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Danny Foley: State Of Athletic Performance
516 Plays10 days ago
In this episode of The Speed Lab Podcast, Les and Danny dive into the rising problem of youth sports injuries, the balance between health and performance, and why early specialization is hurting athletes more than helping them. They break down how the NFL Combine creates short-term athletes instead of long-term pros, the responsibility shared by coaches, parents, and agents, and why true longevity comes from smarter planning, recovery, and communication.
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Timestamps
- 00:00 – 02:22 – Opening banter and setting the stage
- 02:22 – 06:12 – Rise in youth injuries since 2000; early specialization issues
- 06:12 – 10:10 – Balancing performance vs. health; smarter stress management
- 12:01 – 13:32 – S&C’s growth and risks of over-relying on data
- 15:31 – 17:18 – NFL Combine critique; Dr. Marcus Elliott insights
- 23:03 – 25:56 – Longevity and dynamic athlete profiles
- 35:37 – 41:27 – ACLs, UCLs, and stress fractures in youth sports
- 46:52 – 49:52 – Advice for parents: breaks, oversight, and avoiding early specialization
- 53:26 – 57:44 – NFL rookies’ transition struggles and workload spikes
- 60:15 – 63:16 – Coaching accountability and communication
- 67:02 – 70:42 – NFL as a starting point, not the end; athlete ownership
- 73:28 – 76:03 – Evolution of strength coaches and embracing variability
- 76:21 – End – “Strong enough is strong enough”; closing thoughts
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Transcript
Introduction and Lighthearted Banter
00:00:04
Speaker
I'm in here sweating like crazy because I'm out of shape. And I finally started working out. danny's Danny's been making fat jokes like the past three months. And it it's finally started to hurt my feelings. So here I am sweating during this podcast because of you, Danny.
00:00:20
Speaker
Thank you.
00:00:23
Speaker
Hey, man, i've been I've been trying to bring peer pressure back for a number of years now. so Yeah, I'm waiting for you get canceled. if If you guys are interested in canceling Danny, we'll get a petition going. It's a little abusive around here.
00:00:37
Speaker
yeah What up, man? How we doing? oh
00:00:42
Speaker
Fantastic.
Challenges of Athletic Health and Performance
00:00:43
Speaker
Doing good. Excited for today's talk. We've been like off camera just going through it, just talking through anything and everything from injury to performance to health and even just trying to nail down a topic has been difficult because there's it's once you start focusing on one thing, you start to realize all the component parts that lead to that one thing. And it's like, where do you start? Where do you focus? So I know we talked about this being an important podcast, but I think the next five are actually really important. like
00:01:16
Speaker
yeah're We're going to talk through a bunch of stuff today, which is going to lead to a whole other conversation and a whole other set of guests. And then we'll take it the whole other direction. But they're all connected. So it's one of those things. It's like if you're listening now, you're going to want hop in the next four or five at least.
00:01:33
Speaker
um I mean, ah i think like it it was funny, man. Last week, I think like we we kind of – came to a common point where it you know it started to kind of unpack itself of all these different things that that both of us have been you know kind of working towards and and trying to pursue for a number of years now where you know for you for a long time it was like, I'm the speed guy, I'm the 40 guy, I'm the combine guy. And then you know I was doing the stuff with the fashion stuff. like
00:02:07
Speaker
i think we both kind of saw those as as vehicles early on that led us to this point and then now we're sitting here like okay like yeah speed is obviously important you know i obviously stand by all the fashion stuff but you peel those back a little bit and it's like okay well what's kind of the real root of the problem well the real root of the problem that we're both noticing is that organizations and and teams and athletes across all levels males females youth professionals are having a really difficult time staying healthy and and staying
Injury Rates and Early Specialization
00:02:37
Speaker
available.
00:02:37
Speaker
and And I think both of us have a ah genuine curiosity to really figure that out. and And why are we in the state? It's interesting because at the same time, performance metrics are through the roof.
00:02:50
Speaker
Guys are getting faster, guys are getting stronger. um went to a high school game and watched Honor play on Friday. Not only did the dude hit 22.8 miles per hour in game, he had like 400 yards.
00:03:03
Speaker
Their their linemen was like were like 300 pounds. They all probably ran sub five seconds. It was insane. I'm like, the performance side of things is obviously improving.
00:03:14
Speaker
I mean, there's a strength coach on the field that had an iPad that was connected to GPS. They had a TV on the sideline. Oh, wow. They were going through, you know, there the tactical side of things.
00:03:26
Speaker
They had somebody in the booth. Like, they had a drone overhead. i mean, it was insane. Like, the the technology is getting so advanced and the players are getting so far down the performance rabbit hole.
00:03:39
Speaker
But are we are we seeing more injuries?
00:03:44
Speaker
It's that's why I didn't know they had all that going on. I mean, it's, you know yeah, well, you're taking me back to some Texas time here, too. And and and shout out to Soto, man. ah You know, some of the kids down there and and some of the schools and what they were doing down there and the the facilities and the resources, like the way you describe that is it's the professionalization of of high school football almost, you know, and we know these kids are starting up in January and it's, you know, full go right away.
Long-term Health Impact of Specialization
00:04:12
Speaker
it's It's really, really cool to see and it's absolutely fascinating. I think what you were alluding to there at the end, you know this is the other side to that coin is is that we have definitively and and you know conclusively seen, we'll say conservatively, a rise in injury rates or incidents across most sports, particularly you know from the youth levels.
00:04:41
Speaker
since 2000 and and the numbers are are clear on this you know i got i got uh kind of kind of villainized
Balancing Performance and Health
00:04:52
Speaker
after uh one of my podcasts last think it was the coach of my podcast coach me up podcast and um you know i was i was i got a little hot down there but i was talking tongue-in-cheek and said you know injury rates soft tissue injury rates are skyrocketing right now and ig warriors just went to town on it so i was like all right i'm gonna <unk> really do some
Athlete Profiling and Its Implications
00:05:12
Speaker
research on this. So since that point, I've little bit i've been looking into this pretty deeply and it's true.
00:05:17
Speaker
it is It is factually true that the the injury rates since 2000, soft tissue non-contact particularly have increased. And at the youth levels, we've seen this in person quite a bit.
00:05:30
Speaker
It's not just the soft tissue injuries, it's a lot of stress fractures and it's a lot of bone injuries and growth plate injuries. the obvious elephant in this conversation is, okay, well, let's talk about early sports specialization. And I'm actually curious to know your more detailed opinion on this. Like, think it's pretty obvious how that can play into acute injury rates.
00:05:54
Speaker
What do you think that does for more of this long-term process and some of these guys that are getting to the league, guys and girls that are getting to the league? Yeah, well, I'm – Barely qualified to talk about that from like the health perspective. But from what I've seen, I got you know i deal with a lot of youth athletes as well. like We kind of have a pyramid of athletes where you have a large base of youth athletes that leads into a smaller base of high school, smaller base of college, smaller base of pro.
00:06:20
Speaker
It's very rare we see an athlete that's early specialized and you know insanely good and focused at that age that then climbs all the way to the professional ranks. Katarina is one of them, and she was one that was early specialized, never played another sport.
00:06:37
Speaker
went all the way to the top of her sport, obviously with some injuries that were probably because of that. But she was probably the only one that I've seen go all the way through. Everybody else was like well basketball, football, track, or you know the baseball player probably played another sport. like It's very rare. now You see it now with our baseball athletes, the ones that have like specialized so early.
00:07:04
Speaker
You're just like, dude, how are you put together like this? like You are so wound up in one direction or you're you're so you know loud you're so like asy asymmetrical because of the sport and and how it's defined you.
00:07:18
Speaker
um But in terms of the injury rate, it's tough to tell because what happens is it's it's attrition. By the time they get to the, you know, I see them in college or or pro, like the ones that specialize super early may not may not be there, you know?
00:07:32
Speaker
um So, yeah, it's it's super interesting. But I think it all leads back to, ahead. No, you got it. I think it all leads back to, you got it. you got it it Real quick, it just it takes me back to the the balance versus precision piece.
00:07:50
Speaker
right if we're If we're trying to improve performance, we have to be precise. If trying to improve health, we have to be more balanced. And when we're so disproportionate, especially during maturation years, that creates a pretty unsteady foundation.
00:08:09
Speaker
We don't have to know anything about anatomy or injury. If the same things are working all the time and we never deviate from that or do anything differently, eventually those structures are going to be overwhelmed and break down. It's it's very simple in that sense. Yeah.
00:08:29
Speaker
We'll circle this back around into the the later parts of the conversation, but um you know on the on the performance side, like I think it's a necessary evil.
00:08:42
Speaker
we We should expose kids to to training stimulus early on. We should expose them to sports. and I do firmly believe we should expose them to multiple sports, but Case in point, it's nothing that we're saying here today at all is fear-mongering or is is suggesting that we need to put athletes in level rep.
00:09:01
Speaker
What our overarching message is, and again, we're going to work through this not just today but over these next few, is we just have to understand better what these decisions are that we're making. And for parents, no differently than for agents at the professional level or coaches at the college level,
00:09:19
Speaker
understanding this totality of stress
Understanding Athlete's Movements and Injury Prevention
00:09:23
Speaker
that these athletes are are experiencing or going through and understanding that we are the ones that are making the decisions that can alter or modify how these stress inputs are received.
00:09:34
Speaker
So some of it's going to be what it's going to be, but we can definitely do better than what we've seen from a lot of these these yeah organizations and others. Now, if you look at... Getting a little bit more granular in this, if you look at the industry right now, you got a lot of people that are developing businesses around the performance industry.
00:09:51
Speaker
So technologies and softwares and things like that. So you have everything from hamstring testing to force plates to groin and hip testing to, you know, it's just every every month there's a new company that comes out that does some level of testing.
00:10:08
Speaker
And it all leads to ah level of athlete profiling. And I think what's happened, this is just, yeah I might be wrong, but I think what's happened is we've become obsessed with the profiling side of things.
00:10:21
Speaker
and And when we look at most of the profiling, it's max outputs. And it's like all these, all these like how fast, how strong, how high can you jump, um how powerful you like, we're trying to answer those questions.
00:10:35
Speaker
And they're using that to kind of define what players, you know what their strengths weaknesses are. And I think i have ah I have a major problem with that, especially looking at the NFL combine. like I think the easiest way to explain this, and this this is a fact, the number one position that's correlated with faster 40-yard dash speed and success in the NFL is offensive line.
00:11:01
Speaker
Number one.
00:11:04
Speaker
It's wild. It's so wild. And there's actually a negative correlation between wide receivers and 40-yard dash speed. like there's ah There's a point where you have to be fast enough, obviously.
00:11:15
Speaker
So it skews it a little bit. But the 4-3 guys, the 4-2 guys, it's it's really tough to play the game if they don't have the you know breaking side of it, which we'll get into in a second. But...
00:11:26
Speaker
It just goes to show, like, is the combine ah predictor of success in the NFL? No, it's not. and there's There's outliers and there's Miles Garrett and those types of guys, but but it's not. So then you go back to the question of profiling.
00:11:42
Speaker
where we've become obsessed at every level, at the high school level. Now I see all different types of things happening in terms of athlete profiling and benchmarking and percentile ranks and radar charts and all this stuff.
00:11:55
Speaker
And it's, it's almost meaningless, right?
00:12:02
Speaker
Well, what did we say the other night too, right? Like there's, there's a deep origin to this because, strength and conditioning or human performance more collectively over the years has always been kind of little brother, right?
00:12:16
Speaker
Like we've we've kind of been the sidecar, underpaid, overworked. We all know the story, sad story. So I think when we started to see this influx of tech and we started to see this influx of measurability and objectivity, what we noticed was is it gave us, it gave the industry a leg to stand on, you know, to demonstrate that they were doing what they were supposed to do, right? Like the strength and conditioning coaches measuring strength and conditioning and then taking it to the superior and saying, hey, look, we're we're doing our part, right?
00:12:50
Speaker
So on one hand, it's it's fantastic, but I think what you're getting at here is this is extremely important because have we kind of lost the plot? Now are we just being completely siloed into what are the dashboards saying, what the numbers saying, and and now kind of losing the the, again, the understanding of how does
Role of Parents and Agents in Athlete Management
00:13:10
Speaker
this actually transition someone from a performance standpoint, but also a health standpoint and a play standpoint?
00:13:17
Speaker
think we're at a really interesting phase right now. The profiling stuff is fantastic, but if we if we don't understand this side of it, I think it really loses its validity quickly. Yeah, i mean, you told me the other day, the profile feeds the system.
00:13:32
Speaker
So if you go and you profile a bench press, a squat, a deadlift, a 40 and a vertical jump, and you're not good at those things, your system is gonna start to create some level of let's get better at those things.
00:13:46
Speaker
We had a player this year who is an incredible football player that ran a four or five who dropped in the draft. And teams drew like yeah were eh, we're not so sure about them.
00:13:58
Speaker
Well, this guy has the highest braking force and the highest rate of force development braking or decelerating we've ever seen. It's ah it's off the charts. His ability to brake is insane. He could run 20 miles per hour and brake in a box. like small he has an ability to play the receiver position from a completely different perspective, especially in the slot, like being able to brake in and out. Well, if you tested that quality,
00:14:24
Speaker
you probably would have rose in the draft boards, you know? but But we're testing how fast are you in a straight line, which obviously, like, I'm biased because I'm a speed guy and I got my start in NFL Combine and I've been building in the Combine space for a while, but it's it's so...
00:14:41
Speaker
it's so backwards to me to see those types of things. Now, obviously on the other end, it's like we've helped our clients that maybe don't have the the physical profile that NFL would want to see.
00:14:52
Speaker
And we've kind of like cheated the system and got them to express that for a day. But they pretty much go back to who they were after that once they start playing football. And then it begs the question is like, is is this having a negative impact on player health?
00:15:10
Speaker
Right? Like it, by making you, by spending eight weeks on the NFL combine and making you fast for a 40, did that have a negative impact on your, on your health?
00:15:24
Speaker
I'm going to say yes, but what do you think? Yeah. What do you think? I was going to say, what what do you think? Like, is it, it's, it's like the most necessary evil in, in the entire sport, like, or in the entire sport process, at least for the NFL. Yeah.
00:15:40
Speaker
because so much, so much of their initial success is tied to how they perform in Indianapolis. Millions of dollars.
00:15:53
Speaker
So like we got to squeeze that juice, but at what point does that start to come with a negative cost? And I think that's a really good proverbial question.
00:16:04
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, there's there's good parts to it. trick Us being able to get a profile on them, understand how they run, understand the risks of how they run. Like, I think we've done a great job of profiling them from the standpoint of player health and performance.
00:16:19
Speaker
So we're looking at not only do do we understand you from a performance level, but we understand some of the underlying causes to your performance and also the underlying risk to your to your health.
00:16:32
Speaker
And I think the value in combine training is really in that where you you have an opportunity where there's no football and there's a chance for you to really profile the player on the things that they would want to know about themselves going into the NFL.
00:16:46
Speaker
I want to have everybody wants to have a 10 year career. Right. Right.
00:16:53
Speaker
Right. Yeah. And the combine is not conventionally preparing people for a 10 year career. It's preparing people for an incredible four and a half seconds. Right. But this this all kind of speaks back to I'll actually just give a quick direct shout out here. The there's a great podcast episode um from Dr. Marcus Elliott, who's the founder of P3.
00:17:17
Speaker
on under the number podcast, really, really great episode that actually you yeah put me on. Amazing. Amazing. so He's got it. He's got a ton of nuggets in there. But the one I'll pull on here is, you know, so for those of you who aren't familiar, P3 is a is an extensive biomechanical organization that has been doing a lot of force plate testing for NBA for a very long time. But anyhow, basically, he's he goes on to say in this podcast, like,
00:17:44
Speaker
The best and NBA players that they've ever tested, they've ever profiled, don't really do any one thing super great in most cases, right? In most cases, there isn't this.
00:17:57
Speaker
They're not the fastest. They're not the highest jumpers. They're not the most powerful, but they really don't have a lot of weaknesses. And they are able to develop their skill off of what their physical straight strengths are. So I think the obvious example is Luca with this and and his ability to decelerate, just like you're talking about our guy here.
Training Programs and Athlete Readiness
00:18:20
Speaker
Right. And so I think this, this should be eyeopening for strength and conditioning coaches because we, again, historically have been misled into, well, if he's got knee problems or she's got ankle problems, we've got to get under the squat bar right away.
00:18:36
Speaker
We gotta get stronger. We gotta put more load on. We gotta do more sprinting, whatever. Sometimes that is a solution, but not all the time. And not all athletes respond to stress the same way.
00:18:49
Speaker
And this is something that we've been you know really diving into this year as well is, you know some athletes respond differently to high volume phases versus high neural phases. Some athletes respond differently to D cell versus propulsive forces.
00:19:04
Speaker
And, you know, for the typical general strength and conditioning coach, you know, I don't think this necessarily is saying like, okay, well, we, if we have a team of 20 or 30 athletes that we see at a time, you know, we're not saying, hey, you got to have an individual program for every person that you're working with in a group setting.
00:19:21
Speaker
But boy, there sure are some strategies. There are definitely some strategies. And it goes back to this initial point of understanding who and what we're working with initially and then how to kind of put it into motion from that point. Yeah, 100 percent. Because then it's like, I guess the question is, what's actually correlated with health and performance?
00:19:41
Speaker
So like what what things do you actually have to do? Well, for me, obviously I'm super biased in this, but I think profiling running, sprinting specifically, is probably the the main thing that I would look at, main lens I would look at. And honestly, if you look at it, most sports demand running in this sport.
00:20:01
Speaker
And then 70% of the injuries that happen typically are from running-based injuries and soft tissue-based injuries. yeah And if you look at any any game, any field based game, about 30 percent of the actions on the field are in that high intensity component. So accelerating, decelerating, high speeds, all those types of things. So that's that's a lot.
00:20:22
Speaker
And then if you look at running and you look at how we profile it, we're just profiling an outcome. How fast are you running? Right, so it's the, and and I'm guilty. Like we've done 275,000 tests on how fast people are across nine to 40 years old. no no Not to brag on that, I'm saying that's a lot of tests, but it doesn't tell you anything about who they are and how they got to that speed.
00:20:49
Speaker
and how healthy are. it's It's the exact reason why force plates developed where they're doing jump heights, jump height, jump height. Well, within that jump, there's there's a lot of a lot of components to that jump.
00:21:02
Speaker
And there's there's pieces within that jump that could tell you about not only performance, but the health of an athlete. And that's where the force plate boom came about is like, well, we can actually see the outcomes and the drivers and the strategy in this. And if you look at sprinting, it's the same thing, like outcome, how fast do you run?
00:21:21
Speaker
But now what we've started to do is look at some of those drivers to that. So like, you know, we've done the the terror test and the force plate test and all those things, like all the pieces that everybody does.
00:21:33
Speaker
but it's within the context of seeing how what are the drivers to that outcome that you got. And then from a strategy perspective, it's like, how did you technically get there? So how did how did you use the ground? How did you use the air? How did you use your phases?
00:21:47
Speaker
And then we back up into the health equation of we know that if you're an outlier in these categories, that can lead to injuries down the line. So long long way of saying like the P3 model is exactly what we're aiming for when it comes to developing athletes for the NFL and for Premier League and all those things. Because I think what they've done really really well is that they said, hey, this NBA combine thing is a necessary evil.
00:22:15
Speaker
Like we know that and NBA needs to do some level of profiling to delineate good and bad players, like, or fitness, whatever. there's But during that time, we're going to take the opportunity to collect more information on you than anyone else has time to get because we don't have, we're not part of a team. So we could just sit here and collect and collect and collect for x amount of weeks.
00:22:37
Speaker
And then when you finish this this block of time, we could package this profile up and say, from a health and risk performance perspective, This is where we think you'll be, and this is what you need to work on. Pass that to the team like a passport, and then now the team has clarity and transparency and into maybe these are the things we need to focus on with this player.
00:22:58
Speaker
I think that's where the real value is in this profiling matrix.
00:23:04
Speaker
I think that's by far the the really well said there. I think that's really the key. And if if I were to just kind of make a general statement and saying like, okay, where's where is the you know priority being missed in most cases? I think it's that little segment right there.
00:23:20
Speaker
I think most people are doing and understand and appreciate the the significance of a profile. I think we've we've gotten to a point where force plate testing is pretty commercialized. It's in most settings, GPS monitoring, et cetera.
00:23:33
Speaker
um I think people are seeing individual deficits or physical um limitations, for instance, within a bay force profile, and then probably accommodating for that in the training after, right?
00:23:47
Speaker
I think the missing piece is the the continuum and the understanding of longevity, whether you're a 14-year-old soccer player or you're 24-year-old NFL rookie.
00:23:59
Speaker
understanding that these are just a part of the puzzle for this battle of attrition that you're getting ready to enter. And this is where we come back around to this premise of preservation of health or staying in the green.
00:24:16
Speaker
So for my end of this, right, the relativity of injuries, the number one predictor for all soft tissue injuries for any athlete is previous injury.
00:24:29
Speaker
very clear. The second best indicator is how they execute movement and and express forces, right? And this is where we've talked a little bit about the quadrant stuff. We've talked a little bit about force plate profiling, but we take somebody's individual injury history and we align it to this metric profile.
00:24:52
Speaker
And we look at those together and say, okay, based on where they've been and what they've had, and what they are able to produce right
Lessons from NFL Lockout and Training Regulations
00:25:00
Speaker
now. These are some of the areas that we can say are clear deficits or areas that we're gonna flag, yellow, orange, red.
00:25:10
Speaker
And then from that point, we come back and we sit back down and this is where, you know, me and you and Chris were on the calls on Sundays and we're going through, okay, here are the numbers, here's the plan for this week, where do we need to adjust?
00:25:24
Speaker
And i the point that I'm getting at is that it's a living, breathing thing. When you get the profiling, it's not something that just gets tucked away in the in the in a folder on your on your desktop, right? It's something that is living and breathing all the way through because it's constantly changing.
00:25:41
Speaker
You know, nothing about an athlete's life is dynamic is static. Everything is dynamic. So we take what we initially have and then we continue to keep a finger on the pulse all the way through.
00:25:51
Speaker
And we are the ones that have to adjust to this. And I think this is a point that should resonate not just for coaches, right, or strength coaches, but sport coaches, physical therapists, parents, agents, managers, and so on, right? Because everyone is a part of this ecosystem.
00:26:08
Speaker
and I think that's an extremely important thing that gets as And I know we're going to talk about, we're going to go at the those people in a second, youth coach, agent, sport coach, and and kind of speak directly to them.
00:26:20
Speaker
um One last thing before we move off profiling. I think what's really important to understand, you know, what you just said was beautiful. Like that's that's it. Like that that's probably the most impactful thing said about profiling in my mind.
00:26:36
Speaker
Now, I think one thing to also add on top of that, is that there's at one point there was a gap in this arms race of technology. So like you had to have significant amounts of money to collect data like this. like If you wanted force plates 20 years ago, they were very expensive, they were very heavy, very big.
00:26:55
Speaker
um If you wanted the level of information we're getting from 1080 and all these things, like there was like a ah ah gap. Only the top programs, the top teams in the world had the money to spend on those types of things.
00:27:09
Speaker
Well, what's happened now is that a lot of these technologies have been democratized and they're cheaper. So you could you could have an entire level of biomechanics suite for pretty cheap.
00:27:22
Speaker
yeah Things that would have cost you, yeah, an iPhone. These things cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars back in the day, millions of dollars back in the day. Now you see trainers in the park using, you know I got trainers in the park using GPS.
00:27:37
Speaker
Trainers in the park are using force plates. Trainers in the park, I mean, they have a high level of knowledge of it. I think the gap is not the actual technology and it's not even the software.
00:27:49
Speaker
It's the connecting pieces between all of it. It's the system. It's what Stu's talked about, which we're going to get Stu in here to talk about the systems, thinking, and the component parts. But everybody has the component parts, pretty much. like If you're in Division I football, you probably have GPS. You probably have force plates. You you probably have some level of sprint profiling.
00:28:09
Speaker
I know not everyone has that, so don't like fire me up if that's not true. But you have some level of dose response understanding and profiling. um And I think the gap isn't getting those things anymore. that That was the gap. I think the gap is now connecting the pieces.
00:28:28
Speaker
So everyone's doing force plates, but they may not be connecting that to health metrics. They might just be connecting it to performance metrics. Everyone's doing sprint profiling, but they're just connecting it to who's the fastest instead of How does this player project over 18 games this season based on the strategy that they have?
00:28:48
Speaker
Is there a risk? Right? Like, yeah for example, we talked extensively the other night just about like, you know, the the the breaking side of it. If you don't have that, what happens? And then we've talked about how ah the muscle functions functions on ground contact versus the tendon aponeurosis.
00:29:07
Speaker
Like, those are things that we we don't consistently talk about in the industry. So it's not being... It's not being pushed you know onto people and it's not something they're they're typically looking at in terms of profiling.
00:29:19
Speaker
Now, everyone's kind of doing the test already. I can tell you the test. if ah If we were to work with the team right now, there there isn't a new test that we would say, hey, there's a brand new test that we created. It's called the Danny and Les test and it's the best test in the world. You probably already have the test. And how many times have we talked to teams where it's like, no, you actually already have the information. Just look here.
00:29:39
Speaker
No, actually, youve you've already looked there. Just connect that to this. Right. you know And you start to tell, it's it's storytelling. And that's the piece where AI can come in here tomorrow, wipe us all out from a technology standpoint.
00:29:53
Speaker
But in terms of how we communicate, in terms of how we connect the pieces, that's a human. that that That takes a... a skill level because the creativity side of things is really connecting pieces. That's what creativity is. It's connecting multiple pieces. So you're taking Alex and Tara's work. You're taking Chris Bishop's work. You're taking Stu's work, taking Dan's work. You're taking all of these people and you're connecting the dots. It's not about, and I think I talked to you about this other night. It's not about coming up with new stuff. It's not about being,
00:30:24
Speaker
Hey, I just invented a new force plate metric. Okay, cool. Like there's 200 of them already. ah um I'm sure it's not going to tell us anything new.
00:30:35
Speaker
You know, it's just a force and time trace, you know, and same with sprinting. Everyone wants to come up with new words for things and new, you know, it's sprinting's always been sprinting. And like we've gone from the spring mass model to understanding other pieces like ah vertical force and then understanding breaking forces. as technology gets better, you start to uncover layers, but the basics are always the basics.
00:31:00
Speaker
It's the first principles conversation. And our industry is always like, man, to develop a new product, to be relevant in the industry, I have to be inventive. I have to come up with something that no one's ever done before. And it's not true. You just have to connect the pieces a little bit better, you know?
00:31:16
Speaker
So,
00:31:19
Speaker
invent Invention versus innovation. at the And at the end of the day, this is a human based industry and and decision making in and of itself is not only an artistry, but it's a thousand percent.
00:31:31
Speaker
And that requires a really deep understanding of multiple met measures, multiple metrics, contextualizing it to the athlete, to the time of the year.
00:31:42
Speaker
And then being able to have, I think also to, especially in the team setting, a unification across all parties is another factor of this right and this is another thing that we've seen at the professional level is is the the siloed and chambered nature oh yeah apartments you know so the the programming inputs very very important the the medical or rehab inputs very very important the infusion of those things in my opinion is the separating factor
00:32:16
Speaker
Because if those parties aren't aligned on what these outcome goals are, what these you know steps to the outcome are, you can have every measure in the world. It's not going to be very good. And I know soccer is not perfect, but the tactical periodization model was built upon those that that thought process is aligning the system.
00:32:37
Speaker
Like there's a tactical goal of how you want to play the game. And then there's technical skills that are involved in that, yeah but there's also physical outputs involved in it. So aligning every drill to a tactical, technical and physical outcome is massive. And we did that for the Olympics and everything was color coded in terms of, you know, the physical outputs that match the tactical tactical goals. But um if you're familiar with the tactical periodization model, that'll make sense. If you're not, it's really just like,
00:33:08
Speaker
Imagine Danny's the head coach and says, I want to play a spread offense and I want to run and do all these things and no huddle and I want i want to go. Well, the strength coach should then take that information and say, okay, well, we need to be able to run.
00:33:22
Speaker
we got to have some level of repeatability or fitness. um We need to be like you could design your program off that. Now, what what happens in, I think, American sports is the strength coach operates independently of the head coach.
00:33:37
Speaker
And I'm not criticizing division division one college programs do a really good job. It's more like the high school youth level. And I see this a lot in soccer here in the United States where you have the coach that wants to play a certain way. It's like, I want i want to have this outcome and I want to play you know into space and wide and all these things. But then the training looks completely different.
00:34:02
Speaker
It's like you're playing small-sided games or the the fitness looks completely different or they're not working on speed. So it's it's the aligning of all these people But it's also a language thing as well because like if you look at profiling from the levels of profiling the game, so like I'm profiling the sport.
00:34:22
Speaker
like Let's say we're profiling soccer. We have to understand the dimensions of the field, how many players on the field, how long are the halves, Boom. Okay. We get the the the basics of it.
00:34:33
Speaker
Right. then you Then you profile the player. So this is how, you know, the players are that are on this team. And then you can come up with based on how the game is and based on how my players are.
00:34:46
Speaker
Now I can develop my tactics or I develop my tactics and then develop my players. But the point is, is you have to consider all those factors. You can't train soccer players like tennis players. So you need to understand all of the, the, the, the metrics.
00:35:01
Speaker
And in, in the U S it's not, it's not as connected as, as we want, which leads into the next conversation about training load. And I think training load is something that is very misunderstood.
00:35:15
Speaker
And, um, and And I'm going to speak directly to like the players that misunderstand it, starting with the parents. The parents drastically misunderstand training load and and and what to do. So maybe you could, I know I've thrown my youth athletes at you over the past couple months. Maybe you could speak to that for a second.
00:35:39
Speaker
Well, let's tie two points together here, right? Like we we started with, there's there's been a rise in in injury levels since 2000. Okay, so let's isolate this to the youth level.
00:35:51
Speaker
At the youth level, ACLs are up. Number I have is about 25%. um So quite significantly. UCLs in youth baseball are astronomically increased.
00:36:04
Speaker
Zero question on that one. Stress fractures, I don't have a statistic for, but I'm i'm very curious to know more about this. Anecdotally, stress fractures at the youth level seem to be very high, right? And and locally, like in real life for us, i can tell you for sure that's the number one common most common thing I've seen so far.
00:36:30
Speaker
And it just kind of, you know, again, bringing it back around to the other side and to this this point about the parents that we're tying into this ecosystem of sports science, right?
00:36:41
Speaker
Was it a Fergus Connelly quote? Yeah, well, fer Fergus told me. I sat with him for a couple hours. Shout out Fergus Connelly. um I was sitting with him and he was like, who's who's the actual sports scientist? Yeah.
00:36:54
Speaker
I was like, the sports scientist, obviously it's the person that holds the iPad and does the force plays. He's like, no, it's the person that controls the schedule. That's the sports scientist.
00:37:06
Speaker
Yeah. That's a powerful quote, man. Because the the more I thought about that, the more, you know, that that really is a tangible truth. And to answer what you were saying a second ago, right, with some of these youth athletes, like,
00:37:19
Speaker
You know, again, like we're we're not sitting here from our ivory tower and trying to you know say everybody's wrong and you know we have the answers to it all. But some of this is is pretty common knowledge or is relative common knowledge that that needs to be understood a little bit more broadly.
00:37:35
Speaker
And I think about it like this, like with youth parents today, if we have two oppositions, we have the parent that is paying $150,000 a year to have specialty training and all these camps and skill development, and they're putting them in cryo and hyperbaric chambers and all these things.
00:37:54
Speaker
You know, there's a lot of things that we can pick on with that. But if the opposition of that is an absent parent or a parent that just lets them sit around and play video games and eat Cheetos, you know, give me the parent who's investing a quarter million into their their you know youth specialization athlete so it's not the worst thing in the world but bringing it into the context of this conversation we have to get over this this misconception that more is better more is just more right and we have cases where you know these athletes are just being pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed
00:38:33
Speaker
And they really almost start to create a a dependency on input to psychologically be comfortable with where the athlete is at. And what I mean by that is like truly afraid of taking a break, like fearful of taking a break.
00:38:53
Speaker
Because if they don't go to pitch camp or if they don't you know get their at-bats this weekend or if they don't go to the soccer camp, then all these other kids are going to start to pass them. And it's a really, really misunderstood thing that what we're doing at that point is not only just all the physical overload, right?
00:39:12
Speaker
But you kind of alluded to this earlier too. the The psychological toll that that takes on a 15 year old can become extensive. It can eviscerate the love for the game, the the the purity of being a kid and and just being able to play sports and and continue to grow.
00:39:31
Speaker
So the point to take away here, tying this back to the testing and the profiling and the training and all these things is understanding that there is a dynamic that changes over time.
00:39:49
Speaker
The demands aren't the same 14, 16, 18, and And when we press on these certain buttons early on, usually it's just game and practice, practice exposure, teaching speed and and introducing strength.
00:40:06
Speaker
We need to saturate those things in the beginning, but then we need to understand when those time points are to pull back and change what some of these inputs are. And this is where we get some balance to this push for precision.
00:40:20
Speaker
So I think that's kind of the starting point for, well, why are injury rates up so much? Well, one of them is early specialization is up and with early specialization comes physical overload, overreaching.
00:40:39
Speaker
And we get a, basically we we start to work at a reduced cost where we start to become more vulnerable as more injuries occur. The number one predictor of soft tissue injury is previous injury.
00:40:52
Speaker
So if you're 14 and you get a stress fracture in your foot, and then a couple months later, you you tear a hamstring, and then a couple months later, you tear the opposite groin,
00:41:03
Speaker
Well, yeah, an ACL an Achilles or or a serious injury is is probably in the works. the The relationship between lower body soft tissue injuries and then you know triggering a UCL, there's a lot of evidence on that as well.
00:41:22
Speaker
We can't move or we can't produce as much power from the legs. Where do we go? Well, we start cranking on the shoulder and the elbow. So instead of us just thinking that, okay, well,
00:41:34
Speaker
Hey, we can just push through pain is a part of this. Soreness is a part of this. we We have to stop treating it like it an integrity competition and and be a little bit more, you know, mindful with this. And again, to your point, especially with our ability to have measurement and acuity and awareness of how athletes are responding to training. Yeah, no, I agree.
00:41:54
Speaker
All that is, it's wild. Cause you think about it in the scenario you're talking about, the parent is actually the sports scientist. Right, so the parent is making the scheduling decisions on what to do, what to do next. So even like the context, we've had this happen so many times where player A gets injured and all of a sudden the parent's like,
00:42:16
Speaker
I'm just going to search quickly on Instagram and find somebody that looks like a PT. And then that PT just has them stretching ice just for two months and they're like, everything's better. I don't feel any pain anymore. And they jump back into training and something else happens. And the PT's hat petzzy's happy because he's like, I got yeah business coming all the time. like I never run out of clients.
00:42:34
Speaker
you know He just recycles them. Yeah. And part of part of the problem in this is like youth sports is now, there's private equity in youth sports. So there's people that see the potential to make money on athletes right now, especially youth athletes, because they just buy up all their time. Like right now, there's more tournaments than ever.
00:42:55
Speaker
the The tournaments make a ton of money. I see it. yeah I see it all the time. Yeah. um As people are doing this full time now, like people in our space are doing it full time, but also on on the sports side. So like a basketball coach is running camps every other weekend, skill sessions every day. But that's that's how they make money. So they need to have clients. So they're always pulling at the kids.
00:43:18
Speaker
They've developed relationships that are strong enough to say, hey, you need to come in three times a week. And then the next guy is also saying, hey, well, you got to lift three times a week. And then the next guy is saying, hey, you need to do speed three times a week.
00:43:29
Speaker
And all of a sudden, it's a super congested calendar and nobody talks to each other. And the parent is the one that has all the information. right And the parent feels driven from the athlete's like,
00:43:40
Speaker
desire to play. Like if you're athletes, like, Hey, I want to play division one sports. Well, now there's a little bit more of a pathway to get there. When I was growing up, either you were like my brother who's six foot seven and could dunk a basketball from the foul line, or you were me that had very little athletic talent.
00:43:57
Speaker
compared comparatively. And I was the one that was told you better get really, you know, really good grades and you better work really hard and you play JV and you go, you go play defense really hard when you get on varsity, but you're never getting a trainer.
00:44:11
Speaker
Well, it's the opposite. Now every kid has a trainer and multiple trainers. I was just watching this one kid that I trained. And he posts every training session or the actually, let me step back. The trainers post and they repost.
00:44:25
Speaker
So this kid is reposting, reposting, reposting. And I'm like counting, I just wrote down, count how many things he did. He played a football game on Friday. On Saturday morning, he was doing skill sessions.
00:44:37
Speaker
By Sunday, he was doing some um specialized recovery that turned into actual lifting session. By Monday morning, he was doing another lifting session with another guy. And it's like, that was your recovery window you just went through.
00:44:50
Speaker
like That was the time you were supposed to recover. And you spent probably 500 bucks or so doing all these things. So you funded all these guys out there.
00:45:01
Speaker
um But that's that's the the problem right now is the parents don't have context. The parents don't know. Because i guess if I was a parent right now of a 14-year-old, I have a four-year-old, so i'm nowhere near there.
00:45:13
Speaker
But if I was a parent of a 14 year old and I didn't study and spend time in this industry, I wouldn't know either. i would just say, hey, I didn't have this opportunity. So i want to give my kid this opportunity. And it's well intentioned.
00:45:25
Speaker
And you see these parents like fumbling around, like literally as taxi drivers, driving, driving, driving, driving up and down the highway to all these different people. Let's say they do different things.
00:45:37
Speaker
I had a parent tell me that they wanted to do speed with me and agility with another guy and strength with another guy. I was like, and I'm sorry, I'm not gonna train your athlete. And he was offended, but I'm like, ah it's not helping you. Like find one of those guys can do all three and if they can't, they shouldn't be in this industry.
00:45:54
Speaker
um So the parent as a sports scientist, like going back to that, they control the schedule, they control the food inputs, they control who their athlete sees and their training load. And then on top of that, the next level is like the team sport coach is just like more and more and more demanding.
00:46:11
Speaker
Now, if you play soccer and you don't play 11 months out the year, you're probably not making the ECNL team, which is the top team or the MLS Next team. So it's it's complex, man. It's super complex. and This is a really, really, really saturated,
00:46:28
Speaker
um out almost manipulative space right now. You know, It's tricky, it is, it's tricky. And and but a part of the reason why, one, we're talking about it now, but two, we you know have have prefaced that this is gonna be you know something we're gonna pull on for a couple ah couple of these sessions.
00:46:49
Speaker
But you know I think the important, like let's to bring that to a summary point. If there are parents listening to this, if there are people that are listening this with kids, right? And a straightforward answer here.
00:47:01
Speaker
what So what do we do, right? The best thing that we can do is have consistency with who is overseeing the training, who is overseeing or doing the restoration or recovery work.
00:47:20
Speaker
And at some point throughout the calendar year, get away from it. Like just completely get away from it for a month, right? Take a month over the summer. if if they If they're in soccer for the entire year, if they're in baseball for the entire year, I genuinely mean the best thing that they can do is go be a 15-year-old for a couple weeks, couple months, or for a month or so, and just get away from the sport for a little bit.
00:47:47
Speaker
I would take that one step further and say, don't specialize early. I do firmly believe that, right? A rule in my household when she gets to that point is you you can't you can do whatever you want.
00:48:03
Speaker
You can't specialize before 14 or 15 and you can only specialize if you're really, really good. Like if we really think you got a chance in this, we'll go ahead and take that leap. But until then, 99 percent of high school athletes are not going to play at the professional level.
00:48:20
Speaker
95 of them aren't even going to play at a high level university. So let's just play some ball and have some fun, be healthy, be in good shape, strong, confident, get good grades and and you know have your life thereafter.
00:48:34
Speaker
you know But this ties into a bigger point or a continued point that is the agents at the professional level, how it kind of works in a similar fashion. right Yeah, I mean, honestly, the agent in this case would be the sports scientist because they're they're dictating what their client, what their athlete's doing. And it's it's interesting because agents will invest the money, invest the time, invest the energy into draft positioning, which is the NFL combine.
00:49:06
Speaker
So I'll explain it for the people that haven't seen this yet. But when the athlete finishes their college career, the agent will basically front the money and to pay for an athlete to go to a training facility. We're one of them.
00:49:20
Speaker
Exos is one. Bomarito, XPE, all these spaces around the country. Typically, California, Texas, Florida, and that range. um So they'll spend the money for their house, for a rental car, for training, for PT, and invest.
00:49:36
Speaker
I mean, it's it's getting to the $100,000 plus now sometimes. um and And it's all about getting faster. It's all about getting better combined.
00:49:47
Speaker
And and like during that time period, you hear from the agent every single week. Actually, no. ah Let me step back. Probably three times a week sometimes. You're hearing from them consistently. How's the client doing? Are they on track? Are they going to hit this 40?
00:49:59
Speaker
Boom. Then they go run their 40. They kill it. And then what? Nothing. We don't hear a single thing. Now, to give you context and why that's important is they finish the combine and after the combine, they go to pro day.
00:50:13
Speaker
So typically there's a gap. Now for our guys, typically they do well enough at combine that they don't have to do a pro day. Sometimes they do. So there's two peaks in that. After pro day, you kind of just sit around and wait and you wait until the draft. Now, this is what happens.
00:50:30
Speaker
The agent isn't calling. The athletes are like, well, nobody told me to do anything. So they go home and they kick it. Or they go back to their like their homie that was training them you know back in the day and they're just doing whatever.
00:50:45
Speaker
Just doing what, and there's no attention, there's no focus on that. Well, what comes after the draft? Rookie OTAs. Rookie OTAs is about 80% of training camp in terms of volume and intensity.
00:50:57
Speaker
It's like, it's it's hard, it's football. And they go straight into that two or three days. Boom, um then they go straight into OTA, straight into minicamp, right? Okay, so lot of times athletes, and they have some residual from from the season before in the combine training and they're they're okay.
00:51:17
Speaker
Now let's get into the serious part. So they finished minicamp in June, they have six weeks. Well, if you're a college athlete, and if you think about this objectively, they haven't had a break.
00:51:28
Speaker
They went straight from the previous year, winter training, spring training, summer training, fall camp, season, combine training, and then combine, pro day, short break, rookie minicamp, minicamp, and then a break.
00:51:43
Speaker
So what's the natural thing to do? I'm gonna take a break. And they're not getting advised. ah And I shouldn't say that. Most agencies will advise, but in in terms of the attention level that was that's being spent on that time period is is not the same as combine. It's not as intensive. It's not as make sure you do this and I got invest in this and got to invest in that. So what happens? Guys, chill.
00:52:09
Speaker
Like we we look at guys that should be playing as rookies, but they can't because they're hurt because they go through that they go through that summer period, take their time, or they'd kind of do whatever they do.
00:52:20
Speaker
Some guys just run routes. Some guys just throw the ball. Some guys just do DV work. Some guys just lift, but there's a lack of attention to it. and And they don't want to like have some serious like intensive program because that's all they've been doing for the past year.
00:52:34
Speaker
Then they go into training camp and they're like, boom, hit right right in the face with the volume and the frequency of training. And you you now have six, seven hour days and it's very structured and it's like the shock to their system.
00:52:47
Speaker
A lot of guys don't make it out of training camp healthy as rookies, which affects their second contract timing. Like if you don't play that first year, um it definitely affects when you can you know have access to money on on the back end.
00:53:04
Speaker
So long story short, the agent is is in control of some of the the aspects of this. And they are technically the sports scientists in this place because they're we are hired as performance people and we can try to advise and all that. But ultimately the person that controls the money and the attention and the resources becomes a sport scientist.
00:53:25
Speaker
And yeah. So what do you, what do you see in that space? Like how. I got, I got, I got a couple of things on that. Like, I think so. The, the first point like with, with the agent piece, what you're getting at here is like,
00:53:40
Speaker
have the same level of of emotional investment after your payday has come. You're emotionally invested and on the ball and you got your finger on the pulse in January and February because you know, we know, the better they perform at the combine, the bigger the payout is gonna be in the short term.
00:54:02
Speaker
But what you're saying, what we're saying is, you know, hey, everyone involved, let's let's see the longevity of this. We all know that, especially in the NFL, the real money is in contract too.
00:54:15
Speaker
So moving someone from, you know, mid third to early second round is huge. That's enormous. It's a, it's a big thing, you know, make no mistake about it, but whether you're top five or you're mid fifth round, everyone basically has the same opportunity to that second contract. Right. And I think about a dude like Max Crosby, right.
00:54:41
Speaker
Late fourth round out of Eastern Michigan. worked his way up, got to his second contract. Now he's on his third, right? So the point is, is that in the NFL, especially it's a long game.
00:54:51
Speaker
So we, we have to think about it from that sense. And from the, again, the support scientists, the agent, like your passion, your emotional investment needs to be persistent beyond that initial, you know, first point of, of combine finishing. The second thing that comes to mind when you're describing this first year for these rookies, for these NFL guys,
00:55:10
Speaker
The one factor ah that really sticks out is we talked about a second ago how the number one predictor of soft tissue injury is previous injury. Well, a close second is rapid and unpredicted changes in workload.
00:55:26
Speaker
So in other words, and this ties into the use points we were making a second ago as well, but, you you know, going from doing everything to doing nothing to jumping back to doing everything.
00:55:37
Speaker
Big danger zone. Big, big risk there. The way we want to think about this is minimizing the peaks and valleys. So we're going to go up, we're going to come down all the time throughout the entire year, but instead of having massive spikes and massive drops, how can we bevy that out a little bit?
00:55:54
Speaker
The other thing for the rookies, how about the psychological stress and toll that that process takes? mean, I've heard some stories, but I didn't know you when you were 22.
00:56:07
Speaker
I certainly remember when I was 22. You don't, bro, you dump a couple million dollars and in my bank account. You set me up in Miami or in l a ah You know what I'm saying?
00:56:19
Speaker
So it's a really radical time. And for a lot of these dudes, you're, you're going from a place like, you know, Louisiana or Seattle or Oregon. And then now all of a sudden you're moving across the country and You know, maybe you're going to be, you know, a lock for the roster, but maybe you're not. Maybe bounce around a couple of times even in that first year.
00:56:44
Speaker
The demands are different. The expectation is different. You know, you go from being the the superstar of the team to just be in one of 53. So all of these things begin to compound and and it creates this exponential effect of, you know, how the body is going to respond to stressors and to demands.
00:57:04
Speaker
So from this lens of sports science and what, you know, the the point that we're we're kind of creating here is we we have to understand that there is no finish line with this.
00:57:20
Speaker
Like we, I think we set out these goals, we set out these dates and from the agent to the coach, to the parent, to us, to the sport coach, we all see start and stop points throughout the year for ourselves.
00:57:33
Speaker
And I think the real goal of this is having true integration that uplifts all of the components or the surrounding parts that are continuous throughout the year. And just sometimes you're a little bit more involved or a little less involved throughout those points, but everyone throughout the entire process needs to be active Yeah. And honestly, like these are all, these are really good points. Like the the first point you're saying is like have the same level of emotional investment after the payout.
00:58:01
Speaker
I would argue knowing the agents and most of the agents we deal with are really good people like and really good agents as well. Like I've i've had Like getting into the industry, I heard a lot of agent stories and obviously I've had my experiences with with certain agents, but I would say currently who we're working with, it's been an amazing experience. Like these dudes are, they listen, they like, when you tell them the truth, they're like, okay, cool. Like, let's do it.
00:58:31
Speaker
I think some of it is actually on us and it's actually, I would say it's on us as an industry yeah because of how heavily we promote combine and like, we We make it bigger than what it is. It's our Olympics.
00:58:45
Speaker
And it's it's fun because it's like you're you're recruiting and then you're you <unk> in this space. It's like warfare and then to the combine. It's like everyone's mean bugging each other in the hallway. It is what it is. But like that's our are our ego boost, right? Because it's an outcome. And then we kind of like fall off and it's like, yeah, it is what it is.
00:59:04
Speaker
I think it's our fault as an industry that we're not pushing on the agents more to understand what it is. that leads back to the P3 model is that they took the combine and they turned that combine into an opportunity to collect more data to then further their development. And I think right now what we need to do as practitioners is say, we have eight weeks where there's no football and we can collect all this information. Let's collect the right stuff.
00:59:31
Speaker
Let's build the profile that's built heavily on health and performance in a balanced state. And then let's let that drive the next 12 months. Because because it it needs to, like January anywhere to January, this this should be the plan.
00:59:47
Speaker
And in that, we need to outline Number one, you have combine and then right after that, right after that, you have workouts for teams that then leads into rookie OTAs and then leads into OTAs and the mini camp. Guys don't know that.
01:00:02
Speaker
All right. And then you have a six week break and then you go into training camp. And as a rookie, your training camp looks different than our veterans. You know what I mean? Like training camp is not the same for everybody, you know?
01:00:16
Speaker
And what we need to do is is further outline that for them. Right.
01:00:24
Speaker
We we we so are our first episode that we talked. Right. One of the things we covered was. you know, what went wrong in the combine? What do we do wrong? or Or where did we miss? Right. And and my my list was significantly longer than yours or or anyone else's for that matter.
01:00:41
Speaker
But bro, this was one of the first points. This was one of the first things that was just a real wake up call to me. Right. I remember I was I just moved into the new crib boxes and stuff everywhere. I'm like, oh, God, I made it. We did it.
01:00:58
Speaker
You know, we got through this thing. And we had one of our athletes who had a pro day March 21st. It was real late. And you hit me up and you're like, yo, hey, what's the status with him? Like, where's he at?
01:01:11
Speaker
Like, what do you mean? I've heard from over a week. He's got 10 My gosh, you know? And so it, you made me think of it because like it is an emotional process and it is this big investment. And I think the combine, the cool thing about the combine is it's a microcosm of everything we're doing throughout the rest of the year.
01:01:33
Speaker
It's all the same, right? It's just more, it's more magnified during that time. So the takeaway point here is, is I took my foot off the gas because I saw a proverbial end point.
01:01:46
Speaker
But when we're talking about this presence of staying in the green and the the the continuation of health and the continuation of programming and planning and integration, it is 24-7, 365 thing. and And we have to take pride in that, you know, because let's let's bring two ends together on this, too. Like one of the things we started with here was human performance conflating their level of of contribution to this thing because we've been minimized for so long.
01:02:17
Speaker
but So we we you know we've kind of looked at it like that. Well, the same group of people, speaking at large here, right? And this doesn't apply to us specifically, but speaking at large, the same group of people that beat their chest and beat the drum about being underpaid and being overworked and you know not having enough of an input are the same ones that are afraid to work weekends and are the same ones that can't take a call after 6 p.m.
01:02:46
Speaker
And they're the same ones that can't get up early to go meet people for sessions. You can't have it both ways. So it is on us exclusively. And if we want the credit, we have to accept the consequence.
01:03:00
Speaker
So in this context, it's like, yeah, maybe we do need to get beyond just, you know, filling in our programming sheet and and checking our our force plate metrics and then shutting the laptop.
01:03:10
Speaker
The communication piece is so essential to this within the team, direct with the athlete and then to the extraneous parties, parents and agents. I think the most successful model of this was when we did IUK right after the combine.
01:03:29
Speaker
I had a chance to meet Dustin Perry with the 49ers. He was incredible. like He's been mentored to me and and helped me a ton. he was like I remember i was talking to him. He was like, oh, you're working with IUC? was like, yeah. He's like, all right, here's what I need from him to be ready for training camp. And he sent me like all of these things, like volumes here, this much high speed.
01:03:51
Speaker
And I was just kind of getting used to GPS. I think this is 2021. I'm just now getting used to, or maybe in 2020, but I'm just getting used to GPS. I'm just getting used to training and stuff. And I was like, cool, I'll just follow it.
01:04:03
Speaker
And I followed it and he went to training camp. And when he went to training camp, I looked at what we did and I was like, It wasn't really like just speed training. It wasn't really strength training. It was like we needed to get to a general volume of of work to be able to handle more work.
01:04:22
Speaker
And it was like it was it was a GPP looking back at it. And then every year after that, we we did the same thing. What do you need from him in training camp? How is he going to play for the next year? And then and then boom.
01:04:33
Speaker
No, I think my my problem is that not every guy had the level of focus that the Brandon had and in terms of wanting to do all the mundane, boring things.
01:04:45
Speaker
I think when you look at the industry, there's a lot of sexy things out there that are a lot sexier than what me and Brandon did. Like what we did with Brandon was objectively boring.
01:04:56
Speaker
It was the same thing over and over and over and over again every day in and day out. And it was just like mundane. Like it didn't change much, you know? And I look at the attention span of the athletes sometimes and like, I'm going to put some blame on them too.
01:05:10
Speaker
Like everybody's in this, so we might as well put some blame on them. is they want to they want to go to the place that is attached to the scene and parties and the friends and you know the hangouts. I had a guy, I'm not going to name names, but he wanted to go to Miami so he could be with his homie and so he they could drink and be on yachts and all that.
01:05:35
Speaker
San Diego is not that fun. California is, mean, ah shouldn't say that. It is fun if you're into like regular, yeah, like regular stuff. You're not going to go meet a bunch of young girls and stuff. you're not There's not a big drinking scene here anymore. It's actually interesting.
01:05:50
Speaker
The drinking scene has died here in some ways, which is which is cool. But it's not the place you go to have intense amounts of fun. I look back at the l LA scene for a while. l LA scene was wild.
01:06:02
Speaker
And I look at all the ACLs that popped out of that scene as well. You know what I mean? Because they were doing some wild stuff. But um it's not sexy. And I think guys are attracted to the sexiness.
01:06:16
Speaker
And it makes it really difficult in our space to try to tell guys like, yo, like, I know you you just got a paycheck. I know you just got um free of this, you know, like, I don't know this senior year where it's super stressful and it's,
01:06:34
Speaker
really difficult and the combine stuff and you finally got some bread and you finally got an opportunity to chill and you you want to go to the place that's attached to the beach and even run on the beach and all that stuff it's it's hard and like i don't know i don't know if we'll ever be the the guys to push it down guys like you got to do this but um i'm go say it on here you know yeah
01:06:59
Speaker
Well, it's there's a fault in perspective on that, right? And the fault in perspective is seeing the start as the end point.
01:07:07
Speaker
Getting to the league is not the celebration. That's not the end point. Like you you you got there, which is incredible. Getting to the NFL alone, we all know, is is a statistical improbability.
01:07:20
Speaker
Very, very difficult, right? but you got there. And so you have to have the maturity and the sense of awareness of understanding like, okay, it's a clean slate again.
01:07:32
Speaker
I'm bottom man on the roster again. I got to fight for everything again. I've got to prove to everyone what I'm capable of again. It's not the time to sit back and say, Hey, I got a couple hundred thousand of expendable income now. So now I'm going to go, you know, down to TJ or out to Miami or whatever. Right? Like it's,
01:07:50
Speaker
the the we've seen great examples of this we've seen negative examples of this we all know the horror stories but the point that we're getting at here is that for the vast majority of athletes for as at the pro level in this case right you know you're responsible for the direction of your ship you're responsible for who's on that ship you're responsible for the the the ultimate end point that you reach right you're you're a full-grown adult so having the ability to understand this side of things the physical preparation the recovery you know working with the team working outside of the team finding different resources these are all things that fall onto your responsibility so what we're trying to produce and provide is is this a a medium of of
01:08:41
Speaker
not just the training, but the education and the literacy behind it. And like, you know, again, to kind of pull on one, i I know what you were getting at there a second ago with some of this, you know, the buffoonery that we see in the training world.
01:08:55
Speaker
How can we help you understand the differences between some of this eye wash and these things that are, you know, much more grassroots and and and real? And as the athlete, your body is your most valuable asset.
01:09:14
Speaker
You don't have that body. You don't have those physical traits or those attributes and you are immediately affecting your your potential earning or your potential work.
01:09:28
Speaker
You got to be educated to it degree. Which leads to the last part, which is the training. And like, if you look at the training right now and and tie back to the beginning part, we're talking about the profile is the profile feeds the system.
01:09:42
Speaker
So you go to most training, not most, I shouldn't say most, but you go to these training facilities sometimes and they're driving, Hey, we're going to squat test you or deadlift test you or jump height, you or sprint you, whatever.
01:09:55
Speaker
which drives the system, which then guys are trying to chase these outputs for the whole offseason. And we know from a tendon perspective, we understand from um ah training goal perspective is that like a focus on pure outputs isn't necessarily to make it the most camp ready.
01:10:13
Speaker
And I think a lot most most of the good facilities believe this, but um I'm speaking more generally, especially in the youth space as well. um It doesn't help you prepare. And that's the piece that I think is probably the the tie up to all this. And one thing thatll that I'll add in on that as well is that our job as performance coaches is relatively new.
01:10:36
Speaker
And then if you think about the relative newness, that the industry was born out of an off-season period. So was built out of, there's a clear off-season that you develop these these qualities, and then you go to the season and then just stop and you just play the sport.
01:10:51
Speaker
Well, that's how our industry was developed originally as as an offseason thing. And now that seasons have been extended, so they're at they've actually added more in ah NFL games, right? they're They're adding seasons. They're adding games. They're adding time.
01:11:05
Speaker
Especially in the youth space, there is no offseason. So everything is technically in season, right? There is no more offseason. So your motto of chasing these outputs in the offseason and then transitioning to season is is actually dead.
01:11:19
Speaker
Like you have to be able to prepare people to play anytime. They have to be continuously ready, which is the staying in the green idea where you have to monitor your dose and response. You have to monitor your training load, but also have to monitor training response, which should also lead to how you do interventions and programming, which should also be driven from your from your profile.
01:11:42
Speaker
Right. And it's this complex. It's a lot harder, but you have to be able to to be adaptable. So the species that is the most adaptable is the species that survives. The species that can adapt to climate and those things die off and go extinct.
01:11:59
Speaker
It's the same thing for for business. It's the same thing for us as practitioners. We have to be adaptable. So you have to adapt to the different variables that are changing, which could be weather, or could be, i don't know, maybe you can't get inside and you have to only be outside, or there's there's things that are going to change up whatever program you set, or it could be training load, like we're high right now, which means we need to do something else, or we're low, which means we need to stimulate. Like, there's very clear things that are going to
01:12:31
Speaker
cause your program to not be um what you wrote out on a piece of paper. You can't write out 16-week programs anymore in some Russian system that you're going to follow every progression up to.
01:12:42
Speaker
No, it it doesn't exist. And as organisms... we adapt to stress differently. If I'm a smoker and and you're not, and we go on a run, I'm not a smoker. I mean, I smoke cigars clearly, but um if we go on a run and I've been smoking every day, the way I adapt to the stress of running is gonna be significantly different than you, right? So the way that I need to now take care of myself, obviously stop smoking, but um I'm gonna respond differently than you.
01:13:12
Speaker
And that's the piece that I think from a training perspective is that The industry is still focused on sets, reps, progressions, and it hasn't shifted.
01:13:24
Speaker
hey right And it hasn't shifted to how do we be adaptable, right? 100%. hundred percent It's the most important thing that that we've said on this episode, for sure, if not this whole thing. it's It's one of the most important things that you've brought up, the change in the fundamental role.
01:13:45
Speaker
and And it's funny because like ah I've looked at this for for a while, right? And we the the term, the little heuristic that I've always kind of come to with this is like, the best ability is to improve the ability to tolerate variability.
01:14:00
Speaker
Improving the ability to tolerate variability speaks to the physical and the physiological variability. But what you're speaking to is actually more important.
01:14:13
Speaker
It's the broader sense of what a strength and conditioning coach's roles and responsibilities looked like in 1990. versus 2005 versus 2025.
01:14:27
Speaker
Those are three objectively and distinctly different roles and responsibilities. and it And it, you know, again, like you mentioned, like, yeah, sure, it's a little bit more nuanced.
01:14:38
Speaker
It's a little bit more complex, but it's also the reality, right? And and and there has to be a perspective or a paradigm shift that comes with this. And maybe this is where you and I are just very fortunate to be as tight with Stu as we are, because I think this is the point that he illustrates better than anybody.
01:15:00
Speaker
It's not about optimizing the component. It's about the infusion of the multitude of component parts that are all coming together and creating this collective outcome.
01:15:13
Speaker
And so from the strength and conditioning or human performance role, What we've been trapped in is exactly what he, you know, really like faults most frequently in that we are trying to just optimize 10 out of 10 for strength and conditioning with no regard for how this actually interfaces with the surrounding parts of components.
01:15:37
Speaker
So I think it's an enormously important thing, you know. and And like you mentioned, right, the the adaptability and the fluency of this, understanding how to not just create and conduct a profiling process, but understanding the dynamic element of that thereafter, the continuation of it, and then how this actually prompts what's needed for these athletes is the separating factor right Yeah, a thousand percent.
01:16:04
Speaker
2011 NFL lockout. There was no OTAs. There was no spring football. There none of that. And players got strong. I mean, you look at the videos from that time period, dudes were doing all types of training, all types of like weightlifting and and things.
01:16:21
Speaker
what What happened when they came back to football?
01:16:25
Speaker
The highest rate of injury since 2000. And specifically, what what types of injuries?
01:16:32
Speaker
a lot of soft tissue, almost all lower body. It was, um you know, it was kind of like the first real spike in this injury trend line that has been linearly increasing, you know, again, really since 2000, but you see 2011, 2012, and it's a clear elevation yeah in rate and incidence.
01:16:53
Speaker
And so, you know, this again, feeds back to some of the running themes of this, but Getting strong is very important to be a good athlete, right? But strong enough is strong enough and strength does not account for the velocity and dynamics of sport.
01:17:16
Speaker
So what we do in the weight room matters, but only as much as it transfers into what we're doing there. Yeah, a thousand percent. And even just getting specific, like there's tons of tendon injuries during that year.
01:17:32
Speaker
There's ligament injuries. There's serious Like serious injuries, like soft tissue as well. And it it just shows that the accounting for the training didn't account for like the actual sport. So the profile of the sport is that they have to play 40 to 60 plays, depending on you know who you are and you know those repeat every every so often over the course of three hours. right that's That's the game.
01:18:00
Speaker
And also you're preparing for the training, which is training camp, and which is the most difficult part. Well, the actual training that guys did didn't prepare them for the thing that they were going to see.
01:18:11
Speaker
So although it was good, they got stronger and you checked the box and it's valuable from the standpoint is the strength aspect was changed when they got into the high speed, change of directions, high volume situation, almost like worst case scenario.
01:18:27
Speaker
Training camp is worst case scenario. It's high volume, it's high speed, it's high change of direction and and reaction. it's all It's all the things that... you don't want to do a lot of, but you have to because you got to prepare for the season.
01:18:40
Speaker
We weren't prepared for for that. And especially from a tendon perspective, if you're just doing the heavy lifting side of things and you're not developing the tendons, which is a whole other, I know we'll get into the tendon conversation later on, but...
01:18:55
Speaker
um it didn't Although it was good from the sense of guys got looked like monsters, but it didn't prepare them for football. And it's the exact reason why you can't just pull a power lifter off the street and say, hey, throw some pads on it. You should be a good player because you're you're fast and you're strong. And while that's true, there's still a sport demand and there's still a volume demand within that sport and an intensity demand within that sport that's very specific per position.
01:19:24
Speaker
um So, yeah, I think it's i think it's now that the current problem is CBA and and NFL and in um and NBA has actually pushed guys into less training periods. So there the CBA is actually demanding that the guys have more breaks within their within their season.
01:19:47
Speaker
So it's harder and harder and harder to keep guys in the building to protect them and do the training and do all of that. Like they're They're now being sent to different locations that all do different things that may not be looking at the demands of the game that each player needs to focus on.
01:20:03
Speaker
And the the hard part about that is that although the private industry is is very beneficial for some guys, there's a wide variance in what guys do in the offseason. There's wide variance in what guys do from ah training perspective. So you take any team, let's say the Chicago Bulls, and you give them an offseason, and they all go to different spots.
01:20:26
Speaker
They're all going to do very different things to prepare for the season. And the main issue is that no one communicated with whoever's the head of the Chicago Bulls of like, hey, what actually does this guy need?
01:20:38
Speaker
And then from a training perspective, What is this guy going to be required to do when he gets back? And what did he just do before he got here? ah that That doesn't happen consistently. So the less time that they're spending with their teams, the more but the more time they're spending with guys like us.
01:20:54
Speaker
And I'll tell you, if you saw me seven years ago and you you sent a guy for me for training, i would have I would have just provided value in the way that I thought I was providing value. So I would have made the guy run 23 miles per hour.
01:21:09
Speaker
And I thought that would have been the reason why he's all pro. Well, a lot of those guys that I had ended up breaking during the season until we figured out like, man, it's almost more important to prepare them for the sport that they just they're about to go to, but also take into context what they just came from.
01:21:27
Speaker
It's more important for me just to be a bridge than it is for me to be some hero. And I think there's a lot of like heroism in our space that we have to have the guy leave with a 45 inch vertical or else I'm not that valuable because you see the post. It's like I got this guy to a 42 inch vertical and then two plus later you see Achilles rupture.
01:21:48
Speaker
It's like, OK, you did get him to a 45 inch vertical. but now the dude can't walk for a year you know so how valuable is that thing it's not as valuable as being healthy i'll tell you that and that was a hard lesson i had to learn you know
01:22:07
Speaker
yeah it's man there's so much there but I guess to kind of bring it to a summary here. um Because I got to get to a massage lady school here soon. By the way, Danny is a maage you lady.
01:22:20
Speaker
No, just want to throw that out there.
Precision in Athlete Training and Integration
01:22:25
Speaker
Go ahead. The points that were that we're continuing to come back to, you know, are all related.
01:22:38
Speaker
we We need precision. We need to train hard. We have to push those thresholds. We have to have high volume exposures. We have to have high velocity exposures. We have to understand that the work that we that we do matters.
01:22:53
Speaker
Truly, it matters. And we've we have had a transformational improvement in our ability to progress physical attributes and and it in the way that athletes are able to express power and force.
01:23:09
Speaker
We also at the same time have to not lose the plot and understand this bigger picture of pro athlete, high school athlete, youth athlete, or one piece of many.
01:23:24
Speaker
The infusion or the integration of these pieces will always be more significant than maximizing or optimizing the one we have ownership over.
01:23:36
Speaker
So the communication, the transparency, the continue, the continuity of language and outcome goals, all of these things matter. And the final piece is when we need to, when we need to emphasize the health component or the longevity component, we have to balance the system.
01:23:57
Speaker
We have to balance the tenderness and contractile tissues. We have to balance the bioenergetics or the energy systems. We have to balance the psychological stressors and the emotional stressors of work and of life.
01:24:13
Speaker
Right.
Evolving Roles in Athlete Performance
01:24:14
Speaker
And as we continue to see this transition or evolution from strength and conditioning coach to human performance coach, it does come with an expanded role, but it also comes with an increased opportunity for work.
01:24:31
Speaker
And I think on the private sector side, that's an extremely important thing to understand. It changed my life. I'm sure it changed your life as well to recognize that if I can be more versatile in what I can provide, I'm not as limited in my opportunity for income or work.
01:24:47
Speaker
And then within the organization side, it's a similar effect, right? You know, kind so having that versatility, the bandwidth of growth, and then being able to be measured and and precise or calculated with when we provide what is is what it ultimately boils down to.
01:25:04
Speaker
Love it. Yeah. Well, um, We'll end with one thing. I think the the main piece of this is that there's shared blame between us as practitioners, sport coaches, agents, parents, um and the athletes.
01:25:21
Speaker
Like, we're all at blame. but But the goal of this is to provide little bit of context, but also solution.
Future Podcast Plans and Closing Remarks
01:25:30
Speaker
And over the next four to five podcasts, as we dive into like specifics here and we drill down into these components and hear from some some people that are deep into this space, um we'll provide a little bit more clarity on on what the actual outcome is that we're we're trying to achieve.
01:25:49
Speaker
So appreciate you guys listening. This was, dang i didn't even realize it was an hour and 25 minutes. We'd just been... We've just been talking. And honestly, like... but It's a beautiful conversation.
01:25:59
Speaker
Yeah. we've been We've been doing this a lot recently, which is cool. um And it like it's funny because you leave this podcast and it just extends into your day. And then you we end up texting about it and we get back to the next podcast and it's like you dump like 1% of what you talked about in the whole thing. So there's a lot coming here.
01:26:19
Speaker
But I appreciate everybody. Make sure you subscribe. Make sure it's not just like once in a while, like subscribe and then have the alert on there. So when our new podcast drops, you guys get it and then make sure to share and repost it Because that's how this industry grows. like You you don't you've probably spend 30, 40 hours preparing for things like this. And then you know this isn't like a ah business model for us. We don't get paid to do it. like So this is something that we are trying to provide, you know, just 100% free to everybody. But we wanted to make it as valuable as possible. But the most important thing that anybody can do as a listener is just share and repost it So, yeah, that's it. Appreciate you guys.
01:27:03
Speaker
Peace.