308: Will Ratelle on Explosive Training Specificity, Olympic Lift Debates, and Avoiding Redundant Exercises

More show notes at https://www.just-fly-sports.com/podcast-308/ Today’s episode features Will Ratelle.  Will is a strength coach, at the University of North Dakota, working with football, basketball, volleyball and tennis athletes. He is also the owner of “W2 Performance”.  Prior to working in the performance field, he spent time as a professional football player, spending time with the Atlanta Falcons, Kansas City Chiefs, and Saskatchewan Roughriders (CFL). In the supportive role of physical preparation/S&C, it is very easy to partition the process of weightlifting away from the actual needs and demand of explosive, chaotic sports.  It’s also easy to get carried away with excessive auxiliary work, or “atomizing” facets of power work/RFD that don’t end up transferring to actual explosive sport skills.  In this sense, it’s helpful to personally spend time in sport, in skill acquisition, and in strength development one’s self, to intuitively understand the balance, and synergy, between athletic components. Will’s athletic background, love for sport and play, and raw “horsepower” is a unique combination.  He was a semi-pro athlete, can clean and jerk 198kg, dunks a basketball with ease, and also loves to play a variety of games and sports.  Will has an analytical process to his performance programming, and asks important questions that have use really dig into the why of what we are doing in the gym (and beyond). On the show today, Will talks about his athletic, game-play and strength background, and how despite being more than physically capable, did not make the pro level of football.  Will then goes into ideas on what we should actually be looking to improve/intensity in the gym setting.  He chats on how to avoid training things that really don’t matter in the grand scheme of everything an athlete is asked to do.  Will finishes with his thoughts on the specificity of potentiation, jump and sprint variability training, and then a great take on the “Olympic lifts vs. loaded jumps” debate. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster.com and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for FREE (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com