Today’s episode features performance coach and nutritionist, Matt Cooper.  Matt has been a multi-time podcast guest and writer on Just Fly Sports, and trains athletes and individuals out of his gym in Los Angeles, California.  Matt is a bright young coach who has encapsulated many of the training concepts from top coaches, nutritionists, and human performance specialists, into his own system which keeps the athlete operating in proper neurological and fascial harmony.

One of the things I’ve really enjoyed observing in the work that Matt is doing is his incorporation of the work pioneered by Marv Marinovich and Jay Schroeder, into his own training design.  The combination of proprioception, reaction, and neurological emphasis is something that creates explosive and adaptive athletes, with a priority on the function of the body, rather than a priority on lifting a barbell max at all costs (and when you respect the nervous system in training, you tend to get improved lifting numbers without the neurological cost that comes from hammering away at bilateral sagittal plane lifts).

Recently, a few arenas of training that Matt has been working through that I found particularly intriguing, were his thoughts on training the fascial system, as well as a recent article of his defending proprioceptive training, when we define its role in the training process correctly.  For today’s podcast, Matt talks about the role of the fascial system in human movement, as well as its importance in regards to training in light of exercise selection.  Matt also talks about proprioceptive training, its role in light of the greater training process, and practical exercises for training both the proprioceptive and fascial 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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Timestamps and Main Points

6:15 What training the fascial system means to Matt

16:15 Methods to engage the fascial system appropriately in training

24:45 Reasons that barbell squatting can cause neurological irritants to high-performance athletics over time

37:35 Training movements that can improve tensegrity in the body and fascial function

46:15 How Matt programs Olympic lifting and Keiser/Supercat machines, in respect to the feet and fascial dynamics

53:15 The value of proprioceptive and dynamic balance work in training and performance

“The fascia being well-wound together is not just an injury prevention concept, but the fascia being well-woven together like a basket, that actually helps store, transfer and release elastic energy effortlessly”

“(In a powerlifting squat) the athlete’s fascia has to revolve around the bar path”

“If the fascia is adapting around these big compound movements, and they are the centerpiece of our training, then we are sort of adapting athletes neuro-myo-fascially to be sagittal movers, and not everything else”

“You can do corrective exercises in a way that get the neuro-myo-fascial segments of the body well-orchestrated”

“The main emphasis of our training is one that respects natural biomechanics”

“You are setting off a completely different muscle firing pattern by having someone squat off the heel; and the heaviest load is going to happen at the joint angle that is most compromised”

“The engine of the car in humans is a lot more horizontal, it’s push-pull; this is the engine that really drives the car, and if you really (axially) stack the body, chances are you are not going to see that turn into more fluid movement”

“If I’m doing a little too much sagittal lifting, the movement is too much about the bar and the bar path, and the athlete has to mechanically adapt around that load”

“I’ve been having my guys do Olympic lifts, pretty much all off the forefoot”

“The bread and butter should not be the pure sagittal...