From Overtraining To Sparta Score: How Data, Consistency, And Recovery Drive Performance - #278 ft. Cole Hergott

Join David Stark & Cole Hergott, the S&C coach at Trinity Western University. We explore how better beats more, why consistent full-body training outperforms grind culture, and how a simple, repeatable Sparta Score keeps hundreds of athletes focused on the right improvements. Cole shares actionable ways to program, recover, and earn buy-in without fancy gear.

• Creatine’s physical and cognitive benefits across ages
• Why submax testing and bar speed drive safer progress
• The Sparta Score formula and how it unifies teams
• Offseason planning that builds, not burns, athletes
• Under-recovery versus overtraining and how to fix it
• Full-body frequency over body-part splits
• Overcoming isometrics for force and potentiation
• Neck strength strategies for concussion-prone teams
• Data selection, dashboards, and clear KPIs
• Culture, confidence, and competition that lasts

Hey, thank you guys for tuning in. We’ll see you again next week

Transcript

Creatine Facts And Myths

SPEAKER_01 0:00

It's tough. The hardest part is because I was that athlete that was more is better. So when I was coming up, it was like, well, you know, some is good, more is better. So you just kept doing more and more. And well, if you're gonna do four sets, I'm gonna do five because I'm gonna be better than you in that competitive kind of fire. So I I lived the overtraining and doing too much and doing the wrong stuff and not having a me, a coach to kind of guide me. So what I like to talk about with our athletes is our today's do not ruin our tomorrow.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

You're the most decorated racquetball player in U.S. history. World's strongest man. From childhood passion to professional athlete. Eight-time Iron Man champion. So, what was it like making your debut in the NHL? What is your biggest piece of advice for the next generation of athletes? From underdogs to national champions. This is the Athletes Podcast, where high performance individuals share their triumphs, defeats, and life lessons to educate, entertain, and inspire the next generation of athletes. Here we go. When you have it with athletes, do you notice that they end up having as much cognitive benefits as they do physical?

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Potentially. So I mean they probably they probably get it. Yeah, that's tough.

SPEAKER_02 1:17

But man, what am I doing? But that's part of the commercial.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Yeah, but but no, but they they like they definitely experienced the physical benefits, and I promote it to our athletes, and after they start taking it, it's a lot of like I remember just the other day an athlete came in and he hit like like three or four PRs in a lift, and he's like, Well, I didn't just start taking creatine like two weeks ago, and I was like, there you go. So it's literally a natural steroid.

SPEAKER_02 1:44

I know it's crazy. I saw you reposted Perfect Sports shout out to the sponsor of this episode. They reposted that like graphic that had what five, six. Oh, five grams, yeah. Yeah, like what five grams of protein or sorry, what five grams of creatine looked like in salmon, beef, chicken. It was like absurd amounts. Crazy. Could you ever eat something like that? No.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

I I literally actually my mine so every week I give a nutrition tip of the week, and just last week's was about how whole foods are better than supplements. Like, you're better off eating a chicken breast than putting down a thing of like a scoop of protein. I said, except for creatine, because if you had to eat enough food to get enough creatine, I said, like you you a probably couldn't stomach it, or b, you would just gain a bunch of weight because now you're eating like however much beef it was, yeah, and it's expensive. Where I'm like, just take a scoop of creatine and you know it's way better for you.

Meet Cole Hergett And His Role

SPEAKER_02 2:34

Yeah, it's the most researched supplement in the world now, and has been probably for decades. A long time, yeah. Used to be just the bodybuilder's thing, and now it's like literally whether you're 15, 55, or 85, realistically, you should be taking creatine in some way, shape, or form. Consult your physician. I'm no doctor. But yeah, like you said, between the physical and mental benefits, why wouldn't you be taking it?

SPEAKER_01 2:59

Oh, it's like that's the one thing I tell athletes. Like, I I can't legally tell you to take creatine, but take creatine. Like it's and it's it's even yeah, like you don't have to be an athlete. Like, if you're a human being that moves your body, meaning everybody, like you would have benefit from it. Not like, oh, you should take it, but you would experience benefits from it. So to me, it's like, why, why not? Like, there's obviously a lot of myths and misconceptions about it, but to me, it's it's once you start taking it and you realize, like, oh, like I didn't just put on you know 30 pounds and I didn't just become this massive human being that I didn't want to be, like, you're fine. And you you perform better, you feel better. Yeah, it's just it's it's a crazy life hack.

SPEAKER_02 3:42

And not to mention, I also, you know, only slept seven hours last night. And some of the research around sleep deprivation and then supplementing with creatine is absolutely absurd. Not out here recommending that you just take creatine and don't sleep, but when you have a late hockey game, you get back at 11, 12 o'clock at night, you're like, okay, hey, I gotta perform for this podcast the next morning, or I gotta perform for the game the next day. Maybe supplementing will support you. Cole Hergett, thank you for coming on the podcast. This is the 278th episode of the Athletes Podcast. I hopefully I said your name correctly there because I didn't check prior, but hey, perfect person to have on the show. You manage 14 varsity sports here at Trinity Western University, head strength and conditioning coach, over 300 athletes that you work with on a probably daily, weekly basis, which is mind-boggling to think of because I work with a dozen as an assistant coach at Earl Marriott Secondary Basketball, and that is hard to deal with. So I can't even imagine what you have to support from a bandwidth perspective. Welcome to the show. The first question I want to ask you here on the Athletes Podcast, given that we are at Trinity Western University's gym, is what is the Sparta score?

The Birth Of The Sparta Score

SPEAKER_01 4:53

Oh, yeah. Well, first off, thanks for having me on. Super excited to talk about everything we do. Sparta score. So the Sparta score is something that you made. It's my baby. Yep. So, well, kind of. So it's inspired by, so if you're familiar with Nebraska University, so the Nebraska Huskers had a score, and I can't remember what they called it, but anyway, so I learned about this years ago, where Nebraska Huskers under Boyd Deppley, who was like the very first university strengthening edition coach, so a legend, had a score where instead of just taking, like, well, an athlete could squat this much, an athlete can bench this much, an acting athlete can sprint this much, like, did they go up and down? Like, how do we kind of track all that? They created like an aggregate score based on all those metrics. And they have a ton, a ton of scores. I looked it up, it's like a like a super crazy formula, and they do all these different tests. And I've I've actually talked to Boyd about it and just kind of poked him about it, and it was pretty extensive, more than what we can handle here. But what I started to do in the last couple of years, and I'm gonna try to make this as short as possible, but all of our sports do performance testing. We do, you know, we do sprints, we do jumps, and we do some kind of like lifts, all that stuff because I want to make sure that I'm doing my job to make our athletes better. But what I kept running into was a whole bunch of logistical constraints. For example, we're in our weight room, which is 1,100 square feet, and this is the only space that I have complete control over. Our gymnasium is right outside those doors, which is amazing for warmups and sprints and whatnot, but it's always busy. For example, there's a volleyball tournament in there right now. Yeah, so if we were doing testing today, it's like, well, shoot, we can't use the gym for testing. We have a fitness studio upstairs that we used to go up there, but the the surface is a little bit more slick. So if we're doing sprints and jumps, it's not the safest thing. Basically, all that's come down to in the last number of years, I've realized that all of our testing needs to be done within these four walls of Sparta. If it's not, then what ended up happening was I was losing out on data. So if I'm testing, let's say our women's soccer team, and there's 30 girls on the team. Well, some of them can't make the team lift time, so they come at a different time. Well, the gym's not available at that time, the fitness studio is not available at another time, so I only ended up getting like 10 of the girls' sprint times, and the coach doesn't really care what 33% of their team is doing. You know, we want to know a holistic picture. So instead of getting maybe more accurate, less accurate data, doing like a 20-meter sprint might be better to see speed. What we started doing was a three-meter sprint in here. So, for example, we start in the corner and we sprint to like right there so that they have enough time to not run through the wall. And so that we started doing the last couple years. And so now every team starts doing the three-meter sprint. We have force plates over in the corner, and so we do vertical jumps on that, which is super simple. And then most of our teams weren't doing like we were doing like max push-ups or max chin-ups for strength stuff because doing one-write max testing, especially in season, is not the safest thing, it's not the easiest thing to do. And our the only team that was doing one-rut max testing was our rugby programs because our coaches wanted to follow rugby Canada standards. And, you know, they didn't want because some of our our athletes get selected for national programs, development programs. And when they say, well, hey, how much does, you know, how much does David squat? You know, we wanted to have data. The issue with that was our seasons kind of started, especially our men's seasons started starting earlier. And so we lost out on the time in training camp to test because it's like, well, we play that next weekend. So we couldn't really test their wonder max. So we were ending up only testing them like once a year. And it's like, well, I don't really care like what your squad is a year from now. I want to know what it is like in a month, and I want to see if we're getting better. So, all that to say, so we ended up getting uh what are called velocity-based training units, so little boxes that measure the speed of the bar. And so what I came up with was arbitrary weights for males and females based on what I was seeing in our weight room and tracking the speed of those. So, for example, we do a back squat, a bench press, and a chin-up. Males do a 135 back squat, a 135 bench press, and then a body weight chin-up. We just have a bungee cord that they put around their waist as like a little belt, and then they do a chin-up. And then females do a 95-pound squat, 75-pound bench press, and then a body weight on a chin-up. And so the goal with that is if you can only squat 135 and you test 135, it's gonna move hella slow. But now, if I get you stronger, now you can squat 200 pounds, then that 135 is gonna move faster, and that's how we track that. The benefit with that is because it's a sub-max test, it's more of a speed and power test. We could test you like today if you had a game tomorrow, and you'd be fine. So that's the data we've been collecting, those five tests, our three-meter sprint time, our our counter movement, jump on the force plates, height, and then our squat speed, bench speed, and chin-up speed. So there's five tests, and we've been doing that. The issue with that again was I ran into the issue of well, David's squat went up, his bench went down, his chin-up went up, his sprint went, like I and so, like, well, did he get better? Well, like, I guess kind of, and so I wasn't really sure how we were gonna and like coaches got confused, athletes were kind of confused. So that's where this past summer I kind of dove into this Nebraska Huskers deal and was like, hey, this might be interesting. And so I came up with a formula to create our Sparta score, which is you take your squat speed plus your bench speed plus your chin-up speed plus your force plate jump minus your sprint time, because you want a lower sprint score, and then that gives you your Sparta score. And so that way we can track like for me, it's it's two things. Number one, if your Sparta score is higher than someone else's, you are physically better than they are. Yeah, if your Sparta score is getting better, you are getting better. End of story. Well, my chin-up went down, but my squad doesn't matter. Was your Sparta score better? Yes, then you're getting better. Yeah, there are times where some tests go up, some tests go down, but overall, it's like, are we getting better as a group? Is our team average getting better? Are your average getting better? And that's Sparta score.

Offseason Strategy And Consistency

SPEAKER_02 10:54

And it's a way for the men's hockey team to go up against the men's volleyball and men's basketball and say, hey, what's your Sparta score? Hey, mine's better than yours. What the heck you've been doing this past year, right? Like for me as an athlete, for me going up against Juan, going up against Jericho or Jeremiah, I'm like, yo, I'm making sure my number's better than yours. I don't care who you are, what sport you play. For you, that's gotta be fun as the headmaster, the one who's getting to see all of these individuals grow, develop as human beings, but also like, hey, my Sparta score increased year over year for five years while I attended this university. And by the way, I got to rub it in my buddy's face the whole time. I'm like for me, I was enamored at that on its own. Obviously, as a hockey player growing up, you probably were in competitive dressing rooms where this kind of energy was infectious. What was that transition like for you coming from the middle of Canada to out west? I know we just started here with what you've been doing over the past seven years here at TWU, but maybe let's rewind a little bit, talk about your athletic career prior to becoming SNC coach. You went from intern, you're going to UBC. Like, maybe give us the 30, 60 second synopsis on Cole's career prior to becoming the SNC coach here.

SPEAKER_01 12:11

Absolutely. So yeah, emerging from small town Saskatchewan, played a bunch of sports growing up. Because if you didn't play sports in the small town, you didn't have the sport. So it's like all the guys were like, hey, what sport are we gonna play? So I played a bunch of stuff and then just fell in love with ice hockey. And hey, I'm gonna go to the NHL, pursued that as hard as I could.

SPEAKER_02 12:29

As every young Saskatchewan. Absolutely. Well, yeah, you got it.

SPEAKER_01 12:32

Like, I mean, that's that's just what I was gonna do. No one could tell me no, even though my parents tried. And what position? Defense. I was so if you know who Hal Gill is, damn right. I'm tall. Hab's legend. Yeah, tall, long stick, boom, poke check, off the glass and out, safe play, that kind of stuff. You know, don't get much recognition, but you know, plus minus is good at the end of the night, all those things.

SPEAKER_02 12:51

Anyway, so that's the way defense are supposed to play.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

I know, I know. It's like you don't need to be flashy, just just you know, win the game, yep, let the Fords get the credit. Anyway, so I obviously had bigger dreams than what my athletic ability had, but I it kind of led me to I played a year of junior hockey, junior B hockey in Saskatchewan, and then long story short, kind of got connected out here at Trinity with our with the head coach of the time, was Barrett Cropp, who was a Sask guy. Um, actually was the chaplain for the Saskatchewan Rough Riders, great guy. Anyway, so he basically got connected with him, came out here, played for for the Spartans for that first year, and that's kind of how I came out west. It was it was like, okay, well, this is one of the only places that will take me. And so, okay, let's go do this. Came out here on a preview weekend and just fell in love with the place. Just like it's small, and so for being from a small town, it's like this is this is right up my alley, this is what I want. And and then got connected to the strength coach at the time, who's Andrew Hemming. And after, you know, communicating with him over email and that kind of stuff, it's like, okay, this guy kind of knows what he's talking about. And then I still remember the first time I met him, you know, and I was like, wow, this is a guy I want to be. Like, I want to kind of pursue this, the fitness stuff. And I was planning on getting my human kinetics degree. And yeah, so enrolled, got accepted, came to Trinity, and started working in the varsity weight room as an intern at the end of my first year, right around the time that I had my exit meeting with with Barrett, and he basically told me that you know, our program's growing and we're kind of recruiting over you. I only played two games as a freshman, so I I know what it's like to not to not play and be a healthy scratch and hear your name announced as one of the healthy scratches every single night, which kind of sucks.

SPEAKER_02 14:34

But anyway, it's probably the most important, one of the most important learning experiences for you.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

And still to this day, I talk to athletes all the time. Like, like I get it. Like when when when we have sessions here on Friday for for like redshirting athletes or athletes on travel, one of my favorite things, my it's almost my favorite part of my job is getting to walk up to those athletes and be like, David, thanks for coming. I never want to see you here again. Yeah, I never want to see you here on a Friday. What can we do to make that not happen? And so anyway, so that's super cool. But anyway, my story, then yeah, I went to really fell in love with S C and wanted to fell in love with Trinity and wanted to be here. And we had changed head strength coaches at the time. So Andrew Evans was our head strength coach, and he basically told me, like, if you want to do this, like you got to get a master's degree. So then went to UBC, got my master's degree. Andrew Evans became our director of rugby, which he still is in, which vacated or opened up this position. And so I was like, okay, I gotta, I gotta go for it. I was only halfway through my master's degree at the time, threw my name in the hat. And one of those, like, it's not about what you know, but who you know. So when I apply, you know, I'm not just some random scrub. It's like, well, Cole's been here, he's been in our weight room, like we know what he's about. Um, and so while I maybe wasn't ready for the job and I was I was younger. Well, I don't know who the other applicants were, but I'm assuming I was probably younger than most of the other applicants. They picked me, and yeah, here we are, you know, six and a half years later. So in Sparta scores. Yeah. What's your Sparta score at? Oh, it's not very good. It's too my best, is like 2.91, I think.

SPEAKER_02 16:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

And to give you reference, the record is well, right now it's like 4.61. But to be in our top 20, so we have a top 20 leaderboard, yeah, which is like you gotta be a big dog to be on that. I think the 20th score is like 3.5. Okay. So I'm not in the top 20, which is good. Like, as much as I want to be able to flex on athletes and be like, oh yeah, I'm better than you, I would way rather have my athletes be way stronger and fitter and faster than I am. I would rather, yeah, not be the most alpha dude in the weight room. I'd rather have people be better than me. Because if if I'm the best, and like unless I'm elite-level powerlifter, like if I'm the best, I'm not doing my job well.

SPEAKER_02 16:39

It's a testament to the fact that you can train them better and actually get them to perform their best. Yeah. If you were the one doing it, you're probably spending more time on yourself than you are on them, right? Exactly. Yeah. Selfishly, I need to test my sparse score at some point. Not today, because obviously we already talked about it, didn't get enough sleep. Played last night, got a 9-1 win, no big deal. Nice. When it comes to athletes, our basketball team just finished their season, didn't make playoffs, it's all good. We'll got next year. What should athletes be doing ahead of or, you know, during their off-season as they prep for that right now? Obviously, you said five years, six clubs are heading into playoffs. We're going to continue on with maybe some not as high intensity training right now, heading into those playoffs. But like when you have an opportunity during the offseason to add size, get into a big training block, are there specific things that you recommend to athletes that you would, for instance, to my high school basketball team right now?

Overtraining Versus Under-Recovery

SPEAKER_01 17:30

I would say just be consistent with it. Like if you have, you know, for example, let's say some of our teams that won't make playoffs, you know, they'll be done in a couple weeks. So it'll be in the middle of February. Give them a couple weeks off to heal up and and just kind of like mentally, well, focus on school and get on top of their academics. Academics lead. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, academics. And then and then we start the slow build. I think a lot of people start too too hard because especially right when you lose out, especially if you lose out in the first round of playoffs, like everybody's thinking the next day, I'm going to the gym. Like, no, I'm this is not happening to us again. You're so motivated as soon as it ends. And the issue is like you're still banged up, you're still, you know, like you gotta focus on all these other things. So that's where like I tell our athletes, like, I know you want to be here, but I'm actually not letting you come here for for a week, maybe two weeks, depending on the the team. Because I need you to be healthy and ready to go because I'm gonna kick the crap out of you, and I can't have you say, Oh, I need a break in the middle of June. This is your time to take your break, and then we go. But again, it's a slow burn, it's a slow start because you know, we don't like our season. Let's just say one of our teams, their their training camp will start middle to end of August. So that gives us, you know, March, April, May, June, July, that gives us five months. We don't need to be hitting your maxes in May. Right. I want you to be at your best in you know, August and then and then onwards. So we start slow, we start to build, but for me, the biggest thing is consistency because again, a lot of especially younger athletes, and I was guilty of this too, is you're so hungry, you're so motivated, and you start so hard right away, but you can't sustain, you know, lifting really, really hard five, six days a week for five months without burning out. And so you get to May and June, and then you kind of start to fizzle out and like all summer vacations and parties and work and all these things kind of sway you from that. And then pretty soon your your training tails off and you show up to training camp less than what you would have been. So for me, I almost pull back on the reins and I'm like, no, no, no, I know you're hungry, but I want you, I'm only gonna feed you a little bit, and then you come back and feed you a little bit, and then we're gonna do a little more and a little more, and you build that just consistent habit of three to four times a week and slowly getting better and better and better and better so that when we roll into training camp, athletes are not only stronger, faster, fitter, but they're also feeling fresh. Like they're not burnt out from doing, you know, again, hitting the gas pedal too hard. But I just think there's just too much, there's there's just too much, like I said, motivation right away. And something I started to do this last year, and I talked to our teams last spring because none of our teams won nationals, unfortunately. So I didn't get to say, or sorry, I got to give this message to everybody was everybody lost out. None of you accomplished your goal, and you're super motivated, inspired right now, but you need to remember this in June and July. So, what I did with our teams, for example, our women's volleyball team lost out to the US Huskies in playoffs last year. Wasn't very pretty. So I got a picture of the Huskies celebrating that win. And we lost the last game, and then we lost like three sets to none, got swept. And so I put the score line, Huskies three, Spartans zero. And I sent that picture to them in like June. And I was like, remember this. And it just I remember like some of the girls messaged me. They're like, you would not believe how the group chat just exploded after that. And to me, it was again like just injecting that again day after motivation in June when it's the dog days of summer, and you're kind of like, I don't really know if I want to keep doing this. It's like, remember that crappy feeling of losing out. Go to work, like let's get after it. So, all that to say, to answer your original question, just more is is just a consistent, slow habit and build up because we've got a long time. Yeah, and so again, if you go too hard too early, you're gonna burn out. So make sure you're slowly building and just keeping a long-term perspective of again, I don't have to be ready till August. So that doesn't mean sweet, I'm gonna slack off till July, but it's like just slowly build and then we'll get after it.

SPEAKER_02 21:32

Cool, not cold is their their catchphrase. But essentially it helps you cool your blood, regulate your blood temperature so that you don't overheat. Because ultimately, what ends up happening as athletes is when we're training in the gym, weight room, wherever, your blood gets hot, you overheat, and that's when you end up actually not being able to perform. So, this you have glabrous tissue in your hands and on the bottoms of your feet. So when you hold something cold, it actually cools the rest of your blood. In your body, and then ultimately allows you to perform more sets, more reps.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

But yeah, basically the concept is like what we're realizing is a lot of the reason that you get to muscular failure is is because of overheating. I mean, so your body starts to you know shut down. And so by being able to rapidly cool yourself, not cold yourself, but cool yourself, allows you to to continue to perform better.

SPEAKER_02 22:20

Yeah, it's crazy. I literally don't like working out without them now. And it people look at you weird, but it it's a conversation starter in the gym. And honestly, I can safely say that I end up working out for a longer duration and I can perform better if I'm holding them. And it takes the phone out of your hand. Shout out to Apex School Labs, Ariel, and Evy for making this amazing product. Yeah, it's so true. I we just lost 70 to 66, lost back-to-back games by one, two, three points. And it's like, boys, you know, you're in junior basketball right now. You have so much to look forward to, you have so much time ahead of you. Just remember this feeling so that you're not in this position again next year. And you mentioned three to four days a week. I want to touch on overtraining, the fact that a lot of young athletes right now will focus on one specific sport, sports-specific training, which we can get into too. And maybe the fact that pulling back on that gas pedal a bit is actually gonna allow you to perform better because you're gonna recover properly. You know, there's the old adage of, you know, two sets is good, three sets is great, four sets might be too many sets. How do you manage that relationship with athletes being able to say, hey, you maybe could dial it back a little bit and you're actually gonna see better performance?

SPEAKER_01 23:35

It's tough. The hardest part is because I was that athlete that was more is better. So when I was coming up, it was like, well, you know, some is good, more is better. So you just kept doing more and more. And well, if you're gonna do four sets, I'm gonna do five because I'm gonna be better than you in that competitive kind of fire. So I I lived the overtraining and doing too much and doing the wrong stuff and and not having a me, a coach to kind of guide me. So, what I like to talk about with our athletes is our today's do not ruin our tomorrow's. So you are way better off, you know, doing a little bit today, leaving, going like, well, I could have done more than going, well, that was way too much.

SPEAKER_03 24:09

Yeah.

Programming Philosophy Across Sports

SPEAKER_01 24:09

So, especially with a young athlete, like, not that you're gonna get hurt in the weight room, but development is gonna come through puberty and getting in proper sleep and nutrition, protein, creatine, all these things. And so while yes, you still need to train hard and you still need to stimulate the muscles. I think we don't need to train as hard as we think we do to get better. Yeah, but we need to train more often than we think we do. And this is where I'm kind of against, I mean, being a sports performance coach, I'm against kind of the bodybuildings like leg day and chest day and that kind of stuff. But in and I literally just had a meeting with an athlete yesterday, kind of looking for some programming guidance. But it's like, why would you smash your legs on sat on Friday, be wrecked for Saturday, Sunday, can start to walk on Monday, only to smash it again on the Friday. Why would you not do like a little bit every single day? Yeah, so that at the end of your week, you still got your, you know, your four sets of back squat and split squat and you know, lunges and hammy curls and all that stuff. But instead of doing it all one day and then regretting it for the next three days, you're like, oh, that wasn't so bad. Oh, that wasn't so bad. So that's kind of my my recommendation to athletes is is find a plan. I prefer full body plans. Yeah, that's to me the way the best benefit. But it's just finding something that works for you and just consistently trying to get better every single day. So again, going back to like better is better, or sorry, more is better, more is not better, better is better. Yeah, so if if you're working your hardest, that's awesome. You should work hard. But if it's not getting you results, then you're not actually getting better. So you are I'm saying better a lot, you're better, you're better off, you know, training today hard, taking tomorrow off, and then training the next day, being able to add some more weight to the bar, sprint a little bit faster because you feel good and you're fresh. I think a lot of overtraining, it's not even over-training, it's just like under-recovery. Yeah, like the human body has to work extremely hard to be in a state of overtraining and like fatigue. But a lot of that just comes from, you know, well, you only slept five hours last night. Well, you didn't, you know, you didn't stretch after you didn't eat enough protein. Like if you've got 800 calories, exactly. Yeah, like yeah, if you just take care of your body from like a general health and human side, the the sports performance and the gains will just flow like milk and honey. But it's just we just focus so much on the training side and don't worry about that. Like I heard ones, it's like it's not overtraining, it's underfueling. Like if you're just not eating enough, like just like if you're eating 1500 calories, I don't give a crap how hard you're gonna work. Eventually, you're gonna get injured, you're gonna be like burnt out because you just can't sustain that. Yeah, so you're just better off again, slow doses, our today's don't ruin our tomorrow's slowly get better and better and better every day, and then just you're gonna make way more results than trying to be a flash in the pan one time.

SPEAKER_02 26:59

Yeah, unless you've got the mindset like you and I probably share of go until you drop, like you're probably not overtraining, it's just a fact of not getting enough into your system. You know, Brian Wallach, local bodybuilder basketball guy, he calls his like he hits shoulders every day, he calls it microdosing his shoulders. And it's like there's a lot of value in being consistent. You think of farmers decades ago, you know, they're throwing bales of hay every single day, no matter what, and they're the strongest people on this earth sometimes, right? Mind Pump Media, they've been big advocates for the full body two, three, four days a week, right? And it's like, hey, again, to your point, I could hit my legs twice a week by going Monday and Friday, or I could go Monday, Wednesday, Friday, maybe even Saturday, Sunday, and still perform, maybe doing a lighter impact at less intensity, and you're gonna see way better results long term. I saw a ton of benefits going to full body. It took me a while though, because obviously you've seen it preached for decades, push, pull, legs, upper body, lower body split, whatever. So when you're talking to athletes, it should be different than your powerlifting team, though, as well. Different from hockey players to volleyball. How do you, as a coach, write ultimately 14 or 300 plus different plans? Or are you going consistent with your Sparta score and then adjusting based on those specific sport needs afterwards? So the way I program is oh man.

SPEAKER_01 28:23

I I program per team. So there's yeah, like 14 different programs, and it's I'm a fairly general programmer, but I it's but every team gets what they need. So the way I like to talk about is like our men's volleyball program versus our men's hockey program. Like you wouldn't necessarily look at it and be like, well, that's a volleyball program, or well, that's obviously a hockey program. Because to me, every program has the same set of movements. You know, we squat, we hinge, we push, we pull, you know, like it's that's more foundational movement. Exactly. It's like you get my my philosophy is always I'm gonna make you a bigger, faster, stronger athlete. You decide what athlete you become with that. You you know, okay, you went on the ice and skated with your stronger legs, you're a better skater. You went to the court and tried to dunk, now you're a better basketball player. Both of them got stronger legs, both of them did split squats, but it was it was what they did with that, that those stronger legs that dictated the outcome. So the way I program is is obviously there's there's certain differences. Like, for example, our volleyball team, I like to do a lot more front squats because it helps more with vertical jumps. Our hockey team might do more back squats because A, their wrists suck, but also it helps more with horizontal force projection, those kind of like little nuances that athletes don't really know or need to know, but it's just like, hey, this is kind of what we're doing. And I'll throw in some some more specific stuff. For example, our volleyball team does uh like some finger planks or like finger push-ups so that you know we're not weak on the sets and the the hard serves. Our rugby teams will do more neck work, like like those kind of little specific things. But it for me, it's almost like us specific, not sport specific. So I'm not necessarily programming for like a men's hockey team. I'm programming for our men's hockey team. Yeah, for example, I'm not a huge fan of Olympic lifts for hockey players just because of like wrist issues and whatnot, but I've had a lot of our guys ask, hey, can we start doing Olympic lifts? So we started doing muscle snatches and now we're working into hang power snatches. Is that hockey specific? Maybe, maybe not, but it's what the guys wanted, and I think there's some benefit to it. So let's go after it. Or, you know, our volleyball team loves to do Olympic lifting. And if I took it out of the program, there would be a mutiny and they would probably stop coming to the weight room. So even if, and I I don't, but even if I was like, no, I don't think Olympic lifts are good for volleyball, I would still keep them in the program because it's what our guys want, it's what our guys need. I mean, it's what again helps with their performance as well. I don't just cater to them all the time. But I think a lot of programming, again, for myself, comes down to what is the specific needs of the individual or group of individuals standing in front of me and how are we gonna accomplish that goal?

Concussions And Neck Strength

SPEAKER_02 30:57

Yeah, and ultimately it's resistance training at the end of the day, and you're gonna get bigger, faster, stronger when you perform and achieve those goals from a you know basic standpoint. You need to do it to get better overall, get bigger faster. One of the things you also talked about was your volleyball team having concussions. So you introduced some network there. I wanted to touch on that.

SPEAKER_01 31:18

Yeah, like I don't even know what the heck is going on, but our volleyball team in the last couple years has run into a ton of concussions. Men, our men's and women's side. And I've asked, I've talked to like people at volleyball Canada, like, and they're like, no, we maybe get like one or two a year, and we get like like seven or eight a year, and people are getting like multiple concussions. And and I remember when it first started, this would have been in like my second year, and our our men's volleyball coach at the time was Ben Josephson. And so this was actually the COVID year, so the year where we didn't play games and we could just train, and we had a whole bunch of concussions starting then. And I remember I still remember him telling me, he's like, Cole, you're doing a fantastic job. You're making our guys jump higher and hit harder. The issue is we're only playing against ourselves and we're we're concussing our own teammates. And so, so ever since then, it's it's made me, yeah, just kind of reflect on like the impact, the overall impact of making athletes better, and how a lot of our injuries across all our sports will typically happen, not all our sports, but a lot of our sports will happen in practice over games. And it's like, well, that's because our bigger, faster, stronger athletes are competing against our own bigger, faster, stronger athletes, and they're competitive, and and then of course those injuries happen. But so what I've started to do with our volleyball team is is just some isometric network. So literally just like push against your head four different ways, just trying to do some just a little bit. And there has been some research that shows that you know a stronger neck can reduce concussion incidences. Is it gonna be a lucky guy? You know that. Exactly, exactly. And it's like, is this gonna you know be perfect? Are we gonna get rid of concussions completely? No. When you get a ball hit at you at like, you know, 100 miles an hour and take it right off the dome, like you're not gonna just be like, Well, it's a good thing I did my isometric neck work. But to me as a coach, it's it's something where because this has been an issue, it'd be negligent for me to just be like, Well, we're not gonna work on this. So we've started to do it, and and the the benefit is because our athletes know that concussions are big on our team, like nobody goes, Yeah, I'm not gonna do my next stuff. Like everybody does it because they know that it might happen. So there's a huge buy-in that unfortunately with that kind of stuff.

Isometrics And Game-Day Potentiation

SPEAKER_02 33:20

You mentioned isometrics. I've got an isophit sitting in my living room from good old Brad Thorpe shows to him. I am curious if you incorporate those obviously into your workouts. You talk about buy-in. When you see someone pulling on a bar that's not moving, it can be frustrating, difficult. Insert any adjective you want for athletes to be like, oh yeah, that's benefiting me because they're so in touch or familiar with, hey, I'm gonna pick up 400 pounds, I'm getting stronger because this is a big deadlift. Whereas if I'm not moving that bar, I don't look like I'm getting stronger or I am strong. Can you maybe break down isometrics, how you explain it to your athletes so that they can incorporate those in their workouts, see the benefits from them as well?

SPEAKER_01 34:03

Absolutely. So we do a ton of overcoming isometrics with pretty much every single one of our teams. And one of the ways we'll we'll categorize athletes if they need those is we'll use our force plates so they'll jump and we bucket athletes in if they're more speed deficient or force deficient. So if they're jumping fast but not very high, it's like, well, then you need to produce more force in that short amount of time to jump higher. And if you're jumping high but not fast, then we'll do some more like plyometric work so that they can actually just get faster. So that that force group will do more overcoming isometrics. And the way I explain it to them is just simply like you just need to be able to push harder in that short amount of time. And while doing more squats and bench press and those kind of things can help, there's a huge muscular toll on the body when you do that. Like you're gonna be sore, you're gonna be tired, it's gonna take a lot out of you. There's a lot of like warm-up. Like if you're gonna work up to 400 pounds, you don't just slap 400 pounds in the bar, like it's gonna take forever. But here, let's slap this bar in the rack, let's rig it up so it won't move. And you just push as hard as hell, and you're getting that same neural effect of like, I'm pushing hard, I'm getting stronger, but you're not getting the same soreness, you're not getting the same. Well, you're getting a little bit of fatigue right after, but not the same fatigue the next day. And so what I'll do is I'll get our athletes again bucketed that way. I also actually get our athletes to do overcoming ISOs on game day or the day before a game. Nice. So part of that benefit is we're looking for like a potentiation effect of heavy lifting has been shown to potentiate, you know, jumps and sprints and athletic performance, you know, that same day or even like the day after, especially if you can push yourself really hard. And so, what I tell, for example, our men's rugby team has a game today and they were in yesterday and we did some overcoming isometric work. And so, what I what I tell them, and I have to remind them all the time, though, is that if you do this hard enough, you can benefit from the potentiation effect of this for like 24 to 48 hours. Guess what's within 24 to 48 hours? And they all go, our game. And I go, awesome. If you slack off on this and you just kind of, you know, slack, like, guess how long that effect's gonna last? About six hours. You're still gonna get an effect, but it's gonna be about six hours. Guess what's not within six hours? Our game. Amazing. So push as hard as you can. Uh get and what I tell them is like it's it's you get that same stimulation of doing a one-rap max because you're pushing as hard as you can, but you don't have the same DOMs, the same soreness, the same, the same fatigue, the same, oh my goodness, the next day as doing a one-rap max testing. So, and then you can do more joint-specific angles, you can kind of tackle it. And so I think there's a ton of benefit that way. And what I've done with some of our teams, actually a rotational sport, so like hockey, um, our our throws group for track and field, is we do some like in the session potentiation. So I'll rig up a bar in our racks and they try to like twist it. So basically, like just shoot, like pretend you're shooting as hard as you can, backhand, forehand, and then make them do the other side too. And they say, then go grab a medicine ball, go in the gym, and you're gonna whip that sucker harder than you've ever whipped it in your life because you're so like fired up, potentiated from like I'm not moving, and then you grab a 10-pound med ball and it's like wham. So that's something we started doing, and everyone kind of like when they see me demo it, they kind of like they kind of chuckle because it obviously looks funny like you're you're pushing but not moving. But then they all do it, and it's like, dang, this is pretty sick. So now we don't track slapshot speed, so I can't really see if that's actually worked. But to me, adding that extra med ball throw or the extra jump or extra sprint afterwards, like the actual specific athletic movement, enhances that buy-in even more because then they kind of can put two and two together of like, oh, this is why I'm pushing as hard as I can up with one leg so that I can jump higher off one leg. Because as smart as athletes are, sometimes I think we give them too much credit and we just assume they're gonna connect the dots. And this is no shade against any athlete, but even myself, like sometimes it's just nice to have somebody connect those dots for you, and then it's like, oh, boom, that's why we're doing this. I'm gonna go do it.

Data That Matters And Buy-In

SPEAKER_02 37:57

I go to the Kelowna Hockey Fest every year up in August, and I took part in the testing too, because you know, I want to see where I benchmark compared to a bunch of show guys, and I was ripping the ISO fit right before getting as much potential by increase as possible, and it's ridiculous the difference that you can achieve. So I try and do that with my high school basketball team. I'm working on our coach, you know, old head, they you know, not familiar with lifting before, they're like, what's that? That seems crazy. There's so much benefit. We just had the Lakers strength and conditioning coach on as well. And it's like, for us, why not get the most that you can get out of your body? If it's isometrics, great. If it's taking creatine, great. If it's sleeping for eight or nine hours instead of seven or six, like, why wouldn't you achieve the best possible outcome? Or try to at least, right? So for me, I'm so glad that you are there advocating for it because my numbers improved. I'm sure your athletes' numbers are improving here. When you talk about data, how do you decide what to track? Because there's infinite stats out there now. So, how are you breaking that down so that it's easy to decipher for an athlete who has a lot of things to focus on outside of you know what their three-meter sprint is?

SPEAKER_01 39:13

So a lot of it comes down to having conversations with the coaching staff. So, because each team, like obviously our track and field team is different than our disc golf disc golf team, is different than our hockey team, and so they kind of have different KPIs or things they want. So a lot of it comes down to me having those conversations with the coach first, understanding, you know, what do we want from the team, what do we want from athletes, athletes in your team, and then having the tests accordingly. So our Sparta score is kind of everybody does. Yeah, and that's more, I guess, general, more like like is what our we are doing in the weight room working?

SPEAKER_02 39:49

High level, you've got your base score for everyone.

SPEAKER_01 39:51

Exactly. And so everyone kind of has that. But then using our force plates, some of our teams will utilize that data more because if you ever use force plates, there's like like whatever, 50-something metrics that you can track. And so it's very overwhelming. And so certain teams will want different things. So, for example, our cross-country team wants to look at left and right asymmetries because obviously, when you're running, you're using both legs and you don't want to just be favoring one side and injury risk and all that stuff. Our volleyball team wants to look at what their their speed of their jump is and their jump heights the day after or two days after a game. So when they come in on Monday after a weekend, what do we look like? How did we recover on Sunday? What are we looking like into this week of practice? So communicating that to athletes largely comes down to hey, I've had this conversation with your coach, this is why this is valuable, and then presenting it in a simple way. So I've created a bunch of dashboards from Dave Scott McDowell, DSM strength at Brock. So shout out to him.

SPEAKER_02 40:46

Oh there you go. My my alma moderator.

SPEAKER_01 40:48

There you go. Yeah. So so great guy, but he is a wizard with like Google Sheets and Excel and stuff. So I've I've stolen some of his stuff to present things in a visual way. And so all we'll, whenever we do our testing day, collect all our data. It's mayhem, because obviously we're sprinting in the weight room while people are squatting and jumping, and it's crazy. But then I take all that data and I put it into our sheets, and the sheets are nice so that athletes like can see their name, and then all their scores will come up, and then they can see their progress in their sparta score, in just their sprint, in just their jump, in their lifts, in their fitness tests. And what I'll do then is I have a uh radar chart. So for those of you not familiar with the radar chart, think of like a spider web is the team average, and then there's another spider web that's a different color, that's the athlete score, and a bigger spider web is better. And so that way athletes can see themselves compared to their average. Because the most common question yet when testing is like, is that good? Yeah, you know, it's like, well, you know, it's better than you know, it's better than you were before, or it's worse than David. Like, what do you want to know? Is it is it better than you or is it better than the team? And so it depends. Yeah, exactly. So this allows them to see their own progress. Oh, sweet, my Sparta score is getting better. Darn, my Sparta score is still below the team average. I'm still I'm getting better, but I'm still last on my team. And so that kind of data is helpful for athletes to see visually where they stack up again compared to themselves and compared to the team. And then a lot of it just comes down to individual conversations with you know, okay, how are we gonna improve this? Why are we gonna improve this? Why does this matter? Um, and I've explained obviously like why we do the squats at 135 and 95 like versus a one rep max all the time, and just trying to educate them on well, why we lift weights and why why does this testing matter and and how is it gonna help you? And and then presenting it that way. And it's been pretty effective, and and yeah, the scores have have gone up and it's been pretty cool.

Who Leads The Sparta Score

SPEAKER_02 42:42

So, as a goalie, I gotta ask you, Cole. I'm of the opinion that goalies are probably some of the best athletes out there, selfishly super biased. I'll I'll be the first to admit it. You're the one seeing the data, over 300 plus athletes, 14 different teams. Who has the best Sparta score here right now at Trinity Western?

SPEAKER_01 43:00

It's funny as far as teams. Yeah, yeah. It's funny you mentioned that because our two of our men's hockey goalies have one of them has the record, one of them is like second for the three-meter sprint, and they're one of them, one of them has the team record for the jump. And yeah, so like can confirm goalies are freaks. The best team for our Sparta score on average is our men's volleyball team. Okay, because they can jump high, they're explosive, like they can they lift a lot, like they're they're dogs, so they kind of get after it. Our track and field team is up there as well, okay, especially on the female side. We've got some girls that are like are very strong, and obviously they're fast and they jump high because that's what they do. Yeah, our our current record holder on the women's side is a women's volleyball player, Kaylee Plough. Shout out, yeah, like beast of all beasts. Like, she like, yeah, anyway. I could couldn't say enough good things about Kaylee. And then on our men's side is Tim Zimmer, who is on our men's side. Rugby team, and so he him and one of our men's volleyball guys, Tate, have gone back and forth as far as like Tim was leading, then Tate beat him, and then now Tim's back on top because Tim like can squat you know five-six hundred pounds, can bench 400 pounds. So for him, moving 135 is like it's it's almost too light. It's like I almost need to add more weight to him. Anyway, so overall, our best average again is our men's volleyball or our men's track and field, and then on the women's side is is our women's track and field team.

SPEAKER_02 44:30

But it's super cool to see they're they're literally they hear Tim's numbers right now, and they're like, yo, we gotta get the fire alarm, we gotta call this guy off.

SPEAKER_01 44:37

That's crazy. But they it's cool to see like the Sparta score gives individuals an opportunity to shine. Yeah, so yes, your team you know isn't performing well, you know, you're not maybe getting the most playing time, you're working hard. Sparta score is your chance to shine. Like, as an athlete, I didn't get to play a bunch, but I love the weight room, worked hard. Like, Sparta score would have been my thing, man. I've been like, this is this is what I'm gonna be good at. And and it's super awesome to see athletes really dive into it and love it and and be competitive, as you mentioned before. Like it is like it's become a huge flex to be like a common phrase is like, Well, what's your Sparta score? So now no one's like, Hey, what are you bench? It's like, what's your Sparta score? So uh, as I mentioned, we've got a top 20. The the the leader uh has a little keychain that says sparta score leader, and for example, like Tate or Tim beat Tate, and so I got a picture of like Tate handing it to Tim, and then he was this funny thing, but but yeah, it's it's it's a cool thing to where you know our third string goalie might not be playing a ton, but here's his chance to shine and put up some big numbers and those kind of things.

SPEAKER_02 45:37

So and maybe it's a reason for that coach to be like, hey, maybe this guy should actually get some more ice time, right? Like people don't necessarily see what goes on behind the scenes, and those athletes who in grade nine, 10, 11, 12 who are putting in the work, maybe not seeing the ice, but are developing in the dream room could deserve a spot down the road because they have put in that effort, right?

Confidence, Competition, And Culture

SPEAKER_01 45:56

Yeah, it's and that's what I really love about it is what I do is I don't I don't dictate playing time as much as sometimes I would love to. But a lot of it just comes down to my job is just to support athletes, believe in them, and give them the best opportunity to succeed in their sport and their events and whatever their endeavors are. Yeah. And so one coach, one of my mentors, Johnny Parker, who always says, just like make them feel special and believe in them. Like if an athlete comes to you and says, I want to get faster, and they're slow as hell, and there's no way they're gonna get faster. As a strength coach, my job is not to go, nah, it's absolutely let's get after it. And and here's how we're gonna accomplish that. And that belief, that instilling that hard work, that carries over into other areas of life and carries onto the pitch on the court on the ice. And that that self-efficacy, that confidence, you can build that like money in your bank account. I actually just learned this this past week, is is it's like building money in your bank account so that when you do get to those scary moments of like, oh shoot, I did get picked to you know take the take the penalty shot or the shootout attempt. It's like I know I can do this. I've never done this before, but because I was successful in my Sparta score in the weight room, I made the team, I did all these things, that allows you to carry over into the sport. So there's just so many carryovers to being a better athlete and and working hard, regardless if you're playing or not.

SPEAKER_02 47:12

Yeah. And this is why you are a perfect guest for this show, because the athletes podcast, our goal is to educate, entertain, and inspire that next generation of athletes. You've done that here at Trinity Western, impacted many others on socials, been following along. I appreciate you following up, dealing with me being tough to pin down, but you were patient. This is a perfect episode for every single athlete to listen to, whether you are 15 or 25. Ultimately, everyone can get better. You said it earlier, everyone's an athlete, everyone can move their body in some way, shape, or form. That belief that you instill, hopefully, other coaches take note here because proofs in the pudding. You guys got people performing every single day at the top level. I'm excited to follow along Trinity Western's performance. Five out of those six teams. I think we're gonna see a little playoff dub here in the next couple weeks, maybe a natty championship. The way we wrap up every episode is we ask our guests their biggest piece of advice from the next generation of athletes. Now, I think you are also able to answer this from uh as a coach or as an athlete. So maybe I'll let you answer the way you want it.

SPEAKER_01 48:12

Absolutely. I would say my my biggest piece of advice is always work with what's optimal, not ideal. We have this ideal in our heads of like, I need to be playing, I need to do this. Like, I'm in an 1100 square foot old classroom for a weight room, and I need to develop national champions. To me, it's not about, you know, well, the ideal would be to be in you know the Oregon Ducks, you know, weight room that we've all seen, but this is what I have. So how can I optimize what we have? I have Spartans on the wall, I've got the logo on the floor. It's like I'm gonna make this the best possible. Same thing as an athlete. I'm not playing this weekend, that's obviously not ideal, but I'm gonna optimize my situation by you know getting in an extra run this weekend or you know, watching more game film, or just making sure that even if situations aren't the ideal, what you want, you're trying to optimize where you're at so that when that opportunity comes, then that optimum becomes your ideal.

SPEAKER_02 49:05

Trinity Western University athletes are in good hands, Cole. Thank you so much for coming on the pod. I really appreciate it. This has been fun. 278th, 79th episode, something crazy. Yo, I'll be in for getting my Sparta score at some point here when you do testing next. We'll do it again at some point here, but hopefully we're celebrating a national championship in a few weeks, man.

SPEAKER_01 49:22

I hope so.

SPEAKER_02 49:23

Hey, thank you guys for tuning in. We'll see you again next week. Bye.