Today’s podcast welcomes coach Ty Terrell.  Ty is currently an NBA physical preparation coach and has a wealth of experience ranging from training athletes out of a garage, to coaching high school basketball, to being mentored by some of the top professionals in the coaching industry.  Individuals such as Lee Taft, Bill Hartman, and Mike Robertson have fostered in Ty a unique and powerful perspective on blending gym-training methods with athletic biomechanics and outputs.

A running theme of this show has been using gym training methods to cater to the organic manner by which athletes live and move, rather than working against it.  In a recent episode, #220, Kyle Dobbs talked about “hingy, knees-out squats” and the cascade of negative effects these brought out in the athletic population.  Personally, I had loads of elasticity in my teens and early 20’s, but I slowly started to lose the “elastic monster” by starting to train “by the book” according to current strength and conditioning methods and protocols.

This show (and podcast in general) is about winning that elastic power back.  Ty Terrell starts off by sharing some of the key points he learned in his beginnings as a coach under Lee Taft in regards to training athlete speed and movement.  From there, we transition into all things squatting, and the load-unload, “expand-compress” paradigm that has come out of the work and ideas of Bill Hartman, and how this relates to athletic movement on the court or field of play.  We finish with some practical ideas on how to make trunk and core training highly transferable, and represent the movement principles we want to embody in our total-body athletic movements.

Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.





View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage.





Timestamps and Main Points

4:00 Ty’s start with Lee Taft, and some cornerstone teachings he has learned from Lee that have kept with him in his coaching

10:45 How to use bands and resistance to create lines of force on an athlete that can help them use joints better, or get into desired athletic positions

23:45 Approaching elite athletes versus youth in regards to training their sport movement ability

34:00 Questions on general versus any sort of specific skill movement training for a professional athlete

41:45 How athletic movement works in light of the expansion and compression of the pelvic floor, and the body in general

57:30 The effect of overly “hinging” every lift, and how a state of anterior tilt reduces aerobic capacity and even muscular compliance and elasticity

1:06.30 Reflexive core training and experiences to help athletes train their trunk and pelvis in a manner that reflects load and explode paradigms



“When I started, it was important that Lee made me be a coach first (before the standard “textbook” learning)”

“As long as you have forward momentum, it’s OK not to be perfect today”

“Those are the three things that you are looking at in a single motion in athletics: Can you achieve the position, can you produce the force you need to in the time you need to, and can you do it in the context of the situation”

“If you get a 10-year old, they are pretty compliant.  They don’t have years of physical stress to let compensatory strategies come into play”

“With the younger kids, you don’t necessarily have to focus on power to improve power because they are just improving everything”

“It’s the simple stuff (the pro athlete) doesn’t do well (such as a basic squat pattern), because they never had to… I’ll say this, it’s the fundamentals that save pro athletes”

“How many times can you do near-max efforts before your body can’t handle it, and says, “I need to cheat somehow””

“The number one thing I find (the NBA population) needs is the ability to squat.