Dan Fichter Episode 12 From the Ground Up Athletic Performance Podcast "Neurology,Reflexes,and Performance"

On this episode I sit down with Dan Fichter of Irondequoit high School and Wannagetfast. We cover a lot of topics relating to Neurology and how to effectively utilize brain based solutions to drive effective training and aid with recovery. Our first topic is based around where he likes to start athletic development. We discuss his rationale for utilizing isometrics to help develop postural and positional awareness in his athletes and the benefits derived from that. We spend time covering how only focusing on voluntary movement misses the majority of the driver for locomotion the reflexive actions. We discuss how this pertains to speed and how the reflexive system affects speed development. Dan discusses the rationale behind Cross Crawl patterning and how to utilize it to effectively stimulate the brain and brain stem following bilateral exercise. We discuss the different variations of isometrics and the rationale behind different methods. We discuss inputting chaos into the system and allowing self organization through perturbations within training. We also spend some time talking about neuro based warm ups and Dan offers an example of how his team warms up before a game ( including freestyle, breathing in a position of power, Increasing Heart rate, bouncing, signal 6, and different methods of rolling, rocking and crawling to stimulate the vestibular and brain stem. We end the conversation by discussing different methods of recovery that he utilizes to keep his players fresh, efficient, and healthy. This is a great episode jam packed with a lot of rationale behind why you can benefit from taking the brain and reflexive system into account for athletic development. Dan list a lot of great resources that follow the same rationale such as prior guest Shawn Sherman(square1Systems) Mat Boule(IP institut) and Track Football Consortium. Dan will be at both Track Football Consortiums this summer in Texas July 9-10th and Iowa July 23-24th, so if you don't have anything going on, and even if you do jump over to one of the locations and check him and the stellar line up they have this summer. 

Square 1 Systems http://www.square1system.com/

Ip Institut https://institutip.com/?lang=en

Dan's social media Twitter and Instagram @WGF1

Track Football Consortium https://trackfootballconsortium.com/