In this info packed episode of the Coach U Podcast, we're joined by Eric Yavarone and Noah Huff from 5 Tool Connection, an organization dedicated to athlete development through tailored training programs. Our guests share invaluable insights into the science of honing athletic performance, focusing on body movement analysis and individualized program design to propel athletes toward their peak potential.
We delve into the intricacies of performance training, pulling back the curtain on the methods Eric and Noah employ with athletes across the sports performance spectrum, from new athletes to seasoned pros. The discussion spans everything from the importance of routine and consistency in athletes' training regimens to the critical role of recovery and nutrition in achieving optimal performance.
Eric and Noah also share their personal journeys, shedding light on the foundation of 5 Tool Connection and the vision that drives their work. Through rapid-fire questions, fun exchanges, and deep-dive explorations into the technicalities of athletic training, this episode is packed with engaging content and actionable advice.
Whether you're an athlete yourself, a coach looking to broaden your understanding, or simply someone fascinated by the mechanics of sports performance, this episode offers a ton of knowledge. Tune in and get ready to be inspired by the dedication and expertise of Eric Yavarone and Noah Huff.
Remember to subscribe to the Coach U Podcast and share this episode with anyone passionate about enhancing athletic performance and understanding the science behind it.
Contact Five Tool Connection here!
https://fivetoolconnection.com/pages/...
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Coach U (00:00):
Hey everybody.
This is the coach you podcastand I'm your host coach you.
This podcast is about beingcurious.
Learning from others and usingwhat we've learned to evolve
every single day.
Hey everyone.
In this episode, we're beingjoined by the owners of 5 Tool
Connection, Eric Yavarone andNoah Huff.
Both Eric and Noah have workedwith Major League Baseball
(00:21):
players, and now they're takingtheir knowledge and helping
athletes all over the world.
5 Tool Connection analyzes bodymovement, they check to see what
you need, and they write upprograms for you specifically.
This episode will give you anidea what you need to do as an
athlete for In order to excel insports and using training as a
tool to get there.
So tune into this episode andremember to subscribe and then
(00:43):
share with anybody else that youthink would love this episode.
Hey, what's up everybody.
Welcome to the coach.
U podcast.
I'm your host coach.
U we're being joined today byEric and Noah Huff guys.
Welcome to the show.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Super stoked to talk to you guys
eric yavarone (00:58):
Glad to be here.
Appreciate it.
Thank you for having me.
Coach U (01:01):
performance training.
We're
noah huff (01:02):
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
Coach U (01:03):
you guys are doing with five tool connection.
Before we start that, I want togo rapid fire just so the
audience can get to know you alittle bit better.
Noah, you're going first.
What's your favorite TV show?
noah huff (01:18):
That's 70s show.
Coach U (01:19):
That's seventies, Eric.
What do you got?
eric yavarone (01:21):
I was really into Yellowstone kind of recently, so
I guess I'll go with that one.
Coach U (01:25):
heard.
It's good.
eric yavarone (01:25):
It is, it is good.
Actually, I guess I'm a little,I gotta actually finish the last
series, so it's kind of a bigplay, saying it's my favorite
show I haven't finished yet, butI was enjoying it recently.
Coach U (01:34):
Okay.
That's fair.
Noah, favorite band or musician?
noah huff (01:37):
Mountain Joy.
Coach U (01:39):
Mountain joy.
eric yavarone (01:40):
Who is that?
Coach U (01:41):
Yeah.
Tell me who they are.
noah huff (01:42):
It's a, it's a great band.
They're growing a lot right now.
So go check them out.
It's good.
It's kind of like a folk type ofgood music.
You know, it's just feel goodmusic.
Puts you in a good mood.
Coach U (01:52):
I like feel good music.
Eric, what do you like?
eric yavarone (01:54):
I'm in a weird spot, man.
I used to like hip hop music.
I think my horizon's expanding alittle bit.
Historically, Drake's myfavorite, favorite artist,
because he always, you know, hassomething for you, depending on
what kind of mood you're in.
But I've actually been listeningto, like, Morgan Wallen lately
and a little bit of country.
So I don't know what's going onwith me, but I'm shifting gears
a little bit, but I still sayDrake, I guess.
Coach U (02:13):
Taste buds change as you get older, you know, you
always have the classics.
That's never going to leave.
All right.
So then I'm going to go Noahback to you, your favorite thing
about working in the performancetraining world.
noah huff (02:23):
it's just seeing the development with athletes
personally and professionally.
It's a good, it's a cool thing.
Cause you get to see, you know,when you're working, whether if
it was an 18 year old kid oreven, you know, a 25 year old
adult, you kind of see theirprogress and growth.
Not just as an athlete, but justpersonally.
And I really enjoy that.
Coach U (02:45):
Eric, how about you?
eric yavarone (02:45):
Yeah.
Similar, like the process a lot,you know, Noah and I've been
involved in kind of the teamteam environment a lot, and
then, you know, five TCindividual kids, but like
baseball or sports kind ofoutcomes that they're shooting
for and kind of seeing theprocess, whether it's a minor
league guy turning into a bigleague guy or a kid.
Going to college to play.
(03:06):
Just kind of like, you know,being part of the development
process and watching the processunfold and ultimately like
hopefully they get to where theywant to be.
So seeing that those thingshappen at all those different
levels, that's probably, that'sprobably it for me.
Coach U (03:17):
love it.
We're definitely going to talkabout the process.
I want to hear about five toolconnection and what you guys got
going on there.
Before we get into that, I wantto get into real quick, caught
the impact deck.
So we have a couple of differentcards from here.
One's an affirmation.
One's an action and one's areflection.
I'm just going to randomly draw.
I'm going to pose the questionto both of you guys
individually, and then we'llrock and roll.
So I'm going to pull, we got a,an affirmation card.
(03:41):
All right.
So as I take on new challenges,I feel calm, confident, and
powerful.
Noah, how can you utilize thatin your practice?
How can you utilize that in yourlife?
noah huff (03:51):
Yeah, I think as a coach it's really important to,
you know, be calm and cool andcollective and working with
athletes and especially, youknow we work with baseball
players specifically, and it's agame of failure.
And a lot of the times thoseguys are up and down
emotionally.
They're all over the place.
Whether it's stuff off thefield, on the field.
(04:12):
So I think just.
Kind of taking that calm, coolapproach and keeping a level
head and it can really impactthe players and their careers
and then, you know, my lifepersonally as well.
eric yavarone (04:23):
I mean, honestly, kind of, kind of the same point
like we have to be that person,I feel like for them, because
the consistent piece.
It's kind of like the, theprocess of getting prepared
physically to do whatever task,whatever sport and Noah hit on
it a little bit, but they'regoing to actually play the game,
which is the part that has allthe variables in it.
(04:45):
And outcomes are going to beriding high, riding low,
depending on where they'reperforming at.
But we can be the consistentpiece.
So at least they know, likewhatever noise is going on
around them when they come tothe gym or they come to the
weight room, that energy culturevibe is going to be consistent
no matter where they're at.
And I think that that like, is agood thing and probably, you
know, hopefully reminds themthat even when they're going
(05:06):
good, like, Hey, you still gotto prepare and still got to tap
into your process and doeverything the same.
And then when you're going badtoo, like.
Like, I don't care.
Like, you could be old for yourlast 24.
I'm still gonna smile when I seeyou and we're gonna go through
our, our day and, and I'm gonnaget you ready to play that night
because tonight might be thenight you go off.
So I think that being the cool,calm, and collected person
consistently for them, I thinkis a pretty important piece of
(05:26):
the, of the role just for the,the culture and the environment.
So that's kind of what I thoughtof with that.
Coach U (05:31):
So going into that real quick, what do you, would
you say are things that helpkeep you calm, cool, and
collected and, and consistentfor yourselves?
And then also, how does thattranslate into being a coach?
eric yavarone (05:42):
I, I kind of been on this a lot lately, like
walking the walk and practicingwhat you preach is super
important.
So like for me, I know thatlike, I'm a routine oriented
guy.
And I think that doing the samesort of process every day is a
good thing for me, like, itfeels like I'm getting better at
my own craft and taking care ofmyself physically.
I'm doing all the things thatI'm trying to instill in these
(06:03):
guys too.
So like kind of trying to be amodel figure in that regard.
So I think like having thatprocess, having that routine
like That sets the same way ofwe do our process before we get
to the park or we do our processbefore we get to the gym to
train the guys.
I just think that that helps usme individually, right?
And then that allows me to bethe best version of me and
(06:25):
therefore will help the guys.
So I think that walking thewalk, practicing what you
preach, that sort of stuffconsistently and have a routine
with that.
I think that that personallyhelps me be cool, calm and
collected.
So when it's time to.
Train like we're prepared.
So that's kind of what I think.
noah huff (06:39):
That's where me and Eric really aligned is
practicing what we preach.
And I know for me personally.
Very routine oriented as well.
But one thing that's actually, Ijust started doing a week ago
was actually just journalingeach day.
And my mom's been harping on meabout this for my whole life.
I texted her and I was like,Hey, it finally, all the stars
(07:01):
aligned and I finally listened,but I've just kind of like brain
dumping, you know, and it's justkind of clearing out my
headspace and it, and it'shelped a lot, so that type of
stuff.
And Like Eric said, then, youknow, on the practice and what
you preach, making sure thatI'm, you know, staying on track
in my nutrition, on my trainingthat I'm, you know, doing
everything, meditating, so, Ifeel good when I'm telling
(07:23):
athletes, you know, Hey, youshould incorporate this into
your routine.
Cause you know, I'm doing itmyself and, and you also learn a
lot more by doing that yourself.
So,
Coach U (07:31):
100 percent it's easier to teach that when
you're, when you're living it,cause you can act, it's
authentic.
You know, it's interesting.
You talked about the journalingand the meditation and stuff.
That's something that like savedme.
Talk about consistency androutine, like the things you
guys are talking about.
I appreciate the insightsbecause that stuff matters as
coaches.
It absolutely does.
Let's talk about five toolconnection.
Let's, let's talk about what itis.
Tell me how it started.
eric yavarone (07:52):
All right so 5TC started way back when Was
actually it was myself and abuddy who kind of worked more
with hitting and we had thisidea of making you know, this
kind of like all encompassingperformance thing with baseball
and strength and conditioningand kind of started getting some
elements of it going, neverreally went anywhere, but he
(08:13):
kind of went a different routeand started getting into some
team stuff himself.
So I kind of always like, and Ikind of like put it to bed, but
I always had the vision of like,all right, let's, let's find a
way to bring.
Higher level performance,training, testing, things like
that to really kids is what thefocus started on is giving them
resources because not everybodyhas.
Somebody like yourself in theirbackyard, they don't have a
(08:35):
Cressy performance, like theydon't have high level
facilities.
And a lot of them, I feel likedid what I did when I was in
high school, trying to train toget better at baseball, but I
was just going to a 24 hour, youknow, local gym for 10 bucks a
month and doing bench press andnot really having any idea what
I was doing and basicallyskipping legs every time and
just doing upper body.
So it changed from performanceto some other things, but you
(08:56):
know, I think a lot of kidsprobably have that same
situation.
So always wanted to continue theS and C vision for it.
And then kind of made thedecision like, all right, why
wait?
There's no reason to wait.
And then, you know, at the time,no, and I started working
together, got along really well,started becoming very close.
And, you know, I just kind ofthought it'd be really cool to
(09:16):
do something with, with one ofyour friends.
So one day I asked him, Iremember in the gym saying, Hey
man, like I'm doing this.
You want to get involved?
And he said, yes.
Officially like started thecompany in 2019, September of
2019.
So again, it was just the two ofus to get going and with the
vision to bring better trainingto kids and it's morphed and
grown quite a bit, but I thinkthe nuts and bolts of the goal
and the principles of what wewant to do have always been the
(09:38):
same.
And that was, To to bring thatprogram into kids virtually.
And now it's kind of shiftedmore to like, we want to
dominate the virtual space foryou know, baseball, but
rotational athletes, right.
Dominate that kind of virtualspace and bring good testing and
performance.
Coach U (09:51):
Noah, what made you jump on board?
You were like, yeah, Iabsolutely want to do this.
What was the excitement?
I
noah huff (09:55):
Yeah, it was that me and Eric hit it off really well.
He's a extremely intelligentperson, coach.
Has a, a kind of see strengthand conditioning through a
different lens than anybody I'vetalked to.
And Yeah.
At the time, like I was learningfrom him and watching him work
with players and then, and itwas honestly just like, it was
the energy between us.
It was like the vibe we wantedto bring something cool.
(10:16):
We want to be the best and bringthe best service to, to
everybody in a baseball andsoftball rotational sports.
Coach U (10:24):
What do you think is missing the most?
In.
The performance training world,especially for the younger
athletes
eric yavarone (10:30):
I mean, probably resources, right.
Like in all kinds of differentforms, I think I mean, facility
number one, right.
I think like at the end of theday too, like.
Much like the kind of story Iwas telling, like there's
different you know, within the,within the training piece, the
performance piece for, you know,baseball particularly, like, I
think a lot of stuff that's kindof popular right now that we're
utilizing and have seen bigchanges on and things that can
(10:52):
really improve performance.
Like they're not things that youfind in a regular gym, you know,
there's.
Here's your benches.
Here's the incline benches.
Here's the, here's the machinesover here.
And here's the squat racks inthe back and the leg press.
And it's very traditional inthat sense.
So literally from like anequipment standpoint, there's
some limitations, right?
Because they know they have totrain.
They know that the athletes arebig, strong and fast.
So where do you do, where do youdo that?
(11:12):
Oh, you go lift at the gym,right?
So.
But if you go to the gym, you'reonly as good as the equipment as
you have, because you can't youcan have the perfect exercise
that we provide for you or giveyou at the right time.
But if you don't have a waterbag, say like, what are you
going to do?
We can get creative with otherthings, but point being, like, I
think the resources of literallythe facility probably could be a
limit limiting factor.
And then probably theeducational piece too, right.
(11:33):
At the end of the day too, likeagainst referring back to the
same story, cause it was myexperience.
You go to the gym and.
What are you going to do?
I don't know what I was doing.
Right.
So you're going to watch whateverybody else does or what your
buddy did, or what an old coachof yours did when he played 15
years ago and got drafted.
And here's the program that theygave me.
Then go do it.
It helped me.
Whatever that means.
And you know, just the educationpiece of it.
(11:54):
So I think that's another pieceof it too, of what we're trying
to do now.
As we've, I mean, we spent fouryears just refining the process.
Like, cause Noah said, we wantit to be clean.
We want it to be pro.
We don't want to have a poorproduct out there.
So it's been refining the model,changing platforms, making more
videos, like changing the way weadding things.
Like it's just been.
Four years of really growing theproduct.
And now that we're happy withthat, you know, in the last
(12:15):
probably six months to 12 monthspushing more of the social media
and that's our goal within thesocial media is to provide
education for kids, for people,and hopefully make it fun.
So it captures their attention.
They actually ingest theinformation, but those are two
things that come to mind for me,at least is, is educational
resources.
And then.
You know, equipment resources to
noah huff (12:33):
I think number one, education is a huge piece of
that.
Kind of like Eric was saying Iknow personally for me, and this
is kind of going back to why westarted one passion was that I'm
from Knoxville, Tennessee, andat the time, and there's a few
facilities there now, but at thetime there wasn't a whole lot of
resources.
There wasn't very much educationat all on training, on
(12:54):
nutrition, on what you shoulddo.
This is what quality traininglooks like.
This is what it is.
And then you know, I'm gonnahave to go the same, same route
with facilities and, and thosetypes of things.
And that's the cool part aboutwhat we do is that, you know,
you don't need a whole weightroom to do our program.
I was just watching videos thatkids sent today and they're in
their room with dumbbells and afew resistance bands and they're
(13:17):
getting it done.
We're able to provide that tokids all over with, with
whatever resources they have onhand.
eric yavarone (13:23):
I got one more thing to add to kind of like
within the, within the personalstory piece, like when I played
decent player played in college,like, so it was taking it very
seriously.
And on the one hand I had my AAUcoach who like on the baseball
side, maybe the player I was solike.
Unbelievable there.
But when it came to training, hesaid, all you need is Nautilus,
right?
And he bought these Nautilusmachines.
(13:43):
And in the, in the facility,they were just like your most
standard first issued everNautilus machines.
He's like, Oh, that's all youneed.
You look like the Under Armourguy and you're going to be
great.
And then on the other hand I hadsome friends that were fortunate
enough to go to a really goodfacility in town that I ended up
working at later, like mentor ofmine, Mike Ranfone at Ranfone
Training Systems in Hampden,Connecticut.
(14:04):
And like that was the place togo to get the good training.
And I remember getting the pricesheet and bringing it home and,
and my parents saying, Oh, well,we can't afford that.
That's too much.
So on the one hand, I haveNautilus.
And on the other hand, I have,we can't afford it.
So creating this model and thisvision initially was okay.
We can be the middle groundthere.
(14:24):
We can at least provide thetesting and the programming that
you can take to the 10 a monthgym and not be lost.
Right.
If you can't afford the facilityor you don't have the facility
based off of your geographicallocation.
Right.
So just a little bit more oflike a.
Kind of, that came to mind atsome point just in terms of how
it all came about.
Coach U (14:43):
no, it's huge.
I mean, it's, you know, you'realso teaching, especially
younger athletes and just kidsin general for life.
You're going to do the best youpossibly can.
Is it the highest possibleresources?
No, but maybe that comes oneday.
I love that.
What's the first thing you'retalking to them about?
noah huff (14:55):
Basically like a questionnaire basically of you
know, What have you done in thepast?
What are you currently doing?
What are your goals?
And then from there, that'swhere we're gonna, we're
starting our assessment processand that's where it really just
gives us a roadmap of theathlete.
There we can see movementqualities.
We can see force production, youknow, we can see how they move
(15:16):
in different planes of motion.
So it really kind of gives us alook under the hood and we get
to see them as them as anathlete from a training
standpoint.
And then we'll kind of go fromthere and build up their plan
individually.
And then keeping their goals inmind too, cause you know, it's,
what's going to motivate thekids, you know, if, if we see
something that they need, ofcourse, we're going to talk
(15:37):
through that with them, but youalso have to keep their goal in
mind and let that fuel them aswell,
Coach U (15:41):
How do you, how do you guys deal with that?
Cause I think that is a verytough thing to deal with as a
coach.
Sometimes where you run into,you know, you need your athlete
to do something specific andmaybe there's an outcome you're
trying to get, but I don't knowwhat the block met the block is.
Maybe they don't want to do it.
They don't like it, whatever.
How do you guys approach that?
eric yavarone (15:58):
Ooh, a lot of things come to mind.
I think that one is showing thatyou have information to support
where you're coming from.
Right?
Like, if a kid says, I need torun faster, I need to hit the
ball harder, I need to get myvelocity higher.
Like, Yeah.
And in their mind, they envisionlike, okay, if I need to get my
velocity higher, well, what,what do I need to do?
I need to throw like weightedballs, for example, because
(16:19):
that's what's popular.
It obviously looks the part andthat does play a significant
role in throwing harder.
But if you can just say, well, Ithink you need to make your
movement better because that'sgoing to allow you to throw
harder.
Like they, they may not like buyinto just the words, but when I
put a report in front of youthat says, We have objective
information here that is showingthat compared to your age group,
(16:42):
you are in the 20th percentilein the movement category and
you're in the 70th percentile inpower.
So you have incredible amountsof explosiveness in your body,
but your movement quality islimiting your ability to express
that in your actual throw.
It's really hard to argue that.
Right?
And so I think within ourprocess, that's always been the
vision.
(17:02):
We want to be able to convey tothese people and kids and
parents, how do we get thatinformation?
Well, we need to find a way tomake it more objective.
So How do we do that?
We would look at throws we wouldlook at swings and say like,
okay, you want your velocity tobe higher?
We'll look at the way that yourLower half is working in your
delivery, right?
and based off of the movementscreen videos that you sent us
we're going to look at them andwrite, just type a manual
(17:24):
report.
That's where we started.
But again, it was the sameprocess of showing you like,
Hey, look, your lower halfdoesn't work well in this squat,
in this lunge or in your throw.
So there's a high probabilityhere that the mechanics of your
lower half, the mobility that inyour joints that coincide from
the waist down, you're having anissue moving those and it's
showing up in your delivery.
(17:44):
So like speaking in theirlanguage in the, in the lens of
like why.
The training style is relatingor limiting their performance on
the field.
I think that's probably the waythat we've always went about it.
And then within that goal, likeI said, just trying to loop in
piece of information and make itmuch more like clear cut, not
arguable.
But again, it's just, it's, it'seducated, educating them on all
(18:05):
the things that go into theoutcome goal performance, and
then just having some kind ofassessment process for those to
be able to show them like, Hey,this is where you want to go,
this is where you're at now.
This is how we're going to trainyou to get there.
And they're like, okay, soundsgreat.
Let's do it.
Coach U (18:16):
Noah, do you have anything to add to that?
noah huff (18:18):
Most of the time when any time in life, like when,
when we disagree with something,it's just, it's a level of
education that we don't have ofthat subject yet.
And then once we get a betterunderstanding of it, then we
kind of pull back and we're notso, you know, this microscope
view, but we get a more broaderview of the situation.
Then it's like, oh, okay.
You know, it's, as you getolder, you do that all the time.
(18:38):
It's the same thing withathletes and it, and it's.
Like Eric said, it's showingthem, Hey, here's objective
information.
Now let's take this information.
Let's look at your on fieldmechanics and we can point right
here where it's showing up, youknow, X, Y, Z right here.
And then that information'sright there in their face.
But I mean, when you do havethose athletes that are dead set
(19:00):
on, I have to back squat, if Idon't back squat, I don't feel
good.
And if It may crush them.
It may all these differentthings.
Like at some point, you kind ofjust go, okay, I'm going to give
you this, but you're going togive me this, this and this.
And then it's just a trade offin an exchange.
And then everybody's happy.
But I think at the end of theday, you never want to sabotage
the relationship because it'sdevelopment and you're going to
(19:23):
be working with each other for,Months years on end.
So you want to keep that openrelationship and and be mindful
of where they're at and kind ofmeet them where they're at.
Coach U (19:33):
I like that a lot.
I want to ask about themistakes.
So what are some of the biggestmistakes you see in younger
athletes when it comes totraining?
eric yavarone (19:42):
Probably trying to layer like higher level
performance qualities on top oflike poor foundational movement
patterns or lack of stability,right.
In some regard.
I think stability is like alittle bit of a garbage turn.
You're going to find stability.
It's just a matter of whetheryou find it.
In the right places, right?
At the right time, or if youfind it through adding stiffness
and rigidity on top of likesegments, right?
(20:04):
So meaning like, You know, ifyou have good foundational
movement patterns and then youload them up the quality of the
movement, now you're going tolay all, layer all those
performance, performancequalities on top of that.
Whereas if you don't have that,your body is going to try to not
get hurt and it's going tostiffen up in potentially the
wrong areas.
So now you've still createdstability, but now it's in like
the wrong places.
So I feel like a lot of times wesee older athletes with a lot of
(20:27):
training volume under theirbelts that have trained for
strength for a very long time.
If they did it before they hadgood patterns.
A lot of times we have to unwindsome of that stuff and try to
rebuild it up when they'retrying to make a movement based
change on the field, right?
Because a lot of times that is alittle, that is a little thing
that's going to take them overthe edge, right?
Especially at the higher levels.
(20:47):
So that would kind of be what Ithink is, I think if we did a
better job at creating goodmovement patterns in general
stuff, squats, hinging, lunging,moving in all planes, and then
just like general.
Variability in movements likeyou know, kids don't play
different sports anymore, man.
Like playing different sports,moving around to different
planes, different environments,navigating those with physical
(21:08):
solutions, right?
I think if we did that they'd bein a much better spot because I
also truly believe that likestrength, unless we're competing
for like a strong mancompetition, the amount of like
requisite strength that'snecessary.
In team sports, for the mostpart, outside of wrestlers,
linebackers.
I don't know.
I trained baseball players, butlike, it's not that high.
(21:31):
Like, I don't think it takesthat long to gain.
Right.
So people that have beentraining for strength for seven
years.
Like, I think we could probablydo that in an off season.
We could probably get enough ina couple of years.
Right.
But it's gonna take way longerto unwind all the stiffness and
rigidity that they've thrown ontop of their bodies by doing
that for the last seven years.
And then you end up like me andI can't rotate.
(21:53):
So I got a bad neck.
So anyway that's what I, that'swhat I think is, is, is no one
knows about my neck, man.
Come on.
Putting, putting,
Coach U (22:00):
part of it.
This is
eric yavarone (22:01):
Yeah, yeah.
Come on dad.
Now what happened?
But anyway yeah, putting,putting strength on top of a bad
movement in a nutshell.
Coach U (22:09):
I just something came to me there when you were
talking about that with movingquality.
I was thinking about buckets.
We have the strength bucket.
If a lot of these athletes arefilling their strength bucket,
that's great.
Right.
But like you said, there's onlya certain amount you necessarily
need, right?
So what are the buckets, whatare the main things that you're
seeing that do need to befilled?
eric yavarone (22:26):
Movement, movement is one of them.
More on the like simpleassessment side, general
assessment side, things that yousee done in the weight room
joint range of motion testing,weight room movement patterns is
one of them.
I think strength is another one.
Higher force productionsituations, traditional
strength.
I think power is another one ofthem.
I think that we kind of dividepower into two different pieces,
(22:48):
one being more like highereffort feet in the ground, just
moving a little bit faster ingeneral strength movements.
The other one being more elasticreactive power where there's,
you know, deceleration qualitiesand you're springing off the
ground, things like that.
I think you probably split thatinto two.
And then I think the capacitypiece too, is another big one.
(23:09):
In a sense of like conditioning,right?
But being able to repeatefforts, do things over and over
again, bounce back day to day,things like that.
I think those are probably fivefive general ones.
And then that gets into the.
Actually looking at themovements on the field and
depending on what sport it is,what position they play, you
could probably break that down acouple different ways too.
So like maybe for a baseballplayer, it could be the swing
(23:29):
for a position player, and thenit could be their defensive
movement actions, right?
As two more buckets.
So now you have call it seven,six to eight different buckets
that can all go into theresultant performance on the
field.
And then, you know, we just gotto test them and kind of know
what we look for within each oneof those.
Coach U (23:46):
You can get, you can, you can start getting real
detailed if you wanted to
eric yavarone (23:49):
totally.
Totally.
So yeah, you could spread themall out and then you can
condense them kind of, you know,however, however you want.
So we've taken them and we'vekind of put them into put them
into three movement, strengthand explosiveness.
And that's kind of the threethat we test for.
Coach U (24:02):
what do you define as movement and what are the, what
are the qualities that you lookfor in movement?
noah huff (24:06):
Obviously number one, range of motion having, having
quality range of motion andtalking about joint by joint
through the body.
Eric kind of talked about that,where you see compensations and
different things and addingstrength onto a poor movement
quality.
eric yavarone (24:19):
Yeah, it's range of motion testing in the
beginning That's like the mostfoundational component of it
Just see what is capable periodfrom a mechanic standpoint
noah huff (24:26):
So if you don't have good range of motion and control
over that range of motion thenyou're going to put yourself in
a, in a tough spot.
Balance, stability
eric yavarone (24:34):
Like Noah said stability Which is just
controlling kind of segments
noah huff (24:38):
coordination.
eric yavarone (24:39):
The coordination piece where now we're taking the
different segments, putting themtogether, creating movement
patterns at like slower generalweight room speeds.
Then it transitions more intothe high speed movement
stability component in like realtime sporting environments.
Really, you could probably sayhigh speed environments and then
uncontrolled random sportingenvironments.
And you have to be able to movefluidly throughout all of these,
(25:02):
but if you don't have good stuffhere, it makes it much more
difficult to do a good job here.
It's kind of like continuumwhere we're starting on the
table, look at isolated jointrange of motion, transition them
into more.
Weight room movements, thenhigher speed stability, and then
seeing how it all plays.
You know, when it's actually,when a ball is coming at you
versus a ball on a tee, right?
When it gets a little bit moreuncontrolled and dynamic.
(25:24):
Movement is solutions, so howare they going to create
Solutions to whatever the,whatever the task is, right?
So seeing how it plays out insport and then dialing it back
across that continuum, workingthe other way to see what
they're working with and thenwhat we can, what we can change,
if that makes sense.
Coach U (25:38):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm gonna have to take noteswhile I watch this again.
So I can like kind of try tobreak that down and what you
just said, but we'll get there.
That was, I love it.
I love it.
It's, it's it's such a, it'ssuch a simple thing, but it's
also gonna be very intricate.
And so like hearing you break itdown, I do appreciate.
So talk about speed development.
when you're trying to train aguy to get faster, what are you
looking at first?
eric yavarone (25:58):
I probably sound like a broken record when we do
enough of it, but it's the samething.
What's the resultant speed?
Okay, I want to run fast.
Okay, what are the, what are thepieces that go into, into
running fast?
There's a movement andcoordination piece behind that,
we need to be able to get intocertain positions.
Say acceleration mechanics,triple extension, straight line
from head to, Back toe, thosekinds of like main positions
(26:19):
that you want to get intopushing the ground down and
backs to propel yourself theother way.
But there's a, there's amovement component to that,
where if you don't maximize themovement, the timing of it, the
positions of it, it's going tolimit your result, which is the
speed.
There's a strength component alittle bit more early on in an
acceleration where you're,you're.
(26:39):
It's you versus the ground.
Who's going to win.
And when you beat the ground,that means you're pretty strong
where you can push through itdown and back to again, propel
yourself that way.
And then there's a powerexplosive component to it too,
that you can spring off theground.
Looking at like the whole thingin conjunction.
First, I'm going to look at themovement component of it, number
one, see if they get into thepositions that we're looking
(27:01):
for.
If they don't, then look at themovement screen and the range of
motion test and see if we knowthat they're limited in any of
the movements they're trying toshow.
So let's say that tripleextension piece, if they're
limited in hip extension, let'sThey're not going to be able to
get into triple extension.
So we would come at that with amovement solution of getting
more hip extension, working inthe hip extension and turning it
into a running mechanic, right?
(27:22):
If they're really good at all ofthose and the movement itself is
really good, well then let'slook at the strength and power
components to it.
And if we know that they havegood strength, but they're just
not really an explosive athlete,then your, that athlete's
solution to getting faster is.
is power work and true movingfast stuff where maybe they're
good at that and they have somestrength, but the coordination
(27:45):
piece is limited.
And if we're gonna get this guyfaster, we need to improve the
movement piece.
Those are like the big three,and the last one is weight.
Probably when they get, a littlebit older, high levels, like I
do think, too, at some point.
You probably reach a point of noreturn.
If you do want to get faster,you might lose 15 pounds.
So you're lighter, right?
And you could accelerate thatmass quicker, but it's kind of,
it's really the same I go backto those same things, like, what
are the, just reverse engineer,what's the result, what are the
(28:07):
pieces that go into that, whereare they at in each one of
those?
And then, then you coulddetermine what that athlete's
solution is.
noah huff (28:13):
Just kind of layering on what Eric just talked about
obviously you want to first lookat from a movement standpoint
and then you want to, Kind oftake a look under the hood and
and see everything else thatgoes into that it's a skill and
you need repetition and you needto do it.
You need to do it a lot.
I mean, the best way to getbetter at Running fast is to run
fast and do it over and over.
(28:35):
Obviously if that's all you'redoing and you're like, Oh man,
I'm not getting any faster.
Well, did you go down the wholechecklist that Eric just ran
through?
Once you start checking thoseboxes it comes down to just
repetition.
And, and as you're checkingthose boxes you can start to get
that coordination aspect of itfrom doing it over and over and
recording yourself and start tocritique it and look through it
(28:57):
just like you would.
You know, pitching or hittingmechanics same, same type of
approach.
eric yavarone (29:02):
So like we go through our, our initial
checklist.
And then like we look at theposition two and then we can
either even probably get alittle bit more broken down.
Right.
So you take a, take a shortstopversus a third baseman.
For example, the shortstop isgoing to be a little bit more
upright, usually involve more oflike a prep step into there.
Move.
And then, so they use theground, they use some elasticity
(29:22):
and then they start to move ineither direction when they go to
make a play, conversely to yourthird baseman, who's lower to
the ground, feet are fixed inthe ground and they're going
much more from like a noncounter movement position.
Right.
When they then go to feel theball.
So we see some athletes that aregreat at running in a straight
line, but then when they getinto the lateral movement
component, they aren't great orthe position could, could kind
(29:43):
of affect them too.
So if you have a a shortstop whoruns really well in a straight
line, but doesn't move welllaterally, well then like now we
have more of a situation wherewe need to, to do lateral
quickness and doing it fromground contact environments, if
that makes sense.
Just because like when you getinto more of the, the, the
position specific piece afterthat, sometimes you have guys
(30:04):
that are really fast, but likethey get called slow on the
field because They don't putthemselves in good positions or
they don't train countermovements, but the position they
play excuse me, non countermovements, but the position they
play requires them to beexplosive from a non counter
movement, defensive position.
Right.
So I think just that littleadditional piece, once you get
past the original, the firstlayer of running fast.
(30:26):
Then you can get a little bitmore detailed and position
specific stuff too.
And then look at the qualitiesthat go into that and maybe even
be able to dial it in a littlebit more just because speeds
it's all over, you know, it's,it's all over the place.
You get.
You know, like I said, guys,yeah, guys getting called slow
that run a 6560, but it's justbecause they can't use it in
lateral environments in thatparticular situation.
So just more stuff that kind ofcomes to mind as we go through
(30:48):
the list.
Coach U (30:48):
Well, no, but it's true because I think, I mean,
especially on the field, youdon't know what's going to
happen.
You have no idea what kind ofmoves you have to make.
You don't know what positionsyou're going to be in.
You just react.
And so going to that point, youknow, why is it important then
for athletes to be able to have,The ability to move well in all
directions if they want to begreat at their sport.
So how, you know, training forthat is important.
So it takes time though.
It takes time to stick kind of,you're talking about the
(31:09):
movement quality.
Why does it take time to, forthe movement quality like that
to stick?
Why do you have to do it overand over?
What is actually going onwalking through the
physiological process that ourbrain's going through to have to
make this actually happen?
eric yavarone (31:21):
I think inputs matter.
So in the sense of the bodyknows what's important and
what's not right.
So the more inputs you have insomething.
You're kind of telling yournervous system like this is
probably important.
Like if you're doing somethingover and over and over again,
you're going to adapt to beingable to do that more
efficiently, right?
It's the input of saying, thisis what we have to do.
(31:43):
And then that's like number one.
And then I also think that themagnitude of the input is also a
signal that tells the nervoussystem how important something
is.
So for example, if we do aheavy, heavy back squat or
whatever, a loaded movement,right?
The input on that is massivebecause it's, Loaded it's high
intent.
There's a humongous neuralcomponent to it.
(32:03):
The input is massive So if we'retrying to make like, you know
improve just say the same sameone hip extension And then I do
a massively loaded Strengthmovement and then I pair it with
a passive hip extension stretchfor 20 seconds like what input
is is bigger?
Which one's going to stick thehumongous one, right?
So I think it's it's twofold ofnumber one You The amount of
(32:27):
times we do something issignaling the body.
Hey, this is important.
You need to be efficient at thisbecause for whatever reason
you're doing it over and overagain.
So it's got to be important.
So that's number one.
And then number two, like themagnitude and timing of the, of
what the training intervention,the input is.
I just think that like the onesthat have more intent, more
force, more, all that stuff,those are just the ones that are
(32:48):
going to stick a little bit morebecause of how big that input
is, if that makes sense.
So I think if it's a, if it's amovement outcome goal.
And it's a person that has highamounts of strength.
Sometimes you do have to getlike super, super super intense
with it.
And that's where like You know,like a end range isometric at
max intent for 10 to 15 secondsand doing that for a couple of
different rounds, like sometimesthat's the input that's
(33:09):
necessary to tell the nervoussystem, like, Hey, no, this is
really important and you need tobe able to get into these
positions.
So a couple of thoughts thatcome to mind in there, but I
think, yeah, the number ofinputs and the magnitude of
them, I think that's, what'sgoing to ingrain that into the
nervous system.
They kind of signal the bodythat, that this is important on
the, on the neural side, if thatmakes sense, then you have the
actual mechanical side thatcomes from that after, right?
(33:29):
You put a lot of force throughsomething you're going to build
more from the physiologicalstandpoint of like damaging a
tissue to then remodel it andrebuild it.
And that's how you get stronger.
That's how you build more, morearmor, so to speak.
That's kind of the second pieceof it too, of like, you know, if
you've got to be safe in acertain position, you've got to
build a lot of armor in thatposition.
So putting force through,through the body in those
positions is super important tobuild that armor.
(33:51):
So I think those things combinedcreate both the.
Neural component to thephysiological effect.
And then also the mechanical oflike signaling and building
tissue to make sure that you'resafe when you get in those
positions over and over again.
Coach U (34:03):
Theoretically speaking, you could run that
through pretty much any.
Anything, right?
Speed, strength, mobility, rangeof motion, right?
Same concept.
eric yavarone (34:15):
A hundred percent, a hundred percent.
Coach U (34:17):
Speaking of mobility, Range of motion is important.
The movement quality to get intothat position to be able to
control it is important.
What are some of your favoriteways to train mobility and to
increase this range of motionfor your athletes?
noah huff (34:29):
it depends on the, on the athlete and kind of what
that restriction is, I thinkthat the most effective is.
Actively working through theseranges, like a lot of the times
kids will think they're justgoing to do a bunch of long
passive stretches, you know,before they go to bed or
something.
And then that's it.
And then they go load up abarbell on their back and they
(34:50):
work out for two and a halfhours on benching and dead
lifting and and squatting.
And then, you know, they do acouple hamstring, you know,
touch their toes and all right,I'm good on the mobility, but
it's, it's.
Like Eric was saying, like, yougot to continually have those
inputs, have those inputs, havethose inputs.
And I think, you know, the mostthat I've seen with guys is, you
know, having a combination ofnot just the passive, but the
(35:11):
active and really like.
Working through it and going forreps and going or going for sets
and going for, you know, theselong isometric holds where
you're really contracting hard.
I think that's what I've seen.
It's been the most effective.
eric yavarone (35:27):
Yeah, I agree.
A hundred percent.
I think I think we're going lessand less passive stuff, you
know, as we go.
Like sometimes I guess there aresituations where.
You know, like the overallmovement possibilities,
capabilities, like this is theirbox and like, I don't know if
we're trying to expand the boxtoo much anymore.
Sometimes we still doabsolutely.
But for the most part, it's justmaking, making what's in the box
(35:50):
work, you know, as well aspossible.
If there like is a clear cut,like.
This guy just can't get in anypositions on the field.
And we think it's severelylimiting.
I'm like, yeah, we got to makethe box bigger.
But for the most part, it is,it's kind of just making the box
better.
Like I said, and Noah said ofjust, and using, using active
components to that, and thenjust matching the intensity with
(36:10):
You know, how, how big of aninput we think we need.
So I agree a hundred percent.
noah huff (36:14):
Just one more thing on that is I think that most of
the time that athletes orcoaches, everybody, I guess, in
general, maybe we'll kind ofthink of those as like two
separate things of like, okay,I'm going to work on my mobility
and then I'm going to go train.
But you can really incorporateboth of those.
And if it's a well thought outprogram and well put together
program, you're attacking thosemovement qualities within the
(36:37):
program, which is going to beactive stuff, which is going to
be continual inputs.
And then you're going to startto see that happen a lot quicker
than, you know, thinking ofthese as two separate things.
So I think when you reallyintegrate the two is when you
start to see those resultshappen quickly.
Coach U (36:51):
Yeah, no, it's just interesting knowing, you know,
how you guys think about it.
I think the neural input thingand the impact that it makes
really makes sense to me.
Hammering the movement with moreforce and more isometrics.
Talk to me about why that worksand how the body responds to
that.
eric yavarone (37:06):
I think you get two, you get two birds with one
stone, you get both theneurological component and you
get the mechanical component,time under tension creates
hypertrophy, so the longer theisometric is, the more time
under tension, the moreremodeling that will go into
that on the back end, whichcovers that mechanical piece.
And then conversely, the otherway again, when you can build up
(37:28):
specific contractions, in thosedifferent positions and hold
them and build them up forextended periods of time, just
builds up the signal,
Coach U (37:34):
I'm sure it changes all the time, but just out of
curiosity, what's a ballparktheory that you like to use?
Time wise.
eric yavarone (37:39):
yeah, no.
It really follows the rules ofstrength, hypertrophy and
muscular endurance, if it's moreof a recovery based effort or
more of a mechanical driveneffort, longer and less intense.
So called 60%, 70% whetherthat's how hard you're actually
pushing or how heavy you'reloading it.
If it's a squat, a lunge,whatever That would be the the
(38:01):
prescription for that if it'slike hey, this is a high intent
day high intensity We're pairingthis with a true strength effort
a true power effort then well Idon't want to do too much time
where I fry you.
I want to make sure that it's astrength effort And I want to
make, but at the same time, ithas to be big enough to match
whatever we're inputting withthe strength loop.
That's going to be like five to10 seconds, one time, five to 10
(38:23):
seconds.
And then you got that middleground where it's like, okay,
maybe this is the secondaryblock or the third block of a
lift.
And we're getting more into theaccessory stuff, more of the
movement stuff.
We already did our, our heavyduty for the day with the
strength and the power.
Then maybe that's kind of likeyour middle ground, which is
like your true hypertrophyrange, right?
So maybe that's like a 15 to 30second effort at a 80 to 85%,
(38:45):
right?
Again, whether that's load orinternal effort being exerted.
So I think those are probablythe three that we go to the most
frequently.
There's just like, what's the,what's the goal?
Is it high intent strength?
Is it somewhere in the middle tojust facilitate or aid into a
more less intent movement drill?
Or is it a kind of a recoveryeffort?
And then I think that dictateswhich of those three.
(39:07):
Three three plans we take out.
If that makes sense.
Coach U (39:10):
Absolutely.
It does know.
Did you have anything to addonto that?
noah huff (39:15):
Nah, not after that Eric crushed it.
Coach U (39:18):
What does recovery mean to you guys?
Like what, what, what isrecovery?
eric yavarone (39:21):
We look at it in baseball for the most part, but
whoever made baseball is kind ofan idiot.
They just made a sport that theysaid, Oh, this ain't that
intense.
No big deal.
We can play it every day, butyou're never going to be a
hundred percent.
Coach U (39:32):
They didn't use to wear helmets, man.
They used to be in each otherwith the baby.
eric yavarone (39:35):
Yeah, we're getting there.
We're getting there.
Maybe we'll get like a couplemore days off here.
But recovery is basically, Ithink in a training environment,
recovery is your process, yourability to actually make the
adaptation.
So if we input training, that'sgoing to cause a stress, to the
body, a calculated one.
That's what we're doing.
That's our job as strengthcoaches to get a certain
(39:56):
outcome, which is more strength,more power, more size, whatever
the goal is.
But if you don't have therecovery process, you don't
create the adaptation.
So if you come back the nextday, if you, if you knock
yourself down and you don'tbuild yourself back up and you
knock yourself down again, we'regoing the wrong way.
We're going down, we're tryingto go up.
So on the training side, therecovery process is the
adaptation process where youactually get the outcome that
(40:18):
you're looking to get.
So if you don't have it, You'reeffectively getting nothing.
You're just making yourselftired.
And then on the sporting side,how can you get yourself good
enough to come back the nextday?
So if you knock yourself down to50%, we'd come back at.
86 percent the next day.
That's better than coming backat 60, right?
That gives us a better chance ofwinning that night.
If everybody on the team doesthat.
So you know, recovery is eitherthe actual adaptation or it's
(40:41):
for me, or it's the, just, justtry to come back as good as you
can the next day to be inposition to perform again.
noah huff (40:47):
Looking at it from like a nutritional standpoint
and restoring energy.
So, you know, helping with thatadaptation process, restoring
glycogen getting your body inthe, in the best position that,
you know, for the next day tohave a great day with, through
that, through rehydration, youknow, every doing all these
things the day before.
So a lot of the times it's like,We think of maybe that morning
(41:09):
routine, but like, what was yournightly routine that's going to
lead to that good morningroutine, you know?
Cause if you wake up tired andfeeling like crap and grumpy and
all this, well, it's because youdidn't do enough on the front
end.
The night before to affect andhave a good morning.
So how, how can we help theathletes have the best mornings
(41:31):
you know, have quality meal of,of a balanced meal of protein,
good carbohydrates the nightbefore fluids, pumping fluids,
but also getting electrolytes,getting sodium in there these
different things, differentsupplements, or even just using
things like tart cherry juiceand.
And these different things toreally drive good, good recovery
(41:51):
and good sleep where we havegood HRV, we have low resting
heart rate to really help thatadaptation and have a good
morning.
So I think you know, that that'swhat recovery is for me.
Coach U (42:02):
Yeah.
So from, youth to the pros youknow, obviously the pros are
going to have a lot differentRoutines than the young kids are
going to have these kids whowant to get to that spot, you
know, what, what, what goes onat that level?
What, what are these athleteslike?
eric yavarone (42:16):
The best in my experience, they're consistent
and they show up, it's not thethe hard work is.
When you went over three thenight before and it was a long
game and we're at game 120, andyou come in the next day and
it's super easy to just walk inget some food grab your bat and
just get in The cage and startstart whacking Like that you
(42:38):
stop you come in the gym Youtake your 15 minutes to do your
mobility work and mind you likea lot of these guys are type a
people too So like they don'treally Laying on the ground and
doing some 90 90 hip switches isnot an enjoyable task for them,
So, like, that's important, too.
Like, a lot of, a lot of themdon't, like, like all the stuff
that we ask them to donecessarily, but, they know it's
important, and they know it'sgonna, it's gonna relate to the
(42:59):
game.
So, like, it's, it's hard to dothat.
So, like, the hard work, it'sstill incredibly hard work.
It's just in a much differentform of, like, can you stay
diligent, and can you stayconsistent, and can you show up?
To do your 15 minute mobilityroutine and your 15 minute micro
dose lift when you don't reallyfeel like it.
Right.
And that's the separator forthem is, is they continue to
(43:20):
show up and they continue to beconsistent.
They're not always throwing 400pounds in their back squat and
they're not always crushingthemselves with workouts, but
they show up, they'reconsistent.
And that's really what the hardwork is.
And at least the game.
To me, like baseball, where likeconsistency in the day to day is
kind of the determining factorof what makes you great versus
good.
So I think just the, the hardwork component of it.
(43:43):
I don't know.
I just think you get more out ofshowing up four to five days a
week and doing something for 30minutes versus.
Twice a week for an hour and ahalf, you know, like this is
kind of what it seems like that,that the more, the more frequent
inputs the more consistent ones,that's how you're going to make
the biggest change.
So I think that's kind of,that's kind of the difference in
my mind of, of what these guyskind of consistently do day to
(44:06):
day.
noah huff (44:06):
There is this thought process of that.
It's you got to grind it outevery day and grind it out,
grind it out, work hard, youknow, all this, and it really
does come down to thatconsistency of being a pro and
just And that's, that's whybaseball has a minor league
system because, you know, guys,even if they go to the best
college program in the country,they're not ready to, to be a
(44:29):
big leaguer.
And they, they can't handle thattype of environment and
workload.
You have to really learn.
Yourself.
You have to learn your routineand you have to learn what it
takes to be consistent, how youcan, and I don't know if you've
seen like those little memes oflike, this is what you think
consistency is first, what itactually is, you know, and it's
(44:49):
like, you know, it's like aweek, you know, it's like seven
buckets of water full and thenit's like what consistency
really is.
And it's like full halfway, youknow, three quarters, a quarter
in it.
And that's what it is.
It's this continual up and down,but it's.
It's sticking to your routine,sticking to those things and
just being consistent with it.
(45:10):
And I think the other part isthat I think that people might
think that professional baseballplayers think that it's do or
die every single game or everysingle at bat or you know, every
single inning pitch.
Like I've seen players there isa.
A player.
So I mean, I worked with aplayer, Michael Grove.
(45:30):
So he was a second rounder outof West West Virginia top, you
know, got paid well, superpopular, all this things through
his whole minor league careerbefore he debuted, he won two
games.
He went to his whole first yearin professional baseball.
He didn't win a game.
And he was absolutely never onetime did he say, Oh man, I don't
(45:52):
think this is for me.
I don't think I can do this.
There was never any doubt.
He never was negative one timeat all.
It was the most impressive thingI've ever seen.
It was just tunnel vision onlike Hey, this is the process.
This is part of it.
And you know, the guys pitchingin the big leagues now.
So I think it's just rememberingthat it's a game of failure and
(46:13):
that, you know, you have toreally dive into that routine
and believe in the process.
Coach U (46:19):
What would you guys say takes you out of the game,
takes you, you know, you've seenthe guys succeed.
I mean, is it the exact oppositeof the guys who do succeed?
eric yavarone (46:27):
Yeah.
I mean, definitely in a lot ofcases I mean, there's obviously
a big skill component and yougotta be just incredibly.
And there are guys that as muchas we're making it seem like
everybody comes and sees usevery single day and
everything's great.
Like there's some that don't, orthere's some that do just, they
are that good, you know, andmaybe the longevity piece of it,
you know, and taking care oftheir body in that sense, like.
(46:48):
See how that plays out.
Some get away with it.
Some don't.
And that's probably one of themactually now saying that to
answer your question, some of itcould be you know, injury and
things like that where theskills there, but the body
breaks down and that kind ofgets them out.
For other ones.
Yeah, we have seen it'sunfortunate sometimes, but some
guys just don't ever kind offigure it out.
And by the time they do theirbacks against the wall and, and
they're on their way out, right.
(47:09):
Cause they haven't performedyet.
We always kind of talk aboutthere is usually like an aha
moment for a lot of them and yousee it and you just hope that
that aha moment kind of comesbefore it's too late, you know?
But yeah, I do think a lot oftimes there's the skill
component, there's the healthcomponent, and then there's the,
there's that last component ofbeing the exact opposite of what
we're talking about.
And just either guys putting waytoo much pressure on themselves
(47:30):
and that inhibits their abilityto perform where the other guys
are cool, calm and collectedgoing back to the real part of
the conversation and that, thatconfidence is what allows them
to perform.
Or they just, yeah, it justnever really clicks for him.
The whole holistic picture ofthe resources and the things
that kind of go into having thathigh level performance.
And it never really clicks forhim and maybe they don't
maximize their potentialperformance.
(47:51):
So, yeah, those are a couple ofthings that, that at least I
feel like, you know, I've seenin terms of, What doesn't work
out for guys sometimes.
noah huff (47:58):
I think sometimes maybe guys will, they were
always the best player on thefield and they don't realize,
you know, that they have tocontinue to evolve.
And continue to develop thatroutine and, and to, you know,
maybe take a different approachto their training than they had
in the past because they arestarting to get older and
they're starting to play moregames.
(48:18):
So I think that that couldpotentially be another factor.
In addition to everything Ericjust talked about.
Coach U (48:25):
Well, as always, every time I talk to you guys and I
see you guys, I learnedsomething.
I appreciate the insight.
I appreciate you guys bringingthings down.
Cause you know, one is a, as anathlete, you know, I want the
athletes, I want you guys tokeep bringing the videos, keep
bringing the product because I'mgoing to share it.
They're going to learn.
We are going to keep putting outthe good stuff.
Cause there's a lot of stuff outthere that I think Young
(48:46):
athletes can get inundated with,and it's not important at all.
And it's actually probably goingto do them more harm than it
will, you know, good.
So I appreciate you guys takingthe time to do this and you
know, help make me smarter andhelp make our listeners smarter
and athletes, hopefully who takein all this information a little
smarter too.
I'm going to drop any links.
So if anyone wants to reach outto you guys
eric yavarone (49:06):
yeah, totally.
I think we're most most activeon Instagram of the social media
platforms.
Maybe once we get good at thatone, we'll branch out a little
bit.
But I think if, if anybody wantsto talk to us, that's probably
a, where we're putting out themost content, the most
information and be like mostlikely to get back to somebody
pretty quickly.
I hope I do it right.
It's at five tool connectionright now, all written out the
word five tool connected as theInstagram.
(49:26):
So you can go there, send us aDM.
If you want to talk to us thereand then our website too shows
kind of different offerings wehave, that's five tool
connection.
com.
And then if you wanted to emailus, we do for athletes, like we
do, we do 15 minute kind ofstrategy sessions with, with
parents and kids that you justwant to learn more about
yourself as an athlete and ask acouple of questions of what we
would kind of.
(49:47):
Think might be a good route foryou.
You can send us an email at theletter or letter, the number
five, and then the letters, TCfive, TC at five tool
connection.
com.
And we'll get right back to youon that.
And we can get on the phone andwe can, we can talk through some
stuff to there.
Coach U (50:02):
Awesome.
I love it.
Noah and Eric.
Thank you guys for joining andgiving us some great
information.
I appreciate that.
Thank you guys so much forjoining.
eric yavarone (50:11):
Thank you, man.
I appreciate you having us.
This was fun.
noah huff (50:14):
You.
Appreciate it.
Hey everybody.
This is the coach you podcastand I'm your host coach you.
This podcast is about beingcurious.
Learning from others and usingwhat we've learned to evolve
every single day.
Hey everyone.
In this episode, we're beingjoined by the owners of 5 Tool
Connection, Eric Yavarone andNoah Huff.
Both Eric and Noah have workedwith Major League Baseball
(00:21):
players, and now they're takingtheir knowledge and helping
athletes all over the world.
5 Tool Connection analyzes bodymovement, they check to see what
you need, and they write upprograms for you specifically.
This episode will give you anidea what you need to do as an
athlete for In order to excel insports and using training as a
tool to get there.
So tune into this episode andremember to subscribe and then
(00:43):
share with anybody else that youthink would love this episode.
Hey, what's up everybody.
Welcome to the coach.
U podcast.
I'm your host coach.
U we're being joined today byEric and Noah Huff guys.
Welcome to the show.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Super stoked to talk to you guys
eric yavarone (00:58):
Glad to be here.
Appreciate it.
Thank you for having me.
Coach U (01:01):
performance training.
We're
noah huff (01:02):
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
Coach U (01:03):
you guys are doing with five tool connection.
Before we start that, I want togo rapid fire just so the
audience can get to know you alittle bit better.
Noah, you're going first.
What's your favorite TV show?
noah huff (01:18):
That's 70s show.
Coach U (01:19):
That's seventies, Eric.
What do you got?
eric yavarone (01:21):
I was really into Yellowstone kind of recently, so
I guess I'll go with that one.
Coach U (01:25):
heard.
It's good.
eric yavarone (01:25):
It is, it is good.
Actually, I guess I'm a little,I gotta actually finish the last
series, so it's kind of a bigplay, saying it's my favorite
show I haven't finished yet, butI was enjoying it recently.
Coach U (01:34):
Okay.
That's fair.
Noah, favorite band or musician?
noah huff (01:37):
Mountain Joy.
Coach U (01:39):
Mountain joy.
eric yavarone (01:40):
Who is that?
Coach U (01:41):
Yeah.
Tell me who they are.
noah huff (01:42):
It's a, it's a great band.
They're growing a lot right now.
So go check them out.
It's good.
It's kind of like a folk type ofgood music.
You know, it's just feel goodmusic.
Puts you in a good mood.
Coach U (01:52):
I like feel good music.
Eric, what do you like?
eric yavarone (01:54):
I'm in a weird spot, man.
I used to like hip hop music.
I think my horizon's expanding alittle bit.
Historically, Drake's myfavorite, favorite artist,
because he always, you know, hassomething for you, depending on
what kind of mood you're in.
But I've actually been listeningto, like, Morgan Wallen lately
and a little bit of country.
So I don't know what's going onwith me, but I'm shifting gears
a little bit, but I still sayDrake, I guess.
Coach U (02:13):
Taste buds change as you get older, you know, you
always have the classics.
That's never going to leave.
All right.
So then I'm going to go Noahback to you, your favorite thing
about working in the performancetraining world.
noah huff (02:23):
it's just seeing the development with athletes
personally and professionally.
It's a good, it's a cool thing.
Cause you get to see, you know,when you're working, whether if
it was an 18 year old kid oreven, you know, a 25 year old
adult, you kind of see theirprogress and growth.
Not just as an athlete, but justpersonally.
And I really enjoy that.
Coach U (02:45):
Eric, how about you?
eric yavarone (02:45):
Yeah.
Similar, like the process a lot,you know, Noah and I've been
involved in kind of the teamteam environment a lot, and
then, you know, five TCindividual kids, but like
baseball or sports kind ofoutcomes that they're shooting
for and kind of seeing theprocess, whether it's a minor
league guy turning into a bigleague guy or a kid.
Going to college to play.
(03:06):
Just kind of like, you know,being part of the development
process and watching the processunfold and ultimately like
hopefully they get to where theywant to be.
So seeing that those thingshappen at all those different
levels, that's probably, that'sprobably it for me.
Coach U (03:17):
love it.
We're definitely going to talkabout the process.
I want to hear about five toolconnection and what you guys got
going on there.
Before we get into that, I wantto get into real quick, caught
the impact deck.
So we have a couple of differentcards from here.
One's an affirmation.
One's an action and one's areflection.
I'm just going to randomly draw.
I'm going to pose the questionto both of you guys
individually, and then we'llrock and roll.
So I'm going to pull, we got a,an affirmation card.
(03:41):
All right.
So as I take on new challenges,I feel calm, confident, and
powerful.
Noah, how can you utilize thatin your practice?
How can you utilize that in yourlife?
noah huff (03:51):
Yeah, I think as a coach it's really important to,
you know, be calm and cool andcollective and working with
athletes and especially, youknow we work with baseball
players specifically, and it's agame of failure.
And a lot of the times thoseguys are up and down
emotionally.
They're all over the place.
Whether it's stuff off thefield, on the field.
(04:12):
So I think just.
Kind of taking that calm, coolapproach and keeping a level
head and it can really impactthe players and their careers
and then, you know, my lifepersonally as well.
eric yavarone (04:23):
I mean, honestly, kind of, kind of the same point
like we have to be that person,I feel like for them, because
the consistent piece.
It's kind of like the, theprocess of getting prepared
physically to do whatever task,whatever sport and Noah hit on
it a little bit, but they'regoing to actually play the game,
which is the part that has allthe variables in it.
(04:45):
And outcomes are going to beriding high, riding low,
depending on where they'reperforming at.
But we can be the consistentpiece.
So at least they know, likewhatever noise is going on
around them when they come tothe gym or they come to the
weight room, that energy culturevibe is going to be consistent
no matter where they're at.
And I think that that like, is agood thing and probably, you
know, hopefully reminds themthat even when they're going
(05:06):
good, like, Hey, you still gotto prepare and still got to tap
into your process and doeverything the same.
And then when you're going badtoo, like.
Like, I don't care.
Like, you could be old for yourlast 24.
I'm still gonna smile when I seeyou and we're gonna go through
our, our day and, and I'm gonnaget you ready to play that night
because tonight might be thenight you go off.
So I think that being the cool,calm, and collected person
consistently for them, I thinkis a pretty important piece of
(05:26):
the, of the role just for the,the culture and the environment.
So that's kind of what I thoughtof with that.
Coach U (05:31):
So going into that real quick, what do you, would
you say are things that helpkeep you calm, cool, and
collected and, and consistentfor yourselves?
And then also, how does thattranslate into being a coach?
eric yavarone (05:42):
I, I kind of been on this a lot lately, like
walking the walk and practicingwhat you preach is super
important.
So like for me, I know thatlike, I'm a routine oriented
guy.
And I think that doing the samesort of process every day is a
good thing for me, like, itfeels like I'm getting better at
my own craft and taking care ofmyself physically.
I'm doing all the things thatI'm trying to instill in these
(06:03):
guys too.
So like kind of trying to be amodel figure in that regard.
So I think like having thatprocess, having that routine
like That sets the same way ofwe do our process before we get
to the park or we do our processbefore we get to the gym to
train the guys.
I just think that that helps usme individually, right?
And then that allows me to bethe best version of me and
(06:25):
therefore will help the guys.
So I think that walking thewalk, practicing what you
preach, that sort of stuffconsistently and have a routine
with that.
I think that that personallyhelps me be cool, calm and
collected.
So when it's time to.
Train like we're prepared.
So that's kind of what I think.
noah huff (06:39):
That's where me and Eric really aligned is
practicing what we preach.
And I know for me personally.
Very routine oriented as well.
But one thing that's actually, Ijust started doing a week ago
was actually just journalingeach day.
And my mom's been harping on meabout this for my whole life.
I texted her and I was like,Hey, it finally, all the stars
(07:01):
aligned and I finally listened,but I've just kind of like brain
dumping, you know, and it's justkind of clearing out my
headspace and it, and it'shelped a lot, so that type of
stuff.
And Like Eric said, then, youknow, on the practice and what
you preach, making sure thatI'm, you know, staying on track
in my nutrition, on my trainingthat I'm, you know, doing
everything, meditating, so, Ifeel good when I'm telling
(07:23):
athletes, you know, Hey, youshould incorporate this into
your routine.
Cause you know, I'm doing itmyself and, and you also learn a
lot more by doing that yourself.
So,
Coach U (07:31):
100 percent it's easier to teach that when
you're, when you're living it,cause you can act, it's
authentic.
You know, it's interesting.
You talked about the journalingand the meditation and stuff.
That's something that like savedme.
Talk about consistency androutine, like the things you
guys are talking about.
I appreciate the insightsbecause that stuff matters as
coaches.
It absolutely does.
Let's talk about five toolconnection.
Let's, let's talk about what itis.
Tell me how it started.
eric yavarone (07:52):
All right so 5TC started way back when Was
actually it was myself and abuddy who kind of worked more
with hitting and we had thisidea of making you know, this
kind of like all encompassingperformance thing with baseball
and strength and conditioningand kind of started getting some
elements of it going, neverreally went anywhere, but he
(08:13):
kind of went a different routeand started getting into some
team stuff himself.
So I kind of always like, and Ikind of like put it to bed, but
I always had the vision of like,all right, let's, let's find a
way to bring.
Higher level performance,training, testing, things like
that to really kids is what thefocus started on is giving them
resources because not everybodyhas.
Somebody like yourself in theirbackyard, they don't have a
(08:35):
Cressy performance, like theydon't have high level
facilities.
And a lot of them, I feel likedid what I did when I was in
high school, trying to train toget better at baseball, but I
was just going to a 24 hour, youknow, local gym for 10 bucks a
month and doing bench press andnot really having any idea what
I was doing and basicallyskipping legs every time and
just doing upper body.
So it changed from performanceto some other things, but you
(08:56):
know, I think a lot of kidsprobably have that same
situation.
So always wanted to continue theS and C vision for it.
And then kind of made thedecision like, all right, why
wait?
There's no reason to wait.
And then, you know, at the time,no, and I started working
together, got along really well,started becoming very close.
And, you know, I just kind ofthought it'd be really cool to
(09:16):
do something with, with one ofyour friends.
So one day I asked him, Iremember in the gym saying, Hey
man, like I'm doing this.
You want to get involved?
And he said, yes.
Officially like started thecompany in 2019, September of
2019.
So again, it was just the two ofus to get going and with the
vision to bring better trainingto kids and it's morphed and
grown quite a bit, but I thinkthe nuts and bolts of the goal
and the principles of what wewant to do have always been the
(09:38):
same.
And that was, To to bring thatprogram into kids virtually.
And now it's kind of shiftedmore to like, we want to
dominate the virtual space foryou know, baseball, but
rotational athletes, right.
Dominate that kind of virtualspace and bring good testing and
performance.
Coach U (09:51):
Noah, what made you jump on board?
You were like, yeah, Iabsolutely want to do this.
What was the excitement?
I
noah huff (09:55):
Yeah, it was that me and Eric hit it off really well.
He's a extremely intelligentperson, coach.
Has a, a kind of see strengthand conditioning through a
different lens than anybody I'vetalked to.
And Yeah.
At the time, like I was learningfrom him and watching him work
with players and then, and itwas honestly just like, it was
the energy between us.
It was like the vibe we wantedto bring something cool.
(10:16):
We want to be the best and bringthe best service to, to
everybody in a baseball andsoftball rotational sports.
Coach U (10:24):
What do you think is missing the most?
In.
The performance training world,especially for the younger
athletes
eric yavarone (10:30):
I mean, probably resources, right.
Like in all kinds of differentforms, I think I mean, facility
number one, right.
I think like at the end of theday too, like.
Much like the kind of story Iwas telling, like there's
different you know, within the,within the training piece, the
performance piece for, you know,baseball particularly, like, I
think a lot of stuff that's kindof popular right now that we're
utilizing and have seen bigchanges on and things that can
(10:52):
really improve performance.
Like they're not things that youfind in a regular gym, you know,
there's.
Here's your benches.
Here's the incline benches.
Here's the, here's the machinesover here.
And here's the squat racks inthe back and the leg press.
And it's very traditional inthat sense.
So literally from like anequipment standpoint, there's
some limitations, right?
Because they know they have totrain.
They know that the athletes arebig, strong and fast.
So where do you do, where do youdo that?
(11:12):
Oh, you go lift at the gym,right?
So.
But if you go to the gym, you'reonly as good as the equipment as
you have, because you can't youcan have the perfect exercise
that we provide for you or giveyou at the right time.
But if you don't have a waterbag, say like, what are you
going to do?
We can get creative with otherthings, but point being, like, I
think the resources of literallythe facility probably could be a
limit limiting factor.
And then probably theeducational piece too, right.
(11:33):
At the end of the day too, likeagainst referring back to the
same story, cause it was myexperience.
You go to the gym and.
What are you going to do?
I don't know what I was doing.
Right.
So you're going to watch whateverybody else does or what your
buddy did, or what an old coachof yours did when he played 15
years ago and got drafted.
And here's the program that theygave me.
Then go do it.
It helped me.
Whatever that means.
And you know, just the educationpiece of it.
(11:54):
So I think that's another pieceof it too, of what we're trying
to do now.
As we've, I mean, we spent fouryears just refining the process.
Like, cause Noah said, we wantit to be clean.
We want it to be pro.
We don't want to have a poorproduct out there.
So it's been refining the model,changing platforms, making more
videos, like changing the way weadding things.
Like it's just been.
Four years of really growing theproduct.
And now that we're happy withthat, you know, in the last
(12:15):
probably six months to 12 monthspushing more of the social media
and that's our goal within thesocial media is to provide
education for kids, for people,and hopefully make it fun.
So it captures their attention.
They actually ingest theinformation, but those are two
things that come to mind for me,at least is, is educational
resources.
And then.
You know, equipment resources to
noah huff (12:33):
I think number one, education is a huge piece of
that.
Kind of like Eric was saying Iknow personally for me, and this
is kind of going back to why westarted one passion was that I'm
from Knoxville, Tennessee, andat the time, and there's a few
facilities there now, but at thetime there wasn't a whole lot of
resources.
There wasn't very much educationat all on training, on
(12:54):
nutrition, on what you shoulddo.
This is what quality traininglooks like.
This is what it is.
And then you know, I'm gonnahave to go the same, same route
with facilities and, and thosetypes of things.
And that's the cool part aboutwhat we do is that, you know,
you don't need a whole weightroom to do our program.
I was just watching videos thatkids sent today and they're in
their room with dumbbells and afew resistance bands and they're
(13:17):
getting it done.
We're able to provide that tokids all over with, with
whatever resources they have onhand.
eric yavarone (13:23):
I got one more thing to add to kind of like
within the, within the personalstory piece, like when I played
decent player played in college,like, so it was taking it very
seriously.
And on the one hand I had my AAUcoach who like on the baseball
side, maybe the player I was solike.
Unbelievable there.
But when it came to training, hesaid, all you need is Nautilus,
right?
And he bought these Nautilusmachines.
(13:43):
And in the, in the facility,they were just like your most
standard first issued everNautilus machines.
He's like, Oh, that's all youneed.
You look like the Under Armourguy and you're going to be
great.
And then on the other hand I hadsome friends that were fortunate
enough to go to a really goodfacility in town that I ended up
working at later, like mentor ofmine, Mike Ranfone at Ranfone
Training Systems in Hampden,Connecticut.
(14:04):
And like that was the place togo to get the good training.
And I remember getting the pricesheet and bringing it home and,
and my parents saying, Oh, well,we can't afford that.
That's too much.
So on the one hand, I haveNautilus.
And on the other hand, I have,we can't afford it.
So creating this model and thisvision initially was okay.
We can be the middle groundthere.
(14:24):
We can at least provide thetesting and the programming that
you can take to the 10 a monthgym and not be lost.
Right.
If you can't afford the facilityor you don't have the facility
based off of your geographicallocation.
Right.
So just a little bit more oflike a.
Kind of, that came to mind atsome point just in terms of how
it all came about.
Coach U (14:43):
no, it's huge.
I mean, it's, you know, you'realso teaching, especially
younger athletes and just kidsin general for life.
You're going to do the best youpossibly can.
Is it the highest possibleresources?
No, but maybe that comes oneday.
I love that.
What's the first thing you'retalking to them about?
noah huff (14:55):
Basically like a questionnaire basically of you
know, What have you done in thepast?
What are you currently doing?
What are your goals?
And then from there, that'swhere we're gonna, we're
starting our assessment processand that's where it really just
gives us a roadmap of theathlete.
There we can see movementqualities.
We can see force production, youknow, we can see how they move
(15:16):
in different planes of motion.
So it really kind of gives us alook under the hood and we get
to see them as them as anathlete from a training
standpoint.
And then we'll kind of go fromthere and build up their plan
individually.
And then keeping their goals inmind too, cause you know, it's,
what's going to motivate thekids, you know, if, if we see
something that they need, ofcourse, we're going to talk
(15:37):
through that with them, but youalso have to keep their goal in
mind and let that fuel them aswell,
Coach U (15:41):
How do you, how do you guys deal with that?
Cause I think that is a verytough thing to deal with as a
coach.
Sometimes where you run into,you know, you need your athlete
to do something specific andmaybe there's an outcome you're
trying to get, but I don't knowwhat the block met the block is.
Maybe they don't want to do it.
They don't like it, whatever.
How do you guys approach that?
eric yavarone (15:58):
Ooh, a lot of things come to mind.
I think that one is showing thatyou have information to support
where you're coming from.
Right?
Like, if a kid says, I need torun faster, I need to hit the
ball harder, I need to get myvelocity higher.
Like, Yeah.
And in their mind, they envisionlike, okay, if I need to get my
velocity higher, well, what,what do I need to do?
I need to throw like weightedballs, for example, because
(16:19):
that's what's popular.
It obviously looks the part andthat does play a significant
role in throwing harder.
But if you can just say, well, Ithink you need to make your
movement better because that'sgoing to allow you to throw
harder.
Like they, they may not like buyinto just the words, but when I
put a report in front of youthat says, We have objective
information here that is showingthat compared to your age group,
(16:42):
you are in the 20th percentilein the movement category and
you're in the 70th percentile inpower.
So you have incredible amountsof explosiveness in your body,
but your movement quality islimiting your ability to express
that in your actual throw.
It's really hard to argue that.
Right?
And so I think within ourprocess, that's always been the
vision.
(17:02):
We want to be able to convey tothese people and kids and
parents, how do we get thatinformation?
Well, we need to find a way tomake it more objective.
So How do we do that?
We would look at throws we wouldlook at swings and say like,
okay, you want your velocity tobe higher?
We'll look at the way that yourLower half is working in your
delivery, right?
and based off of the movementscreen videos that you sent us
we're going to look at them andwrite, just type a manual
(17:24):
report.
That's where we started.
But again, it was the sameprocess of showing you like,
Hey, look, your lower halfdoesn't work well in this squat,
in this lunge or in your throw.
So there's a high probabilityhere that the mechanics of your
lower half, the mobility that inyour joints that coincide from
the waist down, you're having anissue moving those and it's
showing up in your delivery.
(17:44):
So like speaking in theirlanguage in the, in the lens of
like why.
The training style is relatingor limiting their performance on
the field.
I think that's probably the waythat we've always went about it.
And then within that goal, likeI said, just trying to loop in
piece of information and make itmuch more like clear cut, not
arguable.
But again, it's just, it's, it'seducated, educating them on all
(18:05):
the things that go into theoutcome goal performance, and
then just having some kind ofassessment process for those to
be able to show them like, Hey,this is where you want to go,
this is where you're at now.
This is how we're going to trainyou to get there.
And they're like, okay, soundsgreat.
Let's do it.
Coach U (18:16):
Noah, do you have anything to add to that?
noah huff (18:18):
Most of the time when any time in life, like when,
when we disagree with something,it's just, it's a level of
education that we don't have ofthat subject yet.
And then once we get a betterunderstanding of it, then we
kind of pull back and we're notso, you know, this microscope
view, but we get a more broaderview of the situation.
Then it's like, oh, okay.
You know, it's, as you getolder, you do that all the time.
(18:38):
It's the same thing withathletes and it, and it's.
Like Eric said, it's showingthem, Hey, here's objective
information.
Now let's take this information.
Let's look at your on fieldmechanics and we can point right
here where it's showing up, youknow, X, Y, Z right here.
And then that information'sright there in their face.
But I mean, when you do havethose athletes that are dead set
(19:00):
on, I have to back squat, if Idon't back squat, I don't feel
good.
And if It may crush them.
It may all these differentthings.
Like at some point, you kind ofjust go, okay, I'm going to give
you this, but you're going togive me this, this and this.
And then it's just a trade offin an exchange.
And then everybody's happy.
But I think at the end of theday, you never want to sabotage
the relationship because it'sdevelopment and you're going to
(19:23):
be working with each other for,Months years on end.
So you want to keep that openrelationship and and be mindful
of where they're at and kind ofmeet them where they're at.
Coach U (19:33):
I like that a lot.
I want to ask about themistakes.
So what are some of the biggestmistakes you see in younger
athletes when it comes totraining?
eric yavarone (19:42):
Probably trying to layer like higher level
performance qualities on top oflike poor foundational movement
patterns or lack of stability,right.
In some regard.
I think stability is like alittle bit of a garbage turn.
You're going to find stability.
It's just a matter of whetheryou find it.
In the right places, right?
At the right time, or if youfind it through adding stiffness
and rigidity on top of likesegments, right?
(20:04):
So meaning like, You know, ifyou have good foundational
movement patterns and then youload them up the quality of the
movement, now you're going tolay all, layer all those
performance, performancequalities on top of that.
Whereas if you don't have that,your body is going to try to not
get hurt and it's going tostiffen up in potentially the
wrong areas.
So now you've still createdstability, but now it's in like
the wrong places.
So I feel like a lot of times wesee older athletes with a lot of
(20:27):
training volume under theirbelts that have trained for
strength for a very long time.
If they did it before they hadgood patterns.
A lot of times we have to unwindsome of that stuff and try to
rebuild it up when they'retrying to make a movement based
change on the field, right?
Because a lot of times that is alittle, that is a little thing
that's going to take them overthe edge, right?
Especially at the higher levels.
(20:47):
So that would kind of be what Ithink is, I think if we did a
better job at creating goodmovement patterns in general
stuff, squats, hinging, lunging,moving in all planes, and then
just like general.
Variability in movements likeyou know, kids don't play
different sports anymore, man.
Like playing different sports,moving around to different
planes, different environments,navigating those with physical
(21:08):
solutions, right?
I think if we did that they'd bein a much better spot because I
also truly believe that likestrength, unless we're competing
for like a strong mancompetition, the amount of like
requisite strength that'snecessary.
In team sports, for the mostpart, outside of wrestlers,
linebackers.
I don't know.
I trained baseball players, butlike, it's not that high.
(21:31):
Like, I don't think it takesthat long to gain.
Right.
So people that have beentraining for strength for seven
years.
Like, I think we could probablydo that in an off season.
We could probably get enough ina couple of years.
Right.
But it's gonna take way longerto unwind all the stiffness and
rigidity that they've thrown ontop of their bodies by doing
that for the last seven years.
And then you end up like me andI can't rotate.
(21:53):
So I got a bad neck.
So anyway that's what I, that'swhat I think is, is, is no one
knows about my neck, man.
Come on.
Putting, putting,
Coach U (22:00):
part of it.
This is
eric yavarone (22:01):
Yeah, yeah.
Come on dad.
Now what happened?
But anyway yeah, putting,putting strength on top of a bad
movement in a nutshell.
Coach U (22:09):
I just something came to me there when you were
talking about that with movingquality.
I was thinking about buckets.
We have the strength bucket.
If a lot of these athletes arefilling their strength bucket,
that's great.
Right.
But like you said, there's onlya certain amount you necessarily
need, right?
So what are the buckets, whatare the main things that you're
seeing that do need to befilled?
eric yavarone (22:26):
Movement, movement is one of them.
More on the like simpleassessment side, general
assessment side, things that yousee done in the weight room
joint range of motion testing,weight room movement patterns is
one of them.
I think strength is another one.
Higher force productionsituations, traditional
strength.
I think power is another one ofthem.
I think that we kind of dividepower into two different pieces,
(22:48):
one being more like highereffort feet in the ground, just
moving a little bit faster ingeneral strength movements.
The other one being more elasticreactive power where there's,
you know, deceleration qualitiesand you're springing off the
ground, things like that.
I think you probably split thatinto two.
And then I think the capacitypiece too, is another big one.
(23:09):
In a sense of like conditioning,right?
But being able to repeatefforts, do things over and over
again, bounce back day to day,things like that.
I think those are probably fivefive general ones.
And then that gets into the.
Actually looking at themovements on the field and
depending on what sport it is,what position they play, you
could probably break that down acouple different ways too.
So like maybe for a baseballplayer, it could be the swing
(23:29):
for a position player, and thenit could be their defensive
movement actions, right?
As two more buckets.
So now you have call it seven,six to eight different buckets
that can all go into theresultant performance on the
field.
And then, you know, we just gotto test them and kind of know
what we look for within each oneof those.
Coach U (23:46):
You can get, you can, you can start getting real
detailed if you wanted to
eric yavarone (23:49):
totally.
Totally.
So yeah, you could spread themall out and then you can
condense them kind of, you know,however, however you want.
So we've taken them and we'vekind of put them into put them
into three movement, strengthand explosiveness.
And that's kind of the threethat we test for.
Coach U (24:02):
what do you define as movement and what are the, what
are the qualities that you lookfor in movement?
noah huff (24:06):
Obviously number one, range of motion having, having
quality range of motion andtalking about joint by joint
through the body.
Eric kind of talked about that,where you see compensations and
different things and addingstrength onto a poor movement
quality.
eric yavarone (24:19):
Yeah, it's range of motion testing in the
beginning That's like the mostfoundational component of it
Just see what is capable periodfrom a mechanic standpoint
noah huff (24:26):
So if you don't have good range of motion and control
over that range of motion thenyou're going to put yourself in
a, in a tough spot.
Balance, stability
eric yavarone (24:34):
Like Noah said stability Which is just
controlling kind of segments
noah huff (24:38):
coordination.
eric yavarone (24:39):
The coordination piece where now we're taking the
different segments, putting themtogether, creating movement
patterns at like slower generalweight room speeds.
Then it transitions more intothe high speed movement
stability component in like realtime sporting environments.
Really, you could probably sayhigh speed environments and then
uncontrolled random sportingenvironments.
And you have to be able to movefluidly throughout all of these,
(25:02):
but if you don't have good stuffhere, it makes it much more
difficult to do a good job here.
It's kind of like continuumwhere we're starting on the
table, look at isolated jointrange of motion, transition them
into more.
Weight room movements, thenhigher speed stability, and then
seeing how it all plays.
You know, when it's actually,when a ball is coming at you
versus a ball on a tee, right?
When it gets a little bit moreuncontrolled and dynamic.
(25:24):
Movement is solutions, so howare they going to create
Solutions to whatever the,whatever the task is, right?
So seeing how it plays out insport and then dialing it back
across that continuum, workingthe other way to see what
they're working with and thenwhat we can, what we can change,
if that makes sense.
Coach U (25:38):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm gonna have to take noteswhile I watch this again.
So I can like kind of try tobreak that down and what you
just said, but we'll get there.
That was, I love it.
I love it.
It's, it's it's such a, it'ssuch a simple thing, but it's
also gonna be very intricate.
And so like hearing you break itdown, I do appreciate.
So talk about speed development.
when you're trying to train aguy to get faster, what are you
looking at first?
eric yavarone (25:58):
I probably sound like a broken record when we do
enough of it, but it's the samething.
What's the resultant speed?
Okay, I want to run fast.
Okay, what are the, what are thepieces that go into, into
running fast?
There's a movement andcoordination piece behind that,
we need to be able to get intocertain positions.
Say acceleration mechanics,triple extension, straight line
from head to, Back toe, thosekinds of like main positions
(26:19):
that you want to get intopushing the ground down and
backs to propel yourself theother way.
But there's a, there's amovement component to that,
where if you don't maximize themovement, the timing of it, the
positions of it, it's going tolimit your result, which is the
speed.
There's a strength component alittle bit more early on in an
acceleration where you're,you're.
(26:39):
It's you versus the ground.
Who's going to win.
And when you beat the ground,that means you're pretty strong
where you can push through itdown and back to again, propel
yourself that way.
And then there's a powerexplosive component to it too,
that you can spring off theground.
Looking at like the whole thingin conjunction.
First, I'm going to look at themovement component of it, number
one, see if they get into thepositions that we're looking
(27:01):
for.
If they don't, then look at themovement screen and the range of
motion test and see if we knowthat they're limited in any of
the movements they're trying toshow.
So let's say that tripleextension piece, if they're
limited in hip extension, let'sThey're not going to be able to
get into triple extension.
So we would come at that with amovement solution of getting
more hip extension, working inthe hip extension and turning it
into a running mechanic, right?
(27:22):
If they're really good at all ofthose and the movement itself is
really good, well then let'slook at the strength and power
components to it.
And if we know that they havegood strength, but they're just
not really an explosive athlete,then your, that athlete's
solution to getting faster is.
is power work and true movingfast stuff where maybe they're
good at that and they have somestrength, but the coordination
(27:45):
piece is limited.
And if we're gonna get this guyfaster, we need to improve the
movement piece.
Those are like the big three,and the last one is weight.
Probably when they get, a littlebit older, high levels, like I
do think, too, at some point.
You probably reach a point of noreturn.
If you do want to get faster,you might lose 15 pounds.
So you're lighter, right?
And you could accelerate thatmass quicker, but it's kind of,
it's really the same I go backto those same things, like, what
are the, just reverse engineer,what's the result, what are the
(28:07):
pieces that go into that, whereare they at in each one of
those?
And then, then you coulddetermine what that athlete's
solution is.
noah huff (28:13):
Just kind of layering on what Eric just talked about
obviously you want to first lookat from a movement standpoint
and then you want to, Kind oftake a look under the hood and
and see everything else thatgoes into that it's a skill and
you need repetition and you needto do it.
You need to do it a lot.
I mean, the best way to getbetter at Running fast is to run
fast and do it over and over.
(28:35):
Obviously if that's all you'redoing and you're like, Oh man,
I'm not getting any faster.
Well, did you go down the wholechecklist that Eric just ran
through?
Once you start checking thoseboxes it comes down to just
repetition.
And, and as you're checkingthose boxes you can start to get
that coordination aspect of itfrom doing it over and over and
recording yourself and start tocritique it and look through it
(28:57):
just like you would.
You know, pitching or hittingmechanics same, same type of
approach.
eric yavarone (29:02):
So like we go through our, our initial
checklist.
And then like we look at theposition two and then we can
either even probably get alittle bit more broken down.
Right.
So you take a, take a shortstopversus a third baseman.
For example, the shortstop isgoing to be a little bit more
upright, usually involve more oflike a prep step into there.
Move.
And then, so they use theground, they use some elasticity
(29:22):
and then they start to move ineither direction when they go to
make a play, conversely to yourthird baseman, who's lower to
the ground, feet are fixed inthe ground and they're going
much more from like a noncounter movement position.
Right.
When they then go to feel theball.
So we see some athletes that aregreat at running in a straight
line, but then when they getinto the lateral movement
component, they aren't great orthe position could, could kind
(29:43):
of affect them too.
So if you have a a shortstop whoruns really well in a straight
line, but doesn't move welllaterally, well then like now we
have more of a situation wherewe need to, to do lateral
quickness and doing it fromground contact environments, if
that makes sense.
Just because like when you getinto more of the, the, the
position specific piece afterthat, sometimes you have guys
(30:04):
that are really fast, but likethey get called slow on the
field because They don't putthemselves in good positions or
they don't train countermovements, but the position they
play excuse me, non countermovements, but the position they
play requires them to beexplosive from a non counter
movement, defensive position.
Right.
So I think just that littleadditional piece, once you get
past the original, the firstlayer of running fast.
(30:26):
Then you can get a little bitmore detailed and position
specific stuff too.
And then look at the qualitiesthat go into that and maybe even
be able to dial it in a littlebit more just because speeds
it's all over, you know, it's,it's all over the place.
You get.
You know, like I said, guys,yeah, guys getting called slow
that run a 6560, but it's justbecause they can't use it in
lateral environments in thatparticular situation.
So just more stuff that kind ofcomes to mind as we go through
(30:48):
the list.
Coach U (30:48):
Well, no, but it's true because I think, I mean,
especially on the field, youdon't know what's going to
happen.
You have no idea what kind ofmoves you have to make.
You don't know what positionsyou're going to be in.
You just react.
And so going to that point, youknow, why is it important then
for athletes to be able to have,The ability to move well in all
directions if they want to begreat at their sport.
So how, you know, training forthat is important.
So it takes time though.
It takes time to stick kind of,you're talking about the
(31:09):
movement quality.
Why does it take time to, forthe movement quality like that
to stick?
Why do you have to do it overand over?
What is actually going onwalking through the
physiological process that ourbrain's going through to have to
make this actually happen?
eric yavarone (31:21):
I think inputs matter.
So in the sense of the bodyknows what's important and
what's not right.
So the more inputs you have insomething.
You're kind of telling yournervous system like this is
probably important.
Like if you're doing somethingover and over and over again,
you're going to adapt to beingable to do that more
efficiently, right?
It's the input of saying, thisis what we have to do.
(31:43):
And then that's like number one.
And then I also think that themagnitude of the input is also a
signal that tells the nervoussystem how important something
is.
So for example, if we do aheavy, heavy back squat or
whatever, a loaded movement,right?
The input on that is massivebecause it's, Loaded it's high
intent.
There's a humongous neuralcomponent to it.
(32:03):
The input is massive So if we'retrying to make like, you know
improve just say the same sameone hip extension And then I do
a massively loaded Strengthmovement and then I pair it with
a passive hip extension stretchfor 20 seconds like what input
is is bigger?
Which one's going to stick thehumongous one, right?
So I think it's it's twofold ofnumber one You The amount of
(32:27):
times we do something issignaling the body.
Hey, this is important.
You need to be efficient at thisbecause for whatever reason
you're doing it over and overagain.
So it's got to be important.
So that's number one.
And then number two, like themagnitude and timing of the, of
what the training intervention,the input is.
I just think that like the onesthat have more intent, more
force, more, all that stuff,those are just the ones that are
(32:48):
going to stick a little bit morebecause of how big that input
is, if that makes sense.
So I think if it's a, if it's amovement outcome goal.
And it's a person that has highamounts of strength.
Sometimes you do have to getlike super, super super intense
with it.
And that's where like You know,like a end range isometric at
max intent for 10 to 15 secondsand doing that for a couple of
different rounds, like sometimesthat's the input that's
(33:09):
necessary to tell the nervoussystem, like, Hey, no, this is
really important and you need tobe able to get into these
positions.
So a couple of thoughts thatcome to mind in there, but I
think, yeah, the number ofinputs and the magnitude of
them, I think that's, what'sgoing to ingrain that into the
nervous system.
They kind of signal the bodythat, that this is important on
the, on the neural side, if thatmakes sense, then you have the
actual mechanical side thatcomes from that after, right?
(33:29):
You put a lot of force throughsomething you're going to build
more from the physiologicalstandpoint of like damaging a
tissue to then remodel it andrebuild it.
And that's how you get stronger.
That's how you build more, morearmor, so to speak.
That's kind of the second pieceof it too, of like, you know, if
you've got to be safe in acertain position, you've got to
build a lot of armor in thatposition.
So putting force through,through the body in those
positions is super important tobuild that armor.
(33:51):
So I think those things combinedcreate both the.
Neural component to thephysiological effect.
And then also the mechanical oflike signaling and building
tissue to make sure that you'resafe when you get in those
positions over and over again.
Coach U (34:03):
Theoretically speaking, you could run that
through pretty much any.
Anything, right?
Speed, strength, mobility, rangeof motion, right?
Same concept.
eric yavarone (34:15):
A hundred percent, a hundred percent.
Coach U (34:17):
Speaking of mobility, Range of motion is important.
The movement quality to get intothat position to be able to
control it is important.
What are some of your favoriteways to train mobility and to
increase this range of motionfor your athletes?
noah huff (34:29):
it depends on the, on the athlete and kind of what
that restriction is, I thinkthat the most effective is.
Actively working through theseranges, like a lot of the times
kids will think they're justgoing to do a bunch of long
passive stretches, you know,before they go to bed or
something.
And then that's it.
And then they go load up abarbell on their back and they
(34:50):
work out for two and a halfhours on benching and dead
lifting and and squatting.
And then, you know, they do acouple hamstring, you know,
touch their toes and all right,I'm good on the mobility, but
it's, it's.
Like Eric was saying, like, yougot to continually have those
inputs, have those inputs, havethose inputs.
And I think, you know, the mostthat I've seen with guys is, you
know, having a combination ofnot just the passive, but the
(35:11):
active and really like.
Working through it and going forreps and going or going for sets
and going for, you know, theselong isometric holds where
you're really contracting hard.
I think that's what I've seen.
It's been the most effective.
eric yavarone (35:27):
Yeah, I agree.
A hundred percent.
I think I think we're going lessand less passive stuff, you
know, as we go.
Like sometimes I guess there aresituations where.
You know, like the overallmovement possibilities,
capabilities, like this is theirbox and like, I don't know if
we're trying to expand the boxtoo much anymore.
Sometimes we still doabsolutely.
But for the most part, it's justmaking, making what's in the box
(35:50):
work, you know, as well aspossible.
If there like is a clear cut,like.
This guy just can't get in anypositions on the field.
And we think it's severelylimiting.
I'm like, yeah, we got to makethe box bigger.
But for the most part, it is,it's kind of just making the box
better.
Like I said, and Noah said ofjust, and using, using active
components to that, and thenjust matching the intensity with
(36:10):
You know, how, how big of aninput we think we need.
So I agree a hundred percent.
noah huff (36:14):
Just one more thing on that is I think that most of
the time that athletes orcoaches, everybody, I guess, in
general, maybe we'll kind ofthink of those as like two
separate things of like, okay,I'm going to work on my mobility
and then I'm going to go train.
But you can really incorporateboth of those.
And if it's a well thought outprogram and well put together
program, you're attacking thosemovement qualities within the
(36:37):
program, which is going to beactive stuff, which is going to
be continual inputs.
And then you're going to startto see that happen a lot quicker
than, you know, thinking ofthese as two separate things.
So I think when you reallyintegrate the two is when you
start to see those resultshappen quickly.
Coach U (36:51):
Yeah, no, it's just interesting knowing, you know,
how you guys think about it.
I think the neural input thingand the impact that it makes
really makes sense to me.
Hammering the movement with moreforce and more isometrics.
Talk to me about why that worksand how the body responds to
that.
eric yavarone (37:06):
I think you get two, you get two birds with one
stone, you get both theneurological component and you
get the mechanical component,time under tension creates
hypertrophy, so the longer theisometric is, the more time
under tension, the moreremodeling that will go into
that on the back end, whichcovers that mechanical piece.
And then conversely, the otherway again, when you can build up
(37:28):
specific contractions, in thosedifferent positions and hold
them and build them up forextended periods of time, just
builds up the signal,
Coach U (37:34):
I'm sure it changes all the time, but just out of
curiosity, what's a ballparktheory that you like to use?
Time wise.
eric yavarone (37:39):
yeah, no.
It really follows the rules ofstrength, hypertrophy and
muscular endurance, if it's moreof a recovery based effort or
more of a mechanical driveneffort, longer and less intense.
So called 60%, 70% whetherthat's how hard you're actually
pushing or how heavy you'reloading it.
If it's a squat, a lunge,whatever That would be the the
(38:01):
prescription for that if it'slike hey, this is a high intent
day high intensity We're pairingthis with a true strength effort
a true power effort then well Idon't want to do too much time
where I fry you.
I want to make sure that it's astrength effort And I want to
make, but at the same time, ithas to be big enough to match
whatever we're inputting withthe strength loop.
That's going to be like five to10 seconds, one time, five to 10
(38:23):
seconds.
And then you got that middleground where it's like, okay,
maybe this is the secondaryblock or the third block of a
lift.
And we're getting more into theaccessory stuff, more of the
movement stuff.
We already did our, our heavyduty for the day with the
strength and the power.
Then maybe that's kind of likeyour middle ground, which is
like your true hypertrophyrange, right?
So maybe that's like a 15 to 30second effort at a 80 to 85%,
(38:45):
right?
Again, whether that's load orinternal effort being exerted.
So I think those are probablythe three that we go to the most
frequently.
There's just like, what's the,what's the goal?
Is it high intent strength?
Is it somewhere in the middle tojust facilitate or aid into a
more less intent movement drill?
Or is it a kind of a recoveryeffort?
And then I think that dictateswhich of those three.
(39:07):
Three three plans we take out.
If that makes sense.
Coach U (39:10):
Absolutely.
It does know.
Did you have anything to addonto that?
noah huff (39:15):
Nah, not after that Eric crushed it.
Coach U (39:18):
What does recovery mean to you guys?
Like what, what, what isrecovery?
eric yavarone (39:21):
We look at it in baseball for the most part, but
whoever made baseball is kind ofan idiot.
They just made a sport that theysaid, Oh, this ain't that
intense.
No big deal.
We can play it every day, butyou're never going to be a
hundred percent.
Coach U (39:32):
They didn't use to wear helmets, man.
They used to be in each otherwith the baby.
eric yavarone (39:35):
Yeah, we're getting there.
We're getting there.
Maybe we'll get like a couplemore days off here.
But recovery is basically, Ithink in a training environment,
recovery is your process, yourability to actually make the
adaptation.
So if we input training, that'sgoing to cause a stress, to the
body, a calculated one.
That's what we're doing.
That's our job as strengthcoaches to get a certain
(39:56):
outcome, which is more strength,more power, more size, whatever
the goal is.
But if you don't have therecovery process, you don't
create the adaptation.
So if you come back the nextday, if you, if you knock
yourself down and you don'tbuild yourself back up and you
knock yourself down again, we'regoing the wrong way.
We're going down, we're tryingto go up.
So on the training side, therecovery process is the
adaptation process where youactually get the outcome that
(40:18):
you're looking to get.
So if you don't have it, You'reeffectively getting nothing.
You're just making yourselftired.
And then on the sporting side,how can you get yourself good
enough to come back the nextday?
So if you knock yourself down to50%, we'd come back at.
86 percent the next day.
That's better than coming backat 60, right?
That gives us a better chance ofwinning that night.
If everybody on the team doesthat.
So you know, recovery is eitherthe actual adaptation or it's
(40:41):
for me, or it's the, just, justtry to come back as good as you
can the next day to be inposition to perform again.
noah huff (40:47):
Looking at it from like a nutritional standpoint
and restoring energy.
So, you know, helping with thatadaptation process, restoring
glycogen getting your body inthe, in the best position that,
you know, for the next day tohave a great day with, through
that, through rehydration, youknow, every doing all these
things the day before.
So a lot of the times it's like,We think of maybe that morning
(41:09):
routine, but like, what was yournightly routine that's going to
lead to that good morningroutine, you know?
Cause if you wake up tired andfeeling like crap and grumpy and
all this, well, it's because youdidn't do enough on the front
end.
The night before to affect andhave a good morning.
So how, how can we help theathletes have the best mornings
(41:31):
you know, have quality meal of,of a balanced meal of protein,
good carbohydrates the nightbefore fluids, pumping fluids,
but also getting electrolytes,getting sodium in there these
different things, differentsupplements, or even just using
things like tart cherry juiceand.
And these different things toreally drive good, good recovery
(41:51):
and good sleep where we havegood HRV, we have low resting
heart rate to really help thatadaptation and have a good
morning.
So I think you know, that that'swhat recovery is for me.
Coach U (42:02):
Yeah.
So from, youth to the pros youknow, obviously the pros are
going to have a lot differentRoutines than the young kids are
going to have these kids whowant to get to that spot, you
know, what, what, what goes onat that level?
What, what are these athleteslike?
eric yavarone (42:16):
The best in my experience, they're consistent
and they show up, it's not thethe hard work is.
When you went over three thenight before and it was a long
game and we're at game 120, andyou come in the next day and
it's super easy to just walk inget some food grab your bat and
just get in The cage and startstart whacking Like that you
(42:38):
stop you come in the gym Youtake your 15 minutes to do your
mobility work and mind you likea lot of these guys are type a
people too So like they don'treally Laying on the ground and
doing some 90 90 hip switches isnot an enjoyable task for them,
So, like, that's important, too.
Like, a lot of, a lot of themdon't, like, like all the stuff
that we ask them to donecessarily, but, they know it's
important, and they know it'sgonna, it's gonna relate to the
(42:59):
game.
So, like, it's, it's hard to dothat.
So, like, the hard work, it'sstill incredibly hard work.
It's just in a much differentform of, like, can you stay
diligent, and can you stayconsistent, and can you show up?
To do your 15 minute mobilityroutine and your 15 minute micro
dose lift when you don't reallyfeel like it.
Right.
And that's the separator forthem is, is they continue to
(43:20):
show up and they continue to beconsistent.
They're not always throwing 400pounds in their back squat and
they're not always crushingthemselves with workouts, but
they show up, they'reconsistent.
And that's really what the hardwork is.
And at least the game.
To me, like baseball, where likeconsistency in the day to day is
kind of the determining factorof what makes you great versus
good.
So I think just the, the hardwork component of it.
(43:43):
I don't know.
I just think you get more out ofshowing up four to five days a
week and doing something for 30minutes versus.
Twice a week for an hour and ahalf, you know, like this is
kind of what it seems like that,that the more, the more frequent
inputs the more consistent ones,that's how you're going to make
the biggest change.
So I think that's kind of,that's kind of the difference in
my mind of, of what these guyskind of consistently do day to
(44:06):
day.
noah huff (44:06):
There is this thought process of that.
It's you got to grind it outevery day and grind it out,
grind it out, work hard, youknow, all this, and it really
does come down to thatconsistency of being a pro and
just And that's, that's whybaseball has a minor league
system because, you know, guys,even if they go to the best
college program in the country,they're not ready to, to be a
(44:29):
big leaguer.
And they, they can't handle thattype of environment and
workload.
You have to really learn.
Yourself.
You have to learn your routineand you have to learn what it
takes to be consistent, how youcan, and I don't know if you've
seen like those little memes oflike, this is what you think
consistency is first, what itactually is, you know, and it's
(44:49):
like, you know, it's like aweek, you know, it's like seven
buckets of water full and thenit's like what consistency
really is.
And it's like full halfway, youknow, three quarters, a quarter
in it.
And that's what it is.
It's this continual up and down,but it's.
It's sticking to your routine,sticking to those things and
just being consistent with it.
(45:10):
And I think the other part isthat I think that people might
think that professional baseballplayers think that it's do or
die every single game or everysingle at bat or you know, every
single inning pitch.
Like I've seen players there isa.
A player.
So I mean, I worked with aplayer, Michael Grove.
(45:30):
So he was a second rounder outof West West Virginia top, you
know, got paid well, superpopular, all this things through
his whole minor league careerbefore he debuted, he won two
games.
He went to his whole first yearin professional baseball.
He didn't win a game.
And he was absolutely never onetime did he say, Oh man, I don't
(45:52):
think this is for me.
I don't think I can do this.
There was never any doubt.
He never was negative one timeat all.
It was the most impressive thingI've ever seen.
It was just tunnel vision onlike Hey, this is the process.
This is part of it.
And you know, the guys pitchingin the big leagues now.
So I think it's just rememberingthat it's a game of failure and
(46:13):
that, you know, you have toreally dive into that routine
and believe in the process.
Coach U (46:19):
What would you guys say takes you out of the game,
takes you, you know, you've seenthe guys succeed.
I mean, is it the exact oppositeof the guys who do succeed?
eric yavarone (46:27):
Yeah.
I mean, definitely in a lot ofcases I mean, there's obviously
a big skill component and yougotta be just incredibly.
And there are guys that as muchas we're making it seem like
everybody comes and sees usevery single day and
everything's great.
Like there's some that don't, orthere's some that do just, they
are that good, you know, andmaybe the longevity piece of it,
you know, and taking care oftheir body in that sense, like.
(46:48):
See how that plays out.
Some get away with it.
Some don't.
And that's probably one of themactually now saying that to
answer your question, some of itcould be you know, injury and
things like that where theskills there, but the body
breaks down and that kind ofgets them out.
For other ones.
Yeah, we have seen it'sunfortunate sometimes, but some
guys just don't ever kind offigure it out.
And by the time they do theirbacks against the wall and, and
they're on their way out, right.
(47:09):
Cause they haven't performedyet.
We always kind of talk aboutthere is usually like an aha
moment for a lot of them and yousee it and you just hope that
that aha moment kind of comesbefore it's too late, you know?
But yeah, I do think a lot oftimes there's the skill
component, there's the healthcomponent, and then there's the,
there's that last component ofbeing the exact opposite of what
we're talking about.
And just either guys putting waytoo much pressure on themselves
(47:30):
and that inhibits their abilityto perform where the other guys
are cool, calm and collectedgoing back to the real part of
the conversation and that, thatconfidence is what allows them
to perform.
Or they just, yeah, it justnever really clicks for him.
The whole holistic picture ofthe resources and the things
that kind of go into having thathigh level performance.
And it never really clicks forhim and maybe they don't
maximize their potentialperformance.
(47:51):
So, yeah, those are a couple ofthings that, that at least I
feel like, you know, I've seenin terms of, What doesn't work
out for guys sometimes.
noah huff (47:58):
I think sometimes maybe guys will, they were
always the best player on thefield and they don't realize,
you know, that they have tocontinue to evolve.
And continue to develop thatroutine and, and to, you know,
maybe take a different approachto their training than they had
in the past because they arestarting to get older and
they're starting to play moregames.
(48:18):
So I think that that couldpotentially be another factor.
In addition to everything Ericjust talked about.
Coach U (48:25):
Well, as always, every time I talk to you guys and I
see you guys, I learnedsomething.
I appreciate the insight.
I appreciate you guys bringingthings down.
Cause you know, one is a, as anathlete, you know, I want the
athletes, I want you guys tokeep bringing the videos, keep
bringing the product because I'mgoing to share it.
They're going to learn.
We are going to keep putting outthe good stuff.
Cause there's a lot of stuff outthere that I think Young
(48:46):
athletes can get inundated with,and it's not important at all.
And it's actually probably goingto do them more harm than it
will, you know, good.
So I appreciate you guys takingthe time to do this and you
know, help make me smarter andhelp make our listeners smarter
and athletes, hopefully who takein all this information a little
smarter too.
I'm going to drop any links.
So if anyone wants to reach outto you guys
eric yavarone (49:06):
yeah, totally.
I think we're most most activeon Instagram of the social media
platforms.
Maybe once we get good at thatone, we'll branch out a little
bit.
But I think if, if anybody wantsto talk to us, that's probably
a, where we're putting out themost content, the most
information and be like mostlikely to get back to somebody
pretty quickly.
I hope I do it right.
It's at five tool connectionright now, all written out the
word five tool connected as theInstagram.
(49:26):
So you can go there, send us aDM.
If you want to talk to us thereand then our website too shows
kind of different offerings wehave, that's five tool
connection.
com.
And then if you wanted to emailus, we do for athletes, like we
do, we do 15 minute kind ofstrategy sessions with, with
parents and kids that you justwant to learn more about
yourself as an athlete and ask acouple of questions of what we
would kind of.
(49:47):
Think might be a good route foryou.
You can send us an email at theletter or letter, the number
five, and then the letters, TCfive, TC at five tool
connection.
com.
And we'll get right back to youon that.
And we can get on the phone andwe can, we can talk through some
stuff to there.
Coach U (50:02):
Awesome.
I love it.
Noah and Eric.
Thank you guys for joining andgiving us some great
information.
I appreciate that.
Thank you guys so much forjoining.
eric yavarone (50:11):
Thank you, man.
I appreciate you having us.
This was fun.
noah huff (50:14):
You.
Appreciate it.
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