Amp Up Your Sports Performance

< Full Episode

Transcript: Amp Up Your Sports Performance

Season 10, Episode 13  | April 22, 2025

[MUSIC]

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Life Time Talks. I’m Jamie Martin.

And I’m David Freeman.

And in this episode, we are talking about training to improve sports performance. Whether you’re actively engaged in competitive sports or you play for fun in recreational leagues, outside of practice and play training plan can be helpful in performing well in your sport of choice, or just help you in everyday life. So David, I’m going to kick it over to you to introduce our guest.

Yes, down with the King. Danny King is back, y’all. He’s a master trainer and director of performance and recovery at Life Time. Welcome back, Danny. How you been?

I have been great. Thanks so much for having me back. Super excited to be here.

Alright. So we want to just jump right in because we know there’s a lot of kids, a lot of adults in the United States who are participating in recreational sports activities and leagues. It’s something like 45 million children and teens are participating in youth sports, 60 million adults in recreational sports leagues. That’s a lot of people who are getting involved. I love that.

So if those individuals are looking to improve in whatever their sport is, tell us a little bit why it can be helpful for them to be thinking about their fitness and health outside of their training plan.

Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of people gravitate to sports because it’s maybe more fun than you think of traditional exercise, right? There’s all these different components, but especially if you’re starting to get competitive. And we’re seeing that both in youth and adult sports, there’s all sorts of things that we can do to better develop the qualities that you’re going to be using in your sport.

To be more specific, if we think about — let’s take an adult for a second because I think that that’s sometimes easier. That adult comes out and wants to play something like golf. We’ll start there. Well, you can go practice and practice and practice, but if you don’t physically have the mobility and the range of motion to swing a golf club correctly, it doesn’t matter how much you practice, you’re probably not going to get better.

Engaging in some sort of fitness activity that’s going to help your range of motion, and all of a sudden you can move the golf club the way that you’re supposed to. And we can take that out across really any of these qualities. Building an aerobic base that allows you to go up and down the field better, getting more explosive, getting stronger. There’s all these different categories, but by stepping out and working on that quality, it makes it that much easier to come back to your sport and apply the skills that you’re trying to learn.

Yeah.

Yeah, the reps there. And when you look at key fitness abilities, we know that movement is king in a lot of ways. So when you look at strength, when you look at flexibility, agility, and endurance, they’re all important when it comes to sports performance. But if you can, let us know, regardless of what sport that you’re playing, if you can take these abilities and how that translates to sports performance, and the end result of what it is that you’re trying to accomplish in this sport.

Yeah, I think that — and this is actually a huge, huge, huge mistake in actually both sports performance and actually I would say in general fitness-based training. I think they’re closer together than I think we should think of them. If you take these abilities and rank, all the ones you just said are perfect — your movement, your flexibility, your mobility, your cardiovascular conditioning, your power. We could make this list.

People like to say which ones matter for my sport, or my thing. And they’re going to say, OK, then — well, it’s actually not that. It’s how much do I need this one? You’re actually starting to see a lot — to use a different example — endurance athletes, that are traditionally just doing this do a bunch of power-based stuff. Why?

Well, because you don’t develop it in your sport, but being a well-rounded human, so maybe it’s just for your overall longevity and well-being, you want to do it. But also it seems like, hey, you want to actually improve your run stride, your running economy. Some sprint-oriented training seems to do a really good job carrying over. So now you you’re seeing these marathoners doing sprints.

So it isn’t as much like which ones do I need and how much of it and how much should I prioritize it within my training year or my training week. And those things would be really the way to think about it.
It’s so interesting because I’ve said this on the podcast, and I think I shared with both of you a long time ago one of my goals was to run a marathon. I did that this year. I did it. I did check that off my list.

Congratulations.

It’s happened. But I do think one of the downsides for me is I kind of did neglect some of the other areas. I feel like in hindsight, if I looked at it again, there would be other aspects of this that I would incorporate into my program to maybe have done things better. And if I would do it again, I would have more of these. I was just like — people are time-crunched. Like, how do I do all of this? So it’s a tricky thing to fit it all in.
Do you see that pretty often? I mean, whether I play golf or I’m a lacrosse player, like, here you are, you’re specialized. You got to do more than that, though.

Yeah, I mean, you see it a lot, both because I’m going to gravitate towards the thing I like the most. So I’m going to do that whether that’s my specific sport or it is just that’s what I enjoy and that’s how I get into endurance running or something like that. But often it’s sometimes just takes like someone else telling you. So you just did your marathon?

Yeah.

I’m coming off. I just did a long endurance run as well. And when I look back and I do my debrief of what went well and what didn’t, I also kind of neglected some speed work. And somewhat I was strength training and doing things, but I kind of was like, I got kind of slow.

And now I’ve got some different goals coming up that I’m like, oh —

Great.

—I got to learn to run a little faster again. I kind of forgot how. So it is sometimes, like, having that coach or having someone to potentially make you aware of a blind spot you have in your training that you don’t realize, but super common.

Yeah, I feel like that was like, OK, coach would have been huge within that experience. So we want to talk a little bit about injuries, because if we focus too much on one thing, there’s a greater likelihood for injury. We don’t do it intentionally. But let’s talk a little bit about ways that we can ward off injuries and what we can do.

Yeah. So this is probably my — that idea is probably my number one sell as to why people should spend time with their fitness in a program to help support their sport. And again, this could be a youth playing soccer. This could be an adult playing pickleball or golf, like, anywhere in there. I think it’s kind of there.
Now, we can’t 100% prevent all injuries. I don’t have the magic button that says, if you do this, you will never get hurt. But we do know that repeatedly doing the same thing over and over again has a tendency to create certain patterns. So you sit- in the bike saddle too long. You do that one thing. You go play soccer, you go play your sport. You go play baseball, and you rotate a whole bunch one time as you’re taking batting practice, all those things.

One of the things that a more generalized fitness program can do can just start to balance those things out. So if I take that person and I just start to bring them back through ranges of motion, think of basic strength training program, focus on just the foundational fundamental movement patterns. Well, now, my sport that really only has me moving through a couple of them and in some unique areas and really getting it.

I get a bunch of range of motion. I get some regular tempo-based work in, and I condition the ligaments and tendons and all these things really nicely, that at least should help prevent injuries. And I would say at worst-case scenario, you’re a stronger, more resilient athlete. So if something comes up, your rehab is going to likely be a little bit faster. So I think that that’s my cell. Number one, get into some of this basic stuff because it should really prevent it.

But even if you still get hurt and you say, well, that was bogus because I strength-train, it didn’t. I assure you, your rehab or your bounce back or all those things are going to happen significantly faster because you have those healthier tissues, because you move better, because you’re stronger. So it is still going to benefit in that world.

Let’s frame it up with the next question, as far as laying out an actual training program for an athlete. To make it a little bit more intimate, I’m going to use you, Jamie. You ready for it? So, Jamie, is your middle-age, getting younger by the day?

I don’t like the phrase middle age. I was going to say that.

I didn’t want to be able to call — I wasn’t trying to create drama.

Did you hear me say — did you hear me say getting younger by the day? I said that to you. You got to listen to the whole thing there. I mean, she wants to be able to be strong. She wants to be able to keep up with her kids. She wants to have a mean pickleball game on the weekends. She likes her late-night wine and reading. Are you liking it? Am I accurate right now?

Are you like fighting for me? You’re bringing all of the podcast info you know about Jamie, all coming out?
Yeah, but the reality, I feel like it’s a lot of individuals out there that might have that same flow. So now you’re laying out this program for her, how would you lay out a program for her?

Yeah, I’m going to start really big. And so if people are listening because I’ve been pretty general, I start really big. And I’m going to start to narrow down as we go. And feel free to ask along the way. But the first thing I mentioned, is I want this like base of training with this idea of, hey, let’s get you moving so that we build this block, we build the human that we might neglect within our sport. And I think of that.

And I have this kind of philosophy around, like, train the human first and worry about the sport or activity after. And it’s this idea of everyone needs about the same things. It’s how much — So I think of it that way. Then I would say the next thing that we think of in this order of sports performance. So let me just move the body a lot and get a lot of general movement in that builds the strength and builds that conditioning.

Then I can take it one step closer and say, OK, now that I’ve done that, what are some of the qualities that might be super specific to this sport that I actually need to emphasize a little bit more? So then I’d start to layer on a little bit more, and then I could again even take it and get a little more specific to say, all right, then when does it — when do I sort of overlap within that idea of it is the sport?

So big-picture, I want to be able to cover those things. The next thing I’m going to do with any particular person is, like, if I’m sitting there to say, OK, how much time do I have realistically, because I could build a really cool plan. But that plan would all of a sudden be 10 hours a week and be like, wow, this is — I’m not a professional athlete. I’m just trying to play some pickleball. And that was my fitness that I found I liked a little bit more and all those things.

So if I look at most of these qualities, if I look at most of these qualities that we’ve talked about, the great news is if we’re touching them about twice a week, if we think about touching most of these qualities twice a week, we’re actually going to be able to see significant improvement, especially if we’re doing other things on top of it. And the amount of each of these qualities that I have to do is often a lot less than people think it is.

So if I think about what the minimum effective dose of something like strength training is — actually, it’s just a really, really recent study looking into some of this. And I mean, they were doing one set of a bunch of different exercises and saw a great result for most of these people, even some metrics of like hypertrophy, muscle growth, which traditionally has needed like very high volume approaches.

So how much do I need, especially again, if my goal is preventing that injury, moving a little bit better? It’s less than we think. So I’m going to build to what they need and what we can do. But I’m going to remind anyone at home that if I can just get a little bit of this stuff and touch it, and I can get most of it all in one session.

So again, if I get even a little bit more specific, I’m going to think about a session starting with some sort of dynamic warm-up. And that to me is an opportunity to move someone quite a bit. And I would think of this — your traditional youth athlete, they’re probably good movers, It’s really about getting their blood flow going. But they’re doing a lot of that.

To me, if I flip that over and I think of that adult athlete — I’m not going to use the word middle-aged —

Thank you.

—an adult athlete who, again, is playing pickleball. We see this all the time in our locations. Someone joins pickleball and they’re fit. They’ve been running. They’ve been using an elliptical. They’ve been strength training. And four weeks later, there’s an ACL tear. And what we realize is they’re just not moving a lot. So a dynamic warm-up is an opportunity to move laterally, to get the tissues ready, and to expose your body to a bunch of ranges of motion while we get blood flow going.

So I’d think, let’s call it 10 minutes of time devoted to a dynamic warm-up that’s really movement-oriented. That is going to transition into a little bit of power work. And again, regardless of the type of athlete you are, you probably need to work on your power. Your power is how we express speed or express force a little bit faster. So think throwing a Med ball, jumping, again, potentially moving sideways with some of those things, but these really unique things that most people aren’t doing.

We need some of it. Again, no matter what sport you’re playing, all the way from that endurance athletics to if we’re really if we are playing some — if we’re playing golf, if we’re playing pickleball, there’s going to be a huge component, especially of this like rotational power.

So I’m going to do — and that really a couple exercises done twice a week, especially with intent, is going to make a big difference. Transition into my strength training for that workout, again, really fundamental movement pattern-focused. I’m really probably if I’m doing twice a week picking, let’s call it four to six movements, that I’m just going to give a bunch of effort to two or three sets.

We’re going to work pretty hard there, take it just about to failure one to two. We call reps and reserve on those fairly foundational movements. With that person, again, if sports performance is the primary thing and time is limited, I’m dropping all the little stuff out of there that they don’t need, all the little extra arm exercises and those things, just focus on the core components.

And then I’m probably going to — if we have that time — maybe add some conditioning at the end. So if I’ve got that time to do some conditioning, maybe depending on the sport they’re playing and their need for it, that turns into a little bit more time for something like recovery or movement. But if I do two of those a week, I think that most people are going to start to feel amazing. And then I can adjust from there.

That’s awesome.

You ready?

I don’t know, am I ready? I mean, I feel like, yes, I could do that. Yes.

Two times a week.

Two times a week to add some of those movements plus my strength, I got it. I got it. But then there’s all the other things you need to think about as well. Like, there’s complimentary things with the training plan, the other components. Let’s think about nutrition recovery. We need to have a well-rounded program. So let’s talk a little bit about some of those other components.

Yeah, I mean, I have actually been on this podcast before, talking about how I love getting people competing in something. And this comes back to that, that frequently, once we start competing in something, we view these things differently. Oh, I need to go to bed early because I care about myself. Should be so simple. But it gets easier when you’re like, oh, I’ve got a big run in the morning for my race that’s coming.

So I do think that often once we adopt that athlete mindset, let’s just start there, that some of these things do get a little bit easier. But I have met plenty of people that are athletes, that that is the low-hanging fruit. And I will say one of those areas that I’d start with is a lot of people who are attracted to athletics, because there is definitively, how did you do? Did you win? Did you lose? What’s your time? Those things are a very type A person.

So one of the first places in this whole thing I’d look at would just be recovery, that process, like, are we piling stress on top of stress? Do you have a stressful job? And then you’re going to go do a hard workout. And then you’re going to think about that workout and you’re going to do. So what are you doing in your life to try to recover a little bit? Are we doing some breathing drills? Are we occasionally getting a massage, or are we treating our body well? That’s obviously to me, really fundamental to it.

But yeah, we do want to make sure, I think another major one that’s probably simpler, because I say that and people are like, OK, I get it. I’m supposed to meditate. I haven’t found that time. Then you keep adding stuff.

Yeah.

The simplest one that most athletes are probably neglecting would be hydration. You’re moving more. Again, you go start playing pickleball. You start sweating a lot more. And when you’re on a treadmill and you’re running, you’re, like, intimately aware of every second of that run.

Oh, every second, yup.

You’re watching. You’re not playing pickleball. And an hour and a half later, you’ve sweat way more than you thought you did. So focusing on hydration, thinking, I think a really simple, easy half your body weight in ounces of water a day. That’s where something like using an electrolyte formula, because you are probably sweating significantly more. So replacing those electrolytes are going to make a big difference. If I did something for recovery and focused on hydration, I think a lot of these people would feel and perform remarkably better than they are right now.

Let’s talk about the youth. Let’s talk about the future of our people here. When you think of programs and you think of youth in movement, let’s talk about the value of variety at an early age and why that’s so important. You kind of hit on a few things already that have less of a risk of injury, and just exposing their body to so much more, being able to move their body in space, so on and so forth. Why is that so key for our listeners right now to have our youth have a variety of sports at an early age?

Yeah, I mean, we could spend a lot of time here. Youth, everything is paramount. Because you are seeing, the interesting part of youth is obviously, like, youth sports are more competitive than ever. And now you’re seeing growing gap between that and the average kid and are they playing and all those things. So there’s so many angles that, as you were talking, I was like, I want to bring this up and I’ll bring this up and I’ll bring this.

So many.

So to try to really narrow it down, if we stay on more of the sports side of it, there has been this move over time to watch people specialize and to see this early specialization. And the problem with that is it’s fairly definitive in the research, that it’s not great for someone’s long-term development. They might need to play and play young. And you can see that.

But getting into different activities, because the more activities I expose a body to early — there’s some pretty sensitive critical periods in a kid’s life to things like bone development, to things like how coordinated they are. There’s these things. And so the more I throw at them early, the better developed they are, the better their body moves. I can develop all these different qualities that will serve me better in the long term. So I can do it.

The research is like unequivocal in this world around early specialization, long-term hurting. For every Tiger Woods, there’s thousands of others that had burned out or got hurt or done something. And there’s actually an incredible amount of examples of people who went and played other sports and now are great. So I do think that’s a big part of it, is just setting them up.

I think, too, that if we’re honest, most of these kids probably aren’t going to be professional athletes. It’s not going to happen. And that exposure to a bunch of different activities early is probably setting them up better in life.

So if I build a base of strength, if I understand how to exercise — like, if you gain that as a child, and you gain comfort in a fitness center, if you understand and you’ve built muscle and you’ve moved and you’ve done these things, and that’s your pattern, well, even if you lose it for a little bit, their post-college or whatever, coming back is so much better than if the only thing you did was swim or run or play soccer.
When you become an adult, adding it’s way harder. So if we just think about the long-term health of that individual, that exposure is going to be huge.

That’s good.

Yes. OK. So let’s talk through some examples. We’re going to take a few different sports. We’re going to go through them and share what a training approach might look like for them, and how the training in that way could benefit someone who’s playing that sport. So we’ll start with pickleball, because we know that pickleball is a huge and continually growing sport, both at lifetime and outside of it. So let’s talk about pickleball and what that training might look like.

Let’s do it. I think that’s, honestly, the best sport to start with. The one thing — and I’m going to bring back youth and I’m going to come back — is there’s a lot of people doing youth sports well. We’re seeing it get better and better. In fact, the strength numbers of kids, the PRs associated, like the speeds that kids are running in high school are absolutely insane, that all come to training is getting better.

I actually think at this point, adult athletic performance is starting to get left behind because you are seeing so many kids. And then again, adults are going to, like, I’m going to join a Pickleball League. And then they get hurt because you’re like, hey, it’s been a while since you’ve moved. So if I break a sport down, you got to think, what are the qualities I need to play this sport well? So we should always have this fundamental base of just movement.

But if I think about something like pickleball, what do I need to do? Well, I need to be able to move sideways, move laterally, stop quite a bit. And likely, I haven’t done that in a while. So I need to do that. I’m going to have a lot of rotational component, and so I want to be able to rotate well. I need a good amount of shoulder mobility to think about bringing that racket back to hit correctly to do these things.

And I actually need a fairly good amount of aerobic development because I’m going to move around quite a bit. These points last pretty long if we’re playing, and depending on if doubles and singles and all those things, but it has a larger aerobic component than a lot of people would initially think. So I want to make that list.

And then if I can optimally do it, I want to take whatever athlete I’m saying and say, all right, how are you at each of these things? Am I deficient in them? When is the last time I did it? I’m just going to make some assumptions that most of the people that are jumping in to play pickleball are kind of deficient in these areas. So as I start to build my plan, I would consider graded exposure to these things.

Where people are getting hurt is if I think about this idea of moving laterally, stepping to the side or even stepping forward and reaching, it’s probably not happening on the first point of the game. It’s happening as there’s a little bit of fatigue. That person’s getting tired. It starts to — and then they go and step and it becomes problematic. You could do it the first time, but not the third.

So one of the things that fitness does is it creates this graded exposure in a time when I’m not trying to get to a ball and I’m not trying to beat my partner, and I can do it. So adding things like side shuffle, lateral lunge, and that’s where when we talk about that beginning, these different change of direction drills that I can think about.

I’m going to add little things, like, I’m going to actually have them jump in a way that’s rebounding, because we are seeing a lot of Achilles issues, and need some extra kind of conditioning to that. So some side shuffling, some lateral bounds and jumps, even some upright vertical stuff. And then again, we want to make sure they can rotate where they’re supposed to. So open those shoulders up a little bit more.
And we’re going to do a ton of trunk work because, again, people are complaining about the low back from rotating and hitting the ball over and over again, somewhat comes to strength, somewhat comes to, do I understand how to move correctly?

So we’re going to make sure that we’re mobilizing those shoulders and hips. We’re building a bunch of trunk midsection, both power. Can I hit better? But really, can I just stabilize there a little bit better so my spine is not taking the load? That’s going to make up the bulk of that program. And then I’m going to fill in those just general fitness things, make sure their legs and arms are strong and healthy and those things after.

Yeah. OK. Another sport that we hear a lot about, especially certain times of year — golf.

Yeah.

It’s one that people want to get better at. It’s often something we pick up maybe a little later in life, maybe in middle age or something like that. So the golf — people want to get better at it. But it’s a tough sport and it’s a physical sport.

Yeah, I mean, it is definitely incredibly physical. And again, if I look at — because at first, it’s saying, hey, it’s actually got a lot of the same demands or needs as something like pickleball. But it brings in a new element, which is that idea of being really explosive. Pickleball, you’re moving. But actually, I think one of the advantages to it is you actually don’t have to go that fast ever.

Golf, if you’re doing it right, you’re explosively swinging in one direction. So what do you hear people complain about and/or what are people missing? Well, everyone who’s golfing a bunch is complaining about their low back. It’s taking a brunt of the load. It’s after playing around is pretty beat up. And again, if you ever — I’ve had a chance to work back and forth with some golf pros In my day, they’re just constantly complaining about people not being able to get into the positions necessary for the game.
So there’s a really high level of flexibility, especially around that, what we call thoracic spine. So that upper back, that ability to rotate open and then open the other way. We see the same thing in the hips, that ability to turn and rotate, and then this ability to generate power. So if you watch like elite golfers training now, it almost — it looks like straight — it looks like they’re an NFL athlete or an NBA, the way that they’re like explosively training because it’s that same thing.

But the one thing I’d emphasize is, again, that one, probably we need to train away from the sport quite a bit. Don’t go and rotate it. If you’re already explosively rotating 200 times one direction on the driving range and on the course, if anything, figure out a way to rotate the other direction quite a bit. So rotating, but a ton of core stabilization work. We think like planking, bird dog, dead bug, that stuff to just build that strength, open up those hips, open up that T spine.

Then once I’ve done all of that, we can start to talk through how do we create that explosive power correctly? If I just create that mobility in those areas, create some of that mid-section strength and build some general body movement, I mean, I actually — I got into actually have trained a bunch of golfers. And I’ll give a fast version of this story. But the way it happened is a guy came to me one time over a winter, and he didn’t tell me he golfed. He just did winter. He didn’t care. He just said, like, I got to lose 20 pounds.

And just in the process of, again, training him like a human, hey, you lack mobility in your thoracic spine, you don’t have good core stability, we just built him up. He gets back on the golf course and starts smashing the ball. And all of his friends are like, what’d you do? What was your secret? And he was confused. He’s like, I don’t know.

And then it clicked like oh, I went and got like — and he almost came back, like, I didn’t know you were training me for golf. And I was like, I didn’t know you golf. But we just built you up in a way that let him do what he wanted to do. And I think that that often for people is what’s going to do it.

Well, and that’s just like being able to move more functionally in life. We have to be able to rotate. You think about putting the luggage in the compartment in the plane, those things, like how do we respond to those things?

Most of the people that we’re talking to — and it’s not talking to the audience — I’m in that group. You’re also in that group. It’s like just get better as a kind of human movement and your sport’s probably going to be better. It’s going to be a while for most people before we’ve really got to dial it in to be like, OK, your sport is this. What’s the exact movement I’m doing to mimic that?

And that’s actually good news, because the same thing that’s going to help you maybe loose a couple pounds, if that’s your goal, build a little bit of strength, build a little bit of muscles, also probably for doing it right, the thing that’s helping you with your sport and I can get it all done at once.

We could also hit on, lastly, a youth sport. Is there any in particular — I mean, we’re in Minnesota. Hockey is a huge sport here. So is that one to think about, or soccer, what do you think?

Yeah, we can do — I think they’re all — I think they’re all similar. We can go hockey. It’s a big sport here. Again, let’s build this foundation of strength, especially when you get to a youth level, like, get them strong, is going to do quite a bit. But if you think about what we need — so a sport like hockey, if you go back, you’re seeing a lot of people that end up with groin injuries because it has such a unique element of the way that you push.

It’s this side-to-side push, which is a really different thing. So what am I doing to build strength and even some length through those adductor muscles in kids? You’re seeing that a ton. How am I counteracting some of the overuse that we see in a sport like that, is part of it. And that often just comes to single-leg strength.

But getting them doing something like — I’ve used this phrase a lot — because all of us are neglecting the same stuff, but a Lateral Lunge and some of those rotational or three direction lunges would be a little more important to me in a sport like hockey.

Got it.

And then again — but if I get your leg strong, I get mobile, I get moving in that way, we’re going to see a great improvement. An area that — and this is really hard. I struggle with how would you say this in youth, is hockey is obviously an incredibly anaerobic sport. You’re sprinting on the ice, popping off, sprinting on the ice, popping off. But the way that you recover from anaerobic activities is aerobic fitness.

And so you’re seeing a lot of people that like sprint and they get back on — they sit back on that bench and they’re gassed, so general conditioning. And that’s where coming back almost full circle. Go play soccer in the offseason, rather than telling that kid to hop on a treadmill. You got your whole life to sit on a treadmill and be bored out of your mind, worst way I can think of it.

But go play soccer in the offseason to go build a big aerobic base and hop back out on the hockey practice. And I bet, you’re going to be able to hit those lines way faster and feel much better about your conditioning. So find that sport to go build that aerobic base.

That cross training, right?

Yeah, just do some cross training. It gets you off. It gets you not injuring things that tend to get hurt, but it just hits those areas.

Yep.

Yeah, the contrast of the two. He just said like the anaerobic, the explosive power. You’re doing that so much. You have to build that base of the aerobic and knowing how that translates to the anaerobic and all these energy systems. They’re all working together at the same time. But understanding how to optimize in your sport. So it’s not specificity, but you’re getting the variety. So you’re that much better as an athlete at that age, I love that.

The funny part of that is so often, you can sound really smart as a coach. And I use this all the time to just encouraging someone to do the thing they’re not doing right now. And you just seem brilliant. We sit down and talk and you’re like, yeah, I’ve been running a lot and I’ve doing this. And you pop a little more strength work in and a couple sprints, and you’re like, I feel so much different and better. You’re brilliant.
And you’re like, wow, I just told you to do. If you’d have come to me saying you’re sprinting, I’d be like, try it. Try some aerobic development. And that’s where, again, it helps to have a coach or just that if some people can step back and view themselves that way. But often, it’s just like, yeah, work on the thing that you’re neglecting. We probably have that list.

All right. So you just kind of alluded to the next question that we have for you. So we’re at Life Time. We’re getting ready to launch a program that’s more focused on athletic performance training. So we’d love for you to tell us a little bit about this and what people might be able to expect from it. What’s unique about it?

Yeah. So there’s a lot of cool stuff coming. There’s a big focus. The one thing I can’t tell you yet is exactly what we’re going to call it. Still under wraps. Still top secret, as we’re rolling. But you will see something under our dynamic umbrella within the sports performance realm this year because we’ve realized, it’s again such a big growing opportunity.

Our first foray, I can tell you this, will be focused on sports like pickleball. So these things that are in our locations, that people are doing, that they’re getting more serious about based on our relationships we are talking — this isn’t just like, hey, how do I make sure that someone coming into it doesn’t get hurt?

We’re looking and talking to some pretty elite athletes around this idea of training them for it to show what optimal performance conditioning can do, so that array all the way from elite athletics, all the way down to — our focus, just to give our members a preview, is that there will be a couple of things loaded within our app that if you say, hey, I want to get better at pickleball, I don’t want to get hurt. I just need something. Click right here, and there will be a plan for them that they’ll be able to get into entirely free, just as part of membership.

And then we’re looking at ways that we can bring that up into our coaching with some — we might call semi-private or group offerings, individualized sessions. Again, the big difference, we have obviously a ton of brilliant, amazing coaches out there. What we’re going to ensure, if you’re coming through that pathway, is the person that you’re meeting with is certified in the needs and demands of that sport, so they understand the sport that you’re talking about.

But yeah, we’re really going after this idea of, again, general sports performance honed in on a sport-by-sport basis, starting with pickleball. We’ve kicked around what our next one will be, often something again like golf that’s again fairly neglected. And then as we advance kind of moving through that world of youth sports performance and thinking about exactly what that looks like and how do we bring that to life and how do we help support.

That’s awesome.

That’s really cool.

It’s super exciting.

Yeah, it’s really exciting.

Yeah. Recreational athlete, competitive athlete. The common word in both of them? Athlete. But understanding the difference between the two. When it comes to the training program, and I think there’s a lot of crossover for sure. But I mean, with your years of experience, when you look at that recreational athlete coming into the space versus the competitive athletes, what are some of the similarities and some of the differences there?

Yeah, I mean, again, it’s almost just ratio up and down. And let me start with the recreational athlete is the person who has my heart. I love that group. Really, in a real world. I don’t know that I’m qualified to work with most of these pro athletes out there, that get to elite, elite, elite of the sport. I come from a background of very much so like strength training and the recreational athlete side and helping people get there.

That group, frequently, isn’t thinking of themselves as an athlete, even who are. Like oh yeah, I play in Youth Softball League or I play in Softball League. You’re like, well, you play three days a week. That’s a lot. You’re swinging. You’re an athlete. And you’re doing it. Again, even if it’s not performance-oriented, it’s what are we doing to ensure that you can keep playing this thing and that doesn’t negatively impact your life with these injuries or these other things that exist.

So I do think that somewhat of it is mindset. Are they taking the time? Are they doing these things? If I’m being really concrete, though, it goes back to the more recreational you are, the more of the training to me is set around, how do I ensure that this doesn’t have negative ramifications in your life?

So again, really focused on things like strength through a range of motion, on creating that mobility, on erasing any of the imbalances that a sport might create where the more I get to a professional athlete level, at some point, there is potentially going to be a conversation that says, to get better at this sport might not be good for your health. And are you OK with that?

And it might make sense. I mean, you could, again, look at what’s happening in the NFL and concussions and all these things where you say, like, at some point, gigantic men getting faster and hitting each other, like, maybe not great for your health, but they’re making — if you’re making an informed decision and explosively swinging a golf club might not continue to last — a guy like Tiger Woods, his body could no longer handle it.

So we see these things that, at some point, performance and health decouple. For most people, they work together, together, together, together and then they separate a little bit. So think of it — that recreational athlete, if it’s negatively impacting your life, I’d really tell you, let’s step back. Let’s really think through. And then as you get to perform elite, elite, elite, what’s this worth? And does it make sense to potentially make some of those sacrifices?

That’s good.

Awesome. OK. So one thing that we talk about a lot on here is community. And I’m curious about what role does community play in a sports performance training plan?

I mean, obviously, you can. And as I alluded to, as we think about this, we’ll give members access to things like workouts that they can pop their headphones in and do on their own, if that’s who they are and that’s what they like. But I do think that one of the reasons that people gravitate towards sports and playing something like pickleball or whatever sport they want, is that you get to go have fun.

You get to go be with your friends or be with other people. There’s maybe a trash talk component. There’s a competitive component. And then again, you say oh, to get better at that, I need you to go put your headphones on and get on this fitness floor and take away all this stuff that made it great. So we see, generally, that people train harder and better if they have a training partner, if they have a coach, if they have a trainer with them, all those things.

So the fun part is you can probably look around and you have a community in your sport and the ability to say like, hey, what do you do — we play on Tuesday, Thursday, what are you doing on Wednesdays and Fridays? Want to come upstairs at a Life Time with me and do some strength training to get better at our pickleball? And I’ve got an extra accountability partner. I’ve got someone who’s going to probably push and motivate me.

So it’s cool because you have that. You’re all like-minded. You’re there, that maybe you’ve got a built-in training partner that you didn’t realize because you have it, because that’s for most people, the social aspect is something that we probably don’t get enough of. And I’d hate to discourage you from doing the thing that made you social and gave to go do something to get better at it.

Well, we hit on a lot. We hit on a lot for sure. So I want to make sure before we get into our mic-drop moment, Danny, is there anything that you want to touch on that we may have missed?

I want to say this — hopefully, the person that doesn’t necessarily identify as an athlete, this is going to be my soapbox moment maybe of this whole thing, still decided to listen to it. Maybe it was picked up in their podcast queue. They’ve listened to all the Life Time Talks. Love you guys. So my hope is there’s a lot of people and they’re not discounting the fact that I believe. And the easy transition to me talking athletic performances. I believe everyone should train this way and train like an athlete.

How much of their time is devoted to it might scale up and down, but grab an athletic performance plan. Add some jumping. Add some throwing. Add some lateral movement. Think through training all the way from that power quality to strength hypertrophy out to this aerobic base. And just see how good your body feels. You will feel better.

So if you were listening to this and you’re kind of nodding along, but you didn’t necessarily connect because that’s not you, you’re just training for general fitness, everything I said still would matter. And think about yourself and train yourself more like an athlete. And I assure you, you will feel significantly better than if you ignore some of these qualities and just go about the one or two things that you like the most. But that’s my soapbox moment. I want to make sure I get in.

Yeah, all right. So we’re going to get into mic-drop moment.

Let’s go.

So we’ve been talking about athlete all day. I want to know what Danny King’s definition of athlete is.
Oh, wow. I thought this was going to be so much more, I said surprise question. I was going to go a lot of places. I did not see that. I’m going to start — and this is really just buying time in my answer — but I am going to start my answer by saying a human and an athlete to me are the same thing.

If I go back and I just simply look — and I actually really geek out on like early human development and all these things and looking at where our paleo ancestors came from. There’s some super cool books. If I go back and look at these demands, and we think about the need to run, jump, climb, throw, all those things, it says everybody started as an athlete and you just defined it.

So part of me, my cop out is going to be this idea that, if you’re human, you’re an athlete, because you need to. Actually I like that answer and I might stick with it. If I have to be more specific, it comes to just how you start to view training, and you start to think about it, that athlete has just flipped that switch and is a little more outcome-oriented or a little more outcome-driven, and is really approaching something with some sort of metric behind it. But that would be if you forced me. I’m going to stick and I’m going to come back and say, if you’re human, you’re an athlete.

I love that. I love that.

I like that one, too.

I love that.

Alright. Well, Danny, we love having you on. If people want to follow you, they can follow you @dtraining on Instagram. And you also have your fellow Dynamic Personal Trainers there over @lifetime.trainers. They can listen to past podcasts. Anywhere else you would point them?

No, those are the main ones. Honestly, I would say our Life Time Trainers Instagram account. I have, I think, multiple times on here, committed to trying to be better at social media. It hasn’t happened. The great news now is we have a team of people and they often grab me and make stuff.

So I am more present on the Life Time Trainers Instagram than I am on my own. But then you get also the benefit of everyone out in our group. So that’s probably the best place if you want to learn more about these things that I just talked about.

Awesome.

Love it.

Awesome as always, man.

Thank you so much. Great.

Thanks, Danny.

Appreciate the time.

[MUSIC]