Today’s episode features Doug Kechijian, therapist, coach and owner of Resilient Performance Systems. Resilient’s clientele includes athletes and operators from a variety of professional and collegiate sports, as well as, federal law enforcement tactical teams, military special operations forces, and those with a history of persistent pain and extensive surgical backgrounds
Before beginning his sports medicine practice, Doug was a Pararescueman in the U.S. Air force where he deployed throughout the world to help provide technical rescue capability and emergency medical care to U.S and allied forces. Additionally, Doug is the host of the “Resilient Performance Podcast” featuring a number of thought leaders.
Doug is introspective, humble, and transparent. His diverse experience and education, as well as his own practice of learning and reading has given him an wide lens perspective on many domains of the human performance sector. As a field (and with anything) it’s easy to make noise, or get noticed, based on extreme viewpoints, often talking about avoiding a common practice in coaching, such as “don’t squat”, “don’t lift weights”, “don’t internal cue”, “don’t do drills”, “don’t foam roll”, etc.
Doug is a coach who really makes me think in his drive to find the truth in things, and avoid the tribe mentality in coaching stances. In the spirit of that, I wanted to tackle some facets of the field that tend to be looked at in a black and white frame, but in reality are more grey, which is in the realms of rotational core training, self-organization and when to intervene in coaching versus letting athletes figure things out themselves unimpeded.
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View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage.Key Points
- Doug’s transition from the military to physical therapy and his approach to learning and growing in the field
- Concepts on core-bracing and anti-rotation versus a more fluid and dynamic view on trunk training
- Ideas on self-organization in athletics: when and how to intervene
“When you prepare to be good enough at a lot of different things, you recognize patterns and commonalities across these skillsets, across these diverse fields”
“When it comes to learning, people love formulas… but now I realize that learning is a lot more messy”
“There is always this range between being a specialist and a generalist”
“I think reading outside your field is what helps you to connect dots and see the bigger picture”
“Scientists and all us of want to prove certain things, and often times, just confirm our biases”
“If you don’t see the bigger picture, then that’s where we get these silos between strength and conditioning, and physical therapy, and sport coaches, and all of these things exist on a continuum”
“For most people, I don’t know if a palloff press is dynamic enough or challenging enough… you want to integrate that stiffness in a contextually specific way”
“I don’t teach people specific bracing techniques, because people do that stuff reflexively well, with the caveat that you’re putting them in a good position”
“We’ve made lifting weights way too difficult, it’s not calculus”
“Every intervention has un-intended consequences”
“If the key to rotational performance is to relax and get really stiff…. If that’s what we are really chasing from a rotational performance standpoint, if we are tell people when they do these activities to deliberately brace, are we inhibiting their ability to relax?”
“If you only have one way to do something, then under stress, you have no options!”
“I think it’s dangerous to assume that every movement that emerges organically is best for the athlete, because it might not be a choice, so you want to give people choices and at least give them the requisite foundational joint positions or motor skills, so when they do perform a complex movement, you give them a choice so to speak and they are not doing it out of necessity”
“There’s always a fine line in sport, in what makes people good can also put their health at risk”
“The only way to drive our professions forward is ask “what are you actually doing”. Transparency is the key to driving the field forward”
“That’s’ what our social media incentivizes right now, everything is a competition for attention, and it’s easier to get attention when you take an extreme position… I don’t think the current way we disseminate and share information right now is conducive to advancing the profession”
About Doug Kechijian
Doug Kechijian is a physical therapist and CEO and co-founder of Resilient Performance Systems. Resilient seeks to systematically explore the continuum between acute rehabilitation and athletic performance. Resilient’s clientele includes athletes and operators from Major League Baseball (MLB), National Basketball Association (NBA), professional mixed martial arts, X Games, Winter and Summer Olympics, Major League Lacrosse (MLL), National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), federal law enforcement tactical teams, military special operations forces, and those with a history of persistent pain and extensive surgical backgrounds. Resilient also advises organizations about medical and performance staffing, program development, and injury risk mitigation strategies.
Before beginning his sports medicine practice, Doug was a Pararescueman in the U.S. Air force where he deployed throughout the world to help provide technical rescue capability and emergency medical care to U.S and allied forces. He is a nationally certified paramedic with advanced training in emergency, trauma, and wilderness medicine. In 2015, he was selected as one of the U.S. Air Force’s Outstanding Airmen of the Year.
Doug received his AB in Biology from Brown University and MA in Exercise Physiology/Doctor of Physical Therapy from Columbia University.
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