Today’s episode features Nick DiMarco, director of sports performance at Elon University.
With a thorough understanding of training loads, and the components behind transferable agility training, Nick has a unique array of insights he brings to the coaching table. As a former professional athlete (NY Jets and Baltimore Ravens outside linebacker in 2014), Nick is well versed in the intuitive aspects of what it takes to be a high achieving athlete. Nick is on track to finish his PhD in Health and Human Performance at Concordia University of Chicago by early 2020.
When it comes to agility and change of direction training, there are a lot of questions on the context and integration of perception/reaction work. At the end of the day, the more elements of sport we as coaches can engage and overload, the better, and this area of the field has exciting possibilities for transfer to athletes.
This concept follows up to the last show with Mike Guadango on the evolution of the strength coach and the sports skill industry as a whole: Where does the role of the strength coach in terms of reactive agility training fit in the grand scheme of things? How do we intermix the different layers of the Bondarchuk pyramid in terms of training transfer? Does “basic agility technique” outside of reactive stimuli need to be trained or considered?
Nick covers many of these concepts and more in today’s show, as well as describing his system of categorization of perception and reaction work. He also shares ideas on assessing the results of such a training system, which is a question that many coaches have when considering implementing the work and gauging their progress.
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
- Nick’s background in perception/reaction style work
- The categorization of perception/reaction elements in programming
- Nick’s take on the hard skill vs. soft skill argument in agility training for sport
- How Nick integrates the perception/reaction work into a training day and week
- What is Nick trying to overload in the perception reaction space that athletes are not getting in their specific sport practice
- How Nick’s perception reaction work fits in the grand scheme of sport coaching
- Assessing the results of a perception/reaction based program
Nick DiMarco Quotes
“We had guys who were great at a 5-10-5 or 3-cone drill, and then they would get on the field and were terrible football players”
“What are you trying to do in any field sport: you are either trying to evade a defender, or stay in front of an offensive guy and try to score or not let them score”
“(In regards to perception/reaction) We have a mirror category, we have a dodge category, we have a chaser category and we have a score category”
“You are never going to use that exact technique (of canned agility) no matter how engrained it is in you, when you are reacting to the environment versus a drill”
“(Regarding implementation of agility work in the week) With Tuesdays we’ll do a mirror category and chaser category, and then on Friday we’ll do a mirror or chaser category, and a score category.”
“The options in perception/reaction are limitless”
“In every sport the 1 on 1 situations are pretty critical so we’ll focus on that a lot”
“For basketball with your guards and forwards playing on the perimeter, if they can get more blow-by’s and prevent more blow-by’s as a defender, then that is a huge deal for them, so for them focusing on the mirror drills, and tight spaces (is important)…
“(In terms of training transfer, you are) trying to make the scenarios as close to the sport as you can, you’re not the sport coach, but at close as you can where it’s going to have some carryover”
“In the grand scheme of things, you are trying to get them to play the sport better”
“Guys can get so much better at the perception stuff, the agility stuff (in the offseason) In season we are just trying to figure out their bucket that those coaches aren’t, but in the offseason we are trying to make people better in their sport”
“(Jay DeMayo) kept track of blowby’s by their guards and forwards, and as a defender and an offensive guy, and they had more blowby’s on offense, less blowby’s on defense after they had been training agility stuff, versus the previous year where it was more program oriented”
“It would be interesting to look at, for football, missed tackles and broken tackles (as a result of perception/reaction/agility training)”
“We don’t give out a ton of testing data…. our vertical jump went up two inches, I don’t think it really means a lot, it’s just a way of justifying what we are doing as sports performance coaches”
“In the scientific community, there is qualitative and quantitive research. Why do people completely avoid the fact that qualitative stuff can work just as well?”
“If we are waiting for “evidence based” then you are going to keep doing the same thing forever”
Show Notes
https://www.instagram.com/p/BwXLpg9hJcM/
Michael Zweifel COD drill highlighting biomechanical differences with the introduction of a human stimuli
Chaser Drills
Dodge Drills
Score Drills
Mirror Drills
About Nick DiMarco
Nick DiMarco is the director of sports performance at Elon University, a position which he has held since 2018. Nick is a leader in the NCAA University coaching system in the realms of high performance ideology. As a former professional athlete (NY Jets and Baltimore Ravens outside linebacker in 2014), Nick is well versed in the intuitive aspects of what it takes to be a high achieving athlete.
With a thorough understanding of training loads, and the components behind transferrable agility training, Nick has a unique array of insights he brings to the coaching table. Nick received his undergraduate degree from William Penn, and Master’s from California University of Pennsylvania, both in the sports performance sector. He is on track to finish his PhD in Health and Human Performance at Concordia University of Chicago by early 2020.
Transcripts:
Nick DiMarco: Yeah the off season, especially if you’re dealing with football, is a huge aspect, January all the way up to August. If in that your time you’re doing nothing, because that’s what the sports coaches handle when they start in August, then you’re just missing a huge aspect of development because guys can get so much at the perception stuff, the agility based stuff and just making them better prepared to play their sport, come August. And then yeah, you turn it over to the coach. In the in season, we’re just trying to fill up those buckets that sport coaches aren’t. But in the off season we’re trying to make people better at their sport.
Nick DiMarco: So, what we’re trying to overload is the things as close to the sport as possible, especially as we get closer to those things. So we’ll start very general and then progress towards more game like scenarios, but our goal is always to prepare people to be better at their sport.
Joel Smith: That was Sports Performance Coach, Nick DiMarco, speaking on the integration of perception and reaction agility training, into a high performance yearly model. You’re listening to the Just Fly Performance Podcast.
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Joel Smith: Welcome to episode 152 of the Just Fly Performance Podcast, I’m your host Joel Smith. Thanks for being here today. And on the show for this episode, we have Nick DiMarco. He is the Director of Sports Performance at Elon University. You’ll notice a trend in this show, I’m always seeking to find people who are on that fringe of the field in terms of, finding new and different ways to integrate things that transfer highly to sports performance. And if you listen to this episode as well, there’s a talk of, are we strength coaches, are we physical preparation coaches, sports performance … On the coattails of the last episode with Mike Guadango, sports performance coach is probably the tagline that deals the most closely with the pursuit of finding high transfer things in your program.
Joel Smith: The world of perception and reaction in many ways, is probably the closest that a coach, a sports performance coach or strength coach, will get to what’s happening in sport, outside of sport itself. Outside of the exact implements itself. Obviously general physical preparations means are an important component of the job, but at the end of the day, talk to any season coach and that’s a pretty simple and established area. There’s a lot of hair splitting beyond that, as Mike went into last week. So, for this show Nick’s back … Well first off, Nick DiMarco was recommended to me by Cameron Josse who’s been on the show a couple times, works at DeFranco’s and is one of the youngest brightest strength coaches in the field.
Joel Smith: Nick DiMarco, also a young, bright strength coach, and Cameron had told me that Nick was just incredible at the integration of perception reaction agility and into high performance training model. Basically this ultimate synergy between the strength staff and the sports staff. How do we make that glove fit better in the grand scheme of things? I also think that there’s this trend of like, how are we evolving as a field? Are we going to stay hyper zoomed in on velocity based training? Or are we going to look up that Bondarchuck Pyramid, away from the DPP and more looking and thinking about what’s going on in those SP and SDE realms. Those higher transfer buckets, those things that make a little bit more of an impact of how an athlete operates on the field. So, yeah I just really enjoy these conversations, Nick has a really cool system of how he and his sports staff has classified different types of perception reaction based work.
Joel Smith: Which I think if you’re getting into it, it has infinite possibilities like Nick will say. It can be a very confusing initial venture. James Smith talked about a little bit of his categorization system, James of the US Strength, and I think that’s really cool. And then Nick is going to give his take. So I think as we learn about this system and this whole field, and as Nick mentioned this, it’s like an off season weapon of sorts. The more we learn about it, I think the better we can become at it, in being able to serve our athletes and give them tools to be better in the actual sport decisions they have to make. And be better in context of the decisions they are making.
Joel Smith: A little bit more about Nick as well. So he’s the Director of Sports Performance at Elon, he is a former professional athlete, having a stint with the New York Jets and Baltimore Ravens as an outside linebacker for a year. He has a great athletic intuition that has led him to his training methods, but as well as being a great intuitive athlete and now coach, he also is on track to finish his PhD in Health and Human Performance at Concordia University in Chicago by early 2020. So really a guy who is embracing both ends of the spectrum. So for today’s episode, we get in yet again to the topic of perception and reaction. We’re going to talk about Nick’s background in that work, what led him to that type of agility training for athletes. He’s going to get into his categorizations and his buckets. We’re going to have a discussion on the hard skill versus soft skill aspect. Basically the argument of, what is proper technique in agility if that exists. And is that something we need to train before we do more advanced reactive work, and how that all fits into the model.
Joel Smith: We’re going to talk about how he’s trying to overload the perception reaction space, when the athlete’s may not be getting that in sports specific practice. How it fits into the grand scheme of coaching, and we’re going to talk very importantly, about ideas assessing the results of all this stuff, because it can be very esoteric. And so, the ability to have some sort of tracking … Because we want to track with matters, it’s cool to jump higher and to lift more weight, but it’s also really cool, if you’re a team sport athlete probably more cool, to make plays on the field more often and of higher quality. So those are the topics today, overall just a great chat with a really smart coach in Nick DiMarco. So let’s get onto the show.
Joel Smith: So Nick man, it’s great having you today from … I know you told me earlier, but could you tell everyone else exactly where Elon is? Because I definitely had to ask you.
Nick DiMarco: Absolutely, no one really knows where it is. So, Elon, North Carolina, Burlington kind of wraps around it, that’s where I live. But it’s basically in the triad of North Carolina, so there’s Winston-Salem where Wake Forest is. You have Duke and North Carolina all within 45 minutes of us.
Joel Smith: Yeah, I was going to say, basketball tickets have got to be like … There’s got to be a few crickets I feel like. If North Carolina and Duke are both … Well I mean it’s expensive to go to those games, right? But the overshadowing effect is got to be massive.
Nick DiMarco: Yeah. They have a brand new basketball facility that’s fantastic. And the only game those really filled up for was when we played North Carolina.
Joel Smith: I’m sure the tickets probably weren’t quite as expensive as that North Carolina, Duke game.
Nick DiMarco: No.
Joel Smith: That was unbelievable man. Well hey, I’m super stoked to have you. I love digging into this world of perception and reaction, and maybe part of it’s because I live vicariously a little bit, because I work more in individual sports and I just like hearing how the coaching field’s getting progressive like that. But what peaked your interest in the world of perception and reaction style training, as opposed to the canned agility training work?
Nick DiMarco: I think just my background as a player. When I was an athlete and I went to college, I was 190 pound safety. Moved to linebacker as I gained some weight, and then eventually played D end. I got progressively, well not even progressively, I probably got worse as I moved to linebacker. And I was great at all of the weight lifting stuff, all of the change of direction. I could have a good pro agility, amazing three cone and then I’d get on the field and I just can’t react to a single thing that takes place. Verse, as soon as I played D end, which in football I really think the roles reverse on the lineman positions. The offensive lineman is basically a defender and the defensive lineman is more of an offensive attacking type position. The less elements of reaction that I had, the better that I was. And I don’t feel like I ever did anything really just to make me a better reactor, to where I could’ve stayed a linebacker.
Nick DiMarco: Same thing, working as an assistant training coach with football only, we had a ton of guys who were great pro agility. I would call it a 5-10-5, because it involved no agility. And then the three cone drill, guys are just fantastic at that, and then they get on the field and they’re just terrible football players. They can’t tackle anybody, they can’t react. It’s like we’re just kind of banging their heads training this change your direction work, when it’s not what takes place on the field.
Joel Smith: Yeah. The intuition element of it all is something I always think of a lot. I feel like all these ideas where it runs counter to I guess what’s commonly accepted. It always starts on the level of the disgruntled athlete, or the athlete who’s tried really hard to figure it out. Or who didn’t just accept everything that was thrown at them. And I just think it’s an element of movement that is a … I think it also just allows for tremendous … I’m sure we could talk about this at length forever, but it allows for tremendous creativity, and integration, and discussions on the level of the sports skill itself. I know the way that you categorize each of your perception reaction elements, we’ve talked about that a little bit before. So could you get into, how have you taken that system, so from your time as an athlete to determining this was important, to having a system of categorization? Could you take me into that, and the nuts and bolts of that?
Nick DiMarco: Yeah. So I mean, I just learned too, like you said, it’s through intuition that I was interested in, there’s got to be a better way to do things, but I wasn’t really a creative enough person to be like, oh here’s what needs to happen. But Michael Zweifel or Korey Van Wyk, Michael Zweifel’s BBA on Instagram and Twitter – They put out so many great drills and that spiraled me down it a little quicker and just having conversations with Cory, and just diving into it. But Shawn Myszka’s a huge guy who’s had a ton of influence on their kind of thoughts, but everything he says is just so complex. And for us it was coming up with very simple categories like, what happens in sport. And how do we make this very simple to implement with, if we’re training a football team, a hundred athletes and make it individualized at the same time.
Nick DiMarco: So it all started there, but Korey Van Wyk, he put out a great thing just last week of why not to do cone drills, verse why to do some agility work. And it was basically a gas meter almost, it was random, chaos in the middle and predictable. Sport is not predictable by any means, but it’s not just purely random either, it’s chaotic. And having drills that match that, so it gets into the perception action coupling or like the OODA loop, whatever you want to call it. But it’s basically, the brain doesn’t specify the behavior, the environment specifies the behavior. So it’s not like, oh run five yards and bang a right turn. And even if you’re a wide receiver, which is probably the most predictive element, the defender is still going to change the way that he defends you, so it’s, oh I have to release outside. Well how are you going to get there, and how are you going to get to five yards when you can turn right?
Nick DiMarco: So, there’s always a reactive element to it basically. So for us, it was Jordan Neiuwsma one of our staff members and then my entire staff. So, Cameron Ringstead, Grant Robinson, at that time Jake Niedermann and John Large, we all just sat down, hey what are our categories? We spent probably a full week just coming up with all of our categories, all of our drills for agility based stuff. And we just tried to boil it down as simple as possible, of what are you trying to do in basically any field sport? You’re either trying to evade the defender, or stay in front of offensive guy, trying to score or not let them score. So our categories are, we have a mirror category, we have a dodge category, which is our smallest one, that’s more for our offensive skill guys. And then we have a chaser category and a score category.
Nick DiMarco: So within each one of those, we just have a huge list, and the way that we’ll vary them, or progress them is through … You can change the start position, you can change the size of the area, you can add an entry into the drill, you can add an exit to the drill, you can add all of those combined obviously. You can add some sort of obstruction to the drill that they have to navigate around, you can change the rules or the information to the drill or you can just add people to it. And you could vary every single one of those categories, in each of those drills. So the options are really limitless, I think for myself coming up with a set category has actually allowed me to be a little bit more creative, verse when you’re starting from scratch, you’re like, wow how do I get creative when I don’t really know or understand really what I’m going for?
Joel Smith: Yeah I totally can see how … It’s almost like the barometer too, how open and how closed too. And then what are we trying to train, the fact that you’ve put them into general categories I think is really helpful. Especially for people just getting started too, who are just like what do I … If you’re a strength coach, there’s certain sport practice elements that you can’t have in the weight room or whatever [inaudible 00:15:34] too. So it’s like, you have to be really creative, and deliberate and methodical with it all. But I really like that.
Joel Smith: So one of the things too, is you mentioned the barometer with Korey Van Wyk, and I have to go look that up because I think that is really interesting. I also was going to say too, what’s your take on, and obviously you work with collegiate athletes, I’m sure this may change a little bit depending on populations. But this idea of … I know Jeff Moore mentioned it, hard skills and soft skills. Or like the ability to something on a basic level or what do you say? Riding a bike down a smooth path versus when you make it rocky. And so is there any sort of check offs, or movement quality check offs that you guys tend to have or do? Or is there ever any time where just a basic cut is coached versus free flowing? Or how do you guys roll with that?
Nick DiMarco: So even our … A dynamic warmup for us is very, providing autonomy, letting them be creative, a lot of perception action elements to it. Right before we go into our agility stuff, we will do some change of direction, but we’ll usually add a reactive element. So even if it’s just you and I facing each other and, hey we’re going to do a push and move step or a crossover step, bucket step. Which we’ll teach them how to perform those, but we’re not going to spend a ton of time on it. It’s not going to be like, hey you have to take a crossover step, it’s the most efficient thing ever. In reality, it’s whatever works better for the athlete to move faster, is what we let them … They can pick their movement solution. But what we’ll do, and just for checks and balances of going five yards to your right, and stopping in an athletic position, go five yards to your left.
Nick DiMarco: It allows us to at least prescribe a certain level of volume to each side, to where it’s not incredibly asymmetrical. Because as soon as you get into more agility based games and stuff, it is chaotic to an extent so you don’t really have an idea of how much work they’re doing on each side. But we don’t have a progression of, you have to be able to do change of direction very well before you go to agility, we progress the two in a completely separate fashion. So we’ll progress our change of direction work following our performance prep. We’ll do say, four to eight reps of some, what would look like more closed drills, to prep for our agility stuff. And we’ll progress those things and make the cuts more demanding, or the stops and starts more demanding.
Nick DiMarco: And then our agility, we’ll do the same thing. We’ll progress that from a one on one mirror dodge in a five yard space, to a three on three mirror dodge, where you’re reacting and sorting through chaos, in a ten yard space with an exit. So it’s very easy to progress those things, and I do believe in the soft skills, hard skills, I just don’t think that a great change of direction, correlates to great agility. I just don’t think the skill necessarily carry over, because you don’t hit the same positions just because you’re reaction to a different stimulus.
Joel Smith: Yeah I agree with you on that one. The only land sport that I train regularly, given my day job, is tennis. And so I spend a lot of time watching those guys. You could do a medicine ball throw against the wall, but everything changes if you’re moving towards the ball and hitting it, moving away from the ball and hitting it. It’s all going to be fundamentally different depending on the context and the direction you’re going. So then I’ll also watch them hit and change direction, and it’s almost like in my mind, the biggest thing that I just see that the good movers that the less good or the bad movers tend not to do is that, the switch. I think [inaudible 00:19:22] calls it the switch or [inaudible 00:19:22] calls the boom boom. Adarian Barr calls it remover place, so just that action in the change of direction is what the better guys can do. So I’m like, well there’s so many possibilities that you’re doing in your sports, so I just want you to be good at the switching and hopefully it can carry it’s way over.
Joel Smith: That’s more my mentality, I think maybe it sounds similar to what you’re doing a little bit, because sport is so chaotic. And it’s like we also have college level athletes where, I don’t know, maybe younger athletes might struggle more with soft skills. I feel like to get to university level, you probably have to have a pretty decent level of that skill to at least be able to get to where you’re at.
Nick DiMarco: Yeah. And there’s no doubt, there’s definitely people that are really bad at change of direction. And are they a liability on the field, if they don’t fix those things to an extent? Yes. But at the same point in time, they need to get better at agility too, because that’s what they’re asked to do on the field. So you have to at least prepare them for what they’re going to do in the game too. Can’t just be like, well, until he can do change of direction efficiently, he’s not going to do any agility work. Because the sport coach isn’t going to hold him out of practice until he can do change of direction …
Joel Smith: Yeah, no practice for six months for you. And it’s also our notion of what optimal is. Because even in going through the track and field world that I’ve been in for, as an athlete and coach, for over 20 years, which still I feel like is not truly a seasoned expert. But what I thought was right for just say sprint and acceleration, for about three quarters of that, I’ve overhauled and I don’t agree with that anymore. And so I almost feel like, in some level what I’ve realized in many ways, is the subconscious mind is really, really smart and I’m just starting to get down the rabbit hole like The Felding Chrise books and that, it’s just crazy right? You look at how animals move and all these things in their environment. I definitely lean towards, my natural inclination’s in definitely leaning towards letting the athlete problem solve, whenever humanly possible versus telling them specifically how to do something.
Joel Smith: Even if I’m just coaching someone for linear speed, I try not to give concrete cues whenever possible. Just create an environment where you can solve the problem, I know what I want to see in this linear space where there is no problem solving for the most part, the only problems you need to solve is beating the guy next to you, or girl. But even in that point, I still want to give as few actual concrete do things as I possibly can.
Nick DiMarco: It’s in your book, if I’m not mistaken, the 90 degree arm action. Or everyone has these perfect cues, and I think between you and Keir Wenham-Flatt, rugby strength coach, I’ve seen all these pictures of like, oh, somebody better coach this Olympic athlete. He’s in a terrible position, yet they’re running world class speeds. You can’t over correct everything that takes place and there’s no real cookie cutter approach to these very complex problems.
Joel Smith: Oh yeah, I agree. And it’s funny, even Matthew Boling, the sprinter from Texas who ran a windy 9.98 and 10.1. You got all these people hopping on the Instagram, if he just fixed this he would … No, go away, stop.
Nick DiMarco: Human beings pick the most efficient movement skill for them at that time. So like yeah, maybe if Charlie Francis stuff, he talked about the hips dropping on each time. Maybe if you strengthen the hip complex, you wouldn’t have that issue, but he’s not choosing those mechanics for no reason. He’s choosing them because it’s efficient for him, for some reason.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I also think that there’s the barometer of, even if there’s things that definitely, maybe concretely need to be improved, how we go about doing that … Just in being in the swimming and track and individual sport world for a while, those athletes who are … You know when you see them, those people who are just so over drilled when they were younger. Everything’s this perfect A skip with this perfect arm action, and it’s a position. It’s get to this position, get to this position, and you can see they’re really focusing on it. Those guys and girls never end up hitting their true performance ceiling, it’s just everything is too mechanical, it’s too ideal. The body didn’t get to self-organize like it really, truly knew it could. Or our subconscious mind, which knew the optimal solution over time.
Joel Smith: So, yeah I’m always just curious of the … That’s why I like asking people that question, because I just feel like I’m still growing a lot in what my conceptions and notions are towards an optimal system in the coached versus the un coached.
Nick DiMarco: Even the hard skills, soft skills, or Frans Bosch calls it the attractors and fluctuates or whatever nomenclature he uses. But it’s, we will do some stuff like that. We’ll do hurtle jumps, like jump over hurtle and catch and then go to … You can do the Mike Boyle bounce and then go truly reactive for really rudiment level skills, and then I’ve done variability. Land on a higher box to teach them pretension, things like that. A skips where they’re doing water bags and stuff, those are very easy things to go from a hard skill to a soft skill. When you’re talking about agility, I just don’t see change of direction as the hard skill before the soft skill. I just think it’s a completely separate quality almost.
Nick DiMarco: Michael Zweifel actually had a post, it was probably a few months back, he had athletes running forward and then reversing out a 45. And then he did the exact same kind of movement, but it was reacting off another person, and they flip a reverse 45 in either direction. And he had still pictures of the way that they changed direction on both of them, and they were completely different just because it’s a drastically different movement when you add in a perceptual element, verse, hey just go here and turn around. You’re never going to use that same exact technique, no matter how ingrained it is in you, when you’re reacting to the environment verse a drill.
Joel Smith: Yeah. That’s awesome. My list for show notes is ever expanding. Well and every time we talk, this stuff, if you’re in the car listening to this it’s like, okay I’m driving and I’m trying to focus on driving and listening, but I’m also trying to picture how this drill’s going down in my head. And what are the categories … I mean, I’m going to have to post a lot of stuff, which is good. It’s a good reference and it’s good for me as well to get more ingrained in these ideas and these things. But I think that is … I mean, that has implications I think for absolutely everything we do. Even stuff from the weight room to a level, I use Olympic lifts, and it’s funny. I’ll be watching an athlete and if they’re doing a snatch, and they’re catch position isn’t good, and I say something to them and it’s a good athlete with a shoulder mobility restriction. It’s like, they’re just self-organized and they hit the top the best they could.
Joel Smith: If I say something to them, they have to fundamentally work around their movement restrictions. I think that’s something that … In being in the inner sport in Jay Schroeder’s world a little bit, that seemed like it was all about just giving athletes more movement potential, in which for the subconscious mind to then go use in sport. And just freeing up movement potential, and letting them I guess, be yourself if you will. Which I was talking about with Mike Guadango a little bit ago, so yeah. It’s a cool world, and I’m excited to go see that one with Michael and them. I’m curious how it was different too. You know like, I would imagine if you reverse and it’s conscious, I think we tend to amplify movement more. Like hit a pre conceived position, maybe greaten arm amplitudes and things like that.
Nick DiMarco: I can picture the post somewhat, but I know the one’s feet was right underneath his hips, he had a little bit more of an open hip position, which is more, on paper, your great change of direction. But, when you’re reacting, I think he had a little bit of a wider base and his hips weren’t completely open. And then maybe you take an extra half step to get your hips open, and chase down. Yeah that’s something that you want to improve, but it’s also, a guy can go two ways. It’s not as simple as, I run in, I know exactly where I’m going.
Joel Smith: Yeah I think putting a person in front of you by nature, and this is something I definitely learned from Adarian, just even in linear sprinting, and I look at … And then I pay attention to it with how I play, when I’m playing basketball myself, is my steps are coming so much faster when I play a team sport underneath me, versus anytime … And I think even just sprinting in general, even just training the 40 or the 100 meters, we get carried away with as long as you can, as much force and as far as you can. But in reality, those steps got to come back. If you’re just floating in the air with both feet in the air, you’re actually losing time where your foot can get back and be pushing you again. In team sports, you’d be like, you’re done.
Joel Smith: I mean, you could say in the 100, oh well maybe I’ll be better at the end of the race or something. I know there is some research that you’d have a better 10 yard fly if you get a slow gradual lead in, then a max one, and things like that and I get that. But I will say this, I know for sure in team sport, if you’re doing some sort of push as hard, as far as you can and hitting a long position, it’s totally manufactured and it’s just not going to work.
Nick DiMarco: It’s just unrealistic. I think you’ve mentioned before, it was one of your podcasts I was listening to, that Bounce was one of the books that you had read, which is one of my favorite books ever. Matt Syed just talked about how he’s a world class Olympian table tennis player, but then he was at some charity event or something playing tennis. And he was like, oh give me a real serve, and he just didn’t even move. And you would think of those skills, if he’s good at table tennis, he’s probably good at tennis, it’s just a bigger ball. Those are at least closely related skills, verse just because they look the same doesn’t mean they’re the same thing. I think it’s the same thing for change of direction and agility. They look the same, but they’re completely different aspects.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I love that story from Bounce, it was … Just because you have to pick up … Something like in Tennis, if I’m going to return a 120, 130 mph serve, there’s certain subtle cues that I have to pick up on, almost before the ball even leaves that guys racket.
Nick DiMarco: Yeah, he talked about it as chunking. Same thing for these elite baseball players that are hitting 102, 104 mph fastballs, which shouldn’t be possible. I would just sit there and it’d be by me before I knew what happened. In Bounce, he was talking about the angle and the trajectory of the toss, they’re able to predict where the ball’s going to go, which is just so advanced compared to a novice who sees a 105 mph serve, and they just wear it to the face.
Joel Smith: Yeah. No, I’ve gone out with my tennis guys in the past and had them serve at me, just to see if I could return one. I mean I played when I was growing up I wasn’t good, but I just wanted to see if I could just return one, and I think if I just got my racket on it, I could be happy. Like, yes, I got my racket on it. That’s one of the things I love about team sport too. Being a track coach and working with people who do track year round, and then they come work with you, versus … Especially working D3, and you’d have people who would roll off the basketball court and then start doing high jump. And I remember in Division 3, there’s a guy who literally he rolled off the basketball court, I think the next week or two, he made practice for a week and then won the Division 3 National Championship in high jump. And that’s instinct based training he was doing, there was no coaching, no manufacturing of movement. Just pure jump.
Joel Smith: When I’m eating lunch, I was watching a 1988 Michael Jordan dunk contest, just because I like to see how people … No one coaches him into those positions, I just like to see how he creates movement for the outcome goal. It’s like, that’s almost how I invent plyometrics on some level. Okay, Michael Jordan did this and then he allowed his foot to go here in this context. And like, okay, isn’t that standard now for how we setup … I mean, obviously not every jump is going to be like that, he does a particular jump, but the mechanism by how which he created it I think is valuable. You get that from just being creative and playing basketball and letting the body self-organize, not because a coach told you to do a box jump a particular way.
Nick DiMarco: There’s plenty of guys who step in the weight room, and they’re those weight room type guys who can jump 38, 40 inches and then you ask them to dunk a basketball, and they just look like completely unathletic as soon as they have to move and coordinate with a ball in their hands.
Joel Smith: Yeah that happened to me when I was, actually when I stopped being a track coach … Well it really happened throughout my late 20s, but I remember when I turned 29 and I really got into a full on, it was almost a competitive program, where I tried to squat and clean as much I could. And we were measuring standing vertical increases too, and I got my standing vertical up to a pretty good place. It was 31.5 on the vertic, which is okay. It might’ve been about tied with my best, not a tie, but it was up there with my best I had done previously in my life, within an inch. But I remember I went out to … And I wasn’t playing basketball, I wasn’t really doing track work for about three months, four months, and then I go out to the court and some of the interns are dunking. I go up to dunk, and I can’t dunk. I’m like, what the hell?
Joel Smith: And it’s just because my body was just starting to move in just a pure closed chain, bilateral … There was zero like … And I’ve learned how to deconstruct and re-engineer a lot of this through working with Adarian. But like, as to exactly why I deconstructed myself, I think it can be very simple. Obviously just go play sports more, and don’t just live in a drill based, bilateral world, or that will happen to you. So, I forget where I was going. Okay balance and then something to do with … Man, I’m already off track. I had something cool to talk about, but I do like talking about this stuff, just because I think that, and any of the youth athletes will say it too, we’re over coached and we don’t get to play enough. But even I think with what you’re doing on your level, there is still elements of … It is still play, and you still are tapping into instinct. It’s like giving athletes a good environment in which to utilize instinct to make them better.
Joel Smith: More so, than still over coaching them at that point.
Nick DiMarco: Yeah. One of the things we do a ton of, is play, we call it agility ball. And so, say we start off two on two, three on three, and we’ll progress to more people and change the size. We have game rules that are taken from game changer, but we do it for conditioning purposes, and it’s basically just ultimate Frisbee with a soccer ball. So, if you get tagged, you have to throw it. As soon as you catch it you can run anywhere, you can always pass it backwards, but you’re just trying to score. And it’s amazing to just see the way that people move in a drill like that, and it’s also fun, they’re creative, verse, get on the line let’s run six yard shuttles. You’re going to get so much better intent and a lot more engagement out of guys, and it’s probably a little bit more relative to what you’re doing. So it checks off a lot of high quality boxes, but it’s just having fun and giving people autonomy and creativity’s always valuable.
Joel Smith: The longer I’ve been a coach, the longer I just … You see how athletes react when they get to have fun, and it becomes a game. And you say how their movement quality changes, like Michael was showing too in his videos. And it’s like, I think that’s part of the art of coaching, is noticing that. Being able to instinctively see how an athlete moves and operates differently. I think we’ve obviously all seen that athlete too, that athlete who maybe is a little mentally soft and maybe is dealing with an injury. And you ask them to do a sprint and it’s like, I don’t know. But then they go play, and it’s fine and it’s like they’re their normal selves. Not that every athletes like that, but there’s those two brains at work.
Joel Smith: I was going to ask you Nick, how do you integrate some of these, and maybe we can get a few practical examples too. Because again, I love talking the spirit of it all, and I know it’s hard to get into drills specifically, but maybe take me through, how does an average gym session … You guys will start with that type of work, does it fit in with …
Nick DiMarco: We always start on the field if we’re doing this stuff. We operate off of pretty straight up, high, low structure, that we’ve done for more field sports. So, Monday’s a low day, where we’re not doing anything besides a few, we’d call them potentiation sprints for Tuesday being our biggest day. And so Tuesday we’ll do some top speed work with our guys. Our skill guys and semi guys specifically. And immediately after that, we’ll go into our agility stuff, we’ll spend probably 20 to 30 minutes on agility work on that day. And then follow it up, or have within that 20 to 30 minutes, that agility ball game as our conditioning piece on Tuesday’s. So on Tuesday’s we’ll do a mirror category and a chaser category, and then on Friday’s we’ll do a mirror or chaser category and a score category. Within each one of those, we could have one drill or we could have a progression of that one drill through four different things. But we’re generally getting at least four to eight reps of each drill.
Nick DiMarco: And we’ll try to keep it to where, say we’re doing a mirror drill, we want the offensive guy in an offensive position and our defensive guys, in a defensive position. And at worst, obviously numbers aren’t perfect, it’s not a perfect world. For dealing with football specifically, you’re going to end up in the opposite roll if you play special teams, or anything along those lines. And it’s just valuable I think.
Nick DiMarco: So within one of those sessions, say we just started with a mirror dodge … And the easiest way is if you go on our YouTube can just look up any of these things by name, but if you click on agility we have the mirror category, dodge category, chaser, score, and every drill that falls within that. But so, say you just did a basic mirror dodge, five yards apart. I’m the offensive guy, I’m trying to basically juke you out and evade you, you’re the defensive guy, you’re trying to shuffle, crossover, whatever it is, to stay in front of me the entire time. And so, if we did that week one, that’s our most rudimentary drill, then within that session we’d probably progress with our older guys, but with our foundation athletes, we would stay with that drill and just keep it very basic.
Nick DiMarco: So if we progressed that, you could go to a mirror dodge guard, where I’m on offense, I’m doing the same thing defensively. You flip around and have your back to me, so it’s like a zone concept of basketball or soccer, where you’re always going to have an offensive guy around you that may be behind you and you have to locate him, and still try and stay in front of him. Or we could go one guy’s facing forward, one guy’s back peddling, and it’s a spring back pedal drill. There’s so many variations just by changing the start position. But, our last progression for that, just our mirror category, would be a three on three mirror dodge. Or you could expand it to any number you wanted, but if I’m the first guy in line on the offensive side, and you’re the third guy in line on the defensive side, you have two people in between us. And so it’s one verse three and it just works its way back, three verse one on the other side, to where you’re sorting through two people no matter what position you’re in, and reacting to your guy.
Nick DiMarco: So it just makes you sort through the chaos, and then we’ll do an exit off of it. So I can exit five yards to my right, or five yards to the left on the second go so to speak. So I say go, you’re reacting to me, but you’re sorting through two people. Second go, I go right, but the two guys in front of me went left, so you have to avoid that instinct to follow them and sort through things. But then chaser drills, so we’ll just do four chaser. Put people in a box, a ten by ten box, and stay on that guy hip the best you can. Score drill, we’ll just do a box, again ten by ten, this line is the goal line try to get past it without getting tagged below the waist. And we’ll do an arch entry, we’ll do random entries, or we’ll have … We have some other two options score drill, where it’s five yards away and then a 45 degree angle, we have two cones set up, three yards apart. And then in a completely separate area, we have two cones set up and those are gates so to speak that you’re trying to get through, or end zones, whatever you want to call it.
Nick DiMarco: And that guy has to defend two separate areas. But just adding different elements to it, and really it’s limitless. Just within our mirror category, we have 52 different drills, and that’s probably not even close to the number that you can come up with. But it’s just trying to progress in a way that makes sense to us, so we start very basic and then just complexity to, like I said, the start position, size of the area, entries and exits, obstructions or change the rules, change the number of people.
Joel Smith: I think when you were going through the types, I think dodge was one that I’ve … I forget if I saw this in Michael’s video, basically it just involves a ball getting thrown at somebody.
Nick DiMarco: Yep.
Joel Smith: And I decided one day to warmup, just use that for my swimmer’s warmup, and I’ve never seen that much excitement out of a warmup. It was like kids on a playground. Obviously we didn’t do that much, but the way that it engages athletes for this, is just incredible. I was going to say too, doing something … Even if you never went that far down the rabbit hole, even just putting athletes in a small box and having some sort of basic game based outcome would be an awesome, just warmup if nothing else.
Nick DiMarco: 100%. Like you said, in the dodge category, that’s one of the drills we have is taken from Michael. Which was, like you throw a ball over the shoulder, and he has to turn, locate it. Once he catches it and turns around, there’s three options for him to enter, and there’s two people and if they step into boxes one and two, then you have to go in three. Just simple problem solving stuff like that, is very hard for people who aren’t accustomed to doing it, and it’s very fun.
Joel Smith: Yeah. When I was saying dodge too, in addition to that, I think Michael had posted, or someone had posted, a ball is thrown at you like dodge ball style.
Nick DiMarco: That’s even better.
Joel Smith: That’s what we were doing with the swim that one day, but I was thinking too, how fun would it be to do the video of someone running … Do you run differently if it’s a person, or if a ball’s getting thrown at you and it’s like that defensive, how does your mechanics change when it’s a fight or flight, this guy’s going to hit me. To me that stuff is, it’s just all really interesting to me. Okay so, is there Nick, standard … There’s infinite possibilities in sport and in this type of work, but do you have almost standardized situations if you will, that are go-tos, to pick apart a little bit? Or is it all pretty rotating and free flowing through?
Nick DiMarco: So, basically in every sport, the one on one situations are usually pretty critical. So we focus on those a ton, and we’ll try to make the scenarios as applicable as possible. If we’re working with our lineman, they do a ton of just mirror work. So, offensive lineman, staying in front of the guy in a really close space, defensive lineman trying to get around him. Verse, our skill guys and semi guys, we’ll try and make scenarios more than drill. So like, here’s a … You’re going at this angle, the offensive guy’s running to his right, and you have a ten yard box. The ten yard box is representing, there’s a sideline, and if you cut all the way back across the field in football, you’re going to get killed. So, staying in that domain and making it to where it’s a realistic scenario.
Nick DiMarco: For basketball, it’s all with your guards and forwards that are playing on the perimeter, if they can get more blow-bys and as a defender, prevent people from blowing by them at the top of the key, then that’s a huge deal for them. So, for them focusing on the mirror drills and again, tight spaces or larger spaces, and any of the chaser drills, where you’re the off defender and you just have to be able to man up with a person. But try to make the scenarios as close to the sport as you can, again you’re not the sport coach, but making realistic scenarios to where it’s going to have some carry over.
Joel Smith: Yeah the integration of making it as close to the sport as possible is the one that’s fascinating to me. When I was talking with James Smith, you know strength James Smith …
Nick DiMarco: Yes.
Joel Smith: He had said, in his situation, high school athletes … And this being fundamentally different than yours. He’s basically living in a world where these middle school or high school athlete’s coaches are really dropping the ball, in the sense that they’re just running kids through all these Canned drills, and there’s no creativity. It’s almost like James has to basically pick up where those coaches are dropping the ball, and give these guys things that are going to help them. Now, in your situation, I’m curious how you integrate … Being in the university environment, it’s more of a high performance environment if you will, and you have conversations with the sport coaches. I guess my question is, I’ve asked this, it wasn’t in a podcast, but just an interview with someone who was working I think on the professional level, and they had said, well we don’t do perception reaction on my level, because I just leave that to the sport coaches.
Joel Smith: So my question is, in your level, what are you trying to overload I guess you could say, in the perception reaction space that they’re not getting with … Because they don’t have the specific necessarily, the ball I mean, [crosstalk 00:47:10], but what are you trying to overload? And how do you work with the sport coach with that?
Nick DiMarco: I just think if you say, well that’s the sports coach’s jobs, you missed me on that one just because it is their job end season. So end season, it’s not like I’m bringing guys in before practice and we’re hitting a ton of agility work. In the off season, your goal is to prepare them to play the sport better, and if you think the back squad is doing that more than perception reaction drills, then you’re just an idiot. If you’re taking the off season, especially if you’re dealing with football, is a huge aspect, January all the way up to August. If in that time you’re doing nothing because that’s what the sports coaches handle when they start in August, then you’re just missing a huge aspect of development because guys can get so much at the perception stuff, the agility based stuff and just making them better prepared to play their sport, come August. And then yeah, you turn it over to the coach. In the in season, we’re just trying to fill up those buckets that sport coaches aren’t. But in the off season we’re trying to make people better at their sport.
Nick DiMarco: So, what we’re trying to overload is the things as close to the sport as possible, especially as we get closer to those things. So we’ll start very general and then progress towards more game like scenarios, but our goal is always to prepare people to be better at their sport. That’s why we’ve chose an aim, whether it’s athletic performance or sports performance, I just like that terminology a lot better than strength and conditioning, where all we’re trying to do is back squat and be able to run 300 yard shuttles effectively.
Joel Smith: Yeah. So, with that it’s totally true. You think of the Bondarchuck Pyramid, right? And I think it’s easy to just put your head in the sand with that pyramid, but it’s true. The weight room, and I think Keir Wenham-Flatt said it, he’s like, if all we have is bar bells in the weight room then we’re really, I think SPE at best. Or the third one down from the top, CE being the sport, SDE is special exercises, then SP and GE, general exercises. In some sports it almost might be a GE classification, depending on what sport you have, collision or armor sport, whatever.
Joel Smith: To work your way up that ladder and get closer to the outcome. In a growth mindset, a true growth mindset, I do think that is the outcome, to not be satisfied necessarily. I mean I do think being as best as we can in our domains is highly respectable, and I’m all for that. But to have more of an impact up the chain, you have to get into that space. It’s almost too in a sense, if it’s off season perception reaction, and then you get into your full work weeks or in season. It’s almost like the same but different. Dan John talks about in Easy Strength, it’s like you’re not quite doing your sport, but you’re doing … It’d be like you do volleyball and then basketball, or you play basketball and then you go play football or something like that. Or football and then basketball, you’re doing similar skills, they’re specific, but you don’t have the actual sports stimuli too.
Joel Smith: I suppose maybe there’s something to be said about that, and that impact mentally.
Nick DiMarco: Yeah. Even if it’s like you said, the weight room just has minimal carry over compared to the on field work. If you had to pick one end of the spectrum, at least for me or anyone that’s somewhat intelligent, I think they would pick the on field work. We’re going to improve speed, we’re going to improve agility, we can jump, because speed will carry over to strength once you’re … If you’re a novice athlete, yes getting stronger is going to make your faster, you’re going to jump higher, etc. But those upper echelon athletes, the weight room … Like Mike Boyle of the CSCCa he was like, the weight room is basically to create body armor, and make people less likely to get injured. On the field is where you’re making people better athletes.
Nick DiMarco: There’s not a whole lot in the weight room, once you get past that initial stage of you can make anybody better when they come out of high school. There’s not a whole lot of transfer via bar bells, as opposed to, if you’re out there sprinting, there’s a whole lot of transfer. If you’re out there doing agility work, there’s a whole lot of transfer. Even like, you gave the example of the volleyball player that plays basketball. Or if you have football players who run track, and they play basketball on the off season, throughout their whole high school career, those people are generally so much better at sport when they arrive, than the person that’s like, oh, I only train football and then in the off season I just lift weights and I got to get stronger, this and that.
Nick DiMarco: They usually just really stiff dudes that can’t react to much, verse the guy that’s played basketball and he’s been in a whole lot of different scenarios, there’s definitely something to be said for that.
Joel Smith: Yeah just different reactive scenarios. That’s what I like thinking about. And that’s one thing I think hurt me as a basketball player, oh I did basketball and track, which is an awesome combo for being athletic. For me it was actually the decision making and the awareness and decision making that hurt me. My school actually didn’t offer football, but I think if they did … It was a small school, and it was just kind of … But I think if they did, it would’ve helped me a lot as a basketball player from just a decision and awareness perspective. Almost more so than track would’ve helped me as a basketball player on some level. My athleticism was not my linchpin at all as a basketball player, it was everything else.
Joel Smith: So, it’s just really cool to put that all together. I don’t know if there’s a good answer to this, Keir eluded to it and maybe some coaches are starting to see that with GPS, but the more maybe fine-tuned we get into it. I feel like I’m asking a question that almost nobody has maybe, but do you have any quality improvement classifications at all? Or ways that you can … I know intuition obviously, if you’re moving …
Nick DiMarco: Like quantifying …
Joel Smith: Yeah, quantifying the perception reaction. I don’t know if anyone does to be honest, I just thought I’d throw it out there.
Nick DiMarco: As a staff that was something that we tried to come up with. You have your 5-10-5, you have your three cone, which a ton of people have tested forever, but it just doesn’t relate to agility whatsoever. So, people have done the wide reactive test, which that just seems really hard to simulate effectively, and I don’t think there’s a single way on the field as a test with the sports performance staff, there’s a good way to do it. But I was actually talking to Jay DeMayo and he had some, what I would say quantitative data, they kept track of blow-bys by their guards and forwards, etc. And as a defender, an offensive guy, and they had more blow-bys on offense, they had less blow-bys on defense after they had been training agility based stuff, verse the year before was more program oriented.
Nick DiMarco: I think that is probably the most valuable statistic that you could possibly get, but I thought that was interesting. This past year was our first full year, because I got here and all we had was basically a 7 week summer session, prior to last year. But it would be interesting to look at for football, missed tackles and broken tackles. Because a lot of missed tackles aren’t taking place because the guy’s too weak to bring a guy down, they’re taking place because he’s in a terrible position because he can’t react to the guy. Same on offense, you’re not getting tackled because the guys just out willing you most of the time, it because you’re not good enough agility wise or perception wise, to avoid getting tackled by him.
Nick DiMarco: So I think things like that would be a somewhat valuable tool. But I think if you’re just waiting for, well we have to have a test for it, it’s not a test, it’s a tool, which was again one of Mike Boyle’s things. He brought up in the CSCCa talk, of that’s how he considered vertical jump is like a test, verse it’s a tool. Just train jumping and you’ll get better at the test.
Joel Smith: Yes, exactly.
Nick DiMarco: I think that’s the one thing that a lot of coaches, I think the biggest thing is blocking people from the agility work, number one is just ego and obedience. So many people are, you have to do everything perfect, I want everything to look exact and they’re so scared of just free flowing drills. And I think even with the classification of these four things, it makes it a little bit easier for those kind of guys. But then the other thing is, how am I going to let the sport coaches know that we got better when I give them their testing results? As for me, I really don’t care about testing at all, we don’t give out a ton of testing data. Here’s how we improved in this and that, and our vertical jump went up two inches, I just don’t think it really means a whole lot.
Nick DiMarco: I think it’s just our way of trying to justify what we do for a long time.
Joel Smith: Yeah, I totally see that. I was thinking too, I really like that blow by example. That’s something that’s simple, concrete and measurable. To find those points, I think that’s really cool.
Nick DiMarco: And what’s more specific to the sport? That’s as close as it gets.
Joel Smith: Yeah.
Nick DiMarco: When he said that I was like, oh that’s a genius idea.
Joel Smith: That is. It’s so simple, but it’s so profound. Because I mean, what would you rather have for stats. If you’re the head coach asking for stats on your guys, would you rather see how much their bench went up, or how less times they got blown by, by the attacking player. What matters more at the end of the day? I just think that’s really cool where that’s all headed.
Nick DiMarco: And even in the scientific community, there’s quantitative and qualitative research, why does everyone just completely avoid the fact that qualitative stuff can work just as well. Give out a survey at the end of each training session, or training cycle. Hey, do you feel like you’ve improved at your ability to react? Yes or no? If they all say yes, you probably improved.
Joel Smith: Do you need to research the P value to say that? I’m just finishing up Robert Greene’s Laws of Human Nature book, and it was talking about, the pendulum swings from qualitative to quantitative, to qualitative to quantitative, and I think we’re in the big sport science, big data cycle where everything is show me the research, evidence based. But I feel like, it’s just like this where it’s like, okay, learn to feed into your intuition and understand when you’re making a change and don’t have to rely on a research paper to tell you’re on the right track. All this intuition based stuff I think has maybe opened the door for the … Obviously I think sports science is good, I think it’s a good thing, but I think the door for strength and conditioning or whatever the term is, to use their intuition to create this thing that’s going to transfer and offer better experience is on its way. I think what you’re doing is a big feel for that.
Nick DiMarco: I mean, the data stuff is nice, and it’s definitely impactful. Like you said, there’s always room for something qualitative and just intuition. If we all waited for everything to be evidence based, which some people are, you’ll just keep doing the same thing forever, and that’s fine if you don’t really want to grow and have a growth mindset. But the primers, or potentiation, or whatever you want to call it, where people have been doing something the day before a game, now there’s finally research coming out 10 years later saying, yeah that’s pretty useful. And so all these people that have waited 10 years have missed the boat, because I don’t know, I never saw that in the scientific journals that that was a good idea.
Joel Smith: Yeah, that stuff is funny man. Hey, last question is, any thoughts of how the role of vision or vision training, does that play a role in you guy’s program doing this stuff? Or at least see where that fits in at all? Or any thoughts on that?
Nick DiMarco: I wouldn’t say that we do anything specific. But even within what you’re taking from a Michael Zwiefel video, when he spoke at the Northwestern Clinic, just within your performance prep if we’re doing a shuffle at even a slow pace or a fast pace, we just go O, D, guy. And teaching them how to chunk information, where to look, look at the guys hips, if they move, he’s moving. Verse looking at their upper body. We’re not doing any specific, true vision training, but things like that are kind of as close as we would get of, hey they’re going five yards, and you’re just moving, eyes on his hip the entire time. We do a forward drill, or a back pedal drill, where you’re just … If he goes at a jog, you go at a jog. If he stops, you stop, keeping your eyes on his hip.
Nick DiMarco: As soon as we get into our agility work, we’re basically doing no coaching, just letting them explore. But within our performance prep, we will actually coach and give ideas of how to chunk information together, what you should be looking at and more of those cues, but that’s probably as close as we get to it.
Joel Smith: Yeah, cool. I was just curious. This is a domain that I’m learning more about, but it’s interesting to hear if people are using that. I don’t know, I’m not sure how many people are actually doing the perception reaction, and then this formal vision training. I feel like that’s …
Nick DiMarco: Yeah. Because those lights, where it’s like, oh, I see a light and I hit it. But it goes back to the table tennis verse tennis from Bounce. It’s really not having any carry over verse if I do an agility drill, and I’m keeping my eyes on a guy, him and I learn to chunk information together, and I learn to just react better. Because it’s a skill like anything else, there’s no way you can’t become a better perceptual being by doing it. I think those things just have a lot more carry over, personally, but I could be wrong.
Joel Smith: Cool, good deal. I was talking a little bit too with the vision training, because I don’t really believe in those lights at all. I’ve never used them, but it doesn’t make sense to me. I was just talking more … It’s stuff I learn out of Z-Health, where it’s like your eye positions and … Kind of confusing, I confuse myself with that stuff all the time, I think it’s interesting and profound, I just don’t have enough time for it in my schedule to dive down that rabbit hole super far, but I think there’s a lot of interesting stuff there. I was just curious though how that all goes down, but it sounds like you’re doing awesome things today and man, I’m excited to get this together. Get a lot of shows with the videos and all the things you’re talking about, and it just sounds like you’re really on the cutting edge. Thanks for taking the time with us today, appreciate it man.
Nick DiMarco: No, thanks for having me, I appreciate it.
Joel Smith: Thanks for tuning in today for another show. It’s always great to be tacking onto what I consider shows, and guests that are really evolving and pushing the field forward. Finding ways to deliver service to an athlete in a way that transfers, and helps them to make the play better. It’s cool to be strong, but it’s also cool to read opponents and react accordingly. And being an athlete myself, who lacked a lot of the reaction ability, the assessment to be assessing the offenses and defenses, and all that, the episodes are just really cool to me and I enjoy doing them a lot.
Joel Smith: All right, so before we take off for the day, sponsor SimpliFaster.com. Supplies of high end training technology, massive appreciation to them as a sponsor of this show, so make sure you check their website out. Also, if you enjoy the show, please do me a favor, would really appreciate it if you left us a rating or review on iTunes, Stitcher, whatever you’re listening to. Finally, last I’ll leave you with my new book, Speed Strength is out. We actually have a bundle on sale at JustFlySports.com store. With my two print books, Speed Strength and Vertical Foundation. So, if this is the last thing you listened to, and you want a little savings on those two books, it is out right now for that, so we’ll leave you at that. We’ll be back next week with another great guest.
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