Today’s guest is Kevin Carr. Kevin is a strength coach at Mike Boyle’s Strength and Conditioning and is the co-owner of “Movement as Medicine”, the official massage therapists of Mike Boyle’s.
Kevin has already amassed a wealth of experience in the field of sports performance and personal training at MBSC, working with everyone from US Olympians looking for a competitive edge down to general population clientele. Kevin has a huge wealth of knowledge in the physical preparation, and human function sectors, with certifications including FMS, SFMA, NKT Level 1 and 2, FRC, FAPP, Pn1, and PRI.
On the podcast today, Kevin goes into great detail on some of the principles of MBSC in terms of modifying the powerlifts, as well as thoughts on single-leg training. In my own circle, I’ve felt like people tend to look at progressive training programs like Boyle’s and say “All they do is one leg work” and “They never squat!”, but this couldn’t be further from the truth, and there is a critically important rationale behind their exercise selection.
Although it might not be truly sexy to talk about exercise selection, not back squatting, etc. in terms of injury prevention, there are performance upsides to this mentality as well, especially in the long term. Kevin goes into breaking down the functional capacities of the human body, and how we can optimize our machinery for it’s highest performance. This was an enjoyable episode to put together, that coaches from all arenas can enjoy.
Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.
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Key Points:
- Kevin’s background in the field
- The utilization of SMR tools on athletes, comparisons to hands-on work
- Ideals on single vs. double-leg training for athletes
- Adjusting the traditional powerlift mentality towards what an athlete needs with minimal risk
- Utilizing partial range movements with single leg work
- Proportions of single to double leg movements for developmental athletes
- The balance between multi-planar work and traditional sagittal plane work
- Development and expression of lateral speed
- Approaching thoracic spine mobility and low trap strength development
Quotes
“Some people put too much stock, or too little stock, in SMR tools”
“We live our life mostly on one leg, so we should spend a lot of time training on one leg”
“If we’re always taking those tools (from powerlifting and bodybuilding), we kind of lose sight of what we need to train for, for sports performance and for fitness…. Where a lot of coaches miss the mark is that they can’t think out of the box of powerlifting for training general population or for sports performance”
“In single leg training, I’m a big believer in lowest system load… if we can get more output with less load, then that’s a low brainer”
“It’s a bigger picture than just thinking, well lets put the most load on the bar that we can today. And when coaches start to think that way, you’ll have athletes that are healthier, and performing longer, with longer careers”
“We pretty much always squat to a box…. not to bounce off of, but for a depth marker and then come back up from there”
“Our warmup days are organized into linear and lateral days”
“I don’t even consider single leg deadlifting or single leg squatting sagittal work in the sense that once you pick one foot up off the ground, everything changes from a stability standpoint. You start to get these diagonal patterns and subsystems working”
“One the fundamental things (with agility) we start to see is a crossover, and then getting them to stop and understand shin angles… you’re going to get beat on the field if you don’t understand shin angles”
“(With thoracic spine mobility) We spend time locking down every area they are going to cheat”
“Crawling is a pretty big piece, we put for everyone in the warmup. If you crawl the right way… slow… you don’t always see that online, you get a lot of bang for your buck there”
About Kevin Carr
Kevin Carr is a strength coach at Mike Boyle’s Strength and Conditioning and is the co-owner of “Movement as Medicine”, the official massage therapists of Mike Boyle’s.
Kevin has already amassed a wealth of experience in the field of sports performance and personal training at MBSC, working with everyone from US Olympians looking for a competitive edge to the Average Joe or looking to shed some pounds and get healthier he has helped countless clients move better and live healthier lives.
In addition to receiving a Bachelor Degree in Kinesiology from The University of Massachusetts-Amherst and a License in Massage Therapy from Cortiva Institute- Watertown, he is also credited with the completion of numerous continuing education certifications including FMS, SFMA, NKT Level 1 and 2, FRC, FAPP, Pn1, and PRI.
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