“Almost Impossible to Achieve in Traditional Weight Room Methodology”
PhD and kBox pioneer Mike Young reveals some of his key flywheel training strategies and more for UC Berkeley strength and conditioning coach Joel Smith in his latest podcast. Fredrik Correa thinks you should listen in.
In the last episode of the Just Fly Performance Podcast, coach Joel Smith is having the US kBox pioneer Mike Young on. Mike is well known for his work at his facility Athletic Lab and for his work in MLS, and as a well traveled speaker at high level conferences and workshops world-wide. We were much fortunate to have him at the Exxentric Summit 2016 (you can download that lecture here).
On this episode, Mike talks about developing sprint and speed ability in team sports athletes. The question of how much you should invest into working on mechanics with non-sprinters is interesting and Mike has some great insights in this area. Further, he discusses if there are differences in cuing between sprinters and non-sprinters.
Discussing the kBox
To finish it he gives his take on velocity based training and (from 38:30) the kBox. Mike lets us know how he sees the kBox in a performance setting and what they use it for in power and strength development. We also get to know how he uses it weekly with his track and field group.
Being a long-time advocate of isometric and eccentric training Mike explains that he now appreciates the safety and logistics of doing this with the kBox as compared to traditional methods.
“For many years i had to come up with some very creative and borderline dangerous things to kind of really press the pedal to the metal. I think the kBox provides a very safe alternative to a lot of the things that I was doing, and its much logistically easier.”
They reach overload of up to 175% with elite athletes, and doing that with regular weights is both complicated, time consuming and somewhat dangerous in my view.
“We’ve seen #eccentricoverload depending on the movement velocity and the range of motion in the 150 to 175% range, which is really almost impossible to achieve in traditional weight room methodology. So, I love the kBox. It’s been a great tool for us.”
With team sport athletes they do more of metabolic and hypertrophic training and the eccentric overload, being excellent for injury prevention, has made them replace most of the Nordic hamstring work with overloaded RDLs on the kBox.
Thanks for Sharing
I hope you’ll enjoy this podcast as much as I did. There are plenty of performance podcasts out there and you can’t really listen to them all, but this is a good one that I can highly recommend you make some time for. Thanks Mike and Joel for sharing!
Happy DOMS!
/Fredrik Correa, Head of Research & Development
PS For more podcasts relating to flywheel training, check out the media page.
