Getting Stronger Doesn't Make You Better At Rotation? w/ Dr. Andrew Pichardo (SSOF Ep 156)

James de Lacey2:33

And I'll be interested because obviously you worked a lot in rotational sports as you mentioned with golf and then mainly baseball, etc. And you actually recently published that paper where you looked at, I think you were correlating general strength and power, I guess, tests with rotational medicine ball throws. Be interesting maybe if you can maybe just outline that research, kind of what you did, what you found, and maybe your interpretation of it, and how if it's influenced any of your practice.

Dr. Andrew Pichardo2:33

Yeah, so I mean that kind of was a thought experiment with me and the tennis strength coach here. And we kind of, we see it, but we wanted to measure it in terms of people's ability to rotate. And is that linked to just general strength? Because we see golfers, when we were doing this testing, we saw—So, we did, I guess I'll explain it, but we had kids throw medicine balls according to their weight.

Measured it with a radar gun. We did seated and standing and we were trying to figure out the contribution of the lower body or their ability to, is it a separate ability to be able to rotate and it's not just linked to overall strength?

And that's kind of what we saw, obviously you can throw the ball harder standing up than seated. And one of the interesting things that when we were doing this because we were filming it as well, we took some shots, is some of these golfers that are rotating a lot in their sport when it comes to transferring those skills to another activity that can help enhance their swing, they don't really know how to rotate that well.

There's no technique measurements within it, but you could see that some people are just kind of moving their whole body and just throwing it, and you could tell the people that kind of could dissociate and use their hips and actually get some power that way. So, that was interesting to see.

And we had, we collected some other stuff that we didn't end up publishing in or analyzing, but we also had the output unit at the time, so we had it for a 6-week trial or something. We were going to measure, see the validity of it in terms of if the radar gun is saying the ball is going this fast, but your arm, is it moving at the same speed or is there a disconnect between arm speed and ball speed? But that was kind of phase two that we never got to.

James de Lacey5:02

Nice. So, you talked about some, I guess you mentioned that, would they were relatively, let's just say good golfers. They had faster club head speed, they were able to rotate well during golf that weren't able to do so well with the medicine ball. Is that what you were seeing with some of them?

Dr. Andrew Pichardo5:16

Yeah, essentially. I mean I wouldn't say they all had a super high club head speed, but just the sequencing of it was not what you would hope to see in a golf swing. So, in a golf swing you want to be able to dissociate and lead with your hips. And when they're throwing the medicine ball that's not necessarily happening.

So, that's not to say it's not happening in their golf swing, but if you're going to use med ball training to enhance your golf swing and you're not doing it the same or have the same kinetic sequence, the carryover's going to be limited.

So in terms of using that long term, that was done quite a while ago now. So now it's we have it in our head that that's probably a general theme and we just try to encourage the technique on those throws and stuff to make sure they're not just rotating their whole body and throwing it and they're actually leading with their hips and getting that rotation.

James de Lacey6:10

I can imagine that translates well over to boxing as it should where you could do the same thing and just heave medicine balls versus actually doing it with that same sequencing because it's very similar, right? With the dissociation of upper and lower body within those.

So, that means so you would then make these medicine balls almost be part of what's called special strength training or specific strength training because you are drilling the same movement pattern, it's just under a little more load.

Dr. Andrew Pichardo6:42

Yeah, for sure. And we don't, immediately we don't do a lot of med ball throws because they're developmental athletes still, so a lot of our focus is just building general strength technique and general movement pattern, squat, lunge, hinge, that kind of stuff.

They also have a day once a week, our golfers, where they do it at the golf facility, so weight room's kind of 200 meters away, 400 meters away, where they'll come do lifts. We get them two or three days a week depending on the group. And so a lot of that is just GPP anyways, and then once a week at their golf facility they have a med ball wall there, they have med balls, they have TRX, so that's where they kind of dig a little bit deeper into some of that and teaching the, they're able to get into the kinetic sequence and rotating a little bit more over there.

And since I know they're doing that there, we don't do a lot of extra med ball throws in our training. Especially depending on the weight room you're in, there's not a great wall to throw it. So, you can kind of throw it against boxes. You can take them outside, but if we're trying to be time efficient, we end up kind of hitting the big rocks and leave some of the rotation stuff to the other coaches.

James de Lacey7:53

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I believe in that paper as well, was it that you found that the general strength and power qualities didn't correlate well with the rotational ball speed? Was that correct?

Dr. Andrew Pichardo8:57

I think so. I'd have to pull it up to see exactly what we found.

James de Lacey9:01

I think that was a, I think I pulled it up here, or maybe I didn't.

Dr. Andrew Pichardo9:05

Yeah, so it was basically saying that it's a different capacity and something that you cannot just say if you're stronger, you're going to be able to rotate better. So that was where the weak link was. It's a different type of movement that can be assessed separately without high correlations to general strength, because typically you would think or say maybe the stronger you are, the harder you're going to throw the ball, but with the weaker correlations, we found that no, actually the ability to rotate is different than just general strength, which is kind of common sense, but it was good to see it firsthand.

James de Lacey9:43

It's kind of common sense, but at the same time you have a lot of thought processes, as you mentioned, where just get stronger and then the sport will take care of the rest, whereas potentially that may not be the case. If you're seeing data like this as well and the things you're seeing in coaching, does that then influence or change anything within your program then? Because obviously you can get them stronger, more powerful, but I'm assuming then you're probably going to have to do more rotation within training to at least see some of that transfer come over.

Dr. Andrew Pichardo10:15

Yeah, I mean it's something that we're going to start to leak back into the program. So the first year we were doing that study was the first year they had their functional day, is what they call it. So I was kind of just wanting to see how that went. Now knowing the landscape of what they do over there and some of the same rotational deficits, I guess, that we see with us, we'll find ways to leak that stuff back in. I forgot the first part of your question, but—

James de Lacey10:46

I think that was the whole question.

No, I think the question was the changing the program and if there is going to be more rotational-based work within there, as well as say the more general strength power stuff to try to find that transfer.

Dr. Andrew Pichardo10:58

Yeah, and I would say it depends on the level of the group. We have anywhere from middle school to post grad, so with the middle schoolers, I mean, they're probably not going to do a lot of rotational med ball throws. Or it will be in a game-based setting where we're not really dialing in those super technical aspects of hip transfer and that kind of stuff. It'll be getting them used to throwing balls, max intent, finding ways to make that happen.

And then with some of the older groups, we can actually coach and use that language that they need. But yeah, I mean it's kind of both ways that we see. We see, and that's what makes it a tough sport to work with sometimes, but me for instance, I've got more max force than any of these golfers that I train, but they can swing the club better and hit the ball further.

But then we see the opposite where there's some people that are kind of redlining their engine in terms of they have a high club head speed or high distance, but they're not that strong or raw. So then we can say, "Okay, their technique is the primary driver in that." And so general strength might increase their speed more than someone else who already has a pretty good base and really needs the fine aspects of how to use that in their swing.

James de Lacey12:14

What do you, maybe just hypothetical, just off your opinion, what do you think then makes some golfers—I mean, you see it in multiple sports, right? Like weaker, quote unquote, athletes in the gym, but within their sport they are fast, powerful, almost slingy or elastic, versus the ones that are maybe stronger and say quote unquote, I guess they are more block-like.

So is there something that you've kind of pinpointed as potentially a reason these discrepancies exist, and is that something then that you would maybe look to try and develop in someone who doesn't have it, who doesn't maybe swing as well as some of these weaker guys?

Dr. Andrew Pichardo13:00

I mean, it's just skill I think is what it comes down to. You can have all the strength in the world, but if you can't swing properly, you're going to be limited. So if you—the stronger you are, if you got, let's say we got two submax swings, well, if you're stronger, suboptimal swings. The stronger you are, your suboptimal swing still might be better than other people's good swing just because you have a lot of force. But in terms of the gap between the strength and their performance, it comes down to just sequencing the body, technique, striking the ball properly.

But then with golf, that's not the only—that's a big factor, but it's not the only factor. So you can get by hitting the fairway, not hitting super far if you got all your other parts of the game dialed in. So that's just one thing we try to develop, but there's tons of ways to be a good golfer. And everyone has different strengths and weaknesses, so there's probably other people that are good off the tee and their short game's not as good.

So when it comes to the gym or what's working or improving their strength and power, we can do that, but if you can't hit a putt, you're still not going to score well. And so that's been an interesting balance to try to find of hey, our golfers are getting better or they're getting stronger and more powerful, but their swing's not, so it's a good conversation to have with the coaches about what the priority needs to be for certain people.

James de Lacey14:28

I believe this golf research is correlating countermovement jump with club head speed or it's saying more powerful lower bodies equal faster club head speed in golf. But do you—what do you put that correlation down to versus say the countermovement jump you did with the medicine ball throw not having much of a correlation? Is it just the measures being used or the—

Dr. Andrew Pichardo14:51

I think it's the skill level of the golfer is probably a big part of it. The more skilled you are, the higher I think correlation you would see, because the technique is not an issue anymore. So then it is if I get more stronger and powerful and everything stays the same, that should improve.

For us, it's we have a lot of kids that get more stronger and powerful and their technique is just not progressing at the same rate or is not optimal. So once again, they're kind of limited by their range of motion or their sequencing or the strike of the ball. You could swing it fast and tow it, and it's not going to go far. So club head speed is even different than hitting distance, which is different than all the other aspects of the game.

And that's probably what I would say is where—even our higher skilled golfers are—well, we have just a wide range of golfers, first of all. So we have skilled golfers and some that are still working to improve. And so the carryover you're going to get between their physical prowess and their technical prowess is going to be kind of skewed depending where they're at.

James de Lacey15:59

Got you. Yeah, what is the level that comes through the IMG Academy? Is it scholarship-based, or parents are paying for their kids to kind of go there?

Dr. Andrew Pichardo16:07

It's different. There is financial aid for sports. I think I'm not exactly sure how it all works, but each sport kind of uses their money differently, from what I understand. So certain sports, yeah, they have a lot of financial aid. They get people in, and they have super high-level top teams.

And then with golf, obviously, it's an individual sport, so we have across the range. We're not necessarily on teams, but I think for our golfers, we probably give out less financial aid than some other sports, just because I don't know, maybe the golfers we recruit can pay it, so we don't need financial aid. But I'm just not sure of the details of that, across different sports. But essentially, if you have the money and you want to come here, you can come here no matter what skill level you're at.

James de Lacey16:56

Interesting.

So there could be some parents living through their kids trying to get them pro, something like that.

Dr. Andrew Pichardo17:03

Yeah, we probably see some of that. And we can help them along the way a lot better than a lot of other schools, but it still comes down to does the kid want to get better? If you want the kid to get better, you can send them to somewhere where they have all the tools, but if that person doesn't have that intrinsic motivation then it's, you can only do so much with that.

James de Lacey17:28

Yeah. So how—so you mentioned the age groups. You obviously have them quite young all the way through to I think as you mentioned it was as a late teenager.

Dr. Andrew Pichardo17:36

Yeah, I mean we have post grads. So some kids will finish their senior year and stick around another year. Some people just come in after they graduate high school and they're trying to get one more year and try to get recruited and go somewhere else. But yeah, we have a wide range. And that's—and this is for golf. I think all sports kind of have some middle schoolers and some post grads, but not always necessarily enough to fill the whole team or anything.

James de Lacey18:05

So how does your outlook look at the, I guess, across that kind of long-term athlete development from when they come in middle school all the way through? Does your emphasis, I guess the athlete might take that, but does your emphasis change as they mature through those age groups and start to show, I guess, physical development towards the later years?

Dr. Andrew Pichardo18:26

Yeah, so we're actually I'm part of a working group to create our own athlete development model as a way to help guide some of that process across sports and have some not standardization, but some guiding principles of how we do that. Understanding that kids are not mini adults. So we can't just scale back what we do for adults and give it to kids. So we're working through that process.

James de Lacey18:50

The elite training youth training camps would like to have a word with you about that.

Dr. Andrew Pichardo18:55

I know. I mean it's a big problem, just across youth sports in general. And I think back even to when I was in high school, I'm like, I could not imagine asking my parents to pay $5,000 to fly me around the country to play baseball year-round.

James de Lacey19:08

That's crazy, eh?

Dr. Andrew Pichardo19:10

But yeah, I mean that's a huge thing. I would, but we're in so we're taking steps to try to build out a model for the whole Academy in terms of, what does middle school training look like? For people going through their growth spurt, how do we tailor our training workload and allow for more rest and, you know, understand that their movement patterns may be compromised for a period. And then obviously as you get older, then as you get older it kind of depends on the skill level of the athlete.

Like if you have developmental athletes that are 11th or 12th grade and probably not going to make it to the next level, just understanding that maybe they don't need as specific of training or they have a lot of room to grow with just basic movement still, whereas if you have elite level people that are going D1 when they leave, you want to prepare them for that level of competition.

So we're just in the process of building systems and frameworks to first of all have it put down on paper of "this is what our process looks like" and then kind of an auditing process of "this is appropriate, this isn't."

You know, if I teach a skill to a 13-year-old, I'll probably do it in a different way than an 18-year-old, hopefully, ideally. And so it does change. It goes from, you know, basic to complex, all these other metrics, you know, light loading to heavier loading. But it at a certain point it comes down to training age, too. If you have a senior that comes in that's never trained before, they're going to kind of scale back a little bit.

And vice versa, if you have a 14-year-old who has been training for 5 years already, you know, you might be able to do a little bit more with them. So it's a framework that can be interpreted depending on the athlete in front of you.

James de Lacey21:02

What does preparing a golfer for D1 entail? Is the D1 schedule quite rigorous?

Dr. Andrew Pichardo21:09

Yeah, I mean so part of our process I guess is having 36 hole events where they've got to play two rounds kind of back-to-back. So, yeah, in a college setting they might play three rounds in a weekend. So, and we think it's just golf. We don't always think of them as athletes, but we try to train them like almost any other athlete that you would. So we want them to have a good body composition where they can walk that course with less loading. You know, fatigue endurance to be able to keep up their power output and their focus and concentration through that whole time.

We have nutritionists that work with them in terms of the nutritional approach to tournaments and training. We have mental coaches that help with mental aspects of the game and just learn some skills that they can use, having their toolbox. So that's kind of the big view, but yeah, I mean essentially we get our golfers to sprint, run, jump, throw, lift, you know, and then those are the big rocks. And then the little rocks like teaching their hips how to rotate.

They get some specialized work with the golf coaches. We do some stuff as well and then we don't run through the whole TPI screen, but certain aspects of the kind of a golf movement screen that the golf coaches run that we can then use to help tailor their individualized work, individualize their programs a bit more for them.

James de Lacey22:37

You mentioned teaching their hips how to rotate. Do you have some examples of things you would do typically?

Dr. Andrew Pichardo22:43

I mean, for some of it is just med ball throws and then just coaching it up and trying to show them the sequence and stuff like that. Other things is just keeping their upper body fixed while they're trying to rotate their hips or vice versa, keeping their hips fixed while they rotate their upper body. So this could be just a band twist. A dowel rod, you know, hold it there, move your hips, try not to let your whole knees straighten out and your whole body moving.

And then with golf they do different things with bands. So they'll set up the bands a certain way and just really work on making the movement happen from their hips instead of their whole body moving. So just different aspects like that. Anything where you can get their feet moving without their upper body or vice versa is things that we try to do. And even when you think you've got a foolproof way to isolate it, you know, you're working with kids, so they'll figure out a way to make you coach really hard to try to get your point across.

James de Lacey23:41

Or even as adults, that's hard to do. And that's especially hard to do. I've talked about this bit in the podcast previous videos, but especially hard to do especially with, I guess, people have been lifting a long time and that either coming back to sport or they've really prioritized lifting. And that you lose that upper lower dissociation, not quickly, but you lose that and it's hard to get it's hard to get back. I found myself just, you know, years of competitive weightlifting and then you come back to try and do some other sports and it's like, "Whoa, you're just kind of stuck."

Dr. Andrew Pichardo24:09

Yeah. It's an adaptation for the sport, but it's a hard thing to do and it's probably worth training.

For sure. For sure. So we try to do it. I mean, in the warm-up, paired up with other exercises. Try to hit it in some capacity at each day that we train knowing that they're getting that one day at sport as well and then ideally in their swing they're doing it all the time. I would say, I mean, luckily for us we don't have a lot of kids that have been training for a long time where they're trained out of that. So it's maintaining that as you start to lift or start to put on weight or start to gain some muscle.

For the most part they have pretty good range of motion, which is nice. Some people are just limited because they can't move because they got a lot of muscle or they've been doing a certain type of training for a while. But even a lot of our golfers are coming from lacrosse or hockey or other implement sports, tennis as well, where it's, you know, it's a pattern they've been practicing for a while and they typically have the physical capacity to do it, but not the neuromuscular connection to be able to do it well. And this is a generalization. Some of our golfers are great. It's just some can improve.

James de Lacey25:24

Yeah. Yeah, so that's an interesting one that I think people listening can kind of take that as a general thing to start doing within their training more as well, just to be able to separate that from the upper body. But I want to go into one of your other papers as well. 2021 one where you did, we had 12 to 14-year-olds and you had them do combined resistance training, combined resistance training with weightlifting. I'm assuming that I'm assuming Olympic weightlifting in this context.

Dr. Andrew Pichardo25:51

Correct.

James de Lacey25:51

And then a control group. Do you want me to go into why, I guess why you were looking at this and what you were trying to, I guess, find from it and what you actually did.

Dr. Andrew Pichardo26:01

Yeah, so this was basically my whole PhD. It was 28 weeks of training over the school year. So what I was trying to look at was does weightlifting movements improve athleticism more than traditional strength training? Kind of trying to combat the whole "takes too long to learn," blah blah blah. I'm like, "No, I think they're beneficial." But no, not a lot of.

There has been some studies, but not a lot that have compared, you know, the two types of training. So we had one group that would do weightlifting derivatives and one group that would do what I kind of thought of what a strength coach would replace those movements with.

So if it was a mid-thigh pull, I can't remember the exact pairings now, but they might do a hurdle hop or a med ball throw. And when we did clean pulls, we kind of had a deadlift and a box jump. Something that would say, "Hey, instead of doing Olympic weightlifting movements, this is what I do because they're easier and simpler." So that was kind of the basis of it.

We had, yeah, this was at the high school in New Zealand. We had, not sure how many in each group, but the PE groups acted as controls, and then there was an athlete development program there that was kind of identified talented athletes across different sports. Primarily, probably basketball, rugby, soccer, rowing, and then some other kind of one-offs.

And because we wanted it to be as normal as a normal high school program would be, we had weight room work, and then we had speed and agility stuff outside as well, which they did the same thing there. We literally just would swap two or three movements within the workout each day.

So we found there wasn't a lot of difference between the groups at the end of it. So both groups kind of had a big spurt. And so we measured, so I'm all over the place. We did, I don't know what we did. Counter movement jumps, we did sprints, we did a resistance training skills battery, which is like a movement screen kind of for resistance training. And then some balance tests, some tuck jumps, stuff.

And we found that both groups had a big spike in strength, and then that kind of plateaued over time. And then the movement assessment was kind of a little bit slower progression, and then a bigger progression later on. Sorry, vice versa. So their movement capacity or their movement quality improved. So faster improvements, and then kind of tailed off once, you know, you can only max out the score on this test.

You can't keep improving. And then the strength was kind of a delayed effect of as we learn to move better and as we start to load it up, it took a while, but then those gains kind of shot up afterwards.

And then I guess one of the main differences we saw between the groups was that the group that was doing the weightlifting movements improved their resistance training skills battery score more than the group doing traditional strength training. So kind of adding, I guess, to the idea that doing these complex, more complex movements would enhance the simple movements as well. And I think part of the reason we didn't see a lot of change between the groups or a lot of difference was that it was just, I mean it was a whole, not really a whole year, but a school year of trying these movements with 13 and 14-year-olds, which is tough time to teach them when if they are going through that peak height velocity and they're growing really fast.

But it wasn't loaded to the ability that it could, that it could be once you, once you learn the movements and you can start to load them, I think you might see some different stuff. But we didn't really get to that point. I mean, I don't even know if we did full cleans or full snatches by the end of the year. It was still kind of derivatives and pairing pieces of it together. But the technique was solid. Like if we would have carried that on, I think the year two results might have been a little bit different.

James de Lacey30:13

Do you think that would translate to an older age group in terms of the findings, something like that?

Dr. Andrew Pichardo30:21

Potentially. I mean, just 'cause they might have more exposure and ability to load it faster. We were like, that program was designed for that age group. Well, it was designed for the age group that we were working with for one, but also that was the group that they had set aside to do the research with, so that's what we were doing.

I think it could go both ways, 'cause once again it comes down to training age. If you got older kids that are still, it's still going to take them a while to learn weightlifting movements, but they might be able to happen faster. The older kids would be able to load the traditional movements probably faster as well. Like some of these kids were learning how to lift for the first time and they're doing this program.

Whereas if you get 17, 18-year-olds, they might have some experience, and so if we are doing deadlifts instead of them doing, 60 kilos and learning after months of training, they might be doing 160 kilos. So the outputs from those will be different. But not a lot of research is done in youth male weightlifters to really compare those adaptations.

James de Lacey31:32

Yeah. That is true. I mean, there isn't that much research within youth, at least. I guess it's tough though within youth, right? 'Cause you mentioned they're growing, so how much can you put down to puberty as well with these guys growing. So I guess it can be hard to really isolate differences between protocols, I guess, within that.

Dr. Andrew Pichardo31:53

Yeah, I mean, there's kind of like standard or average increases in some of these skills that we tested with just normal puberty, and so we saw gains above that. So we, I mean, we could say that the training did have an effect, but it is hard to tease out how much of it was from what. You really can't tease that out.

James de Lacey32:19

So you, are you using then a lot of weightlifting derivatives then with your golfers?

Dr. Andrew Pichardo32:23

I, no, I mean, I'm not now. I did a little bit my first year and then I kind of got away from it. I've been thinking about going back to it.

James de Lacey32:33

Wait, okay. Go into that for me. You started and you stopped and now you're going back, what was the catalyst for those changes?

Dr. Andrew Pichardo32:40

It was a lot of, I mean, my first year I was just trying to figure out how the place worked and I didn't have a great handle on that for a while. And so that, and the other thing is I'm about to start my fourth year, so the previous 3 years have each had a slightly different twist in the scheduling and the grouping that the kids come and me just, I mean, taking a while to figure out the place.

So I think now that I have a pretty good grasp on that. We have perch now, so that's a big difference, too, in terms of being able to track some of this stuff. When I say, and then when I say derivatives, like we've done mid-thigh pull, like isometric mid-thigh pulls over the course of the years, but we haven't hang cleaned or hang snatched or anything like that.

A reason to go back to it, I don't know. I just want to kind of revisit it and see. Probably won't have them catch cleans unless they want to, but I haven't fully decided if I want to go back to it. I just think it's a good way to increase the tools in tool box. So, once again, thinking about Division 1, if they do go there, they might be exposed to some of this stuff. Any college really, any college level.

That's part of it. Part of it is we're having a lot of complaints with back stuff, with trap bar deadlift. So last year I cut it out of the program completely. I did it the first 2 years, last year we didn't do it at all. And rightfully so, like the bars we have in one of our weight rooms are 70 lbs and they're stored upright, so I mean, getting them out sometimes and loading and, some of our girls are 100 lbs. So that's not a great tool for them to develop strength or explosive power.

So I think, being able to do like a jump shrug or a hang clean pull is something that is more scalable across our weight rooms and clientele. And yeah, it's just another thing to add into the program that can help if it does help, like we talked about with the coordination and overall, like maybe that's even though it's not rotational, it still might increase our kinetic awareness to be able to transfer to those higher level movements like the golf swing or even a med ball throw.

James de Lacey35:16

As I was saying you mentioned about the trap bar deadlift as well. So you took that out because of potential back problems. Did you replace it with anything in particular?

Dr. Andrew Pichardo35:26

Not really. We just ended up squatting more. Like we used to squat and deadlift. And it's not something like I don't think the back problems are from the deadlifts.

But it was just a constant battle of modifying stuff or changing stuff out. And so it was a conversation with our athletic trainers of just like hey, let's just go away from this and see what happens. And they had less back injuries last year overall. So I think we did some more other core work to not really replace the deadlift but to say hey, if we're not getting this high stimulus and if back injuries are the problem, let's try to address that.

But also the hex bars we got replaced after the hurricane were those bigger ones. So before that they were kind of the 45 lb normal bars. Then we get these new ones in that are 70 lbs and they're stored upright. So they're just hard to get out. Like even for me they're not the easiest thing to maneuver.

So, yeah. I'm like, we don't necessarily need to do a loaded pull from the ground to get the strength stimulus. We just get it squatting.

James de Lacey36:41

I agree 'cause I did a few videos on this. I've done some recently as well, and I've done some in the past about not deadlifting, even on Instagram and stuff. And obviously, you always get different camps and things on it. I think people tend to, I guess, understand. What people don't like is when you say, "Oh, it's a higher risk of injury." That's what they don't like to hear.

Yeah, everything's a high risk of injury. But it's like, well, like for me, like a conventional like a deadlift from the floor, because you don't have the preloading like a squat where you kind of, you stay essentially learning it. It's just like, it's not that it's dangerous, it's just that you just have a greater chance of doing something funky. And with as you mentioned, athletes notoriously have lower back problems.

Especially with golf when you're just rotating one way the entire time. You think about rugby, like crazy [expletive] like that. Like something's got to give at some point. And if you're going to do your weightlifting drills as you mentioned, do you need to add deadlifting on top of it? There's just so many other factors that come into play.

Dr. Andrew Pichardo37:45

Yeah, so I mean, I end up using the trap bars at the end of the year to do some jumps with our, it's kind of like if 70 lb is less than half of your body weight, you can use the trap bars. And if not, you're going to use dumbbells. So we're just doing weighted jumps. But kind of trying to account for really just their body weight, not necessarily their strength level. But if it was more than 50% of your body weight, your strength level wasn't that great anyways.

So we use them a little bit. I don't know if I'll go back to them with the golfers just because of the trap bar situation. Maybe our older groups, or even our older groups, we have some really good girl golfers that are still, I mean, 100, 110 lbs that like a 70 lb bar is getting up there already. And that's what I'm talking about. It's awkward.

I mean, some of the decisions you make as a high school coach are not always optimal. It's like what is efficient or not going to do your head in. Like if it's easier to get that from something else. Not saying always take the easy way out, but you have to understand the groups you're working with and what the pinch point's going to be and sometimes some things are just more complicated to perform than to find alternatives.

James de Lacey39:04

That's what social media, quote unquote, trainers don't get.

Dr. Andrew Pichardo39:10

I've seen some crazy stuff out there lately, man.

James de Lacey39:13

Dude, that's gotten worse, hey? It is like, I don't know if it's, I thought it was just me, but I'm pretty sure everyone's seeing how bad it's getting recently. I'm like, "Whoa." It's like every market has jumped into the, quote unquote, fitness niche or picked a sport and decided to be the branded guy for whatever it is. And I was like, "Holy [expletive] man." Some of the stuff that comes out is like, I don't even, it's clear that this person hasn't coached. Otherwise, you wouldn't be saying this.

Dr. Andrew Pichardo39:40

Right. Right. Yeah, it's tough. 'Cause the general population doesn't probably see that, but experienced people I think can kind of see it and understand that just 'cause it's hard doesn't mean it's beneficial.

James de Lacey39:52

Exactly. Explain for the listeners, you mentioned Perch, your velocity-based system. You want me to explain how that works? That's like a real fancy one, right?

Dr. Andrew Pichardo40:01

I think it's fairly fancy.

James de Lacey40:04

It's got cameras and [expletive] so it has to be.

Dr. Andrew Pichardo40:06

Yeah, it's got cameras. So we haven't actually used it for a school year yet. So we've had Elite Form in the past couple years, which is also a camera system, and we got Perch now. We got Perch recently. We kind of had Catapult bought Perch, didn't they? Didn't they buy Perch? I think it was like the day after we inked that deal or they posted it or whatever.

Yeah, I mean it's just a little bit more functional for me in terms of like the programming aspect. So, even going online and putting your workouts in for the athletes seems a little more user-friendly. The back end when the athlete completes a set or a workout, getting in there and seeing that and comparing different athletes, so far that's been better.

I haven't really used it in a full group setting and for a full school year. I've just been messing around with it myself, but I think that's going to allow for some different things. So, I don't know exactly how I'll use it yet because it's a new technology.

Before I even got to IMG, I hadn't really used VBT too much just because it wasn't really anywhere I ever was. And so, there it was in one weight room, our main weight room, but not in the bubble. So, we have an inflatable bubble with turf and a weight room in there, but Elite Form wasn't in there. And so, some golfers' sessions would be in PCW, some would be in the bubble. And so, I couldn't even accurately prescribe it because they might not have the same weight room day.

So, I ended up towards the end of the year, their workout was less of your first workout in the week, I want you to do this because it's more taxing. It was hey, the day that we're in PCW, we're going to squat, bench and use the camera and use VBT for that or at least track our workouts in there.

And the day we're in the bubble, we're going to do stuff that we don't necessarily or aren't as worried about tracking. Well, we couldn't track it anyways. So, for some groups that was day one, for some groups that was day two and we just ran it that way.

With Perch we have it in the bubble and PCW so we can track all the main movements, you can track dumbbell exercises which is different than Elite Form. You can track bodyweight stuff so just using that as a tool to monitor as opposed to jumping on force plates, there's a lot of capabilities I think we'll have that will take some time to figure out what we want to implement and what we really want to look at.

James de Lacey42:43

Do you have a general idea, I know you haven't used it properly but do you have a general idea of what you want to get out of it?

Dr. Andrew Pichardo42:48

I mean for me it's probably just a lot about load selection like progressive load selection and it's got dynamic estimated loads you can do. So this is just stuff I've messed around with but I put my max in there and once you have so much data you put the speed in there that you want to move at and it will give you a weight range to work from.

So that's huge because I don't know if I'll one rep max all my athletes but I can get a number and put it in there or it can also predict a number based on once you get so many sets at so many different loads it can give you a predicted max and it does all the guesswork for you.

So for me that was a big thing to try to work out was how can I make sure that athletes are progressing and without it just wasn't that easy to see with Elite Form and I didn't use it to track everything like dumbbell lunge whatever but now I can and so it'll help hold the kids accountable but also help them understand where they need to be at if we're looking for a certain range.

It will help them decide that load which for some, it gives a range which is nice because you can be on a high end of the range. For most of our guys will probably choose that and a lot of times the girls need something to push for or a lot of times I'll put weight on the bar. I'll see a girl bench bar, oh that was so hard and like you crushed it so I'll put 5 lbs on and they'll do it, oh that was so hard, you crushed it.

Like they don't understand where they're at and their levels of weight room willingness are just different than guys traditionally. This is once again a generalization, it's a spectrum either way, but I think it will just help the girls push themselves and the guys be safe.

James de Lacey44:53

Practically, some of the older accelerometer devices, one of the issues was if you're doing multiple jumps and jump squats with the bar and you did it continuously it wouldn't pick up all the reps because it would almost blend them. And I don't know if you played around with it at all with Perch at all and if you can do something like that and it picks it all up or you have to jump, rest and wait like a 2 seconds or something and do it again.

Dr. Andrew Pichardo45:18

It will pick up continuous reps and I've tried it so it's got, and I'm once again I'm still learning it but there's some training movements and then they got a value weight which is three movements and there's certain things that are locked depending on what description you have. So I don't know who has what or what we're going to get or if we got everything we're going to get but essentially there's a counter movement jump with your arms fixed like hands on hips with the arm swing and then continuous jumps.

And so I've been trialing on myself and the continuous jumps, I'll just put 10 jumps in there, I'll jump 10 times, it doesn't miss a rep, gives you a set average right there. And so for an athlete to be able to do that see that set average and potentially see other stuff that they've done in the past real time is huge.

So, I think that kind of stuff will be huge if I put a velocity range in there, they're going to see it when they do the rep. It's going to ding or it's going to show up yellow or red and they're going to know on the next rep and set to set, it's going to be huge. Elite Form had some of that built in, but I would say so far Perch is a little bit more streamlined.

Leader boards, yeah, you can create whatever leader boards you want. You can post it up on the TVs. There was a way to do that with Elite Form also, but I never end up doing it. It seemed complicated.

So, there's a lot of exciting things that the more I use it, I think the better idea I'll have of what I want to use it for and what I can just use. Either way, it's a better programming piece on the back end. So, if nothing else, it's going to be better for that.

James de Lacey47:07

Perch better sponsor this podcast. I recently had your thoughts even just on velocity based training generally. Obviously, there are many ways you can use like percent drop offs to do in power work. You can use it as you mentioned like monitoring and selecting load. One of the interesting ones, those velocity bands, this is speed strength, this is strength speed, etc. Is that something that you use or ascribe to at all or is that just you don't worry too much about these arbitrary zones?

Dr. Andrew Pichardo47:45

I don't worry about it that much. But I think, and part of it is before you would have had to know all that and programming it, which is fine. This, I mean, it's got the ranges on there, so if I'm doing back squat, it's got just whatever, six different ranges for max strength, blah, blah, and it's got their velocity cutoffs in there, and you can do a custom one.

So I use that just personally just to, because I've just been messing with it, but to moderate my loads to an extent. If I wanted it to be a super hard day, I'll put one of the slower velocities and do that. Typically, I haven't. For me, it's like I need to keep it lighter, so I'll put a fast range and just try to move a lighter weight fast.

So, I could see myself using it in that perspective and still progressing stuff throughout the year, but I didn't use those zones that much before when I was using it. A lot of what I was doing was just load moderation of hey, if you move it faster than this, add some weight. I would use it on tournament weeks. Hey, if you come in and we're squatting, okay, today you're going to keep it at whatever, 0.65 or faster.

So, those were kind of the primary uses before, but not all the athletes were doing it. So, even then, it was only a couple groups that were using the VBT, and some groups were just in the bubble the whole time. So, the application was kind of sporadic or targeted.

Whereas now, I can use it, I mean, I can use it for a dumbbell reverse lunge with a middle school kid if I wanted. I probably won't with them. But it will still track it. It will still track that thing, and I can still use that information to help them understand the training process.

James de Lacey49:39

That's cool. It's a nice little auto regulation tool for you, hey, just to be able to like, if they're not feeling great that day, it's just going to adjust for them anyway. Or if they're feeling really good, you're going to be able to push them just through just through having that system there, especially with the group.

The other thing I was going to touch on with VBT, I don't know if you've played around with it a lot. Not particularly with the device, but just generally. With the peak power drop-offs. So, typically like you see in the research, like 10% peak power drop-off when you're doing jumps and stuff like that, and that's kind of what they use to develop or maintain power, I guess, over long cycles in terms of like their sets.

In my experience, I've found 10% you can do a [expletive] ton of jumps, and it just [expletive] it just [expletive] you up. So, I tend to make it like a 5% drop-off instead of a 10. I don't know if you've played around at all with that stuff. If you've maybe experienced different or different thoughts on it.

Dr. Andrew Pichardo50:40

I haven't played around with it myself. I know a lacrosse strength coach did some kind of I can't I don't know the exact details of it, but he did something similar with his athletes. So, over the course of the summer, each Wednesday, the sports would sport lead would talk about the program from the last year.

And so, he's one of the first ones to go, and he talked about some stuff he did with his lacrosse team, and I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was using a load, and it was like do as many reps as you can above a certain velocity. So, it wasn't a power cut-off, but it was a velocity thing, and he found that they were doing like hundreds of reps.

And so, he's like, "Okay, let's try to figure out what's going on here because this is not exactly what we're aiming for." So, I mean, I think if like I haven't messed with it, but if you have, and if you think that 5% better, like that's a good insight. Now I kind of want to try it.

James de Lacey51:39

Yeah, try it. Okay. Do some jumps with the I can't remember what load I did. But even if you just do like jumps and like and just hit it like a 10% I think it's like a 10%

Dr. Andrew Pichardo51:49

So is this within one set?

James de Lacey51:51

Yeah, within one set. So 10% I think it was a peak velocity I think it was a peak velocity cutoff of 10%. So whatever 10% of the best rep was which is usually the first or second rep. And then you just go until it obviously didn't feel right. But man, I was doing like 10 plus reps.

Dr. Andrew Pichardo52:05

Oh, wow. Maybe you just have maybe because of your training you have a better propensity to maintain your power output longer whereas other people might only get five reps.

James de Lacey52:17

Well, maybe I need to make the load hit I don't know. I don't know. Either way.

Dr. Andrew Pichardo52:21

Well, no, it's interesting. I think that's built in Perch too though. Like I'm pretty sure you can set it to that and it will just like cap your set when you hit that.

There's a lot of Perch to mess with which I haven't messed with all of it yet. But I got I got a couple more weeks before the kids come back. So that's on my to-do list now.

James de Lacey52:38

Yeah, perfect. Now, I appreciate you coming on and yeah, where can people find and follow and keep up with what you're doing?

Dr. Andrew Pichardo52:44

Probably most active on Instagram dr. andrewpichardo. Yeah, LinkedIn I don't really post or anything but connect. I'm happy to talk to anyone that reaches out.

James de Lacey52:58

LinkedIn's horrible.

Dr. Andrew Pichardo52:59

Oh, yeah.

James de Lacey53:00

It's a horrible platform to be on.

Dr. Andrew Pichardo53:02

It's I don't know. It's hit or miss. Like I see some good content on there but I don't really talk to people and the people that message me are like all sales people and it's and that's annoying. That's very annoying.

But I did away with it with Twitter. I just same thing. I didn't really post. Didn't really gain that much from it after a while. I'm like this is yeah.

James de Lacey53:22

Yeah, no, fair enough. I'll put your Instagram down in the description for anyone who's listening now. But I appreciate you coming on.

Dr. Andrew Pichardo53:29

Yes, sir, man. Thanks for having me.