June 27, 2024 • 55 mins
Unlocking Game Speed with Multidirectional Expert Jason Feairheller | Coach U Podcast
In this episode of the Coach U Podcast, we are joined by Jason Feairheller , a multidirectional speed expert and host of the Game Speed Podcast. Jason shares his journey into the sports performance industry, his favorite TV shows, and music interests.We delve into various aspects of athletic performance, discussing the science behind speed and agility, the difference between change of direction and agility, and the importance of training angles in sports. Jason also touches on key training tools and exercises, and the importance of intent in coaching. Watch to gain insights into Jason's coaching philosophy and methods designed to improve speed, power, and agility in athletes.
00:00 Introduction to the Coach You Podcast
01:30 Meet Jason Feairheller : Multidirectional Speed Expert
01:48 Jason's Journey: From College to Private Training
02:43 Personal Favorites: TV Shows and Music
04:04 The Joy of Coaching and Client Success
04:43 Impact Deck: Choosing New Skills
08:03 Understanding Agility and Change of Direction
17:06 Training Techniques: Deceleration and Redirecting Force
21:21 Game Speed vs. Traditional Speed Training
26:06 Skill Development in Sports
26:26 Misconceptions in Speed Training
28:44 Effective Speed Training Techniques
31:19 Importance of Angles in Sports
42:13 Strength Training for Speed and Agility
47:22 Favorite Training Tools and Techniques
50:41 Specialization in Sports
52:00 Key Takeaways for Athletes
53:37 Final Thoughts and Contact Information
GET IN TOUCH WITH JASON
https://www.instagram.com/jasonfeairh...
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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 podcast, and I'm
your host coach you.
This podcast is about beingcurious, learning from others
and using what we've learned toevolve every single day.
(01:29):
hey, what's up everybody.
We're being joined by JasonFairheller.
Who's a multidirectional speedexpert.
He's a speaker.
He's a presenter.
He also hosts the game speedpodcast.
He's a mentor to other coachesand he also offers speed and
power training programs.
So you can check out the linktree in the show notes.
Jason, thank you so much forjoining us.
Welcome to the show.
Jason F. (01:46):
Awesome.
Happy to be here.
Coach U (01:48):
So tell me about how you found your way into doing
what you do today.
Jason F. (01:51):
Originally decided, you know, I, I think in college,
like I want to go into thecollege strength side and I
applied for a job and I did notget it.
And I remember thinking after Ididn't get it, like I was not
ready for this.
Like I didn't know what I wasgoing to get into.
So I was like, I'm going to goto the private side.
I started doing it, working at asports performance place.
(02:14):
And.
It was just not being run verywell.
So after a couple of years, I'mlike, you know, I'm going to go
with a personal training route.
And I did that for a little bit.
And when I was there, met acouple other guys and we decided
we are going to, we all hadbackgrounds in sports and
training athletes and we allwanted to go back to that.
So we said, all right, we, we'regoing to start our own gym.
(02:35):
And we did.
And that was about eight yearsago, And here I am now.
And I love it.
No regrets
Coach U (02:42):
love to hear that.
I'm going to give you a couple,before we get into like the
nitty gritty, the science ofspeed stuff, I want to talk to
you about some of your personalthings.
So,, give me your favorite TVshow.
Seinfeld.
I was thinking like, what's thenumber one show that I've seen
probably the most.
And it's definitely that.
And I've watched it, everythingthat happens in life.
(03:03):
I have a Seinfeld reference forpretty much.
So I was like, that's, that'sgotta be it.
But it does kind of date myselfbecause it is a 90s show.
No, no.
See, everything's on Netflix.
So one knows, no one knows whenyou watched it.
So tell me about your favoriteband musician.
I love nineties rock.
Like I grew up in the ninetiesgrunge and alternative era and.
(03:25):
I was thinking like, it's hardfor me to even name my top five
bands.
Cause I'm just like, ah, who doI leave out?
But if I had to, I wouldprobably say the offspring just
because I.
If it comes on, I never turn itoff.
That's good way to what?
That's that's, when you trulylove something when it's
repeatable over and over Yeah.
(03:46):
A hundred percent.
That's cool, man.
I grew up in the nineties aswell.
A lot, a lot of the same kind ofmusic and hip hop to a lot of
rap and hip hop for meabsolutely.
You know, I always go back andforth, just kind of whatever
mood I'm Hell yeah.
That's the same thing fortraining too.
It's like, I think it's hit andmiss sometimes.
Like I want, I know it's odd,but like even sometimes during
training, I'll listen to likeclassical music.
It just depends on my mood.
Tell me about some of yourfavorite things about working in
(04:07):
the performance world.
for me.
The best thing is when, and itdoesn't, I do have some like
personal training clients too,that I've worked with for like a
decade and it really doesn'tmatter who it is, an athlete or
gen pop person, if someone buysinto what you're saying, And
sees results, that's a greatfeeling.
Especially when they just giveyou a random thank you, like, I
(04:29):
did this this weekend, and Iplayed well, or I ran a 5k, it
doesn't matter what it is.
But when they see value in whatyou're bringing to them.
And it's just a greatrelationship then back and
forth.
Oh, that's awesome, we're goingto go into the impact deck.
So if I pull a green card, it'san action.
Orange card, it's a reflection.
Blue card, It's an affirmation.
(04:51):
Give them a little shuffle Ooh,how about this one?
Choose a new skill you'd like tomaster and investigate your
options for learning it.
So the first thing that came tomind was, and this probably
applies to any coach thatdecides they want to do
something on their own.
You have done a lot of stuffregarding training.
(05:11):
You understand programming, youunderstand pretty much anything.
Attention to detail, strengthtraining, all of this other
things, all the nuances of it.
And then you're trying to builda business and you know, nothing
about business.
So the skill is going from liketrainer to entrepreneur.
And.
(05:31):
I mean, I've been, I've had myown gym for a while and I'm
still going through that processof like creating better systems
and things like that.
So yeah, there's alwayssomething to be learned as far
as like tightening things up,creating more time for yourself,
making more money and yeah,doing what you want to do, uh,
(05:56):
In life because of that stuff.
The other thing is, I don't knowwhy I've always wanted to learn
how to juggle.
So the skill I want is to, andI, I practice on and off a
little bit and I can go for likefive seconds, but I don't know
why I just, I want to do that.
I think of like a Rubik's cube,just like random skills that
don't mean anything that I'mlike, just interesting to have
(06:19):
in my back I mean, if you showup at a party with a Rubik's
cube and some juggling balls,you might be the life of the
party.
If you nail it, I might be.
Yeah.
what is your favorite aspect oftraining for sport?
for me, it's attention todetail.
And I think this is whatseparates a good coach from
somebody who is.
(06:39):
Uh, an elite coach is just the,the differences in like the
slight attention to detail, andI know you had Lee Taft on the
podcast and he's a good friendand mentor of mine and you hear
him talk, he, you're like, thisguy knows a lot, but when you
really like dig in, he knows somuch about.
(07:00):
The way people move andunderstanding movement.
And I think it's that attentionto detail, which would then
allow you to choose moreappropriate drills for your
athletes to choose betterprogressions, all of those
things, which would then lead tobetter results versus you see a
drill, you think it's cool.
(07:20):
All right.
Uh, people are moving fast whenthey do this versus like they
chose the drill and it stillmight look cool, but it serves a
very specific purpose of whatyou're trying to do with them.
It's, it's easy to get into thecool looking things too, because
we're surrounded by Instagram,social media, YouTube, tick
(07:41):
tock, all these things, right?
thankfully you put out videosthat are very high quality and
yeah.
Makes sense.
when it comes to performancetraining.
So,, it's nice to know that thatattention to detail, you know,
is being put out into the, tothe social media world too.
Cause it's for every, every oneof those, there's like 10 of the
non detailed things where it isjust that fancy.
Look at this move.
It's cool.
I can do it, but is it reallytranslating?
(08:03):
But I want to hear how, how doyou define agility?
It's funny, somebody, messagedme or like wrote in one of my
comments, You, you said this isa speed drill, but you didn't do
a drill.
And to me, speed is fast you cango over any relative distance.
(08:24):
So in a lot of time, when welook at sport, you're not
running 30 or 40 yards withoutchanging direction.
It's a lot of five yards, 10yards, two yards, very short
distances.
And the quicker and faster youcan do those, it doesn't matter
what the You need to get as muchspeed as you can over that
distance.
(08:45):
And that is going to be speed.
And agility side, it's funnybecause in about a month, I'm
doing a talk for the NSCA stateclinic in Pennsylvania, and it
is about the difference ofchange of direction versus
agility and why a lot of coachesdon't truly understand that.
(09:05):
Like they, they will misuse theterms change of direction.
Is a rehearse drill.
Someone knows where they'regoing to go.
Someone knows exactly whenthey're going to go.
And they know exactly what youwant executed with So they're
trying to perform basically avery specific skill.
Whereas agility involvessituational awareness.
(09:29):
You're looking at the actuallike visual ability.
You're looking at.
Um, like you're trying to readpattern recognition from the
opposing athlete and thosethings are, are actually
agility.
So the athlete is reacting tosomething.
So now I'll just give you aquick little rundown.
If, if I'm pointing at a conefor an athlete to go to, That
(09:53):
only fits in one of thoseagility categories that doesn't
fit pattern recognition becauseno one on the field is pointing
to you where to go, right?
It doesn't fit situationalawareness because there isn't a
score.
You don't know exactly likewhat's, what's the situation in
the game and how do I need toreact based off that?
It is only working the visualability to pick up something and
(10:16):
sprint directly to that point.
So even a lot of times whenwe're training agility.
We're only training a tinyaspect of agility.
So getting into using athletesone on one, two on one, those
types of things, that's whenyou're truly doing agility
drills versus the change ofdirection drills.
(10:37):
And now there's always a battleof like, should you do change of
direction?
Should you do agility?
And I think.
Every single drill that you dois an assessment.
So you are looking at thephysical ability of the athlete
to do that drill.
And if they don't have thephysical ability, then you do
(10:58):
change of direction drills toimprove their qualities of
quickness, speed, time off theground, how quickly they can
rotate their upper body.
And once they have those, Thosetypes of qualities.
Then you start to layer in someother agility type of drills to
see, all right, are they able touse that on the field?
Because if you know, they havethe physical qualities, but it
(11:20):
doesn't transfer to the field,then, you know, it's all agility
or perception type issues, andyou can work on more of those,
but.
If you only ever do agilitydrills, you don't know whether
or not they're missing thephysical tools or they're
missing the perception tools.
So you're always just kind ofguessing.
So I think coaches need tounderstand the difference of
(11:43):
those.
And then they also need to beable to know when to choose one
or the other.
To get whatever outcome you wantwith your athletes.
Let's say you're, you're takingan athlete, uh, through an
agility style drill, but yourecognize, okay, they're not
doing well on this.
You want to go back then to, andI'm going to say back to, but
(12:04):
now I'm going to go to changedirection, maybe to hone in on
something here to help them onthe agility side.
How would you approach that tohelp them understand like the
translation?
If you're seeing something nottranslate well.
Here's a perfect example.
So I have two brothers.
They're both lacrosse players.
One is actually, uh, playsdefense.
One plays offense.
(12:25):
So it's perfect.
Cause I can always match them upone on one versus each other in
different drills.
And the offensive player.
About a year and a half ago,Torres ACL.
And since then, like I saw hisfilm beforehand and he would
never ever stutter step, hewould plant a foot into the
ground and he would make a hardcut and go, and he was able to
(12:46):
beat a lot of people doing that,but since he had a surgery, he
had a tendency sometimes tostutter step a lot.
And when, when you'reapproaching a D a defensive
player and you're stutterstepping as an offensive player.
You're slowing down.
When you slow down, it allowsthe defensive player to slow
down.
And whenever an athlete slowsdown, they have more movement
(13:09):
options.
It's easier for them to moveforward laterally backward.
So I needed to get him to stopdoing that.
So.
We did a bunch of rehearseddrills where we're basically
just performing like a sidestep.
They might just do a couple ofhard steps and then plant a foot
into the ground.
And then I might have them evenmake like a cut around the cone.
(13:29):
And I might change the angle ofthe cut on the cones to make it
a little bit harder of an angleor things like that.
And then maybe I have them cutone direction, plant a foot and
cut another direction and goback.
So now once he was good at doingthose where I, I know he has the
To then do them comfortablygoing right to left, then, all
(13:51):
right, let me put it backtogether in another agility
drill.
And it was, I worked with himfor about like six weeks and
every week was less and lesstimes that he stutter step.
And actually the last week I hadhim, there was zero, which was
awesome because I'm like, allright, now he gets it.
And it went from like hisbrother beating him most of the
(14:13):
time to him.
Being able to create some moreseparation just because he was
able to do that.
You know, do you know thebaseball player Todd Hilton
retired?
Just made the hall of fame.
he said one time after aninjury, you know, you have to
know your new 100 and.
When I, you know, I've hadinjuries, I'm sure you've dealt
with injuries, your brain, yourbody is a lot smarter than you
(14:35):
are.
And it will, like you said, thestutter step, I'm sure that
happened because the, just thetrust in the body and that, that
over time, the pattern ofhitting the ground probably just
Yeah.
Right.
So I think it's cool.
Cause you're taking that idea ofprogressive overload that you
have in weights and taking itinto this kind of, and correct
me if I'm wrong, but that's howI'm kind of visualizing it.
I don't want to knock physicaltherapist.
(14:57):
My wife's actually a physicaltherapist.
I think there's sometimes.
A misunderstanding betweensomeone has the strength that
they have previously had, and itmight be equal to their, their
uninjured leg.
And they're able to get thatback pretty quickly, but I don't
think that necessarily should belike the determining factor, the
return to play needs to be likean overload progression where,
(15:20):
all right, if I sprint two stepsand slam on the brakes.
Ultimately, I haven't built up aton of speed.
That now is like fairly easy.
That's a pretty basic drill.
You want to increase that?
All right.
Sprint four steps.
Now you've probably gone like afew more miles an hour.
It's harder to slam on thebrakes.
(15:41):
Now go like seven yards, 10yards.
And eventually the more speedyou have, the more strength
you're asking the athlete to, toshow whenever they're trying to
slam on the brakes.
So you can overload the drillslike that.
And when I was talking aboutattention to detail before, that
is a perfect example of it islike, all right, understanding
(16:04):
the athlete cannot slam on thebrakes well at seven yards.
It never, ever happens at fiveyards.
Maybe it happens two thirds ofthe time.
Okay, great.
Like they, they demonstrate thatthey can do it, but they can't
do it consistently.
Let's see where it's consistent.
And then once they get a hundredpercent of the time, now they
(16:25):
own that skill.
They own that physical capacity.
Let's make it a little bitharder somehow.
So there's always ways to makedrills easier, harder, but.
If someone owns a skill, youcan't, or I don't want to say
you can't, you wouldn't want tokeep doing that same exact thing
(16:45):
because you know, it's basicallyjust keep on doing the same
thing over and over again.
You're not necessarily gettingthem any better, so you keep on
progressing them in differentways in order to make the drill
tougher.
Going off the thought of theability to slam on the brakes,
deceleration comes to my mindand I'm thinking about how
important it is to you.
(17:06):
How do you train it and how doesit affect the ability to stop
and go After decelerating.
So a lot of times when we dorehearse drills or when I see
coaches demonstratedeceleration, it's usually.
Landing a jump, doing a snapdown type of thing or something
like that.
(17:26):
But that's not how decelerationis expressed in sport.
When someone is reacting tosomeone else, you don't have
time to put two feet into theground.
And if you do, they are by youlike in a split second.
So deceleration is essentiallyin sport, the ability to slam on
the brakes with a single leg.
And ultimately you can assessthat by looking at what is the
(17:50):
Angle of hip flexion and theangle of knee flexion at their
deepest range of motion whenslamming on the brakes.
And the deeper they go, theworse they are at it.
Ideally, the best athletes willkeep a less knee angle, less
knee flexion.
At a relative speed and almostthink about it.
(18:12):
Like if you're accelerating outof the bottom of a squat, that's
going to be slower, it's goingto take a little bit more time
to pick up speed than if you'rejust accelerating out of a
quarter squat, and we want thatsame sort of knee angle whenever
we're changing direction.
So when we plant a single leginto the ground.
What that does is it allows ourother leg the free leg to open
(18:34):
up whatever new direction weneed to go.
So if I need to go behind me andI have two feet planted on the
ground, now I'm going to pivot,I'm going around my turn, I'm
going to lose my angle.
Whereas if I plant a single leginto the ground, I can rotate my
hips, rotate my trunk, plant myfoot into the ground, and now I
have the angle I want to have.
(18:55):
Not to say that a jump stick or,you know, those kinds of drills
can't be effective or useful,but you're right on the field,
on the court, you're constantlymoving and being able to be
coordinated through thatmovement and be able to transfer
that energy efficiently.
I feel like is more importantthan most of the training, uh,
that is shown or taught most ofthe time.
(19:16):
What are your thoughts on that?
I like to refer to it as likeredirecting force.
I don't want someone to thinkthat they are necessarily
stopping.
They are just changing themomentum of which direction
they're, they're traveling.
And if, if we think about likejump training, plyometric
training, if I'm performing.
(19:38):
Two legged jumps.
I am telling athletes you aretrying to get as much height or
as much distance as you canevery time.
I don't necessarily care aboutsticking the landing every time.
I need someone to demonstratestability, but ultimately,
someone demonstrates whilelanding like a squat jump or
(19:59):
even a little single leg hopover hurdle isn't close to the
forces someone is going to needwhen they are sprinting hard,
reacting to someone planning asingle leg into the ground and
then going another direction.
So I almost think of change ofdirection as.
What I'm doing to improve anathlete's stability almost.
(20:20):
And then the plyometric trainingwhere I'm actually trying to
minimize time on the ground, getmaximum distance while
minimizing time on the ground,that's where I'm focusing on
redirecting force.
And.
In my training, I like to dothat in all angles and in all
different planes, because that'swhat happens on the field.
We're not always moving straightahead.
(20:41):
We're not always movinglaterally.
It is a mix of all angles andall directions off the inside of
your leg, off the outside ofyour leg, all of those different
things.
So yeah, as far as, as that itis, I, and I want them to think
about redirecting force.
I don't want them to thinkabout.
Oh, I need to decelerate andslam on the brakes.
(21:03):
Then I need to go the other waybecause then it just ends up
being too slow.
They, they sink too low intotheir hips when they change
direction.
So, so then what is game speedversus what most people think of
when it comes to speed or speedtraining?
So I talked about speed beforeis like how fashion go from
(21:24):
point A to point B.
And when I think about gamespeed, it is a combination of
the physical capacity of theathlete.
That's your change of directiondrill and the perception
abilities of the athlete.
And that's your agility drills.
And ultimately how that isexpressed in sport is what is
your ability to either createspace against an opponent or to
(21:46):
take away space against anopponent.
So if I'm an offensive player,My job is to create space.
Cause when I have space, I canmake a play.
If it's basketball, you know,when no one's in your face, it's
easier to make a shot infootball.
If you can get open, you'regoing to catch a pass versus if
a guy's on your back, thequarterback's not even going to
throw to you.
(22:06):
So those are the things I'mlooking for.
And then if defensively, you'retrying to take away that space
all the time.
An offensive player kind of hasthe.
The edge, because they candecide, particularly even if
it's like basketball orfootball, where they almost have
a preplanned route of some kind,like, I think I'm going to try
(22:28):
to set someone up to do this anda defensive player.
You're just reacting the wholetime.
So if you can take away thatspace, you have the ability to
slam on the brakes, move, readand react.
That's what makes you an elitedefender.
All right.
Now going back to regular speed,most coaches think of speed is
just, I'm going to improvesomeone's 40 yard sprint.
(22:52):
That is a huge component ofspeed because the, obviously the
faster your single top speed is.
Over any given distance, themore likely you are to either
create space or take away space.
So that still needs to betrained to say that just having
(23:12):
athletes run 10 yard sprints,accelerations, 20 yards, 10 yard
flies, 40 yard sprints, whateverthose linear sprints are, that
that 100 percent transfers andwill make someone an elite
athlete.
I think is there's a huge jump.
To that, and I don't necessarilyagree with that.
I think it gives them thepotential to be better, but
(23:36):
ultimately moving well on thefield is a skill itself.
And if I have athletes come in,I can create drills.
And I always think of the drillsbased off of scenarios that
happen in sport of like, I'mmoving this way.
I need to rotate this direction.
Oh, they cut back.
I need to go back the originaldirection.
(23:57):
So always think of drills likethat, and you can create drills.
That elite athletes will have ahard time doing well 100 percent
of the time.
And you don't even necessarilyneed a ton of distance in order
to do that.
So in my mind, these are allskills.
You can always improve the skillof moving well on the field
(24:21):
versus just saying, practicetakes care of that.
Because if no one's evernecessarily taught how to do a
drill, then you just kind ofhope that they figure it out.
And I mean, this is a.
Kind of a huge side topic, butthe amount of time coaches or,
um, the amount of time athletesspend playing sports now is
(24:45):
higher than it's ever been,especially when it comes to
specializing in a sport.
So for me, why aren't there waymore elite movers on every
single team?
Why is every single player notso much better than they are?
There's still that one guy onthe team that can Take over and
(25:05):
maybe there's like the secondguy or whatever, but everyone
else is just still kind ofaverage.
And to me, I think a missingpiece of that is doing speed
training with an intent ofcreating more movement options
for every single player.
There is, and doing practice,just, it doesn't cut it as much
(25:29):
as I think a lot of coachesthink it would.
I'm trying to get more in withthe coaches, like the sports
coaches themselves, and sayinglike, Hey, these are things you
should be doing before practice.
This is how you're going to getyour kids ready to go onto the
field.
And like, incorporating thatspeed training, because the
reality is, they're not going tosee me four days a week, but
they're seeing that sports coachfour days a week.
So if I can get sports coach tojust implement just a little
(25:50):
bit, five to 20 minutes,something small enough to just
get that stimulus, I feel likeit's going to help a lot.
I feel like that'll at leastgive them a little bit more than
they had.
You know, that's, that's a hope,I guess.
We don't really have the sciencefor that.
Um, Or maybe we do, we justhaven't studied it yet.
Yeah, and I mean, skilldevelopment in sport is huge,
and obviously, like, if youdon't have the skills to do the
(26:12):
actual sports skill, you'renever gonna get on the field as
it is, but there is a happymedium there between performing
the sports skills versustraining the actual physical
skills to get you better at thatsport.
When it comes to improvingspeed, power, change direction,
agility, what are some of thebiggest misconceptions that
(26:33):
younger athletes make about thetraining they need to do?
I would say that the biggestmisconception is They don't
actually train speed, like speedis done where If I were to time
you for a 10 yard sprint andtime you again, doing it, that
those times are pretty muchright next to each other.
(26:54):
They, they might be exactly thesame.
You might improve a little bit,but it's not going to be a big
drop off too much of the time.
The speed training turns intoconditioning.
And I see like plyo agilitycircuits on Instagram and.
They're, they probably drive mecrazy.
Number one, because if you lookat them, everyone's doing a sub
(27:15):
max effort every single time.
So while extensive plyos aregreat, if you're doing that,
that drill for conditioning, butdon't say that a 32nd circuit of
like, you know, shufflingthrough hurdles, doing a few
hurdle hops, moving laterally,doing all these other Is
(27:39):
actually going to improve yourspeed.
Playing devil's advocate.
If I have a basketball.
Player and they're, they haverepeats, a lot of repeats, a lot
of lateral shuffle cuts and theygot to stay with their guy.
You know, there's an endurancefactor to that too.
So you could argue, all right,so how do we get them to be
faster through that?
Like 22nd portion of how oftenthey're doing that.
(28:00):
I don't think it's actuallyhappening that often, but do you
understand what I'm saying?
It's like, there's thatendurance So how do we get them
better at that?
without it being just aconditioning drill, All right.
So how often is a player insport moving as fast as they
possibly can without slowingdown for a couple seconds?
(28:21):
say maybe like 2 percent of theplays.
Yeah, it's, it's so few.
I mean, like even in likehockey, if, if like a team gets
stuck in their own end for awhile and they get gassed,
they're going as hard as theycan for maybe like 10 or 15
seconds and then all of asudden, like they're, they're
gassed, they're, they're slowingdown.
(28:44):
what I would do is keep alldrills in the realm of like two
to four seconds.
So two to four seconds, as hardas you can, you can actually do
it more work than it sounds likewithin that two to four second
space, and then you repeat thatover and over again, you take,
if you did that, like every 30seconds.
(29:06):
You're going to build up somegreat repeat sprint ability
endurance as it is anyway.
And the better shape someonegets, the better they'll be able
to repeat the more volume theycan get in over a speed training
session.
So while I still want quality tobe high, if I'm working on
improving speed, I can still getin more volume with athletes
(29:28):
that are.
Better trained just because theycan repeat that ability much
better.
Um, I don't know if you're likea big kettle kettlebell guy,
but.
Pavel, Satsulin, like the guywho brought kettlebells to the U
S hmm.
he talks a lot about like, Notbeing in that like glycolytic
(29:50):
range and the ability to producerepeated power efforts over and
over again.
And a lot of his protocols arelike, you do like five
kettlebell swings as hard as youcan every minute on the minute
for like 30 minutes or somethinglike that, or you do a
kettlebell snatch or akettlebell clean and jerk.
(30:11):
It's the idea that you dosomething explosive.
You allow a rest, so qualitystays high and you repeat that
and over time you build up tothat like 30 minute mark, but
maybe it starts at like 10minutes and the volume, maybe
you only go two seconds perdrill every single time and then
maybe you do two seconds perdrill.
(30:33):
You can work up to 20 minutes.
All right.
Now we're going to go foursecond drills at 10 minutes, but
the point is you can manipulatethe time of the drill and the
rest to get an aerobic.
Effort out of your speedtraining as well, just because
in two seconds, no one's heartrate is getting to max, but it
(30:55):
does raise a little bit.
And even if you, you take ashort walk after it, a 30 second
break, you go again.
All right.
Now my heart rate's hanging outat probably like 120 or so.
For 30 minutes.
I'm getting in a decent amountof aerobic base work while still
improving my speed.
It's not going to affect thequality of my speed training.
(31:19):
I want to talk about angles andwhy angles in sports and
practicing cutting and hittingdifferent angles in sports are
so important.
So I like to divide up my speedtraining into like three
different aspects.
Number one would be any sort ofattacking drill.
So if I have my arms to theside, anything moving forward, I
(31:40):
would consider an attackingdrill of some kind.
And even just linear, linearsprints would be part of that.
Then I would have any sort oflateral drill where I'm just
going side to side.
And then I have any sort ofretreating drill, which is
anything going behind me.
So easiest way to, to thinkabout this is you hone in on
(32:02):
what watches sport.
Doesn't matter what it is.
You hone in on one player andyou watch exactly how they move
and.
I mean, basketball is a perfectexample, just because, even
within short spaces, people are,are moving forwards, backwards,
laterally, they're hitting alldifferent angles, and even,
(32:23):
like, uh, an offensive player,if they, they go in and they
take a step back, they'reessentially performing a
attacking drill to a retreatingdrill.
Where they're moving backwards.
Whereas a lot of times peoplemight think, Oh, only defensive
players need to work on movingbackwards.
Only offensive players need towork on moving forward.
(32:45):
Well, that's not necessarily thecase.
If we're trying to create space,we need to do that at all
different angles.
And the more you practice thesedrills, the more you realize,
all right, when I, when I gainmore speed for me to go from
like a lateral movement to aretreating movement.
And it tried to hit an exact 90degree turn that's going to
(33:06):
actually be pretty difficultversus if I were to just go side
to side, you're slamming on thebrakes.
You're coming back.
It's much easier to kind of justmaintain your position versus
adding in that rotationalcomponent to it.
So when I'm doing drills, a lotof times I might just kind of
(33:26):
think it like Different angleswhere I go to the side, I go
forward, maybe like 15 degrees,go to the side, go forward, 30
degrees, go to the side, 60degrees.
It doesn't matter what it is,but within the same drill, if
I'm doing three reps, I couldhit three different angles.
And now I'm improving theability of the athlete to move
(33:47):
at all of those angles.
And I talked before about as acoach paying attention to
detail, if I have an athletethat struggles hitting a
specific angle.
Now I know, especially whendoing a change of direction
drill where it's rehearsed, Imight need to focus more on
improving that because that isone flaw within the physical
capacity element of their game.
(34:10):
And a lot of time I see thiswith defensive players when they
need to move backwards withspeed.
The best ones are so fluid inhow they're able to get their
hips and their torso rotated thedirection they need to go plan a
foot into the ground.
Accelerate out of every turn.
They do that while keeping theirvision focused elsewhere on the
(34:32):
field versus if you have anathlete who isn't quite as good,
there's that little hitch.
When they change direction wherethey plant a foot into the
ground and maybe they popupright a little bit too much.
And when they do that, you know,their torso kind of tilts or
sways.
That's going to make them slowerout of that change of direction.
(34:52):
And now they've lost a step.
So for me, I'm training allangles all the time.
If I'm doing an attacking day,I'm hitting a lot of the angles.
If I'm doing a retreating day,same thing, hitting a bunch of
those different angles, and thenwherever there's a weakness, you
can just focus on that so youdon't necessarily have to
(35:12):
change.
The drill, if I'm doing like ashuffle into an angled sprint
forward any direction, so movinglaterally and then I sprint
forward at any angle.
If I see one part of that whereit's all, it's not quite as slow
or as smooth as I want it to be,then I just have them focus on
that angle a little bit more.
(35:34):
And I think that is really wherelike a good coach comes in
versus, all right, this is theexact drill we're running.
You're going to run it.
If you do it well, great.
If not, that's okay.
We're going to move on to thenext one.
Then right after that, anyway,versus trying to get them in a
position of choosing a drillwhere they're able to actually
(35:54):
like learn the skill or getcloser to learning that skill.
What are some of your favoritecues that you tend to use a lot,
especially for changing angles?
You have to create an athleticposition where you're able to
strike your foot wide of yourcenter mass.
So a lot of times coaches talkabout being low and that's great
(36:17):
because if, if we're not low, wecannot strike a foot outside of
our center mass.
And if I think about creating anangle for someone to accelerate
from, and this could be anotherside topic, but training
acceleration for athletes.
Don't always just have them facestraight ahead because a lot of
(36:38):
time acceleration is out of achange of direction.
So even if we could just viewchange of direction as
acceleration work in a lot ofinstances.
Back to the point of, if theydon't strike the foot wide,
they're not going to be able tocreate an angle from their foot
through their opposite shoulder,almost a straight line through
(36:59):
that in order to accelerate thenew direction they need to go.
Now, a lot of things need tohappen well for that.
to happen.
They need to be low enough.
They need to be able to not sinkto have a certain level of
strength where they don't sinktoo low into that turn.
But the main part is I needathletes looking the new
(37:21):
direction that they're going togo because whenever they're not
necessarily focused on anythingwith their vision, they're just
kind of like, Oh, Looking inspace somewhere without any sort
of like purpose to it, theirtrunk needs to rotate and
actually if they can startrotating their trunk slightly
(37:44):
before they change direction,that change of direction is
going to be so much more.
So a lot of times I might justgive them a visual cue, tell
them to maybe snap their head alittle bit around a little bit
sooner just to give them thatfeeling of like, Oh, this is how
I accelerate a little bit fasterout of that.
(38:07):
A lot of time, even when itcomes to like plyo drills, I'm
just telling them to be quickeroff the ground.
I need athletes to learn to bequicker off the ground.
So no matter what the drill is,what the change of direction is,
the quicker they can get off theground, the better they're going
to be.
Are you teaching them to getinto the angle before they hit
(38:28):
the ground I try to choose thedrill so they can get into the
angle.
So the very first step ofgetting the angle is getting
someone to feel what it is liketo hit that angle.
So, so first day one.
People are getting into athleticposition.
And for me, that's hips orthat's feet wider than your
(38:51):
shoulders.
If they're at your shoulders andI move and I go to sprint with
my feet right under myshoulders, I'm almost pushing
completely vertically.
When I push off the ground, myshin is, is too straight up and
down.
I need my feet wider than, thanyou would think they need to be.
And first step is just doingstraddle jumps.
So from that wide or from likefeet right next to each other,
(39:15):
Give me like a quarter squat andthen get both feet as wide as
you can and then bring them backin as quick as you can.
And when an athlete can do thatwell and strike their ground far
away from them and bring it backfast.
All right, now we know like theyhave a base of athletic
position.
Now from there.
I might just have them go into asprint where I'm having them
(39:38):
start with their feet right nextto each other because in order
to sprint to the side, they needto reposition their foot or
punch a foot into the ground inorder to go the other direction.
And I know people are notsometimes a fan of the false
step, but if you watch sport, ithappens.
Every single play all the time.
If you were to coach someone outof that, you're, you are making
(40:00):
them slower.
So I have athletes line up feetright next to each other.
Give me a quarter squat.
All right.
And sprint five yards to theleft.
Okay.
How far away did they strike theground with their foot?
Was it like six inches?
If so, that's no good.
I need it to be further thanthat.
(40:21):
So they can create an angle.
And then I might even tell them,all right, this is where you're
lining up.
This is where I want you tostrike your foot into the
ground.
Okay, cool.
We do that for a few reps.
They get the feeling of knowing,okay, that is where I need.
To strike the ground in order toaccelerate well, and then maybe
I have them do a shuffle to theright and then a sprint to the
(40:44):
left.
And when they plant on thatshuffle, I want them to plant
with their foot to the side.
And when, why would I choose ashuffle?
Because they don't have a lot ofspeed with that shuffle over one
single shuffle.
So you're just slowly addingspeed into it.
Then maybe I have them perform alateral run step, and then they
sprint back.
Then a five yard sprint, andthen they sprint back.
(41:07):
But You have to give them a baseof feeling what it's like to
strike the ground where you wantthem to and then you can do that
and use that same idea as far asmoving any direction you want,
whether it's forwards orbackwards.
But when an athlete feels it,they know it.
(41:29):
And a lot of times I will askthem like they do two or three,
three reps.
What did you think of that rep?
What'd you think of the firstrep?
Tell me, tell me which one didyou think was faster?
And in the beginning, they'realways like number two, like
they're guessing.
They, they, they, they don'tknow what I want to hear, but
(41:49):
then as time goes by, they pickup, they're like, I didn't do
this, that rep, I need toimprove this on the next rep.
Oh, that rep felt great.
And that's learning that islearning to move well.
And once they learn to movewell, then that can transfer to
the perception and the agilityqualities that somebody has
(42:10):
Nice.
Love it.
so let's talk, let's talkstrength, I, I do know strength
is needed for speed, but howmuch, how much are you utilizing
strength to help develop thechange of direction, agility,
speed.
for me, strength is thestrength.
Someone needs in order toimprove.
(42:32):
Their speed is all relative totheir body weight.
So I mentioned before about whensomeone slams on the brakes, I
don't want to see them sinkreally low into their hips.
So to me, in my opinion, that ishow strength is expressed when
changing direction.
So it's the ability todecelerate very quickly.
(42:54):
And now how you get there isThere's a million ways, right?
Like that, that's, that is up toyou as the coach.
I do think that there is benefitto doing full range of motion
lifts to doing partial range ofmotion lifts and doing a
combination of those things.
(43:14):
But ultimately it is what is anathlete's relative strength.
Now I'm always trying to getathletes stronger because the
stronger someone is The better,the more capacity they have to
change direction.
Well, I don't want the strengthtraining to get in the way of
(43:34):
the speed training I'm doing.
Like I can't have the strengthtraining be so difficult where
an athlete is so beat up, whereif I see them four days a week,
I only get in one quality speedtraining session.
Because the rest of the timethey're too beat up in order to
do that.
So typically I will leave likea, I'll have athletes leave like
(44:00):
a rep or two in the tank duringcertain phases, just because
I'm, I'm working on speeddevelopment a little bit more.
If I'm focusing on accelerationand it's like earlier in the off
season, like I know, like.
I don't necessarily have theirhamstrings developed enough, and
I don't feel comfortable themjust going out and doing 40 yard
(44:21):
sprints right away, then I'mtaking that time to do a little
bit more strength work justbecause it won't affect their
speed quite as much when we'redoing the acceleration type
stuff versus some linear typestuff later on.
And, uh, I'll say too, like if Ihave an athlete coming in five
(44:41):
days a week and it's the summerand they're able to come in, two
of those days are linear speeddays.
And then the other days aregoing to be change of direction
days.
And the volume is going to be alittle bit dependent on the
phase that we're in, thestrength work that we're doing,
how the athlete feels.
So I'm always kind of jugglingall of those things a little
(45:05):
bit, but I don't want thestrength to get in the way Of
the speed.
What are some of your favoriteMovements in the weight room
that you love to go to that helpwith the power and speed
development.
So when it comes to like speeddevelopment and when you watch
(45:26):
an athlete accelerate, you'relooking at how far their front
knee.
Goes towards the ground whenthey initially take off.
And the closer that shin angleis towards the ground, the more
strength they have to overcometheir own body weight and to
push off without falling over.
(45:46):
So if you'll notice like weakerathletes, they, they cannot get
the same shin angle, which meansthat they're more upright.
And that is a strength issue.
So.
I love doing muscle snatches andmuscle snatch variations because
it's a really long lift wherethey have to continue
accelerating for a very longtime.
(46:07):
So I'm a fan of like those typeof Olympic lifting variations.
And I do like, Going more fullrange.
If I'm having an athlete doacceleration type stuff, as far
as max speed stuff, I knowpersonally when my hamstrings
feel really strong, that's whenI'm running my fastest times.
(46:30):
And I do a lot of like longlever hamstring work.
So like leg is just barely bent.
I'm doing isometric hamstringholds doing those types of
things.
And that is a little bit more oflike the accessory side of it.
I'm still always getting insquats, hex bar deadlifts, those
(46:51):
types of things.
And yeah, I mean, it's not likeI'm doing the craziest exercises
ever.
It's fairly basic.
But I make sure I am doing somehamstring specific work and
things where they have toproduce some power over that
(47:12):
long period of time, like amuscle snatch.
Like I mentioned, in order toget a little bit better transfer
to specific elements of speed.
What are some of your favoritetraining tools that you love to
utilize when training for speed?
I'm a huge fan of the bands.
Lee Taft got me onto these.
(47:32):
free shout out superflexfitness.
com.
Um, you're welcome.
If you want to send me somebands, go ahead, but they are
extra long, like the pull upbands you have, but they are
extra long and you can get themin varying resistances.
And it's just so easy to hook upto a wall, but I love to use
(47:53):
them.
To not only add resistance to adrill.
So like, all right, let's sayI'm doing a resisted side
shuffle.
An athlete is, you know,shuffling away from the anchor
point.
I love to add them, or I lovethat athletes do drills where
they start with a ton of tensionon the band.
They go towards the anchor pointand then back out.
(48:14):
So basically they're gettingaccelerated into that change of
direction and needing to moveback out.
And especially when you havelike a fixed anchor point and
like, we just have a bunch ofhooks set up on a wall.
I mean, I can do those in abunch of varying and different
directions.
hmm And it's super helpful.
(48:34):
And especially if you don't havea ton of space, it's a great way
to add some speed to themovement without needing more
space.
And with the bands too, you canmanipulate the amount of
resistance to get exactly whatyou want.
So like if I have someone with aton of tension on the band and I
want them to do a lateral run,Towards the anchor point and
(48:57):
then back out.
If they can't stabilize whenthey run in and plant a foot and
keep good angles and then runback out, then I have them just
start with less tension on it.
So it's not like I go from like,all right, now you can't use the
band at all.
No, we just start with a littlebit less tension on it.
And you can even get to a pointwhere you accelerate them that
(49:19):
by the time they stop, theremight be no tension on the band.
And then they, they go back outand you just slowly kind of
change that resistance.
But that is number one for speedtraining, for sure.
Number two would be a timingsystem.
I love.
Timing all sorts of flies.
Um, I was just doing somesprints the other day where
(49:42):
actually I had like an L set upand I was timing and it was back
to the point of like a stutterstep.
I was running that 90 degree cutwith a stutter step and then
without a stutter step andtiming it just as a way to show
like, all right, when youstutter step, it makes you this
much slower over this givendistance.
(50:06):
I didn't try to like purposelygo slower.
I still tried to go at it, butjust stutter step.
And when people can see theirtimes, it does add more intent
to the workout for sure,especially when it's like, all
right, who can hit under a onesecond fly 10, then athletes are
trying to really move,especially when it, when it
(50:28):
comes to like the summertraining and type stuff,
everybody wants to be in thatclub.
yeah.
Yeah, the competition comes outand I love it because it's an
it's an innate thing Especiallyif you're an athlete you're
gonna get after it more ahundred percent Two more
questions and then we're out.
Athletes should be playingmultiple sports, even if it's
not in a competitive league.
(50:49):
I would say yes to a certainpoint.
I think once they get aroundthat, like eighth grade mark,
then I would say, go ahead andplay a single sport.
And it goes back to the idea of.
You still need a high level ofsports specific skill in order
(51:11):
to get on the field.
And I know people like PatrickMahomes played all different
sports throughout his whole highschool career.
And I think that's great.
But as kids specialize in sportsearlier on now, the skill level
is way higher per sport.
Now I don't think their physicalcapacities are as good as they
(51:33):
should be.
They're not as strong as.
They were 10 or 15 years ago.
I don't think they necessarilymove as well, but their skill is
still high.
And ultimately sometimes that iswhat gets you on the field.
So once they hit that, likeeighth grade, ninth grade mark.
I'm okay if, if they specialize,but before that I want them
(51:56):
doing all sorts of differentsports, Athletes need to sprint
two to three times per week inorder to maintain or increase
their speed a hundred percenttrue.
I might cut it down to like twotimes per week, but that has to
happen.
That, I mean, there is no wayaround it.
You get slower if you don'tsprint and by sprinting, that
(52:21):
means.
Running as hard as you possiblycan.
And it's like I said before, itcan't turn into a conditioning
workout and doing that multipletimes.
In season, your volume doesn'thave to be as high, but there
still needs to be focused sprinttraining in order to maintain
(52:41):
speed or build speed.
All right, I want you to finishthis sentence for me.
The three most important thingsathletes need to do in order to
increase their speed, power, andagility are Train consistently,
choose the appropriate drillsand perform the drills with
(53:02):
maximum intent.
I'm so glad you said intent,because I think intent drives
everything.
It's like you're coding yourDNA.
You're rewriting how your bodyresponds to something.
You're teaching your brain howto process this and produce it
over and over.
It's a fine motor skill, justlike it would be shooting a
basketball or throwing abaseball, all of those things.
Are repetitions.
(53:22):
It's the same exact thing.
So, intent drives everything.
And I think that's everything inlife.
How you, how you go about yourbusiness.
How you go about yourrelationships.
How you go about, you know, selfcare.
All of those things.
It's all intent.
So, I think you, you nailed itthere, man.
Jason this has been a very funconversation.
I have enjoyed learning andseeing how you think.
(53:44):
I love learning how othercoaches process, you know, their
coaching process.
it was funny, you said, uh, Idon't know if you're a
kettlebell guy.
I don't think I'm like a guy ofanything.
I think I've just kind of,Developed and found like the
things that make the most sense.
I love hearing what othercoaches bring to the table
because then I can then reformand rethink like how I do things
and.
You know, like you said earlier,it's a constant, you know,
(54:06):
you're constantly learning,you're constantly changing,
you're constantly growing as acoach.
I appreciate you taking the timeto share that with us and the
audience.
I want to make sure people wereable to reach out to you get,
get ahold of you.
So I'll put all your informationin there, but please feel free
to shout out anything thatyou're offering, that you want
people to know about and wherethey can find it.
J at Jason Fairheller, J A S O NF E A I R H E L L E R.
(54:32):
Probably just easier to find itin the show notes, but that's on
Instagram.
And that's where I post by farthe most.
I'm not on Tik TOK.
I'm not even on X.
I'm not, yeah, Instagram iswhere to find me or DM me.
I do have a course.
So a lot of the methods and thethings I talked about, I do have
a course, um, course 20.
(54:53):
With a code for 20 percent off.
Anybody wants to use it atmultidirectionalpower.
com.
Awesome,.
I'll put everything in the shownotes so they can click the
links and whatnot so they canfind you.
I appreciate the conversationtoday.
I hope that you enjoyed it aswell.
Absolutely.
Thank you so much.
coach-u_1_02-29-2024_093206 (55:11):
you
Hey everybody, this is the coach you podcast, and I'm
your host coach you.
This podcast is about beingcurious, learning from others
and using what we've learned toevolve every single day.
(01:29):
hey, what's up everybody.
We're being joined by JasonFairheller.
Who's a multidirectional speedexpert.
He's a speaker.
He's a presenter.
He also hosts the game speedpodcast.
He's a mentor to other coachesand he also offers speed and
power training programs.
So you can check out the linktree in the show notes.
Jason, thank you so much forjoining us.
Welcome to the show.
Jason F. (01:46):
Awesome.
Happy to be here.
Coach U (01:48):
So tell me about how you found your way into doing
what you do today.
Jason F. (01:51):
Originally decided, you know, I, I think in college,
like I want to go into thecollege strength side and I
applied for a job and I did notget it.
And I remember thinking after Ididn't get it, like I was not
ready for this.
Like I didn't know what I wasgoing to get into.
So I was like, I'm going to goto the private side.
I started doing it, working at asports performance place.
(02:14):
And.
It was just not being run verywell.
So after a couple of years, I'mlike, you know, I'm going to go
with a personal training route.
And I did that for a little bit.
And when I was there, met acouple other guys and we decided
we are going to, we all hadbackgrounds in sports and
training athletes and we allwanted to go back to that.
So we said, all right, we, we'regoing to start our own gym.
(02:35):
And we did.
And that was about eight yearsago, And here I am now.
And I love it.
No regrets
Coach U (02:42):
love to hear that.
I'm going to give you a couple,before we get into like the
nitty gritty, the science ofspeed stuff, I want to talk to
you about some of your personalthings.
So,, give me your favorite TVshow.
Seinfeld.
I was thinking like, what's thenumber one show that I've seen
probably the most.
And it's definitely that.
And I've watched it, everythingthat happens in life.
(03:03):
I have a Seinfeld reference forpretty much.
So I was like, that's, that'sgotta be it.
But it does kind of date myselfbecause it is a 90s show.
No, no.
See, everything's on Netflix.
So one knows, no one knows whenyou watched it.
So tell me about your favoriteband musician.
I love nineties rock.
Like I grew up in the ninetiesgrunge and alternative era and.
(03:25):
I was thinking like, it's hardfor me to even name my top five
bands.
Cause I'm just like, ah, who doI leave out?
But if I had to, I wouldprobably say the offspring just
because I.
If it comes on, I never turn itoff.
That's good way to what?
That's that's, when you trulylove something when it's
repeatable over and over Yeah.
(03:46):
A hundred percent.
That's cool, man.
I grew up in the nineties aswell.
A lot, a lot of the same kind ofmusic and hip hop to a lot of
rap and hip hop for meabsolutely.
You know, I always go back andforth, just kind of whatever
mood I'm Hell yeah.
That's the same thing fortraining too.
It's like, I think it's hit andmiss sometimes.
Like I want, I know it's odd,but like even sometimes during
training, I'll listen to likeclassical music.
It just depends on my mood.
Tell me about some of yourfavorite things about working in
(04:07):
the performance world.
for me.
The best thing is when, and itdoesn't, I do have some like
personal training clients too,that I've worked with for like a
decade and it really doesn'tmatter who it is, an athlete or
gen pop person, if someone buysinto what you're saying, And
sees results, that's a greatfeeling.
Especially when they just giveyou a random thank you, like, I
(04:29):
did this this weekend, and Iplayed well, or I ran a 5k, it
doesn't matter what it is.
But when they see value in whatyou're bringing to them.
And it's just a greatrelationship then back and
forth.
Oh, that's awesome, we're goingto go into the impact deck.
So if I pull a green card, it'san action.
Orange card, it's a reflection.
Blue card, It's an affirmation.
(04:51):
Give them a little shuffle Ooh,how about this one?
Choose a new skill you'd like tomaster and investigate your
options for learning it.
So the first thing that came tomind was, and this probably
applies to any coach thatdecides they want to do
something on their own.
You have done a lot of stuffregarding training.
(05:11):
You understand programming, youunderstand pretty much anything.
Attention to detail, strengthtraining, all of this other
things, all the nuances of it.
And then you're trying to builda business and you know, nothing
about business.
So the skill is going from liketrainer to entrepreneur.
And.
(05:31):
I mean, I've been, I've had myown gym for a while and I'm
still going through that processof like creating better systems
and things like that.
So yeah, there's alwayssomething to be learned as far
as like tightening things up,creating more time for yourself,
making more money and yeah,doing what you want to do, uh,
(05:56):
In life because of that stuff.
The other thing is, I don't knowwhy I've always wanted to learn
how to juggle.
So the skill I want is to, andI, I practice on and off a
little bit and I can go for likefive seconds, but I don't know
why I just, I want to do that.
I think of like a Rubik's cube,just like random skills that
don't mean anything that I'mlike, just interesting to have
(06:19):
in my back I mean, if you showup at a party with a Rubik's
cube and some juggling balls,you might be the life of the
party.
If you nail it, I might be.
Yeah.
what is your favorite aspect oftraining for sport?
for me, it's attention todetail.
And I think this is whatseparates a good coach from
somebody who is.
(06:39):
Uh, an elite coach is just the,the differences in like the
slight attention to detail, andI know you had Lee Taft on the
podcast and he's a good friendand mentor of mine and you hear
him talk, he, you're like, thisguy knows a lot, but when you
really like dig in, he knows somuch about.
(07:00):
The way people move andunderstanding movement.
And I think it's that attentionto detail, which would then
allow you to choose moreappropriate drills for your
athletes to choose betterprogressions, all of those
things, which would then lead tobetter results versus you see a
drill, you think it's cool.
(07:20):
All right.
Uh, people are moving fast whenthey do this versus like they
chose the drill and it stillmight look cool, but it serves a
very specific purpose of whatyou're trying to do with them.
It's, it's easy to get into thecool looking things too, because
we're surrounded by Instagram,social media, YouTube, tick
(07:41):
tock, all these things, right?
thankfully you put out videosthat are very high quality and
yeah.
Makes sense.
when it comes to performancetraining.
So,, it's nice to know that thatattention to detail, you know,
is being put out into the, tothe social media world too.
Cause it's for every, every oneof those, there's like 10 of the
non detailed things where it isjust that fancy.
Look at this move.
It's cool.
I can do it, but is it reallytranslating?
(08:03):
But I want to hear how, how doyou define agility?
It's funny, somebody, messagedme or like wrote in one of my
comments, You, you said this isa speed drill, but you didn't do
a drill.
And to me, speed is fast you cango over any relative distance.
(08:24):
So in a lot of time, when welook at sport, you're not
running 30 or 40 yards withoutchanging direction.
It's a lot of five yards, 10yards, two yards, very short
distances.
And the quicker and faster youcan do those, it doesn't matter
what the You need to get as muchspeed as you can over that
distance.
(08:45):
And that is going to be speed.
And agility side, it's funnybecause in about a month, I'm
doing a talk for the NSCA stateclinic in Pennsylvania, and it
is about the difference ofchange of direction versus
agility and why a lot of coachesdon't truly understand that.
(09:05):
Like they, they will misuse theterms change of direction.
Is a rehearse drill.
Someone knows where they'regoing to go.
Someone knows exactly whenthey're going to go.
And they know exactly what youwant executed with So they're
trying to perform basically avery specific skill.
Whereas agility involvessituational awareness.
(09:29):
You're looking at the actuallike visual ability.
You're looking at.
Um, like you're trying to readpattern recognition from the
opposing athlete and thosethings are, are actually
agility.
So the athlete is reacting tosomething.
So now I'll just give you aquick little rundown.
If, if I'm pointing at a conefor an athlete to go to, That
(09:53):
only fits in one of thoseagility categories that doesn't
fit pattern recognition becauseno one on the field is pointing
to you where to go, right?
It doesn't fit situationalawareness because there isn't a
score.
You don't know exactly likewhat's, what's the situation in
the game and how do I need toreact based off that?
It is only working the visualability to pick up something and
(10:16):
sprint directly to that point.
So even a lot of times whenwe're training agility.
We're only training a tinyaspect of agility.
So getting into using athletesone on one, two on one, those
types of things, that's whenyou're truly doing agility
drills versus the change ofdirection drills.
(10:37):
And now there's always a battleof like, should you do change of
direction?
Should you do agility?
And I think.
Every single drill that you dois an assessment.
So you are looking at thephysical ability of the athlete
to do that drill.
And if they don't have thephysical ability, then you do
(10:58):
change of direction drills toimprove their qualities of
quickness, speed, time off theground, how quickly they can
rotate their upper body.
And once they have those, Thosetypes of qualities.
Then you start to layer in someother agility type of drills to
see, all right, are they able touse that on the field?
Because if you know, they havethe physical qualities, but it
(11:20):
doesn't transfer to the field,then, you know, it's all agility
or perception type issues, andyou can work on more of those,
but.
If you only ever do agilitydrills, you don't know whether
or not they're missing thephysical tools or they're
missing the perception tools.
So you're always just kind ofguessing.
So I think coaches need tounderstand the difference of
(11:43):
those.
And then they also need to beable to know when to choose one
or the other.
To get whatever outcome you wantwith your athletes.
Let's say you're, you're takingan athlete, uh, through an
agility style drill, but yourecognize, okay, they're not
doing well on this.
You want to go back then to, andI'm going to say back to, but
(12:04):
now I'm going to go to changedirection, maybe to hone in on
something here to help them onthe agility side.
How would you approach that tohelp them understand like the
translation?
If you're seeing something nottranslate well.
Here's a perfect example.
So I have two brothers.
They're both lacrosse players.
One is actually, uh, playsdefense.
One plays offense.
(12:25):
So it's perfect.
Cause I can always match them upone on one versus each other in
different drills.
And the offensive player.
About a year and a half ago,Torres ACL.
And since then, like I saw hisfilm beforehand and he would
never ever stutter step, hewould plant a foot into the
ground and he would make a hardcut and go, and he was able to
(12:46):
beat a lot of people doing that,but since he had a surgery, he
had a tendency sometimes tostutter step a lot.
And when, when you'reapproaching a D a defensive
player and you're stutterstepping as an offensive player.
You're slowing down.
When you slow down, it allowsthe defensive player to slow
down.
And whenever an athlete slowsdown, they have more movement
(13:09):
options.
It's easier for them to moveforward laterally backward.
So I needed to get him to stopdoing that.
So.
We did a bunch of rehearseddrills where we're basically
just performing like a sidestep.
They might just do a couple ofhard steps and then plant a foot
into the ground.
And then I might have them evenmake like a cut around the cone.
(13:29):
And I might change the angle ofthe cut on the cones to make it
a little bit harder of an angleor things like that.
And then maybe I have them cutone direction, plant a foot and
cut another direction and goback.
So now once he was good at doingthose where I, I know he has the
To then do them comfortablygoing right to left, then, all
(13:51):
right, let me put it backtogether in another agility
drill.
And it was, I worked with himfor about like six weeks and
every week was less and lesstimes that he stutter step.
And actually the last week I hadhim, there was zero, which was
awesome because I'm like, allright, now he gets it.
And it went from like hisbrother beating him most of the
(14:13):
time to him.
Being able to create some moreseparation just because he was
able to do that.
You know, do you know thebaseball player Todd Hilton
retired?
Just made the hall of fame.
he said one time after aninjury, you know, you have to
know your new 100 and.
When I, you know, I've hadinjuries, I'm sure you've dealt
with injuries, your brain, yourbody is a lot smarter than you
(14:35):
are.
And it will, like you said, thestutter step, I'm sure that
happened because the, just thetrust in the body and that, that
over time, the pattern ofhitting the ground probably just
Yeah.
Right.
So I think it's cool.
Cause you're taking that idea ofprogressive overload that you
have in weights and taking itinto this kind of, and correct
me if I'm wrong, but that's howI'm kind of visualizing it.
I don't want to knock physicaltherapist.
(14:57):
My wife's actually a physicaltherapist.
I think there's sometimes.
A misunderstanding betweensomeone has the strength that
they have previously had, and itmight be equal to their, their
uninjured leg.
And they're able to get thatback pretty quickly, but I don't
think that necessarily should belike the determining factor, the
return to play needs to be likean overload progression where,
(15:20):
all right, if I sprint two stepsand slam on the brakes.
Ultimately, I haven't built up aton of speed.
That now is like fairly easy.
That's a pretty basic drill.
You want to increase that?
All right.
Sprint four steps.
Now you've probably gone like afew more miles an hour.
It's harder to slam on thebrakes.
(15:41):
Now go like seven yards, 10yards.
And eventually the more speedyou have, the more strength
you're asking the athlete to, toshow whenever they're trying to
slam on the brakes.
So you can overload the drillslike that.
And when I was talking aboutattention to detail before, that
is a perfect example of it islike, all right, understanding
(16:04):
the athlete cannot slam on thebrakes well at seven yards.
It never, ever happens at fiveyards.
Maybe it happens two thirds ofthe time.
Okay, great.
Like they, they demonstrate thatthey can do it, but they can't
do it consistently.
Let's see where it's consistent.
And then once they get a hundredpercent of the time, now they
(16:25):
own that skill.
They own that physical capacity.
Let's make it a little bitharder somehow.
So there's always ways to makedrills easier, harder, but.
If someone owns a skill, youcan't, or I don't want to say
you can't, you wouldn't want tokeep doing that same exact thing
(16:45):
because you know, it's basicallyjust keep on doing the same
thing over and over again.
You're not necessarily gettingthem any better, so you keep on
progressing them in differentways in order to make the drill
tougher.
Going off the thought of theability to slam on the brakes,
deceleration comes to my mindand I'm thinking about how
important it is to you.
(17:06):
How do you train it and how doesit affect the ability to stop
and go After decelerating.
So a lot of times when we dorehearse drills or when I see
coaches demonstratedeceleration, it's usually.
Landing a jump, doing a snapdown type of thing or something
like that.
(17:26):
But that's not how decelerationis expressed in sport.
When someone is reacting tosomeone else, you don't have
time to put two feet into theground.
And if you do, they are by youlike in a split second.
So deceleration is essentiallyin sport, the ability to slam on
the brakes with a single leg.
And ultimately you can assessthat by looking at what is the
(17:50):
Angle of hip flexion and theangle of knee flexion at their
deepest range of motion whenslamming on the brakes.
And the deeper they go, theworse they are at it.
Ideally, the best athletes willkeep a less knee angle, less
knee flexion.
At a relative speed and almostthink about it.
(18:12):
Like if you're accelerating outof the bottom of a squat, that's
going to be slower, it's goingto take a little bit more time
to pick up speed than if you'rejust accelerating out of a
quarter squat, and we want thatsame sort of knee angle whenever
we're changing direction.
So when we plant a single leginto the ground.
What that does is it allows ourother leg the free leg to open
(18:34):
up whatever new direction weneed to go.
So if I need to go behind me andI have two feet planted on the
ground, now I'm going to pivot,I'm going around my turn, I'm
going to lose my angle.
Whereas if I plant a single leginto the ground, I can rotate my
hips, rotate my trunk, plant myfoot into the ground, and now I
have the angle I want to have.
(18:55):
Not to say that a jump stick or,you know, those kinds of drills
can't be effective or useful,but you're right on the field,
on the court, you're constantlymoving and being able to be
coordinated through thatmovement and be able to transfer
that energy efficiently.
I feel like is more importantthan most of the training, uh,
that is shown or taught most ofthe time.
(19:16):
What are your thoughts on that?
I like to refer to it as likeredirecting force.
I don't want someone to thinkthat they are necessarily
stopping.
They are just changing themomentum of which direction
they're, they're traveling.
And if, if we think about likejump training, plyometric
training, if I'm performing.
(19:38):
Two legged jumps.
I am telling athletes you aretrying to get as much height or
as much distance as you canevery time.
I don't necessarily care aboutsticking the landing every time.
I need someone to demonstratestability, but ultimately,
someone demonstrates whilelanding like a squat jump or
(19:59):
even a little single leg hopover hurdle isn't close to the
forces someone is going to needwhen they are sprinting hard,
reacting to someone planning asingle leg into the ground and
then going another direction.
So I almost think of change ofdirection as.
What I'm doing to improve anathlete's stability almost.
(20:20):
And then the plyometric trainingwhere I'm actually trying to
minimize time on the ground, getmaximum distance while
minimizing time on the ground,that's where I'm focusing on
redirecting force.
And.
In my training, I like to dothat in all angles and in all
different planes, because that'swhat happens on the field.
We're not always moving straightahead.
(20:41):
We're not always movinglaterally.
It is a mix of all angles andall directions off the inside of
your leg, off the outside ofyour leg, all of those different
things.
So yeah, as far as, as that itis, I, and I want them to think
about redirecting force.
I don't want them to thinkabout.
Oh, I need to decelerate andslam on the brakes.
(21:03):
Then I need to go the other waybecause then it just ends up
being too slow.
They, they sink too low intotheir hips when they change
direction.
So, so then what is game speedversus what most people think of
when it comes to speed or speedtraining?
So I talked about speed beforeis like how fashion go from
(21:24):
point A to point B.
And when I think about gamespeed, it is a combination of
the physical capacity of theathlete.
That's your change of directiondrill and the perception
abilities of the athlete.
And that's your agility drills.
And ultimately how that isexpressed in sport is what is
your ability to either createspace against an opponent or to
(21:46):
take away space against anopponent.
So if I'm an offensive player,My job is to create space.
Cause when I have space, I canmake a play.
If it's basketball, you know,when no one's in your face, it's
easier to make a shot infootball.
If you can get open, you'regoing to catch a pass versus if
a guy's on your back, thequarterback's not even going to
throw to you.
(22:06):
So those are the things I'mlooking for.
And then if defensively, you'retrying to take away that space
all the time.
An offensive player kind of hasthe.
The edge, because they candecide, particularly even if
it's like basketball orfootball, where they almost have
a preplanned route of some kind,like, I think I'm going to try
(22:28):
to set someone up to do this anda defensive player.
You're just reacting the wholetime.
So if you can take away thatspace, you have the ability to
slam on the brakes, move, readand react.
That's what makes you an elitedefender.
All right.
Now going back to regular speed,most coaches think of speed is
just, I'm going to improvesomeone's 40 yard sprint.
(22:52):
That is a huge component ofspeed because the, obviously the
faster your single top speed is.
Over any given distance, themore likely you are to either
create space or take away space.
So that still needs to betrained to say that just having
(23:12):
athletes run 10 yard sprints,accelerations, 20 yards, 10 yard
flies, 40 yard sprints, whateverthose linear sprints are, that
that 100 percent transfers andwill make someone an elite
athlete.
I think is there's a huge jump.
To that, and I don't necessarilyagree with that.
I think it gives them thepotential to be better, but
(23:36):
ultimately moving well on thefield is a skill itself.
And if I have athletes come in,I can create drills.
And I always think of the drillsbased off of scenarios that
happen in sport of like, I'mmoving this way.
I need to rotate this direction.
Oh, they cut back.
I need to go back the originaldirection.
(23:57):
So always think of drills likethat, and you can create drills.
That elite athletes will have ahard time doing well 100 percent
of the time.
And you don't even necessarilyneed a ton of distance in order
to do that.
So in my mind, these are allskills.
You can always improve the skillof moving well on the field
(24:21):
versus just saying, practicetakes care of that.
Because if no one's evernecessarily taught how to do a
drill, then you just kind ofhope that they figure it out.
And I mean, this is a.
Kind of a huge side topic, butthe amount of time coaches or,
um, the amount of time athletesspend playing sports now is
(24:45):
higher than it's ever been,especially when it comes to
specializing in a sport.
So for me, why aren't there waymore elite movers on every
single team?
Why is every single player notso much better than they are?
There's still that one guy onthe team that can Take over and
(25:05):
maybe there's like the secondguy or whatever, but everyone
else is just still kind ofaverage.
And to me, I think a missingpiece of that is doing speed
training with an intent ofcreating more movement options
for every single player.
There is, and doing practice,just, it doesn't cut it as much
(25:29):
as I think a lot of coachesthink it would.
I'm trying to get more in withthe coaches, like the sports
coaches themselves, and sayinglike, Hey, these are things you
should be doing before practice.
This is how you're going to getyour kids ready to go onto the
field.
And like, incorporating thatspeed training, because the
reality is, they're not going tosee me four days a week, but
they're seeing that sports coachfour days a week.
So if I can get sports coach tojust implement just a little
(25:50):
bit, five to 20 minutes,something small enough to just
get that stimulus, I feel likeit's going to help a lot.
I feel like that'll at leastgive them a little bit more than
they had.
You know, that's, that's a hope,I guess.
We don't really have the sciencefor that.
Um, Or maybe we do, we justhaven't studied it yet.
Yeah, and I mean, skilldevelopment in sport is huge,
and obviously, like, if youdon't have the skills to do the
(26:12):
actual sports skill, you'renever gonna get on the field as
it is, but there is a happymedium there between performing
the sports skills versustraining the actual physical
skills to get you better at thatsport.
When it comes to improvingspeed, power, change direction,
agility, what are some of thebiggest misconceptions that
(26:33):
younger athletes make about thetraining they need to do?
I would say that the biggestmisconception is They don't
actually train speed, like speedis done where If I were to time
you for a 10 yard sprint andtime you again, doing it, that
those times are pretty muchright next to each other.
(26:54):
They, they might be exactly thesame.
You might improve a little bit,but it's not going to be a big
drop off too much of the time.
The speed training turns intoconditioning.
And I see like plyo agilitycircuits on Instagram and.
They're, they probably drive mecrazy.
Number one, because if you lookat them, everyone's doing a sub
(27:15):
max effort every single time.
So while extensive plyos aregreat, if you're doing that,
that drill for conditioning, butdon't say that a 32nd circuit of
like, you know, shufflingthrough hurdles, doing a few
hurdle hops, moving laterally,doing all these other Is
(27:39):
actually going to improve yourspeed.
Playing devil's advocate.
If I have a basketball.
Player and they're, they haverepeats, a lot of repeats, a lot
of lateral shuffle cuts and theygot to stay with their guy.
You know, there's an endurancefactor to that too.
So you could argue, all right,so how do we get them to be
faster through that?
Like 22nd portion of how oftenthey're doing that.
(28:00):
I don't think it's actuallyhappening that often, but do you
understand what I'm saying?
It's like, there's thatendurance So how do we get them
better at that?
without it being just aconditioning drill, All right.
So how often is a player insport moving as fast as they
possibly can without slowingdown for a couple seconds?
(28:21):
say maybe like 2 percent of theplays.
Yeah, it's, it's so few.
I mean, like even in likehockey, if, if like a team gets
stuck in their own end for awhile and they get gassed,
they're going as hard as theycan for maybe like 10 or 15
seconds and then all of asudden, like they're, they're
gassed, they're, they're slowingdown.
(28:44):
what I would do is keep alldrills in the realm of like two
to four seconds.
So two to four seconds, as hardas you can, you can actually do
it more work than it sounds likewithin that two to four second
space, and then you repeat thatover and over again, you take,
if you did that, like every 30seconds.
(29:06):
You're going to build up somegreat repeat sprint ability
endurance as it is anyway.
And the better shape someonegets, the better they'll be able
to repeat the more volume theycan get in over a speed training
session.
So while I still want quality tobe high, if I'm working on
improving speed, I can still getin more volume with athletes
(29:28):
that are.
Better trained just because theycan repeat that ability much
better.
Um, I don't know if you're likea big kettle kettlebell guy,
but.
Pavel, Satsulin, like the guywho brought kettlebells to the U
S hmm.
he talks a lot about like, Notbeing in that like glycolytic
(29:50):
range and the ability to producerepeated power efforts over and
over again.
And a lot of his protocols arelike, you do like five
kettlebell swings as hard as youcan every minute on the minute
for like 30 minutes or somethinglike that, or you do a
kettlebell snatch or akettlebell clean and jerk.
(30:11):
It's the idea that you dosomething explosive.
You allow a rest, so qualitystays high and you repeat that
and over time you build up tothat like 30 minute mark, but
maybe it starts at like 10minutes and the volume, maybe
you only go two seconds perdrill every single time and then
maybe you do two seconds perdrill.
(30:33):
You can work up to 20 minutes.
All right.
Now we're going to go foursecond drills at 10 minutes, but
the point is you can manipulatethe time of the drill and the
rest to get an aerobic.
Effort out of your speedtraining as well, just because
in two seconds, no one's heartrate is getting to max, but it
(30:55):
does raise a little bit.
And even if you, you take ashort walk after it, a 30 second
break, you go again.
All right.
Now my heart rate's hanging outat probably like 120 or so.
For 30 minutes.
I'm getting in a decent amountof aerobic base work while still
improving my speed.
It's not going to affect thequality of my speed training.
(31:19):
I want to talk about angles andwhy angles in sports and
practicing cutting and hittingdifferent angles in sports are
so important.
So I like to divide up my speedtraining into like three
different aspects.
Number one would be any sort ofattacking drill.
So if I have my arms to theside, anything moving forward, I
(31:40):
would consider an attackingdrill of some kind.
And even just linear, linearsprints would be part of that.
Then I would have any sort oflateral drill where I'm just
going side to side.
And then I have any sort ofretreating drill, which is
anything going behind me.
So easiest way to, to thinkabout this is you hone in on
(32:02):
what watches sport.
Doesn't matter what it is.
You hone in on one player andyou watch exactly how they move
and.
I mean, basketball is a perfectexample, just because, even
within short spaces, people are,are moving forwards, backwards,
laterally, they're hitting alldifferent angles, and even,
(32:23):
like, uh, an offensive player,if they, they go in and they
take a step back, they'reessentially performing a
attacking drill to a retreatingdrill.
Where they're moving backwards.
Whereas a lot of times peoplemight think, Oh, only defensive
players need to work on movingbackwards.
Only offensive players need towork on moving forward.
(32:45):
Well, that's not necessarily thecase.
If we're trying to create space,we need to do that at all
different angles.
And the more you practice thesedrills, the more you realize,
all right, when I, when I gainmore speed for me to go from
like a lateral movement to aretreating movement.
And it tried to hit an exact 90degree turn that's going to
(33:06):
actually be pretty difficultversus if I were to just go side
to side, you're slamming on thebrakes.
You're coming back.
It's much easier to kind of justmaintain your position versus
adding in that rotationalcomponent to it.
So when I'm doing drills, a lotof times I might just kind of
(33:26):
think it like Different angleswhere I go to the side, I go
forward, maybe like 15 degrees,go to the side, go forward, 30
degrees, go to the side, 60degrees.
It doesn't matter what it is,but within the same drill, if
I'm doing three reps, I couldhit three different angles.
And now I'm improving theability of the athlete to move
(33:47):
at all of those angles.
And I talked before about as acoach paying attention to
detail, if I have an athletethat struggles hitting a
specific angle.
Now I know, especially whendoing a change of direction
drill where it's rehearsed, Imight need to focus more on
improving that because that isone flaw within the physical
capacity element of their game.
(34:10):
And a lot of time I see thiswith defensive players when they
need to move backwards withspeed.
The best ones are so fluid inhow they're able to get their
hips and their torso rotated thedirection they need to go plan a
foot into the ground.
Accelerate out of every turn.
They do that while keeping theirvision focused elsewhere on the
(34:32):
field versus if you have anathlete who isn't quite as good,
there's that little hitch.
When they change direction wherethey plant a foot into the
ground and maybe they popupright a little bit too much.
And when they do that, you know,their torso kind of tilts or
sways.
That's going to make them slowerout of that change of direction.
(34:52):
And now they've lost a step.
So for me, I'm training allangles all the time.
If I'm doing an attacking day,I'm hitting a lot of the angles.
If I'm doing a retreating day,same thing, hitting a bunch of
those different angles, and thenwherever there's a weakness, you
can just focus on that so youdon't necessarily have to
(35:12):
change.
The drill, if I'm doing like ashuffle into an angled sprint
forward any direction, so movinglaterally and then I sprint
forward at any angle.
If I see one part of that whereit's all, it's not quite as slow
or as smooth as I want it to be,then I just have them focus on
that angle a little bit more.
(35:34):
And I think that is really wherelike a good coach comes in
versus, all right, this is theexact drill we're running.
You're going to run it.
If you do it well, great.
If not, that's okay.
We're going to move on to thenext one.
Then right after that, anyway,versus trying to get them in a
position of choosing a drillwhere they're able to actually
(35:54):
like learn the skill or getcloser to learning that skill.
What are some of your favoritecues that you tend to use a lot,
especially for changing angles?
You have to create an athleticposition where you're able to
strike your foot wide of yourcenter mass.
So a lot of times coaches talkabout being low and that's great
(36:17):
because if, if we're not low, wecannot strike a foot outside of
our center mass.
And if I think about creating anangle for someone to accelerate
from, and this could be anotherside topic, but training
acceleration for athletes.
Don't always just have them facestraight ahead because a lot of
(36:38):
time acceleration is out of achange of direction.
So even if we could just viewchange of direction as
acceleration work in a lot ofinstances.
Back to the point of, if theydon't strike the foot wide,
they're not going to be able tocreate an angle from their foot
through their opposite shoulder,almost a straight line through
(36:59):
that in order to accelerate thenew direction they need to go.
Now, a lot of things need tohappen well for that.
to happen.
They need to be low enough.
They need to be able to not sinkto have a certain level of
strength where they don't sinktoo low into that turn.
But the main part is I needathletes looking the new
(37:21):
direction that they're going togo because whenever they're not
necessarily focused on anythingwith their vision, they're just
kind of like, Oh, Looking inspace somewhere without any sort
of like purpose to it, theirtrunk needs to rotate and
actually if they can startrotating their trunk slightly
(37:44):
before they change direction,that change of direction is
going to be so much more.
So a lot of times I might justgive them a visual cue, tell
them to maybe snap their head alittle bit around a little bit
sooner just to give them thatfeeling of like, Oh, this is how
I accelerate a little bit fasterout of that.
(38:07):
A lot of time, even when itcomes to like plyo drills, I'm
just telling them to be quickeroff the ground.
I need athletes to learn to bequicker off the ground.
So no matter what the drill is,what the change of direction is,
the quicker they can get off theground, the better they're going
to be.
Are you teaching them to getinto the angle before they hit
(38:28):
the ground I try to choose thedrill so they can get into the
angle.
So the very first step ofgetting the angle is getting
someone to feel what it is liketo hit that angle.
So, so first day one.
People are getting into athleticposition.
And for me, that's hips orthat's feet wider than your
(38:51):
shoulders.
If they're at your shoulders andI move and I go to sprint with
my feet right under myshoulders, I'm almost pushing
completely vertically.
When I push off the ground, myshin is, is too straight up and
down.
I need my feet wider than, thanyou would think they need to be.
And first step is just doingstraddle jumps.
So from that wide or from likefeet right next to each other,
(39:15):
Give me like a quarter squat andthen get both feet as wide as
you can and then bring them backin as quick as you can.
And when an athlete can do thatwell and strike their ground far
away from them and bring it backfast.
All right, now we know like theyhave a base of athletic
position.
Now from there.
I might just have them go into asprint where I'm having them
(39:38):
start with their feet right nextto each other because in order
to sprint to the side, they needto reposition their foot or
punch a foot into the ground inorder to go the other direction.
And I know people are notsometimes a fan of the false
step, but if you watch sport, ithappens.
Every single play all the time.
If you were to coach someone outof that, you're, you are making
(40:00):
them slower.
So I have athletes line up feetright next to each other.
Give me a quarter squat.
All right.
And sprint five yards to theleft.
Okay.
How far away did they strike theground with their foot?
Was it like six inches?
If so, that's no good.
I need it to be further thanthat.
(40:21):
So they can create an angle.
And then I might even tell them,all right, this is where you're
lining up.
This is where I want you tostrike your foot into the
ground.
Okay, cool.
We do that for a few reps.
They get the feeling of knowing,okay, that is where I need.
To strike the ground in order toaccelerate well, and then maybe
I have them do a shuffle to theright and then a sprint to the
(40:44):
left.
And when they plant on thatshuffle, I want them to plant
with their foot to the side.
And when, why would I choose ashuffle?
Because they don't have a lot ofspeed with that shuffle over one
single shuffle.
So you're just slowly addingspeed into it.
Then maybe I have them perform alateral run step, and then they
sprint back.
Then a five yard sprint, andthen they sprint back.
(41:07):
But You have to give them a baseof feeling what it's like to
strike the ground where you wantthem to and then you can do that
and use that same idea as far asmoving any direction you want,
whether it's forwards orbackwards.
But when an athlete feels it,they know it.
(41:29):
And a lot of times I will askthem like they do two or three,
three reps.
What did you think of that rep?
What'd you think of the firstrep?
Tell me, tell me which one didyou think was faster?
And in the beginning, they'realways like number two, like
they're guessing.
They, they, they, they don'tknow what I want to hear, but
(41:49):
then as time goes by, they pickup, they're like, I didn't do
this, that rep, I need toimprove this on the next rep.
Oh, that rep felt great.
And that's learning that islearning to move well.
And once they learn to movewell, then that can transfer to
the perception and the agilityqualities that somebody has
(42:10):
Nice.
Love it.
so let's talk, let's talkstrength, I, I do know strength
is needed for speed, but howmuch, how much are you utilizing
strength to help develop thechange of direction, agility,
speed.
for me, strength is thestrength.
Someone needs in order toimprove.
(42:32):
Their speed is all relative totheir body weight.
So I mentioned before about whensomeone slams on the brakes, I
don't want to see them sinkreally low into their hips.
So to me, in my opinion, that ishow strength is expressed when
changing direction.
So it's the ability todecelerate very quickly.
(42:54):
And now how you get there isThere's a million ways, right?
Like that, that's, that is up toyou as the coach.
I do think that there is benefitto doing full range of motion
lifts to doing partial range ofmotion lifts and doing a
combination of those things.
(43:14):
But ultimately it is what is anathlete's relative strength.
Now I'm always trying to getathletes stronger because the
stronger someone is The better,the more capacity they have to
change direction.
Well, I don't want the strengthtraining to get in the way of
(43:34):
the speed training I'm doing.
Like I can't have the strengthtraining be so difficult where
an athlete is so beat up, whereif I see them four days a week,
I only get in one quality speedtraining session.
Because the rest of the timethey're too beat up in order to
do that.
So typically I will leave likea, I'll have athletes leave like
(44:00):
a rep or two in the tank duringcertain phases, just because
I'm, I'm working on speeddevelopment a little bit more.
If I'm focusing on accelerationand it's like earlier in the off
season, like I know, like.
I don't necessarily have theirhamstrings developed enough, and
I don't feel comfortable themjust going out and doing 40 yard
(44:21):
sprints right away, then I'mtaking that time to do a little
bit more strength work justbecause it won't affect their
speed quite as much when we'redoing the acceleration type
stuff versus some linear typestuff later on.
And, uh, I'll say too, like if Ihave an athlete coming in five
(44:41):
days a week and it's the summerand they're able to come in, two
of those days are linear speeddays.
And then the other days aregoing to be change of direction
days.
And the volume is going to be alittle bit dependent on the
phase that we're in, thestrength work that we're doing,
how the athlete feels.
So I'm always kind of jugglingall of those things a little
(45:05):
bit, but I don't want thestrength to get in the way Of
the speed.
What are some of your favoriteMovements in the weight room
that you love to go to that helpwith the power and speed
development.
So when it comes to like speeddevelopment and when you watch
(45:26):
an athlete accelerate, you'relooking at how far their front
knee.
Goes towards the ground whenthey initially take off.
And the closer that shin angleis towards the ground, the more
strength they have to overcometheir own body weight and to
push off without falling over.
(45:46):
So if you'll notice like weakerathletes, they, they cannot get
the same shin angle, which meansthat they're more upright.
And that is a strength issue.
So.
I love doing muscle snatches andmuscle snatch variations because
it's a really long lift wherethey have to continue
accelerating for a very longtime.
(46:07):
So I'm a fan of like those typeof Olympic lifting variations.
And I do like, Going more fullrange.
If I'm having an athlete doacceleration type stuff, as far
as max speed stuff, I knowpersonally when my hamstrings
feel really strong, that's whenI'm running my fastest times.
(46:30):
And I do a lot of like longlever hamstring work.
So like leg is just barely bent.
I'm doing isometric hamstringholds doing those types of
things.
And that is a little bit more oflike the accessory side of it.
I'm still always getting insquats, hex bar deadlifts, those
(46:51):
types of things.
And yeah, I mean, it's not likeI'm doing the craziest exercises
ever.
It's fairly basic.
But I make sure I am doing somehamstring specific work and
things where they have toproduce some power over that
(47:12):
long period of time, like amuscle snatch.
Like I mentioned, in order toget a little bit better transfer
to specific elements of speed.
What are some of your favoritetraining tools that you love to
utilize when training for speed?
I'm a huge fan of the bands.
Lee Taft got me onto these.
(47:32):
free shout out superflexfitness.
com.
Um, you're welcome.
If you want to send me somebands, go ahead, but they are
extra long, like the pull upbands you have, but they are
extra long and you can get themin varying resistances.
And it's just so easy to hook upto a wall, but I love to use
(47:53):
them.
To not only add resistance to adrill.
So like, all right, let's sayI'm doing a resisted side
shuffle.
An athlete is, you know,shuffling away from the anchor
point.
I love to add them, or I lovethat athletes do drills where
they start with a ton of tensionon the band.
They go towards the anchor pointand then back out.
(48:14):
So basically they're gettingaccelerated into that change of
direction and needing to moveback out.
And especially when you havelike a fixed anchor point and
like, we just have a bunch ofhooks set up on a wall.
I mean, I can do those in abunch of varying and different
directions.
hmm And it's super helpful.
(48:34):
And especially if you don't havea ton of space, it's a great way
to add some speed to themovement without needing more
space.
And with the bands too, you canmanipulate the amount of
resistance to get exactly whatyou want.
So like if I have someone with aton of tension on the band and I
want them to do a lateral run,Towards the anchor point and
(48:57):
then back out.
If they can't stabilize whenthey run in and plant a foot and
keep good angles and then runback out, then I have them just
start with less tension on it.
So it's not like I go from like,all right, now you can't use the
band at all.
No, we just start with a littlebit less tension on it.
And you can even get to a pointwhere you accelerate them that
(49:19):
by the time they stop, theremight be no tension on the band.
And then they, they go back outand you just slowly kind of
change that resistance.
But that is number one for speedtraining, for sure.
Number two would be a timingsystem.
I love.
Timing all sorts of flies.
Um, I was just doing somesprints the other day where
(49:42):
actually I had like an L set upand I was timing and it was back
to the point of like a stutterstep.
I was running that 90 degree cutwith a stutter step and then
without a stutter step andtiming it just as a way to show
like, all right, when youstutter step, it makes you this
much slower over this givendistance.
(50:06):
I didn't try to like purposelygo slower.
I still tried to go at it, butjust stutter step.
And when people can see theirtimes, it does add more intent
to the workout for sure,especially when it's like, all
right, who can hit under a onesecond fly 10, then athletes are
trying to really move,especially when it, when it
(50:28):
comes to like the summertraining and type stuff,
everybody wants to be in thatclub.
yeah.
Yeah, the competition comes outand I love it because it's an
it's an innate thing Especiallyif you're an athlete you're
gonna get after it more ahundred percent Two more
questions and then we're out.
Athletes should be playingmultiple sports, even if it's
not in a competitive league.
(50:49):
I would say yes to a certainpoint.
I think once they get aroundthat, like eighth grade mark,
then I would say, go ahead andplay a single sport.
And it goes back to the idea of.
You still need a high level ofsports specific skill in order
(51:11):
to get on the field.
And I know people like PatrickMahomes played all different
sports throughout his whole highschool career.
And I think that's great.
But as kids specialize in sportsearlier on now, the skill level
is way higher per sport.
Now I don't think their physicalcapacities are as good as they
(51:33):
should be.
They're not as strong as.
They were 10 or 15 years ago.
I don't think they necessarilymove as well, but their skill is
still high.
And ultimately sometimes that iswhat gets you on the field.
So once they hit that, likeeighth grade, ninth grade mark.
I'm okay if, if they specialize,but before that I want them
(51:56):
doing all sorts of differentsports, Athletes need to sprint
two to three times per week inorder to maintain or increase
their speed a hundred percenttrue.
I might cut it down to like twotimes per week, but that has to
happen.
That, I mean, there is no wayaround it.
You get slower if you don'tsprint and by sprinting, that
(52:21):
means.
Running as hard as you possiblycan.
And it's like I said before, itcan't turn into a conditioning
workout and doing that multipletimes.
In season, your volume doesn'thave to be as high, but there
still needs to be focused sprinttraining in order to maintain
(52:41):
speed or build speed.
All right, I want you to finishthis sentence for me.
The three most important thingsathletes need to do in order to
increase their speed, power, andagility are Train consistently,
choose the appropriate drillsand perform the drills with
(53:02):
maximum intent.
I'm so glad you said intent,because I think intent drives
everything.
It's like you're coding yourDNA.
You're rewriting how your bodyresponds to something.
You're teaching your brain howto process this and produce it
over and over.
It's a fine motor skill, justlike it would be shooting a
basketball or throwing abaseball, all of those things.
Are repetitions.
(53:22):
It's the same exact thing.
So, intent drives everything.
And I think that's everything inlife.
How you, how you go about yourbusiness.
How you go about yourrelationships.
How you go about, you know, selfcare.
All of those things.
It's all intent.
So, I think you, you nailed itthere, man.
Jason this has been a very funconversation.
I have enjoyed learning andseeing how you think.
(53:44):
I love learning how othercoaches process, you know, their
coaching process.
it was funny, you said, uh, Idon't know if you're a
kettlebell guy.
I don't think I'm like a guy ofanything.
I think I've just kind of,Developed and found like the
things that make the most sense.
I love hearing what othercoaches bring to the table
because then I can then reformand rethink like how I do things
and.
You know, like you said earlier,it's a constant, you know,
(54:06):
you're constantly learning,you're constantly changing,
you're constantly growing as acoach.
I appreciate you taking the timeto share that with us and the
audience.
I want to make sure people wereable to reach out to you get,
get ahold of you.
So I'll put all your informationin there, but please feel free
to shout out anything thatyou're offering, that you want
people to know about and wherethey can find it.
J at Jason Fairheller, J A S O NF E A I R H E L L E R.
(54:32):
Probably just easier to find itin the show notes, but that's on
Instagram.
And that's where I post by farthe most.
I'm not on Tik TOK.
I'm not even on X.
I'm not, yeah, Instagram iswhere to find me or DM me.
I do have a course.
So a lot of the methods and thethings I talked about, I do have
a course, um, course 20.
(54:53):
With a code for 20 percent off.
Anybody wants to use it atmultidirectionalpower.
com.
Awesome,.
I'll put everything in the shownotes so they can click the
links and whatnot so they canfind you.
I appreciate the conversationtoday.
I hope that you enjoyed it aswell.
Absolutely.
Thank you so much.
coach-u_1_02-29-2024_093206 (55:11):
you
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