Today’s episode features sports performance coach Matt Cooper. Matt is a young performance coach on the cutting edge of the field, with influences from the worlds of Jay Schroeder, Marv Marinovich, Nick Curson, Garrett Salpeter, and Soviet sport science. He also has a holistic knowledge of the brain, nervous system, psychology and nutrition, and has a view of working with athletes in a manner that trains the “whole athlete”.
I first heard Matt on “The Bledsoe Show” and as soon as Matt started to reference the neurological approach to training that he uses, I realized that we must have a lot in common. Unbeknownst to me at the time of my listening, Matt was hosting a seminar in southern California with podcast guest, mentor and good friend of mine, Adarian Barr. With all this in mind, my conversation with Matt has been a long time coming.
When we look at the future of training, we need to look further than simply muscles and the weight on the bar, and Matt’s work is the epitome of looking beyond those things, into the nervous system, and into the brain and mind of an athlete. In this podcast with Matt, we talk quite a bit on his training influences, and how the work of Jay Schroeder (Evo-Sport) Garrett Salpeter (Neufit) and Nick Curson and Marv Marinovich (Pro-Bod-X) works from a neurological perspective, and how we can shape our own training with their concepts in mind.
Knowing the nervous system, and how it processes training is a key to continual improvement, and this is yet another installment in the Just Fly Performance Podcast universe that helps us to understand this amazing system, and its impact on training, just a little bit better.
Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.
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Key Points
- Matt’s background and influences
- How Matt is using ideals from Marv Marinovich and Jay Schoeder/Inno-Sport/Evo-Sport in his own training means
- The neurological pitfalls of a max barbell strength directed mentality
- Direct-Current neurological training and how we can understand the body from this perspective
- The evolution of barbell work in Matt’s system over the years
- Pro-Bod-X work and it’s role in Matt’s programming
- How a typical workout may shake out in Matt’s programming
Matt Cooper Quotes
“When you go too far down that maximal strength pipeline, you often will create governors and limiters on your brain, where for survival’s sake, to protect your joints the brain will rewire the way you contract the muscle”
“(Marinovich) would look at training more in terms of a tendon adaptation; you need to make sure you are training the tendon to store and release kinetic energy, and that’s something you can only train at the speed of sport”
“The deep squat position is one of the positions that is going to produce the most co-contractions and limiters on the body from a survival perspective”
“Someone can eat to express their nervous system”
“With the (Marv Marinovich) ball work, you are training your body to activate muscles in synergy”
“The ball work is more in the pre-hab and warmup, and some oscillation of it is going to be in the beginning of most workouts”
About Matt Cooper
Matt Cooper (Coop) is a nutrition consultant, strength & conditioning coach, and human performance coach from California. Driven by an obsession to expand human performance, Coop spends his time researching, experimenting, doing nerdy things, and building better humans in general at Stand Out Performance (Fast Twitch LA) in Compton, California.
Coop works with athletes and individuals-from developmental to professional levels-remotely and in-person to optimize their health, performance, and fitness.
Coop translates research, experience, and human performance technology to design one stop shop services and programs that address relevant areas, including nutrition, health, training, sleep, mind/body integration, the nervous system, recovery, and beyond.
Coop’s own personal journey began in athletics and fitness-until poor health and mental states befell him at an early age-this lead to him becoming his own practitioner and fuels his current work, marrying functional medicine and human performance to help others become superhuman.
- Certified Nutrition Consultant
- Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist (CSCS)
- NeuFit Electrotherapist
- Speed of Sport Affiliate; Certified Sport Performance Specialist
- Director: Wellness I Performance I Sport Science; Fast Twitch LA
- Director: Wellness I Performance I Sport Science; Black House MMA
- Consultant: The Third Wave
- Chief Scientific Officer, Ketone Score
- Over 1K Clients Helped (pro/developing athletes, individuals, businesses, addiction/trauma)
- Co-Author, The Ketogenic Diet: A Metabolic Manifesto For Dieter & Practitioner
- B.A., Communications; SSU
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