what are some ways of doing exercises in the gym that can potentially facilitate our ability to move better outside of the gym first let's look at the kinetics of sprinting sprinting is only really truly about four things how much force you apply in the ground how fast can you apply it the direction in which you apply it and how heavy you are and it's just those four things how much force how fast which direction what is your mass so we need to yeah force is important we have to be able to apply a certain level of force but there's a threshold to this everyone says there's a big question and has been for a long time how much strength quote-unquote is enough in sprinting well enough is it's the same question that we ask we should ask in every task there's a rate of diminishing returns on all of these capacities that we need that we require is spending an extra few years trying to get an extra five kilos to your power clean or an extra 25 pounds to your back squat as effective as a means to get faster than it would be if you say you start skipping maybe do some more explosive work actually start sprinting a little bit more so there's always this um from a programming perspective is understanding where the athlete is what they require what they've got where they are in the rate of diminishing returns on each of those capacities so first we have to understand that um let me zoom out just a little bit i coach andre andre degrasse as we talked about andre when i started coaching him in 2015 could barely squat his body weight eight months later he's three-time olympic medalist eight months later he was one and a half years into his sprinting career he'd sprinted for 18 months he had three olympic medals in the sprints the 100 the 200 and the four by one he could barely squat his body weight he could clean 60 kilos so 135 pounds he definitely couldn't bench a plate and a half he might have had 145 pound plate uh bench yeah maybe super weak but on the other end of the spectrum this is the example that everyone gives you've got ben johnson famously ben johnson did the 600 pound squat a couple of days prior to winning in the tokyo olympics in 1988 running 979 obviously that was thereafter taken away after he tested positive so you've gone on one end of the spectrum somebody like ben johnson who applies incredibly incredible amounts of force and on the other end you've got somebody like andre degrasse who doesn't apply relatively any force but does it really really fast so this gives you like an understanding of the spectrum of capacities and abilities that humans have to do a task in an almost infinite number of ways so to get to your question it depends on who you are and what you're good at and why you're good at it there's not one way when you've got a ben johnson who can apply incredible amounts of forces and that's one of the reasons why he's fast on the other end of the spectrum you've got andre degrasse who's weaker than most high school girls who's incredible fat incredibly fast where does that leave us that just tells us okay there's many different ways to do this which is great it's cool that gives us again some freedom to better ask the questions about what it is that makes you andrew really good like you apply a lot of force okay let's lean into that let's try to improve your speed by try to maximize your force but what are you limited by okay you're having trouble getting off the ground you're not super reactive or reflexive so we have to work some things into your program that's going to make you a little bit more reactive or reflexive so maybe we'll do some jump squats maybe we'll do some hurdle hops maybe we'll do some more skipping maybe maybe we feel like okay you've reached the rate of diminishing returns on your force capacity you don't need to squat four plates if you squat 385 is going from 385 to 405 gonna make you any faster no not at all so let's keep you at 385 and we'll just do some other things so first and foremost it's respecting the individuality of all things and understanding that there's not one way in which i can tell you do this because this is what he did and that's what's going to work for you now there is as i said before there's non-negotiables and there's rules to things so sprinting is how you transmit that force into the track in a really fast period of time in the right direction so the transmission of force is typically more important than the magnitude of the force and at least at the elite end at least at the adult end so transmission of force means how the the amount of force that you put into the ground how do you use it to propel yourself forward so what are the types of exercises that maybe what would what would you think about if i said this is a force transmission exercise rather than say a force magnitude exercise is that something that appeals to you yeah jump squat comes to mind you know um jump squat comes to mind um any kind of uh like push clap push-ups um you know the ability to like yep double clap or you know or more um yes that's what comes to mind that's pretty accurate olympic lifts is one is one that where a lot of people would say yes olympic lift that's kind of what we're doing with like a clean you're kind of yeah i'm not in i don't do olympic lifts but from what i understand i you know they're they're pushing off the ground to get get the bar up yeah it's it's essentially can we apply high forces fast over a long period of time so that's kind of we do we spend a lot of time looking at those types of exercises sled work uh we don't do any sled work i'll be all about we could get back to that if you know sled work for elite sprinter we don't we do resisted acceleration work so we'll sprint we'll do some specific strength work where we're pulling uh you know probably in excess of 10 to 15 kilos you know so 20 to 30 pounds ish do you use the parachute that was a big thing a few years back remember that when i like the parachute i used the parachute 20 years ago absolutely we don't know we we uh we actually have a we have a piece of equipment called the power cord we use that i use that that's really good spring-loaded and the 1080 sprint which is this uh incredible piece of equipment that we use that we can really dial in the resistance down to like you know a half a kilo that's it's beautiful so we use that but that's for different reasons so the you talked about the weight room in in the in the um the population of athletes i work with maximum strength is at the rate of diminishing returns already we don't spend almost any time working on that at a lower level of population maybe if you're high school kid or if you're in your 20s when you're not super or if you're super weak just by increasing your force capacity so your ability to apply force you will get faster because remember what the calculation is amount of force how fast direction and body mass so it is important it just becomes less and less and less important the faster you get so it's and then it becomes when it's less important when the ability to produce a high magnitude of force isn't important what is important so then we're starting to looking at plyometric things and probably most specifically i'm looking at specific isometric stuff in the weight room so let's look at the position in which we're applying in excess of five times our body weight and that's when the foot is directly underneath the center mass the foot is flat on the ground there's about a 15 degree knee bend and there's about a five to ten degree hip bend so if you can you think of think about that position so we're pushing up against in a movable bar or holding a very very heavy bar on one leg with as heavy as we can or as hard as we can for somewhere between three to five seconds times three to four repetitions and we'll do like three sets of that that's alex notero's work he's one of the the premier researchers in what's called run specific isometric strength training so it's getting strong in really specific positions to the task that you're trying to become better at so that's that's the primary one for me is that position where the foot is directly underneath the center mass there's a little bit of a knee bend there's a little bit of a hip bend and we do a lot of isometric work right there that's that's and then i and this is my bias i do nothing bilateral at all you mean parallel stance parallel stance nothing except occasionally if it is an issue you know with neural drive or whatever i'll do some uh trap bar deadlifts so some parallel stance trap bar deadlifts because i think it's a great exercise i think that's difficult to do with a staggered stance it's very difficult to do with a uh a single leg stance but you can load up some pretty good weight on a parallel stance trap bar deadlift and yeah i feel pretty good and you you get a good feeling out of that it's not necessarily to be um be able to apply or generate more force it's more about sort of neural drive than it is for anything else everything every single other thing that we do is in a staggered stance heel to toe or kickstand which is kind of the same same sort of thing just a different terminology or split stance or a stance where the front foot is elevated or the rear foot is elevated so we'll do as as we as we've talked about quite a bit now find opportunities to get the knee behind the butt that's a really important position can we get stronger faster more control more repeatability and more range at that position one of the things i learned from you yesterday is um well let's i'll double click first on this um the staggered stance so this is one foot slightly in front of the other um i've been doing this with various lifts in the gym for a long time i would say the exception would be if i'm belt squatting or hack squatting i don't do that um but for everything else overhead presses um anything where my feet are in contact with the ground that is uh not on pull-ups and dips of course but um curls tricep extensions and i make sure to vary the stance so one foot is in front for one set one is in run for the sometimes even in the middle of the set i'll i'll switch them up after um and i found that to be tremendously helpful for building core stability and a number of other things um and it sounds like it might help running gate as well the other thing that you said yesterday that i think is really important i've not thought of before but now i'm doing is anytime you have a foot elevated in the gym to get onto the toe front foot can be flat yeah i think the ability to get off your first ray so for the big toe to bend and flex is really important so for me if i if that's important i'm going to search for opportunities to do that as often as i can so if i have an option to either flex the big toe or not then we're going to flex a big toe now if you can't and many athletes cannot you know there's a lot of athletes that just cannot extend to that big toe or some athletes have bunions and just can't get over it and that's okay we can go on to the top of the foot but it's not the not the end of the world but i look for opportunities like that like i look for opportunities to extend the hip how can i work hip extension exercises into everything i do how do i look at or do i look for full um full chain or full body force transmission exercises as much as i possibly can ideally from the left foot to the right hand and the right foot to the left hand so cross body so i'm looking for these long fascial chains like ways in which i can bring some function to the work that i'm doing in the weight room some level of transferability between the things that i do in the weight room and the things that we do on the track because frankly most of the things that we do in the weight room don't transfer to the track a squat doesn't really transfer it's a totally different exercise performed a totally different way at a totally different time totally different weights so the transference is very very far it's very it's not very nebulous so i'm looking for ways in which we can find a way to transfer the capacities that we are building in the weight room directly to the track and with respect to stretching i'm thinking again of yoga because this is where the probably the first time i've done this where one would lunge so front foot planted flat rear foot up on the big toe if possible the knee back of that rear foot um or rear leg excuse me back behind the butt and then the opposite arm raised above that's that fascial um sling that cuts across from you know in anatomy nomenclature contralateral across the midline um and then essentially trying to learn to feel that um line that goes all the way from one's big toe that's planting back across up the leg across the the pelvis up the body and shoulder to the opposite tips of finger 100 and it's it's if uh if i can add to that stretch um this is something that i really love kelly about you know he's he's so much on i need you to be in control of your body there is a way to do this but then it's up to you to find out a better way for you specifically so you've done a great job of outlining what the stretch looks like now what can i do with my body to actually make this better do i rotate to one side do i side bend to one side do i flex the hand as well as as well as doing this because this will be a better stretch than that so palm parallel to the to the ceiling 100 of the raised hand correct if i push the knee back and try to push the heel on the ground and actually contract if i rotate my pelvis underneath me posteriorly like you know do a a pelvic tilt underneath me well will that increase it so it's always this exploratory process there is a right way to do things but you are an individual we're all unique snowflakes right we're all move in different ways and it's up to us to explore all of our uniqueness