Today’s show is with coach Brady Volmering.  Brady is the owner of DAC Performance and Health. After starting out in the world of baseball skill training, he’s since moved into the human performance arena, putting the focus on increasing the capacity of the human being.  Brady looks at what “training the human being” actually means and how that relates to increases in specific sports performance.

Ever since I’ve been in a formal weight room training setting for athletes, I’ve really wondered about the thought process of how the various barbell and dumbbell exercises were going to help athletes actually be better at what they do on the field.  I’ve always tried to keep a close eye on elements of gym training that could possibly link to athletes who were more successful in their actual sport.

It’s important to ask the question: “what is training?”, and realize that the answer includes “how” just as much as “what”.  Weights are just one tool, or manifestation of the ability to be strong, and if we zoom out from the tool of barbells and dumbbells, we can look at the process of training and adaptation on a broader level.  Muscle tension (and relaxation) can be achieved in a wide variety of ways.  If we take a close look at the mental, emotional, and physical components can be put into the simplest of exercises, we can make then a better conduit by which to improve the whole state of the athlete’s system.

On today’s podcast, Brady gives us his experiences with training athletes on a “human” level.  He goes into the tool of isometric holds, and how to modulate those to draw out different intentions, into ideas on learning the way a child does, the importance of menu systems, as well as “breaking the rules” with higher repetition training schemes (and the qualities it takes to adapt to “unreasonable” training loads).  This is an “outside the box” episode that covers a lot of important concepts in training the total human for sport and beyond.

Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Inside Tracker, and Lost Empire Herbs.

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View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage.

Timestamps and Main Points

4:51 – How Brady started in the specific skill training of baseball players, and how he transitioned into more “human level” training and performance

9:09 – How Brady views the transfer of training ideology in light of the “human layer”, or GPP layer of performance

15:35 – Different intentions Brady prescribes during exercises, particularly isometric type exercises

22:31 – Elements Brady notices that transfer between human-level skills and how an athlete is performing in their sport

29:22 – The mentality by which children make rapid progress in skills, and how to harness that developmental ideal

39:16 – How Brady looks at menu systems for athletes, and giving them the power of choice

47:49 – Brady’s take on “breaking the rules” with high volume training experiences

58:36 – Thoughts on the balance and handing of high volume training versus the minimal effective dose of work

1:02:32 – “Human level” principles of athletes who can absorb and adapt to training volume on a higher level

1:07:58 – What an average training session looks like for Brady in light of the principles discussed in the show

1:11:50 – How to look at sets and reps, versus the construct of time, to direct intention of the athlete

1:14:07 – Some single-joint, high rep modalities that Brady enjoys using at the end of training sessions

“When I’m training a human, I’m not thinking at all about transfer to their sport”

“The goal is the deep pushup is for them to direct their intent into whatever it is they are doing; the pushup is just one way to practice that”

“That’s where the human aspect of things is “how can we go into the hum...