222: Ty Terrell on Practical Speed, Squat and Core Training Methods for High Athletic Transfer | Sponsored by SimpliFaster

Today’s podcast welcomes coach Ty Terrell. Ty is currently an NBA physical preparation coach and has a wealth of experience ranging from training athletes out of a garage, to coaching high school basketball, to being mentored by some of the top professionals in the coaching industry. Individuals such as Lee Taft, Bill Hartman, and Mike Robertson have fostered in Ty a unique and powerful perspective on blending gym-training methods with athletic biomechanics and outputs. A running theme of this show has been using gym training methods to cater to the organic manner by which athletes live and move, rather than working against it. In a recent episode, #220, Kyle Dobbs talked about “hingy, knees-out squats” and the cascade of negative effects these brought out in the athletic population. Personally, I had loads of elasticity in my teens and early 20’s, but I slowly started to lose the “elastic monster” by starting to train “by the book” according to current strength and conditioning methods and protocols. This show (and podcast in general) is about winning that elastic power back. Ty Terrell starts off by sharing some of the key points he learned in his beginnings as a coach under Lee Taft in regards to training athlete speed and movement. From there, we transition into all things squatting, and the load-unload, “expand-compress” paradigm that has come out of the work and ideas of Bill Hartman, and how this relates to athletic movement on the court or field of play. We finish with some practical ideas on how to make trunk and core training highly transferable, and represent the movement principles we want to embody in our total-body athletic movements. 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 4:00 Ty’s start with Lee Taft, and some cornerstone teachings he has learned from Lee that have kept with him in his coaching 10:45 How to use bands and resistance to create lines of force on an athlete that can help them use joints better, or get into desired athletic positions 23:45 Approaching elite athletes versus youth in regards to training their sport movement ability 34:00 Questions on general versus any sort of specific skill movement training for a professional athlete 41:45 How athletic movement works in light of the expansion and compression of the pelvic floor, and the body in general 57:30 The effect of overly “hinging” every lift, and how a state of anterior tilt reduces aerobic capacity and even muscular compliance and elasticity 1:06.30 Reflexive core training and experiences to help athletes train their trunk and pelvis in a manner that reflects load and explode paradigms “When I started, it was important that Lee made me be a coach first (before the standard “textbook” learning)” “As long as you have forward momentum, it’s OK not to be perfect today” “Those are the three things that you are looking at in a single motion in athletics: Can you achieve the position, can you produce the force you need to in the time you need to, and can you do it in the context of the situation” “If you get a 10-year old, they are pretty compliant. They don’t have years of physical stress to let compensatory strategies come into play” “With the younger kids, you don’t necessarily have to focus on power to improve power because they are just improving everything” “It’s the simple stuff (the pro athlete) doesn’t do well (such as a basic squat pattern), because they never had to… I’ll say this, it’s the fundamentals that save pro athletes” “How many times can you do near-max efforts before your body can’t handle it, and says, “I need to cheat somehow”” “The number one thing I find (the NBA population) needs is the ability to squat. When I see someone who can squat, I can see someone who can maintain proximal control of their pelvis” “If I want to load something… I want to be able to squat, to expand” “Exhale is propulsion, it’s output” “If I’m going to do a cut and push right to left… if I can’t squat down, my push angle is going to be too vertical” “The inhalation, not only physically moves the pelvis backwards into a posterior tilt, so I can reach greater degrees of hip flexion, and so I can get depth, but it also expands the pelvis when you do that, and it creates that posterior weight shift that allows you to sit down” “Our industry (strength and conditioning) tries to find ways around faults (making things more of a hinge than a true squat)… maybe if your purpose is powerlifting, but if you want to demonstrate full excursion of moving, you need to be able to squat well, I call it squatting in a phone booth” “A lot of Olympic lifters, once they get the bars past their knees, the hips have to come forward” “When you are constantly in an anteriorly tilt position, an exhaled position, you tend to be less aerobically fit systemically” “For knee tendonosis, for the tissues to be pliable and move, you need to get the pelvis to move” “A concentric environment is a rigid environment, it has to be to produce force” “Rapid-fire med ball scoops is a good way to get a bunch of reps in to teach the body to reflexively turn the abs on” “Sometimes we need to do ab work that feeds us towards movement we need to get into, like a reverse crunch” About Ty Terrell Ty Terrell is a performance coach who has a broad range of experiences in the fitness and physical preparation industry. From his beginnings of coaching in a 2 car garage, Ty has built his philosophy coaching high school basketball, running speed camps, being a director at a YMCA, as well as working for tremendous leaders in our industry like Lee Taft, Bill Hartman, and Mike Robertson. This work eventually led Ty to become a strength and conditioning coach for a professional soccer team and ultimately ending up as a performance coach in the NBA, as he has synthesized all of these educational experiences into a training process based in science, practicality, and simplicity.