76: Redefining “Agility” and Sport Movement: Shawn Myszka, Scott Salwasser, Michael Zweifel
Today’s podcast is a special roundtable episode on sport movement, featuring an expert panel of Shawn Myszka, Scott Salwasser and Michael Zweifel. Each of these coaches has a unique area of application and insight into making athletes better at reacting to actual sport stimuli, making plays, and ultimately winning games. Shawn Myszka is a movement specialist working with many NFL athletes and has a large background in physical preparation. Scott Salwasser is the director of speed and power at Texas Tech University and is making his third appearance on the Just Fly Performance Podcast. Scott is not only a great linear speed coach, as we’ve seen through his talks and writing on the topic, but also is constantly pioneering sport-applicable movement training through his own athletes and interaction with other movement specialists in the field. Michael Zweifel, who has written some tremendous articles for Just Fly Sports in the past, is the owner of Building Better Athletes Performance, is an NCAA record-holding wide receiver. Michael is an industry leader in reactive training for athletes, particularly in the scholastic population, and where specialization is not possible. “Agility” is a word likely most used in marketing, and getting parents to buy in that a particular sports performance institution will make their child better at reacting in their sport, but this is rarely, if ever the case in the manner that the majority of these training interventions are implemented. For today’s podcast, we simply cover the ideas of what “agility” training really is, and best practices in creating training to allow athletes to become more reactive movers on the field of play. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Key Points: Shawn, Scott and Michael’s backgrounds in the industry The value of teaching sport agility absent of sport stimuli Thoughts on non-specific agility stimuli such as colors and lights Anecdotes of what Shawn, Scott, and Michael do in their practice “Sport is nothing but a problem solving activity where movements are use to produce the necessary solution” “For football, the biggest (agility) stimulus is other bodies; the stimulus that most of them are reacting with are other human beings, so you don’t need football specific plays to give them an authentic stimuli because a lot of times they are working against someone else and that is the primary stimulus” “How can this running back that runs a 4.4 40yd a 4.0 pro agility getting tackled in the backfield by opponents, it just doesn’t make sense; so it led me Shawn and the idea that (this athlete) is not a very good decision maker” “When you de-couple a movement or an action, so you take away the perception or intention from the movement outcome, you aren’t doing any good” “Most coaches are control freaks, and we know exactly what controlled drills are going to look like; more of an open environment intimidates a lot of coaches” “One things that I’ve gravitated towards is making the agility stimuli as human as possible; humans are free” “We perceive to act and we act to perceive” “The space and time relationship is our key performance indicator” “We know that situations are going to afford and invite and constrain certain (movement) patterns” “I am always going to get to the more specific representation of what athletes are going to see on the field (at the end of the day)” “With my cat and mouse drills, it’s not tag; football players will try and tag their opponent when they get within arms length, and that’s not going to result in you making the play” “My athletes need to be very comfortable being uncomfortable at all times” “Perfect practice is constant problem solving; we try to increase pressure and ...