Today’s episode features Clemson University director of strength and conditioning for Olympic sports, Rick Franzblau.
During his time at Clemson, Franzblau has worked with 10 ACC champion track and field squads. He has also worked with 8 individual NCAA champions, and 7 Olympians in track and field. In 2013, he worked with Brianna Rollins, who set the American record in the 100-meter hurdles. Rick’s current role has him directly responsible for baseball and soccer.
When it comes to a wide-sweeping view of athlete analysis and training, Rick’s system is unparalleled on the collegiate level. His system utilizes force plates, Nordbord, 1080 sprint, PRI techniques, and more in gathering a complete picture of an athlete’s abilities and training needs. Rick’s success in the world of speed and power athletes, as well as his expansive knowledge, makes him a fantastic guy to talk to when it comes to all aspects of sports performance.
On today’s show, we talk about Rick’s athlete assessment protocols, speed training progressions, velocity-based training protocols, Olympic lift protocols, and his utilization of neuro and structural optimization systems.
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:
- Rick Franzblau’s background as an athlete and how he got into the field of sports performance
- Athlete assessment at Clemson
- Strength and elastic jumpers and force plate profiling
- Rick’s speed training progressions at Clemson
- Areas that separate Olympic sport athletes from track and field sprinters
- Rick’s system of using velocity based training combining in an RPE system
- Ricks’ use of FRC, PRI and RPR systems
“Athletes have their most issues in frontal plane asymmetries”
“Generally you are not going to have someone who is elastic and try to make them more static; you want the elastic athlete, that’s the gold standard. If we have a static, strength athlete, can we safely move them to elastic?”
“If we are going to make a shift (attacking force-velocity weakness) it is going to be in the offseason”
“Competitive sprinters put out a ton of force in the first 3 hundredths of a second in groundstrike (vs Olympic sports athletes)”
“Early on in the season we’ll do a lot of tempo running”
“Track kids don’t need any kind of sarcoplasmic hypertrophy”
“The power output from a clean off of blocks had the highest correlation with vertical jump height”
“Our ultimate goal is how much weight, and how fast can we get it moving off of the blocks”
“The end goal is not what is your clean from the floor max, but how powerful can we be doing work from above the knee or mid-thigh”
“What I get out of a countermovement on a hang clean in a countermovement for a track athlete will do little for their elastic qualities in sprinting and jumping”
“Sprinters who are 5’3 don’t have time to generate the same velocity out of a bar as a 6’5 high jumper”
“With range of motion, it is important what percent is an active range of motion”
“It’s about gaining strength in end ranges of motion”
“Adductors are really important for how well your femurs are going to sit in your acetabulum”
“Isometric is the easiest contraction to learn from a motor learning perspective”
About Rick Franzblau
Rick Franzblau is in his first year as the director of Olympic sports strength and conditioning at Clemson. The previous three years he served in the capacity of assistant director of olympic sports strength and conditioning. He is responsible for the supervision of the assistant strength coaches, graduate assistants and volunteer interns. Franzblau oversees the strength and conditioning for all 14 of the Olympic Sports that train in the Jervey weight room. He is directly responsible for the strength and conditioning efforts of the baseball, men’s soccer and track and field teams. Prior to becoming an assistant coach, Franzblau worked as a graduate assistant at Clemson where he worked with football and Olympic sports.
During his time at Clemson, Franzblau has worked with 10 ACC champion track and field squads. He has also worked with 8 individual NCAA champions, and 7 Olympians in track and field. In 2013, he worked with Brianna Rollins, who set the American record in the 100-meter hurdles. In 2015, Franzblau worked with Matthew Crownover, the ACC pitcher of the year, who was also one of 4 Clemson baseball players drafted in the first 6 rounds of the MLB draft. Franzblau also worked with golfers Ben Martin and Corbin Mills, who participated in the prestigious Masters’ tournament while still competing at Clemson. In 2014, Franzblau also assisted with ACC champion men’s soccer team.
Franzblau graduated from Colgate University in 2006 with a degree in history. At Colgate, Franzblau spent 3 years as a student assistant strength coach after his football career was cut short due to injuries. He is a certified strength and conditioning specialist through the NSCA and also holds the SCCC certification through the CSCCA organization. Franzblau has also taken the Myokinematic Restoration, Postural Respiration, and Impingement and Instability courses through the Postural Restoration Institute.
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