Gavin MacMillan on Redefining Balance, Motor Control, and Force Production in Athletic Performance Training

Today’s show is with Gavin MacMillan, sports performance coach and founder of Sport Science Lab. Growing up in Toronto Canada, he participated in 7 high school sports, and received a tennis scholarship from San Jose State University. In 2001 Gavin founded Sport Science Lab where he has experienced a great deal of success training athletes and teams at every level in multiple sports. I’ve personally had a mixed relationship with barbells in the course of my own athletic career. I’ve had positive (squatting sub-maximally 1x a week being a staple in my best athletic year), but also several negative experiences, one of which was my surprise at age 20, I had spent fall of work increasing my best clean from 225 to 245lb, yet high jumped only 6’1” the first two meets of the year (my PR from high school being 6’8”). In my first few years as a college track coach, I learned quickly that an athlete who learns to lift barbells better is not necessarily a faster athlete. When I was 21, I stumbled across a book called “Pro-Bod-X” by Marv Marinovich and Edyth Hues. The training methods within were like nothing I’d ever seen, incorporating a lot of unstable surfaces, and they didn’t use heavy weights. Doing the workouts for just over a month, I was pleasantly surprised by just how easily I was moving and jumping in my pickup basketball games. Gavin MacMillan does not use barbells in his training program, and yet gets incredible results on the level of building speed, reactivity, jumping ability, and tremendous resistance to injury. He has a strong use of balance and proprioception based movements in his training program. Regardless of where you stand in closeness traditional weightlifting/lifting maxes as a form of progress in a program, you will be a better coach by understanding Gavin’s approach to training athletes, as well as his own experiences as an athlete that led him there. On the show today, Gavin shares his background as an athlete, his results using a non-barbell based training program, concepts on force-production training without using barbells, foot training, and the role of athletic balance training that can be merged with resistance training means for big improvements in reactive outputs. 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 6:15 – Gavin’s athletic background (which included ballet and figure skating), and how he got into sports performance coaching 12:30 – Gavin’s experience with traditional barbell weight training, and how he ended up going away from these methods in his own training, and with athletes he worked with 21:15 – Taking a step away from traditional barbell training, and how Gavin was able to transform the injury-reduction factor of a professional Rugby team, setting the record for the fewest player minutes lost 29:15 – Gavin’s answer to the question on, how to train an athlete who needs to get generally bigger and stronger, without using traditional barbell methods 33:00 – Gavin’s thoughts on how to train strength and force for people who don’t have access to advanced training machines 46:30 – Talking on what one sport might be able to offer another from an explosive perspective, such as the impact of figure skating in Gavin’s upbringing 52:00 – Elements of a fast transition to the ball of the foot 54:00 – How squatting with a foot on a balance disc fundamentally changes the exercise adaptation, soreness, and athleticism 1:04.15 – The various surfaces that Gavin uses with his athletes, that optimizes their interaction between the foot and the ground 1:10.30 – How Gavin uses isometrics to produce high rates of force development, without generating large amounts of muscle soreness 1:20.30 – Ideas on the rhythm of moving a load in training “What a gift (ballet) was, because now I was taught balance, I was taught flexibility, I was taught to control my body in space. And then in figure skating, I really had to find different ways to balance on small blades, and I was skating circles around people” “If a system (such as barbell training) is relying on your form being perfect to work, that’s flawed from the outset” “To be able to handle my own bodyweight at a higher velocity is imperative” “In rugby for instance, the scrum is 2% of the game, so I’m not going to spend the entire training platform more than he’ll actually need it” “You are not going to improve the ability to move an external load unless you move external loads; have you ever tried to bale hay in your life? I’d rather a guy is flipping tires than back squatting” “A human can only produce force properly at certain joint angles” “We’ll incorporate a balance element into almost all the strength work we do” “The foot is so important because it’s a suspension system that the rest of the body has to stretch against, and the foot has flex as well” “I don’t think people understand what balance is; balance is keeping your body in a centered position, no matter how it’s challenged” “Great athletes control their limbs in space, in every range and plane of motion better than other people” “Last year’s combine, every one of our linemen (vertical jump) went up 6 inches in 6 weeks, in whatever we had them for” “People don’t’ understand that having just a standing vertical, this is not going to correlate to a moving vertical” “If you don’t have the balance to control yourself at slow speeds, you sure as heck aren’t going to have the balance to do it at high ones” “The best athlete not only can create contact well, they can avoid contact better” “In figure skating, you had to hold these bent knee positions, and propel yourself the length of the ring to pass your exam” “Your body is going to try and find the most efficient way it can (in athletic movement, including squatting)” “We don’t just have strength at any position, we have optimal power positions (90 degree angles)” “That’s one of the thing we really talk about when we talk about baseball hitting; you can’t have your head moving when you have objects being thrown at you at 100 miles per hour” “DOMS is created from heavy eccentric loading, which our body never does, think about it. Eccentric range, we either ballistically load it, or we hold it isometrically, we never load it slowly eccentrically, never happens” “Where the strength business is going to go, is it is going to go where you need to increase the velocity of the load eccentrically” Show Notes SSL Foot Work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khuz-KRg2HY SSL Strength Work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF1wNq-A5hc About Gavin MacMillan Gavin grew up in Toronto, Canada. While in high school he participated in 7 sports, ice hockey being his main and favorite. He received a tennis scholarship from San Jose State University and graduated with a B.S. Degree in Economics. In 2001 he founded Sport Science Lab where he has trained athletes and teams at every level in multiple sports. He has also been approached by various sporting teams and committees around the world to advise on conditioning and rehabilitation strategies. Of late he often works with boxing legend Freddie Roach preparing fighters for events, Over the last 21 years he has accumulated a noticeable client list which includes Miguel Cotto, Will Blackmon, Troy Polumalo, Manny Pacquiao, George St.Pierre, Dominick Cruz, Will Blackmon, LA Sol women soccer team ...the list goes on and on!