345: Nick DiMarco on Speed, Specificity, and Maximizing What Matters in American Football Preparation

Today’s guest is Nick DiMarco. Nick has been the director of sports performance at Elon University since 2018, and is a leader in the realms of high-performance ideology. He is both a former professional athlete (NY Jets and Baltimore Ravens outside linebacker in 2014), and has a Ph.D in Health and Human Performance. In addition to being well versed in the intuitive aspects of athleticism, Nick is skilled at applying logical models to a high-performance training environment. He has been a guest on multiple episodes of this podcast, speaking on the physical preparation process with a focus on American football. In the preparation of an athlete, all roads must ultimately lead towards the specificity, chaos and decision making of the sport itself. The days of putting outputs on a pedestal (such as a squat max or “canned” SAQ score), are still with us, but integrative coaches are seeing the higher-links within the total training equation, and the win-loss column. Ultimately, a good sports performance program never loses sight of the ultimate goal, which is to prepare players towards their sport as well as possible. If you caught the recent episode with strength coach, turned football coach Michael Zweifel, this message likely hits on an even deeper level. On today’s show, Nick gives an overview on the Elon football team’s performance over the last few years, and the integrative factors that contributed to their recent success and low injury rates. He gives his evolving take on the important elements to cover in preparing players for the speed and movement demands of the game of football, including acceleration, maximal velocity and agility/change of direction. In this episode, Nick goes in depth on his weekly speed and strength training format, talks about the metrics he measures, gives his take on deceleration training, and much more. Nick’s ideas are both cutting-edge, and incredibly pragmatic, useful for any sports performance coach. 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Timestamps and Main Points 2:41 – An overview of how the last season went for Elon football 4:50 – What strength/sport coach interactions need to be prioritized for the high performance model to be maximally effective 12:47 – Nick’s updates or thoughts on the game-speed agility model that in the last several years 23:19 – Psychological aspects of perception-based game-speed training for Nick’s athletes 28:54 – Nick’s weekly offseason training format, and his balance of more traditional “tempo” running, versus more specific sprint conditioning for his players 40:18 – What metrics Nick measures and gives feedback to the players on 45:38 – How Nick looks at things like “deceleration training”, relative to chaotic change of direction 51:23 – Nick’s take on the agility categories (mirror, dodge chase, score) in context of other sports, such as court sport 53:57 – Where Nick recommends sports performance coaches to expand their knowledge base, in regards to the breadth of the field, as well as the sports they are working with 57:42 – How being a father to young children has impacted Nick’s athletic performance process 1:02:18 – If Nick had to pick between wearing a shmedium polo shirt, waving a towel, or warming up with jumping jacks on the whistle, which would he pick, and why? Nick DiMarco Quotes “We had very low injury rate for us, and I think strength coaches want to pat themselves on the back and say that was their job, but it goes hand in hand with our head coach, he does a great job with his practice design, and doing everything to maximize our weekly layout, keeping guys at healthy and fresh as possible” “Anything that is physical related, we should try to inter-twine with the sport coach as much as possible” “You can do a great job in the weight room for your portion of the year, but if you pass the baton, and you are no longer involved, (sport coaches) hammer the guys with volume, and every day is physical contact, you are going to have injuries and issues no matter how your offseason went” “Early on I valued (general speed) too much… (now being more specific) we’ve had more of a reduction in our injuries and we are giving them the exact stress they are going to feel on the field, appropriate doses, and that is the best agility work they are going to get” “We’ll hit our 8 vector tempos, so it’s in different directions instead of just being linear” “You don’t want to replicate a garbage scenario for the sake of it being specific” “Psychological stress is an element you need to have in your conditioning in some way… there’s a lot more that goes into rest than just standing there” “Monday our max velocity day is more rate of force driven. Tuesday we will hit some linear tempo with a decent amount of volume, but that day will remain linear. Wednesday is a moderate intensity day, it is our practice session day, on that day we do our 8-vector (creative change of direction) tempo day. Thursday is a drawn out performance prep with a large focus on mobility, and an upper body volume day. Friday is our acceleration focus; that is our heaviest strength focus day for our younger athletes” “Our line guys, that’s a huge portion of their conditioning, the combative stuff” “Even though it’s not that taxing from a neuromuscular perspective, when you start asking people to change directions a bunch of times, you are going to get more muscular soreness” “We do not do any sort of L-drill, pro agility, I don’t see those as a good use of time” “We don’t have a max day ever…. every day is a chance to PR” “The fly 10 stuff, the more I’m around it, the more I think of it as a dose of high speed to keep people safe, versus actually improve (game speed)” “If you are looking at 40s for a combine guy, the easiest way to improve is that first 10-20 yards” “You want to take anything and everything into account that you can, but there’s not a ton of stock in “one guy went from this (sprint time) to this” so I guarantee he is going to be really good at football this year” “The sport of basketball they play year round, soccer plays year round, tennis plays year round, all of these other sports have a chance to play their sport consistently, that it’s not as big of a deal as it is for football when you don’t get a chance to play your sport except for isolated bouts throughout the year” “So much of basketball is trying to stay in front of another human being and sort through information” About Nick DiMarco Nick DiMarco is the director of sports performance at Elon University, a position which he has held since 2018. Nick is a leader in the NCAA University coaching system in the realms of high-performance ideology. As a former professional athlete (NY Jets and Baltimore Ravens outside linebacker in 2014), Nick is well versed in the intuitive aspects of what it takes to be a high achieving athlete. With a thorough understanding of training loads, and the components behind transferrable agility training, Nick has a unique array of insights he brings to the coaching table. Nick received his undergraduate degree from William Penn, and Master’s from California University of Pennsylvania, both in the sports performance sector. He has his Ph.D in Health and Human Performance at Concordia University of Chicago.