396: Graeme Morris on Curvilinear Speed, Athletic Microdosing, and Learning from the Martial Arts

Today’s podcast is with Graeme Morris. Graeme is an athletic development coach and leads the rehab program at Wests Tigers. He is the former head of strength and conditioning at AFL Field umpires, Western Suburbs Magpies and the Newtown Jets. Graeme has consulted for a variety of field based and combat athletes including world and Australian champions in Muay Thai. Graeme has experience designing and implementing strength and power in the gym, as well as speed, agility and conditioning on the field. In athletic performance, it’s easy to get trapped in one viewpoint of improved athleticism, when there are many aspects of good movement and decision making. Graeme has both a wide-ranging understanding of sport and physical training, as well as an ability to understand the role of each coach and specialist in the overall training process. On today’s podcast, Graeme speaks about his time training in the martial arts, and how that impacted his thought process in his recent return to traditional sports performance training. He also gets into thoughts on lateral and curvilinear sprint development, ideas on how to “micro-dose” athleticism in team sport athletes, ideas on staggered stance lifting, and more. Today’s episode is brought to you by Lost Empire Herbs, TeamBuildr and the Plyomat. TeamBuildr is an online software for coaches and trainers. Use the code “JUSTFLY” for a free 30 day trial of the TeamBuildr software at https://teambuildr.com. 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. The Plyomat is a functional, intuitive, and affordable contact mat for jump and plyometric training and testing. Check out the Plyomat at www.plyomat.net View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps 4:43- The Impact of Training Environment on Performance 13:24- The Importance of Fitness Tests in Sports 20:55- The Importance of "Grapple Strength" in Wrestling 30:43- Building a Resilient Foundation for Athletes 41:04- The Importance of Curvilinear Running in Athletics 46:20- Layered Progression for Athletic Performance Enhancement 53:02- Enhancing Athletic Performance through Variable Training 59:48- Staggered Stance Squatting for Back Relief 1:02:20- Flywheel Training in Athletic Performance Graeme Morris Quotes "But then I believe that in a soccer game that they analyzed, and I'm not saying this is necessarily true in rugby league or what the sports I work in, but 85% of sprints were curvilinear nature. Okay? So all of a sudden we know, okay, this is also preparing guys for game demands." - Graeme Morris "Are you getting taught the correct things? Are you getting taught the correct tactics? Do you have good training partners? If you get training partners is so and so important. The people around you, are they challenging you? Are they pushing you? Are they assisting you? Becoming better every single day? So when I come back to sport, I always think, are we having a training environment that can lead to success? You want to produce a culture there, but that's not only really demanding and you're upholding standards, but it's still enjoyable to come to every single day." - Graeme Morris "But every single player knows what a good time is and what not a good time is. And when they return to training or when they come back, they know what the standards are, whether they're fit enough or they're not fit enough." - Graeme Morris "But you also got to also understand with some of these types of methods when you're in a team scenario as well. It's got to fit in with the holistic nature of what all the other coaches want as well. So you don't always get exactly what you want, whereas if you're doing something individually or when you're just a private coach, you can explore a bit more of these things. You might have this intuitive nature that you think this works and if your athlete has trust in it, it's easy to implement. Whereas in a team scenario, like multiple coaches are going to have input and then that certain thing might not get the tick of approval, so you might not get to have the full say, if that makes sense." - Graeme Morris "But to do that fun stuff, you have to do some of the other stuff before that, I believe." - Graeme Morris "I find the Kbox pushing into these positions like that because it's just forcing you all over the place when you're trying to do it, especially when you're doing it properly with a lot of." - Graeme Morris Show Notes Rugby Contact Drills https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71beRAMIuGQ Transcript About Graeme Morris Graeme Morris is an athletic development coach and leads the rehab program at Wests Tigers. He is the former head of strength and conditioning at AFL Field umpires, Western Suburbs Magpies and the Newtown Jets. He has consulted for a variety of field based and combat athletes including world and Australian champions in Muay Thai. Graeme has experience designing and implementing strength and power in the gym, as well as speed, agility and conditioning on the field. He holds a degree in Human Movement with Honours in Exercise Physiology, a Master’s degree in Strength and Conditioning and is a level 2 qualified Australian Strength and Conditioning Coach (ASCA).