This week’s guest is DeFranco’s gym director of sports performance Cameron Josse. Cameron is one of the brightest young performance coaches in the industry, and at age 26 is one of the leaders in ushering in data-driven work on heavily resisted sprints for NFL preparation.
Cameron trained under Joe DeFranco as a scholastic athlete, and eventually joined his staff where he now works with athletes of all ages, including many professionals. Right now, Cameron is doing some of the most advanced speed training around for his athletes, which include a contingent of NFL vets and pro-day hopefuls.
Much of this work centers around what he is doing with the 1080 sprint based on the research of JB Morin, Matt Cross, and others on heavy loaded sprinting. Heavy resisted loads are quite a hot-button topic right now, as the research suggests their usefulness but there isn’t the practical case study quota right now to really make people jump in on it. Cameron is doing work right now in this regard and speaks on his exact methods at length on this potentially effective means of getting athletes faster.
Outside of this, Cameron is doing great work on “game speed” based training, which goes far beyond linear speed ability, and is very involved, dealing with lots of sensory and reactive aspects. Game speed is a relatively new paradigm in the world of sport performance that is of very high importance to transfer in team sport success.
Our talk today also ranges to vertical jump training and means of building the feet for optimal performance. Overall, this was an amazing talk, and most definitely worth the listen all the way through.
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
- Cameron’s background
- Utilizing the 1080 sprint with NFL veteran and pro-day athletes
- Heavily loaded sprints with the 1080 sprint, and applications for traditional sled sprints in the heavy-load paradigm
- Linear speed vs. “sport” speed, and all the sensory, reactionary and environmental differences within
- Cameron’s thoughts on the speed ladder and its effect on movement
- Common acceleration errors
- Special strength exercises for vertical jump development
- Cameron’s take on training the feet
“The 40 yard dash is pretty much the only (combine) test that matters”
“Studies have concluded that anywhere form 69-91% of bodymass should be on the sled for recreational or team sport athletes, and as high as 96% for real sprinters. That’s to improve the mechanical capacity for force at lower velocities.”
“The optimal load (for improving force) is found in a range of 48-52% of the velocity decrement”
“When I finally found the optimal training load, as an example I had two different running backs, one of them is a little bigger, he is about 220lbs, and his 50% max velocity fell around a load that was 74% of his bodymass, the load that was “optimal” for him. The other running back that was only 200lbs, his optimal load fell around 82% of his bodymass.”
“I’m going to start tapering my athletes down with the lighter resistance sprints directly after their work with the optimal load (within a single workout)”
“The 50% (max velocity) rule (for heavy loaded sprints) doesn’t work with split time. Split time isn’t as accurate as being able to measure maximal velocity, but it’s a step in the right direction”
“With jump work, you can get away with (heavy contrast training), you can do a heavy squat and follow it up with an unloaded jump, and it’s OK, but because of how technical sprinting is, that’s a big reason that JB Morin and those guys say that heavy sled work isn’t technical work, it’s specific strength work for sprinting. If you go that heavy, and then (immediately) go unloaded, you’re going to fall on your face like I did.
“It took them 5-6 seconds to run 20m against this (optimal) load”
“People ignore (sport specific, sensory, visual, reactive, etc. speed) because it’s hard!” “It’s not enough to get someone to sprint fast without any sort of reaction” “This stuff isn’t measurable; either you make the play or you don’t”
“What are the constraints in the game, and how can I alter those in training to get these guys more prepared… it could be as simple as the starting position that they are in”
“If you have two guys reacting to each other (in a reaction speed drill), it’ll always be different”
“I’m big on doing my best to helping guys self-organize (in sprinting). I try and put them in situations where you don’t have to give them a cue, and they figure it out for themselves.”
“Three acceleration mistakes in football players: 1. Arm action 2. Poor acceleration rise in light of anthropometry and abilities 3. Not using hip extensors to propel themselves forward”
“All three sprint problems can be solved using sleds and resisted running…. if they feel that resistance, now they have feedback”
“My big thing with special strength for jumping is a huge variation component. I like doing every type of jump I possibly can with these (NFL) guys”
“Win somehow, just find a victory in the day. It’s important psychologically that they’re seeing some kind of progress. I think that’s the importance of keeping measurements on everything too.”
“When we do our main lifting for lower body…. we get them out of the shoes for that, especially in the single leg work when we go heavy”
About Cameron Josse
Cameron Josse is the Director of Sports Performance at DeFranco’s Gym. He has worked with DeFranco’s Gym owner Joe DeFranco since he was 17 years old. As a former athlete in DeFranco’s training programs, Cameron was exposed to Joe’s unique approach to developing all the tools needed to succeed in athletics, eventually landing him on staff.
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