Today’s podcast features Anthony Cockrill. Anthony is the Director of Volleyball Sports Performance and Assistant Director of Olympic Sports Performance at SMU. Previously at the University of Houston, he’s coached athletes across multiple sports and has a strong focus on explosive strength development, getting notable vertical jump training results with volleyball athletes.
There are different layers to the strength equation, and not all types of lifting will offer equal adaptation for athletes. In understanding key differences between full and partial ranges, as well as a focus on the concentric, isometric, and eccentric adaptations to the lift, we can better design a program that allows athletes a maximal bandwidth to adapt to the demands (and chaos) of their sport.
On today’s podcast, Anthony discusses the nuts and bolts of his training program, with a specific focus on squatting methods, range of motion concepts, and building strength, particularly through the eccentric phases of a lift. He also covers yearly planning, plyometrics, gymnastics, in-season training, and the physiology concepts behind his methods. This was an informative, and incredibly practical podcast on all things vertical jump and explosive strength development for athletes.
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Timestamps
11:30– Enhancing Squat Mechanics with Zercher Squats
17:07– Heel Elevation for Enhanced Squat Performance
19:32– Enhancing Back Squat Performance Through Torso Training
29:00– Eccentric Overload Back Squat Training for Volleyball
31:23– Deep End Range Exercises for Volleyball Performance
38:05– Optimizing Strength Through Deep Range Training
40:58– Enhancing Strength Through Deep Range Isometrics
44:33– Deep Squat Training for Enhanced Strength
46:26– Enhancing Strength Through Deep Squat Positions
55:29– Enhancing Athlete Performance Through Gymnastic Movements
1:06:05– Utilizing Muscle Spindles and Titan for Power
1:06:05– Eccentric Emphasis for Enhanced Athletic Performance
1:09:21– Enhancing Performance Through Deep Range Plyometrics
1:21:56– Optimizing Performance: Athletic Training Strategies
Quotes
(13:00) “The torso is always the limiting factor when trying to load the legs.” – Anthony Cockrill
(14:30) “I’ve moved away from a ton of front squatting. I do do it, but only maybe for a three-week period. I used to do it like exclusively instead of Zerchers, but It’s a little more technical than a Zercher as far as like getting kids into that front rack position.” – Anthony Cockrill
(15:58) (For Zercher Squats) “The fat bar is obviously like the more surface area, the more you’re touching it kind of dissipates that pain in the elbow from the thin bar. But if you don’t have fat thick bars. Yeah, we’ll just use fat grips.” – Anthony Cockrill
(21:00) “Within the Zercher and you’re like protracting those shoulder blades out and the amount of like stress you get within the upper back and in the rhomboids, that’s probably the area most kids like feel it the most within those first three weeks. Because again most people are really underdeveloped between the shoulder blades.” – Anthony Cockrill
(31:30) “We do a ton of single leg as we get in season.” – Anthony Cockrill
(35:50) “The biggest range of motion movements that are probably gonna, from A structural standpoint involve the most amount of contractile tissue.” – Anthony Cockrill
(40:40) “The idea is to have a massive bandwidth to handle chaos. So I think if you can get into those deep end ranges and not just produce force, but various forces, whether it’s leveraging, momentum, velocity, pure concentric like contractile tissue contracting, I think you on paper it sounds like it’ll probably help you create a larger bandwidth” – Anthony Cockrill
(44:39) “If you’re really strong in the bottom of the squat in the deepest end range, you’re probably gonna make like the top is gonna get stronger. It does not work vice versa. Like if you’re only training the top range and you’re never exposing yourself in those end ranges, that’s always going to be the limiting factor.” – Anthony Cockrill
(54:16) “What I love about this field is it’s completely lawless. You can do whatever you want and probably yield a result, but sometimes just yielding a result isn’t good enough. It’s like who’s going to yield the best result? And it’s very contextual and like environmentally based and what your situation is and yeah, just our situation doesn’t call for Olympic lifts.” – Anthony Cockrill
(1:22:11) “But I think if you’ve been doing it long enough, you kind of know how to mitigate that risk with just the true coaching eye.” – Anthony Cockrill
About Anthony Cockrill
Anthony Cockrill is an accomplished strength and conditioning coach with extensive experience developing high-level collegiate athletes across multiple sports. He currently serves as the Director of Volleyball Sports Performance and Assistant Director of Olympic Sports Performance at Southern Methodist University (SMU), where he leads performance programming for the volleyball program and supports the development of Olympic sport athletes.
Before joining SMU, Cockrill was a Strength and Performance Assistant at the University of Houston, where he worked with a variety of sports teams to implement strength, speed, and injury prevention protocols. His coaching career began after graduating from Tennessee Technological University, and since then, he has steadily advanced through roles of increasing responsibility in collegiate athletic departments.
In addition to his university coaching roles, Cockrill has developed and published structured training programs for athletes in the offseason, including specialized micro-cycles aimed at post-season recovery and structural balance.
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