This week on the podcast we were joined by Dr. Andy Galpin for a conversation on strength, sleep, recovery, travel, and preparing players to perform. In our wrap-up, we came back to a few coaching questions that don’t always get enough attention: how much are we asking from our players, when are we asking it, and what are the costs?
A few thoughts from our recap…
- Give players a chance to recover. We can’t control every sleep habit, meal, or phone scroll. But we can control practice length, days off, recovery sessions, and how quickly we help players come down after practice.
- Don’t steal from sleep without knowing it. Early practices, late practices, extra film, longer walkthroughs — sometimes they’re necessary. But they still cost something. The point is not to avoid all of them. It’s to know the tradeoff.
- Warmups need some game in them. The game starts with contact, pace, and decisions. If warmups are too clean, players can feel good without actually being ready. Galpin’s phrase was to “touch the curtain” — get close enough to game speed without burning through the tank.
- Travel is part of performance. Bus rides, arrival times, locked gyms, traffic, and stiff bodies are real coaching problems. The simple idea: move before the bus, give enough time when you arrive, and don’t overdo the fake “wake-up” stuff three hours before tip.
- The bigger takeaway: manage the stack. Physical load, mental load, travel, sleep, contact, film, and practice all pile up. None of these decisions live by themselves. The job is knowing what the group needs next — and what we may need to take off the plate.
Transcript
Dan Krikorian 02:19
Andy, we often hear that our best players are our best movers. From your perspective and from your world, what is it that we should take as coaches when it comes to strength and movement and how we train and help our athletes prepare for the game of basketball?
Andy Galpin 02:37
Yeah, so this is really good. If you go back to the 1970s or so when strength training first became really acknowledged as a legitimate thing for athletes, right? So you remember prior to that is not acceptable. It wasn’t till we got the University of Nebraska. And we got Boyd Epley and people in saying, I don’t know if you guys actually know that story, but Boyd was effectively the first strength edition coach in athletics. We had bodybuilding. We had all sports in a year. We had Joe Waiter. We had plenty of coaches in that milk there, but it would never cross over to sports, not at a prolific level, right? Maybe some individual people were doing it here and there, but there was still the like, this is going to make you tight. This is going to make you slow. You’re going to be less athletic. So not only was it not accepted, it was generally banned. You’re not going to be lifting weights because you’d be less athletic. We need you to be an athlete, not a bodybuilder, right?
Okay, great. Boyd Epley came into Nebraska and the challenge was, well, very directly as the story goes, and I’ve heard Boyd himself tell this many, many, many times that gave him some demand and said, I think it was like a 40 yard dash time or something. And it was like, if these guys get slower, you’re fired. Fair. Well, if anyone paid attention to any college football and you know what Nebraska football looked like in the 1970s, they redefined the whole sport. They physically dominated everybody so badly. It didn’t take more than a few years before every other college was like, what the hell is Nebraska doing? They’re untouchable right now. And it was like, we’re doing strength training. This was in the first start of the realization that strength training is not just bodybuilding. Now, if you look in the public lexicon, it is still that, right? The vast majority of people uneducated, other folks are not in the sports sciences still think bodybuilding, weight training, this is the same thing. So if you train an athlete like a bodybuilder, then they would not expect to make them a better mover. They’re not going to look smoother. I mean, it can’t happen, but that’s not the optimal way to train. But we have to acknowledge and realize that that’s not all strength training. That’s not all one very specific style that leads to that kind of muscle growth outcome that does not improve movement. So you fast forward 50 years, we’ve made some innovations there, like we’re never 60 years actually past that. When we have the conversation about we need to make better athletes, we have to acknowledge that one, it’s not just weightlifting, or strength training. Sure, but that is a critical part of that equation. I was actually reading a paper this morning. If you start to look at the research on things like flexibility and range of motion, you just won’t find anything that’s better at improving range of motion than heavy strength training.
Andy Galpin 05:03
And so we started to look up like, well, I need to move better, like, okay, well, are we limited in our range of motion, then full range of motion strength training, you can sit there and static stretch your hands all day. But heavy loaded RDLs is going to give better results generally, then your static stretching.
And so again, we start to actually think about what are we trying to do? And just like a strength coach would be obnoxious to be like, all basketball is just shooting. Oh, okay, really? You can’t go reverse to say that thing. That’s the reason we call it exercise science, right? There’s a reason people get PhDs in these things is because there’s an enormous amount of detail. So on top of that, now we have the ability to define movement, right? So in the past, it’s like, oh, I want to move better. Like, what’s that mean? That guy moves better. You’re like, well, what the hell are you talking about? Now, all of us can see it, like, you can watch somebody like Avijon Robinson, or Christian McCaffrey in the NFL, and you’re just like, wow, they are so fluid. But we couldn’t go backwards into finance, like define a good mover on the court, like you wouldn’t be like, well, now we’re starting to get closer to that, because we can look at things like kinetics and kinematics and go, Oh, Bijon can get a joint angles in his foot that other running backs can’t. That’s why, right? Why are people cutting off the wrong foot? Like Danny and Thomas, and it’s just like, he’s the classic example, because if I’m running back, if you’re not familiar, he would cut on the wrong foot. But because of that, it was so hard to deal with, because he had this physical ability to make these cuts, literally the inside leg, basically cutting, if you can imagine, he’s running to the left side, cuts back to the right side, everyone’s gonna plant on the left foot, he could do that off his right foot. And so he’s doing it at half a step early. And people are just like, you’re so thrown off by that, you’re just not expecting a human to cut. Well, we start to break that actually down, we can actually now start to put objective detail behind us like, oh, okay, he has these muscle qualities that allow him to get to that physical expression, or we can see that and go that looks different. And we can reverse engineer that patch your answer of saying like, yes, we can actually start to now build things to say, okay, if you want to move like that, then what characteristics do you need to be able to get to that place, we can use things like, we have a program that we put all of our athletes through called optimum muscle. And this allows us to run a full 3d MRI of people. And so the MRI is not for tissue damage and tears and ligaments, that MRI gives us a 3d interactive was called digital twin of over 140 muscles on their individual body. So I can see the exact size of all of those muscles across their entire body. And I can start to look and see what does their soleus muscle look like on their right leg versus their left leg? What does this tiny little internal rotator at their hip muscle look like on the right side versus their left side?
Andy Galpin 07:43
And why that matters is movement is based on slings in the body. So your left ankle will determine in part your right shoulder. And this determines how effective you are throwing and doing things like that, because you have these cross slings, which is how human movement is created, it’s called a torque, right, so we turn around a corner, so that happens. So if you’re a perfect symmetrical being, you probably are always generally super athletic, because we want some asymmetries to be able to create torque and create spin, you can imagine trying to start a fire the old fashioned way like you want to create spin, which means you have to pull and push in opposite directions, really, really fast, right?
The way that we do this in the PGA tour, if you want to hit a golf ball farther, imagine you’re a right handed golfer, right, if we want to increase your driver speed and velocity and hit golf ball farther, it’s counterintuitive. But you actually push backwards on your left leg. The same thing with pitching, by the way, it’s not a matter of how hard you can drive on your right leg, you know, like towards the golf ball, you actually push the exact opposite. We want people fall backwards when they swing, because you actually can push in your left leg hard, that creates your right hip to spin really fast, that then smashes the rotation, right? The point being, like we actually can start to define why this person rotates so much faster, why are they so much more fluid? Why are they faster? That’s not just linear sprint speed, or how high you can jump, right? It is these characteristics that define those non specific defined movement patterns that look so aesthetically pleasing, and to a learned eye, you can go, Oh, that’s a better mover. So long, non specific, I guess answer to your question, but this is the type of stuff we work towards to figure out that has implications with not only improving performance in our sport, but also it has ton of notifications for return post injury. And so we can get back to things of saying like, I know you’re at range of motion, and maybe your maximal strength is the same, but you’re not moving the same.
Dan Krikorian 09:33
We’re kind of in the realm talking about recovery a little bit, and for coaches, things we maybe don’t think about or should be thinking about when it comes to an athlete’s daily recovery from practice games, the loads that they’re putting on their bodies.
Andy Galpin 09:47
Yeah, there’s a really awesome figure that my friend Robin Thorpe, he is in charge of Red Bull. They do all that crazy performance stuff. Put this out there for free. So you guys can go grab that and share that maybe in your show notes or something.
And this is nice because it’s like a little bit of an algorithm that says like, when I say under recover, am I talking about my mood? If it is, then use ABC modality. Am I looking at is it nervous system? Is it performance? Is all my legs heavy? Am I sore? And it kind of walks you through like what the athlete is complaining about. And then if it’s this and not that, then use this modality. And so that covers the blanket of should they take a nap? Should we use hot? Should we use cold? Should we use compression boots? Should we train? Should we do active recovery? And it has a really nice schematic to help every coach walk right through that. And he’s just put that up on his social media. On top of that, though, the real basics, when it comes to recovery, there’s nothing that will even remotely compare to adequate sleep. And so your number one priority is that.
And I could go into as much detail there as you would like. The thing after that is what people generally use is the three Rs. So you’re looking about like rehydrate, recover muscle glycogen. And then the other R is therefore protein synthesis, which is an easy way of saying fluids, carbs, and protein. If you manage those things from a cellular perspective, it has everything it needs to get back on that recovery train. And so if you’re given a little bit of like, again, my legs are heavy. Okay, great. Do we not hydrate properly? Do we not sufficiently refuel? And do we not sufficiently give ourselves amino acids needed to rebuild the tissue? If it’s none of those things, and we’re talking about like, oh, my muscles are sore. I’m rehydrated. They’re not heavy, but I’m sore. Now you’re going to move into things more like, okay, use hot. Use norm attack. Use something like that. Because it’s just a muscle soreness issue. This isn’t actually like a cellular recovery issue. Fine. If it’s none of those things, but it’s more of a chronic fatigue, no energy or there, all that stuff, then you might be thinking, okay, insufficient sleep or training loads too high, excessive stress loads too high, so on and so forth. So at the highest level, if that gives you a little bit of a sense of triage, you want to be thinking about that. So if we go that reverse order, what you’re thinking about is, as soon as we’re done on the court, have protocols where we’re reestablishing the three R’s. Like get on top of recovery right now. Rehydration, refueling, re-synthesis, there, immediately. That’s going to solve a lot of your problems. Now past that, we start thinking about, is our schedule appropriate where it doesn’t catabolize sleep? Are we asking these people to get up for a 6am shoot around? And you’re like, okay, yeah, a 17-year-old is going to go to bed early because they have 6 a.m. shoot-around. In fact, there’s actually data that just came out in the last couple of months on that.
Andy Galpin 12:36
Well, it turns out, guess what? When you do really early practices for young kids, they do not go to bed any earlier. They do not. They just play video games still till 2 o’clock in the morning and then just suffer through it. That’s what they do. So it does not work.
Kids will not be more disciplined because you give them early shoot-around. Like, it just doesn’t happen. And in the professional realms, it’s a little bit different, but for this, you know, kids to early college, in fact, there’s actually data published on college kids, too. They will still go out and party. They’re just going to show up hungover. You’re not doing anything. Maybe occasionally they’ll be like, oh, my God, I feel the terror. But it’s not working. What it is doing, though, is catalyzing their sleep. And I get it. Like, every time I say that, coaches flip out because they’re like, that’s the only time we have the gym. I get it. Do your best you can. Everyone does the best they can. But philosophically, you should be trying to avoid that as much as we can, right? There’s a pretty known saying in sleep science for performance now that it’s called sleep in and win. And the data are really, really clear on sleep. You sleep, you win more.
And you don’t. You lose more. In fact, I’ll give you one. There was a really interesting study from my friend Sherry Mull at Stanford. She used the Stanford basketball team. So Division I, guys, really good. And she showed sleep extension defined as trying to get them to sleep nine hours per night. Now, what this ended up being is about an additional 90 minutes of sleep per night throughout the season. Now, not every guy did 90 minutes. Some did 20 more minutes. Some did more. Right. But the coaching point was try to get to nine hours. Right. That was the target that they set for all of them. So if that means you’ve got to go to sleep earlier. Fine. That means you need to sleep in. Fine. That means you need to take naps during the day. Like, however, we need to get to this total number of 90 more minutes. And what she saw throughout the season was a 4 percent improvement in reaction time, which if you’re familiar with kind of like central nervous system stuff, that’s a lot. That’s really hard to improve reaction time in season. But more importantly, about a 9 percent improvement in both free throw shooting and three point percentage in practice.
They tested the same testing every single day in practice as well as their game data. And then there’s a bunch of other physiological improvements, mood, energy, the perception, all those things. So we start to look at that and you’re like, OK, if I told you right now that there’s a drill you could do that would give you a nine percent improvement and three point shooting in Division one. So already a very high skill level. You would buy everything ever sold to sleep more. There’s no supplement. There’s no recovery. There’s nothing I can give you that will even come. The stratosphere of the fact of sleep, especially with younger if you’re playing basketball, you’re young.
Dan Krikorian 15:02
Yeah.
Andy Galpin 15:03
So those are the big rocks to really hit after. There’s actually been a number of studies done in basketball players as well that did stuff where they implemented sleep education program in season. And what’s interesting about this is the data suggests that despite the fact that the kids are not necessarily listening to it, sleep will improve about 45 minutes per night on average. And so why I bring that up is, like I really tell coaches, talk about it. I know the look you’re gonna get, you know the look you’re gonna get, but it is actually still working.
They will sleep somewhere between almost an additional hour per night on average across the season when you are consistently providing education on it. Despite the fact that they’re gonna like not pay attention to me on their phones, like do the whole thing, it is actually working. So talk to you go in the face, but it’s working.
Patrick Carney 15:48
Andy, on optimizing the schedule to allow your players to recover, what should coaches maybe be aware of in terms of you talked about maybe practicing early, but if you have to practice late, and if you think about if they’re pricing till eight, by the time they get out of the gym, by the time they eat, by the time they finally adrenaline comes down, they’re still not going to get to bed any earlier. What should coaches maybe know how long it takes really an athlete to regulate their body to calm down to where they could even be prepared to sleep?
Andy Galpin 16:14
This is a great question we get all the time. So in the NBA and Major League Baseball, and in hockey, and the UFC, and all of our fighting sports. By definition, we’re competing between 7 and 11 p.m. across the board, and NFL is different, we get to play one o’clock games a lot, four o’clock games, then the occasional Monday, Thursday night game. But this is our day to day problem, right?
We deal with this every single day. In those particular cases, because we’re professionals, we tried to do things like we’re not doing 8am 80s, because we have to acknowledge the fact that we can’t tell these guys get to sleep by 11. But it’s like you go pitch a baseball game, and then like, be asleep at 45. But like, it’s just zero chance gonna happen, right? They have 1000 reasons, right? NBA, like, you’re on the road every couple days, you’re playing like you’re just not gonna have. So one, realistic expectations on how long that takes to then not setting ourselves up for failure in the next morning. So then the bus is not a 9am bus, we’re going to push it to know we’d rather get later into the next city and preserve our sleep, like, just lots of little strategies like that. Other stuff you can do in those particular things are we push hard to implement post game and post practice downregulation. So one of the things you can do is you can accelerate this process. If you finish practice or a game, and then you go to the locker room, and the vibing music is a particular vibe, and then everybody’s excited, lights are on, everything’s loud, what do you expect to happen? No one’s downright the fact they’re just like more hyped up, and then they’re going to charge out of there with energy. And then you’re going to go into that stuff. So can you dim lights a little bit? Can you play a different style of music? Sometimes the answer is no. Like, you’re not going to tell anybody, like, no hip hop after it. Like, so again, like, there’s philosophy, there’s concepts we’re trying to do. And then it’s like, okay, you got to be realistic, I get that. But conceptually, we’re trying to get to a more downregulated state quicker. One thing we have done a lot is you can do things like three minutes, three minutes where we’re going to turn the lights off, we’re going to land our back, we’re going to cover our eyes, and we’re just going to breathe for three minutes. Right? Okay, good. Right. And then yeah, someone will then go put music on like, sure, great. But like, you’re trying something. And you’ll be stunned how quickly heart rate comes back down to resting. They’re gonna recover because they’re super athletes. But what we’re looking at is really small changes of heart rate an hour later, two hours later, what’s the resting heart rate when they went to sleep, that will markedly go down when you implement more downregulation stuff. Again, that’s not their post exercise recovery, that will be back down to normal within two minutes. It’s that type of stuff. When we start to look at data, like, what does their heart rate look like one hour into sleep?
Andy Galpin 18:43
Again, this is when you’ll start to see that stuff be like significantly lower when you do a little bit of downregulation, which means they’re in a far deeper parasympathetic state. They’re not having sympathetic arousal. Their sleep quality is much more effective. They don’t wake up nearly as often.
Then next day, refreshments improves. If you can get them to do that on their own, if you can get them to have a minimal wind down routine before bed, a minimal wind down routine, those things make major impacts on this stuff that don’t influence you having to try to tell a 19 year old to go to bed. We generally call these passive. A wind down routine is a little bit active. But can you do things like again, when you get home, if you’re doing ABC, can you keep the lights lower? Let’s make sure we like we’re not watching tik tok 30 minutes before bed, like tik tok is literally the worst offender possible.
What you want to do is avoid it’s not necessarily light and things that are as bad. The thing that is the hardest part with this is the things that are searching for a nozzle and novelty. It’s that stuff that kills them. So it’s like, can we switch over to a different type of TV? Can we watch a different style of stuff on your phone? So there’s lots of little things you can do. Those require some behavioral change. But as many of the non behavioral change things that are passive, improving their bedding, improving noise canceling stuff in their ears, like lots of little stuff that are heavy lift that are not unrealistic to be like, you’re not going to make these lifestyle changes.
So all of those things, Pat, going to like our comprehensive program, like this is how we manage that problem. Because we cannot change your circadian timing, like this is not an option based on yours.
Patrick Carney 20:21
He also talked about recovery training, and I guess it’s two-pronged. Like what, as a coach, are the factors where we should give a day off, or we should maybe have a recovery training, and what do you recommend, what does a good recovery training look like?
Andy Galpin 20:36
Yes, it’s a great question. And I can’t really give you a direct answer. We’ve done this stuff for years. I can give you an answer from a individual perspective. But from like a team wide, how do I know when the team needs a day off? We don’t have a good answer.
If you’re collecting some data on them, then we could, like, maybe get a bit closer to answers. But if it’s not, then this is just when you actually have to go back to your coaching experience. You should consider, I’ll say this is the obvious stuff, but like the vast majority of people don’t. It’s wild. I mean, just think about the schedule. Did we do day, night, back to back? Are we out here on a travel thing? And then just use a little bit of that. It’s crazy. Coaches will just be like, no, we did this is what we do. Saturdays at 11. And they did do not change independent schedule, like at all. And I’m like, Okay, did you realize the fact that you went from blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, plus it was finals? Didn’t think to that. Just look at the real high level basics and go, okay, we probably need. Can we switch this to walk through? Maybe you still want them waking up? Can we switch this to a pool session? Or film? Or could we play a game? Instead of, you know, we’re doing our conditioning drills, we’re not even basketball game, switching up and play frisbee, whatever, dodge, like some other thing. This is like, okay, you got to move in there. And so I’d say for most people with if you don’t have data on the individual team, what we will do, we will look at day, week, month at a time. So we will look at this and go, okay, what’s January, February, March look like? And then you look at the schedule, you start to plot travel, you start to plot time, and you go, okay, physiologically, there’s going to be the most strain in February. So we are proactively then going, okay, in February, we’re going to do a B and C, going into it, which is could be things like, we’re going to cut down practice 15 minutes, for every Wednesday, Friday, or something, right? Because we just know volume is so high across that month, we’re just going to proactively go after this or things like that. So if you’re really just thinking through big picture stuff, it actually is pretty easy for, you don’t have to be a sport scientist, it does look at me like, well, we got five back to backs. Okay, great, we’re going to like get ahead of this recovery curve. Because we can’t do anything about the schedule and these kids are in class or whatever else. That would be my strongest advice. This week, mainly baseball schedule started to come out. And one of our teams we deal with has like 26 games in the first 30 days of the season. And we’re like, okay, we’re doing spring training different this year, because we know coming right out the gates, we’re playing 26 and 30. Okay, we just know what’s happening. So just why wait and get pissed off at the end, when you’re all tired and like, and just do something about it, but ahead of time, like you just know, it’s going to be there.
Andy Galpin 23:02
And typically, that happens like mid to late season. And I’m like, well, we know it’s happening. We see this, we know the schedule. So it was nice medical staff, everybody was like, yeah, okay, it doesn’t make sense. This is we get why you guys want to do this. It’s pretty easy conversation.
Dan Krikorian 23:14
A quick reminder as we head into the summer. One reason we’re excited to partner with the NABC is the work that they continue to do advocating for coaches. The NABC serves as a national voice for coaches across all levels, making sure they have a seat at the table as major decisions shape the future of college basketball. They’re also supporting coaches through First Chair, a new virtual seminar for NABC members entering their first season as a college head coach, built to help them navigate the unique challenges of leading the program. We’re proud to support the NABC’s work helping coaches grow, lead, and have their voices heard.
Learn more at nabc.com. The off-season looks quiet from the outside, but coaches know better. It’s film, portal lists, and recruiting boards, all running at the same time. Huddle keeps it from becoming a logistical nightmare. Sports code, fast recruit, and Huddle Instat all in one place. One workflow instead of three browser tabs and a spreadsheet. Learn more at huddle.com slash slapping glass today. Thanks for your thoughts there. We wanna transition now to a segment on the show. We call start, sub, or sit. We’re gonna give you three options around a topic, ask you to start one and sub one, sit one on the bench, and then we’ll discuss from there. So if you’re ready for this first one, we’ll hop in.
Andy Galpin 24:34
Yes, sir.
Dan Krikorian 24:35
Okay, this could be about for coaches just thinking about trade-offs. We’re kind of terming it, silent stressors, mental loads for players. So I’m going to give you three different things within basketball coaching that your start here would be the one that would cause probably the most silent stress that we’re maybe not thinking about. So mental loads on players, silent stressors.
Option one is travel. Option two are walk-throughs, pregame walk-throughs, what we’re doing in those walk-throughs. Option three is just our film and scout prep and what we do for them mentally there. So start or sit, your start being, what’s the most mental stress or mental load of those three?
Andy Galpin 25:18
Okay, so for sure, obviously travel is gonna do the most. It’s not necessarily the mental load on it, but it is the, we’ve talked a lot about sleep, but sleep would be the biggest impact there and plenty more to that, but it’s not a mental load thing, but it will manifest itself in mental and what’s this called, allostatic load. Allostatic load is the science word for all the stressors in your system combined. And so that can manifest itself in mental load. That’s a pretty easy one.
Having done more than a few film sessions in my life as a college athlete, there’s a lot of sleeping and dozing off and not paying attention on those things, especially no offense, but basketball, it’s not as difficult of a film thing as something like football. It’s just so complicated film sessions and football. Basketball is far harder than baseball. Film sessions and baseball are pretty funny, but it’s kind of a different level there. So I would probably say that would be my third, my sit-on, because you can have cruise skills. Walkthroughs are easy physically. So I think the cognitive load is probably a little bit higher in those, depending on your style of walkthrough. And then as you all know, some walkthroughs are pretty aggressive. Like it’s a very loose definition of walkthrough here when everybody’s pouring in sweat and you’re like, okay, like that was a walkthrough, I guess, right? Or is this like the hotel lobby or airport walkthrough where you’re literally stepping through things. So I’d probably say that, like travel, walkthrough, film at the bottom.
Dan Krikorian 26:37
zooming out for a second, thinking about as a coach, how all these things interconnect, the physical, the mental, the emotional, Pat are talking about game day stuff right now. You’re always trying to be cognizant as a coach of where’s my team at from all of these perspectives and just the work that you do and how those things interrelate in your mind and what we’re aware of.
Andy Galpin 26:59
I am a physiologist. I have some dear, dear, dear friends that are sports psychologists, psychologists, psychiatrists and all the above. So I say this with all love, but to me, psychology is just a misunderstood physiology, which is my joke. Please don’t defend him. It’s my way of saying, look, if you take care of physiology, certainly not indicating all mental health is perfect after that, but that’s the way I approach it, right?
It’s just like, make sure that the body is not either inducing or exacerbating anything that’s going on emotionally, psychologically or otherwise, right? We can actually define this and give you examples in multiple directions there, but when you look at basic things like, there’s a molecule in your body called carbon dioxide. When you take a breath in, you breathe in oxygen. When you exhale, you exhale CO2, carbon dioxide, right? That’s, plants do the opposite. They breathe in CO2, they breathe out O2. So this is very basic. Well, CO2 in your body is the direct connection between physiology and psychology. You have plenty of them, but it’s one of the main drivers. So when you actually are sitting there and holding your breath and you start to feel that like panic urge to breathe, it’s not because you’re getting low on oxygen. It’s because the amount of CO2 is building up really high. So the sensation to breathe is a function directly of CO2 concentrations. If CO2 gets really, really low, you don’t feel an urge to breathe. When you feel a real desire or urge to breathe, this induces psychological panic. So if you were to work in a psychology research lab, the way that those folks do research on things like panic attacks and anxiety, is they give you a tank and let you breathe in CO2. So we can induce panic attacks and altered anxiety, things like that, by just breathing in CO2. So we know that there’s this very direct and physiological way that we can induce in either direction. I can put you in anxiety or I can reduce your anxiety. And this is why going back to like a little bit of breathing after practice, like a little bit of downregulation will bring those numbers back to a normal level. And then psychologically, you’ll see a direct impact of that, which then manifests itself right back into physiology. We can look at things like people’s CO2 tolerance. Some people are really sensitive to CO2. So a little bit starts to build up and they actually start to see psychological changes. They make worse decisions. They freak out. They aren’t as common or pressure, like all those things, certainly indicating that is all driven entirely by CO2, but it’s certainly a part of the equation, right? So when we are going to look at stuff like that, that holistic picture, what we’re trying to look at are what are these things, right?
Andy Galpin 29:26
And so if we’re seeing somebody that’s has an actual psychological, certainly of its clinical, then like, let’s get some of those appropriate individuals, right? Let’s head that route.
But if not, it’s like, what can we, if we’re just talking about general things like I am burnt out or lack of motivation or I’m not focused today, there’s an enormous amount that is being regulated by your physiology that we have access to and we can control. And so a little bit of appropriate different styles of breath work, pre-practice, they’re not there, they’re not checked in, they’re not locked in. You can scream at them. That works. You can play music. Like that works. Like there’s lots of things you can do. Or there’s some stuff physiologically that you can do that will help get them in that spot that they don’t even know necessarily you’re doing a mental thing on them.
Or the opposite. They’re over the moon. They’re too hyped up or pissed off or whatever the case, let’s bring them back down. And so we want to be in that perfect inverted U, right?
We have this nice arousal level, but we’re not under or over aroused. And I, again, my bias simply prefer to do that from a physiological route. Most of the time, that said, I’ll certainly play some sports like games here and there, which I have learned again from many of my colleagues. So having the tools to play all those games, right? You can’t always do it physically, right? Like, so if you’re physically shots, like, okay, maybe we can do this. Maybe we, you guys probably do this all the time, by the way. This is the, okay, fine. All practice today, we’re only using our offhand. Or we’re doing no shoes today. You’re just like, what? You’re like, it’s just like these fun games we would like, I played college football. Once a year, we didn’t know about it. We would show up and the entire practice, we would do reverses. So offense only to defense and defense only played offense. You run harder, you run routes harder. Every drill you’re doing at 100%. They would always do it towards the end of the season, in the playoffs, like when you’re tired.
And you get way more physical effort by just doing like, Reversity Day, right? Where you’re just like, yeah, I gotta run routes in the defense, or the offense. It’s like, yeah, now you’ll see how hard it is to guard somebody man to man, right? All these things. You coaches do this type of stuff all the time. And then our coaches, just together in a football example, we’ll do the opposite. Again, once a year, and it took me to like, my junior year to figure out like, oh, they’re doing this on purpose. Right, like five minutes before practice, they would throw out a new coverage at us. We’d be like, whoa, whoa, whoa. And then you have all these questions, right? Because football is so complicated with all the different sets and all this stuff. It’s like, well, what if they motioned this? They wouldn’t tell us, right? Because it’s like, well, yeah. And so what would happen? We’d get in to practice. We start running it, and it’s just chaos. It’s busted coverage as every other play, right?
Andy Galpin 31:53
Because we don’t have rules for A, B, and C. And then everyone would freak out. Because you’re like, linebacker screwed up, and safety screwed up, whatever. And everyone’s getting yelled at constantly.
You’re yelling at each other. And then you look over at him, and he’s just like sitting there. And he’s just like, blah, blah, blah, like yelling at us. And I’m like, oh, he just made us freak out. And then he would come over afterwards and be like, okay, so what happens in a game if we start breaking down? Is this how we’re gonna react? And we’re like, oh, shit. So the whole thing was a trick. He intentionally gave us a coverage he knew wouldn’t gonna work. And we didn’t have rules for it to let us melt down, to then come back and be like, less than learned, right? This is not how we react to failure. So he induced panic on one side, and then they induce the opposite and assign. It’s just having a little bit of a coaching field to say like, how are we gonna get to this problem? Or if the energy’s not there, again, maybe we do this from the physiological side.
Patrick Carney 32:42
I’d like to follow up on travel, and maybe we specifically look at bus rides and a lot of teams, mine included, have to go travel by bus. What should coaches maybe prepare for or prep for based on bus ride duration and, you know, like two hours, just go straight there, three hours, take a break or five hours, like what are you trying to do? Or can you go the night before, like, how does bus ride duration affect performance and what your coach may be thinking about?
Andy Galpin 33:09
If you’re on that time frame, I wouldn’t worry about it. Two, three, four hours, you’re probably not seeing anything like that. If you start to get past that three and a half hour to eight hour range, I wouldn’t necessarily think you have to worry about stopping per se. That’s probably not going to do much.
But what I’d say is you want to get to your destination earlier. It’ll take them longer to come back. So if you want to do something like a quick activation before you get, this is one of your moderate level mobility, stretch, move, dynamic, things like that, then get on the bus, then get going. Then try to get there, whatever is realistic, two to three hours earlier than you would. So you can do the same thing, and then go relax, recover, and then start your pre-game or pre-practice routine. So basically, what you’re trying to do is squeeze in two actual movement sessions, would be there.
We actually did a study a number of years ago where we didn’t look at the bus, we looked at plane rides, and we had people in University of Connecticut to collaborate with UConn. We took blood and we had them do a simulated practice at UConn. They flew to LA, we did the same thing, had them stay overnight, took more blood, more performance, and then flew them back. So we’re looking at transcontinental travel back there, and then had their simulated game, if you will, back at UConn, and half of the group wore compression gear, and the other half did not effectively. In the blood work, it was pretty significant for the compression gear having a positive effect.
Whether you’re on a bus or plane, I don’t necessarily get matters per se. So we will generally advocate where as much compression stuff as you’re busing in. Now, conflict of interest to bulge, this was Under Armour funded the study, which I don’t have any relationship with them, but take that information for what you will evolve. It doesn’t matter that it’s Under Armour, but we will generally try to get as much compression gear on our people. If it’s under four hours of plane or whatever, I’m not worried about it. But if it’s over that, and then a lot of our athletes will compete internationally, especially like our golfers and live tour and our fighters and stuff like we’re going everywhere. If you’ve got seven or 10 or 14 days before you compete, it’s not a big deal. But if you’re traveling, landing, and then you’re going to compete the next day or two, then we’ll try to be like, hey, compression gear as much as we possibly can, and then dealing with time zones is a whole different question.
But that’s what we generally try to do. If we’re working through an injury or something like that, we’re going to want them to be as active as possible every 45 to 60 minutes there. So this could look like all the air squats, isometric contractions. We might use a device like a Firefly. I don’t know if you guys have seen one of those. It’s a tiny little electrical device that you can put on the front outside of your shin, and it makes your foot twitch.
Andy Galpin 35:39
Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. There’s a lot of research on Firefly, actually, so really effective for generating blood flow. So we use things like that, whether that’s actually improving performance, I don’t know, but the research in other realms of physiology is reasonable.
If you can get, of course, the normatics and the things like that, hyper ice, we use loads of hyper ice, but just a little bit of activation, so you’re not just sitting in stiff the entire six hours would be how I think about it. So whatever fits your budget and ability, you can’t have everybody getting up to any air squats on a whole bus. You can try to get folks as much as they can.
Patrick Carney 36:13
You mentioned some exercises, some devices we talked about in the recovery cycle, the down regulating state, if you know, like, hey, we’re 30 minutes from finally being there, should turn lights on turn music on or is it like you said, just get them off the bus early and do another routine would be enough.
Andy Galpin 36:31
I wouldn’t worry about upregulation that far out because you’re probably getting there at least three hours before tip-off anyways. They’re gonna have plenty of time to get up.
They’re gonna get there and all those things. Forcing upregulation is almost never an issue. You probably have to go to your way quite a bit for standard regulation, which is something you actually might want to do in the reverse, which is to say five hours out from tip-off. Maybe we cut lights, we cut everything, and we’re gonna do a 20-minute zen time. It’s like all of you take your headphones out, put the devices down, or do 15 minutes of team blackout. Okay great, like get a little bit of downregulation and while we have that thing going on, that might actually be more beneficial and then they can go back to other stuff.
Patrick Carney 37:11
All right, well, Andy, this actually kind of transitions then into our next question as we talk about now pregame warmups Pre-prep for a performance We all have limited time in our warm-up what we want to hit on activating bodies and getting our shots or rhythm So in your opinion, where would you spend the most time on preparing your athlete out of these three things? We’re going to give you here to prepare them for performance Option one would be their movement prep preparing them to move for the demands of the game preparing them for the physicality demands of the game And then option three would be their coordination and balance
Andy Galpin 37:52
I think if you asked a bunch of high performance people that question, you’d get a lot of fighting over those answers. I’m having a hard time in my brain being like a third, a third, a third.
I think you’d be pretty foolish. You might sound like an exercise physiologist if you were like, yeah, just get their movement prep and get them physically prepared. Like every athlete would be like, oh, yeah, just so take no shots before the game. All the athletes would be like, no, just let me shoot around. I would probably say unless you have a real very specific movement deficiency, or problem that could probably be pushed on the pecking order a little bit. Because the fact that if you got them physically ready, cardiovascular system was going, temperature was up, all that stuff. And they were skill ready. If you aren’t moving perfectly in game because you didn’t do your ankle mobility or your hamstring, whatever. If you’re dealing with that every other day, fine. Unless you have somebody who are like, yo, when we don’t do this, they hurt their back a lot. Okay, well then definitely do it. But if this is just a general prophylactic maintenance type of stuff, you could probably cut that thing down a little bit. Nobody, not a single person in the history of sports wants to go on a game not feeling their feel. You have to hit the shots. You have to throw the throws, right? No one’s going to be happy about that. In addition to that, by doing that, a lot of people will get kind of warmed up pretty good. You’re going to be out there, physical demands will get up there. So if you force me into anything besides like third, third, third, I would probably say when you go into sports, man, if you don’t feel right, no one’s going to be happy. Whether to actually change your performance or not, they’re not going to be happy. So if you start to cut that time out, I think you’re going to lose that every single way. So I wouldn’t do that. And if they’re feeling good, then you can push towards more of the physical type of stuff. But if not, you’re going to lose.
Patrick Carney 39:32
My follow up is on like that physical prep, you know, me and Dan talk a lot, and I think, you know, yeah, there’s a lot of like on air, you know, preparing for movements, their shot, the rhythm. How would you talk to coaches or help coaches to understand without like overloading them, but properly loading them?
Of course, be prepared for contact. And when the game starts, they’re not surprised by the physicality of your opponent.
Andy Galpin 39:56
You know, I think I’m sensitive to your point, right? So we deal with this, in my perspective, this would be very akin to, imagine a UFC fighter, shadow boxing, and then going into a fight. Not gonna go well, right?
Every combat sport athlete will do that. They’re gonna bring in their friend with them, but they’re going to spar before the fight. They’re going to wrestle, they’re gonna do takedowns, they’re gonna do like all that stuff before the fight, and then you’ll see them like, physically punching them all themselves, right? Which is like, nah, but you have to get ready for that contact to your point. So I think especially it’s gonna be a little bit different for your bigs versus your guards, but certainly you can see the situation of the bigs being more akin, it’s just like, you’re going to be pushed in the first 10 seconds. Like there’s gonna be a forearm in your back in the first 10 seconds of this game. Let’s get prepared for that.
My instinct would be to say like, yeah, like get that work in on the court. Let’s bump a little bit, like let’s move in those things. You’re gonna have a contact on the land, and so if you can, I guess facilitate the element there. I mean, imagine a baseball player, like stepping up into their first a bat, having not hit a ball with a bat that day. Ah, like hands are gonna shake a little bit. It’s like, hold on.
Patrick Carney 41:01
You know, I guess too, in terms of we don’t need to get into the weeds of what exercise do, but you know, if you have your own court work, but again, like you’re only getting a half court, like if you’re not working at a basket, I guess talking with maybe your strength and conditioning coach, how would you tell them maybe like, Hey, give them some, you know, we all see different stretches working on the ladder, but how would you make sure they’re hitting each other or they’re feeling contact in a warm up specific capacity?
Andy Galpin 41:24
The super easy drills you could do in the NFL, we just have lots of dummy pads, right? So you have a strength coach and a system person on there, just like, okay, like set going in, just hit the pad, right? But you’ll also see, watch every NFL game warm up ever, and they hit each other. You’re going to do little drills where all your linebackers are together. One linebacker has the ball, they run to the corner, and the other linebacker kind of comes up. And if you’re going through the motions, you’re getting that contact there.
My first instinct would be like, bigs against bigs. Get them on the baseline and just push, push, push for 10 steps, okay, great. Let’s get that post move in. Like you push, the guy, let him do three, then you switch, you push, you get three, and like just kind of get your sports specific stuff. In that particular case, like you’re going to really hedge on sports specific. In our combat sports, we’re like, just give us a look, right, which is like, don’t hurt, don’t press, but don’t be so light that I’m not like getting a realistic feel for this kind of contact, right? So like, give me the look, right? Don’t know what that means. So I would have that like probably player driven, more than almost anything is like, give me the contact. Like we’re going to do layup drill here and you kind of ride the guy’s hip and as it goes through and protect ankles and all that type of stuff. But I think you can probably facilitate that into your sports specific warmup, more than just about anything, whereas they’re like, you start off with layup line, whatever, and then as you’re more lathered, you work into, let’s ride the hip a little bit, let’s get a little push, let’s land dynamically off here. And it’s no different than the guys kind of when they’re shooting threes or whatever, all right, kind of fly at me doing that kind of stuff. It’s like, okay, great. And now we’re just adding that little bit of contact piece to those other exchanges. So I probably handle it more in your sports specific recommendations from like skill side rather than the SNC side.
Dan Krikorian 43:02
When you’re ramping up into a full performance, how much of your pregame preparation should you be going at 100% of what a game rep would be, and how close to game time? So you’re going hard 45 minutes before the game, but then you come back down and then you’re kind of shooting jump shots, or is it you should be going harder right before the performance? When you’re talking about just from the physiology side of it, how should we prep so that we’re going hard right before tip-off or level it off?
Andy Galpin 43:31
And sorry for the other sport analogies, all the teams we work with are usually on the blood work side or the sleep side or whatever. So this type of stuff I work with other sports on just by Sherlock. So what I’ll say is again, if we think about what we will do for our professional fighters or for the NFL players is we always call it touch the curtain. I want you to touch that curtain. I don’t want you to go blasting through it. I don’t need you to hit it as hard as you can, but I want you to touch that curtain.
And this is a high heart rate, right? This is like a max. This is a game simulated thing. And I want that probably to happen in the UFC.
We call it get the first round out. And then if we have 10 to 15 minutes before we start the walk and then the walk is going to take five to seven. And then we got, depending on if we’re red or blue corner, we’re going to have another like seven to 12 minutes for intros and like all that other stuff. So you know, you’re already looking at 40 minutes in that timeframe. So we try to get that last real hard first round as close to walking out to the cage as we can because we know we have that delay.
That’s going to already give us 15, 20 minutes because you don’t want it to be an hour. The NFL, it’s the same thing. Like you’re going to ramp that stuff up. You’re going to go in the locker room. You’ll see they tend to hit the locker room like eight to 12 minutes before kickoff. They’re gone for a few minutes and they’re right back out there. So you can time that. The UFC, I don’t know when you’re going to fight because it depended on the previous fight and boxing things like that and wrestling tournaments. You get two tournaments. Like, I don’t know, but in the NFL, I know kickoff is at one Oh five. So we can time things out perfectly.
Baseball, I don’t first pitch like all these things. You know that in basketball. So you know, right? So you can tinker with this a little bit. My immediate instinct would be something like if you can get to a max heart rate, probably 15 to 20 minutes before tip off for your top seven. You know, you guys are going to be in the first few minutes of the game. The other guys might go closer to tip off. You know, you’re not coming in until minute 12 or whatever. Whatever your guys have said is there, maybe push them closer to tip off because you’re going to have that 23rd minute delay. They know they’re not coming in. I wouldn’t do it much shorter than that as in closer to the game. But it extends out a little bit longer to that. As long as they stay moving and stuff, they’re pretty primed. They should be pretty okay. Those first couple of minutes on the court might be a little dicey. They’ll be okay. So that would be my, like, I would say 20 minutes would be pretty close and sure. You just want to touch that high heart rate.
You don’t have to get there and grind and like, get all the way up there, get all the way up there close. Right. You’re not going to wear a heart rate monitor. We’re not like check. I don’t know. Like, you know, the feeling get that first possession out, get that first round out and then settle it.
Dan Krikorian 45:57
Well, Andy, you’re off the start, sub, or sit, hot seat, as we call it. So thanks for playing that game with us.
That was a ton of fun. So our final question that we ask all the guests is what’s the best investment that you’ve made in your career?
Andy Galpin 46:09
That’s a tough one. I would say taking effectively an unpaid job an hour and a half away my senior year of college. I was still playing college football but I was done academically basically. Let me back up.
The real answer was volunteering to take blood pressures on campus in the rain when I have zero interest in public health and blood pressure. I’ll keep this short-ish but the reality of it is I’m in an exercise physiology class I’m an undergraduate and the professor was really into public health and stuff like that and they’re like hey we want to run this campaign where we take blood pressure when I set up a booth outside and just help people kind of be more aware of their own health. Does anyone want to volunteer? And I was like sure I’ll do it. She’s like great do you want to go into like public health and stuff and I was like no no I have no interest in that but like why not help out right it’s just physiology it’s something great. She’s like do you know how to check blood pressure? And I’m like nope no idea great. I went to school in a small school in Oregon like I did division three school Linfield. I sat outside in the rain in Oregon for three hours not a single person wants their blood checked on a campus. So it’s like all right well that was a waste. So I felt like I wasted half a day or more with a skill set I’ll never use again but fine fast forward several months and the same faculty member had a former student who was at Dita’s. So Dita’s national headquarters is in Portland and she’s like hey they have a corporate wellness program they have a gym up there and they have an opening do you want this job? And I’m like yes I didn’t ask when what days of the week what time like what the pay was I’m just like yes one I definitely just needed money and two I’m like great it’s at Dita’s who knows what’s gonna happen.
Andy Galpin 47:49
Well they needed somebody to open their corporate wellness gym you know like six in the morning or something like that it’s an hour plus drive away and I’m still playing college football so I’m like great so I’ll be getting up at 4 30 to drive an hour and a half for a minimum wage job to be a personal trainer which is like death right I’m like this is the worst this is probably worse than blood pressure so great I mean so I always got up super super early because it’s like the way I grew up my dad’s like if you’re there 10 minutes early you’re late so I’m like great and I got traffic and I have a you know $600 car could break down I’m like jeez I can’t be late all this thing so I’m up there way early and I always noticed there was like four or five people that were at the door waiting for us to open and so I was always there like half an hour early so I just let them in and it’s this group consistent people well eventually those people are like hey will you help train us and great so we were doing this like group training kind of thing there well the like five people there four of them were on the executive board and Dita’s but I had no idea the other one worked at the smoothie bar and I was like I’m just like coaching them all as hard as I can right like regardless of where that acts I don’t know because you know you on the internet really back then so I can’t like google who these people are there’s no linked in like whatever I’m just like coaching because at least I’m here I’m coaching I don’t get paid any extra personal training I’m still getting probably 10 bucks an hour and I gotta leave by like two o’clock drive back get to meetings practice and like do the whole thing right well it took a few months before one of the guys was like hey we just started a partnership with this guy in Arizona who has this new idea to put to make a strength conditioning building and he wants to put athletes and nutrition and Cairo and PT all in the same building for these pro athletes and I’m like well that sounds incredible would you go there and intern for six months for free and I’m like hell yeah move to Arizona so as soon as season was over I moved to Arizona I didn’t get a dollar for six months this guy was called Mark Verstegen and that gym was called athletes performance that launched into one of the biggest franchises and all these other models came off of Mark’s idea it’s now called Exos they’re one of the largest corporate wellness companies in the world but I walked into that facility having not known a single famous person in my life never even met anybody famous never been around a professional athlete don’t know anybody who’d ever met a professional athlete and I’m immediately helping coach 16 guys who are the first round of the NFL draft we had probably 200 athletes in there loads of hall of famers at the time actually like the second week we’re there the entire Boston Celtics team was there like baseball players like all over the place and I’m like well this is tremendous and so now a few months in it got the point where I was literally was like out of money every credit card was maxed I was like I have to go back home and get a job but then I had on my resume like I’ve coached and I could start filling in the blanks like this person this person then these people go on their pro teams and they go on their stuff and then now I have these relationships and like my entire career came out of that and people always ask like how do you get into pro sports and stuff I’m like I don’t know start checking blood pressure and I can tell you 500 stories by the way of things I did like that that went nowhere because that’s what’s gonna happen the vast majority of the time but the fact is like you have to take every shot on goal
Dan Krikorian 51:02
All right, Pat, hey, let’s hop into this recap. Great having Andy on to just, you know, for our world’s thinking about cognitive load, how much we’re going body on body, recovery, sleep, you know, travel, really interesting stuff. And so he’s done great work on it, works with a ton of teams and it’s fantastic. So great having him on today.
Let’s hop right into it to our top three takeaways. And for number one, let me throw that to you.
Patrick Carney 51:27
Like you said, really interesting conversation. My first takeaway is, how do we better recover our guys or at least give them ever opportunity recover? Like you said, whether they decide to sleep or not at a reasonable time, we can only control so much. But that part of the first conversation I really enjoyed, especially I think, you know, the one thing hopefully or not all the time is trying to, how we schedule practice week days off recovery training, how, like you said, the loads.
And taking that all into account, I think, where the conversation went is like how we can think about avoiding cannibalizing the sleep, again, going and giving our guys the opportunity to sleep. And that whole conversation that just kind of stemmed from, from sleep. And then immediately, like after practice, how we also have to trying to help them downgrade, what did he say, he said, get to a down and regulated state, and passive ways that maybe we can help. I mean, of course, you can’t tell them no music, you know, but these subtle ways, I like dimming lights, three minute breathing, encouraging some wind down routines, you know, even talk about getting off TikTok, you know, I know there’s like blue light glasses, you know, all this stuff that just like he said, can just lower their heart rates, get them hopefully sleeping better longer. You know, I like the study he referenced about sleep education while yeah, I’m sure the guys may all roll an eye, but it has an effect of maybe getting 45 minutes longer, I think every percent counts.
Dan Krikorian 52:50
Yeah. And I think so much of our jobs as coaches is these trade-offs, like managing trade-offs all the time of like where you’re putting energy, where you’re taking energy, what’s important, what’s not. And I think that’s kind of, you know, what we circle around a lot when today, I mean, there’s obviously coaching trade-offs when it just comes to, you know, what you do, what you run analytics. There’s trade-offs everywhere in coaching.
Today’s more on the just mental, physical, emotional load side of players. And just being, I think, aware of there are trade-offs to every single thing you do. And so case in point, the early morning practice, is it just something where you’re listening to this podcast and maybe you’ve got a 9am schedule on a Saturday because that’s the only time you get the gym at the high school college level? Well, because, you know, women are coming in after us and then we got games, like, I can only go at eight or nine, but is there a trade-off? Can we push it back a half hour on certain days and just go a little shorter? Is that more beneficial to give them the extra half hour sleep? Just having that in your mind, I think, is good enough. Like we’re not all going to be up on the exact science and have maybe all the tech and the things like that maybe higher levels have, which are great. But just knowing that those things are important, I think, is that was a huge part of the lesson today is like, it’s worth thinking about your own individual programs all the time. I think just from a coaching side, there’s the tendency, and I am guilty as ever, you want to give them more information, more shots, more reps, more film, because it just feels like the more they have, the better prepared they are and makes you feel better as a coach. But like, sometimes is it pulling back? Is it just the extra hours sleep and the recovery and the breathing? And you know, he talked later about just, you know, the reverse day in football where they come in offense to defense. Those are the balancing acts that we have to think about.
Patrick Carney 54:38
But, you know, much like players, I think coaches are creatures of habit. And when we talked about, I think it was in like, you know, recovery day versus an off day and how it’s important that we factor in the schedule and of course we all look at it, but then kind of planning out, you know, he talked about like, maybe a Saturday should be taken off, but if it’s like, well, this is what we always do, you know, and kind of having that adaptability, I think is key for us. And just like these marginal gains where if you see like, okay, we’re in it January, February, we’re in conference, the games are coming fast and furious and it’s just like, we just need a talking to staff, like make sure we’re just taking 15 minutes off of practice, you know, not necessarily cutting everything down or we need more off days or light days, but just the 15 minutes and knowing like, hey, in January, February, like, yeah, we got to cut it back makes a difference. And I thought that was a really good point.
And that’s like stuff you can prepare for once you get the schedule kind of forecasting out. And again, as we as coaches can prepare for these habit changes that we’re needing to make or to become adaptable knowing, right, this is the time is what we talked about in August, we knew it, we got to monitor our guys, I got to get practices under 90 minutes, whatever it may be 10 minutes shorter, plays a huge role.
Dan Krikorian 55:49
There is this side of it, but it’s also, well, are you coming off of winning three in a row, losing three in a row, who’s your opponent, the next game. What’s the togetherness of the team? Do they need a day off from each other? Like, you know, that’s why it’s like just so situational per group.
Patrick Carney 56:03
It goes back to what he said, the trade-offs. If you want to go hard at them too, because they are playing like crap.
Everything will have a cost, good or bad. All right, Dan, throw it to you for the second takeaway.
Dan Krikorian 56:14
So I’m going to go to your start subset, which is pregame warmups and just thinking how we can prepare our athletes when the ball’s tipped that we’re just as prepared as possible from a movement, real game environment perspective. We can do layup lines for 15 minutes and everybody’s feeling good and there’s a bunch of dunks and then it’s like, okay, they come out and their other teams get right into their set and it’s physical and they’re pounding the ball inside. Are you ready for that physically? And I would say a lot of times that’s the hard part, the first three or four minutes of a game is like, are we ready for this and how in warmups can we get it closer?
I thought that was an interesting conversation as far as one kind of at the end there, it was how close to game time should they get pretty close to a game rep or their heart rate up. I thought it was good because you mentioned about 20 minutes, right? At least for your first five to seven to feel that heart rate get up there was like a good one. He had this story about the UFC fighter and touching the curtain and at what time they want to do that I think was good. And then Zach Guthrie, South Bay Lakers head coach just gave a terrific presentation on court demonstration at our Slapping Glass Coaches Summit this past year, all on pre-game warmups and just ways to add three on three, four on four, some variability. So not only are they physically primed, but then also like they’ve made some decisions too. So you’re like mentally primed before the ball’s tip I thought was worth throwing in there that I was thinking about during this conversation.
Patrick Carney 57:41
Yeah. And that’s where this question originated from because for me, watching coach Guthrie’s presentation really changed the way I think about it and what I’ve tried to apply with our team and preparing them for the movements of the game, making reads against real defenders, real bodies and real space. But the thing I, which I was so interested about this question is, I like what he said when he said touch the curtain, so not duplicate the physicality that we’re playing aggressive and risking injury, but get them to like you alluded to when the game starts. They’re not going to be surprised by the opponent’s physicality.
I think for a lot of us, you know, I watched coach Guthrie’s presentation and it was great. I took as much as I could from, but we don’t all have the luxury of having a huge staff and a bunch of guys who just finished college that can go out there and defend and on minimal staff. This is where I’m thinking worth. It’s me out there. Yeah. How can I implement some physicality? And I think the other kind of hurdle I run into is, and what he mentioned, and I agree is the best way to replicate it is have your players do it. But at the same time, when we’re like 40 minutes out of the game, some players are going to do it. But if you’re a team that’s less physically inclined, are they going to do it? If there’s motivation is, are we going to be then yelling on their ass, like 40 minutes demanding that they hit and they go hard. And again, I go back to this trade off. Where does it sit and how we prepare our guys for the physicality of the games?
And that’s why too, I think if you have an SNC coach, can they just do drills where the very least like you’re touching bodies, hitting shoulder to shoulder, if you don’t have the big staff to just like, yeah, we’re going to play some four on four, or you tell your guys, I agree. I mean, it’s stuff I thought about, let’s do some layups, but you’re on their hip and you watch and it’s just like a feathers on their hip, you know, it’s just like, we’re just there, or their shadow, you know, and it’s just trying to rev them up. I think a lot is like educating our guys and the importance of like, hey, we need to touch the curtain, as he said, or get that first round out, I thought was also a good way to pose it.
Dan Krikorian 59:33
Yeah, we’d like to see some pre-game footage of you just trying to block shots, bang guys down in the post in a suit about 20 minutes before the game. Luckily, I’m not in a suit.
Well, good stuff there, Pat. We should keep this rolling. So for our last takeaway, I’ll throw it back to you.
Patrick Carney 59:51
So my last takeaway is your start subset on just like these silent stressors and you know, I’ll go right to where my fault I could just where I can’t defend these guys. But now I’m also we’re sitting on bus rides How can we make these bus rides as efficient as possible and not just devastate our guys and their ability to like wake up?
Prep and play so I just like that conversation and just I thought it was interesting He said maybe necessarily and I tend to agree if it’s over three and a half hours four hours Like does a stop to go for a kind of a bullshit walk? Really help probably not but more so prioritizing then just get there early, you know Do a movement some movement stuff before the bus get off the bus get them early activate them again Calm them down then get into it for me I thought that was really beneficial because I mean that’s I think what we’re thinking a lot about is All right, what bus ride is too long, you know We’re if we have the means we can go over the day before like all right Now are we gonna maximize or when there’s traffic what do we need to do how far out in advance? We need to be thinking like just real-world coaching scheduling issues But then like we also have to take effect like crap We have 12 guys on this bus that needed and try to perform
Dan Krikorian 01:01:04
Yeah. Or the real world stuff. Like, I mean, I agree getting there earlier, but you get there too early and the game manager for the other team, it hasn’t shown up to the gym yet. So you’re just sitting outside in the locker room because no one’s shown up to work the game management yet.
You know, again, thinking about how we can prep our team. I think what was a good takeaway is if you’re getting there two to three hours before, don’t worry about it. They’re going to get up for the game. Guys are all sleeping and lights are off and it’s three hours. It’s not like you need to alarm lights on whistle, you know, get them out by their seats and get the heart like they’re going to be all right. Hanging the cowbell. Yeah, cowbell on there.
Patrick Carney 01:01:40
I thought that was interesting when I kind of asked that question He said it’s not necessary, but maybe like even down regulating them five hours out and a 15-20 minute blackout Like hey, let’s just try to down regulate of course, too I think with the advancements and all like the sports performance technology mentioned the Firefly the hyper ice stuff the norm attack like compression shorts all that stuff too plays a role in making sure the guys are Physically ready when they get off the bus
Dan Krikorian 01:02:08
Yeah, I did think the compression thing was interesting like, can you wear that on a longer bus or on a flight just because that’s going to help you get there for sure. And then I’ll just my last little thing on this was, I think it’s always interesting with walkthroughs, just every coach’s take on it and how hard they’re out of detail.
I mean, I think detail is great, like it’s just yeah, taking into account like that is they’re on their feet one, but then it’s the mental load and then like, is it how much is it helping them versus us, you know, as a staff and not saying they’re not important. But like, it’s just, I think there’s varying degrees of the walkthrough on game day.
Patrick Carney 01:02:44
Maybe get rid of those one-on-ones you like to do.
Dan Krikorian 01:02:47
Yeah, maybe I got to stop doing one-on-one full court.
Patrick Carney 01:02:50
For sure. Just yelling at you guys, it’s a trade-off. Touch the curtain.
Dan Krikorian 01:02:55
touch the curtain no we’re going in the curtain yeah we’re not touching it we’re in the ring we’re getting the first round out guys yeah exactly Pat any other areas we could have gone deeper on with Andy today
Patrick Carney 01:03:11
When we were talking about the silent stressors, he talked about, you know, we all see it when our guys like lack of motivation, lack of focus, and there are some physiological ways to snap them out of it. I wish I’d followed up a little bit more on that.
I mean, he talked about, you know, the reverse season kind of different kind of spins you can put on practice, but I think he said talk about some breathing. So maybe just like some techniques where I don’t know if you notice or something like ways to get our snap our team out of it. I wish I kind of followed up a little bit more on that.
He alluded to maybe with breathing and but just digging a little bit deeper on just we’ve all seen it like okay, what are some quick techniques that can just get our guys back into it. Yeah.
Dan Krikorian 01:03:50
for sure but definitely been interesting maybe for another guest go deeper on that. Once again, we thank Andy for coming on and giving such a great interview today.
We appreciate everybody for listening and we will see you next time.