Podcast #105: Rodrigo Alvira (Spaniard Performance)

By Jake Tuura / January 1, 2024

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/jacked-athlete-podcast/id1462537296?i=1000640270154

Being underweight: “I stopped playing basketball which was one of the biggest things that made me gain weight.”

“The physical preparation stuff was more focused on the court… everything was trying to imitate the movement on the basketball court… a lot of core workouts, first step workouts, step back workouts.”

“When you get here [the states], you realize these guys not only weigh 40 more pounds than I weigh but they’re faster than me.”

“If you’re so good, you can get away with it [lack of physicality], but I feel like 90% of the players can’t.”

“If you don’t produce it in the first place, you’re not gonna be at that risk [of injury].”

“You go through those phases [bosu balls, balance training] and you learn in a better way than if somebody told you not to.”

“I think that’s why my learning curve was faster because I figured it out on my own.”

“You can tell who learned it by themselves or who learned it under someone… when you get things told to you, you don’t get a grasp on why things are wrong or right.”

“If you just learn it on your own, you’re like actually it doesn’t really matter that much, everything is gonna cause some kind of adaptation.”

“I think I go in and out of it [hyper seriousness of S&C]… little by little I realize, it’s more about having fun in the weight room… the work has to be done but if you’re able to have fun in the first place, the work is gonna get done.”

“When you become this serious, military guy that the S&C world sees, they’re [athletes] like na. They’re not gonna listen to you.”

“Does it really matter that much? Everything we do. It’s important, I love my job. But in the grand scheme of things, we’re nobody. That takes so much pressure out of your job.”

“As far as doing the basics right, nothing else matters. As far as them having fun doing it, nothing else matters.”

“A lot of times, you try to make it fun for basketball and they take it way too far to the point that nothing gets done or somebody gets hurt… that’s finding the middle ground.”

“Men’s volleyball was going in with me at 8am, they just got out of bed, they hate it [dynamic warmup]. A lot of them are not even doing the right thing. I get mad, I yell at them. Why? The problem here is you need to be able to tell yourself, you don’t really need to do that anyways [dynamic warmup]… yes, let’s do a few stretches, at the end of the day, I let them do whatever they wanted and then we started playing dodgeball.”

“Seeing PRs on the force plates after we play a dodgeball game compared to other warmups we did before, just because they were so pumped.”

“I think we do a lot of things that we think are good that if you ask a player they would say, I think it’s so stupid.”

Rodrigo’s Linktree: https://linktr.ee/spaniardperformancesm

Rodrigo’s Instagram (Spanish): https://www.instagram.com/spaniardperformance/

Rodrigo’s Instagram (English): https://www.instagram.com/spaniardperformance_/