June 16, 2025 • 49 mins
In this episode of the Braun Performance & Rehab Podcast, Dan is joined by Eric Lichter to discuss linear speed training & assessment strategies. Eric Lichter established himself as a leading speed and performance enhancement coach in the private sector, training NFL and NBA draft prospects and preparing them for combines. He has worked with two Heisman Trophy winners, two Jim Thorpe Award winners, and over 20 first-round draft picks, including LeBron James and Ted Ginn Jr. Notable former clients also include Nene, Leandrino Barboso, Maurice Clarett, London Fletcher and Nate Clements. For more on Eric & Plus 2 University, be sure to check out https://www.plus2-u.com/ , @ericlichter , @plus2university*SEASON 6 of the Braun Performance & Rehab Podcast is brought to you by Isophit. For more on Isophit, please check out isophit.com and @isophit -BE SURE to use coupon code BraunPR25% to save 25% on your Isophit order!**Season 6 of the Braun Performance & Rehab Podcast is also brought to you by Firefly Recovery, the official recovery provider for Braun Performance & Rehab. For more on Firefly, please check out https://www.recoveryfirefly.com/ or email jake@recoveryfirefly.com***This episode is also powered by Dr. Ray Gorman, founder of Engage Movement. Learn how to boost your income without relying on sessions. Get a free training on the blended practice model by following @raygormandpt on Instagram. DM my name “Dan” to @raygormandpt on Instagram and receive your free breakdown on the model.Episode Affiliates:MoboBoard: BRAWNBODY10 saves 10% at checkout!AliRx: DBraunRx = 20% off at checkout! https://alirx.health/MedBridge: https://www.medbridgeeducation.com/brawn-body-training or Coupon Code "BRAWN" for 40% off your annual subscription!CTM Band: https://ctm.band/collections/ctm-band coupon code "BRAWN10" = 10% off!Ice shaker affiliate link: https://www.iceshaker.com?sca_ref=1520881.zOJLysQzKeMake sure you SHARE this episode with a friend who could benefit from the information we shared!Check out everything Dan is up to by clicking here: https://linktr.ee/braun_prLiked this episode? Leave a 5-star review on your favorite podcast platform
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to another episode of the BRON Performance and
Rehab Podcast powered by Isofit and Firefly Recovery. Isofit is
my go to for all things isometric strength training. For
more on Isofit, be sure to check out isofit dot com.
Episodes like this are made possible by Firefly, the official
recovery provider of the BRON Performance and Rehab Podcast. For
(00:22):
more on Firefly, be sure to check out Recovery firefly
dot com. This episode is powered by doctor Ray Gorman,
founder of Engage Movement. Learn how to boost your income
without relying on sessions. Get a free training on the
Blended practice model by following at Ray Gorman DPT on Instagram.
Joining me today on the podcast is Eric Lichter. Eric
(00:44):
is an absolute legend in the performance space, in particular
surrounding speed. We're going to dive into that today, surrounding
long term athlete development for speed, what speed training is
and looks like, and so much more. This is a
really insightful discuss with Eric. We could have kept going
for hours and hours. The dude is a wealth of knowledge.
(01:05):
Highly recommend you check out his work and the work
that his team at Plus two are doing. If you
haven't already enjoy, Eric, Welcome to the podcast. I'm super
excited to work with you today. Man, I can't wait
to get into the weeds. I'm sprinting in long term
athlete development and so on that way with you. But
before we do, you know, for people who maybe don't
know you as well as some of our friends over
(01:26):
at ten eighty, or maybe they're not familiar with the
incredible work that you and your team at plus two
have been doing, would you mind fill them in a
little bit about who you are and all the great
things you've been up to.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Yeah. Well, I appreciate it, Dan, and I'm excited to
be on the podcast. I always love to you know,
share and collaborate with, you know, other like minded coaches. Yeah.
So I'm I'm coach Eric Lichter. I'm out of Columbus, Ohio.
I've been in the performance sort of you know, feel
for just under thirty years. I'm fifty years old, so
I've been doing this a while.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
This is the part where I tell you how old
I am.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Right, only years old as me.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Man, you've been in the industry longer than I've been alive.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Yeah, so there you go. You know, your stuff, dude,
be that and yeah, so, I mean I spent most
of my you know, twenty eight years in the private sector.
I had a six year stint with Ohio State, so
I was the director of football performance for the Ohio
State University under head coach Jim Tressel at the time.
(02:28):
Great unbelievable time, you know in that role. But most
of it's been in the private sector. So you know,
I've done a lot of I was Lebron James's trainer
all through or through most of his high school years.
I've probably trained thirty first round NFL and NBA draft picks.
So I was kind of rare because you know, I
did both football and basketball draft prep in there, like
(02:52):
on opposite sides of the planet. On what you know
what that's like. I've trained a couple of Heisman Trophy winners,
a couple of Thor Award winners, some Olympic sprinters, and
you know, speed is sort of my love, passion gift
if you will. And you know, over twenty eight years,
long story short, like what I was doing back when
(03:14):
I was twenty four and the guesswork, although I think
we got lucky more than we got it wrong. But
you know what we're doing now is so specific, transparent.
The technology is just totally changed, right like ten eighty
sprint now versus me slingshot bungee and guys for fifteen
(03:37):
yards and hoping the core doesn't snap and take their
eye out right and guessing on is this is this
good training? That it looks fast? I don't know, I don't
know how fast it is. So you know, it's it's
been an interesting time. But like anything, things evolve and
technology has absolutely become a must for a coach. But
(03:58):
in some regards, you know, the more things change, some
things don't they stay the same? Right. I mean there's
been some great coaches who have been doing work back
to the Charlie Francis days, and I find myself very
much in those same beliefs. So there was a lot
of great ones that went before me.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Yeah, one hundred percent. And I think you hit on
such an incredible point already, is our process has to
evolve over time. We have to constantly be auditing what
we do, why we do it, and asking ourselves could
we be doing it different? Could we be doing it better?
Because to your point, sometimes there's things that we implement
that are highly successful and they don't need to change.
(04:36):
You know. For example, when I'm working with athletes for
lower extremity rehabs, they all do some variation of a squat.
I don't care what variation it is, but the squat
has stood the test of time for me. So everyone
is going to squat. I don't care how we do it,
but it's worked for years. I'm going to keep that
piece in. So there's certain pieces that are consistent throughout time,
(04:56):
and then there's others that, as you mentioned, evolve, and
as you mentioned as well, technology is almost a must
for coaches anymore. I think now more than ever, there's
a lot of pressure on performance coaches in particular to
deliver results. Kids want to be faster, their parents want
them faster. They're starting to realize that speed is not
(05:16):
just a genetic thing, and you can actually get faster
through proper training. But if you don't have the ability
to show them the progress over time, and you don't
have the ability to get objective feedback to your program
to understand if you're going the right direction or if
maybe we have to course correct ourselves, then I think
ultimately you're doing the athlete a huge disservice and you're
(05:37):
not fully understanding the effect that your program might be
having on them.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah, there's no doubt. Validation is huge. So being able
to take a parent and you know, an athlete and
show them, you know, undeniable proof that they're getting faster
or developing more power or accelerating you know, better, covering
more distance in the same amount of time. Those things
are game changers, you know. And I think too, like
(06:04):
what you said, you know, some things don't change, there's
no doubt about that. I think what has changed most
of me is is figuring out how to do less.
I mean at the end of the day, like we
you know, I'm always I think I heard someone say
I don't remember who it was like when you're programming,
right your first crack at it, you know, build it,
(06:27):
step away from it, come back and figure out how
to cut two thirds of it away because that's usually
about where you need to be, right, That is so true.
I find myself so much more and more and more
like figuring out what can we take away, how can
we combine, how can we you know, be more efficient
in the time, and what can we take away? Because
when you think about it, you've been in this world.
(06:49):
You know, you hit all the sort of planes of
movement and all the key points that we need to
get in today, and you go through the workout and
you're like, dude, we're at two hours and we still
we got a lot left to do, and you're like,
this is too much time in here, right, So you
know it's about it's just about figuring out how to
really do less. I think that's a huge thing with athletes,
(07:12):
is they just do way too much.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
I think that's such a great point, especially in the
middle school high school population. And I realized that, you know,
when you're in your teens, you feel like you're made
of rupper and magic. You bounce back from everything, and
no one really understands how. I mean. You know, when
I was in high school, Yeah, I benched five days
a week, just like everyone else. And you know it's
probably not good for me, but you know, you gotta
be walking around with a chest pump every single day
(07:37):
when you're a guy in high school. Right, So we
did it. Not recommended, but we did it. But I realized,
or I've come to realize this kind of like eighty
twenty principle or eighty twenty rule, if you will, where
about eighty percent of our results come from twenty percent
of our effort. And instead of to your point, stacking
more on top of someone who's already got too much
(07:58):
going on. Right, these kids seven eight hours a day
in school, two to three hours a day of practice,
they got homework afterwards, they're probably not sleeping great. I mean,
I know when I was an athlete in high school,
it was like five six hours of sleep at night
because that's just what you had to do. So it's like,
you know, we're already overclocking the kids. Now if I
throw two to three hours of additional workout on top
(08:19):
of that, what adaptation is that actually going to drive?
I think, you know, it'll certainly fatigue the kid. But
we're not after workload and fatiguing someone right now. We're
after how do we develop speed? How do we make
them faster? And I think a lot of times in
this population, we confuse conditioning work with speed work, and
I don't think they're the same whatsoever. And I think,
(08:42):
to your point, you know, it's how do we hone
in And it's twenty percent of what we do that
actually moves the needle forward. In relation to this athlete
getting faster and staying faster long term.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
I think, you know, speed is the most misunderstood thing
by them most amount of people. It's you know, at
some point you have to sit there, whether you're a
track coach or a speed coach or whatever, especially when
you have most of the control of the athlete. In
(09:13):
my world, I have, you know, I share most of
our athletes, right, I'm kind of a guy who they
come to for speed work or you know, for strategic
work in between all the other stuff they're doing. Right,
So my job is the hardest because I need to
get an extract information from the athlete, and that information
(09:35):
has to be accurate. Now, we do a really good
job of reaching out and building alliances with coaches and programs.
We reach out to them and say we want to
be an ally and not an adversary. And you know
that that doesn't work all the time, no matter how
much you try to disarm. Some coaches are just so
tribal and you know, whatever it is, they don't they
(09:57):
don't want their athletes going outside places. That's another conversation.
Lun story is short. You know, if you're mostly in
control of the athlete, like, for instance, high school track,
this is just a pain point at this time of year,
turning over a bunch of race horses that are already
fastest can be in great fitness for repeat sprinting. I'm
(10:20):
not going to say conditioned in shape. I'm going to
say they are at a great fitness capacity for repeat
sprinting and for long sprinting. Right, And so there's no
need to take them to the high school track and
blast them with eight four hundreds because they need to
get in shape. Just stupid shit, right, And so like,
(10:40):
if you're a high school track coach, and I'm not
indicting all of them, but if you are constantly watching
your team get hurt, multiple athletes and I'm not talking
two or three, I'm talking eight or nine, you know
out by the middle of the season with hamstrings and
soft tissues, and you're watching year and year out, you know,
(11:01):
most of your team gets slower as the most important
meats come up, district's, regional, state, state, you know finals,
You've got to ask yourself, what is it? Right? Is
it me or is it the athletes? Like it's it's
just you know, super frustrating that people confuse you know
(11:22):
now and to this day and age still they think work,
extreme amounts of work and extreme amounts of sub maximal
you know, load on an athlete somehow translates to faster. Right.
It's like saying to the picture, hey, you throw ninety five,
(11:42):
that's the heat you bring. We need ninety eight. You know,
in order for you to go from Triple A to
the bigs, you're gonna have to throw ninety eight. Ninety
five is not going to cut it here. So the
plan is going to be, we're gonna just work the
shit out in your arm. We're gonna make it exhausted.
And what we're going to do is is in the
week week one, we're gonna throw three hundred seventy eight
(12:03):
mile hour fastballs with a tired arm. And then week
two we're gonna make it four hundred. We're gonna add
more seventy eight mile hour throws because that's just gonna
you know, get that arm in shape. And then in
week three we're gonna do five hundred. And then you know,
like we're gonna go to six hundred and we're gonna
work really hard and then you're gonna be able to
(12:24):
throw that fastball ninety eight miles per hour. No, what's
gonna happen is your fastball is gonna go from ninety
five to ninety two. Right, You see what I'm saying, Like,
and it's it's all the evidence is all right there,
and it's just you know, really good coaches are out
there reaching out saying, hey, guys, that's not how you
(12:44):
do it, you know, But but no one wants to listen.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Yeah, no one wants crazy to this concept, to do
less to get more out of it. But you know,
I'm willing to try that. Your athletes probably spend more
time resting than they do sprinting when they're working with you,
But that's what it takes sometimes. You know, you have
to allow energy systems to regenerate, and you also have
to understand the motor learning element of it as well.
(13:07):
You know, if you're going to get technical with something
like sprint mechanics or sprint form or something like that,
you know, don't expect athletes to pick up on that
and have some kind of like motor learning effect if
they're super fatigued and tired and gassed, Like if you
just keep beating a dead horse over and over again,
it's not going to magically just come back to life. Right.
If you want change, you actually have to allow time
(13:29):
for that change to take place.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Yeah. For you know, for people that are watching this
and digesting this, you know, speed is the high tide
that lifts all boats, right it is. Sprinting is the
one exercise that absolutely influences every other you know, physical
trait and ability positively that you can't say that for
(13:53):
you know, I can't say that squatting one hundred percent
improves my spring. I cannot say that you know, this
this lift or whatever it is, that that that one
hundred percent is going to improve my sprinting. I can
unequivocally say that sprinting will one hundred percent improve my squatting.
And because of the way that you know, the brain
has to obviously recruit and the nervous system intensity of
(14:17):
sprinting right, all hands on deck, and it is such
a fragile thing. So you know, you know, speed when
it comes to really getting fast, man, it's microdosing. It's
little little bits of speed here and there and there,
and you know that, so you have to be patient
with it, right, And as you said, you know, you
have to understand that it's a process. So movement patterns, positions, posture, right,
(14:46):
those type of things have to be built, right, They've
got to be built. So speed mechanics absolutely have a
place in the in the plan, and mobility absolutely has
a place in the plan. And understanding ankle stiffness and
bear foot training and these are all like pieces of
a puzzle that you put together. And then when you
put it all together, and you got to run, right,
(15:07):
you got to run fast, but you also have to
run you know, in the right positions, right, you gotta
you gotta progress there. So there's there's just a process
and there is a time that you have to be
patient and you can't you can't microwave this. You can't
nuke this right. And so like what you'll see is
(15:29):
when you overtrain you and you just beat down an
athlete by running them into the ground. If you're really
looking at positions, posture, angles, motor patterns, you see that
they're awful. When an athlete's fatigued, they those patterns break
down and they they become awful. And so it's such
(15:51):
a I think a simple thing. It's not always simple
to know how how hard you can push this sprinter.
Can I give this sprinter four overspeeds, you know, as
opposed to the two that we've been doing. You know,
if I'm looking at what he all the load he
had last week, you know the plan for six weeks,
(16:11):
the track meets he ran in, or the football combines
he went to. You know, sometimes you you have a
good idea, you have to play around some things. But
from a coaching perspective, it's so simple to see when
when a speed session should end. Right, there's two criteria.
If you're measuring output, when the output drops, you know,
(16:34):
and you've already decided, okay, it's not like a rest thing.
Like he's running slow on these fly on these fly
thirties or fly tens, and I've given them plenty of rest.
He's just running slow. Nervous system's done, it's tired, it's fried. Right,
we're not getting all the motor unit recruitment. Well. The
second thing is look at the look at the patterns
on the track. They're bad. They're not ideal, right, I
(16:57):
don't like the word bad. They're not what the should
be and they're getting worse. End the story. You know,
you're you're you're now training a different skill, and you're
throwing good money after bad money. Right. That's I say
that because as as as a as an athlete and
as a coach, if we're investing time in a session
(17:17):
and that session is going the wrong way, time is
valuable and we're wasting the athletes time and I'm wasting
my time, Let's cut the session, Let's come back when
the athletes recovered, and let's quality quality, quality. So that's
the message that you that the that the viewers need
to take away is, you know, stop being obsessed with
how hard you think an athletes going output. What we're
(17:41):
talking about speed now, right, We're not talking about getting
in shape for a football you know, we're not talking
about all the There is a need to build some
anaerobic capacity, and there is a need to build some
tolerance to hydrogen build up from lactic acid conversion, from
energy systems being pushed to the end of their ability
to to you know, where we've got to kick down
(18:02):
to the next energy system to keep energy going. Right,
There's there's cost to that. There has to be some
of that, but I think the minimum amount necessary once
we've checked the box. We've checked the box with me.
We don't need to overkill it. But we're talking about speed,
you know, that's what we're talking about. We're talking about
getting faster. And you know, I think the thing that
(18:25):
you have to take away is less is more. You know,
less is more, and the two things that you must
do is you must measure it, right. So you got
to you got to be able to measure how the output,
you know, output trump's effort. So I don't care. That's
where I was going with this. I don't care how
(18:45):
hard you're going. I want to see output. To me,
when we're talking about speed is more important than effort.
So you know, you can give great effort, but you're
running slow because you're exhausted, right, I'd rather see the
other scenario. We're damn, you're running fast and you don't
think you're going that hard your effort. You're like, yeah,
I'm kind of like, you know, getting to that split
(19:08):
time and that two under meter mark and I feel great,
Like you know, I'm coasting here. That's fantastic, right, So
you know output, measure it with tech and have a
coach's eye understand, you know, what you're looking for from
positions on the field or on the track or whatever.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
It is, yeah, no, one hundred percent to you know,
run it back a little bit. I think you have
to keep the main thing the main thing. And if
your main thing is, hey, this athlete needs to be faster,
they need to be faster in a straight line, linear sprint,
then we have to go all in on that one thing.
As you mentioned, you know, we can't kind of get
lost in the sauce of all these other little things
(19:48):
going on. It's like we have to focus on the
main intention behind what we're trying to elicit from a
response that way, and as you mentioned as well, just
there at the end, you have to be measuring the outputs,
something objective that allows you to track that athlete's progress
over time. And again, you know, it's not always a
marathon of ups, you know. I wish that every single
(20:09):
athlete we at, every single athlete we worked with every time,
just consistently sees nothing but progress upwards. But sometimes life
happens and we get a little dip down or maybe
we pushed a little too hard or did a little
too much. But having that feedback quickly allows you to
correct it so one little dip doesn't become a huge
drop off the side. Of the mountain if you will
(20:31):
that way. I'm curious what's been your process for assessment
and measuring outputs in this population in particular. You know,
we mentioned the ten eighty that way, but I know
there's a lot of other products and devices and softwares
and you know, movement capture technology producing like kinograms and
stuff that way. How do you go about kind of
sorting through all of the different tech that's out there
(20:53):
now and putting together a framework that allows you to
reliably assess outputs in the sprint that way?
Speaker 2 (21:00):
So what we do in our main population, so our
main athlete population is the middle school the high school athlete.
That's who we serve the most at plus two, you know,
the largest amount of a mass, and we always like
to start them out with an assessment, so we assess
everything from mobility. We kind of put them through, you know,
(21:22):
multiple planes of motion and assessing not only their hip, mobility, ankle, knee,
he spine, shoulder, all those things, so give them mobility score.
We assess jumping ability, so you know, vertical jump, horizontal,
broad jumps, not just double leg but unilateral jumping. So
(21:44):
we'll you know, assess sort of that power we'll do
a few other things, some strength, some kaiser, you know,
power stuff, and then we'll take them over and we'll
assess their sprint capability. And what we do is we
pretty much do it a battery of sprints where we'll
do a forty yard for the most part. We might
(22:06):
shift the distances a little bit if it's a track
athlete versus field sport athlete, but for the most part,
they're going to do a forty yard one kilogram run,
so they're running out, you know, against resistance on the
ten eightych other but one kilogram is resistance, but it's
it's pretty much insignificant. So we'll do you know, two
forty yard runs. Then we'll do a thirty yard run
(22:28):
against five kilograms, so we'll you know, load it up.
Then we'll do a twenty five yard run against ten kilograms,
and then we'll do a twenty yard run against fifteen kilograms.
And so what we'll do then off of that data
is we'll take you know, their fastest five meters average
speeds against those loads. We'll put them through a formula
(22:51):
and we'll predict their top speed, so we'll know what
they're absolute top end, you know, highest peak sprinting speed
they can they can run at, and then it also
gives us a profile on them called a load velocity
profile and LVP where we can then determine how much
load on the machine for this athlete is required to
(23:14):
pull certain amounts of speed away. So this is important
because you know when you're training the beginning of a sprint.
So for a football player, that's the first ten yard
dash of the forty yard dash, right. For a baseball player,
that's the first, you know, ten yards of the sixty
yard dash, right where they sideways and they turn and go.
(23:35):
If it's for a track athlete, it's coming out of
the blox when you're training that particular area, right, that's
that's your strength speed, you know, sort of profile, right,
So we know that that is when you produce the
most amount of force. A run into the ground is early,
very early, So we want to load very heavy to
(24:00):
train that particular aspect of the sprint right the beginning.
We've got to force the athlete to produce force. There's
so much force is produced early. So we tend to
do what we call a seventy five percent v deck,
which means velocity decrement so how much load do I
(24:21):
need to put on this machine to take seventy five
percent of that athlete's speed away from them? Essentially, So
if I'm a ten meters per second sprinter, I should
be running at two point five meters per second right
out in that particular training, and that we wouldn't be
doing fifty yard runs against that heavy, heavy load, right,
(24:44):
We'd be doing five to ten yard you know runs,
and we'd be loading them very heavy. Okay, when you're accelerating,
so you know, for all practical purposes, you know, from
the from the eight yard to the twenty yard mark, right,
that's when acceleration is going to be very high, and
(25:04):
we're going to be really you know, driving our speed up.
That's when we produce the most power. So that's about
a fifty percent v deck, right. And then when you're
sort of transitioning sort of, you've reached the end of
your acceleration and now you're you're really at the top
end of your speed and it's just you know, how
fast can I run, how high can I push that spedometer?
(25:25):
And then how much can I hold that speedometer high
before it starts to drop? You know, that's kind of
like your transition and your top end speed. Those are
usually you know, twenty five percent V decks down to
five percent V deck zero percent V deck, which means
we wouldn't even we wouldn't even put a resistance on
an athlete. Right if we we didn't want to take
(25:46):
any speed away, we just run untethered. We'd run through
timing gates with a GPS device on. Or if we're
working top end speed or max velocity, we might instead
of taking speed, we might add speed. So how do
we do that? We pull them, right, we overspeed them,
(26:07):
or we assist sprint them by pulling them, you know,
towards the machine instead of resisting them as they run
away from it. And so you know, we we basically
do that assessment to determine, you know, how strong is
the athlete, because that will know we'll know how strong
the athlete is and how much force they put into
the ground when we see the ten and the fifteen
(26:29):
kilogram results of the run, right, because they're running against
very very heavy loads. So we'll see how well they do.
We'll see how well they accelerate in that thirty yard
five kg run, and we'll see how fast they are
which you know, when we when we say how fast
is someone, we're not looking at a twenty yard run
(26:51):
to evaluate that. We're looking at a forty More importantly,
if someone asked me what's the ideal amount of distance
to see how fast someone is, I'm going to say
sixty yards or sixty meters. I think that's the ideal,
you know, amount of distance where you can get sort
of the field sport athletes who will fatigue if you
ask them to run one hundred meters, they'll crash and
(27:12):
burn on the last forty meters they're not used to that.
Or a track athlete who you know might not be
hitting their their peak speed by sixty meters. Most of
them are, but you know, if you're world class Usain Bowl,
you might not peak till sixty five meters or whatever.
But you know, bottom line is, I think that sixty
meter mark is the ideal amount of distance. But anyway,
(27:33):
long story short, we'll see how fast they are in
that one kilogram run. Right, So based on that assessment,
let's say we I always use this example. You may,
I don't know how familiar you are with Ohio State football,
but two first rounders that I that I trained not
only at Ohio State, but I trained both of them
before Ohio State when they were young middle school, high
(27:57):
school athletes. Ted Gin Junior, who's considered one of the
fastest football players to ever play, great kick returner, right,
blazing speed, and Beanie Wells, Beanie Wells was a powerhouse tailback,
six foot two, you know, fix one two thirty four
to four speed, high, four to three speed, just explosive, powerful, fast.
(28:22):
If I were to take Beanie Wells and Ted Gin
Junior and I were to put them on a goal line,
you know, Tedgan Junior's five ten, one sixty eight, one
hundred and seventy pounds, stoking well with clothes on. Right.
If I were to put them on a goal line,
and I were to say, we're going to race and
see how fast they are, and we're going to run
(28:44):
twenty yards, who's going to win this race? Ninety nine
out of one hundred. People who don't really understand speed
are going to pick Ted Gin Junior. And they're going
to pick ted Gin Junior because they're gonna in their mind,
they're going to be like, he's fast, he's super fast.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
But it's not. It's not just about the speed. It's
about the acceleration component as well.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
Right, So ninety nine people are gonna pick Ted Gen Junior.
One person's gonna say Beanie Wells, and that one person's
going to be right because Beanie Wells is going to
put so much force into the ground right off the start,
and he's going to produce so much more power than
Ted early. So Beanie's going to absolutely beat him, and
(29:32):
they beat him significantly to the twenty yard line with
their starting from zero, right. If you take that to
forty yards, they're probably going to be neck and neck
because Beanie ran a four to three okay at two
hundred and thirty pounds, and you know ted Gan Junior
also has run four to three. So that's going to
(29:53):
surprise a lot of people. But what you don't know,
what you understand, but what they don't understand is ted
Gan Junior still got a lie out of room to
go before he reaches top speed. Beanie's going to reach
top speed earlier in the run, and then he's going
to crash and burn as that run continues. Ted needs
more runway and his top speed is going to be higher.
(30:14):
His peak speed will be higher than Beanie's and he'll
reach it further down the road. So what's going to
happen is if we take this run to sixty yards,
Ted's going to absolutely start to leave him by a
significant margin. And if we take that to one hundred yards,
Beanie won't be able to read what's on the back
of Ted's shirt. But you know, that just shows you
(30:35):
that speed is not one thing, right because you know,
one guy is able to get from A to B
quicker than another guy, and so there there's a power
and a force component there. So when we do these assessments,
we want to know how strong you are, how powerful
you are? Right, that means how well will you accelerate
and how fast you are? You know, what do you
(30:57):
like at top speed? And then there's an other component
which we really don't get into unless you're one of
our track athletes, which is speed reserve, you know, or
speed endurance. How well can you repeatedly sprint and hold
your speed? Right, so, how fast can you recover and
how repeatedly fast can you sprint? That's another I think
really really important you know, physical key performance indicator for athletes,
(31:22):
but it's not something that we measure on day one
of an assessment because we're not going to just run
an athlete over and over and over again, right, So
we kind of get to that a little bit later.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
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Speaker 2 (32:20):
On the model.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Yeah, because then your assessment's invalid if you just ran
them into the ground for three hours. It's like They're
not going to do that in training, so why would
I do that from an assessment purpose. I love the
way you outline that and just kind of building off
your example there on Beanie against Gain that way, it's
also good carryover from a coaching standpoint into the game itself.
(32:43):
There's all these talks about you know, speed and game
speed and that sort of thing as well, and it's like,
you know, what can we as a performance coach do
to help this athlete not just get faster, but also
from a carryover to sports standpoint, it's like, you know,
head coach might be one of the ones who is
in that ninety nine that picks Ted over Beanie and
(33:04):
then it's like you put him side by side and
you realize, hey, look, Beanie's faster for the first twenty yards.
Like that's the difference in a game like football of
the running back hitting the hole and then getting to
explode away versus they don't actually hit the hole ass
hard and they can't actually explode away and develop into
something further on down the field. That way, and with
(33:25):
that in mind too, it's like, you know, you look
at Ted Ginn playing receiver and kick returner and stuff,
like that it's like he actually has a runway in
game that he can build up that speed and then
by the time he gets the ball, hopefully he's caught
it and gone and you won't be able to catch him.
So it's the difference between the profile of the two
and how that carries over to the game as well.
(33:47):
I also love that you brought up the V deck
And this is something that I've kind of played around
with a lot, just from an Excel standpoint, in just
different calculators to try and understand how much do we
have to actually load these athletes from a resistant sprint standpoint.
And I think it's something that I took for granted
when I was in school. I was like, oh, yeah,
you know, math, Excel, Like I'm not going to need
(34:08):
that stuff. And then I got into the real world
and it was like this like realization of like, oh shit,
this stuff is really freaking important. So one of the
things I always push other coaches and physical therapists and
pretty much anyone in the sports performance sports REHEB space
to do is get familiar with Excel and actually learn
some of the math that goes into this stuff, some
of the statistical stuff that goes into it because you know, unfortunately,
(34:32):
if you don't know what your data is telling you,
or you don't know how to represent it visually in
a way that you can explain it to anyone, you're
ultimately going to be misguided by it. You're going to
misinterpret it, and you're going to completely miss the boat.
So I think making sure that you have a system
in place to not just collect the data accurately, if
you will, but also process it and analyze it in
(34:54):
an effective and efficient way is just as important in
my mind.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
No doubt. And you said something, you know that's that's key, right.
So like on field sport, you know, acceleration is that
is the number one attribute that wins, right. So you know,
that's why a lot of track guys can't convert to
football players because football is not straight ahead. You got
a lateral jump cut, you got to make that extra
head and you know hat in the box miss right,
So a lot of those guys aren't going to actually
(35:20):
get to top speed unless they just break away. So
there's a lot of start stop, right, excel, decel re excel,
change the direction. So you know, in field sports, you
know lacrosse right, football soccer, whatever it is. The ability
to accelerate very very aggressively and very very efficiently is
(35:42):
is the number one. It's king, right. Speed is really
the queen in that regard. Okay, but you know you
still have to train top speed because of what I
said before. You know, speed is the high tie that
lifts all boats, and that's max velocity. Right. So if
you're sprinting straight ahead, even though the game is not
(36:04):
straight ahead, I get that. I get that as well
as anybody you know, but that that sprint work is
such a hit to the nervous system and to the
brain to be able to absolutely turn on all the
highest threshold motor units all at once in a synchronized
you know ability, right, It's like it's like turning all
(36:26):
the breakers on at one time and not having three
of them trip and not turn on. Right. That is
going to elicit such better athleticism throughout the entire chain,
for for lifting, for making decisions in the in the
sports world, which we know is chaotic, right, you have
to solve problems in microseconds in sports, you know, to react,
(36:49):
to be injury resilient, to decelerate, you know, all these things.
I believe stem from the nervous system and how well
that nervous systems you know, obviously built out. But what
I was going to tell you was, we do a
lot of linear speed focus with all of our athletes
in the winter, you know, that is the focus we
run straight ahead. We absolutely transition to more game speed
(37:14):
in the spring and summer because they're getting closer to
coming into their seasons, especially if you're a fall athlete,
like a football player, right, like a soccer player. So
then we get into a lot of you know, deceleration work,
although I don't I don't think we ever leave deceleration work.
Whether we're in we're in the weight room and we're
working on eccentric control or isometric or snap down holes
(37:37):
or whatever, we're always tugging on the muscles and adding
speed to them when they lengthen and then making those
athletes stick those positions, right, because that's what that's what
injury resiliency is from, is you know, the tremendous pulling
forces on muscles when they lengthen, and so we're always
(37:57):
doing that. But from you know, it's different, as you know,
especially being a PT right, Like I try to tell
people all the time, It's one thing to go through therapy,
and this isn't I'm not trying to cross over in
that world. But but it's one thing to do physical
therapy or to train, you know, in the weight room.
And I don't care if you're you know, you're snapping
(38:17):
down as fast as you can into a split position,
holding it and doing a trapbar squad jump up, or
being having tremendous accommodating resistance. I'm in a band squad, right,
I've got tons of weight and the bands are stretched
like crazy, and I'm gonna drop into the squat and
that thing's gonna yank me down and I'm gonna stick
it at the bottom of ninety hold it, and drive
(38:38):
it back up. That still falls way short in comparison
to the intensity of sprinting ten yards up the field
and stopping on a dime. Right in the weight room,
I can only move so fast, I can only move
at so many meters per second. But out on the
field I can move six, seven, eight times that amount
(38:59):
of speed I can get in the weight room. Right, So,
in order to prepare athletes for the demands of their game,
we have to get out there in the on the
field and we've got to move. We've got to move fast.
We've got to stick our feet in the ground. We
got to stop, we got to cut, we got to restart.
We've got to put those tremendous you know, ground forces
(39:21):
and speeds on the athlete at the right time. We've
got to prepare them for them. But we have to
do that. So we transition a lot at this time
of year. We get away from the linear stuff, you know,
and we start really getting into the vector cuts and
the start stopping, d cells and all that, and we
start to increase the metabolic cost of the workouts because
(39:43):
our job is to prepare them for the demand of
the sport, right and so you know, in one regard
we were talking about speed, full recovery. You know, what
we do today should never ruin tomorrow, right. I think
Tony Holler said that a lot. You know, we know
that that's that's really important. But when we get into
this part of training the athlete, we crossed that line
(40:04):
a little bit and we definitely build more capacity and
more you know, starting and stopping is the most taxing
thing on the body. So if you look at like
a GPS load calculation player load, we have GPS on
kids all the time, all over the country. And if
a kid were to do a really like intense super
(40:25):
fast speed workout where they hit, you know, twenty six
miles per hour on fly thirties and you know, they
went through a really really intense speed workout, which to me,
intensity is how fast they run, not how many reps
they do right or how much distance they cover. If
you were to look at that player load score versus
a player load score of a guy who's doing a
(40:47):
bunch of vector cuts, a bunch of start stopping in workouts,
that start stop is going to be extremely higher in
player load than the fast running because of all the
you know, the wear and tear on the body from
celerating and then decelerating, and that takes a lot of
wear and tear. So we have to build the tolerance
to that for our athletes.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
One hundred percent agree. I like that long term development model.
And to your point, you know, I have no shame
in kind of throwing some shade at the PT space
that way. If you're working with athletes that are in
long term rehabs like ACL maniscus hipscopes, that sort of thing,
there is a time that you need to be sprinting
them in their rehab. Now obviously it's not month one
(41:30):
or month two, but like, you have to expose them
to this stuff, plain and simple. Nothing that I've found
preps you for sprinting like sprinting. You know, you can't
just do like a Nordic or you can't do a
squat or some heavy rdls and think that's going to
carry over to sprinting. You know, the forces that you're
talking about, the forces you mentioned, especially in that first
(41:53):
ten to twenty yard range are just so many times
greater than body weight that you just can't recreate that
in the jim or if you can, you know, please
send me a text and email and tell me how
you did it, because I haven't figured that out yet.
You know, we're talking eight full body weight forces through
like hamstrings alone. So I think that you need to
sprint athletes as part of their long term rehabs. You
(42:16):
need to expose them to that and then build on
it as you mentioned, and introduce some of these change
of direction concepts later on the line. That way, and
that could be a whole separate podcast episode in deep
Dive into how we incorporate sprinting in these return to sport,
return to play conversations that way, if you will. But Eric,
I know we've covered a lot. I know we could
(42:36):
talk about this for six more hours and still just
really scratch the service surface as far as how much
there is in sprinting and long term athlete development in
this middle school high school athlete population. Is there anything
in particular that you really want to kind of recap
and summarize or anything that we missed as we were
discussing today. No.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
I just think, for you know, every time that I
try to share my knowledge experience, I really want to
make an impact or a difference. I want someone to
take a nugget away. They're not gonna understand everything we said.
It's a lot, but I want parents and athletes to
understand that you've got to have patience. You you cannot microwave.
(43:21):
You know, if you want to go from a four
nine forty to a four six forty, okay, you can't
do it in six weeks, you know, doubling up on workouts, Ay, well,
you're going to hit the gym in the morning and
we're gonna go back at night and do a double
day because we're gonna we're gonna we got to get
this forty time down right, or we've got to get
our vertical up. You you have to understand that the
(43:44):
body must have a stimulus, a training stimulus, right, which
then you know, tears the body tissues down, and then
there has to be a recovery and a regrowth of
that issue, and that that whole concept takes time. And
(44:05):
if you just keep tearing down tissues from training hard
and you never let them regrow and make the adaptations, okay,
you're not going to see the results that you want.
It's going to be like you and I wearing five
layers of clothes and jumping in a pool with boots on.
When we get out of that pool, how are we
(44:25):
going to feel? Heavy? Constricted? Right, bogged down? That's what
the nervous system feels like when you don't recover. Now
you get used to it. It's what it's. You know,
athletes that train seven days a week, they don't know
that they're restricted and bogged down, right, because you just
(44:47):
you adapt to whatever it is you're doing, right, but
you don't see your performance outputs improving, And so what
happens is they just double down on stupid and they
train harder because they're like, I'm not training hard enough.
And you know what I'm saying it just so like everybody,
if you just went to like Florida for two weeks
(45:10):
and sat in the sun and drank water and didn't
do a single thing, no training, don't go to the gym,
sit in a sit on the beach chair for eight
hours a day and just you know, relax and take
two weeks off and come back, everybody would run their
fastest forty they've ever ran. Everybody would jump their highest
vertical from doing nothing right. It's proven. So you know,
(45:33):
understand that it's it's patience and that it's it's not
necessarily getting some you know, crazy level of training. It's
it's it's getting the mastering the basics, mastering the simple
concepts and becoming excellent at them, and just giving the
body time to grow and adapt and you know, recover
(45:58):
to every athlete. Should you know, I beg people to
get one full day off because I know what I'm
dealing with. But the reality is every high school and
middle school athlete should have two full days off two fold.
It doesn't mean they have to be together. They might
be spread out you know, but two full days off,
a week of doing nothing doesn't mean you can't study
(46:19):
film doesn't mean you can't work rip strength with a
tennis ball. Sitting around watching your favorite show doesn't mean
you can't catch balls out of a jugs machine just
sitting still, turning sideways. It doesn't mean you can't work
on your craft. But you have to take the physical
meter down to pretty much nothing. Your body needs to recover.
(46:40):
And you know, the last thing I'm going to say,
I think you'll like this. If they could ever give
you a pill that would increase your vertical jump by
many inches over time. If I could give you a
pill that would make you faster, like in the forty
yard dash or in one hundred meter dash. If I could
give you a pill that would make you more injury resilient.
If I could give you it would all be in
(47:01):
a pill that could make you react better as an
athlete and make better decisions on the field. I would
give it to you. I actually can give it to you.
It's called sleep. Sleep eight hours a day. Guys. Put
your phone away from your face, Get your phone away
from your face, get to sleep. You know, a couple
(47:22):
of nights a week by ten o'clock and sleep eight
eight hours of unrestful sleep, and you will see your
numbers go up. That is the pill.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
I love that. I love those takeaways, Eric and I
couldn't agree more. And the only thing I would add
to it is, please be consistent with the program that
you run. Nothing drives me more crazy than an athlete.
To your point about wanting quick results, going into one
facility training for six weeks, not being happy, and then
jumping to another facility and another facility and a new program,
(47:54):
be consistent, trust the process, and stay the course. And
as you mentioned, cover sleep, pay attention to the minor
things because as you mentioned, you've worked with extremely high
level athletes and all of those guys are dialing in
all those things. If you want to be the next
again or you want to be the next Beanie that way,
(48:15):
you have to take everything seriously. It's not just you
know we see this all the time on social media.
It's not just train hard. It's like, hey, you have
to train, you have to sleep, you have to eat,
you have to recover, you have to do all the
things that way. And I know that you and your
team are masters of that, and you work with athletes
from very young ages all the way up to you know,
the highest levels of sport. That way, So for people
(48:37):
who want to find out more about you and your team,
maybe they want to find out more about the remote
programming and coaching that you guys offer. Where can they
find out more about you and plus two?
Speaker 2 (48:47):
Yeah, so mostly the social media that we use most
of Facebook and Instagram. I'm just Eric Lichter on Instagram.
This e er C l c h T er plus
two University is on Instagram. Both of them are on
We're on Facebook. I'm on Twitter a little bit. I'm
not a big X guy, you know, but we're on there.
(49:11):
And then our website is www dot plus two, so
that's p l us, the number two a dash sign
the letter you dot com, So plus two dash you
dot com and you know you can find us right there.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
That's awesome. We'll link to all of that in the
description below as well. That way, if you didn't quite
catch it, you can just click there and see everything
that Eric and his team are up to. This is
an amazing conversation and I really appreciate your time, man.
Thanks for everything.
Speaker 2 (49:42):
Man, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on
Welcome back to another episode of the BRON Performance and
Rehab Podcast powered by Isofit and Firefly Recovery. Isofit is
my go to for all things isometric strength training. For
more on Isofit, be sure to check out isofit dot com.
Episodes like this are made possible by Firefly, the official
recovery provider of the BRON Performance and Rehab Podcast. For
(00:22):
more on Firefly, be sure to check out Recovery firefly
dot com. This episode is powered by doctor Ray Gorman,
founder of Engage Movement. Learn how to boost your income
without relying on sessions. Get a free training on the
Blended practice model by following at Ray Gorman DPT on Instagram.
Joining me today on the podcast is Eric Lichter. Eric
(00:44):
is an absolute legend in the performance space, in particular
surrounding speed. We're going to dive into that today, surrounding
long term athlete development for speed, what speed training is
and looks like, and so much more. This is a
really insightful discuss with Eric. We could have kept going
for hours and hours. The dude is a wealth of knowledge.
(01:05):
Highly recommend you check out his work and the work
that his team at Plus two are doing. If you
haven't already enjoy, Eric, Welcome to the podcast. I'm super
excited to work with you today. Man, I can't wait
to get into the weeds. I'm sprinting in long term
athlete development and so on that way with you. But
before we do, you know, for people who maybe don't
know you as well as some of our friends over
(01:26):
at ten eighty, or maybe they're not familiar with the
incredible work that you and your team at plus two
have been doing, would you mind fill them in a
little bit about who you are and all the great
things you've been up to.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Yeah. Well, I appreciate it, Dan, and I'm excited to
be on the podcast. I always love to you know,
share and collaborate with, you know, other like minded coaches. Yeah.
So I'm I'm coach Eric Lichter. I'm out of Columbus, Ohio.
I've been in the performance sort of you know, feel
for just under thirty years. I'm fifty years old, so
I've been doing this a while.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
This is the part where I tell you how old
I am.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Right, only years old as me.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Man, you've been in the industry longer than I've been alive.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Yeah, so there you go. You know, your stuff, dude,
be that and yeah, so, I mean I spent most
of my you know, twenty eight years in the private sector.
I had a six year stint with Ohio State, so
I was the director of football performance for the Ohio
State University under head coach Jim Tressel at the time.
(02:28):
Great unbelievable time, you know in that role. But most
of it's been in the private sector. So you know,
I've done a lot of I was Lebron James's trainer
all through or through most of his high school years.
I've probably trained thirty first round NFL and NBA draft picks.
So I was kind of rare because you know, I
did both football and basketball draft prep in there, like
(02:52):
on opposite sides of the planet. On what you know
what that's like. I've trained a couple of Heisman Trophy winners,
a couple of Thor Award winners, some Olympic sprinters, and
you know, speed is sort of my love, passion gift
if you will. And you know, over twenty eight years,
long story short, like what I was doing back when
(03:14):
I was twenty four and the guesswork, although I think
we got lucky more than we got it wrong. But
you know what we're doing now is so specific, transparent.
The technology is just totally changed, right like ten eighty
sprint now versus me slingshot bungee and guys for fifteen
(03:37):
yards and hoping the core doesn't snap and take their
eye out right and guessing on is this is this
good training? That it looks fast? I don't know, I don't
know how fast it is. So you know, it's it's
been an interesting time. But like anything, things evolve and
technology has absolutely become a must for a coach. But
(03:58):
in some regards, you know, the more things change, some
things don't they stay the same? Right. I mean there's
been some great coaches who have been doing work back
to the Charlie Francis days, and I find myself very
much in those same beliefs. So there was a lot
of great ones that went before me.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Yeah, one hundred percent. And I think you hit on
such an incredible point already, is our process has to
evolve over time. We have to constantly be auditing what
we do, why we do it, and asking ourselves could
we be doing it different? Could we be doing it better?
Because to your point, sometimes there's things that we implement
that are highly successful and they don't need to change.
(04:36):
You know. For example, when I'm working with athletes for
lower extremity rehabs, they all do some variation of a squat.
I don't care what variation it is, but the squat
has stood the test of time for me. So everyone
is going to squat. I don't care how we do it,
but it's worked for years. I'm going to keep that
piece in. So there's certain pieces that are consistent throughout time,
(04:56):
and then there's others that, as you mentioned, evolve, and
as you mentioned as well, technology is almost a must
for coaches anymore. I think now more than ever, there's
a lot of pressure on performance coaches in particular to
deliver results. Kids want to be faster, their parents want
them faster. They're starting to realize that speed is not
(05:16):
just a genetic thing, and you can actually get faster
through proper training. But if you don't have the ability
to show them the progress over time, and you don't
have the ability to get objective feedback to your program
to understand if you're going the right direction or if
maybe we have to course correct ourselves, then I think
ultimately you're doing the athlete a huge disservice and you're
(05:37):
not fully understanding the effect that your program might be
having on them.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah, there's no doubt. Validation is huge. So being able
to take a parent and you know, an athlete and
show them, you know, undeniable proof that they're getting faster
or developing more power or accelerating you know, better, covering
more distance in the same amount of time. Those things
are game changers, you know. And I think too, like
(06:04):
what you said, you know, some things don't change, there's
no doubt about that. I think what has changed most
of me is is figuring out how to do less.
I mean at the end of the day, like we
you know, I'm always I think I heard someone say
I don't remember who it was like when you're programming,
right your first crack at it, you know, build it,
(06:27):
step away from it, come back and figure out how
to cut two thirds of it away because that's usually
about where you need to be, right, That is so true.
I find myself so much more and more and more
like figuring out what can we take away, how can
we combine, how can we you know, be more efficient
in the time, and what can we take away? Because
when you think about it, you've been in this world.
(06:49):
You know, you hit all the sort of planes of
movement and all the key points that we need to
get in today, and you go through the workout and
you're like, dude, we're at two hours and we still
we got a lot left to do, and you're like,
this is too much time in here, right, So you
know it's about it's just about figuring out how to
really do less. I think that's a huge thing with athletes,
(07:12):
is they just do way too much.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
I think that's such a great point, especially in the
middle school high school population. And I realized that, you know,
when you're in your teens, you feel like you're made
of rupper and magic. You bounce back from everything, and
no one really understands how. I mean. You know, when
I was in high school, Yeah, I benched five days
a week, just like everyone else. And you know it's
probably not good for me, but you know, you gotta
be walking around with a chest pump every single day
(07:37):
when you're a guy in high school. Right, So we
did it. Not recommended, but we did it. But I realized,
or I've come to realize this kind of like eighty
twenty principle or eighty twenty rule, if you will, where
about eighty percent of our results come from twenty percent
of our effort. And instead of to your point, stacking
more on top of someone who's already got too much
(07:58):
going on. Right, these kids seven eight hours a day
in school, two to three hours a day of practice,
they got homework afterwards, they're probably not sleeping great. I mean,
I know when I was an athlete in high school,
it was like five six hours of sleep at night
because that's just what you had to do. So it's like,
you know, we're already overclocking the kids. Now if I
throw two to three hours of additional workout on top
(08:19):
of that, what adaptation is that actually going to drive?
I think, you know, it'll certainly fatigue the kid. But
we're not after workload and fatiguing someone right now. We're
after how do we develop speed? How do we make
them faster? And I think a lot of times in
this population, we confuse conditioning work with speed work, and
I don't think they're the same whatsoever. And I think,
(08:42):
to your point, you know, it's how do we hone
in And it's twenty percent of what we do that
actually moves the needle forward. In relation to this athlete
getting faster and staying faster long term.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
I think, you know, speed is the most misunderstood thing
by them most amount of people. It's you know, at
some point you have to sit there, whether you're a
track coach or a speed coach or whatever, especially when
you have most of the control of the athlete. In
(09:13):
my world, I have, you know, I share most of
our athletes, right, I'm kind of a guy who they
come to for speed work or you know, for strategic
work in between all the other stuff they're doing. Right,
So my job is the hardest because I need to
get an extract information from the athlete, and that information
(09:35):
has to be accurate. Now, we do a really good
job of reaching out and building alliances with coaches and programs.
We reach out to them and say we want to
be an ally and not an adversary. And you know
that that doesn't work all the time, no matter how
much you try to disarm. Some coaches are just so
tribal and you know, whatever it is, they don't they
(09:57):
don't want their athletes going outside places. That's another conversation.
Lun story is short. You know, if you're mostly in
control of the athlete, like, for instance, high school track,
this is just a pain point at this time of year,
turning over a bunch of race horses that are already
fastest can be in great fitness for repeat sprinting. I'm
(10:20):
not going to say conditioned in shape. I'm going to
say they are at a great fitness capacity for repeat
sprinting and for long sprinting. Right, And so there's no
need to take them to the high school track and
blast them with eight four hundreds because they need to
get in shape. Just stupid shit, right, And so like,
(10:40):
if you're a high school track coach, and I'm not
indicting all of them, but if you are constantly watching
your team get hurt, multiple athletes and I'm not talking
two or three, I'm talking eight or nine, you know
out by the middle of the season with hamstrings and
soft tissues, and you're watching year and year out, you know,
(11:01):
most of your team gets slower as the most important
meats come up, district's, regional, state, state, you know finals,
You've got to ask yourself, what is it? Right? Is
it me or is it the athletes? Like it's it's
just you know, super frustrating that people confuse you know
(11:22):
now and to this day and age still they think work,
extreme amounts of work and extreme amounts of sub maximal
you know, load on an athlete somehow translates to faster. Right.
It's like saying to the picture, hey, you throw ninety five,
(11:42):
that's the heat you bring. We need ninety eight. You know,
in order for you to go from Triple A to
the bigs, you're gonna have to throw ninety eight. Ninety
five is not going to cut it here. So the
plan is going to be, we're gonna just work the
shit out in your arm. We're gonna make it exhausted.
And what we're going to do is is in the
week week one, we're gonna throw three hundred seventy eight
(12:03):
mile hour fastballs with a tired arm. And then week
two we're gonna make it four hundred. We're gonna add
more seventy eight mile hour throws because that's just gonna
you know, get that arm in shape. And then in
week three we're gonna do five hundred. And then you know,
like we're gonna go to six hundred and we're gonna
work really hard and then you're gonna be able to
(12:24):
throw that fastball ninety eight miles per hour. No, what's
gonna happen is your fastball is gonna go from ninety
five to ninety two. Right, You see what I'm saying, Like,
and it's it's all the evidence is all right there,
and it's just you know, really good coaches are out
there reaching out saying, hey, guys, that's not how you
(12:44):
do it, you know, But but no one wants to listen.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Yeah, no one wants crazy to this concept, to do
less to get more out of it. But you know,
I'm willing to try that. Your athletes probably spend more
time resting than they do sprinting when they're working with you,
But that's what it takes sometimes. You know, you have
to allow energy systems to regenerate, and you also have
to understand the motor learning element of it as well.
(13:07):
You know, if you're going to get technical with something
like sprint mechanics or sprint form or something like that,
you know, don't expect athletes to pick up on that
and have some kind of like motor learning effect if
they're super fatigued and tired and gassed, Like if you
just keep beating a dead horse over and over again,
it's not going to magically just come back to life. Right.
If you want change, you actually have to allow time
(13:29):
for that change to take place.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Yeah. For you know, for people that are watching this
and digesting this, you know, speed is the high tide
that lifts all boats, right it is. Sprinting is the
one exercise that absolutely influences every other you know, physical
trait and ability positively that you can't say that for
(13:53):
you know, I can't say that squatting one hundred percent
improves my spring. I cannot say that you know, this
this lift or whatever it is, that that that one
hundred percent is going to improve my sprinting. I can
unequivocally say that sprinting will one hundred percent improve my squatting.
And because of the way that you know, the brain
has to obviously recruit and the nervous system intensity of
(14:17):
sprinting right, all hands on deck, and it is such
a fragile thing. So you know, you know, speed when
it comes to really getting fast, man, it's microdosing. It's
little little bits of speed here and there and there,
and you know that, so you have to be patient
with it, right, And as you said, you know, you
have to understand that it's a process. So movement patterns, positions, posture, right,
(14:46):
those type of things have to be built, right, They've
got to be built. So speed mechanics absolutely have a
place in the in the plan, and mobility absolutely has
a place in the plan. And understanding ankle stiffness and
bear foot training and these are all like pieces of
a puzzle that you put together. And then when you
put it all together, and you got to run, right,
(15:07):
you got to run fast, but you also have to
run you know, in the right positions, right, you gotta
you gotta progress there. So there's there's just a process
and there is a time that you have to be
patient and you can't you can't microwave this. You can't
nuke this right. And so like what you'll see is
(15:29):
when you overtrain you and you just beat down an
athlete by running them into the ground. If you're really
looking at positions, posture, angles, motor patterns, you see that
they're awful. When an athlete's fatigued, they those patterns break
down and they they become awful. And so it's such
(15:51):
a I think a simple thing. It's not always simple
to know how how hard you can push this sprinter.
Can I give this sprinter four overspeeds, you know, as
opposed to the two that we've been doing. You know,
if I'm looking at what he all the load he
had last week, you know the plan for six weeks,
(16:11):
the track meets he ran in, or the football combines
he went to. You know, sometimes you you have a
good idea, you have to play around some things. But
from a coaching perspective, it's so simple to see when
when a speed session should end. Right, there's two criteria.
If you're measuring output, when the output drops, you know,
(16:34):
and you've already decided, okay, it's not like a rest thing.
Like he's running slow on these fly on these fly
thirties or fly tens, and I've given them plenty of rest.
He's just running slow. Nervous system's done, it's tired, it's fried. Right,
we're not getting all the motor unit recruitment. Well. The
second thing is look at the look at the patterns
on the track. They're bad. They're not ideal, right, I
(16:57):
don't like the word bad. They're not what the should
be and they're getting worse. End the story. You know,
you're you're you're now training a different skill, and you're
throwing good money after bad money. Right. That's I say
that because as as as a as an athlete and
as a coach, if we're investing time in a session
(17:17):
and that session is going the wrong way, time is
valuable and we're wasting the athletes time and I'm wasting
my time, Let's cut the session, Let's come back when
the athletes recovered, and let's quality quality, quality. So that's
the message that you that the that the viewers need
to take away is, you know, stop being obsessed with
how hard you think an athletes going output. What we're
(17:41):
talking about speed now, right, We're not talking about getting
in shape for a football you know, we're not talking
about all the There is a need to build some
anaerobic capacity, and there is a need to build some
tolerance to hydrogen build up from lactic acid conversion, from
energy systems being pushed to the end of their ability
to to you know, where we've got to kick down
(18:02):
to the next energy system to keep energy going. Right,
There's there's cost to that. There has to be some
of that, but I think the minimum amount necessary once
we've checked the box. We've checked the box with me.
We don't need to overkill it. But we're talking about speed,
you know, that's what we're talking about. We're talking about
getting faster. And you know, I think the thing that
(18:25):
you have to take away is less is more. You know,
less is more, and the two things that you must
do is you must measure it, right. So you got
to you got to be able to measure how the output,
you know, output trump's effort. So I don't care. That's
where I was going with this. I don't care how
(18:45):
hard you're going. I want to see output. To me,
when we're talking about speed is more important than effort.
So you know, you can give great effort, but you're
running slow because you're exhausted, right, I'd rather see the
other scenario. We're damn, you're running fast and you don't
think you're going that hard your effort. You're like, yeah,
I'm kind of like, you know, getting to that split
(19:08):
time and that two under meter mark and I feel great,
Like you know, I'm coasting here. That's fantastic, right, So
you know output, measure it with tech and have a
coach's eye understand, you know, what you're looking for from
positions on the field or on the track or whatever.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
It is, yeah, no, one hundred percent to you know,
run it back a little bit. I think you have
to keep the main thing the main thing. And if
your main thing is, hey, this athlete needs to be faster,
they need to be faster in a straight line, linear sprint,
then we have to go all in on that one thing.
As you mentioned, you know, we can't kind of get
lost in the sauce of all these other little things
(19:48):
going on. It's like we have to focus on the
main intention behind what we're trying to elicit from a
response that way, and as you mentioned as well, just
there at the end, you have to be measuring the outputs,
something objective that allows you to track that athlete's progress
over time. And again, you know, it's not always a
marathon of ups, you know. I wish that every single
(20:09):
athlete we at, every single athlete we worked with every time,
just consistently sees nothing but progress upwards. But sometimes life
happens and we get a little dip down or maybe
we pushed a little too hard or did a little
too much. But having that feedback quickly allows you to
correct it so one little dip doesn't become a huge
drop off the side. Of the mountain if you will
(20:31):
that way. I'm curious what's been your process for assessment
and measuring outputs in this population in particular. You know,
we mentioned the ten eighty that way, but I know
there's a lot of other products and devices and softwares
and you know, movement capture technology producing like kinograms and
stuff that way. How do you go about kind of
sorting through all of the different tech that's out there
(20:53):
now and putting together a framework that allows you to
reliably assess outputs in the sprint that way?
Speaker 2 (21:00):
So what we do in our main population, so our
main athlete population is the middle school the high school athlete.
That's who we serve the most at plus two, you know,
the largest amount of a mass, and we always like
to start them out with an assessment, so we assess
everything from mobility. We kind of put them through, you know,
(21:22):
multiple planes of motion and assessing not only their hip, mobility, ankle, knee,
he spine, shoulder, all those things, so give them mobility score.
We assess jumping ability, so you know, vertical jump, horizontal,
broad jumps, not just double leg but unilateral jumping. So
(21:44):
we'll you know, assess sort of that power we'll do
a few other things, some strength, some kaiser, you know,
power stuff, and then we'll take them over and we'll
assess their sprint capability. And what we do is we
pretty much do it a battery of sprints where we'll
do a forty yard for the most part. We might
(22:06):
shift the distances a little bit if it's a track
athlete versus field sport athlete, but for the most part,
they're going to do a forty yard one kilogram run,
so they're running out, you know, against resistance on the
ten eightych other but one kilogram is resistance, but it's
it's pretty much insignificant. So we'll do you know, two
forty yard runs. Then we'll do a thirty yard run
(22:28):
against five kilograms, so we'll you know, load it up.
Then we'll do a twenty five yard run against ten kilograms,
and then we'll do a twenty yard run against fifteen kilograms.
And so what we'll do then off of that data
is we'll take you know, their fastest five meters average
speeds against those loads. We'll put them through a formula
(22:51):
and we'll predict their top speed, so we'll know what
they're absolute top end, you know, highest peak sprinting speed
they can they can run at, and then it also
gives us a profile on them called a load velocity
profile and LVP where we can then determine how much
load on the machine for this athlete is required to
(23:14):
pull certain amounts of speed away. So this is important
because you know when you're training the beginning of a sprint.
So for a football player, that's the first ten yard
dash of the forty yard dash, right. For a baseball player,
that's the first, you know, ten yards of the sixty
yard dash, right where they sideways and they turn and go.
(23:35):
If it's for a track athlete, it's coming out of
the blox when you're training that particular area, right, that's
that's your strength speed, you know, sort of profile, right,
So we know that that is when you produce the
most amount of force. A run into the ground is early,
very early, So we want to load very heavy to
(24:00):
train that particular aspect of the sprint right the beginning.
We've got to force the athlete to produce force. There's
so much force is produced early. So we tend to
do what we call a seventy five percent v deck,
which means velocity decrement so how much load do I
(24:21):
need to put on this machine to take seventy five
percent of that athlete's speed away from them? Essentially, So
if I'm a ten meters per second sprinter, I should
be running at two point five meters per second right
out in that particular training, and that we wouldn't be
doing fifty yard runs against that heavy, heavy load, right,
(24:44):
We'd be doing five to ten yard you know runs,
and we'd be loading them very heavy. Okay, when you're accelerating,
so you know, for all practical purposes, you know, from
the from the eight yard to the twenty yard mark, right,
that's when acceleration is going to be very high, and
(25:04):
we're going to be really you know, driving our speed up.
That's when we produce the most power. So that's about
a fifty percent v deck, right. And then when you're
sort of transitioning sort of, you've reached the end of
your acceleration and now you're you're really at the top
end of your speed and it's just you know, how
fast can I run, how high can I push that spedometer?
(25:25):
And then how much can I hold that speedometer high
before it starts to drop? You know, that's kind of
like your transition and your top end speed. Those are
usually you know, twenty five percent V decks down to
five percent V deck zero percent V deck, which means
we wouldn't even we wouldn't even put a resistance on
an athlete. Right if we we didn't want to take
(25:46):
any speed away, we just run untethered. We'd run through
timing gates with a GPS device on. Or if we're
working top end speed or max velocity, we might instead
of taking speed, we might add speed. So how do
we do that? We pull them, right, we overspeed them,
(26:07):
or we assist sprint them by pulling them, you know,
towards the machine instead of resisting them as they run
away from it. And so you know, we we basically
do that assessment to determine, you know, how strong is
the athlete, because that will know we'll know how strong
the athlete is and how much force they put into
the ground when we see the ten and the fifteen
(26:29):
kilogram results of the run, right, because they're running against
very very heavy loads. So we'll see how well they do.
We'll see how well they accelerate in that thirty yard
five kg run, and we'll see how fast they are
which you know, when we when we say how fast
is someone, we're not looking at a twenty yard run
(26:51):
to evaluate that. We're looking at a forty More importantly,
if someone asked me what's the ideal amount of distance
to see how fast someone is, I'm going to say
sixty yards or sixty meters. I think that's the ideal,
you know, amount of distance where you can get sort
of the field sport athletes who will fatigue if you
ask them to run one hundred meters, they'll crash and
(27:12):
burn on the last forty meters they're not used to that.
Or a track athlete who you know might not be
hitting their their peak speed by sixty meters. Most of
them are, but you know, if you're world class Usain Bowl,
you might not peak till sixty five meters or whatever.
But you know, bottom line is, I think that sixty
meter mark is the ideal amount of distance. But anyway,
(27:33):
long story short, we'll see how fast they are in
that one kilogram run. Right, So based on that assessment,
let's say we I always use this example. You may,
I don't know how familiar you are with Ohio State football,
but two first rounders that I that I trained not
only at Ohio State, but I trained both of them
before Ohio State when they were young middle school, high
(27:57):
school athletes. Ted Gin Junior, who's considered one of the
fastest football players to ever play, great kick returner, right,
blazing speed, and Beanie Wells, Beanie Wells was a powerhouse tailback,
six foot two, you know, fix one two thirty four
to four speed, high, four to three speed, just explosive, powerful, fast.
(28:22):
If I were to take Beanie Wells and Ted Gin
Junior and I were to put them on a goal line,
you know, Tedgan Junior's five ten, one sixty eight, one
hundred and seventy pounds, stoking well with clothes on. Right.
If I were to put them on a goal line,
and I were to say, we're going to race and
see how fast they are, and we're going to run
(28:44):
twenty yards, who's going to win this race? Ninety nine
out of one hundred. People who don't really understand speed
are going to pick Ted Gin Junior. And they're going
to pick ted Gin Junior because they're gonna in their mind,
they're going to be like, he's fast, he's super fast.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
But it's not. It's not just about the speed. It's
about the acceleration component as well.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
Right, So ninety nine people are gonna pick Ted Gen Junior.
One person's gonna say Beanie Wells, and that one person's
going to be right because Beanie Wells is going to
put so much force into the ground right off the start,
and he's going to produce so much more power than
Ted early. So Beanie's going to absolutely beat him, and
(29:32):
they beat him significantly to the twenty yard line with
their starting from zero, right. If you take that to
forty yards, they're probably going to be neck and neck
because Beanie ran a four to three okay at two
hundred and thirty pounds, and you know ted Gan Junior
also has run four to three. So that's going to
(29:53):
surprise a lot of people. But what you don't know,
what you understand, but what they don't understand is ted
Gan Junior still got a lie out of room to
go before he reaches top speed. Beanie's going to reach
top speed earlier in the run, and then he's going
to crash and burn as that run continues. Ted needs
more runway and his top speed is going to be higher.
(30:14):
His peak speed will be higher than Beanie's and he'll
reach it further down the road. So what's going to
happen is if we take this run to sixty yards,
Ted's going to absolutely start to leave him by a
significant margin. And if we take that to one hundred yards,
Beanie won't be able to read what's on the back
of Ted's shirt. But you know, that just shows you
(30:35):
that speed is not one thing, right because you know,
one guy is able to get from A to B
quicker than another guy, and so there there's a power
and a force component there. So when we do these assessments,
we want to know how strong you are, how powerful
you are? Right, that means how well will you accelerate
and how fast you are? You know, what do you
(30:57):
like at top speed? And then there's an other component
which we really don't get into unless you're one of
our track athletes, which is speed reserve, you know, or
speed endurance. How well can you repeatedly sprint and hold
your speed? Right, so, how fast can you recover and
how repeatedly fast can you sprint? That's another I think
really really important you know, physical key performance indicator for athletes,
(31:22):
but it's not something that we measure on day one
of an assessment because we're not going to just run
an athlete over and over and over again, right, So
we kind of get to that a little bit later.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
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Speaker 2 (32:20):
On the model.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Yeah, because then your assessment's invalid if you just ran
them into the ground for three hours. It's like They're
not going to do that in training, so why would
I do that from an assessment purpose. I love the
way you outline that and just kind of building off
your example there on Beanie against Gain that way, it's
also good carryover from a coaching standpoint into the game itself.
(32:43):
There's all these talks about you know, speed and game
speed and that sort of thing as well, and it's like,
you know, what can we as a performance coach do
to help this athlete not just get faster, but also
from a carryover to sports standpoint, it's like, you know,
head coach might be one of the ones who is
in that ninety nine that picks Ted over Beanie and
(33:04):
then it's like you put him side by side and
you realize, hey, look, Beanie's faster for the first twenty yards.
Like that's the difference in a game like football of
the running back hitting the hole and then getting to
explode away versus they don't actually hit the hole ass
hard and they can't actually explode away and develop into
something further on down the field. That way, and with
(33:25):
that in mind too, it's like, you know, you look
at Ted Ginn playing receiver and kick returner and stuff,
like that it's like he actually has a runway in
game that he can build up that speed and then
by the time he gets the ball, hopefully he's caught
it and gone and you won't be able to catch him.
So it's the difference between the profile of the two
and how that carries over to the game as well.
(33:47):
I also love that you brought up the V deck
And this is something that I've kind of played around
with a lot, just from an Excel standpoint, in just
different calculators to try and understand how much do we
have to actually load these athletes from a resistant sprint standpoint.
And I think it's something that I took for granted
when I was in school. I was like, oh, yeah,
you know, math, Excel, Like I'm not going to need
(34:08):
that stuff. And then I got into the real world
and it was like this like realization of like, oh shit,
this stuff is really freaking important. So one of the
things I always push other coaches and physical therapists and
pretty much anyone in the sports performance sports REHEB space
to do is get familiar with Excel and actually learn
some of the math that goes into this stuff, some
of the statistical stuff that goes into it because you know, unfortunately,
(34:32):
if you don't know what your data is telling you,
or you don't know how to represent it visually in
a way that you can explain it to anyone, you're
ultimately going to be misguided by it. You're going to
misinterpret it, and you're going to completely miss the boat.
So I think making sure that you have a system
in place to not just collect the data accurately, if
you will, but also process it and analyze it in
(34:54):
an effective and efficient way is just as important in
my mind.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
No doubt. And you said something, you know that's that's key, right.
So like on field sport, you know, acceleration is that
is the number one attribute that wins, right. So you know,
that's why a lot of track guys can't convert to
football players because football is not straight ahead. You got
a lateral jump cut, you got to make that extra
head and you know hat in the box miss right,
So a lot of those guys aren't going to actually
(35:20):
get to top speed unless they just break away. So
there's a lot of start stop, right, excel, decel re excel,
change the direction. So you know, in field sports, you
know lacrosse right, football soccer, whatever it is. The ability
to accelerate very very aggressively and very very efficiently is
(35:42):
is the number one. It's king, right. Speed is really
the queen in that regard. Okay, but you know you
still have to train top speed because of what I
said before. You know, speed is the high tie that
lifts all boats, and that's max velocity. Right. So if
you're sprinting straight ahead, even though the game is not
(36:04):
straight ahead, I get that. I get that as well
as anybody you know, but that that sprint work is
such a hit to the nervous system and to the
brain to be able to absolutely turn on all the
highest threshold motor units all at once in a synchronized
you know ability, right, It's like it's like turning all
(36:26):
the breakers on at one time and not having three
of them trip and not turn on. Right. That is
going to elicit such better athleticism throughout the entire chain,
for for lifting, for making decisions in the in the
sports world, which we know is chaotic, right, you have
to solve problems in microseconds in sports, you know, to react,
(36:49):
to be injury resilient, to decelerate, you know, all these things.
I believe stem from the nervous system and how well
that nervous systems you know, obviously built out. But what
I was going to tell you was, we do a
lot of linear speed focus with all of our athletes
in the winter, you know, that is the focus we
run straight ahead. We absolutely transition to more game speed
(37:14):
in the spring and summer because they're getting closer to
coming into their seasons, especially if you're a fall athlete,
like a football player, right, like a soccer player. So
then we get into a lot of you know, deceleration work,
although I don't I don't think we ever leave deceleration work.
Whether we're in we're in the weight room and we're
working on eccentric control or isometric or snap down holes
(37:37):
or whatever, we're always tugging on the muscles and adding
speed to them when they lengthen and then making those
athletes stick those positions, right, because that's what that's what
injury resiliency is from, is you know, the tremendous pulling
forces on muscles when they lengthen, and so we're always
(37:57):
doing that. But from you know, it's different, as you know,
especially being a PT right, Like I try to tell
people all the time, It's one thing to go through therapy,
and this isn't I'm not trying to cross over in
that world. But but it's one thing to do physical
therapy or to train, you know, in the weight room.
And I don't care if you're you know, you're snapping
(38:17):
down as fast as you can into a split position,
holding it and doing a trapbar squad jump up, or
being having tremendous accommodating resistance. I'm in a band squad, right,
I've got tons of weight and the bands are stretched
like crazy, and I'm gonna drop into the squat and
that thing's gonna yank me down and I'm gonna stick
it at the bottom of ninety hold it, and drive
(38:38):
it back up. That still falls way short in comparison
to the intensity of sprinting ten yards up the field
and stopping on a dime. Right in the weight room,
I can only move so fast, I can only move
at so many meters per second. But out on the
field I can move six, seven, eight times that amount
(38:59):
of speed I can get in the weight room. Right, So,
in order to prepare athletes for the demands of their game,
we have to get out there in the on the
field and we've got to move. We've got to move fast.
We've got to stick our feet in the ground. We
got to stop, we got to cut, we got to restart.
We've got to put those tremendous you know, ground forces
(39:21):
and speeds on the athlete at the right time. We've
got to prepare them for them. But we have to
do that. So we transition a lot at this time
of year. We get away from the linear stuff, you know,
and we start really getting into the vector cuts and
the start stopping, d cells and all that, and we
start to increase the metabolic cost of the workouts because
(39:43):
our job is to prepare them for the demand of
the sport, right and so you know, in one regard
we were talking about speed, full recovery. You know, what
we do today should never ruin tomorrow, right. I think
Tony Holler said that a lot. You know, we know
that that's that's really important. But when we get into
this part of training the athlete, we crossed that line
(40:04):
a little bit and we definitely build more capacity and
more you know, starting and stopping is the most taxing
thing on the body. So if you look at like
a GPS load calculation player load, we have GPS on
kids all the time, all over the country. And if
a kid were to do a really like intense super
(40:25):
fast speed workout where they hit, you know, twenty six
miles per hour on fly thirties and you know, they
went through a really really intense speed workout, which to me,
intensity is how fast they run, not how many reps
they do right or how much distance they cover. If
you were to look at that player load score versus
a player load score of a guy who's doing a
(40:47):
bunch of vector cuts, a bunch of start stopping in workouts,
that start stop is going to be extremely higher in
player load than the fast running because of all the
you know, the wear and tear on the body from
celerating and then decelerating, and that takes a lot of
wear and tear. So we have to build the tolerance
to that for our athletes.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
One hundred percent agree. I like that long term development model.
And to your point, you know, I have no shame
in kind of throwing some shade at the PT space
that way. If you're working with athletes that are in
long term rehabs like ACL maniscus hipscopes, that sort of thing,
there is a time that you need to be sprinting
them in their rehab. Now obviously it's not month one
(41:30):
or month two, but like, you have to expose them
to this stuff, plain and simple. Nothing that I've found
preps you for sprinting like sprinting. You know, you can't
just do like a Nordic or you can't do a
squat or some heavy rdls and think that's going to
carry over to sprinting. You know, the forces that you're
talking about, the forces you mentioned, especially in that first
(41:53):
ten to twenty yard range are just so many times
greater than body weight that you just can't recreate that
in the jim or if you can, you know, please
send me a text and email and tell me how
you did it, because I haven't figured that out yet.
You know, we're talking eight full body weight forces through
like hamstrings alone. So I think that you need to
sprint athletes as part of their long term rehabs. You
(42:16):
need to expose them to that and then build on
it as you mentioned, and introduce some of these change
of direction concepts later on the line. That way, and
that could be a whole separate podcast episode in deep
Dive into how we incorporate sprinting in these return to sport,
return to play conversations that way, if you will. But Eric,
I know we've covered a lot. I know we could
(42:36):
talk about this for six more hours and still just
really scratch the service surface as far as how much
there is in sprinting and long term athlete development in
this middle school high school athlete population. Is there anything
in particular that you really want to kind of recap
and summarize or anything that we missed as we were
discussing today. No.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
I just think, for you know, every time that I
try to share my knowledge experience, I really want to
make an impact or a difference. I want someone to
take a nugget away. They're not gonna understand everything we said.
It's a lot, but I want parents and athletes to
understand that you've got to have patience. You you cannot microwave.
(43:21):
You know, if you want to go from a four
nine forty to a four six forty, okay, you can't
do it in six weeks, you know, doubling up on workouts, Ay, well,
you're going to hit the gym in the morning and
we're gonna go back at night and do a double
day because we're gonna we're gonna we got to get
this forty time down right, or we've got to get
our vertical up. You you have to understand that the
(43:44):
body must have a stimulus, a training stimulus, right, which
then you know, tears the body tissues down, and then
there has to be a recovery and a regrowth of
that issue, and that that whole concept takes time. And
(44:05):
if you just keep tearing down tissues from training hard
and you never let them regrow and make the adaptations, okay,
you're not going to see the results that you want.
It's going to be like you and I wearing five
layers of clothes and jumping in a pool with boots on.
When we get out of that pool, how are we
(44:25):
going to feel? Heavy? Constricted? Right, bogged down? That's what
the nervous system feels like when you don't recover. Now
you get used to it. It's what it's. You know,
athletes that train seven days a week, they don't know
that they're restricted and bogged down, right, because you just
(44:47):
you adapt to whatever it is you're doing, right, but
you don't see your performance outputs improving, And so what
happens is they just double down on stupid and they
train harder because they're like, I'm not training hard enough.
And you know what I'm saying it just so like everybody,
if you just went to like Florida for two weeks
(45:10):
and sat in the sun and drank water and didn't
do a single thing, no training, don't go to the gym,
sit in a sit on the beach chair for eight
hours a day and just you know, relax and take
two weeks off and come back, everybody would run their
fastest forty they've ever ran. Everybody would jump their highest
vertical from doing nothing right. It's proven. So you know,
(45:33):
understand that it's it's patience and that it's it's not
necessarily getting some you know, crazy level of training. It's
it's it's getting the mastering the basics, mastering the simple
concepts and becoming excellent at them, and just giving the
body time to grow and adapt and you know, recover
(45:58):
to every athlete. Should you know, I beg people to
get one full day off because I know what I'm
dealing with. But the reality is every high school and
middle school athlete should have two full days off two fold.
It doesn't mean they have to be together. They might
be spread out you know, but two full days off,
a week of doing nothing doesn't mean you can't study
(46:19):
film doesn't mean you can't work rip strength with a
tennis ball. Sitting around watching your favorite show doesn't mean
you can't catch balls out of a jugs machine just
sitting still, turning sideways. It doesn't mean you can't work
on your craft. But you have to take the physical
meter down to pretty much nothing. Your body needs to recover.
(46:40):
And you know, the last thing I'm going to say,
I think you'll like this. If they could ever give
you a pill that would increase your vertical jump by
many inches over time. If I could give you a
pill that would make you faster, like in the forty
yard dash or in one hundred meter dash. If I could
give you a pill that would make you more injury resilient.
If I could give you it would all be in
(47:01):
a pill that could make you react better as an
athlete and make better decisions on the field. I would
give it to you. I actually can give it to you.
It's called sleep. Sleep eight hours a day. Guys. Put
your phone away from your face, Get your phone away
from your face, get to sleep. You know, a couple
(47:22):
of nights a week by ten o'clock and sleep eight
eight hours of unrestful sleep, and you will see your
numbers go up. That is the pill.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
I love that. I love those takeaways, Eric and I
couldn't agree more. And the only thing I would add
to it is, please be consistent with the program that
you run. Nothing drives me more crazy than an athlete.
To your point about wanting quick results, going into one
facility training for six weeks, not being happy, and then
jumping to another facility and another facility and a new program,
(47:54):
be consistent, trust the process, and stay the course. And
as you mentioned, cover sleep, pay attention to the minor
things because as you mentioned, you've worked with extremely high
level athletes and all of those guys are dialing in
all those things. If you want to be the next
again or you want to be the next Beanie that way,
(48:15):
you have to take everything seriously. It's not just you
know we see this all the time on social media.
It's not just train hard. It's like, hey, you have
to train, you have to sleep, you have to eat,
you have to recover, you have to do all the
things that way. And I know that you and your
team are masters of that, and you work with athletes
from very young ages all the way up to you know,
the highest levels of sport. That way, So for people
(48:37):
who want to find out more about you and your team,
maybe they want to find out more about the remote
programming and coaching that you guys offer. Where can they
find out more about you and plus two?
Speaker 2 (48:47):
Yeah, so mostly the social media that we use most
of Facebook and Instagram. I'm just Eric Lichter on Instagram.
This e er C l c h T er plus
two University is on Instagram. Both of them are on
We're on Facebook. I'm on Twitter a little bit. I'm
not a big X guy, you know, but we're on there.
(49:11):
And then our website is www dot plus two, so
that's p l us, the number two a dash sign
the letter you dot com, So plus two dash you
dot com and you know you can find us right there.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
That's awesome. We'll link to all of that in the
description below as well. That way, if you didn't quite
catch it, you can just click there and see everything
that Eric and his team are up to. This is
an amazing conversation and I really appreciate your time, man.
Thanks for everything.
Speaker 2 (49:42):
Man, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on
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