 So I saw some of the basketball speed, the really stuff you did with Stephen Bennett. So if you had him from off-season, pre-season, in-season, how would that change or progress kind of going through? Well I won't and I don't. I just think, I mean it's a needs analysis and I'll answer your question better here, but Stephen specifically, he's got to be able to close out and then he's got to be able to cut the guy's first move off in two dribbles. So you put him in a position just like anything else that you got to do that. Make sure he can close out first of all, which is deceleration. Make sure when he finishes his deceleration he's in a position to make the next play. I think that's something that's often not talked about or coached. Yeah, you came to a stop, but you're off balance, you're on the wrong place on your feet, you're too high, you're too low. Your shoulders are here, maybe your trunk has leaned forward too much. I mean you can list a number of factors and it decreases your ability to or diminishes your ability to make the next play. And so that's sports. Field sports are always about the next play, field and court sports. We always say it's not about the deceleration, it's about the re-acceleration. I put a little dash in my name under his name. The way I teach a lot of speed and agility, I don't think there need to be hour long speed and agility courses. Even when I was teaching my courses and my classes were speed and agility, I mean we're only talking 20 to 30 minutes of it. There's a college here in town that does an hour and 10 hour and 15 minute sessions and that's no longer speed and agility that's conditioning. But no, to answer your question about pre-season, off-season and end-season, I mean yeah, you can absolutely play with intensities and volumes. But this is a skill, it's no different than going in the gym. If you're a basketball player and working on your form shooting every day, you should come in, you should work on the basic movements. That's why I put a lot of crossover steps, hip turns, landings, decelerations, low intensity, low skill stuff in warm-ups because they've got to have that foundation. But yeah, you could taper it through, you can make the most intense stuff in the off-season and then I would keep the intensity really high but decrease the volume in the pre-season and make sure that it's really sharp. Don't accept bad reps. And then end-season, maybe it's just part of your warm-up where you're just making sure they have it and it's maintenance. You can follow the same training methodologies as you would with strength training. Can it make sense? When you say basic movements, what do you mean? And so I mean, just like simple, like lateral decelerations. So if you just think of the movements when it comes to court sports, so there's lateral deceleration, there's lateral acceleration, right, or lateral power. There's linear and then there's multi-directional movements. So I always make sure that people can do a hip turn. I make sure they can do a crossover step. I make sure they know how to shuffle appropriately with proper tempo. And shuffling is not like a grunt movement. It's not a muscle movement. It's quick. You're trying to get to your next shuffle faster. And I think speed and intensity gets you where you want to go more so than force, just brute force. It's a momentum-based movement, so you want to get there fast. So hip turns, crossover stabs, lateral shuffle, which would be lateral acceleration. Lateral deceleration, linear deceleration and acceleration. And you don't have to put all of these in a warm-up, but especially with court sports, field sports that require a multi-directional movement, I just make sure that they know how to put an exercise that makes them have a good plant angle. So you're just reinforcing that position. Makes them move at a good height, which is not the same for everybody. So with Steven, we raised him up an inch or two, and he was significantly faster. And he felt that he was faster. His coaches yell at him, get low, get low, get low, because that's what's been ingrained in our coaches for a long time. That noise sounds when I make a good point. But they're also going to get mad at him if he sits down low and he can't cut a guy off. He can't cut off the baseline. So literally this happened. He raised up, and in that drill the next time he did that, he closed out, cut a guy off, and they were like, yes, see what happens when you sit down low? And I was like, yes, see what happens when you move at the right height, which is not sitting down low for him? Which is going to be different for any person. And so, yeah, I just kind of cleaned this up on Rambo. But hip turn, crossover, lateral acceleration, deceleration, good plant angles. It could be a low box. It could just be rehearsed cutting. Stutter step cut, go to the next cone, just angled cutting. Just like anything else, what does that athlete need? And then try to give them what they need. When you talk about height, how do you determine what is? A lot of it's high, but with this one particular kid, I know he's got a bad squat. That's past issues that are getting in his way. And so, for him to sit down at maybe what would be considered a normal level of a defensive stance or an athletic stance, he's just too many restrictions throughout his body to do that. And so everything becomes forced, and there's a lot of effort that is needed for him to move now. So he can't do it as fast. And what's the speed-strength continuum there? Closer towards strength on the end of the continuum, it's going to be slower movements. So let's not put them in a position where they have to deal with a lot of resistance. And so let's put them down here. I played high. Michael Jordan played high. That's something that Michael and I have in common. But you see an Aaron Kraft for Ohio State a couple of years ago, as one of the best defense players in the country, he plays low. That's something that's where he plays well. And I just don't think that you can... It's like anything else. We have an N equals 1, right? So you can't just hammer somebody into a box or shape because of this is what we want, whether they want. So you can't say that one particular position is the best position for someone? Nope. Yeah, absolutely. And because they're all coming to play with different factors, right? Limitations, whatever, you know, whatever it is. And it makes sense when we say it out loud, but we don't put it into practice. Well, yeah, I know you guys aren't the same. I know I'm not the same as you guys. So yeah, we're going to move differently. I mean, that's why we do assessments. Yeah, exactly. I mean, if you've got FAI and you keep coaching someone into going... And they're like... And they can't deal with any force. You know, the functional squat test may be an indicator. I never thought about that, you know, but I'm sure there's, you know, if you're a three or lower or three, four, yeah, three or better, you know, I'm sure that correlates to the depth of your athletic stance. You know, if you're a two or worse or like a two, one or zero, which, you know, like I would be, you know, I'm going to play higher. You know, and I think because speed and agility, if you want to call it that, is so much, you know, based on elasticity, I don't think you have to load a ton. You know, I mean, there's strength, there's a definite, you know, strength component without a doubt. You know, but I've seen a lot of kids that are really fast that are really weak. And so they just, you know, maybe they're just more elastic. He's turned over. Yeah, maybe they, yeah, absolutely. You know, I mean, I couldn't live, I mean, I couldn't squat 200 pounds, you know, but, you know, I was decently fast and I can jump, but I was never going to be the strongest guy on the team ever. Just the best looking. Would your approach change as far as, you know, similar vertical athletes like a basketball player or a basketball player who needs like that, I guess that ability to jump off repeatedly. Would you change your approach? I know the N equals one, but I guess the generality of what volleyball needs versus what basketball needs. No, and I think we get caught up in sports specific. I think that's, you know, that's, I think that sports specific training, I think is a sales tactic. All right. Because my sport specific training looks the same for almost every single field. Yeah, that's volleyball training. You did a hip turn. That's basketball training. You did a hip turn. Yeah, crossover step. You went from the middle of the quarter on a volleyball over to the edge to get a block. Yeah, that's volleyball specific training. That's also soccer, baseball, basketball, football, tennis. So these are fundamental movements that are there in all athletic sports. So if it makes dad feel better, that we say sports or sports specific or if it makes them sign up, then go ahead. But movement is movement, you know, is squatting sport specific? It can be. If it's going to help, you know, develop your vertical, you know, whatever. So... You do have exceptions though, right? Absolutely, you have exceptions. Hockey, maybe? Hockey, absolutely. Absolutely. I think it's funny to say, because I just talked to a guy about hockey training yesterday, you're not going to have, at least I don't see it, and Lance, if you think differently, say something, but like you don't have the stretch reflex, you know, in hockey that you do in typical court sports that aren't nice, because there is a period of acceleration in hockey with every step, because you have to drive, versus, you know, I can change directions with just a quick little plyo step, you know, in a basketball or something like that, or court sport. Yeah, every sport is going to have their little twist on it. You know, tennis has to play higher because they have to see over the net. So if I'm training a 5'9 tennis player, and I actually had this one time, and I was, get down, get down, get down, and I realized, it was like a seventh session, I realized that's not how he plays. You know, he's going to have to play tall. You know, now if I'm 6'3 and I'm a tennis player, or maybe I did a story, maybe I don't have to play as tall, but you still kind of do, you see all tennis players, they're upright. You know, so you have to train them in that position. You know, so yeah, there's absolutely going to be some tweaks, but they're still going to do a crossover step. You know, and they're still going to do hip turns and everything like that. So, but yeah, I mean, it does, it does change from sport to sport. And I think hockey, because of the nature of, you know, the surface, that makes it truly unique. How would you change that, change what you do for a hockey player? Well, I appreciate you asking me a question. I don't know an answer to. No, with, you know, I don't know. I haven't put a lot of thought on that. I've, we're in Indianapolis in the end. I know hockey's a little bit bigger in Indianapolis, but I've never had, I've never had much experience with, I've had zero experience training hockey players. I would put more emphasis. I think I would put less emphasis on plyometrics and maybe still have them because I think that's an important athletic component. I do want to hear your opinion on this. Yeah. And if they contradict mine, then so be it. But, you know, I would absolutely put a ton of emphasis on obviously driving, you know, because you have to with skating there, but so like, you know, linear acceleration would be a big deal to me, I think. But even then, in a hockey or not, it's not straight linear. You're actually a little bit of abduction, right? Yeah. Yeah, so your linear acceleration is way more frontal than you would think. Yeah. And your deceleration is isometric. Okay. It's because, you know, the friction of the blade on the ice is what stops you. You just have to hold your position because you don't follow. Right, right. Yeah, so that makes sense. So you really don't have, you know, like there's not a plyometric component a lot in that. Each push on a hockey is almost like, I mean, even though there is a more frontal plane, you know, component there is literally like taking off. I was trying, there's a long ground contact time. And so, you know, maybe there's a way to incorporate that in training more. Like bounding maybe? Well, that's not a lot of, that's actually, I would say leaps more. You know, bounding is very, you know, bang, you know. But yeah, you know, maybe some leaps with some, you know, forward and lateral. Yep. Yep. Heidens, you know, stuff like that. You know, I would still propel you forward just to get that component. So you said like natural movement is quickest. Is there any... What do you mean by that? Like, don't tell them how to step. Yeah. So is there any scenario where you would break somebody's movement down and teach them? Yeah, if we can improve it. Okay. Yeah. And what would you see to improve? I mean, that's a tough question. And this is why I don't think like speed and agility is to just become such a garbage can term. You know, I really think it's been watered down and I'm biased because that's what I do. But it's here's a ladder, here's some cones, or here's a sled, and let's go. And yeah, those things may help. You know, they may give you a positive training, you know, benefit, but you know, each person is different. I mean, I think you really, really, you know, it's like resets, you know, it's like a resets with our clients. You know, you may do an all four belly lift. That may do nothing for me, you know. So I don't think that you can just say, this is it, this is the way. Steven probably stands taller than I would have more at most athletes stand, but that's what works for him. You can change stance. I mean, there are some things that you just need to change based on, you know, based on angles and stuff like that. What is the most consistent thing you see that people do incorrectly? I mean, there's a number of things. I think plant angles are usually, you know, just an instinctive, because you don't think about it. But, you know, there's a number of things. I think plant angles are usually, you know, an instinctive, because you don't think about it. But, they can be doing that one, to protect themselves. Two, maybe they don't know what a proper plant angle feels like. So this is something that I've only heard one other person talk about. And if other people talk about it, then I apologize. But experience, when it comes to speed and agility, especially changing directions, I think is a big deal. I think being familiar with positions, being familiar with situations and environments that happen, you know, like one reason, bigs are, you know, they're getting in trouble in basketball when they have to go out and guard somebody, it's because they don't do it. You know, yeah, I know they're bigger and slower, but at the same time, they just don't do it. So when I drive at you and cross over, you don't understand what should happen. And so, and I think that's absolutely a big deal, exposure to situations and environment. And that's even like environment, you know, and we know that everybody has different strategies when it comes to movement. So like, you know, I don't necessarily have a, this is how we should do it. It's just, you know, how does it look? Does this make you faster if I drop you an inch? Does this make you change directions better? If I put a band around you and pull you a little bit, and now all of a sudden your plant angle is a quarter, you know, half an inch wider? You know, is that a better angle? Sure. You know, what if we, what if we do something to stop a little bit of a, you know, less shoulder sway? What if we bring it down an inch and the shoulder sway less? Because you have a lower center of gravity now. You know, I don't, it could be anything, but those are just factors, you know, that's where, I don't have a system to this stuff. There's a little bit of a system, but I don't have a, a lot of it's just I, and I know that's not great when you're trying to put things together, but it's just, you see it. Trial and error. Yup, you know, there are some general rules, you know what I mean? Understand angles. You know, you know, understand gait, force production, and you know, and all that, but at the same time, you know, you got to understand your client too, and you got to understand the sport you're training. For baseball players, especially catchers, you're going to focus on the front of playing, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. And how much, I guess, speed and agility do they need? I think, I don't, I think there is, I will do stuff with pitchers, because I want them to maintain or have some sort of athleticism. I just, I want them to be able to feel things. And if you don't have athleticism, you know, call athleticism what you want, you know, call it the fastest guy in the field, maybe. I think the guy who has, I think the athlete who has more skills in the toolbox is more athletic. You know, you know, Usain Bolt is incredibly, I mean, it's, it's, it's amazing how fast he is. But, you know, is he more athletic than, than Steph Curry, who's a scratch golfer, can shoot from 30 feet and consistently hit it. And, and make amazing passes and dribbles, you know, on a court that's, you know, that things are moving a million miles an hour, and he can read his environment. That's a skill. You know, he can assess what's going on and transfer that into an action really fast. You know, but I bet he doesn't beat the sprint, you know. And so, I would say he is as much or more athletic than Usain Bolt, you know, without knowing a lot about either one of those guys, but just looking at their performance. And so, but, so my point is, I want these guys to be athletic so they can feel things and they can make adjustments on their own. And, you know, I think the more athletic you are, the better feel you have, probably the better you pick up on new skills, you know, or you can adjust. But definitely, a ton of frontal plane work with pitchers. Do you do a lot of like band resistance stuff? Sure. Yeah. You can do that. You know, make sure they have the basic qualities, you know, you know, be able to evert off the mound so you can load the back glute. And then, you know, you have to be able to transfer that forward so you have to be able to accept the load on the front side, you know, on that front leg. And so there's, you know, throwing a baseball is really cool to me biomechanically because I know all three planes come in a movement, but it's such a fast action with high velocity intensity. It's really cool and you can't not have one, I can still run on a straight line without a frontal plane and a transverse plane. We see it all the time. You just, you know, your arms don't move and your upper body doesn't rotate. But man, there's some damn fast guys that do that. But you can't pitch well, you know, without at least, I shouldn't say you can't pitch well because there are guys that are making a living and have been making a living that do pitch well without a frontal and transverse plane. But you also see them on the injured list a lot. You know, and so we can name names. I don't want to name names. But, you know, it's guys that you consistently see year and year out on the injured list. And I don't know for sure because I can't assess them, but you know, we can watch video and see, you know, this guy doesn't finish over his top hip. This guy doesn't flex his trunk and this guy doesn't disassociate his hips and his trunk. You know. Yeah. Yeah. You don't either. You don't load. And you know, I, you know, I think e-vergence is a big deal to load that back glute because different guys teach different mechanics. But like, you got to be able to have a long stride. And I don't know if this is a hundred percent right, but I think it's like at least your body link is like one times your body. Yeah, you want to be able to stride out. And some guys like Lensicum does like one and a half times his body, but it's like, like how aggressive that is. But like, but yeah, I mean, if you can't load, I mean, you're getting out. How are you getting out there? You know, it becomes a, it becomes a reach with the front foot. Now you're dissipating forces. It's a lot of syllables. So when you say that speed and agility has become a garbage term, what is a, either a better term or a better definition? I mean, it's like saying a secretary and an administrative assistant. I don't, you know, it's not just me. You know, it's speed. What do you want? Sport speed? I don't know. I think that's just my own personal like, hang up on it. I just, you try to avoid being grouped in to what's happening over here because you don't agree with it. You know, and so that's just all I'm trying to do. So, but like Lee calls it multi-directional speed. You know, have at it. So the key in the cares with strength and or range of motion deficiencies and how you would address those in the weight room or on the field while you're coaching and then in the weight room. Strength and range of motion deficiencies? So like a kid. So I know one is the leg whip. Hank. And then, so they can't de-sell, but, like that's what I'm talking about. You ever hear Hank change directions? You should, because it's a really heavy foot. And, so he doesn't decelerate, you know, very well. Have you worked with, have you worked with Hank at all? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, like his last three steps are, he's, yeah, he's beating the ground. He does. Hulk smash. I bet there's like an inch indentation like on, when he's playing football in the field, where he changed directions, and then in the ground. He probably does really well in wet weather. Yeah. I'm stuck. But, like then like Nick, who comes with him, is, you know, so for the sake of the video, you know, Hank has a football quarterback and he's a, he's a well built stocky kid who, when he runs, he leg whips, you know, which means his foot kinda comes out to the side. And there's another kid that comes and trains with him. That is a, he's a slender, very slender basketball player. With a lot, without a lot of relative strength, but he's as quick as could be, you know, and fast on a straight line and things like that. And, you know, when he changes directions, it's, it's sudden, you know, you hear a little, you barely hear it, you know, and I'm not saying be soft, I'm just saying it shouldn't be a heavy action. And, and so, yeah. Here's the side of that with Hank. And I'm not trying to say like, you know, I'm not trying to like use this as a, you know, get out of jail free card here, but yes, we try to work on him. But he's also pretty fast, not really fast, but he's pretty fast. He's got a good vertical, he's got a good, he's got a good 10 and 20 time. It could be better, but he does, it gets, you know, he does pretty well. He is in a strength and conditioning program that isn't going to take into account biomechanics, his deficiencies or whatever. And you've got, and you know, to their, to be fair, you know, it's not going to happen. You know, I mean, you'd have to have 10 strength coaches in there. You know, it's just not going to happen. And you have to make sure they're qualified, which is not going to happen. And so, you know, we try to just bring Hank back a little bit on that spectrum, give him some, some, you know, freedom of movement, keep him healthy and let him do what he does. Don't see him enough to make changes like that. And I just, that's, I think it's just the way, unless you're a strength coach and I don't know if you're going to see kids enough to make real changes. And I don't, again, I'm not trying to like get out of jail free here, but you guys have all heard me talk about that. So, Hank would need a retraining process with that stuff. How would you go about retraining that? I would, I would, that's where I believe the weight room complements speed work a big time. And I don't know if anybody talk, I don't know how many people talk about that. I know we all lift weights to get faster, but I don't know where the movement goes. You know, we train hip extension in here, you know, all the time, you know, that's a quality that needs to be had. You know, you know, whatever hip, you know, hip flexion with, you know, with hip extension, hip separation, whatever you want to call it. You know, giving him adequate, hip mobility, mainly internal rotation so he doesn't have to leg whip, make sure he can keep that with out load, make sure he can do it under load and stress, and then make sure he can do it dynamically. And I think, I don't know if I've seen that process all the way through, but going through the process with athletes and just not having enough time to finish it, I think it takes a while. It's a lot of reps. No different than changing anything else. I've always hit my tennis backhand like this. You know, and all of a sudden you want me to do it a different way or you want me to go double, two-hand backhand. It's going to suck for a long time. You know, there's a research there that was like, you know, we have the 10,000-hour rule and the unfortunate thing is sometimes 10,000 hours is not enough to undo 100 bad hours. Yeah. Yeah. So you're up against it. You know, and I'm not saying give up. I mean, I'm glad I like to hear that because that makes me feel better. But, you know, but if you can move them back on the spectrum a little bit, you know, maybe in worst-case scenario, you give them a little bit more range of motion. You improve them a little bit physically and he's able to load better in the weight room. So now he's using more of the muscles we want and he's putting, he's damaging his body less, which may help him recover better. So now he's automatically faster because his nervous system is recovered. We're loading better muscles and he's stronger. Good hand. Go ahead. I mean, if that's, like if that's what we can do, awesome. But there's just no ideal. I don't know if you guys know like Todd Morenovich, but you know, we don't have, I'm not taking my son if I had one, my hypothetical son, and from the age of three, training him to be a professional athlete 24 hours a day, 365 days a week, that's just not going to happen. You know, we don't do that with these kids. Going back to Hank, so, in retraining him, like you just don't accept bad reps or you just cut it short, like cut it off and is he absolute? Is he losing? Absolutely. And then... So if he gives you four good reps and rep number five, he's losing his position, stop it. Okay. And maybe you give him 90 seconds of rest and come back and do more. Like, you can, let's say you have, let's say you have four sets of six is what you want to do with him today. And, and he gives you two sets of six and then on the third set, he only gets three and breaks down. So, just break it up. You know, make him do doubles, make him do triples, you know. It doesn't have to be, a double doesn't have to be 95% of your one rep max. You know, it can be 80, 85%, you can pattern. Maybe 95% is too much stress. So, which it probably would be for someone that you're trying to retrain. I might keep them like, you know, I don't know, at least in that intermediate stage, 65 to 75% of their max will necessarily get, you know, up to, you know, more than five or six reps. It'd be like an RPE of like a seven or eight, you know, until they can, you know, just keep adding a little bit over time. So, then what do you do with a pro guy? With a pro guy? Yeah. You know, like, I think you just, you just identify what they need the most. Like, you remember, were you ever meet Zach, Steinberger, the soccer guy? When he was getting ready for the combine, that sagittal plane work was not going to be a priority and that frontal plane work was, and because of the position he played, and so we just focused on that for eight weeks and it paid off, you know. He, he changed directions better. His combine time for his 510-5 as pro agility test drastically went down and, and he had very little elasticity, so we trained that component. So, there were three things with, with him that we did. We focused on the neural component, you know, for a better efficient, you know, force production. We focused on the elasticity of the plyometric component because that's what he needed and we focused on frontal plane stuff. So, we gave him some frontal plane stability and his hips, which allowed him to change directions better. I think it was a couple of examples of what frontal plane test was you did you start out with, you know, like if we're doing PRI exercise, like an adductor pullback or right, you know, right clamshell and then we progressed him as he demonstrated abilities, you know, to hold those positions well. And then, yeah, we used, you know, even just a half-kneeling chop or half-kneeling exercise gives you an opportunity to teach frontal plane. So, we started there in the beginning and then we, you know, something dynamic. So, but definitely a lot of single leg work with him to control that. A lot of, you know, static half-kneeling position in the beginning and then moved him up from there. So, and he did a good job. He took advantage of the time that he had, like he did stuff on his own too. And so, and I, it showed because there was literally from week to week, there was noticeable improvement. Good. Very. Thanks for letting me talk, guys. I don't want to show too much leg on this video. Time wants to be an exotic dancer. Yeah. That's not a strip. I can go as far as say entertainer. Absolutely. I wanted this out. Yeah. This day.