215: Chris Korfist on New Advances in Sprint Training and Mind-Body Concepts in Athletics | Sponsored by SimpliFaster

Today’s episode features speed coach and human performance expert, Chris Korfist. Chris is a multi-time guest on the podcast and is back for a solo-interview show where he gets into his recent developments in speed training, as well as a great conversation about mind-body concepts and their relationship to sport, and even life itself. Chris Korfist has been a high school coach in track and football for almost 30 years, with more than 80 All-State athletes. He owns the “Slow Guy Speed School” that helps develop athletes ranging from World Champion to middle school. He has consulted with professional sports teams all over the world, including the NFL, MLB, NBA, and Rugby League, and is an advisor for Auckland University of Technology’s SPRINZ. Chris also co-owns the Track Football Consortium, and co-founded Reflexive Performance Reset. It is always good to sit down and just have a great sprinting/speed conversation, as in so many ways, speed is a universal concept to us as human beings, regardless of our exact sport or movement practice. Sprinting represents the highest coordination demand output that the human body can do, and improvements in maximal sprint velocity are some of the hardest earned in training, but also some of the most rewarding. Chris has been on several of my podcasts in the last few years, but we haven’t had a true “speed training” talk since our first episode together around 4 years ago. In addition to some great novel concepts on speed training covered on this show (such as asymmetrical sprint training and shin-drop methods), Chris also gets into a topic that may be more powerful and relevant for many athletes than particular speed training methods (although we want to do them all well), which is the power of the mind to impact posture, power outputs, sport skill, and attitudes of the opposing team. If you get all of the speed training right, but get posture and confidence wrong, one’s highest potential will never be reached. 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. Timestamps and Main Points 13:35 Updates and new ideas in Chris’s sprint program the last several years 26:05 Foot training, and how subtle variability can make a big impact on exercise outputs and effects 32:05 Using resisted sprint training to help technical elements, such as shin drop 40:25 Why Chris changed over from straight-leg bounding/primetimes into preferring flexed-leg bounding/flexed-leg primetimes 43:45 Mind-Body Training: The story behind saying “I am the Greatest!” before doing a sprint or jump, etc. and improving performance substantially 55:05 Mirroring in athletic performance “I think in the (bent-knee primetime) position, it is going to be more appropriate to changing the lever, loading the ankle, and getting a more realistic toe-position (than a straight-leg primetime)” “Where you walk on your knees and you try to crush your calf to your hamstring… that’s a great exercise (for sprinting)… We wear the LILA calf sleeves when we do those to bring the focus on picking the shin up” “It’s a monster of a workout, when you just put weights on one (LILA) sleeve… you can put it on the same arm, same leg, and now it’s a huge core challenge” “If I’m slowing down one leg, the other leg has to go faster” “Kids would run faster fly 10’s when we put the (LILA) sleeve on one side” “Change your toe position and do the (lateral line hop) and it’s a completely different exercise. The slightest variation in your limbs completely change what the exercise is. You are changing slack, distances, recruitment patterns, fascial patterns, and all that” “I started pulling kids out of the start. So I am focusing on, do I have time to get that shin down if that’s really what I’m focusing on” “We’ve been doing diagonal runs, where you keep your shoulders square to the finish line” “You have to make the body give a damn to be perfect” “You can’t cross-over (run) when you are doing a bent-knee primetime” “There is a huge angular component to overspeed that I think everyone just blows off” “These positive affirmations constantly drive your body into doing better” “We repress everything (human aggression)” “You are standing there like you are ready to lose, and it no longer becomes a game of “I can dominate you”, but rather, a game of “Who can make the fewest mistakes and eek out a win”” “One thing that’s really helpful is team breathing, our RPR breathing. You can look at the All Blacks doing the Haka before the game, they are yelling and screaming, but they are doing that together, and all breathing together” “When you are standing in a superman pose, that’s a dominant pose” “This day with phones, you should have your own highlight reel going” “We are meant to be social animals, if we can go down to the basics and breathe together, we are all going to be in the same place” “What is one thing you aren’t allowed to do anymore? Yell and scream. But it’s something that we are meant to do; we are repressed” Show Notes Diagonal Exergenie Sprints https://youtu.be/pBFvTW7R3LY “Chuck Berry Walks” https://youtu.be/o_9Gji7tQRg Flexed Leg Bounding About Chris Korfist Chris Korfist has been a high school coach in track and football for almost 30 years, with more than 80 All-State athletes. He has also been a strength coach at the college and high school levels, working with many sports. Korfist owns a private facility called Slow Guy Speed School that helps develop athletes ranging from World Champion to middle school. He has consulted with professional sports teams all over the world, including the NFL, MLB, NBA, and Rugby League. Korfist has published research on sprint training and is an advisor for Auckland University of Technology’s SPRINZ. Additionally, he co-owns Track Football Consortium (@TFConsortium), is co-founder of Reflexive Performance Reset, and has discussed training in countless blogs and podcasts. Transcripts Chris Korfist: Or even change what your, your, you know, change your toe position and do the line hop, or like you had on Instagram yesterday, where you had your toe checked up and you're doing single leg squats and you're, and you re reformat, or what you wanted the foot to look like while you're pressing up. And that that's, that's a completely different exercise. And people forget that, that the slightest variations in your limbs completely changed what the exercises, whether it's foot position, hand, position, all that different stuff, completely changes exercises. Cause you're changing s lack distances, you're changing recruitment patterns are changing fascial patterns and all that, but I'm sitting there and I'm at whether I'm in Anaheim, California, or Las Vegas or wherever. And there's 80 volleyball games going on at once. And he plays every couple hours. So I'm walking around and I'm just watching all these kids with this horrible body language, you know, and I'm like the most important thing is going on right now where you're standing there, like you're ready to lose. And it becomes a game of no longer of I can dominate you, but who's going to make the fewest mistakes and eek out a win Joel Smith: That was Chris Korfist. And you're listening to the just fly performance podcast. Joel Smith: Today's episode is brought to you by our longtime sponsor, Simplifaster. There are a lot of sports technology companies out there, but Simplifaster is the only website you can go to. That features an online store that covers the bandwidth of training technology from force plates, to timing systems, to muscle simulators and more, some products of Simplifaster that I use and love include things like the free lap timing system and Kbox or coaches favorites such as gymaware recently simply faster has that a two units as a coach, you should definitely take a look at the first is the muscle lab contact grid, which is an extremely affordable and portable step-by-step literally system to collect data on jumps, bounds, sprints, agility, hurdle hops, and really as much as your creative mind can imagine in what used to take a whole runway worth of collecting of data, collecting strips, the contact grid does it all with only two small strips that together cover up to 40 meters of sprinting ground contact time, step rates, rhythms, and beyond are at your fingertips with this device. 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And also the back end of this show is going to be loaded with a ton of really cool mind, body and confidence inducing techniques that I think you're going to find really helpful in working with your athletes to guide us. Our, our guests in this discussion is none other than Chris Korfist. Chris has been a high school track coach,