Get up to Speed

Acceleration, Ground Speed, and Liftoff with Jumps Coach Jacob Cohen

“If you’ve got speed, you can figure out how to jump. It’s just not that complicated to me.” Power, velocity, and force, the connection is simple enough, and guided by Jumps and Combined Events Coach Jacob Cohen, athletes in the University of Illinois track program have been doing more than just figuring out how to […]

Tools of the Mechanic: Under the Hood with Hurdle Coach Boogie Johnson

When someone tells you who they are, listen. Lawrence “Boogie” Johnson—the 2013 USA Track & Field Coach of the Year and current Head Track & Field Coach for California State University, Northridge (CSUN)—has the bona fides to call himself whatever he chooses. Even as he trains a crew of notable Olympians, including 2016 Rio medalists Brianna […]

Next Level Power Gains with Long Driver Ryan Steenberg

Let’s get this out of the way from the get-go—Ryan Steenberg is not normal. It’s not normal to drive a golf ball 300 yards and hit baseballs “off the planet” at age eleven. It’s not normal to play two years of quarterback at the collegiate level and then switch to the opposite side of the […]

To Heal and To Correct: Applying the 1080 Quantum in a Clinical Setting

The concept is nothing new. From Ben Franklin’s axiom an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure to Charlie Weingroff’s presentation series “Training = Rehab, Rehab = Training,” problem-solvers have long recognized the need to address the underlying causes of an issue rather than simply reacting after each issue flares up. In a clinical […]

Lessons in Defying Gravity with Coach Caryl Smith Gilbert

The sun is already beginning to bear down at 9am in central Los Angeles, saturating the athletic complex at the University of Southern California with a lazy heaviness further exaggerated by the easygoing pace of a campus in summertime. A few swimmers can be spied gliding down their lanes at the Uytengsu Aquatics Center, but […]

Speed 101 With Dr. Matt Rhea and Indiana University Football

“You didn’t know you registered for this class, did you?” Indoors, outdoors, speed class is in session on the turf with Dr. Matt Rhea, Athletic Performance Coach for the Indiana Hoosiers football team. The curriculum? Get faster. The syllabus? A speed development plan for each player, with programming and goals based on their individualized profiles. […]

Microdosing and In-Season Strength Maintenance with the LA Kings’ Matt Price

Regardless of the unique demands of the sport or league, high performance coaches across the NBA, Premier League, MLB, NHL, and beyond all face a common challenge: the prolonged grind of the regular season threatens to sap the strength and speed gains they worked to achieve in the pre-season. Matt Price, head strength and conditioning […]

1080 Sprint: After-hours work outshines ‘negative results’ at University of Guelph

“Negative results” should be an oxymoron, the sort of throwback phrase you use ironically to get a smug chuckle at the expense of earlier generations. But somehow the idea still has purchase around the scientific community. Not at the University of Guelph’s Human Performance and Health Research Laboratory. Dr. Jamie Burr and HPL graduate student […]

Superman and the analytics-driven sports organization: Dr. Stephen Shea

Visit the website for any management consultancy and you’ll quickly find their white paper on how to transform your organization into an “analytics-driven organization.” That phrase came to mind when I saw a Twitter thread by Dr. Stephen Shea. The audience for those white papers – the prospective “analytics-driven organizations” – are already warm to […]

Ato Boldon’s turn to coaching moves him outside the lanes of track & field

Ato Boldon did not think much about throwing away the old-school red diary he used as a training log. With 10 senior-level international medals in his house, he was not lacking mementoes from his sprinting days. Years later, he realized binning his logs was the best thing he could have done for the third leg […]