E21 | Matt DeLancey: Perspectives from a Veteran Coach

[0:00:01 Speaker 0] Welcome to the Team Behind the Team podcast. I’m your host, Don? T Made. This is the monthly show focused on building conversations around the team based model approach to ethics, performance, strength and conditioning, sports medicine, sports science, mental health and wellness and sports nutrition. Hello and welcome back to the Team Behind the Team podcast. I’m your host, Ronnie Made and we are on to another episode this month and man this this month is uh man, we got an awesome guest and friend of mine that I’ve been dying to get on the show, but before we get to our guests, coach, Mike Hansen, the co host is in the house again. Coach say, what’s

[0:00:44 Speaker 1] up? Hey, everybody happy

[0:00:46 Speaker 0] to be back

[0:00:47 Speaker 1] Wrapping up the school year here. So it’s a kind of an exciting time and it’s already about to hit 90° in Austin. So I’m preparing for another hot summer

[0:00:55 Speaker 0] mike. Are you ready for this? You like this? Austin heat coming from Minnesota. You like not feeling it?

[0:01:00 Speaker 1] I am. I’m loyal to Minnesota. I’m a loyal midwestern. I don’t do well in the heat,

[0:01:06 Speaker 0] awesome. Good stuff. We’re glad you’re back on the show. Might appreciate all your help leading this. And uh, without further ado, let’s get onto our, our special guest, good friend of mine, coach Matt Delancey from the University of florida. Go ahead coach Matt, Welcome to the show. Hi Donnie. Thanks for having me. I appreciate Michael. Yeah. Hey man, I know you’re busy with volleyball prep going into this bubble and we really appreciate you. Just carving out a few moments to educate and just talk some shop today, man. Sounds good. How’s things down in Gainesville is heating up down there a little bit. What’s going? Actually been pretty cool down here. We’re gonna been enjoying 60 to 70 degree weather the last couple days. Really nice. No, no humidity right now. Nothing like that. It’s a little human, but it’s not like it normally is at this time of the year. Give it a week. It’ll be uh, it’ll be Gainesville hot. Yeah. I tell you what I being being in texas games, I’ve been to games for a couple of times and you know, you realize how soft you are when you go to Gainesville and you get that. You think you think it’s hot here and you go down there and you get the heat. But the humidity then you realize that’s a different special kind of heat, whole different, whole different world of a pennsylvania guys. So this was a shock to me when I first got down here. Right. Right. Yeah. Well, good stuff real quick. Just a brief introduction and we’re gonna let let coach the land to kind of kick it off. But uh that’s just a good colleague and friend of mine, I’ve really got to know mat probably more when a good friend and colleague of ours, Jesse Ackerman, they worked together at florida when Jesse Ackerman was football and the mad, of course, on the olympic side, but this is uh coach Talansky’s 19th year and if you’ve ever followed or listen to coach Matt, uh not only easy, great at what he does, but very passionate in my opinion, has just a deep passion and love for his student athletes and in the profession and just really a master at his craft and so that’s something that’s really always draws me to him. And then he just an honest, if you’ve ever been around coaches Lance, he’s gonna keep it real, he’s gonna shoot you straight, you’re not gonna wonder like, I wonder what he was thinking right there. So he’s that kind of a guy um in my opinion to uh, you’re the Lord of the Rings, if you’ve ever seen, he’s got more national championships than anybody I know, uh this, this industry. So you’re up there with that, but again, most importantly, you’re a great guy, You love, love what you do and you’ve, you’ve definitely been a good friend and helped me through some stuff. So without further matt, we’re glad you’re here. Can you just take a moment and talk about your, your history in this profession and what led you up to Your 19th Korea or 19th year at Florida there now, currently? Well, I guess you could say uh my career started Eddie strasbourg when I was doing my undergraduate degree in physical education and health. Five year major went from East Strasburg, the high school coaching and teaching. And then from there I went to europe and played and coached in the european Federation of American Football in Austria, came back to grad school at northern Illinois left school or leagues. My mom got ill, I took an internship at University of Richmond The summer of 2002 and It’s like if I’m gonna do it might as well do it big. So I went and applied to like 60 different schools for an internship. Only four schools replied to me, one was Florida and I came down the road would an intern with rob glass got hired In May of 2000 three And I’ve been, I’ve been in Florida since 2000 and since and since I was an intern in 2002 and currently I’m the associate director. I’ve worked with swimming and diving, gators, track and field and cross country and data, volleyball. And recently swimming has come off my plate because I’ve had too many athletes for a long time. So we’ve hired Tracy Zimmer and she’s done a phenomenal job taking care of uh lacrosse and swimming and diving. So it’s kind of where I’m at in my career right now.

[0:04:59 Speaker 1] That’s awesome. Usually just juggling track and field athletes typically as well over 100 is enough in itself to fill a plate. But then when you add in many women swimming and volleyball over those years, like I can’t imagine your time management skills, how that’s growing. But speaking kind of how you’ve grown Again, you talked about, you’ve been at Florida for 15 plus years You’ve worked with. It sounds like hundreds of athletes each and every year. How have you as a coach with regards to your philosophy and your approach to training. How has that evolved over those 15 plus years of coach at Florida?

[0:05:32 Speaker 0] Well, there’s a few consistent things that I still do. One is, I’m gonna, I’m gonna always start with some assessments and find out where athletes are either coming in as freshmen or coming back from from some time off after their season. So we’re always gonna start with assessments but some of my core beliefs have modified or changed over the years. Squat depth is one of them like squad depth used to be I think I was religious about, oh my God, you have a squad parallel or below parallel. Like now it’s, I’m along the lines of everybody. Squat depth is kind of their squad depth and if it can be improved to work on it. But if there’s factors that limited, then we’re not gonna lose our mind on it. So just to give an example, but I’m always going to start with assessments. The terms of philosophy, I don’t necessarily have a philosophy. I operate with systems and I don’t really design training programs until I’ve done an assessment with with an athlete. There are gonna be some things that I always do. Unless there’s something that’s contraindicated. I’m gonna always be start with no red squad assessment and build into teaching them how to snatch. We’re gonna work on learning how to clean properly and we’re gonna learn how to do some sort of squat variation, whether it’s a back squad of front squat a trap. Are It might be some kids that live on the leg press. We’ve had that as well. So I mean those are kind of my key fundamentals, but a lot of what I do like when I go back, I’ll look at sometimes I get on my computer and look at my my programs from like year one to year now. And I look at 15, year, 10, year and five year and I look at him like, what was I doing?

[0:07:09 Speaker 1] Yeah, I think we all do that. Absolutely. And then how like, so you talk about having, you want to assess your athletes and then from there you can make decisions about again how you period eyes or how you program for each of those athletes. Does the context I mean, it’s kind of a leading question because the context of the sport they play or the demands of which that athletes placed in. Does that play a role with regards to your assessment of the athlete or is it just kind of a general assessment that you give all your athletes?

[0:07:35 Speaker 0] Well, the assessment, I’m going to start with an overhead squat always. And at this point, like when I was trying to swimming, I knew that for most of them, I’m going to probably see the stick because we were using wooden dow. I’m going to see the wooden dowel come forward because most of them have like some sort of upper cross syndrome when they come in the door. There are things for swim that I’m like, okay, these are some things that could cause issues down the road. I’m going to look for that specifically. So if the swimmers, if you don’t correct that over time, they will have some torn rotator cuff injury or labrum injuries. So that’s something I’m looking forward on them. Volleyballers. When I’m looking at their assessment, I’m truly starting from the foot up and if I see any kind of probation at the ankle, we’re going to hammer that pronation often early because probation dangle leads to henley to some sort of a major A. C. L. Injury if you’re not managing that. So so for the assessment I’m looking for what I know are key fundamental issues for those athletes and for a track I’m looking for the over our our lower cross syndrome because a lot of sprinters coming in just are so over there so over arching your lower backs, which means, you know, hip flexor dominant, their glutes aren’t functioning correctly and they probably got some synergistically dominant hamstrings and if you don’t manage that, that’s a major hamstring at some point. So for the assessments I kind of like these are the major things I’m looking for for these sports and then once I’ve kind of worked through that and if there’s anything else that pops up, if I get all I need out of the overhead squat will progress through snatch transfer series. If I see something that overhead squat like I’m not exactly sure what’s going on here, I might might block the hell just to see what I get. I don’t block heels when, when the squat that’s just not within my training system. But in terms of an evaluation, I think blocking the hell shows you what’s what’s really happening in that over at squat. So, or I might add in some sort of a jump, single leg jump or single leg squat just to kind of dial in on what’s really happening with whatever dysfunction I see. So I started out broad, I have a general idea about each sport and then we get into the details and most of my individualization comes through this. Maybe this isn’t, I’m not a fan of this word, but I don’t have a better one for it comes to the correct this program. So for me are correct. This program is also our warm up and out of season, it’s very individualized, but by the time you get into season, most sports athletes start to kind of show the same dysfunction in season because they’re all very similar movement patterns. And so unless there’s something that’s really off, it’s a general correctives program for warmups pretty much every day of the week, regardless of sport on the other ones.

[0:10:07 Speaker 1] That’s awesome. That warm ups just, I mean, it’s a like you said, like correctives maybe isn’t the right word, but it’s definitely the right place to address what you’re saying is the needs of those athletes. So that’s where we’re gonna find the individuality of your programs. And

[0:10:21 Speaker 0] that’s the way I explained to the athletes, to this kind of talk out my coaches look, I’m trying to get our athletes into better human alignment before we move better human alignment before activity. You’re more efficient as an athlete. If you’re more efficient as an athlete, you’re encouraging us muscle damage, you’re going to recover better after the session, whether it’s practice weights, whatever it is, you get them into better alignment, you have a more efficient athlete. That’s really what I’m working towards.

[0:10:48 Speaker 1] That’s awesome.

[0:10:49 Speaker 0] Well, I like to I think you made me think because I like I love your approach about those correctives, even though it’s that’s a tough word, but it’s true, you’re trying to get kids their athletes to move not only cleaner, but more efficiently, but you know, there’s there’s some asymmetries in there to play your sport a position at a high level, you just gotta you’re not going to fix it, but you got to manage the gap, manage it to manage it. Yeah, that’s that’s the way I’ve always kind of looked at it too. Like they’re gonna be doing this thousands of times, but if we don’t address this, then it’s going to be a big issue. You know, one of those, you look at, most of our volleyballers are going to have any symmetrical shift when they squat just because they’re, whatever their non dominant leg is, in terms of their hitting arm, they’re going to land on that a lot. They’re going to have a symmetry is just because of that. And if they have it, for me, that’s looking at the ankle, if they’re moving with a neutral ankle and the knee is lined up between 2nd and 3rd toe and there’s no symptoms with that, then that’s just some don’t even say much to the athletes, don’t want to put it in their head. So, to me, that’s that’s where the art of coaching comes in that area. That’s good. I got a little change. The questions here for you a little bit more. 50,000 ft view. Uh Matt, you’ve seen a lot of success with the teams you’ve worked with as well as olympians after calling. So you’ve seen a lot of world class, high level athletes, kind of what have been some key traits and characteristics that you have seen in these teams or even individuals. What have you seen in these these kids? Well, the highest performers that I’ve worked with, whether it’s the collegiate, the high performance, collegiate level or the high performance international level, they’re all resilient mentally and physically because if you’re available to train, you have a better shot at getting better. So they are physically resilient. They’re mentally resilient, handle adversity better than their counterparts. They’re very consistent in the outside habits that matter. Most going to bet early eating properly, hydrating well, taking their multivitamins whatever their supplements that they need to take, then they’re they’re consistent in all of those habits. To me, the ones that don’t sleep, they don’t that we deal with, you know, you deal with that too. We deal the ones that don’t sleep. Those are the ones that are injured the most, they’re missing practice there when they are available for practice their efforts, not where it should be and they’re not going to get better. So to me, consistent in the non visual sports performance habits that we really can’t control because they’re outside of us. Those that’s really the key variables. And the high performers, you know, I’ve always said it’s kind of like a kid can’t leave themselves very well, they’re just not gonna do anything Well, I mean, I see that my men’s tennis team, we’ve got especially one individual that just, he just his sleep habits right now are just all over the map and you see it in his performance and he’s the younger guys kinda trying to figure it out right now and kind of growing up some. But yeah, you totally see a kick over into the court, so for sure. Anything else to enter that mike?

[0:13:43 Speaker 1] No, I don’t think so. I just I think like kind of what you said coach Delancey about championship teams, like they’re the ones who are going to be on top of those things that are probably educated to them throughout the year by their sport coach or strength coach, you know, whoever, whether it’s nutrition, sleep, et cetera. It’s like, it’s like those intangibles of athletes who are kind of all in purses. I mean, that’s the same thing I’ve seen is those successful teams. They care about the details they care about those little things. And so it’s kind of like when you look back on a year, no wonder that team did so well. They probably supported each other. They prioritize things like that. So,

[0:14:18 Speaker 0] um, you had, uh, Go ahead. Our, our 2017 volleyball team made the National Championship match. We lost Nebraska. But the year before that, we got knocked out in the round of 32 by florida state at home. So around 32 making the national championship match and the biggest difference was in season, seniors decided they were going to go dry. They held their teammates to that and we had bureau practices, missed that whole fall. Our players were the healthiest they’ve ever been. And and their body camps literally on average, I think we gained £2 of muscle and lost. I don’t, we lost maybe average pound of fat or something per athlete in season. You don’t you don’t typically see that. So All the right things step point. I can tell you that in 18 and 19, the thing that held us back most of those athletes, they rebelled a little bit against going drive policy and they showed it showed in our post season play. It’s a long season then if you’re not take care of the details because I mean, alcohol interferes with sleep too. I mean, it’s not just you just drink alcohol and that’s it interferes with everything. So we definitely sold in that. I think the pandemic has also helped us get back to being a little more dry because they can’t go out, right. So we’ve seen a healthier team through the fall and the spring this year and they again, it relates to alcohol, I really don’t think I can get enough and I know that my best Track and swim athletes when they’re in heavy training, like Grant Holloway is a great example. He just broke the world record in the 60 metre indoor hurdles and he might drink a glass of wine with dinner every once in a while and that’s it and Grant gets to bed early, he wakes, wakes up, has breakfast, sleeps probably 99 hours every night and Caleb Dressel is in the same boat, treats it the same way and those guys are both world record holders, they sleep well, they eat well, they do a lot of things right, they manage their day to day stressors to they, I’ve never really seen either of those guys have a lot of relationship stress, which I think is also a key factor. Sure and uh so it just reinforces what we’re, what we’ve already talked about. Uh good, good friend of mine and coach Hansen’s met him recently, you know him too, but coach Path and path years ago he worked at texas matt, he used to have this saying, he says you know sixth street here in Austin is like where all the college kids go and uh during the pandemic obviously has been shut down quite a bit, but he used to always say you can’t be all american in all six street at the same time, you gotta pick one. That’s fact, that’s in fact nobody is dead damn was 1.2. He was what, He was at Florida for two years. Uh I didn’t know that then I, so I got the, I got to learn from dan early in my career, I think it was oh four throw six. I I was that’s what I was starting to pick up field events. I wasn’t programming yet. I was learning from dan while he was here programming for Phil vets. So that’s awesome. He said he got his thumbprint on a lot of us. He’s a he’s a great mentor, he really does, but good stuff. I got one more question and I’ll kick at the mic. So this kind of, our podcast is the team behind the team. So matt, that’s strength conditioning, athletic or sports medicine, sports nutrition, apply sports science and mental health or behavioral health. How would you define performance, team model and then give us a glimpse of what that looks like for you there in florida behind the scenes. So that became our job is to support our athletes so that they can be the best they can be. That’s the bottom line. Right? So the way I see each member of the team is that we’re all going to have areas that overlap with each and we all have to be comfortable with each other kind of thing and each other’s areas sometimes I think sometimes when I hear people use in terms of like stay in your lane and those really detrimental terms to a performance team, I think there are some things that I do that overlap with athlete training or some things that athletes trainers don’t overlap at us and nutrition and vice versa. And we’re all here to help support each other’s world. So for me, the performance team is an integral coach just for athletes. Um athletic endeavor also, we’re trying to help them be as healthy as possible. Sometimes healthy isn’t the right word. I think it’s healthy as possible just if you play, you’re going to break down. I mean that’s part of the deal. So the goal of the performance team is to support the athletes endeavors. And I I think that when, when everybody’s communicating and you respect each knowledge and experience or allow natural overlap that happens, you’re not getting, letting your ego get in the way. I think it’s when performance teams um, work on their highest levels. Good. What about give us an example, like a pick a day whether it’s volleyball or trap maybe or do you see those performance teams, do they operate a little differently and each team maybe for sure track and field’s different approach. So track has, our coach walt is one of our associate head coaches and she’s been at florida for a long time. She’s the glue, horrible staff. Like the athletes go to her, that kind of serious team mom a little bit. She kind of coordinates a lot of the things that are happening around the scenes. I think she’s mouses right arm. Honestly Mouses are head coach. So if we have an athlete that in track, it’s about being a your ideal body weight, which is with one or £2 for for those cats. And if somebody’s overweight, she’ll talk to the whole support staff or performance team and we’ll we’ll talk and we’ll have a plan of action for that athlete and we’re all involved in whatever our nutritionist or dietitian Abby says, I’ll reinforce it with the kid behind the scenes, obviously not in front of the athletes, but behind the scenes, all kind of reinforcement. Happy has said. And Abby will reinforce what I’ve said and coach wealthy will reinforce what everybody else has said. And I think in that, in the track and field world that we have in florida, we do a pretty good job of operating outside of silos, right? And for volleyball, it’s um, it’s more like mary just let us handle our jobs. Like we’ve all been working long enough to know where and I use body wakes. I think it’s the easiest one to, to look at because it’s, we all deal with body weights. So if we have been overweight athlete, volleyball, Randall or athletic trainer myself, we might ask a question along the lines of, hey, do you think so? And so is moving as well as it could be? And typically we’re asking that question because in our hands, like we think they’re overweight, but we don’t necessarily tell the coast of that. And the coach will say, uh, they could probably be a little quicker. And then if I get that feedback, then we’ll sit there and we’ll talk to Hillary or dietitian and we’ll talk to our team, doc, doctor padilla and well, we’ll look at some standards. And then at some point, um, typically in the season, we don’t try to manage that at that point because it’s during the season, but once we get out of season, if that athlete hasn’t graduated, then we’re, there’s a conversation with the athlete, but hey, where do you think your body weight should be? And then we, and then we all the staff kind of moving forward from there. So I think that’s a pretty good example how to two different teams are accomplishing something similar, but by different, different methods. But at the end of the day, the professionals are allowed to their jobs and it’s, and every team is different depending on the people in the room. And then, I mean, honestly how the head coach kind of leads to, you know, how they interact with each one of you may be a little differently. That changes the dynamics the flow of information, how it’s handled and how it’s deciphered and reports are kind of given out and then you have interventions and mitigation depending on the time of year. Like you said, I think Tommy here is key uh, what year the athlete is and also the the athlete individual. They have some risk there too. So I think that’s all, that’s pretty key, crucial stuff. Good stuff. Absolutely,

[0:22:45 Speaker 1] for sure. And then, um, so pivoting topics just a little bit, we kind of highlighted you’ve been with some really successful track and field teams, men and women swimming teams, Volleyball like very successful as Donny alluded to with you being the Lord of the rings. But how does your approach change with regards to training those teams in the weight room? Is there a bunch of differences as far as how you go about training those different sports? Or is there quite a bit of overlap?

[0:23:12 Speaker 0] The diff there’s overlap. I mean, the differences come into what we talked about earlier. It’s from the assessment with the the correct is right. So in order for me, I have to have a my top five that I want to try to accomplish it. And obviously some, some athletes aren’t able to do some of the top five years modifications. And the modifications are another area where are very individualized per person because that also comes down to confidence for the athlete. For me in my top five, I’m gonna always start with The overhead squat because it leads into snatching and I think it’s important to recognize that 18 years of working with athletes, we’ve never had problems with a snatch and shoulder injuries or elbow problems, because I don’t do max efforts snatching. Okay, they’re not olympic lifters. We use the hang snatch. It’s a power movement, It’s a it’s a light and fast movement. I want, I’m catching in a quarter squat, power position, the height of your catch really determines what kind of weight you have in the bar because you can’t catch in that power positions too heavy. So, when I hear people are injuring athletes with snatches, I’m the first thing I think well, there max effort are just too heavy. Right? So I want I just want to make that differentiations that people understand that there is a difference between olympic lifters and athletes. So when I do my assessment and I use an overhead squat, I feel like sometimes people forget where that overhead squat came from. You know, it’s a great assessment tool, but it also came from learning how to snatch. So if you go from an overhead squat to oppressing snatch balance to a snatch balance and then to the to the hank snatch, that’s all just the progression of the overhead squat. And as it becomes more complicated in movement and execution, you’re gonna find more dysfunction along the way. And by the time you’re into a hang snatch, you’ve worked through a considerable amount of dysfunction that help some function better as an athlete. So I want to give that caveat because one of my number one is a hang snatch. And then I want to teach them how to clean clean properly. And I want to I want to teach them how to have a squat variation that’s done properly. And that squat variation could be any number of ways we squat, right? And then I want to teach them how to hinge and push and pull and then uh rotary work. So those are going to be, for most part, those are going to be very similar across the board. And now the manner in which they’re implemented can be a little different. My shot putters and my hammer throwers might go through five by five cycles early in the year because five x five with those, they might put a little more mass on. If I’m working with sprinters, we may never go over triples the whole year. Um, so the nuances are within the actual programming of those exercises and then there’s some events stuff that I might do differently between not might do I do do differently between all the different track events obviously with DSS and lab arrows versus outside hitters and middles. I’m going to do a different court agility and jump program with my hitters than I am with my center and my back row players. So I think the nuances really come in outside of the top five because there’s definitely something I want to, I want to get everybody consistent with because I just think they build better overall general athletes and then it’s about identifying some key things for each athlete that they can act with and some of that might just be confidence based. So kid comes in and they feel that we had here is a great example. We had a shot putter, Kamal message is a Bosnian dude. He was top three in the country, unfortunately he was competing against some guy at texas and uh, uh, finished top three, it might have been Ryan crowds at the time. I care, but uh, he’s decent, but, but camels thing was, I like to do bicep curls because when I do bicep curls and I feel like my bicep is big, I feel like my arm is on a full prominence and my bicep is like forcing my arm to help me throw the shot, so when he’s telling me that something like, dude, if bicep curls make you feel confident about throwing a shot, then let’s do some bicep curls. Like you see he’s in there all the time, he just always cranking through uh easy curl bars and dumbbells and stuff and whatever, it made him feel like it helped him. So we’re, that’s, that’s a nuance, right? I’m going to allow because the guys, it was a real thing to him and maybe it is a real thing, I don’t know, but for him it was definitely a real thing.

[0:27:51 Speaker 1] No, that’s awesome. It sounds like I hear two principles surface there when you talk about differences or similarities across sports. One is like we all have these tools, but what you’re saying is like it’s a matter of how you’re going to use that tool. So you may have similarities and movement patterns, but the difference is maybe in, well maybe it’s volume, maybe it’s low, you know, maybe you switch the movement pattern just a little bit and that’s where you find the differences and that’s huge. I think that’s, that’s one thing I’ve come to learn over the last five years as a young shrink coaches is it’s all a tool. It’s just a matter of how you’re going to use

[0:28:23 Speaker 0] it. Then

[0:28:24 Speaker 1] That 2nd 1 is like given that athlete autonomy, man, who cares if it’s a placebo or not, if it makes them feel more confident, that probably speaks more to, you know, whatever rep ranges they’re going to be hitting, doing that exercise is like whether the physiological effects, the psychological effects are just as important,

[0:28:42 Speaker 0] huge and

[0:28:43 Speaker 1] certainly can be skipped over by quite a few coaches. So

[0:28:47 Speaker 0] I want to back up to something you said earlier man about snatching and so just kind of like I love what you said about that, you know, and when dan, like I said when dan was here back in the early the late nineties, early two thousands, he would they would bring in some therapists when I used to help a track and field early on here. Mike Leahy, I don’t know if you ever heard of Mike Leahy was the early kind of teachers, practitioners of A. R. T. Active release therapy. And so, mike, when I was talking to him, we would just have these side out, he would work on athletes and clean him up and then he was talking about you know, shoulder health and he said really honestly one of the only lifts you can do that will strengthen the mid trap in the back of the behind the shoulder is an overhead snatch, especially you think about and dan used to always talk about, you know, if you gotta overhead athlete, they hit, they throw do some kind of rotation with that one arm, you got to address that space above their head, right and you’ve got to do that in the weight room obviously safely and then but you’ve got to come up with exercises if you don’t get it strong. Like Mike said that that that mid trap in the back with something overhead, you’re gonna have some shoulder problems down the road, especially with over the athletes. So I love you. I thought that was, it was great what you said and and to jump on that um with volleyball every time they come in the weight room, once we get through the warm up corrective period, the very first thing we do after we go through snatch transfer as part of the warm up. And because again every day is an assessment to me because anything can pop up at any time in season or out of seasons, they’re learning a new technique and individuals, there might be something that we need to manage a little bit, but like we hit that all year round And to me are valuable team, does a great job with all this. Like I’m the act of physical training. I think they just do a phenomenal job with. It allows us to really work through some things and we’ve had I think one solar surgery in 18 years, it was a rotator cuff muscle just wasn’t more than a that address came in with it. But we’ve been really healthy through our shoulders in my, in my tenure here and we’ve always done a version of this good stuff. I know as much as they internally rotate when they hear you’ve got to do something that goes opposite to fix that, you know, over time. So anyway, mike you got any more questions for him.

[0:31:12 Speaker 1] You know, I was just curious like, you know what you said there coach made like when you do so much internal rotation at some point there needs to be a counterbalance of balancing out that tissue or helping that joint understand that it also needs to externally rotate. So just curious coach Delancey because with swim volleyball and then even like say a jab thrower, you’ve had a ton of experience with overhead athletes. Is there anything outside of snatching which is obviously not standing exercise that you do to try to maybe a trust that overhead athletes

[0:31:44 Speaker 0] in our warm ups, whether if in season all of them come in charge of our warm ups as well in season out of season, every day of the week, we’re gonna do some version of eyes wise teas and ace scott push ups, scrap attraction and bam full of parts and it might only be one set and it might just be like a micro dose of exercise. But we’re going to do and swimming too. We’re going to do some version of that every single time I see them with swimming, I also had their dry lands um and we it was part of the dry land as well as the warm up. So we will always do some version of what I mentioned. They’re all every single day. And I think that does help manage that a lot.

[0:32:31 Speaker 1] Just getting that’s cap to move through all the different

[0:32:33 Speaker 0] planes and. Exactly,

[0:32:34 Speaker 1] that’s awesome.

[0:32:35 Speaker 0] Well I think, you know, I want to jump on that. I think what I’ve seen matt and mike, I’m sure you’ve seen this, you’ve done some of this with different athletes, but it’s good being able to assess when that scapula is frozen and it’s stuck to the ribs. You can strengthen all you want around that. But if that scapula is frozen and it’s not gliding, interior part of that shoulder is gonna be lit up and you’re gonna overcompensate, there’s gonna be some inhibitions, mechanically swinging or hitting, it’s gonna be way off and it’s gonna just domino effect. And then you’ve got to figure out, like you said, sometimes it’s not about getting stronger, but getting that to move cleaner, then back up, back up, fix that a little bit. Now let’s move forward with right stuff, you know, jumping on that too is part of my, one of my certifications is the corrective exercise specialization through Nasa. Um and you know, I I know there’s a whole world of strength coaches that don’t like trigger pointing and grids and trigger point balls and all that, but I’m like, we go through uh trigger points stretched prior to doing our correctives every single time and just listening to the athletes self report on that too, is they feel better once they’ve done the trigger point stretching on overactive musculature allows you to get into those movements properly. So, I don’t know, you’ve seen us travel valuable and if you’ve seen them with their health packs that we have, we have a creative all bands, different things in there and you know, they’re expected to have with them at all times and when we’re in the off season, I tell them like take it home with you, make sure you have with you, if you’re in your apartment, your sore on friday, go through some of our trigger point stretch and a lot of our kids are really good about it and an end season that’s always with them. And I think that going into that, we go through like some work through their scrabulous with with the grid will do different things, you know, just trying to open up the traffic mobility to But like that’s a great, great point that you bring up. I think before you do any of the corrective movements setting it up with like SMR and some stretching helps helps a lot as well.

[0:34:42 Speaker 1] Yeah, I know in swimming, I mean sometimes luckily like knock on wood here, we haven’t had to deal with too many shoulder issues in recent years, but when that does come up as a common point of injury for swimmers, it’s one of the first things that I do is, you know, I’ll have them lightly with just their hand, reach their arm overhead, do some control articular rotations, and it’s like, are you seeing that scat move or is it kind of stuck in its place? And that can usually be the first point of, okay, this might be the problem and then kind of what you’re saying, coach may have is when that’s cap is stuck and it freezes, it doesn’t translate across that rib cage. That’s something I see in rowers who run the rib issues is there’s so much scalp retraction that when they go to reach at the catch, when they’re kind of reloading per se. For stroke, that scaf’s not coming across, they’re going to find that extra range of motion elsewhere. Um and whether that taxes the rib pulling on, there are the greatest pulling on the rib or even below back, like that’s typically a good spot to to try to investigate.

[0:35:42 Speaker 0] That’s a great point. Well, I I know and I used to work with football guys, you would see this all the time, anybody listen this, if you do way too much bench press, you’re gonna get extreme internal rotation and your subs cap hilarious is going to be inhibited in short and turned off, and that scapula is going to be stuck and you’re just setting up for either sub Luxor dislocation from a big hit. So, host serious shoulder health and scapular health is fundamental for any kind of performance coach. So benching is a, this can be very risky. We, uh, this is probably gonna get some hate. I don’t know, we don’t, I don’t bench volleyball. Let’s go. Let’s go, man. I knew it. I knew I don’t bench, I don’t bet swimming. Like we do, we do a lot of overhead pressing and the closest we might come to benches like dumbo inclined. But like we, we literally don’t do traditional bench press I training program. There’s another reason I love you right there. I mean, no, and for track, like our sprinters, they like to look good. New Jersey’s and again, that goes back to the nuance of look good, feel good, run good, right? So the sprinters will do a little bench, the jumpers will do a little bench. I don’t write numbers on their cards because I’m like, I don’t want to top every sprint jump athlete, the first thing I tell them, I don’t want to top every sprint jump pathway. I know you guys like the feeling of it, you’re only allowed to go light to moderate if you are close to missing reps. I’m a yaya. And so they don’t get a little bit of benching. Outside of that are throw crew, like our, you know, our shop voters, obviously they have to bench and you got to manage that. Um, the hammer throwers bench just to maintain some balance in their shoulders. We don’t get crazy with the hammer throwers, but there is some benefit for Hammer Guy bench a little bit thomas who just won the weight indoor. Um, and through 2 48 last weekend in the hammer opening up, he’s uh, he likes to do a little bench, he feels good about his Norwegian dude loves the bench, the jab kids that they we bench a little bit with them, but outside of that we don’t, I’m not a bench press advocate. I uh I I Sprinkle it here and there for when you have to have a real reason to bed bench press. So it’s yeah, just not, you know when I was younger, my first couple years of volleyball, like my first two years we would bench had some shoulder discomfort and things and some point I’m like cut it out and we just stood overheads and we never looked back

[0:38:12 Speaker 1] for sure. And then, I mean it’s like you were saying coach Mabe is like with every exercise, no matter how much we may fall in love with it as a coach, there’s cons to it too, even if it’s a great exercise. And so we talk about that with like the scat movements, like if that the physical bench itself during the bench press is preventing our scraps from being able to kind of rotate over um as we push up. It’s like, well maybe there’s some fall back to that. So I think with any exercises you have to consider that is, it’s kinda like you’re saying coach Lance C well, if it’s causing shoulder discomfort, is this worth it to us? And then you kind of re evaluate and re plan and then you kind of keep doing that over the years and maybe you end up with certain sports, they just don’t even touch a barbell bench. So

[0:38:55 Speaker 0] yeah, awesome. Hey, we’re going to shift gears on the quiet. I’m gonna take this question here and then Michael close us out. But coach matt just change gears real quick. I think this is a topic that you like to talk about, but let’s talk about qualities that you look for in young strength coaches, what qualities do you look for when hiring or bringing someone on board and I cannot wait to hear this go for the very first thing I’m looking for is someone with a growth mindset, regardless of their knowledge, experience, if they can come in with a growth mindset and willing to learn because obviously in terms of coming in to help us do our jobs and if you can help us do our jobs did not bring any value or your department right? When I’m talking with someone on the phone or zooms or meet in person, it’s these are the expectations Growth mindsets, number one, if you’re not willing to learn our cues and what we do and how we do it and it’s different for every coach in the room because we don’t micromanage our coaches, we hire good people and then we support them so everybody’s got a different way to go about what we do, strength and conditioning and it’s also a program because every team has different needs so if the intern coming in doesn’t have a growth mindset and you know it right away when you start talking to them because they get into the yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Type like trying to just get you off the topic right? I just don’t invite those people into our room. I caused to make problems. You have too many people trying to put their spoon in the pudding. And every semester I got a lot of intern go because they overstepped somewhere and I hate doing it but you know we make it very clear, it’s like you gotta come in with a growth mindset, you absolutely have to learn what we do, You have to check your ego at the door to me, that’s the number one now outside of that, they got to have a great work ethic, you can’t be a strength and conditioning professional and not have a great work ethic, It doesn’t work. Your coaches will eat you alive, you’ll get, you’ll get fired out of your first job, you got to have a great work ethic early on in your career, you have to be willing to outwork everybody. I mean we know that we’ve opened at um so to me, growth mindset work ethic are the two big ones. If you have, if you have poor contact knowledge we can help you with that. That’s that’s something I’m not I’m not concerned about that. We’ve had, I’ve had plenty of interns come in that literally don’t know a thing and they’ve stuck around for four or five semesters because they wanted to learn and because they’ve done a good job, we’ve let them stick around, we’ve had tapes come in with great contact knowledge and because they don’t necessarily agree with what our coaches, what we were doing, they washed out within a semester and some of them wash out within a month. Typically it’s on their end because they just want a bigger role, they want, they want to, they want to put in, put in. And so for me that intern, that young strength coach, but you’re coming in for an internship, growth mindset, work ethic and willing to deal with lack of control. Those have to be the big three right there. Now, if you’re, if you’re a young strength coach that’s been hired and now you got the job, the advice might be a little different terms. You still got to have a growth wide set, you’re still gonna have a great work ethic, you have to be open minded to everybody that’s interacting with that team because everybody’s opinion matters and they’re coming at it with a different experience at a different knowledge content and if you’re not willing to listen, then you’re gonna miss out on some really key insight that there’s no way you could have possibly had because you’re not in that person’s head thinking what they’re thinking. So to me, if you’re hired and you have the job and now you’re in charge of the programming open, that, that’s part of growth mindset, but that’s, this is still like, I’ll put that in a separate category. I think a lot of people struggle with that are really off.

[0:42:47 Speaker 1] I mean,

[0:42:48 Speaker 0] real quick mike, I think you hit a sweet spot for me was just being able to learn how to really

[0:42:54 Speaker 1] listen to people

[0:42:55 Speaker 0] and what I mean by listening is you don’t really hear what they’re saying, you’re not trying to formulate your next thought and you know how to, you ask more questions to let them know that you are listening and then you take practical steps of behavioral change moving forward and you see that and and they become flexible and adaptable, like that growth mindset versus they really don’t hear you there is doing well, that’s not what I read in a book or that’s not how I learned from so and so versus no, this is how we do it here, this is our house, this is not so and so’s house or this coach, this is how we operate here, so learning how to listen and learn, watch and then kind of adapt and evolve. I think it’s, it’s so hard to do for young coaches today. There’s a lot of influencers with social media that they, I think they’re over whelmed with the amount of information that’s available to them and it’s throwing uh I’m gonna say they’re throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks sorry for that, but I think that’s, that’s a problem that because we didn’t necessarily have that when we were younger, it wasn’t the internet was so we got this book and we got, we have to go talk to people and we have to pick up the phone and we could call somebody in night. I think that’s a different concept than just going on twitter and scrolling and reading and going on instagram and seeing every fitness model do a band include exercising correctly with over our slower backs? Like, I think it’s just, there’s so much information that I think this young strength coach professionals right now are just so overwhelmed and yeah, well we live in a day and age where you can have 30,000 followers on instagram, but you don’t know what you’re doing exactly what are you trying to? And I’m just like, but that’s just the reality of the landscape. It’s a wild wild west right now. So I’m speaking of that when we, when we screen in terms, the first thing I do is I go look at their social media accounts. I’m sure I want to see what they, what they’re doing, having it in turn coming in and this kid, she had all those, all those categories and she’s got an instagram account that she posts everything she does and that will be something managed to manage that at some point I’ll talk to her about it probably and be like, hey, you know, maybe want to put your account private while your gator because I don’t want that feeding into our athletes are being an issue. So I think that I think that’s something that’s important to manage these days, because that can get out of hand.

[0:45:29 Speaker 1] You always say with that like new landscape of, you know, you can get all this information from everywhere so quickly and are, you know, young string coaches who’s to know if this is legitimate information or not? I think that’s one of the principles we try to equip our interns with is you need to have a filter and whether that’s, that’s just understanding that this could be good, this could not be, or even finding a coach like coach Mabe who can mentor you and you know, maybe lead you on your way as far as well. Maybe this is a good place to get an information or maybe this isn’t. But having a filter I think is what they need to be equipped with to be able to handle all that new information. Yeah,

[0:46:06 Speaker 0] that’s a great point. That’s a great point.

[0:46:09 Speaker 1] But yeah, even, you know, kind of sticking to the young strength coach topic. Maybe a little bit more of a fun question for you. Coach Delancey is if right now you could

[0:46:19 Speaker 0] go back and talk to

[0:46:20 Speaker 1] your younger strength

[0:46:21 Speaker 0] coach self,

[0:46:22 Speaker 1] what type of advice would you give yourself or what pieces of information would you share?

[0:46:27 Speaker 0] Cut yourself some slack. You don’t need to know everything to be effective. You need to know what you or doing, you need to know that very well. So that again it goes back to the overwhelmed, so cut yourself some slack. Every loss and injury isn’t the end of the world because when I was early, you know that you feel those losses and when a kid gets injured, you, you feel that too. And I think, um, I was, I would tell myself to cut yourself some slack. Don’t lose so much sleep over athletes getting injured and losing because that’s part of the deal. Like you have to accept the fact that sports do have an injury rate associated with it no matter what we do and what the coaches do and what athlete does, it could be all perfect. People are gonna get hurt and people are going to not perform at their best even when they’ve done everything right. And I think that that advice to me early on would have been helpful because they got to sleep a lot better. So where

[0:47:26 Speaker 1] Were you? four years ago for me, that would have been

[0:47:27 Speaker 0] great. Exactly. So, and that was me for two years when I first got hired at florida, because you know when you first get your big job, you’re like, oh my God, I don’t want to lose this job, like, like that’s the wrong mindset because that’s not a winning mindset, like it’s not so much about what do I do to lose his job, Like is what I do to keep the job, what do I do to help move my athletes forward? What do I do to keep progressing? And I think that’s once I got into that, that comfort zone, that’s where I really started to excel as a, as a sports performance coach,

[0:47:56 Speaker 1] awesome, thank

[0:47:57 Speaker 0] you. Hey, one last kind of thing won’t shut it down here. But any resources that you recommend, I’ve seen a picture of your bookshelf and uh you look like you’re a bookworm like me, any resources you got for us coach, anything. So there’s a book that I really uh for me it’s it’s straight up olympic weightlifting, but there’s a technical aspect to the book that I think helps clean up your mind set on certain things and that you can understand that there are a couple different ways to teach a clean and a snatch and it, so it’s essentials of weight lifting and strength training. It’s by l Huey phenomenal, it’s a phenomenal like general resource on olympic lifting. The uh you know, I’ve always loved the high performance uh strength and conditioning book I think Bill for and was part of that book. That’s always been a he’s he was the editor, I was always been a good uh good readers, a whole bunch of different professionals in there. So the high performance sports conditioning, it’s a nice foundational book. Super Training is a big read with Mel says if I got a bunch of bonder check books that I, that I like to pull out here and there and then a couple of running books from France bosch. So those to me are some really good ones. And then, you know, the other thing as I have an athletic and sport issues and muscular skeletal and rehabilitation. That was a big book early on for me because when we’re coming out, when we’re first come into a job, you’re not gonna know everything. We still don’t know anything, but there was a good resource for just like injuries. So those are to me, those are some really good uh, starting points. Thanks coach. Yeah. My pleasure. What where if our listeners want to kind of reach out, connect with you have another conversation or shoot me an email? Uh, Matthew D two teas and Matthew Matthew D at Gators dot ufl dot e d U. Often. Typically I get back within within the afternoon. Good stuff. Coach Hansen, you got anything to add as we kind of wrap the show up today. Anything?

[0:50:03 Speaker 1] No, just again, we’ve kind of talked about how busy you can be coached to Lindsay. So I just appreciate you kind of carving out some time for us and just talking shop and

[0:50:12 Speaker 0] being transparent. I appreciate you appreciate you guys. Thanks for having me. I really enjoy this. Yeah, well, hey matt, you are the man. And uh, I’m going to use a line from our good, we’re in Jesse Ackerman. We’re going to keep our anger healthy, uh, navigating this pandemic and hopefully get back to normal at some point. Um So so one last thing Donny, you and I met initially At the c. s. c. c. a. conference back in 2005. Yeah that was I think I did a talk on volleyball all day and you come up and you’ve always been growth mindset but I’ve always appreciated that about you. So I I just want to make sure people know we we’ve we’ve known each other for a long time. Yeah. I’ve always, just from the day I heard you speak and met you just always been impressed with just how you handle yourself and you just, you’re really good at what you do and you, I feel like you’re here to help others do that too. So I have always respected and admired that about you. So just keep doing that map. Keep thank you man, I appreciate that. That’s it. Well we’ll wrap it up from here. Coach Delancey. Hopefully we’ll see you soon. I’ll be leaving for the bubble in Omaha with volleyball just like yourself. So we probably can’t get near each other, but well at least we’ll give air bumps or something or uh, air fist bump or something, give each other look, you know, smolder look or something. But Mike Hanson, uh, as always, you’re awesome co hosting this and leading it. So appreciate everybody’s time and being honest. So we’ll catch you next month on the team behind the team podcast. Y’all take care. Thanks so much for tuning in and listening to this episode of the team. Behind the team podcast. For future episodes. Go to Itunes, Spotify, google podcast or stitcher. We definitely want to keep having great guests on the show in great content. So if you have a moment, please go to Itunes, leave a rating and review and let us know how we’re doing. I’m Donny Made and thanks so much for tuning in.