CVASPS The Podcast

“We play to win but few receive a trophy. Take a look at your seniors, they are living trophies. Coaching is about winning but it is also about growing people. Be committed to the person that wears the jersey. Serving them through mentorship is the greatest reward of all." Matt Johnson via @StrengthCoachMJ on Twitter This My Thoughts Monday is brought to you by GymAware, the leading tool to measur...

“If communication was easy, then why are do so many misunderstandings occur?” In this weeks edition of the podcast I get to sit down with 2017 Seminar presenter Brett Bartholomew and discuss the tug of war going on in the field when it comes to the “Art vs Science” debate. After a brief catch up Brett shares with us his latest project, Bought In. After we get through where the course came from and...

“What I am trying to do is get theses extra workout to have a little more ump, to have a little more pop. For them to be excited to do more. Because again, like Mike said, if all we are doing is what we are being asked to do we are doing the same as everybody else.” This My Thoughts Monday is brought to you by GymAware, the leading tool to measure your athlete’s weight room performance. Learn more...

I had the great pleasure of having Dr. Christian Carter and Coach Willie Danzer on campus the other day to hang out and talk training. It was a great discussion for the afternoon. These guys are doing great things up in Harrisonburg, and I can’t thank them enough for coming down. This is the first (of hopefully many) discussions we will have here where we ask coaches the simple question: “What are...

“They’ve adopted the idea that I have that being tired is not the goal, being tired is the enemy. Once you start thinking like that you’ve drank the Kool-Aid, and all of a sudden kids will love your program. You’ll get every kid out, and they’ll be ready to play or ready to run.” In this weeks edition of The Podcast we sit down and talk speed development with Tony Holler. Tony is a chemistry teach...

“We need to take care of ourselves first, not selfishly, not even considering the idea of being selfish or not willing to put in the work. We need to take care of ourselves first so we can take care of our athlete’s even better.” This weeks My Thoughts Monday, Louisville’s Chris Hays reviews a letter that he wrote at the end of this tenure at George Washington University. This letter lead to a goo...

“We are seeing more and more and more how the research is really supportive of the fact that negative language can really perpetuate pain and persistent pain.” After a brief introduction Dr. Zach Gabor dives right into how he’s interrupting the latest work on pain science. Dr. Zach is a big advocate when it comes to understanding how vernacular has a massive impact on the perception of pain. Terms...

“Science is a way of thinking and it’s an approach to answering and solving a problem. It doesn’t necessarily matter if the scientists on your campus study exactly the research questions you have, but they may bring new insights and new lenses that can really support the things you’re doing and better help you better understand and help guide you in making training decisions.” University of Oklaho...

Coach Dietz was kind enough to sit down and discuss his latest article "Single Leg vs Double Leg Training: Addressing the Controversy" with me this week. In this discussion Coach Dietz talks about why he decided on this topic, how his oscillatory method fits in and how using Track and Field and Swimming athletes help show the validity of methods you use in training. You can find more on the oscill...

“In the strength and conditioning world we have to realize that everybody’s volume and intensity tolerance is slightly different, and we just got to get better at just recognizing that, and understanding that if we keep hammering away at some people they’re not going to recover they’re going to get hurt, they’re not going to progress.” Dr. Zachary Long sits down and discusses the role of monitorin...

In this weeks My Thoughts Monday I share my thoughts on how we, as a profession, need to slow down with our reactions to everything we see on the internet. This is something that's bothered me for a while. Let me know what you think. This My Thoughts Monday is brought to you by GymAware, the leading tool to measure your athlete's weight room performance. Learn more about "The Rolls Royce" of bar v...

“Coming from American football and into rugby and getting my mind blown with the conditioning levels that these guys had. Working for 80 minutes and carry a lot of muscle mass, and I thought a couple of the benefits of the flywheel were perfect for the conditioning effects.” Paul Cater joins us today to discuss everything fly wheel training. Paul starts out with us sharing how he got introduced to...

“Everyone talks about what culture is set to win championships, and here’s the reality of it, the best athlete’s tend win championships.” This weeks My Thoughts Monday brings us Robert Morris University’s Todd Hamer talking about culture, and what his thoughts are on it. Todd discusses how everyone’s culture has issues, just like everyone’s program has issues. This is a personal thing that each co...

“Having kids started this thinking because I wanted them to have access and I wanted them to be exposed to, you know, not just training, but enough movement as they’re growing up so when they do get older weather they play sports or not they want to be competent movers so they can go out and do fun stuff and not be stuck, hurt, or out of shape, or overweight or any of those things. So, I wanted to...

“If they can get work done in here and continue to grow that’s what we need to be focusing on as strength coaches, especially when times are tough.” It’s something that we have all come across, and if you haven’t at some point in the future you most likely will. Santa Clara’s Jeremy Golden shares with us today some ways he has helped keep his athletes involved in difficult times. This includes how...

“Your assessment, really, is never going to stop with us. We are assessing you as we see how you respond to the dosing and to the prescription of exercise that we give you.” Today we are joined by Tim DiFrancesco discussing working and learning in NBA, building a business, and relationships. After a brief intro Tim starts breaking down lesson’s he learned in his tenure in the league and how they a...

“Even if the perfection isn’t attained the outcome is decidedly better than just ‘good enough’” This weeks edition of My Thoughts Monday is brought to us by Michigan’s Katlyn Haycock. Katlyn discusses with us Jon Bowers TED talk (check it out here: https://www.ted.com/talks/jon_bowers_we_should_aim_for_perfection_and_stop_fearing_failure) on perfection that hit home with her. In the talk there are...

“To me, that’s the ultimate Litmus Test. If you got something in your weight room, or you have some sort of mantra. Go to your kids and say “can you recite that? And more importantly can you define it?” If they can’t, it’s an opportunity for you to step back and say, “ok, how strong is my culture? How am I trying to support the staff upstairs? How am I trying to create that connection so we are al...

“When you quantify something like sports, you have to understand that the statistical measure of how that quantifiable number relates to the sport needs to be done by someone who understands statistical measures.” This week’s My Thoughts Monday brings the return of The Head Strength and Conditioning Coach for Eisbaren Hockey Club, Berlin, Germany, Jake Jensen. Jake shares with us his thoughts on i...

“I think were we need to continue to challenge ourselves is, just because we are good at that, we may be good at the human side of it. We still need to be able to explain why we do what we do and teach up and teach down what we are doing.” Ron McKeefrey Today we are joined by PLAE Mac Performance’s Ron McKeefrey to discuss his travels and the lessons he’s learned through them. He starts by talking...

“That was something I learned early on in my career. When I tried to walk into a program and lay the hammer down and pretend like I was the one in charge, and that it was my way or the highway. That usually doesn’t go over that well, at least from what I found out.” In this week’s My Thoughts, Indiana Fever Head Strength and Conditioning Coach Chase Campbell discusses some methods he’s used for bu...

“Obviously you can train harder when your younger but the philosophy is the same, which is, where are you weak and how do we fix these area’s so you’re less prone to injury, so we can train harder?” Matt Wenning joins us to discuss programming and the direction the world of training needs to move. After starting out with a brief background, Matt dives right into discussing some of the issues he se...

Today's Thursday Throwback podcast is with Cal Dietz. In the conversation Coach Dietz and Coach DeMayo discuss the Sport Back Squat, how to implement it, some progressions to using it and different forms of exercises that Coach Dietz implements. I’d like to give a huge thank you to Cal for taking the time to have this discussion. Just live every other conversation with him, I walked away a better...

“I don’t believe we can completely ditch the intuitiveness of the coaches. You want to use that data to help you, maybe to give you more question than give you concrete answers. It’s a combination of intuitive thinking and data driven facts.” Mladen Jovanović sits down with us to talk about his experiences traveling the world as a coach in each corner of the world. We start out discussing cultures...

“Because true and always true are different things.” Val Nasedkin sits down with us to talk about readiness, preparedness, and sport mastery in today’s edition of The Podcast. We start up catching up with Val, and what he’s been up to sense we last saw him at The Seminar. We then discuss the differences between readiness and preparedness, what are the differences, why it matters? This leads up to...