Sports Performance Guru Lee Taft, the Speed Guy is on today’s episode.  He talks about the commonalities between training professional athletes versus youth athletes, his top 5 drills, the place of sports performance in today's competitive sports environment, and when he feels athletes should choose to focus on one sport.  He also talks about his speed insiders toolbox, a coaching aid for his helping sports performance coaches.  

Website: https://leetaft.com/

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/leetaft/

Book Recommendation

7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Make it Stick

Today we don’t have a guest but I wanted to dedicate one podcast to a topic I am passionate about and stress the need to have a long term athletic development mindset.  Kids are focusing on one sport these days to the detriment of their long term athletic development, and a shift in the mindset that not playing one sport for another is a good thing long term for the sport you think you want to focus on! 

Andrew Gregory, CSCS is an assistant coach for the Mens and Womens Tennis teams at DePauw University in Indiana.  In his role he is responsible for the teams on court and off court training for both Tennis skill, and sports performance.  In this episode we talk about his transition into the role of a strength and conditioning coach as well as a tennis coach, the need for this transition and the outcomes he has seen in the development of the players under his tutelage.  Tennis is a sport which needs performance training, and is underrepresented in the sports performance community.  

Instagram @ag_tennis_performance 

Book Reference The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance

Website AGTotalTennisPerformance.com tvagen@highline.edu

Tim Vagen is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist who is the program manager of the highly regarded Highline College Personal Fitness Trainer Program. He has over 40 years of clinical, field, and teaching experience helping athletes, trainers, and Physical Therapists to be better educated in movement skills. His clients include: NFL, CFL, LPGA, MLB, soccer clubs, elite swimmers and Gymnasts, Seattle S.W.A.T., U.S. Secret Service, and was a consultant to the U.S. Rugby team. Tim’s programs have produced 17 Olympic Medals, Multiple World Records, US National Figure skating champions, multiple US national Swim Champions, a US Open Tennis Champion, and many state champion high school athletes.  We had an amazing conversation about coaching athletes of all levels.  

LinkedIn Tim Vagen

Book Reference 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Stephen Covey

Email tvagen@highline.edu

Jae Taft is the founder of Us Girls Basketball.  Jae is a former collegiate basketball player, and current basketball coach who talks to us about the importance of developing both on court skills as well as off the court skills and how off the court makes you better on the court.  She offers a lot of wisdom for young female athletes, regardless of whether they play basketball, in regards to mindset.  She also discusses a product she developed called Recruiting System 101 which helps athletes decipher the collegiate recruiting journey and process.  

Website UsGirlsBasketball.com

Podcast Us Girls Basketball

Instagram @jaetaftxoxo

Book Reference You’re a Badass Jen Sincero

In a former life I was a high school science teacher who gravitated to spending hours in the weight room. One of the students whom I most often found there, was Jack Dustin, who is now the Head Strength and Conditioning coach at Endicott College. Jack played Football at Assumption College, where he was a four year starter and Captain. We discuss his journey to his current position from college, his training philosophy, what makes his job exciting as well as what challenges he faces with athletes. He talks about the sport he feels most needs time training sports performance and what being grateful is a key to being successful in life!

Website Endicott College 

Instagram @coach_jackd

Twitter @coach_jdustin 

LinkedIn 

Book Reference 

Lead your Tribe and Love your work

Today we talk about endurance coaching and mental well-being with Lucas Fortini, a former professional cyclist and the founder of Omnium Outdoors.  Omnium Outdoors is a non-profit designed to create a community for all people focused on mental and physical health using the outdoors as our venue. In this episode we talk about training for endurance sports, the importance of physical health to mental health, the value in taking time for yourself, as well as some of the really cool events Omnium, has in store in the months to come!

Website Omnium Outdoors

Instagram @omniumoutdoors

Twitter @twitteroutdoors

Facebook Omnium outdoors

Book Reference 

Shoe Dog 

Hollywood Park

Today we talked to Matt Lachine from Matt Lachine Athletic Consulting in Ontario Canada. Matt works with amateur and professional hockey players, along with tennis players, and has established a great reputation as one of the up-and-coming hockey trainers in the Ontario area. We talked about how training on dryland makes better hockey players, his go-to exercises for training hockey players, and he shared with us great insight into his keys to success.

Website Matt Lachine Athletic Consulting

Book Reference Conscious Coaching by Brett Batholomew

Our guest today is James Lujan from XCel Performance in Virginia Beach, VA. James is a performance coach who I met through a common mentor, Lee Taft. James has taken Lee’s Reactive tier system, and utilized this in his athletes towards game situations for them. Today we discuss his background, why he took a job at Boeing, his training philosophy, and some of the issues, and solutions, he sees with youth athletes today.  

Instagram @james_the_fn_trainer 

Website https://xcelperformance.thinkific.com/

Book Reference Never Eat Alone

Episode 1

No Risk Sports Performance Origin Story. A recap of Judah’s life and background, and how he came to running No Risk Sports and why he sees the importance of athlete development through sports performance training vital to the health and wellbeing of today's athletes.

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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/norisksportsperformance

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/norisksportsperformance/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJlzS88OMPj02sQ72kYioNA

Website: https://www.norisksportsperformance.com