Transcript
Speaker: Everybody loves talk about mental toughness, but no one can really describe it. And I think one of the best descriptions I ever heard from it was mental toughness is just resilience coupled with task orientedness. It's great that we can build resilience, but if it's not related back to my task, we're just going to fall apart. When I see people do that, where we just, we build the resilience part. It's like, okay, we're just going run you until you get super tired.
Speaker: But then I combo it with that task orientedness where, okay, now it's related back to the game. Those kids stay dialed in no matter how tired they get. Welcome to the Captains and Coaches podcast where explore the art and science of leadership through the lens of athletics and beyond.
Speaker: I'm your host, Tex Wokokin, and today I travel to South Carolina, Sorenx headquarters at Summer Strong to sit down with Dr. Dylan Seeley, chiropractor, professor, and strength and conditioning coach at Inferno Performance and Rehab.
Speaker: Dylan's built his career on the movement side of sport. Vision training, concussion recovery, all sorts of stuff most coaches were never taught in school. I brought him the injuries I see every season on the field, shin splints, low backs, hamstring tears, concussions, and asked him to translate it for high school coaches.
Speaker: No fancy tech, no thousand dollar machines, no assessments, but just mechanics. and the why behind them. If you coach kids who lift, run, and play through pain they don't understand yet, this one's for you.
Speaker: With that, let's hand it off to Dr. Dylan to help us raise the game. Ready, ready, and break. Action. Live at SummerStrong. point this is 1919 yeah I'm looking at 18 this is from Ross here but that's not a normal shirt no we we had a late night in the printing room and we're messing around and this is ah a one of one it's a limited edition all right well it looks awesome well now I'm jealous ah yeah sitting here with dr. Dylan and Thank you to Coach Cav for connecting us. We had a ah dinner one time at your father-in-law's home. was a memorable moment where we first broke bread, but then through Cav had the opportunity to connect and get to know each other better. So I got a lot of questions for you. You're one of the leading experts in the field related to movement injuries, and I got to manage a lot with my athletes.
Speaker: So I'm going to speak from a high school coach perspective. okay So you're going help us also speak to high school coaches on how to fix this stuff. I'll help translate to the best of my abilities how to fix these problems. And I got to lead off with shin splints. Okay.
Speaker: So here's what I've seen every single season that I coach lacrosse. 50% of my dudes, they play high school football and there's a spring season. So 6 a.m.
Speaker: they weight lift, do running on the track and then do seven on seven practice. um After school so it's lift and train seven on seven and then full lacrosse and that's start and eventually they add spring pad practice That's full pads in that a.m. Block Afternoons off and then they come to lacrosse inevitably shin splints occur So I do my best to do you know ISO holds lots of Dorsey plantar push anything I can do so
Speaker: the has gone down, the pain has been less severe, but it still exists. okay Especially for freshmen coming in that aren't used to that volume. Yeah. um So help us understand the shin splint. So we can really break down shin splints into two different categories. You have like your your common one that we all think of, like the anterior shin splint. um And you also have like the posterior one. So like whether it's you know the you know the big meaty muscle on the front of the shin or if it's the one that's kind of tucked in the bone behind it. that will kind of change how we attack it. Okay. And um so with that big, medium muscle, that tibialis anterior, it's kind of a two-fold issue because it it does help essentially like dorsiflex. So it allows us to get a better shin angle to sprint. But at the same time, it can also block motion.
Speaker: So it's kind of a weird thing. And it's really just how our foot interacts with the ground. And so we have this thing called pronation, which is essentially our foot just flattens out against the ground. And that's what allows us to push off. um If you've rolled an ankle enough times, you start to lose that ability. And what you'll see is you almost take your knee towards like the outside of your foot rather than towards over top or more towards your big toe. And then that kind of creates this blocking mechanism that we see a lot of the time. And with with with that anterior shin splint,
Speaker: We see a lot of just like foot mechanics. It's just not doing its job. Like we athletes, I just have very weak feet nowadays, not a whole lot of time being barefoot. We don't see. um Another big thing is just like the kids are loving to wear slides now.
Speaker: Slides. Yeah. Burkitt socks with socks are back. Yes. At least in Austin. And so when you wear those, they're not the way that you keep them on your foot is you have to almost grab the ground with your toes. And and we're not really designed to do that because we have it's called a windlass mechanism where you're everything kind of stretches on the bottom of the foot when the toes kind of, you know, get this pressure and then you're able to push off. We don't have that anymore because now I'm gripping the ground. The foot isn't stretching. It's not changing shape. And so now in order to actually like lift my foot and push off, it's really just me kind of using that anterior tip to kind of lift my foot up and then step next.
Speaker: And that's why I'm not super big fan of like having my athletes wear shoes like that all the time. But that's usually what you'll see as soon as they get out of practice, they just slide them right back on because it's just, it's the convenience of it. um But ah in regards to that anterior shin splint, I look at it as a lot of volume Or just it's mechanics issue. And so there's two schools of thought. It's just like, we can strictly just, you know, it's too much running volume. And if we back them down, they get better.
Speaker: And I have seen that, but I've also seen it where they back down the volume, they go right back to it and they have shins once all over again. And so then you have another field where it's like, it's strictly a mechanics issue. And honestly, like, you know, in everything in life, usually the answer is a bit of both.
Speaker: And so I look at it as let's let's curtail our volume a little bit. Let's be a little bit smarter about how we run them. knowing like We have to take into account you know what else they're doing outside of things, which is always annoying you know because you want them to do your sport. But you know it's the health of the kids. And the other thing is let's just clean up how they move. like Let's make sure their foot's doing the job, and making sure we can pronate properly, like actually stretch the foot, have some good foot strength. So I'm big on like barefoot stuff, just warming up early on in practice um and just letting them have that.
Speaker: ability to sense the ground, feel it, strengthen their feet up over time. And then once we get going, yeah, then throw the cleats on. And with cleats, how they're made nowadays, like you're seeing a lot of carbon fiber plates, like in the midfoot. So it's actually designed to make your foot super stiff and rigid, which helps you push off. But then it also comes at the price of like, now my foot isn't very flexible and movable. And so this thing that's making us you know head towards high performance is also taking us away from health. Yeah. So it's this interesting trade off that we constantly have in sport. But yeah, for that anterior shin splint, I'm really big on getting the foot to move first. Right.
Speaker: And then it's I don't attack a lot of anterior tip raises or anything like that because it's already getting beat up. It's super overactive. Like, let's give it some time to calm down. Whether you want to, i mean, any modality, you can foam roll it, pens it, you know, dry needle, whatever you like to do to kind of get it to calm back down. And then from there, we also do a bit of just getting their foot to move, like teaching them how you got, I'm going butcher it because had a terrible night of sleep, but it's like 32 joints in your foot. So it's a lot of moving stuff there.
Speaker: And if we can get all those things to kind of move the way that we want, it really takes a lot of stress off your foot. Now, the other thing that a lot of people don't think about is the VMO. So it's the, you know, that little teardrop of the quad muscle.
Speaker: that VMO actually dictates your dorsiflexion because if my knee can't properly fold, but if my VMO can't stabilize my knee to want to fold over, I'm just going to roll towards the outside of my foot, which is then going to make me very reliant upon that anterior tib to then help with the mechanics of my foot.
Speaker: And so I, I program a lot of that stuff in and it could just be like a foam roller wall squat, little ISO drill. Um, and I got videos as of all this stuff. I can give it to you and you know, put it in the the newsletter email. So make sure you sign up for the newsletter. Um, Newsletter.captainsandcoaches.com. So, um yes, I always throw in some drills like that, just some ISO work. It's not enough to fry them, but it's enough to least get it to to do its job. And I'm big on this. It's like, just get in and get out. Like, wake that thing up, and then it's okay, cool. We're we're going right into practice mode.
Speaker: Yeah. Um, posterior shin splints. This is a little bit of a trickier one, and it's because it's almost like the exact opposite mechanics. Like now you're, you're rapidly pronating to the point where you're not controlling it anymore. You're just crashing in and you'll see this. It's almost like the ankle folds in like with some athletes. Um,
Speaker: And what happens is that muscle runs from the inside of your shin all the way down underneath that ankle bone towards the bottom of like essentially the arch of your foot. And so so there's three muscles that are back there and they're just getting rapidly overloaded and crushed. And so, you know, imagine it's like you're holding your arm out and somebody just cranks on your arm all of a sudden and they're just doing that every single time you jog. Like that's what's happening to that posterior tib.
Speaker: And so it's just getting overloaded far too rapidly. And so for this, it's like, i really just have to train this muscle up. I can't just take time off because it's more so just a weakness issue. Like I need to clean this up. And so for those, it's like, you can do little short foot drills.
Speaker: I'm trying to think of what else I've i've done with it. I mean, honestly, just calf raise and different positional work, stuff like that. It's really just to get them strong. Yeah. um And you'll see that with a lot of athletes that just don't like to be in the weight room.
Speaker: Right. And like but they've also gone through a bit of a growth spurt as well. And so they're kind of moving like a newborn deer. Yeah, there's a lot of those. So um I'm super big on the weight room with a lot of that stuff. I feel like we just don't train the intensity of our calves. You know, they're the same because we feel like we get it through running and we, you know, we're trying to be a little bit overly cautious, but it's still something you can really load up on still. Mm hmm.
Speaker: And then um i guess within calf training, now that we're there, is there any, if I hammer calves or do calf work and then practice, is there any Achilles tension there? Cause my calves are, i guess, fatigued. Fatigued. yeah You run into that a little bit, but the good, i mean, the good thing is with like calves is,
Speaker: It's a lot of type one fiber composition. So essentially they're, they're meant to be endurance based. Okay. Um, yeah. Like we might, you know, get a little bit concerned with, um, you know, some Achilles stuff. So we do have to be a little bit mindful of that. Um, in so for me, it's like one to two sets, get in and get out if we're in season mode, right. Or if I'm right around practice, it's like one to two sets getting, get out, just make sure, you know, we we stimulate it, but don't annihilate it Yeah. Outside of that, then I can really start to attack a little bit more. I got some other drills like I played around with a foam roller um and done some real good work on that, too, to be able to train it. And it's also to help kind of how the mechanics of your footwork is like, can things work synergistically or is it just going like.
Speaker: this thing crashes and the next domino crashes and the next domino crashes. And so I've played around with a couple of drills cause I try and keep it as basic as humanly possible. And so, I mean, you can knock out a lot of this phone, like a lot of this calf training with just a foam roller on a wall.
Speaker: Good. Yeah. We're out in the field. Yeah. We don't have access the weight room. yeah So this leads me to my next challenge is teaching these kids how to move, but I don't have the weight room tool, unfortunately.
Speaker: So now they're learning to lift weights with high school football coaches versus like a strength professional. And then know two instances of Spondy pops up. And, dude, I've never even heard of Spondy before this season.
Speaker: So something happened to freshman spondy and then you mentioned it up before this podcast and I'm like, okay, help me understand. I've never heard of this before. Yeah. so this is very, very common in powerlifting backgrounds. So I actually have a spondy and um what it means is, so you have spondylolisis, which is kind of like an inflammation of the facet joints. So if you want to think of it as like, you've got spondylolisis,
Speaker: ah your vertebrae. So essentially it's just a block. And then you've got, let's say that's L4 and then you've got L5, which is another block below it, but you have a disc in between. So there needs to be a way to connect these two bones. And it's almost like having a like a ramp. And so you your L5 has like this, we call it like a or l four has this facet that's angled down and then it connects with this L5 facet that's coming up. And that's what allows us to bend.
Speaker: And so with with bending and some of this rotation stuff, we you have to have a bit of that you know strength and stability to support it because you can get that inflamed and irritated and if it's bad enough you can actually get it to where it fractures and starts to separate and that's spondylolis thesis and so that's where that's what i have so where the bones actually separate off and the reason you see it a lot saw a lot of this within powerlifting is because you're taught to you know chest up arch back hard as you can keep your position also at the same time sitting back onto a box or anything else And so you're creating this hard extension underweight. And so your facets are taking a lot of that load, right? And it's a lot of pressure. That's where everybody's low backs feel terrible after heavy deadlifts or RDLs or box squats.
Speaker: And so that tears you up over time. But now we're seeing this... on the field, which is a little bit different now too. And this is why I was super interesting with, you were talking about lacrosse in this, this is not really a lacrosse issue. And so that was what kind of blew my mind initially, because the only time that we really ever saw this was with gymnastics because gymnastics, they have to extend and rotate and it's not designed to do that. So when you extend, you almost lock the facet out. And so if you try and rotate, there's nowhere for that thing to go. Something has to give. So we see it, we saw it mostly with
Speaker: gymnastics, and so you'll see it a lot in the research, and then baseball pitchers every once in a while. yeah But lacrosse was so new, there wasn't a whole lot of data on it, right? And so now, I mean, some of these kids got some whips on them. And so... So I'm pointing my finger at the football coach and lifting.
Speaker: but they're also shooting a hundred plus yeah shots. And it's like that shin splinted thing. It's like, do I fix up the volume or do I fix up the mechanics? And it's like, Hey, it's a bit of both. And so with shooting now, it's like that arching coming back, you know, and there's just no space, no room to go back into. And so I harp heavily, heavily now on a lot of oblique training for guys. And, um I mean, there's a, there's a super simple drill. We're all do it with athletes out on the field. And you know, you could do it with something like as simple as med ball or trying to think of like maybe even a foam roller, it's something where they can both wrap their arms around something. Okay. And so they're laying next to each other with their arms,
Speaker: wrapped around whether like what's a med ball right and so we kind of loop over and then someone else loops over the other way all you're trying to do it's like wrestling the covers back from your wife you're just trying to roll this thing back across to your side while your partner is actively trying to bring it to their side okay and so you're caught like that that constant wrestle of this it's all rotational yeah and so i'm learning to leverage my obliques on this rotation and that helps to offset a lot of that pressure that we're getting in the low back Because one thing that we see with a lot of powerlifting, not a whole lot of rotational work going on that weight room.
Speaker: And so they're just so underprepared for the sport. You're essentially teaching them to be as stiff and as rigid as humanly possible if we're taking out a lot of this rotation. But yet I'm asking them to go whip 100 shots or do wall balls all night.
Speaker: And now that we are surprised that their low back hurts. Yeah. and so this has been popping up a lot more I've seen, like probably in the last few years in lacrosse. Yeah, okay, and I imagine within also the weight room.
Speaker: Here's what I need to do is get the hand my hands on that program. Yeah if What are we missing and then I can aim to supplement it one interesting? social challenge I had was Previous seniors that did both football and lacrosse, they had to do 100% of everything. And then there was one practice I started to temper the volume. Okay, football guys, you only have, let's just call it three reps.
Speaker: Non-football guys, you're doing five. And then just the, what? That's unfair, all this. And I was like, okay. Just shut up. We'll do four reps, everyone. Chill. So...
Speaker: There was that where i i aimed to temper the volume. They're like, no, we had to do it. They have to do it. It's like, all right. Now we all get worse. Yeah, but I mean, even from the oblique side of things, I mean, even some of the foam roller, like that little calf drill still has an indirect way of actually unlocking your low back because then it works on your hamstrings too. And so your hamstrings attached to the bottom of that pelvis and the top of your pelvis is just connected to your low back. And so if I can take pressure off the top of my pelvis by making the bottom half work a lot harder because my hamstrings are doing their job. Now my low back can you know take a lot of that pressure off.
Speaker: Yeah. Okay, and i got I got some ideas for oblique training to bring it in there. It's going to good. So now this is what we call a segue in the business. You mentioned the hamstring. Yeah. I also want to cover this because you got some great Instagram videos, content teaching, trainers, coaches to understand the hamstring. and i was like, I didn't think of it that way.
Speaker: So help us understand the mechanics of the hamstring. A biarticular joint means it crosses two joints. And yeah, there's a lot going on there. And even rotation at the hamstring and the knee. So some fun stuff. What do coaches need to be aware of? It's not just RDLs and pit bridges.
Speaker: it's kind of yeah It's an interesting thing. And so most of our weight room stuff is driven through a lot of like low back extension to train our hammies. The biggest way to the easiest way to pop a hammy is the same pelvic and chest position you'd be in, in the weight room.
Speaker: So it's kind of a counterintuitive thing because say like, if I'm doing an RDL, like I stick my butt back, my leg is, is pinned. So I'm actively lengthening it, pushing it the other way. Right.
Speaker: My chest is up so I don't fall over or say if I'm doing a Nordic, like I'm arching my back as hard as I can while I'm loading my hamstring. If I arch, if I pop my chest up and you'll see this all the time when kids get real tired when they're running, it's like their mechanics are terrible. Chins up. Chins up, heads flopping back, you know, ribcage is all up, and then they go to step.
Speaker: And it's like if I'm extended all the way up top through my upper half, and then I try and extend through my lower half, something has to give. And so that's exactly what happens. They get fatigued, they lose that chest and rib cage and pelvis position. And all of a sudden they're, you know, they're stretching past their capacity and then it's like, boom, and it happens so quickly. And so the weight room stuff can help, but it doesn't fully replicate the demands of sprinting.
Speaker: Um, and so the biggest thing for like return to play is like, I just have to get them to sprint in a more controlled manner. And so for that, I coach heavily on a lot of that stuff. Um, but again, I can use like that foam roller drill. Again, this is like the perfect catch all because it also makes them work their hammy in a tucked.
Speaker: Position and so it's literally keeping that we call it like belt buckle forward, you know if I'm sprinting That's the cue I like to use well This is almost tucking them so hard that the belt buckles now facing them and so that way now I kind of get back to this middle ground It's like I overshot went backwards so far that now I'm back in the middle because a lot of these kids are just living on the edge where they're just so extended everything because their low backs are chewed up and it's like they can't even touch their toes and And so we do this drill, which makes it go the exact opposite direction. So that way we land right back in the middle.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Well, I mean, that's it easy, affordable, freaking get a bunch of PVC pipes too. And make up they're super simple. Like I had a kid. He was running in the two, so at the 200 and he had hammy tweak and he needed to run like later that week. And this was for states. So it's like, obviously we got to make it to there. And I just gave him like that drill, did some hands on treatment, you know, saw him i like back to back days before he went and ran and like he ended up winning a state title. That's great. And so it's like, again, like there's nothing.
Speaker: there's There's no fancy tech involved. There's nothing like, yeah, it's nice to have that stuff, but it's really just telling me stuff that i already know. Time out. Tex here to take a second to talk about training. i want to extend a seven day free trial for my training program. Old Bull is the program I'm writing for myself.
Speaker: I'm staying active. I'm lifting heavy. I'm having fun with it. And it's flexible to move each day around heavy push, heavy pull cardio. athletic strength, moving those days around to fit my busy schedule between doctorate program, podcast, work, running a business, everything. I got a busy life, so do you.
Speaker: Follow along with the training program with me, seven day free trial. Click the link in the show notes. if you're watching on YouTube, it's right here. Don't want to hold you back anymore. Join us on the program. opal And now back to the show. Ready, ready and break. All right. And so I don't need the fancy tech or any of these little things to measure these metrics. It's like, am I seeing this kid is in a better position? Yes, this drill can put them in a better position and take a lot of load off. and it just cleans up so much stuff.
Speaker: Yeah. That they're not aware of. Yeah. Because when I see that freshman class next year, school year, they're going to be a completely different person. Exactly. So good time to reset everything and movement-wise.
Speaker: I mean, what other injuries common in contact sports are you seeing? Concussions, for sure. Concussions, yeah. So, I mean, are they preventable? Is it inevitable?
Speaker: it's ah It's a bit of both. Like, i I mean, I joke, like, the only way to prevent a concussion is just not playing any sports and living in a bubble. Yeah. that's in i but that's never realistic. And so there is some really interesting research around vision training. um And, again, like...
Speaker: We used to think of vision training as just just this most of abstract thing. And you needed all these like fancy thousand dollar machines. And I'm literally just doing stuff with pen and paper. and It's like, just go to Kinko's and print it out. And it's dirt cheap. And so I've been playing around with a lot of this stuff now. And the reason that concussions, Joe Clark, who I i spent some time learning under, He was at the University of Cincinnati. He implemented this training protocol with the football team there, and he took their concussion cases from nine point on, you know, it's average across 100 athletes per or however many seasons. But it was on average when they calculated out, they were at nine point two concussions before they started the program. And then it went down to, I want to say two point three or something like that. So they just and they didn't add anything. There was no like extra training, no extra neck training, nothing they added into it it was literally just vision training. They layered into the groups.
Speaker: That's fun. And what makes it super interesting is, is the fact that, well, know, why is this working? And it's just because it's the hit that you don't see coming. That usually gives you the concussion. Right. And there's, there's different schools of thoughts. Like, should I train my neck? Should i not train my neck? Cause the research is really conflicting. And it's like, I say it like this neck training is almost like an SAT score.
Speaker: Right. You need it. You need a good SAT t score to get into college. But once you're there, it doesn't guarantee your success after that. Right. I don't even think kids have to take SATs anymore now, though. no know um So I think kids need to train their neck.
Speaker: Am I chasing a specific goal? No, I think we just need to, you know, be involved in the process and consistently train. But once you're going to hit a point where like, OK, we got over that initial barrier of neck strength, that's not going to protect me anymore.
Speaker: But it's my foot in the door to, OK, like, you know, it's it's only going to help you. It's not going to hurt you. Yeah. And so I am big on neck training. And then I also layer in a lot of the vision stuff too. Cool. So that makes a big deal. The other thing is just having very good cardio.
Speaker: That's how you bounce back fairly quickly from a concussion. Explain that. So it's more so you just go into this massive energy crisis when you have a concussion, right? it's's ah It's actually like a neural, so like brain and metabolic issues. So essentially like blood sugar, metabolism, all that stuff.
Speaker: And so what happens is when you get, your you know, a concussion, you have like sodium potassium channels that kind of manage what's going on in the cells of your brain. Well, they actually flip.
Speaker: So some stuff goes out, other stuff goes in, that's not supposed to be there. It kills off the cell and then we can't use blood sugar efficiently. So then we start utilizing lactate in the brain. And then there's just this whole crazy thing that goes on. And so actually like one of the best things is just, and it again, it kills off your mitochondria because it's so toxic in that area. So the best thing to do is start doing cardio to rebuild that up. And so before we were always just taught, you know, cocoon therapy, just go in a dark room and, you know, sit there until you feel better. Well, we actually, read yeah. And what we actually found out is it's the exact opposite. Like we need to get you moving. We need to lower your carbohydrate intake because you can't utilize a lot of the carbs anyway now. So again, there's like ketone supplements and all that stuff out there now. Creatine even, you know, with some of that stuff. And I just get my kids outside and walking.
Speaker: Cool. as Something as simple as that. It's like go for walks out in nature, like immediate, like if you can tolerate it within the first 24 to 48 hours. yeah And I just want you outside. And then from there we start to ramp up. We do like a lot of like zone one to zone two cardio because that's actually restorative for a lot of these kids. Because again, I'm just, utiliz I'm not utilizing a heavy amount of carbohydrates within that. It's really just, you know, utilizing fat. And so again, that just kind of helps. And it also makes them more parasympathetic too. it rebuilds that system. And so it keeps them calm.
Speaker: cause that also gets knocked out of whack when you have a concussion sympathetic. So it's like your fight or flight, your go, go, go. And then your parasympathetic, which is like your rest and digest your, you know, your calming system, those get knocked offline. They go completely haywire.
Speaker: And so usually it's that parasympathetic that really goes out the window. And so we're just trying to restore that back up because then it helps us heal much quicker. Yeah. So I'm very big on cardio. We start like gradually working back in like immediately into things as long as they can tolerate it, whether it's just like, could be a light walk outside, like, you know,
Speaker: hopping on a spin bike, whatever they want to do just to get moving. Yeah. And then we just build up some time within that. And then we start to layer in some of the harder stuff as they start to feel better symptoms, you know, kind of calm back down.
Speaker: Yeah. And guess last question within there, from my understanding, parasympathetic sympathetic, when you get the old hard ass old coach, when they're yelling and motherfucking you like that leads more to the sympathetic fight, fight, freeze.
Speaker: So from your understanding of this, would that delay return to play or is that just something we need to, I mean, it's going to be good for them because that's not as sympathetic as ah a game situation would be. yeah Yeah. So it's, it's, yeah, it's really like the stress tolerance of the kid. And I mean, I think we can all agree these days, like the stress tolerance is not great for a lot of these kids coming up just because they came through the COVID era and everything else. And so,
Speaker: By at least doing some of this you know low level cardio, it helps to almost build up resilience and a bit of a buffer for a lot of them. Because I mean, I'll have kids where like we'll do bolt scores, so like a breath hold test and see like how long can we tolerate it. And so there's some kids that, you know, can't go more than 15 seconds on a full exhale. And you're like, you know, what is going on? And I'll see it. These kids have anxiety or depression. And it's like we screen them we ask them, we go through all this stuff. And it's the lower these scores, the worse the tolerance is for these kids. And so I harp that heavily of, you know, working on a lot of that stuff, trying to boost up that parasympathetics, you know, getting comfortable, being uncomfortable. So even doing some of that breath hold stuff is part of my warm ups at practice. I used to do that when I was coaching. And so that made, you know, a massive, massive deal because now I don't freak out nearly as soon because the higher your heart rate goes, the more likely you are to freak out.
Speaker: And so that's what we see a lot in return to concut like return to play for concussion. If they don't have this, you know, nice steady buffer of that parasympathetic, it's like they go and it's zero to a hundred real quick. And then their heart rate's at 150, 160. And we actually have data to show like the amount of oxygen in your brain that you can utilize starts to dip down after a certain point. So now you, you know, you're watching film and you're like, what are you doing with this stupid decision? Like, and you're yelling at this kid and he has no idea what the hell is going on. yeah And it's literally just because his brain doesn't know how to effectively use that oxygen, you know, and it's like, well, I can train him to that point and get comfortable being there, or I can just create a buffer so we can delay it. I you do a bit of both.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah, that factoring that into conditioning and aim to help kids understand what we're doing and why and just break it into we're working on your heart, we're working on your legs, we're working on your your your mental toughness, your resilience, your mindset, and then putting the hammer down. This is where we're working on like your head, for example, is your decision making when your heart rate is jacked. Yeah. so i'm such a big fan of a lot of that stuff like i train fighters and so it's like we need to be you know with it at all times because there is no disassociating when you're in a cage and uh with a lot of that stuff i almost put in like some of these brain games with them more like scenario based stuff um so we'll get their heart rate up and i'm constantly like trying to make them make you know, the wrong decision and like almost trying to screw with them. And there's even things called like a Stroop test where it's, you know, has essentially colors and words. And so the word might say black, but the actual print of it is in blue. Right. And I would say, OK, tell me like the actual print color of this, not what the word says. And so again, like that, that goes into decision making. So I can see how impulsive is this kid? This is something I can easily work on and sort of stuff like that. So I'm constantly trying to stress them out because that'll also jack their heart rate up too.
Speaker: So I've done that with return to concussion stuff or return to play from concussion just by doing brain games with them and their heart rates like 160, 170, because they're just getting so overwhelmed and so stressed. yeah And so I am so big on this because I don't want my kid to disassociate when they're playing.
Speaker: And so that's why I'm so big on on throwing these little brain games in or these situational plays. And while we're doing cardio, like i almost want to fatigue you first and then we can go into a small side of game or something else like that. um Because like you talked about, everybody loves to talk about mental toughness, but no one can really describe it. And I think one of the best descriptions i ever heard from it was mental toughness is just resilience coupled with task orientedness. So it's great that we can build resilience, but if it's not related back to my task, we're just going to fall apart.
Speaker: And so i see when I see people do that, where we just, we build the resilience part. It's like, okay, we're just going run you until you get super tired. But then I combo it with that task of orientedness where, okay, now it's related back to the game. Those kids stay dialed in no matter how tired they get.
Speaker: Time out. Text here at Train Heroic headquarters meeting with the team to talk about the coaching experience that I'm able to provide for my athletes. So if you're a coach and want to put your program out there on an app that athletes actually enjoy using, Train Heroics for you. I've been using it since 2014. delivering literally over tens of thousands of workouts to athletes.
Speaker: And Train Heroic allows me to provide the unique coaching experience that I want to. Uploading video, providing coaching feedback, directions, and building a community. That's why I love Train Heroic. And if you want to take your athletes where they can't take themselves, that they want to go, head to trainheroic.com slash captains and check out how you can deliver programming to them.
Speaker: And now, back to the show. Ready, ready, and
Speaker: I love it. All right. We hit our mark. You got some speaking opportunities coming up to share where people can connect in person. Where are those at? um and NSCA Tactical down in Orlando. i believe the name of my presentation is mission critical vision so all things vision vestibular training um you know geared for military all that stuff how to you know keep you and your guys safe um and then and nsea ohio i will be doing concussion um and then i'm at high point university in a couple weeks uh and i'm going over energy systems training so
Speaker: It's going to blow a lot of people's minds because what we were taught in school is not actually what works. Imagine that, right? But um well, we got to do part two. So yeah, this one, it's going to be a big game changer because it even completely upended my career of like how I trained athletes to the point where I'm like, I need to go back and relearn everything I've ever done.
Speaker: Well, I guess we'll sit down for round two of this podcast at a mastermind. Yeah. And then you'll get to share all that with our our listeners here. Awesome.
Speaker: thanks for your time, man. We'll let you get back to oh pleasure yeah the Summer Strong Experience. Thank you all for tuning in. well us Handles, because you got some wonderful content out there. Where can people follow you? i believe I'm terrible at Instagram. I think it's... Dylan underscore Sealy DC. So my first name underscore last name DC.
Speaker: I've been really lazy about putting out content the last few weeks, I'm back come back on the bandwagon. I got some content throwing back up there. There you go. Just have a guy film your presentations. That's pretty much what happened. So that was like the first where I'm like, oh, sweet. I got content for days on this thing. Yeah. And I had the pleasure of, I guess, spotting you in Summer Strong yesterday and yelling out, Dylan, a you son of a bitch. And then we put our high five. So that was my highlight Summer Strong 26. Summer Strong 2026.
Speaker: some strong twenty twenty six That's where I tripped up before. All right. Roll what you got. Fight later.
