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Danny Foley: Solving Problems In Human Performance
355 Plays2 days ago
In this episode of The Speed Lab Podcast, Les and Danny dive deep into the lessons from the NFL Combine, athlete rehab, and the balance between art and science in coaching. They share behind-the-scenes insights on calf strain rehab, the role of connective tissue, the challenges of interdisciplinary work, and how to create individualized plans inside a team environment.
Episode Timestamps
- 0:00 – 4:30 | Crash course beginnings, chaos, and lessons learned
- 4:30 – 11:00 | Solving problems in human performance & staying curious
- 15:30 – 17:15 | Quadrants as a blueprint for sprint mechanics
- 26:30 – 33:00 | Inside calf strain rehab: long-duration isometrics, recovery, and daily oversight
- 35:00 – 37:15 | Connective tissue vs. muscle dominance — why strains happen
- 41:00 – 43:30 | Why rest and separation of health/performance fails athletes
- 53:30 – 55:30 | The paradox of concentric vs. eccentric force
- 58:30 – 1:04:00 | Foot mechanics, posterior tibialis, and performance impact
- 1:10:30 – 1:13:30 | Leadership lessons: range of motion, reliability, and profiling
- 1:16:40 – 1:19:45 | Individualization within team programming
- 1:26:15 – 1:29:45 | NFL complexity and building continuity of care
- 1:33:00 – End | The future of performance, human connection, and relationships
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Transcript
Starting the Podcast Journey
00:00:04
Speaker
right, guys, we're going to hop right into it. Danny and I talked about doing this podcast for like, shoot, I don't know, six months at least. And we've come up with every excuse.
00:00:15
Speaker
I've really come up with excuses. Danny's just kind of been waiting on me. But it's something we've been trying to do because we have conversations like this every single day. And we're like, man, if we just hit record, it will be pretty impactful. um Because a lot of times we're just solving problems like literally through conversation.
00:00:33
Speaker
And this has been something we've been putting off. We even put it off this morning. Like we were going through our camera settings and microphones and you know I was trying to get him to download some apps and stuff so he doesn't look like Kanye sitting against the white screen.
00:00:47
Speaker
um But yeah, here we are. So we're just going to rip it. We're going to talk for as long as we can and just kind of go through...
Adapting Post-NFL Combine
00:00:56
Speaker
some of our problem-solving processes, um some of our thought processes since the NFL Combine that we've adapted and um what we've improved and what we've been going through. So, yeah, Danny, thanks for finally hopping on this with me. I've been trying to get you to um sit down with me for a while, but you keep ignoring my calls.
00:01:15
Speaker
Yeah, well, i was going to say, i would I would typically say it's a pleasure having me and and all that stuff. But, ah yeah, sort per usual, we're par for the course right now.
00:01:24
Speaker
Yeah. um Somehow Danny and I both avoided our kids breaking into the room so far. So hopefully we we keep this going. um But, you know, first thing I want to start off on is like, let's talk about like what we've adapted and changed. I know it's super broad, but since the NFL combine, what have we like shifted course on?
00:01:48
Speaker
Like what what are the main pieces that we've like adapted and changed?
00:01:55
Speaker
it's It's almost like funny, like talking to you directly about this, because this has been almost every podcast I've been on just talking behind your back. But no, man, I mean, I think like, so, you know, I'm sure most people that are tuning into this, you know, have some idea of, you know, where each of us are coming from and and kind of how this all got started, you know.
00:02:12
Speaker
um But the reality of it is looking back is it was a it was a true crash course. You know, I think we were both. interested in the in the idea of of working together, partnering up.
00:02:25
Speaker
And um we both understood that we were good at what we did. But I think it it pretty quickly became the reality that you know I didn't understand fully what I was getting myself into. I don't know that you fully understood what my work application looked like.
00:02:38
Speaker
And you know from start to finish, we did the job. we did ah We did a great job. We got the results with everyone. But there was a lot of you know internal strife and and confusion, and it was very hectic and chaotic. And yeah you add in the life factors, and you know you had a lot of stuff going on
Learning from the NFL Combine
00:02:56
Speaker
throughout that time. Obviously, you're getting ready to have another and baby.
00:02:59
Speaker
um you know With us being in an Airbnb, not really being at home, like so everything was kind of on a you know unstable ground at the time. But with that, though, you know it it ended up being...
00:03:11
Speaker
one of the greatest experiences of my life, especially from a learning opportunity and then the excitement of, you know, being able to move out here and then really get integrated with you, get integrated with everybody, Chris, Dusty.
00:03:22
Speaker
And what we've been doing since then has been this elongated process of kind of unraveling what those three months were. What was the good? What was the not so good? What do we need to, you know, really analyze and break down and do better next year? What do we need to retain?
00:03:39
Speaker
And so I think with these different cases
Dynamic Human Performance
00:03:41
Speaker
that we've had since then, it's almost like we're solving, you know, three or four problems every single time we have somebody. I know we'll talk about her more as we go through this, but like, you know, I'm still buzzing about the whole cat situation, man. Like that was,
00:03:56
Speaker
That was one of the coolest things that I've done in a long time. And I felt like that was one of the, that was what I want the combine to reflect on a bigger scale, you know, and the the fluidity of that and the action behind it. And then obviously the objective results that came with it. So I guess that's at least where, you know, my, my mind is with the premise of this outlet is like, we are constantly solving problems. We're, let me rephrase that. We're constantly faced with problems in this industry.
00:04:24
Speaker
Human performance is exceptionally dynamic. becoming more wide reaching than ever. we're We're expected to have more skill sets and more awareness to all of these things that go into it. And it can move pretty quick, right?
00:04:37
Speaker
So what you and I do very well is acknowledge when we have problems. And then especially you do a good job of just attacking those. And if we if we detect any weakness in our system, we have to understand why.
00:04:50
Speaker
And then we have to figure out what that recourse is. And I think that's what we want to bring, you know, kind of through this opportunity.
Evolving Perspectives on the Combine
00:04:56
Speaker
Yeah, and, like, it's funny because externally it was wildly successful, even just from, like, a result standpoint.
00:05:03
Speaker
And still, like, I think just that's some of our personalities where we're going into it, like, what could be better? And I've had this moment, like, probably 30 times since the combine where I'm like, damn, if I had just like done this back then, or like, damn, I wish I had known this before, you know? And like, those, those are the things that keep me up at night that I'm, I'm, I'm constantly searching for gaps. And it's like, it's all, it's, it's interesting because the combine static, it happens every year.
00:05:32
Speaker
It's always the same type of thing. You got 21 to 23 year old guys coming for eight weeks, seven weeks, six weeks, whatever. and it's the same test, right? So every year, and also I get older every year, 36 now, and they they stay the same age. So like, there's a lot of like, which is a whole other subject, like crash outs, all that stuff. But um your perspective every year is on the same thing that's static, but your perspective is very dynamic. So like, I do the combine, I do January, February,
00:06:06
Speaker
March through December, I'm like doing other stuff, but it's always referring back to that static thing that's coming up in January. So like we had Katarina Macario out, who's arguably one of the best soccer, women's soccer players in the world that had like a host of problems. Like,
00:06:23
Speaker
pain, ah you know, previous major injuries and things like that. And, you know, we took that case study and that process taught us more about the combine than the combine taught us. Right. And then you're looking back, yeah you're looking back at the combine you're like, bro, if I had just like looked at it from this perspective, like,
00:06:42
Speaker
that would have been incredibly impactful. And then we come back with Brandon Jetter, come back with River Craycraft, you come back with like several different case studies that to me have been the most impactful, fun, successful work of my entire life.
00:06:57
Speaker
And it's like, whoa, we're onto to something here. um And like last night we were talking about the P3 guys and how much respect do we have for them and I was thinking about this, like this is super interesting and I'll give you the mic back in a second, but P3 started in 2006 before like any of this. There's no like GPS, there was no like, force weights were probably these big expensive pieces of equipment.
00:07:22
Speaker
Um, and it, they, they had a vision, right? They had a vision, like, we're gonna, we're gonna figure out health and performance together, right? So it's not just health, it's not just performance. We're gonna marry these two together, and then we're gonna talk about it.
00:07:35
Speaker
And in the beginning, nobody even cared. Like, it was like, NBA teams, like, eh, like, I don't care about asymmetry, I don't understand it, whatever. um And it was it was cool because for me, it's like that shows that he was like way ahead where he knew that people weren't going to adopt it right away, but he was still doing it.
00:07:53
Speaker
that The P3 team was investing money and it it took 13, 14 years, you know, for them to to get caught up to where we're at now, where now they're in 30 NBA teams, which I told you last night, which was wild to me, like,
00:08:08
Speaker
they're inside of 30 NBA teams, their system, and it clearly works, and it clearly identifies risk and performance. They're into scouting departments and all that. So my question for you, based on that information, is like, you know, like, some of this is like, I don't want to say, like, taboo, but I want to say, like,
00:08:27
Speaker
it's It's the way we got to this solution, like you're your path and my path weren't like, go get a medical degree, go get a master's degree, go get your PhD. And here we are at this junction where we're like, we know this is something that's impactful, but everybody hasn't like adopted it yet and and they haven't believed. So what keeps you going on that stuff?
Influence of Open-Source and Mentors
00:08:51
Speaker
Um, I mean, I guess it's a little bit paradoxical, right? Like i've I've still got the same chip on my shoulder that I had when I was 21 and got kicked out of college. you know, and, and for me, and and I know I've shared this with you privately, but you know, if it, if it weren't for Twitter and YouTube and open source information at that time, and kind of like you're alluding to with P3, like that was one of the first, you know, big groups that I came across back then.
00:09:16
Speaker
Um, you know, if it weren't for those outlets, then I definitely would not be in the position I'm in right now. Like zero chance. You know, I don't even know if I'd be doing this because it, I remember sitting in class when I would go and, and just sit there and think to myself like, damn, man, like the human body is so interesting. Like, how am I so bored with this right now? Like, how are we spending a whole semester talking about anatomy? And this is just mind numbingly boring.
00:09:42
Speaker
And then I find out what Twitter is and I'm seeing, you know, Pete by Marito and Eric Cressy and Mike Boyle and Joe DeFranco and Stu McMillan and Dan path. And I'm like,
00:09:54
Speaker
oh man, this is this is what I'm doing? Okay, this is cool. So it you know it allowed me to kind of buy into it. So here we are, however many years later, 12 years later now, And it's almost like that whole feeling of, you know, the the wind is at my face and I got this chip on my shoulder and everything is kind of brand new again. I'm in a whole new environment for the second time in three years.
00:10:18
Speaker
I'm working with a celebrity and Les Spellman. Oh, my God. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. You know, but like to share space with you, to be able to meet Chris, to be able to meet Dusty and some of these other guys, and then to be in proximity to Stu in Phoenix.
00:10:35
Speaker
You know, we got some guys up in LA. Like it was it was to an extent a dream come true. And it and it gave me this sense of of reality of like, You know what? We've talked about doing this for a long time. We've we've talked about you know changing the industry and all these other things. And it's like, well, now we're kind of boots on the ground. like we're We're here now.
00:10:55
Speaker
And you know I don't feel like we've done anything you know truly exceptional yet, but I 100% feel the potential for it, which is all I ever need. you know yeah and And that's a special feeling.
00:11:09
Speaker
Yeah, 100%. You know, it's interesting because I wrote down some of those names, like Cressy, Bomarito, all those guys. And like now, ah Danny Foley's in that mix. like There's somebody watching your feed.
00:11:21
Speaker
your feed i don't even know if you're on Twitter. If you are. I think unfollowed you. yeah i think i on followed um Twitter is wild, bro. That's a whole other that's a whole other podcast. But yeah, people are looking to you now. like I'm sure there's young guys that are like, man, the school stuff's real cool. But like that Danny dude, that's it.
00:11:43
Speaker
It's a cool feeling. Yeah, it's a cool feeling. And and it's you know and and again, to to reinforce kind of the the purpose of what we're trying to do here, it's like, yeah I can speak for you when I say this, like, I don't feel like I'm any smarter or more intelligent than than anybody, you know, given in the field like it, you know, I feel like people like you and i the the separating quality is just this, this burning curiosity and this yeah true ferocity behind us you I'm going to figure this out.
00:12:10
Speaker
and And I know I'm going to run into problems. And I know that shit, things aren't going to work, you know, great all the time. And that's okay. um You know, our job is to continue forward and keep figuring things out and trying to figure out the better ways or the more efficient ways to do things.
00:12:25
Speaker
And that's what I really aspire for. And that's what, you know, has really been present out here. Yeah. And I think the the main piece of that is like, accepting that like sometimes you look like a dumbass and like you will fall flat on your face and and have like, and i I talk to coaches all the time. I think our industry pushes people into a mindset that's like, you can't fail in this. Like, it's like, it's like, imagine if you're a boxer, right? If you're a boxer right now in in the, in the world, like, and you're trying to be pro,
00:12:58
Speaker
everybody's trying to be 50 and 0 because that's what Mayweather did, right? So, like, you take a loss, it's like ah your career is over. I feel like our industry adopted that a little bit where it's like, I don't want to say this because I might be wrong in two years. Like, perfect. Well, be wrong and then show people why you're wrong. And, like, I feel like both of both you and I have have had that ability to say, damn, I was wrong.
00:13:21
Speaker
Like, I'll push something out on the internet and, I've done courses and I've been like, actually guys, like I was kind of wrong on this, like, cause I just learned something and immediately you realize you're not attached like pieces of of the puzzle. you're You're attached to the whole, you're not attached to a single piece of it. So, um but yeah, so like the the next thing,
00:13:43
Speaker
I want to say on this is that like, I think we've been heavily influenced by like a few people this year, especially, uh, Stu, obviously like Dan, obviously, but like for me, the biggest influence that I've had that the biggest person that's influenced my career this year has been James Wild, the researcher, um,
00:14:07
Speaker
from Surrey.
Research Impact on Athlete Assessment
00:14:09
Speaker
So like, I mean, the quadrant stuff, if you guys haven't heard of James Wild, he's done a ton of research on acceleration in team sports.
00:14:18
Speaker
And he developed a quadrant system that's based around ah the ratio of step length to step frequency and the ratio of ground time to air time. So you end up in one of four buckets. So you could be a bounder, which is step length,
00:14:33
Speaker
and airtime based, or you could be a driver, which is step length and ground based. You could be a spinner, which is step frequency and ground based, or you could be a bouncer, which is step frequency and air based.
00:14:45
Speaker
And then what he's done is that he's also shown that there's a ah there's a risk associated with each pattern of running, each style of running, each signature. So like you're in this signature of running and there's also patterns that that cause certain risk factors for you. So for example, if you're a bounder, you might have more foot, calf, Achilles issues.
00:15:07
Speaker
um If you're a driver, you might have anterior knee stress. If you're a spinner, you might have hip flexor, adductor, hamstring. If you're a bouncer, you kind of have a little bit of everything, but um you got hamstring in there. You got a little bit of foot, calf, Achilles in there. It's kind of a mixture.
00:15:21
Speaker
So how has this impacted? Because obviously you've been doing you know your thing for a while, but how has this impacted you in terms of your lens and how you see health on the on the health and performance side?
00:15:34
Speaker
Well, I go back to what you said a couple of months ago in that it gave us a medium to understand either side a little bit better. And, and, you know, kind of helped on the communication side. It's, it's, I mean, it's almost embarrassing, but it's, it is funny at the same time that, you know, I consider Stu, you know, my, my primary mentor in this thing.
00:15:55
Speaker
I spend all this time with you and all this time at Altus and I still don't know a damn thing about sprinting. So with the, with the quadrants from my lens as a performance therapist,
00:16:06
Speaker
it gave me a much better economy for assessing running and knowing where these athletes were being plotted based on their run strategy.
00:16:17
Speaker
It gave me an opportunity to focus in on what I needed to pay more attention to, to like from you know an assessment standpoint. And then on a work economy standpoint, as we know with the combine, very small windows, very quick turnover.
00:16:32
Speaker
I felt like my accuracy just kept improving throughout the time because I was able to lean into those things. And then taking it a step further, it helped me make more sense of the metrics. Yeah.
00:16:43
Speaker
So again, like where you can just watch somebody run and not just guess their time, but you can say probably what their step frequency is. You can probably get pretty close on what their length is or what their, um, you know, touchdown distances, you know, those things aren't second nature to me by any means.
00:17:01
Speaker
So just being able to say, okay, I've got eight guys running today. I know these five are bounders and I know these three are drivers or spinners. So we've got five that are going to be length based and three they are going to be rate based. Let me just see that.
00:17:13
Speaker
Let me hear that. Let me just sit back and get some repetition on this, on what those patterns look like. And so for me, again, it was it was really kind of a blueprint for how to analyze and observe you know sprinting mechanics. And it was tremendously helpful.
00:17:28
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. No, it's interesting because it's like almost like we had to adopt the same language. Yeah. Because at a certain point, like I'm talking to you about ground contacts and frequencies and like, it's just not a native language. Like I was listening to a podcast where was talking about, um,
00:17:46
Speaker
man, what's this guy's name? He was an Italian coach that went to Spain and coached soccer. and And they were like, how are you preparing for the season? Like, what, you must have all these plans. He's like, I'm preparing for the season by practicing Spanish five hours a day.
00:18:01
Speaker
That's how I'm preparing for the season. So like, his goal was to learn the language. Like, it's, that's the most important thing. Like, everything else comes from that. so I feel like James Wild gave us a common language, but also a common thing to really point to. And like, you know, since that point, we've been looking at, okay, you have your run strategy, so you have your risk within that. And then there's a magnitude within that risk, obviously, like,
00:18:25
Speaker
you could have, you could be very deep into that quadrant, which, which probably means it's problematic. ah The deeper you are into it, the more problematic it is. um Also the the highest performers typically end up kind of on the outskirts anyway.
00:18:39
Speaker
So, you know, that's, that's one side of it, right? So you understand the strategy, you understand the signature. And then we also know the training load side of it also has an impact on it. So like,
00:18:50
Speaker
we're looking at, if I want to assess the risk of an athlete, there's a level of profiling I have to do. So the profiling piece that you've you've done is like, structurally, this is how you're built.
00:19:01
Speaker
We talked about the foot last night for like an hour. I understood about 20% of it, but um we talked about like, you know, we we talk about how you're built is deterministic in how you run. so If you have long femurs, that will determine some of your running style, right?
00:19:17
Speaker
And then you zoom out a little bit and you got physical qualities. Like I've talked to you about the force plate and things I've been looking at on that, which has really actually changed my perspective on things too, which I'll dive into in a second.
Athlete Profiling and Performance
00:19:28
Speaker
And then you got your technical, which is like your run strategy. So there's a level of profiling that we have, structural, physical, technical. Stu calls it structural, functional. um What's the third one he calls it?
00:19:42
Speaker
SFT. SFT. Yeah, so same same thing. I'm not trying to change the ah um the game. ah Functional to me, just I don't understand it. Physical makes more sense. But ah SFT. So you have that, right?
00:19:56
Speaker
But then you have how the athlete interacts with their environment, which is their training loads. And that's another piece that we've added in terms of like looking at the GPS stuff with FirePod, which has been great.
00:20:08
Speaker
um Looking at some of the wellness responses and the even just the RPEs and things like that. So that's that's been one level as well. So like now ah we're starting to look at it from...
00:20:21
Speaker
Probably like, we were probably looking at it at like a microscopic view, when both of us, when we entered into it. And now we're starting to zoom out a little bit where we can kind of see the factors that are influencing the athlete from a performance standpoint, but also from a health standpoint.
00:20:38
Speaker
Like, they're we're not just guessing anymore. We're not just saying like, hey, I think this athlete has a hamstring issue. It's like we're saying he has a hamstring issue that's related to this, so he needs to reduce this or increase that. Like it's it's been very, very, very dialed in recently in terms of prescription. So what might have took us a year before is now taking four or five weeks, which is, which is crazy.
00:21:03
Speaker
Um, so just, just talk a little bit about the profiling side of things, like maybe how that your perspective has changed since I've made you log into a bunch of accounts and connect Bluetooth and do a bunch of, a bunch of annoying stuff.
00:21:17
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, well, let's even go a step further back. And, and the, the first thing was making me talk in colors. It was the most annoying thing in the world to me at the time.
00:21:30
Speaker
Because like, again, like this has been, you know, to feed into the first point of this talk, it was a true clashing of ideology. Like, although we have so many different attributes that are similar and we're we're very similar minded, right? You think in numbers, I think in words.
00:21:48
Speaker
So for you, everything always comes down to an Excel sheet and and to, again, a color, you know, at some point for for the sake of profiling or classifying. And, you know, my history that predated coming out to California was I was immersed in the artistry side of this.
00:22:06
Speaker
And I think that's why, you know, Stu has always resonated so heavily for me. Because that was just my way of understanding the body was, you know, i feel some things, I watch some things, we do some things and I think about it and I'm like, okay, well, maybe it's this and there's this kind of, you know, long little, you know, subtext behind it.
00:22:27
Speaker
But the problem with that is is, number one, it's very difficult to share your story or share your message when you need X amount of wordage to do it. right we Especially when we're trying to scale something or grow something, there does need to be a common simplicity factor with a common language behind it.
00:22:47
Speaker
So that was really good. It was good for me to get forth into that. The second thing was... you know, I would say this is where the philosophy of staying in the green was really born. and And over the summer, you know, this was going to be my big project this year. I, you know, started ripping through my framework and put down like 30 something pages in a Google doc. I'm like, all right, I got it. This is the next big course.
00:23:15
Speaker
Then I got to the end of that and I was like, no, I can't. I can't do this without Les and Chris. Like I can't. It's not, it's not my original thing. It's not my thing. The, the staying in the green euphemism is probably the most sensical thing that I've been, been a part of or thought about in terms of the system demand of athlete health and management.
00:23:39
Speaker
And if you are trying to do this by yourself, even at the Dan Path levels, if you're trying to do this as a one-man team, it's not going to work. In order for us to truly optimize health and performance, there has to be, to a degree, conflicting perspectives that are aligned to a singular outcome. But we need the numbers view and we need the artistry view.
00:24:01
Speaker
We need that... that weirdo that's in in between and kind of understands both sides and is able to kind of communicate to both ends. But we go back to this initial point of that the human body is very, very dynamic. very complex.
00:24:16
Speaker
and And the different paths and the different sub-disciplines or expertise that that each of us have are all extremely needed or necessary. And this is where we think about it from the wide lens, narrow focus point of view.
00:24:31
Speaker
We have this very wide spectrum of things, the structural, the functional, the technical, everything that exists in between that. And at different points throughout the process, we need to have a very narrow focus. We have somebody who comes in with a calf or a hamstring issue.
00:24:48
Speaker
Right now, the focus is their pain levels at a six. So we have to get them down from a six right now. And then when that six comes down to a two or a one, we have to pull back out and then look at all of the other factors and parameters of training and say, okay, how do we not only keep them below a two right now, but how do we potentially prevent them from getting to a six again?
00:25:12
Speaker
And then it's a whole conversation. i And that's the ebb and flow. No, 100%, because like i mean you've been a part of this before where you've seen a PT or a therapist return someone back to low levels of pain.
00:25:29
Speaker
but maybe not returning back to the performance that they need to be at. So like, for example, like there's now a training gap because let's say you're out for six weeks with a calf issue, right?
00:25:41
Speaker
Well, in that six weeks, the team has still accumulated training load and they they've done the volume, they've done the intensity, they're doing it at the density of a game and all these things. And you hop back into training and then all of a sudden another issue pops up and it's like,
00:25:58
Speaker
that's one of the pieces that we've worked on heavily this year is like understanding the dose and response side of things. Like we're trying to, we're trying to build the volume. We're trying to match intensities and we're trying to grow it. So like, for example, we had a, we had a calf, um, calf project, a guy that was in the NFL.
00:26:18
Speaker
He had, ah he had reoccurring calf strains and, And he came to us like, dude, I'm about to retire. Like this, this is probably it for me. Um, but I want to give it one more go potentially. Like if I can solve this problem, we also had a deadline of like six weeks, I think five, five ish weeks.
00:26:38
Speaker
Hard cap of six. Yeah. Try to be ready in three or four. Yeah. Yeah, and and like also, like not just be ready, but like return back to NFL training camp, which is you know, if if you watch any headlines or ambulance chasers, that's where the injuries happen, right? It's during NFL training camp. It's it's a big deal.
00:27:01
Speaker
So it's it's a risk, right? And and the guy 30 years old. um He's been in the league for a while, but he hasn't made $100 million dollars or anything like that. So it's like he's... he's going to have to go in and try out.
00:27:13
Speaker
So like knowing all this, like let's, let's dive in, let's, let's deep dive into this project. Let's talk about, we don't have to say his name, but let's, let's go as deep as we can into this and like what actually happened and and what what was the outcome.
00:27:27
Speaker
Yeah. So the, the initial injury was, was repetitive chronic calf strains bilaterally. He himself has an extensive injury history.
00:27:38
Speaker
um i don I don't want detail that too much, but it was it was a lot of lower body injuries. um Recently had a a shoulder injury last year. To your point, just a a seasoned veteran guy who's kind of been through the ringer, had to fight for everything he's earned.
00:27:55
Speaker
And, you know, the way he put it to me was, you know, when he was kind of going through this contemplation process, He was playing with his daughter and he was like, man, I just, I'd really love to be able to, you know, have her remember this, you know, and she's like one and a half right now. Right. So we're looking at another three to four years.
00:28:15
Speaker
And he's like, you know, I just, I want to I want to make it to a point where like she remembers it, you know, which kind of gave me goosebumps. Like I, I messed with that. Um, And so he was like, you know, what would the story be if if I had to tell her about, you know, be me being an NFL football player? And, you know, what would i but what I have to say if I was like, yeah, well, you know, it ended when I had some calf strains.
00:28:39
Speaker
And he was like, nah, F that. Like, I can't. I can't do that. You know? So... With that, we had bilateral calf strains. He had a procedure done over the summer.
00:28:51
Speaker
And, um you know, effectively, the the first phase for us was... um Procedures PRP. ah Okay. Yeah. yeah Very, very low level for the first couple weeks.
00:29:04
Speaker
Yeah.
Innovative Recovery Strategies
00:29:05
Speaker
And, um you know, we we started with basically gait retraining and and some, you know, indirect soft tissue work.
00:29:15
Speaker
And, um, you know, that kind of led into more, you know, isolated focus, isometric. And then we got to the point where we started getting you back involved and we're, we're back on the field and going through some locomotive stuff.
00:29:27
Speaker
And then, you know, really between week three, week four was when we just started taking off. Like it just, oh, that was the other thing too, was the first 20 days, I think we had seven days of travel, eight days of travel, but we're writing remote programs and he has this access or doesn't. And so was very, hectic in the beginning, but that third, fourth week we start coming around. And so to give everybody an idea of what this looked like five days a week, we would show up around eight, we'd show up at eight,
00:30:01
Speaker
First hour was performance therapy. So this is, you know, it started off probably 40 minutes, 30, 40 minutes of table time, local isometrics, and then some moving around.
00:30:12
Speaker
Then it progressed into like 15 to 20 minutes of some tissue work and then very specific isometric protocols. And what we utilized a ton with him was long duration isometrics.
00:30:25
Speaker
And a part of the reason- Why is that- Yeah, so long duration isometrics. um Keith Barr talks about this a lot. um You know, he talks about it more in the context of tendon health, but it applies to other tissues as well.
00:30:38
Speaker
And it's just as described. It's it's doing specific position isometric work um for 40, 50, 60, sometimes beyond seconds. And the principle behind this is by having that long duration isometric, what we are doing is we are effectively pre-fatiguing the tissues that are already strong or the, you know, short, quick twitch fibers and effectively forcing the body to recruit different tissues or different muscles.
00:31:08
Speaker
And, you know, kind of bringing them up to speed. and So we would do this in multiple foot positions, combinations of spring ankles, you know different long lever calf isos.
00:31:19
Speaker
And then we would start pairing that with like you know almost even lower than rudiment plyos, but eventually it became rudiment and kind of extensive plyos. And I just always have had this belief of of contrasting applications.
00:31:35
Speaker
So I really liked the combo of the long duration isometric. So hold a single leg calf iso for 45 seconds and then turn away single leg, you know, mini hop in place 15 seconds.
00:31:50
Speaker
Right. And just kind of working that pair back and forth. We then progress that into, you know, doing it with some load or doing it with some resistance. We would give some manual resistance and band resistance and then just gradually speed the Pios up.
00:32:04
Speaker
So that was the first hour. Then we would transition them to you. You would have from nine to 10, everything that you're doing. And then we would come back around from 10 to 11 and then have our lift at that point.
00:32:19
Speaker
And the lifts were nothing spectacular, very, very conventional stuff there. But then here's an important part of this too. And this is another one of these things that I've learned post combine is that the work doesn't stop when the training's done.
00:32:33
Speaker
Right. And in past years, it would be do really good work for an hour and or three hours in this case. And then I've got my next person or then I've got my project that I'm working on and and I'll see you on Tuesday.
00:32:46
Speaker
But you've shown me that there needs to be more direct action and oversight throughout this whole process. So we wrote a very specific recovery protocol for him that we're texting back and forth on throughout the day.
00:32:59
Speaker
You know, he's doing stuff probably up until about four or five o'clock in the afternoon um just on his own, but we're still overseeing it. And then we're going in and doing our reports. And this is kind of but again, back to the initial point of this.
00:33:11
Speaker
is I'm typing out my daily notes. You're downloading all the the data from the GPS and from the force plates. And then six, seven o'clock, we're getting on the phone again. Hey, what did you have today?
00:33:23
Speaker
Here's what I saw. Here's the notes. And I think those are the things that really started to push everything forward. You know, doing great work in person is one thing, but having that attention to detail and that oversight after the fact is a different level.
00:33:36
Speaker
ah Facts. Yeah. And I was thinking about, as you're talking, was like, Thinking about, like well, why why did this happen? Obviously, like he's got an extensive injury history and there's other pieces to it. But there's there's one thing that we saw that we wouldn't have seen last year.
00:33:54
Speaker
like if If you and I had the same case last year, we might have done a similar training build, but like we missed something big. And I think this thing was the reason why we had confidence we could return it back to.
00:34:07
Speaker
being in the NFL. And I think that was his run signature. It was his quadrant. Um, he's a bounder, really big step length. Um, a lot of airtime. Like, I mean, yeah he has such a big step length that like when he runs his routes, it's never at the right depth.
00:34:25
Speaker
Cause it's like, he's, he's so, his step length is so much bigger than what a receiver coach would say. Take three steps do this, whatever. Um, So in knowing that, we know that there was a lot of stress on his lower leg.
00:34:37
Speaker
Like we knew that foot, calf, Achilles, all those things are are potentially problematic. And also he's like, his magnitude of his signature was like very, very, very deep into two standard deviations away on the airtime, you know? um So we know that that could be leading to potential problems. And like, I think one of the most interesting pieces of this was like,
00:35:01
Speaker
the strain happened at low speeds. trotting Which is like, right, it it happened twice. and and Why do you think? Why do you think? Yeah, well, I think it it builds right off of what you were just saying with the airtime and the in the strategy, but if we think about So just to describe it simply, he's somebody who we would say is more of a connective tissue based movement, right?
00:35:25
Speaker
He's not particularly strong, but he decelerates at an unprecedented level and he just kind of utilizes momentum really well and he's kind of shifty, right? So he doesn't have a lot of, you know, true musculotendinous force production,
00:35:44
Speaker
but he's very elastically proficient. So to put a simplified explanation to this, if we think about the connective tissue as being the dominant between connective and contractile tissue, then we think about the forces that are going through the tendon or through the connective tissue relative to the contractile tissue.
00:36:05
Speaker
And when we have a certain level of disproportion between those, the connective tissue in his case was too strong comparatively to the muscle tissue, which then caused the strain.
00:36:21
Speaker
So the eccentric force application due to the increased air time in addition or combination to his connective tissue, contractile tissue profile, put him in a more vulnerable position to have something like a calf strain, right? Yeah. The opposite of that would be the very force dominant athlete who's got very strong calves, but doesn't do anything to train the tendon or the tissue.
00:36:48
Speaker
The calf pulls too hard and then the tissue pop or the tendon pops, right? Yeah. So yeah we see it in both directions, but that was the case for this one. Yeah, like in my perspective is like the fast stuff for him was easy because like from a tendon, it's the faster you run, the more tendon based the ground contact would be. Like yo he'll he'll move through the stretch shortening cycle um completely different than if it's at slow speeds where it's like forcing you to use like
00:37:19
Speaker
Muscle. like yeah Yeah. And like, you know, we had this conversation in the beginning and it was like a light bulb. I'm like, dude, we know how to, we know how to adjust this. We how to fix this. Like we can, we can really do this. And like, when we started out, I think the first two days,
00:37:35
Speaker
He was walking, and he was like, I'm in pain. Like, this sucks. um I think we did 90% table, 10% me. And all I did was, like, some marching and walking. and Yeah, like all the things that Stu hates. But that's all we could do. It's only way we could put force into the ground, you know. So when I was thinking about the progression, I really just used Alan Murdoch's model, which was, i don't know if you guys have seen it, but Alan Murdoch's model, return to play, fast to fit, was and it's incredible.
00:38:05
Speaker
So he talks about returning back some of the the aspects of intensity before you add on the volume. So like the the if you look at dynamic correspondence, like there's five things and like one of the things is the forces that are involved, right? So if you look at sprinting and obviously you have forces involved, range of motion of all these pieces, but...
00:38:26
Speaker
we knew that we had first get him back to the level of force that he's gonna experience when he runs fast. So started off just marching, right? And then we look at, okay, not just force, but we need to return back the acceleration ability. So horizontal force, like we need to be able to get him in the right angles to accelerate initially. That's the first piece that we're working on. So we're going from vertical marching to then horizontal marching, sled marching, resisted marching.
00:38:54
Speaker
then we progressed that to like a high knee pattern. So like we're increasing the velocity vertically. Then we're increasing the range of motion. we're increasing the push. We're increasing all those things. um And then we looked at it in other buckets like return to decel.
00:39:08
Speaker
So we knew that the horizontal deceleration, the braking piece is extremely intensive. So we started out with like basic things like drops or progressions, like almost like rudiment.
00:39:20
Speaker
and and progressing that to a further, like further, um, touchdown distance and started breaking. And then we went Damien Harper's model, which is like the breaking developmental.
00:39:30
Speaker
So we're, we're pulling you and you're resisting and you're just walking. Right. And then we go take that model into a run, into a pull, into a break. And then we go into a fast break and then we go into vector hops, kind of like, uh,
00:39:46
Speaker
What's that the vector the vector book that Jordan put out, right? So we start looking at different changes of direction, right? And then at the same time, we're also looking at, hey, a training camp practice could be 5,000 yards, right? And 3,500 of that could be above walking.
00:40:02
Speaker
And a lot of that can be fast, right? So we knew 50, 40, 50 accelerations and decelerations. Like we know that' that's potentially what's gonna happen. So there's also return to conditioning.
00:40:15
Speaker
And if you think about it's like, well, if you can't run, let's say you can't run 70% without pain, we've got to find another way. So we started dribbling, you know, and we started with ankle dribbles, 10 times 30 ankle dribbles, short breaks.
00:40:31
Speaker
And then that turned into calf dribbles, and that turned into knee dribbles, and that turned into running. And then so that started turning into changes of direction. So like, The whole process from table to then performance, it was like 90-10.
00:40:47
Speaker
And then it was like 80-20, 70-30. seventy thirty And we just started going, so it was like fifty fifty And, you know, we still did a lot of table work and progressions, but by the end of it, it was less therapeutic and was more priming.
00:41:01
Speaker
you know There's two key points to this. I think for the listeners, the first thing is is to take what you just said right there and then compare it to a more conventional or contemporary model or approach to this. right And the first thing is is that we we have this poor conditioned a tendency to see everything as binary.
00:41:22
Speaker
So in other words, the conventional process would have taken this athlete for that first two weeks and said, rest, ice, heat, and elevate, and you know stay home and getting the get in the hot tub and come see us in a couple of weeks.
00:41:36
Speaker
And I think that's terrible. Two primary reasons. Number one, the last thing that you want to do for an injured athlete is psychologically reinforce that they're injured. It's the worst thing you can do. So even if we're just showing up to basically throw the football around and do a little marching and then hit the table, it's worth it, right? We we need to immediately get them into this environment.
00:41:58
Speaker
And then the second thing is is this... You know, impact or influence of having a true interdisciplinary model or integrated model where there is no separation between performance and health. They are they are very truly, you know, one interwoven thing that we're just allocating different time points for.
00:42:16
Speaker
So early in the process, yeah, it's more of a performance therapy or a health demand. So we're going to spend the majority of our time there, but you're still involved in this. And then all the way through to that last day that we had where it was the practice simulation, now we're looking at it as predominantly a performance aptitude or application, but we still needed pre-session and we still needed to have some different stretch mode protocols on the back end of it.
00:42:42
Speaker
So, Instead of looking at your athletes as saying, hey, we need to go to PT. We need to go do the rehab stuff over there, you know away from everybody else. And then you come back to us when you're healthy enough.
00:42:55
Speaker
Don't necessarily look at it that way. I know that there's some nuance to this and having the right team is a part of this. But really, even if you're just a strength and conditioning coach and you have these athletes that are in or coming off of the return to play model, I think it's our responsibility to understand that.
00:43:10
Speaker
how we can safely and and ethically not violate scope of practice, but have these athletes initiate this process as soon as possible, as soon as we possibly can.
00:43:24
Speaker
Yeah. And it's like, all right, remember day whatever, I said, can we force play jump him? And you're like, yeah. And River's like, I can't jump. i'm like, perfect. Perfect. we'll do a two inch jump.
00:43:35
Speaker
Yeah. he did it He did a two inch jump. And, you know, we, we, we progressed, we progressed, we progressed. And pretty soon, you know, he was jumping. And one of the things that we looked at was like, he's a, he's an elite decelerator.
00:43:48
Speaker
And I talked to you about this last night where, um, I was, I was talking about Luca, right? And, and Luca is not somebody that people think is fast and not someone people think is that ah is athletic, but at P3, they actually measured,
00:44:03
Speaker
He's 95th percentile for deceleration ability. So not only like his the forces that he produces, eccentrically in the deceleration process, but also the rate of force development. So how fast he can produce those forces.
00:44:19
Speaker
And if you watch his game, like he's actually built his game on that. And, you know, he he's developed an ability to get open and and use the skill in the body that he has. ah James Harden is another one who's not like doesn't jump off the charts in terms of like propulsive power jump height like he had a 28 inch vertical at the NBA combine it's like I have a 28 inch vertical and I'm a 36 year old dad so like not saying I could play in the NBA but the dude has an elite ability to break and he's used that in his game you see it in and out of cuts right well River has some of that and like it was funny because um one time like my wife first met
00:44:59
Speaker
River, she's like, that dude plays in the NFL? Like, he doesn't, I said his name, sorry. It's all good. he's He's signing the NFL now. But she's like, this dude plays in the NFL? Like, it how is that possible? He's like six feet tall, 190 pounds, like nothing like crazy. He doesn't have big size. He's not super fast. I mean, he's fast, fast enough. He can hit 22 miles per hour.
00:45:24
Speaker
But it was, it's really his ability to break, its ability to to stop from high speeds. And when we were looking at the first play, it wasn't like return back to your propulsive and how high you can drop. Although that that is part of it. It was like, we really need to introduce this this breaking quality as soon as possible. Because this is going to be the reason why you play in the NFL and the reason why you you play at a high level.
00:45:52
Speaker
which led to a whole different rabbit hole on the eccentric side and and the deceleration side, which like led to this week's conversations, which should have been all recorded.
00:46:03
Speaker
um But you know i deep dived on the braking side of things. And if you look at Vald's force plate, like you do a ah counter movement jump, it classifies braking as everything after unweighting. So like at the end of the unweighting phase to the beginning of the concentric phase, essentially.
00:46:21
Speaker
Now, if you look at the deceleration, the deceleration phase is when you start producing forces greater than your body weight all the way up until peak takeoff, which is the beginning of concentric. So the the amount of force you produce there is important, but also how fast you can produce that force, so the slope of that movement.
00:46:39
Speaker
of that thing. um And interestingly, at the same time, VOL released Premier League data on counter-movement jumps and a bunch of other data as well. But the number one distinguishing factor between the best players in the world and the best league, which is the English Premier League, and everybody else, the number one distinguishing factor was actually eccentric deceleration RFD, meaning like the deceleration phase, how fast they can produce eccentric force.
00:47:08
Speaker
um So then I started, you know, deep dived into my side and I was like, let me pull up all of our best athletes and let me get a list of like 100. So all of our NFL, all of our, you know, any guy, any guy that's played professional.
00:47:22
Speaker
um And I know how good they are contextually. And I ah first looked at the correlation between max speed and how long and they've played in career and their ah professional sport.
00:47:34
Speaker
Very low, like very low correlation. In fact, negative on some of them, right? So I looked at a couple guys and I was like, man, this guy was insanely fast. Didn't play long or a major injury.
00:47:47
Speaker
um So, which was interesting because I'm like, you know, I coach speed for a living, right? um Looked at a couple other things. Jump height, moderate correlation. You know who threw off that correlation?
00:47:59
Speaker
Tony Jefferson, 33 years old, plays for the Chargers, year 13 the NFL. sat Sat at a desk and was a scout for a year, you know? Dude's got an average jump height, average speed, but still in the league.
00:48:12
Speaker
How, right? So I went through a couple other metrics, like peak power, okay? Oh, yeah, this this has to correlate. No. I mean, there's there's somewhat more of a correlation than other pieces.
00:48:27
Speaker
Well, the the number one thing that I saw correlated with career length and health and performance and all those things, even contract, was that same metric, eccentric deceleration rate of force development.
00:48:42
Speaker
um And obviously you can look at you can look at breaking impulse or deceleration impulse and all those other things I can nerd out on, but... um Brandon Ayuk was at the top. Obviously, Brandon had ah again severe injury that was caused from a contact. so like Yeah.
00:48:58
Speaker
Yeah, that is what it is. um You know, but you had a lot of guys up there, like, and and even in the soccer space, though because I had U.S. men's national team and all these other guys that looking at, and i'm like, man, like,
00:49:12
Speaker
there's some truth to this. So I started going down a rabbit hole, asking around, talking to people, ended up talking to Ken Clark. And I'm like, bro, well, doctor, I didn't say bro.
00:49:24
Speaker
He explained to me what I should be looking at. So he pointed me in the direction of Rio Nagahara's research on, on acceleration.
00:49:37
Speaker
And he's sort ofs he's like, yo, Les, you got to look at the braking forces that are involved in every ground contact. Because like basically, the way that I was brought up in terms of teaching people how to run fast initially was primarily concentric-based lifting and primarily outcome-driven metrics. Like, how high can you jump? How much can you power clean?
00:49:58
Speaker
how hike you know How fast can you run? like These outcomes, right? And and and very rarely... were people looking at like under the hood, what determines a lot of those outcomes. So what he sent me was Rio Nagahara's research and and he showed that in the first part of the ground contact phase, there's breaking, right? So but first and the in in the first part, like first three, four steps, the breaking is relatively small.
00:50:26
Speaker
But as you get faster and as the contacts get shorter, there's higher braking forces. So if you're on step 13 step 20, whatever, there's very high braking forces. Like the first half of contact is braking, right?
00:50:41
Speaker
Now, if you've followed any like speed gurus or anybody, they say, okay, your goal is to minimize braking forces. And there's like some value and perspective in that as well. But The reality is, is that the faster you are, the more vertical force you produce, the higher the breaking force actually is.
00:51:00
Speaker
So when you're looking at, and um I'm going to tie this back to River, so trust me, right? So the the higher the the vertical force down into the ground, the greater the break in demand is. So actually the faster athletes, the fastest athletes,
00:51:18
Speaker
I actually have better eccentric deceleration ability than the slower athletes. So to give you one more step further on that, so like let's say I have a big braking force, but I don't produce a lot of vertical force.
00:51:32
Speaker
Well, yeah, my i'm I'm not going to manage that ground contact well. It's going to be a long contact, whatever. But if I have a high vertical force, and I have the capacity to sustain on the braking side, that means my propulsive becomes very efficient.
00:51:51
Speaker
So I manage my first half of ground contact better, which means that it's shorter, which means I have a better propulsive. Well, it's the same thing we see in the jump. So that, anyway, and this started with River, so I'm going to tie it back to River. So we saw he had that capability.
00:52:08
Speaker
um And we knew that his game was deceleration, but also we saw it as ah way to improve his sprinting. And we knew that this is something that we could point to in the return to play process as a physical capacity to develop, to, to then help him run.
00:52:27
Speaker
And that's what led us to hunt Hunter Eisenhower. We're, we're, he's talking about slow force, high force and fast force and the slow force side of things like the yielding isometrics and those things. And the high force was like the drops and,
00:52:40
Speaker
you know, the the really, really high impacts in those, in those things. And then the fast force was like the really fast, like the reactive side of things. So I know we implemented a lot of that and shout out to Hunter and and those guys, but, um, it, this, this was a really long rant for me, but the, the D the point is, is that the deceleration piece of it,
00:53:05
Speaker
became eye-opener when we look at sprinting. it's in it The best sprinters have a better eccentric capacity. And Stu's been saying this all along and I just couldn't visualize it. it Couldn't visualize Couldn't visualize it.
00:53:21
Speaker
um And if you're listening to this like you're idiot, okay, yeah, I'm idiot. But this was mind-blowing to me. Mind-blowing to me to look at that. Sorry, that was a lot, but yeah No, it's obviously important. and And I think there's two levels to it. I think intuitively, we and most probably can conceptualize that.
00:53:43
Speaker
Right. And like we've we've heard the the saying for a very long time, you know, and it's it's the same thing with fighters. Right. It's not the amount of force that they can produce, but how quickly they can inhibit the antagonistic muscles.
00:53:57
Speaker
Right. So similar concept here. But what we you know, again, what we were mentioning last night and kind of summarized a summarized point of this was you don't want to be in a position where you are producing forces that you can't manage.
00:54:11
Speaker
So if you are concentrically very robust, but you can't eccentrically tolerate the forces that you're producing, well, then you're you're fundamentally setting yourself up for an injury, right? five hundred percent 100%. Yeah. So it's a super important thing. And, i and you know, for...
00:54:29
Speaker
newer, younger coaches or for anybody in general too, right? It it is paradoxical because like I'm a speed dummy and and you you sit there and you're watching people run and you're like, you know yeah, well we need to get more push off. We need to get more length. We need to improve concentric outputs because it it just naturally would make sense. But you get into this second tier conversation of it and then everything that you just went through there,
00:54:54
Speaker
And it's like, well, the the better or more proficient that we are eccentrically kind of has this like feed forward mechanism of then improving the concentric output that occurs thereafter. So we can be more economical or efficient in training by having a better emphasis on some of this eccentric quality and and capacity and then rate of eccentrics, as you mentioned.
00:55:18
Speaker
Yeah. Well, it's the stretch shortening cycle. So like, uh, the CMJ is a slow SSE, but like there is an eccentric phase and then that allows you to then switch to the concentric phase and the the forces that you put down and what you create in the eccentric phase will determine a lot of what happens on the, on the concentric side.
00:55:40
Speaker
And then it's the bridge in between the amortization phase, right? Amortization phase. Because that's that's the trend. And this will feed into, I know we'll we'll get to him in a second, but like yeah that transitional point is is just as critical as well. Because if you if you have instability at the point of change of direction, then you are effectively bleeding out the elastic energy that's being stored in the eccentric phase to then be produced in the propulsive sense.
00:56:10
Speaker
So right the eccentric phase has its components and its importance, that isometric piece in the middle, and then we get to the concentric power.
00:56:21
Speaker
like the CMJ is a way to see the stretch shortening cycle. And then obviously when you get to, like you could have the capacities in the CMJ, and it'd be perfect and then not express it in a sprint, right? because Because the mechanisms and and and how we get there is different.
00:56:36
Speaker
And that's like more of a fast SSE, but it's the same it's the same concept. It's like restoring that elastic energy and then it's released and we have propulsion, we go forward. And um yeah, I guess that leads to the next piece that we alluded to is like,
00:56:50
Speaker
We have an athlete where, um i mean, he's, he I'll give you a little bit of background. He's bobsled athlete, strong as hell. Like, he was moving 530 pounds at.75 the other day or some crazy, crazy thing.
00:57:07
Speaker
He still doesn't want to see me on a platform. Danny. yeah I could dog you. So he could definitely dog you. But that's a whole that's a whole other conversation. So anyway, this dude, like, I mean, you get him on a forced weight, he's jumped height-wise, probably top three out of all of our professional athletes.
00:57:30
Speaker
um He's in the top, you know, eight or so in the bobsled world. He's going for an Olympic year. And and there's There's still problems, though. Like, he he's got all these these physical attributes, but, like, something isn't adding up. And, like, we've... And Brandon's been... I said his name again. Why do i keep saying their name? It doesn't matter.
00:57:52
Speaker
Brandon... um He's been with us for a couple of years now, and we've been trying to solve this problem for a couple of years, and he's gotten faster, gotten faster, and then it just plateaus. And, you know, I did my little eccentric, you know, ah deep dive on him. I'm like, okay, he's concentric. Like, he he produces a lot of propulsive power. Like, he's very good at the push-off. He's very good at...
00:58:17
Speaker
all that, but essentially the capacity for his essential capacity is not, not really there, but also when he sprints and I'll let you hop in here is like, we realized that there, there's an issue on the contact.
00:58:29
Speaker
to talk to that? So the first thing that I noticed with him, we, we go back probably about two months ago. Um, first or second time I was seeing him.
00:58:41
Speaker
And initially, there was a single priority with this but this athlete. And from both you and from him, I need to improve my hip extension. yeah I forgot about that.
00:58:54
Speaker
Yeah, that's what it started with, was we need to improve hip extension. And I believe it was on the left leg ah more specifically. So first session, we're doing a hip check. We're you know hitting all the points. We're doing some some isos, some tissue, whatever.
00:59:09
Speaker
And I just had him go walk. um And when he was walking back, I remember looking at his left foot and the only way I was able to really to describe it was like, it was a dead foot.
00:59:21
Speaker
Like he just didn't have any ability to actually push into the ground and and propel himself forward. So I remember we sat, we were at the cigar bar and I was like, yo, pull up his, his ankle iso.
00:59:35
Speaker
And you pulled it up and you were like, oh damn, like, yeah, his left foot is 11% down. Uh, and, and Like, okay, cool. So we got that, right? So the focus pretty quickly shifted for me from the hip down to the foot. i was I was thoroughly convinced that that was the reason why we had a low hip extension. For him, it 100% was not a a restriction and in local or structural range.
01:00:00
Speaker
Like he did not have a ah passive extension issue. So now we go into more of the functional technical category and we think about, okay, well, What is a component of hip extension, ah especially as its as it's expressed in a sprint? Well, the ability to fully transition from heel to forefoot and then actively plantar flex to go into a true hip extension as the hip crosses over the ankle joint.
01:00:28
Speaker
So we sat forward um up until the last two weeks. And this has been a really interesting one for me. um Kind of related, kind of not. He actually had a a minor soft tissue injury on the opposite leg from just a weird step.
01:00:44
Speaker
His cleat got caught and he kind of fell over himself a little bit and he tweaked his peroneal. um So we did some you know restoration on that side. But now... we're back on this left foot.
01:00:56
Speaker
And this week we, we were doing some different wedging and some different, um, you know, slant board patterns and stuff. And what we noticed was he can get into a single, a single leg heel raise, but only if his center of mass is behind his ankle.
01:01:12
Speaker
And as we put his center of mass over his ankle, his foot immediately collapsed and he was not in old it. And there was a, there was a pain response to it. So, This brings up a couple of different things that we've already kind of touched on, but then also to include some of the anatomy points here, it it is a true conventional case of an inhibited posterior tibialis.
01:01:38
Speaker
So the posterior tibialis is, in layman's terms, the mini Achilles. So this is a extrinsic foot muscle on the medial side of the ankle and the foot. It attaches in on the navicular and then kind of... wrap you have to simplify that one.
01:01:57
Speaker
So the navicular bone is is kind of the the middle, the the medial bone. So towards the big toe on the inner aspect of the foot and in in that right in that mid part of the foot. So think above the arch.
01:02:13
Speaker
So... It attaches there and then it kind of hooks underneath the ankle, runs directly up the inside of the leg and then kind of inserts on the backside of the leg in between the top of the middle and the lateral gastroc, medial and lateral gastroc.
01:02:30
Speaker
So this is a muscle that is critically important for sprinting, critically important. And the reason is, is that it is the primary driver for maintaining that midfoot stability as we go into push-off.
01:02:45
Speaker
So the compensatory strategy here, When we can't maintain midfoot stiffness as we go into active plantar flexion with the body traveling over the ankle, what we will do is we will externally rotate the foot and then try to kind of pull it up into dorsiflexion so that we can bypass that midfoot locking.
01:03:14
Speaker
The consequence of that is that's when we get that midfoot or medial arch drop or that foot kind of falling flat into the ground.
01:03:24
Speaker
And then we spin out of that push off position. So the interesting thing for this athlete is, is because of his sport and his demands, It's not as much of a vulnerability because he doesn't have any nest bike any real change of direction, any cutting, any reactivity. like you know There is the eccentric loading component of the sprinting aspect, but because it's a purely linear thing and it's predictive, he can utilize that compensatory strategy and feel absolutely no limitations.
01:04:00
Speaker
right No pain, no problems. Now, I would argue that there's still probably some performance compromise there because of this patterning. But in terms of health and and execution of tasks, he's good to go.
01:04:13
Speaker
If he were a basketball or a football player, we got a real problem. Yeah. so So walk me through. He's got two more weeks until push champs. Two and a half, maybe.
01:04:26
Speaker
And here we are. So we know, okay... we We have the physical bucket. like We know that he he he doesn't manage the eccentric part well in comparative comparison to the concentric part.
01:04:40
Speaker
um we We know he has this like almost like foot drop when and and spin out when he when he's running. So what do what do we do in the next two weeks? How do we solve this?
01:04:50
Speaker
it the The important context here is two weeks. Right. So the the first thing that we have to understand and recognize is with a 27, I believe he's 27 or 28 year old athlete with a super high training history and a very important competition coming up, we're not changing anything.
01:05:11
Speaker
We're not trying to change the pattern. We're not trying to do anything dramatic. We don't have enough time. If we had two months or if we had six months, 100 percent, absolutely going to make that a priority.
01:05:24
Speaker
yeah But in this case, and this is another one that's a really, really important point for coaches to understand is when we think about identifying problems in people's movement patterns, we have to put an abundance of context around it.
01:05:40
Speaker
yeah So the context here is is we support the strategy that's in place. We try to think about strengthening that position of his foot um in an isolated manner, and we just want to try to give him maybe 1% to 2% more ability to hold that heel off the ground with his center of mass shifted forward, or in other words, activating the posterior tip.
01:06:10
Speaker
which Yeah, go ahead. And you're specifically talking about like overcoming ISOs like on that high force day. Man, overcoming might even be a little bit too progressive.
01:06:23
Speaker
you know we like yeah We might be looking at like body weight and just you know some long duration stuff and some just... It almost becomes like movement literacy in a sense of like, can you hold this without compensating, without pain, and just register this position?
01:06:45
Speaker
Because remember, we're always playing with the brain. That's what it always comes back to. Is... there's And there's, a I don't know if we have enough time to get into the depths of this, but like there's even more of an enhanced guarding pattern or compensatory strategy um because of the amount of proprioceptors and mechanoreceptors that are embedded within the tissue in the foot.
01:07:07
Speaker
But to stay on track here. But what we are doing you know more from a brain perspective here is we are trying to override this signal that this is a dangerous position.
01:07:23
Speaker
The brain perceives it as a threat. So it rotates the foot out, pulls up into dorsiflexion, and then basically tries to bypass that windlass or heel elevated position by rotating and dropping through.
01:07:39
Speaker
So we are going, go ahead. No, it just real quick You know, it's interesting is that he actually tied his PR yesterday and like a 10 plus 10. I was like,
01:07:54
Speaker
What's going on? Yeah. It was on soft grass. Yeah. Yeah. No, again, I mean, I don't, because of the demands of bobsled, I don't think it's a problem.
01:08:05
Speaker
If this exact case is a cornerback in our combine group, we're having a totally different conversation. Completely different conversation. Yeah. i yeah Now for him, we get him through this phase. We get him to the the point that he's trying to get to.
01:08:20
Speaker
He goes over to Italy and wins a gold. And then he comes back to us to start training for the 2028 games. We got a different strategy. We got a different approach. But to to finish the point on this, when we have tissue or mechanical vulnerabilities,
01:08:40
Speaker
the brain perceives certain positions and in most, in and in a lot of cases, uh, displacement of joints or, or movement as being a threat.
01:08:52
Speaker
Right. It's it's a protective guarding mechanism. So this is why we always lean into this heuristic of the best athletes are the best compensators. Well, there's a lot of truth to that because their brain is able to process this faster and they just put themselves in the position that they need to be in, pressurize where they need to pressurize to get the task achieved.
01:09:11
Speaker
Right. So there's some level of that at play here, too. But we can override this and we can retrain the body. We can retrain the brain. You first, you remove the speed, then you remove the load, and then you play with the angle or the position to kind of facilitate specifically the response you're trying to get.
01:09:31
Speaker
But we get him into this neutral foot, bend through the forefoot or through the toes, and Elevate the heel off the ground. And the first level of it is just hold that.
01:09:43
Speaker
Just stay right there and hold that. Then we increase the angle a little bit. Then maybe we start to add some motion to it. Maybe we get a little bit of load and then we reintroduce velocity thereafter. So like you started with in two weeks time, we don't have time to do that.
01:09:58
Speaker
So we want to preserve what's present. And then just look to give him maybe one or 2% more, little bit more range, little bit more strength, and give him just a little bit more access to actively plantar flex with a neutral heel.
01:10:13
Speaker
I love it. um All right, switching gears.
01:10:18
Speaker
Next year, combine. Let's start with profiling. what What are you changing?
01:10:29
Speaker
man. Yeah, I know. Besides trying to get trying to get rid of me. um Yeah, we're talking about leadership, pal, here? We used to have one leader on this podcast, but continue. um this I'm not dodging the question here, but the the the first thing that has changed for me is understanding and appreciating the bigger picture.
01:10:58
Speaker
Um, so let's pick on range of motion. Um, prior to this, this past combine, never in my life have I ever pulled out a goniometer or an output or anything else to measure range of motion. I can eyeball it and tell you about where it's at.
01:11:15
Speaker
I'm going to look at the ratio between passive and active range. Um, and then I've got all the information that I need. We'll go from there. But understanding how important those range of motion values are for all of the other things that you're monitoring and and measuring um you know change the level of significance for that. So I think the the first thing that we're going to adjust is a much greater attention to detail on range measurements.
01:11:42
Speaker
I want the same people on each site to do the testing every single time all the way through. um So there's no inter-tested reliability issues or questions. I think I want to, um well, I know I want to look at both passive and active ranges with those athletes um and track that more consistently throughout.
01:12:04
Speaker
And then We've already kind of done it, but you know transposing this into next year's combine is having a better clarity and definition on what the color system represents, what red or what green, yellow, orange, red um actually represent what those specific ah parameter adjustments become.
01:12:27
Speaker
ah So for instance, if we have an athlete who we do an intake evaluation and we, you know, let's say for the sake of the conversation, they're coming off of a foot surgery in December.
01:12:38
Speaker
So they're going to start out with us in orange. So orange is going to mean that they have a hard volume cap of 50% of what's prescribed. They have a hard cap of at least 30 to 40% of intensity that's prescribed.
01:12:53
Speaker
And we have a specific distance allocation that's associated to that. Um, so that would be another big change. And then I would say, profiling wise, um you know, maybe just kind of leaning a little bit more into the quadrants and, and, and understanding, um, you know, perhaps some of the, the, the specific protocols that we have in place from a health perspective, uh, based on that quadrant arrangement.
01:13:27
Speaker
Um, I feel, i felt like last year for me, like I, I used it, but it was increasing throughout. And I don't know that it was as specific as it could have been so probably just better utilization there yeah it's funny because like after combine i spent probably man you went dark yeah i went dark i probably spent hours writing ended up with
01:13:58
Speaker
two hundred and seventy something pages on the quadrant the So I ended up writing all, I wrote a whole entire course on the quadrant piece.
01:14:11
Speaker
Um, so, and really what we were trying to do is like, i was trying to understand how do you train differently based on your quadrant?
01:14:23
Speaker
So for example, the bounders, what are they sensitive to? Well, we found out bounders are very sensitive to volume because of their tendon-based strategy, and um which is going back to the river conversation, right? it makes sense.
01:14:38
Speaker
um The spinners are very, very, very sensitive to high speed. So... you know You got two ends of the spectrum there, and then you got the drivers that are sensitive to acceleration and deceleration, what makes sense because the anterior knee stress.
01:14:52
Speaker
And then you got the bouncers that are sensitive kind of to like the resisted loading and and some other some of the other pieces. So like now that we know some of those pieces like from a volume and intensity standpoint, what people are sensitive to,
01:15:06
Speaker
but now we can adjust how we might train them, right? So from a grouping standpoint, from a loading standpoint, um for example, the bouncers are elastic and reactive.
01:15:18
Speaker
So the difference is, is like the reactive piece is how they interact with the ground, right? So if you if you put them on heavy, heavy, heavy resistance,
01:15:29
Speaker
you actually undo some of the things that make them really good. and So you do want resistance, but maybe it's light and they do very well with assistance. But then you got, then you got the spinners who enjoy moderate loads and do well with moderate loads and the drivers like heavy loads.
01:15:49
Speaker
And then the boundaries are somewhere in between. Right. So it's like this, this entire bandwidth, um, you know, of of not just loading, but volume and intensity.
01:15:59
Speaker
And right now, like, we're getting all the data from FirePod. We're live in that session. We know which groups can handle the capacities that we have planned and which groups we need to pull back on.
01:16:11
Speaker
um So, yeah, I think 100% looking at the quadrant and implementing as early as possible, we know you're bounder, spinner, driver, whatever. We know your magnitude, so we know if it's problematic.
01:16:24
Speaker
And then we know exactly what our plan of action is also in the weight room. Because what we what we didn't attack this year was taking the bounder or the driver, the spinner, bouncer, and then saying, this is the best loading strategy for you in the weight room, which is how we've been doing all of our guys now, which is crazy, right? Yeah.
01:16:44
Speaker
yeah that Yeah, and that that that was one of the irritating parts for me too because it's such a simple thing because like yeah you're alluding to it perfectly here, but what what I would encourage the people listening to to take away from that or the message of that is that when we have different athletes or different archetypes, the vast majority of the inputs from both the therapy side and from the speed and strength sides The vast majority of things are the same.
01:17:15
Speaker
They need the same base things. But the way in which we do those things should and needs to be different. So in other words, if we have squats for the day and we have five by three on squats, what you're hinting at right there is everyone's going to do squats.
01:17:35
Speaker
But some of them we may have in a split position. Some of them may be at 90%. Some of them may be at 75% with a velocity emphasis. Some of them we may have an eccentric tempo. for So you know so like you're doing the same things, but I guess the strategy here is bucketing how those things are going to be done. And that makes a tremendous difference.
01:17:55
Speaker
So when we're trying to create different adaptations, it's not necessarily about putting a different X's and O's together. You're not writing 15 individual programs. You're writing one program framework that has maybe three or four different applications to it all within the same setting.
01:18:12
Speaker
That's how we promote individualization within the team strategy. or team setting round. Yeah. It's the same thing in the gym is is on the track and or on the field. Like when we say, hey, the bouncer isn't doing heavy resistance, everybody has their load for the day. So like the spinner and the and the driver might be a little heavier, the bouncer and the bounder might be a little bit lighter, right?
01:18:38
Speaker
It's not hard to to individualize that piece or group that piece. um And another thing that we saw is like there's physical qualities that match up with those those strategies of running.
01:18:50
Speaker
So like the spinners have extremely high strength in the hip extensors, but they lack the force forced transmission, a foot and ankle.
01:19:01
Speaker
So adding a a little bit of foot and ankle in there makes makes sense. And then you have the opposite where the bounder typically has a really good foot and ankle, um but they they lack the hip side. But their risk is at the foot and ankle. So it's like from our protective strategy, we're still going to do foot and ankle stuff to protect.
01:19:20
Speaker
We're going to build some of the qualities that that they're missing, right? So it's it's interesting how how much we could drive from that signature. in terms of decision-making for the combine.
01:19:31
Speaker
and And then really just every,
Preparing Rookies for NFL Careers
01:19:33
Speaker
it's not even just combine. Like you look at combine, it's like this end all be all, but it's like you still have an NFL season. So our target is to help you arrive at your rookie year, play your rookie year and, you know, and be and be safe. Like that's, that's priority number one.
01:19:49
Speaker
Which I think reinforces the point, you know, because we're, we're, so we're saying, look, all of you are going to get faster at this little 40 yard dash thing. But the the stuff that we're putting in and the things that we're doing aren't just specifically targeting running a faster 40. It's improving your physical archetype for the 40 and then beyond that.
01:20:13
Speaker
And then from your, you know what I'm saying? So like it it reinforces that same concept. And I think like, It's interesting that, you know, from the from the lens of the of the quadrants, what I have been emphasizing is the the specific sites, right? The connective tissue sites that are associated with all of these. But what you're going through right here is more of the physiological differences between these these groups of these quadrants. So again, we we pull that out and we go back to this kind of, you know, 10,000 foot view and it's like,
01:20:46
Speaker
Okay, I may not know how to, you know, specifically plot these individuals on this quadrant, but I can understand pullers versus pushers, spend more time in the air, more time on the ground. Like those are things any coach in any setting can see.
01:21:01
Speaker
So now I pull
Challenges in Rookie Year
01:21:02
Speaker
back out and I say, okay, from pre-session to speed to strength to special strength to recovery, These athletes need more of ABC and then these athletes need more of XYZ.
01:21:16
Speaker
All of them need a lot of the same things, but we're going to do some of these a little bit differently. 100%. Yeah. know You know what really pisses me off is Like, I feel like, um ah it's funny when I said that, I thought about the Call Her Daddy podcast.
01:21:35
Speaker
How she always like goes into tangents. She's like, you know what pisses me off? um I thought you were going to say three doable words. Dude, well, first of all, you you should Everyone should watch the Call Her Daddy podcast documentary because it's unbelievable.
01:21:52
Speaker
And it actually pushed me to get this started. But anyway, i i already went on a tangent. So you know what pissed me off for real, though? It's like we we train these guys for two months. And we like, I mean, from food to tracking their sleep to training to...
01:22:08
Speaker
like mentality, it's like all in, get to the combine. And then what happens? Guys go to the combine, they run good. Yo, amazing. We celebrate. I don't see him again until next year.
01:22:20
Speaker
right It's, it's, it's hard because like, well, and I don't want to blast any agents because the agents are doing their best. But I think that the thing that I'm seeing is like, there's so much value from an agency perspective To protect the players that first year from beginning to end, from January until the end of their season, let's let's say. like Because it's the hardest year. Think about it. Think about how crazy this is.
01:22:50
Speaker
You play the national championship. You finish January 20th. yeah you come train You come to California. You train January 23rd. You leave January 27th to the Senior Bowl. You come back February first or February 2nd.
01:23:03
Speaker
You train February 2nd to February 26th. You go to the combine February 27th to March 3rd. You run at the combine. Then you go back home. right They send you back home or back to school.
01:23:17
Speaker
And you kind of like do some stuff, but like you're not really sure what to do. You're doing some stuff. You're not doing some stuff. Team calls and say, hey, we need you to fly to Texas today. and we need you to do a workout. You go and do that.
01:23:28
Speaker
Another team calls, you need to come to Philly. Now they're bouncing across the country, flying around, doing workouts for different teams. Nobody's communicating. The Kansas City Chiefs aren't calling the Eagles and being like, yo, what did he do today?
01:23:39
Speaker
You know, they don't care. Like, you know mean? So you
Managing Rookie Transitions
01:23:42
Speaker
bounce around for a couple months. Actually, sorry, a couple weeks. Then the draft happens. You get drafted. Boom. Okay. Celebration. You go to the team.
01:23:52
Speaker
About a week later, you go to rookie minicamp. Okay. Now, rookie minicamp is about 75% of the volume of a training camp practice, maybe 80%. But the intensities are there because it's damn near a tryout, right?
01:24:05
Speaker
It's three days in a row or two days in a row. And what do you see? You see guys that are like flaring up or having issues at that point. So you could you could confidently say that the combine to that period was mismanaged probably most of the time.
01:24:21
Speaker
Then after do rookie OTAs, you do OTAs, you're training with your team, which is good, very good. Most teams do a phenomenal job now. um Then you go to mini camp, and after mini camp finishes June 5th to June 10th in that range, you don't have training camp and until late July, early August.
01:24:43
Speaker
So think about think about that. So you have this period of combine. Then you have this period of like random workouts. Then you have draft, OTAs, minicamp.
01:24:55
Speaker
Then what do most guys do at that point? Man, I'm tired, dude. I just played. I literally played in January. Didn't get a break. So what do they do? Take a break.
01:25:07
Speaker
And then what happens when they get to that first camp? You see all the things pop up and all the ambulance chasers be like, this is why sprinting is bad or squatting is bad or whatever.
01:25:19
Speaker
i don't know, whatever it is. But there's so much in that window that's not talked about and that it pisses me off, to be honest, because, and it's it's my fault because I'm not like, haven't said this until now, but like that year needs to be managed.
01:25:38
Speaker
and And it's got to be managed by somebody that has, like, the insights into training load, like, what they're doing. It needs to be managed by whoever has insights into their medical history, also their signature of running. 70% of injuries running-based and specifically lower leg. Like, I mean, a lot of them are lower leg. we need to We need to
Ongoing Athlete Care Proposals
01:26:01
Speaker
talk about this, right? So, man, like, based on my rant right there,
01:26:07
Speaker
you're in charge. You got a rookie next year, January. What are you doing?
01:26:18
Speaker
mean, I think like the, you know, the the tricky part of this is always going to be the logistical barriers of of the sport. and And I don't know that there's anything that's more unnecessarily complexified or complicated than the NFL.
01:26:36
Speaker
um it That's my, what pisses me off is, is the NFL acting like it's the the Pentagon. um Like that's neither here nor there.
01:26:48
Speaker
I think from a, from an operational and a practicality standpoint, you, you raise a lot of good points. And the, the, the advantage of the combine is, is that it's the one exclusion really from high school football through professional football.
01:27:03
Speaker
where we have a legitimate allocation of time with zero competing inputs, relatively full control or oversight of what that athlete is doing. And then it's basically a lab environment. It's a living lab.
01:27:20
Speaker
We're collecting an abundance of information consistently over time. You know, you get somebody for seven weeks, that's 35 data points of fill in the blank, whatever you want.
01:27:32
Speaker
So true data. the The thing that I always come back to is, you know, when we're in the private sector, representing or presenting ourselves as being extensions of care.
01:27:47
Speaker
And this traces way back for me, way all the way back to VHP when we were working with the SEALs and stuff. We knew we weren't taking anybody off base. Like, that's where they go to work. That's, you know, that's what they do. We're not going to pull anybody out of that.
01:28:01
Speaker
But being an extension of care is giving a better oversight with a more thorough analysis and management process to provide more specific inputs for athletes or individuals who who need it, right?
01:28:17
Speaker
So we get a a great runway on that from January to March. My theoretical or idealistic goal in this sense would be that we were we would be able to have comms with all 32 teams.
01:28:30
Speaker
And after those guys finish up the combine, check back in with the school one time, take a couple of days. You just went through this, you know, rugged six week, eight week thing, and then get back here.
01:28:43
Speaker
and And see this as your proverbial home base for any time that you have that you're not in the organization or you're in the city that you're playing in.
01:28:55
Speaker
And what we can do with that is continuously be this extension of care that has transmission of data that understands who this athlete is as a human and then uplift the organization by being fully transparent with them.
01:29:13
Speaker
And so now we look at the continuum of care in season, off season, preseason, combine. It just continues all the way through.
01:29:23
Speaker
And I think for for the athlete side, like the worst thing you can do is just be a gem hopper and just pop in and pop out. You know, hey, man, dude. Oh, my God.
01:29:35
Speaker
Not that big. eyes You know, Like, yes, there's a lot of potential damage in that, you know, and yeah and I don't say that as fear mongering, but getting even beyond just the good trainers, bad trainers, good coach, bad coach.
01:29:49
Speaker
It's it's just the inconsistency and the lack of congruency between them. Even if
Data-Driven Player Care
01:29:55
Speaker
you have two good people, that lack of congruency is putting you at more of a vulnerable risk.
01:30:01
Speaker
I mean, how many times so do we have a guy that has a skill coach? Right. That does example yeah whatever they do. We do whatever we do. And then they have a strength coach that does whatever they do.
01:30:12
Speaker
And nobody talks. Like, it's crazy, dude. it's i mean I mean, what we're proposing here is like, we want to be what P3 is to the NBA. Yeah.
01:30:26
Speaker
what we are to the NFL. And then other leagues as well, because like, I think they've done a great job. Like, we don't even need to reinvent the wheel. Like, it's data sharing. It's literally like, hey, we have time to collect things that no one else has time to do because we're capturing them in a period where there's no football.
01:30:45
Speaker
So we can give you insights and we have, like, next year we'll have 35 guys that are top 100. 35% of the top 100 picks in the NFL. Hey, come on.
01:30:56
Speaker
Yep. there's There's significant value. There's significant value. And, and, sending like a packet of information to the team, like, so to say, like, if I could tell you like, Hey, we have Melrose, this is what we saw with Melrose.
01:31:11
Speaker
Like, this is, these are the pieces or ah you take any of their, any of our rookies and we're just like, these are the things they're sensitive to. Here's their entire training load that we captured on Firepod.
01:31:24
Speaker
Here's all their force plate data. Um, but Primarily, and this is what we've started to do now with Chelsea, we've started to do now with other teams around the world, um both in soccer and football and other, mean, did this with Ayuk, is like, here's the best course of action based on who they are.
01:31:44
Speaker
It's like we just have a little bit deeper of a fingerprint because we have more time and we don't have that many many people. It's not like a this is better information than you can get. We just have more time. um And I think the information that that we're combining together in terms of health and performance, and then walking through the strategies and the lens that we're looking at it is extremely impactful.
01:32:06
Speaker
And like, you know, I'll go and say it on this, like in the last two minutes that I think this is some of the most impactful work being done on on players in the NFL right now.
01:32:19
Speaker
and um
Future of Player Care and Personal Reflections
01:32:20
Speaker
And then other sports as well. But I think we what we're building here is a team of people that see that, believe in that, and we're always searching for the answer. So, yeah, I mean, I just wanted to end on that because i listened to a podcast about P3 yesterday and I told you it inspired me because I'm like,
01:32:42
Speaker
if we didn't have a direction before this, knowing that information, like now we do. And I, I know that we've been on this health and performance thing. I forced you to move out here during Olympic camp last year. I was like, Hey, you got to move out here.
01:32:55
Speaker
um you know, I've been trying to fight to keep my word on everything that we said in the beginning. And like, I think overall we've done a phenomenal job for people that just met a year ago.
01:33:08
Speaker
It's incredible. To this point. It's, yeah it's amazing. And I appreciate you for real. So no, it's incredible, man. And like, yeah, to put, put the summary point on it, like it, you know, we're, we're, we feel so good about it. We feel so confident about it, but like the reality of it is, is we're still just scratching the surface. And, and I think like, uh, you know, really from the, the industry standpoint, from our, our work standpoint, it's like, you know, think about how rapidly it's, it's changed in the last 10 years and it's going to compound, it's going to exponentially compound. So where are we at in 2035 and 2040? And what do these things look like? And,
01:33:45
Speaker
we go back to this management process and, you know, the extension and, you know, transmission of data and things. And like, it ultimately always comes down to the human aspect, right? And I think the most important thing is like the the relationships with the athletes and the relationships with the agents, as much as they piss people off in the, in the teams is, you know, standoffish as they can be like, you you know, it's ah it's a really important thing to be direct and conscientious about as a human performance specialist is the human aspect you know yeah you need you need those relationships and and everybody's doing their best they only know what they know and like if you look at most people on our side that there's been a lot of like screw-ups on our on our side yeah trainer trainers have done things that have caused injuries and like i would be cautious as well but like
01:34:36
Speaker
What I'm hoping is this podcast rewrites some of that and opens up some discussions around what does it look like for player care. And we can do better. you know the The industry can do better. And and ah maybe this reinforces, again, the human point where at the end of the day, like it's you know they they are athletes by trade.
01:34:54
Speaker
They're humans first. and And we're talking about, you know, for the combine, the the difference in somebody's life outcome going in round three versus round six.
01:35:06
Speaker
The difference in somebody's life in being able to be healthy through training camp versus. Hey there, though. Yeah, we got a guest. Hey. What's up, girl? You want to, you're on your first podcast. You want you want to talk to the people?
01:35:22
Speaker
you say hi? and Okay, tell us tell us about your day. Her day is going to get dressed and she's coming over to your house.
01:35:33
Speaker
Yeah. That was our first podcast guest, to be honest. All right. Well, I appreciate you, dude. Likewise. We'll be here. um It's my wife's birthday weekend and your wife is helping her nest and get ready for this baby.
01:35:48
Speaker
So maybe we can sneak in the garage and do some work. So. Gents Park party. Yeah. All right. Appreciate you, bro. All right, my man. I'll see you a little bit but