Today’s episode features speed coach and human performance expert, Chris Korfist. Chris is a multi-time guest on the podcast and is back for a solo-interview show where he gets into his recent developments in speed training, as well as a great conversation about mind-body concepts and their relationship to sport, and even life itself.
Chris Korfist has been a high school coach in track and football for almost 30 years, with more than 80 All-State athletes. He owns the “Slow Guy Speed School” that helps develop athletes ranging from World Champion to middle school. He has consulted with professional sports teams all over the world, including the NFL, MLB, NBA, and Rugby League, and is an advisor for Auckland University of Technology’s SPRINZ. Chris also co-owns the Track Football Consortium, and co-founded Reflexive Performance Reset.
It is always good to sit down and just have a great sprinting/speed conversation, as in so many ways, speed is a universal concept to us as human beings, regardless of our exact sport or movement practice. Sprinting represents the highest coordination demand output that the human body can do, and improvements in maximal sprint velocity are some of the hardest earned in training, but also some of the most rewarding. Chris has been on several of my podcasts in the last few years, but we haven’t had a true “speed training” talk since our first episode together around 4 years ago.
In addition to some great novel concepts on speed training covered on this show (such as asymmetrical sprint training and shin-drop methods), Chris also gets into a topic that may be more powerful and relevant for many athletes than particular speed training methods (although we want to do them all well), which is the power of the mind to impact posture, power outputs, sport skill, and attitudes of the opposing team. If you get all of the speed training right, but get posture and confidence wrong, one’s highest potential will never be reached.
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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Timestamps and Main Points
13:35 Updates and new ideas in Chris’s sprint program the last several years
26:05 Foot training, and how subtle variability can make a big impact on exercise outputs and effects
32:05 Using resisted sprint training to help technical elements, such as shin drop
40:25 Why Chris changed over from straight-leg bounding/primetimes into preferring flexed-leg bounding/flexed-leg primetimes
43:45 Mind-Body Training: The story behind saying “I am the Greatest!” before doing a sprint or jump, etc. and improving performance substantially
55:05 Mirroring in athletic performance
“I think in the (bent-knee primetime) position, it is going to be more appropriate to changing the lever, loading the ankle, and getting a more realistic toe-position (than a straight-leg primetime)”
“Where you walk on your knees and you try to crush your calf to your hamstring… that’s a great exercise (for sprinting)… We wear the LILA calf sleeves when we do those to bring the focus on picking the shin up”
“It’s a monster of a workout, when you just put weights on one (LILA) sleeve… you can put it on the same arm, same leg, and now it’s a huge core challenge”
“If I’m slowing down one leg, the other leg has to go faster”
“Kids would run faster fly 10’s when we put the (LILA) sleeve on one side”
“Change your toe position and do the (lateral line hop) and it’s a completely different exercise. The slightest variation in your limbs completely change what the exercise is. You are changing slack, distances, recruitment patterns, fascial patterns, and all that”
“I started pulling kids out of the start. So I am focusing on, do I have time to get that shin down if that’s really what I’m focusing on”
“We’ve been doing diagonal runs, where you keep your shoulders square to the finish line”
“You have to make the body give a damn to be perfect”
“You can’t cross-over (run) when you are doing a bent-knee primetime”
“There is a huge angular component to overspeed that I think everyone just blows off”
“These positive affirmations constantly drive your body into doing better”
“We repress everything (human aggression)”
“You are standing there like you are ready to lose, and it no longer becomes a game of “I can dominate you”, but rather, a game of “Who can make the fewest mistakes and eek out a win””
“One thing that’s really helpful is team breathing, our RPR breathing. You can look at the All Blacks doing the Haka before the game, they are yelling and screaming, but they are doing that together, and all breathing together”
“When you are standing in a superman pose, that’s a dominant pose”
“This day with phones, you should have your own highlight reel going”
“We are meant to be social animals, if we can go down to the basics and breathe together, we are all going to be in the same place”
“What is one thing you aren’t allowed to do anymore? Yell and scream. But it’s something that we are meant to do; we are repressed”
Show Notes
Diagonal Exergenie Sprints
“Chuck Berry Walks”
About Chris Korfist
Chris Korfist has been a high school coach in track and football for almost 30 years, with more than 80 All-State athletes. He has also been a strength coach at the college and high school levels, working with many sports. Korfist owns a private facility called Slow Guy Speed School that helps develop athletes ranging from World Champion to middle school. He has consulted with professional sports teams all over the world, including the NFL, MLB, NBA, and Rugby League.
Korfist has published research on sprint training and is an advisor for Auckland University of Technology’s SPRINZ. Additionally, he co-owns Track Football Consortium (@TFConsortium), is co-founder of Reflexive Performance Reset, and has discussed training in countless blogs and podcasts.
Transcripts
Chris Korfist: Or even change what your, your, you know, change your toe position and do the line hop, or like you had on Instagram yesterday, where you had your toe checked up and you’re doing single leg squats and you’re, and you re reformat, or what you wanted the foot to look like while you’re pressing up. And that that’s, that’s a completely different exercise. And people forget that, that the slightest variations in your limbs completely changed what the exercises, whether it’s foot position, hand, position, all that different stuff, completely changes exercises. Cause you’re changing s lack distances, you’re changing recruitment patterns are changing fascial patterns and all that, but I’m sitting there and I’m at whether I’m in Anaheim, California, or Las Vegas or wherever. And there’s 80 volleyball games going on at once. And he plays every couple hours. So I’m walking around and I’m just watching all these kids with this horrible body language, you know, and I’m like the most important thing is going on right now where you’re standing there, like you’re ready to lose. And it becomes a game of no longer of I can dominate you, but who’s going to make the fewest mistakes and eek out a win
Joel Smith: That was Chris Korfist. And you’re listening to the just fly performance podcast.
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Joel Smith: That’s simpli with “i” faster.com.
Joel Smith: Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. It’s great to have you guys here and we have an awesome show getting into the nuts and bolts of speed and sprint training today. And also the back end of this show is going to be loaded with a ton of really cool mind, body and confidence inducing techniques that I think you’re going to find really helpful in working with your athletes to guide us. Our, our guests in this discussion is none other than Chris Korfist. Chris has been a high school track coach, a track and football coach for almost 30 years has had a ton of All-state athletes. He owns a slow guy speed school and has worked in that firm athletes who are world champions all the way down to middle school. Chris has consulted with professional sports teams in a number of organizations, and he also cones the track football consortium and as a cofounder of reflexive performance reset, Chris has been a four time guest on the show and has talked about topics ranging from sprint training.
Joel Smith: As we’re talking about today, a to DB Hammer and inno-sport neurology based strength, training and performance training, as well as being on alongside Cal Dietz recently where he talked about French contrast, a French contrast adaptation to the traffic training system. Chris is absolutely one of my favorite guys just to sit down and talk about athletics with he’s a holistic thinker and innovative thinker. And despite the fact that he has been on a couple of times already talking about speed and sprint training, there is no shortage of sprint training knowledge. When it comes to talking with Chris, Chris is constantly tweaking his program, optimizing his program, finding the latest means and continually working towards the best possible model. And that’s the reason that honestly, we could have them on every year and talk about his program and we would always leave learning something new. And I always do when I learned to, or when I talked to Chris.
Joel Smith: So for the show today, the first half of the show, we’re going to get into some recent developments that Chris has been making or, or tweaks and optimizations in his own sprint training program. And a lot of these really within the last year of his program. And then on the second half of the show, we’re really gonna get into the mind body experience. Some of the things that Chris learned from Douglas Heel, some of the body posture and body language, ideas, and elements that Chris sees in his own observations of athletes. And to be honest, if you take, and if you really take the two elements today, sprinting and getting faster and confidence and mastery of the mind and the body, man, you have such a boost to your not only athleticism, but just the quality of the experience too. So it’s kind of two almost, it’s almost like two different shows in some, in some way today, but they’re both awesome. And I know you guys are really gonna love this. I love talking to Chris and I think this show is really going to help a lot of coaches and athletes. So let’s get on to episode two 15 with coach Chris Korfist, Chris man. It’s good to have you back. I know, I think you have a story about you. You are, car-less now, right? Aren’t you riding like a kick bike around, are you getting a good hamstring workout? What’s going on with that?
Chris Korfist: Yeah, so we have three cars, which in most families is plenty, but my daughter has taken a car up to Minnesota and she usually works during the day. She’s going to go to Iowa this fall and my son’s going to be a junior, but he’s had his license since December. And he has volleyball every day and then tournaments on the weekend, which I don’t know is legal or not these this day and age, but basically I’m a 51 year old person that doesn’t have a car. I have a license, but most of my days and evenings, I am Carless. So a couple of years ago, more than a couple of years ago, I stopped Frans Bosch was playing around with a kick bike and John Pryor told me about it. So I have become the kick bike master of Chicago. I am the middle aged guys zooming around on a red kick bike.
Chris Korfist: My record so far is 14 miles, which is pretty good on a kick bike. I did it in 40 minutes, but I go grocery shopping, go pick up burritos, things like that, throw them in my backpack. And I kicked bike around the Western suburbs of Chicago, which it may look easy, but kick biking as much harder than riding a bicycle. It’s your one leg is pedaling through. So there’s a ton of hamstring involved. And the other leg it’s like in this isometric squat position. So you can get low enough to get your foot on the ground. So that’s been my summer so far kick biking around trying to go get food or go get whatever I need. And it’s just awkward. Like I go to the wine shop, which is isn’t too far away, but I wear a backpack in my backpack. I got a bottle of wine and a burrito. It’s like, this is kinda messed up.
Joel Smith: Usually you’d see like a 14 year old on something like that, but it’s not often you see a 51 year old. How fast can you get? Do you take that thing through timing gates? And like, how fast does that thing go?
Chris Korfist: Oh, well I have these hot shots. Cause sometimes I just go out for the exercise and there’s all these trails nearby and you got these hot shot bikers with all their gear on. And I always like to wear street clothes just to make them feel bad and I’ll assume by the bikers. So I’m going to guess I can go 14, 16 miles an hour when I get it moving.
Joel Smith: Yeah. That’s a, that’s not too bad for non-motorized. Yeah,
Chris Korfist: But that’s a, that’s a, that’s a, a short burst to hold that for awhile. You get tired really fast.
Joel Smith: Yea h. I was just going to say, this is maybe a good segue into some things that you’ve been, you know, some recent sprint ideas and human locomotion ideas, but like the spiraling nature of things, right? Like you got one leg that’s has one job and the other leg has the other job. And I know you’ve been talking about the LILA, and some asymmetrical stuff there. So do you feel, do you feel like you get a little like spiraling action or how long do you go on one leg before you switched to the other? So you don’t like start running in circles or do you care? Like does it not matter?
Chris Korfist: Usually I do just because I get bored, I count to 10, so I do 10 pedals, but then sometimes I’ll go, all right, let’s see how many I can do on this leg before my isometric leg, the leg that’s on the machine or bike completely as burning and then I’ll switch. So something like that. And I’m usually listening to a podcast. So I’m doing that too. So I’m because to me there’s nothing worse than doing aerobic work. I think it’s just mind numbing. So between going fast on a kick bike, listening to a podcast and know worrying about crashing and which leg is burning more, that usually is enough to keep my mind off the fact that I’m kicked biking and it doesn’t get me too pissed at my children for taking all the cars and leaving me on a tick bite.
Joel Smith: I think life is interesting. We don’t have a car, you know, it’s it definitely I feel like there’s always something to be learned. I I was going to say, I will say as I’ve gotten older too, I, I definitely appreciate having a good aerobic system, but finding creative ways to do it. Not just running in one direction and all that type of thing so
Chris Korfist: That I did your a bear crawl pushup thing this morning. Oh, nice. And that’s hard. Oh yeah. No, it’s super hard.
Joel Smith: No, it gets, it gets tough. Like it gets, it’s like logarithmic, you know, like one, two, three, four, or whatever, but then it seems just, they’re getting five, six, seven. I need to come up with a way to make that more. Like, cause otherwise everyone’s going to get stuck at like eight, you know? Or you can just rest a really long time. Right? Yeah.
Chris Korfist: It, it, it, I thought it would be easier than it actually was.
Joel Smith: Yeah. It’s a, well, for me, I would do like if it was me and someone else doing pushups and it was like, you could either do two competitions. One would be just how many pushups can you do? And two let’s do that crawl thing. I would do way better at the crawl thing. Cause I get to rest and I’m way better at it. And it gives me a chance to like, you know, take a break and I have a little more aerobic and all that, the stick. So I think I just kind of a cheater way for me to make it look like I’m a little stronger, my upper body or something. I don’t know. I like it. I feel like it’s got it. I was thinking it’s like you do get like the gait cycle in between every bilaterals.
Chris Korfist: Yeah. I agree. I felt that same thing. I, you know, I think the crawling is huge. Cause you know, everyone’s locked down and we’re lucky because we have gyms in our basements, but it’s still, you know, you start cranking off pushups just for something to do. And you can, that gets a little numbing after a while and you can feel the impact that all right, great. I can crank off 150 pushups, but I’m not walking as well. And my shoulder kind of hurts now, what am I really doing here? Is it really important that I do that many pushups? Or is it more important that I feel pretty good after I do the exercise.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I was doing one of the last, like traditional strength programs I had done for a while. And ever since all the, like the lockdown stuff and the weight rooms have been a little more sparse. I didn’t have a barbell for quite a while, but one of the last programs that I was doing was just easy strength, just two sets of five every day, basically, or three sets of, and I was barbell benching every day and I haven’t jack. Yeah. I’m getting older, but I haven’t, I haven’t jacked my shoulder up that bad in a long time. Like my left shoulder was just dying after awhile. And every time I do those crawls, like, it’s just like, it’s all good. You know, you, it’s just a way to mitigate the same stress and your back and your shoulder blades being pinned, you know, of course too. And I feel like a cool way to do this is just my mind like where my mind goes a bit. I it’s bio, but like, I don’t know if you’re doing hexbar deadlifts this way. If you did a hexbar deadlift and did one rep and then walked like, I don’t know, 10 meters and did two or that’s the next one, I’ll see where that goes. The next time in the gym
Chris Korfist: Bill Holdsworth, when he did his presentation is to why are you deadlifting for athletic development? He made that point. He goes, you know, if we were meant to pick something up heavy and stand there, if you follow the principles of evolution, when you pick up something heavy and you’re standing there, you become a target. All of a sudden, some predator, that’s an easy target because you’re not moving. He goes, maybe you should pick something up heavy and take some steps. Maybe that’s going to be something a little bit more athletic or more usable in just in, in good feeling. Then just standing up with it.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I’ve always loved it. I get away from it sometimes, but I always, every time I go back and do like weighted carries of some sort, I always feel better. Like it just, everything feels better. It’s just, I was, I just like doing that. So that’s been a, that’s been, that’s always a good thing to do. And, and here so I know you’ve been up to some, I mean, shoot, last time you’re on the podcast. I think we were talking DB Hammer and more maybe training structure. I don’t know.
Chris Korfist: I think it was that me and Dan on together.
Joel Smith: Yeah. Or no, you and Cal was the last one. Sorry, but I don’t know what we were talking about. Yeah. I don’t, we weren’t, I would say I haven’t had like a real sprint, you know, true sprint conversation with you in a while. And so I I’d love to hear what you’ve been up to the last few years that, cause I know you’re always tweaking, always experimenting, always finding the new thing or updating, I should say you’re always updating to the next, that next level. And so what are some things that, that really, really updated? I would say in the last, let’s say five years in regards of how you see sprinting, should I make it too? So, I mean, yeah. You tell me
Chris Korfist: I did a lot this year. You know, because I have all the things to measure things and I’m never happy with my results. You know, I could be getting great results and I’m still not going to be happy. But I really started looking more at what’s going on with foot and ankle stuff. And changing shin angles, you know, something that Adarian Barr talks about. I don’t call it changing shit angles. I call it four foot rocker because that’s, it’s you follow the ankle rock or where the, the shins coming forward. And then at that last second, when the forefoot about the load and load the spring, if you want to call it a load to lever that’s really what we’ve been working on. So from a sprinter sense I don’t even know what I call them. We just call them, forgot what come, but there’s a walk in what we do is it’s kind of
Speaker 4: A lunge walk kind of thing, which you’re not actually lunging down. You’re basically locking your knees and trying to walk. And as that backlight comes forward, you want your shin to get as low to the ground as possible. And we didn’t do it. Why we do it with a band and it’s not so much that the band is causing resistance. Like you’re doing a pole, but it’s more to hold your body weight so you can become more comfortable in that position. And so you can find it, you can find where your foot gives out. You can find where everything’s happening and then to make it better, we’ll do water bags and water bags over your head and you know, different progressions on that. And that was, and then that progresses into Iran and we call, I call it a bent need prime time, because I think in that position, you can, I think we had this discussion during the early parts of lock downs where we talk about primetime runs and some people I come, some people don’t, but you and I both agreed that there’s a place for them somewhere.
Chris Korfist: And I thought, well, if I can bend my knees in lock those knees and go through this different cycle, I think it’s going to be more appropriate to changing the lever and bringing up that leg. I’m loading the ankle a little bit better and getting more hamstring, working, getting a better, a more realistic toe off position where your foot is actually a travel behind, just like you do in a sprint. Whereas at the straight like prime time, you just kind of bounce like a pencil. And that became a staple of what I did in my short track season this year, where we did that drill every day. And we progressed quite a bit in, we were getting into those runs, but what was cool about it was we had some pretty dramatic changes in our running form. I had two kids that ran under seven in the 61 kid ran six, eight, eight, and this is on spiked. We, we, we have a phenomenal, beautiful field house at Homewood Flossmoor high school, probably the best 200 meter track, except our superintendent who was an athlete played in the NFL, does not believe that we should tear up our trick by wearing spikes. So we have to run everything in flats.
Joel Smith: That’s nice that, that, that makes it hard to do like a feed the cat style that would, that would basically ruin feed the cats. Wouldn’t it? If you couldn’t wear spikes, I think that’s one of Tony’s rules. Yeah.
Chris Korfist: We do everything in flats and, but still six, eight, nine, six, eight, eight is smoking and flats in a 60. And that’s the same kid who last week he ran 10 55. And we stayed with that drill throughout the lockdown. Now during school time, I wasn’t allowed to see any kids state rule. So everything was by a Google doc and I put workouts up on a Google doc and they would try and go find a place to do stuff. But he ran 10 55 fat when legal the other day. And that was a basic staple of what we did. And that was a great, great workout. Another thing that I just started doing since I went through the Adarian Barr seminars with you every Monday at 11 o’clock, those were a lot of fun, unfortunately, only 12 of us there, but you know, it’s fun.
Chris Korfist: It’s fun to think through that stuff. I love those hamstring walks where you walk on your knee will be walk on your knees and you’re trying to crush your calf, your hamstring. I’ve gotten more out of that exercise then that’s a great exercise. What’s interesting is people, you know, I can do a lot on Nord board and all this other stuff, and you have them do that. And they cramp up like nobody’s business. And you’re like, Oh, if your muscles cramping, just from trying to squeeze there, you probably have a pretty dysfunctional hamstring going on there. Maybe we need to work on that. And then we progressed that into a where the LILA calf sleeves to do those it just to get a feel for picking it up. But then we’ll do we’ll do mini hurdle, Ron, this wickets through there with the focus of trying to bring that up. And then with a 10 80, I’ll pull you through faster. Now, if your goal is to bring that up, you’ve got to make that movement even faster to get it down just to accentuate it. And we got a lot of bang for buck out of that as well.
Joel Smith: So many hurdles with a cap to hamstring, like, like accentuation basically.
Speaker 4: Yes, you’re trying to create, I call it crush the grape, you know, you got a grape behind your knee. You want to crush it when you’re running through. And that was a great, those are two great things that we did this spring that I’ve gotten a lot. Well, it’s summertime, it’s almost school. What am I talking about the last since March, since February that we got a lot of bang for buck and which, which was exciting because we had, we were going to have a really good tracking this year.
Joel Smith: Yeah, no, it’s in listening to you talk about it and the results you’re getting. It’s, it’s it’s sad to think about, I mean, you know, hopefully that chance will come around here, but sad to think of what if, especially with how good training was going. Yeah.
Chris Korfist: But next year, hopefully everyone comes back except for our hurdler. So I’ll have my same team back and we’ll have a whole year to train and go further into some stuff. We also did a, we were talking about, I don’t know, Joel and I talked for an hour before we started the podcast. So we were talking about a, some asymmetries and running and things like that. And we did a lot of single leg, calf sleeves stuff as well. Just because there’s a million reasons why but basically the idea is if I’m slowing down one leg, the other leg has to go faster. You know, there’s, you start at the angular velocity
Chris Korfist: Of things in how the physics behind it. It’s a, it’s a monster of a workout when you just put weights on one sleeve. But I think our society is so concerned about being balanced and symmetrical and all that, that nobody would ever think of. Just wearing one.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I know you were saying, Oh, sorry, go ahead.
Chris Korfist: And then you can put it on a same arm, same leg. And now it’s a huge core challenge that I have to regulate. What’s going on in my torso while these weights are flying around in a few break, apart in your torso somewhere, well then you’re going to fall or you’re going to trip or something like that. So to me that becomes a really effective core workout because really we want the core to do some kind of stabilization is these four limbs are trying to balance each other out, but we know that there is a symmetry between limbs, that it can’t. So really it’s our core and spinals function to regulate and modulator so we can move well.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I think that, I mean, compared to trying to do stuff in the, I mean, you can do a lot of stuff in the gym, but at the end of the day, if you can do something to sprinting itself to get what you need, that’s where it’s at. And I, I was going to say I had a good experience doing a, it was like a Pulser in my left hand and like a LILA on my right. I remember that configuration one day I was like, this feels really good, but I probably would have felt a lot more court thick. That’s more balanced. Right. I probably would have fell off more core challenge if you will, if I would have gone that ipsilateral I imagine I could see that being a big, like oblique challenge to do that.
Chris Korfist: Yeah. And spinal too, because really it’s your paraspinals that are regulating what your hamstrings are doing. And when they’re challenged, you know, you can either increase the ceiling of what your hamstrings can do. Cause your body’s going to feel safer and learn how to put out more power when you get rid of all the weights, because they’re said, yeah, we’re, we’re good here. Go ahead. Increase power. And there you go. Yeah.
Joel Smith: You were saying Chris, that people were actually running faster with the sleeve on one leg. This is before we were talking on air, but that they’re faster.
Chris Korfist: I don’t know that you and I did an entire podcast before the fight.
Joel Smith: Yeah. You got, yeah. Everyone missed the, the re the real podcast. Yeah. I’ve had a lot of those. They’re always really good.
Chris Korfist: Yeah. I’m there. I can’t tell you what I actually did. Well, I’ll say I cheated. I I’ve. When I found out that kids would run faster, fly tens with the sleeve on one side, we would wear a sleeve on one side and I did this at, Mantini not at HF. We would put a 200 gram weights and pull socks up high. Just because it helped, if someone was really asymmetrical or you could put the weight in a certain position that you could get the flick to function better. That’s what we did.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I like, yeah. I mean the body, every time I watch people run now, I’m, I probably don’t watch the same things that most people like, I’m always watching. Like how has, how was the left hand doing something different than the right? What’s the little, like, what are the nuances? And then once I see that, I’m like, okay, now, what is the foot doing? That’s different than the other side. I mean, I just, I don’t know. It’s like the more you have to see, the more you realize the body one, side’s doing one job and one side’s doing another, and you can get a lot more out of it by exploring that with people. And so just trying to make everything as like robot, like, you know, I mean, there’s comes a point where it just might be crazy and not helping you, you know, and injurious, but
Chris Korfist: That’s why you measure things is because now, you know, all right, this worked, that was a dumb idea. And I, and I do that with my athletes all the time and say, Hey, let’s try this. Maybe this’ll work. And the kids are like, I mean, I think I might be able to get faster just by doing this. Yeah. Let’s try it and find out they’re all in. And when it doesn’t work, say as a stupid idea, let’s try something else. I’m all in. Yeah. Let’s go coach.
Joel Smith: Yeah. Just keep chipping away. I know that. I think I really bought into the asymmetry idea. And again, I think there’s a limit, but that’s where you, you do experiment and you see the quality of movement, but it was, I was doing 10, just 10 yard dashes. And I decided to, and I was just like, I was just pounding my head in the wall, stuck at a certain number. And then I just decided to try to intentionally make a, I mean, I tried everything, right. Like, and I I’m so used to it. And then I just, all of a sudden said, I’m just gonna make this one asymmetrical. I’m gonna go long off my left show off my right and see what happens and what do you know? I dropped the 10th just like that. And it felt super easy. I was like, okay, I guess this is what my body wants to do right now. You know, versus even I think I like mini hurdles of wickets, but I think even sometimes too much of that stuff for, to it just either to try to put the body into too much of a box sometimes versus letting it, letting it do its thing.
Chris Korfist: Yeah, that’s fine. I’d like to change them up. And you know, I think one thing that really helps and it can help change shin angle is as you put little mats out in between, so, you know, well, you’ve seen my driveway, I’ve got all different kinds of mats and things like that laying around and I can change the height or the density and things like that. That’s a huge variance because really your body’s feeling for stiffness on the ground and the density of the ground and what’s going on. And we’re just reemphasizing this great neural pattern down to our feet, which unfortunately for society, it is, everyone’s got shoes on and they’ve forgotten how to use their feet to run.
Joel Smith: Yeah. We live in an interesting times where with it, with interesting surface at various different manufactured surfaces, manufactured things you put on your feet. I, yeah, I totally agree with that stuff. And I love that. I love the challenge with the variable surfaces. Cause it’s like that’s a hundred times different than just doing calf raises or just chasing an arbitrary stiffness, you know, it’s like this full rounded proprioceptive effect. And yeah, I was feel like I get so much out of that even, you know, what I really love too, is the you and Dan had it. And one of the old that DVD, you had the want to get, you know, those workouts and yeah. Whatever the, yeah. Just tell us sample workouts and the one where you did, like, it was like fly tens and then the bounding and then the Australia bounding. I’m sure if you flex like now, right. And then hurdle hops and then a single leg line hop for like 30 seconds and drop seconds.
Chris Korfist: That’s a classic
Joel Smith: Love that I think that’s been my jam, like throwing those single egg line hops in there. Cause I just think about that even just lateral there’s so much going on just lateral. And I know you’ve like changed the surfaces sometimes and things like that to try to give that feet more sensory load for the next, the next round of work or high intensity,
Chris Korfist: Or even change what your, your, you know, change your toe position and do the line hop or like you had on Instagram yesterday where you had your toe jacked up and you’re doing single leg squats and you’re, and you re reformatted what you wanted the foot to look like while you’re pressing up. And that that’s a completely different exercise. And people forget that, that the slightest variations in your limbs chain completely changed with the exercises whether it’s foot position, hand position, all that different stuff, completely changes exercises. Cause you’re changing Slack distances, you’re changing recruitment patterns are changing fascial patterns and all that. That was one thing, you know, with all this time off, I think I talked to Cal deeds at least two or three times a day. I talked to Dan Fitcher two, three times a day, and we’re all coming up with all these different ideas about how to change things from neural sense. How are we going to change this? How can we change that to make it more interesting? And Cal made a good point. I said, you know what a great exercises go walk in the woods, but she can’t look straight ahead. You’ve got to go tilt your head and look at all these different ways because you’re tapping into your peripherals, tapping into your no, you’re hearing your vestibular systems. And now you’ve got to navigate through all this different stuff and really that’s what we’re meant to do and what people and people can’t do that anymore.
Joel Smith: And, and do it barefoot and walk on like all the twigs and all the little districts. Yeah.
Chris Korfist: That, that would be even better. It’s just, you know, poison Ivy or something. I dunno. Yeah.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I got plenty of that when I was playing disc golf and Wisconsin lacrosse, I’ve been there. That I was just say to you, I mean, I I’ve appreciated the both aspects if you’d like the proper reception and the stiffness. I think they work hand in hand. I’m not trying to downplay that at all by any means, but I just think I just liked the VR and like Boo Schexnayder or talked about it last time he was on the podcast, he said like proprioceptive, variability being such a huge thing. And it’s like, so often we just want to just force is the only thing that can improve the whole year, but it’s like, no, just change the environment a little bit. Let the body, give the body some space to work and, and give it some variety and give it some things to work from a sensory perspective.
Joel Smith: And let’s say that stuff’s underrated. Yeah. The web stuff was fun. I sometimes I don’t even know. Like, I’m just, I’m like, yeah, I’m playing, I’m playing with a, you know, a variation does feel good actually spring did feel really good that next day. So I like that. I’ll, I’ll keep that in my back pocket and we’ll, we’ll keep rolling with it or trying again. But if it would have felt bad, then I would have felt bad that I put it on. Actually I think I did post it after I had a good result the next day I felt good. So, but it’s fun to play around with the different, that different stuff.
Chris Korfist: Kelly and I count that are making a, working on something where it kind of goes with our PR, but just really basic simple exercises to make sure things are working. And when you get up from the exercise, you feel great and you don’t need weights or anything like that, but just basic movement things, whether or not on the floor standing up, but just so when you get up, you feel like, wow, I move really well right now. I feel great. And I think people my age and your age, we’re still into beating up our bodies, you know, bench pressing and all that stuff when really we should be doing exercises. So we feel great every day.
Joel Smith: I completely agree. Like, I mean, that’s, that’s like my emo now is after spending, you know, X amount of years doing a ton of like bilateral lists, not as heavy as many people, I was never that strong of a weightlifter compared to my elasticity. But everything now is like, how did I mess myself up doing too much, you know, deadlift or something, you know, neurologically and athletically in elastic, you know, my stride length going down and stuff and how can I get that back? How can I feel good? And, and I do like, I all, I only lifted, he was just a little high handle hex bar deadlift, just to feel some weight, but it’s never that much. And everything else is just single leg and foot try some stuff with the feet and let’s let’s see how we can get going on there. I want to dig in. Typically you mentioned those I’ll maybe categorize the three things too, cause I want to get to body language. I really excited to chat with you about that. But so if I had to summarize what you said, like you, you did shin angle work flex leg bounding, and then forgetting the third. I don’t know,
Chris Korfist: Asymmetrical asymmetrical work
Joel Smith: Asymmetric. Yeah. Yeah. So the, the shin drop one and me, I can get it. If you have a video, I can throw it in the show notes, but so basically like a band resisted a walk where you’re trying to be mindful of the after the foot plants, the shin falling forward.
Chris Korfist: Yes. so yeah, so their back leg is going to come through and you’re going to try and get that shin down as far as you can, while you’re trying to extend the hip up in the air, and then you’re going to fall into that position.
Joel Smith: Do you do, does that play in with like work on resist? Like if someone was pulling a sled or on the 1080, can they, cause I think weighted sleds. I was talking with Cameron Josse about this back a few months ago, but the idea of weighted sleds, helping at least some athletes are a lot put possibly to, to self-organize these things on their own. You’re like being more squatted, letting the shin fall to move it. Do you have any thoughts on that in conjunction with, with sleds or how to add that resistance?
Chris Korfist: I think what I do with my sleds as a primer is we do, I actually use my run rocket for this. We do, we call them shin down walks. So you’re learning to drive in. You’re trying to get your shin down, stay on the ball of your big toe, you know, inside arch and drive forward from that. So we’re going really slow learning that position. And then we’ll progress over the 1080 and you know, we go crazy on the 1080. In fact, one thing that I found that worked pretty good as I started to pulling some kids
Speaker 4: Out of the start just to get them to make any time you speed up, what’s supposed to happen. You’re going to learn faster sometimes. I mean, it’s kind of weird that the dichotomy is we can learn to do things really well, either going really slow or, but from a brain sense, you can go really fast where it’s like really chaotic and I’ve got to be perfect or else, you know, everything’s going to blow up. So that’s one thing that I’ve done is I like to pull people out of the start. So just so you’re really focusing on, can I, do I have time to get that shin down if that’s really what I’m focusing on it, that’s my one cue that I have that I’m working on to make it happen faster.
Joel Smith: Yeah. It makes it like with a star too. There’s so much going on, like JB Morin said on this show, like the robots can run, but they can’t accelerate yet. There’s just, there’s so much coordination going on. And so to get the shins drop in coordination with everything else that has to happen. Yeah. It makes sense that I think I’ve seen a drill that you did where you had, like, it’s almost like a weight pulling the athlete, like upwards at a angle. Like I like it was like a band and it’s pull, it’s almost lifting them. But it’s also, I’m trying to think of the setup.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I’m just, I’m just trying to de wait you so you can find where the body goes. Cause if you have to worry about your body, weight and gravity and crashing, if I can make you feel a little safer by making you feel less, you can learn where to put things. And I did that. I think that was hanging off a chin up bar where I’m trying to get a girl, not only to shoot her hips, but to kind of get out so she can step a little bit more behind her hip. Cause what’s the first thing you’ve seen. Every girl’s track meet. Their first step is horrible and it’s way out in front and they almost come to a dead stop on their first and their first step. So I’m trying to get them to project hips, get feet underneath and get your shin down so you can push.
Joel Smith: Yeah, I was. I remember you saying it works better for, I mean, I’m sure it works great for everybody, but female young female athletes need that almost more than anything. Cause they safety, you know, they feel like if they’re trying this, there’s so many, I don’t want to fall on my face alarms going off if they’re not that physically strong yet too. And to me that made really good sense for helping a young athlete with those issues get better at the things you’re trying to work on.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So they know where they’re at so they know it’s right. And and again, a lot of times, a lot of people like to use resistance to make it like the strength training thing, but you can use resistance to find, to take body weight away so you can find positions and really work on your technique.
Joel Smith: Yeah. That’s was, that’s a little similar, not quite the same, but Adarian had one day at the track of Adarian and I, he, I don’t remember exactly his setup, but it was something with the idea of doing a resisted run. Like if let’s say I took a run rocket and I put it up like on a five meter platform or something, and now the angle is different and using that to facilitate feeling shin drop. And so I had an extra genie which worked well and I really, that was like, Oh, that’s a cool way to play around with this resistance is just take the extra Genie and put it like three up four meters up. And now you have to kind of push your shin down just to get going. You can’t really do, unless you want to pop straight up.
Speaker 4: I started getting really creative with my extra Genie now, too. I was hanging it up, but it’s a guy he’s not a kid anymore. Chris Mang. He ran at Notre Dame and he’s got a girlfriend who’s trying to make the Olympics. If we ever have one again, she ran at Notre Dame and they came by for an assessment and one, Oh, here’s another thing I’ve been doing. We’ve been doing diagonal runs where you keep your shoulders square to the finish line, but you’ll start in lane eight and I’ll set the distance you end up in lane one. So let’s say you’re coming off sideways on your right foot. And I want you to get more through to the inside of your foot. We’ll do those diagonal runs. And so I said, yeah, Jordan needs to do some diagonal runs. You know, you can add a water bag. Well, Chris Christopher, his name’s Christopher I call him Chris, Christopher hooked up his Genie to the fence at this track, which I don’t think anyone has been on in months. And he videotaped it all. And he sent me the first video tape where she had to run diagonally with the extra Geanie on. And we all know you can’t adjust or you can’t really judge how heavy the extra machine is. Yeah,
Joel Smith: Yeah, yeah. It’s arbitrary kind of,
Chris Korfist: And every extra genie is different, but her first set, she was completely lost. Almost fell second set. She started to figure out third set. You can start to see her come through through that big, tall four to set, not only. And she come through to that big toe, but you can see the torque through her, through her shank, or she’s getting that drive down an end to push forward. Three weeks later, you watch her on film. It’s like completely changed. And she dropped her fly 10 time. I think she runs pretty fast, but this day and age, everyone complains about who’s time or, you know, whatever she runs fast she’s she improved in, which is really cool to see
Joel Smith: You’re listening to the just live performance podcast brought to you by simply faster. Yeah, I was at first, when you were describing the exercise, I didn’t quite get it, but as you were talking about, it’s like, Oh, I think this makes sense now. So basically if I have an extra junior or any resisted, you know, device, I suppose extra, it would be the easiest, honestly, based off just the free angle. But so I’m yeah. So starting in lane eight and I’m running towards lane one on an angle, but the resistance is kind of pulling me, it’s pulling me to angle. So I have to focus more on one asset yet. Like one. Yeah, I like that. I like that. That’s a, it’s kind of send you that video too. It’s kinda like, I’m like, I’m really into jumping. I’m really into like lateral depth jumps or depth jumps just with like a little even like the, you know, the Polis box SOPs, right? Like the lateral stuff that’s important and jumping. I mean, I think that’s a big reason that basketball players can jump well or volleyball. Like there’s always these lateral elements. It’s never just linear every single time. And so it’s cool. Put that into sprinting a little bit.
Speaker 4: And that’s, you know, that’s kind of a realization I came to is we’re so focused, especially in track and field on linear stuff that, that that’s all we train, but there’s this three D world that you can wait people down, pull them from, you know, overweight, one side, run diagonally all these different challenges that will improve your linear world. If you can convert it over, you know, go diagonally and convert that into linear. So I guess you kind of blow the doors off of everything’s even everything’s straight, you know, see what you got, move things around. Put I know one thing that John Pryor did is he strung together, Daisy chained a whole bunch of rubber bands and then put it around two athletes and they ran straight for a hundred yards while the rubber bands are pulling on each other and they call it you know, positive running, but it forced positive running just for fear of falling in getting sucked into the other rubber band you had to run perfectly. And so again, that’s the, the idea that, you know, you have to make the body give a damn to be perfect. Here’s a really shitty situation and you’re going to be perfect. It’s kind of like when you go to dinner with your grandparents, you gotta be on your best behavior. Same thing.
Joel Smith: I liked that analogy. It really, it makes you have to pull the body into something it’s not comfortable with and just, and still make it get, you know, get through the task. I even I would think, I feel like that’d be an awesome if you did like a, you know, four straits for warmup, like you did for one hundreds and you switched off every a hundred and then, you know, then you started your workout. After that, I feel like that’d be a, that’d be a pretty good one to get just the body out of its typical routine and proper receptivariability. Right. And just, yeah, that’s just a, it’s just it’s. Yeah, you’re right. As soon as you break out a sagittal plane land, there’s so much, you, you grow exponentially with all the variability and the options that you can present here.
Chris Korfist: And now every workout is different, but yet you’re going toward the same goal every time
Joel Smith: I love it. We were quickly alright, so I just wanted to touch on flex leg bounding really quick. And then I want to get into our the mind body stuff. So I, cause I’ve yeah, like that was a huge realization for me. I don’t even remember how long ago it was just one of those things. It kind of fit with. I think this was one of the reasons Squatty runs just caught on for me. So well is cause I was running over many hurdles one day and this was, I think before I even met a dairy and I was like, okay, I’m going to start running as tall as I possibly can. Like, let’s call it a five tallness and then I’m going to go the next one, like a four tallness, a little lower and then a three and then a two.
Joel Smith: And it was like somewhere between three and two, I felt super powerful. Just like glutes were kicking like really good. I was like, man, that feels kind of fast. So I’ve been running just, you know, only super tall this whole time. And I mean, obviously you need that stuff. There is, there is a level of tallness and stiffness. That’s obviously a really important part of it all, but if you force it, then you might get something different. So I kind of felt the same thing when I started doing the flex leg bounding compared to that just way more glute. And like you said that back that back part of it,
Chris Korfist: And I think what’s great about flex, like runs are so mine aren’t quite Squatty, but we’ve done Squatty runs over the many hurdles, but it, it does that. It it’s, you still have to maintain, you know, foot tracking. Like you can’t, you can’t cross over when you’re doing a bent leg prime time or a flex knee prime time or whatever bound or whatever you want to call them. And I think that’s something that’s important is that once you start crossing over, you can get into that Squatty run. You’re in trouble. You’re losing a ton of energy return through your hips. And again, another reason why I like that bent knee prime time so much.
Joel Smith: Yeah. It’s, there’s so much power coming through. Yeah, you’re right. You can’t, you can’t really do that. Bent knee primetime and have crossover running. Right. It’s it’s gonna always be pretty lined up.
Chris Korfist: Although I’ll find I’ll get my son to do it and see if I can get him to fall. That would make a good YouTube clip.
Joel Smith: Do you do overspeed, like bound? Do you do mess with that at all? The flex like bounding, do you like overspeed or resisted or diagonal diagonal? Is that, is that a pattern?
Chris Korfist: I haven’t done a diagonal, but we do it with, we do overspeed with with the exigent sleeves on, because if you think about it, if you set their hurdles up at a certain distance, the frequency has to be X, but if I’ve waited down that limb and you still have to make it through, I have to move that limb at a faster rate and still to make those timings. So I don’t crash or fall or trip.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I like, I like that. That’s another, almost outside the box completely thing. Like, you know, going to two to three, two, but then also it’s like overspeed, isn’t just in a straight line. It’s also angular. Yeah.
Chris Korfist: It’s angular. There’s a huge anger component to it, which I think everyone blows off and there will be a paper coming out soon that I’m not allowed to talk about by someone we all know that will be pretty mind blowing when it comes to that. Yeah. I can’t wait. It’s all I’m allowed to say. But I think he’ll want to be on your show when it, when it comes out. Yeah,
Joel Smith: Yeah. Otherwise this this recording, this tape will blow up in three seconds or something. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So let’s get to, let’s get to the body, the mind body, sorry.
Chris Korfist: The topic that, the topic that we were supposed to talk about.
Joel Smith: Yeah, yeah. The one that, and then the like the 10 minutes before the show, I’m like, Hey, let’s just talk about these two sprint things. And then we’ll, we’ll that? We’ll get to that. Anyways. All right. So mind, body, one of the things. So I’ll just kind of kick this off with what I’ve, I’ve shared this anecdote of years, plenty of times, but I’d love for you to tell it, but like I know, I think this was a Douglas heel thing and you, it was the, I am the greatest, right. And the vertical jumping. So can you tell me a little bit about that? The background, and then what happened with that experiment?
Chris Korfist: So Doug was CEO of Be Activated, used to come stay with me when he ran his clinics here, which Joel went to one. And there’s a funny story about Joel coming to it and breaking something at the place where you’re at. Remember when you threw the ball. That was awesome. That was awesome. So my favorite stories, but anyway he would have people come by and we had, you know, we’d have athletes come by. And the guy who came by was Jeff Salzenstein. Who’s actually a national champion tennis player played on the circuit. Now he’s a tennis coach and he does all kinds of stuff online. He’s got all kinds of videos for sale and he wanted to get his vertical jump up because according to tennis world, and I don’t know anything about tennis, the better your vertical jump, the better service you’re going to have.
Chris Korfist: And so we were working on it and so we Douglas reset him and jumped. And he, I think he started at 28 or 27. And then we went through the reset and he was up to 30. And then Douglas said, I think there’s a lot more to it. I want you to say I’m the greatest 10 times. And so he said, I’m the greatest 10 times. And went through and, you know, jumped, he got higher. And then Douglas said, say it again, but this time yell it. And so he did, it went up higher and we kept going through this cycle. And I think eventually got to the point where he was jumping 34 inches, seven minutes increase in one workout. And
Speaker 5: So the idea was that, you know, these piles
Chris Korfist: Sort of affirmations constantly drive your body into doing better. So your, your brain drives your body and your body drives your brain. I mean, there’s a symbiotic relationship between the two, it’s a yin and a yang. And I think unfortunately for most athletes, especially today we’re constantly bombarded by negative. And Jeff wasn’t, you know, Jeff, you know, whatever reason he was having, why he wasn’t feeling great or whatever, you know, I think Douglas just tapped into that. So we started doing that a lot with our athletes. Like if someone’s having a bad day, I instantly say, say I’m the greatest 10 times. The idea is you should probably say that to yourself all the time. And kind of had a funny thing happened today. I had a girl here really good triple jumper. She tripled jumped 40, 40.6 going in this summer, which is a good high school, triple jump.
Chris Korfist: I think she said she was number three in the country and we were doing vertical jumps and she wants to make it onto my wall, you know, on my wall. I have all my vertical jumps in my flight tens and she wanted to make it on the, for vertical jump for girls, you gotta do 28 to make it onto the wall. And she was at 27, six 27 four. And I said, Sam, the greatest 10 times. And she said it once. And then she got really nervous and looked around. Cause there was other people there and she felt kind of embarrassed or whatever. And I said, no, 10 times she did it three. And I said, well, that’s you got seven to go. And eventually she dyed it and she jumped 28, four. So she gets to go on the wall. But the idea that I think the way kids are today, they’re afraid to say something like that.
Chris Korfist: Like they think that there’s something wrong with affirming that I’m the greatest, or even having the thought that I’m the greatest shouldn’t we all be, even as you’re competing, you need to have the mindset coming in, that nobody is going to beat me. When I come to this line, nobody’s going to beat me on the court. Nobody’s going to beat me on the field. And I think that’s, what’s happening to our athletes. Our younger athletes today is, you know, and then I told her, well, you need to go on Twitter and tell people, this is what I did. She goes, I don’t want to do that. And I said, you do, you have to, you have to have these affirmations that, Hey, I’m not just some girl who’s going along in life. And I do a tic -tac. You need to let people know that, Hey, I jumped 40.6, you know, I’m here.
Chris Korfist: And so again, it’s this idea, this idea that we, I hate to say this, but I think it’s moreso women and girl, athletes, rather than boy athletes. But the idea that to step out and be aggressive in, be tough and step up to the line and go, you know, here I am is something that we’re missing. I have a good story about that. I had a girl, her name is Toni Kokenis. She’s a lawyer now and in Boston, but she was the four year starter at Stanford point guard back when they were really good. And I trained her all throughout high school she goes to Stanford. She starts, they make this the final four. And she got beat up a little bit. There’s some girls from Texas or Texas tech or some school down there that are Baylor. I think it was Baylor that really roughed her up a little bit.
Chris Korfist: And when she came home, we talked and said, Hey, you know, that didn’t look good. You got pushed around. You look like a Hinsdale girl. You know, hinsdale’s where I, she goes to school and it’s a really nice neighborhood, no white collar type thing. And I said, we gotta stop that you can’t, we can’t get into the final four and have that happen to you. So we kind of changed the gears a little bit. And I had her, I think you may have met him. He might’ve been at the be activated, but he’s an MMA fighter. MMA trainer was doing it before it was popular. And I said, you’re going to go train with them. You you’ll only see me once or twice a week, but you’re going to go see him three days a week. And she went out there and she punched and she kicked in.
Chris Korfist: She learned to get tough. And sometimes exercise is for that. Like if you go out there and you’re gonna just kinda bed a ball around a little bit, there’s never anything that’s going to bring you to that next level of aggressiveness, like going out and punching and kicking things and to get into tumble a little bit. And what don’t most girls do that are athletes. They don’t get into that, that realm. So I think with some of the girl athletes that I’ve worked with, and that became a thing, and by the way, she went out there and the next year nobody pushed around entire year for the rest of her career there actually, she actually got pretty tough and didn’t take shit from anyone. And I, I like to think that that had a lot to do with the fact that she learned to be tough somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. She, she had great basketball skills and stuff like that, but she didn’t have that, that element that I think a lot of girl athletes miss, which is I can kick your ass.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I think, yeah. A lot of that being cultural, I was talking with Rafe Kelley about that he does evolve, move, play, and like human sociology and exercise. And we’ve talked about that cause I’ve had female athletes. Do I, I got the point in formal strength and conditioning where it’s like, okay, I can do a typical warmup with all the regular movement prep stuff. Or we can do like this, these rough house end games, you know, and they loved it. But I mean, but it was kind of split. You had about a third of the group that just the girls that would love it. And they were like, they were like more into it and more aggressive than the guys even, and then about a third are right down the middle and then a third really didn’t want to do any of that stuff, you know? And so you could really see these clear like delineations of, of that. And especially God, these, these were swimmers and not like basketball or, but I think you would see the same thing regardless of the sport. You’re going to see a lot of Rafe said actually I think the group that was the, the most aggressive that he had was it was like, I think like a freshmen gymnastics, female gymnastics, or something like that, but it’s like, they have it in them. It’s just oftentimes just repressed and
Chris Korfist: It’s repressed and frowned upon. And the last thing any girl wants to be called is a bitch.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I I, I mean, I don’t, my, my daughter’s only four and I don’t have, you know, I don’t have that expertise, but we we rough house. Like I have intentionally a really rough house with my children a lot and they love it. They’re just, I mean, they’re always jumping all over me and, you know, and, and I like that too, as like rough housing and Rafe talks about this as a means, like that’s how I animals kind of talk to each other. They’re always playing and, and you know, you have dogs, I’m sure you see that all the time. And
Chris Korfist: I roughhouse house with my kids and my kids, rough house with the dogs. Yeah. It’s, I think that’s important, but, and it’s something that we get away from. We repress everything.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I and I, to the to your point with the, I am the greatest, and I noticed this, I remember, so I, you, I think you had told that story at the be activated. And then I went back and with my men’s swim team, we were doing Kaiser jumps, server, vertical jumps or something. Then I was telling him tell them all about it. And because I had done it too, like I remember, I remember that it was like, it was yesterday, I’m sitting there in the main weight room and I got a vertical jump mat and I had jumped like 29, two or something. So it was pretty poor at the time. And so I don’t remember, there was people in the cardio room just kind of doing their thing on the elliptical and, you know, no one was really in the way, but there’s some people around and I’m like, I’m going to try this.
Joel Smith: Like, and I didn’t, I didn’t do it 10 times. I just yelled at as loud as I could. Like literally everyone in probably half the building could absolutely hear me note without question. And then I jumped and I felt like, literally I felt like my body was just energized. Like just something different. I was a different person for that, like second and I jumped 30 to eight and it was just like, and I was like, okay, yeah, this is legit. And so I, then I had my men’s swim team do it. And I noticed that I just had them. I was just like, you have to yell at as long as you can. And you can just tell a lot of those guys are actually a, really, some of them were owned it and, and their, their outputs would go up. But some of them, like you could tell they weren’t, they didn’t really believe it.
Joel Smith: Like there was a disconnect, like there was it’s like something kept them. Cause you can tell if someone really believes it by how they say it, I feel like, Oh yeah. And if they didn’t believe it, they actually would do the same or be worse because it was almost like there was this cognitive dissonance. Like they don’t really, but the people who did and who didn’t care and just let it rip would get better. And so I always thought that was interesting, you know? And that, I think that probably means a lot too when it’s time to compete, especially cause I am to compete at the highest level. And, and you have to have this belief system of confidence.
Chris Korfist: Yeah. I mean, look at, look at look at the elite athletes. They have this elite confidence. I mean, whether it’s the same bolt or, you know, he walks out there and he owns it and you know, and if people judge him for that, he doesn’t care because he still owns it. He’s he’s above all that. And you see that with a lot of really good athletes, which is I’m here to do a job. I’m going to do these things to get that job done. And I don’t care what you think about me.
Joel Smith: Yeah. Yeah. Lebron James, or even Christian Coleman the way he walks out there, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s all, it’s like that. Yeah. Sorry. It’s my, it’s my track.
Chris Korfist: That’s great. You’re over there, but you won’t be there for long. I’ll be ahead of your year and all that.
Joel Smith: There was a, there was a situation last year where I had two athletes swim sprinters in the weight room and I told one and one of them was like who was a national champion? And the other one was kind of like always looking to kind of break through. And one day I actually told one of them. I was like, Hey, I was like, just what your job today is just to watch the guy. Who’s a national champion. Just watch how he walks in the room, watch how he carries it, carries himself, watch what he does, you know, just watch his posture. And it’s like, and then the person in, basically I make that. Yeah.
Chris Korfist: And you can break down that thing into another thing where you have that national champion swimmer into to motivate the guy who’s trying to break through and say, Hey, this is what we did at York, at least. And this is where Joe Newton- Stan ran over masters, but we broke down all of our workouts and we had different splits for different things. And basically you talked a kid into being a champion because you would say, Hey, look what you ran today. This is the same thing that Donald Sage ran. And Donald Sage was a multiple time champion.
Chris Korfist: He ran the same thing. You ran the same thing he did at the same time. And so you’re building these layers in that, Hey, look at this. Now look at him, walk like him. You’ve already done what he has done at this point. We just got to go that one little bit and you’re going to be there. And so you can use that to build up these athletes. And I think mimicking is probably a phenomenal thing to do because body language kind of dictates everything.
Joel Smith: Oh, I’d love it. Yeah. I could imagine if you had a group, like maybe you had a group of basketball players who wasn’t very confident and you’re like, I want you to walk like, act like LeBron James for 10 walk out, like you’re LeBron James, or, you know, something like that. I feel like that would have. And that’s what we talked about that on my podcast, assignment, Capen it was all about that. Like I think he had a a bit about a tennis player. It’s like, pretend like you’re an adult. Like, what does he feel like, what is it like to be him put yourself in his body? And I think that that’s I was actually kind of playing around with that. One of my w with I think that at one point they had shut the tracks down at one point near me where I was in Berkeley. And so I was just running the street and I was like, all right, what am I going to do running in the street? And I was just basically trying to be different, like people and have different, like, you know, just playing with just the different emotions at different times where I was successful in running. And, and that changes everything just as much as a technical cue in many situations, but it’s almost from like a higher order of things than even than even a technique.
Chris Korfist: It’s fed idea that made me write that article about body language and posture. My son’s a very good volleyball player does really well. And, and I go to all the, I go to as many tournaments as I can. My wife and I rotate who travels to wherever for whatever tournament, you know, I always said that I would never be a club parent. Yeah. That didn’t work. But I’m sitting there and I’m at whether I’m in Anaheim, California, or Las Vegas or wherever, and there’s 80 volleyball games going on at once. And he plays every couple hours. So I’m walking around and I’m just watching all these kids with this horrible body language, you know? And I’m like, the most important thing is going on right now where you’re standing there, like you’re ready to lose. And it becomes a game of no longer of I can dominate you, but who’s not going to make enough.
Chris Korfist: Who’s going to make the fewest mistakes and eek out a win. And so there was none of this body language that you would want to see in elite athletes walking around in these 80 courts of people. And if you think about who plays volleyball and that they’re good athletes and all that, but normally those are not your kids that are wrestling and playing football and stuff like that. So they’re not used to that kind of bravado or body language. They’re nice kids. They’re, you know, they’re not supposed to get in fights and things like that. But what if you put mindset into them where they could stand like they’re champions or they’re standing like they’re ready to go fight someone, how much would that change the outcome of the game? Cause if you look at volleyball scores, you could have a bad team and a good team.
Chris Korfist: And somehow the score comes out to be 25 to 21. Nobody ever really dominates. But what if you change the posture of all these kids in and put that out on the court and just how the other team would perceive that posture like, Oh shit, we’re going to get our ass kicked. Look at those guys just by the way they’re standing. And even my own son, who, of course he doesn’t listen to anything I have to say, but I’m watching him surf. And he does like this little mini prayer, every time he served. And I said to him, call you’re dictating yourself that I pray to God that I get this ball over the net. That that should not be the mindset that you have going on. It’s going to be this, thing’s going to come at a thousand miles an hour and no one’s going to return it. You know? So just, just with his mindset alone, it’s like, I’m praying, not the failure fail instead of I’m getting ready to dominate.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I, what is, so what are some things I know we’ve talked about mirroring mimicking imagery. Is there anything that like, if you’re, you know, if you’re the volleyball coach or, you know, you’re, I w I know I’ve seen you do stuff like throwing a ball and yelling, or, I mean, there’s probably a lot of things. Is it more one-on-one there are things you can do as a team breathing. Like, what are some, what are some thoughts and ideas?
Chris Korfist: And I know I don’t want to sound like a sales pitch person, but one thing that’s been really helpful is team breathing where we do our RPR breathing, because I think that puts everyone on the same page. I mean, if you look at the all blacks, what are they doing before a game they’re yelling and screaming, but they’re also breathing together and doing that all together. And I think once you can get into that mental state where you’ve brought yourself there and you you’re, you’re acting, you’re living as a team. I think that’s a good start. You know, one thing that Dan Victor likes to do, and I starting to agree with that more is standing at attention. When you’re standing at attention, that’s a dominant pose or a Superman pose. Any of those things where you’re telegraphing the fact that you’re a dominant person here.
Chris Korfist: That’s one thing I told Cole, of course didn’t listen. No. When you guys were getting ready to play, stand with your fists, make fists in your hands, because what you see someone coming at you and they’ve got fists, they’re getting ready to fight. That puts instantly puts the opposing team in a situation. Well, I can fight flight or freeze. What do I want to do? Most of the kids are gonna say, I don’t think I want to fight today. And so just by telegraphing or addicted or showing that body language, you are putting the other team on a defensive. Now with this day and age with phones and all that, you should have a highlight reel going. I think you should have your own highlight reel going. And I think you should find players that you want to mimic. So we can get into that mimicking phase where hopefully carries over.
Joel Smith: Yeah, I liked the, I liked the highlight reel, like the visual one thing that was interesting, that happened to me. I was at the Olympic training center in Colorado Springs this past year. And there’s this thing called the incline it’s Manitou Springs. It’s like 2000 feet vertical climb. And it took me like 43 minutes to do. And I was just absolutely dying. I mean, I, I don’t, I don’t have via aerobic engine was not very good when I was just one of those things. I mean, I do stuff like the more on what, like I’ve done a Spartan race on will and a 5K on will. And I made it, but this was a different animal. And I got to the top finally, and there’s a guy who was, he had his headphones in and he was like, you know, he was really going up the Hill and, and he got to the top and he actually, I started talking to him a little bit and he was listening to I don’t remember why I started doing this, but I used to like, listen to like motivational, like one hour motivation while you’re working out.
Joel Smith: And some athletes love it, some athletes don’t. But he was, it was called like, I am 13, if you YouTube, it’s like, I am 13. And it’s just like, I am strong. I am powerful. I am, you know, I am this and he’s listening to it as he goes up and he’s got just different things. And I always thought that was, that was interesting. I, I, I, my wife actually, I played it to my wife and she noted that the guy, when the guy is saying it, like, he believes it, like you can tell there’s not an ounce of doubt in there. And so I, I just, yeah, I think it’s all, it’s all interesting stuff. I was gonna say, tell me more about the team breathing. Cause I, that’s an interesting thing with the, the haka, cause I mean, most people know it, but I’d never really thought they’d about the idea that they’re breathing together too.
Chris Korfist: Kind of the idea of the team. Well, for us and RPR, it’s about taking you into a parasympathetic state and we’re meant to be social animals. So if we all do that together, which is the most basic thing we can do is to breathe. If we can go down to the very basics and breathe together at a fundamental state, we’re all going to be at the same place, which for us getting ready to practices, you know, bringing it down, being parasympathetic getting ready to perform or what we call performance breaths. And what’s kind of crazy is with my football team. When we started doing it, we did it at five 30 in the morning or five 45 in the morning. Cause that’s the only time we, you get the field house, you could feel the energy in the room drop, you know, and, and now kids who are, might be screwing around or doing something a back, everyone was together for that five minutes at a very basic level.
Chris Korfist: And so I think when you move it into the, all blacks with the Haka and all that, the next step is they yell, right? And so really from a recruitment pattern after you, you have your diaphragm going, you’re going to engage your SOAs for hip flexor and all that. But diaphragm and psoas actually share a similar part in the same part in the brain and they’re connected together. And so we tied in yelling with basic movements because we’d do a belly breath and then yell so we can engage diaphragm. And maybe so is when we’re throwing balls or doing something really basic where we’re doing one set of one type stuff. You know, you’ve only got one medicine ball. You can throw it that, that one time, but we’re trying to get into that fundamental movement concept and performance state at its very basic level.
Chris Korfist: And what’s one thing we aren’t allowed to do anymore. You can’t yell and scream, but it’s something that we’re meant to do a hundred percent and we become repressed. So I think when Douglas was here in Douglas used to do a lot of emotional work. That was one thing that, you know, I’m upstairs and he’s downstairs in my basement, working with people, you would hear people just randomly start screaming and it’s like, wow, that’s what’s going on down there. And then you would ask him, he said, yeah, there had all this repression and they couldn’t get to where they needed to be because they’re holding everything in. And sometimes just by yelling, you can let it go. I mean, if you think about animals, what’s the first thing they do. Like you see a gazelle, get chased by a cheetah and they survive. They go behind a tree and they go through this huge tremor reaction where they shake everything off. When dogs, you know, you’ve seen my dogs when they rest on someone gets their butt kicked or they do something stupid. What’s the first thing they do. They stand up and they shake. It’s almost like they’re shaking off, whatever just happened. And then they go, I get back to life. What do we do? Someone takes a picture of it on YouTube, puts it on there. And we’re humiliated for the next however many years because it’s floating around, out in the Instagram world.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I completely agree about the yelling thing. I, I jokingly put that kinda not jokingly. I think it might’ve came out as a joke, but one of my Instagram posts on things to do between running. And, but I, one of my, I used to me and my buddy Paul Cater went on a trail run in California’s California, like four years ago. And we just kind of went to a spot where there’s like, not really anybody and you know, maybe there was maybe there wasn’t, but just took turns of it’s like yelling at the sky and it’s like, that feels really good. Why don’t we do this more? You know, it’s just, it’s built into us as humans, I think to, yeah, like you said, we’re just taught to be like a quiet and nice and not appear angry. Like you wouldn’t wanna yell, like, you know, I mean, there’s difference between just yelling and being, you know, the angry, angry, but you know what I’m saying? I mean, it’s, it’s, I, I think it’s really important and very beneficial.
Chris Korfist: Yeah. I tend to agree. We had sprinters back when I was at York and nobody, you know, way before RPR. And I would have guys that would go to get on the line, you know, they’re getting ready to, you know, go everyone’s going through their thing. And my guy was pounding himself in the stomach and yelling and everyone would be freaked out. So not only was he putting himself in a performance state and tying it all together, but he was freaking everyone else out around. And it worked.
Joel Smith: Yeah. I remember, I think it was Tony that story or something like that, a toddler about, or someone was telling that how of your sprinter doing that and how it impacted her. And I was so freaked out, freaked out all the other lanes. They’re like they spent more time looking to see what he was going to do next rather than, Hey, well, I got to get set and go, Oh shit, what’s he doing? That’s over now too bad. Yeah. Yeah. Powerful stuff. I mean, it’s a good thing. It gives us all stuff to observe too. If you get a line of sprinters or a team coming out, everything. So what really good, good talking to you, Chris, man. I know we didn’t spend as long in the body languages I think, but we covered it. I think we covered it really well. And I love talking about the sprint stuff. So it was a really great show. I was really good talking to you today. Thanks. Thanks. It’s always nice to be on Joel.
Joel Smith: All right. That is it for another show. It’s always good to sit down and have a talk on speed training as always. I appreciate you guys appreciate you all listening. If you enjoy this show, you can help me out by leaving us a rating or review on iTunes, Stitcher, whatever you are tuning in on. I would totally appreciate that. All right, before we finish this one off, I wanted to give one last shout out to our sponsor. Simplifaster.com. They have been with us from just about square one on this podcast. So we’re truly thankful for them. You can support them by heading to their blog, their online store, and they’re going to get you the best of in each category of sports technology. If you’re looking for timing systems bar speed, monitors, force plates check it out, what they have to offer. Alright, that’s it for this show. We’ll see you guys next week.
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