Distorting Game Speed, Rhythm & Coordination

Vern Gambetta1:16

So when people say, I get a lot from today's generations, well where's the research for that. And I go, well, there's a lot of pro best practices informed by research. There's a really good study overview publication done by, I can't remember the journal. It's put out by Human Kinetics where they looked at the top 100 sports science papers of all time. So that encompassed those only six of the studies of the top 100 were done after 2000.

And if you look at published like here in the Exercise and Science and Sport, which America, most of the citations are from the 2000s and I'm going what's wrong with this picture? If the landmark studies were done in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, why aren't they being cited?

So, for me and my colleagues, I think it's a terrific advantage that we can take a broader view. And I'm not anti, but believe me, I'm not anti-science. But like I said, the key thing is you're informed by science, not driven by it. That's the key. At the end of the day, your fighters have got to produce. My athletes got to produce. It's as simple as that.

And so, we've gone overboard with load management and that, which load management is good coaching. It's planning. It's being aware. I can't tell you the number in 56 years of coaching, the number of times I've pulled athletes out of sessions. That's enough. No, they didn't always like it and there'd always be a dialogue about why. Some of it I got a hunch. Okay, trust me, I got a hunch. Doesn't look right right now. And I also made the mistake many, many times of doing too much.

I got on a rant there, but

James de Lacey5:40

No, perfect. I love the rants on the podcast because you get real in depth into what you're thinking. But yeah, I've definitely formed, I mean anyone who's coached long enough makes these mistakes. I've made load management mistakes being too precious I guess you could say and being too in the numbers and being like oh he's going to hit X amount of distance this week and he's going to play, we need to match him. It's like but do you really like these guys can handle more than you think when you're weak is when stuff is planned properly.

It's very hard to go really overboard. Like even if you track like say session time, session duration times RPE and you get like a training load, it's very hard to really exceed that when you're only doing 60 to 90 minute sessions and those that kind of stays constant throughout the week unless you're suddenly doing three-hour sessions at then obviously but that very rarely happens.

So at what point do you need to really get that, how often do you really need to intervene in areas like that when everything's kind of consistent, they've kind of built up that tolerance to it?

Vern Gambetta6:34

Well, one of the companies, again, not to be named, really good people, good and I rate them highly, but I'm not into promoting things and had a really good discussion twice now with one of, and again what do the numbers mean? The numbers in context.

There's a new thing, you've seen it now, the big thing, Vern Gambetta, wide receiver for the. So, he ran 23 miles an hour in the game or the defensive back ran 23 miles an hour. Yeah. Because he got beat and he was chasing somebody. What a meaningless number. And 23 miles an hour for how long? I mean, if you could do that for a extended period of time, you don't be in football. You should be in the Olympic Games.

So, yeah, it's funny. It's fascinating because I remember I was talking to a friend of mine, I went to grad school in 73-74 at Stanford and I wrote a paper about, a lot of the thing here speculating like if we could measure this if we can, I was thinking more track ground contact time and things like that. And there's a, we can measure so much now but It's what's meaningful. What's meaningful?

I'm not against measuring it, but I think what you do is you look at trends over time. And, I've worked with union league and sevens for periods of time and been around them the high, the best teams in the world really. And there's just some stuff you got to do. You better do it. No matter what the numbers say.

James de Lacey8:41

That's the thing as well as you mentioned like with talking with athletes and how they feel or maybe going you get some objective jump number or something and they might be fatigued but there's so much that goes on in a session and in an athlete that after a warmup or after they do something they start to feel better anyway.

Like that's something like I would use like a wellness questionnaire and maybe someone would flag up but they'll just be talking to them be like oh how do you feel blah blah blah oh you know they're okay or once they be okay you just go through the session we'll see how you feel, etc. And usually they just come right. It's just movement at that point.

But versus being like knee-jerk reaction like, oh he can potentially injure himself. We need to deload and all this other stuff. But it's like, talk, if you talk to them, you start to understand them. You get a kind of understanding of the team vibe as well. You know, when it's really quiet, you're like, okay, maybe we'll switch up the session quickly and play some games, etc. There's so many things you can do versus just taking the data at face value and then just being like, okay, this is what we're going to do now because this number says XYZ.

And that's why also we can move on from this. But, even the wellness questionnaires, I've seen with pro teams and pro athletes, they know how to manipulate those. Now, best thing I've seen

Vern Gambetta10:09

and I loved was Melbourne Storm Rugby League team. My good friend is Lachlan Penfold, I don't know what his title is. He's in charge of the show, but he's very hands-on. And they're, like right now I'm sitting, my desk is facing the door and every player walks through the door. That only two of them can fit through the door at a time. And there they greet each player every day and they can see through the window. They can watch them from they walk to their car.

And I'm going this is brilliant. And they know, I mean one of the guys they just had a baby three days before. And they said, how are you sleeping? And he said, not. And that. So, right away that's a flag. Adjust the training. So, it's knowing your athletes. And that's why we're called coaches.

James de Lacey10:09

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Yeah, that's missed on TikTok and Instagram now unfortunately, but this is going to go in random directions just on random thoughts I've had. I mean, I've probably brought up your name multiple times on various podcasts recently, just with all the stuff you've had an influence on me on and things like that, but I was actually just recently doing I started doing more of your lunge matrixes.

Vern Gambetta12:24

Oh, yeah.

James de Lacey12:25

Those are very very nice. Do you want to maybe run through some of them and kind of how it came about, what you're doing, why?

Vern Gambetta12:31

Yeah, the lunge matrix or lunge series I call it. There's three variations in the basic series and in my standard warm-up that I use really across sports. We even use it in swimming. It's the mini band walk, third step in the warm-up. And what you're doing is, so you do with lunge and reach overhead, lunge and reach and it's forward side or lateral and rotational. Okay?

So you do three right, three, you do right, left, right, left, right, left, side, right, left, right, like that. Then you go on to lunge and reach up. Wait, what did I just say? Yeah, lunge and reach up is the first one. Then lunge and reach out. So with two hands and so now start adding up the reps.

A lot of times I'll only go to two reps, not three, two, by the way. Modified that because there's, and then the last one is lunge and reach across. So if I lunge out on my right, I reach across and have to touch the ground in front of my right leg. So the opposite arm and like that.

So that's been, I don't believe in injury prevention and identifying things as injury prevention, but the first step in the warm-up is mini band series. And that's the second one is walking rotations. And the third one is that and those are all the injury prevention. Never tell the player, never tell the athlete that.

And there's variations of that done that virtually every warm-up. Now, if there's two warm-ups in a day, if there's two in a day, one thing to remember too that the second warm-up, if it's within three to four hours of the first session, it's usually abbreviated. And we might if we do lunge and reach in the morning, we won't do them in the afternoon. Okay. Like that.

And so there's, it's incorporating all planes of motion through a full range with rhythmic control. Okay. It's not ballistic. It's not slow steady. It's just controlled. One, two, three. Like that.

So, no, it's when I look at the number of groin injuries that I see happen and I, and again the proof of the pudding is the people that have used this routine. I don't know if when you came to Gain if Nick Garcia was there. Nick's a brilliant high school S&C who works with 16 sports by himself and in since 2003 he's been there so however many years 21 years they've had one groin pull and I mean they play at the highest level of high school sports in Southern California. I mean many of their athletes go on to higher level, so I don't think that's just coincidence.

So yeah, it's doing that and then the other thing about this is I call it some of these movements or if you want to call them matrixes are Swiss Army knives in a sense. So I can really come in and they come into the weight room and it's a winger or it's somebody who has to move a lot of different directions, even a big lineman or something. We'll do that loaded.

So they'll use depending on body weight, a percentage of body weight, and they'll go through lunge and reach forward for one set, lunge and reach side for one set, lunge and reach across. So once you learn the movements then you can apply those in many different ways. So that's

James de Lacey16:50

You mentioned how you do it kind of in this rhythm and timing. It's like one two and I know in your leg circuit you also have almost a rhythm and timing there where it's like every second should be a squat. Is that something you like to do with most of I guess your quote unquote drills kind of thing? Is that something you like to implement into the rhythms

Vern Gambetta17:09

across the spectrum? I mean, look, everything is velocity based training, but I like to take it before velocity. You've got rhythm, tempo, and timing. Rhythm, tempo, timing, range of motion. Think about dance. Okay. So, leg circuit is one per second. You're trying to in a lunge, it's hard to achieve one per second, but it's fast eccentric work.

James de Lacey17:34

And you can load it, but you can't if if the load, well, I can't finish a body weight, so I ain't loading it. That leg circuit's hard.

Vern Gambetta17:34

Well, I mean, I've had, I've my beach volleyball players were doing it with 30 pound weight vest on and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. You better you better. Summer Macintosh, won a few gold medals. Last time some world records was doing it with with a 15 pound weight vest on.

So, you want to build up to that, but the key is and the reps drop. Sometimes we do mini leg circuit, three rep, half leg circuit, full leg circuit. But the key is you got to keep the rhythm and tempo. Rhythm and tempo, and that's what I think we, I, it was something that it was always there in my background, but I think I've become a lot more aware of that in the last in my old age in the last 20 25 years as it's just a big dance and it's about, it's about what shapes.

This is the way I think of it now too. Let's think about shapes. So think of a shape. Yeah, let's say a baseball pitcher, okay? He starts in a big tall shape, then he goes into a smaller shape, then he elongates and that. So I the way I look at it, the way I analyze movement now relative to you is what shapes can you make? What shapes can't you make? How do we reconcile the two?

And then it's the paradigm then is is it strength? Is it speed? Is it body awareness? Is it something a joint restriction and prior injury? Something like that. So that that takes me back, backing it. So you think about lunge and reach, you're going from tall to long to overhead, all of that.

So it's then the other thing is is testing is training. Training is testing. So it all fits together. So I can look at all these every day and look at all these pieces and see how they fit together and where they're working. So yeah.

That's why it's a system. That's why it's a system. Yeah. Sorry.

James de Lacey19:50

No, you're good. I love the the talk on rhythm. I mean, I've been, I must have been influenced from you back in the day. Even with Gain and even some of the old content you've done around just rhythm and timing and then it's kind of like you see the you see really good athletes have it like at this innate rhythm in the game already and it's almost like well because it can't be measured. It's almost like discarded, right?

Like it's just like whatever. It's not, it's not, it's not physiology. It's not mechanical output, nothing or whatever, don't even worry about it. But it's such a, yeah, it's such an interesting space cuz it is like the the top athletes just have it.

And I've played around with rhythm a lot in different things. I think mainly from your influence with things like even just using different balls within training games, changing the tempo of the training game, walking, running, jogging. I did one where I was like they were walking through waist high mud pretending. Yeah. So, changing rhythms like that.

It'll be interesting to kind of go into your ideas and philosophies around changing rhythm within training and how you may go about that. And then, are there any outcomes you're trying to see from it or is it more kind of just play and exploration?

Vern Gambetta21:03

Oh, no. I try to, it's become a for me, it's become a conscious thing. It's something I really, I don't want the athlete to become a robot to that.

Yeah. That's really really important. So sometimes it's just this non-verbal, sometimes I will give them a target on on certain things like touch my foot, touch my foot, touch my foot, and I'll move my foot slow or I'll move my foot fast. So you elicit it, but that's done driven by I don't want them thinking about that. I want that subliminal and reactive. Okay?

And it's if you look at the jersey behind me, Lee Perry who's athlete probably the best cricket player female cricket player of all time that's probably we sat down with Eddie Jones two year three years ago and had coffee and he says well what's what's the biggest change what's the biggest thing you've done working with Vern and she says rhythm and tempo.

It's not I mean hell she's 35 now she was 31 then she's seen every exercise in the world, but execution of that and the if you want to put it the broad umbrella is coordination, right? You read all the eastern literature about and they always have chapters on coordination, but that was so implicit in their lifestyle with the kids growing up with gymnastics and that and I know this is pointed toward martial arts.

I mean, think of that, think of changing rhythms when you're punching or when you're lunging to somebody and that can be a terrific tactical advantage too. So, does that answer the question?

James de Lacey23:00

I've kind of defined for myself at least within sport as kind of like disrupting your opponent's rhythm while imposing your own. And you see it, I mean, you see it when momentum shifts in fights or rugby or any sport where a team has momentum and it's like their rhythm is on and team other teams will try to slow down the game so they can disrupt the other team's rhythms. There's all stuff going on and you mentioned about coordination.

Is there a point where coordination training, coordination can go too far or be just so out of because you can see what people call quote unquote coordination training and it's like catching tennis balls off the wall touching flashing lights and like that. Where's the line for coordination training?

Vern Gambetta23:41

Well it's common sense. I mean you can touch all the lights you want and get your ass kicked. It's as simple as that. I call it getting cute. I want athletes going to tell me right away. I look at their eyes. I look at their face.

I want to look at movements that lead into sports specific movements and incorporate that. Don't, I think the rule of thumb is it's bad to use have a negative rule, but I try to stay away from plastic rigid environments. Because every sport that I've worked with, 22 internationally, most of them are open skill. Well, yes and no. I mean, there's a few of them, cricket batting and baseball batting. Well, they are open skill in this.

James de Lacey24:35

They're typically open. I mean, if you've got different pitchers or different bowlers that have different actions, you having to design for that information.

Vern Gambetta24:35

We've just gone crazy with, like juggling is okay for hand eye coordination. I we used to do a little bit of that. But as far as the question is the question I always ask is return on investment. So if I'm going to spend 10 minutes a day juggling, is that going to make me 10 minutes better at my game?

James de Lacey25:03

According to Tik Tok, yes.

According to Tik Tok and Instagram, it will.

Vern Gambetta25:08

Oh, of course. Of course. Yeah, because they're selling a juggling video.

James de Lacey25:15

That wasn't trained. That wasn't trained.

Vern Gambetta25:17

I'm not saying do it, but I'm jealous of the time. Look, James, I've had in 56 years of coaching at all levels. I've never ever ever had unlimited time to train. Or if I do now, at least has more time. I'm jealous about that time. I want it focused.

So I've got to look at what are the things that I'm doing. Are they meaningful? Do they transfer or the other thing that I use a lot and JP John Prior has done this a lot with rugby with Japan rugby lead in does just lead in to a skill.

So they marry it and it leads into a skill. See? Good. Good enough. But I don't, unless I'm working with circus or something like that.

James de Lacey26:14

That's a good point and I wanted to come back as well you mentioned obviously about the groin injuries and stuff like that with the lunge matrix obviously hamstrings are another issue that still persistent everywhere but there's like a I don't know this is just me thinking off the top of my head around shitty theories on this but there's like a overemphasis on these muscle groups because they are often injured and I always think like I even think back to some of my training programs like I never trained the groin directly was in any of my athletes like it was never a thing and never had groin problems.

But it's like as is a lot of this, everyone's pushing all these Nordics then Copenhagen planks everything else do you think this overemphasis on training these muscle groups is potentially I'm not going to say causing the problem but just not making?

Vern Gambetta27:00

I'll say it it's causing the problem they hate me.

James de Lacey27:05

You have a lot of haters for the?

Vern Gambetta27:08

I don't care. I want to be proven wrong. Let's put it that way.

James de Lacey27:15

I look at the individuals, the teams?

Vern Gambetta27:19

That use the methodology that we're talking about. They don't have those injuries.

You're going to pull it. There's sometimes like on a wet field, and you put your foot out. There's some things growing in hamstring, but Nordics are not the answer. They're isolating the hamstring. And the big argument is, well, they're working eccentrically.

Well, the hamstring works at both joints. It works eccentrically for a while. It works isometrically. And it also works concentrically. And you're just putting look at the shape that you're putting the body in. It has no relationship to how the hamstring works and functions.

Same thing with groin. The adductors. That's where the minivan series, it's too cheap. You buy 10 minivans for $11 and do that every day and you don't have groin problems.

But and I'll say this and the original Nordic guys, they will I mean I know there's I see this somebody's following. No, I'm not paranoid, but, like that's become the joke. When I, the original study was flawed. The original study, if you go back to the original study, one group did Nordic hamstring curl and normal soccer training. The other team did?

James de Lacey28:42

Soccer training, right?

Vern Gambetta28:43

What the [expletive] is normal soccer training? Did you did each team do the exact same thing?

James de Lacey28:50

It means they didn't lift weights.

Vern Gambetta28:52

Never. Yeah. They never did. Like what did they do? Listen, I'm not the smartest tool in the shed, but come on. And that goes so that goes back almost 30 years now, but once it gets in the literature, look out. And again, the dumbest doctor is smarter than the smartest?

Smartest performance coach or whatever. Yeah. So as soon as you have an MD or a PhD or something, but I'll go to my grave, fighting this is every way I can.

James de Lacey29:29

It's just it's something I've been thinking over the past few years like this over emphasis on just these individual muscle groups and whether it is potentially just causing more problems than it's helping cuz everyone's just trying to balance the hamstrings or do these Copenhagen planks and making them more intense and more intense and it's like if anyone's done like if anyone's done like maybe as an example high rep squats or maybe done high rep lunges and haven't done them in a while and you wake up the next day like your abductors like destroyed from lunges.

And it's kind of like you're getting them in a movement that's they're probably going to have to go through in training versus the Copenhagen plank?

Where you may be in a shortened position holding it and you're not getting much out of it.

Vern Gambetta30:14

Well, even the big emphasis on isometrics today. Look, in 1962 when I started weight training, functional isometrics were the rage and isometrics. And they helped me as a growing 15 years old to be able to get stronger in certain positions. And I use isometrics, but the isometrics aren't the be all end all.

Put the hamstring in an extended position and hold that isometrically for 30 seconds. What does that do? And the way I put it here's a simple test to put ask talk to the muscle. Be a little weird and talk to the muscle.

So, I'm going to say, "Mr. Hamstring, so I'm going to do some Nordics with you today and I want you to tell me are you going to scream or sing?" And you do two Nordics and ah, it hurts. I don't like it. Now you do three set, you do lunges. Oh man, that's a beautiful song. It sings, right?

You're working those muscles in in synergy with everybody else. And the proof of the pudding is in injuries. Look, now everybody the other one I one pet peeve, if you'll let me rant just for a second, is calves.

Calves. You'd never heard of calf pulls until the last four years and ruptured achilles started actually ruptured achilles started with the onset of anabolic steroids in sport in the 60s. You can almost trace that but the and I saw something on from some influencer the soleus is the strongest muscle in the body. Really? That's absolutely freaking amazing. I just learned something. It's not.

And so doing seated calf raises is just like is going to predispose look at how the gastro soleus functions. It decelerates the foot into the ground and then it helps it only helps with push off in the last third. So I in my generation I did calf raises we did three times a week three sets to burnout with a 250lb guy on my back.

My calves?

James de Lacey32:36

A bodybuilder.

Vern Gambetta32:38

My thought process it would help and my calves were huge and then I got to track and I had to, I was playing a marit then but so I've lived it. We didn't have calf pulls. I don't know why. I had a lot of Achilles issues though. I know that.

And when I stopped doing all the cavies, it took about six months, the Achilles issues went away. So again, that's a case study of one. But those are the things that make you think. And that's that would be the operable term that I would say think, think, think, think, analyze, look at this, understand muscle function.

James de Lacey33:18

Absolutely. I wanted to come also into I guess it falls under rhythm of time, but this gain speed and distortion kind of idea. And I actually when I was on Joel Smith's Just Fly podcast recently, I was talking to him about your old Gain podcast cuz I have a little black book of training stuff from Gain and all different stuff. And I wrote in there episode 81 of the Gain cast and that one was that I think it was like 2017 that one and it was about distorting the game and not replicating it. And it was just the idea about being 30% of a game.

I mean I've taken that and run with it with all different stuff. But it be interesting to kind of go into this idea of distorting game speed and how someone could potentially look to do that across different sports and what does it what does it even mean to do that?

Vern Gambetta34:04

Well yeah it's good really really good question. What does it mean? I mean, first of all, it's not sprint speed. Game speed is not sprint speed, and we I myself included have spent a lot of time trying to make real people real pretty, nice, tall. But in 90% of the games that we work with, it's three steps and change either change direction, shift weight, something like that.

So the first thing that a lot of us did was well, you came and watch an athletic performance practice and we were just taking moves from the game and imitating them with a weight vest on or something and slowing them down. And I'm going, wait, then I started thinking, well, this doesn't really make sense. Let's figure out ways that we can make the player because the athlete because a lot of the games we talk about are about exploiting space, denying space, that kind of stuff. And game speed is really the ability to read, react, change direction, accelerate, decelerate in the context of the game rapidly under control.

So we started creating scenarios and situations where it was maybe extended out a step. So you have to go a little bit faster and add reaction to a not a light but to another body and that kind of stuff as a stimulus. Even tag games, things like that. I don't know if I'm doing a good job of that, but again, what we did with soccer goalkeepers back in the day, we would do in a sand volleyball court and then onto grass.

So you would do some sort of typical programmed agility drill for five reps and then five reps immediately on the grass. So it was faster, so slow to fast and then fast to slow, things like that.

And there's a lot of ways to create without going nutso creating with stretch cord and that some little over speed scenarios where you have to get there faster and that under control. So yeah I it's creativity it's imagination it's working closely with the sport coaches so you know the game and the athlete.

I mean, we did a thing with long time ago with us was on the US World Cup team where we just put two thing augers in the ground. He had a belt on and with two stretch cords and all he had to do he had to go back if you can imagine now the stretch cords here it's stretching out and then I'd play the ball to him and I'd play I'd have two balls one two one two like that and or I'd call out chest head things like that now he was coming off of nine knee surgeries.

But so to me that's distorting the game, and you can do that in threes with players. So yeah, I mean I don't Does that make sense?

James de Lacey37:35

Yeah, let me throw you some examples of stuff that I've done from that that might be interesting because I've thought about a lot how we used to do it and I don't know if I would do it exactly the same again but so rugby unit and rugby seven. So when I was Romanian rugby, we would do like attacking phases and I had the peak like two, three and five minute periods within some of our games.

And I had it in meters per minute. I don't know if I'd do it in meters per minute now, but regardless say it was 120 meters per minute, I would add 30% and be okay we're just running a 3-minute attacking block and we're just trying to exceed that pace for that entire attack.

So if the ball goes out, the ball goes somewhere, another one just gets rolled in, they just go go against an opposed defense. So that was something we would do for like distorting game speed. Now whether I would do

Vern Gambetta38:28

to me that's a good example. That's a good example.

James de Lacey38:32

Like whether I do accelerations or maybe make it more position specific. I don't know. Either way, but that was one obviously and that's all with the sport coaches, right? Another one, sport coach, like I guess you can say like counterattacking or maybe more quote-unquote agility based stuff whereas like a chaotic game where more players are coming in different ways and they're having to problem solve 2v3s etc.

But the other one we did in sevens it was I guess you could throw on the worst case scenario too even like we had no we had no time to prepare for Olympic prep. It was crazy but we basically took defensive like contacts per minute and then just added again 30%. I think it was like 11 total contacts and then we created this grid where they would have to run through different contact scenarios. So they still have to think so hit certain rocks but they'd have to decide based on the position of the person or the hit shield what they had to do.

Then they'd have to wrestle a ball off someone. So again another form of contact and then they would have to sprint back like they were chasing a kick. It was brutal but it was like within this short time frame within the minute it's like okay you're exceeding the contacts that you could have. So that was kind of just some ways we'd looked at distorting it.

Vern Gambetta39:38

That's perfect. And you're not doing it for an hour. You're doing it for brief first. See, I do a thing called living cones. I can do it in basketball. I can do it in rugby. I can do it in soccer. So I no ball. I can put a ball in it. There's six of us, five players in a square area and they're moving and I have to get through them. They can't touch me.

So they're moving. So they might be going forward, backwards. I've got to get to the other side of the square. And then I can make a contact. So I have to hit each one. Hit each one, no two people consecutive. So create constraints, things like that.

So in rugby, it's so important to getting up off the ground, and if you want to play faster in American football, you've got x amount of time between plays, get up off the ground, get back in, things like that. So yeah, it's some of it, and it's constraints approach. That's a big part of distorting the game, I think, too.

Yeah. I like to do I'd do stuff if I were coaching basketball again, I'd do stuff with two balls with two different color balls, same size same size basket and that and then you create a constraint. Or you just take the basketball court and say draw between each free throw line like that. Everything has to happen outside of that. So now what do you do? So now you've got a problem to solve. So you've distorted the game.

And I think this is where it's really got to done in be done in cooperation with the sport coach too. Now we can do a lot of stuff without that, but I think doing it in cooperation with the sport coach really and that's too where this idea of lead-in. So, use a distorted activity to lead into a regular drill, a regular 5v5 in basketball or 11v1 or whatever it is.

James de Lacey41:54

Yeah. I love the different balls one. Like I had multiple games that I'd run through depending on the sessions and there would be like offsite touch variations, small grid tag variations, four goal variations and I just in the middle of the game it's a tennis ball or a mini basketball or a rugby ball or whatever else we had at the time.

Vern Gambetta42:15

How many times you've done it and I did it as an athlete where you line up on the touch line and you do sprints like what the hell? What does that have to do with it? And you met Jimmy Radcliffe at Kane and when they when he and Chip Kelly, they never did conditioning. The practice was so intense. And they've done that with Japan rugby. Eddie did that with England in rugby. John Wooden did that in basketball a million years ago, and play. It just it it's using some imagination and speed it up. Speed up.

James de Lacey43:00

Yeah, it definitely takes some session planning, which I think a lot of teams may not be doing.

Vern Gambetta43:03

Yeah. It's not just pulling it out of thin air and just getting weird. I mean, see, again, that's where people have gone astray. But using Elise as an example, we call it, she does cricket speed. So it's wheel drill, it's three steps. I do it steps, not distance, for fielding. So straight ahead, angle, angle, side, back over your shoulder.

And you'll do it three steps, six steps, nine steps. And then there's a sprint day and there's two 30-meter sprints acceleration, then there's a curves, two 30-meter curves, then there's two 30-meter angles. So that's distort, that's—well, I don't know if it's distorting, you're preparing for the type of speed you have to have in the game.

James de Lacey43:59

I actually have a question in the live chat here. He's asking, can belt squats replace back and front squats as the main squat pattern movement for building leg strength? Is losing spinal loading bad for performance?

Vern Gambetta44:13

There's two questions there. Belt squats, I think for a lot of people with a long, tall back, basketball players, some of your big, even some of your big are really good. Now, again, the spine, loading the spine is the biggest concern that I have now with racking cleans and with back squats. And I know you have to do it at certain times when you have to move somebody and you have to overcome resistance, but over the years it's become less and less and less. We'll get into it, get out of it. But yes, I think belt squats are a really good way, a good substitute.

James de Lacey44:58

I believe it was Grunk. Grank, his whole career he only belt squatted. I think there was a cop online.

Vern Gambetta45:04

Yeah, because he had a really bad back. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I don't have very many hands-off kind of things, but having my daughter was a really good athlete, hurt her back at Rice in going over and having them do heavy squats after a heavy sprint workout. And she's 42 now and the back problems after having the baby, her first baby, the back problems have subsided, which is an interesting thing too with females, but we don't have that option.

But yeah, I don't know what the infatuation with back squats is when I can do various heights of step-ups. There's so many things that really, I'm dancing around the word function, but functionally work the legs as part of the whole kinetic chain, is really good. And by the way, if I did belt squats, depending on the phase, I would marry or superset belt squats with an unloaded squat jump.

So I might do sixes on belt squats and six, three or four sets of those depending on the time of the year, things like that. So I'm getting the power end of it too. So I didn't know we were on live chat, but that's good.

James de Lacey46:27

Yeah, I just throw it up live and just see who joins. And if anyone asks questions, sometimes people ask, sometimes people don't.

Vern Gambetta46:34

Ask questions, because I love them. I love learning.

James de Lacey46:38

And I know you've got a new book that is out or coming out at least. Do you want to maybe run through what's in that book, maybe that's different to some of your previous ones like Athletic Development and some of your other little training manuals?

Vern Gambetta46:43

Yeah, it probably looks to you maybe a little more, like about a third of it looks a little bit more like the Gain manual a little bit. And then the first part is I address culture, coaching philosophy, the role of sport science, the role of leadership, all of that. So it's really more, well, it's not a supplement, it's a complement to the Athletic Development book. The Athletic Development book was written 20 years ago.

James de Lacey47:22

Dude, that thing is so good. For anyone listening, pick up the Athletic Development book because it has so many different things you can pick up and literally implement, like the medicine ball work and stuff like that. It's pretty good.

Vern Gambetta47:34

There's a fair bit of that in the new book. And I think it's a reflection of lessons learned over 56 years. There's the prologue, is kind of a long story of my jaded athletic career and coaching career in terms of—no, I mean, it's not just, I think a coach at any level would really get a lot from it. It's not heavy on sample workouts. I think there's more of that in the Athletic Development book. It's kind of, I would say, it's a little bit more of the whys of some of the things.

James de Lacey48:17

You spend more time thinking and philosophizing over everything into a book.

Vern Gambetta48:21

Yeah, to a certain extent. Martin Binger helped me with it, and I tried really hard to make it something that would be a manual that a coach could take out to the field, take out to the weight room too, as a resource. All the leg circuit progressions are in there. Dumbbell complex progressions in there. A lot of stuff that I've picked up from Nick Garcia because he's working with that real rich age from 14 to 18 developmental level age too, stuff like that.

So yeah, thanks for asking about it. And you can get it at hammermedia.com or the gaynetwork.com. It's available for pre-sale now, but it'll be out, what are we, the 13th? It'll be out by American Thanksgiving, if you have four was foreign. I'm pretty sure.

James de Lacey49:20

Perfect. I'm gonna link that up in the description as well.

Vern Gambetta49:22

Took a long time. It's a process.

James de Lacey49:25

I can imagine. And you talked, funny enough, you talked about when you talk about your cricket player training around using steps instead of distance. And it's interesting because you sparked my mind. I remember when I called you during one of the rugby camps and I was having issues with potential players pulling up sore because cold, wet, snow, ice, training on turf, training on grass, playing on this, just going everywhere. And I was like, how am I going to get speed work done?

And something that I've used since is you have them build up to when whenever they feel comfortable or 90%, and then when they feel comfortable, 8 to 12 steps at 100%. And then they just coast out. And that's been epic. And I don't know, do you have any more little things like that?

Vern Gambetta50:10

Yeah, I mean, again, and this is the benefit of coming from track and field backgrounds and also working across sports and with developmental athletes. So, build into it, hit top speed, you're still accelerating, accelerating from a slower speed to top speed.

But this goes back to something that I really learned from Gary Winkler many, many years ago, at least 40 years ago again. So again, we'll do, and it's usually a number of step acceleration. So I'll say today it's 12-step acceleration. Well, 12-step acceleration for a decently fast rugby player is around 20 meters. I'm not timing them, but a lot of times I'll look and I'll watch where the 12-step is. They may not be pushing enough, they may be pitter-pattering too much. So that's one thing.

And I think the other part of this is using a pulley device, a 1080, which is $20,000, which we don't all have. But use a pulley device. There's a lot of pulley devices. But what we do, we try to get people to run faster than they're capable of running. So I'll do things, I've done this with 12-year-old soccer players. I put the pulley device on them and I walk them through it once.

I go walking up to running, walking to run, and they feel comfortable. And then I'll have them run a little bit and tow them up to speed, and I check them. Then we'll go standing start. The device is right on their belly button, basically. And I'll pull them for four or five steps as hard as I can and release them. So, get them up to speed.

Another good way to do it, and if you look around in your training venues, is find just a gradual, maybe like the scope of a slope of a pitcher mound in baseball. We used to use in baseball where you have one, two, three steps on the incline and then you're right to level. Well, if you don't have good control of your stride, when you go to level, you break. So use an incline, a slight incline to overcome inertia, and then you carry that speed out.

Yeah, those are—I mean, you don't have to. And sometimes too, this sounds really crazy, but I do this because I don't want the kids, and this can be 30-year-old kids too. I'll stand behind them and I'll just right on their low back, I'll give them a big shove. And they have to get their foot down to accelerate. You see? So that's pretty specific to a lot of sports.

But from that they'll go a six-step acceleration, or I'll stand next to them and give them a big shove on their right hip and they have to reorient to a line. So those are all speed development types of activities that carry over to games.

James de Lacey53:44

Yeah. I do something similar. I'd have them jump and I'd have another player hit them.

Vern Gambetta53:49

Yeah, like not stand there because then they know which way they're going to get pushed. Just circle around them so they don't know.

James de Lacey53:55

Push them in the air, land and accelerate. Same thing.

Vern Gambetta53:58

That's really obviously really important in soccer on 50/50 balls in the air. Really important in rugby on line outs. Well, not just line outs, but wingers jumping balls and stuff.

James de Lacey54:08

Yeah. And it's important in basketball. You don't have to give them as hard a shove because that's a foul, but you just give them a nudge and then so they start to learn how to land on balance and then do something with it.

Okay, that's the key thing. Don't just land. Make them have to go two or three steps. So they have to take the activity and apply it. That's crucial. This is something that I have something I have against deceleration because—

Vern Gambetta54:35

Oh god.

James de Lacey54:35

I've never done pure deceleration drills and every time I look at them I really don't like them. And it's just this idea that you're never stopping in this perfect straight line and you're never just stopping either because you're reorientating essentially every single time. It's always a change of direction. So I was wondering what's your thoughts on kind of just—

Vern Gambetta54:53

Well, I can't think of his name. It's elegant the work that they're doing on deceleration, but it's artificial. So it's like what are you decelerating to? That's the first thing that I ask. Are you decelerating to a full stop? Are you decelerating to change direction? Are you reversing direction? So I build a good foundation with strength training in and out of the weight room. Plios are going to help me with that.

But in terms of the drop and stop stuff, I don't know if it creates an awareness. I know sometimes it... But Bill Knowles and I are always talking about this: you're landing, what happens? There's very few activities where we land. We're getting ready to do something else. So that's my attitude toward deceleration.

I think you can learn a lot by some of the work that they're doing. But a lot of it is artificial. And I think programming... Here's the epitome of agility and deceleration reacceleration: triple jump and long jump. So a world class long jumper is running down the runway at 10 point something meters per second, hits the board and has to now convert that horizontal velocity to vertical velocity and do it with minimal deceleration.

So I look at that and then the triple jumper has three phases. So I look at that and I try to look at that in the context of what I have to do with my cricket player or with my soccer player or something like that.

James de Lacey57:08

So when I—

Vern Gambetta57:11

So if you look in the new book, I'm not trying to sell the new book, but I don't have deceleration as a component. I have change of direction as a component when you look at your training factors. And there's various change of direction drills, but most all the change of direction drills that I do involve a start, a stop, a reacceleration type of thing.

James de Lacey57:40

Yeah, we're definitely on the same page there. I see a lot of straight line like sprint deceleration. They're trying to stop in that one leg in that perfect position, torso over the leg kind of thing. I'm like, maybe I guess they just call it deceleration capacity or something, but it's like doesn't... You're not doing anything like you're never doing that ever.

Vern Gambetta57:40

It's artificial and you're bringing it to a conscious level. And the other thing that I said, this on a note to—I think it's Harper, good people. They're really working hard and I'm not trying to put them down—is the role that the trunk plays. It's huge in terms of changing direction. So that's where all the medicine ball work and all the partner stuff comes in.

If you want to really work on deceleration ability, just do a bunch more standing medicine ball and plate twist and things like that with a step. And I mean, look at the mass there, even in a 60 kilo girl soccer player, the mass in that trunk. So it's not core strength per se. It's the whole trunk tied into, again, same thing, kinetic.

James de Lacey59:00

That's pretty much one of my favorite exercises I've taken off from that, that step twist and step in and lean. I do those all the time now. They're like some of my favorite things to do in warm-ups and things like that. Just feels so good, too. Like it just opens up your spine.

Vern Gambetta59:15

It's cheaper than a chiropractor.

James de Lacey59:19

I was talking to Martin not long ago about game. What are you currently doing with that? I think you mentioned that there's no more big gains.

Vern Gambetta59:27

We're doing one more. We're calling it... If any of the fans of the band—the band from, they're all dead now, Robbie Robertson, they did a movie called The Last Waltz with Martin Scorsese. They did it here in San Francisco when they broke up. So we're going to have The Gain Last Waltz. It's going to be June right now. I think June 16, 17, and 18 at Nick Garcia's place at Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks.

It'll be non-residential, so people will have their own hotels. But it'll be the same kind of format, long days, more mix of presentation, practical, presentation, practical, just because there we can do everything within about a 300 meter radius. Beautiful. And that's Sherman Oaks is LA, so you can fly into LA Burbank. So it should be fun.

And then after that, Gain is not going to die for the listeners. I found out you can't put the Zoom link on—I got excoriated by Zoom. Put it on, I put it on Twitter and that kind of stuff. So if you drop me a note or drop Martin a note, why don't you put Martin in there?

And then we do a coffee talk once a month. We might expand that to twice. But then what we're going to do is we're going to do one day Gains around the country and that Jimmy Radcliffe and I primarily and then one other person.

So but the... It's not a restart. I mean, we did... It's going to be in July, mid July. So it's right at the end of the World Cup in soccer. Some people said, but Vern... I mean, you can watch the games on TV that night or something like that.

James de Lacey1:01:39

Well, I look forward to the day Gain in Austin when it eventually comes through.

Vern Gambetta1:01:44

Well, we'd love to do one. Love to do one. What we're doing is we're putting impetus on the people at the various sites. If they can arrange the hosting, then we certainly would be willing to do that. Jimmy's wife got her PhD at Texas. I don't know if you know that.

So he's been to Austin quite a bit. So I'll come anytime I can and have some more barbecue. So I'd love that. For sure. For sure.

James de Lacey1:02:13

Perfect. I appreciate you coming on, Vern. Is there anywhere where people can follow you and keep up with your rants and what you're doing?

Vern Gambetta1:02:13

Well, yeah. I'm on... Let's see. X is Coach Gambetta. Facebook is just me, I think. Vern Gambetta. LinkedIn is Vern Gambetta. And then Instagram is here.

James de Lacey1:02:36

Instagram is also Coach Gambetta.

Vern Gambetta1:02:38

Is that Coach Gambetta?

James de Lacey1:02:40

Is that Instagram? Okay.

Vern Gambetta1:02:42

That's another old one.

James de Lacey1:02:45

I thought you were GTS coach at one point.

Vern Gambetta1:02:45

No, GSTS.

James de Lacey1:02:49

GS.

Vern Gambetta1:02:50

It's GS, Gambetta Sports Training Systems.

James de Lacey1:02:54

Oh, there you are.

Vern Gambetta1:02:55

Huh?

James de Lacey1:02:56

Yeah. No, you have two of them. GSTS coach and you also have Coach Gambetta on Instagram. But your GSTS coach is your main one, it looks like.

Vern Gambetta1:03:07

Oh, really? Okay. That's where I've been putting stuff up on. Guys, I was born in an analog world and always die in an analog. I mean, I'm not that much of a Luddite, but the whole social media thing... Again that somebody said, "Well, how many followers do you have?" I don't know and I don't care. That's never been the purpose.

And they said, "Well, why do you post so much?" Because I want to share what I've learned. And I get paid if you come to Gain, but I'd love to have you have me in and consult. But I had people help me 40, 50 years ago, even in the last few years, that didn't charge a dime. So that's the goal to me with these vehicles that we have: let's share good information and be professional and that.

So anyway, sounds very altruistic, but maybe it is. I don't know.

James de Lacey1:04:10

Perfect. Well, I'll link all those up in the description anyway when this comes out. And I appreciate you coming on, Vern.

Vern Gambetta1:04:14

No, thank you very much. Appreciate it.