The mic is hot and the game is on. You're listening to News for the Nation podcast by Aces Nation where we talk about nutrition, sports performance, the journey of a student athlete and more. I'm Claire. I'm Zach. Time to level up. Welcome back sports fans. Today we're covering part two, I guess you could say of our case study where today I'll be going over a couple of unique cases that I've dealt with and what that progress looks
like. So I'm going to take you in depth as to improvements that were made from testing perspective and some of the things we focused on from strength training in the weight room and how we evolved as they went through the respective time of the competitive season for both of these athletes. So, but first things first, Claire, you've been watching the Olympics. I have too. What are some of your favorite moments so far? Gosh, I feel like there have been a lot. Gymnastics has been
fun to watch on the men's and women's side. So I think one would be both teams meddling at the Olympics in the team. So that's awesome. I'm trying to think swimming wise. What's happened one thing that surprised me was Katie Ledecky in the 800? Getting bronze But that's okay. I know But she like holds the best 20 times from one of their races was a 1500. Yeah, it was ridiculous
to see that stat. Yeah Ridiculous So that was interesting but a lot of other great things with swimming the men won the four by 100 won gold I think women got silver in the 4x100. I can't remember what race it was, but I think we went 1 -2 in maybe the women's 400 IM. I think that was it. I don't remember, but a lot of great swimming. I can't remember exactly the the placing and stuff, but it's just been really cool to
watch and just cheer for USA. Yeah, so I've been watching Obviously we did the Six Nations podcast series, but I definitely watched the rugby, right? I'm really upset that the men's rugby sevens was so early. Like I missed all of it except for one match. Yeah, because it was before the opening ceremonies. Yeah, right. So they did
it so early that I missed it. And I was a little upset because DuPont From the 11 squad their national team who was on six nations He was on the the seven squad here and they won the gold Wow, and he was a big part of it, too He was
incredible. I saw some highlights. I didn't watch a match with France, but So yeah, I was upset that that happened so early, but man that USA women's bronze medal finish Oh incredible because Australia had a great uh they had a great try like 12 seconds before we did that at the end oh it was incredible that finish so uh that was one of the ones that I was really impressed with um and I've seen some soccer um watch USA men's and women's right now men doing really well I
mean doing better than they have I think at any Olympics as far as scoring goes I'm taking that with a grain of salt because I don't feel like there are a lot of like top international guys playing soccer for their country in the Olympics because I feel like Euro Cup, World Cup, those things are probably more important to those players because we don't even have some of our top players
playing for our Olympic team. So I'm taking it with a grain of salt, but it's good to see that, you know, men's team is doing well and women's teams continue to roll. So that's nice. Same with basketball. I've watched some basketball. I've watched some games that weren't even USA basketball that have been pretty good. So it's been been an interesting game so far. Yeah. Two, I guess a couple of other interesting things with field hockey I was watching earlier today.
USA is not very good. Oh, I mean, I hate ranked women's field hockey, which is so interesting because I feel like it's a very popular sport here. I know, I hate to say it. I did watch them play against Argentina maybe like last week. We did not look very good, but interesting. I think they were playing Great Britain this morning. Not great. Yeah. Well, on a positive note though, didn't Men's Rowing, one of their groups won gold for the first time in like 60 years, something
like that. I don't know if they won gold. No, but first time and since 1962 or something I believe was something like that. Yeah, I Don't know if you heard anything about the triathlon but I heard it got postponed Yeah, I they they postponed it and then it happened and apparently the water quality still wasn't great. So I don't remember where he's from, but one of the athletes finished and was, he got sick like 10 times right after. Wow. Wow. Wow. Yeah. I can only imagine.
I mean, how much water you're ingesting swim. Yeah. So, yeah. Oh, not great. Apparently the level, the E. coli levels were quite high. Yeah, so what I saw was just from notifications that I've gotten was the day it was supposed to happen, they postponed it and then they had it the very next day. So I guess the levels had changed enough for them to continue on. But anyways, I mean, it's been it's been pretty good so far. The boat entrance was pretty unique, you know, I guess.
I think it was the first time they've ever done something like that as an opening ceremony. Some of the artistic pieces that they had set around the scene were pretty good. Lady Gaga performance, I was impressed. I didn't see her performance. Oh yeah, yeah. She was like one of the first ones. She came out, she was singing in French for a while too, so it was nice. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But anyways, let's get into
these case studies. I'm going to cover women's soccer player and a men's basketball player. I'm going to do a couple of different seasons here. So women's soccer, I'm going to talk about what we do, what we did off season. So it would have been in the springtime because their competitive season is in the fall and men's basketball. I'm going to talk about work that we did right before the season and then into the season throughout. So a lot of times Just to give you some backstory
here, general backstory. A lot of times when research articles are put out, normally they're done on recreationally active people because they can't get athletes or whatever to participate. It's hard to get that inclusion there. So I'm going to give you people who are like my highest.
Some of the highest like athletes I guess like highest level people that we had on the team and probably in the school at the time Just because I feel like it's important to know that even though you're already one of the top people you can still make improvements and these individuals definitely work hard at their craft in their sport and they also Invested a lot in themselves In training physical training. So anyways, let's
let's get into soccer here. So again to preface these are college athletes at the time and This is all supervised and programmed by me. So I was in charge of these people So taking into account we did a lot of testing on the front end of these so I've got numbers to compare it to Let's get into the soccer one first This is the spring before her senior season. So this is her junior spring, important time to develop as a player. Really some of the things that we
focused on in a lot of our pre -lifts. So we would do general warm up, get blood flow going, kind of wake yourself up, get your system ready to move, go through different ranges of motion.
What I like to focus on are elements of core, maybe some glute elements if that's important to your sport, maybe a rotational movement if that's important, maybe a stability movement, some type of posterior shoulder because it's great for posture and to protect our shoulders and any type of pressing that we do, especially if you're an overhead athlete, someone who throws
a lot or hits the ball overhead. And then I usually do a little bit more specific type of movements at the end to actually get you prepared for that first big movement that we're gonna do. So all the pre lifts are gonna be like that, but really I'll focus on kind of generally what the area
of focus is through these different phases. So. What we wanted to do early on after we did our initial assessment is we wanted to kind of build up some Tolerance and move into a type of training that's called triphasic At the time I did a lot of Olympic weightlifting movements So I have got hang power clean in here. We did hang power snatch. I was still doing catching at this point Hadn't learned what I did later on after moving
on from this place. So We did a lot of clean, some snatches, really our main emphasis movements. If it wasn't an Olympic lifting variation, we had a back squat. I also focused on rear foot elevated squat or Bulgarian split squat, as some people may call it, and then a bench press as well. So those were kind of my main timed movements. So the first thing we did was focus on eccentric. So we're focusing on different elements of like an exercise. In a squat, for instance, you go
down. That's the eccentric component. There's the part at the bottom where you're changing from down to up. That's called amortization. A lot of people do ISOs in that little element before you go up from going down. And then we focused on the concentric movement part of it, which is us just executing the movement at a
normal speed or a fast speed. So really, those are some of the things I decided our women's soccer team, we needed to increase the force that we could produce on the eccentric side. So we did a lot of eccentric work on the front end. So we spent two weeks doing some sub max eccentric work in our main movements, really focusing on three seconds down early on. A lot of our accessories at that point were upper body, hip dominant or glute dominant type of movements.
some type of single leg and anything we could get from a pulling perspective to increase the upper body. I also focused on the hamstrings a little bit just to build up some strength in those areas. I also have some mobility in this post lift and then some upper body work. So I don't want to bore you with a lot of this intricate stuff here like going through sheet by sheet.
But yeah, so the first two weeks we did go submaximal eccentric, which means we weren't at max we were i think the highest we went with 70 percent of their uh one rm and that was from testing the week before and then we went a week of sub our um super maximal so we went above we had spotters for this so it was easy for us to do uh the only place i didn't go above 100 percent was uh Instead of doing Bulgarian split squat we moved to split squat a little more stability and the ability
to get out of it We kept the percentage low, but still focused on eccentric Back squat we had spotters on the side and a person behind so we had three people ready to help this person Get up to the top so they weren't Bringing the entire weight up himself Similar with bench press, we had spotters ready to help on the way up. So a lot of communication was happening here.
Mainly the spotter behind was giving the down call, giving the one, two, three count, and then the up call for everyone to engage the bar as a unit. Continued on the same with my accessories from that. And then we moved into after our ISO phase, holding for three seconds, we moved into More of our just concept your faith getting back to training kind of a normal speed. So Same pre -lift emphasis now we're throwing in a couple different elements of our Olympic weightlifting
Variations here. We did clean we did snatch. We also did a pull so we weren't catching and that was probably our heaviest one Because we could smaller range of motion we could do more right now. We're getting into a phase called APRE so What we're doing is trying to maximize the body's readiness in that day and see where we are and use that as a driver for development. So we use the same movements across for those
three main ones. And then my accessories, I stayed with the same focus, whether that was a hip hinge, single legwork, like lunging, some type of range of motion, maybe some adductor. for groin strengthening and then some upper body push and pull to balance us out and keep us strong when we're trying to get pushed off the ball. So I spent three weeks actually in APRE and worked my way down as we were getting into our mid semester test. Then we retested, took a deload week. I think it was
a week I called competition week. So we had We had different stuff going on. We got outside of the weight room to kind of de -load from what we had been doing because that eccentric work, the isometric work, and then the APRE stuff, I mean, that's a tough task for them to be able to handle. So it was definitely, it was good for us to get outside of the weight room for a little while, for just that one week. And then
we jumped back into APRE. Because I had a week where there was an optional phase coming on so I just switched some emphasis there Following that we really loaded up on the Concentric phase of it. So we contrasted and what that means is we took a heavier weighted movement such as a back squat and then we move that into an unweighted movement. So we did a French contrast. This really what's called type of style. Like I've got back squat. We immediately went to some hurdle jumps.
And then our next one was like a hang power clean where it's a little bit lighter than what we're doing for back squat. Range of motion is different. And then the last one, we did an assisted movement where we're not creating the force, but we're getting moved faster as we jump, right? So it's taking weight off of us at the bottom so that we can increase the rate at which we're jumping, not necessarily increasing the force which would
have been achieved to the hurdle jump. So we did some different contrast training to mix it up and get exposure from high force movements, high velocity movements, weighted, unweighted, all those things together to try to create a stimulus that was going to be beneficial for power or force development. We spent a few weeks there Moved into a little more volume training
after we got out of spring ball. So our contrast was mostly during their spring ball Component where they played a few few matches and then we got into a little bit of a pyramid scheme still trying to keep the rate of force development high in our first block with our Olympic variations. Maybe we had some jump squats that I added in. So changing it up a little bit for us on the development side. But then our more volume focused
movement was where our main lifts were. And then our accessories, even though the exercise may have changed and evolved a little bit, they still came with the same purpose of what I had mentioned earlier. And really, after we hit this pyramid phase here, we were into our final testing block of the semester to kind of solidify our one rep maxes for the summer program they were going to do and to see what our improvement was overall throughout that semester. So then we hit summertime.
I know that was quite a bit right there before I get into these testing numbers. Did you have any thoughts pop up during any of that? I think the main thing, so you mentioned what type of athlete this person is, and you kind of mentioned it sporadically, but going into this program, what were her and your specific goals by the end of it? So my goal for the entire program for her was to be able to create greater force, which to get stronger and then to be able to
do it faster, right? So I wanted to see her performance metrics go up, right? So I wanted to see her be able to jump higher, but also run faster. And really I wanted her lower body strength to body weight ratio increase. And those things were what I felt was important. Her change of direction ability was also something we wanted
to see improve as well. really kind of can you exert more force let's say jump higher or lift more right and can you while achieving those things can you run faster change direction better and maintain or improve your strength the body weight ratio so those are some of the things that I was looking forward to and I know that she was just ready to keep improving her strength as she went along and just continue to be the
top person amongst our peers on the team. So a lot of those things really showed the rest of the time. So I'll go over a couple of final test results. So the numbers I'm going to give the difference, the improvements, or yeah, it'll be the improvements even if it's a negative in the time. It'll be from the first test, right? So remember, I had an initial test at the beginning of the semester. I had a mid semester test right
before they started playing spring games. And then we had the final one a couple of weeks after that. So. Body mass doesn't necessarily matter because we'll get into the strength of body weight ratio later. Vertical jump over this period right here increased by 3 .4 inches. So really nice to see that she was able to increase her vertical output. Broad jump increased by five inches. So horizontal force production definitely increased.
10 yard sprint the same. 40 yard sprint is what was probably the her biggest improvement went down three tenths of a second. So That was a big deal for her because her position, she played wingback. So sometimes she has to make really far runs and maintain speed. So that's important. Also for her position, the ability to change direction efficiently. Her change of direction test went down almost four tenths of a second. So that was a big deal as well for her to be
able to change direction more efficiently. But even though those Numbers went up Where was it here hang power clean number went up so her Olympic lifting capabilities Technique wise sure got better through practice, but also the amount that she was able to withhold or withstand Back squat numbers increased not necessarily It was based on the APRE number that we had so it wasn't just that her overall max calculated went up.
It was the fact that she was able to have more load on the bar and be able to be successful. So her bones get the benefit of that force, her muscles get the, and tendons get the benefit of that force. So it's not only that she was like, it's not like she was doing lightweight, a lot of reps and it calculated to this giant numbers. The fact that she was able to take on more on the bar, and do it, lift more. So bench,
deadlift, those numbers all went up. But what we really were wanting was her strength to body weight ratio to go up. And that increased both times. So from mid -test to the final test, it continued to increase from the very beginning. And that's what we wanted. She maintained the highest on the team. And to be fair, rivaled the top guys or somewhere in that top layer of men's soccer players that we had at the school
as well. So that was a big deal, probably one of the most powerful people that we had on campus at the time. And I'll say to her credit, going into that next season, her senior season, never missed a game, able to play. 90 plus minutes for the entirety of the season. So really a credit to her capabilities as an athlete and then her dedication and intentional activity as an athlete. So really that was impressive to me that she was able to improve even though You got soccer
practice. We're doing conditioning on top of that. We're really not even talking about the days where we would start on the field and do sprint technique, do change direction mechanics or something, do plyometrics. And then we've got lifting. You've got academics on top of that. This is someone who actually is now a doctor. So somebody who was higher up in the pressures of academia So just really impressive what we
got here. That's hard. I was going to ask too, since you mentioned obviously starting this at the beginning of the semester, there wasn't necessarily spring ball games. But if there would, there have been anything that you would have done differently if you had maybe started this with her in the summer after spring ball versus starting when she was still playing games. Probably. If she would have been on campus and we would have done
summer training. Probably would have started something similar and gone a little bit longer in each phase because I mean in the semester were limited to a certain amount of weeks that we can use for the NCAA. So you have to kind of pick and choose your battles and do what you think is best for your team at the right time so. I think we did a pretty good job of like what the dose doses were. Yeah, I would probably
just extend some of the phases. But really, the power phase as we got towards the end, like you're talking about summer training, they come back in August, my whole July, maybe even maybe even the last part of June, we're probably been more focused towards How fast we're producing force so more like a power model maybe even see and I might have taken down The I might have taken down some of the load like reduce some of my percentages as we get into more of a fitness
component because Although fitness was important for matches and practice at this point in time It wasn't like they were coming back and having to perform a fitness assessment at the beginning of preseason camp. Right. Yeah. So I think we would have moved our focus a little bit towards the halfway point instead of like at this point, I was able to focus on those short power moments more than fitness. Right. And at some point there's
there's a shift between the two. You still need to maintain Your speed capabilities and that's why it's important to continue sprinting even as you're trying to get ready for your fitness assessment But yeah, I think we were allowed to do a little bit more Higher load in the weight room because we weren't about to come back into a fitness assessment So and to be to be fair, that's all my experience has been is that when people are coming back to a fitness assessment
Whether it's men's or women's soccer For some reason that's all they seem to do is like I'm just gonna run because I need to be ready for this fitness assessment, right? Yeah, no Probably. Yeah, I think things would have probably changed for me. Maybe moving from Just do a back squat, you know as my main lift to moving to more of a single leg strength as we were getting Into that closer to preseason camp type of thing Just change the focus a little bit. But yeah, good
question. Yeah, that's interesting. I think Mainly I also ask because I think when you look at it from a nutrition perspective to sometimes we almost depending on the goal want to wait for a particular point in the season to work on certain goals. And sometimes that'll change things. So it's interesting to kind of see. I would say if anything, that goal of like getting stronger and faster, you could probably do most of the time whenever, especially again, from a nutrition
perspective, that just means eating more. So you could definitely do that in season versus if we're trying to really focus on body composition. We usually recommend waiting until off season or summer, sometime when you're not necessarily having to maintain. a specific level of performance. Yeah. And I think that would be probably is the best time to do that because you're not playing any games. You're not necessarily worried about
so much sports skill technicalities. You're pretty much just training at that point and trying to recover from training. So yeah, it makes sense. And that's really a time where a lot of athletes, whether it's the summer or like this long off season that you have, like Those are times that they try to focus on. This is where I need to gain mass. Right. Hard to do that. Hard to do that when you're in the season. Right. So I think
that does change. If you're trying to gain mass, you're going to lift a certain way and you're going to recover or eat, I guess you would say a certain way. Right. Right. Exactly. So to finish off the soccer one this year. was really unique. The time frame that I talked about because I had the opportunity to collaborate with another strength coach who was at the division one level and I was at the division two level at the time and we were able to compare soccer numbers of
like our assessments. So it's really cool to to see those numbers go back and forth and the person that I'm actually talking about who worked really hard and you know all this She actually had higher numbers than most of the the girls on the division one team So I feel pretty confident in her work ethic not anything really that I had to do But like just her ability to perform at a high level is what I'm seeing from the numbers You know definitely higher than the people we
had on our team, but higher than almost everyone with the Exception of a couple of players on division one level team. So I thought that that was interesting and Great job on her part. Yeah So let's shift to men's basketball now again college athlete I'm gonna go through preseason and in season try to keep it as as short as possible.
So Just give you that the high notes of everything I should say like the last one who had training experience working with me coming into it, this athlete that I'm talking about here also had at least two years of working with me up to this point. So had made improvements already, but again, to say that we can continue to make those improvements. Aces Nation is a team of former college athletes and coaches on a mission to improve the sports culture experience and change
today's expectations. We do this by helping every player maximize their athletic potential with professional programs to improve strength, speed, nutrition, and mental toughness, and by using sports to create a direct pathway to college with a guaranteed college scholarship program for all student athletes. Visit acesnation .org to learn more and schedule a demo. Let's go. A lot of my focus early on with this men's basketball team was to introduce volume, get our technique
down for certain movements that needed it. Like I did, like I said, used Olympic weightlifting variations. So to get our technique down with that, granted, I also had some technology. We use force plates here. So some of the stuff that we did was specific to what their force plate
jumps said about that player. So we may have changed the range of motion that the athlete did, or we may change the speed at which they executed a movement, or we may have had an athlete doing a lower body exercise, but two different lower body exercises just based on their needs from the jumps that we got. So my pre -lift for them was pretty much the same. I do like to focus on a lot of ankle mobility for them. We got hip mobility. Do some type of hip strengthening as
well. Probably you would just consider that glute, some type of core activation and something specific to what we're about to do in our first block of exercise. So really arm four days here. Sorry, I didn't mention the last one. Women's soccer only lifted three days a week. I did mention what they did each of those days, but they did. This men's basketball team at the very early
on we lifted four days. So I had single leg squat as one of my builders for volume, incline press, horizontal dumbbell bench press, and then I did a lateral squat and a hip bridge combo as another thing we did as well. So, posterior or like accessory stuff, focused on hamstrings or hip dominant
movements. Again, did some single leg work, a lot of upper posterior shoulder to protect their shoulders from grabbing a rebound or Defending and maybe you know reaching for something, you know and getting your arm hit or For shooting or blocking or you know any any type of movement that can happen overhead Just trying to protect that there And we also did some low back work Again some more glute posterior like reverse hyper type of work post lift Did some like easy
mobility You could say it was hinging on some type of balance. It does some overhead squat movements. So just trying to work on some T spine movement whether that was stability or whether that was not moving and functionally staying stacked or we were actually Rotating and then some upper body as well early on in our prep.
So focused on this whole prep phase for about four weeks using the same things, working percentages, if we had percentages with the guys, or if with our new guys, we were just kind of seeing where they were and, and letting them self select at that point. So for basketball, it's a little bit different, like they play until hopefully you play until March, right? Late March. And then you get like a couple of weeks off and then you come back and you may have two weeks, you
may have one week. to do some workouts before it's finals and you're out of here, right? So not a lot of time to do assessments, a lot of assessments in that spring semester. So we did one before they left. When they come back, it's kind of a phase where you like to get going as much as possible. For this particular year, we got to work as soon as possible. We did do the force plate testing and that was about it at
the very beginning. But before we got into preseason practice, we went into a testing session where we just focused on movements that we have been doing and Also our jumping and sprinting and change direction mechanics as well So that leads us into preseason where I really decided to take a lot of the load off So as they get into that first couple of weeks of practice where it's really heavy very intense for our team at this point where we were a very fast -paced team I
took out all my Olympic weightlifting variations, but I kept the supersets that were with them. Most of them were either a med ball movement, posterior shoulder, some type of mobility, probably T spine. I kept all of those after our pre lifts. So it's basically an extended part. And then we went into our main accessory lifts, but reduced
the volume quite a bit. I also in men's basketball and women's basketball use a type of training that incorporates contraction of the muscles on different sides of the body, upper and lower body at the same time. Just something that gets blood flow moving. You accumulate some type of fatigue and it really trains your heart to be efficient in pumping. It's a pretty good form of what I would say conditioning without running reps. So we're still training, getting some tissue
exposure. So we're doing a lot of reps like you may be going through a squat or a lunge or a single leg bridge. And you're also doing a push
or a pull at the same time. So your body is going through ranges of motion and contracting and your heart is having to pump a lot and there's a science behind whether you're standing or whether you're laying on your back to do some of the exercises but to keep it brief like we did this escalating density type of training in this first block a bit of preseason because it was really not low maintenance but it was a low fatiguing type of exercise and we were able to set ourselves
up for we were going to use it late in the season so So we saw that continue We got into the season
things got pretty specific pretty quick. So we still focus on our Olympic weightlifting variation our Back squat starts to become a little more specific to guys based on their force plate number And then we're just slowly working in this escalating density training at the end And then any areas we need to in between we do it had a lot of check boards at the end What that means is I would have something on the board for a different groups whether they were someone who needed to work
on their quad strengthening or their ankle mobility they would have something to do or I got guys who need to work on their hamstring strength or their full body range of motion they would work on something else completely so As we get further into the season, it's even more specific and this kind of just continues on the way down. So we've got a group that's working on one thing and a group that's working on another thing. And the exercise is buried just a little bit.
So for instance, on the same week, I got a group working on front squat and push press on different days. Then the other group would be working on rear foot elevated squat and overhead squat on different days. And this continued to go on throughout the season where some points I worked on strength. Then I moved into some different power work. Almost like in a linear fashion, we did some strength, some power before going back to strength and then back to power. And as we got into later
in the year, we worked more on speed. This team, at this point in time, we were able to use velocity tracking devices. So we were able to program a lot of our movements like back squat or our hang clean pulls, even our bench press off of velocity. So we were able to just. kind of take it to the next level, I guess, with what our output was and where we were focused. So I could
give the guys a range of a back squat. We're trying to be between this and this and they're going to be able to see it on the monitor or have the guy spotting them, tell them, hey, you're not in that zone. You know, you need to go faster or great. You're great right there. Let's let's keep going. So I think that really kind of, you know, drives the output and the intent behind every single lift. Crazy thing is about this team here, this was the year that COVID happened.
So into my last programmed phase, I believe we got shut down. So we didn't finish that phase, which ended up being my first day. The main focus
was the two different. Things that that you know, we were set on we're doing specific and then my second day was more of just a this day's for everyone our focus is the same type of thing but Really we worked our way into moving as fast as we can and we kind of just bounced back and forth from we picked our spots right where We had the opportunity to work on strength and our schedule was going to be pretty consistent It wasn't like going up to a time of high competition
or like high stakes moment where it was like conference tournament or something like that or first conference game we picked our spots to really focus on strength for a while because they're getting a lot of that power and speed and practice like I said there was a fast -paced team and the practice was incredibly intense so we just kind of worked that and really stayed on top of our jumps. We continued to jump on the force plate throughout the season to see
where we were, how we were improving. Do we need to make any adjustments? Does a guy need to move from this group to the other group based on where his jumps were? Did somehow his mechanics change or his body's capabilities are allowing him to do a little bit more? Really, it doesn't happen very often, but it allows us to see details that I can't see from my eye. I can see how these guys are actually producing sports. So that was
really great. But all that to say, we went into the very end of this season before COVID hit, being number five in the nation, won our conference tournament, and we're hosting regional. So we're
really on the uptick. My personal opinion was that we were loaded and set to win the national championship that year obviously nobody did because they didn't hold it right so yeah so anyways um yeah so that was kind of our our uh go through the end there and and really i brought this basketball example to light because one of our athletes on this team who went through this program um in the group that needed to focus a little bit more on range of motion was national player of
the year that year. And so having the opportunity to work with him and again, another guy who is best on the team, best in the nation and someone who was just really dedicated every day to like what he did in there and had a great time with his teammates. I mean, this guy was a senior this year. So I had seen him from a freshman develop all the way into national player of the year. from all the hard work that he put in on
and off the court. So I know I could take you through some numbers that he definitely improved in. Gosh, he improved his vert, I think, over the time that he was with me, at least seven
inches probably. His 10 yard sprint time went way down Probably one of the fastest guys in the school coming off the line change direction Was like well below the test we were doing at the time was a little bit longer than what normally was but Well below any any standard that we had strength to body weight ratio almost to I mean just just a That's like a really good point like we had another guy who was Over to in the strength of body weight ratio these two guys completely
different in the way that their body operates and they played two different positions, but The other guy that had the higher strength of body weight ratio was like defensive player Of the year in the conference. He also they both went to go play international basketball professionally, so Yeah, these guys incredible incredible was had the opportunity this year to work with a lot of people who played professionally Overseas
some of them still do to this day. So this year was definitely a year that I wanted to highlight not just for our national player of the year, but a lot of other guys who took care of their bodies and took everything we did seriously and it definitely shows in their chemistry and their respect for each other and just the results that they had off the court as well Yeah That's awesome. Are you questions here? Do you have any thoughts as we went through that? No, I think that was
pretty straightforward. I think overall kind of summing things up and looking at both of these case studies as a whole, if a high school athlete or youth athlete or even a collegiate athlete, whoever came to you and just wanted your like top tips or your kind of cliff notes of what they should be doing to get stronger and faster. What maybe three things would you tell them?
I mean, honestly, honestly, the first two things that I would tell them have nothing to do with with lifting or with like what exercise to choose. I would tell them you have to be intentional, but you have to go in with a purpose every day. And you have to come back often, right? You have to be consistent. So if you don't have those
two things, doesn't matter. If it's lifting, if it's a nutrition goal, you're not going to get the result that you want if you're just coming in every so often when you feel like it and you're not even doing it all the way. I've seen so many people who expect to come in for one week and train and be like, top notch athlete, like you have no idea. Even these people that are in the Olympics, they train their whole life for this,
right? At least four years at a time, they're focused on trying to win a gold medal, you know? Yeah. And the people, if you hear about comebacks, like I think, who was it? Suni Lee, Caleb Dressel, even Simone Biles, they took an extended period of time off of their sport. to recover, get better, come back from injury, or just kind of find their passion for it again. But these people also have to remember that they were Olympic gold medalists
before that. Right, right. I mean, you look at Usain Bolt, I know he's got a quote out there, but he trained four years to run less than 10 seconds. Crazy. But you have to. You have to. You think that that guy has less than 10 seconds to be great. He doesn't. He didn't have time for anything like that, right? I mean, even our women's rugby team, they trained not just four years because they're trying to make a name for themselves, like in rugby, many years to get
to this point. And, you know, they got a bronze medal out of it. And so that's to be commended. So the first thing is, yeah, you have to be intentional with what you're doing and you also have to be consistent. And then after that. It's whatever is important for your sport or what your goal is. If you want to get faster, you need to sprint. If you want to get stronger, you need to lift. You need to get some type of resistance to your body. So those is be specific, I guess, at the
end point there. But if you don't have the first two, it doesn't even matter what you pick. You're not going anywhere. No, I think that's great because I think a lot of times people or athletes, especially younger athletes look up to maybe these older athletes and just want like, okay, what exactly do I need to do? But they can have the best or the most well thought out written program. But if they're not doing it consistent, consistently or with the right intent, like you
mentioned, it's not going to work. I know, I know. I guess one thing that I would say to kind of close this out here, if you're somebody who looks at a role model, As someone you aspire to be in athletics Don't look at their highlights, right? Like go read about times that they had to overcome or watch a whole training monologue because Their highlights don't tell you all the stuff that they went through to get to that point. It just shows you the result of all those things,
right? Like they're that great because of some other stuff that's not in the highlight and a lot of time that it took to develop those qualities. So don't just be stuck on the highlights, right? You need to be dedicated to the ins and outs of every moment of training that it takes to get to that point, you know, training and recovery, because you can't, if you haven't learned that recovery is a big deal by now, You need to read up on it, right? It's not just how hard you train.
It's how great you recover so Thanks for everybody for listening. It's been great. Hope you continue to watch the Olympics Exciting moments happening. Yeah, go USA and we will catch you on the next one. See ya