John Opfer, CSCS

PST InDepth: Methodology

At , our methodology starts with an initial assessment. I think the best way we can share our toolbelt with an athlete is to figure out where the need is. We're not only looking at their body fat composition, or body weight or nutritional needs, or even just the sport they play. Before we can really help them we need to take a look at what the need is. And we do that in a number of ways. We do that by first taking them through what's called a functional screen. And that screen tells us where the mechanical breakdown, the suspension of the body is out of whack. Most athletes come to us because they want to become faster, stronger, and to jump higher, and for us to do that, there's a power output needed to improve all three of those scenarios. The assessment results show the best way to hone and share our skills to fix and improve the athlete as a whole.

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is for anybody that is passionate about getting better. There is a misconception that we're here only for the Division I athlete, or for the athlete that wants to play professional sports, and I think that's false. I think our job is to help the athletes dominate where they are, and in doing so, that gives those athletes opportunities to continue to play.

If you ask any great coach, why they're coaching, it's because they're trying to be involved with the sport they love dearly and miss. So, in coaching, we're extending our career to be involved with sports. For the athlete, we're trying to extend their career and their longevity so that they can enjoy the game that we greatly miss. We give every athlete that comes here, not only a sense of urgency, but a reality check. Everybody's got dreams, everybody would like to be in the NHL or NFL or Major League Baseball. The issue is, if we can't get them to dominate in grade school, on the practice field, in the league they're playing in now, they probably don't have a very good chance to play further. So that's simply our goal, to improve them where they are and catch the attention of those around them. When that happens, typically they're asked to play at a higher level and that's really the goal here at . Really, it's to access, find out what the need is, and then improve the athlete's ability and in doing so we're extending the athlete's opportunity to play.

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At , we take a chance. We sit back and try to get an understanding of what the need and desire of each athlete is and co-mingle them as best as possible. Plenty of people can watch DVDs and tell you how to get fast, and certainly there are some crossover exercises that many professionals out there are using. I think were we set ourselves apart is we're almost like sending your car to the mechanic or the salesperson: if you send your car to the sales rep, he can only tell you about the sales brochure and the car manual he's looked through. The mechanic, on the other hand, can actually diagnose the problems and issues that are holding up the car from performing at its highest. And so, I think that's where we set ourselves apart. We're able to diagnose, fix the issue, make it sport specific, and improve the athlete.

Think of as a laboratory for sports science. During a game, and even during most team practices, things happen quickly and the goal is to play the game and win. Here, we put each athlete through sets of highly controlled exercises that are designed to instill optimal form. Each exercise is carefully explained. Repetition under the watchful eyes of our trainers gives athletes the opportunity to fine tune each movement to perfection. This develops kinesthetic muscle memory so that, in actual game situations, peak performance is attained.

For example, what we do with groups here is we teach most exercises to a clap. We'll have everybody go to the clap. We'll clap, they start the exercise, we'll pause them. Then we can fix all the little mechanics that they might need fixing. For example, bending your knee a little more, getting a little better posture, keeping the ball a little closer to your foot in soccer. In hockey, it may be getting a little lower in your stride, extending the leg all the way through the hip. In track and field, having your Z-line for running a little higher, your front recovery a little higher, your toes pointed up, driving through the ball of your foot. They're all things you want to look at. When you are in a game situation, you don't have time to break that down.

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The age groups here range from nine all the way up to adults. We have many different programs and for each athlete we can create a different program, so they have a lot of availability. Obviously, the younger ages aren't going to be doing as much heavy lifting, but they can do a lot of functional work, a lot of work on just their body strength, their core strength to evolve them as an athlete. When they start to hit their growth spurts, and start to get bigger, they're more of an over-all athlete and they don't have to catch up with their growth.

Athletes always want to get bigger, faster, and stronger, but most athletes don't know a functional way to do that. A lot of athletes build a lot of strength but they don't do it functionally. So, for example, their shoulders tighten up, and if you are a pitcher in baseball and your shoulder tightens up, and you are going to lose some of that speed you had developed, even though you are stronger. For baseball and pitching, you want to loosen up the shoulder, you want to strengthen it. But you want to keep those muscles nice and loose so you get the full motion of your pitch. For football, for running, you want to keep your posture. If you've gained too much mass that is not in balance, you're not going to be able to get in the correct position, the correct depth, to actually take somebody out, to actually get low enough to make the tackle.

Here at , we deal with all levels of athletes. We work with athletes, for example, that are riding the bench on their JV team, and want to get good enough to someday start for their varsity team. A lot of times an athlete comes to us and says “Hey, I don't necessarily want to play in college, but I want to play in High School.” We work with those athletes. We develop a program that brings them to the level where they can start on their team. We also have athletes at the college level who are looking to go on to that Pro level. We give them the tools they need to hit that pro level.

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Getting an athlete in the mindset to achieve, to have the mindset to better themselves, every stage, is our goal. We get them to a point where they know what they want to do and why they want to do it. If an athlete doesn't want to get better, then they shouldn't be here. So what we want to do is we want to have that athlete mentally prepared to do the work that it takes to get better. To do the work, in the game, that it takes to win, to achieve greatness.

If you look at any great athlete, they're always asking questions, they're always trying to better themselves. There's this relentless pursuit that's ongoing, so the athlete's got to be willing to fail to get better. They've got to be willing to come in and look at their weakness and make them strengths. They've got to be open to being coached. They've got to be open to new ideas. They've got to be open to figuring out what those little idiosyncrasies are that are keeping them from really raising their level. And for some athletes, they're very small things. And so if we don't pay attention to detail, then we miss out on an opportunity of extending their career.

Through the work that we do, through that assessment and through the individual workouts, we get to know every athlete in here at a personal level. That personal level we use to talk to the athlete, it makes it easier for us to interact with each athlete in here and to make them, to explain to them in ways that they understand all the lifts, all the nutrition, all the overall aspects of the sport mentally and physically. If you know all aspects of an athlete personally, its much easier to get them to the next level, to excel.

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There has to be a special fit where the coach staff is open to our methodology and we're open to being available to change schedules and to co-mingle with the seasonal plan. We help teams by looking at their play and their coaching micro and macro cycles and say “OK, you're trying to get your team to peak here. We don't want to over train you, we want to work smart and so here's where these training times need to work.” We are flexible and strive to improve the teams on the ice, on the football field, on the soccer field or on the baseball diamond. And so, in return those teams want to keep training because it's a success story that's working together.

Whenever you're looking at a specific sport, you're looking at a couple things. You're looking at, first, what's the work to rest ratio? What are the injuries that are typically involved with that game? What are the dominant athletes looking like in that game? What are the characteristics of those athletes? How they move…what their size is, where they play. And then, from there, trying to link together some of the simple, basic skills that, for instance, the soccer coach is trying to get across to his athlete, and then we're trying some simple skills to prevent injury and improve performance.

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Stretching and flexibility is a huge thing. One thing most people don't understand is that a dynamic warm up before their sport is more important than just a static warm up. A dynamic warm up actually gets the blood flowing. It gets your muscles warmed up so that when you get a stretch on them during the sport, when you get an abnormal torque, off-balance, you can work to get back because those muscles are warm enough to contract quickly enough to stabilize. Once you are properly warmed up you can get torqued in any direction and still not get the pulls that a lot of people get. Also, warming up and stretching after the workout or after a game is extremely important because stretching after a game is going to help you increase the flexibility of those muscles. Stretching when you're already warm and the blood's already flowing shows much more benefit than stretching when your muscles are cold.

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Nutrition is of the highest importance for athletes. When athletes come here we always get a three day log of their nutrition. We want to know everything these athletes are eating from the minute they wake up to the minute they go to sleep. If, for example, an athlete is drinking a lot of soda or pop, then that athlete has a lot of sugar and a lot of carbonation that is actually not benefiting them on the field. If this athlete was to excel at a higher level, they're going to need to change their diet. So, we don't only want to look at athletes now, we want to look at athletes in the future, what they're going to be in the future. So we bring that nutrition and we bring it on a larger scale, say “This is what you want to be eating, how you want to be eating.” We want athletes to know they have options, but they want to choose good options.

There are a lot of scenarios out there, a lot of clichés, high protein this, high carbohydrates that, low fat this, and I think its really about each athlete individually. We know that we're 80 % of the puzzle. Fixing the mechanical and the force output and the power output, that's 20% of the problem. The other 80% is the recovery. I tell the athletes all the time, if you think about the highest level, the reason, unfortunately, that our athletes, our professional athletes are on steroids is because it ensures recovery. The myth is that steroids are what's making them bigger, stronger, and faster and that's really false. Its that its insuring a high level of recovery. The problem is that steroids is cheating and damage that steroids is doing, extra growth hormone to the kidneys and liver within the body, is almost 1 year of abuse to 7 years of damage. And so that's the reason that you're seeing the athletes at 38, 39, 40 years old have dramatic heart attacks because they were abusing those types of hormones at 21, 22, 23 years old. So, where am I going with this? Are we condoning steroids? Absolutely not. But the 80% that's in the athlete's hands that we really need to take care of is the nutrition and recovery. So, if we don't pinpoint what their caloric need is, how much protein, carbs, and fats they need on a regular basis, what kind of gas, their fluid, what kind of fluid intake they need, how many times they need to have a water bottle in them, or 24 oz. of water, if we don't address those things, then we know that the recovery is going to be poor. And if the recovery is poor, then the stimulus that we give them in here isn't going to solicit a high adaptation. So the nutrition is 80% of the issue. Its almost the number 1 issue that we face and one of the 1 number one issuer that we address when an athlete comes to .

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Injuries

We also work with a lot of athletes that have injuries. Iif you have surgery you get sent to the physical therapist. You are at the physical therapist for a few weeks and then after that they say “OK, your time's done here, you're done.” The athlete might be good enough to where they can walk around and they can move around, but they're not to the point where they can run yet, they can get back into their every day sport. So a lot of athletes come here to us with injury and we can develop a program to specifically strengthen up the injured area so that they can get back to the level that they were before the injury, and then achieve a higher level than they were before the injury. Because that's really the goal of most athletes – to get to that higher level.

Injury prevention is huge. Injury prevention is done by strengthening up all your core muscles and all the muscles surrounding your joints. So for example the knee: if you strengthen your quads and your hamstrings and your calves, you're going to have a lot less chance of injury because your knee is going to be much more stable. Your shoulders as well: you strengthen up the shoulder complex, your scapula and your delts, your shoulder, then you're going to be less inclined to have shoulder injuries. So those are things, we don't like to see athletes with injuries because then you're missing time in your sport. You're missing time that you could be progressing to that next level. So we want to work with athletes to get them stronger on a whole level so they are less likely to get an injury.

Closing Thoughts

I think the reason that we are successful is because we've staff here that are passionate about helping you become a better athlete. And as long as you are willing to be taught, as long as you are willing to absorb the toolbelts that are in this facility, I think that we can ensure your success when you step in our door at .