Andrew Cormier and Joel Reinhardt on Reducing Noise and Building a Speed-Based Training Culture in Team Sport Preparation

Today’s show brings on coaches Andrew Cormier and Joel Reinhardt. Andrew Cormier is a sports performance coach at the University of Massachusetts, working with the men’s lacrosse, women’s soccer, and softball programs. Joel Reinhardt is the Assistant Director of Sports Performance at the University of Massachusetts, working with football and women’s lacrosse. Together, Andrew and Joel run the sprint-jump-throw.com website, as well as the Sprint Jump Throw Performance Podcast. Speed training, on the surface is a very simple venture. High quality sprinting efforts in a fresh state is key to getting faster. For track and field this is quite simple, but for team sports, this becomes more difficult, since it’s harder to control fatigue, as well as address the many facets of speed displayed in the course of a game, compared to a simple linear sprint race. Andrew and Joel are two young coaches with a view on speed training for sport that blends “Feed the Cats” ideologies, into their progressive system that seeks to eliminate the noise from an athlete’s regimen. On the show today, Andrew and Joel talk about a speed-based model that they utilize in their team sport preparation, running technique and options in the course of game play, and their model of cueing and instructing athletes. Andrew and Joel have taken on an approach to “rank-record-publish” in speed-based training that gives athletes unique motivation in regards to improving this critical component of athleticism. Throughout the podcast, we also chat about the role of visual field, perception and body language in the development of game speed, as well as diversity in running “options” that high level athletes display. We finish this chat with Andrew and Joel’s take on the utilization of tempo in resistance training, and how much we really need to rely on the weight room for power if speed-based ranking systems are being utilized outside of it. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 6:05 Andrew and Joel’s history in working together as coaches and how their podcast came together 11:05 How Andrew and Joel are building a “feed the cats” model of speed development in the context of team sports 18:35 How to replace linear-extensive tempo and long runs with more coordination driven, locomotion-complex style running for field sport athletes 27:50 What KPI’s Andrew and Joel are looking to boost throughout the year in regards to team sport physical needs, and how maximal sprints are ranked-recorded-published 39:35 How to work with athletes who are regularly in the last places in speed-based measurements 42:20 How Andrew and Joel consider change of direction ability in their training regime 57:55 Approaching running technique in light of the needs of team sports and the various types of running that may be present in team sports 1:09.20 Ideas on approaching bar tempo in a weightroom setting “It’s prioritizing the high speed components of the game, and then filling in the cracks elsewhere” Reinhardt “If we are trying to build some sort of physical stimulus, we always go back to “how can we build this playing lacrosse” Reinhardt “Instead of (traditional tempo or a long boring run for soccer players) now we are throwing a bunch of different movements at them (such as gallops)” Cormier “In season we only supplement fly 10’s (for field sport athletes)” Reinhardt We track (fly 10’s) as soon as we are done tracking it, I rank them, send it in the group message, put it top to bottom, color code it, green to red, mark PR’s on there, and they get all excited about it… the slight shift in language even within the team, instead of girls asking “how can I get in better shape” they ask, “how can I get faster” Reinhardt Team average we put 1.5 mph on their (lacrosse) average max velocity, in season, over 14 weeks (Reinhardt) “With female athletes, I’m not too worried about introducing more tone to the system” (Reinhardt) “They are doing some sort of high intensity lacrosse (and therefore change of direction) almost always, I’ve been working with them almost 2 years now and I have not done a single change of direction drill. (Reinhardt) “(Instead of change of direction drills) I do strictly intense plyometrics in multiple planes, and then say, “just play your sport” Cormier “We are going to start doing sprint training where now we are going to stare at a point off to the side, but we are going to run in a straight line, and you are going to learn to track being in a good position and the only thing we are changing is the actual physical demand” Cormier “(In regards to Cal Dietz’s work, neural perplexity, and attention management) What correlated most with the guys who went to the NHL was the guys who were able to do math while they were skating” Cormier “For me, a lot of the weight room based movements are so general, that if you are not allowing yourself to be in a good position, then you are probably causing more harm than good, so I force tempo on a lot of exercises…. I know you are getting a ton of eccentric stress from all of your change of direction sprinting that you are going to do in practice, so I am not going to throw much more at you” Cormier “We do a ton of alactic, 7-10 second (isometric) hold sets for almost every single exercise” Cormier “I even, this year, took away… we used to do a decent amount of groin prehabs stuff… adductor/abductor stuff, to be honest with you I kind of stopped doing it this semester, and we hit more big-pattern, end-range isometrics, and we still didn’t have any nagging groins and hip flexors” Cormier About Andrew Cormier Andrew Cormier joined the University of Massachusetts Department of Athletics as a sports performance coach in July 2019 and works directly with the men’s lacrosse, women’s soccer, and softball programs. He came to UMass from Holy Cross, where he was an assistant strength and conditioning coach for the Crusaders’ men’s and women’s lacrosse, women’s volleyball, and men’s and women’s tennis programs. Cormier’s prior stops include a sports science internship at the University of Minnesota, a graduate assistant coaching position at Amherst College, a sports performance internship at the University of Denver, and a strength and conditioning internship at his alma mater, Springfield College. Cormier co-runs the sprint-jump-throw.com website and the Sprint Jump Throw Performance Podcast alongside Joel Reinhardt. He earned both his degrees at Springfield College: a B.S. in Applied Exercise Science in 2016 and an M.S. in Exercise Science and Sport Studies in 2018. About Joel Reinhardt Joel Reinhardt is the Assistant Director of Sports Performance at the University of Massachusetts, working with football and women’s lacrosse. He has previously served as an assistant at Nicholls State University, and as a GA at Springfield College. Reinhardt co-runs the sprint-jump-throw.com website and the Sprint Jump Throw Performance Podcast alongside Andrew Cormier. He earned his undergraduate degree from St. Olaf College (Northfield, Minn.) in Kinesiology and Exercise Science in 2015. Reinhardt’s strength and conditioning expertise also includes internship tenures with Total Hockey Minnesota (2013), Springfield College Athletics (2015), the UConn Athletic Department (2016) and Western Michigan football (2016).