This week’s guest is Adam Feit, Director of Sports Performance for Reach Your Potential Training (RYPT) and master class coach at Precision Nutrition. Adam has worked at every level of physical preparation, from youth up to the professional level. He also created the Complete Jumps Training System for coaches.
I had heard of Adam, not only through the Complete Jumps product, but also through Ken Clark’s mentioning of the unique speed training approach at RYPT, as well as seeing great tweets on Adam’s coaching ideas down at a seminar at ALTIS.
This podcast revolves around Adam’s philosophies on speed and jump development, particularly in young athletes. Many of my guests are high-level track and field coaches, or performance coaches who work largely with collegiate and professional athletes. Adam has not only that experience, but also has years of training developmental athletes. As Curtis Taylor of Oregon mentioned in a previous podcast, the more age groups in the sport you can work with, the better coach you become.
Adam is a great guy to talk to about jump training. After doing a podcast with Lee Taft, and looking more into everything Lee does on speed (have an intimate understanding of game movement, and build that outward into speed work), it makes good sense to take the same care with jumping and its relation to team sport movement. One of Adam’s unique exercise models is in the realm of hybrid jump training, which unlocks a new world of physical prep possibility.
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:
- Adam’s background in the coaching field
- Approaches to teaching acceleration and speed to young athletes
- The value of training top-end speed for team sport athletes
- The biggest need in jump training in athletic populations
- Progressing an athlete from absorbing force to reactive plyometrics
- Hybrid jump training, and its role in team sport training
- Adam’s top three exercises to improve vertical jump in high school athletes
“We focus so much on acceleration, but we neglect to train body position”
“The biggest need in jump training for youth athletes is absorption of force and eccentric control. When it comes to jumping, it is their ability to land from that jump”
“In our speed program, whether it’s a linear lateral or multi directional day, we’re always going to end with some element of training with a reactive base, or chaotic base, or competitive drill”
“What I notice from these guru trainers (and plyometrics) is that they are doing too much, too soon, and too often”
“Before I jump up, what’s my arm position like? Am I being reactive with my arm swing.”
“Before we do any jump, we do some type of double arm snap down…. we want to make sure we get that rhythm and timing down first”
“We do a snap down, we move that into a box jump, and we move that box jump into a depth drop or altitude drop. We don’t do any landings higher than 18” in our facility”
“We do it in (preparation for) lifting, if you are Olympic lifting you do some sort of complex work in your warmup, if your squatting you might do some corrective goblet squat work or landmine work, why are we not doing that with jumping?”
“How can we better prepare our athletes for landing on one leg, that was one thing we wanted to improve with the hybrid training”
“Where we see the transfer of the rotational and lateral jumping (in hybrid jumping) is in change of direction”
About Adam Feit
Adam Feit is the Director of Sports Performance for Reach Your Potential Training and is responsible for the design and implementation of the center’s sports performance programs.
Before joining the Carolina Panthers, Adam served as the Head Sports Performance Coach for Eastern Michigan University in 2010-2011. Adam designed sports performance programs for football and women’s soccer, while supervising a full-time staff in charge of 21 varsity sports.
Prior to assuming head coaching responsibilities at Eastern Michigan, Adam served as an Assistant Strength and Conditioning Coach for the University of Louisville’s Football Team.
Earlier in Adam’s career, he served as a Graduate Assistant Strength and Conditioning Coach for The Citadel in Charleston, SC. He also performed strength and conditioning internships with Arizona State University, US Olympic Training Center, University of Connecticut and Springfield College.
As a college athlete, Adam played football for Springfield College in Springfield, MA. During his years as an offensive lineman, he was a team captain and garnered all-consensus 1st Team All-American and All-Empire 8 League honors. As the Division III’s East Region Offensive Lineman of the Year in 2006, he helped Springfield win its’ only Empire 8 Championship and reach the second round of the NCAA playoffs. Adam also represented Team USA in the Division III All-Star game, the Aztec Bowl, in Aguascalientes, Mexico.
You can find Adam at his blog at adamfeit.com. He is also the creator of Complete Jumps Training, sold on Athletes Acceleration.
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