Podcast #69: Speed Training – Questioning Tradition with Matt Hank

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“Yeah we go in the weightroom but a monkey can run the weightroom. My energy and focus is more on field, on court.”

“That’s not running [punching]… what does that have to do with picking your foot on the ground and cycling it with coordination, timing, and sequence? Almost nothing.”

“It’s easy to measure [force into the ground].”

“Is that the strategy or the outcome [punching the ground hard]?”

“The whole feeling of timing is very tricky… if you just punch, that’s all they’re gonna feel… but the cycle, that’s another ball game.”

Beautiful extended position: “Nobody plays like that.”

Triple extension: “That’s the byproduct.”

“Anything that’s a shorter lever to keep the speed and then the speed’s helping to keep the timing.”

“We literally just tell them to pick their feet up… all of a sudden their leg cycle is quicker, their foot’s underneath their body and hips more.”

“We’re the program that gets away from the ground where there’s a lot of other coaches that are worried about getting into the ground.”

“How often are you playing sport on your heels… when would you sit your hips straight back.”

“If your heel comes up, you don’t get in trouble in our weightroom anymore.”

“We can’t just put our blinders on and say Powerlifting today guys, now Olympic weightlifting… these guys play basketball, these girls play soccer.”

“Of course I’ve done all those things, that’s how I learned.”

“Instead of wasting my time teaching drills that do not have the dynamic correspondence to actual sprinting (A skips, seated arms action, wall drills), I do actual sprinting.”

“My warmup is not A skips, arms drills, it’s actual sprinting. I can just manipulate the variables, such as distance to then manipulate the speed.”

Achilles ruptures: “Deep dorsiflexion while the center of mass is traveling forward… same idea [pushing harder and longer] in sprinting, heel behind us and dropping down, that would just make sense that there’s a greater potential for injury.”

“Most people are assessing from the side… from the side, you’re not going to appreciate what’s happening at the foot and ankle.”

Ankle pronation: “If you’re focusing on certain arch strength while you’re running at high speeds, you’ll get this mechanism to work.”

“If your foot caves in with this structural integrity of the foot and then it rebounds and coils back out, that sounds like an advantage to me.”

Trunk folding: “It helps with the cycling process.”

“Athletes play bent… they’re always playing in a flexed position.”

Squatty running: “It’s not squatting deeper in the running itself. It’s being in a bent position.”

“Even at top end, you’re always having knee bend and hip bend.”

“Just improving ankle dorsiflexion to become faster is illogical.”

Jumping: “The sequence isn’t always long arms to this big hip pop, sometimes it’s short arms to make you faster.”

“You’re telling me your elite level, alpha male football players are going to crawl on the ground in a fetal position, turn sideways, and breathe through a straw.”

“I guarantee our lenses are more similar than different, that’s one of the things I’ve learned over the last 20 years.”

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