324: Jarod Burton on Rethinking Work Capacity, Over-Training, and Adaptation Through the Lens of Athlete Perception

Today’s episode features Jarod Burton. Jarod is a human performance specialist, chiropractic student, and health coach. He got his coaching start working with Brady Volmering of DAC baseball, and has spent recent years coaching, consulting and running educational courses in the private sector. Jarod focuses on engaging all aspects of an athlete’s being, providing the knowledge for the individual to thrive in their domain. In the world of coaching and human performance, the road to success is often thought of on the level of do “A”, in “B” amount, so you can accomplish “C”. The focus on typically on numbers, exercises, and (often) a linear cueing process for those said movements. We are so quick to judge programs entirely based on numbers and exercises. What we don’t consider often enough is the complex factors surrounding the volume that is administered. There are elite athletes who have won gold medals and set world records who do a lot of volume that would “crush” other athletes (think the athletes that survived the Soviet or Bulgarian training systems, or modern-day athletes, such as Karsten Warholm, the 400m hurdle world record holder). We need to ask ourselves, “what is the difference, or elements, that allowed the athlete to tolerate that?”. Is it that their musculo-skeletal system was somehow just “better” than the other trainees, or are there other additional elements to consider? The more elite coaches I’ve had the opportunity to work with, the more I realize that good coaches intuitively key into the mental and emotional state of the athlete, as well as the physiological management. On today’s podcast, Jarod chats on managing high training volumes, work capacity dynamics, the critical role of boredom/interest in training, athlete self-discovery, and much more. This is a podcast that causes you to ask questions, and gives us a new and interesting perspective on the dynamics of training. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, Lost Empire Herbs, and the Elastic Essentials online course. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 4:10 – The nature of Jarod’s training experiment, where he only performed extreme iso holds and dunking (in his quest for a higher vertical jump) 9:45 – Thoughts on the process of assessing athletes, and drawing out physical and emotional weak-points 12:15 – How “obsessive” or “unreasonable” training, such as bounding every day, could actually be a powerful performance tool, and how we actually classify fatigue in training 28:45 – How to manage higher volume training so athletes don’t get injured or decrease their performance 42:30 – The role of self-discovery and creativity in athletic performance training 45:36 – Thoughts on mixing game like activities with specific training outputs (such as a 10m fly or dunking a basketball) 57:28 – Mental associations, boredom/interest, and training principles 1:05:55 – Jarod’s thoughts on the “Easy Strength” mentality on weights and barbell training “As I was holding the isometrics, I was creating the reality of: “what would it feel like as I dunk”” “How do you meet an athlete where you are at in their current state; how do you expose them, and how do you draw out they creativity within them” “The more awareness they have, the more ability they have to create. The goal is for them to be the captain of their own ship” “The amount of volume that kids or athletes experience in a game is 5 to 10 times the amount of actual stimulus that we even give them in the training aspect; I follow along with the idea that the training must be more intense and strenuous than the actual activity itself” “The biggest thing, regardless of how you train, is whether the athlete buys into what they are doing… it comes down to, how does the athlete see it, how does it fit into their reality currently, and how does it fit into the reality that they are trying to create” “I found research papers back to the 1930’s that DNA, teeth, vertebra, your skin, is all run off of piezoelectricity, so this crystal form” “I learn that the muscles behave like water, so if I want to learn about fatigue, I need to learn about water” “I can take somebody; they are sprinting; and maybe they start slowing down and feeling fatigue, but all of a sudden they play football; and I roll a football out as if it’s a fumble recovery, and then they jump back up again…. Now I can manipulate how the body is being fatigued or not by including different scenarios that are either going to peak their arousal or cause them boredom” “I look at a lunge; and I look at how somebody compensated within a lunge, then I take a video and those same compensations that are showing up in the isometric are showing up when you sprint” “The center focus of my training as well, is to challenge the athlete to figure out who they are as a person” “How you think about yourself, and how you speak to yourself, is going to directly influence how you perform, and maybe even what injuries you get” “(When there are external goals) the brain turns off of forced work, and now you are just responding to the environment, and your mind starts turning off, and you start seeing people run fast” “Depending on how the person perceives the event depends on how their body is going to react to that” “There is no perceived threat playing football with your friends, there is no perceived threat in chasing a frisbee” “It’s so silly to put it in this tiny box and say “you can only run 10 sprints”… then the athletes starts believing the fact that, if I run more than 10, I’m going to break down” “You can train the body in a way that actually gives the body more energy” “A lot of times when you don’t like an aspect of a person; it’s an aspect you don’t like in yourself” “Then we go to the skill work side, and you can throw all (the “max intent”) work out of the window, you don’t need to focus on the max exertion; now you just need to figure out how you can find flow, find rhythm” About Jarod Burton Jarod Burton is a performance specialist, chiropractic student, and health coach. He got his coaching start working with Brady Volmering of DAC baseball , and has spent recent years coaching, consulting and running educational courses in the private sector. Jarod focuses on engaging all aspects of an athlete’s being, providing the knowledge for the individual to thrive in their domain.