Applied Sports Science Podcast - Ep. 3 with Matt Wietlispach, Niagara University
Opening: From out of the lab and into the gym, CoachMePlus Applied Sports Science Podcast
Kevin: Hi, I’m Kevin Dawidowicz from CoachMePlus and you’re listening to the CoachMePlus Applied Sports Science podcast. This is episode number 3 and with us is the head strength and conditioning coach from the Niagara University Purple Eagles, Matt Wietlispach. Today we talked about some monitoring and alerts on a small budget which was very interesting because Matt works at a smaller D1 so you get to hear some of his experiences in his first year as a D1 coach. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast with whatever App you’re using whether it be Stitcher, iTunes, or other and make sure to go to Coachmeplus.com and subscribe to the Applied Sports Science newsletter by clicking the subscribe button in the top right corner. Without further ado, Matt Wietlispach.
We brought Matt on because obviously, he is a friend of CoachMePlus. He worked with us for a little while, right?
Matt: I did
Kevin: You were the first strength coach to kind of join the team, I think.
Matt: Yeah, Russo coached baseball so yeah, first strength guy.
Kevin: It was an interesting introduction like you actually got brought on by Doug McKenney. We were just talking about it, right?
Matt: Yeah
Kevin: So you worked with Doug with the Sabres, right?
Matt: Yeah, I interned with them for like 6 months with the Sabres.
Kevin: Was that your first internship?
Matt: No, before that I interned with UB and then before that, I went the junior college route so took a little different route where I went to Elgin Community College, went to Parkland Community College and I went to Erie Community College so two community colleges in Illinois, one in Buffalo where I was the head strength coach and you know you’re not making much money so you would work the rec center for minimum wage or personal train on the side so that’s what I was doing with those jobs. Then I got the ECC job and while I was at ECC, I was teaching PE, actually to make money and then while I was there, I had the Sabres internship and then the UB internship.
Kevin: So that’s one thing that a lot of people don’t understand who might be on the outside of the industry like first coming in or maybe they’re looking to be a strength coach, whatever it is, is like these internships that you do are no pay.
Matt: Yeah, not even when the Sabres or at like a division 1 institution, it’s very rarely paid. I just got my last intern an internship with the Bills and his was paid, which is great, it was like 10 bucks an hour.
Kevin: haha
Matt: You laugh but that’s like the best internship you can get in the world. You got the Bills, which is awesome to slab on your resume, an NFL team and you’re getting paid. If you do a good job, they’ll bring you back for the next minicamp. All of it is basically volunteer, you go and volunteer your time and you learn and you get your name out there and you network.
Kevin: How competitive was it out there? I mean you’re out there in the space, you’re trying to get a gig and you know, you’re winding up for the long haul. You’re taking the free internship, you’re basically like you said, you’re working extra hours personal training, whatever it might be but is the space filled with guys doing the same thing or was it easy to get the positions that you were looking for?
Matt: Yes and no. A lot of guys are interning and GA’ing and volunteering. I don’t think a lot of guys did what I did. I emailed the community colleges that were near me. I was like I want to work with any of your teams and some of the teams got back and some of the teams didn’t. So some teams I would work with baseball, other teams I had basketball, lacrosse, hockey, etcetera, whatever team they wanted. Whatever coaches got back to me, I just emailed them directly knowing they didn’t have a strength coach. I was like hey, anything we can work out and a majority of the times they threw you some money. But it was nothing that was really worth your while. The worth your while was that they’re a reference and that you do a good job and they say “hey, this Matt guy did a good job” and you get to put head strength coach on your resume so I don’t think a lot of people do that because that’s a little harder. You have to seek those guys out, you have to them emails, you have to hunt them down. Then you’re basically strength coaching for no money and then you have to intern, then you have to find money.
Kevin: But I think you nailed it with networking, right? Like that’s the key.
Matt: Yeah, that’s the name of the game
Kevin: So who was the guy who opened the door for you first?
Matt: The first guy was Phil Ryan. When I was at ECC, I was just working with the baseball team and helping coach baseball too. Oddly enough, they had a strength coach there and that was actually how I got in. I told them I want to strength coach and they’re like “we pay this guy from UB, the UB strength coach, his name is Phil Ryan” and I was like cool, well that’s great and I will get to learn from him and put that on my resume. I worked with Phil for a year and a half and he was the guy who introduced me to the Sabres, JT and Doug. So he was the one who got me in the door there and then he worked at UB so then I interned with him on the Olympic side, Nate Harvey is the head guy. So he got me both those internships. That got me having the internship with the Sabres, got me the job with CoachMePlus, you guys and then having those references eventually got me the Niagara job and that opened up because Doug put in a call and then Phil put in a call and then I am friends with the Athletic director at Canisius who put in a call and then meeting guys through CoachMePlus which is great. I didn’t even know the assistant AD at Niagara, Steve Butler and he’s best friends with Hal Luther, who is the strength coach with the Bills. Hal called Steve and said “Matt’s a good guy, he’s the right guy for the job.” I didn’t even know that or ask for it, so it’s crazy networking is the name of the game.
Kevin: It was kind of funny because before we brought you on board, I had three different coaches call me and give me reference for you. I had two coaches from the Sabres and a coach from the Bills call me and say “hey, by the way, Matt is a good guy, he’s looking for a gig.” I remember you came in and I was like you had Jason call me and you’re like I didn’t know he was going to call.
Matt: Yeah I just asked Doug to call and then a few more called which was nice.
Kevin: So I mean the lesson that you would give a young coach who is trying to break in, how did you get these guys to vet you and say Matt is a good guy, he’s definitely worth a reference, I am going to call out for him.
Matt: Well I think doing a good job speaks for itself so you got to go in there and work hard. Anything they ask, you have to do. I was there more than they asked me to be there. I was there earlier, I was there later and I did anything from stocking coolers to cleaning up towels to doing laundry, whatever you needed help with. Also, what would help was just putting in their mind that you wanted to do this and then I would research jobs and I would say I want to stay in Buffalo, I wanted to live in the Buffalo area. A job would open up and you would say hey can you call these guys and as long as you had a good relationship, they would call and that’s when I urged my interns to do too is to intern as many places as you can. I actually have a lot of them split hours so I have them come here to Niagara and then I will have them go to UB and I will try and get them in with the Sabres or the Bills just because the more people you know, the bigger your network is and the better chance you have of getting a job.
Kevin: So you spent time with CoachMePlus, you got to travel all over the place. I think the first week you got thrown in the car with Teo
Matt: An NFL combine the first week
Kevin: So you got exposed to not only coaches and the states and all along the country, but you also got exposed to coaches who were from Europe and Australia and things like that. The mindset that seems to be in North America is building your coaching experience through networking, right? You become part of this family tree and you become part of everybody’s network and you work through that network where it seems that we find that the coaches that come from Europe and Australia seem to not follow that mindset and instead it’s more about credentials and experience and things like that. Have you seen any other examples of that where it’s like North America you have to be a part of the family tree or watching other guys come in and just kind of bring it from Europe and come with Phd’s and credentials and run it that way?
Matt: No, not at Niagara. I really haven’t seen that, I have seen more of the North America style working better. I think the name, at least here, my opinion is experience then people knowing you do a good job. So if you think of just a company like CoachMePlus you went and talked to those guys before you hired me so I think you always want someone that is qualified. You want someone that you know is going to do a good job and that you know somebody you trust, trusts them. I think that is pretty key.
Kevin: So for the North American’s strength coach it is more about the mentorship, the guidance, the network, and walking you through the experience
Matt: I think if you have a guy under him, you want a guy who is going to follow your lead who is not going to bring up if your system and philosophy is this way who’s not going to come in and say you know what well I brought in this philosophy and they might both be great but if you have one guy saying we should be doing A and the other guy says we should be doing B, it creates a terrible culture. I think that is what people are looking for.
Kevin: Okay, interesting. So this is your first year as a D1 head strength coach, right?
Matt: Yeah, almost one year.
Kevin: What has it been like? I mean you walk in fresh, brand new place, brand new experience, your network has paid off, you paid your dues, and you got the gig. You walk in the doors for the first time, what’s it like?
Matt: It’s exciting, for me it was really exciting. That is where I went to school so it was nice. I knew people going into it which was good. I know my direct boss, which is the head Athletic trainer so I knew him. Beyond that, it was like overwhelming because you walk in and there are 18 teams and at Niagara and it’s rare because I think I am a rare case Division 1, small school but it’s just me. So there is no assistance.
Kevin: So how many kids do you got?
Matt: It’s about roughly 300 I would say.
Kevin: That’s a lot
Matt: At least 270. It’s around 300 and it’s just a lot and then you get there and I didn’t come into the best situation. The guy before last time at the end wasn’t doing a good job and that is why they made the move. They had teams who didn’t want to work with the strength coach anymore because they didn’t like him so that was a fourth of the teams. A fourth of the teams never worked with him at all because he didn’t reach out to them. The other half of the teams worked with him and liked him so you had to please those guys because they were like we liked the last guy and then the other quarter you had to reach out to and convince them that they should be working with the strength coach and they should actually lift and the other quarter was like hey I am going to do stuff different, kind of selling them on your philosophy and the way you’re going to do things. Bringing in the half and the other half was trying to change the other guys’ minds of wanting a new guy. There was a little mixed feeling there but it was overwhelming getting all those teams in. You got 18 programs to write by yourself, the days are long but it’s fun, I enjoy it.
Kevin: We’re talking with Coach McKenney about this and he had gone through 20 plus coaches over 30 years. Had to rebuy in everytime that he did it. He got to a point where he had this repeatable way of doing things. Like guys came in and get on board again. You’re walking in for the first time, you’ve got 18 sport coaches and you got to convince them that what you’re about to do is important. What techniques, what tactics did you play out there?
Matt: Each group it was different. The half that really liked the last guy were kind of receptive to change. They were like we did things this way and we don’t want to change them. I had the advantage of knowing what the bad parts were there and a lot of it was injuries so like with the hockey, for example they had a really good relationship with the coach but they had tons of soft tissues injuries and the coach just thought that was bad luck. So I kind of walked in and had known the trainer and went through a couple years of the past injuries and I said this is something we want to look at and this is something I can help with. He wanted to know how so we sat down and that what when I started doing grip strength for CNS fatigue with the hockey players. So we did that, we did it for a month and at first we were just collecting data, the workouts were way different. They were a lot easier compared to what they’re used to like playing in season, we weren’t beating them up. Once games started I started showing them data that we had collected and that guys were tired and that was the big buy-in for him was they play Friday, Saturday which is tough for hockey to play back to back games. We go into Friday and we’d be tired. So we play Friday and it is a physical game and they were shot for Saturday. These guys were bad, Saturday they had no energy. We were all minus 2 standard deviations, anyone who played.
Kevin: So wait a second. So you’re tracking information, you’re using GPS, heart rate monitor…
Matt: No, so yeah I’ll go back and cover that. So we’re a very small budget school so we use CoachMePlus to collect data so basically it’s like having an assistant. CoachMePlus is like my assistant coach. What they do is they have a phone, they sign in on their app and we have a question that just says, Enter your grip strength.
Kevin: So you don’t need CoachMePlus for that. You can use excel, you could do anything but you’re just collecting grip strength as one.
Matt: I’m collecting grip strength but I don’t have more than two minutes to analyze data. If I wrote it on excel it would just be a number I would never look at ever again. They put it into CoachMePlus which also saves me time. Instead of excel, they have to write it on the paper then I can go get it and I can look at it well then I got to put it into my computer. Somebody who has 18 teams with 1 guy, I’d like them to find time for that so I can’t find the time. They record it and they just squeeze it 3 times and they take their best score. We bought 14 grip strengths, 14 different rooms.
Kevin: And how much did that cost you?
Matt: Those are 28 bucks a piece, 30 bucks a piece roughly
Kevin: So you’re getting a team number for 28 bucks
Matt: They were so cheap, the head coach was like we’re going to buy one for every room. So that was important that they’re doing it at the same time. So they’re waking up and doing it, well they would have to come here if we only had a couple of them so we just bought them all. It’s 30 bucks, you buy 10 of them, that’s 300 bucks. That’s nothing, even for Niagara, that’s nothing which is saying a lot. So they do that, they record it and basically also what CoachMePlus does, I’m sure you can do this on excel if you’re a good wizard, but we have a 30-day moving average. Grip strength of 100 and then we’re taking standard deviation so minus 1 will flag yellow, minus 2 will flag red, neutral is grey, plus 1 is green, plus 2 is purple. We’re Purple Eagles so that is their good indicator. Again that is another thing that CoachMePlus does. They enter that score, all the numbers are run. I set it up so in the locker room and each coaches office they have a TV and it goes to their monitors so they already know what Billy Smith and all the other guys, Kevin Patterson, they know what all their guy’s scores are. So that really helped the buy in when Friday they would all be in the yellows. He’d be like well it’s hockey, they’re going to be tired and I’m like okay. Saturday they would all be in the red, he’d be like Matt what’s with this and I’m like they’re tired. He said it’s hockey season, of course they’re tired and I’m like well they’re not going to play as well and were going to see some injuries. So luckily we didn’t really have injuries but the first couple weeks they played so bad on Saturday so we play the same team. So we played the team, have a good year but we would lose by like a goal. Maybe a 3-2 game, next game would come and we would lose like 8-4 or 6-1, we would get killed.
Kevin: So you’re seeing like a major drop off
Matt: Yeah, we would get crushed, we just couldn’t skate. We’re not a skilled team, I wouldn’t say so we kind of had to grind out and dig the pucks out of the boards. Well when you can’t do that because you’re tired, you can’t play your game and even if we lost 3-1, it was like we had no chance to win.
Kevin: So you actually had the benefit of showing what you were tracking and basic information like I said, you’re not using GPS, you’re not using heart rate monitors.
Matt: Yes, real simple. They’re taking a minute to do that.
Kevin: You’re showing the coaches that information and it’s actually correlating to performance on the ice.
Matt: And the best part is I’m not doing any work for that
Kevin: How long did it take to get Coaches to understand, okay what we’ve been doing since I’ve walked in the door and what you’ve been doing over the past couple years of coaching is making your guys more tired
Matt: He noticed it at first. I think he didn’t want to believe it so then I was backing off the workouts. After 3 weeks when they hadn’t won a game or they had won like one or two games, he was like, “alright Matt, what do we gotta do.” As bad as it is that we were losing games that I kind of helped. Then we talked about practice, I did not tell him how to run a practice at all. We basically had Sunday was our active recovery day where they came in and they rode the bike and we did cold tubs and again we don’t have many things to do. You got a bike ride, you got a cold tub, you got an easy skate, or an easy jog if you run. We did basic ART work like foam rolls or partner smashing, taking a bar bell and working your quads out, all that stuff with no equipment. Monday was usually their hardest day and the way we did it was if we were yellow, the majority of the guys were yellow, then we have another group dashboard where you could see the team so if the team’s averages are yellow or red, or the team is neutral or green. So that was also a big one. If it was yellow, he did a medium practice. If it was grey or green, he had a hard practice, that’s basically how he ran practice. Yellow can be medium, if it’s red it’s got to be easy. Grey or green, you can do whatever you want. So he would look at the average and if it was grey or green, they would get off the ice and be like practice was so hard, the classic complaining and that was basically how it was run. At the end of this season, we would go Friday, Saturday, Sunday active recovery, Monday was a medium day, Tuesday was an easy day, Wednesday was a medium day, Thursday they just skated and did skill work. We didn’t really have a hard day towards the end of the year but we didn’t have any soft tissue injuries. We reduced concussions but I’ll get on that later. We only had two shoulder injuries and that was both impact, guys getting hit into the boards, contact injuries. One was an AC separation and the other kid ended up tearing his labrum. The only two injuries that we had all year.
Kevin: How many injuries did you have the year before that?
Matt: I don’t remember, I pulled up multiple years together, over 3 years. Again you have to report so it’s going to sound higher than it was, like you had to go to the trainer and it had to be logged. You had to go to the trainer and say my elbow is sore but I want to say it was in the 70s for three years.
Kevin: You’re just employing basic principles, right?
Matt: Just basic stuff
Kevin: You measure fatigue, change the program based on
Matt: They also had concussions which was a big one
Kevin: It’s kind of funny, we’re constantly talking about grip strength as being an indicator here before we get into the concussion thing, what kind of tied you into thinking about that as like your key piece? What else are you tracking besides grip strength?
Matt: That is like the key piece. We do subject of questionnaires and just ask five questions like, Eating, Sleeping, Mood, General level of soreness, and then we have a body chart that pulls up through CoachMePlus which would indicate the soreness, which is helpful too. And then we do weigh-ins, weigh-outs so I sold that to the players and the coaches as we are going to reduce injuries, being hydrated. We’re also going reduce soft tissue injuries but I went more at the concussions because the more hydrated you are, the less chance you have anything to do with your brain. So we did weigh-ins, weigh-outs and then we would show them the percent weight loss so I think it was 2% was yellow, 2-3% weight loss is loss, 3% above was green. So they had to weigh-in, weigh-out each day and at the end of the year they were so good with it we had drinks in the CoachMePlus app too that they could go and log and then see what to drink and at the end, they knew if they were yellow they needed this amount, if they were red, they needed this amount so at the end of the year we kind of had it down where if you were in red you took a Pedialyte, they knew how many ounces, 64 ounces of water and a pickle juice. If you were yellow, you took either a pickle juice, a Gatorlyte, a Pedialyte and then 32 ounces. They knew they had to do that so that was another ingrained thing in their head. We did ask a lot for them when it’s all said and done, they are entering the questionnaire, they are entering the grip strength, that’s done first thing in the morning which would take them a couple minutes. Before practice or a game, they weighed-in and they weighed out.
Kevin: Let’s go back to this, I mean if you didn’t have CoachMePlus, you’re just using excel and stuff like that, which you could do all this, you have spent 300 bucks on grip strength equipment, you have the scale, you have your fluids, questionnaires don’t cost anything to implement and you’ve just employed monitoring in your hockey program and immediately reduced soft tissue injuries
Matt: That’s it, that’s all we paid. I mean the supplements and all that is you know you get down the road and then we’re changing different things that we have available. We brought in Pedialyte and we’re trying to bring in other products like the right stuff and different proteins but that stuff will hopefully come in the future.
Kevin: From our standpoint, we’re doing this podcast, the Applied Sports Science podcast, and the interesting thing is we will be talking to coaches about their heart rate variability and about their GPS numbers and the best way to analyze data, how do you modify drills and everything else like that but you’re doing this at a level that is effective, but affordable.
Matt: Yeah, very simple. I know you can get more in depth with HRV and GPS and I’m sure it can be done a little more scientifically but that worked for us. It was simple, easy to attain, and then there is not a specific load number or anything for putting on a person. It’s overall, how is the team feeling, how he’s going to manage the practice.
Kevin: Did you want to elaborate on the concussion stuff?
Matt: We had one concussion the whole year and again, it was three years they had 17 or something. 13, or something like that, over 10 in 3 years and we had one.
Kevin: That’s incredible man, good job.
Matt: That was nice. I mean a lot of that is luck too but it was good that hockey let players bought in too and knew what they had to do and took the initiative to do it so that was really good.
Kevin: You’re showing coaches numbers, they believe in it, they get into it. Does that help you then sell to other coaches what you should be doing?
Matt: They were the revolution. They were the team we started with and then Dave Burkholder, you talk to coaches and you talk to others in your circle. After we came back from Christmas break, I had 4 coaches, it was Lacrosse, Volleyball, Women’s Basketball, and then Softball were like why aren’t we doing this stuff? I was like we can. Everyone did it a little different, we did grip strength with softball but with Women’s Basketball and Volleyball we did vertical jumps. I bought the vertical jump mat, I forget the name of it. The Vertec, maybe. Just again for simplicity…
Kevin: Were you looking at vertical jump height or were you looking at multiple jumps in flight time?
Matt: We did vertical jump height and what I did for volleyball was they took their normal three step approach. Most of them in volleyball they take like two or three steps. Whatever their approach was depending on their position. They took that approach and they jumped and they would do three jumps. We only have one mat so it was a little more tough so we did it everyday before practice so they warmed up and did it before practice. Women’s basketball was the same way, they warmed up, they did it before practice. The times varied a little bit which wasn’t an ideal world but we had the same exact setup so they took their 30-day moving average, if their vertical jump was a 20, we would look individually at players and then the coach had the group dashboard of all of them and again we would just kind of explain to them if we have a game Thursday, we want them as grey or green as close as they can be towards the end of the season, it’s hard but the Volleyball coach did great with that and I think a lot of the coaches too, they have the way they run practice and it’s just the way they run practice, nobody’s explained to them. So even the volleyball was like, when do you have a harder medium day, and he was like, well we just kind of do the same thing basically at practice. They have their routine and it is kind of the same setup, each day so it never changed. When I explained to him if it’s Wednesday and we play Thursday and it is Wednesday and everyone is tired, we can’t have that same practice. He’s like, well that makes a lot of sense. So I think just even bringing it up, as simple as that sounds, totally changed the way they did things. And then that helped the players, the girls buy into the importance of strength training and the importance of eating right and being hydrated and feeling good and sleeping. Part of the questionnaire is answering how many hours you slept and in college sometimes they like to go to bed at 2 in the morning and still wake up at 6. Oddly enough, half the time they did that, their jumps were really poor and any competitive athlete, you learn your jump. They know when they’re tired, they know when they feel good. They learn them over time, for me I thought was a good thing because they’re like what could I have done and then we would be like well you slept 5 hours, why did you sleep 5 hours? I procrastinated, homework, whatever. That was a big thing just explaining to them, sleep. Sleep is going to help and recover and then eating was the big thing because we had nutritionists come in and give them a meal plan but they didn’t want to follow it because they didn’t want to change the way they ate but that helped them too but once they saw the results.
Kevin: This is all like 101 stuff
Matt: Yeah it is just like education on why they’re doing it and I think that helped them a lot. Volleyball was great, we didn’t have a single injury. Women’s basketball was good, we had our best player tore her labrum, she fell down from a rebound but no soft tissue either but they at the end of the year, new coach, and some players had quit and some players got kicked off the team so they had 8 players and only 7 of them could play because the one girl had torn her labrum. We were borderline yellow, red all the time.
Kevin: So you actually got to see it and these things happen
Matt: Volleyball was easy. We got them green before almost every game. It’s not that hard of a sport.
Kevin: They would beg to differ.
Matt: It’s not that taxing on their body. They could play a game and they don’t play again until the next week, so they had a nice schedule. Women’s basketball, they’re playing at all different times, they’re traveling, they’re taking planes, they’re taking buses and they are going all over the place, and they only had 7 girls who could play. Two of their girls were playing all 40 minutes every single game, they never came out. So those two girls had to be monitored very closely so at the end, they weren’t lifting in general, it was very basic movements that wouldn’t make them sore. We did a lot of mobility, a lot of stretching. This actually started with women’s basketball, my mom is a yoga instructor and we had one day where she put together this routine and she put it on youtube and we would go through it. So we did that with them, that was one of their lifts and sometimes it was that and other times it was a full body lift so we really had to scale it back. Nobody got hurt but we would go into most games pretty tired. That was a rare case.
Kevin: The one thing I always ask about vertical jumps whenever people tell me they use it for testing is how do you deal with injury who can’t do the vertical jump. Maybe it’s an ankle, or whatever. What would you switch that with in return to play? Like you’re waiting for that athlete to return to play, what else would you do instead of vertical jump?
Matt: If they had hurt their knee, hurt their ankle, if it was a lower extremity injury we would go to the trainers which in volleyball and basketball we didn’t have either of that the whole year. So I didn’t come across that which was pretty fortunate.
Kevin: Might have to figure that out next year but hopefully never
Matt: Yeah we didn’t have a step protocol so I’m not really sure what we would do but we would have return to play with the trainers. We probably just wouldn’t have them jump then. Then we would look more at the questionnaire, look more at their eating and the sleep, would probably be the indicators we would want to see. It would probably be too late to bring out the grip strength because we wouldn’t have enough numbers
Kevin: We talked about this in the last podcast too but they do isos, they actually get a number off the fly wheel without doing a submission move. Not a jump, not an impact…
Matt: Right like an isometric hold or something
Kevin: Yeah, so volleyball no soft tissues except impact injuries. That’s pretty good man. So volleyball jumped on, basketball got on board.
Matt: Basketball got on board. They were actually were a big supporter from the beginning but I did the grip strength with hockey and they were like, we need to be doing this so they came on but they were a big supporter from the beginning.
Kevin: So you mentioned that the basketball team travels a lot though, right? A lot of planes, trains, automobiles.
Matt: Yeah, they travel a ton.
Kevin: So how did you modify your programming based on travel or do you just use your numbers to tell you?
Matt: So we did that through the app as well. Are you asking for ready to play or work out wise?
Kevin: I got a couple of games this week, I’m going to be on the bus for both of them and I come back. Are you modifying based on the feedback or are you planning your modifications?
Matt: We would have a workout plan but I am looking at that. So if they come back, I am more looking at it as an individual base because basketball was so small. There was 8 of them or 7 of them technically so I would look at that individually and I had a basic plan that was completely changed once that happened. And then I actually wrote their program week to week because it was such a unique case. When they came back from travel, we did yoga the second they came back. A lot of times that was done on their own. They would get back, let’s say Sunday afternoon at 2 o’clock, at 3 o’clock they were doing it. That day they had to do it so that was kind of the process. You get back, you do it. You would land, get there on Monday and your game is on Wednesday, you’re doing that yoga session that day. A lot of studies will show doing something right when you get off the plane, something like low impact just to get the body going and kind of calming the nerves, getting the central nervous system down. It does a lot of good so they bought into that and then the lift when they’re with me, we had individual sheets at that time so they had their names on it and we probably spent like 30 to 40 minutes in the weight room but it was very basic. It went all the way back to evaluating them and the beginning squats or dead lifts or pulls. They were very easy to make everything individual because there were so few of them but the two girls that played would come in and a day for them example would be speed squats to a box. We would be doing 6 sets of 3. They didn’t really jump either because they jumped enough so we would do that. Then we would do some type of accessory work, we would do some type of single leg work for their hamstrings, single RDL and then we would do a single leg squat depending on the girl or an iso hold squat. We focused quads, hamstrings to prevent ACLs. Those three movements and they would be done. Those were the two girls who played all of the time.
Kevin: One of the interesting things that we have seen in the past year has been a lot of blow back from sport coaches who are like, well my players are too soft now. It’s recovery stuff, we’ve got them resting more, we’re doing yoga when they get off the bus instead of what they normally do. Have you faced that yet?
Matt: With Men’s Basketball, yes. It is still kind of an uphill battle. That old school thought is still tough and I guess we can get into that now. It’s a battle, I’m still trying to change it. Right now it’s summer sessions 2 and 3 which they do with me and then they get into their regular season but before that they do the conditioning with the coach. Again, with 18 teams I can’t be everywhere at one time. I do the lift with them, but like 9 times out of 10 the coaches are doing the conditioning, I’m not doing it. With a lot of them, we will sit down and talk about it and I am not going to tell them how to run their practices but I’ll give them different ideas such as a fart lick runs or interval runs or bike sprints and give them different things to do and my philosophy behind that. For Men’s Basketball they haven’t changed, they haven’t bought into that yet, the coach hasn’t at least. He wants them working hard. They, on the other hand, had a ton of injuries last year. In preseason alone, we had one pulled hamstring, a kid tore his calf muscle, he had to have surgery. He pulled his calf muscle and came back too quick and then tore it. There was more, maybe it was a quad or two hamstrings but there were three guys and they only had 12 players, all soft tissue. That was during their conditioning, it was like a track work out, it was insane. I think you just have to find the approach that works. For him, I have not found it yet but for the other coaches just explaining that to them that whatever player you have, having them for 30 games and it is your best player. Would you rather have them play 30 games and be almost optimal or would you rather have him 20 games but they play like a freak but they miss 10 games. Most of them would rather have him play the 30 games.
Kevin: Yes, it is interesting because everyone points to the Spurs, pulling out guys and limiting minutes and you think that it would transfer into college hoops and down but we did see a lot of blow back from college basketball coaches who are like nope, we’ve been monitoring, we’ve been tracking and don’t care.
Matt: Yes I think it is an old school mentality that is hopefully going to change. I think what I have done for basketball is that the players really like me and respect me so I have gotten their buy-in where now they are like they want me to take the reigns and go to coach. It’s really not that they even want it, the coaches just think it is soft but you can make the workout a lot harder, just more efficient. Some of the workouts they will run 8 400 meter repeats with like a minute break. That is why they have a lot of hamstring injuries. Just making them understand we can get more out of a short interval with a longer rest and we can still pick up the volume and intensity and they are still going to be really tired and get in good shape but they’re not going to get hurt. The other thought to that is at a school like Niagara, we have a certain amount of good players. We’re not USC or Duke so we might have five really good basketball players. After the 5, there is usually a significant drop-off.
Kevin: You don’t have a next man up kind of thing?
Matt: You have to have that mentality but we don’t even have a 3-star or 2-star recruit sitting on the bench. The guy or girl on the bench is usually a freshman or sophomore that we are still developing. They aren’t a freshman that can come in and average ten points so keeping them healthy is really a by-product of them winning and keeping their job. If your best players get hurt for the next three years, you’re not going to win.
Kevin: So go back to your hockey, women’s basketball, volleyball analogies. When you saw fewer injuries, you were managing based on fatigue and things like that, did you translate that into better on-court performance?
Matt: With hockey, yes. The Saturday games you could just tell they were better. I think they had 8 wins but at the first month of the year, the closest Saturday game was 3 goals. The last couple months, literally every game was a one-goal game or we went into overtime. We would lose at the end but we had a lot of close games and that was a direct performance. Guys played better, guys lasted the whole season which really never happened there before. Women’s basketball was a little harder to tell because they played so many minutes and at the end they weren’t really fresh anymore, they were in survival mode but they played the whole year. Imagine if your 7 players go down to 5, you’re pretty much done. A new coach came in, she didn’t have much to work with, players transfer and leave just like anywhere so they should be a lot better this year and they have 15 girls now.
Kevin: How do you deal with taking that success and then translating it to the coaches who might seem old school and don’t want to do this?
Matt: What I’ve done and what I am actually going to do with Men’s basketball is showing the specific examples from Hockey. Like when we played a team Friday and played a team Saturday, we were too tired. Lost by a goal on Friday and lost by 4 goals on Saturday and then three weeks later when we started doing this we would lose by a goal on Friday and win Saturday. The games were comparable and you had no injuries at all. That is a big thing so bringing that into basketball is going to help and then when the players bought into me is a good thing too because they can go to the coach too and say we like the stuff Matt is doing and try and go from there.
Kevin: So you spent a year in the Coach Me Plus office which really actually wasn’t in the office, it was more on the road for you. You were kind of like an intern, you go to a couple schools, you work at different places, and then you finally get on the road and get exposed to everything. What would you say were some of the coolest things that you saw out there with what teams were doing or what coaches might have been doing?
Matt: There is a lot of them.
Kevin: What really stood out?
Matt: What stood out to me was the Ottawa sports, Kyle Thorn. They had football, soccer, and hockey and it was just him, no assistant. They had a small budget and I am a spitting image of what he did and that is where I learned it from. He did grip strength, he did weigh-ins and weigh-outs, he did a subject of questionnaire. He saw great results, very simple, very basic, but at a high level, you’re a professional at the highest level and that is what he is doing.
Kevin: They made it to the CFL Championship too.
Matt: Yes and soccer or hockey won.
Kevin: Soccer made it to the championship, hockey was number one in their division and second-year football expansion team made it to the championship as well.
Matt: So yes, super successful. I would ask them all of the time like how do you know this or that and then at the end of the day he was like, we really don’t have any soft tissue injuries so I think we’re doing the right thing. The red, green, yellows, standard deviation, all of that stuff was basically taken from him, that is who I learned it from. I interned with the Sabres so I learned a lot from them which was really cool. The weigh-ins, weigh-outs from Dougie, that was kind of where I got that from, Doug McKenney and the Sabres. And the other one I really liked was John Shackleton with Villanova and there are so many good ones, they’re all good but he is the same thing. They have heart rate monitors, they did their own version of the FMS, which I have kind of picked up on which I like for basketball. He would have them squat with like a PVC pipe, he would have them lunge with a PVC pipe, push up or do a pull-up and that was the e-valve. Inside his workouts, he’ll group mobility and you’re attacking the areas for that sport where their limited range of motion and basketball is ankles, hips. That was something really cool to pick up on and obviously they won the national championship last year so that is a good guy to learn from and just the way he broke down programming and planning the year and grouping things together and not over killing them. Their program is very basic, very simple and they are big on urine specific gravity and ours is weigh-ins, weigh-outs but same difference. They won’t allow guys to practice or play so their thing is if you’re in the red, they won’t allow guys to practice, they will have to go get fluids before they get back out there and if you don’t practice, I am sure the coach has some punishment for you that you don’t like whether it is playing time or running. The way he broke down nutrition with them too, I made mine similar, he is super smart with that. He was big on education, it is not that athletes are lazy, now they want to be told why they are doing something and how it is going to help them. If you give them this packet and you show them why we are doing weigh-ins and weigh-outs, and why we’re lifting, and why they need to jump higher, and why they need to run faster, and why they need to eat healthier, and you make it make sense to them, they are going to buy-in.
Kevin: Yes, that makes sense. Any surprises while you were out there like coaches are still just as old school?
Matt: Yeah, there are a few cases there too but guys setting their ways but I don’t know if they’ll change that. You definitely have those guys that think the data is overwhelming and won’t help and they have done things their way. There weren’t many of those cases but there were definitely a few of those that didn’t want to do that. Some of it is just the work too, like they’re old school, they probably don’t even use excel, so they don’t want to track the numbers and what not. The idea of Coach Me Plus for me is it is taking time away, it is not adding time so all that stuff they are entering in and I am the one benefiting from it because they are doing the work, I initially set it up which doesn’t take much time and they’re doing the work and I am benefiting from the numbers. I get to make my program better which makes my job better and makes them play better and keeps them healthier. It is a big win for me and really for them, they are doing the work.
Kevin: Looking forward and this is your first year, what lessons have you learned, what mistakes have you made that you wouldn’t do again?
Matt: The biggest mistake I made was the Men’s basketball culture. The culture needed to be changed in the whole school, there are teams that were super easy, you explained hey guys, this is what we are going to do, here is my philosophy, do anything and they are going to do it. There were teams that were harder and you had to grind them and there was men’s basketball who came from a culture that they kind of just do whatever they want and I was like well this is the way the coach does it. I guess the biggest mistake I made was listening to someone else and be like if this guy comes late, they are our best player, they’re not going to sit. There are no repercussions if they can’t make it to lift that day because they’re at tutor, it was stuff in the past that was tolerated and drove me crazy so for the whole first semester I didn’t attack that the way I should’ve but the second semester I did. So that was the biggest mistake I made was just not attacking it right away but then in the second semester we changed a lot of things in the weight room which are way better now. The learning of that is like going back to the old school mentality, they don’t want to work as hard, they literally wouldn’t do anything for me in the weight room. Some of the guys wanted to work and some of the guys didn’t want to work, so I was like great, I am one of those guys now. I can’t watch myself do that.
Kevin: What is it the top five guys, ten middle guys, and five bottom guys, and they’ll follow.
Matt: I refused to believe that, I had like ten rules from like they can’t swear, they can’t sit down, they can’t wear jewelry, and I started implementing more of John Shackleton’s workouts where we would go from a mobility to a strength or power or mobility so they always had something in between that wasn’t going to kill them and wasn’t going to make it super hard on them. We went from something hard to something easy or group a core exercise, an ab exercise or the group name now for that with a leg exercise or bench or something. All of this stuff was burpees, so if you were late, a minute per player late, was 10 burpees so I had to wait for the season to be over to implement this so when the season was over, all we did was burpees. If guys were 20 minutes late, we would do 100 burpees before we did anything. Do 60 burpees, do 80 burpees, do 40 burpees. After about 10 days, they wouldn’t want to do burpees anymore. I wasn’t mean or anything, that was just the rule. The best thing was that the guys started taking control so I didn’t have to be the one say oh we’re doing burpees, the guys were like don’t sit down, why are you sitting down? Guys who finished early also had to do work. Like if I finished before you, you have to go do extra stuff. A guy would just stand there in the corner, and someone would be like oh you’re better than the team. Now it is pretty remarkable, they are actually the hardest working team, and I am not nice to them at all.
Kevin: You got the team to push on each other, that’s great.
Matt: It’s good, their lifts are just as good as anyone’s now.
Kevin: Nice, awesome. If there is anything you can do next year and I mean anything, like you can go out and spend 100 grand on tech or whatever what would it be? What’s your pie in the sky, I wish I could do this implementation?
Matt: There’s a lot of them. I think I would go HRV maybe. A mega wave or something to tie in. I think that is what I would go with and buy like 300 of them if I had the budget. We would all get the results through Coach Me Plus and then every team and every player could do it. I guess that would be it but we’re good with what we’ve got.
Kevin: Have you actually tried the HRV for training app?
Matt: No, is that the face?
Kevin: No that’s the cardio buddy and I wore my heart rate monitor with that thing.
Matt: The cardio buddy? That one is good.
Kevin: You listen to Rod Paisley, right? I would recommend checking out that app if you want affordable heart rate variability. Try it on yourself for a while like to play with it.
Matt: I like the grip strength and vertical jump like it works.
Kevin: You’ve done an incredible job.
Matt: I don’t want to over-complicate something that doesn’t need to be over complicated.
Kevin: Yeah, I think you’ve done a great job. I think the soft tissue injuries speak for themselves, and on a shoe string budget in your first year is pretty remarkable.
Matt: We had one ACL last year.
Kevin: That’s amazing. Anything you want to add before we wrap up?
Matt: No
Kevin: Not doing any special promotions, you don’t want to recruit anybody in Niagara?
Matt: No special promotions, I’d like an assistant. An assistant strength coach would be nice.
Kevin: An intern?
Matt: I have interns do the work to get them from other schools but I have one this summer too from Mercyhurst. The other ones were from Canisius.
Kevin: Nice, very cool. Well thank you, again that was Matt Wietlispach from Niagara University and your first year as D1 coach, I think you did a pretty good job.
Matt: Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me, it was fun.
Kevin: Yeah cool, thanks man.
Kevin: Thanks again for listening to Coach Me Plus Applied Sports Science podcast. I hope we made your ride to the gym a little easier. You were listening to Matt Wietlispach from Niagara University’s Purple Eagles. You can follow him on Twitter @mattw0892, yeah I know it’s easier to remember. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast and of course subscribe to the Applied Sports Science newsletter. Go to CoachMePlus.com and click the subscribe button in the top right corner. Look for our next podcast in the next two weeks and we will talk to you guys soon, thanks.