Simplifying Speed and Athletic Development with Kendall Green B.S., CSAS, USAW

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Coach Kendall Green (B.S., CSAS, USAW) simplifies speed and athletic development in this podcast interview hosted by Siobhan Milner.

Kendall’s key advice: keep it simple. Kendall discusses motivating athletes with tech tools like the Dasher, how to foster self-motivation, talks about speed coaching across age ranges, and the universal benefits of sprint training in various sports.

Kendall Green also touches on how speed can be developed in the weight room, and how sprint OR strength training may be more important for certain athletes at certain times. Kendall shares practical takeaways for athletes and coaches, particularly regarding fostering the development of complete athletes with a solid base of movement skill.

Thoughts about this episode? Let me know over on IG!

About Kendall Green:

Kendall Green is Head Strength & Conditioning Coach and Owner of Green Roots Performance & Wellness in Williamsburg, Virginia. He has previously served as a High School Head T&F Coach, Football Coach, and Strength & Conditioning Coach. He specializes in speed and power development.

Featured on the show:

Where to find Kendall:

Instagram: @greenrootspw

Twitter: @KoachGreen_

Sinplifaster: https://simplifaster.com/articles/author/kendallgreen/

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Transcript for Simplifying Speed and Athletic Development with Kendall Green B.S., CSAS, USAW

Siobhan Milner: [00:00:00] Welcome Kendall.

Kendall Green: Thank you for having me, Siobhan. Thanks. Awesome.

Siobhan Milner: Yeah. I’m excited to have you here. We’re going to talk about speed today, speed training and speed development. So I wanted to start off by asking you what is speed training and why is it important for athletes?

Kendall Green: Sure, sure. So for me, speed training is kind of twofold where you have the, I guess the common understanding of speed training.

We’re working on sprint ability, speed development as far as field work. Um, and that kind of encompasses obviously sprinting, deceleration, acceleration, change of direction, agility, everything to me. is as far as fieldwork goes and the more sport specific movement. That’s what I would consider speed development.

Um, but the other side of that would also be just the rate of muscle contraction. So I know, especially on sure, we’ll get into [00:01:00] this at some point. Um, there’s the common idea that you can’t develop speed in the weight room. Or you can’t develop speed effectively in the weight room. But I think, I think if we look at it from a different, from, from a more anatomical or physiological standpoint, then we actually can develop speed.

You might not be able to develop those other things that we were talking about before, uh, being sprintability or whatever field, uh, movements we’re looking for to be fast. But I think we can. And do, we do it all the time, we can develop the muscles to fire faster. So for me that’s what speed development is, is those two things working hand in hand.

Siobhan Milner: I feel like I’m already going to go on tangents. But I’m talking about, the whole, the whole podcast is a tangent really, so.

Kendall Green: That’s fine with me.

Siobhan Milner: I’m kind of interested with the rate of force development when it comes to speed or, or training for rate of force development in the weight room. Do [00:02:00] you think that athletes and coaches need to have access to things to measure velocity?

Like do they need that sort of equipment or can they work on it at a more basic level, do you think?

Kendall Green: Yeah, I definitely, I, I’m a, I’m a proponent of simplicity..

I’m a wholehearted believer that, you know, the, the KISS principle, keep it simple, stupid. You’ll get more bang for your buck more times than not. I know when people have, and the facility I work in that I own, I don’t have access to a bunch of technology or certain pieces of equipment, one because it’s a smaller space and two because those things are expensive.

But I think when you start getting, and we’ve seen it over the past couple of years, especially in college football, where. People have access to these unnecessarily large budgets, and they start getting into more sports times, which is great if you have access to those things. But then with that comes a lot more information as far as the data points that are being [00:03:00] accessed and I think when you start to get too much into the technology, um, or relying too heavily on the technology, I should say, that’s when you start to lose a little bit of what you’re actually trying to accomplish.

I think speed, as far as, as far, well, for both, for both sides of what I, uh, Explain the field stuff as well as the weight room activities. Speed is pretty simple. You know, obviously the, the development of it and the application of it, that can be a little more complex, but speed in and of itself is fairly simple.

So I think keeping it simple for, for me, at least would, would do most people better. Then having to invest in some, some external device, um, and then again, they are, they are great pieces of the VBT trackers, you know, even video analysis, all of those types of things. Those are great to have. I don’t think they’re necessary by any stretch of the imagination.

You know, we have people every year and, and, you know, world championships [00:04:00] events, uh, when the Olympics comes up, all these major sporting events where the best of the best are competing, and then you see some of them and. From where they come from. Um, I was actually listening to the, uh, the episode you did with Elizabeth Oehler earlier, and she was talking about Olympic weightlifting, and we see people from, you know, parts of the world that You know, they got electricity and that’s about it, you know, so they, they’re still getting the very best results with the most minimum of, of equipment.

So I don’t think at all, the technology is necessary. Again, helpful. 100%. If you know what to do with it, if you know what you’re looking at, if you know the all the data points you’re getting, if you understand those things and and how they can be incorporated into the training program and how the program can be progressed from there.

But Not necessary. Keep it simple. Figure it out from there. You know, [00:05:00] move whatever weight faster, be more efficient with your body movement. Stopwatches still work. I have a Dasher system. I still use my stopwatch from time to time. The Dasher is great. Uh, it gives me what I need as far as, as far as tracking sprint times and agility times.

My stopwatch still works and I got it for four dollars from Walmart. I, I actually, I actually got two of them. Oh, perfect. What a deal. Big spender over here.

Siobhan Milner: Okay, I feel like I want to dive into some of the weight room stuff, but I’ve got to pull back a little bit. So, uh, otherwise I’m just going to go down the weight room rabbit hole.

People listening don’t want to just hear about that. you’ve talked a little bit about what speed is, but what are some of the maybe common misconceptions about speed and speed training, and how can athletes and coaches avoid those or understand them better?

Kendall Green: Sure, sure. So, so I think the main and, and almost only [00:06:00] misconception about speed development, speed training is volume.

And I think, and when I say volume, I’m talking volume of work, obviously, and then also the volume of rest. , and I think with true speed development, the importance of rest is almost just as important as the number of repetitions you’re doing. So for me with redevelopment, I work with athletes from middle school to college, but most athletes I work with are in the high school range, kind of right in the middle, where the vast majority of them want to improve their athletic ability, and they know they want to improve their athletic ability.

So for me, we don’t do a ton of volume. As far as repetitions, most of the volume takes place in the summer, the most volume I’ve had an athlete do is maybe Maybe eight reps. That’s for the higher end college athletes that can, [00:07:00] I know they can handle that amount of work.

And then as far as the distance goes with that, that volume, one, because of the space I have inside, I only have really five yards of true sprinting space, which I do use a lot, but outdoors. I really have at best 25 yards of sprint space, so we can start getting into the max velocity stuff.

But regardless, the volume that I’ve seen again with football, primarily football is probably the, as far as strength and conditioning goes, football probably has the furthest to go. In my opinion, just because it’s been a thing for so long with football, they kind of, you know, Introduce strengthening, and conditioning to the general population through football.

But because some of the, the applications and protocols that football strengthening, additioning coaches use, it’s pretty archaic. In my opinion, so I already went off on a tangent. Anyways,

Siobhan Milner: I love the tangents. We love the tangents. [00:08:00]

Kendall Green: Um, but yeah, the, the volume of work, with the actual work and with the rest, I think that We often see speed work and I wrote this in one of my articles, I can attach the link to my article, but, the the volume of work and the limited amount of rest that’s allowed with that volume. It turns in, it turns from speed development into conditioning and it turns in conditioning for a sport that you’re more than likely not training for. So I had a professor, he’s actually my advisor.

Uh, he’s a long distance runner and he was, he’s in his late sixties and he was still running. marathons, which is awesome. But he would always tell the football players in class that his his sport is our punishment. Right. And as horrible as it sounds, this is the truth, and then often our [00:09:00] punishment is also our conditioning.

Um, I played football in college, obviously, but the amount of running athletes are doing at a moderate, at best tempo, or intensity is not speed development. If they’re not, if they’re, if they’re breathing harder. then they were when they, you know, did the warm up, then they’re probably not really doing speed development for for the purposes that I trained.

I’ve only had two high level track athletes that I’ve worked with since I started this outside of the school I used to work at. So in my facility, if we’re working on true speed development, we use what I guess in conditioning terms, The talk test, right? So if we’re able to have a regular conversation in between reps, then I know we’re in a good place, right?

Obviously the, if the distance is a little bit longer, you might be a little more winded, [00:10:00] but it shouldn’t be to the point where you have to take gulps of air in between a sentence, right? I kind of. I don’t trick them, but to make sure we’re utilizing the rest in between sets to the best of our ability actually kind of create conversation.

One, it helps build the relationship with the athlete, right? But also it ensures that they’re taking advantage of the full rest. They’re not getting super fatigued aerobically or even mentally. And so we can ensure the reps are going to stay of the best quality. So I think with, with young, especially.

Again, football, high school, strength, conditioning, sports training, whatever it may be, a lot of people, either in the private sector, they promote speed and agility training, or in the, in the actual school setting. They are saying we’re going to get faster, whatever it may be, it turns into that conditioning piece where we’re going to do a bunch of reps because I get and I’m assuming in their mind and I coach the sport so I get it and play the [00:11:00] sport in their mind.

They’re thinking about the game itself and how they want their athletes to play fast. Right. But they also want them to play fast within the condition of how the sport goes over time where they’re, you know, you’re getting tired throughout the game, but we still want you to play fast. So they’re trying to, I guess, match it up where we’re tired and training.

We’re still running fast. That will translate to the game. You’re tired in the game. You’re running fast. And it’s not sometimes work. Usually it doesn’t just. Physiologically, and and from a pure definition standpoint, if we’re working on speed. That’s really all you can work on at any given time, because as soon as fatigue sets in, that’s when it turns into something else.

And obviously, fatigue sets in naturally, but to what degree is it setting in? And as soon as you cross over that threshold, and the threshold is fairly It’s a very thin [00:12:00] line between speed development and conditioning, right? But there’s a lot of space on both sides of that line that you have to work with.

So when, when coaches, when trainers, whoever it may be, says they’re working speed development, they have to ensure that the rest is looked at. Just as equally as the work they’re doing is,

Siobhan Milner: as you say, the rest is super, super important to get that right intensity so that they’re actually training speed.

But the other thing I wonder is maybe just from a, even a motivation standpoint, how do you get your athletes to really. give you speed when you’re doing those drills?

Kendall Green: Sure. Sure. So, so two things to that, when I first started, I’ve been training to for what year is this? Seven years, I think.

I mean, I’ve been training and coaching for seven years and I didn’t really start getting into development, how I see it now, [00:13:00] probably maybe four, three or four years ago, I guess, four years ago, right, right before COVID. And so for me, when I start working with athletes, especially In that high school college age range, the middle school group, I’m not super concerned with their actual speed development numbers per se.

It’s just a matter of them just getting comfortable running regularly. But for that age range, the high school to college group, when you first start, if I have a new athlete come in, you’re not used to taking that risk. Right. Because again, they’ve been training or working out with, you know, either their school for X amount of years, or with a different trainer that may not view it the same way I do.

And so when we take longer rest, it’s kind of a shock to them and they get You know, kind of antsy. But then once we progress and you know, either the reps increase the distance increases, or when they start to see their time decrease, that’s when they really start to understand it really starts [00:14:00] cooking.

They really appreciate the rest because they see what it has done for them. Um, but as far as the motivation to improve, that’s where the yeah. The Dasher comes in, and I’ve only had the Dasher for three years, I think, but, you know, we have, we have the Dasher, we can get a, you know, a fairly accurate reading on their actual speed.

They can see it, right? And then that internal competitive nature that they have, it comes out and they kind of essentially motivate themselves. I don’t have to do a whole lot. You know, I, I try to be. I don’t know if you can tell, my voice is fairly monotone, so I don’t have a whole lot of excitement behind it.

Not that I’m not excited, I just, that’s just how I talk. I try to, you know, again, create that relationship where, you know, I like, I’ll probably see the time, well I will see the time before they do, because they’re still, you know, finishing the run or whatever. And when I’m charting it, You know, they always turn around and say, what was about time?

And, you know, I make a little face. I’m like, Oh, you can get a little spicy. And you know, that, that [00:15:00] kind of motivates them to, you know, they, they get that, that little, that little quick hit of dopamine where they like, Oh yeah, we can really, really let loose now. So yeah, that’s, that’s pretty much it. But before I had the dasher, I was using the stopwatch.

And a couple of different ways. Well, I was reading the stopwatch in one way, but I was doing kind of in my mind, I call it the poor man’s speed technology. So, uh, with the stopwatch, I was doing a timed run for whatever distance. And it wasn’t any further than, or any longer rather than maybe three seconds.

So we would have our start land wherever, and then I would have cones marked off for probably up to 40 yards, even though I knew they weren’t going to get there. If they can run 40 yards in three seconds, then you should probably be doing something else. But, you know, I would say I’d obviously be, you know, a little more reactive than them going on their own with the Dasher.

But, you know, I would say go, I would try to be as accurate [00:16:00] as possible with the stopwatch, where I would start the stopwatch as soon as they move, like same with the Dasher. But the effort would be to get as far as they can in X amount of time. Right. So obviously with that, especially with kids, you know, they’re trying to, they’re literally trying to get as far as they can get in whatever amount of time.

Right. So they’ll push a little bit harder because they already know in their mind, it’s a little bit different with a stopwatch than it is for the Dasher. With the Dasher, they can focus a little bit more on their technique. With the stopwatch, they’re focusing a little bit, from my experience, they focus a little bit more on the effort.

So trying to push themselves as far out as they can get it. And whatever time limit that is, we get the time, put a mark down or whatever, and we can see that over time either improve or as they start to, you know, drop off and we, you know, call it or whatever. Um, and so the other way I was, I was using that motivating aspect of their of their mentality, I guess, was I would have them run. It would be a set distance. [00:17:00] So 10 15 yards having run a set or sprint a set distance and I always tell them we always think about the car when we’re sprinting. So you’re accelerating, pushing down on the gas. decelerating, pushing the brake.

There is a space in between where you’re not doing either, right? So you’re coasting essentially, right? So accelerate faster. You can through 15 yards. Take your foot off the gas. Don’t touch the brake at all. Right. So in physics, we can, we have, you know, our laws of motion, an object in motion stays in motion unless, unless acted on by an outside force.

Right. So if we can increase the distance of your coast, then we, we know in theory that you’re getting faster. Right. So if you’re sprinting 15 yards, and you coast, and obviously it’s a little more subjective. With them coasting [00:18:00] because you can’t really tell if they’re slowing themselves down or if it’s actually, you know, gravity and their mechanics dropping off, that’s slowing them down.

Um, but putting that, that thought in their mind, like sprint through and then stop accelerating, but don’t stop yourself. That protocol we usually did on the hill because it’s a little bit easier to feel on the hill because the hill I have right outside of my facility. It’s in the parking lot, but it’s I have 15 yards up there.

Um, and then at the top of 15 yards, it goes flat. Right. So we can, it’s a little easier to feel going from the hill to flat, the deceleration, so that’s where we usually did that, but it still worked on the field or flat ground. Um, so we know if you, if you’re running a certain speed, right, and you get a certain distance, the goal is do the same thing, do the sprint faster, especially can obviously each rep and then see if you get.

Carried further by the [00:19:00] momentum you created. So that was my, before I got the technology of the dasher, that was my poor man’s way of incorporating speed development with using time as the, as the constraint or the motivator, so to speak, and it worked pretty well until I got the dashers. Now everybody wants to use the laser.

So the stopwatch is starting to get a little dusty. So, so the same, same physics apply.

Siobhan Milner: Yeah. It’s interesting also hearing like they’re motivated when they hear the time that they’ve got through the dasher. I recently started working with a team that they’ve got a bit of, history of doing like repeated sprint ability tests.

So they have, they do have the very short rests. It’s not a very high volume, but they have the very short rest. And what I see, often because one of the things they’re measuring is how their speed drops off as well. So they’re looking at the total time and how the speed drops off. But I see with some athletes, [00:20:00] like they know, oh, if I can get around this for every sprint, then I’m going to get a better time.

So they kind of. Pace themselves, which isn’t necessarily what we’re wanting, but I wonder, you know, when you’re really strong on saying, like, we are having this rest time and we’re really going to rest. Do you think that also helps prevent that pacing? Because they just know, like, I’m, I’m going to have that full recovery.

Kendall Green: I think so. I think so. It’s, uh. Yeah, simply. I think having that having that rest in there. Well, I saw their programs are all individualized in a notebook. Um, but for the speed work for most of them, I put it on the board so they can see and it shows how much rest they’re going to get. Even even in a notebook the lifting stuff, it shows how much rest they’re allotted for for whatever activity they’re doing.

I do think that having the knowledge [00:21:00] of the rest being there is definitely beneficial. Uh, from from an effort standpoint, I remember growing up even when I was coaching, from from playing and coaching. I remember there would always be, it always be that one kid at the end of practice. We were doing whatever conditioning run.

There’s always be that one kid like, how many were we doing? And, everybody get mad. They know if somebody asked that the coach was gonna get upset and make you run another one or whatever. Uh, it all made no sense. I think that the transparency of knowing and I try to be as trans because I know what it was like when I was growing up.

I try to be as transparent with the workout as possible. So I lay out every piece of information. They could possibly need. Obviously. I’m still there so they can ask questions but provide as much information as possible on what it is we’re doing. So you kind of. Can prep yourself mentally, right? Knowing that, especially having things like the Dasher and in parliament and all that [00:22:00] type of stuff, having those things laid out where, you know, you have to hit a certain mark and, you know, we’ve been tracking it over time to see improvement.

Nobody wants to get worse. I don’t think, especially, especially in the private sector, cause you’re paying for this, right? So I’m going to do. the best I can on my part. So the same is expected of them. Um, and so they know they’re there because they need to get better or they want to get better. So the effort is there.

You just have to find, you know, How to dig it out and usually the transparency, has helped a lot for me in that regard.

Siobhan Milner: One of the things you touched on a little bit was, about with some of the younger athletes, you might focus more on technique rather than actual speed training. So how do you feel that, age and experience affects how Athletes and coaches should approach speed training.

I don’t

Kendall Green: train. I’ve trained the youngest athlete I’ve trained is or was nine. [00:23:00] Um, and I didn’t let him because his brother was older. Um, so I just had both of them in the middle school group. But for for younger athletes, the KISS principal, I guess You add another S to it. So super simple and the volume is, I would say, I would say you could push the volume a little bit higher, not much by any means, but I think you can push the volume a little bit higher, but not necessarily to create some sort of adaptation physiologically, but more so to, to get the reps in.

Right. Create some form of consistency and build up the reps over time where they get more comfortable again, moving in a particular manner. I know a lot of people don’t have younger kids do sprint mechanic stuff. We do a very little bit of it. Um, and we keep like a runs is probably the extent of it just because I know they’ve done things similar to that in their sports, whether it be, [00:24:00] you know, high needs or buckets or whatever it is.

And we kind of explain to them how they Correspond with each other and and what we’re actually looking for. So it’s something they already know. Um, it’s just putting it into more of a formal context. And so with younger athletes, I think there there is obviously, a limit of too much where they are either getting mentally fatigued or physically fatigued.

And then obviously one effect the other. Um, and then the result of those fatigues, they show up differently than they do for older athletes. And younger kids, younger kids are a little more internal with their frustrations, I think. Obviously, some of them can be more vocal, I guess. But, younger athletes are a little more internal and they kind of Shut down to some degree, more so than, than a high school athlete would for my experience.

And there it’s much harder to get [00:25:00] them back in that, you know, middle school, elementary school, if you’re in that field, hard to get them back. Once they do cross that line, like I’ve had high school kids, like, yeah, I’m ready to go home. It doesn’t bother me when they say that. I don’t really care.

They’ll be all right. But when, you know, once the younger kids say like, I want to go home, then that’s when it becomes like a real. a real issue as far as the responsibility that we have as coaches because they’re not as most of them are not as mentally durable or as mentally resilient as older athletes just because they don’t have the experience.

So I think the getting the experience of just enough right getting into where they’re understanding it and and usually for them for for younger, younger athletes, I let them get it wrong a little bit more than I would for older athletes when I see older athletes start to get it wrong with their time start to start to go [00:26:00] up or whatever it may be the form starts to fall apart.

I’ll cut them off almost immediately. Because then I know now we’re not, you could start creeping into the mental fatigue, the, the upset, whatever, but it’s also starting to get closer to the injury, right, getting closer to possible potential injury with younger kids. I know, you know, I felt like when the freshman came in, when I used to coach football, they would talk about how they.

One day, they like pull their hamstring, allegedly next day, they’d be a practice running around or before practice runs like you don’t have enough muscle to pull yet. So I know they’re a little more physically resilient, just because they don’t have a lot. But, they’re mentally like they don’t have that that same resilience that an older athlete was because they don’t have the experience.

They don’t they’ve never been put most most athletes haven’t been put in situations where. Mental resilience is necessary, right? To [00:27:00] the degree, that they will soon experience, right? As far as athleticism goes, or sport goes, so just keeping, keeping the simplicity of it, the main thing as, as The age goes down.

Um, you can still do some of the same things. It doesn’t have to be as specific. Um, I use a dash with younger kids and they, they love it. They don’t know what it means. I sometimes don’t know what it means when they run some time. Like, who are you? Right? They run some crazy time. And then the next one, the next rep, they like get super excited about it, which is great.

And the next one is like two seconds slower. It’s like, all right, well, this means absolutely nothing. But the fact that they’re, you know, they’re, they’re doing it, right. It’s just the act of doing, again, going back to Elizabeth’s episode about just, you know, [00:28:00] playing sprinting, sprint work, speed work can be played for kids recent recess.

I remember racing at recess all the time. That’s like, that’s played to me, right. It’s just in a more formal setting. So I think, you know, simplicity and trying to incorporate some type of. A little bit of instruction here, there, you know, don’t look at your friend while you’re running. Maybe look where you’re going, stuff like that, to make sure we’re, we’re going in the right direction.

So I don’t think the, again, the physiological adaptation for speed development isn’t, it’s probably not even on the checklist of things I’m looking at for younger athletes, but as soon as they, you know, as soon as they get into, I would say probably if I had to put a, I didn’t really put a. actual quantification on it, but I would say probably 10th grade.

That’s when we probably will really start trying to actually push those numbers in a more productive manner, a more productive and structured manner.

Siobhan Milner: As a non North American, can [00:29:00] I ask what 10th grade is?

Kendall Green: Oh, yeah, so 10th grade is, uh, was second grade high school. So I want to say 14, 15 years old. I’m going to say I could be completely wrong.

I’ve been out of high school for a few years. Um, I’m pretty sure it’s 14/15.

Siobhan Milner: It’s, yeah, when you say, when I hear this, it’s like the UK, they also have different, I think they say like 5th form or something. And in New Zealand we say year 11 and I’m just like, I have no idea what these terms are. So it’s helpful.

I have, I have kind of a, a selfish question, I guess, because I work entirely with sports that are not on solid ground. So two of the, two of the sports I work with are on ice and one of the sports I work with is on sand. And I just wondered, For you, when you’re working with athletes that might be competing on different surfaces, would there be different things that you would take into consideration for speed training?

Or if you’re really wanting to train speed, would you still [00:30:00] train that on a, you know, a standard surface?

Kendall Green: Yeah, so to be completely honest, I have not had that come across my desk yet. Uh, it’s not a thing I’ve had experience with or have really looked into to be completely honest with you. And also I just went to my first ice hockey game like three weeks ago with my wife.

Yeah, it was cool. I enjoyed the fight and everything. Um, yeah, they’re brutal. Yeah, they should let everybody do that. It would probably cut down on penalties. Um, no, so I, yeah, I haven’t, haven’t had any opportunity to work with non solid grounded athletes, but if I did thinking about it right now, I probably, I probably wouldn’t change anything other than the volume.

Um, when I, when I train athletes in my facility, I train them essentially as a [00:31:00] team, but they all come in as groups. Um, just to keep kind of that team atmosphere, I guess, where there’s multiple people at the same time, because obviously, especially the more mature and experience they get and closer to, you know, higher level sport that they get into.

They don’t necessarily need to sprint great, but I think the ability or the capacity to sprint well is useful just as far as, you know, the physiological, whatever science word. Um,

Siobhan Milner: Yeah. And I think even, you know, when we think about, there’s been a lot of talk about, um, sprinting being like a vaccine for hamstring injury.

I think there’s also benefits with that as well.

Kendall Green: Absolutely. Absolutely. Just the, just those high, you know, highly recruited motor units and, this [00:32:00] muscle fiber is firing it essentially the fastest rate possible. Um, I think just having that capacity is super beneficial for every athlete. Um, do they need to be great at it?

Probably not, but it’s helpful, right? Just just kind of pushing that, uh, that that aspect of athleticism. Um, it probably doesn’t, you know, translate that well to swimming, right? But having that ability to push the push the body a little bit harder, I think is beneficial. I love to work with non athletes.

non ground based athletes, but a lot of people don’t like me.

Siobhan Milner: Oh, . I’m sorry to hear that .

Kendall Green: It’s fine. It’s the life I chose.

Siobhan Milner: I, uh, yeah, I’ve kind of gone with, uh, entirely weird sports in the last, well not weird, but, you know, non-traditional last in the last five years, [00:33:00] so Cool. Yeah, it is, but it’s interesting when.

Uh, like, I’m not sure what your kind of S& C background is, but I feel like a lot of the S& C certification in education is so focused on like basketball, football, soccer, you know, so you’ve really got to get in and be like, I mean, you have to do the needs analysis and you’re, you’re also, I think this for me was a big thing of being like, I can actually really learn a lot from the athletes, like, you know, them telling me how things feel as well.

So. Yeah.

Kendall Green: Yeah, that that was actually a big part of my development over the last four years, probably, um, because obviously when I used to go to football, I coached football and track, um, at the previous school I worked at, uh, and then a lot of the athletes that were coming in to my facility played either football or track.

Um, so that was kind of the base of my, which is fine, especially with track track track. I think track and field has helped a [00:34:00] lot with my understanding of football. of athleticism, uh, and performance. Um, but then I got a few, athletes that came in. A number of them played volleyball. And, I’ve had one that played field hockey, and I was honest with all of them.

I was like, I’ve never in my life been to a field hockey game. One, because they’re played in the same season. So I never really had the same season as football. I never really had the opportunity to go to a field hockey game. But also, I didn’t care. In all honesty. Um, like I know you guys are over there doing your thing.

That’s great. Um, I just, you know, I just because I didn’t have the experience with it. So I did had no interest, right? And the same with volleyball. Volleyball is also played in the fall. We usually had either practice or a game so I can’t do both. Uh, but you know, I was a little more familiar with volleyball because like some game you played in [00:35:00] elementary school, middle school and gym class.

So I was a little more familiar with the game, but having the communication with those athletes about, you know, what position do you play? What does your position do? What do you need to do specifically? Um, how can, how can I help to improve whatever qualities of athleticism you need to be better at your sport?

Um, then I got the opportunity to see. Uh, several of them actually play their sport. Um, at pretty both that actually division one level one, one is club, but it’s technically division one. So, so being able to have the conversation with them in the training environment about what it is their sport entails and what it is they need, then being able to actually go see them do it.

Those two things in tandem really Elevated my ability to program for not only them, but also the other athletes that train even the adults that I work with a lot of things. A lot of [00:36:00] the protocols that I use for the athletes does translate over to the adults that work with regardless of age. Um, because, you know, those things are obviously the intensity is not the same, but You know, the the idea of human movement, it doesn’t change just because you’re not playing a sport in my mind.

Um, like, like, you don’t finish your last game in college or high school, whatever it may be. And then you turn into some other life form. You’re still, you’re still the same person, you know what I mean? So , still, you know, going through certain movements Patterns or doing certain lifts. Even I mean, I’ve even had adults go through some variation of the a series.

Um, With with a runs or a skips or whatever, maybe just because those those pretty much everybody’s like, I haven’t skipped in 30 years, you know, just, you know, having the ability to coordinate, um, [00:37:00] use your natural rhythm and all those type of things, um, throughout your entire sporting life and into the dozer that I think make a great, a great bit of difference.

Um, and they seem to be working so far. Nobody’s Filed a lawsuit against me yet

Siobhan Milner: Ideal . So I wanna come back to, the strength training component as well. Yes. Yeah. Because I think a lot of, especially when I’m working with younger athletes, a lot of parents. They don’t see the value of strength training.

And of course, there’s a whole lot of reasons why they should be. But I wondered if you could talk a little bit about, the role that strength training plays in speed.

Kendall Green: Yeah, sure, sure, sure. Uh, and that’s interesting because I actually have the opposite effect.

Siobhan Milner: And is that because it’s football, maybe?

Kendall Green: Maybe. Uh, I think a lot of it has to do with how my facility looks. Because the, the. It’s not a huge space by any means, but the main thing you [00:38:00] see is the lifting area. Um, nobody really, I have a small strip of turf that actually got from another gym that closed. Lucky me. But uh, like the strip, it’s just, it’s a strip of turf, right?

Nobody, it’s just there. It doesn’t say sprint on me or anything, but everybody knows what weights are, right? So that’s the main thing you see. And then obviously how I look, I’m not small, but, I think for, for strength training, I’m sure you thought on Twitter last week or this weekend or whatever it was, the, the rate of force development.

Oh my goodness. What a, what a time.

Siobhan Milner: Yeah, there was a question on Twitter just for people. What was it? It was, uh, can we even train rate of force development? Was that what it was?

Kendall Green: Uh, so the original question was, or it wasn’t a question, it was a statement, which makes it worse about, um, You know, is if you’re, if you can produce X amount of force more than your opponent, the rate of force doesn’t matter.

Okay. I’ll [00:39:00] almost, I guess. Uh, but not so, um, strength is definitely from a system, sheer physics. One on one standpoint, force strength is obviously a component of velocity, velocity being speed, but I think that we get, not we. A portion of strengthening conditioning strength being the operative word of the title, we kind of get caught up in the force, the peak force production or the, the, uh, even the rate of force sometimes we can kind of get caught up in.

Um, it’s all. Content is like the biggest key to all of this. So, so with, and I, I know a lot of times, uh, I see it all the time on, on Twitter or whatever, social media outlet, um, or blog site or whatever, about how, you know, you can never be too strong, [00:40:00] right? And I think that’s not true, simply put. Uh, I, I think you absolutely, for, and again, going back to content.

If we’re, if I’m working with a track athlete, if I’m working with a, if with a, uh, wide receiver that plays football, if I’m playing with, I don’t know, soccer players, if I’m playing with an athlete who, who their sport and their position in that sport speed is of the utmost importance. Um, I think they absolutely can be too strong.

I think. that strength is fantastic to have and to develop. But in the context of what it is that you’re doing, it’s probably for at least for field and court sports, it’s probably not that important. Um, I think if you if you get strong enough [00:41:00] to the point where You know, you can, we have all these metrics about, you know, you can squat two times your body weight or bench 1.

5 times your body weight, all that type of stuff. That’s great, but what can you do with it? And how fast can you do it? Right? And, and how, how long can you do that fast? You know, if you can squat 405 pounds, I guess, cause that’s four plates on each side, just to keep it simple, 405 pounds. My metric conversion is not,

Siobhan Milner: uh, I should know it’s 183 kilos.

Kendall Green: Oh, I was close, but, um, yeah. So, so if you can squat X amount of weight, but if we take a percentage of that, which most times in sport squat, moving that amount or producing that amount of force [00:42:00] at whatever, at whatever velocity is it. You know, it’s not going to happen in sport, right? So if you’re, for example, uh, if you play basketball, you’re a forward or whatever it may be.

And you are, you are going up for a rebound. You’re producing more force than you would be for the weight you would do in the weight room. And you’re doing it faster, right? So the strength training aspect of performance is important, but I think it’s more important for Resilience of, you know, joints, ligaments, tendons, the fascial system, those, those things are more deeply affected with strength training than speed is for, for the context of this, of this conversation.

But it’s still an important aspect of it, obviously, because you have to produce force, right, to, to change your position in space. So I think what parents, [00:43:00] coaches, athletes, you know, have to understand about strength training is that. It’s necessary. And I kind of get both sides of the spectrum, depending on who I’m working with and what sport they play.

Um, where there are some that come to me because they want to get stronger. They want to get more powerful. Great. I can handle that. Fantastic. Those are the ones really like, we’re about to do a lot of sprints. You’re going to lift, but you’re also going to do a lot of sprints. On the other end of the spectrum, other side of the side of that coin, I get athletes that come in like, I want to get faster.

Fantastic. We’re going to lift a lot because chances are the ones that want to get faster are, I almost want to say anatomically built for speed right there. They’re usually smaller. They’re not as heavy as other as other kids, so they know they have the physical appearance to be fast. They just don’t have it.

Those are the ones we’re gonna do a lot of technique work, but still everybody, sprints. Every athlete that I work with, sprint, I don’t really care what sport they play. We’re gonna sprint, kind of going [00:44:00] back to the previous question about, you know, other non ground-based sports, right? So those kids, they’re gonna do some technique work because that’s usually especially younger kids.

Young, younger being like early high school age, they’re not fast because their sucks nine times outta 10. We technique we can see. drastic improvement in their sprint times. Um, from then that’s when we get them lifting. They’re the ones that need to be able to produce more force. The bigger ones that want to lift, people that want to lift weights are usually already strong.

Lifting weights isn’t fun. I don’t really care what anybody says. That’s my, that’s my hill. I’m dying. Lifting weights is not fun. Uh, as I’ve trained for a weightlifting competition this weekend. Anyways, the ones that want to lift weights, they’re the ones athletically sport athlete wise. They’re the ones that need to sprint more.

So again, everybody’s sprinting, right? The ones that lift, obviously, [00:45:00] if they’re like, you know, huge, if they’re like an offensive lineman and sprinting is probably going to hinder them to some degree and their joints, obviously we’ll limit them, but. If they want to live, you’ll sprint more and they want to sprint.

You’re going to lift more. So I think there’s a balance. I’m having to play with, um, to see who needs what. Right. Um, I wrote an article sometime and, basically saying that,, it was about track and field. not being essentially track and field, not being the answer to improving football players, American football, I should say.

Um, and it is beneficial track and field. Love track and field. I coached it brand in high school. Um, but you’re training in track and field, especially in high school. You’re training for the sport. You’re not training for the adaptation, right? Obviously, we know the fast kids run track. Got that running with fast [00:46:00] running with faster If not equally fast, people helps you get faster to some degree, right?

But you’re not training the actual quality that you’re needing for what you think you’re training for. If that makes sense. So if, if we’re not, if you’re, if, if we’re, and I used to do the same thing, um, myself, you know, football season would be over like, Hey, and it’s the, it’s the multi sport concept.

It’s like, Hey, play as many sports as you can to, you know, develop all these different skills. But in my experience, that doesn’t necessarily work out unless they’re already just athletic. Um, so I think, you know, or I would tell them, you know, after football season is over, take a little week break or whatever it is.

If you need it, go play basketball, go wrestle, um, do whatever other sports in the winter. Then when the spring comes around, run track, play baseball. Not necessarily [00:47:00] play soccer because that’s a little bit different than most sports just because you don’t use your hand. Um, And and that was kind of the cycle, right?

But I think it was getting to the point where I was actually seeing that the guys that play football going to track in the spring, they’re actually coming back slower.

Yeah. Right. And so I think part of that was because one, the track team wasn’t lifting on a regular basis. They were lifting, but it was very sporadic. Um, and then kind of going back to our original points was that the volume was just too high. So they were like, they were coming into, into the summer, training.

They were well conditioned. They, you know, they could do all the workout with essential ease. Um, but they weren’t, they lost the speed that they had from. You know, a football season prior. So I think when we look at the total, necessity of our different physical qualities being strength, velocity or strength, three strength, speed and power.[00:48:00]

Um, there’s a depending on who the athlete is, there’s a pie chart, right? Where you have those three things. And depending on who it is, that’s where the pie chart changes, right? Do they need more strength? Mhm. To be faster, because it’s starting out a lot of, especially, you know, the 11 to 13 year old age group.

They’re just not strong. That’s why they’re not fast, right? They’re, they’re just not strong enough to push themselves in whatever direction. So they need to get stronger. As they get stronger, the pie chart starts to change where all right, we’re starting to get stronger. Now we’re just, we’re not having the continuation of acceleration.

So maybe we need to focus a little bit more on power where the strength that they’ve built in the earlier, earlier ages, now they’re You know, uh, higher percentage of that force they can produce at a faster rate rate of force. Um, and then once [00:49:00] they want the power improves, right, then we get focused more on higher velocity speed training.

That’s when and that’s usually I’ve had a couple, uh, 16, 17 year olds where that’s like their thing, but they were track athletes through and through. They didn’t play any other sports. It was just track. Um, they can handle that type of work because max velocity sprinting takes a lot out of you. if you’re really, if you’re really doing it the way you’re supposed to be doing, it takes a lot out of you.

Um, and so, but they can handle a lot of athletes that either haven’t, haven’t ever really been involved with and usually track. Um, they haven’t been, they’ve never been on the track team. They’ve never really sprinted. They’ve done like little wind sprints, but they’ve never really stood up and ran really fast.

And so, most of them never really get into that type of work, because they don’t, they also don’t need to. Right? So, if I have a full off air, we [00:50:00] might go 40 yards, but beyond that It’s not necessary just again, because based off of what they do based off of the things that you see in their sport that just pushes us closer to injury, right?

And that’s my job, right? As a coach, that’s our job as coaches to figure out what that pie chart looks like for each individual athlete as far as strength, speed and power, um, and it’s manipulating that over time. And that’s. Pretty much all we can do, just being aware of that pie chart and, and tracking the tracking the information that we’re getting back from the athletes.

Siobhan Milner: Do you feel like you’ve got any key take home points that you would give to athletes or coaches regarding speed training?

Kendall Green: Don’t do too much. That’s, that’s kind of the main thing I kind of wanted to express. And that’s my main issue that I’m,, I guess fighting against now is just. [00:51:00] Doing too much either in general or too soon.

Um, I think you have the tendency. Um, and I say we as coaches collectively, we have the tendency to want to, you know, we want to get, uh, the athletes we work with. We want to get them as good as we can as fast as we can. Right. So we’re not necessarily shortcutting the process, but we’re trying to expedite it.

And I think that’s when we really start getting in trouble because we miss a lot of development in not just athletic performance, but human performance in general.

And so, you know, just taking the developmental process step by step. I know we see, you know, the freak athletes coming out of high schools every year and they can do these phenomenal things once again, the college or even if they’re able to go to the professional level straight out of high school, they’re able to do these freakish things, you know, but that’s, you know, Those type of people don’t come around ever, essentially.

[00:52:00] Um, they’re, they’re anomalies. And this is not to say that, you know, younger athletes that don’t have those natural, elite gifts early on, that’s not to say they can’t get there. It’s just saying Take your time with them. You know what I mean? They, you know, obviously there’s a, there’s a time frame, right, that we have to work within as far as getting them to a point they need to be able to succeed and the place they’re at and then going to the next level.

But if we’re trying to rush the process, then we’re again missing out on the developmental stages and just like child rearing, right, if they’re there, there are certain Progressions or certain milestones you have to hit when raising a child.

Um, it’s just a matter of getting the global athletic development incorporated into it. I was at the National High School Strength Coaches Association National Convention last year, and we heard , coach Ryan. He works for one [00:53:00] of the soccer leagues, I want to say Manchester’s developmental league, Des Ryan.

That’s his name. Des Ryan. Um, and he was talking about how essentially they specialize these kids from like, nine years old or whatever, and how they track their development over time. And he shows videos and videos and pictures of, you know, just the things they do in the training setting where they are able to get those other skills, right?

Obviously they’re there for soccer, but they’re able to incorporate other movement skills, other, other areas of just movement and athleticism, they’re able to incorporate that into their training to make sure they’re developing the full spectrum athlete and human and not just focusing on that one thing.

So I think that’s where, especially here in the States, that’s where we get into trouble is we have kids that specialize and it’s usually, it’s usually one of like three sports. It’s either baseball [00:54:00] Baseball slash softball, volleyball or basketball, those are soccer. So for, five, if you separate baseball and softball, but, those, those are the ones that really, they hone in on just those skills and really close off a lot of the other aspects of movement and movement proficiency.

Um, and then that’s where you see the overuse injuries, the, the mental burnout, all that type of stuff. And that’s why it’s a problem, but to answer the question you actually asked me, yeah, just just keep it simple. Don’t try to don’t try to do too much too soon. Don’t try to do too much too late. Um, because that’s, you know, the other end of the spectrum is, you know, you gotta, I’ve had a lot of, especially during when, well, after everything opened back up around, after COVID happened, I was getting a lot of female athletes that were like juniors and seniors in high school.

So they’re about to graduate to go to college. And it’s kind of like they were a little [00:55:00] bit behind the ball, right? And not necessarily physically, but as far as just Yeah. athletic, formal athletic, development. I’ll say skill wise in their, in their individual sports, they were, they were fine, right?

That’s why they were able to have the opportunity to play at the next level. But as far as just the training process, they were, you know, as novice as they come. Um, but with the athleticism that they already had, they were kind of able to Climb the ranks a little bit faster than most would, but you know, just still being able to do things with them that they weren’t able to do otherwise or was weren’t given the opportunity to do otherwise.

I think, you know, it’s something we have to work on as a As a profession is just making sure we’re giving feeding the knowledge to the right people that are in control of them because, you know, for me being in private sector exclusively right now, you know, [00:56:00] it’s only so much I can give to an athlete that comes in here because at the end of the day, they have to go back to their team and their coach and that to get the final word.

Um, it doesn’t really matter. I can give them the best advice possible. Um, and I do, at least I try to, but you know, they’re going to, they’re going to run, they’re going to run a mile before track practice and then sprint during the workout. That’s going to have Guinness. I can have a conversation with, you know, whoever the appropriate authority, but at the end of the day, I can only do, but so much, but I’ll do it within the context of what you need.

And, you know, We’re not going to double dip into anything desert. That’s the regular double dip in anything you’re already doing. So the track athletes I’ve had in the past when they come in and they’re in season, which is completely fine, actually encourages them to come in in season just to make sure they’re staying healthy.

Essentially, we don’t hardly do any. Sprint work. Those are [00:57:00] probably the only athletes that I have at any given time that don’t sprint. Um, unless they have like an off week or a spring break or something like that, but if they had practice at any point in that week, they just come in, stretch, roll out, and lift and go home.

Um, but other than that, you know, that’s all the advice I could give is just, you know, keep it simple.

Siobhan Milner: Thank you, Kendall.

Kendall Green: Oh, yes. so much, Siobhan, for having me. This is awesome.

Siobhan Milner: I’m wondering if you can tell us where people can find you, if they’re interested in learning a little bit more about you and your work.

Kendall Green: Yeah. If you want to learn more about me for whatever reason, you can find me, uh, on Instagram, my business page is green roots, G R E E N. R O O T S P W. Uh, you can find me on Twitter at Coach Green, Coach with a K, because my first name’s Kendall, had the same conversation with Julia, she thought it was cool, maybe.

[00:58:00] Um, Coach Green with a K, on Twitter. You can also find my, personal page on Instagram, but that’s just me pretending to be a weightlifter. Um, not as impressive.

Siobhan Milner: Your weightlifting is impressive. I don’t think you’re just pretending.

Kendall Green: I do my best. It hurts a lot. But it’s a good time. I’m enjoying the process.

Um, and then also, I have a number of articles on Simplifaster just to get a, deeper, more formal look into, into my, thought process as far as athletic strength and conditioning goes.

Siobhan Milner: Yeah, I’ll share some links to some of those as well. Thank you so much.

Kendall Green: Absolutely. Thank you. This was, this was great.