Training the Athlete’s Biological Leg Springs with John Nardi
Clance: John! What’s up, baby?
John: What’s up, Clance? First of all, I want to thank you for your time. I really appreciate the time you put aside today. I think a lot of people get to know the truth and that’s why we’re here today.
I wanted to get started by asking you what your inspiration for doing what you do. You’ve been a strength coach for, the master strength coach for over 30 years now. A lot of accomplishments, coaching professionals as well as amateur athletes. And I want to get into your inspiration for what you do, why you do what you do and where it all started.
Clance: I guess the simple question is I love it. I love being part of the process of creating. How being part of the recipe of an athlete being successful. Not only being successful but DOMINATE. Dominating. Like I just love it and I’m just crazy about results, but the things that come with that is hard work, commitment because a lot of ex-athletes come back, you know, they message me and say, Thanks, Clance. I wouldn’t have passed that board exam or I wouldn’t have gotten this job if I wouldn’t have stuck through this process.
This is outside the athletic world. If I didn’t train with you, if you didn’t coach me. Because you push me so hard and you helped develop me mentally. So it’s not easy, like the one-word statement is like, because, you know, as an old guy, I kind of lived through my athletes and my athletes laugh all the time, and you know, you got my athletes make me young. I love being in the trenches and competing with them on things.
Sometimes I get stupid in, I get dinged up, but I love it. The energy and I kinda, I lived through my athletes actually, you know, so I know it’s a long-winded question, but it’s hard for me to just pinpoint one thing. I just love what I do. I care about my athletes and I just want success for them. It’s not only about winning but also in the real world.
John: Yeah. Well, I want to ask you next because I read your book Dominate that you wrote with Jeremy Choi. I think everybody should read it. I think if you want to be an athlete or a successful person in life, it’s a quick read. You can do it in two days. It’s a great read. But there was something in that book that I wanted to really segue into and that was your incident on the track when you got your career ending in injury. And I feel like that’s a big inspiration for what you do today. Can you bring our listeners through what exactly happened and how that lets you know what injury prevention and a lot of what you preach now?
Clance: Well, simply I was at their, what we call, years ago there’s a thing called a Peace Games. So Peace Games where the top athletes from Canada would go to Indianapolis and we’d compete against those in Indianapolis. Then the athletes from the United States would come over to Canada so every year they’d swap or something like that, it’s called the Peace Games. So this particular time we were doing, it was a 4×1, I was an anchor, got the Baton. I remember like it was yesterday, you know, we were in the lead when I got to Baton and I just don’t know what happened.
I was, you know, a little bit of showboating, you know, bad thing to do. Relax a little bit, all of a sudden, boom, I hit the baton on my thigh, dropped the baton, had to stop and boom, I felt my knee just, it just went, boom, boom. Like I’ll never forget that pop and it was done. I was on the track, you know, hot sun looking up and I was just, I was distraught. I just knew it was bad, but I didn’t think it was that bad. I figured out I’d come back and so on and so forth, but yeah, after that, you know, tried to come back and come back and like, my knee would swell up when it gets cold. It would, you know, I’d just be walking in there, pops out.
To this day I still have issues with my knee because of the demia in it and it swells. I’m supposed to have a third surgery on it. And I remember how many years ago a doctor told me, you know, I should stop, this time I wasn’t really training like that hard on my leg, but I was getting into it and you know, it swells up and the doctor told me, Hey, you should stop squatting. You’ll never be able to squat again. Something just bothered me about that so I started to squat more and I just started to dig into it. And I ended up squatting 500 pounds on my bad knee. Right? And I was happy about that and I said, and the funniest thing is the more I squatted, the better I felt. When I stopped squatting, I felt weak.
Like, you know, when I stopped training my legs and predominantly used to do a lot of squats, a lot of split squats, back squats, and my knee would feel weak and it would be more susceptible to popping or going out every fall. My knee would pop out like clockwork. October, it’s out. And for a period of time, at a certain time every year, I’d have to get my knee drain. So it wasn’t just a minuscule thing. It was like something ongoing I had to do all my life even to this day. I don’t talk about it. There’s no excuse, right? I just do what I have to do and get it done.
I just squatted this morning. Right? So I just know it’s part of my life, but that prompted me to kind of check into, look at the lower body biological leg spring, like the tendons and fascia and all that kind of stuff. It really made me dig into my strength and conditioning, but it wasn’t based on an injury thing. It was just based or injury prevention. It was just, I just wanted to turn athletes into monsters.
John: Gotcha.
Clance: Then over time, things started to click and started to connect the dots, and I had to do more research and so forth.
John: That’s great and I think the big question a lot of our listeners want to hear, you know, I get a lot of this year, really. You could make a pro bowl team and an all-star team out of guys who have torn their Achilles and guys who have torn their ACL is, you know, you got guys like Clay Thompson, torn ACL, then a torn Achilles. And you know, a lot of people have, including one of my co-hosts saying, you know, well, it’s cause I’m short and preseason. Now I know that you have to say a lot more on that and that the problem runs deeper than just that. There is an issue with the way people are training in layman’s terms for our listeners, our general sports listeners. What’s wrong about how they’re training in north America right now?
Clance: Okay. Let me… Okay. That is, you know, because it’s a shortened season for the athletes or, you know, less conditioned. As layman’s terms, I can put it that is complete nonsense.
John: Yep.
Clance: You have to prepare athletes for the velocity, the stresses of their sport, the Achilles tendon ACL injuries, and so on and so forth. Ligaments, tendons, and fascia, that’s a spring.
John: Yep.
Clance: If you don’t use the spring, what’s going to happen.
John: Snap.
Clance: Right? Spring dries up when you stress, the spring is going to be brittle and it’s going to snap. That’s exactly what’s going on right now in NBA, NFL, and so and so forth. That’s a process that takes over time. It starts from high school, college, and by the time they get to the pros and so on. So that is done by training: (a) to short range of motion, right? So not doing full range of motion lifts like full squats ass-to-the-grass, and that is potentiated by tight ankles, lack of mobility in the ankle, right? Hence Achilles tendon tears. Also, ACL rupture.
So I’m trying to break it down, but the problem is that these partial squats, quarter squats, underload, training on Swiss ball squats, and all that nonsense is basically exacerbating the issue of these athletes who are tight, immobile, and they’re weak in those ranges of motion. You have to work on your mobility then you have to get strong with full range of motion, and in those areas. Then you have to understand you have to be fast and reactive and explosive in those because that’s what sport is: fast, reactive, explosive. You see an athlete take a step, they pop. What is that telling you? That the body’s not used to those loads. It’s not because they’re tired.
The Achilles tendon is one of the strongest tendons in the body. It doesn’t just break like that. So I’m sorry. I’m getting a little like it’s because it’s just crazy.
John: Yeah.
Clance: So with my understanding of my research and me digging in and talking to some real smart people I’ve understand that that is one of the major issues I’m trying to slow down and keep it as simple and as basic as possible.
John: I think your book does a great job with that.
Clance: Yeah. The problem is lack of mobility, right? Not only lack of mobility, but lack of mobility under load, you just can’t be flexible, go do yoga. But those tissues have to be, it’s called load-bearing. Those tissues have to be used to the bearing of the load, the reactive. Not only bearing of the load, the tissues have to be used to fast, reactive, explosive movements. So squats are great, right? But if you just do squats all the time, full range of motion, squats are slow by definition. That is actually a slow isometric exercise. That’s why, if you notice my athletes, they squat, but they’re always doing fast, reactive, explosive movement to full range of motion. That is an injury prevention recipe.
John: Right.
Clance: And they don’t understand that.
John: So what I get from this is you’re strong and you’re mobile, but are you strong in those mobile positions?
Clance: Exactly. The body has to react and accept external loading. React. So you dissipate that energy into, I don’t want to, the ligaments, tendons, and redistribute. Right?
John: Yeah.
Clance: So contraction and relaxation, meaning if I’m accepting a load, I have to learn to contract, accept it, relax, and redistribute. That’s ligaments, tendons, and fascia muscles, nervous system, everything working in concert. Too much slow stability, those exercises disrupt those motor patterns year after year after year after year after year. It’s like two things, it just starts to get worse and worse. And over the years you see those things start popping up about eight years down the line. I am convinced that’s the problem.
John: Right. And that’s a big reason why we do so many Olympic lifts here, snatch, clean and jerk, and something. I want a bit of a concept I was interested in your book was the hamster wheel and a concept that basically states that a lot of people are put through the same ringer and doing the same thing and only the most talented yet come out of that and become pro athletes and successful athletes.
Now you had a lot of pro athletes like Mark Friedman, Gordon Whyte, PK Subban, and these guys who are constantly training with other athletes in their team that are on that hamster wheel. What do they come back and say to you after being with so many athletes? You probably asked them like, Man, why you snatching, why you clean and jerking like we don’t do that kind of stuff. We don’t squat full range of motion. Do they ever question the system that you really programmed for them or like what are the kind of results that they see after going through your program? That’s different for most coaches in North America?
Clance: For Sure they asked me questions because a lot of the things I do is unorthodox and it’s different.
John: Yeah.
Clance: And you have to understand if you are a pro athlete, 99.9% of the time you are genetically gifted.
John: Yeah.
Clance: And we as strength, coaches have to understand that. Okay? Our duty is to take that genetic gift and put it in the right direction.
John: Right.
Clance: Now, those who need that 1% or 0.1% of the right direction or it could be a beginner, I’m just throwing out some numbers here, of work in the right direction, that’s what’s going to get them on the team. That’s what’s going to get them over that hump. I get a lot of athletes that are, they’re close, but they just need to get over that hump to sign that corner contract, get that team. Maybe they’re smaller or PK didn’t walk in here, a freak of nature and they’re not, you know what I mean?
We had to put in the work, we had to give, put them in the right direction. He’s a hard worker. So that’s my job in terms of, you know, I look at the hamster wheel, right? And they don’t care because their job is like, next up, you didn’t make it, next up. And once you get to the pros, their job is not to turn you into a pro. You better be a pro. You better have that work ethic. By the time you get there and you better be good enough to stay. So their job is not to make you better in the gym and so their job is to you better understand the place. You better know how to, you know, study your playbook and execute, and so and so forth. If you don’t have the physical gifts, you don’t have the attributes, you don’t have the work ethic, you don’t have the mentality. you don’t have the mindset, you’re gone.
So what my job is here is to give them that work ethic, give them that toughness, let them understand the right exercises and methodologies that’s going to work for them, to help them to play. But because everyone’s different, some like doing parking, some like squatting, some like do med ball throw, or some like to jump. So they understand what’s going to make them feel cause of their job, they have to master themselves. They have to understand through the system what is going to make them better because when they get to a team, you want that team comradery. When PK Subban went first to Montreal, he couldn’t, he had to hide to do the training that he knew that worked for him because that’s the politics, right?
You have to. Now, as a veteran, he do whatever he wants, but you can’t go in there and say, I’m not going to do this strength coaches program unless, you know, I have certain strength coaches. I talk on professional teams that we can communicate, you know, they’re fine, on national teams and so on and so forth. Okay. They’re good. They respect Clance, you approach Clance later. Okay. You’re good. Just do it. Just, you know, make sure you do this and we work together to, for the athlete.
So it’s not a cut and dry and athletes will pick what kind of works for them. But the system is the system. I need that data. I need the results. So you have to go through the system and then we will modify it. Even though it’s a system, everything is modified for each and every athlete, but there’s individual things that obviously that need to apply you address to you.
John: Right.
Clance: Right?
John: And a big problem that we also see is we talked about this a lot, we saw LeBron James quarter squatting. We see Cam Newton doing short range of motion training. These guys train hard. They’re hard workers. But your point is that this problem compounds, and there are kids at home who are watching this. There are parents who want to put their kids into sports-specific training. How much of an impact do you think that has on the world of sports right now?
Clance: Massive.
John: Yeah.
Clance: Cam Newton is a freak. LeBron James is a freak. Those guys can do anything and still be good. Am I going to say, if they do the right work, they’ll be better, have better careers, more longevity, less injuries, and so? Of course. But what kills me and really pisses me off is that you see these kids watching this crap. Right? And they think that’s what the, Oh look, LeBron James does that, let me do it. I’ll get better. I’ll be the next LeBron James. And for the athletes, they don’t know. That’s not their job. They’re not a strength coach. You know? So I don’t blame them. What I do blame to some extent is that strength coach.
John: Yeah.
Clance: Because your job, when I got into this business, my job is to understand the anatomy. Cold. Not just anatomy, functional anatomy. How does that apply to sport? I’m not a therapist, but I want my athletes to be as healthy as possible. So how am I going to put my athletes in the best position, strength, health, to help them be less susceptible to injury? That’s our job.
So it really pisses me off when I see this crap on social media and on all these stupid coaches, and then you got a lot of these frigging announcers, don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. Right? Like they don’t know. And so that’s like, that’s a personal pet peeve of mine and something that just drives me crazy because you know what, they’re hurting a lot of potentials.
I just had a kid in here who just came in, he blew his Achilles tendons on that same shit. So now we gotta clean that up and put them on the right track. You know what I mean? It’s an epidemic: ACL, Achilles tendon. Those are career-ending injuries and I take it personal because I don’t, my coaches didn’t understand that, but hey, I went through it and I know to this day, I’m not asking you, I’m telling you, I’d be an Olympian or on some pro team.
John: Yeah.
Clance: That’s how confident I am. So that’s why I get upset about it and it really rubs me the wrong way, but I’m not like there’s a feeling that people know and they don’t give a shit because you got a lot of poor kids that want to put food on the table and they’ll do anything it takes to get where they get. And these big companies are exploiting that.
John: Yeah.
Clance: And that’s the fact, and that’s what pisses me off.
John: Yeah. No, that’s fine. We love the emotion here. The last question to wrap everything up, I like asking this question at the end. In 50 years from now, what do you want people to be saying about Clance Laylor did what from the sports community, Clance Laylor did what from the strength and conditioning community?
Clance: I know what I want to say is just how I’m going to say it, but basically I’m not creating anything new, the things that I preach have been around for decades.
John: Yeah.
Clance: Right? I’m just basically letting people know how those old things make sense today. So if anything is that Clance Laylor could be trusted. He tells the truth and that’s pretty much my legacy. Like that’s why I developed AAS as a true system of getting results for the athlete. To get them to a certain level then they can start, but that’s their foundation. So if anything is just basically bringing the true information to the sporting community.
John: Right.
Clance: I just hate the gimmicky clout chasing piggybacking pro athlete crap that I see today. And for me, I just want to change that. If I didn’t have my business, I wouldn’t be on Instagram. I wouldn’t be on friggin, none of these social media. That’s just a fact, but it is what it is. And what makes me feel good is that I’m trying to give some true information.
So if you’re looking for jokes and gimmicks and so many sat on a Swiss ball with their finger up there, you don’t come to my page. If anything is, I don’t know if I’m choosing the right words, but I just want to help athletes get the right information. That’s why I wrote the book. It’s to help athletes give them the right information. To give them a good start because of. LeBron James stands on a Swiss ball with something with a tire or something like that. That’s not a good start.
John: Yeah.
Clance: For a lot of these young athletes, you know what I mean? That’s all, I just want to give these athletes the right information so they can have a shot. Right? Get them off that hamster wheel, let them understand, okay, these are tried and true methods by reputable scientists that work. That’s it.
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