Tony Reynolds is founder and Director of Performance for Progressive Sporting Systems in Terre Haute, IN.
Currently, Tony is serving on the executive counsel and board of directors for the International Youth Conditioning Association. Tony is a chapter author for the IYCA’s level one certification textbook Developmental Essentials, and is one of three elite lecturers that present and certify the IYCA’s very prestigious Level II certification. Tony has helped or is helping to design all three levels of the IYCA’s certification exams.
Prior to founding Progressive Sporting Systems, Tony served as Head Strength and Conditioning coach for Rose Hulman Institute of Technology where he worked with football, baseball, volleyball, soccer, softball, wrestling, and track and field. In addition to duties at Rose Hulman, Tony has worked extensively with Indiana State University and St. Mary of The Woods University providing sport performance enhancement for numerous teams.
In 2000, Tony served as the Head Strength and Conditioning Coach for the Cincinnati Reds Double A-team, the Chattanooga Lookouts. Prior to his stint in Chattanooga, Tony completed an assistantship with the International Performance Institute in Bradenton, Florida where he worked with professional football, baseball, soccer, tennis, and golf.
Tony is a featured author and sport performance expert for many strength and conditioning resources, including sportspecific.com, athlete.com, bodybuilding.com, along with many other industry resources. Additionally, Tony has written several books on functional athletic development.
Tony received his undergraduate in exercise science and his master’s degree in Biomechanics in Human Performance from Indiana State University (ISU) Additionally Tony is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist through the National Strength and Conditioning Association, and a Level 2 Youth Conditioning Specialist through the International Youth Conditioning Association.
AC: Thank you for the interview. Why don't you start by telling us a little bit about your current training commitments and who are your typical clients?
TR: My typical client is a 12-18 year old multi-sport athlete. We see everything from swimmers to football players, male and female, injured and healthy. Mostly these individuals are looking to improve performance and prevent injury. Several have come for injury recovery purposes.
AC: What should a typical training day consist of?
TR: What should a typical day consist of? In an ideal world, it would consist of full night of restful sleep. Adequate nutrition divided up into healthy rounded meals. Manageable levels of stress. I cannot say there is a “typical” training workout to go along with the typical training day. If I had to force our training into a template it would look something like this:
Warm-up: Dynamic only unless there is reason to statically stretch something; we have several different jump rope, med ball, dumbbell, tubing, bodyweight, and combo warm ups that we do.
Neural Acceleration exercises (sometimes plyometrics): Box drills, agility ladders, agility hoops, lines, dots, free space, combo drills
Strength Training- This is totally dependant on the athlete. With younger kids we keep things more game oriented and include a lot of playground activities - i.e. wheel barrow hand walks, light hopping squat, lunges, crawling and climbing, throwing and catching, etc.
Older kids we get are a lot more structured and tend to focus on the posterior chain and other non mirror oriented muscles. We get good at developing high levels of force and applying that force rapidly and in multiple directions and planes.
AC: What are your thoughts on nutrition for the typical client in regards to lean muscle gain and for fat loss?
TR: I work with kids, so this is not typically a concern of mine. For my older teens, I tell them to spend their money on health food rather than supplements. Kids develop like weeds and will typically grow from anything. For lean muscle gain, I typically suggest that they eat everything the can see. If it cannot run away from them, eat it. I tell them to avoid eating candy, a lot of fast food, and or greasy foods, but everything else is fair game. They are also told that they need be training equally as hard as they are eating.
For the heavier late teens, we look at their diet, we look at their training, and we try to moderate. I think kids have very few choices when it comes to what they eat. We just need to make sure they understand what is good or at least what decent choices are. Just because mom and dad eat a bag of Cheetos at night, doesn’t mean its okay. Most kids just don’t know this stuff.
AC: Is there anything that you do there that you'd do differently with males?
TR: I approach weight loss much more cautiously with females than males (remember that I am talking about middle school and high school kids here). I think males are much less apt to develop many of the eating disorders that we see, and are less conscious of weight problems. I tend to focus more on the parents with the females, and more on the athlete with the males. I don’t do anthropometrical measurements with any of my younger athletes, unless there is a direct request and the request makes sense. The older males I like to do them to show the kids how they are growing. Most young females will never step on a scale or get measured in my gym.
AC: How do you monitor training intensity - how far do you push?
TR: I design all of the programs that are implemented in my gym. I spend a lot of time at my desk in the planning stages to insure a safe progression. With teens, this tends to be nothing more than a developing a starting point. They grow and change so quickly that it is impossible to quantify future volumes and intensities in a plan. You just have no clue what that kid will be able to do in a month. I also find that young athletes are never the same two days in a row. With school, homework, practice, work, chores, growing, and all of the other things that go into being a kid, they tend to be either mental or physically exhausted on occasion. On these days we scrap anything structured and go with the flow.
In general, I like to have a general game plan that is designed to fix development problems for the kid, and let the program grow into more of a performance-based program as the kid matures. “Sport specific” does not exist for kids and many times for teens. They need a good foundation to build off of before you go too crazy with specialization. When it is time, we look at the sport and the issues of the athlete and draw them into the weight room. This is when program development gets real time consuming.
AC: I know you study the field a lot. Who do you go to for training advice?
I look everywhere. I have volumes of copied old Soviet Sports Reviews in my office. I have almost every article Louis Simmons and Dave Tate wrote. I love Verkershonsky, Siff, and all of the other greats. I also love to study guys like Santana, Mike Boyle, Brian Grasso, Alwyn Cosgrove, etc. I love to view multiple perspectives and derive my own methods. I have books and videos on everything (except bodybuilding, yoga, Pilates, and anything that combines them) from physical therapy topics, massage therapy, powerlifting, general strength training, martial arts, speed development, agility, plyo’s, and on and on.
So it’s not just one main influence-Louie and Dave for their influence on band and chain training and powerlifting programming, Carlos Santana for creative training techniques, Lee Taft for speed development, Siff and Verkershonsky for scientific perspective
AC: Who else in the field has influenced or helped you? What are the best tips you learned from them and can pass on to your readers?
I think this is covered in the last question. My golden rule is the following: Learn, understand, practice, play, and justify.
If you live by this rule, your programs and training will be great. If you are nothing more than a person who jumps on a bandwagon and blindly follows the masses, you will never be a great coach and you will probably hurt a lot of people in your path.
AC: When young athletes come to you for training, what's the first thing you do with them? Does any particular sport stand out as being better than another?
The first thing I do is watch them walk in the first day. I will watch them from afar to see what they look like in their natural environment. At this point they have not been influenced by me, and are not thinking about being assessed. I will be taking either mental or physical notes on them at this time. I will then sit them down and discuss their goals, injury histories, our policies etc. We typically then go into the gym for assessments. I rarely test athletes anymore. Rather I assess how they move. How do they jog, sprint, shuffle, skip, cut, stop, turn, jump, land, lunge, squat, balance, focus, exert themselves, etc. From this I typically begin the process of program design. I determined what looked weak and what looked strong. Were the problems nothing more than mechanical or were the strength and mobility oriented? These kinds of questions must be asked and addressed.
As I said earlier, sometimes I will do some anthro measurements with my older kids. But we don’t train for aesthetics, so there is little benefit in doing so.
AC: What about someone who's goal is primarily aesthetically driven?
I can honestly say, I don’t typically work with these people. It is not something I enjoy so I don’t do it.
AC: What are your goals as a coach?
My goal is to be touted as the best strength coach ever. I know it sounds cliché, but it is true. I want to be the best and nothing less. When someone says strength and conditioning, I want my name to come up.
AC: In a nutshell - What is your training philosophy?
I am going to use your phrase here Alwyn, because it summarize my training philosophy much more concisely.
Part One: Make the program fit the athlete, not the athlete fit the program
Part Two: Learn, understand, practice, play, and justify
Part Three: After part two review the athlete, review the program and go back to part one.
This is an endless cycle.
AC: Could you list the 3 top tips you could give to any athlete that is just beginning structured training?
1. Don’t forget that you get stronger and get better during recovery, not during training.
2. There is more to your body than what you can see in a mirror.
3. Learn about the different types of training and don’t just do what you see others doing. Be proactive in your learning. Also, remember that you are training to become more athletic. Preacher curls are not going to really help you that much, so avoid “Guns” and “Buns” magazines and get info that will improve performance.
AC: What are the most common mistakes that you see strength coaches and trainers make?
I think this industry still tends to harbor too many bodybuilding philosophies. Many coaches still have the “train muscles” rather than the “train motions” mentality. Their focus is too often on isolative machine type training with open chain exercises (leg extensions and curls). I also think there is a tendency to jump on the neatest and newest fad bandwagon that is coming around the corner. Every coach should constantly study their craft and be able to justify every element of their program.
AC: What mistakes have you made as a strength coach or trainer?
I find that I make mistakes on a daily basis. I think the biggest mistake that I have made in the past was that I thought I knew everything. In retrospect, I was, and still am truly very ignorant about what I do. I don’t know how many times I have learned that major cornerstones of my program were absolutely wrong. I thought I knew speed development until I met Lee Taft. After 5 minutes of talking with Lee, I threw every program I had ever written into the trash and started over. My athletes have benefited exponentially. I thought I understood assessments until I met Bill Hartman. Once again, I realized that I had a lot of work to do and a lot to learn.
AC: How do you explain your system/program to your athletes so that they understand what they are doing? Or do you do this at all?
I am an educator at heart. I love to learn and to teach. I truly feel that knowledge is power and that the more the athlete knows about their body and what they are doing to it, the better their results will be. I explain the purpose and the rationale behind every exercise and drill they do. I always refer back to their sport and demonstrate how everything is related to development of their specific needs. I try to get them to the point where they can coach me and explain to me why they are doing the things they are doing. Most of my athletes could work for me after the first year of their training.
AC: What about recovery techniques? Any suggestions?
AC: What tips and tricks can you share that have made your strength and conditioning program better?
Be hungry for new knowledge. Never be satisfied with what you know. There is so much cool stuff out there that many of us do not even know exists. Read books and articles, watch videos, go to conferences, call other coaches, take time each day and go into the weight room and PLAY. Hell it’s what we do for a living, take advantage of it. Everyday I try to find at least 20-30 minutes to play and be creative. Many times, I come up with a bunch of nonsense, but occasionally I come across a keeper. It also keeps my interns and coaches learning and growing as professionals.
AC: What are the most glaring weaknesses you find in athletes?
They are "strong" in the wrong places. They tend to train like bodybuilders and do not develop strength that will augment athleticism. I see to many quad, pec, and biceps dominant athletes. They lack strength in their posterior chain, triceps, upper back and posterior shoulders. They have very poor rotational strength and stability through their core. Many cannot activate their glutes properly. They tend to have weak and tight hips all the way around. I call it the “if you can’t see it in a mirror while you are doing curls it ain’t important” syndrome. The athletes tend to be “strong” in one plane and that’s it.
AC: Are there any exercises that you feel every athlete, regardless of sport, should do?
I like squats and just about every variation of squatting I can think of. I also like to do a lot of horizontal loading with adjustable cable machines. I also like glute ham raises, pull throughs, different variations of step ups, upper back work...
AC: What is the biggest obstacle you have to face as a strength coach or trainer?
COACHES!!!!! Their training programs are still from the 70's, and they are not interested in changing.
AC: How do you deal with hesitant and/or stubborn coaches that don't agree with your program?
Prepare for a rant…I don’t. I am past the “proving myself” stage, and I no longer have the energy to fight what usually tends to be a losing battle. Most of the coaches that have any sort of hesitation or problem with what I do are usually not going to change their mind. If they have a true question about something, I will happily sit down and have a discussion. However, the ones that just want to point out: 1. How they have been doing the same program for 100 years and it has always worked fine. 2. They don’t need any help, “After all…it’s just weight training and speed development, not brain surgery.” 3. And finally, “I did this program in 1972 when I played in college so it’s all they need.” These coaches are not going to sit down and listen to my “all but traditional” type methodologies. Bands and chains? 1 legged what? Rotational? It’s not normal so it must be wrong. I also have discovered what I call the “you must live 200 miles away to be an expert” syndrome. To this day I cannot get a local coach interested in anything I have to offer. Yet, I get emails everyday from coaches, parents, and athletes from all over the world. (Sorry but this is a sore spot with me). I am busy and I make a good living, so…I have learned to just focus on the people that are interested and that do care about getting better.
AC: What advice would you have for those wishing to become a part of the industry?
Figure out whom you truly want to work with. Young athletes, college athletes, professional athletes, bodybuilders, weight loss and fitness clientele, elderly, whatever and learn everything you can. Once again, educate yourself daily and take time to play. A big tip is to go train under the best that you can find. Spend time picking the brains of the Louie Simmons, Dave Tate’s, Carlos Santana’s, Lee Taft’s, Brian Grasso’s, Paul Chek’s, and Tony Reynolds’s of the world. Learn as much from every person you can and develop your own philosophies. Practice what you preach and get in the trenches and try your newfound knowledge on yourself before a client. Learn your craft, thoroughly, make good connections with great coaches, work hard, and never settle. You will do great in the industry, and you will help many needy clients.
AC: Anything else you'd like to mention?
First and foremost, you got to love what you do for a living. If you don’t, why are you doing it? Second, look at life as on opportunity for discovery. We tend to live in little bubbles and forget all of the really unbelievable stuff that exists. Expand your knowledge and expand your experiences. The more you learn and experience the more you will realize that you don’t know that much. It’s a big world, and you will never know everything there is know about everything, but you can know more than you did yesterday. So be proactive in your education.
My wife says to make life a journey, not a destination (as she writes her 19 different check lists). I agree with this whole heartedly. For this reason I no longer worry about the future.
AC: Where can people read more about your theories and programs?
My website is www.pssathletics.com. On this site you can sign up for my mailing list, read my articles, talk on my forum, and best of all…Buy my products.
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