How To Get Faster, Stronger, and Jump Higher for Basketball w/ D1 Strength Coach Zack Zillner

Are there specific exercises that you use that are like these are the movements that we know will help them with speed and these are the movements that will help them handling the jumps? I love cleans like any clean variation. I think the catch is the most important part. You know you have guys that show up and they're like this elbows straight down the floor and it's like okay I'm probably going to have you for nine months maybe two years of for lucky. Walk me through that off season screening the athlete looking at what injuries they have and then building in the off season. We're chasing health so they just got done with a long in season and I'd argue that you know basketball is one of the toughest sports on your body just because of the surface you're playing on the speeds that wish they're running jumping, changing directions. Like it's pretty violent on the body. It's also I mean a collision sport too. Do you see any carryover of X squat equals this on a vert? You know get to adapt this comfortable that looks good that I don't see your back all wonky and it's not all lower back from all of that bright torso and then from there like let's get good at. We're going to go over everything that you need to know about basketball and where to start right now. I'm Olympic strength coach Dan Miller. I've been to two different Olympics and I've coach world medalists in three different sports Olympic weightlifting freestyle wrestling and track and field. So we were fortunate enough to sit down with the director of sports performance for Miami's basketball team coach Zach. Zilner so he gathers all of the information around the strength, the explosiveness, the different angles and injuries that these athletes may be having and then incorporates that into their overall training and performance in practice. Prior to working at Miami coach Zilner was at Texas for 10 years where he had a ton of success. Some of the best years in the women's basketball program at the University of Texas. This podcast is absolutely loaded with tons of information about what you guys can do as basketball players and how you can get an edge on your opponents. Now let's get into the podcast with coach Zach Zilner. We are hosting a strength and conditioning seminar here in Pennsylvania June 5th in June 6th with Dr. Kristoff Kip, Dr. Ken Clark, Wilvertell and myself. This is for strength coaches and sport coaches alike and the first 30 that sign up are going to get 400 bucks off. This thing is going to be awesome. Now let's get back to the podcast. All right, Zach. So as the director of sports performance or athletic performance with the Miami basketball team, what do you see as like the most consistent areas or consistent issues as far as that lower limb is concerned like knee ankle, hip issues that you see from game, from practice and then how do you screen them and then how do you sort of mitigate them as you move as you move throughout the entire season or through the entire year. Yeah, I think the biggest thing is like predictor of injury would be previous injury. So you know right when these guys get on campus, we try to have a you know sit down go over like their medical records with the trainers and all that kind of stuff. And then I also like to sit down with the athlete themselves because sometimes you know they'll leave out. You know I've sprang ankle two weeks ago is fine not not a big deal and try to get all those deals and I want like his fine of details as they can give me like I don't care if you you know stubbed your toe pretty bad and seventh grade or you had a weird injury that wasn't even from basketball like I want to know about that just because you know maybe that's why we have certain limitations in certain places. So find out their injury history and then the biggest thing is sit down with your coach and figure out you know how you guys play and so are you like a team that walks the ball up the court or they coach that believes in playing 10 players a game or they more like six or seven are we a running gun type thing. Figuring all that kind of stuff out so you can kind of help them get used to the demands that they're going to face in practice. Do you see as far as that play type is concerned like let's say you have a high tempo offense that you just move and constantly. Do you see more more consistent types of injuries based off of that offense. Yeah I mean I think we're seeing that a lot with the NBA now like with rule changes and everything like the play is more wide open and so it's gives these athletes time to create more speed. Sprint higher velocities jump at higher rates and you know allow these really athletic guys to do with their do best but it's like with anything like if you have a high performance sports car and you drive the shit out of it all the time. Chances are that it's going to be in the shot more often than you know if you're taking your Honda Accord to the grocery store and stopping at stop signs and not speeding and all that kind of fun stuff. So okay that so that if you if you do have in that case like more speed to essentially run into the ground to take off you know for you know if you're attacking the net if you looking at that how do you develop or how do you build a strength system or some type of performance system. Am I what maybe I should start off with am I wrong in thinking basketball players don't typically like to lift as much as other athletes or is that wrong assumption. I think it's just something that you know when player plays football like everyone knows from your grandma to your aunt that never watches you know football that like football players lift and you start lifting when you're you know 10 years old and P.U.E. football all the way up and basketball I think. After you know it's changed recently but before it was like basketball players don't need to lift you know it's a skill type sport they just need to be long and lean and run fast and jump high and I think now the narratives training where at least we are getting athletes that have some training age. Before we see them but I think that's part of the culture you build in the weight room and how much of a priority it is for you and the head coach and then if it is a massive priority like be all about it you know find these pain points of you know if athlete doesn't feel like they do need to lift you know how can this room help them be a robust athlete to help them do what they love to do at a higher level. And so yeah I think it's on you to create that training culture that this isn't you know we're going to come in and do some calf raises and bicep curls and be done like if you want to be a robust athlete like you have to train that way. Our podcast is sponsored by our own strength training app peak strength gain an edge on your opponents on the court by downloading peak strength today and we have position specific strength and conditioning so you can click on the first link in the description. Head over to peakstrength.app the Google Play Store or the Apple iOS store you can download peak strength and then enter your email once you enter your email then you can select if you're a point guard if you're a center if you're a forward you can get a specific program. For your position a lot of you basketball players aren't even training so once you start training that's going to give you that specific edge and if you guys sign up for one full year you're going to get 38% off again click that first link in the description. Head over to peakstrength.app the Google Play Store or the Apple iOS store download peak strength today now let's get back to more basketball knowledge. So off of that like how how much time do you spend you know well how many let's let's like clarify how many games in a year will will Miami play this year. It's anywhere from like 30 to 36 just depending on you know different tournaments and then how far you go in March madness and all that kind of stuff so you know around around 30. Okay so let's say 30 to 35 games and then you guys are coming off of that how much time will you spend almost in recovery mode or rehabilitating these athletes based off of the long season before you would get into like okay let's do some type of like baseline work to start to build back towards something else like how how long would you. I guess maybe what I'm asking is walk me through that off season of screening the athlete looking at what injuries they have and then building in the off season. Yes so basketball is kind of unique where we're the only sport that's really on campus 12 months out of the year even with football like they're gone you know during winter break or have longer breaks than basketball I know after the season's done you have to give them a required 10 days off and usually depending on your season went you know you'll be there practicing. On that 10th day or if you know the season went longer and you you know reached your goals for the season coach might be nice and give you you know two or three weeks off but usually that first phase like early off season or chasing health so they just got done with a long in season. And I'd argue that you know basketball is one of the toughest sports on your body just because of the surface you're playing on the speeds that which they're running jumping changing directions like it's pretty violent on the body it's also I mean a collision sport too. So the biggest thing is before we you know send them home in May is I want to get them as healthy as possible so usually during April and then through May when they have finals we're chasing health getting them to feel good that way when they do go home for their break. I don't have to worry about you know little nagging injuries that they've been bugging them all year and then something that I've changed when they come back for summer training is what kind of chase health as well right in the beginning those first two or three weeks. And my narrative used to be different of like June let's freaking get after them and traditional like summer shrink conditioning stuff and the more I looked at the calendar and everything we're doing like we don't start practice till. October. And so for me, it's like, let's chase health in June and then start to ramp things up in July, August, September. July, August, September. And then it's like, okay, what my, my biggest thing, because you mentioned about the collision aspect. I'm just writing this down where it's like, if, if you're, if you're looking at this, you know, in your young strength, coach, or, you know, your coach listening to this, how are you managing or how are you looking at managing the collision aspect of the sport along with the speed of the sport, along with the endurance of the sport, and then along with the ability to transfer the speed into some type of explosiveness if they're if they jump a lot or whatever along those lines, how do you manage that or how do you break that down, screen it or have assessments for this as you're building in towards the season then. Yeah, so something I started these last couple of years is like the collision aspect of stuff. So the team I was working for Texas, like they're known for their defense super physical team. And I was noticing that most of the injuries we were getting were like collision type stuff, like, right through a screen or diving for a ball or different things like that. So I was like, okay, who is really good at collision sports and it's, you know, American football and you see it all the time they do these before they get pads there in these like collision type prep situations where it's like wrestling or any of these like pushing against a partner variations anything like that. So I kind of took some stuff from Vernon Griffin. Griffith who does that kind of stuff with some of his NFL guys and I had a chance to, you know, pick his brain over the summer and kind of borrow some of the stuff he was doing and it seemed to paid off. And I think if anything else, you know, gets you used to contact and you're not going to be as afraid of it is if you're doing it all the time. So we'll do little things whether they're, you know, pushing against each other almost like pseudo wrestling type stuff anything to get those contact exposures, which is something, you know, I never thought about doing 5 10 15 years ago. So, okay, so do you take that and I was just thinking like one of the things we've had wrestlers do is like, they might do a single like a let's say a front squat right and they do a front squat and then they might hit some type of sparring where they're doing like. Double like shots double like shots are pummeling in between. Is that anything that you guys would do not that they would need to be doing as much pummeling but anything like where they might do a specific type of strength lift and then do some collision work or is it more like let's just say that collision work for closer to the season and have the remainder of that off season development be a little bit more built out. You know block by block yeah, I think we just kind of slowly progress into it so we'll put it in our warmups and I call it like a court strength work so you know you've probably seen stuff where guys are shuffling sideways and you put a hand on their hip and their shoulder and then forwards and backwards and then we'll do things where basically they get shoulder to shoulder and fight for position. You know that's going to help with rebounding all that kind of stuff and then as off season moves on chances are in practice we're going to start doing more like box out drills or things where they have the pad or running into each other so the beauty of college basketball now as you can practice up to four hours in the summer so it used to be. You only had strength conditioning that was it no basketball it could be shooting on your own but nothing with coaches and now we can actually practice so I can sit down with coach and. Figure out the practice plan of what's today's emphasis okay it's a skill session we probably don't need to do collision stuff on this day okay hey it's a defensive rebounding type day okay maybe for a warm up we need to get them used to running into somebody. Leverage positions all that kind of fun stuff. So in the in the earlier parts let's say July July August are there specific exercises that you use that are like okay these are the movements that we know will help them with speed and these are the movements that will help them with their with handling the jumps handling handling that that really will help prep towards that collision as well. Yeah I mean I'm a huge fan and this is tough with basketball just because if you look at your ideal basketball archetype like it's going to be someone with the short torso long limbs if you wanted to make your ideal weightlifting archetype it's going to be long torso short limbs probably guy that looks pretty similar to me. And I wouldn't be anybody's first pick you know in the draft or the transfer portal for basketball team so the fun part and kind of the frustrating part with basketballs you have to find variations that they can do well that they're comfortable and that are advantageous for their gifts essentially. So like I love cleans like any clean variation I think the catch is the most important part like I get triple extension all that kind of stuff but I think the catches really where the bread and butter is with that left so we'll go through and our first couple weeks back we'll teach the guys the front squat and I'll kind of put them into groups like okay you can front squat cool now I'm probably going to you're going to be in the group that I'm going to teach how to clean. You know you have guys that show up and they're like this elbows straight down the floor and it's like okay I'm probably going to have you for nine months maybe two years of for lucky you're probably someone we're not going to put that much time into teaching you how to clean if you can't even get in the front rack position. Now that's not saying I'm going to neglect it and they're never going to learn how to front squat but it's more of a priority type thing so that would be an athlete that I would dump in for like a trap bar variation or anything like that. So I usually like to start them with the I guess in goal in mind so like instead of you know starting with the squat progression with like a plate and then a skeleton front squat or a zombie front squat and then a goblet squat like we'll start them with where I want them to be and you can see right away of like okay they lack thoracic mobility that they can't really get into the front squat position or they're really good at it already let's just keep hammering it. I used to be you know in my earlier career I think everyone loves progressions and they can show like over this 12 weeks look how good we are now at front squatting you know like I bet week one that guy could have front squat it anyways and these guys you know they're great athletes so I think you know you're great athletes are better at learning things and picking up things quick so a lot of these guys you can teach them something on Monday and they can usually do it Tuesday. So I think that's the biggest differentiator between like high level athletes and mid is you know how quickly they can pick up these skills so we'll teach them all that kind of stuff and then it's an evolving process so we're lucky enough here where the head coach really believes in training so anytime we practice we lift before practice so they're getting anywhere in season it's like 20 to 30 minutes of training before practice and now the season it's you know 45 to an hour and if we're practicing you know an average six days a week we're going to get six lifting sessions a week so it's a way where we can actually get better at the skill of lifting and by the time they're done if you add all that up with most teams you know lifting twice a week in season you know freshmen is already at almost a junior level of training by the time they're done with their freshman year. So you guys will lift every day and it might like I guess that's a question with the in season work is like okay 20 to 30 minutes I think oftentimes a lot of people initially will have this like oh I don't have enough time to do this but then when you just mentioned that 20 to 30 minutes it's interesting because I actually just sent Jason our video at a research paper on like the exercise bites like having a 10 to 15 minute workout and maybe think about this it's like how would you set that up then out throughout the week is it one exercise each day or one priority goal each day and then I almost I almost want to like double click on that on how important it is to recognize like dude 15 to 30 minutes is plenty if you're doing it you know five six days a week. And I think the beauty of that is you're going to you know cut reduce soreness because you're doing that activity all the time like the only time you really get sore is if I squat on Monday don't squat again till the next Monday I get sore again don't squat again but I think if you're always basically you take out your you know your traditional two or three days a week worth of training you know an hour each time and then divide that out and just spread it out over six sessions. I think it's a lot easier for them to handle they can definitely concentrate more always you know people think I'm crazy for this but I challenge you next time you work out like set your stopwatch when you start. And look at the stopwatch when you're feeling your best and I guarantee you it's at that 20 to 30 minute mark and so right when you're feeling the best you're good go to practice. And so does two things you know with that athlete buy-in of like they know they're going to come in get some work but they're not going to leave crushed. And I think that's the biggest positive reinforcement of like do you seem to come in will do these warm up blocks and then you're going to hit five sets of two on front squat and get out of here you know is that that hard like no that's easy thanks coach appreciate it in now. Okay, so one of the questions that will get a lot from basketball players and parents especially parents it's like okay I don't want to training or I don't want to training upper body I don't I don't want to focus on any upper body work because it could impede on the shot. How do you you know how do you deal. with that? How do you mitigate that issue? And is that true? What are the best lifts that you guys use that you've seen as far as developing that strength and still not having a negative impact on their performance with their specific skill? Yeah, I'll educate them first on are they getting in the gym enough and shooting? Like the best way to screw up your shot would be you're absolutely right to lift a bunch and not shoot. But if you're lifting, you know, you get down through your lift, you take the 10-minute shake your arms out, you should be fine. But I think the biggest thing, especially if you are looking at skill acquisition and shooting next is lower the volume for upper body. So I think, you know, the worst thing you could probably do is hit a big high volume arm farm or whatever and then ask somebody to go shoot. Like I totally agree with you. But if we're talking about, you know, doing heavy weighted pull-ups or heavy bench or even, you know, heavy arm work and just keep the volume low, I don't think that's going to interfere with your shot. Also, we always try to keep in mind doing a bunch of shoulder mobility hangs in each kind of teespine rotation because, you know, I'm sure you found this like heavy barbell bench, like barbell benching all the time. You get really awesome at that and what are you really bad at putting your hands over your head? And so, shooting and talking about exactly, hey, I'm a product of that as well. But I don't have to shoot so I can keep barbell benching out of care. So we'll do a lot of the stuff with these guys. We'll be like dumbbells and then depending on the player, like if it is a skill type player for us, like a high level shooter, they'll probably always be on dumbbells full range of motion. And if we have like a five player that his job is you need to get 14 rebounds a night, set big screens and dunk the ball. Like, sure, we're probably not worried about, you know, your teespine mobility and how you can extend because you're not going to be shooting anything outside the paint. So that'd be someone where it's like, yo, let's double down on getting as big as, you know, possible. That makes sense. And then it's like, okay, in season, would that be something, maybe they hit once like twice a week. So what we'll do is we'll kind of throw it in throughout the week. So kind of how I mean, I could talk about setting up my week. So everything is, I'd love to give us your split. So we'll just do, I'll give you my in season because it's fresh in my head. But we work on the game day minus system. I'm sure you're familiar with it. But if you're not, it's a game day minus three would be three days till your game minus two is two. And then minus one is the day before the game. And then we'll do a plus one, which is the day after the game. So I look at it like this, like game day minus three is going to be your slower moving movements. So that's an everly going to be a strength day. So we'll pick, you know, their main move of the day will be some sort of squat variation. And then either a pressing or a pull up type variation. So naturally, heavier weight, you know, it's going to limit how fast you can move that bar. Game day minus two would be more of our power production days, whether that's the trap bar variations, hang power clean, snatches, jerks, you name it. And then the day before the game is like a speed strength type day. So with throwing med balls or doing a bunch of plios, maybe light Olympic lifting, whether it be snatch, high poles, something like that. It's basically coming and, you know, move fast, feel good. So we'll have mobility in there. And then the game day plus one. So the day after the game, we're moving in all plans and movement. The rep scheme is usually like two sets of 10 to 20. It's a feel good type situation. So they might come in and hit, you know, goblet squats, pushups, inverted rows, we can do our accessory stuff. So that's when you get your curls in. And then we'll throw a bunch of mobility and soft tissue stuff on those days. Yeah, that's, I mean, that's pretty sensible in the fact in like how that is actually drawn out. I was even writing down here. I'm like, you mentioned snatch. And I remember, so I've worked with, there's a guy named Mike Aton who's ahead of like, he's a USAW, like the head of high performance. I think it's his official title. And he worked with the Chicago Bulls back in the 90s. And so he worked under Alver meal. And he would, when we talk about basketball, he makes the argument, they would clean a lot, they would snatch a lot. He makes the argument that he thinks the snatch like a hang snatch or a box snatch is almost easier for basketball players to learn and possibly more applied if you're looking at like join angles and shit like that. And when you mentioned that, maybe think about that, is there, do you have any truth to that in your experience and recently with athletes that maybe it snatches easier to teach and or they're easier, it's easier for them to do. Yeah, I think especially for the teaching part, like you got to think like get this and everything I give is through my lens. So the guys we get are the 1% of the 1% their free athletes. So we talked about before, like they have super long arms. So a lot of these guys, if it's a, you know, they have a clean grip on the bar and they're trying to get, you know, start the shoulders over the bar for a clean, like they might only have to go down a half an inch and they're already at their knees. So snatches an easier way where they can get, you know, their hips involved when they first start. And then the wattage these guys can produce just because they have a longer distance to pull that weight and the position like basketball, you know, you're in a defensive stance, your hands are up, you're playing above your head most of the game. I think it's invaluable. We usually use it more on the speed power type situation like we're never going to probably go for a heavy one or two RM on squat. I just, or on a snatch. I just don't trust these guys. And I just know a need for it. But I think as far as like a speed type exercise, if you have a guy that listens and is good at mover and all that kind of stuff, like I think it's a great lift to throw in there for sure. You mentioned the wattage. Like how are you measuring the wattage on a snatch? Is that, are they using any type of VBT? Yeah. So we were, I'm trying to get VBT here. But the last eight years I was using VBT or Elite form at Texas and then I had Elite form at basically every school I've been at. And it was great just for, you know, obviously getting information on our end. But I think the biggest thing it gives the athlete is intent. And so anytime you can gamify something and have the care factor go up of, hey, the guy next to me did, you know, 2500 watts. Like I'm going to try to get 2700 watts. So who shit? He got 3000 watts. Like I need to beat him on that. Anytime you can create that competitive culture, I think it bleeds and everything you're trying to do. What do you see when they're doing, okay, if they're doing like the, the slower day, the squad or do you, okay, I have a couple questions here. A minus three day, would they do a squad or a trap bar deadlift or do you train, do you save the trap bar deadlift for like the minus two day? And then if they're on that minus three, are you looking at like when they're squatting, there's a specific speed. If let's pretend you have VBT right now that you would want them to move at. Yeah, so kind of what we'll do for, we'll pick a lower body strength. So I call it RX squat. So basically it's a prescription squat. And so I'll have the guys bucket it of like front squat guys, back squat guys, Hatfield guys, split squat guys, hack squat guys. And then from there, they'll come in and tell me what they want to do. So I could be like, Hey, you're on front squat today. How's everything feeling today? You want to do front squat or, you know, are you banged up and you'd rather get on the machine or you rather do a split squat variation or whatever. So I kind of let them pick within that kind of framework. And then the trust between both of us is whatever you pick, you need to go ham on it. So I'm letting you pick the exercise you want to do. So when we work up to a heavy double, I shouldn't see, you know, complaining about that. And I don't want to do it like you pick the exercise. So you should be able to crush it with it. And so with that, we're looking at speed, but I'm looking at like quality of movement first. And then you can kind of see as these guys warm up if it's a day where like, yo, we're going to get effort. I feel good or days where it's like, hey, coach, like I'm pretty run down XYZ and the other. And the beauty of the training every day is if a guy comes in on a minus three day and he's like, coach, I'm not feeling today. My back is talking to me. I'm like, cool, we can regress this. And then I know in three more days, we have another opportunity to hit that strength type lift. So I kind of let them pick of you in a track bar dead lift. You want them whatever variation they want. That's kind of what we go after. And we work up to either a heavy triple double or single, just depending on that, what we've had. You know, the days previous and what what our next few days are going to look like. If you have this is very specific to the happy field, if you have the hat field, okay, and you have athletes that spend time on that, why would you put them on a hat field squad? What do you see as a result of that relative to other movements in the sense that like they can't do something. So you have them hat field or hat field increases XYZ. Like what do you see as far as that lift specifically is concerned? I think it's a comfort thing more than anything. So if you have a bar on your back and it's super heavy, no matter how confident it lift you are, you have that little [BLANK_AUDIO] head that's like, what if I missed this or what if I get buried or what if I do this? And so I feel like, especially me included, it's a lot easier for me to add maybe a weight that I'm like, I don't know. Maybe if I'm like, I can always get out of this if I need to because my hands are on there. And we talked about the knee stuff before, you know, it's a way of we can get that heavy centric and they can use their hands as much as they want to get it up or we call it days, I call it Piano Key Day. So basically it's they're doing the hat feel, but they can only have two fingers on the, you know, hooks or whatever, the handles whatever holding on to. And so they'll kind of know, okay, that day it's more of like, dude, that's all you. This is just here for comfort. And then while days where it's like, hey, let's load it up. And if your knees are bothering you, you can use that to help you, you know, get up. But I think it's a comfort thing more than anything. And some guys just prefer it more. Other guys are like, I don't like holding on to the handles. I'd rather front squat or can I just have my hands on the pads itself. So I kind of just leave it up to them of where they feel the most comfort. 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Click that first link, head over to peakstrength.app. Now let's get back to this podcast with Coach Zach Zilner. Do you see any any relationship especially with guys that tall? What would be the range of motion that you're looking for? Do they go to a box? They don't go to a box. And then also, do you see any carryover of X squat or X front squat equals this on a vert? Or is it like these guys are just so twitchy, it doesn't matter. So I guess that's a little bit of like two questions there. Range of motion and then if there's a transfer. Range of motion, I think earlier in my career, that's what I hung my hat on if I was a good coach or not. So I'd spend all this time to be like, look, I have a seven footer that can put his butt on his heels. But you know, you look at the video and it's 135 pounds. And it's like, what is what is this actually doing? And so I've honestly started with like the top down approach of like, you know, get to a depth that's comfortable. That looks good. That I don't see your back all wonky and it's not all lower back or more of an upright torso. And then from there, like, let's get good at, you know, increasing the range of motion. But I think for me, I can get range of motion in our accessory work that I care more about that I can get in better positions, whether it's split squats or any single leg variations that I don't really worry about it too much for their bilateral stuff. And if you look at any guy with a short torso and long legs, it's like, there's probably going to be a limit on how low they can go. Like we have guys that are like six, eight. And when we sit down next to each other, we're the same height. And I'm five, 10. And so that tells you all you need to know. But we'll get that full range of motion stuff with our accessory work. Okay. That makes sense. What about do you see a transfer from? Like these guys are better jumpers or these guys like that squat more or don't. This is fuel. I'm thinking about. So I did a podcast with Isaiah Rivera who has like the World Record Vertical Jump at 51 inches. And he, you know, he's pushing his front squats or like control these centric squats just so he can try to blow up his vert even more. And that's where it made me think about. Do you see any tendencies with the actual basketball players? Yeah, I think you got to look at, you can't just look at absolute vertical. So I was a pretty good jumper. Like I could, I think I jumped around 35 inch, 36 inches. But if you watch me do it, it took me forever to get off the ground. Like I loaded all the way down, took all day, jumped up, got 36 inches. We have guys that can bend their knees, you know, a quarter of an inch and jump 36. And so I think a guy like myself would really benefit from traditional strength training, like just get frickin stronger and your verticals going to go up and guys that are more twitchy and responsive. I don't necessarily think that is the case. I think they're really good at just being quick and reactive and doing too much like slow grinding out traditional strength and I don't think is a huge advantage to those guys for looking at strictly trying to make them better jumpers. And I know that sucks because it's not as fun as a train. But there's a reason why they're an outlier. Well, it's also like the way you're describing it to me. It's like the the quick and twitchy guys. Like, yeah, it's important that you continue to build those qualities, but it's almost, I don't want to, I don't want to be the pussy who's like so focused on like injury prevention. But it's like getting them making sure they're durable enough that they're built enough to handle 30 to 35 games. And in theory, you can also get to the next level and handle the, you know, a really, really long season in comparison. No, I agree. And with those guys, it's like, okay, he's already jumped. He has a 38 inch vertical. Me getting him to whatever squat to get a 40 inch vertical is that going to be the reason why he goes to the NBA or doesn't like no. And so it's like that guy. It's like that's an unbelievable vertical. Like, let's just make sure he's healthy, moving, correct and still still train. Like I think too many people's like, you hear this thing, like don't mess him up. And it's like, you can still train. You just might have to do it in a different way that you would, you know, train a, I guess less gifted athletic person. It's interesting because there's a, there's a paper, a Marquette put out a paper and like 21, it's the comparison, a counter movement and, and preferred style jump mechanics and male basketball players. And there's literally no correlation between the, the jump style of the preferred jump and a counter movement jump, which would be essentially the vertical that you're looking at. So it's like the pervert, the preferred jump, how they're going to jump in the game. And even that counter movement, don't even have in the, in a lab setting that much of a correlation. So put that into a court. And it's like, not that you shouldn't be training that, but it's, it's an interesting, it's an interesting takeaway. I guess that leads into, for me personally, I'm thinking about the jumping and, and speed stuff. And maybe just going into jumps further is how important is it really, because they're jumping so much in their practice or in their game, do you do plyometric or athlete specific sessions of jumps? Or do you try to back off of that because of what they're doing in their sport? How do you approach anything along the lines of like plios and things like that? Yeah, I think I'm probably different with a lot of things you hear, like a lot of people are like, okay, in season, we're going to get away from plios because they're already jumping a ton in practice. But I'd argue that most of those jumps in practice are sub-maximal. And so we can get away to add more, you know, maximal type jumps in training. I think that's perfect. And we just kind of mirror them off what we're doing, you know, in the weight room that day. So if it's like a strength day, we might be more of a depth drop. If it's a reactive day, it's might be a, you know, a depth drop to a box jump or any like consecutive hopping type things. If it's a speed day, it could be a lower, I guess, hurdle hop, anything like that. So we're kind of mirroring whatever we're doing that day in the weight room to kind of enhance that main lift of the day. So that's still, so the jumping you'll be doing almost, you know, let's say every day or every other day, at least to some point during, let's even like right now during the in season aspect. Yeah, I think it's important to keep it in. And my example all the time is realistically, how many jumps are you going to do in a weight lifting session? It's probably five sets of two. And if you can't recover from 10 jumps, I'd really question what you were doing, you know, in the off season or why they can't recover from 10 box jumps total. Are you, are they ever like, are you ever looking at somebody and say, okay, this guy, this dude is a one leg of jumper versus a bilateral jumper. And that's how we're going to train or is it almost always you're jumping off of two feet? Like do you have any how do you approach that aspect based off of what they do in in their game? Yeah, usually like guys that prefer two feet, they're going to be more of that like muscularly driven athlete. And so they're also going to be probably really good at squatting deadlifting anything bilateral force production. Like that's usually their jam. And you're longer leaner like, I guess tendon driven athletes. If that's That's what you want to call it. They're going to prefer. single leg stuff, quick reaction. And those are the guys that they're not comfortable when you're doing slow e-centric. So anything that's grinded out and your two foot leg adjumpers, like that's their bread and butter, like they love grinding stuff out, you know, loading in the ground. All that long duration stuff, usually your, you know, your big muscular guys are better at. - Okay, so going off of that, like if you're looking at, I mean, let's talk about goda for a little bit. The goda guys will blame things like Achilles tears in the NBA, ACL tears in football, but specifically in your realm in basketball. Do you see, I sort of want to figure out how we can make, how we can talk about them, but maybe what do you see is like the prevalence behind that? Is it the fact that the game is more open and there is higher speed leading to harder breaking forces? And I guess how do you go about dealing with that potential issue of handling those breaking forces that these guys have now, especially the, you know, at the college level? - Yeah, I think that's the big we talked about before, like, you know, more wide open spaces. And I think we're forgetting as like, these guys are bigger, faster and stronger now than they were 20, 30 years ago. Like 20, 30 years ago, there were no guys that were 245 that had a 40 inch vertical and had blazing speed. Like that just wasn't a thing in the game. And so you're having these bigger, more powerful athletes when more wide open space with more games playing. And like before, like if you think that you can prevent an injury with a certain exercise or this and that, like you obviously haven't been doing this long enough or trained anybody worth a shit, to really know to have that sort of opinion. And then when we talked about before, like building that robustness, so getting them exposed to the different angles, positions, all that kind of stuff, they're gonna see in a game super helpful. One thing that helped me a ton was after every game, we get a bunch of pictures from our media, people that, you know, just still shots of these guys. And it's amazing these different positions, these guys will find themselves in in the full court, you know, planning a certain way, their body is leaned completely other way. And we're trying to, you know, if they're already exposed to those positions and at high speeds, it would probably be advantageous for us to train them at lower speeds. So that's kind of that we'll throw in different things, whether it's a split squad on a ramp where their foot's ankles pronated or supinated, anything like that to kind of get the tissues used to those extreme angles and positions, they'll get into. - That actually does remind me to, mainly this is a question that I had been talking about you to one of our defensive ends. And his dad had mentioned like, you know, ask him if there's any specific ab core work that you would teach, 'cause he said he finds himself, his son's a dog and he finds himself watching some of the bigger basketball players and it almost reminds him of that d-end, you know, dipping and being able to bend so well as a bigger player. And is there any, and he was saying, you know, mobility aspect for sure, but also what you were just saying about the single leg on a ramp. Do you see, do you guys specifically use any, like, 'cause I feel like a lot of guys, we all, you gotta do more core work to be able to handle that. Do you do anything specifically for that? Do you think handling the half fields, the front squats, the goblet squats, stuff like that, that's enough or is, you know, what's your take on that? - Yeah, I used to think, you know, we squat and deadlift, that's enough core. And then the older I got, you know, the more I played around with some of these different movements and it actually took me playing pickup a couple times where I woke up the next day and I was sore shit in my like midsection. And then you could think about all the different movements that are in. So we'll do a lot of things, you know, your traditional farmers walks, single leg, or single arm, double arm. And then what I really like doing is I can oblique crunch in like a 45 degree back extension where they're really challenging that rate of, you know, like melting into the ground coming up. And so therefore, you know, they're working in it both in ranges. We'll do kind of on your back and your feet are together. And I call them windshield wipers. So basically they're going one side, left side, back the middle, left side, back the middle. And then we'll do the other side. And we're working on that disassociation. So when you play defense and turn and run, you're taught to keep your, you know, your nose or chest on the ball and your legs have to keep running straight. And so if you're bad at rotating, that's gonna be a really hard position for you to be in. So I think we throw those in all the time. I think the oblique crunch is like a very underrated thing or even like standing or half kneeling with a dumbbell at your side and doing like a side bend, anything like that. - Yeah, that, that, it's interesting because I've sort of fallen on that same exact track of like, oh, if you front squat, you snatch, you clean, you do walking lunges, you'll be fine. And then it's like, I'm still just, even with throwers, it's like, yeah, I don't know. I don't, I don't think it is. I think there is a little bit too, like the actual targeted core work. Especially lateral and that disassociation stuff. Like crunches, whatever, like if you like doing them, I don't think they're good or bad. But like any of that lateral flexion, I think is a missed thing that most people aren't really targeting and not training it, you know, heavy enough. - Right, right. Okay, if you're looking at like from a speed perspective, do you guys, so, so I had Stoomic milling on less spillment and recently Ken Clark and it's like, okay, we gotta break down first 10 steps, you know, or the first 10 yards, you gotta break down, you gotta have a flying 10, you gotta have looking at how many steps they're taking through 10 or 20. In the basketball realm, are you seeing anything similar where it's like, let's focus on specific types of assessments for speed and that, those specific assessments sort of carry over to the best players on the court. Or those best players have a higher performance on these specific assessments. Do you see anything like that? And then walk us through how you would train like speed in the off season versus speed in season, I guess. - Yeah, we'll do a lot of like acceleration work just the first three steps. And what I'll try to do is get them in similar positions that they'd be in during the game. So like a big is gonna play from rim to rim. So he probably needs to work on, you know, taking three hard steps and sprinting in the straight line. Like your point guard or guard's kind of fan out. So they're kind of on that curvilinear train before they hit the straight line. So we'll do different things. We'll though, you know, start curve around and meet in the opposite corner or any of the curvilinear running, especially for the guard, just 'cause they're gonna do that kind of stuff so much. That was one of those things. Once again, I took from Corey, all the curvilinear running. You'll be surprised if, you know, you have horrible ankles. What angles you can't get into or lines you can't run on because you're just lacking that, you know, either ankle strength or mobility. So we'll do a lot of curvilinear running. And then we'll do some top-end speed work towards the end of the summer. Once again, when I was young, I thought that was stupid 'cause the court's only 94 feet. You know, you're never gonna reach top speed, but what better way to train, you know, your hamstring, glutes, calves, all that kind of stuff than, you know, high-end sprinting. And we'll put some constraints on them 'cause, you know, we're probably not gonna run the 100-yard dash, but maybe we'll do some, you know, flying tens, 20s, any of that kind of stuff. - When you're talking about like the direct ankle work off the curvilinear run, is there, well, you were talking about the lack of range of motion in the ankle can have a negative impact on those types of runs. Is there anything you do prep-wise? It's like, this is one of the best things to do to handle the ankle. And then is there anything from a strength perspective that you also would be like, you know, these are, you know, very good for maintaining or increasing strength in the ankle? - Yeah, I think those run specific isos, like position two, I think Alex Neterra put out a bunch of stuff on those. And what I've played around with is, you know, traditionally, they're either like flat on the floor where your heels off the ground and all the weights in your four foot. You got a little bit in your knees, but changing that angle of where that foot comes in the contact with the ground. So what we could be doing that same position too, but it could be pronated or supinated or even changing now how high I am versus how low how bent that knee is. And then old-school stuff like Polish boxes, like I think low-level plyos basically jump rope height on, you know, two inverted boxes or two everted boxes, I think it can help prepare the tissues for what you're about to do. And you can find out really quick if someone's had an ankle injury 'cause you do a couple sets of the Polish boxes the next day they're like, yo, I don't know what it is, but the outside of my ankle is super sorted there or whatever. And, you know, that's kind of a way where we can bucket guys of, okay, you might need more position two work before we go back to the Polish boxes or your ankles move great. Let's try to add some more. or altitude to those. - Do you ever sit there in like in the, I mean, do you have full sessions devoted to speed work? Like do they ever get hooked up on a 1080 and you're running like five sets of 15 yards or anything like that? - No, we don't have that much time. With them, so all of our stuff, like I put speed work in quotes, just 'cause it's not traditional speed work. Like I can't wait five minutes between reps or anything like that. So I'll give them a pretty good amount of rest, but for most part, it's, I guess, if you wanna call it sub-maximal speed work, which I'm sure I'll get eviscerated for that, 'cause it's not the same thing, but we're just working on, you know, running hard with good intent behind it. And at the end of the day, like, that's gonna help 'em. - One of the things that made me think through all this, 'cause you were going into the culture stuff in the beginning, and I think that plays such a massive role in every athlete just wanting to be in the gym. The interesting part that I liked, that is sort of this crazy difference is football coaches will measure absolutely. Football strength coaches will measure everything. And then I'm talking to you and it's like, dude, just getting it, and it's funny 'cause a lot of our guys here, we measure, dude, we do a lot of tests, but it also comes down to like, you know, you just gotta show up, you gotta squat, you gotta jump, you gotta run, you gotta, you gotta lift. And it's like, what is the difference between the, just freaking train versus measuring? Like, why do you think football is so infatuated with that versus basketball, not really, not that you're not measuring, but not nearly to the degree of football? - Yeah, I think you have to go back to why are you measuring stuff, and are you measuring it just to show your worth, to show a hey coach, since I've taken over, everyone's increased their back squat by 200 pounds and are benched by 100 pounds and XYZ, I'm a really good strength coach. And, you know, you look at all the other qualities and no one's talking about speed numbers or availability numbers or anything like that. And I think it's the easiest thing for people to put value on themselves of making people stronger. But if you look at any of what we do, getting stronger is like the small piece of the puzzle. And it's not powerlifting where absolute strength is the most important piece. But I think, you know, you might have, you know, get lost in the weeds of what you think is important. But, you know, if you're boss, if you're head coach, that that's what he wants to see, that's what we would be doing. But, you know, on our end, like, coach doesn't care how much they squat or bench or whatever, he just needs really athletic dudes that are robust and available on every game day. And so I don't get too caught up in chasing those numbers. Like the numbers are gonna come. You're consistently trained with high intent day after day weekend after week, like you're gonna get better. And so to me, I don't place that big of a thing of maxing out, I guess. - Yeah, I guess it's interesting too, 'cause I was even thinking about it, you know, when I was watching the National Championship for football and they were talking about like Indiana's team and how many of the guys are portal guys or, you know, holdover, like older dudes. I'm wondering if that, I wonder if too, because basketball, now this might be a total, I might be completely clueless with this, but it seems like you have less time with your guys, as far as absolute period of their entire career. Maybe, but it seems like they might leave school earlier than the football guys. And as the portal takes over football, I feel like basketball, it's a bit more, it happens. It seems like it's just more accepted and now that's leaking into football. And these guys might have the football guys less, will they care less about the tests because they don't have as much time to worry about them and they want them to just come in already, basically, and pretty good freaking shape. Like, that was another thing I was just thinking through. - To me with all this stuff, I think it comes back to like actionable data. So like, is this stuff you're tracking, moving the needle for game performance? And is back squat, is that any correlation to wins or losses or, like, I don't know? But like, to me, unless something really specifically affects the game or how we want them to play, like, it's just another number. So, I don't know, I don't think. It's tough 'cause I've seen so many players on both ends be super strong monsters that are elite players and guys that are like, dude, you're gonna get me fired of Coach C's you lifting how, you know, weak you are. But you're also in it, we all start. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Like, how much of that really matters? But I think, you know, your environment, like you said before, like, creates, whether your guys get better or not. So if you're fostering like a high intent, competitive environment, like, your players have no choice but to get better. And at the end of the day, that's what we're after. - Well, that's the interesting part is like, we often times we'll say, we want to test athletes more so because the testing itself, when we do it, like if you have a kid hitting a three rep clean or a big bench or something or a big, you know, back squat triple, the whole gym stops and everybody's just going, "Ape shit." And it almost makes it more valuable than the actual exercise. Like the ability for a kid to control themselves and their aggression and all these things and put it into this action. And then hopefully one day that leaks into their specific sport, that is more valuable than the actual test, than the actual exercise. So it's an interesting thing. - Yeah, I think like to like, I consider every training day a test day. So to your point, like, I won't have a specific, you know, last Monday the summers are a test day, but like every day is a test day. So if we're doing weighted pull ups, you know, you better look around and see like, oh, he's got a 45 on his, he's got a 45 and a 10, like maybe I'm going to try to get a 45 and a 25. Like, and that's I think up to you stressing how important and how cool it is to care, how cool it is to invest in yourself, invest in your teammates and have them realize, we always sit down and it's like, hey, do you think having the biggest, fastest, strongest, toughest guys on your team is going to help you guys win? Yeah, coach, obviously. It's like, okay, well, you need to hold each other accountable and all these sessions need to be accordion. So if you see a guy slack in today, help him out 'cause you might be the one slack in tomorrow if you're in sorrow for yourself. So it's like, how can we all, you know, I guess build up each other to care enough to give it your all. Right, right. That's what I mean, that literally is all that really matters, dude, also my frickin' squirrel brain while you were talking (laughs) and you had said about, does back squat really, does back squat really lead to us winning more, but then I started thinking about a football team and if they did these pre-game metrics and they were like putting, like, the average back squat of this football team is this weight and then over a year we could actually see, like, does a bigger back squat actually lead to more wins or do these coaches just suck if they have a guy with a big, or a team with a big back squat? Yeah, I don't know. And yeah, I mean, maybe I'm just trying to validate myself 'cause we don't do that kind of stuff, but. No, I think it makes perfect sense and that's where it's like, it makes me think like, what are wide receivers training like? Like, are they training closer to how you guys are training then during the season? 'Cause the body type is not very, and the collision aspect, you know, it's not gonna be nearly as much as if you had an O-Lime and or a D-Lime and so you get a big body at the wide receiver position, but they gotta be freaking fast and they gotta jump. That was another thought I had, but I don't know if you have much experience with that or not. Yeah, we kind of compared them to like a cornerback is basically like a basketball player. It's always change direction, reactionary type, athlete. And then your quarterback is almost like a skilled spot shooter. A five player that doesn't, that is just there to set screens and get rebounds and donk is probably like a DN type situation. So yeah, they're all pretty similar, but I say the majority of your players are like a cornerback type situation, like being quick, reactive, moving all planes of movement. Like let's say they come out of the health phase in June. Are you testing anything where you'd be like, let's do a three rep clean, a five rep, you know, back squat to a box or whatever, and then let's see where that is before the season starts. Is that anything that would be like a standard practice or is it more so, is that tough because these dudes are just so freaking big? So tall, it's hard to figure that aspect out. Yeah, to me, it's like, you know, I know a lot of some successful coaches. is they do all the one rep max testing. I don't think it matters. Like until I have a head coach that cares or until we get points for having 400 pound back squats or whatever, like I'm not going to set aside a whole day for that. And I just look at it as, okay, you came in and you know, you were doing sets of five with 135 and now it's two months later and you have 185 on the bar. Okay, you got stronger and then three months down the road. You got 225 and so on and so forth. And then we'll jump them on the force plate once or twice a week and we'll usually start out with your regular kind of movement jump and then we'll do kind of a depth drop jump to kind of get that reactivity. And then I care more about those numbers than I guess the weight room numbers per se because there's a bunch of different things that can get that needle to move not necessarily just looking at the strength bucket. And a lot of people forget like weight lifting and lifting in general is a skill. And you know, I got taught this firsthand with those training NBA player. He's probably one of the best players that ever pick up a basketball and his limb lengths and everything are not advantageous to lifting. And I was like, okay, you know, I'm obviously can squat more than him. We have like an iso kinetic leg press and we're going to do an iso and I'm going to crush him on that too. And this will make me feel good about myself. And I went on I got like around 900 pounds and then he almost doubled me and show that just taught me like how we test strength is these certain shapes and positions that we deem necessary and standardized and everything. But what is true strength? So let's get them on something that's low skill, low technique and just brute effort. And there's a lot of difference that goes into what's actually strong and not strong. So I think a lot of people give basketball players crap for not being strong or this and that. And it's like that dude can win, mill dunk from the free throw line. I think his strength and everything is fine. Just his way of expressing it isn't through a barbell. Yeah, and it almost makes sense. Like think about that if you have a 230 pound dude or however heavy, right? And you're jumping from the free throw line and you're able to win mill dunk. It's like tell me how much force is going into that like into that plant and taking off. It's a whole other world in that case. Exactly. And so it didn't matter how much I could squat like I wasn't standing the chance to that guy. Right, right. I guess the the aspect that even when I was taking through that is like, okay, if you're working backwards, even from there, is that when when someone let's say somebody dunks, because I often think about this is just this fat old dude is when I would like jumping off of a box. It's like jumping off of a box as you get older is hard. And these dudes are fallen from a 10 foot rim. And there's ankles around them. It is that going back to just working on that collision aspect and almost combining the collision aspect with the the different angle boxes so that they can be prepared or at least feel and sense when they're coming down like they might be making contact to roll an ankle. Well, I think the crawling variations, the tumbling variations, all the low level gymnastics stuff is so important because there is a lot of falling. And you fall from a rebound. The guy pushes you. It's like, I don't want that first instinct to be you stick your arm out. And now we lost you to a broken wrist. Like I want you to be able to be good of rolling out of things, falling out of things. Not looking like you know, you're going to break your hip because you fall. And some of our guys, there's six feet tall and can dunk and they're high in the air coming down from that. You don't know where you're landing or how you're going to fall. And what better way than in our warm-ups to kind of teach them so they're more comfortable of, hey, maybe you're going to learn how to roll out of it instead of just sticking your arm into the ground. Yeah, that makes sense. I think like that that was going to be my next question is like, is it just better to use that specifically on a regular basis that alone is its own type of skill and you can use that in the warm-ups. And it is likely something that will carry over to some type of like potentialation. And probably has a better carry over than even doing a front squat with hooks on the bar and doing that to a box squat. Well, they hate it. Like most tall people like they do everything they can not to go on the ground because it's a pain in the ass to get up, you know. And so it's like getting them in these more uncomfortable positions. Like when they fall their way further off the ground and you or me. And we take that for granted. That's why you don't see you know six, ten gymnasts and the Olympics. That's a moment. Wow. That would be absolutely wild. They should put that in the enhanced games. Like make sure make the enhanced games like not about drugs but more so about like just absolute complete different. They shouldn't be in certain sports. Yeah. Yeah. But the fattest dude to finish a marathon. Yeah. I mean that one. Okay. All right. Coach Zilder's act. Thank you for doing this. This was awesome. Where can everybody find you? You can find me on socials, Instagrams, usually these you want to get ahold of me. It's @ZACK_ZILNER. Just pepper you with DMs. Yeah. Bam, bam, bam, bam. Yeah. Ask ask how can I fix how can I get my vertical higher so that I can finally dunk a basketball. Exactly. Good luck. Take better. Thanks. Thanks a lot. Hey, have a good one. Thanks for having me. Peace.