Today’s episode features Dan Back. Dan is the founder of “Jump Science”, as well as the creator of the popular “Speed.Science0” page on Instagram. Dan coaches at Xceleration sports performance in Austin, Texas. He works with team sport athletes, as well as “pure output” sports, such as track and field, and dunk training. Dan reached an elite level in his own vertical jump and dunking ability, and has been helping athletes run faster, jump higher and improve overall physical performance for well over a decade. I first met Dan in my own time at Wisconsin, LaCrosse, where I was working on my master’s degree in applied sport sciences.
One element of human outputs (sprinting, jumping, throwing, etc.) that I’ve found fundamental over the years is the idea of one’s strength/structure determining their technique they use. I found very quickly in my early track and field, as well as team sport ventures in jump and sprint technique, that getting an athlete to exhibit the technique you were asking for to surpass their old personal best almost never happened. Athletes would generally be using a technique that amplified their physical strengths and structure, and if you asked for a technique that took them away from that, performance would inevitably decline. At the same time, many coaches will approach sporting skills without regard to pre-existing strengths/structure, and that sport technique is a singular factor that relies only on a mental “computer program”.
On today’s show, Dan gives his perspective on how athletes strengths (or weaknesses) show up in their sprinting technique, and how sprint technique will differ from one athlete to another as such. He’ll go in depth on building elasticity, plyometrics, building up an athlete’s vertical force capacities, give his take on sprint drills, and much more. Dan has a practical style, where his experimentation is backed by data, and results. This show is a deep dive, not just into important principles of performance, but also practical nuts and bolts on how to get more out of one’s athleticism on a high level.
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Timestamps and Main Points:
4:13 – Dan’s journey in training, as it started more so in jumping, and moving much more into sprinting and speed training over time 11:05 – An anecdote of an athlete who took .4 seconds off of his 40 yard dash in a short period of time via power training and high-density single leg bound/hops 16:56 – Single leg hopping and ability in explosive athleticism, and how to determine single leg elasticity, as well as considerations with single leg RSI as a high-transfer test to athleticism 26:42 – Dan’s take on sprint drills, in terms of their transfer to sprinting, and their value as an extensive plyometric 35:29 – The experimental nature of training athletes to their ideal sprinting technique and ability 41:40 – Sprinters different strategies to solving the problem of sprinting as fast as possible 57:50 – Elastic vs. inelastic sprint athletes, and how looking at where athletes are strong is going to have an impact on their sprint technique 1:02:40 – Dan’s thoughts on training team sport athletes in light of sprint training technique 1:09:15 – Dan’s thoughts on how to go about the process of developing vertical force in sprinting, as well as how to integrate speed oriented gains in context of a total training program 1:21:20 – Thoughts on the use of tempo sprint training as an elastic stimulus to get an athlete “bounce”“Even with those jumping athletes, I am using speed training”
“If you do have a lot of squat strength built up, that does give you some level of durability”
“Even moving at walking or slow jogging speed in single leg hopping, it requires you to get off the ground faster, and I’ll use that as my evaluation”
“There is definitely a connection between single leg RSI and sprint speed”
“Single leg hops for distance can get very sloppy, so I’ll say do 90% of the distance you could do, and keep it smooth… I only do the actual distance with some athletes”
“Teaching an athlete a sprint drill generally has no impact on their sprint mechanics, so I’ve moved away from hoping for that… I view them more as contributing to your elastic training volume, and with that in mind, that cuts down a lot of drills that I use”
“The two main (sprint drills) I use, are the track style butt-kick..I just call it the high-feet drill, and you use high tempo and add (horizontal) speed to it progressively… I will use that to try and plug that into sprint mechanics a little bit, it doesn’t connect from everybody”
“We want high feet, even if it’s backside”
“The big thing for me is, it’s all experimental…. I’m not going to be like “do this drill to take .2 off your 40 yard dash””
“Stiff leg bounding is another go-to drill, but that is just a fun, athletic thing to do, I don’t try to connect it to sprint mechanics”
“The traditional sprint model is all about shortened contact distance… if you have less time on the ground at a given speed, you are increasing the (vertical) force demands… all that being said, the people who are able to use something close to the technical model, it requires elite vertical force application”
“You can’t expect a (typical) high school athlete to utilize a short contact distance the way an elite sprinter does… they will need to use a longer contact distance”
“Athletes may not be physically capable (of using a short contact distance)”
“Sprint exposure is the biggest thing (in developing vertical force capacity) you have to think about how many foot contacts you are getting”
“I think there is a value in how many thousand-times did you bounce off the ground? (in sprinting”
“I measure fly times, all of the time. I want to know, what is the impact of training right now on your speed, and what is the condition of your body right now, and that guides decisions a lot”
“Let’s go run 10×100 at 15-second pace, and you can rest as much as you want; we are just trying to get some bounces off of the ground”
“I don’t think we can intervene by hammering the ground harder and create that vertical spike; I think that you bounce off the ground (repeatedly) and you develop something in your legs that is different”
“A cross country runner can have a higher RSI in their legs than a basketball player… they are just getting a lot of exposure to bouncing off of the ground”
“The complexity of the human body, and the diversity of solutions forces us to open our mind to solutions”
Show Notes
Dan’s Post on contact distance and individual sprint technique considerations
View this post on Instagram
Shelly Ann Fraser Price sprinting (see forward contact distance)
About Dan Back
Dan Back is the founder of “Jump Science” and is a coach at Xceleration sports performance in Austin, Texas where he trains both track and team sport athletes. Dan reached an elite level in his own vertical jump and dunking ability, and has been helping athletes run faster, jump higher and improve overall physical performance for over a decade. Dan has been a constant source of coach and athlete education in the last decade through his website and social media channels.
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