's made for that. It's like I told you before, if I've got a kid that I'm
(29:30):
coaching, that first thing I'm trying to do is not so much what I give him.
It's a lot of the bad habits that he's doing to take away from him, take those habits away.
Got to put him in the right posture, the right position, and everything he's
doing, teach him the correct way, but get rid of the negatives.
And that way, he never does that again.
(29:51):
And we can do that. That's the start. And what we've done in Mondo is to take
away some negatives that we've had and just try to help that coach.
But yeah, our thing is built for dropping weights. That's what we did, dropping the weights.
Sounds good. Coach Ethan Reeve, he is a longtime wrestling coach,
(30:13):
strength and conditioning professional.
He did sports performance coaching at the grade school, high school, collegiate levels.
He's been around folks and uh unfortunately time
flies while we're having fun uh this interview
went pretty quick and we're gonna have
to have you back coach okay thank you very much ed i appreciate what you're
(30:35):
doing is you're helping a lot of coaches by doing that so i really appreciate
what you're doing yeah and you know i imagine you might be down at the cscca
convention this this year in Fort Worth? Yes. I'll be there.
You're going to be there?
Yeah. And also, I'm sure, you know, a lot of the collegiate and high school
coaches that are going to be attending that will be able to bump into you down
(30:59):
there on the show rhythm or walk in the hall. Tell them to come down to the booth.
Tell them to come down to the booth. We'll go into the lab, the teaching lab.
Anything we can do to help them in any way we can, just send them our way. We'll have a booth.
All right? Well, there it is. This is Ethan Reeve, strength and conditioning professional.
Ethan, thanks for joining us with this ASAP Athletic Strength and Power podcast.
(31:23):
It was recorded live from Cincinnati, Ohio and Chattanooga, Tennessee.
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