John Wallace: Key Insights on Performance Training (Full Transcript)

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Ronen Ainbinder 0:59

Joining me now is probably one of the most athletic guests we've ever had on the Halftime Snacks.

He's the director of performance at Spire Institute in Ohio, where they develop and implement performance training to increase the athletic abilities from academy students to Olympic athletes.

SPIRE Performance is one of the largest performance training centers in the US.

This man's role is to educate and prepare athletes with both theory and practice.

He also brings a lot of technology to the mix, as he uses data, Functional Movement Screens, biometrics, and video analysis to the training.

It's a pleasure to host such a superstar of the training and performance side of sports. Ladies and Gentlemen, John Wallace!

John Wallace 1:43

Thanks, Ronen. Nice to be on.

Ronen Ainbinder 1:44

Man. I've been looking forward to this conversation for a while. And I want to start off our conversation by talking about how you ended up where you are right now. So I want to know if there's any moment in your life that made you realize that you want to be a strength and conditioning coach, or if you thought you were going to end up doing this, and then you switch? Or how exactly did you get where you are today?

John Wallace 2:09

Yeah, so when I first got into college, I played soccer at Cleveland State. I've been an athlete my whole life. In high school, I played soccer, basketball, baseball, ran track, my dad played basketball in college, my sister ran track at the University of Hawaii, my brother Russell, so I've been around sports my whole life. But I went for the first two years of my undergrad for civil engineering. I've always been one that likes woodworking, tinkering on projects, and building things. I did enjoy engineering, but it was a little more of a struggle for me grade-wise; I was able to get by, but the amount of effort I had to put into it and seeing it as something that I wasn't as passionate about 10 years. I was trying to figure out whether I see myself doing for the next 30, 40 years. Luckily, our soccer team started working with our strength and conditioning coach, who, when I was at Cleveland State, was Derek Melander. And he's been the head strength coach for the Cleveland Cavaliers for some time now. So he was a very good first fit for me to see what strength conditioning was. It impacted me as an athlete, and through a discussion with them, you'll find out what degree you go into and how you get into that field. So I transferred my majors to exercise science, and you'll find myself paying attention in class enjoying the three-hour lectures. And I think I found the right fit for me, especially with my athletic background. I'm a decathlete of athletes; I was never great at one sport was pretty decent at a lot of sports. So I think it's something that now allows me as a sports performance coach and strength conditioning coach to understand the physical demands and the training principles that we need to hit for each sport. So it's something that I'm very glad that I switched to it. It's a very competitive field and one that you have very long hours and days, but it's something I thoroughly enjoy. And if I find myself reading articles and reading up on stuff outside of work, I think it's something that I found a career that I'm passionate about, so not mad if we're going to civil engineering. So I think many of the principles, the physics that kinesiology clicks with what we do, but very glad I found a field. It's very enjoyable to see whether I'm working with the youth athlete to an elite athlete to see the gains and the athleticism translate to their the court, the field pitch, whatever sport they're doing, and how that can have a positive impact on their abilities.

Ronen Ainbinder 4:35

I think we're going to talk more about how the structure of the training structures in an athlete itself, but we'll leave that for later because that's the meat side of the conversation. But I wouldn't know as a director of performance and training in one of the most important Institutes of training in the US. I wonder what some of the daily challenges you face are and how you solve them or your role, or how your day-to-day looks. Can you share with us a little bit of your experience as a performance director there?

John Wallace 5:06

I'd like to say our challenge is probably similar to most sports performance coaches out there, whether we have different sports in the collegiate realm professional realm. Our academy for our high school postgrads is currently swimming and diving, track and field, and basketball. And they're all three completely different sports in terms of their movement patterns, training principles, and even their seasonal competition schedule. So COVID has been very fun this year, also throwing a wrench in terms of scheduling. So basketball is one, especially from our academy model, that our athletes will pick up games at the drop of a hat, we'll have a game planned on Monday, and all of a sudden, they'll pick up a game Thursday, Friday, Saturday. So that throws a wrench into what I had planned for those athletes in terms of their training. So it's something as performance coaches, we got to be very flexible.

We plan, prioritize their training, get everything set in place, but sports that have things that pop up and change an athlete gets injured, or maybe this athlete played a ton more minutes than the previous game. How can we best fit the training for that athlete? At that time, sports that are a little more linear, we like to say, are consistent with their competitions. Even with the importance of their competitions, we can plan out more blocks. Still, consecutive phases of training that meld into each other, it's nice we have with our swimming and diving pool, the competition's track has been a little more variable this year, just based on meats coming and going. Next week, we're hosting the Big 10 Indoor Track and Field championship, and I have the fun ability to try to schedule in the strength coaches and their athletes to get access to our weight room. And usually, it's still something I got a schedule. And so we make sure we don't have too many athletes just utilizing the racks now of COVID; we got to make sure we have enough distancing teams can't be in or at the same time. So those are your typical headaches that come from scheduling. And again, luckily, we don't have a huge volume right now with our academy. But when I was at Cleveland State as GA, there are 17 teams that we had for only two weight rooms, and one of them was pretty much just a basketball inclusive weight room. So the ability to schedule 16 teams in one weight room makes sure that everyone gets utilized the same ability at the weight room. A lot of times, those are issues as well. Being flexible is very important, and understanding what we learn in school (the theory) understands these principles. Every coach has to implement those systems to the equipment they have with the space that they have several staff members. We're getting to that point right now with the interns that we have is going through this theoretical model with them and give them these projects and prompts, and they build up these workouts. I'm like, okay, and I throw a wrench in it, you only have 45 minutes, and it's before practice. So is that going to change anything that you're doing in terms of your programming? So little things like that. Again, I think the best coaches out there, everyone in this field, is passionate about it and has a very good understanding of physiology. But I think the best ones are the ones that can get the best out of the athletes. I liken it to have you a big fan of cooking shows but beat Bobby Flay is a US chef and was an Iron Chef. And he's got a show where he challenges people to come into chefs go up against each other, and then the winner of that one gets to go up against him. And whoever goes up against him, they come there with their own dish. Bobby has no idea what the dishes, and they only have 45 minutes to cook them. And a good portion of the time, Bobby still wins, not even knowing what the dishes and I think that's a good sign of a good coach or a good professional is they can make the best out of what they have limited time-limited resources. That's something that I thought about throughout the years being here. Seeing how this academy model goes and how sometimes the game schedule or competition schedule can drop, just like that, you can be flexible and still provide the best that you can for the athletes to perform optimally. And that's a big thing with us too. Because we are an academy, your athletes are coming here to hopefully get a scholarship or go on and play at the next level. So in college, you'll have athletes three, four, or five years; a lot of times, I only have athletes for one year, so we got to maximize that potential and also make sure they're playing at their optimum at any time because they don't know when a coach is going to be there. You're recruiting him at a certain tournament.

Ronen Ainbinder 9:42

I wonder how much is it relevant for you guys to get involved in an athlete's life in terms of how much you track, how much they sleep, their diet, their time in the training room, their time in the gym? Is there a specific ratio you can tell us about, or how exactly do you guys track and manage a specific athlete's complete schedule? I guess that most of the people who train with you guys are at least on the most professional level; sport is their life? So they are there to get the best, the best treatment, so to say, to become the best athlete. So I wonder, I want to know, what's the approach taken, at least from your perspective in all the other aspects in life besides probably like just training in this specific sport?

John Wallace 10:36

Yeah, so, essentially, look at stress and recovery. There's a lot of research by Dr. Tim Gabot; he has an acute to chronic workload, which essentially looks at your short-term stress, your acute stress, and then your long-term stress or chronic workload. And making sure that as we're training our athletes, if that short term, that acute workload grows too fast compared to what our chronic is, you can start to fatigue out athletes or over train them. And even if it's not a problem with the training load, if the athletes aren't recovering properly, you could have dosed in an appropriate amount of increase in training. And if they're just not recovering properly, whether they're lacking sleep, there's stress because it's final exam week, social issues, they broke up with the boyfriend or girlfriend, they're not sleeping great. And either staying up late, listening to sappy love songs, all these things can affect how their body adapts to the training. So currently, we do wellness surveys with the simple athletes, just Google Forms, or we've been playing around with some other samples from some different providers looking at their platform. And biggest thing with that is, are the athletes consistent with it? Are they honest with it, and that's a big thing getting that rapport with your athletes? Them understanding we can have all the knowledge in the world, but if they don't know that this stuff is meaningful and worthwhile, there may not be as consistent with that data. So a big thing is pushing it to them. And then also we can collect all this stuff, and love research and love all this stuff. But if it's not meaningful data, if we don't do anything actionable with it, we're just collecting stuff to collect stuff. So the big thing is getting buy-in from the athletes, the coaches understanding to that, hey your athletes are training this much on the court or on the track or on the pool swimming nine times a week, doing med balls two or three times a week, lifting three times a week, that's a lot of stuff. Even though your athletes are doing a good job sleeping eight, nine, sometimes 10 hours a day on the weekends, and they're implementing pretty good sound nutritional habits, they're still looking like they're fatiguing out. So maybe we got to look into the programming. Maybe what can we take away? What things do we not want to take away to still maximize the development versus some of my other teams? We're not doing that much, and they're still not recovering? Well, you guys are staying up and playing fortnight till 2:30 in the morning; it's not a matter of what we're doing. It's how you guys were recovering. So that's a big thing with our youth athletes, not that it isn't very important with our elite athletes—no professional teams. Luckily, I'm in house here at the spire. I don't travel much with our teams; our basketball team just left yesterday to go to IMG, both our high school and postgrads, for one of their big tournaments at the end of the year. And even little things like that with elite athletics is planning when you're traveling, when you're going to get up, if you're flying to different time zones. So thinking about those things to optimize even the performance at that time. So, technology is is very, very big coming in, in sports science. And I think we're fortunate that we haven't dived into anything big yet, because the products continue to improve yearly, and to the fact that they're one getting less than the cost to getting more efficient. And then you're able to make a lot more out of just one product where they're starting to work together cohesively.

Ronen Ainbinder 13:51

Yeah, it sounds like you guys are very dynamic in terms of the preparation of an athlete; you're very personal with each one, like each one is a very particular case, and you're going to treat them differently. I wonder why you mentioned if you're starting to see that an athlete is degrading their performance. It might be because he's training too much, or he's not maybe getting enough recovery, or maybe he's not eating the necessary thing. So what I understand is that it's most dynamic; you track it as you go, you kind of have conversations with the more personal trainers, and you kind of try to figure out what they can do to be better? And I think that's great, John, and also on that side, I want to ask you, what are some of the like factors, specific things that separate the good and the great athletes? What makes an athlete that trains at a higher level?

John Wallace 14:46

We've been fortunate to have a couple Olympic athletes., gold medalists come through here. We have, I want to say, five or six right now that are training to try to get to trials for the US in their respective sports. Coming up here soon. And, the biggest thing is, I'd like to say the character. Not that many of the athletes I have are bad, bad people, but the character of athletes at that level,, to get to that level, you've had to go through a lot, you've had to go through adversity. They've all had a ton of different coaches, different coaching styles. And I would say, the, their, their effort, their ethic, their intensity, and their ability to be coachable. You see that, and I don't think it's a matter of what sport those athletes are coming from. If they're getting to that level, they've obviously put in the work. Still, they probably have been surrounded by very good individuals, but their generalized character, their ability to come in, day in and day out, and have that professionalism and every side of things. So not just the training in the weight room, but the recovery, the nutrition, and doing the little things that will separate them. And that's why they are elite because, at the elite level, just a small little thing can make that difference. So that's something that generally I've seen, which is nice, because we do have the ability, sometimes for our athletes to our youth athletes. Even our academy athletes will sometimes train not in the same programming, but they may train up here when we have some of our other elite athletes in here. We had Katerina Stefani. She's a Greek pole vaulter who has been training out here for the past; once they five or six years, she was training her before winning gold at the last Olympics, and fairly athletic individually. You're training up here, but no one knows too much about track from a lot of our other sports training here. And she'd be up your training. And a lot of people will be asking, oh, who is that? Well, just a pole vaulter and stuff may find out who she was. She's very, very good with the individual. She'd have no problem and talking with some of the youth athletes and taking pictures of them. She's a perfect example of just the character that those athletes are personifying, as everyone's a person, even celebrities, elite athletes. I think that's a big thing that is good for some more younger athletes to see is just how the athletes carrying themselves, you think of them just as robotic creatures that just train, train, train, and I like to think of the Russian and Rocky that's what you see. And, they're, they're people just like anyone else. And generally, when you get to meet them and see them, you understand that they still have their own characters and personalities. But when it comes time to train,, they, they get after it. And that's, I'd say, one of the differences I've seen from the athletes that make it far in their sports, and even if you don't make it that far in your sport, it's something that will carry on to your professional life as well.

Ronen Ainbinder 17:30

Would you say it's more of a mindset that you have to adopt? Rather than having, let's say, a skill or a specific talent around the sport? How much would you say is the balance between having mental toughness, being resilient, dealing with adversity and with risk and with a challenge, and how much of it is just dedicating your life to training and having this skill and being elite at that level?

John Wallace 18:02

Yeah, I think that's individual in the athlete in the sport. You have athletes who just exude confidence, and they perform their best when there's the best color level; I think that's athletes with high arousal. I remember my psychology classes, but we're fortunate to have a sports psychologist on staff that comes out and works with our athletes. He even sorts of, just like we do in performance, melds the programming specific teams, and specific to individuals. And that's something that at the elite level, you're a basketball player, and you shoot 90% free throws in practice, but you're shooting 72% in the games, what's the difference? Obviously, it's not a matter of your shooting skill. It's something mentally that you lose focus, you lose competence, so how can we do some building exercises with that? So, they work with our mental skills coach on developing training plans and developing ways to create stuff that's individualized for what they need another sport or go back to pole vaulting. And say you miss your opening mark, and you missed the second time, and this is an easy mark that you hit all the time. Now, you're starting to go through things and switch up in your head that you might need to switch your techniques. So luckily, I played soccer, it's one that I don't think there's individuality. In some of the sports where you're out there competing by yourself, you need to have so much more robustness in your mental fortitude; sometimes, when you're out there, playing is getting in the zone, just flow with the game. So that's something that, luckily, we have in our sports performance, we have myself with strength conditioning, we have the athletic trainers that help with any injuries that we see and work with us in rehab. We have physical therapists on site. If something goes beyond athletic training, they need to see a therapist. But then we also have mental skills that are under our sports performance hub. So we're hitting it from all sides. So even athletes that aren't injured are still doing some corrective programming or stuff based on their movement faults to stay ahead of things. Even athletes who don't have a weakness, so to say in their mental skills, get certain training. We can bias each area by testing athletic testing the mental skill of coaching, talking with their sports-specific coaches where they may need more emphasis. The nice thing about our academy is that we can bias what athlete needs more of what area of performance to see better training or better transfer of their performance on the court field goal whatever sport they're playing.

Ronen Ainbinder 20:32

That's, that's very, very interesting, JohnJohn. I've been thinking about this for a while, and I'm sure that you can give me a very complete answer. I wonder what difference it makes, for instance, for an athlete who would participate in the Olympics in 2020, and then it got moved because of COVID. So they move their schedule or their plan, as you mentioned, how the short term and the long term are two different things for preparing yourself. I guess an athlete or coach can know when is exactly the day that the athlete is going to be at its peak in terms of performance. So I wonder how much of a difference it made for athletes preparing themselves for the Olympics to move in a year. And also because I guess that it for a human body, it's not the same thing as being 18 years old, and being 19, in terms of how your body's developing, how you're growing, how your metabolism works, how your genetics are made. So I wonder if it makes a big difference that they were moved for a year? And if so, how? And if so, would you say this is just a personal question? Would you say that it's going to be a little bit unfair for some of the athletes that were ready to go in 2020? And then now they have a bigger challenge, or maybe a disadvantage because they couldn't take advantage of the advantage in 2020? So wouldn't that be a disadvantage in 2021? And if so, would you consider the 2021 Olympics to be the year with the asterisk next? That doesn't count. So what do you think about that?

John Wallace 22:19

Yeah,, it's, it's unique., if you go to individual sports, first-team sports,, so to save soccer if you're a team that's trying to pick your, your team is coming into it when you have an extra year, to try to build up and build that culture and find out what athletes you want. Say you're a senior athlete that's gone to two or three Olympics in an individual sports track or swimming or something like that. And you're starting to age a little bit that extra year; you may have been peaked, ready to go on thinking that's your last Olympics. Now you have to hold on to those physical abilities for a whole nother year were you on the other end of it, you can be a young up-and-coming youth athlete just fresh out of college or even out of high school. And that extra year of physical development may help you now for the USA like track and swimming, was very gifted have a lot of athletes that have a standard, which is minimum qualifying numbers to get to the Olympics. But because of that, you have to go to trials, and they only lost so many athletes from our nation to represent them at the Olympics because if they didn't, we'd have so many athletes. So that can be a positive for some sports and some sports not so much. I think it's just individually a big thing we've seen; we've had a couple of athletes who have trained out of the National Training Center in Chula Vista. And because during COVID, California shut down completely, so they shut down that training center. So we had a couple athletes come off here because we want to sort out the middle of nowhere in Ohio, so our positivity rates were supremely low compared to other places in Ohio, but even compared to the rest of the country. So that's a big thing, too, is where athletes we're able to train at our national governing bodies if they were shut down. Where are you training? If it's a sport that doesn't have a lot of funding or these athletes are developmental, they're not sponsored by Nike or Adidas or not getting money on a professional circuit yet were? How do these athletes train at a high level which you have to pay for coaching? When can't you go to places where you train? So I think it's going to be interesting to see how this Olympic comes up. We've been seeing someone swimming and track though even through indoors for swimming. And Caleb Russell's been breaking records left and right, the past couple of months. There may be some positives with that with some individual sports, but it'll be interesting to see what the team sports; how much were they able to still play? Soccer leagues, football league games have been canceled here and there. So maybe hard for teams to have that typical consistency and build that cohesiveness within the team. So, I'm not sure how to answer that., it's going to be very interesting. I think he might see some big surprises and like in the past And in the negative. I'm hoping that all the athletes that have found the opportunity to train have been able to maximize it because it's been difficult, especially depending on what country you've been from. You're where the training been? What's been shut down?

Ronen Ainbinder 25:15

Yeah. And would you say it's, it's still a fair competition? Because all of like, all of the athletes have the same opportunity to train? Or would you say it doesn't count because of how people train their whole lives and think about aiming for 2020? And now it's 2021. And it probably wouldn't sound so much. But I feel like it's a completely different story in the body and an athlete's body. So what's your take on that?

John Wallace 25:43

I think, for still them getting there., that's the Olympics, for most sport is the epitome of the highest competition and the most prestigious place you can be in terms of representing your sport and your nation. So I don't want to say that this Olympics will be an Asterix, because it's I don't think fair to say for the athletes that have trained hard, or I'm going to get to go there. I think it's just going to be a unique challenge for those that have had a challenge, especially maybe senior athletes that have trained for so long with consistency. Having this for the past year and a half, suddenly, the change could have been eight, 9, 10 years of program training. And now you throw something into their different training plan, they're training somewhere else, they're training, maybe under different situations, whether they're competing at different times. So that can be something that may be disadvantageous versus a youth athlete that are younger athletes that this is just something new, we'll deal with that we'll brush it off. So yeah,, it's hard to say. I'm very interested to see what the results come this year. And I think we're gonna learn a lot, especially from the Sports Science side, as we're tracking a bunch of these things that maybe there could be some positives athletes are resting longer, we're seeing better results. We saw a lot from the NFL, and I can't wait for some research to come out. The lack of preseason training, the lack of offseason training, and substantially more injuries, non-contact, soft tissue injuries, Achilles hamstring tears. Then there have been, I was looking at a graphic from Dr. Hanson. The only time it was close to these levels was the lockout period, I think in 2011, which has shortened preseason and training. Understanding that we don't have enough preseason training for athletes in the sport combat sport, like football, is very detrimental. So, there will be some positive stuff coming out of this too, which can help us understand the implementation of training offseason in season postseason that although there are many negative things with COVID. Can we take the positive from this, and you use it as a learning effect?

Ronen Ainbinder 27:44

Yeah, absolutely. I didn't think about that. But you're absolutely right. The kind of like the injury side is also quite, quite interesting. And as you mentioned, the NFL was a very unique case to see. And I remember having my fantasy team and all my players out of Southern Oregon. So I guess that we will see some of that also in the Olympics. I hope that it's not as bad as it was in the NFL. But and I also hope it's not. It doesn't hurt an athlete's performance. But we'll see, we'll see. It's a unique time, unique, unprecedented time for everyone, but in the sports world, as well. And I feel it's going to be interesting, JohnJohn. And since we're running out of time, I want to ask you the last question, a more practical question, maybe to share with us kind of like your knowledge on a practical side of athletes and wellness. So I guess that my question is, what is one habit that you've recommended, or you think that it's undervalued, that people, athletes, and people trying to get into a very healthy lifestyle? Should they do more, or do they don't value enough? And why do you think it's important?

John Wallace 28:57

One thing I'd say, honestly, is just the intensity that you put into your training. And it goes to every type of training. So whether you're doing conditioning to improve your fitness, trying to get stronger, or increasing your vertical jump, and even stuff like flexibility, mobility stuff just doesn't happen. Like we need to stress the body for the body to adapt, we also need to recover. And those are the important things that I think the harder you train. Obviously, the better results you're gonna get. But on the other side, if you're not recovering just as hard, making sure you go into bed at the right time, getting enough sleep. So elite athletes just go harder every session. Whether it's something that seems minuscule, like a recovery session, where we're focusing on what we call them correctives, their individual routines based on our functional movement screen with them putting the focus on that word just seem like you're laying down stretching. These movements don't matter how we do it. Well, it does if you put some intensity and effort into it, even though it's not a super fatiguing thing. You're gonna start moving better, you start moving better, I can train you in better positions and increase your strength and better range of motion, your knees not going to hurt as much, now we're gonna be able to do more plyometrics is going to help you jump. So everything's a snowball effect. But I'd say, the ability to work hard, whatever you're doing, and putting in that effort, intensity, separates the difference between getting the results you want, and like a battery that's fully charged, first charge 70%. You can work as hard as you can at 70%. Or you can work not even as hard as kind of 100% and still get better results in the 70%. So making sure you're recovered and putting in that intensity. So that's something I've probably seen for myself, personally, as an athlete going through stuff, but and that goes across the board, from elite athletes to young athletes is putting in that intensity, I think it drives your results.

Ronen Ainbinder 30:49

Would you say it's more about training smart than training hard?

John Wallace 30:53

Yeah, well, you should always train hard. And I've used this analogy for our insurance a lot. Work smart, not hard. In our field, you have to work hard. But sometimes more is not always better. So that's the difference you need to train hard to get the results. But doing a ton of stuff sometimes can be a detriment. And for our field., we call ourselves more sports performance and strength conditioning because we're focused on sports athletes. I don't train Olympic lifters, bodybuilders, powerlifters. So what we do in the weight room is not their sport. And quite frankly, not a lot of them like it. I'm a strength coach. And I don't like lifting that much on my own. I do it because I have to my job, but what we do with the athletes, we need to make sure that isn't increasing their performance. And we use the word or the phrase minimum effective dosage. So can we do the least of what we need to do to get the biggest result? And sometimes doing so much more substantially may only increase that extra athleticism, whatever that metric is a little bit, well, can we just not do that and let them recover more, and then perform better in their sport. So whatever we're doing, there needs to be intensity. But sometimes less is more; it's just the intensity always needs to be there. Unless it is something that we're trying to get them to recover.

For our basketball guys left. Yesterday, we had a recovery day; they were sore from the past couple of training days. So we did some foam rolling, stretching and wanted to get them up and to move. But they've done so many recovery workouts, and it gets monotonous. So we play dodgeball. It's enjoyable for me because I love to watch them bash each other with football, soccer balls, and other things. But you saw their faces, they were having fun, they had a good level of arousal in terms of psychologically, having some intensity to it, they were moving upper body, lower body, etc. It was a nice finish to their workout, which seems like we're just playing games. Still, it was something that had better intensity, so to say, versus if I would have had them do a nice little jog dynamic warm-up, which would have been boring for them. So they would have brought that intensity. Sometimes, as a coach, finding ways to manipulate the variables where the athletes don't know what you're doing, but you still bring the best out of them.

Ronen Ainbinder 32:57

That's absolutely fantastic. John, I want to thank you so much for your time for your insights. For everything you shared with us, man, you're a superstar of the training and performing side of sports. I want to thank you again for coming to the Halftime Snacks, being with us in COVID times, this pandemic, social distancing. I believe you're doing a great job, and keep it up with a great job on performance and everything you're doing in the SPIRE institute man, you're an absolute inspiration.