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Training Science Podcast
Top Episode Replay: The Sprint Training Evolution - With Jonas Dodoo & Dr Martin Buchheit
01:08:51
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- [00:00]
A
Hi everyone. Welcome back to the Training Science podcast. After a short break over the summer, I'm excited to kick off this new season with a very special guest, Jonas Dodu. Jonas is the founder of Speedworks Training and one of the world's leading sprint and speed coaches. He's also a mentor to athletes and coaches across elite football, rugby and athletics. Over the years, he's worked with British athletics, Liverpool, England rugby and countless players, bridging the gap between sprint mechanics, rehab and performance. In this episode we really go full into his process from testing and profiling athletes. We also mentioned the use of AI at the moment exercise selection that really ensure transfer on the pitch. Jonah shares also how he approaches weekly periodization using windows of opportunity across the micro cycle. And how always balancing competition demands on coaching, rehabbing and supporting club staff. It's a pretty dense but very practical conversation and probably one you will come back more than once with insight in how to make speed training truly effective in the real world of elite sports. So without further ado, let's dive straight into it and hear my conversation with Jonas. Hey, Jonas, Good to see you, my friend. How are you?
- [01:15]
B
Yes, very good, Martin. And you?
- [01:17]
A
Awesome, awesome. We had this recording floating in the air for a while. So super excited to have you finally and also to kind of kickstart the new season as we're talking offline. I've been away from the pod for a few weeks or even months, so having a great guest, prestigious guests like you, it's the best way to start the season. So thank you. Good, good to have you.
- [01:42]
B
Thank you very much. And I've tried to do podcasts and I haven't really done many podcasts for the past two years or maybe longer. I've done the odd one, but even like how Monday we couldn't do it, you know, life sometimes gets in the way and it's got in the way a lot, but in a nice way.
- [01:58]
A
So we have a lot of things, of course to discuss and all the work around your. The speed development that you're doing on the rehab. So that's going to be the core of the, of the chat. But I was just curious to know a bit more about what you're really doing at the moment. Because every time we chat you're on a course, a mentorship, now you're in Manchester to train players. So I'll be curious to know exactly what you do and how you balance the coaching athletes, coaching players versus coaching coaches, which is also something that we discussed. So yeah, tell me about what you're doing now in Manchester right now. Players, right?
- [02:29]
B
Yeah, I mean, yeah, so it's international break. So this is the time where some players go to Dubai and let their hairs down and some players want to put more, more money in the bank again and, and get some quality training like we did in the, in the offseason in the preseason. And so I think that you know the modern player is evolving. The modern player is recognizing that. I think all players have recognized that maybe some external support could be useful. I think the modern player is finding a way to make sure that it's is actually having transfer to their game and that it's not contrasting or conflicting with the other training they're doing at the club. And that requires communication and relationships and so yeah, I, I, I, you said about balance. I don't know if there is balance in my life yet. I'm still trying to figure it out. What I am learning is how on the spectrum I probably am and that if I go too deep into one thing. No, I, I like to go deep into something then when I come back out I, I almost have a bit of burnout and I need to go to something else and I'm not very good not doing anything, just sitting at home. I like to be busy even with the kids where possible and so yeah you mentioned coaching coaches, coaching players, coaching teams and supporting with mentorship. That really is my day to day and I think week by week sometimes that can fluctuate more than others. Last season towards the end of the season I spent a considerable amount of time with Liverpool supporting with some mentorship and some reviews and some rehabs and that was really nice and fun because I don't think I've been in as forward thinking and open minded and performance based environment in football ever.
- [04:23]
A
Good to hear.
- [04:24]
B
I don't think it's a coincidence that, yeah I don't think it's a coincidence that they're winning, that they're a pressing team yet they've got relatively good health records. You know, injury wise I don't think it's a surprise. I think success leaves clues. So that's, that was really nice for me. I get to spend some time with mentees. I have a new mentee that knows you very well, a physio and that's really cool because he's got some serious expertise and he has some elite clients around the country like I do. So we have some congruence in what we're doing on our day to day basis but he wants to take a different perspective On, I guess, not just physiotherapy, not just rehab, but performance training and how it integrates. So that's cool because every mentee I have who are of a certain level, I learn from them as well. Right. I get to share stories and we get to challenge each other a bit. So that's been really cool. And. And then I get to run some mentorships. So we have our new mentorship cohort coming up and we have a women's cohort with Ruth Waghorn and. And just talk about a few of the. The mentees, or I'm going to call them X mentees. Like Ruth, you know, she's just gone and done amazing things with, with the women's football team. FA England women's football team. Hailu Theodrass, he's with the men's team right now. You know, I don't know how long ago, maybe four, five, six years ago, he was a mentee when he was at Chelsea and then he worked for us because he was that good. We had to steal him and then the FA stole him and now he's with the first team and he's got some really cool projects there away international break with them right now or every now and then I get to really bounce, bounce off of Tom Thomason, who's now been employed by Man City and that's really interesting because we spent six years working together with England Rugby. He's done some bits in football, he's done some bits of Man City in their rehab department last year and now he's embedded into their first team with some. With some really cool projects and so it's just really nice to sometimes work. Of course I've got to work, but sometimes just to bounce off of the people I'm working with. Tom Taylor is at Chelsea now. He was at Rangers before and I got to with him a lot when he was at Brighton and. And it's. It's really nice to see new departments and how they grow old ways of doing things, people bringing in new ways, the frictions that occur during that and, and then the, the fruits that happen. Hopefully fruits as opposed to just dead, dead plants. Right. It doesn't always work out. So I, I guess I. I keep myself entertained by coaching nowadays. More than a lot of the mentorships and a lot of the consultancies, which I still do them and I still work with clubs and stuff. I think I've just increased my coaching by 50% or 80% because that's my current obsession again. And that's what gives me energy.
- [07:34]
A
Awesome.
- [07:34]
C
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- [08:13]
A
Yeah, we can feel this energy and I agree with everything you said you know about when talking about the. You learn a lot from the interaction. Whether the mentees, they ask the good questions so they thought that you maybe didn't think about and so on. And having the chance to be invited to visit clubs, it's a chance because they bring you in to bring expertise but you get so much from the interaction. So contact Grimoire. Awesome. So yeah, let's dive straight into let's say so I have a lot of questions for you about how you work and let's say I'd like to start maybe to understand a bit your process as you said now you're going to work for the next couple of days with some athletes. So let's say I'm a 22 year old football player, I have the feeling that I need to do work with Jonas. So this guy's reaching out to you. How do you start? What's the process when you get them to, to work with you?
- [09:11]
B
Yeah, I mean I think that the, the standard and easy place is to if you've got a relationship with the club is to be able to review previous data. Right. So count movement jam like force plate metrics. If you've got Val hamstring groin related metrics if you've got an awareness of their velocity, their top speed, you know, you've got an awareness of some of their physical characteristics that's, that's useful. But, but in many scenarios players don't reach out just because they're fresh and they're in a good place and they want to get faster. In most scenarios players reach out because they've maybe got hurt, got hurt again or they're not being selected, they've lost some form. And so often the more interesting information is injury history, the more interesting information is sometimes subjective like response to training like I'm healthy again, I've been hurt, I'm healthy again. But when I do this type of training it takes this long to recover or when I do this type of training it flares up. The old injury or a new injury has now occurred and I think it's separate but actually on review, they're connected. So my, I guess the initial information is a combination of quantitative related stuff that is measurable and I can measure myself again using force plates or using, using AI and using speed solutions to create a PSR report in acceleration, max V in braking and decel. Those are now because of technology and because of availability, very easy quantitative elements that we can collect that everyone's got. But what pieces together that quantitative data, what starts to make sense and connect the dots is just as much, just as valuable as the subjective is maybe the qualitative information that's coming. Then you start to stitch a story together, you start to trace. 18 months ago I had a right sided hamstring injury and since then I've had repetitive left sided injuries. I don't think it's related because it's a different leg. Well actually let's look a bit deeper into that. Let's look into how when we look at your running mechanics, your jumping mechanics, how you're really still, even though you're getting repetitive injuries on this left side, that left side still is the overloaded side. It's the side that does more work still currently. So maybe we should investigate why it's doing more work. Maybe the right side is inhibited. Maybe we need to go back and finish the rehab that you think you finished last year so that we can get to a point where we're balancing the load and we're in a place where we can start to really figure out what's going on on that left side. You know, you won't you. Of course a lot of that is founded in objective quantitative information but I think some of the, the sometimes you have to be a detective and you have to piece pieces of the puzzle together. You have to look at timelines, you have to look at when training load ramped up. You have to look at maybe when I had a baby and my wife was in hospital for so long. You have to look at some of these non pure data LED points and then combine it together to start to make a better picture, to make more sense of what's really going on. But yeah, if I play any speaking, someone walks in the door. You know, people know me as a sprint coach but most of my time working for British athletics as a coach, I was a therapist. I was having to do trackside therapy. I was having to prepare players and athletes. I was having to listen to their bodies, check ranges of motion, create routines to return ranges of motion. I was more about posture and alignment and awareness and inhibition and reactivation than I was all about cues and sprinting. It's part and parcel of being an individual coach in track and field. So players walk in the door. There's a combination of understanding how they move in general, functional movements, functional patterns. It's an understanding of what they have available currently in terms of ranges of motion in their hips, in terms of just movement patterns. And then, and then it's about piecing together all that other information I talked about earlier and then trying to come to a conclusion from there.
- [13:35]
A
Yes, awesome. I really like the really broad approach of I would say the player profiling, as you said, very specific testing, but also understanding the. Of course, as we keep talking, especially in the podcast, talking about the context and so on. So I really like this very broad approach, like moving a bit more into the details. So you mentioned force plate, you mentioned history. I'm curious to know how much now the use of AI has changed your approach of assessing running mechanics or maybe at least running more remote kinematics. I guess when you talk about AI, you're talking about video marker less kind of solutions, right?
- [14:21]
B
Exactly. So we, we have, we have a partnership with ViewMotion. ViewMotion uses a 2D, a 2D AI model. So you can use your iPhone or you can use a GoPro. You put it on a tripod, you put out some cones marked out to, to measure the 10 or 20 meter area. You, you record the athlete run, you upload the video and then you get a full kinematic analysis of, of that run. Now that's ViewMotion's normal process. Now within ViewMotion Speed Solutions, there's a button you can press for your video and then what you, what it will do is it will take our data set of, of 10000 runs from elite players from, from football, from rugby, from NFL, a bit of it from NRL Rugby League in America, in Australia. And, and it, what it does is we've got some really nice rich data sets to be able to, rather than provide an opinion to say I think that's too much or too little range, I think that's too much or too little step frequency. Instead we just look at our database and we use
- [15:29]
A
benchmarking process. Yes, that you can Again, filter based on the population because of course, like a sprinter.
- [15:38]
B
Sorry, go on.
- [15:39]
A
I just said that you can't compare a typical English Premier League player with the sprinters you're working with. There's too much difference, I guess in the background.
- [15:49]
B
No, yes. I mean, firstly, I don't work with sprinters. I haven't worked with them for years. Yeah, so, but the database is full of team sports. So each database is population specific for the team sports, specific one for the elite football. We've actually included some NFL into that data.
- [16:07]
A
Okay.
- [16:08]
B
And the reason being is the Anthony Elangas of this world, the Tariq Lampteys, you've got some real elite sprinter based players playing in the Premier League, but they are very few. And so when we look at them in comparison to everyone else, they are elite and they are very good and they do everything perfect. But no, when we look at them in comparison to their peers from other sports, so their peers being similar velocity, similar speeds, similar body shapes, we can now start to see where they can improve. So when you're an outlier, and we see it in every football club, when you're an outlier in a football club, when you're the fastest, when you're the most explosive, when if you get hurt or you need to improve, sometimes you're the hardest to improve in the club, the club find the most challenge because their perception is you're already great at everything you do and they don't know where to reach, they don't know where to go to. Your metrics are based on everyone else, but everyone else, they're paupers, they're pedestrians. You are different for a reason. And so by all means, I couldn't compare the whole of the NFL database to Premier League because they are all outliers as well. Most of them are freaks. Equally. I couldn't compare Aussie rules or GAA players to prem or rugby players because they are a bit more endurance based. They're not always as explosive, they don't always have the same speed levels. But yeah, a rich database. I'll take a step back. So we have a rich database. We then have spent the past couple years learning that when we see key components in running, they align as in strengths, weaknesses, metrics that are outlier performances, et cetera. They align with key components in plyometrics and they align with key components when it comes to breaking down the body into segments. When we look at the hips, the ankles and the trunk. And so then when we go all the way down to MSK assessment So physiotherapy based assessments and when we start to understand stable and mobile versus unstable and immobile weakness, when we understand just a general, a general picture of the athlete's internal biomechanics and maybe general strength, it's really cool because you see a connection all the way from the table all the way up to elite performance in intense action. So acceleration, deceleration, max velocity, especially when there are ailments, there are injuries or there is a lack of performance, we can always see the connection across the board. And so a lot of my projects and like I said, the reason why I think Liverpool are one of the best teams I've worked with is because in our review meetings I can sit back and they can have a room full of every level of department and they can speak so openly on a physio talking about an ankle injury and a restriction on the table that's maybe recent. And then a sports scientist talk about maybe some issues with a drop jump and asymmetries in a 10,5. And then a technical coach or maybe the same sports scientist or fitness coach talk about the PSR report and look at the PSR and look at an issue in breaking and identify that issue in breaking being linked to the ankle. And I can sit back and I'm sitting there going, wow, this is amazing because it's amazing to have a whole department. Firstly, ego low enough to be able to say, hmm, I can get impact and insight from this person over there, either this other department or this external practitioner in myself. Firstly that's amazing. I think jp, the doctor there has, he said it to me, he said he employed high skill, low ego people and low ego doesn't mean low confidence, it just means so confident that they're open to explore other options. And I think that's bloody amazing.
- [20:31]
A
That's super cool.
- [20:32]
B
And so yeah, that connection between what we're seeing in general movements and what we're seeing at the highest level of intensity and can we connect the dots in between? That to me was always my goal and it's what I've always done in my own personal practice. But as an individual coaching track and field at an elite level, you have to do it all. You have to be empowered enough in all the areas. And I think that what I've done 10 years ago, 15 years ago in track and field and what I've been doing the past 10 to 15 years to transfer that same process to team sports, you know, I feel like we're close to it, I feel like we're Having better conversations across different communities of practice and it's just pretty exciting right now.
- [21:21]
A
That's super nice. Yeah, I like the whole story about again this multi disciplinary work and contact removal.
- [21:28]
C
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- [22:06]
A
So get your point. I think the example, for example this example with a weak ankle and there might be some problem in terms of biomechanics, as you said, could be. So as you said, the puzzle is the most interesting bit. Now if I'm turning myself more into the practitioner becoming pragmatic about exercise to implement, about the work to design the program. If I take the example of those elite team sport players, so those football players, rugby players, they don't have infinite time to work on those work on. Of course training is training, technical training is always the biggest rocks. So I guess at some stage you have to make some priority on what would give you the biggest bang for your buck. Is it the deficit in this calf strength or is it more this running mechanic, the pelvic control. You see what I mean? So that's probably where when I listen to you guys and of course I have to talk about Endai in this case because he would have a very similar approach of cleaning as he says he cleans at least injury wise or performance wise. But it's almost. Where do you. Where do you. Yeah, where do you go to have the biggest impact when you can't spend three hours per day with an athlete? So how do you go through this process of prioritizing content?
- [23:32]
B
I think that's a great point. So a number of years ago I was working at Derby county and essentially I can tell you where I was provided over time. It took time to build to this point where I was provided opportunity to influence player preparation and training transfer. And I guess that first sits in your morning warm ups of course, but different people have different warm ups. So in some scenarios, sports scientists are given 15 minutes to warm up players, and in some scenarios they're given 45 minutes to warm up players. And I think that that difference and that 45 minutes is maybe just like few and far between. You know, not many people are given that opportunity. But if you're given 15 to 30 minutes two or three times a week prior to training, and you're also provided, let's say, 30 minutes to an hour, two to three times a week after training in the gym or in and around the gym, I feel like we have to use those opportunities to create the types of changes and interventions that we want. And we have to recognize that a lot of it will not happen during running, that we won't always be given a lot of opportunity to make changes and implement coaching cues during running. And if we are allowed to do it during running, we may not get the repetitions that we want. We may not get the density that we want to actually create change. So that's why I'd rather break down running and say, okay, that's projection. That's switching, that's reactivity. And if by doing that I break down the key attractors of sprinting, but also I create boxes or segments to start to look at away from running. So if I look at projection and ability to create force horizontally to propel myself, I also recognize that some projection is very horizontal and actually some projection is very vertical by the time I transition to upright running. And some projection is actually very lateral. But either way, I can identify it as projection. I can identify the muscle groups that are highly influential in projection in those different angles, and I can identify the movement patterns that support those muscle groups. If I can do that well, I can identify exercises. If I can identify exercises that aren't sprinting but can have an impact on a key component of sprinting, then that's what I'm doing in my mornings, that's what I'm doing in my afternoons. That's what I'm using my time to address a component that supports running. And so I would look at activation sessions, I would look at how we use the gym prior to running. So let's just talk very specific. I think if you've got a clear a week, Saturday to Saturday, and you have a manager that, let's say he trains Tuesday, Wednesday, or Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, off, Thursday, Friday, whatever it is. If you've got a recovery day coming up, you, there are some rules of thumb. You know, the day before recovery day, you can do a bit more. So that's that's one tick. We're just looking for opportunities. If, you know, on your day one, your day two of training, maybe day one's Excel D cell, day two is more or more open spaces. Maybe more velocity is going to be utilized by car. Okay, another tick. So you can kind of see the format of the week, you know, you know, I love your paper with Simon Harris. I, I love a lot of complimentary training, Madam Jovanovic. And, and, and I love. I probably said that name wrong, by the way. And I love everything John Kiley's talked about in terms of periodization. And, and, and then I've studied deep into nearly all periodization models for a very long time. It's very clear that even though I've got a Saturday to Saturday and I need to peak for my weekend, that as long as I have every midweek and the end of my week is more activating in nature, that I will recover and bounce back from not just last week's game, but some of the extra load that's happened early in the week. And so all I'm doing here is conceptualizing the microcycle, the demands and the priorities of preparation and the opportunities to do work. So that's the first and foremost. So when I look at football teams, when I look at a lot of activation and warm ups, that the morning is not given time or that time is rarely used appropriately. It's used to warm up the guys, get them maybe awake, get them a bit of blood flowing, maybe do some Copenhagens and do some glute bridges and do the odd pogo and pretend they're doing sprint mechanics. But if you look at skill acquisition, if you look at, at what's needed to create adaptation, if you look at what is actually activated by the end of those routines, there isn't a lot.
- [28:51]
A
Yeah, completely.
- [28:52]
B
They are just warm. Whereas, you know, if you use the opportunity to put a nice dose of. So I'll just talk from the heart. In Derby, we had like an opportunity where in the mornings we would maybe spend half an hour to 20 minutes to 40 minutes either in the gym or in the dome. And so in the gym that time would be spent. We would start five minutes. Every session starts with dynamic exercises. Cradles, crucifix, just stuff to, to open up the spirals of the spine, release the lumbar pelvis a bit, maybe, you know, stretch out and elongate the, the fresher lumbar fascia. Just kind of some short, easy ways to give some freedom to the lumbar spine and when players have tight hamstrings are just generally tight. You'll be surprised what five minutes of dynamic stretches can do to their perception of tightness. You'll be surprised how much it can
- [29:50]
A
turn off some general inhibitions, lower back kind of things.
- [29:53]
B
Yes, lower back, exactly how it can turn off some inhibitions when you, when you have a. I'm going off on a tangent. Lombard's Paradox. No, Lower Cross syndrome. Right upper cross, Lower cross syndrome. Lower cross syndrome is something that hardly anyone talks about anymore. But it's very, very clear that that's what we're fighting week to week with players. They turn up with a neutral pelvis in the beginning of preseason. They get loaded, they run, they jump, they get hit. And day to day they lose some of that natural pelvic tilt and it becomes more and more anterior. Well, some of all we're doing in the morning in that first five to 10 minutes is just giving some opportunity to reset the pelvis. You can tell my ADHD, I'm going to talk about Liverpool only because there's some videos that have been going viral about their training recently. And I think that traditional SNC looks at SNC training and it must be barbells and it must be eccentric overload. But it doesn't realize that there are good and there are negative adaptations to training. So every time I compress the spine more, drop, jump more, sprint more, tackle more, I become compressed. And that compression in my spine, in my joints, in inhibits a lot of my key muscles that I need for performance. So the first job in the morning for me, me narrow enough every session is to decompress, that is to turn off some inhibitions is to reset the body. And I think that what you see in a lot of the Liverpool's banded people call it quirky movements. It's a bit hip locky. It's a bit, it's a bit breaking strength, it's a bit. What's the. I want to say, there's a word I want to find but I can't find it. But it's a bit quirky. But you know what? I think that's that if we take a step back and ask ourselves what are the inhibitions that we expect in the players and what are these banded quirky movements doing? I think that they stop, they finish those movements and they feel awake again. They feel like, okay, I'm stable again, some stabilizers are awake again. I would challenge anyone to check internal external rotation of the pelvis of the femur prior to doing those Quirky movements and check it after. I wouldn't be surprised if there's some freedom, some new range. I wouldn't be surprised if glute mead and adductors and lower abs were more activated. I wouldn't be surprised if, if, if they, there was this general activation happening and then they move from that into the green room where they become explosive. They do their resistor sprints, they do their jumps, they do all of their more explosive movements. So why am I saying all of this? Well if I go back to derby we moved away from banded stuff. We moved as in like just bands around the knees and just lying down activation to doing quarter squats and drop jumps and broad jumps and heavy by the way as well. Progressively we started light and we moved heavy. But what we did is in that year we had the oldest squad in the top four leagues and by Christmas like more than 90% of them had run a top speed, a new top speed. At the beginning of this Robin Sadler, I say this all the time. Robin Sadler was the head of physiotherapy. He's now at Liverpool but in the first eight weeks he told me, jonas, I've been at man City for 10 years. We've seen sprint coaches come in and out. It don't work, it don't work. It don't work for ballers. They don't need it, they don't do that actually after 10 weeks we're best friends, we've been great friends since and he saw the value of it. He said he lost a physio at that time to another job and he told me I don't need to re employ anybody because at the beginning of the season everybody in the morning wants to come in, get taped, get a rub and now most of them are in your activation. We're not busy anymore. And so I think that the difference is that challenging players and player power. I'm off on a different tangent but I'm in the same place. Bear with me. Player power. So a lot of SNC coaches, physios, they're also fans of football. These million dollar, million pound players come in with big egos and their coaches telling staff do what they need, just make sure they're happy. And the fear culture of making mistakes, all of these things are a dark cloud over the confidence, decision making and real performance programs that are required in football. They're d. They all stop people or hinder people or create friction or slow them down from applying good principles of training, principles of adaptation. The stuff Verkhoshansky was talking about, however many years ago, the basic principles. Because the pressure of the club, of the sport, of winning or losing last week or has a. Takes a toll on the decision making that needs to happen. And all that happens for me is. And the older I get, the more I realize, not that I'm immune to that stuff. I care and I. And I do have an element of fear, so I have to make good decisions. But my biggest priority is performance and health and improvement. And sometimes that feels like a contradiction to staff who, like I said, that fear, I didn't add the last one, which is fear of losing your job. All of these things make you go, actually, maybe I shouldn't. Maybe I should. Just maybe I should.
- [35:45]
A
And that
- [35:49]
B
is not high performance. Eddie Jones is the model for me. Eddie Jones is the model. Eddie Jones is the head coach of England Rugby brought me in and said, right, our guys need to be faster. They need to be able to do this. They need to start fast, they need to do these things and if they break, figure out why they broke and don't break them again. Whereas most other head coaches will be like, don't break them. Don't take any risk. I want this, this, this and this, but don't take any risk. Don't change my routine. You've only got 10 minutes. They set these big, grand goals, but then they give you very, very little to work with. Yeah. And so there has to be congruence in the decision making. What you say has to follow by. So if you say you want this from someone and I say, right, in order to do that within your working schedule, I need a bit of room, I need a bit of time here. I need to be able to do a double session. They need to go and have lunch and come back and do the session. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. No, hold on. We do it straight off the grass. Your power output's about 45% less when we do it straight after the grass. And when they just have an hour, a little break, a little bit of fuel, the power output goes up, up. Yes, yes, but, but no, I. I have golf books.
- [37:04]
A
Yes.
- [37:04]
B
So that we need to do it quickly. So you have all of these constraints that are nothing to do with running mechanics. They're nothing to do with RSI or power, they're nothing to do with the pelvis, but they are restricting people from applying what they should. I feel like I've gone off on nine tangents, but I feel like it still comes back to, what, what, what, what can we do as practitioners? Is Easy use. Teach and train movements, create the underpinning physical characteristics of those movements and make sure you build the physical and the technical together. Not just physical, not just technical, but you build them together. Because they're always easier when you build them together. If I want a higher knee in a running cycle, and I realize it's to do with limited ground reaction force on the opposite leg and may maybe some pelvic tilt, some pelvic awareness, the more I do that physical work, the easier it is for them to do the technical action. Are they not the same? Right. If I want that technical action to happen at high intensity repeatedly and done under perception action of other things. So maybe habitually I can do those things, but just build them together. The problem is you need the time, you need to buy in and you need the repetition. Because it's easier to do it in chunks. Microdosing was a craze ten years ago. Right. So it's easier to do it in chunks across the week. And then when you have opportunities like your off season, pre season injuries, Saturday to Saturdays, yeah, midway through the week, or Tuesday or Wednesday, if you can do a double day, send them to have lunch, do something else. You, you've got an opportunity to microdose, to have a bit of a macrodose and actually create change. But you've got to be brave and you've got to be able to navigate the constraints of the psychosocial constraints, not even the constraints of the player. The player is the least friction. It's everybody else. It's everything else.
- [39:05]
A
Super cool.
- [39:06]
B
I can't be quiet now.
- [39:07]
A
Yes. No, no. I just took a lot of small notes on everything you went through and there's a lot to unpack.
- [39:15]
C
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- [39:49]
A
Before we go back really to the, to the program itself, you know, when you commented on the more the programming, the windows of opportunity, kind of distributing the workload or the work, the training across the week, as you know, that's really a theme, a topic that is really close to My heart, I've done a lot of. I keep thinking about that, the prioritization. So would there be some content? So I'll get you about working in chunks. So again, pragmatic, someone willing to try to follow your path. Are there key moments for some contents than others like neurotypical you won't do eccentric training day minus one or two. You can go heavy early in the week. But more about the other stuff about the. The running mechanics, the. You know, are there things that fit better some days than others? For example, try to be. If you can be pragmatic with the examples of.
- [40:53]
B
Yeah, I think it makes sense to do. To do acceleration, resistor sprints and braking strength work on your day. 1 Most of the time right before you go out or when you're out or after if you have to. But the. The stimulus and the stress on the tissue and the movement patterns are similar. So if you want to increase not just intensity but some of the co contractions and essentially protect the muscles in accel and decel then do some accel diesel work before do some resistor sprints, some breaking strength work, do some plyos of a big landing or bounding lateral forwards because during those actions, if it's done efficiently, you're creating some really nice co contractions. You're creating some really nice co contractions in rotation, in pelvic control, in agonist antagonist. So hamstring and quad working together because that's what we see if you want safe braking, let's say unsafe braking is knee and quad taking more of the load. Safe braking is hamstring quad working together to share the load across ankle, knee and hip. If you go straight into football actions, the path of least resistance will rule whatever is the easiest for the athlete to do. And where their body currently their habits and their reflexes are is how they will perform. But if you have enough opportunity prior to going out to change some of that, to edit some of that, to provide them a bit more space in their hips to. To. To activate the hamstring and quad to work together then you are sending them off into those actions in a safer place, more reflexive, more prepared. It's all about the co contractions. So accel D cell work. I would do axel D cell work prior upright running. If there's more open space, you know 11 v 11 or big spaces 9 v 9. If you know the coach is going to sprint a lot, I'm going to be doing more sprint specific work prior. The difference is I probably don't need to sprint prior to that as much in the gym, because I'm in the gym. But I can work on vertical stiffness. I can work on again lumbar pelvic control. Can I control my sternum with my pelvis and rotate here? Because if I can rotate here, my lumbar spine won't rotate as much. If my lumbar spine can be stable, my pelvis can be stable and I don't create excess strain on my posterior chain. So I'm going to be working on things that help me create, create stack my joints whilst having to create large forces and big switching actions. I'm going to work on posterior chain stiffness and alertness. I'm going to understand the key component of the action they're about to do and try to not replicate it, try to overload it to some degree prior so that the motor unit recruitment and all those other neural factors are addressed prior to going into the activities. And that would be my, my day one, day two, like mindset essentially. And then I think match day minus one is a hidden place because what you should as an athlete, how you should feel on match day minus one is a bit damp because you've done some decent training midweek, you should have had some recovery and you're coming into the session on the way back up, up on the way back up out of the curve, so your nervous system should be a bit damp. So it's a great time to microdose. A bit of sharp movements, a bit of plyometrics, a bit of again, resistor sprints contrasted maybe with some unresisted sprints. And they don't have to be all straight line. They can be as varied as you want, but you're giving the athlete an opportunity to just sharpen up again, to feel awake again. Because far too often people get into their game day and actually their nervous system's still a bit damp and it takes reps and it takes minutes in the game to wake them up. In track and field, everyone, most athletes will do a pre meet just like your matchday minus one. But they will dial in the intensity a bit more than what I see happen traditionally in football. They will wake themselves up, up, not so much that they, they blow a load but just enough and then they stop so that when they turn up the next day their reflexes are on, inhibitions are off, they can just get to work so that hopefully that was more, more practical and just clear. You mentioned something about match day minus one, match day on match day plus two. I think that the match day and match day plus one is a hidden place to do eccentric work. I don't think it's a common place, but I think it's a hidden and great place to do eccentric work. Especially if you follow the model of after the match day, I'm still going to bring the players in and then. And their match day plus two is their off day. I think there's this hidden place where the match has stressed them already, so we might as well continue to stress them because after this we're going to allow them to recover. And so some people say, yeah, but the match is already stressed and we don't want to add any more stress. If you've played 90 minutes and you've been sprinting up and down, up and down, down, why do I need to add eccentric load to you? Right. But if you haven't, then maybe I do. Or if you played half, maybe I do. Because where else in the week do I have an opportunity that period there and maybe midweek, but everything after that point I don't.
- [46:35]
C
Yeah.
- [46:35]
B
And so that would be my practical perspective of how I would apply it. And then I think the last point, just because it's, it's, it's very appropriate variation and moderation.
- [46:51]
A
No.
- [46:53]
B
What's the phrase? Sorry, my brain's not on. We need to stimulus. Dan Path says, stimulate, adapt, stabilize, actualize. Right. Stimulate, adapt. And he also says everyone gets stuck in a cycle of stimulation, adaptation. Stimulation, adaptation. And we don't wait for them. Stimulate, adapt, stabilize. We don't wait for them to stabilize. That's in track and field. In, in football, I've seen the opposite. I've seen stimulate, adapt and become monotony. That's the, the, that's the balance. Can you create a new stimulus until it becomes monotonous? Then you need a new stimulus until it becomes monotonous. I see football programs. Find a training program, an activation, a gym program that works and then they do it year round, they sometimes do it for multiple years. And I think that that is ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous. Because you're not understanding training and adaptation. Whereas the same kind of error. Some people want to introduce some ballistic elastic work. They do too little of it and there isn't really a stimulus. Or they do far too much and then there's too much of a stimulus and either way it doesn't work. Whereas this, this ability to find an exercise and then layer it with a more complex or more challenging exercise and layer it, and layer it and keep layering it over time and having Fluctuations between volume, load density over time. I think that that's the real hidden gem and that people in football have been told periodization models from up other from track and field or just from. From the research doesn't work in football because we got a peak week to week. But I'm like, no, no. Physiologically the rules about physical adaptations are more important than the rule than your calendar. Right? The rules about physical adaptations are far more important than your calendar. And actually if you do hold a phase and you do have progressive phases across each month, across each 12 week block, you will find yourself in FE in March being able to do really elastic, really elaborate speed and power sessions in a very safe way because you've built your way to get to that point. And people say but we can't wait until February to get our players fast. And I'm like, you're right, we're not waiting till February. We're starting that process now. But we're starting that process with exercises that might be semi weak in their stimulus but great for teaching and learning. So we will get an adaptation now, but that adaptation will not continue to grow if we remain weak in our stimulus. We need to keep growing and building. So we have this opportunity to teach now and intensify over time. But you have to reset your brain and start to apply some of the laws of periodization. Understand how it would apply, maybe understand that maybe it only applies to your first three to four days of each week and that you're going to build gradually over time.
- [50:11]
A
And so it's excellent, excellent. Thank you. I didn't want to interrupt, but I had so many comments to add on what you were saying. But I'll let you go.
- [50:21]
B
I don't breathe when I talk. You will never have a space. You have to just interrupt me with a big hand and then I'll stop.
- [50:29]
A
Just maybe a comment. You know, I was glad when you were mentioning the eccentric post match or plus one one for example, because that's something we had done. We started like it's 10 years ago now, even more in Paris and we even published a bit of that about taking CK creatine kinase on plus 1 plus 2 plus 3 and those CK values were not going. They were worse, they were bad anyway. They were high anyway after a match. But we were not exaggerating the CK response with adding some, some AV eccentric. So that's going to. What you were saying is that players are, they're already dead anyway. So let's use this window of opportunity. And that was great learnings from that. But that was just a segue just to. As a kind of backup what you were saying from your practice as well. I'm conscious of the time and there's two topics that I really wanted to have your views and ask you about. The first one related to. To like let's go to the session examples you gave. Let's say, okay, you want to have a specific content on your vertical force application, parametrics, pelvic control on your -3 if that's your big day. I'm thinking more about again thinking about coaching the player. There are some types of exercise you can do it group wise, you know, everyone take the sticks, everyone do their pogos or not. But there are many exercises you need to constrain almost at the individual level to make sure not only to correct the movement but to make sure that the exercise you know that you're getting where you want. So back to again working as you are doing right now with a couple of players, I think that's a no brainer. You do it. But again when you have 25 players you may have two or three conditioning coach, maybe someone help, you know, like so how much is effective or what's the workaround when you can't individualize that much the work.
- [52:36]
B
I think I have to draw on the work of my colleagues and friends because I think they've done it the best and there's just different examples. So firstly and to say it without being rude, I think a lot of people in team sports are sports scientists but they are not coaches.
- [52:54]
A
Definitely. Yeah.
- [52:55]
B
And this is where a lot of the problem happens because the coaching process is 360, is psychosocial, is athlete centered and based on empowerment and education. So I'll cut to the chase. So Ryan Grubbs in the states at the Texans, he does such a good job of, of. Of empowering the players. So that, and I think I'm going to say Ryan, Tom, I've already mentioned Tom Taylor, Tom Tombson, Ruth Hoo. They're very good at saying, right, we're going to do some video of everyone sprinting. Great. They will pull it up in a gym, they'll put up PSR exercises. They will integrate the analysis of the athlete and the exercise they're doing and tell them the why behind it. And in order to do that, yes, maybe the way they do it is they do a full analysis. They have a short 2 to 3 minute video and a short 5 minute in interview or conversation with each player to discuss the individual plan from the backbone of how they move in intense actions because 50% of players don't mind the gym and 50% of the players will bin it off if they're given the opportunity. So how do we get them all to buy in? How do we get them to do a calf raise or a step up or any exercise and really believe it's going to impact their ability to perform? We've got to show them. We've got to. I say trust is earned. Never, never just given. They need to trust it. And actually most athletes are high ego so they need to believe it's going to improve their am not. It's just for everybody. So there. So I, I think that the coaches that record movement, running, change of direction have a very simple way of, of providing a report to a player. So we provide video reports. So in, in addition to the normal PSR reports, we'll create a video report and that will just allow the coach to say, this is what you're going to. That this is what we're working on. This is why boom, finished. And by doing that process, it enables the athlete to now start to understand the coaching language. It creates a shared language. We do the prowler push and you're focusing on bigger shapes because we already talked about it. Your step plant's really small. Okay, great. And you're doing a prowler push and you're going to make sure you attack back very violently. Why? Well, because we've already said like your swing leg, you flick out in front or you're damp on the floor, your ground contact is slow and you're doing a prowler push. But you're going to focus on making sure your ankle doesn't collapse when your foot hits the ground. Why? Well, you already know that every time you let it collapse, it makes your Achilles sore, you're recovering from a foot injury, et cetera, et cetera.
- [55:58]
A
Very good point. But again, this is still very individual coaching, which I believe is the way to go. I'm trying just to challenge you when you don't have this capacity to always drill down such an individual level. Again, back to football environment if you want to use this. So maybe the answer is when you have the whole group just go drills that can still benefit with less coaching. So if it's just like the typical strength work, you don't need to be behind every single one. But then maybe that's. Maybe you're going to. Maybe let's do small groups and when you, when they come back in the afternoon, then you have them by group of three, group of four and then you coach that. That's kind of what I'm trying to get your, your view on how to. Because there are things you all. It's almost a one to one v one.
- [56:51]
B
Well, let me, let me say it differently then. So again, I'm going back to Ryan Grant if I have a whole squad. And the reason I use Ryan because we think in football we have lots of athletes, we have 20, 25 in the squad, they got 60 to 80, right? So you're right. Find exercises where there is a dynamic correspondence and 80% of what you want from movement will just occur because it's the only way to be successful at that exercise. 1,000%. That's probably why I should have started for sure. So I think that we use bands, big resisted bands for deceleration work. We, we use exogenie or anything for resist, for resistance sprinting, we drop high off of boxes. We do various activities that will force you to create forces in a certain vector. Right. You have to choose exercises where if you are not successful it's probably because you didn't put yourself in the right positions and if you are successful, it's because you inherently put yourself in the right position. So there's definitely a dynamic correspondence, a bit of a constraint based approach that you need to apply in order to get 80% of the work done. But equally, if you've got 20, 20 athletes and we're just going to do it really simply, there's three components of a sprint. Projection, switching and reactivity. You can group people into groups, you can put them into groups. You can choose a similar exercise like a war drill or high box jump or any kind of dynamic exercise. But you can constrain it a bit to challenge the ankle more for reactivity, to challenge leg exchange more for switching, or to challenge expression of force more for projection. So you can make small nuances to the same exercise in order to do the coaching and queuing for you. So, and then group your players into those groups. And so Sheffield United did this, Sheffield United Academy did this two years ago, maybe three years ago now. And several teams have done that. Where they've gone, your deficit is projection. We're just going to focus on this. And what they found is across a season review that players shifted towards whatever group they were putting. But the caveat is that some of those people improve performance. Most of those people stabilize performance, very little of them decrease performance. So what it is saying is you can get coached towards a certain movement pattern by changing the program to really dominate and I guess focus in on that quality. It may not make you faster, but it will definitely make you more balanced and efficient in your running. And my caveat would be my last point here is when you coach towards one thing you've got to recognize that actually the year might mean you coach those different components. So you might have your three groups but you should allow people to change group over time because we're so complex as humans and we adapt and we move forwards and so that putting someone in a group doesn't mean they stay in that group forever.
- [60:06]
A
Very good. Excellent. Yeah, that's exactly what I wanted to hear from you. So thanks for, for getting into this level of detail. Awesome. Last one, last one. Which is maybe taking more distance when you know before when you said that sometimes those sprint coaches have a bad press or like you know, your colleague was saying that he didn't believe that coach. Sprint coaches will have an effect. I've heard that. I've seen that as well. And that's also back a bit to the, to the transfer aspect. You know, I've seen sprint coach telling how players should run a lot about the technique. This is how a sprinter run about your anyway about the running technique. So players roughly they try to mimic that they're back on the pitch with a ball, everything disappears, you've lost an hour. So how do you sell yourself then in this case and what makes the difference between a good sprint coach and a less good sprint coach then?
- [61:08]
B
Oh, I like that, I like that. I think that I'm of course concerned about how people move move but in the context of football and probably it impacting how they move more based on like through strength and conditioning and through like mobility, stability like assisted stretching. So and I think that the reason is, is that a sprint coach might first come in and watch movement and try to make all the changes through, through biomechanics and through coaching. Whereas I would 100% coach it. But I really believe in underpinning physical qualities. Yes, I believe that if we just coach it, it will change now and disappear. If in like in track and field we get to coach it within an environment of high volume and high density, then that's how we create physical change in track and field. Large volumes, large context of stiff contacts, large amounts of, of mid zone and high intensity running done with that technique will change the physical. But if you can't do that work then you're naive to believe that work will change the physical. It will change the understanding and the perception. But you have to Align it with physical properties. You have to.
- [62:32]
A
Yes.
- [62:32]
B
Otherwise sometimes maybe you're providing risk.
- [62:35]
A
Yes.
- [62:35]
B
If an athlete never has much swing out in their, in their shin doesn't swing out much in their sprinting. The foot comes under the knee and then lands. Foot comes under the knee and lands. They have a very high frequency model. They have 5 hertz, 5 steps per second. They are very high frequency, very high ground based. And you teach them how to be bouncy and how to have a bit more air time and how to use a B swing, they will have more posterior chain loading. They will sprint better. But if they're fascicles and just the strength load travels in extended amounts is poor then actually like that eccentric strength in an outer ranges is poor actually. You're also doing some supra maximal eccentric work. Suddenly for someone who hasn't even done maybe the sub maximal, maybe that's okay in a few reps. But if you do lots and lots of reps and they don't have the background, then there's a likelihood that they get very big doms. That's fine as long as they're not training the next day or training two days off after. Right. So if that's not your situation, you have to find a way to gradually overload that new outer range eccentric hamstring. And what better way to do it by combining some movement based drills with some overloaded eccentric work. Maybe you just put a light weight on the ankle and you do a static B skip drill and microdose that across the week. So they get used to swinging their leg out and bringing it back under them. So you, you, you paint a path for three to six weeks of progression of that new skill set, that new component of sprinting. You don't just decide to go in there and whack it and do it again. I've done it before. It don't work unless you have the space. Yeah. The space being time in the week, it don't work. It just makes them nervous because suddenly they're domsy. So I don't know if I answered your question directly but. But maybe I did.
- [64:28]
A
Yes. No, I think it's just the way that that's, that's how I see it mentioning Enda, working with him in Qatar. I see what he does. You know, it's really about building, as you said, the physical capacity that can support this new running mechanics. But the teaching comes with it. But just telling people to do it won't last, won't last, won't work. It's Just about just teaching. It's about building the base that will support. And I've been always pretty, I've been, I've been impressed by how sometimes some change can happen pretty quickly. Just a couple of sessions a week. Then you get this stiff ankle and now you get this look at this and then this build up, build up, build up. And then the guy's running way better. Of course we told him how he should run but it's what you bring with him to support this new running mechanic that does change and that's probably how I see why some coaches success and other failures, they just too much focus on queues and teaching the run per se without building this on the way. So I think that's a way to summarize I think what you said or what we believe, both of us. So if. Yeah, that's cool. Before align also. All right, I think we're going to have to leave it there. If I give you another question it's another five, ten minutes. So I think we're good on super cool. So I'm really, really glad we could catch up. Thank you so much. There's so much from the episode that we could unpack this kind of episode. Probably people will have to, me included listen a few times to get everything from. Was dense. What else? Before we wrap up we have to mention that you guys are coming to Optimo in Spain as well. Tell us about it. What's the point?
- [66:20]
C
Plan.
- [66:20]
A
What's happening?
- [66:21]
B
Yeah, so the plan, the plan is that in, in the October and November international break which is coming very quick, that must be a month from now or five weeks from now. We will come and, and, and partner with Optimo, your company and, and utilize your amazing facility in Estepuna and utilize the physios and the support staff there for, for you know, normal physio work for recovery work. Use, use the space for strength and condition positioning. Use the grass for what we need to do. We're going to have a three day camp for players. It's a reset camp. It's not, it's a micro mini camp. It's you know, long term rehabbers in their mid to late stages. Fit players that just want to boost. Maybe they're not getting game time. Players that want to visit with their physios, visit with their staff. So we have, we have three day minicamp in Estepuno in Spain. They might be Bayer. I'm excited. My wife is jealous. I can't wait. And then we will stay an extra two days to run our foundation program. So we'll stay and then we'll do the Friday and Saturday for coaches and physios where we will go through a lot of what we've talked about today but it will be practical. A lot of the theory I'll put online people can watch it separate. It will be a fully practical camp. We'll go for Accel D cell Max velocity and a real focus on what can we do in the gym gym. What can we do with. With. With. With assisted stretching and mobility to enhance the player and, and make sure that the, the. The people that turn up leave with some real practical tools to go away and apply straight away. So I'm looking forward to, to visiting. I'm really grateful that you and Juan and the team are going to be supporting us and, and, and yeah, I just, I'm quite excited about.
- [68:09]
A
Yeah, yeah we too of course. Definitely that's very good but yeah, great initiative and yeah looking forward to see how this develops but I think yeah you, you. You sold it very well. It's going to be an amazing event and I like again you're bridging the both again having some athletes, having some people coming to watch and and the courses. So it's always I like this package and that's what's been. We've been doing as well a bit everywhere what I've been whether it's through my work through you mentioned optimal but aspect as well and everywhere. So that's the way to go. Awesome. Thank you so much again Jonas. Really good to spend this hour with you and yeah see you and speak very soon as always. Thank you my friend. Thank you. Bye bye.
- [68:50]
B
Thank you very much. Have a good day.