Today’s episode features Dan Back.  Dan is the founder of “Jump Science”, as well as the creator of the popular “Speed.Science0” page on Instagram.  Dan coaches at Xceleration sports performance in Austin, Texas.  He works with team sport athletes, as well as “pure output” sports, such as track and field, and dunk training.  Dan reached an elite level in his own vertical jump and dunking ability, and has been helping athletes run faster, jump higher and improve overall physical performance for well over a decade.  I first met Dan in my own time at Wisconsin, LaCrosse, where I was working on my master’s degree in applied sport sciences.

One element of human outputs (sprinting, jumping, throwing, etc.) that I’ve found fundamental over the years is the idea of one’s strength/structure determining their technique they use.  I found very quickly in my early track and field, as well as team sport ventures in jump and sprint technique, that getting an athlete to exhibit the technique you were asking for to surpass their old personal best almost never happened.  Athletes would generally be using a technique that amplified their physical strengths and structure, and if you asked for a technique that took them away from that, performance would inevitably decline.  At the same time, many coaches will approach sporting skills without regard to pre-existing strengths/structure, and that sport technique is a singular factor that relies only on a mental “computer program”.

On today’s show, Dan gives his perspective on how athletes strengths (or weaknesses) show up in their sprinting technique, and how sprint technique will differ from one athlete to another as such.  He’ll go in depth on building elasticity, plyometrics, building up an athlete’s vertical force capacities, give his take on sprint drills, and much more.  Dan has a practical style, where his experimentation is backed by data, and results.  This show is a deep dive, not just into important principles of performance, but also practical nuts and bolts on how to get more out of one’s athleticism on a high level.

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Timestamps and Main Points:

4:13 – Dan’s journey in training, as it started more so in jumping, and moving much more into sprinting and speed training over time

11:05 – An anecdote of an athlete who took .4 seconds off of his 40 yard dash in a short period of time via power training and high-density single leg bound/hops

16:56 – Single leg hopping and ability in explosive athleticism, and how to determine single leg elasticity, as well as considerations with single leg RSI as a high-transfer test to athleticism

26:42 – Dan’s take on sprint drills, in terms of their transfer to sprinting, and their value as an extensive plyometric

35:29 – The experimental nature of training athletes to their ideal sprinting technique and ability

41:40 – Sprinters different strategies to solving the problem of sprinting as fast as possible

57:50 – Elastic vs. inelastic sprint athletes, and how looking at where athletes are strong is going to have an impact on their sprint technique

1:02:40 – Dan’s thoughts on training team sport athletes in light of sprint training technique

1:09:15 – Dan’s thoughts on how to go about the process of developing vertical force in sprinting, as well as how to integrate speed oriented gains in context of a total training program

1:21:20 – Thoughts on the use of tempo sprint training as an elastic stimulus to get an athlete “bounce”