Today’s podcast is a special roundtable episode on sport movement, featuring an expert panel of Shawn Myszka, Scott Salwasser and Michael Zweifel. Each of these coaches has a unique area of application and insight into making athletes better at reacting to actual sport stimuli, making plays, and ultimately winning games.
Shawn Myszka is a movement specialist working with many NFL athletes and has a large background in physical preparation.
Scott Salwasser is the director of speed and power at Texas Tech University and is making his third appearance on the Just Fly Performance Podcast. Scott is not only a great linear speed coach, as we’ve seen through his talks and writing on the topic, but also is constantly pioneering sport-applicable movement training through his own athletes and interaction with other movement specialists in the field.
Michael Zweifel, who has written some tremendous articles for Just Fly Sports in the past, is the owner of Building Better Athletes Performance, is an NCAA record-holding wide receiver. Michael is an industry leader in reactive training for athletes, particularly in the scholastic population, and where specialization is not possible.
“Agility” is a word likely most used in marketing, and getting parents to buy in that a particular sports performance institution will make their child better at reacting in their sport, but this is rarely, if ever the case in the manner that the majority of these training interventions are implemented.
For today’s podcast, we simply cover the ideas of what “agility” training really is, and best practices in creating training to allow athletes to become more reactive movers on the field of play.
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:
- Shawn, Scott and Michael’s backgrounds in the industry
- The value of teaching sport agility absent of sport stimuli
- Thoughts on non-specific agility stimuli such as colors and lights
- Anecdotes of what Shawn, Scott, and Michael do in their practice
“Sport is nothing but a problem solving activity where movements are use to produce the necessary solution”
“For football, the biggest (agility) stimulus is other bodies; the stimulus that most of them are reacting with are other human beings, so you don’t need football specific plays to give them an authentic stimuli because a lot of times they are working against someone else and that is the primary stimulus”
“How can this running back that runs a 4.4 40yd a 4.0 pro agility getting tackled in the backfield by opponents, it just doesn’t make sense; so it led me Shawn and the idea that (this athlete) is not a very good decision maker”
“When you de-couple a movement or an action, so you take away the perception or intention from the movement outcome, you aren’t doing any good”
“Most coaches are control freaks, and we know exactly what controlled drills are going to look like; more of an open environment intimidates a lot of coaches”
“One things that I’ve gravitated towards is making the agility stimuli as human as possible; humans are free”
“We perceive to act and we act to perceive”
“The space and time relationship is our key performance indicator”
“We know that situations are going to afford and invite and constrain certain (movement) patterns”
“I am always going to get to the more specific representation of what athletes are going to see on the field (at the end of the day)”
“With my cat and mouse drills, it’s not tag; football players will try and tag their opponent when they get within arms length, and that’s not going to result in you making the play”
“My athletes need to be very comfortable being uncomfortable at all times”
“Perfect practice is constant problem solving; we try to increase pressure and anxiety and perform movement actions under fatigue”
Shawn Myszka
Shawn Myszka currently serves as a Personal Performance Advisor & Movement Coach for over a dozen NFL players each year where he guides the performance of players to the limits of their potential. Through his frequent presentations at strength coach and sport conferences nationwide, Shawn has become a sought-after clinician and leader in the field of sport-specific power development, the transfer of training to sport performance, and the development of mastery in the movement of athletes at all levels of qualification.
Scott Salwasser
Scott Salwasser is currently the Director of Speed and Power Development at Texas Tech University, where he works exclusively with the Football program. He served previously on the strength and conditioning staffs at UC Berkeley, Sparta Performance Science, University of Louisiana-Lafayette, Sacramento State and the Oakland Raiders. He competed nationally in Weightlifting as a graduate student at Sacramento State, and played intercollegiate Football as an undergraduate at UC Davis. He has a Master’s Degree in Kinesiology and is CSCS certified, among other distinctions. He and his wife Katie have two daughters, Stella and Charlotte.
Michael Zweifel
Michael Zweifel is the owner and head of sports performance for “Building Better Athletes” performance center in Dubuque, Iowa.
Michael is a CSCS, IYCA certified practitioner, and was the all-time NCAA leading receiver with 463 receptions in his playing days at the University of Dubuque.
Building Better Athletes (BBA) is committed to an evidence-based practice towards sports performance, and attaching physical preparation from every angle possible – physical, mental, nutritional, soft-tissue, mobility. Our focus is on building the athlete from the ground up by mastering the fundamentals of movement mastery, strength/power training, recovery modalities, and giving athletes ownership of the Other 23.
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