E9 | Dan Fichter: Strength & Conditioning

Welcome to the team behind the teen podcast. I am your host, Donny, mate. This is the monthly
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show Focus on building conversations around the teen based model approach to ethnic performance.
Strength. Conditioning. Sports Medicine. Sports Science. Mental health and wellness. And
Sports nutrition.
Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the team behind the team podcast. I’m your host,
Donny mate, and today’s special guest will be wears multiple
hats, as you’ll hear in a moment. But before we get to our guest, I do have a co-host helped me
today to do this interview, coach Mike Hansen, who works at the University of Texas. He trains
our women’s swim team and our women’s crew rowing team. Mike, say a lot, everybody today. Hello,
everybody. So, Mike, good to have you in here to help with the interview. Mike and Dan have
a a relationship through coach Cal Dietz and just through following
Dan Victor Victor on different things you’ve done. So
without further ado, let’s welcome our guest host, Dan Victor to my center right college center right
today. Welcome to the show. Say hello to everybody. Hello, everybody. It’s great to be here. And he got in late
last night. Dan is here speaking at our clinic this weekend. It’s his January. And you got
in from New York, right, coach? So he’s a little sleep deprived, deprived in. But he’s here if you had to barbecue.
Yeah, coach, I have not. So we have failed him. We’ll get. We’ll get
him. We’ll get him. We’ve got to get him Tex-Mex. And we’ve got to get him barbecue. So a little
bit about Dan and we’ll turn over to you, Mike. But Dan is the owner of Want
to Get Fast. It’s a sports performance business in Rochester, New York. And the head football
coach at say it again for his coach, Randy Quaid. High school. I cannot say that yet. I need to work on it. But
he’s a head high school coach. He’s one of the most innovative and educated coaches in our
field. And I would attest to that. You spoke to our staff today, and it was just it was absolutely
phenomenal. Dan’s knowledge of the neurological aspects of training
is on another level. He travels around the country speaking on speed training, strength training,
and how developing the nervous system can dramatically increase performance. So it’s
a little bit about Dan. Coach Hansen, take it from here and lead us into it. Yeah. Thanks
for joining us, Stan. First, we just want you, if you can, to introduce yourself
to our listeners. How did you become a high school head football coach? Always that path like
in how did you become an owner of a private training facility?
Ironically, I went to AROUNDA to quit high school. High school senior played football,
ran track. I wanted to compete in three sports, played basketball,
says multi-sport athlete in high school decided I wanted to play football, although basketball was my
favorite sport. But I’m vertically challenged so that wasn’t going to happen. So I kept up with the football.
And these two of us and played football collegiately at Brockport
State Division Three School in upstate New York had an opportunity to play in the Arena Football League for a few years
and Canada. So with that quest of trying to play
professional football, I delved into the strength training and the speed training, and
it just absolutely intrigued every part of me to figure out how
people run so fast and are so strong. From there, I
got my degree from Brockport and I started to teach. So I was a high school physics teacher for
eleven years. And in that time period, I was running my gym and
pro about halfway through opening my gym. I was like, I got to do
this full time to be able to commit to it. So I love teaching left teaching for about five years
to open up two businesses, one in Rochester, New York, and one in Tampa, Florida.
And all that time, I was an assistant football coach.
So then the head football coaching job came open at the high school and I went to and I’m like, I have
to do that. That’s something that, you know, you just feel like it’s it’s your
calling. And so I closed the gym in Tampa and I said, I’ll have one gym here.
I’ll go back to teaching and I’ll be there. Head high school football coach. And I’ve loved every second
of that change and just the ability to meet new people and coming out here. It’s been
a blast. Laughs That’s awesome. Your your approach to training is
unique in that you use a variety of methods that aren’t too commonly used
to influence the neuromuscular system in order to maximize performance. So can you talk about
why the nervous system is so important for performance and then maybe dove into a few brain based
methods that you do use? Well, I think the nervous system is important because most
people talk about training the central nervous system when they’re training. I take a little bit more
philosophy about brain based stuff. Are we really addressing right hemisphere? Left hemisphere?
Are we talking about cerebellum stuff? I mean, these are the things that get down to actual movement patterns.
And to be honest, we are strength coaches where our conditioning coaches, but we’re movement coaches. We have to help
athletes move better if we don’t don’t care how strong you are, don’t care how fast you are. If you don’t move
correctly, you’re either going to get hurt or your performance is going to be terrible.
So that question, you know, you talk about there’s a lot of different philosophies rolled into
what I do because I’ve learned from so many great people. I tell you, if there’s anything that
I would brag about, it’d be the opportunity that I’ve had to study with different people and the great mentors I’ve had.
And I’ve been out with Mel Siff from Super Training. I’ve had an opportunity to sit
down with some really phenomenal strength and conditioning coaches and just learn from people
and continue to learn. And then from there, you develop what you do. Mm
hmm. Coach, you kind of you kind of talked about it today with our staff, but
what are some things you do to assess your athletes nervous system readiness? You know, today, amigo,
they got a lot of technology. But I mean, really, the coach’s eye still is pride one of the best
tools. Would you agree? Yeah. I really believe that. And so
what I do is I take a look at three or four different systems in the body to see how we can impact
movement. One of those system is the vestibular system. So I’ll talk about that tomorrow. When I speak
to in that seminar is how do we evaluate the vestibular system?
We’ll also talk about the AIS and the power, the power behind the eyes, not just from
lifting heavy weights, but how it can impact our human gait, which is what
we’re all chasing. And as much as we all like to lift weights and do these things,
your gait pattern is so responsible for the success that you have in athletics that
you have to address it. In training, you have to. So we’ll address the appropriate septic
system, the vestibular system, the visual system. And we try to we try to pack
that all into what we’re normally going to do in a workout. And if I can
get that involved in a weight room session without kids knowing I’m doing
it, that’s the way I like the game. Yeah, that’s key. Yeah. Because then they’re they’re asking questions like what?
Why this? Why that? And their job is to get better. And if they’re getting stronger while
I’m implementing these techniques, that’s all that matters. Q
Do you have a few examples of as far as how you address whether being a warm up or during your
your session, whether it’s the vestibular system or the ocular system, whatever
it may be. So today we’ve talked a little bit about AI dominance. You’re right, dominant left AI dominance
and we showed examples of how that can create strength or how can it can actually limit
you. So if you know that that’s a strength or, you know, it’s a weakness
training, it is going to help it. Right. So I don’t think many people
train their weak guy in a gym. The gyms that I’ve gone and talked
to people, they don’t understand those concepts. So but it’s pretty powerful and it gets
instantaneous results. So we address that. The vestibular system can
be added to anything as a potentiation because it’s responsible
for your extensor muscles. So spinning, enrolling and tumbling, all these things
activate your vestibular system, which in turn kicks in same side extensor as
if I can do that. I’m going to enhance performance. So it’s kind of like a no brainer that I want to get these
involved right away before we workout and even after to recover because
the vestibular system is responsible for your parasympathetic nervous system. If we can get those kicked
in as we’re done training and I can get back to that normal heart rate, I can get back to our rest
and digest. I’m ahead of the game recovering faster. Yeah, I really
like the example you gave us earlier today. If you’re a right tackle
and maybe your right eye is not so dominant, not as dominant, your left eye on
that can be a weakness if you have an end coming off the edge to your right side. Yeah. Learning from a lot of great football
coaches that you have to have an answer. You always have to have an answer for something they won’t want to know. Right.
So, I mean, as a football coach, I’m not quite sure I have an answer why my right tackle
can’t kick slide. And every time that Lufthansa coming in, he’s can’t
block them. While he might not be able to do it because he’s left dominant in his right visual
field is weaker. All right. So knowing how to train that can make you a better football player.
That’s really good. What about if we were to go into your weight room? Coach, what kind of if you were to give us a
little bit of a snapshot, what kind of exercises methods you would be
using to enhance performance? Well, the two guys who run my gym now, Nick Marino and
Donato Clemente, they made the trip up here with me. What you would see from them are two guys
that have been through the system before that are as explosive as anybody
I’ve ever coached in the gym. And both have over 40 inch vertical jump and can bench press to the corner
until you tell them to stop. But what you’ll see is force absorption. Can
your body absorb force and can it absorb force in the proper position? And once that
happens, good thing starts to happen. But those are two coaches that can demo everything.
Yeah, they’re pretty good. I can’t do that anymore. They’re pretty good. I’m right there with the
interns. We try to recruit to all of demonstrating for us.
We’ve kind of already addressed this a little bit, but we can maybe dove a little bit further. And that’s
in your observation or in your opinion. Are there any key variables or even pieces to performance that get
swept over in our field? Maybe our underutilized. Whether it be isometrics
or whatever other methods, anything that’s largely unexplored. Yeah, I’ll say two things.
One is the relationships you have with the kids that you’re training. I think it’s important for for them to
trust you and to have faith in you as you’re starting to, especially in a
program like mine where things are different. It doesn’t look like a normal weight room. All right. So they have to build that
trust. You have to show them that you care about them in order for them to care and for them to get better.
So they’ll be number one. Number two is definitely the use of isometrics, isometrics in various
positions. Isometrics as it relates to recovery, as it relates to a potentiation
in all phases. And then addressing the gate, the human gate.
If you’re not addressing it, I think you’re really minimizing the results you’re going
to get. Yeah, we talked a little bit again about it today with long-duration Isometrics
or whatever name that you do have for those. But holding a position typically seen as like a yielding
isometric. Yeah. One that you’re not pushing against the immovable object. What are some
adaptations that you seek when you utilize those, how you coach them? Yeah. Well I think
Jay Shroder is the guy who who claimed that and started that. But Isometrics had
been around for a long time with the Russians about joint specific isometrics and all that stuff. And we know that
it works and we know it’s a real powerful way to get strong. What we didn’t realize up
until recently is that when you do things in a split squat stance and you’re working symmetrically, there
you are actually the brain will actually complete the process for you. So if you
are in a split squat lunge, you are actually working on your sprinting gait
and your brain believes that it’s operating at full speed. So now you’re minimizing
the impact forces. You’re going to minimize injuries in your gym and your body
is going through those patterns, whether it be reflex arcs, whether it be
from muscle recruitment of how you are getting into the isometric positions. So it
does a lot in terms of fixing the way we run when people come
to my gym. They always say, well, your name, your company is want to get fast? Are you’re going to teach my son or daughter
how to run with your knees up on the balls of your feet. I’m like known people don’t run on the balls of their feet around
their heels on purpose. They run because they are they have something from a neurological standpoint
where they’re deflecting force, where they cannot absorb force. So we have to find that in the weight room
and we have to fix it. I’m curious through. I got a little interesting question here.
Some have fought orders and been
seeing them come up through high school athletics. And I’m really I’ve watched the club.
We have my daughters play club volleyball, a lot of soccer. You’re talking about a little bit about
you’re working with younger athletes. What have you seen as far as
early sport specialization in some of your training? And what have you done
to help maybe offset some of the negative effects of that? What are your thoughts on that? Coach, I think
we are playing so much game stuff, basketball, volleyball
around you’re around that. I think what happens is your skill
is better than your physiology. Yeah, that’s a good that’s because when you start doing
so. So you can’t if your skill level is higher than your physiology,
you’re going to break at some point. So we have to back it up a little bit and readdress that physiology
part. And a lot of people don’t do that. I think isometrics is the best way to do
that with kids who are that active. Right. Because parents will come in and say, well, we have volleyball
on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then soccer on Thursday. And then we. And I’m like. And
you want to train? Save your money. Because we have I mean, just the
my daughter playing volleyball. They’ll be in a tournament two days in a row.
They’ll play five or more matches in one day. We don’t ask
our high level athletes to do that, but we’re asking our young athletes to do that now if they’re not playing
it with the same impact and force and it’s not at the speed. Right. But still, it’s
and it’s on top of concrete. Yeah, it’s sport caught on concrete. The thing to say.
Yeah, there’s a gap there and it’s really big missing though. I think we have to start addressing it again.
It’s when when I look at my son, I watch him do things with the basketball at 9
years old, I’m like, boy, I couldn’t do this. But he wants to do a.
But his body’s not ready to do it. So he’s gonna get the B result and that’s not good. So,
yeah, I’m growing up in Minnesota playing hockey and Ryan working with hockey players. It’s
probably the equivalent of Texas football and you see extreme side of that. Sure. So we’re at the gym.
Hockey players come off the ice where they got up early, 6:00 a.m., 7:30 or 9 hour.
Excuse me. We’ll come right up to the weight room. Roll out, warm up, lift. It’s been an hour and a half, so
I’ve spent the first three to three and a half hours of their day training. They’ll come back
later in the day, in the afternoon to some steak handling, shooting behind them on dry land
shoes. It never ends, right. Because then you had your tournament teams in the summer that you need to
make for scouts to see you or whatever it may be. And before you know it, you’re back right into
the regular season of hockey. So it got to a point in the summer when I was training some high level hockey players where I’d
watch them run. And I’m like, stop, stop. We’re not doing that because you’re going to hurt yourself. Fish
out of water. We got to figure out something else for you to do because you never learn that skill.
You were on the ice and that’s OK. And making millions of dollars now. So I guess it paid off
for them. But what about all the other people who aren’t? I didn’t develop all those skills. No, I tried to teach tumbling
to a bunch of hockey players did not go well. Simple, tumbling. Just roll. Do all properly
to you. So, you know, there’s going to be a cost to that. There’s gonna
be a cost to that. Speaking of movement, what strategies or methods have you use to improve
motor learning? Coach? Well, some of the systems that we’re working with
now are addressing motor control restoration, which I don’t
think anybody’s utilizing that stuff right now. Guy out of Chicago created the system and it’s
just it’s unbelievable how simple
brain communication with joint actions that are intolerant of load can change
the way you move and the way you can learn new patterns. I think everybody is into,
you know, the motor learning part of rehearsing things and practicing. We got that down pretty good.
But from a standpoint of trying to increase your capacity to learn it
and absorb those forces from it in multiple joint plains of motion, I
think that’s that’s where our industry is going. Good stuff.
Can I take you back to isometrics a little? Sure. So I know he kind of talked about long-duration ISO’s.
Do you use anything that short duration use overcoming ISO’s? You know, what types do you use?
Cal talked a lot about the feet. We use all those foot isometrics. Big believer
in that. We use a lot of short five-second isometric hold to fix. Like we’re
talking about the motor control issues. So in order to restore that motor control,
those certain types of isometric exercises allow the brain to communicate better with the brain,
with the joints. So once you have that implementing of any other training
system is going to make it that much better. So isometrics play a role from the start
to the finish. Right. And I know it can be a little bit unique depending
on how you coach or who you are and where you learned. But I’ve heard before, whether
it’s a heavy ISO or something, that you’re going to hold very long duration
to be constantly pulling yourself into position. Is that something that you do? Yeah, we do. Pulling ourselves
into position and the intent of what? What is the intent of the movement? Meaning if you’re doing
a split squat, lunge is your thought process on running. So now we’re
gonna get more mortar unit activation based off of that gate cycle or that sprint cycle.
A lot of people just hold it just to hold it right. So. They’re wiping their nose or doing all kinds of other things.
I want the athlete invested in exactly what they’re doing at that moment versus
passively. Can’t exactly sit in the opposition. You know how. I’m curious, how frequently would you use ISO’s?
Oh, we use it all the time. Every day in every workout. Every workout. They’re doing some
type of isometric work. Yeah. Yeah, we build it in interest set where they’re
doing ISO dynamic, where they’re holding it on their chest and then wrapping out after that, we’ll do it at the bottom of a squat
to multiple reps of squats. We will do it just in an a bar ISIL
hold for a long duration. We’ll do a wall squat. We’ll do a lunge. Like
I said, our warm up is joint specific isometrics. So we use it in all
areas of our training in the biggest return on the ISO’s. What’s what’s good? First of all, it’s
it’s the force absorption issue that you need to be able to absorb force. But
if you’re constantly absorbing force in the wrong position, you’re gonna get hurt. Yeah. So I
think it keeps your injuries down in the weight room. Yeah. The way I mean, I’ve started experimenting
with some of them and I really like them. I I’ll know personally I’ve I’ve done some myself.
It doesn’t beat me up now. And that’s what I think. You know, I don’t feel like my muscles
are they feel strong still. Yeah. But I’m not walking around. I kind of like, oh man. I
just went through a tough session right there, you know? Yeah. You’re still getting that neuro stimulation from it
without having to put your muscles through the work of it. So because if you think about like a yielding
isometric or something where you’re pushing against something that’s not moving. Right. You’re going to rip
apart all of that. That’s pretty intense workout when you’re pulling yourself into position
and holding and ranges of motion is a completely different animal to the brain.
And then while we’re in those positions, I’ll begin to add other neurological stacking call.
So whether it’s eye exercises, vestibular exercises, vestibular colic, reflex
stuff, all look like weird tricks, but
they’re just sensory input that’s making the motor pattern that we’re creating and that isometric even
more powerful. You make me think we just took a course recently and I don’t know if you’ve
looked into it yet, but it’s called stic mobility. And we’ve got the sticks
and the GM, it’s fairly new. It’s not that new, but it’s just a system built around ISO’s.
Yeah. When you get when you get right down to it, if you want increased mobility of a joint, you’ve got to you’re going to have
these ISO’s and there’s varying degrees. They don’t use isometrics. They use. I think if you’re an irritation,
is their terminology a little different? And I use it a lot for priming, for doing some of the bigger
lifts. But also, again, I think just from taking the course, it opened up my
eyes of just the importance and power of just holding positions with tension.
And that opens it up. So you look at kids position now, it’s terrible. We
have to go back and re teach kids how to get in the proper position for anything. Right.
And I think we we go from A to Z so fast because their skill level is taking
off so much that they think when they come in the weight room, this is going to be easy. You’ve got to go back and get to those
rudimentary, right? Yeah. What the what? The tissue reeducation.
So our rowing our rowers tried that this year for our GPP, the second year in a row. We’ve done it,
but we threw them into a long duration. ISEF So two minutes, three minutes we went up to four
minutes. You can see the difference that comes back to the coach’s eyes in the warm up. You can kind
of see when they stand with our rowers, they do. Thousands of strokes a day where they don’t get to
full hip extension. And that’s on top of sitting in class for two hours a week there and observation, right.
So we’ll do those split lungi cells where we put them in that position in their cued to pull
themselves down to just above the ground. And whether it works or not, I don’t know. But from the
eye test, it’s like they stand up after that and they’re sore, but they just they stand taller without even being
told. And they’re ready to do it again. You can recover at the same time. That’s right. That’s kind of neat
when you’re when you’re talking about brain stuff. It’s also reflex driven. So if you are training something,
you should be recovering at near the same time. Right. So the other the other part
with with ISO’s that that will do is a lot of times will control their breathing.
Right. So I’m a big we put water in their mouth and it forces
nasal breathing. When you start to manipulate that, the performance gains
are incredible. Yeah, I’ve heard of the military has been using that for a long ways to tape their mouth
shut. But then some of the administrators say it doesn’t look so good. Ministration walked in and saw.
No. And I’m like, why keep him quiet? They don’t talk when they’re training. But you know, the
book, The Oxygen Advantage, you know, if you ever read that book, I have not seen coaching.
Patrick McKeever is isn’t my. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It’s good. Yeah. Yeah. It’s designed to breathe through
breathe through our nose and our mouth. Ever diaphragmatic breathing. IBNR don’t know if
I pronounce his name right. He is. Have you heard of Evan? I have not. So he.
He’s big and I think he’s a chiropractor or he’s more of an APB out. Yeah. Yeah.
But you know, he talks about nasal breathing and diaphragmatic breathing and in quite a few of his books, so
know. Oh yeah. Page which echoes the same thing is oxygen advantage. Yeah. So what. So instead of taping
we’ll put, you know, water in the mouth and it does the same trick as the same trick. And that’s
almost the concept of stacking. You’re working on one thing while at the same time working on another. Absolutely.
Which you can add. I’ve heard you do. Is it Eissa KADES? Yeah, I isakhan. We do all different
types of eye exercises and we’ll test to see which ones kids respond to. So when they’re doing their isometrics,
they know what eye positions they’re gonna get into. And then we do some stuff with cerebellum
positions that will allow you to get into a deeper lunge because as you look
a certain way, it activates certain parts, certain muscles. But it also
relaxes certain muscles. So it’s a great way to lengthen a stride. It’s a great way to get into
different positions, which all this just kind of reinforces that everything just comes back to the brain. It
does. It’s not really does. Well, I’ve heard that I’ve heard both you and
Carl speak about the influence that bilateral and unilateral exercises have on
the nervous system. We talked a little bit about it earlier today. It seems that the bilateral versus
unilateral exercise has been kind of a continuous debate amongst coaches in our field,
whether one’s better ones were Swann’s good ones not. And while they’re
merits of both depending on one’s circumstances or what they have to work with. Can you weigh
in on how those patterns of both bilateral or unilateral exercises influence
the nervous system? I don’t have a preference on either one. I think both have merit and both can
can help an athlete. What I do think you have to realize and I explain this today is that there
is a negative consequence to lifting weights bilaterally. There just is. I mean, it will
temporarily paralyze your nervous system to where you don’t have strength.
And I’ve shown that hundreds of times at various clinics. Now, it doesn’t mean you lose your strength
forever. It simply means that you need to respond with something that is of a cross crawl
concept. And most unilateral stuff is cross crawl. So, you know, do I like
unilateral trade? Absolutely. I think it’s great if the athlete is prepared to be on one leg. That’s awesome.
But I think it’s more of a brain issue. And to be honest, I don’t think it’s debatable because I think
bilateral training is fine. There’s anything wrong with it. Right? It’s just you better have the answer
when it shuts off, because if you look at power lifters, they’re not the best movers.
And again, our business, we get paid to make people move. Right. One of the sorry coach,
one of the things you said there that stuck out was, was there’s a consequence to it. And it’s
not only just bilateral, but really anything we do in the weight room, whether it’s nice, symmetric or breathing
or it seems like there’s, of course, a pro to it or there should be a reason that why we’re doing it. But there’s also always
consequences. Absolutely. And I think that’s something just from my limited experience in the field
that sometimes gets overlooked amongst coaches is whatever you are doing, it’s, you know, not
the end of it. It’s not that the answer always. Right. There’s a consequence to what you’re doing. And you got to evaluate
what are you giving and what are you taking. But the stuff that I’ve studied in
the last three years, it just confirms that I know very little about the human body
because I’ve spent a lot of years doing things that. I thought were this is the best
and I’ve completely changed my philosophy, so you have to in this business, I think you
have to be willing to, you know, stick your neck out and go, what else is out there? Because I can’t have
all the answers and we don’t have all the answers. Yeah, I think that’s that’s a good
point. I think going back to the unilateral sport by nature
is is imbalanced. And you get. I mean, just I think
I really like what you said that, you know, bilaterals great and everything. But there are some consequences
to that. And it seems like with the unilateral training, you can kind of
you can address compensation’s, which you talked a little bit about today. And though
you’ll see you can you can evaluate, engage, maybe where there is a conversation, a weakness
that if you don’t if you’re doing it with the bilat or move, you just maybe increase that.
Yeah. Well, I think the brain likes two things. I think it likes targets,
number one, and complex movements. Number two. So if we’re not doing either one of those
things, I don’t think we are getting the most out of what our brain can give us back
for sports performance. And what I mean by a target is and I tell people is if you’re a
power clean person, if that’s your philosophy, when we power
clean, there’s not an end game. It’s a technique. It’s a skill. But if I
picked my foot up and put it in a certain area, that’s a skill and a target
that I have to get to. So now the brain’s gone. Mm hmm. I’m a little bit more interested in the
end product here. So if my foot ends up on a wall where there’s an X
in my hips are in the right position, that it would look like when I was running. Now that becomes
a little bit more specific to the brain. It has a target. And now from a motor learning
standpoint, if I learn how to do that, I’ve also put my hips in the right position to be
a better runner. So so targets are one complex movements or another.
We have to be able to give our brain complex movements something new, something novel,
a new stimulus, or else it becomes lazy, becomes lazy. And we’ve seen
friends, Bosch, you know, address the targets. Right. Even if you’re going to utilize a power going absolutely
nuts. That’s not too new. Kind of like you were saying, coach, but certainly
it feels like we’re progressing in that manner, kind of like you said and circling back to the beginning.
That’s just the way things are starting to trend. You know, I hear friends talk about
Coke, contractions of the spine. I’ll wind it back even deeper, saying that when
you when you stimulate the vestibular system, you’re forcing those poor spinal
muscles of the spine to turn on. So now you’re actually doing brain training. I don’t think he explains
it that way. He’s more into the motor learning aspect of it and the targets fight. But that’s still
brain activation because your brain has to be able to turn those spinal
spinal muscles on to create stability before it’s going to let go. Any force in your lower back, right.
Right. And that’s the brain essentially limiting our outputs, right. Based
on what it thinks is safer threats. It’s all about threats. Yeah.
One thing I’m Shargel with with the bilateral training versus unilateral is I work
with sport like rowing where it’s kind of bilateral in nature. Inside
you fight with myself as far as well. OK. They’re gonna do this many bilateral or hip extensions every single
day. How much unilateral training should I do? What offsets the brain isn’t even
even worth putting time in to do that because I don’t know. You know, exactly what I’m doing is right. Exactly.
Helping, but. Well, I think one of the things you can do is test it. Muscle test it. All right. So
if they’re if they’re rowing in your muscle testing and again, it’s not just a muscle test to see how strong
you are, it’s more of a neural response of. Are they engaging? Are they locking out?
So if you just reverse the hands, that might, you know, in some of the let’s
say of the five minutes you’re rowing, a minute of it is reversed hands. That might be enough.
We build into our football program where the kids come in for recovery. They take their shoes
off. They’re walking in grass. And I tell them purposeful walking where they’re going to leave their heel on
the ground as long as they possibly can in their gait cycle to lengthen those hip flexors out
that we’ve had. SHORTEN Well, they’re sitting in school. So we’re killing two birds with one stone. We’re gaining electrons
from the ground by grounding, strengthening our feet. And we’re walking with a purpose
because now if I’m taking a thousand steps, that’s 1000 steps of a longer
hip flexor and I tricked him. That’s big time.
Yeah, I kind of wanted to I’m just out of curiosity, I want to change gears this for a second
because I want to circle back to some things he said earlier. When you’re introducing yourself,
you’re a hit coach. And that in you own your own business.
I do. You said you opened up to did so
just as as a professional. When I heard you say that that was just
a daunting task. When you just being hit coach and then having your own any you travel and speak.
Can you just talk a little bit? What’s it like being a head coach? And then obviously you’re not to
Bernero, you know, get this kind of side to you. I think a lot of coaches have this side to him.
How do you do that? What kind of would it come from? Well, I I’m I’m blessed because the first for two different
reasons. Number one, I have great people all around me. I’ve had the opportunity to hire
some great people like my staff. And the football program is it’s got to be tops in New York State. I mean,
I’ve got guys that have won state championships, two young coaches who have that fire.
So when you in order to be a great leader, I think it’s it’s servant
leadership makes you a leader. And so you have to be able to give back to the people that are helping you.
And I’ve I’ve been blessed with that. The second part of that, in terms of running, running the businesses,
I’ve been blessed because I don’t I’m not a business man. I love to train. I love
to watch people get stronger and faster. It’s been a passion. And when it started, all it did was
fund my research. Now, if I’m lucky enough, where I can bring in a little bit of an income,
but it’s nowhere near where it should be. But just because I’ll be see
if I can do it. It’s like cheating. I love it. You don’t have to pay me to do it. I love it.
And the two guys that are running it now are just as vested. And it’s awesome
to see any plan to write a book in the future or do anything like that. Yeah, I think Carl and I are
going to write a book. Well, well, we got do we have that on record and we got it recorded if
we’re gonna hold you to it. Yeah. I’ve I’ve always thought I’m
not a good writer. I’m a doer. Like I want to I want to be in the weight room. I want
I want to be involved in it. But I always wanted someone that maybe
just kind of jot down things as I’m talking, because as it comes out, sometimes I don’t even understand what I’m saying.
It just comes out. But let’s go. That’s pretty, pretty amazing. He’s the head coach
and does. That’s crazy. You know, you’re not bored. Yeah, no. And the other part about it, too, is
a lot of times in coaching, you sacrifice a lot of family stuff. I’m able to have my son with me. A lot
of times during that coaching. And that’s a really big deal for me. Like he can come to practice. He comes
to the games. He’s getting involved in the training part of it. And like coming
out here, he was so excited that I was coming out here because of
Colt McCoy. And I just couldn’t tell you what take over. That’s
right. The eyes of Texas are upon. Always. Coach, always. One
cool thing about why we brought you down here is, again, we talked about it like it’s your
own unique approach to training. Right. It’s understanding neurology. It’s understanding how the brain,
at the end of the day, ultimately affects performance. And so I only say that to say we’re
excited and we’re keep our years to the ground, if you do start writing a book, whether it be with Calor or
Matt Van [INAUDIBLE]. But I think. I mean, we’ve talked about it like that’s that’s kind of the
way or the realm that our field is trending. Yeah. Is a brain based. I mean,
it is, you know, really. And like I said, I’ve been lucky enough to be able to, you know.
Sit with a lot of great minds. I mean, I look at a guy like Hal Dietz, I mean, he’s
off the charts. I think he’s one of the best in the business. And it’s
it’s awesome to hear people speak like I’m looking forward to listening to the speakers tomorrow.
It was wonderful to come into your weight room today and watch your staff go to work. I mean,
you can learn something everywhere you go and learn something everywhere you go. Absolutely.
Well, just here you offer your well, read any. So
there’s some bookworms, I’m sure, listening research junk out there. Professional development.
Can you give us anything? Books, courses? What would you recommend? Kind of
one of the courses that I that I took that I think is a game changer is is John Imes
and his primal reflex release technique. It basically deals with Sherrington
love or supercool inhibition. And it’s pretty powerful how we can use it
in the weight room and the therapy table. It’s that was profound. And tomorrow,
in part of my my seminar speech, I’ll talk about the five things that really impacted
me as a coach. One of them was being able to sit down with Dr. Peter, weigh in
and listen to his research on human locomotion and
having an opportunity to speak with some of these great minds that aren’t necessarily in, quote
unquote, the strength and conditioning field. I used to think
when I was younger. Oh, therapy. You know, they’re gonna balance on a Swiss ball. I can’t
make that happen in my weight room. So I shut it off to not listening.
And then I started thinking, you know what? Let me listen and see if I can gain something to help
what I do. And lo and behold, it’s all about a filter. Yeah. David EPSTEIN, if you’ve heard of that
author, he just finished a book that came out called Range. He says, basically,
the book you just said in a nutshell that if you want to find answers to whatever you’re doing,
your field or whatever, don’t stay in your don’t stay in that one. You got to broaden
that range. You have to find creative solutions and answers to problems.
Did you have within your contact? Right. I’ve had medical doctors come in
and we’ll do some reflex stuff and they’re like, this is simple. And like, you’re
a medical doctor. How did you not know that I have this? And they’re like, well, that’s not what we do. What we do is we
have gone mainstream. So instead, like and then it but if you
take a look at some of the people who created some of these systems, they’re so brilliant and so passionate
that they come off and people look at you and go, oh, I’m not doing that. That’s crazy.
But they have something good. I can’t tell how many times I was at a lecture and people would walk out. Strength coaches
will walk right out of a lecture because somebody said something that was so unbelievably
blowing people away and different that that can’t be true and walk out. Well, they missed the last part
of it because the last part was the best part. I’m not going to use the first part. I use the last part. So there’s
always something to learn. Whether you hate something or not. You can learn.
Yeah. I mean, here at Texas, we have like you say, we have athletic trainers, behavior, health, nutritionist,
strength, conditioning coaches, sports science. And while we may all have our jobs within
those platforms, I think all of us kind of owe it to ourselves and each other and the athletes
we serve. And that’s our jobs blend kind of in each of those. No question.
Aren’t Barela covers all five of those. And so, you know, you may specialize in just one of them, but
whatever you are doing, it affects the other four. You know, however you end up dividing it, even in
the medical community, like if you’re talking about anatomy trains the book. Right. They’ll be
physicians who will say, OK. This is fash. Yes. Somebody will say,
well, there’s a bio electric charge around that fascist somebody else. Well, that’s a Meridien. Well, somebody
will say that’s a reflex. It’s all the sense of. Yeah, but somebody is explaining it differently.
Somebody from Eastern Europe is going to talk differently about a Meridien Chinese mooradian than the
actual Chinese acupuncturists. Right. So it’s not wrong. It’s
just a different way they explain it. And if it gets a result, that’s what you gotta worry about.
That’s what you gotta think about. And that’s what you’ve got to try to make fit into what you do. Yeah. Nothing, too.
You know, technology is such a it’s such a that’s the buzz. Now I have buy cell
in every gadget under the sun. And so I think one of the from what I’ve
seen, the positive, you can quantify everything now, sleep, hydration,
your fatigues or you can quantify everything, forced production absorption. So now
when you can you can look at all that on a piece of paper of what’s improving, what’s not. Now you’re gonna
search for different answers because. The old methods that this
is what’s always worked often is not getting the results that we want, so it’s cause I feel like it’s causing
people to go a little deeper and be more open minded to different solutions. That’s outside the box again,
because you have to have answers. You have to be able to explain what’s happening physiologically. And,
you know, sometimes people have a hard time understanding how can an isometric lunge
when you’ve never run before? Make you faster? Well, if the reflex arcs are correct and you are in
the right position, you will get faster. Means
broadening your horizons, right? It’s getting out of that tunnel vision is one thing, as you can
see with interns. I know I saw it myself as a young coaches. You grow up under one system or
one philosophy. You think, oh, that’s the way you go to a new experience, you know, shoot. No, that’s the
way. And you soon learn usually the hard way that, again, everything is
connected. And there’s something you can take from each experience, from each person who’s presenting on something,
from each person and their expertise. It’s just all about your filter. Yeah. I tell people the story all
the time. When I spent some time with Mel MSF before he passed. I go into his basement
probably in my middle 20s, thought I knew it all. And he’s
talking. I’m listening and he’s he’s brilliant. I mean, he could speak and make your head spin.
So he said, well, what’s your passion? What’s your interest in making people fast and get him really strong? Is it okay?
Great. He goes, do you do any aerobics work? I’m like, non-believing.
He goes, okay. He goes, I want you to look at my library of books I have. So you going to his basement
and it was this vast. He had books from everywhere. So he goes each side
of the wall, had a different philosophy on the court, whereas all the speed stuff he goes that’s
on that wall right over there, all the Russian research, all the stuff. My God, that’s awesome. You can go on over there. You’re
going over here. I go everywhere. So I pull out the first book. And it was a cross country book.
And I’m like, that’s great. I don’t want to do this. He’s like, I don’t care what you want to do. You’re going to understand
why you don’t like that right before you tell me everything that’s bad about it.
And I’m like. Then he started saying, you could do this in your relationships in the middle of an argument.
Switch sides and argue for the other person and then see what happens. And I’m like,
boy, that’s empathy right there. Put yourself in someone else’s shoes. Just seeing the argument or
discussion from a different person. Then he goes, How are you truly going to master knowing anything about power and speed if
you don’t know everything about why you don’t do the other stuff? Good point.
So I sat in that basement and studied for a while. What a great lesson.
Great story. What would you say to young coaches coming up today? That advice
would you give, you know, your history and just because the field is changing. Don’t think that the guys
who started stuff and have great ideas and back in the day go spend some time
with them because you’ll learn a lot about what’s coming around now like we’re talking about. Isometrics
right now. All right. The Russians were talking about that in the early 60s.
And now all of a sudden people are going isometrics are. Well, the Russians come back around. It’ll come back around. So
so go after the people that have been in the business for a while and just listen to him, even though you might not have the same
philosophy because you just got out of school and you know everything. Listen to them. They will.
Enlighten you. Yeah. One thing one common question I get from interns is when they read all of our staff
bios, they’ll see that I interned in her kallaugher. Seven, eight months and, you know, talk to me
about eccentrics and isometrics. And I always try to stop them and say, look, Kelp did an
amazing job popularising you nice metrics, but they’ve been around forever. Right.
So I’m like, you want to start anywhere? There’s plenty of stuff that the Russians were doing 50 years ago.
Even volume control of how we how we self-regulate in how
many sets of reps we do based off the performance. I still use the stuff. I don’t
know if you guys have it in for him. Yeah. I mean, I still use that stuff
with my tracting. Like how can you manage volume? How do I know for a 10th grade kid
can run 20 sprints and the senior can run five sprints? Well their time tells me when they can’t run
fast anymore, they’re done. Could be five sets, could be 20. I don’t know. I’m not that smart to figure that out.
So we will we will control volume that way. Still, that’s years old. Yeah. And
the best part of that, I think, is that there wasn’t all the new fancy technology when it was discovered he was a stop
watching and then Karl was talking about it today. Yeah, right. So I mean, you
know, Listento who’s like Louis Simmons. I learned so much from him. I don’t do a lot of the
stuff that he does, but I certainly learned a lot from him. Yeah, I learned about the grind.
That guy does a miss days of lifting. He just doesn’t. He does the same thing every day.
I respect that. Yeah. Why? So barbell posted the other day on Instagram, the recovery day. And
I was looking at it like, man, I’d be shot doing that. Yeah, it was basically no lift. Yeah.
Yeah, it was. It was a big bodybuilding lift. Yeah, he that’s a different breed.
But again, you can learn something from everybody. Absolutely. Coach, what kind of.
I know you, Debbie. Relighting books you’ve been reading lately. Any recommendations? It’s
not more. It’s not as much about books as it is about people I study. Like the guy that’s intriguing
me now is Dr. Jack Cruz. I don’t know if you guys have heard of Dr. Jack Cruz. Look him like
he’s that he’s more on the nutritional side. He’s a brain neurosurgeon,
but he’s kind of figured out the whole diet thing. And he’s got some pretty profound
ideas and he’s off the charts. Brilliant to the point, again, where those
types of people make a lot of people angry because it challenges their belief systems. But
love listening to him talk and read his stuff. So that’s kind of where I go. And then you
work your way back. The guy’s a neurosurgeon, so he knows certain things about the brain. What
happens when you eat certain foods? Chemicals. And here we go.
And now we trace it all back to performance. And if a person can get in and out of a car pain free
or a person is trying to jump forty three inches, there’s no difference to me. To me, it’s it’s about performance.
Very true, true, Jack. Cruz, that was his name. Yeah. Dr. Jack Cruz. Look at me. He’s the
man. He’s the man. Anything else? Chance in the day?
I feel like we could talk for hours, but that’s all I got right now. Coach, I appreciate your time coming to visit
with us today. Been awesome. So if any of our listeners do want to connect with you
or reach out to you. Do you have any contact information and you would be willing to share? Yeah, they
can. They can hang up on our Instagram page. I think it’s WJF one.
We have a Facebook page. I have a personal Facebook. So we’re we’re all over the Internet.
Never been a big marketing guy. No. You know, my rule was when I started training and athletes
was if the father or mother calls me three times, leaves me a message three times,
then I’ll call him back, because I know that they’re that serious about training. They call me once
and they never call back. They never wanted to train anyways through. You got to. Yeah, you do. Got to be persistent
for sure. We’ll call Coach Dan. It has been a absolute pleasure
doing this podcast today. Interview with you. And thank you for making time. Coach Heinsohn, thank you for
making the connection. Yes, sir. You are the man. So, yes, sir. I heard Callon in podcasts. Drop
your name. Anytime. Cal does that. I’ve learned over the years that it’s probably pretty important
resource. So it took me a little bit to find. Yeah. Awesome. When I first asked Matt VanDyke
and Sandino Dan Victor Azeez like I have no idea who that is. A few weeks later, after going to the
what is the TFSA? Oh, yeah, yeah. The Shikaki came back niggaz. I know who Dan Victor is and
he’s going to come visit. And we’re just glad that you made the trip to Austin. So thanks for the invite. It’s been awesome.
So we’re gonna get you some Tex Mex tonight. I think I think that’s accurate. And we got get him bargaining, but we’re
getting out of here. But can you do it one time for can you do a hook him for his coat. Hook him hook a Muslim
telcom coaches, a Longhorn fan. And we definitely that that’s even more special to have you here.
So we thank you for your support of our programs here at Texas Inn. It’s been real. Co-chairperson,
thank you for joining us today. And that’s it from the team behind the team podcast. We
will catch you on the next episode. Hook them horns.
Thanks so much for tuning in and listening to this episode of The Team Behind the Teen podcast
for future episodes, go to i-Tunes Spotify, Google Podcast or
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So if you have a moment, please go to i-Tunes, leave a rating and review and let us know how we’re
doing. I’m Donny, mate. And thanks so much for tuning in.