The 8 Year Evolution of HansenAthletics

Unlock the secrets to building athletic prowess from the ground up with Coach D on HansenAthletics Radio. Ever wondered how a small-town training hub in Pocatello, Idaho, transformed into a high-performance hub for athletes to play at the next level? Join us as we recount our journey from lifting heavy in a cramped garage to mastering the art of speed training with insights from industry experts like Les Spellman. This episode reveals why traditional methods fell short.

Through personal anecdotes and pivotal moments, we share the game-changing realization that speed can level the playing field for athletes of all sizes. Whether you're a coach, an athlete striving for that next-level performance, or a parent eager to understand the nuances of modern training strategies, this episode offers a treasure trove of practical insights and inspiring stories. Don't miss out on learning how HansenAthletics became known for turning local talents into field-ready competitors with world-class coaching methods here in southeastern Idaho.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:27

What's cracking guys? Coach D here. Another episode of Hans Athletics Radio. Today we're going to be going over a Twitter or X post that I made, that you know did pretty well with engagement, and just kind of cover this for coaches out there listening, athletes, parents Want to know. Number one a little bit more about Hans Athletics, but number two kind of how we've evolved over the last eight years. So, for context, this one will probably be a five 10 minute episode Again, if you have any follow-up questions. I've been getting some great questions from listeners in terms of going a little bit deeper into these topics, which we can do via podcast, which you can do via DM or just conversations off the webs, right.

Speaker 1: 1:09

So jumping into it for context, five years ago is when we really kind of got rolling with our physical location this will be our eighth year, but the first couple of years we're in a garage, shared space, at a PT clinic and whatnot. So once we kind of got to start doing the things that we wanted to do, we had come from a more traditional background, sheldon and I so growing up in high school doing a bigger, faster, stronger program, which probably half the country did, basically just lifting heavy all the time maxing out a lot Power lifts, pretty much 80% of the time. We came from that background. No formal speed work, no technical work when it came to sprinting or how to sprint faster. No technical work when it came to sprinting or how to sprint faster, fast forward, we get to. You know, I was a Utah State, shell was at Weber and, having exposure and experience in those programs and seeing still a little bit of that boat was being missed, like there was a little bit more tempo days and whatnot. But we never really were taught how to sprint, nor did we do now, knowing what we know, you know true speed work. So spent time there. Now we're at the university there, learned what we could.

Speaker 1: 2:16

I also coached University of Utah for a little bit and in the weight room side. And then you come, you know, you realize, okay, back home we were missing some aspects of training and that's kind of what stemmed me to move back to Pocatello and start up Enhanced Athletics. Shelton and I kind of joined up right from the beginning and we just implemented what we knew. So we were doing a lot of lifting in a couple different manners than we did in high school, looking a little bit more for bar speed, playing around with velocity, curve, profiling athletes based on how they lifted weights versus just lifting as heavy as they can, and that was kind of the extent of it. So came back opened up. We had a lot of support immediately. You know we were doing a good job with what we knew at the time.

Speaker 1: 3:02

Fast forward, you know we're getting great results with the athletes, but not necessarily seeing like as much of the carry over to the field as I wanted or Shelton wanted. And then number two you know we kind of wanted to take it to that next level. Our mission has always been to bring world-class coaching to Pocatello and we wanted to figure out ways to, you know, help these kids get an advantage and be able to play college sports that they want to, or at least train in a performance way for the rest of their life. And, like I said, we just weren't getting the results that we wanted. Keep in mind we're in a small town in southeastern Idaho, so you know we're not. We have some freaks that come out of here, but we're not always getting the most genetically gifted athletes per se. They sometimes are, you know, tend to be a little bit small for that division, one sport level, particularly when it comes like football, basketball.

Speaker 1: 3:52

So when we look into, you know, what's a, what's a separating factor, what's something that can equalize the playing field, that any that you know that we can drive here in Pocatello and give our athletes a chance to play at the next level, whether that's a more D2, juco D1. And that's when we started to think speed. Man, like you know, speed is the great equalizer. If you don't have size but you have a lot of speed, you can see a lot of success, even at the professional level in sports. So we start diving into this thing. Right, we contacted Les Spellman. He was just about to do this new thing called Speed Lab. We were the first one to join back in the end of 2021. And that kind of marked our journey into the world of sprint, development, speed, change of direction and whatnot.

Speaker 1: 4:39

And, man, what did we find? A lot of things. Number one more of our kids were getting to the opportunity to play in college. So better performance on the field, more opportunities for athletes. I mean, at this point, you know, I'd say about five years in of actually, you know, having a facility to do what we want and then three years of really mastering and getting into the speed side. I mean we've had over I believe over 130, 135 athletes from our area. Just at our gym have the opportunity to play a collegiate sport, which is huge. When I grew up here, there was like two or three that I knew of my whole graduating class and maybe a couple from the other schools, so maybe like five or six total and we're, you know, we're easily averaging, you know, 15 to 25 per graduating class and that's just getting bigger every year.

Speaker 1: 5:30

Number one we saw better results Right and we learned you can teach speed like a lot of like 10 years ago people thought you were just as fast as you were going to be. Came down a lot to genetics, which there is a piece of that, but there's also a lot of room to grow and develop within that. Get better technically, develop the right type of force production in the right direction and understanding how to sprint, and you can see massive results from that. So number two that we saw was at first we weren't our eyes weren't necessarily open to this, was you know? Our injuries and overuse issues went down pretty dramatically as our athletes got faster and we were continuing to expose them to high speeds over periods of time and even in season. Right so touching those high speeds in season? Because in most sport other than track and field you're not really going to get an opportunity to drive the nervous system or keep the tissue ready for that high of intensity of movement. So between our, you know, hops, skips bounds, sprint mechanics, sprinting, reactivity, training, like we just saw way better results of the athletes and they were staying healthier and truly began to understand that. You know, if the only intensity metric that you're measuring is strength numbers, you're leaving a ton of performance and quality out the window.

Speaker 1: 6:43

And this fast forward, this turns into I mean now our sessions when athletes come in is we spend 30 to 35 minutes on speed development and training and then the rest of the session, like 25 to 30 minutes on. You know, some lifting and accessories, and a lot of times those accessories are designed to point back towards. You know, how do we improve speed, how do we get athletes faster, how do we open up ranges of motion, keep them healthy and then our strength work. You know work is designed in the same way, so everything kind of is centric back to speed the faster we've gotten athletes. As a good friend, tony Holler, says, rises the tide of all the boats. So increasing an athlete's capability to create force quickly and be reactive is going to up the levels of all their other attributes as well.

Speaker 1: 7:30

We have really strong athletes, even though we don't really, you know, spend as much time on strength as you might think we do, just because those adaptations are systemic and they're making big changes in their ability to recruit muscle fiber and move quickly. So again, we just kind of realized like we were getting athletes strong, but in the context of sport it wasn't really carrying over, and I think that's a big thing that coaches miss at all levels and it's not easy though. So no blame there is, it's hard, you really have to dive in, you really have to spend a lot of time. So that was one of the main things we noticed. You know, it wasn't really carrying over and applying the context of sport.

Speaker 1: 8:09

And again, since then we've been, you know, breaking record-breaking scholarship opportunities for athletes in Pocatello, in a small town where in Idaho, there's like 60,000 athletes and number two. The athletes love training, they love being here, the outcomes are better, they're having fun, we're able to gamify speed, we're able to develop speed, develop strength and mobility. So we kind of went full swing. You know, and you'll see that at the high level of collegiate now, when there's good strength conditioning coaches, they're on the same page as us. Like, I've traveled around, I was at the Houston weight room, houston basketball, spent time at UCLA. I've spent time, you know, with professional athletes and combine training and you know and we're hitting the nail on the head here in Pocatello, which is huge because we want to put Pocatello on the map so hopefully that gives you a little insight into how our training is developed.

Speaker 1: 8:56

If you're a coach and you have questions, let me know. There's so many more levels to this and conversations that we could have. If you're a parent, hopefully it gives you some insight into where we came from and where we're going. We're going to continue to push the ability for our athletes to compete at a high level. And if you're listening to this and you're interested in learning more, just hit HansAthleticscom, follow us on Instagram, hansathletics. We're on every social media platform. We've got a free blog. We've got, obviously, this podcast. We have some free education resources out there as well as some consulting. So again, appreciate you guys, thanks for making this dream of podcasting come true and I appreciate all the people that listen, and I hope you guys have a great week.