Applied Sports Science Podcast - Ep. 4 with Jay DeMayo
Opening: From out of the lab and into the gym, CoachMePlus Applied Sports Science Podcast
Kevin: Hey everybody, it’s Kevin Dawidowicz, co-founder, and president of CoachMePlus and you’re listening to the CoachMePlus Applied Sports Science podcast. Today is Wednesday, July 6th, 2016 and you’re listening to episode 5. Today we have on Jay DeMayo. He is the head strength coach for basketball over at the University of Richmond. He also runs the Central Virginia Sports Performance Seminar. You can find that at cvasps.com. Now if you’ve never been to this, I promise you it’s probably one of the best seminars that you’ll ever go to. It is this year July 15th and 16th which is next week and of course if you miss it, book it for next year. As far as our conversation with Jay, we discuss the seminar, we talk a little bit about getting athlete compliance, we get some information on Omega wave and how to educate your athletes on nutrition. For us, if you want to subscribe to our podcast, make sure you click your link whatever App you’re using whether it be iTunes, Stitcher, or whatever it might be. You can follow us on Twitter @Coachmeplus and of course you can subscribe to our newsletter. When you go to CoachMePlus.com and click on the link in the top right. So without further ado, Jay DeMayo.
Kevin: And we are live
Jay: Wow
Kevin: That was a disaster, that was a lesson in why nobody should ever podcast without professional equipment.
Jay: What are you talking about bro? Number 40 is this week for me. Although the issues I am having with this Macbook say otherwise but case error, right?
Kevin: Well we have Jay DeMayo on the line here. Jay DeMayo, the head strength coach basketball at the University of Richmond and of course Jay DeMayo who also runs the Central Virginia Sports Performance Seminar which is also known as the CVASPS which is coming up in a week, right?
Jay: Yeah about ten days, 15th and 16th
Kevin: Really cool. Actually last was my first year that I was there and I thought it was really good. I don’t know how you got those speakers that you had there but literally, it was one of those things where you had to bribe people or something to actually have the people that you had there.
Jay: You know I guess that one thing that I’ve kind of become a little bit better than average at is finding people and I think that a lot of people would want to become involved now because we have been really lucky to have some really fascinating people involved.
Kevin: Yeah and how many years is it now? 6 years?
Jay: This will be number 6, yeah. 6 or 7. 11,12,13,14,15,16, yeah this is number 6.
Kevin: So in the past 6 years, I guess the question would be how has it progressed from that first event that you had and which I’m sure was a learning experience to start with.
Jay: Yeah man they all are. I know a lot of people think that you can do a lot with these things and it’s really just crazy, easy, whatever. I’ll tell you straight up it’s not. My assistant, Andrew and I have been running crazy already and we’re ten days out. I’ve told this story a billion times now but former director Brandon Hourigan who is now the head guy at Wake Forest kind of called me out to pick it up and went really big for 2010. The reason I don’t mention 2010 is because we had to quit. We had to fold it because nobody else showed up so we took a couple steps back and 2011 was Doc Anatoliy, it might’ve been Vladamir too, I would have to look at the list again it’s been so long….. Matt Thome at Michigan Tech, Jeff Moyer with DC Sports Training in Pittsburgh, Danny Raimondi at George Washington has been completely a backbone, something you would never see in the front but he keeps me standing up with a lot of these things.
Kevin: Sure
Jay: These guys they basically volunteer their time to come back and help because it really is a special two days. It is a lot of fun.
Kevin: I think we did 22 or 23 shows this year just traveling around and the one thing that you always get over and over again is you’ll get these seminars, these groups and they’ll have a speaker and the speaker gets up on stage and the guy starts talking about whatever theory he is getting into and stuff like that and because the crowds at some of these events are getting so big they jump the shark where you’ve gotten to the point where people won’t divulge the actual techniques or the secrets or whatever it is behind what they’re doing because there is competitors are in the audience or they might be afraid they’re going to offend somebody or whatever it might be. You go to MIT Sloan or something like that and people are really tight-lipped about what they say on stage but my experience in going to see CVASPS last year was people started cracking open excel sheets and laptops and data sets and just started getting into this is how I do it, this is why we do it, this is where it works, this is where it’s screwed up. I was really impressed with the open nature that the form provided and I don’t know if it is because of the size of the room or because it is on campus in a dorm or what but whatever you did to get that environment going I really learned a lot being there and the networking was great and everything else like that so that’s just my thoughts on it.
Jay: I think that’s a big part of what we wanted to be is there are so many people that get up and talk about this is team access speed program or whatever they’ll never tell you their actual numbers. Not that there is anything wrong with that. I’m sure there is a lot of people out there that can take things and exercises or sets and reps, whatever it may be but when we’re looking at the group of people that are there regularly. I think Rudy said it in his interview at the end of it where it’s really just a bunch of family members and really tight buddies just get together, “Yo man, what have you been doing different and what are you seeing.” I think the thing with most people in this profession what they would probably agree with is if you got a lot of secrets you’re probably hiding something.
Kevin: I wouldn’t say hiding something, I’d say that you’re afraid that….most secrets are simple, right? You get behind the doors of whatever super secret sauce is happening and it actually ends up being really basic stuff and there isn’t a whole lot to it. I think people are afraid of stripping their own mystique.
Jay: Oh yeah but even when we get down to things like talking with like for example like Ryan Horn of Wake Forest like how you guys are using Omega wave versus what we do. Something simple like that there are some people who don’t like to talk about those things or what modifications you’re actually making, like what are you doing, what are you looking at and then how do you know that it is helping? Is it even helping? What are you seeing, it is a lot of opening and a lot of sharing. The other thing too is that there are a lot of guys there who are very serious about what we’re doing. We’re very serious about the advancement of the profession and all of those things but there aren’t a lot of “schmucks” that are going to be like, “Nah dude, that’s stupid, like what are you doing?” If you can provide a reason whether someone agrees with it or not. It was 3 or 4 years ago when the whole 1×20 thing started going, we were using it here when it was me and Matt, Jeff Moyer was starting to use it up in Pittsburgh and Yosef…
Kevin: Explain that, what is the 1×20 thing?
Jay: So it’s Doc Yessis’ methods so it’s basically just one set of twenty of exercises basically looking at every joint angle and it’s just general GPP. I think people get a little excited about all of it because they hear this thing and there is now almost this mystique to it where it’s almost like the dark side of the force, what is it? But it’s just simple GPP, it’s awful. I dinged my knee up playing broom ball with friends…
Kevin: They have ice down there in Richmond?
Jay: Yeah inside, imagine that. We’re really good at Central air. I squatted for the first time in two months, two and a half months and that’s when I did it. I did the 1×20 today and it’s not fun. People look at it and say, “could it be boring, could it be this, could it be that?” There are things you can change all of the time. Let’s be honest boring works, bro.
Kevin: That’s what I’m saying, simple is the easiest thing. All of this is going around, you got a bunch of different guys basically implementing the methodology…
Jay: This was before we were housing on campus so we were at a bar and it was 20 people going absolutely crazy like ripping it apart and defending it and building it, how they would manipulate it and all these things. It was probably one of the coolest professional discussions I’ve ever been in because it was the three of us are just like, “Nah, that is legitimately how we do it,”Oh, well but blah blah blah blah blah,” maybe but that’s not how we do it and these are the results that we got. It was awesome though man…
Kevin: It becomes an honest discussion, right?
Jay: Yeah and especially when you start mixing in good beer and all of a sudden that discussion starts to pick up a little bit
Kevin: Some of the best conversations that I’ve been a part of having been in a bar with 5 or 6 different coaches, everybody just cracks it open and totally honest and this is why this sucks and this is why this is cool. It’s very rare you get that in a seminar kind of setting because everybody is trying to put their best professional foot forward and I’m so and so and this is my persona and this is who I am. When that stuff breaks down and people actually have real conversations, that is when the ideas really start flowing.
Jay: Even more so what you find with a lot of these things are like when people have these conversations it’s typically we agree on legitimately 98% of everything. Then it like the 2% where it is like, I see what you’re doing. I see what you’re doing but I don’t like it. There was a great conversation between Dr. Peterson and Val 3 or 4 years ago when Benny gave his dissertation and Val initially was like, “What no, this is all wrong” and then Ben was like, “Wait a minute” and they talked about it and then it kind of came around where they agreed on 97%, 98% of it. It was just terminology, this, that, or the other thing. I think those socials are the best time for me, I just sit at a table and just crack the ears open and start absorbing.
Kevin: If you’re a young coach in the profession that is probably the best lesson that you can throw out there is to listen with your mouth shut for a while and actually hear what some of these guys are doing because I see a lot of stuff like we just work with so many different groups and different coaches and things like that and a lot of the opinions that I have are anecdotal. I could tell you what this football team does and what that hockey team does and what this coach does behind the scenes and things like that and honestly I’m just not the expert enough to tell you why it’s right or wrong and if I just shut up and listen to the amount of information that comes this way really helps me understand why a coach is doing something that way or why they think this guy’s methodology sucks. I am not in a position to defend it, I’m just simply a neutral person listening to it and my curiosity in the space just takes over. It’s funny because we see a lot of these guys that become disciples to a methodology religion.
Jay: Mhmm
Kevin: It’s like no man, this is the way, this is the thing, this is what you’re supposed to do and you’re like you might want to stop that for a second, crack open the thing you’re sticking with and listen to what the coaches are doing and explore it. That’s always the environment that we try to promote when we’re working with groups and of course doing something that you guys are doing, it really helps the profession, I think.
Jay: No doubt about it. I mean when you think about the mere fact that over 50% of marriages in this country don’t even survive but we want to marry ourselves to exercises, 51% percent. But no, people do and I think a lot of times we argue a lot about exercises and I don’t know man, you would hope that in 2016 we’re kind of past that and we were starting to look more at like how are you getting there or what are your progressions or how are you moving things forward or backward or inside or outside. What are you actually doing to take care of your kids? These student athletes or athletes or professional or youth, whatever they are that you’re working with. I think that if the conversation doesn’t start or at least somewhere in the middle bring in what your results are, then what are we talking about bro? If you’re just going to say, I like doing these exercises because they do this. Well okay, but what does that do for a person’s vertical 10, 40, 30, change direction, whatever
Kevin: How about this? How do those metrics actually correlate to on-field performance, if I’ve increased your vertical, we’re talking about the NHL combine because it was recent here in Buffalo, we’re talking about vertical jumping, how does that translate into on-ice speed? Does it? One of my friends was like I got this algorithm, it’s got three different variables and get on-ice speed that way and I’m like okay, like is it real or is it not real and testing just for the test actually translate into some sort of performance metric
Jay: Right, well and with things like that too it’s just so crazy, skating is such a specific skill. If you haven’t ever been on the ice, accelerating on the rink is totally different in what you would do otherwise so it’s crazy man and I just think that a lot of us need to be able to evaluate more of what we’re actually putting into what these kids are doing. Now it’s difficult, if we look at a team like, let’s say you’re a good team in a not a very good conference and you win a bunch of games every year and go to the NCAA tournament versus a team that’s in a really good conference, who would beat that team. Are we saying that the team in the really good conference but isn’t as successful in their league and maybe doesn’t go to the tournament every year versus the team that is successful in their conference but lost to that other team, like things that are going on there proving better results versus things that are going on with the team that beat them.
Kevin: Was it that or was it the recruiting that was better?
Jay: Right, listen I personally think that you can make kids better athletes, there is no doubt in my mind that you can make them faster, you can make them quicker, you can make them more agile. There are a bunch of different things that I think the future holds for this and I don’t know if it is necessarily big in depth, expensive tech stuff too. I think the Slow the Game down guy’s that do the stuff at the cards and all of that stuff with the vision training. I think that when we’re looking at that kind of stuff because I think vision training is the next big thing when it comes to all sorts of athletics because…
Kevin: When you talk vision training, are you just talking about reaction time with whiteboards or are you talking about wearing the goggles that track your eye movement and stuff like that?
Jay: So Slow the Games down has things where it works on depth perception or just identifying colors and reacting off of specific things like that because we want to talk about agility all the time but the biggest thing with agility are your eyes. Being able to identify whatever the stimuli is, whether it’s somebody coming at you that you need to dodge or you need to hit or back to hockey, is it the boards, is it the goal? And picking up visually what you’re seeing and changing direction. Now I know that the people that Slow the Game down really get success helping guys hit baseballs better and tennis athletes, male and female and softball players and I know Jeff does a bunch of their stuff I think with soccer too. We’ve talked about weigh-ins with your monitor and stuff I think that starting simpler, he does have a ton of those toys too. I think that when you’re able to do A and a lower level or less techy things that allow you to see significant improvements visually..
Kevin: So for those who don’t there’s a lot of stuff that’s going on with visual testing, you’ve got the guys who are doing complete virtual reality and looking at here’s what your position on the field actually looks like. You’ve got guys like Axon who are flipping a screen up on the board and letting you react to that. You’ve got the light board, you’ve got Slow the game, you’ve got right eye which is actually tracking where you’re looking in an athletic movement so you might have a tennis movement or you might have pitch and you’re trying to train the person to look at an elbow to the wrist to the movement instead of actually following the ball. You’ve got all these different things, you’re exposed to a lot of this tech, obviously with writing the seminar in the group and stuff like that. With all of those, you go from a couple K to a quarter million bucks for a unit, what have you seen that you think is going to get your best bang for buck where it is right now. Not where it is going to be 5 years from now because 5 years from now everybody is going to be immersed in VR but right now.
Jay: I think that right now from what I have seen and in literature that I’ve read especially when it comes to concussions is that D2 board is supposed to be real. Now I haven’t had a chance to bring it in and have my guys do it. I know for a fact that the stuff that Jeff uses that Slow the Game Down has seen significant improvements with his kids. The other things that I think that those reaction lights and the gates, I think that those are kind of the middle spot between both of them to allow you to get into some more game related type things. That ends up being a little difficult in NCAA because as soon as you get a ball involved it’s called practice, we’re trying to figure out more and more with that. But I think kind of piggy-backing off of it, we like to jump at those things because toys are cool right? Dude, there’s nothing more attractive than technology when it comes to working with high-performance athletes but we don’t ever talk about how they cut. It is very rarely that we sit there and teach these kids these techniques and it’s something that we’ve actually had a lot of success with. We would get more backdoor layups and keep people in front of us better than when we worked on the stuff and the less we did, the worse we got. Specialized exercises like Doc Yessis talks about where there’s some carry over into these things and again it’s not the attractive stuff, it’s the stuff you do every day but it helps
Kevin: Sure
Jay: Even return to play, we always want to talk about that. That’s another buzz word but how often in anyone’s rehab protocol are we actually saying let’s review how you cut. We talk all day about your hop stop and your leg press versus right, left with an ACL but never like, “Let’s work on a two-step cut, a two-step, 90-degree cut and let’s see how we do with it.”
Kevin: Well I do see some groups like we’ve seen at the Olympic training center, you’ll have athletes doing like a drop jump but a drop jump athletic movement so that you’re training not only for the eccentric movement but you’re also looking for the athletic movement afterward. There are some places that are advanced and they’re actually thinking about it that way. I think you’re right, we run into this a lot where the people assume that the technology will solve the issue of bad coaching or bad culture or whatever it is. If I spent more money on it, the problems are just going to go away and that’s not true at all. If you can’t figure what your coaching staff is going to do, the technology isn’t there to augment it, it is there to replace issues that you have, that is never going to happen. We sell technology, it is what we do but the technology isn’t going to make you a better coach. You already have to be a good coach and this is going to augment what you guys do. You’re like we are going back to basics, teaching athletic movements, isn’t that what you’re supposed to be doing in the first place?
Jay: I mean yeah and it’s funny because a lot of the stuff Doc talks about really kind of fits in that “isn’t that what we are supposed to do?” like that kind of makes a lot of sense and people like pre-hab well pre-hab, can we get them to move through the joint angles required at the velocity or forces required in the sporting activity using the muscles and the contractions. It is called dynamic correspondence, it is how you build specialized exercises. I think that we look at things and we try and pigeon hole stuff and maybe move a little bit out of our realm and I don’t know why that is but it maybe some people might get a little bit PT’ey. Now if there is a problem, and you can help it, help stabilize whatever these issues are, of course, you should do it and I’m not saying you should never do gluten need activation for a kid whether its activation or not, we can talk about later. Gluten need exercises for a kid who has some fault in their landing but have you ever tried to talk to the kid about how they’re landing?
Kevin: It becomes coaches cues and coaching technique right?
Jay: I think it is a little bit of both. If you talk to them and they’re not doing it, it is one of three things. Your cues aren’t working so they don’t understand it, they’re just not paying attention or they don’t care to listen so you need to find something else to try and help them or to motivate them or to get them to do it. If it’s putting a band on their knees when they squat or whatever it may be, then so be it. Doing what the game demands, I guess.
Kevin: Back to the original point, the technology is attractive, the newest gadget that comes out, a sensor that tells you when you’ve reached your max while doing your activity sounds really cool but you’re exposed to a lot of different coaches that come to your seminar, obviously the tech is a big conversation, data is a big point in the conversation and stuff like that. How many of these guys are too focused on that and not going back to what you’re talking about now and that’s staying in front of a kid and showing him why his landing is wrong?
Jay: I think that we are lucky here that we don’t have, I don’t know lucky might not be the right word because it just is what it is. There are not a lot of people that are in attendance and unless that is their primary job focus, that’s what they’re really doing. I think that there are some people that right now are collecting a ton of data. There are some that have way more of a luxurious situation than I do in the fact that if I wasn’t running the numbers or I wasn’t the one going through all the stuff that was popping up in our dashboards with you guys or putting it in excel, it was Andrew where they have exercise science departments that can do that for them which must be nice because when it is just two people it is a lot of work. I do think though that it can be overwhelming I do think that no matter what that everyone would agree with that there is a lot that can come from things. I think the one thing that I have learned the most is like everybody says, communication obviously needs to be the driving factor but even more than that it starts to impede upon anything else that you’re trying to do, that things need to change.
Kevin: Sure
Jay: As we’ve moved things in different ways and are implementing technologies in different settings than we were prior, there has been a dramatic change in a whole vast array of things, good, bad, or indifferent. It is crazy how that kind of stuff works, man that there could be some things that you see or you know and you’re trying to do but if the kid is like no, I’m going to do this, that, or the other thing instead, well what are you going to do?
Kevin: Well that’s a really good point. We had a coach Matt Wietlispach, I don’t know if you remember Matt, he’s now D1 coach up at Niagara and he’s the only guy in staff over there and he’s got three or four hundred kids and he was talking about getting some of his guys who are seen as team leaders and things like that to be the ones to buy in first so everyone else kind of follows along. I’ve had a bunch of offline conversations with you where you’re like I’ve got this jerk and this kid and how do you deal room when it’s like look, man, we’re trying to get this done because it is going to help you.
Jay: I think he is 100% correct, there are some people that no matter what, they just don’t want to do it. I think that the higher level you get, you’re going to get more and more people that are going to end up being like that. I’ve almost come to the point now where it’s hey man I am here, when you’re ready, I’m here. This is what you’re going to do until you’re ready but when you’re ready, I’m here. We can move forward at some point but if it’s just going to be like that then it’s just going to be like that, I’m not going to take it personal if that is how you’re going to be. They think that they have the best answer for themselves. They may or may not be correct but that’s just the way the cookie crumbles with some of these kids. The crazy thing is more often than not when those people are removed or those situations are eliminated or at least altered in a bit then the whole barometer of everything changes.
Kevin: But that’s not a decision you can make, right? You’re not going to be the person who is going to transfer a kid or cut a kid or take away his floor time, whatever it is. You still got to deal with the issue in the gym so what has, in your experience, worked well to get kids to buy in?
Jay: Giving them some autonomy of what they’re doing is really important. When you’re allowing these kids to make some selections, we can talk about lifting and all of these things all we want right, it’s general stuff man, it’s GPP. Who cares what the guy is doing at the dumb bell bench versus the barbell bench versus dumbbell incline? At the end of the day if the kid wants to bench and he is going to be more excited to come in and bench instead of doing dumbbell incline, but you say no you can’t do bench because you have to do dumbbell incline, you’re kind of the “schmuck” I mean seriously, who cares? If you have your things where you’re like listen, alright man, I need you to do X, Y, and Z. After that, it’ll say horizontal push and it’ll be an empty square. It will say horizontal pull and an empty square. Shoulder raises and an empty square, some dude really loves to do half lateral raises and that gets him hyped, cool. You want to do hammer curls instead of easy bar like the things that we kind of pick fights about, I don’t know if those are the things that we should pick fights about.
Kevin: So you got a couple hills that you’re going to die on, which things do you pick fights about?
Jay: The ones that Dr. Berkaschenski said are the ones that are most important are the squat and actually a seated calf raise and Doc Yessis is big with his glute ham which is a little different from how some other people do it so it is all the way down, pause, then up to 30 degrees. For the most part, as we get going, it will be the specialized stuff, the knee drive and the lunges and depending on where the kid is in his career following the jump progression is Dr. Berkaschenski has laid it out is really important, it sets that base of teaching them how to move better. Those sort of things are really it but with even that being said, obviously there are medical reasons why you’re not going to back squat or we will change how we back squat or squat or whatever. We will have 6 of our 8 guys double bodyweight squat for me, I don’t know how much a basketball player needs to squat more than that. If we’ve got 6 of those guys that are ready we should be doing velocity based stuff, maybe those are the guys that we look at and just watch how they cut. Are they better for somebody to be on a K-box because they really need that over speed eccentric, that over loaded eccentric so they can just pop lower. It’s kind of having your staples but just because you’re a potato guy doesn’t mean you can’t eat sweet potatoes. Short story long, those three, the guy is no, the guy’s 100% no and when they ask, I tell them because these are the ones, the really smart people say are the most important.
Kevin: Yeah, they have Dr. in front of their name, they’re really important.
Jay: And their last name, you can’t spell it
Kevin: So that’s in the gym and do you work with the on-court stuff or is just the gym stuff and pre and post?
Jay: Not during practice, we will do some stuff before and some warming up stuff but even with that I think what is interesting with basketball is the whole pre-warm up thing if people are really going to invest in it, I think it can be really great. I think more often than not it’s just killing ten minutes. I think it is kind of like that at a lot of places where you kind of give them your blueprint and there are some guys like I know we got one kid who everyday, no matter what we do in the warm up, as soon as we are done he is going to do a finger four stretch on the scorer’s table. I got another kid that no matter, he is going to sit down and stretch his hamstrings on the bench. There are just different strokes for different folks and they’re just going to do the same thing everyday. How I handle that is, what do we need today? How do you all feel? When I see them before, if I do it’ll be figuring out things and getting a pulse and going that way. Now the recuperative stuff when we get into the season we will be doing things much differently. That is when we will start to look into readiness and the CNS and the ANS and prescribing things post-practice the night before a game. We can’t specifically prescribe nutrition I don’t think in the state of Virginia because I’m not a licensed dietician but we can talk to them about how their CNS is down and it would probably be a good day instead of eating avocado and seafood, some salmon or whatever. We’re lucky to have meetings the night before games so we can sit there and take care of these things. Let’s really bang in some extra protein, get either the norma-tech and crank it all the way up or get you in a cold whirlpool or a game-ready or whatever it may be. Hopefully, it’ll help you recover a bit, help you get ready for tomorrow, if you’re the other way, we’ll give you a norma-tech and it is way, way down, and it is just gentle or whatever, pump you full of fluids. We look at all that stuff and we feed you with exercise or stress, whatever you want to call it, whatever is cool now based on what you are able to handle but we kind of run from these other things. Charlie Wiengroff spoke about it up at BSMPG a few years back where they were setting up everything that they were doing with Canada basketball, the original thing they were doing it for was their rehab and regeneration stuff and it is something that I have really spent the last two years looking more and more and trying…let’s figure something else out of it…
Kevin: So outside the gym, you mentioned CNS, ANS, looking at parasympathetic responses and things like that. Obviously, you’re using an Omega wave unit for recovery, looking at recovery. You’ve been using that for quite a while, right?
Jay: Mhmm
Kevin: So I am a basketball coach, I have heard of this thing, the Omegawave does heart rate variability and some other magic. What was your experience like when you started, how many years ago, first off till now?
Jay: Gosh, five years ago
Kevin: So you’re like a ninja black belt in Omegawave now?
Jay: Yeah I don’t know about that. I think more like ninja black belt, no maybe an uber driver
Kevin: You’re more like an uber driver
Jay: Yeah
Kevin: We will go with a yellow belt so you’re like a prissy yellow belt. Start to finish, how did you first experience the technology? What did you gain in experience in it? And then finally, what did you leave with where it’s like I don’t need 90% or 80% of this I just need like two or three key variables that really make the difference?
Jay: Yeah I think that’s the biggest part of it right there, is that it ends up being, like we locate like two or three things that we look at other stuff like long term like all the other evaluations the functions of the central nervous system obviously are key. We’re looking more towards the off season and we’re training kids that are looking at their resting heart rate. If we are doing it in the morning and make sure it is sub 60, hopefully sub 55 because that will just tell us what their general fitness level is. You’d be surprised how many of these kids show up. I mean it doesn’t just happen with basketball players, it happens with all sorts of athletes and that resting heart rate just a random spike in that is going to tell you a bunch of things that’s going on with the kids. I’ve said this before, the first thing I tell anybody when they first start using it is, you’re going to do something about a month or two in and you’re going to see that change whatever it is, right? They will either go from yellow this to green that or red this to green that or you’re going to be like, man this is easy. You’re going to do it again and it is going to be dead wrong. It’s not going to do what you think it is going to do so pump your brakes man, like pump your brakes. Hit up a lot of people that are involved with it, I know that Trisha’s done a lot of great things with expanding her help. I know Mark Mclaughlin is going to schools and talking with people and if you’re called me a black belt, he is the Jedi master over here. But you need to pick your one or two things and follow them and those are the three things that we really look at. It is a lot and it’s getting into than what it’s gotten me into then is reading more, researching more, and understanding more of how the body wants to do things like how it wants to survive and it’s really fascinating. There are people that say they have a pulse on their team and they can tell just by when they walk in how ready they are. I would say 9 times out of 10, you’re right but what if that one day is the day that you shouldn’t do it and I’m not using this as a sales pitch for them even though I would because I truly believe in everything that they stand for and they do and found a cardiac condition with one of our kids. It ended up being a low-level AV1 block but there are kids that are dying in training like why would you not want to look at these things to make sure they’re okay? The other thing that people need to understand and I’ve said this a billion times too, it might be expensive duty but it isn’t a deity, you spend a lot of money on these things. Even if you spend a lot of time putting together a questionnaire that uploads directly into your google drive or whatever it may be. Time is money, man it is all expensive and you have to remember that there are times where it may not be the best day for them to handle something and you may have to pay it back later but you have to know when to let them go a little bit and how to feel the kids out. Then you have to be able to know that the next day you’re going to have to back stuff off. You’re not paying with a debit card, you’re paying with a credit card.
Kevin: Sure
Jay: But it’s fun, man. If you’ve got any sort of sciencey, nerdy number geek like I do in you then it’s great for you.
Kevin: So obviously you’re going to recommend an Omegawave to just about anybody who is out there that is looking for technology. I can’t afford an Omegawave, what do you do? Like you said you go back to the questionnaires and google forms and things like that. I mean, what type of correlations have you seen between the low budget way of doing things and the high budget way of doing things that you can maybe actually short cut to one or two things that actually help without buying technology?
Jay: Can I steal an answer here?
Kevin: Yeah, totally
Jay: Well it depends on what you’re trying to do, right? What do you want to find out? With your questionnaires what I would probably suggest if that is the route you want to go, is I would keep it to three at most. I would wait until you do anything until things are at least 10-12 numbers in
Kevin: Okay
Jay: Because you need to know what an average is, like what the kid is
Kevin: Sure
Jay: It is like we talked about, I am a Debbie Downer man. Tomorrow soreness, I am going to be a 1. I am going to need a wheelchair after what I did to myself today. When I feel good when I am old and dinged up, I’ll probably be a 2, maybe a great day I will be a 3. But you, you’re always happy so maybe you’ll be a straight 5. It’s not like you’re 15, Kevin is the man and my 6 is Jay blows. Jay is Eeyore and Kevin is Winnie the Pooh and all of a sudden Jay’s 6 is now a 2, or a 3 or whatever, now we got a problem. Understanding that with all of this stuff you have to pump your brakes before you start diving into things and if you’re not going to be willing to sit and talk with your kids or there is going to be something that is a barricade to allow you to talk to your kids about things for any reason whatsoever, don’t do it.
Kevin: You’ve been looking at data side by side for a while now, is there anything that you would say? You know what this matches up pretty close. This type of information matches up pretty close to watching central nervous system, fatigue, whatever it might be.
Jay: I mean, the big one is sleep, right? When these kids don’t sleep well, I think that when you’re looking at the questionnaires then everything else falls in with that. And if they say they are stressed and they slept well then typically ANS stuff isn’t going to be too bad because they’re not really stressed. You know what I mean?
Kevin: Yeah, yeah
Jay: Like when they’re really stressed and they’re up and they’re not sleeping and they actually do have whether it be school stuff or problem stuff, life, whatever it may be. A cold, the flu, that is the one that I think impacts things the most
Kevin: So do you ask sleep quality? Is that your question?
Jay: Yeah, sleep quality.
Kevin: Sleep quality, okay
Jay: I think hours of sleep is hard because then you’re asking them to spitball it a little bit. Even then, I think that then you’ll get the outline number because they’ll know. I think it’s 6 in one, half-dozen in the other because you’re going to get the outline number either way and who is to say that well I went to bed at midnight and I woke up at 7 but when they say they went to bed, they were in bed watching House of Cards for 2 hours.
Kevin: Yeah that is what life does. What are the other things that you have done? You’ve got the Omegawave obviously and we talked about some of the gym stuff, what other parts of the athletes day are you dealing with in touching in a way that again, you have only so many hills that you’re going to die on when you battle these guys and what is absolute and what is not absolute. What other absolutes do you have in your programming?
Jay: I think that right now, the way that we’re moving more towards the start of trying to help these guys with what they are eating and I think that it is more of just general home ec type stuff that they should’ve been taught in high school. For the longest time, I thought that all of these questions, for the most part, were just “ridiculous.” What do you mean you don’t know that? Everybody knows that.
Kevin: Everybody knows that the back of the package has something on it, right?
Jay: Yeah, eat your vegetables. Fried is not as good as grilled, it is not as good as baked. Everybody knows, they don’t know this. Maybe they’re just getting better at playing dumb or they don’t know this. We are trying to find a cheesy way of like getting that going but that is kind of the next step for us I think is whether it be Andrew and/or I in trying to get the staff involved and being like we are going to go D Hall or we will go to dinner one night and they’ll be like what is on your plate. I am not telling you to get rid of it, I just want to know what you’re looking at. What could you do differently that might help you play better?
Kevin: So it is not feeding them as much as it is educating them
Jay: I think that more and more with this generation you need to empower them than just spoon feed them because as soon as you don’t give them these things, if they don’t know what they should do. Now, even if they know it doesn’t mean they are going to but if they don’t know what they should do then they are not going to change anything. They’re just going to go I got a guy no matter what he’s going to go to McDonald’s, he’s going to get hot cakes and sausage. It doesn’t matter but maybe it is just because he doesn’t know better. This is just what he likes to eat well alright, let’s talk about that. What are you looking at and what are we trying to do, what are you trying to accomplish? What can we do that will be better for you? All you can do is try. If they’re not buying it and they’re going to do their own thing then again, you’re there, they know you’re there. They know you’re trying to help them. If they don’t want the help then they can come when they want the help.
Kevin: What resources have you pulled together to give these guys? Let’s get right down to it, like what works to educate some kid who has never seen the back of a package before, who has never eaten outside of a fast food restaurant? The one thing that I found that when we first started working with athletes was that you really don’t need to be as educated to be an athlete. It was kind of a surprise to me that some of these guys who were in the NFL and you talk to them and you’re like oh, that is right, you’re very talented and you’re not as up as what you could be. I am trying not to say stupid but these guys, how do you break down lifelong patterns? They have been spending 18 years just getting by on talent and eating McDonald’s because that was what was available to them. How do you break down and get it to a simple way that you can actually educate these guys?
Jay: To be honest it is just sitting there and talking to them and it is like, what are some things that we should look at? What are some things that we should be looking to add or subtract or change? Okay, so do you know what it means when they say French Fries. Do you understand what is going on there? And then just talking to them about it and as much as I try with the seminar, I’ll never be great with social media. Mostly because in my own personal life I don’t really care much about it. I don’t think that I do anything that is really all that cool that I need to put on the internet every day. I don’t know, maybe other people would.
Kevin: And here we are Periscoping by the way
Jay: I know, how crazy is that? Both of us running a podcast but anyway. I think that it is just talking to people because again, and Drew is right over here. He can attest to it, these kids all the time are like, what should I be eating? The worst part about it is, is that it is not quite that simple. It is not what you should be eating specifically, what are some things that you can look at? I know people take teams to the grocery store and they look at labels and this and that. I just don’t know if that’s step 1. Right now in college, we’re lucky in a way that I don’t believe that any of our student-athletes live off campus so they always have access to the dining hall or whatever eatery on campus they select. If the only choice they have is to go to the international building and it’s either a turkey wrap or dumplings, well what are you going to choose? Why are you going to choose it? Is that the best choice? What drives you to that choice? Have you even tried the other thing? That is all you can do.
Kevin: Obviously they change NCAA regulations to allow for better meals for athletes and looking for the benefit of the student-athlete wellness. What have you done as far as changes go in your operations to deal with that?
Jay: Well that is an ongoing process right now. We actually are lucky with Men’s basketball that we have a full kitchen actually in the locker room. So what we are doing right now is just trying to build 2 or 3 almost snacks for the day that they can come and get. But again, if they don’t take them then what do you do? It is just about educating. It is about making better decisions and helping them. On top of that, the meal stuff that we will do the night before games, that will be new. Baby steps because I think the other thing too is when you make huge dramatic and gross changes it freaks some people out.
Kevin: Yeah
Jay: Me, especially. So I don’t know if we would go any further right now if that would be good for the guys or if they would just look around and be like what is going on? I got to do what?
Kevin: Wasn’t it part of what Altov was talking about with the changes they made at Baylor? It was a year over year we are only doing little boiling the frogs slowly kind of thing, little changes year after year so that these guys who were never exposed to it will eventually get exposed to it but the new class that comes in will have no knowledge of the changes that took place, it just happened over time.
Jay: Right, yeah and I couldn’t agree more with Andrew talked about with that. That and the whole idea of earning all of those situations with kids is absolutely brilliant.
Kevin: Yeah I think it worked out really well. Dude, an hour flies by really fast.
Jay: No way, really?
Kevin: Yeah
Jay: You’re really awesome at this. I get to 30 minutes and I’m like no, what do I got to do now? But oh wait, I only wanted it to be 30 minutes.
Kevin: It’s funny because there is so much more I want to talk about and ask. Next week is CVASPS, not to keep plugging it but the people should be aware of this thing, it is pretty awesome. We are actually going to do 2 podcasts, we are going to be interviewing with Mr. Carl Valley who is my favorite most honest person on the planet when it comes to knocking down walls and actually just asking the right questions. But I’m also going to do some 10-minute segments with coaches that are there and stuff like that so we will put them in so it’ll be 2 podcasts out of the CVASPS show but I’m excited about it. For one, it is the last show I have to do for the year and I’m going on vacation shortly afterward.
Jay: Brilliant man that’s great
Kevin: It’ll be so nice but we’re going to get some stuff out of there and hopefully help continue to promote this. You also got a book coming out too?
Jay: Alright, we will make the announcement here, man. Nobody knows about this! That was going to be the secret for the seminar
Kevin: I am not going to say anything
Jay: No we can do it
Kevin: We can talk about your secret memoirs and biography later on
Jay: No, no, not that book. The Manual will be out July 15th. It is in print right now and we’re hoping to have it ready to go so those people that are in attendance will be the only people until August that will be able to get access to it. It will be the first edition of volume 1 and it really is kind of a lot of behind the scenes heroes that have helped put this together, talking about real-world stuff that is straight up. This is what we do, this is what we did and this is how we got better or this is exactly what my studying was. Gosh, I am going to try and name all ten. It’s ten chapters, it’s Dr. Mike Gentry talking about coaching. It’s Kevin talking about auditing on a budget. Jeff Moyer talking about motor learning. Yosef Johnson talks about some things with injury reduction. Matt Thome is talking about training the respiratory muscles. Danny Romandi talks about max aerobic speed and how he took Dan Baker’s stuff and kind of tweaked it a little bit for what he does with his student-athletes at George Washington University. Bryan Mann VBT in season and Benny talking about RSA, I believe it was. Yeah, I think that is all ten off the top of my head.
Kevin: I’ll tell you what I love about is like what you’ve really taken the David Joyce approach where it’s like pick best people to give real experiences instead of just Jay standing on top of a mountain screaming off the top of his head what he thinks is best.
Jay: Yeah I don’t know if it is going to live up to Joyce’s book because that thing is killer but it’s neat and it’s opened my mind and my eyes to a whole another world. It’s like what the podcast has and the seminar has, it’s fun stuff that keeps me busy because if I’m not busy then I lose my mind. People may say that happened before but it’s neat and it’s really exciting and I just hope that it’s things that people can take things from and above and beyond everything else, it can open more conversations. That is what we are trying to do is and whether it be with the seminar with the people in attendance or the people watching on the online stream or it is the podcast or now the Manual. As long as it is driving the profession and it is getting people to talk more and share more information openly and honestly about what they are doing. It is just going to make us all better
Kevin: You’re doing the work man honestly like there aren’t enough people out there who put together these lighthouse events. I can count maybe 5 that exist that are just like these anchors that really bring people together and share open ideas and stuff like that and I think that you’ve been doing a fantastic job at it. We need more of it and unfortunately the amount of work I think it takes, it scares people away. You’re doing the grind out there to make it happen so I thank you and I am sure there are some people out there who thank you for doing it as well so congrats man, you’ve been doing a great job at it.
Jay: Thanks, man I appreciate it and you guys have been a big part of it too helping out and of course obviously your involvement with the book and your involvement not just with the seminar but with the direction I have gone professionally and helping me be better and it is mutual. I appreciate everything you all are doing.
Kevin: It’s what we are all here for right? I don’t know another group of people that are better as coaches, we could’ve built software for anybody but this group of people is just incredible. Everybody is really there to help lift each other up and you don’t see a lot of jealousy out there, you don’t see a lot of poking around, you just really see a lot of people trying to advance themselves, their professions, personal growth and everything else like that and I am just happy to be around guys like you so good job man.
Jay: Appreciate it, man
Kevin: Again, Jay DeMayo, Head Strength and Conditioning from the University of Richmond, we will wrap on that. CVASPS, do you want to CVASPS.com and all of that other good stuff?
Jay: Yeah, CVASPS.com I have a newsletter on there that I am awful at sending out but feel free to sign up for it. @CVASPS on Twitter, we are on the Facebook thing too. And then the podcast that we have too on iTunes and if you can make it out to Richmond, Virginia July 15th and 16th, we would love to have you. The lineup I think is kind of biased but I think that the lineup is pretty awesome, Bob LAHOLE hitting lead off and I think Randy Ballard is going to hit right after him and Randy Ballard is an athletic trainer at Illinois who is a super star and not enough people know about him. His resume and his work high-level athletes, is absolutely fantastic. When you post something that involves Randy Ballard on social media and the first person that retweets it is Dan PAFF and that just tells you something. Having ______ on campus is never a bad thing, he is a rock star. He is coming in from Vancouver. Sam COHN from Oklahoma. Mike Curtis is coming from down the street from UVA and is talking about everything that they are doing over at Virginia which is nothing short of stellar\. He is above and beyond of being a genius, he is the nicest guy you will ever meet. Hank has helped me in ways that I could never pay him back for the amount of help he has given me professionally. He is a rock star and he is a genius and his talks are awesome. He is actually going to talk about coaching. People look at Hank and he gets the misfits and the people you can’t work with or gave up on and again, I don’t know if I want to say he fixes them but he fixes them. And whenever you get CAL VAHL in a room it can be exciting and he is rocking regeneration lab, the 2016 edition. If you haven’t looked at the regen lab from back in the day, here is the data, here is what it says, here is the studies, these are what people are doing, blah blah blah. It is just legitimate stuff and you are always in for a treat when Buddy Morris stands up in front of you. There is nobody out there who calls a spade, a spade like Buddy Morris does. He is a super guy and I have been lucky enough to see him talk a couple of times and he would be an interesting guy to watch box because he doesn’t hold a punch.
Kevin: Nope and don’t invite him to Buffalo because he will…haha
Jay: He busts my chops about it all the time from people from Upstate New York
Kevin: Oh you’re from Buffalo, you guys have to come to Phoenix to see me, I am not going up there.
Jay: My wife is from there, there is no way. I told her, you want to go back? Go ahead, never going back.
Kevin: He spent his time up here, he did his time in Buffalo
Jay: That he did but yeah it is exciting, it will be a lot of fun and the crazy thing is the people that are in the room walk around and in that group I want to say that 4 of the 8 were in the room last year is guys in attendance. We have already got the lineup for next year set. Yeah, unfortunately a bunch of those people won’t be able to make it because they got something going on in Brazil. It is a lot of fun, we hang out and if you can stay on campus and again I hate to keep name dropping but all PUFF said in his review of it, it is kind of like going back to college. We are going to eat in the cafe, we’re staying in the dorm.
Kevin: Yeah I am packing an extra pillow. That is the lesson I learned from last year.
Jay: Well we got barbecue the first night and then my boy, Mike Moe who does all of our catering for basketball. He is bringing the grill out and it is going to be Hot dogs, hamburgers, chicken, straight out there. We’ve got a couple local craft beers each night and for people who aren’t as adventurous just some more regular stuff. It is just about coming out and opening up and even if you don’t want to open up, just open up your ears. You’re going to be sitting at a table with guys who have coached people who have won gold medalists, people that won national championships or who have been to Final Fours or conference championships or you name it, even World Series Championships.
Kevin: We will do that, awesome looking forward to it, this is going to be a great time.
Jay: It is, I am excited. I can’t believe it is already here.
Kevin: Awesome, thanks, Jay. Look forward to next week, thanks, man.
Jay: Appreciate you having me on, thank you
Kevin: Alright see ya.
Jay: See ya
Kevin: Hey everyone, thanks for listening to the Coach Me Plus Applied Sports Science Podcast. I hope we made your ride, your run, your bike, or your drive a little bit easier. If you are new to the podcast, we do this about once every two weeks and hope to get coaches on that take things out of the lab and bring it into the gym. If you’re listening to us on an App, you might want to subscribe by either clicking the link in iTunes or Stitcher or whatever App you might be using. You can follow us on Twitter @CoachMePlus and of course you can subscribe to our newsletter. It is the Applied Sports Science newsletter, go to coachmeplus.com, click on the link in the top right corner and subscribe and I promise you won’t get hit with spam, it is actually good stuff. Thanks for listening and we will catch you guys again in two weeks.