In this engaging conversation, Dr. John Harry shares his journey from athlete to academic in biomechanics and strength conditioning. He emphasizes bridging research with practical application, helping coaches understand the purpose behind their methods. The discussion covers technology’s role in coaching, momentum versus velocity, and the importance of movement quality and clarity in data interpretation.
Key Takeaways:
- Understanding biomechanics is fundamental to athletic development.
- Coaches must bridge the gap between research and practice.
- Momentum, not just velocity, is essential for effective training.
- Clarity in terminology prevents confusion in performance data.
- Overreliance on technology can hinder coaching intuition.
- Understanding the “why” behind training methods enhances effectiveness.
- Research informs practice—but experience completes the picture.
- Simplified methods often lead to better athlete outcomes.
Quote:
“It’s all about how you interact with the environment. The interaction with the environment is overcoming gravity, it’s force application, and putting those things together within the laws of motion—and that’s how movement goes.” — Dr. John Harry
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John Harry:
just from a purely biomechanical perspective, which, you know, one of the reasons I got into the field of biomechanics as opposed to like physiology is you can improve physiology, right? You can make someone have better aerobic capacity. You can increase VO2 max. You can increase
other mechanisms within the system and not be a better athlete. You’ll be healthier, right? And, you know, damn it, that’s great, right? Because who doesn’t want to be that way? But when it comes to athletic development and performance, it’s all about how you interact with the environment. And the interaction with the environment is overcoming gravity, it’s force application, and putting those things together.
within the laws of motion and that’s how movement goes.
Samson:
What’s going on Sampson Strength Coach, collective listeners. On today’s episode, have, I mean, I have three titles to introduce this man. His dear friend of mine is one. ⁓ Number two is his official title, which would be associate professor of biomechanics and director of the exercise physiology PhD program at Texas Tech University. And the final, my favorite title is the wizard, ⁓ as I have proclaimed him, Dr. John Harry. Thank you so much for coming up.
John Harry:
Yeah man, thanks for having me dude. This is gonna be fun.
Samson:
I’m excited to give you some background as the wizard originated, right? Because I’ll never forget when I was an undergrad, every PhD always said you have to refer to me as doctor in the email. There’s no choice whatsoever. And so I always would call him Dr. John or Dr. Harry. And one day he said, you’ve just got to stop that. And so I didn’t feel quite comfortable calling you John either. So I ended up just coming up with wizard because you’re an absolute beast with the research.
John Harry:
Well,
you know, I’ll take the title. don’t know if it’s earned yet, but we’ll take it.
Samson:
To be determined. Well, can you just take us through your career? Obviously, you’re the first professor I’ve ever interviewed on the podcast, so I’m very excited to have you on. ⁓ Just take us through your career, ⁓ what your journey’s been and what’s led you to Texas Tech.
John Harry:
Yeah.
Yeah, man. So ⁓ started, I guess we’ll start with, you know, like most of us who kind of go in either the strength world or the the the sports science, you kind of realm come from an athletic background. So growing up, I played baseball. I was I was a really good baseball player until everyone else caught up in high school. And then I kind of became average. ⁓ Did that, you know, played football, did all the stuff. But then once I graduated high school and I was in college.
going through the undergrad program at Cal State Fullerton, I was really hard in the drinking the CrossFit Kool-Aid, which, you know, tastes really good at times. And that, like it does for so many people, transitions you into other realms that you weren’t aware of yet in like strength training or how that goes. And so for me, it was weightlifting. And that was just like, let me do this.
so I spent a couple of years in Southern California training, ⁓ with team Southern California. It’s got, ⁓ coach Pat, Colin Carroll and, and Danny McDermott out there. And, so I did that for a couple of years by no means was I any, any good at it. You know, I did competitions, but I wasn’t competitive, if that makes sense. ⁓ so my numbers were always very average, ⁓ but loved it. And like, that was the thing. And like, that was like the, the impetus for me to be like, how do I share this with other people?
And how do I get it more so than I just want to snatch and clean and jerk more, but to athletic development, right? ⁓ and so those two things just kind of happened at the same time, you know, the love for weightlifting and athletic development, and then also the undergraduate degree program, ⁓ was kind of like this happy, like sandwich of things that happened. And it was like, I think I want to get into this world. So I was trying to go strength and conditioning as my route.
And, you know, this was 2010 or 11 and at Cal State Fullerton, was there, Dr. Andy Galpin, you know, he’s like the biggest celebrity in the world now. but he was there as as a young professor and you know, we kind of hit it off and he encouraged me to do this graduate school thing that I never thought I could do. ⁓ and so I ended up going to the university of Memphis with a, with a sole focus. was like, I’m going to be a D one strength coach. And I get there and my mentor there, Brian Schilling, ⁓
Another great dude introduced me to a couple of the strength conditioning guys and we were talking about, you know, what they were doing. And it was just like, you guys work literally 24 seven. You know, I was like, I love what you’re doing, but I don’t like how long it takes a special person to do that. Right. And you know it because it’s your world. Right. So for me, it was like, okay, if I don’t think I can be there at 4 a.m. and leave at 7 p.m. most days.
what, can I still stay in this world? And in graduate school, you know, they force you in some programs, most programs to do a research project. And so I was working on that and I thought, this was pretty neat. And the, the ideas start going about how I can take this research skill and apply it into the human performance setting. And then, you know, the, next questions you have with, with the mentor at the time, Brian Schilling was, know, how do you end up doing this? Like you do for a career? And he’s like, well,
Next step is a PhD. And I was like, well, that’s a lot of school, man. You know, like, you know, here I am in my, in my late twenties now at that time going, I won’t finish telling them in my thirties, like people are already making money. You know, I don’t, I’m not ready to be poor again for that long, but I ended up doing it, stuck it out, went to the university in Nevada, Las Vegas out there in sin city, which is a ⁓ wild ride of a place to, to go to do anything except, you know, Vegas.
so that’s an adjustment, but you know, ⁓ that was, that was a great experience. Probably the, the most impactful time of me as a thinker, because I went there and my mentor, Janet Doofek at the time, she was more about like firmly entrenching you in like biomechanics knowledge. It wasn’t really about athletic development per se. She was into like injury risk and landing and certain, ⁓
approaches to work with data. And so it was like this new exposure to me that helped me kind of mold the way I want to approach athletic development. Like now I’ve got this deeper biomechanics lens that I can bridge with new ways of thinking and really try to put those two things together. And once I got here at Texas Tech, it’s kind of been my goal is to take what I’ve learned
as a researcher in biomechanics and what I’ve my experiences in the strength conditioning community as a as a trainee myself as a young relatively uninformed strength conditioning coach forgot to say that that you know was sort of a strength coach at the time working with some dry land swimmers but I say that very loosely because you know back then I thought I knew everything but really had zero answers you know ⁓
But so going from that transition and building those together and then, you know, meeting people like you who really know how to work with athletes and how to create an environment that stimulates adaptation and saying, okay, this is what they’re doing, but now how do I bring my expertise that I’ve now gained? Right? Because they are, you and all the other strength coaches I’ve worked with are leaps and bounds better than I am or could be as a practitioner.
But there’s pieces to it that I can bring that can help make those decisions either easier to find or more focused in on the objective. So that’s kind of where we are now. I know long story short, ⁓ you know me, I’m a rambler, but you know, that’s kind of the long kind of windy path like this that stayed in the same lane of athletic development. So really trying to just move the needle a little bit in this world.
Samson:
I love it and I truly appreciate that because again, you know, it’s one of these weird things where strength coaches, I feel like either really dive deep into research or they kind of neglect it. And one of the things I’ve always heard was, ⁓ if you wait for research to officially come out, then you’re already behind the curve, right? And, and, you haven’t, ⁓ pushed the limits a little bit too much, but it’s never quite made sense to me.
And especially with my master’s degree being in sports psych, you know, I’ve kind of been behind the curve already. And so for me, it’s a little bit more useful to rely on research and methods that have been proven ⁓ and tested and peer reviewed. For me, it’s just a little bit more of an efficient way to do things. You know, how do you, you said your whole mission is to kind of bridge the gap a little bit and create ⁓ areas where your knowledge can be useful for practitioners. How do you continue to do that? What are the ways that you’re really trying to
⁓ push that congruence of information between both practitioners.
John Harry:
Yeah, I mean, I think one primary way to do it is, is when you work with a practitioner and they say, well, you I’ve done plan a for however long and it works, right? You know that it works for the certain responses you’re trying to get, but there’s that, you know, from delivering the intervention to seeing the result, there’s a lot that goes into play that you
hypothesize what is happening, right? Whether it be a type of stimulus that you’re giving an athlete or, ⁓ you know, a targeted adaptation. You you wanted this to be, ⁓ you know, rapid force production during eccentric actions, right? And so you’re linking your training to those things, but is it actually doing that, right?
It might be working really well, but the why it’s working is what often kind of gets lost in the shuffle, which I understand why it gets lost because it’s like if it is working like I want, I really don’t care why, right? I have a thought process on why, but if my thought process changes, I’m still going to get the result I want. I’ve always wanted to know that why and be like, you’ve done this because it does.
You know, you’ve done X because it does Y and the end result of that is adaptation. Whereas I feel like a lot of others are just like, I don’t, I don’t need to know the Y. ⁓ but I try to convince everyone that if you’re going to deliver this to a, someone and you don’t know that interplay of what’s causing the response, what are you going to do when they ask you and say, how does this work? Right? How is this working? And with
The worst answer is, don’t know, it just does, right? And so that’s kind of my thing is to be like, if you ever are curious about the why something is working, let me help you find out why. And ⁓ that’s sort of like the overarching theme. And then you fine tune based on what the intervention is or what the task is and go from there.
Samson:
Yeah. And to me, it kind of helps solve a problem, which I see a lot, which is, uh, this is the grayest profession that gray can get, right? Where, uh, you learn a lot of different methods and then you kind of plug them all in together and then make your own. Like that’s the whole point of internships. It’s the whole point of going to different positions is saying, okay, well, uh, when I was at Tennessee, we did this and it worked. And then when I was at Texas tech, we did this and it worked. And when I was at a UPenn, it worked. And so let me combine what I like from each of those. And then hopefully we can continue to see results.
But then it becomes this thing where there’s a lot of unnecessary arguments, there’s a lot of difference in training, there’s a lot of saying, well, that’s stupid what you’re doing. I don’t think it’s gonna work, right? When everybody ultimately seems results. So once you can discover that why, it becomes a lot more efficient and then you can actually dispel that information and there can be a little bit less of this gray area, especially for new grads who are just really trying to figure out, okay, what’s the best way to do things?
How can I become the best strength coach possible? And then you’ve got 50 different opinions and everybody’s saying that all the other 49 are very dumb. I think it could be a much better approach to helping educate future strength coaches.
John Harry:
Yeah, for sure. mean, one of the things that we try to pump the brakes on when we have students that come through or trainees that we’re working with is like, don’t jump onto just what’s sexy because it’s sexy. There’s an entire world out there who love and harp on collecting data on athletes where they focus on things like rate of force development.
and try to use that as like your rate of force development goes up, you are going to be better at task, whatever. And it’s not really the case. mean, just from a purely biomechanical perspective, which, you know, one of the reasons I got into the field of biomechanics as opposed to like physiology is you can improve physiology, right? You can make someone have better aerobic capacity. You can increase VO2 max. You can increase
other mechanisms within the system and not be a better athlete. You’ll be healthier, right? And, you know, damn it, that’s great, right? Because who doesn’t want to be that way? But when it comes to athletic development and performance, it’s all about how you interact with the environment. And the interaction with the environment is overcoming gravity, it’s force application, and putting those things together.
within the laws of motion and that’s how movement goes. And so that led me to biomechanics because it’s like, you’ve got to know the way you can tease out. That’s just a sexy variable that really is cool looking, but doesn’t have an implication on the movement outcome. Right. And having that understanding of biomechanics is really what drives that. And so I try to get those students to say, well, look, that’s sexy. You might have a
a mentor in the field who focuses on this. says his interventions are rate of force development targeted or, you know, stretch shortening cycle targeted, but throttle back a little bit and say, okay, based on laws of motion, what are you stimulating change with? Right? Everything else is just a strategy or a means to an end. And, you know, one of the, one of the lines I preach, which I can’t take credit for, I stole it from Andy Galpin is methods are many concepts are few.
People focus on the method. They don’t focus on the concept. But the concept is the answer. And that’s what you should be targeting, right? It’s not the method, it’s the concept. It’s the outcome. It’s the approach where you’re saying, you know, we live in this environment and we’re constrained to certain ways. Our body only moves certain ways. So how do I take those limitations, restrictions, environmental features and use them to my advantage?
And that’s the end game for me. And so it’s trying to make sure everyone has that foundation of can you connect your training or your testing to the laws of motion and how that’s going to relate to or contribute to moving better. moving better is a thing that you can dissect in itself. But for me, when it comes down to it, it’s moving you or a mass.
or both, you and a mass quicker. Right? And so when you think of those two things, that is movement is not just how fast you move, but it’s the amount of motion you create, which is momentum. And that’s kind of one of the main things I’ve focused on over the last few years, which we’ve talked about a little bit. And so making sure you have to know how momentum has changed.
because that’s the end game of motion. ⁓ And trying hard to chip away at long held, not beliefs, but long held principles that don’t focus on that. And trying to change it so that you can still do what you have been doing, but look at it from this lens, creating motion, rather than rapidly producing force or whatever the other sexy term might be.
Samson:
Yeah, I think that’s something that you’ve definitely taught me in the research that we’ve done together, ⁓ you know, and besides just getting to put my name on a paper where I did nothing but provide the athletes for, you know, it’s been a big benefit to work with you. Do you feel like this kind of, you know, I mean, technology has always been around, right, but it keeps advancing and now there’s a lot of different technologies that strength coaches can use. Do you feel like this problem can be kind of exacerbated by the amount of
different technologies that coaches have access to. Like you mentioned, rate of force development. You mentioned kind of focusing on one key aspect that the strength coach thinks is key to increasing performance, but ultimately it’s a myriad of different reasons. And to me, feels like basically with force plates, there’s so many different numbers you can look at. There’s so many different things that people kind of hone in on one thing and say, okay, well, this is what’s gonna drive performance. Do you feel like kind of that?
⁓ exposure to so many different technologies can kind of exacerbate that problem a little bit.
John Harry:
Yeah, I mean, it’s almost like a, you know, ⁓ option paralysis because there’s so many technology companies out there that are doing something similar, but they do it differently. Right. When you look at, let’s just simplify. You mentioned force platforms. I say force platforms, not force plates. It’s a soap box of mine. So just you and the listeners bear with me, but you got to force platform companies that
in words describe something that sounds the same. In the data and in their numbers, they go about extracting those with very different methodologies. So if you’re using company A and I’m using company B, for example, and we’re talking about one functional deliverable ⁓ as a strategy.
We could be thinking we’re talking about the same thing and two wildly different outcomes from data is what we’re actually talking about. And then there’s this discrepancy because, your numbers don’t align with mine. What’s going on here? Who’s right? Who’s wrong? What’s, what’s this? What’s that? So there’s this lack of consistency in terminology in data extraction methods. And I think some of it comes from, you know,
You mentioned, you know, if you’re if you’re waiting for research to come out, you’re already behind. Well, there is this has been, I don’t know, 10 years now, but there’s this in the clinical world benched to bedside. So it’s how long it takes, you know, findings from research to go into practice. And I think at that time it was 18 years. And so if you’re waiting for the research to come out to show you, you are way behind. And so these companies have taken certain pieces of the literature from whatever group.
that they are most closely tied to. They have their own approaches. They put this in their device. They sell a hundred thousand units, but all the while those units are going with this one methodological approach and the research is saying, wait, that approach might not be great. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Here’s how you should. And now you’re in this cycle of what you’re looking at is potentially at times not giving you the results that you think it’s giving you.
It’s giving you results that could have positive implications on your outcomes, of course, right? But tying it to training is getting more difficult, especially if you’re going from one institution and you change jobs and you go to another one and they have competing technology device. You’re like, let me apply this. And then you go in there and you try to pull out the same information and you’re like, whoa, what’s going on? You know, everything’s different. ⁓ So that’s one problem with it.
The second problem is most of the companies are very secretive in how they do what they’re doing behind the scenes. They marry you to their data analysis cloud, right? You can’t get away from it if you want your outcomes. I always try to harp on, know, if you’re going to use a device, can you get the numbers yourself without their cloud? Make sure you know what they’re like. If it says, you know, force at zero velocity, for example, on a, on a, on a force platform reading.
Right? Or another one says it’s the the amortization force magnitude. Right? Do know that those two things are the same, even though they’re given different terms? And do you know how they are extracted from the data? If you can answer yes to those things, by all means, use it in their report because you know how it’s obtained, how it’s extracted and what it means. If you don’t have those answers, don’t use it. Right. Because
Now you’re in this this black box of stuff happens and I can’t explain it. Right. And so if you can’t explain it, how can you confidently apply those numbers? You know, it’s like, here’s something, use it because it’s good for you. And they say, why is it good for me? And you’re like, I don’t know. You know, right. I think that sounds dumb, right. But it’s it’s all over in the field and not just in strength conditioning.
I mean, researchers do that too at times. So that’s one of the things I try to do is make sure everyone that I work with knows, right? If you’re looking at something, you can use any technology we want to. You want to use Force Decks, go do it. You want to use Hawking Dynamics, go do it. You want to use whatever other technology is out there, do it. Don’t rely on the outputs they give you. Go get it yourself, right? Most of these companies will…
output the data for you. Make sure you know how to do it yourself before you rely on their outputs. Right? Not only could it save you some money down the road and saying, Hey, you know, sorry companies, but like, if I don’t need your cloud, I’m not going to buy it. Right? And that could be a huge boon for, for a strength coach is saying, I don’t need the cloud. I’m going to save five grand a year. Right? I can do it myself and I know exactly how to do it. And those are skills we try to teach.
here in our program or if you reach out for consultation. that’s what we want to do is create independence and guide people to the right way of becoming independent with the technology. You don’t want to be dependent on the technology and on someone else to get you the answer. You know what I mean? And that’s where, like here at Tech or like when you back when we were working here at Tech, was like,
Samson:
Mm.
Yeah.
John Harry:
You know, you’ve got the technology, but maybe not the methodology for like, want to get this and I know how to get it. And you’re like, well, who does? And it’s like, well, we do. So we can get that for you. You just tell me what you need and I’ll get it for you the right way and explain to you what it means. And then you can say, yeah, okay, but I don’t need that one or I need a new one or I want something else. And it’s this constant driven by you inquiry.
And you say, well, I want to know this, let me go get it, rather than someone saying, here’s all the things you can pick from. And I think that’s really powerful as a practitioner or someone trying to use data as ⁓ a ⁓ addition to a program.
Samson:
Hmm. So then how do we, how do we fix these inconsistencies? Is it by what you’re saying? Like just learning how to, you know, read the CSV output and understand exactly what you need from it.
John Harry:
I mean, some regard, yes. And I know that some people say, well, I don’t have time for that. And it’s like, well, if you don’t have time for that, what do you, you know, you’ve got time for all these other things. Right. So you have to prioritize and you have to be willing to go in there and learn something that might take you a month before you can apply it. Right. ⁓ And it’s not an easy thing to do. I mean, that’s why these companies are doing so well.
It’s because they’re doing something that is challenging and can be difficult. But with the right education and not not even really education, but just repetition and doing it, you know, you you can do it yourself. If you just had the hardware, you can record it and go in the back end and do it all yourself. You really could. And. ⁓
There’s some people who say, I don’t want to do that. I want them to do it for me. And that’s great. But that circles me back to my other question of what you’re extracting from them. You better understand it. You better be able to explain it. And the best way to do that for me is to go in there and do it yourself. maybe the thing is, is you take a little while and you say, all right, I’m going to do it myself for a while. And I’ve got a good idea for it. But it takes me too much time.
Well, now you can go and say, which company gives it to me the way that I know is the most closely tied to what I’m trying to do? And you can pick from there and say, all right, well, I know what they’re doing. I know how they’re doing it. I’m going to use your service. Right. And so I think instead of getting the stuff and then trying to work with it is knowing what the stuff does and then getting it.
Samson:
Yeah, and I think that’s the, you know, former is the approach that a lot of strength coaches kind of end up going with is just, okay, well, I know we need some form of technology. So let me buy these force platforms. Okay, just so can make sure it’s correctly. ⁓ You know, so let’s get these and my buddy over at such and such university says he really likes Hawkins. So we’re go with Hawkins. And then after that, you know, I’ll start to learn.
via their continuing education system that they have or whatever they may provide and use their standards and everything. And ⁓ I’ve done the same approach too. And I feel like I haven’t really gotten as much out of it that I would like or it’s been a lot of time learning. And then, like you said, I’ve made the switch from Force Decks to Hawkins. I’ve made those switches and it’s been confusing for me and it’s taken me a long time to understand those things and exactly what I’m looking for.
One thing I’m curious about is how do you fix the inconsistencies in the terminology as well? Because I’ve noticed that and to be honest, I’ve struggled to come up with an answer.
John Harry:
It’s hard because it’s the there’s the there’s the the two sided coin of let me let me describe something that is mechanically true, right? This is how it is obtained and this is what it means from a purely physics perspective. There’s the connection to terminology that’s currently in practice and never going to go away.
Right? Rate of force development is one of those terms. ⁓ But it’s not the ideal way to describe the rate of change of force. ⁓ But that’s a term you’re never going to get away from. Then there’s the argument in some of these. For example, I’ll give the big example is in ⁓ force decks output, they have a term called eccentric deceleration rate of force development. Right?
In Hawken, they have a similar term that is called the breaking rate of force development. Now they’re not exactly the same temporally in terms of the time frame they’re from, but they include pieces of the same information. One is saying, well, I don’t want to use a muscle action because at the very fine level in the muscle, not all of the muscle fibers are working that way.
So if you say eccentric, well, there’s gonna be muscle fibers or tissues that are isometrically contracting. So it’s not really eccentric. But if you look at the whole muscle level at the gross scale, it’s eccentric. You can only lengthen while trying not to lengthen and have it be one thing at the gross level. So what do you choose as the clearest description?
You know, I always try to go from the approach of I need to make it mechanically true and I need to connect it to something I know of in training. I think in training, it’s very easy to identify or apply, for example, an eccentric or concentric specific stimulus, right? You’re doing something because you want an eccentric adaptation. And so you’re, you might be overloading the downward portion of a squat, right?
as an example. Well, is that going to stimulate to, for example, during a vertical jump eccentric responses? Well, how are you going to know that if the terminology doesn’t allow for it because it’s not connecting to training adaptations or training targets? So that’s what I try to do. So, for example, I always try to avoid terms like deceleration and
We’re going to get on a soapbox a little bit, ⁓ apologies for that. But when you move downward, right? And speed up or accelerate. You have negative acceleration. Right now, most of the time, if I was to say there’s negative acceleration happening. People are going to say you’re slowing down. That’s deceleration, right?
Samson:
Please go ahead.
John Harry:
but it’s not when you’re moving downward, right? When you slow down while moving downward, you are decelerating, but you have positive acceleration. So there’s this discrepancy if you look at your numbers numerically, like I want everyone to do, and you say, all right, well, here’s the part of the counter move where you’ve started going downward and you’re speeding up, you’ve got negative acceleration.
How in the hell are you speeding up with negative acceleration? Because my brain thinks negative acceleration decelerate. Right? So you’ve got to kind of link those away. So that’s for me, one thing I would change if I were the CEO of Vauld, right? Now they’re never going to change it, but if they’re not going to change it, you got to know what it means, right? Is that ⁓ how the body is actually accelerating. Now when, for example,
during the counter move and you want to slow down and eventually change directions and go upward you know you slow down because you go from moving to not moving right and the only way you can do that is by slowing down so Hawken for example calls that breaking which quite obviously is because you are slowing down
What they don’t include is the muscle action. But how do you move downward, apply force into the ground while you’re moving downward to slow down? Right? Your muscles are lengthening while you are, but your lower body muscles are lengthening while you’re moving downward and applying force. Well, at the gross level, that’s eccentric, right? So yes, it’s breaking, but it’s also eccentric. So.
If I want to deliver an eccentric stimulus, you can now, by knowing it’s eccentric and breaking, figure out, I delivering a stimulus that is eccentric and while they’re slowing down, right? And there’s this other piece to it, to where part of eccentric actions,
during the downward portion of a counter movement jump, for example, where you are eccentrically working, you’re increasing your force production, but you are still getting faster while you move downward. Right? So you think about that as like the tug of war where you are pulling as hard as you can, but whoever’s on the other side is just dragging you, right? You are yielding, you’re losing that fight big time, no matter what your effort is. And in the counter movement jump, that’s done through
you producing eccentric gross muscle actions, right? To try and slow down, but you’re not yet. So that’s eccentric, but you’re not breaking yet, right? So there’s, there’s this portion of the eccentric phase that a lot of companies will call eccentric is the part that includes where you’re losing the fight and being dragged and the part where you’re slowing down.
And to me, those are two separate things, right? They’re eccentric, but the objective is I can’t lose anymore. And then the next objective is, whew, I’m starting to have an outcome here. I’m slowing down. So you got to look at those two things separately. Now there are force platform companies that will look at one only, the breaking one only. There’s a company out there that will look at both of those two things together. And you look at the research out there and it looks at, okay, rate of force development.
E-centric rate of force development or breaking rate of force development. Somebody says it is predictive of jump performance. More rate of force development, better jumps. The other paper says no, not not at all related. Next paper says it’s moderately related. The next one says not even close. Why is the reason? Because of the discrepancy in how we’ve defined them and what they actually mean mechanically and the outcome or objective that the person or the jumper or the athlete has.
So if you don’t know like within there, what’s happening, what you’re trying to extract, you’ve got this problem, right? There’s another side to it. And we’ve been talking about rate of force development with my examples, just because it’s the low hanging fruit. But the rate of force development is a strategy, right? It’s variable. I can jump to the same output. Like I can have a 50 centimeter jump and have a large rate of force development. And I can do a 50 centimeter jump again and have a small rate of force development.
It’s not a predictor, it’s a strategy. And there’s many ways to skin the cat. And the reason is understanding how motion is created. It’s not created by the rate of force that you apply. It’s the accumulation of force multiplied by the duration of time you apply it. Right. And so that’s what has to go up to make you jump higher. It’s not the rate, right. But it’s sexy because we think, Oh, that means, you know, high rate of force development. This is awesome.
but it’s not always the case. might want it to be a high rate of force development, but that’s not gonna be predictive of your outcome. It’s gonna just say, that’s the strategy you’ve chosen. And I want it to be consistently high, right? So yeah, that’s another me ranting and raving.
Samson:
No, no, no,
but it’s very interesting. And I think it kind of leads you back to your main point of it seems like the best way to navigate this world is to really just have a true understanding of what you’re trying to ⁓ test and what you’re trying to actually get from your outcomes. How would strength coaches go about doing this? Like take me for example, right? I’m interested in using force platforms, almost said force plates, and I apologize. You would have got hopped off the podcast immediately. ⁓ I’m interested in using these
technologies or tools to help my team. And I’m really looking in, okay, how do I really dive in depth on these different terms and understand what I’m actually looking to get out of it? What would be the best way to go about doing that?
John Harry:
Well, I think first things first is when you buy these technologies from these companies is some of them are really good at saying, here’s how this is calculated. Right. What you should then do is say, all right, here’s this metric that I want. They are telling me how it’s calculated. Great example. That is Hawking dynamics. They have that, ⁓ I forgot what they call it, but it’s the, it’s the worksheet of like variable X definition.
Variable Y definition. Now you know how to get it from the data, right? Or you know how it’s being taken from the data. Maybe not how to go do it yourself, but you know what it is. And then you got to say, okay, but what does that mean from a functional perspective? What is the athlete trying to do here? Can I take that answer and apply it to training?
Right? Where is the same thing that athlete trying to do that here also, right? If you can get those connections, that’s a metric option for you. If you can’t put those two things together, ignore it. Right? As you start to get down that hole, you’ll realize some of these things are redundant. They give me five, six variables that mean the exact same thing.
And the reason, in my opinion, is not because the company doesn’t know that they’re doing that, but it’s to give you option. Right? For example, if you’re looking at a jump on a force platform, jump height, ⁓ concentric impulse, if you want to call it a propulsive impulse, peak power, all three of those things are going to tell you the exact same story.
And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone somewhere and I’ve watched someone use an output, you know, from force platform company X and it said, look at this, we did this training program. Peak power went up, propulsive impulse went up, jump height went up. mean, this is awesome. And it’s like, great. You told me one thing changed. Right. But the reason the company has done that is to say, well, which one do you like to communicate better? Right. Do you have conversational?
competence more so talking about power output Do you only care about the jump height because that’s you know, how high do you go people understand that? Right, or are you more fine-tuned into the numbers and you care about the impulse? Because impulse when it’s extracted the right way in terms of have you removed body weight? Have you done all this stuff? That is the determinant of jump height right so so It’s what how you want to tell the story
Right? And so it’s not like when I read a book, I’m not going to read this page, turn the page and reread the same page. Right? So why would I want to do that with data or with my numbers? And so, so you’ve really got to fine tune that. What’s the output, how they extract it. What does it mean functionally? Can you tie that to your training or your targeted responses? If the answer is yes, go with it. If the answer is no, you got some digging to do. Right. Or, or you’ve got to latch onto somebody and say, Hey,
Help me answer that question so I can see if I want to use it. Right. And that could be the company, right? Those companies have smart people behind them and you know, they can definitely help you with those things if, if you don’t have a network of people yourself.
Samson:
Yeah, I know and one knows me on a first name basis and I basically have to buy him Christmas gifts every year for how many times I’ve had to have discussions with him. ⁓ But it makes complete sense and I appreciate you ⁓ revealing my secrets to everybody of using the same output and saying three different things ⁓ in greased.
John Harry:
Yeah, there you go.
well hey hey if you’re trying
to sell a story to somebody you know hey give me more money because look at all the things I’ve changed odds are they’re not going to know that those things tell the same story right so so yeah yeah well that that and before you do I get a commission right yeah yeah
Samson:
Yes, and now we have to take an ethics course as well. ⁓
Deal. Very, very fair. think 10 % would be fair and we’ll send our
kickback checks to Dr. John Harry. So personally for you, what are the things that you like to research? I know you mentioned looking at the why of things and why training outputs have occurred and why things work. What are the things that you really like looking at?
John Harry:
That’s right. That’s right.
Yeah, well, right now it’s kind of, it’s kind of got this, ⁓ two things. I’ll start with kind of the, methodological piece is trying to bring clarity to a lot of what we’ve talked about. People that use terms or variables or tasks for certain objectives and those objectives don’t connect. And so trying to, to kind of funnel the confusion and make it clear is kind of what we want to do.
⁓ part of that is for, ⁓ the companies themselves too, right? Where it’s like, Hey, I really need you guys to consider including a metric like this because it’s shown to be critically important. Right. ⁓ you know, not to, I’m not favoring a company or another because I prefer not using any of them, but I know that this has happened in those companies. Right.
Force decks and Hawken have both done this, right? And the most recent example is in Hawken where they are looking at the literature and they’re seeing some studies out there that are looking at the landing side of the jump. And it’s like, well we’ve neglected that landing because the jump is sexier. And they’re saying, all right, well what’s the literature saying about landing? How can we deconstruct it and pull variables out that are important? And they’ve started doing that. And I think Vald, Force decks did that a little bit too in years past. ⁓
So it’s trying to contribute to that, right? But the challenge is doing it to where it’s not saying company X or research group Y is doing something wrong. It’s just saying, hey, we’ve got more info now. We know better and we probably need to pivot to making things more connected, right? So that’s one objective is methodological. The second objective is
connecting and simplifying training interventions. Right? There’s methods that are tried and true and work. You know, one that you and I know where we’ve talked a lot about is velocity based training. It works. I can’t argue with that, but it’s overly complicated. And I think it’s overly complicated due to lack of understanding biomechanics. Everyone understands move fast, right?
less people are aware of quantity of motion, which is move a mass fast. And so there’s this concept where it’s like, let’s reframe from trying to move faster to trying to create more motion. And if you think about it, this has been resistance training for decades, centuries, right? Is, you know, if I were to, to pull people and say, all right, you’re,
You’re here as strength coach. You want somebody to jump higher. You want somebody to run faster, whatever it is. What is the king of all exercises? People are going to say the back squat, right? Back squats aren’t fast, right? But how do they make you run faster or jump higher, which are move quicker, dependent activities? Because in that task, when you load to a certain magnitude, it’s forcing them to create more motion.
right? There’s this piece of back squats, there’s a that that sort of rumbling in there about well there’s there’s a there’s a cap of how heavy to squat. It will no longer contribute to those adaptations. My argument is no, that’s that’s wrong because all that you’ve done when you’ve gotten heavier is create less motion because you’re moving slower.
So you have to bridge it to where you need to focus on creating more motion than the task you’re trying to improve. So for example, counter movement jump, that’s an easy one. We’ve done this with jump squats where you load somebody with a bar on their back or a trap bar and they do ⁓ jumps, loaded jumps. Well, you know what the momentum is created during the vertical jump, right? And we focus this on the upward concentric output.
And so let’s say they create 300 kilogram meters per second of momentum. You know, they have momentum of 300. Now, you know what you have to exceed in training. Doesn’t matter what your exercise is, as long as it meets your criteria for specificity. But you need to create more than that 300 of motion to have a positive stimulus. Now you obviously, in my opinion, would want to
train that exercise where you create the most motion possible and that has a fine interplay of what load you move and how quickly you move it. And that’s where it’s good for people that currently use velocity only because you can take your velocity output multiply it by the cumulative mass of the person in the load and say I know how much momentum you’ve created. I can compare that to my task that I want to improve
and say, am I giving you a positive stimulus? And if that momentum and training is more, then you know, yes, I am giving you a positive stimulus. Now, is it maximum stimulus that I can give you? Well, that’s another thing. So if you were to do a profile of those loaded jumps at various loads, where you increase them at some percentage that you’ve chosen, it doesn’t matter if it’s scaled to a one RM squad or you’ve just picked loads.
but they’ve got to be separated enough so that when they do the activity, you can get a momentum profile. And most cases, what we see in that profile is that the more you load, it goes up, you create more motion. And then at some point it peaks and then the heavier you go, the less motion you create. So here you have this maximum. All the while you’ve got this baseline of like, it has to be above this, right? So anything above that is going to be good.
But this maximum is going to be best. And the great thing about momentum is it’s the product of the mass, athlete plus load, and how fast you move. Multiply those two things together, you can figure it out. But you can now fine tune. You can say, I’m focusing on velocity. I want you to move this fast, which means I know you need to move this much weight. Or I want you to lift this much weight, which means I know how fast you need to move it.
rather than the contemporary approach, which is I’m going to follow this range of velocities and not care about how much motion you’ve created. I’m only caring about how fast you’re moving. And that is positive. We know that it’s giving adaptation. The literature is clear. Velocity training works, but it’s because when you compare it to the task you’re trying to improve any of those loads at the velocities that they’re prescribing,
is creating more motion than the other task, but it’s theoretically creating the maximum amount of motion. So the argument there is, are you leaving training adaptations on the table? Right? You can still play around with velocity and have fun with that, but you’ve got to include it within momentum as the, I want momentum highest, play with velocity, play with mass to create it.
And that’s the crux of it. so we’re trying to push this in the literature. We’ve shown a few times now, and others are starting to latch onto this. There’s another group overseas that’s showing this as well about how you can create these profiles to figure out what loads you need to do for athletes. ⁓ But we’re at the stage now where it’s kind of like, okay, you’ve shown the process. Now where’s the receipts? Show me that it’s better than.
velocity or that you are actually leaving something on the table with velocity. So that’s what we’re trying to do with training interventions now.
Samson:
Yeah, and I mean, I can tell you personally for the listeners that it works. You know, we saw, I mean, I think our average vertical jump increase this past year ⁓ from what July to September was for standing vert, like 2.3 inches across the team and then for our approach vert, like 3.1. So we saw some really good vertical jump numbers and it’s been very positive. And one of the things that I really like about it too, getting the
read your transcript right and understand what you’re trying to do was it’s not like this ground shaking, earth burning, you know, new development where all of a sudden all these velocity based training companies are obsolete. We can’t use them anymore. Now there has to be momentum based training companies that come out. Like you said, it’s very easy. Just start to calculate in the athlete mass and the mass of whatever implement that they’re moving. And it’s a quick fix. And then you could hopefully, like you said, not leave these training adaptations on the table.
John Harry:
Yeah, it’s literally taking something we’ve done that we’ve made more complex than it has to be and just saying, hang on, just take a step back. Still use the numbers that you’re using, but in this context. And it’s great because if you’re using Eliteform or if you’re using Gemoware, if you’re using whatever velocity output, simply take your phone out and do a quick multiplication and boom, there’s your outcome. And you can just start tracking, right?
And there’s the like the velocity based approaches out there where it’s like, okay, I want you to move this load this fast. once you reduce by a certain amount, we’re done. Same concept. You’re going to move this load this fast. It’s going to create now this much momentum, but I don’t care if I start to see your velocity decrease instead of cutting you off and going lower volume than what I planned.
Maybe I just need to reduce the mass and have you move faster to continue training at that momentum value. Right? And then after that starts to decrease, okay, now maybe you’ve hit your maximum volume that you can prescribe in a session. But it gives you, by throttling back the complexity of what you’re trying to ⁓ monitor, you’ve opened the doors for more options.
Right? More creativity, more, you know, more comparison of, Hey, we know doing stuff real heavy works. We know doing stuff real light works for jumping. Why? Both of them create more motion than an unloaded jump. Right? Not because one moves a certain speed. Right. ⁓ and so that’s the case. And that’s why heavy back squats work. Cause you’re moving a shit ton of mass, not very fast and creating a lot of momentum.
And once you’ve gotten so heavy that you move so slowly, you no longer create more momentum or you no longer approach the max momentum you can create. Well, now your adaptations are not going to be as great. And that’s where that my theory is squat too heavy and you start to deteriorate those athletic outcomes. I think it’s that it’s that reason. Now that’s just a theory, right? We haven’t tested that with data, but when you look at it from Newton’s laws of motion and how momentum is created and you know, it makes sense to me.
Samson:
So sounds like the step-by-step now is to ⁓ go back, get a physics degree, and then move on from there. Obviously not.
John Harry:
Hey man, even,
you know, I tell people it’s more simple than that, right? I never took a physics class as a student. I jumped into biomechanics and jumped into the fire. But really, here’s the thing you got to understand. Newton’s laws of motion. There’s three of them. And he explained all of earthly motion with those three sentences. Right? I told my students, I can’t even tell you how I put my pants on in three statements. Right? So this guy made something that can be thought of as very complex and made it very simple.
Samson:
Yeah.
John Harry:
Right. And if you’re going to focus on one of Newton’s laws, it’s the second law of motion, law of acceleration. ⁓ And knowing how you can rearrange an equation to reveal how certain things happen is just so powerful. And when it comes down to movement, athletic performance, that’s what it’s about is motion creation. And that’s the most powerful thing I think you can learn.
It’s not, and again, this is selfishly thinking, it’s not energy system utilization, right? It’s not, you using ATP right now or is it glycolysis? You know, that’s cool. And that’s, that’s good to know those things, but it’s how is this motion created and how can I create it better? Right? Cause if you can do that, your athlete’s going to get better. Right. That right. And that’s the entirety of the, of the profession, but I don’t see people focusing and it’s
Samson:
And that’s the whole point of this profession. Yeah.
John Harry:
partly because of my field and my profession is not selling it in that way. Right? We all have our own little specialties that we love. And if you run into that program, that’s what you’re going to get. Right? And so you’ve got to find the right sources or, you know, you yourself dive into that info. But it really is just real simple. Newton’s laws of motion.
Samson:
I love how it all goes back and I love that analogy. I can’t even describe how to put my pants on in three sentences and all of sudden we know all the motions of the universe in three.
John Harry:
I’m dead.
Right,
right. It’s wild. As long as you’re moving slower than the speed of light, those three laws are the game.
Samson:
Well, you know, maybe if we keep focusing on motion so much, we can finally get some people going the speed of light. That’d be pretty cool.
John Harry:
Hey, hey, you
know, one of my dreams is to like live Star Wars like, I’m like, you know what? I’m gonna go to this planet today and I’m there. So if we can do that soon, that would be wonderful.
Samson:
Yeah. ⁓
That would be incredible. We’ve got 50 years or so. ⁓ Somebody’s got to figure it out soon. Well, my final question for you, and this is something that I know personally about you, is that you’re quite the Axeman as well. ⁓ What is your favorite song to play on guitar?
John Harry:
Yeah, that’s right. That’s right.
⁓ Lord. ⁓ You know, I would probably go to some older stuff ⁓ because when I was learning, it was where, because of my dad, what I was listening to and it’s Black Sabbath. So really, really anything from the paranoid ⁓ era, you know, whether it’s Iron Man or it’s actually paranoid or it’s NIB, any of those Black Sabbath songs. ⁓
Samson:
Yep.
John Harry:
are just, ugh, to me it’s just like, that’s what you, when I think of guitar, that’s what I listen to or think of. And it’s great because, you know, in my office, I’ve got my, I’ve got my stuff. So whenever I need to take a break from telling people about Newton’s laws, I just crack that bad boy open, so. Yeah, that’s right.
Samson:
Absolutely.
Hahahaha
Yeah, as soon as this podcast is over, you’re going
to go straight to it. Well, I love that and I absolutely respect the choice. You know, the only time I ever get to play Black Sabbath is when I’m lifting alone in the weight room. But it does sound fantastic over the speakers. Well, Dr. Harry, thank you so much for coming on. I truly appreciate it. And it’s great to speak with you in a formal sense on the podcast. I look forward to our next podcast, where it’s just a live concert of you for another hour.
John Harry:
That’s right.
There you go. ⁓ yeah, always.
Samson:
just playing your greatest hits, so I can’t wait.
John Harry:
Hey,
as long as you don’t make me open my mouth and sing, we’ll be good. You’d lose all your viewership. Hey, there you go. ⁓ look at this guy.
Samson:
Yeah. ⁓
I’ll take over the singing for you. We’ll handle that piece. I was an All County Choir in high school. Little known fact about me.
Well, if somebody wants to reach out or if somebody wants to inquire about something they heard on the podcast, what would be the best way to do that?
John Harry:
man, anyway, email me. My email’s john.harry.ttu.edu. That’s probably the quickest way to get me. I’m on all the social, well, not all, I’m on all the old people’s social platforms. You can just search me on Instagram, I think I’m at Dr. John Harry. Twitter, what’s it called now? X, I’m at Dr. John Harry.
You can just find me on any of those, shoot me a message. I’m on LinkedIn too. You can find me, see this mug. There’s another one on there and you’re like, need him. ⁓ But I’m on all three of those. try to respond pretty quick ⁓ to any type of inquiry, but I’m always eager to hop on, even if it’s like hopping on a Zoom call or whatever with people to try to talk things through or.
Samson:
Hahaha
John Harry:
Expand what I think about you know even if people pose questions to me about like hey, how do you do this? mean, I don’t know let’s try to figure it out I really enjoy those kind of challenges So if somebody out there listening watching doing the whole thing says I got a cool idea shoot it shoot it this way
Samson:
Yeah.
That’s awesome. Well, I appreciate your openness to it. We’ll have to get you on TikTok soon as well.
John Harry:
man, ⁓ that’s too complicated for me, man.
Samson:
Yeah, you can take over force platforms. I’ll help you out with TikTok. We’ll become an undefeated team. What’s the ⁓ freak the mighty? Have you ever read that book? It’s about, ⁓ man, is unnecessary story, but it’s a very large ⁓ individual. The friend’s a very small individual and then he puts them on his shoulders and they become freak the mighty. And so I would be the small individual on your shoulders in that scenario.
John Harry:
We got a partnership.
Uh-uh. No.
I don’t know.
I was gonna say we have to figure out hard who’s on which role there.
Samson:
Well, regardless, Dr. Harry, thank you so much. I truly appreciate everything. Absolutely.
John Harry:
Right on man, thanks for having me.
