384: Hunter Eisenhower and Mike Sullivan on Exploring Elasticity and Athletic Force Production

Today’s podcast is with athletic performance coaches Hunter Eisenhower and Mike Sullivan. Hunter Eisenhower is the head of men’s basketball performance at Arizona State University, previously spent time with the Sacramento Kings, and has worked in several NCAA S&C departments. Hunter played college basketball for four seasons at Seattle Pacific University. Mike Sullivan is a speed and performance coach at TCBoost Sports Performance in Chicago, IL. At TCBoost, Mike works with a wide variety of athletes, from youth to professional, and transitioned to the private sector after time in collegiate strength and conditioning. Most recently, Mike was at UC Davis and spent time at Illinois State, Notre Dame, and Texas. For a long time in sports performance, weight room strength has been considered the top priority and method of measuring strength and power outputs. At the same time, bodies in motion produce incredibly high forces in jumping, sprinting, and landing (eccentric and reactive forces). Understanding the nature of elasticity and reactivity, and how to measure and train it in greater detail is a must-know for anyone looking to improve athletic abilities. If you were to list three of my favorite sports and human performance topics, they would be: Play, Jumping, and Sprint Development. Today’s show will be getting into these topics, primarily digging into key markers that highlight usable athletic force production, centering around altitude drops onto force plates. We’ll also cover aspects of sprint training from a standpoint of observation and technique, relative to technology readouts, as well as overspeed methods. Finally, we’ll get into Hunter and Mike’s use of play, games, and “aliveness” in their warmups. This was a fun and practical episode from which a wide range of coaches and athletes can find new and valuable ideas. 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Timestamps and Main Points 2:31 – Discussing the UC Davis “Strength and Conditioning Decathlon” 6:37 – Maximal elasticity and reactivity as a function of team sport play, versus training without the athleticism that comes from well-rounded play and elastic activities 9:48 – Discussing scoring systems for power and reactivity 16:14 – Key elasticity metrics for athletes, and key reactivity and elastic metrics based on force plate rate of force development readings 29:52 – Measuring force production through the realm of single leg reactive strength values, as well as thoughts on single leg hops for speed 39:42 – Programing implications based on muscular or elastic abilities 45:49 – Overlaying sprint kinetics via technology (such as a 1080 sprint) relative to observation, and athlete feeling of the effort 53:27 – Overspeed work, and giving sprinting a sense of “ease” 1:00:41 – How Hunter and Mike have put “aliveness” and play in their programming 1:07:37 – Risk/Reward assessment in terms of using a more alive, play based warmup or training approach with a group of athletes Hunter Eisenhower and Mike Sullivan Quotes “Just that little framework of me creating a 50 (centimeter CMJ jump) club drives intent so much more. On a small scale it works, and if you can create it on a bigger scale.. the difference it makes is huge” “Running a fly 10 without lasers is ridiculous, running it with lasers is awesome. Same thing (with med ball throws) throwing a med ball shot put throw as hard as you can, get out a radar, you break 30 miles per hour, it’s awesome” “I dropped off a 48” box and hit 9500 newtons of force… there has to be something here because these are significant numbers that we are getting” “Running full speed, a Euro-step around somebody, is like a low-level triple jump” “A single leg depth drop off 24” box, is a little over 5000 newtons (that I got) but it’s variable because the strategy you use to land is going to change things” “A compliant landing is like 2000 newtons, a “drop legs” (stiff) landing is like 7000” “The idea of a new 1RM in seeing what’s the absolute force producing capacity of the overall system, and the exercise that does it the most is depth drops” “As you increase height, peak force is going to go up, but once you get to a certain height of box, force will not go up” “You train with some of these drop catches… and now you have more of a force reserve for injury mitigation, force in acceleration, and maybe there is something to a force reserve, like there is a speed reserve” “Every person I tested who had the best horizontal RSI was the best accelerator, and the worst horizontal RSI was the worst accelerator” “Very rarely do you see “nice mountains” on a 1080 sprint” “The first thing you should say is “how did that feel”, the second tier is “how did it look” on my part, the third thing is what the graph readout said” “From the side, the sprint looked totally normal (I had to watch from the rear view to understand what the asymmetry in the graph. was telling me)” “Even when I feel like garbage and don’t want to sprint.. I’ll tow myself (on the 1080) at 2kg, I won’t run as fast as I can, but it’ll feel good, and way better than sprint float sprints, or wicket runs” “You take some of those (play) experiments, they worked with middle schoolers, let me apply them to high schoolers. They worked with high schoolers, can I just keep going up a level until I know it’s safe enough, or competitive enough to use with higher level athletes” About Hunter Eisenhower Hunter Eisenhower is the head of men’s basketball performance at Arizona State University. He previously worked on the NBA level, as a Sports Performance Coach and Sports Scientist for the Sacramento Kings, as well as closely working with the Stockton Kings, the franchise's G-League affiliate. Hunter has served in the NCAA realm at at UC Davis, Southeastern Louisiana, and Minnesota State Mankato. Eisenhower has also spent time with the Washington, Minnesota, and Seattle University strength and conditioning departments. Hunter played college basketball for four seasons at Seattle Pacific University. About Mike Sullivan Mike Sullivan is a speed and performance coach at TCBoost Sports Performance in Chicago, IL. At TCBoost, Mike works with a wide variety of athletes from youth to professional. Mike transitioned to TCBoost after time in collegiate strength and conditioning. Most recently at UC Davis and beforehand spending time at Illinois State, Notre Dame, and Texas.