Barbell Shrugged - Compete Fridays: How to Integrate Play and Performance in Athlete Development w/ Cody Hughes, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash Barbell Shrugged #608

Episode Date: September 22, 2021

Cody is a former college baseball player turned strength coach, with experience at the Division 1 and Division 2 collegiate level as well as in the private sector. Cody is certified by the NSCA as a CSCS and the CSCCA as a SCCC certified coach.   In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged:   How to progress athletes in the first year of lifting The right way to run group classes Why play is essential to performance Performance and playing at the next level Why developing athleticism should be at the base of every strength program    Connect with our guests:   Cody Hughes on Twitter   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   ————————————————   Diesel Dad Mentorship Application: https://bit.ly/DDMentorshipApp   Diesel Dad Training Programs: http://barbellshrugged.com/dieseldad   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa   Please Support Our Sponsors   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   BiOptimizers Probitotics - Save 10% at bioptimizers.com/shrugged   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://prxperformance.com/discount/BBS5OFF Save 5% using the coupon code “BBS5OFF”

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug, Cody Hughes is dropping into the podcast and we are talking about high school strength and conditioning. He runs a completely badass program and I'm always amazed to find out how deep the world of strength and conditioning has gotten. Because when I was in high school, we did not have strength coaches at our school. And now we have done two shows with two super awesome coach, Blaine Lappin out of Williston, North Hampton, which is my alma mater. And now the strength coach at my old high school. And then Cody Hughes today talking about the program that he runs. I think it's super cool thinking about the problem solving that goes into running a high school strength conditioning program and the progression of people from the age of 14 through 18, 19 years old and how fast kids change in that specific time frame going

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Cody Hughes coming to us from Alabama. I don't know many people from Alabama. Just outside Huntsville. What's the name of the private school you coach at? Madison Academy. Madison Academy. Yeah, right? Dude, you're the second high school strength and conditioning coach. We had Blaine Lappin from my high school, Willis Northampton up in Massachusetts. Do you know who he is? I don't, which probably should though.

Yeah. I mean, it's from my alma mater. So it's gotta be one of the smartest humans in all of high school strength, strength conditioning. Um, but what's super cool just in interviewing him and I can't wait to learn a lot of the athlete monitoring stuff you have going on, um, is how far down, I feel like really good strength conditioning coaching didn't happen until you got to college yeah and then and this was like 20 years ago when i was in high school and

then even if you got to college there was a really good chance you just had some meathead that knew how to back squat or like watched a louis simmons powerlifting video decided that was the way exactly and now there's like real people in high at the high school level that are professional strength coaches. It's not just like the guy that cuts the grass at the football field saying you should back squat. Like that's pretty much what we had. How did you – give me a little background on how you got into the high school game, high school strength game.

Yeah, it's funny you say that because like in college I didn't have one either. I literally got sent to the rec center and was like, three by 10, squat, leg press, bicep, tricep, get out. Same deal. I played college football. No strength coach. How do you know how to be a strength coach for college football? I mean, we're D3 small.

It's like extended high school football, but you still think they would have a strength coach there. Yeah. You still think winning is important. Maybe we should be strong. You know, it's part of literally why i do what i do is to and why i'm so active on social media and stuff is to fight this fight right so a little background on me um i'm from phoenix city alabama a little small town in uh east central alabama really close to the georgia line i was a free

sport athlete in high school got the opportunity to play college baseball at the division two level at the university of montevallo right outside birmingham i was a free sport athlete in high school. Got the opportunity to play college baseball at the Division II level at the University of Montevallo right outside Birmingham. I was a four-year pitcher. One year as a closer, three-year starting pitcher. How hard did you throw? I was 99.2-ish.

On my best day, right? How tall are you, Cody? How what? How tall are you? We're just sizing you up hardcore right now. How much you bench? How much you bench? How much are you? We're just sizing you up hardcore right now. How much you bench? How much you bench?

How much you squat? Playing days, I'm about 6'1". I was about 215, 218. I'm about 255 right now. There it is. Yeah, so played there for four years. Like I said, didn't have a strength coach, man. And it was just kind of like, here you go.

Here's a program. I wasn't really into strength coach man and it was just kind of like here you go here's a program I wasn't really into lifting man I was about playing ball uh my sophomore year so speaking of athlete monitoring this is a good segue and kind of an intro was I was uh I was a closer my freshman year was very uh very successful two saves away from the school record um but closers you know come in and it's really fast hard one inning hard as you can go i was an absolute psycho if you know who max scherzer is and he's like cussing the dude out in his glove really just freaking murder you that was me i was an absolute psycho um yeah uh and was pretty successful but you know if you look at a long season i usually throw about anywhere from 25 35 innings well roll, played summer ball as well,

up in the Northwoods League in Minnesota, come back down sophomore year, prepare to be the closer again, 30-inning workload for the year. That's how I prepared. Well, our Sunday starter pops his UCL first weekend of the year, and Hughes, hey, Hughes, you're starting. So guess what, guys? I end up throwing 85 innings that year. Guess what happened at the end of the year?

You were hurt. You popped your UCL, too? I didn't pop my UCL, thank goodness. Okay. But I did fracture my lacronon in my elbow and had to have a screw put in, and that's when my velo went out the window. Because, like, the rehab process, if you have a really good strength coach and really good athletic trainers,

they understand biomechanics and get you back to return to play let's see i don't have that it was go to your physical therapy visits okay you're cleared get on a throwing program and then from there i could only throw about 86 to 88 and really had to learn how to pitch so i was there for four years and i was studying exercise science the whole time didn't really know what i wanted to do and i was like all right i want to go into physical therapy which almost i feel like 98 percent of strength coach say that right when i first thought well they want to be with the smart people. Right. So I'll be a doctor.

Yeah. Two reasons I didn't do it. One, when I hurt myself and I went to physical therapy, I was like, this is boring. This is going to be my everyday life. I don't want to do this. This sucks. Right. Two, I saw, oh, I need two extra physics classes, two extra chemistry to get into ptsd no i'm good i'm

good so i was like all right what's the next step well i had to have an internship to graduate in college everybody in the undergrad does and my advisor i went to my advisor thinking she was gonna spood feed me she's like well we've got a couple opportunities here here's one there's a personal training gym in in downtown mountain brook alabama um this is the only one that can pay you and i was like paid sign me up i don't care what it is i'm doing it yeah get my degree and let's get out well i got to meet one of the first guys that introduced me to it named david thomas got in uh and i started training gen pop right like mom and pop was very uh unique gym very small very boutique style and one-on-one

stuff. And he was a CSCS and a former strength coach and now opened up his own gym. And he was like, dude, you can't have a knack for this. What do you think about going into strength conditioning? I was like, what's strength conditioning? Like, what's that? I don't know what that is. When I was in college, yeah. Like when I was in college, I got hurt and I fell in love with weights because i couldn't do anything that summer i had surgery and i was sitting and once i was clear i just went and crushed legs five days a week just loved it just freaking that's a lot of everyday plan i was cory gregory i literally got on bodybuilder.com don't do that to muscle farm

yes gregory and i was all in i was like doing his plan. Yes. I fell in love with him. He's one of the guys that got me into it. Corey Gregg is literally one of my – if I get to meet him one day, it would be amazing. It makes it happen. We talk every day now. The hardest part about meeting Corey isn't meeting Corey. It's waking up at 3 a.m.

Right. You have to go hang out with him. Yeah. If you want to go squabble with Corey he'll take anyone the problem is you got to wake up right no doubt you know so you know back backtrack coming back to doing that well did that and i started asking people like all right well how do you get in a strength condition i don't know how to do it well david got me in touch with a guy that was in the local university at uab um right there in birmingham and their coach kind of killed my soul. He was like, you got to go intern.

You got to be a GA. And I was like, yeah. Slave labor, man. Deuces. Peace out. Standard formula for being a strength coach. You know, like I was kind of disappointed because I was like intern. Like I got to start.

Like I just did my internship. What do you mean? Like, okay. And then like I was also huge on trying to save my parents money like i i'd basically paid my own way through school through athletic and academic scholarship and i was not fitting to just ask for a handout like i was nervous i did not want to do that well i talked to my baseball coaches really close with especially my pitching coach i was like all right coach i really want to sort of seek this out do you know anybody and he was like yeah actually my first cousin is the uh top assistant strength coach at mississippi state for football and i was like fuck off what i was

like okay gave me his number had an hour phone call with that guy that night and he told me the same exact thing dude if you really want to do this you got to go intern man you got to work for free it's just the nature of the beast i beast. They like walk you down to the locker room and they're like, well, this is your bed. You're going to sleep here for two years. It's crazy. If you'd like to have a girlfriend, well, you got to bring her back to the locker room. Is there any other industry like this?

Like I really believe there's a problem. I don't know, man. I'm not doing slave labor for anybody so they can kiss my tail. Yeah. It's a tough thing, man. And I look at it as, I mean, I'm going to control what I can control. Right. You know, and if I'm going to do this thing, I'm not going to make excuses.

I'm going to freaking make it happen. That's how I like to think. So I went to my parents and I was like, look, guys, I found what I'm passionate in. I love this stuff. I want to learn more. But this is what's got to happen. And the

coach at Mississippi State said, look, we got you an internship. I had to formally interview in a suit for a position that didn't pay Jack. That's crazy, right? So got the position. My parents put up some money for me to live in an apartment with four guys for three months, did a summer internship with Mississippi State football. And I got to see what SEC football training was like. And, boy, you want to talk about the bug biting me. I was in love. I was like, I don't care if I work 130 hours a week. I'll be here every day.

This is amazing. I love every second of it. Yeah, every day is a freak show of the best athletes in the country. Dude, got to see, like, Dak Prescott had just gotten drafted and came back and was training with the guys and, like, seeing all these dudes. And I was like, this is where I want to be this is it right yeah and then everybody was saying all right get your internship under your belt get a good reputation under your coaches I got to work for some amazing coaches uh they're one of the ones I'm really close with still his

name's Riley Allen he's now the head strength coach for Ole Miss basketball we text pretty much every week um and he vouched for me and a couple Ole Miss basketball. We text pretty much every week. And he vouched for me and a couple other coaches. And I was like, all right, I got to become a GA. Like, I need to get my master's. And I was this close. I was about to get engaged, right? I had a longtime girlfriend who's now my wife.

And I was like, I don't want to go too far away, but I want to chase this dream. She understood. Well, I got an opportunity to – because I was in Starkville, Mississippi was in Starkville, Mississippi and my wife went to the university of Alabama and Tuscaloosa hour, 15 minutes away. Cool. Whatever. That's good. It just happens to what happened. That happened to be the way it is. Well, I got an opportunity to be the first ever graduate assistant strength coach at the university of West Alabama, small D two school, literally in the middle of nowhere bfe alabama 50 miles from tuscaloosa and i was like and i got warned i was like if you want to be in the sec and you go ga at d2 good luck getting back up to the sec it's hard to get it's hard to get back in and i was like but it's but the thing

about this university was you can get your master's online everything was online you could leave your GA and finish and I was like I'm close to my fiance and the coach there very impressed me and was like look you're going to be the first ever GA you're not going to be treated like a GA you're going to be my assistant you're just not going to get paid full-time that's just the nature of the beast and I said right let's do it all right three months out of my graduating college I already I already took the CSCS and failed it by three points. And I was like, crap. He hires me anyway. And next thing I know, I'm programming for baseball, volleyball,

men's and women's basketball, assistant with football, and got thrown in the fire at West Alabama. Wow. And it was a blast, but very tiring. And, guys, I look back at my time there first program i written and i just cringe oh yeah that was terrible i think i had a lot of that's a good thing though i mean that means you've gotten better and you've learned since then yeah you didn't write that first one be like man that is money gold you know yeah and also like i was learning how to program guys i

didn't have strength coach right so i was in mississippi state we had everything under the sun we had specialty bars we had tendos we had chains we had all this stuff i go to west alabama And also, like, I was learning how to program. Guys, I didn't have a strength coach, right? So I was at Mississippi State. We had everything under the sun. We had specialty bars. We had tendos. We had chains. We had all this stuff. I go to West Alabama. You got a crappy rack, a crappy bar that don't spin, bumpers, no bands,

no dumbbells. Get the work. You got to win. I was like. That was like the first gym I ever went in. It's beautiful. Yeah. And you'll hear guys.

That's where all the hard work happens. You'll hear all the guys in the industry one of my good close friends i've become close friends with alan bishop he's at houston uh he's pretty active on twitter great strength coaches if you can't get the job done with a barbell right there you don't deserve any of those other toys that's just the truth so i got to get my feet wet there and uh i was there for about nine months and then i got an offer a full-time opportunity at mcneese state university Division I University in southwest Louisiana. Got married, went on my honeymoon, moved down there, me and my wife, and we were there.

And I became the assistant director. I was the number two in line, full-time job. Man, I thought I was living the dream. I was assistant with football. I was a baseball guy. I really got obsessed with learning shoulder biomechanics. I took care of our quarterbacks and our receivers. Also trained baseball, softball, and volleyball, basically all of our overhead sports and rocked with that for

about a year and realized, guys, it's really hard to be the number two guy on staff, work 80 hours a week and be paid less than 30K a year and have a wife at home that I don't ever see. And that rocked me because I'm a family guy, always wanted to be. And I was like, is this what it's going to take? Is this this person I'm going to have to be in order to get back to that big time to make the money you need to spend the amount of hours away from your family? Because that's what's got to level up to me. If I'm going to spend this much time away from my family, they need to be taken care of. And I just didn't see it. And I started looking for other opportunities, wondering, I don't know if college strength conditioning is for me.

Got an opportunity to go out to Denver and Colorado and do some private sector work. Moved out there. My wife got a good job. I worked in and out with a lot of people. I got to see Lloyd Landau work. Who did you work with out there? I originally got hired with a franchise company called Redline Athletics. You've probably heard of it before.

So I was coaching with them. Didn't really work out who the guy was working for, working for an ex-military guy who would just make eight-year-olds puke, and that was totally against my ethics. So I literally took my shirt off on the desk and said, I'm out of here. I'll go do something else. And started training some hockey teams out of Denver with a couple of guys. Got to go into Joel Rather's gym who trained the Colorado Mammoth,

the lacrosse team. Got to lock in with some of that and get some different experiences. And, guys, I was this close to being like, I'm not making enough money. We got to pay the bills. Like, I got to get a real job. So I went and interviewed in Colorado at a milk delivery plant where they literally get in a truck and they deliver fresh milk to people's doorsteps all around the suburbs of Denver. Oh, wow. And they saw my resume like, oh, you're a strength coach. Oh, you're a college athlete. Oh, you can do this. This is easy.

And it was going to pay like twice as much that I ever made in college. That's a darn shame. Right. i mean meanwhile i this opening at this school at madison academy open and i had family connections here this has always been prestigious if you're a football fan there's two big nfl guys that came out of here carry on johnson who played at auburn who was with the detroit lions um for a while played here uh jordan matthews who played at vanderbilt one of the most decorated receivers out of Vanderbilt and the SEC. He's still playing. I don't know how he's still – I mean, dude's been in the league for a while. He mostly made his money with the Philadelphia Eagles.

So, we've had pretty prestigious athletic spots here. And they called me, and everything worked out. And in May of 2018 is when I moved here. And you hear all that, right, from internship. I interned in August of – I'm sorry, May of 2016. All that happened in two years. I was here in May of 2016. All that happened in two years. I was here in May of 2018. All that happened in two years.

Wow. I moved my family across the country three times in two years. Cost a lot of money. Got into a lot of debt. What does your wife say to you on all that? Was she supportive the whole time? She's a trooper, man. She looked at me and she said, I'm here to pursue you. I'm here to help you.

I'm here to pursue your dream as long as you keep us first. I got to Huntsville and I was like, guys, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I've drug you around. We wouldn't trade it for the world. We've learned a lot of experiences. But I was like, I'm not going to do that. We're going to be here.

Plus, my wife's family is from here. It's pretty much a wrap. I'm four hours from my parents. Then two years later, we. And plus, my wife's family is from here, so it's pretty much a wrap. I'm four hours from my parents, and then two years later, we had our first child. I've got a two-year-old. So now we have children. Things are completely different, right? What teams are you coaching now?

I coach all of them. So I have a really interesting position here at MA. So I am the department chair. I am the PE guy. How big is that chair? I don't know about that. We're a small school. We're a 3A size

school in Alabama. Think of it graduating class wise. We only graduate anywhere from 75 to 85 in a class. It's not very big. I like my high school. On our football team, we got anywhere from 36 to 45 guys. Somewhere in there. I saw you saying that on Twitter the other day. One of the reasons why you coach the way you do is because it's smaller.

Yeah, my context is my situation is very unique, and I always try to make sure I say that. So the way we structure things here, I have an unbelievable president, an unbelievable athletic director, an unbelievable principal who absolutely buy into what we do here. Physical culture is part of our school. We understand that fitness and being healthy means we got to move. We got to strain.

We got to get in the weight room. Our decked out, we have play flooring, 12 sore necks, base camp racks, all the nice trap bars. We've got specialty bars because our administration believes in it. So that's number one. I have resources. That's a great job. The way things work here is that we try to train during the year, during the class. A class is strength training.

It's strength training. Everybody takes that class. You're only required to get one PE credit in Alabama to graduate. So you got your kids that aren't really athletes will take it as a freshman and then be done. All other athletes will roll through. So I've got classes anywhere from 9th to 12th graders, anywhere from I've got Johnny Trumpet down on rack 12 that don't know his elbow from his ankle, and then I've got my start and left tackle sign to play D1 training in the same session. So I've got to be really good at managing that session

and programming and creating a developmental. How many people do you have a session? So I keep my classes capped at 36 because i have 12 racks so it's just you just me well it's funny it's been me for the past three years i'm going on year four we hired a new head women's basketball coach who has a strength conditioning background she's also assisting me in that which is great and our head football coach assists on the boys classes because i do boys and girls not just boys uh they both assist me and do an absolute phenomenal job i mean they're both really knowledgeable yeah it's really impressive how knowledgeable they are did you guys have that that culture

before you got there or do you like help implement that physical culture like were they already bought in on strength training and it was on the way before you got there yeah it was on its way uh there was a guy here actually a private sector guy travis you may know his name and andy mccloy um he's really close with joe kidd it's funny i don't know if uh but he's a private yeah he's a private sector guy here in huntsville who i think is one of the legends in the field and i got like i said i don't know how i landed upon all these guys but he he kind of was a strength coach here for like 11 years back when all those other guys were those nfl guys were playing here. What were they contracting him? Yeah.

And then, yeah. And then he opened his own business and then they decided, Hey, we're going to go full, full time in house. They hired a guy. He was here for two years.

They got that, that physical culture implemented. And then I came in about year three. So that's awesome. I think the high school, you know, segment is where things are going. I think there's two things.

Any Smith coach. Let's see. I think you should look into high school. I think if you want a life, that is. And the tactical arena. I think that field is like, either one of those is great if you're a Smith coach listening to this podcast.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, the difference between my experience in college and now in high school is that in college, it's all about winning. Everybody's on the same path. You're a scholarship. We're trying to win, trying to get you here. You want to play professionally. We're all got to win because if we don't win, we don't have jobs.

The high school level, it's about developing the person, developing the human. That's what I love about it. Technically my position here at Madison Academy is director of human performance because it's about developing the human and part of being the physical part. We think spiritual, emotional, mental, physical. We try to hit all four of those things. That's what separates us here at being a private school. You're going to pay tuition here because you're going to get the holistic view.

You're not just going to get the academic side. We're going to do all of it. You know, so we, I really enjoy it, man. I train teams year round in class, kind of as an in-season format. We can talk more about that later. And then how we do things off-season is very unique. And I try to get involved with every sport possible that I can. A little bit unique here is we have like only four or five head coaches

that are actually full-time at the school. Other head coaches of smaller sports get contracted out. They have other full-time jobs. Huntsville is an engineering hub of users. The Redstone Arsenal here in Huntsville is a big army uh base where they test weapons and all so like you have a ton of people in the army and people really really really smart engineers and uh in Huntsville so a lot of those guys who like to coach and do that job too they come over and do that too so when you have yeah when you have uh brand new to weightlifting

novice kid in class along with linemen signed to go d1 somewhere in class what what does the program look like and kind of balancing sports specificity as well as just gpp and movement mechanics just getting people comfortable in the weight room and then being able to tailor things to the guy that really needs to be doing something more sports specific. Sure. So we have one thing that I think that one of my strengths as a coach is setting up management and flow of a team setting room to where it'll run itself. I want to manage less and coach more. And I'm going to lean on my veterans to help lead me. I can't do it by myself. It drives me nuts when a coach thinks the best thing to do is to stand in front

of a room, set one, rip one, whistle. Next guy, ready. I haven't been in a room with a whistle in a long time. Zach Evanesh brings a whistle this weekend. We won't. Zach is going to coach. He's going to coach. The whistle.

That is not coaching. I'm just going to be – I'm going to keep it real and say that is not coaching. You're really good at whistleblowing. Good job. Whatever you're good at. Yeah, no doubt. So what I do is I really try to set it up, Anders, is that one – so there's a middle school class too. There's an eighth grade only

class that takes a whole year with me and gets weight room 101. Literally, we just had our second session today of like. Sick. I like that class. Tell me about that class. I'm really interested in that. Right. So, they come in, the whole eighth grade boys or eighth grade girls takes it and you get the whole year. So, I'm looking at my calendar, you're looking at 37 school weeks. They come to me twice a week. You're looking anywhere from 70 to year. If I'm looking at my calendar, you're looking at 37 school weeks. They come to me twice a week. You're looking anywhere from 70, 80 sessions. And I'm looking at two to three times a week, depending on our schedule,

because we have an alternating schedule. It's a little weird. But we literally break it down from like, guys, we're about to spend two months on a warmup. Like we're going to start off with like, the first thing we learn is, learn how do I get in a split stance? Just get in a split stance just get in a split

stance and go okay I want to make sure that my foot is in the middle my knees stacked over my ankle my hips not too externally rotated internally rotated I want to sit at about 135 degrees joint angle can you do that college coach if I was a college coach I'd be sitting in that room with you going give me that one give me that one in Give me that one in six years. That one's wired. He knows how to do it right away. Give me that one. She knows where her glutes are at on day one. Yep. It's a built-in assessment. Then you see the kids that can already naturally move and they don't even know it. Then you got kids. And then we do that. And we work on that all year. Then we start our simple progressions of teaching a squat, teaching a hinge, teaching a press, teaching a course, teaching course stability. We do all those and we basically, I build that up. This is

how our program is built here. You got, I don't tell my kids, I want my middle schoolers to be middle schoolers as long as possible. And then when they go from eighth grade, they're done with me. Eighth grade summer, transitioning to ninth grade is when they jump in to finally train in summer training with the varsity teams because they're ready. They're prepared. They've been taught patterns, but they're going to jump into what I call my fundamental training pathway. So I have kind of three pathways in our class once they get to ninth grade. Number one is the fundamentals. You got to learn how to move, right? So even if everybody in that pattern today is doing a squat pattern, like I said, my big starting left tackle or my starting linebacker

who's got offers from Clemson and Michigan is probably down there doing either a heavy box squat with chains, heavy box squat, in-season football, right? He's got his specific prescription, but my ninth graders down here are doing a goblet squat to a box to learn. Or we're doing a front squat, right, a tempoed front squat. But I try to lean on my older guys or my coaches so like my football coaches in here too I let him be around the older guys because to

me like once the older guys get it they don't need me as much anymore I focus on my youngins I go down there and manage the youngins you know what I mean and get them going my ninth and tenth graders and then I see my older guys to set an example and lead and now we're trying to create a culture inside the weight room that we're coaching each other. We're holding each other accountable. This is not me. This is not about me. This is about you.

We're trying to get you guys to, this is your room to own it. And if you guys aren't holding the standard of how we train, you guys got to hold each other accountable. And then you've got your football coach who has that little card that everybody is scared of called playing time. Yeah. You're not training hard. That playing time card can really be pulled.

See, I don't have that card because I don't coach a sport. So building trust is tough. When do you start to bring in, or I hope maybe just even right out of the jump, but kind of the athleticism side of things. Like, I don't coach a lot of high school kids. I'm coaching a lot of three-year-olds in the neighborhood right now pure sprinting pure sprinting i'll race you all day long we have we have foot races outside because if you could sprint at three we got a long we got a long window a long ramp we're building right now yes like and i imagine you see a lot of people in

eighth grade they don't know how to sprint too well. No, they can't walk and chew gum, man. No, it's tough. Some people don't have that. So I do that through what I call small-sided games, if you've ever heard that term before. Say that again. We just, mine buzzed out.

Small-sided games. So I don't like to structure agility training and stuff because kids will just black out. They're like a goldfish, man. They're thinking and worry about something else, right? Yeah. So the way our structure is, and I have to include the member, I'm always trying to tell my context. This only works in my context. If my schedule was different, I may do it different, right? So we work out either two to three times a week because we have an alternating schedule. You either come to a class Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or come Tuesday, Thursday, and the

next week it flip-flops. So every kid has eight classes. You go on a block schedule, you go to four classes on A day, you go to the other four on B day, and it flip-flops. So it's a weird alternating schedule. It makes it a little bit tougher. Yeah. Right.

But I've found something that works. I saw, okay, consistently, you're going to come to me twice no matter what. That's going to be our two-day-a-week lift year-round, 37 weeks worth of training that doesn't include summer. You hit me on that third day, that's our fun Friday. Compete Friday. Let's pick a game. Let's get after it.

Three-on-three basketball, ultimate frisbee, capture the flag, speedball. We come up with games. Tag is like the greatest game in the world for athleticism no doubt so that so we do that we compete but it's also about human development guys you got to communicate how do you get the kid that's not that athletic involved like we had a kid that scored a touchdown that wasn't athletic and he lost his mind and he literally told me in a survey later that year that that was one of the best days of the year it changed changes life holy cow like this is bigger than sets and reps guys right you know what i'm saying so it's it's all it's everything sets and reps matter but

it's bigger but anyway come back to our training session um and in the high school training session a little bit of structure so we'll go full warm-up we'll do things such as athleticism rhythm coordination and a lot of elasticity through plyos, extensive plyos, jumps, sprint mechanics, sprint shapes, things like that that are quick. I don't spend a ton of time on it because kids will lose their attention span. I've got a laser timing system on my turf strip in my weight room, wheel time sprints every single day. And I do this throughout the year. We time five to 15 yard sprint. So it's a 10 yard fly with a five yard lead in. And I time it all year round and I collect rolling averages to see where we're headed.

And that's part of the monitoring that we've kind of mentioned there. What are you finding? Let me ask you a question on that. What are you finding? Are you finding by just getting them competing and running those sprints? Are they getting faster? I mean, are you really working with them on technique?

Like what's happening right here? It's been one. It's been a long time. It's crazy. So the biggest thing with these is that when, because I have an Apple TV in my weight room, that'll stream up to a 90 inch TV in my weight room. So I have the iPad screen mirror. Yeah, we're rich brands.

I've got the iPad that has the number on the 90 inch screen. And when you run, your number flashes up. So that's an immediate intent driver. There won't be a kid that's not going to fricking bust it. It's not going to also post their times. So they know that. And I tell everybody in the class, like you're competing against yourself.

You get your time faster. I'm like, guys, my 290 pound tackle is not going to run the same speed as my 160 pound DB. So, um, what I'm getting out of that though, Travis, what you're, what you're asking is that literally just from intent,

the kids are going to get faster. And just from really one teaching point and teaching a kid how to push correctly when it comes to acceleration, kids think, and it's mostly because of these freaking bogus trainers out these days, think that a lot of foot movement means quick and means – I'm going to separate. Because, guys, at the end of the day in sports, you've got to separate from your opponent to create space or you've got to close in on an opponent to get rid of space in order to win. That's the name of the game in team and field and court sports, which is what I train. I don't really do a ton of general population fitness anymore.

I don't do any bodybuilding, powerlifting, weightlifting. I just use derivatives of that stuff. But through our, through our sprinting, you know, it's interesting because it fluctuates up and down, okay, based on a lot of different things. I also survey my kids every day on their sheet. I wish I had one sitting with me and I could show you, but I ask them three questions. I ask them, all right, in what area, how many hours of sleep do you get last night? Right. Did you eat breakfast this morning? Yes or no. On a, on a scale of one to five, how stressed out are you? You don't have to tell me why. Just tell me circle one. And they don't tell nobody. They just go to their rack because I have their sheets on their rack that I do all through Google sheets and they do. And if

I see that I'm seeing trends of times, either like I have a spike that's really slow or I'm just watching the kid and I'm like I see that they're just not here yeah and then it opens a conversation right what's going on does that make sense yeah yeah I've actually super bigger bigger survey but yeah do you uh start to see a a difference in performance as like academic stress rises around like finals times or championship times and then have to match training volume and intensity to meet those things that are like outside of your uh kind of outside of your control yeah i mean i've been here for three years now i'm almost i'm almost predicting it at this point like i know if i look at our our school schedule and i go all right i know volleyball's got uh area tournament here i know finals land here i know when break's coming

like and i just go ahead and program around that stuff and then i make small changes built in in the session based off what i see macro changes i look at because i've been tracking it for three years of where performances go up and go down but i have a really cool thing called a stoplight system that has really changed the game for thing called a stoplight system that has really changed the game for us. So the stoplight system, there's a chart on our wall in our weight room. You have a green light, yellow light, and red light. I did that backwards, but you know what I mean?

Red light, yellow light, green light. And what that does is that if a kid is either their surveys, one thing, I just see that they're being sluggish. I know that this is a time where maybe a game got scheduled change because that happens in baseball, volleyball, and basketball all the time because of logistics. I say, all right, I want you to move because everybody sits on a green light. That's normal volume and intensity. If you move to yellow light, super simple. Every rep cuts your reps in half. Just cut your reps in half. You got six. Now three gorgeous i'm loving this you have five that's two and a half round up do three all that does is takes away amount of work done the

intensity doesn't change because as we all know intensity is not what's going to drive fatigue that much more volume volume right yeah so that's yellow light move to red light that's a game day protocol if it's time of game we're still training hard we're going to cut every rep in half just don't do your top set so we take a little bit of load off, cut the volume in half. Time out. So green light goes, you're good to go. Yellow light is like cut the volume in half. Yep.

Every rep you see, if I see a six, it turns into a three. Three. Okay. And then red is what? Red is the same exact thing. But if I've got five sets, I don't do the fifth set on it before. All right. So everything that yellow is, but don't do the last set. So it takes a tad of top-end intensity out just a little bit.

My God, that is gold for any coach listening right there. It's so easy to implement because kids can do math. It's like, hey, don't do your top set and cut everything in half. Here's the thing. Wait, hold on. One more time. Are they telling you that they're green, yellow, or red, or you have surveys and you're calculating it for them?

How does that work again? It's a case-by-case basis. This is where communication and trust comes. Me trying to track all that is going to be stress on all of us. Hey, coach, I got a game today. I know this athlete. I know they play soccer. I know they have a game.

I know they're telling me the truth. They have a track record with me as a human. All right, yellow or you have a game today, red, let's get it. And then they just, they also write down what they do on their sheet. Okay. And then on my iPads, I have a JotForm, which is a high powered form we have a commercial license with, and they enter their stuff. And I have a whole Google Sheets database that records. I use reps in reserve as a way to track performance. So they write down how much weight did you do on your best set? How many reps did you do? And then give me a score. And I ask their scores. How many do you have left in the tank? I predict a training max off of that performance.

I do that through all 37 weeks and I will see, and I can adjust maxes on the fly. We only test twice a year just because kids like it. To testing is training training is testing so that's how we that's how we do that all right it's brilliant i use velocity but it's the same you know well i've got a vmax pro i've got one uh vmax pro is a new velocity based trainer out that simply faster actually sells um it's really user friendly and a really good price point man i don't have a tindo or a gymware. You know, those are the absolute mech, the big – especially Gemware is the absolute mecha. Yeah. I wish I had it. What was that?

What did you say? What is? Gemware. I'm just kidding. I think Coach Barbell shrugged, right? I worked with him. What? Coach Barbell shrugged, right?

Or Match 5. Yeah. So, I know that that's like the big daddy, and it's great if you don't have elite form or something like that on your racks you know so um i'm dabbling i'm dabbling in velocity-based training a little bit with my but i've got i could probably count 10 guys i mean i've got a guy that's gonna go play college football at a really high level yeah he's still kind of to a point where i want to see some power production but that's later you know what i'm saying the

only thing i would say would be for high school is like it's a great way to get things safe meaning like if you don't have a lot of experience and you're kind of a new coach velocity is a way to say look go to a 3rm but stay above this velocity so it's kind of like the second coach in the room but like you're very experienced i would trust you with my own children so you don't need that but like there are a lot of coaches out there that do. If you have a high injury rate, you need to look into getting velocity, not because you're trying for power to keep them from getting hurt. Right, and that's great.

And I also think – I think Mark Hoover, a good friend of mine, who's also a great high school strength coach, he likes to set velocity floors to where, like, look, if you have a lift that's below.35 meters per second, it doesn't count. Because that's a grindy rep. It's probably going to look like crap if you have a lift that's below 0.35 meters per second it doesn't count because that's a grindy rep it's probably gonna look like crap for high school kids you have a really experienced lifter who's hitting a 1rm they may hit a 0.21 but it looked beautiful because they're they're really good at what they're doing so we set a velocity floor and say all right if it's below that we're not counting right so that's mark did that he started using it

and i thought that's another great way to use velocity in the high school we said it for our you know because for weightlifters i don't want them going to a true 1rm back squat anyway but so i'm going to go to a 1rm but keep it above either 0.5 0.4 at the lowest 0.35 ironically so yeah it's funny you say that because i remember you know when i when i moved to mcneese i got introduced to the mash blueprint and the super total program yeah i ran that on myself and you wrecked me like i was not ready for that dude so i've got all your stuff travis man i've ran it all on myself it's great especially those drop 10 and do three more sets. Yeah, screw you, Travis. Yeah, we know that's not even for me. I got an email. I got an email like Wednesday of last week.

The guy wrote, is this written backwards? Is this three sets of 10 or 10 sets of three at this heavy of a weight? I was like, oh, that's 10 sets of three. Find yourself a little home over at that squat rack and get comfortable. Stay there. Stay there and be quiet. Just keep it. Be quiet.

You emailing me means you are not eating or lifting, so we're wasting time. Right. Right. Dude, I have a question just kind of like about human growth at that time and funky, like people getting big. Not like big muscular, but just the growth spurts that hit at weird stages. I feel like when I was at 13, just the idea of squatting 95 pounds was like awesome. At 14, I think maybe 135 pounds. I just had no testosterone in my body whatsoever. By the time I was a junior, I squatted 315 for the first time.

That's a funky gap to put that much weight on the bar in two years just because of one simple little hormone called testosterone in that time of life. How do you kind of manage that many kids and just the funky stage of everyone's like puberty development at that time right i mean we got so many gumbies and bambis walking around this yeah like i feel like that's like a real thing where it's like we talk about the systems and we talk about but the the reality is like you've got not just some kids have been lifting for five years and and get it but you've also got some kids that have come from unathletic families and you've got kids that hit and grow spurts at 15 years old, 14 years old,

and everything's awkward. Rewiring their bodies and brains, it's a weird thing at that age. That's a great point, and I think a lot of coaches get this wrong. I think that this is where they can be better, is that if you're training the youth athlete, you're looking 13 to 18. You have to consider motor capacity, okay, brain development and what they can do. When they're growing that fast. The number one thing I worry about is freaking coordination. Like that's the number one thing we do. We do things like footwork drills. Yes, we use a ladder. We do. We do it for coordination,

move my body. Okay. We use training bars. We tempo the crap out of everything to be able to add stability. And I'm not, I'm not focused on load because to me that's, that's backwards. My, our end game is not load. It's a movement, right? We want to be able to move well. And we have to be patient and let that motor capacity as they become 16, 17, 18 years old. I'm starting to notice that there's a massive jump when you go from 10th grade to 11th grade. When you go from being like a 15 year old to 16 year old and then 17 year old, that's when everything starts to crank up. Your capacity gets better, your intermuscular coordination, your rate coding gets better, all of that naturally just from

growing up. And then if you time that right, that's whenever you can start pushing for adaptation. So if you have two years, three years of coordinative and technical movement under your belt for three years and you're disciplined enough to not try to freaking, I want to get them loaded up so I can say I did something because you're not grounded in what you believe in and you time it right you're going to see a much higher ceiling right i'll start another thing i do is that as soon as i get my classes i enter their birth date into my google sheet so i know because look just because we have a 10th grader i could have a 14 year old or 15 year old 10th grader i could have a 17 16 year old 10th grader it may have been held back late birthdays, early birthdays. Those times matter. So I go off of their true date of birth age before their grade. And then I also look at their,

their prior experience. I mean, I've got a kid. One of my best friends went through puberty in like a summer. Yeah. That dude woke up on like, went to bed in like June as a little boy and woke up in August with hair all over his body and a totally different human being. I remember just being like, God, that guy got thick. How am I ever going to battle this kid in hockey? He's going to just destroy me. What happened to my best friend? Play games together, and now he's a man.

And you know, that could be anywhere. For me, it was super young. It happened to me in the eighth grade. Yeah. It don't happen to some guys to the 10th grade. It depends. I went into junior year. Yeah. So you rank them,

you rank them based on, obviously you got, you know, their biological age, you've got their training age, and then you've got, this dude just happens to be more advanced than everybody else. Do you use those three things?

How do you, how do you rank these people? I just, I just use my eyes. I get to know the kids. I really do. At the end of the day, you have to know your humans. Everybody would go, oh, classify this, this, and this. And I'm like, they're not numbers, they're people.

Just get to know your people. And I know what these kids can do. For example, I've got a ninth grader that went through the eighth grade program I was talking about earlier that is now with me. Travis, I'm telling you. So we have like, we're huge on the clean. We clean every single session because I think it's great for kids. I like you even more now. You just went up a notch. We start off with a block progression. The first time we ever truly catch it, we start from a block above the knee. And this kid named Keaton, he's in the ninth, he's in the eighth grade. And we were right at the end, the very end of that eighth grade year,

where we start to implement the sequence of a first pull and start teaching it. And he was like, Coach, let me try to catch it. Let me try it. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. I was like, let me just try it. And I was like, all right, Keaton, it's 65 pounds. Okay, let's try it. He did it.

And I was like, okay, okay, who taught you how to do that? And he goes, I just saw my brother do it. And I was like, okay, now I've got a kid to do that? And he goes, I just saw my brother do it. I was like, okay, now I've got a kid that's just – this kid is going to be a freak. He's got legs as tree trunks. He's super coordinated. He's probably going to start on the varsity. Oh, shoot, he's probably, I don't know, 5'8", 5'9".

He's only in ninth grade. All right. Well, it begins right now, the recruiting process. He's looking to go to school? Something you just said actually just triggered a question that I think is really interesting to me of like how much like in a way just like intervention and you coaching is like a balancing act with like, yo, just let nature take over.

Let that kid jump and catch the bar because some people just know how to do things. is like a balancing act with like, yo, just let nature take over. Let that kid jump and catch the bar because some people just know how to do things. Some people like really need a coach to show them all the intricacies. And balancing a large group setting is not – whether it's hanging out, just playing outside with my kids or like actually coaching people, seeing people in a crossfit gym like just getting the reps a lot of times is the winning formula right like just like man just let nature go but also you got a bunch of kids that can't get them injured they gotta they gotta go out and play sports and it's a really tricky balance at the end of the day it's i'm always

gonna take the minimum side i'm always gonna go lower volume lower skill because that that's my out that's kind of my my philosophy I'll get to that here in a second with how I approach programming but how I do the coaching side is that they understand logistics they know the flow of it they know where to stand they know what's going on they also know that I want I try to pair kids up with like somebody who really knows and somebody who doesn't quite know so they can be of a built-in coach itself, right? And then you just got to coach, observe, all right, how did they receive that? Am I overcoaching? Am I not coaching enough? Does this something that just needs reps because the skill's not there yet? Something I can't keep coaching them on. They just need to keep going till that light bulb comes on,

which is a lot of the times, right? that's very timing oriented like the clean being able to time everything out properly and sequence guys we just need hundreds of reps we just got to keep repping it we got to break it down into its parts and guys you're not going to get it in two days it's funny some of my kids don't really know about olympic weightlifting is it being a sport and i'm like guys do you know that there's people that spend their entire life, four years, to these two lists? That's what they do for their sport. I know a few, yeah. And they're like, whoa, seriously?

And I was like, yeah, that's how hard it is. That's how you're – you're not just going to get this today. You can't touch it in 10 minutes. I'm kidding. Well, that's a whole other conversation. Yeah, it's a whole other. But anyway, that's how i do that and then i always try to help the the motor learning process and learn and understand how skill acquisition

works right and i've read a bunch of studies on it i've talked to a lot of skilled people about it about how you go through three phases you go through a cognitive phase and associate phase and then eventually get to an autonomous phase where you gotta you gotta teach it in the brain first and learn and if if the load is too heavy it's too it can't be too physiological and be high neurological first when you're learning because you just become survivor i'm just trying to keep myself from drowning a lot of high school coaches do that crap i'm gonna teach you how to squat but we have to put on 225 to start like kids are just gonna drown you're not learning anything same thing in sport practice yeah right you think sport practice like i go to football practice

that's another thing where i think strength coaches need to increase their value is learn how it transfers to the game i can like if you don't understand how to teach skill how about we how about we learn how to program our practice a little better to help teach this kid actually how to tackle instead of you just screaming and mfing them all the time on why he can't tackle because really you ain't teaching him. Take a little ownership here. Let's be better instead of just yelling at a kid when you haven't taught anything. So you got to learn how to be a good coach. And I try my best to just let them figure it out. Like you're right. See if they take ownership in it. And I tell them questions are always good. I don't get mad when they ask me 10, 5,000 questions. I know that can get frustrating. It can get arrogant, but I try to tell myself,

like, don't get upset when they ask you, okay, what, how many blocks this time? Like, but cause I know they're intrigued. Like I know that they're bought in. They're trying to learn when they ask good questions. That's nothing but good things. It's the kids that are like, I know everything. Leave me alone. I don't want to do this. That's where we have to intervene as far as it goes. How do you handle competition in the gym, kind of on those compete Fridays? Athletes, it's like the thing we do.

All this working out stuff is secondary to, can we go throw down on Saturday or whatever the actual competition day is, game day is. A lot of kids probably aren't, aren't in that mindset. How do you continually, you know, build them up, build confidence in them so that without, you know, having them get left behind when, when there are standout kids that are competing on a regular basis and have that purpose behind them. You know, this, this school is where this makes this happen is because, you know, I go to a school that has a spiritual emphasis on it and I know that's not everybody's thing, right? And that's fine. But we're really big on

just developing people and we're trying to teach our kids from the inside out on how to mentor younger kids like on that level so i lean on my higher athletes because guys the the best athletes and older upperclassmen athletes freaking run the school that's just how it is they are your leaders they are your culture drivers so if i don't lean on them and teach them like look if you don't include them you're losing the point if then i try to teach them on how to do it and then the ones that really care what just sit back and watch magic happen they do it now i have to pick the right games where they have the opportunity okay can we pick a game that everybody can play can we pick a game where they have the opportunity. Okay, can we pick a game that everybody can play?

Can we pick a game where they have to communicate and do things? Like, to me, we play a game called Speedball, where it's ultimate frisbee, but with a Nerf football in a gym. So it's way faster, and everybody can play, right? And you strategize, because every kid wants to take it up and just chunk it. Well, this Nerf football is really hard to throw a spiral. So you actually have to kind of slow it down and do it kind of more rugby style and short, and then you have to strategize. And if the ball drops, turnover, other person goes.

And that's the game that I was telling you that the ninth grade kid that scored the touchdown, it was the best moment of the year. So that's like I try to come up with these games and ones that they enjoy. They give me some feedback on games, but I really lean on my upperclassmen, man. I really try to identify my leaders and I start with my leaders. And if you're spiritual, you know that that's the, that's the Jesus discipleship model. Like that's what I tell every coach, the same thing that, you know, the first thing when I talked to a high school coach, not really in a private sector,

but in the like, you know, public sector where they got hundreds of kids. Look, I have too many kids. It's hard for me to implement any kind of system. I say lean on your, if you teach them right from the beginning, by the time someone's a senior, they're ready to help for sure. I was. I know that I learned that from my high school. I got lucky both in high school and in college. This was in the 80s and then 90s. I got lucky both in high school and in college, you know, back, this was in the 90s, well, 80s and then 90s. And I got lucky and that's what they did. You know, when I was a senior in high school, I was helping in weight training. So I would take on a freshman or two under my wing and teach them. But that's what you got to do, man.

And I really believe, you know, I taught adjunct at a university for two years here in town as well. So I've got that background. I love to teach and I know that I always learned more when I had to teach. Yeah. I try to tell my older kids, all right, I want you to attempt to teach this kid how to do it. You do it well, but can you teach it? And then they, they just get better themselves. Right. We're teaching this model of everybody's helping everybody. Everybody's a coach. I'm like, guys, I'm the, I'm, I'm the lead coach in this room, but we have 36 coaches in here. All you guys are coaches.

All you guys, if you see something that's not right, you need to have the courage to help coach your teammate or your classmate. And then if you're getting coached, you need to have the humility to drop your ego and be coached. If we can do both of those, we're going to be in a good spot. Let's talk about in-season, off-season. I love what you were saying on Twitter the other day. Let talk since most people are in season right now football starting like what does that model look like for you guys so very interesting i'm gonna kind of just cover my tweet we were talking about guys uh because if you're

about you hear about the nfl like when they go to fall camp and injuries are just popping everywhere like guys are just beat up right how coaches just run guys into the ground preseason. To me, that's just, I think that it's fixable. Well, here at the high school level, I want you guys to know the difference between college and high school when it comes to summer training. When I was in college, you know, you can't do any football stuff. It's all player-led.

So the strength conditioning is very important to get guys in the capacity and in shape to walk into fall camp and be ready to do the work that's going to be asked of them. If you don't prepare them to do that work, their fatigue levels are going to get increased and they're going to get hurt. But in high school, in Alabama at least, we have all summer, so we're looking at eight to ten weeks where we do this.

We lift first and then we go and we have an hour and 15 practice we practice all summer in shorts and helmets scripted practice there's no rules against that so we're actually building up our capacity and conditioning in the fines of the in the confines of the sport so we don't need to do conditioning right we program it practice wise and we kind of monitor it so explain that because some people aren't going to understand that what do you mean like explain like you do it in practice like you do do it by by scrimmaging by the rate at which you're moving you know do you do sprints you know what is right so at the end of the day the summer and at least football at least is almost purely working on passing game okay and working on route running in seven-on-seven periods because that's what they do tournaments and stuff with.

So the only way you can really manage fatigue at the high school level if you don't have GPS is just time on your feet and then what periods you choose. Like if you do a deep ball period where we're working on routes, you know that the volume of running is going to be higher. If you're doing a short game or a short passing period or a teaching period where we're not moving very much, you know that your day is kind of light.

That's when you get into kind of that Charlie Francis high-low. So I talk to my football coach in a very way he can understand of like, all right, what periods are demanding, which ones are not? Let's program it throughout the week to let our guys recover. And my head coach knows how to build in practice so that when we get to august and put pads on and now we're going for an hour 30 hour 45 like we're ready to handle that stuff right so that's that's what i mean by that so why would i add extra running on the front end or the back end when we need to do this in the confines of

doing our skill we are running and i was just talking about this very thing about how you know when you condition at the end and you're like, hey, go all out. When they know good and well, after looking at the GPS, nobody is going all out. And what's going to happen, they're just going to get slower and slower, and they're going to try to show you on their face that they're running fast. We all know these games. Anyone who's ever played football knows exactly what I'm talking about.

If you don't, you're lying. Well, it's a culture problem to me. Right. It's a culture problem. Totally. The reason I say that is because why are you going to ask your athlete to go all out in the thing that actually matters in practice and the skill that we're trying to do to actually win? And then if they actually practice hard and we have sprints at the end, they're not going to have anything left in the tank. And you're going to ask these kids to go hard and then be mad at them that their facial expression is showing fatigue right completely backwards you have it you're completely

running yourself into the ground you heard of this uh way of measuring things by you know you ask your kids at the end what do you you know their rpe what do they perceive you know was it a 10 did it kick your butt was it 9 8 you know it's like a 1 to 10 and then you times it by the by the time that it took and that gives you like a pretty it's pretty good we use it in weightlifting but like it gives you a pretty good yeah where you're at as far as load for practice yeah see that's something i want to get into down the road um right now i currently don't stay all the way to the end of practice because like i said before guys i'm a family man i stay at practice at the beginning and i get home guys I'm home by 5 o'clock every day. That's beautiful.

I want to be – I am home. I'm being with my wife, being with my kid. That data is not more important than my family. It's just not. Amen. Now, when my kid's playing football down the road – hopefully he plays football – and I'll be at practice. That's different, right?

That's different. But this time and phase of my life, I'm not there. One thing we are doing in season, Travis, that also is really good, is like today's Wednesday, so we're in actually week zero. We're getting ready to play our first game this week. We're actually going to expose our athletes, our skill guys, to max velocity exposures one day a week because you don't get it in practice a whole lot.

The reason we want to do that is a hamstring injury preventer. Totally, yeah. Because in the games, the thing that causes hamstring injuriesstring injuries one is when you're under fatigue and then you call on horsepower at high velocity high speed contraction it snaps so if i don't expose it during the week in a timely manner before the game you call on it and you haven't you haven't exposed it because guys speed residual strength residual is about 30 days like once you acquire strength you can probably not do much for 30 days and

still be able to express that strength right speed is anywhere from about four to seven depending on the research paper you read right so if i'm not exposing it every four to seven days we're getting slower and we're also losing capacity in that so will you do will you take your athletes in your classes and then have them do some high velocity or will that be something separate built in the warm-up at pre-practice. Perfect. They'll do some high-end sprinting pre-practice. We rotate into it.

Guys come with me. We get them warmed up. I've got my laser set up before they even come out there because they always meet before. I get two times on our laser. I write it down and record it. We will flow right into practice. Oh, that's beautiful.

So they're going to get it. It's at the beginning. They're laser time, so you know that this is legit. And if all of a sudden it's, you know, if it's not, you're like, but you run a four, four and here you run a five, one. So, right. Awesome. I want to hear more about the, all the data that you collect, like how you use athlete monitoring to adjust programs, how you use that data to like go to the administration and say,

hey, look at what a great job I'm doing. Look at how the team collectively is improving. What kind of metrics do you have for that? How do you track it, et cetera? It's really hard to do that at the high school level because everybody wants to say, all right, are you getting stronger? And the way you prove that is that you don't see that coaches can be full of crap because, yeah, oh, our maxes went up 10%. Did you see the squat that they counted as that squat? Did you see it? You're telling me that that's making them a better athlete

and a better human and more healthy. So how are you telling me that's improvement? And that's another problem with administration not knowing how to evaluate strength. And that's across the board, college level, everything. But for me, number one is attendance. How many kids are showing up? Do they want to be here? If kids ain't showing up, it's different.

And in school, it's a little different. But summer, that's huge. I do track strength numbers through my reps and reserve model. And that's built in based off of a predictory formula that I have. So every week, if we do whatever variation we're doing, I'm trying to see what's predicting a one rep max based off what I see. So that's strength numbers. There's two things that I really only track for strength. I track trap bar, deadlift, I track bench press. I don't make it a point that I want your squat to be high or your clean to be

high because they're very technical. And that's like, to me, if you're squatting, I'm like, guys, I want you to practice squatting, not train it. And I kind of trick them mind-wise, and their squat will naturally get better as they become a better squatter, right? Trap bar deadlift is the easiest thing in the world to freaking teach, so we're going to grip and rip, and it's going to be the heaviest thing. I've got 36 guys on our football team. I've got 10 over 500 pounds.

Yeah. Beautiful. We're pretty strong because we do it all the time. Yeah. Bench press as well. That's kind of our upper body strength movement we trap bar bench press those are main strength movements i track qualitatively clean and squat don't really track the strength number i track sprint numbers every single week it's also kind of a readiness thing if i'm seeing if i'm seeing numbers slowly get worse i'm like i gotta ask the question what's going on like all right did practices go long last

night unless you're purposely causing that adaptation there's a time where it might dip because you beat them up as you know a little bit as you should but right then it creeps back up it should at least uh call for a question it should call for thinking right so you should say okay are we in week three of a really high volume phase in summer i'm not going to expect sprint times to be great right you know once we taper and we let the guys come up and overcome say we're ready to go so that's how i do that uh i have a jump mat where you can instantly uh train vertical jumps we train vertical jumps to use what's called a power index if you ever heard this formula where you can take the square root of the jump in inches multiplied by the square root of the body weight in pounds.

You get this number on a 0 to 100 scale, which is really cool, and you can see how powerful the kid is no matter how much they weigh. How much are they displacing their body weight based off their body weight in inches, and it gives them a power score. And I've learned – I got this from a college strength coach. I can't remember who showed it. One of the guys that uses it a ton is Lucas White over at Boise State. Is that anything over an 80 is pretty, pretty, pretty powerful.

And if you test your kids, you'll know the ones that are powerful. Once you do that, you're like, okay, this, this, I've got a norm here. Like I can see how that checks out. Now for females, it should scale a little bit. I'm still working on that data. But part of the, one of the biggest experiments I ran over the last two years is I normalized the trap bar and bench press numbers. I asked about eight strength coaches at the high school level that I trusted. That means I know that you're doing it well. I trust

your numbers. Okay. I asked them to give me trap bar and bench press numbers because it's really hard to just butcher those. I'm not going to ask for people's squat numbers because squat numbers are a little high. It's crap. Send me that. Send me what grade they're in. That's all I want to know. What grade and what their trap bar max, bench

press max was. I basically created a bell curve for 10 different weight classes in high school. That's about 15 pounds a piece. I can show you that graphic later. I can send it to you. I would love to see that. I see what you're saying. This is beautiful. If you're between 155 pounds and 170, right? The average male trap bar deadlift 385. And then I create standard deviations off of that. And usually your freaks are going to be one standard deviation above or of that mean, mean right and it's funny you look at it and it doesn't fluctuate a ton when you look at relative the body weight but for the most part

my strong kids are two times body weight minimum trap bar deadlift and they can bench press their body weight at the high school level the elite guys can like i've got i've got two i got a running back in a db right now who are freaks can both trap bar deadlift three times their body weight and can bench press 1.35 times i'm like so at this point yeah go ahead i was gonna say when you get those guys there you know at at a high school level i was once you get them to x number of standard deviations out where where does the program go from there because now we start to get into that like we're strong enough yeah we're strong enough to to be good at the sport so

sport doesn't have to move yeah sport doesn't ask for you to produce force only you only get you can only produce force in the time given that's a quote from joey garacio down at fau he's an excellent one of the best strength coaches i've ever ran around i've got to meet him in person you guys interview a college strength coach you need to freaking talk to that guy he's freaking brilliant um he said so now it's not just about how much because that's when velocity-based training would come into play i'm working on getting a couple more devices this usually happens either their senior year that's the norm so we start moving towards all right in those power zones those speed strength strength speed zones how can we get the most power output and force that we can get how fast can you

move x amount of weight and let's try to increase that that's all that's what we're going to work on from there max strength is no longer a goal for those kids yeah i think that's brilliant i was actually just thinking about that when i was talking about my squat numbers which for some reason i've never actually thought about until i was i was telling you that of like i squat at 315 when i was this my junior summer my best squat ever is only 110 pounds more than that over the next decade or so of training. It's strange,

but you were, you were more of a power lifter, but really, right. Crossfitters. I mean, it's somewhere between, yeah,

you just get somebody to a level and you go, well, we're just strong enough and we got to now, now tune this this dial this thing into the sport i think it's a lifelong i think it's a lifetime of that i think yeah in high school you get them to where you consider to be that point and then power development same thing in college you know it's about start back over yeah right that if i have that senior that's gonna go play college ball that's kind of in that power development phase yeah the level of force

production needed at certain times at the college level is now increased so they've got to go back to strength development and then get back into power it's just exactly it's an ongoing revolving door really yeah yeah yeah it's nice you know it's it's really cool to show those numbers and then you get a kid like i know travis i know you do this all the time because you got a little bit of ego like me is when a kid's like's like, oh, you can't do this. And they've got like 405 on the bar. And I go and pick it up and I'm like, I didn't even warm up. Yeah.

Like, that wasn't hard. I got a couple of kids now. Yeah, MASH, you don't front squat with the boys anymore. I just front squatted yesterday, bro. 400 easily. Wait, with them? Yeah. You used to walk in the back of MASHe just go scoot over yeah i'm coming in

morgan just gotta put me in my place so like dude that kid is a freaking freak i can't tell you how many times coach like coach i've been following you for like five years you know before you ever met me on twitter you're phenomenal and i've used those videos of morgan in my class more than you know like guys look at this kid i'm like you feel good about your 275 clean okay let me show you something let me humble you real quick you know let me show you this guy at your age yeah he's an absolute monster i was like man i wish i could see morgan play linebacker or something oh me too you know like we've talked about it a bunch about like i'm all his parents are not all for it but i'm all for it i'm like i just like to see him go out there and just absolutely smoke some kids but i also tell them like the dedication that this kid has had for years to be elite at one thing i'm like

guys just take this with you all right you're not trying to be elite weightlifter you're trying to be elite football player but you don't watch film you don't take care of your body you're not doing all this kid that this guy's doing there's a reason why he's putting up the performance he is i use it in that way too that's true because you know the kids that i get to work with like literally most of them moved across country to just to be with me like whole families move home school the whole yeah they go all in So, yeah, if the high school athlete took that approach and they really said, man, okay, if I watch film,

this will be a mundane thing I can master. If I sleep better, eat better, if they took every little mundane task and they took it seriously, they could get really, really good. Almost any average athlete could become really good and every really good athlete become

unbelievable. But you got to do those things. It comes with a price. A lot of those kids don't want to pay it and that's okay. That's why there's only a couple of Michael Jordans or one Michael Jordan and maybe the new guy LeBron. But you know

like you only get a couple. It's funny. The new guy. Iron but you know like you only get a couple funny new guy the new guy I've heard of him he just showed up last year he says Space Jam the movie right the new one you know we haven't specifically touched on hypertrophy like when I tend to think about like you know a skinny 14 year old who's just beanpole he's he's six feet tall and he weighs 155 pounds like I'm not really thinking about like raw strength with that kid. I'm thinking about just put slaps of muscle mass on him. And then he's obviously also going to get stronger. Like

to what extent do you focus on hypertrophy with your, especially your, your, your younger kids, even though they're all fairly young kids. Interesting hearing your approach. Cause I'm actually the opposite of that. I don't focus on hypertrophy at all. I focus on capacity and it happens within, right? So like for us, like we're going to develop stability, stability, strength is literally our, our, how we move up. Hypertrophy is going to come with capacity training. Like, like you said, I, I like to go low volume sets. I mean, low volumes, yet low volume sets and add sets to add volume i'd much rather do a 10 by 3 than a 3 by 10 any day of the week if i'm doing a 3 by 10 though it's for skill

development you need more reps within the set to feel things get fatigued but if you do it right and you do a lot of volume and you teach how to move this like you know how many dumbbell rows i see butchered every single day in high school weight rooms? Not knowing how to put tension in the lap. Elbows all flied out. Oh, here. Yeah, absolutely. That's something not talked about enough.

It's the bit over row. I know. It's the most messed up exercise. Yo, I see them butchered in college weight room. It's probably one of the most butchered weight rooms. Pulling it up to their chest. Yeah. So, like, when I'm in the weight room,

and I'm doing a dumbbell row way low like this, and they're like, literally, my baseball coach walked in on me training there was like what kind of row is that and I was like the right one like the right way to do it the one you should be doing yeah how to engage the lat but anyway if I teach kids how to create tension with proper lines of pull proper resistance profiles I teach that's all teaching and then they do five reps and you're smoked because you actually know how to train rather than just let me get the reps over. And my time under tension is barely any. I haven't put any tension on the muscle fibers. And if you put and think about how long we're

training, though, you know what I'm saying, Doug? Like I train a long time for three years and I just learn how to train and put proper tensions. And then we progressively overload. My kids turn around and get jacked. Yeah, totally. Like, immediately. Man, I've got a picture that we've gone this approach, and let me see if I can pull it up because I really want you guys to see it, whether you can see it well on my camera or not. And I know the guys, the audio here is not really going to be able to see it, but I want to prove to you guys what this looks like through one of my

basketball athletes who has been one of the most phenomenal athletes I've had over time, and golly, I hope I can find it. If not, we'll just move on. You do a really good job of talking while you're searching. That's interesting. Well, I have my own podcast, guys. I feel like that really is one of the – just the motor coordination to be able to actually locate musculature

and use it has got to be one of the largest things that you have to overcome, especially in the freshman, sophomore years. Like I just – when kids show up into the garage and do stuff, and you just go, can you like pull your arm towards your – your wrist towards your waist? And you give them like a three-pound dumbbell. It's just like flying around. Granted, they're super young, but then I'll have like nine,

ten-year-olds in here when I'm training with their dads and they do the same thing, like getting kids to actually slow down, to be able to realize there's a muscle there that you're trying to put tension on and move properly. I don't want to interrupt your, your search for. No, you're good. Yeah. I'm with you. I'm listening the whole time. Yeah. What is the kind of just the general method for actually controlling the the tempos and the speed at which people are doing this so that they have to go and um and at least try to connect

their brain to whatever muscles you're trying to train well i have a general rule i said we're either going to do things intentionally fast or intentionally slow we don't do anything in between like the whole half speed gets us nothing so when we're doing you are john francis yeah it's good so i'm like if we're doing any accessory work okay especially anything that's rowing because to me rowing is stability driven we're going to go slow and we're going to squeeze if we're going to go anterior and we're going to push we're going to explode okay we're going to go fast so especially teaching kids how to do face pulls band pull aparts rows anything that has to do with retraction okay scapular movement i show them the tempo that this is the standard i don't care what the card says you're going to go hold squeeze at the top and

you're going to go three second eccentric minimum no matter what i don't care what it is okay when we do chin-ups like everybody sees my chin-up protocols and go how you guys barely do chin-ups over three reps i'm like i know you want to try it with me and i'm going to smoke you because we're going to go up we're going to get completely closed bicep we're going to squeeze and really get externally rotated we're going to pause for a bicep. We're going to squeeze and really get externally rotated. We're going to pause for a two-second hold and a minimum three-second eccentric on the bottom. Charles Pulligan now. You got from Charlie Francis to Charles Pulligan?

Yeah. Yeah. I've got a lot of different influences that I've read over the years. He was one of my buddies. I'm hearing all the people as you talk. It's cool to see as an older coach coach to see younger ones talking about those things. So you've got that, right? And if you just learn how to train that way correctly,

the hypertrophy is going to come. And managing and all that and doing that is, one, teaching the standard first so they don't know other way. Everybody at your rack is helping you hold the standard and coaching you up and calling you out when you don't do it right, right? And then just make it simple. Stick with a couple of tempos. I don't introduce four-number tempos to mine.

I don't do that because they're like four O's, one X, what? They're high school kids, right? This is the example I was going to show you. Hopefully, you guys can see it well. This is a kid that's a two-year difference, okay? Hope you guys can see it. He's a basketball player going through sophomore year. On the left, little boy. On the right, man shit. Man man part of that's just growing up second is the kid loves to freak but that's

why i really wanted to like get your opinion on just let nature be nature and you just like you're just guiding nature to where it's supposed to go. Like the freak is going to be the freak. But if you screw the freak up in eighth grade, now he's all got these bad wires. You got to go back and redo it all. So like, let's just let the testosterone do what the testosterone does once it gets there, but allow it to be overloaded early so that we're creating an environment that's pretty chaotic and a little bit heavy and a little bit scary. So when you get that big shot of juice, when you're a sophomore, your brain goes, bam. Legal steroids. We got to figure out how to deal with this crazy ecosystem where strong matters.

And then they just grow. Well, work capacity in a sense is really, that's how you get hypertrophy. I think all the hypertrophy experts would agree that, you know, what you got to do is wherever your capacity is now has to increase, your body will adapt and you'll get bigger. So, yeah. I try to increase my kids' ability to do work. Like you guys got to be able to complete this session without getting so

nearly fatigued. And some kids, guys, I've got band kids that come in here. And after the warmup, they're like, cause I'm dizzy. I'm like, then go sit down. Let's hopefully try to get it next time. Like, seriously, I've got band kids that come in here, and after the warm-up, they're like, because I'm dizzy. I'm like, then go sit down. Let's hopefully try to get it next time. Like, seriously, like, you're done. You're done. Like, that's okay.

We're good. Look, and I'm not mad at you. Nobody's mad at you. Everybody's in different levels. You don't have the capacity to complete the warm-up. So next week, I'm like, let's get through the warm-up. Well, I would get dizzy blowing the trumpet, so it's perfect.

You know? You're in my, this is how I play music. I'm sorry if I keep making fun of guys that blow the trumpet. I'm sorry. If you're a trumpet player and you're offended at this, I deeply apologize. I mean, or the tuba or anything. Right.

I would get dizzy, I'm sure, so I'm just trying to say, hey, that's your area. This is our area. It's all good. No doubt. No doubt. This has been good. Yeah, Hey, that's your area. It's all good. No doubt. This has been good. Yeah, man.

I really appreciate it. I feel like, uh, I am like for, for so long, I was so interested in all of the performance stuff just on my own side. And now that I have kids and I'm around kids like in the neighborhood and I'm like watching them like progress as athletes and just humans and watching them move and um i'm sure everybody else is just watching their kid making sure they don't get hit by a car but i'm trying to see make sure their toes are pointed forward and picking their knees up really well um i uh dude i run i run drag races out front all the time it's the best who's the fastest kid in the neighborhood matters.

We don't play, we don't play bad games anymore. Play things like throw the football high. I really appreciate you having, having you on man. Is there any way that people can kind of find your systems? I'm sure there's tons of high school coaches out there just dying to find some way to build a program and do some of these athlete monitoring things. Where can people find you? Absolutely. You can find me first and foremost on Twitter is where I'm most active, and I love to respond.

I'll answer every single DM. I always reply at CLH underscore strength. You're going to find me both on Twitter and Instagram there. I'm way more active on Twitter. I have a website, CLHstrength.com. I've got a lot of products out that I sell. I've got a couple of things that are really big hits. One is my high school coach's guide to program design. That's an ebook that costs, shoot, I think it was 30 bucks. You can buy it. You can get my strength coach starter pack for 30 bucks where you've got an in-season plan, how to program

design, how to teach to clean all these things that come in in a little pack. They're super easy and available, low price point. You can get it easy PDF download. Also, if you struggle develop, like being able to deliver programs, because a lot of coaches spend all this time trying to write their program and how do you get it in front? I have an automated programming template through Google sheets that you can buy in a team setting where you can program for four weeks on it, assign your rack assignments. It creates a card for you immediately. You press print, you move, you stop spending time on a computer and you spend more time coaching. You can find all that stuff on my website or I tweet about it all the time.

So you can see it there. That's where you can find me. Um, and other than that, man, if you want to, you know, I I'll do this. If you guys, I'm, I'm literally an open book. If you want to call me my number 706 527-8008 i'm an open book bring it i'm telling you i'm in this business to help i give my phone number on purpose on purpose because i'm in this business to help coaches and i know that people have this persona of self-serving oh you have you have a podcast. You have a brand. Oh, you sell something? Ooh.

Like, you're just about trying to make money. I'm like, no, I want you to get to know me personally. I'm here to help you. Yeah. Absolutely. Coach Travis Bass. I'm just making money for sure. Yeah.

Money is great. Masterleague.com or you can go to Twitter at Masterleague, Instagram Masterleague Performance. Doug Larson. You bet. On Instagram, Douglas. Doug Larson. You bet. On Instagram, Douglas C. Larson. Cody, dude, I am super envious of your athletes, that they have you as a strength coach.

Like, for any of us to have a strength coach that is your level of quality and caliber in high school for all four years, and our whole team had that. What a blast. I was fortunate to have a strength coach, but it was kind of like me and a few guys, but it wasn't like the whole team the whole four years. That's totally amazing. Hats off to you, man. You're doing a great job. Appreciate it.

I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We're Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. Get over to Diesel Dad Mentorship for all the busy dads getting strongly in an athletic without sacrificing family, fatherhood, or fitness. And, friends, we're launching in Walmart over 2000 stores, which means that if you go into the supplement section,

performance nutrition, and you don't see my face on a box in that aisle, go to the one down the street. Cause we're in over half of the Walmarts around the nation. Uh, 21 day challenges on the shelves and you can come hang out with us. Just so exciting. It's so cool to say that we're in over half the Walmarts in the country.

That's insane. It is insane. Wow. We'll see you guys next week.