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Rethinking Acceleration Training: Joe Pedulla, Pedulla Performance
983 Plays1 month ago
Darren Hansen sits down with Joe Pedulla to discuss rethinking acceleration training, working with youth athletes, and practical coaching strategies for time-constrained programs. They explore how to identify athlete types, balance strengths vs. weaknesses in training, and prepare for their upcoming webinar.
Timestamps
00:00 - Introduction & Triple H (Hardship, Highlight, Hero)
05:09 - Rethinking Acceleration: Joe's general philosophy
07:50 - Teaching young athletes: Gorillas vs. Cheetahs framework (force production vs. speed)
10:16 - Visual cues for coaches to identify athlete movement types
16:02 - Training strengths vs. weaknesses: when to focus on each
17:20 - In-season training: keeping athletes engaged and stimulated
19:21 - Working with limited time (2-3 hours/week with athletes)
23:40 - Sled training loads and programming discussion
32:58 - Why sleds rarely make athletes slower + recovery considerations
34:56 - Lateral movement patterns and "squat accelerators" in sport
39:18 - Program design: subtle changes for different athlete profiles
44:56 - Acceleration vs. deceleration: what separates athletes at game speed
47:27 - Where to follow Joe + closing thoughts
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Joe Padula and His Impact
00:00:05
Speaker
right, welcome back guys to another episode of Speed Lab Podcast. This is your substitute host for a second episode, Darren Hanson. I'm super excited to have Joe on the podcast today, Joe Padula, if you haven't heard of him.
00:00:16
Speaker
In my opinion, he's one of the up and coming to me, but many have probably known him for a while, but really starting to take over the space. um putting out some great content and really helping a lot of athletes and coaches specifically around the country. So turn it over to you, Joe, for
Personal Journey and Inspirations of Joe Padula
00:00:31
Speaker
just a second. We'll start with the Triple H, the hero, hardship and highlight, and then let you introduce yourself.
00:00:39
Speaker
Thanks, Darren. First, we want to thank you for the opportunity to come talk to you today. Always always fun and ah enjoyable talking to you. But Hero, i got i got to say my my mother. you know she's She's shaped a lot of my behavior, um really raised us well ah in the house. So I thank her for a lot in my life. I think my my biggest hardship, I'm going to keep this S&C related, and this this might pave the way for...
00:01:08
Speaker
uh people understanding why I think the way I do and you know my my obsession with the pragmatic side of coaching and having your hands tied a lot of the time and having to make a decision with that pressure on you but it was hard coaching in minor league baseball I'll be honest with you that that was probably the toughest time I've ever had coaching uh because you're very limited on time you're very limited on space sometimes you're You're limited to a couple of power blocks, a couple of kettlebells, bands, and you're trying to figure out how to deliver a stimulating you know training effect to a bunch of grown adults who have been doing this for years.
00:01:43
Speaker
And sometimes you're in a moldy hallway at very inopportunistic times of the day or schedule. And you got to get it done. You got to figure out a way to to provide those guys with with what you've got. So it really made me a better problem solver.
00:01:57
Speaker
So I'm thankful for that time. um And my biggest highlight, you know, recently ah we just moved into our first house and found out that my wife is pregnant. So we have a lot of exciting things ahead of us. So that's been one of my biggest goals as ah as a man is to be a father and ah and and a good husband. So that's that's the thing I'm looking forward to most in in this coming year.
00:02:18
Speaker
I love that, man. um Yeah, that's my future goal, too. And I actually really like how a lot of ah you know a lot of people come on and talk about their mom. I'm a big mama's boy. So yeah i definite relate I definitely relate a lot to that as well. So awesome.
00:02:35
Speaker
um Again, appreciate
Upcoming Webinar on Acceleration: Insights and Registration
00:02:37
Speaker
coming on today. you know, we have a webinar coming up with you and I wanted this to kind of be a good leader ah into that so people can go register for that if they really like what we're talking about today.
00:02:47
Speaker
um So I wanted to kick it off. You know, you've been talking a little bit and you have the webinar coming up with rethinking acceleration. So maybe just give us like a general first thing that comes to mind when you when you think about that topic.
Exploring Acceleration: Individual Strengths and Archetypes
00:03:01
Speaker
the The first thing that comes to my mind is is how physical it is. And the biggest problem that I made in my coaching journey so far was getting super granular with the the technical side of acceleration.
00:03:16
Speaker
And i I would classify myself as as a technician. That's what I was acting as, trying to pick apart little things that really didn't consider all the intricacies of how different people move is the first thing and what different people's strengths were.
00:03:33
Speaker
If anybody that's listening to this has gone down the archetyping rabbit hole, you know that you have some muscular-driven athletes who might be really good at acceleration and others that are much more wiry and elastic where, you know, if you take that wiry athlete and you have them race that muscular-driven athlete, they might get beat in the first 15 yards, but you give them more space and that elastic athlete's going to end up, you know, taking taking taking the cake at the end. So I didn't really consider that much, and I was really not educated enough to really understand that or even be aware of that.
00:04:07
Speaker
So that's the first thing is the mechanical side. And that that kind of bleeds into the second piece of this, which is changing my whole model of what athletes constitute as good versus you know poor reps.
00:04:20
Speaker
And I got this from Franz Bosch. I wish I remembered the title of the book. But He basically goes into the knowledge of results model versus the knowledge of performance model.
00:04:32
Speaker
And this is something that I've talked about a couple of times on my Instagram page, but this knowledge of results is basically getting that that dopamine hit by the end result of what it was you were doing. So whether it's a speed time or it's, hey, that felt really good. That felt really rhythmic and fluid. It felt natural. It didn't feel forced.
00:04:53
Speaker
and You're leaving it up to subjective sense, but the athlete is feeling a certain thing that that you either want
Coaching Strategies: Tailoring to Athlete's Physicality
00:05:00
Speaker
them to feel or or that they're trying to target, or you're giving them an like an objective reality of how effective what it was they were doing was.
00:05:09
Speaker
and Then you have knowledge of performance, which is when you constantly enforce the athlete based on what you're seeing mechanically. so You're telling them You're breaking it down movement-wise. You say, oh, you had a very low heel on that rep, or maybe you cycled too high, or your arms didn't swing long enough.
00:05:31
Speaker
And what I'm finding with a lot of these team sport athletes is that that is not – the right way to go about this because there's still so much physicality to be built that underpins acceleration as a whole that, you know, working with a female demographic that has a low training age, you know, in in college, I would argue that most athletes actually have a low training age on average, especially at very high levels where there's very high levels of sports specialization um and hyper-specification.
00:06:05
Speaker
So I'm more focused on building the physical qualities that that underpin acceleration. And this year, I think I've queued mechanics less than I ever have. And I think a third thing, just to give you, you know wrap this up into a nice um three threesome here I think the third thing is just taking a more constraints-based approach with this.
00:06:25
Speaker
And I look at at at resisted sprint training as as a constraint. If you're looking to put an athlete in a certain position, the load is going to dictate that. um The starting position is going to dictate that. if you have you know If you're doing a PVC run with your arms out in front versus a PVC on your back, you know I've been doing that lately to clean up some things with with my own start.
00:06:48
Speaker
Namely, you know just to go on a little side tangent here, my problem is staying too low. So I over rotate. i don't give myself enough so enough space to get into hip flexion and strike the ground. So I put a PVC on my back now, which is a constraint I'm placing on myself to force myself without having to think about it to lift up a little higher.
00:07:07
Speaker
So thinking more in terms of constraints as well to put athletes in better positions, I think is a much better way to go than, than adhering to this knowledge of performance model and giving a lot of these cues that quite frankly, most, most athletes don't really understand.
00:07:24
Speaker
Yeah, that, that, that's all great stuff and, and a lot to unpack.
Categorizing Athletes: Cheetahs vs. Gorillas
00:07:30
Speaker
And it's like, so let's start back with, cause I love this. Cause like when I work with my middle school and high school athletes, like as,
00:07:38
Speaker
ah I went down that route when I first started coaching of really trying to go like super deep on these young kids. And it's like, at the end of the day, now I just call them cheetahs or gorillas, like ah i cheetahs or gorillas. And that's what I tell them they are. And then I'll, I'll cue them a little bit different based on, based on that, you know, gorillas are like that guys that take a longer time, but they can create a lot of force, but they take a long time.
00:08:00
Speaker
And then your cheetahs are gonna be your more elastic athletes that maybe create medium amounts of force, but they can do it really quickly. So that's how we like categorize our kids and they love it. um Let's say, let's say you're like, I always think of the perspective of like a private facility, coaches, younger coaches coming into it.
00:08:18
Speaker
what What are some ways or like really easy tests they can do if they're having a hard time visualizing like what, what this means for the athlete or how they move? Like what are some tests they can do where they're like, okay, this athlete was better at this. So they're probably a gorilla and this athlete was better this. So they're probably a cheetah. Like what would you say are some good,
00:08:37
Speaker
That's a really good question. So I, i this ah is also very limited to what you have accessible to you. You know, I personally, I use force plates, not everybody has that. I'll get into, I'll talk a little bit about force plates here and then talk about what I would do had had I not had access to those. But I'm looking at things like time to take off. I'm looking at things like propulsive net impulse. I'm looking at RSI.
00:09:00
Speaker
I'm looking at peak relative breaking strength. I'm looking at things that might clue me into whether this athlete favors time on the ground or not. That's one thing.
00:09:11
Speaker
ah We can get into in intricacies of, you know, force time curves, what those look like, unimodal, bimodal shapes. I think that's beyond our talk today. But um i'm I'm looking at a lot of different things force plate wise that really clue me into time related metrics. Yeah.
00:09:28
Speaker
um And then I'm also looking at things like broad jumping. I spoke about this the other day on my Instagram, which is a super, super simple way to ah one, look at movement and to look at output. So Acceleration is what? We are trying to displace ourselves in the horizontal direction as far as possible.
00:09:48
Speaker
And the problem that a lot of athletes make is they just try to pump their arms and legs really fast, but they don't really go anywhere. So broad jumping is a really good way to look at their actual ability to express power that way and truly push.
00:10:01
Speaker
So what i what I find with a lot of the elastic athletes... is maybe they can't orient their trunk in the right position. Maybe they're a little tall. I also noticed they jump off the ground and they do this little fast hamstring curl.
00:10:14
Speaker
you probably You probably know what I'm talking about, right? Or it looks like they're extending at the back. It looks like they are not really driving through their quads. It's almost like a hip hinge. And then there's this big global extension happening at the through the lumbar spine and hips.
00:10:30
Speaker
But the hips look like they're extending, but they're really not as much as they should be. And then you see your your gorillas, we'll call them, who have that deep – that that that deep range of motion, and they actually drive through their quads, hamstring, glutes, everything is shortening and contracting together, and their outputs are they they tend to be higher.
00:10:52
Speaker
yeah Now, you could you could extend that to double and triple, or even quadruple quadruple and pentabra jumps, and then look at look at that too. okay the The gorillas, I would venture to guess,
00:11:05
Speaker
might be deficient in that stretch shortening cycle. And if you give, just just like if you were to have those athletes race and you give that elastic athlete a little more space to open up and actually hit their top speed, they might beat that gorilla.
00:11:18
Speaker
um If you have them do that triple quadruple pentabroad jump, you might find that that that elastic athlete is going to end up further. So just some things like that is, you know, looking at What's the stretch shorting cycle utilization like?
00:11:33
Speaker
um And then kind of tying that back into your speed times, if you if you have the ability to time sprints.
Year-Round Training Strategies
00:11:40
Speaker
I'm currently in the middle of building an Excel workbook that's gonna integrate the DEETS 1020 algorithm where people can automatically bucket their athletes. And then it's also tied into, you know, V-deck sprinting data and things like that, that I'm really excited to to publish hopefully in the next two weeks. But um within that DEETS 1020 model, for anybody who's seen it,
00:12:01
Speaker
you know Dietz has his training zones. He's got his max strength zones, you know speed power, strength power, max velocity. so Based on your times, you know you can kind of gauge where where's this athlete deficient.
00:12:15
Speaker
And and it's it's this big Excel sheet where you got your 10-yard times on one side, you got your 20-yard cumulative time on the top, and then you just follow this ladder. And um I'm trying to take that into my V-DEC prescriptions and say, okay, if if I had an athlete who needs to work on maximal strength, how would I load them with – with resisted sprints, probably probably heavier.
00:12:37
Speaker
yeah um If I had an athlete who's really good at acceleration, but they they lack that ability to transition and get into top speed and express power and higher ah RFD, what would i not want to do? Well, I wouldn't want to slow them down more.
00:12:53
Speaker
So I would want to give them a load which is either either no load or or light enough to where they can still you know express really fast ground contacts. And then how do we approach that in the weight room? We're going to take a similar approach. you know we're We're going to give these athletes that need to work on that first step or that early acceleration – some loaded jumps, maybe some more absolute strength, things like that, longer contact times, allowing them to use more contractile muscle tissue.
00:13:20
Speaker
And then those athletes that need that other side of the equation, that power and high speed expression, we're going to give them a lot more short coupling plyos We're going to bias the ankle complex a lot more, things like that. So that that's kind of where my mind goes with testing. um I would also go as far to say that more often than not, these these wiry athletes are going to express better vertical forces.
00:13:46
Speaker
um I think that their jump heights, what I've seen at least, their jump heights are a little better. Their RSI's are better. Their time to take off is a little faster.
00:13:57
Speaker
And I see them operate better in and in a more upright position. So they're their their vertical force expression is a lot better than these these gorillas you're you're talking about.
00:14:09
Speaker
Yeah. All right, we got to take a second to talk about the universal speed rating because I literally just found this out and it blew my mind. We just hit over 500,000 verified speed tests inside the USR software, half a million.
00:14:24
Speaker
That's coaches all over the country testing, tracking, and proving athlete progress with this system. It's not just data. It's giving athletes confidence and giving coaches real proof of results. I remember running our first speed lab test back in 2019 in a closet that my uncle helped me build, now half a million.
00:14:41
Speaker
If you're not testing speed yet or you're doing it without a system, this is your chance to check it out. Hit the link in the description, book a free consult, and see how the USR could work in your program.
00:14:53
Speaker
um with With those athletes, I mean, those are athletes people like to talk about too. Like, in your opinion, what's, you want to work the weaknesses, but what are some precautions you take to not take away from their strengths?
00:15:08
Speaker
That's another really good question. And this I like to approach this question from a perspective of where we are in the in the phase of the year, where we are in our competitive cycle, and and where we are in our in our sports cycle.
00:15:22
Speaker
I love Tim Caron's quote in his book Strength Deficit where he says, train the weaknesses early and then peak with the strengths. And just thinking about that, like extrapolating that and just trying to reason with what that really means. you know if If we're trying to maintain freshness in season – we we would not want to disturb homeostatic balance as much as we'd want to in the in the offseason. So what do you do in order to accomplish that is you give people the things that they're good at.
00:15:52
Speaker
So when I look at athletes who need to either, you know, maintain a strength or target a weakness, I'm looking at where we are in the year. so you know, in preseason right now, it's all weakness training.
00:16:04
Speaker
And then we're we're going to get further and further into the into the competitive year. you know We're going to play games for a good four, four and a half months if if if if we're lucky and we can make it to where we want to make it. um You have to train weaknesses early so that you can peak at the right time. you know if you're not stimulating them hard early on, you'rere you're going to plateau and you're going to peak too early. So I believe in lifting those weaknesses with the time you have outside of the year.
00:16:29
Speaker
especially just my sports softball. We're in season all the time, with the exception of just a couple of months that I have them ah in in August and early September and now really early January.
00:16:43
Speaker
But yeah, in in season, I'm trying to maintain freshness. So I'm going to give them the things that their body likes, the things that they're accustomed to. So that's that's really the overarching ah constraint for me is just is is is the timing of it.
00:16:58
Speaker
And I really like that too, from like my perspective of like a little more regressed on that is also that model, you give them things that are more enjoyable for them to do in season. So when they're really grinding through and they're playing a lot of games, you know, potentially they're a little more excited and stimulated to be in the gym because they're, they're doing things at that time that they actually enjoy.
00:17:21
Speaker
which Yeah, that's that's another big part of it too, is is the psychological piece. It's like, how how arduous is this work? yeah And you know we we we think about holistic development and and you know readiness, as as we know. Obviously, the the CNS is not differentiating stressors. So the mental piece is big.
00:17:40
Speaker
And um yeah, you want athletes to be in a flow state in the most important time of the year. the last thing I want to do is is be challenging them you know beyond measure. During a time where so many resources are going elsewhere.
00:17:54
Speaker
And I just thinking about too, from a time limit constraint, I only have really an hour and a half to an hour 45 a week with them in season, once we start playing games. So you could really make the argument like would training weaknesses even make that much of a difference? Like, are you signaling a strong enough response?
00:18:12
Speaker
with that amount of time. and and And if you are able to do that, I would argue that you might be overtraining a little bit given the time of the year. Now, I've never really seen athletes overtrain, but get given the context, like to elicit an adaptation with that little time, you got to be training pretty dang hard and with serious intensity and to to truly shift that person. And the program would have to be heavily favored toward that weakness.
00:18:42
Speaker
you know if you have an hour and 45 minutes of time across the week you you can't you can't mess around and have stuff in there that
Balancing Training for Youth Athletes
00:18:50
Speaker
is not their weakness if if that's your goal with that with that little time yeah and that i love that you just said that too because that there's going to be people listening to this i know in the speed lab network and we're lot of us from private facilities and that's the world we live in where we get a youth athlete hopefully year round, usually not, but I mean, we get them I get most my athletes two hours a week, sometimes sometimes three.
00:19:15
Speaker
So it really comes down to like the successful ones I think are really chunking down to, you know, what's the basic, what do we need the most? And you have to find what they need the most. You can't do all the the stuff you wish you could do um with that population because they're you know it's all optional where the cherry on top are not required. And it's just all this extra stuff. So you have to really look at what are they doing in their high school program if they have one and what are the buckets we can fill.
00:19:41
Speaker
So it's really interesting to hear you say that of like and that raises a question in my mind of how do I make sure how do I get their strengths better? But how do I also get their weaknesses better when I have very constraint?
00:19:52
Speaker
and I don't have a lot of time that I can work with them. So that makes my mind. You know, how can I find the best way and make that make that the best experience for for the athletes where you can hit these buckets when you only have them for two hours, three hours a week?
00:20:07
Speaker
So it's an interesting challenge. I think a lot of people that listen to this will be going through. And I don't know if we have the answer today. i mean do you have any thoughts on that? Like A youth athlete, like if they're a cheetah or a gorilla, you know, how much time can you really spend?
00:20:21
Speaker
You know, we're in that situation where it's difficult to navigate um those waters. and And in your opinion, if you have one, and maybe we don't have one today, but it's like a good thought for these gym owners is,
00:20:34
Speaker
I mean, how would you approach, let's say you have, let's just make it basic cheetahs, gorillas. How much time, if I have a youth athlete for two to three hours a week, you know, how would you segment? Do you, would you really focus on weaknesses and then, you know, hopefully their strengths play out or would you spend more time on the strengths and just try to sprinkle in the weaknesses? You're saying with youth athletes who are limited on time, you're asking for tips for those gym owners to deal with like That in season?
00:21:03
Speaker
Yeah. How would you approach that? would In your opinion, would you be like, I can only sprinkle in... Because here's the deal, man. Youth athletes right now, most my athletes are in season all year round. like there's no There's no actual, like I'm off season.
00:21:19
Speaker
So how do you navigate that? of It's not as clean as like, oh, I can do weaknesses now, strengths here. right i got you. Yeah. Okay. So the way the way that I would handle that is having like a strength and weakness day.
00:21:37
Speaker
Okay. I like that. You know, we're gonna have one day where we're going to try to target some weaknesses here and it's going to be far away from game day. and then we're going to have a strength day, which is going to be biased towards the things you're efficient in.
00:21:50
Speaker
We're going to do that closer to game day because it poses less of a perturbance or like disturbance to your system as a whole. yeah I think with youth athletes too, you can be a little more balanced here and you could be,
00:22:03
Speaker
a little less cautious than than I might be because their outputs are not as high, which means they come at a lower cost. So... I would not be reading into that as hard if I was working with youth athletes. I might have weakness targeted work on both days and it maybe occupies a ah fraction of the session when the rest of it is biased towards strengths.
00:22:26
Speaker
And if it's such a novel stimulus, we know that that means that that that requires less work overall to lift that thing up.
Enhancing Acceleration with Sled Training
00:22:34
Speaker
So I would I would consider those options there.
00:22:39
Speaker
You know, you either have a you if you see an athlete an athlete two days a week, we're going to have a weakness day and a strength day. And then if we you know, you see him three times, let's only do you know, we're going to do one weakness day.
00:22:50
Speaker
We'll have another balance day. We'll have another we'll have a strength day. So however you can dice it up. I think it's fine just given your constraints, but I wouldn't be as concerned about the the interference effect there that that i'm I'm talking about with the with the fatigue ramifications.
00:23:07
Speaker
Yeah. I love how you micro that really well and broke it down to like a weekly that that's, that's smart. So I think that will help a lot of gym owners that I know listen to this. Um, I actually want to swing it like back a little bit onto, we were talking about sled sprints and I get a lot of questions from our network. Like coaches will tend to be hesitant to go over like a 50% sled load, like for athletes, like 50% body weight for those that might not know what what that means. But yeah,
00:23:34
Speaker
I mean, have you been playing around when you're talking about this, you know, rethink acceleration, like how heavy of loads, I know it's a little bit athlete dependent, but, um, you know, how heavy a percentage are you getting up to with some of your, like some of your athletes?
00:23:51
Speaker
So I, for context, the, this all started from that recent meta analysis that came out that JB Marin was, uh, was public, what was talking about and he posted on his page and,
00:24:05
Speaker
Some of the, some just big findings just as an overview for the listeners here. They basically found a couple of things when looking at all this this RST research out there. The first is that the more experienced you are, the heavier you have to go, point blank period.
00:24:22
Speaker
The second thing is that the more inexperienced you are, the less importance this holds really, how heavy you're gonna go. They can get away with lighter with lighter loads and experience similar adaptations.
00:24:35
Speaker
And the third thing that I found interesting and and really exposed me for some um misconceptions I had was the argument around mechanics.
00:24:47
Speaker
The paper literally says that coaches were criticizing high V decks at and above 50% because they created this gumbo run. That's literally the term that they used, which is like that really squatty crouched run.
00:25:05
Speaker
appearance. And what they found through further investigation was that when you're comparing mechanics unloaded versus loaded, you're really comparing apples to oranges.
00:25:17
Speaker
What they found was that when when comparing an unloaded sprint versus a loaded one, the mechanics are actually very similar with with very little differences as long as you're comparing movement happening at the same velocity.
00:25:33
Speaker
So if I'm running with a sled and I'm running 13 miles an hour, in theory, that means that if I'm running 13 miles an hour without a sled on me, the kinematics should look fairly similar, loaded or not.
00:25:49
Speaker
So... that's more of an apples to apples and orange to oranges comparison
Incorporating New Research into Training
00:25:55
Speaker
there. Cause you're not now, now, now velocity is really the, the, um, common denominator there.
00:26:01
Speaker
And, ah there's actually there one more thing that I, uh, found was interesting as well is they made it very, very clear that time under load was the important thing to chase.
00:26:12
Speaker
And the way that I've been approaching resisted sprints for a long time is taking the rep out to a certain distance thinking that i was targeting like that zone of the sprint and in doing so you run into a couple of consequences like like second order consequences as a result of that number one if you take a resistant sprint out pretty far to 20 25 yards you can't go that heavy And if you do, you're going to be sore. So that that that's a problem. And there's some studies out there that look at, there's this like who study that I like to cite sometimes that looked at creatine kinase levels um after implementing resisted sprint loads that were, you know,
00:26:59
Speaker
ah fairly heavy if i if I'm remembering remembering correctly. um But clearly this group that used the the heavier loads was was experiencing more muscle damage. So you know that's that's common sense. I think we could assume that without having a study, but it's just good for validation there.
00:27:16
Speaker
So the thing that I'm focused on now is slowing down the rep more and doing and doing shorter repetitions and doing more of them.
00:27:27
Speaker
So to go back to your question about how heavy I'm going, i have increased my my sled loads significantly. um I was very scared to get people sore and to cause a lot of hip flexor and, and you know, rec fem quad discomfort by loading up these sleds really heavy.
00:27:45
Speaker
But I think i would I would mitigate that by emphasizing the first 10 yards a little more and worrying about that more than anything else. Because like thinking about softball, I mean, just looking at GPS data we started collecting recently, we're not, I mean, athletes are not hitting very high speeds in practice, which which validates what I thought originally. You know, it's it's a small field. You're not able to hit hit top speed.
00:28:11
Speaker
Most athletes are hitting 78% to 82% of their max just compared to like their split times that I have. So you know you take that information, you're looking at ah of almost exclusively acceleration-dominant sport.
00:28:27
Speaker
So I'm much more concerned now with the early acceleration phase of these sprints and going heavier. ah One thing that the study also found, the the ah Marin meta-analysis, was that females can get away with a little less load too.
00:28:44
Speaker
So I'm i'm having a lot of them operate at like 40%. And then that that power group that is, you know, really, really good at at acceleration, but they they might need that exposure to that, like, back half of that 20-yard sprint, that 10 to 20, working through that like that transition phase, they're going a little lighter right now, maybe like, you know, 20 to 25%. Yeah.
00:29:07
Speaker
um that's That's where I'm at now. Now, if we're talking about going heavier than 50%, at that point, I'm not really calling it a sprint. We might be doing a so a prowler push, a sled push, ah maybe as like a neural priming phase or like a technical block before we get into our actual running, just that athletes can feel the positions, um build some you know lower leg strength in that position, get oriented with the position they're supposed to be in,
00:29:36
Speaker
and just but just applying some basic motor learning here, just slowing things down just to get some positional awareness there so that when they can when they actually get into the rep, they can put pieces together a little easier. So that's the only time I'll use above 50% is like early preseason, just teaching positions.
00:29:56
Speaker
And then after that, we're pretty much in season all year. So I'm not i'm not really touching that. I want to start building acceleration because – You know, they're going to be sprinting on the field anyway. they're're I don't need to be sitting here and saying, hey, we can't can't be sprinting or we got to take all this time to go through this big progression. Like, we we got to use this time.
00:30:15
Speaker
So I start sprinting them right away. And ah that this this past month, is where I really started to apply this new research a little, a little better. And the results have been pretty good so far. I'm happy with where our times are at for this phase of the year, given the fast on-ramp of workload from practice and the weight room, you know, it all slams them at once.
00:30:39
Speaker
Um, but it's been pretty effective. And, um, the this The meta-analysis also talked about how how effective just a very small dose of this of this work is. So I'm not going crazy with how much we're doing here. I mean, we're we're probably doing six to eight reps of resisted reps a week.
00:31:00
Speaker
um Really not much in the grand scheme of things. And accumulating less than 100 yards total. ah I know the study talked about what loads or distances or volumes were effective for certain sports. I think in rugby, they were talking about like several hundred yards a week, like anywhere from like 250 to 300 plus or something in that range. But just comparing sports there and demographics, like rugby athletes cover a much much more ground than a softball athlete would.
00:31:34
Speaker
So i would i would end I would expect that the loads necessary to create these these adaptations for my demographic would be a little less. So i'm I'm making some assumptions here, but i feel like they're I feel like they're educated assumptions just based on what you might assume about these athletes' work capacities in different sports.
00:31:51
Speaker
Quick pause here. and want to talk about the universal speed rating. So many coaches I meet are just overwhelmed. They're running sessions, programming, dealing with parents, and trying to prove their athletes are actually getting faster.
00:32:03
Speaker
One of the reasons why we built USR was to take some of this stress off the table. One software solution to help coaches test, track, and show improvement without adding hours to your week. If you feel like you're guessing with your speed training or drawing, trying to make sense of your data, hit the link in the description, schedule free consult and see how the USR can help.
Focus on Acceleration in Team Sports
00:32:23
Speaker
Yeah. A couple of things too is like, from my perspective, like, I love top speed, but I think acceleration is the king in most sports in general, at least most sports sports for me and from what I've seen. And I've never got an athlete faster in their zero to 10 and they got slower on their top speeds. Like usually they actually get faster.
00:32:46
Speaker
So I think, I think it is really important. and And I also think one nice thing about Excel from, my coaching perspective too is as my youth athletes, I mean, I can do that more frequently through the week if I have the opportunity and they recover faster than than top speed like they can perform really well um on acceleration. And I personally feel that way too with my training is like I could do three Excel days a week, but at 34, if you asked me to do you know, three max velocity days a week, i I wouldn't be able to handle it.
00:33:17
Speaker
Right. So I think that's important. Now, I wanted to ask you a specific question because you talked about couple of times these kind of squatty accelerators, like lot a lot of lateral movement side to side. Right. Is what I would assume. Right.
00:33:32
Speaker
um your perspective on that? Because some of my fastest athletes I've ever had that are playing at big universities, that's how they accelerate. And so they're very, they're lower to the ground. They are very lateral side to side. You know, what's your perspective on that in terms of like, is that something like when you talk about not queuing too much, is that something you're like really trying to change or is that a strategy that works that.
00:33:56
Speaker
man I mean, i would say it works for some. I think for me, yeah it just as ah as a blanket term or blanket um preface to this, it's all a movement solution.
00:34:10
Speaker
So it's it's solving for some kind of other compensation or maybe it's a structure thing or it's a physical capacity. And it takes knowing the athlete really well for you to really say like, hey, am I going to correct this or not?
00:34:24
Speaker
Like I knew it was a problem for me because I had never done it before. That's number one. It just it's kind of just started happening. As a result of me over cueing myself to stay lower and try to clean up my start and make it more horizontal.
00:34:37
Speaker
And I started over rotating a ton. And then I get this, this popliteal tendinopathy behind my right knee that I thought was a meniscus tear. It was that bad. I had like audible clicking. Turns out it was the tendon just rubbing over like a tibial tubercle or typicalbi or ah a tibial condyle.
00:34:55
Speaker
Um, but it was painful. Uh, and I, I never ran like that before. So it's like, you watch people long enough. It's like, you ever watch your athletes run a sprint and you're like, Hey, you good? Like, did you just pull something? Like, I feel like a lot of athletes, yeah.
00:35:09
Speaker
That was all the time because it looks weird. It's like that, that was not your typical pattern there. So I, I pay very close attention to how athletes are moving from the jump.
00:35:20
Speaker
Yeah. And you know, what are they doing without any instruction here? What's the natural preference? And then as you start to get to know them a little more, you start to look at things like resting posture. Okay, what exercises work for them in the weight room?
00:35:33
Speaker
Okay, I'll give you an example here, like RDLs. Athletes who have a resting anterior tilt tend to do really well at hinging. because their hips are already dumped that way. It's a lot easier to access internal rotation at the femoral head.
00:35:47
Speaker
It's a lot easier to shift the hips back. But you take an athlete who's a very wiry, narrow isa maybe lankier athlete who's got a flat back presentation, you have do an RDL and their SI joint's blown up.
00:36:00
Speaker
yeah So it's like taking things like that and kind of just comparing like, what am I seeing in the weight room? How do they move in sport? How are they moving in their speed work? And then trying to make an educated decision on that. So like with with myself, I have a resting anterior tilt.
00:36:18
Speaker
um it's just It's just how I'm designed. So when when when you have that and you're in a very low squatted position and acceleration, it can be really hard to get your leg into hip flexion unless you start from a certain position that allows you to get that clearance off the ground.
00:36:35
Speaker
So... I try to take a lot from track as well. Like talking to our track coaches, like how are you coaching these guys starts? Like what are the different, you know anatomical makeups that are making you, you know, cue these athletes differently. I know, I know track is unique because they all start from blocks. It's like they have to solve that problem starting from blocks.
00:36:56
Speaker
um But, but even guys that start from blocks, you know, you might see a very cyclical high turnover in the first couple of steps. ah You know, why why are they doing that? It could be because of that anterior tilt that puts them in that that natural backside position, that backside mechanic that everybody wants to fix because they think it's a problem.
00:37:17
Speaker
You know, for some, it's not a problem. For some, if you try to fix that, you're going to slow them down. So... Yeah, I think that sums up my answer there. It it it can be really difficult to say, am I going to fix this or not? But it it really just takes knowing the athlete and putting all these different pieces together and being informed by everything, not just what you're seeing when they run.
00:37:42
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting because as you were talking through that, I think about like some of my fastest kids I was just like talking to you about. they're They're basketball players and they are really successful. But I mean, that lateral movement could also be a strategy because they have anterior pelvic tilts. So that could be a strategy to get the leg through um into a little bit better position because they their hips are set the way they are. so Yeah, I mean, the the lateral movement too, I feel like these these narrow athletes,
00:38:09
Speaker
I don't want to get too deep into like anatomy here and stuff like that, but just just looking at that archetype, I find they're they're very lax. Like they're very hypermobile sometimes. Yeah. So so you you might you might see that come to life and you might see a lot ofary a lot of like rotary expression.
00:38:27
Speaker
happening in their sprint because that that's just how they move. They, they're not going to compress and stabilize as well as these gorillas. Yeah. You know, they're, they're, they're going to find the solution one other, another way. And I find that with, with a lot of these narrows or these hypermobile athletes, that rotation comes in.
00:38:47
Speaker
Yeah. And in a way it's a beautiful thing. um Awesome. So I want to swing it back. real quick before we kind of wrap it up. So in terms of of programming for a session, so ah so for those listening, i I follow your online training program. So a little plug for your online training program. I love it.
00:39:06
Speaker
Thanks. um You know, as you go into program this for athletes, for the people that follow your training program, um What are some like the subtle changes you're going to make with the warmup or the prep and the reps just so people can kind of get an idea of that if they're currently doing acceleration with their athletes and they're like, I like where Joe's headed.
00:39:23
Speaker
What are some things that I can implement? Yeah, I think one thing that I've been really married to lately is the is the contrast sprints. And i think there are some pros and cons to it. I think the biggest the pro to it is the coordination you get.
00:39:39
Speaker
You know, you're gonna get some really nice variable learning there with different loads at different speeds, which is gonna help you clean up some technical things really well without you having to really think about it.
00:39:51
Speaker
um You're gonna be able to feel your positions a little better. But some subtle changes that I've made is actually is taking that contrast work and actually making it part of our prep and using a 10 yard acceleration unloaded as kind of ah a readiness gauge for the day.
00:40:07
Speaker
So instead of like waiting to time our reps for the main work, like let's get an idea of where we're at right now in the warmup. Let's do some, we'll call it our technical block and do some really heavy reps. ah Just a couple because we we know we don't need that much volume there to get this adaptation.
00:40:25
Speaker
And we also don't want to kill ourselves and get and and and get super, super sore here. So I like to use it as as prep a lot of the time, actually. um That's at least what I'm tinkering with now with my teams and myself.
00:40:36
Speaker
Um, I shouldn't say I really like to do that. I'm experimenting with it for the first time. You're asking about little small things that I've changed here so that this is kind of where my mind is going. But using these heavy reps that are 50% VDEC or 40% and then doing a timed 10 to get a readiness gauge, i've I've then used that to kind of guide where the rest of our session is going to go there for certain individuals.
00:41:01
Speaker
ah that's That's one thing. And then in in your main work, we're we're just going to open up and do some high-speed work. ah There's another application that I like for a GPP, you know, if you're just trying to raise general work capacity and get a lot of reps in that position, and you've got time to to really drive these adaptations deep, something that I've liked to do is actually auto-regulate my speed work where I'll i'll do timed 10s timed 15s, or even like a timed flying 10 with a 10-yard lead-in, or 5-yard lead-in, whatever it is.
00:41:38
Speaker
And I'll go until I hit like 3% drop-off Once I'm at that point, I can, I'll, I'll cut my session. yeah And then if I want to get some other work in on that same day, like my GPP, I mean, I, I treat it like serious GPP for myself and and, and the training team. I don't really do this with my athletes cause it's a lot of work and they're not always that speed trained.
00:42:00
Speaker
Um, Maybe if I had another demographic, I would do this, but I like to finish those GPP sessions with some like longer 25, 30-yard tank sled pushes like for repeat power endurance, and the the rest is incomplete, and also the the effort isn't 100%. trying to get some like intensive...
00:42:23
Speaker
Intensive, extensive repetitions there in in that acceleration posture, ah but i'm I'm purposely trying to fatigue myself. I'm really driving that that adaptation deep where I'm trying to push for as long as I can and exert pretty high levels of horizontal force.
00:42:40
Speaker
um those Those sessions are pretty fatiguing. They are, but I think they've paid dividends down the line, you know, yeah weeks after you stop doing that kind of work and everything kind of comes together.
00:42:53
Speaker
And i think another thing, I'll give you a little a little third nugget here is maybe we need to rethink how we structure our speed schedules with our teams. like I feel like the common course of action is one acceleration day and one max V-day.
00:43:11
Speaker
I think it's time to start considering two acceleration days and very little max V yeah for for a lot of team sports. Soccer, I don't think I would go that far to say that for soccer because they they do have a lot of open field, very high speed exposures. I'd say the same thing for football.
00:43:29
Speaker
um I think for softball and baseball, the sports that I'm i'm really invested in, I think that max V should be ah actually ah quite a smaller fraction of what we do.
00:43:41
Speaker
Microdose, more so than anything. like if we have If we have two speed days, one day might be all acceleration. And then at the very end, like, hey, let's hit a let's hit a buildup or a crescendo run to max velocity.
Sled Pushes in Training: Endurance and Posture
00:43:53
Speaker
Or, you know, you have another day, which is like a, it's like a hybrid day. You know, you have your acceleration and max V in there. You do some acceleration, then, hey, we're going we're going to do two flying tens with a 20, 25 yard lead in here. And then that'll get athletes closer to their max V. Instead of doing, you know, here's our max V day. We're going to do all flying tens, all wickets, all this stuff.
00:44:16
Speaker
um So i'm I'm starting to like are closer to the side of two acceleration days for my, for my sport. Yeah. love I'm like smiling. Cause I love that. I hope people make it to that part of the episode, especially a lot of the coaches I know, I think, cause I agree with you completely. Like there's,
00:44:36
Speaker
yeah I think acceleration, like we spoke about earlier, I think it's predominantly in a lot of the sports I work with is the most important part. And they're even football. Like there are some breakout plays, but there are few and far between. Like a lot of the time, the the acceleration and deceleration is more of what is separating the athletes from what I've seen. And like Tony Vlade's game speed and treadmill, we use that. But I agree with you completely. My last question is, when am I going to see these sled pushes on the training program? I'm ready for them.
00:45:06
Speaker
Oh, man. the you know the reason i haven't program The reason I haven't programmed him is because I don't know if everybody has the equipment. i'm sure yeah I'm sure you've seen on my program like before, I'll be like, hey, if you don't have this, you know use this.
00:45:18
Speaker
you know maybe i'll Maybe I'll do that. i'llll ill I'll oblige you. Yeah, because I think they're... I think that's a great idea to kick your butt and you get a lot of good, like you said, in in acceleration postures and positions and lower leg work and ankle work and all of that. So I like that. I got that idea from Blaine McConnell who. there's Yeah. I mean, he, his his, his unit program, I i ran it ah actually a while ago.
00:45:48
Speaker
And ah there was one day on the program in the early phases of the program where it was just repeat sleds with incomplete rest, but the effort wasn't 100%. And um it served as a pretty good conditioning effect.
00:46:02
Speaker
I wouldn't say aerobically, but like that, that anaerobic repeat power. And it also like gave me just a ton of really good reps in that, in that position. yeah um and, and I was able to do a lot of it because, because the effort's not maximal.
00:46:16
Speaker
yeah So I was able to, to really enjoy that for a good amount of
Contact and Mentorship Opportunities
00:46:20
Speaker
time. And I, I tried it on myself with the tank sled, which I also enjoyed. and i And I would venture to say it doesn't beat you up too much as well in terms of the sleds.
00:46:31
Speaker
Yeah. you Athletes recover pretty quick from that. There's no eccentric work. It's all just pushing. um Awesome, man. So let's say people want to come and follow you and engage in what you're doing.
00:46:43
Speaker
Learn more about you. Where do you want to send them? Where's your number one spot? Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty active in my Instagram DMs at Padula Performance. That's P-E-D-U-L-L-A Performance.
00:46:54
Speaker
ah You could also email me at joe.padula at padulaperformance.com. And if you're ever interested in some mentorship, i that that's the thing that I'm heavily invested in right now and um committed to helping coaches understand things at a deeper level and and just never stop learning. I'm really just trying to promote a community of people that don't ever want to stop learning and don't ever feel satisfied with, with, with what they're doing. So I think, I think the coaching industry needs more of that.
00:47:23
Speaker
So would love to have people join that community. ah But if not be happy to answer some one-off questions in my DMS. Okay. Awesome. We'll make sure to put that in the show notes. If you guys like this, remember we have a webinar coming up with USR. You can go and register over on USR's Instagram page. Joe, I appreciate your time. I know you're busy and you're always, i have so many notes here. Like you are the opposite spectrum of my strengths as a coach. So I love to listen to you talk and like really dive into intellectual side.
00:47:52
Speaker
And I think it's important for a lot of us. stuff Thanks, man. Of course.