Hey, fitness and sports fans, coach Frank here. So they have a special guest Dean Cooper. He was on episode 54 earlier this year. We’re going to be talking today about some of the injuries that people come across in basketball, just like we’ve been doing with golf. I want to show you some of the things that they come across in basketball between the range of motion,
posture, and some of the things that happen to athletes that cause them to not do as well in their games. So get in the game because I’m going to bring all that to you. And more right after this, let’s do this Game on sports, fitness, and health fans. With another episode of the Sporting Good Posture digital radio experience gear up for coach Frank’s advice from the sidelines as he helps you crush your game,
no matter what sports, health, or fitness game you play. This is coach Frank Pump’s Sporting Good Posture. What do you use for it? Hey Coach, what do you got for us today? Welcome back to another episode of sporting good posture. This is coach Frank and I have Dean Cooper on for the second time. And this year we’re going to be doing another interview with him,
talking to him about some of the NBA injuries he’s seen with their athletes. Some of the college injuries he’s seen with some of the players he’s come across and some of the rehab that these guys do to get back on their game. And I’m even going to sneak in some golf because we’re both into golf. Dean loves golf. I’ve done a lot of episodes on that lately.
So we’re going to talk a little bit about that and we’re going to get to all that and more here in a moment, right after this message. We’ve all said it we’ve all felt it. My feet are killing me, but did you know, that foot and ankle pain turned out to be more than just discomfort or inconvenience? That’s why the foot level system is now part of the posture care center for ideal health and wellness.
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episode 54, he’s a former NBA coach. He’s had some time in college, but he’s coached the rockets and the trailblazers, and he’s even coached the bulls. And he’s had a lot of experience, with sports and injuries and many different players. And I want to welcome you back on the show today, Dean, it’s great to have you back and we’re just going to get right into it here.
You’ve had a lot of experience in both college and the NBA. And one of the things we were talking about is I’ve done a lot of golf episodes lately and talked about some of the things that hold people back on golf between a range of motion or posture, their flexibility, you know, whatever it is, anything that’s kind of holding them back from previous injuries.
What, do you notice being a coach now? And you just were talking about it, you know, you move from the NBA now you’re doing college again. What are you noticing about the kids? And you mentioned some of the things that you were talking to him about, about body maintenance and things like that. Could you go over those again,
just for our listeners, about those kinds of things? Yeah. You know, coming from the MBA, any athlete where it’s the NBA major league baseball, golfers, football players, whatever it is, you know, your body is that, that your money-making machine, right? So over the last 10 to 12 years, and I would say it’s probably pretty true of,
of all say the major sport, hockey, football, baseball, golf, or basketball, and then probably golfers too. It used to be, you know, just weightlifting and, and doing this, but it’s become an all-encompassing, stretching, hydration, body maintenance. There’s so much more time put into that than ever. I mean, staffs are growing immensely.
When I first got to the rockets, we had two trainers. And I think when I, my, with the bulls, the last couple of years in Chicago, the performance staff was probably eight or nine full-time people not to mention the outside doctors and, you know, physios and all that. So definitely a huge swing and just awareness of it a lot more time spent doing it.
Guys spend a lot more time in the training room than they used to. And as I mentioned before coming on, obviously there’s rehabilitation going on with some players, but it’s more about preventative. What I try to tell our young guys here in college, is if you wait until the oil light comes on in your car, your engine’s already doomed. You got to do preventative maintenance,
a changing your oil, stay on top of your transmission oil, and all those things. So that the engine and the transmission don’t go bad. And I think there’s a lot of reasons for, I think people have just gotten generally more educated on it and regarding the injury and you probably can speak to this. I just read an article may be within the last month.
Now there’s this big talk about kids becoming specialized in a sport. You had a very young age now. And so they don’t get overall body sort of maneuverability and maturation. They use the same muscles over and over and over and over starting at a very young age, which, you know, it’s ironic sports. Medicine’s probably never been better. However, injuries have also never been higher.
Yeah. So, And you’re right, that when they’re specializing, especially you’ll see it in pitchers, particularly, I’m seeing kids coming out of high school already getting Tommy John surgery. And they, you know, they’re playing baseball all through the year where, when I was a kid I’d play in the spring and summer and then move on to another sport after that,
there are specializing more. Are you noticing guys coming in more with some of these catastrophic injuries, like ACL tears and Achilles rushers and, you know, shoulder tears? Are you seeing that more now? I wouldn’t say that they’re coming in with those that I think they’re more predisposed that percentage of the likelihood of having those types of injuries has gone up.
As I said, you can read injury reports and they’re easy to find online, certainly for the NBA, I’m sure for every sport, but sports medicine and the staff and the approaches have never been greater or better. Yeah. But there’s also an increase in injuries and, and you know, there’s a lot of people just are pretty well convinced that it is a lot because of that in,
in, in our sport, in particular, you use the word catastrophic. Well, our sport is a weight-bearing pounding on your lower extremities, right. Your feet, your ankles, your knees, your hips, and consequently your lower back. Right. Kind of from there down. Right. So, yeah. I don’t know if there are more injuries when we,
get here, but there are more injuries during their career that are what you would call. Non-contact is not somebody taking your ankle out or your knee, or they just happen from your movement. We use injuries. These guys are getting these overused tears and they just drop. Yeah. Yeah. Your body’s only meant to do so many reps. You know,
then I’ve mentioned earlier where that, you know, a large segment of the medical people that I’ve read and, or talk to believe that not only are you getting more reps, but your body just doesn’t balance out properly from the lack of doing other things as well. So it’s kind of a double whammy. Yeah. Because they’ll get good at one sport,
but they’ll get limitations on their body by doing only that one sport. Yeah. So when you have bigger training staffs, the guys are in the training room more, as far as the actual training, you know, it used to be just lifting heavy weights and, and, and stuff like that. Are you seeing a progression of, of different avenues to work these guys out and train to avoid some of these muscle injuries and tears and stuff?
Oh, absolutely. I mean, almost every team now, besides just having basically as you would, what you consider a trainer, right? Like the person who takes care of their body and then a strength and conditioning coach, that’s kind of all, it used to be it’s about two people, maybe assistant trainer or whatever, but now it’s, everybody’s got a physio,
they got physical therapy, people. They have everybody, who’s got a chiropractor or massage therapist with the bulls. We had an actual Acupac full-time school. Yeah. So the number of people and the number of different ways to take care of their bodies has grown tenfold, even from things like the de Los machine, you know, for the balance of your ankles and stuff like me,
not when I was with the jazz, that was a mandatory exercise. It wasn’t, it wasn’t a suggestion. It was a mandate. We’ve also seen more ACLs and MCLs and all those joint slash tendon-related injuries have gone up and probably a large part to the fact of specialization and repetition. That’s the other thing I when I grow, grew up,
you grew up, we did sports probably year around as kids. I know I did, but it moves, it moves sports. And now my viewpoint of it has changed that I don’t know if I’m right or wrong. I am kind of, sort of in the belief that at least in, in our league, in the NBA, we’re probably overtraining them now that we’re contributing to our problems.
And I do believe that I just, I think that your body needs recovery time. It’s very true. We were talking. And I remember the, my Kevin Duran, how he tore his Achilles, talked about how he was going to come back and, and, you know, that used to be an injury that almost was pretty much a career-ending injury.
Now, these guys can come back and he has looked very good. You don’t tell that he’s lost any explosiveness and he, you know, that he’s had any problems after that Achilles he’s been scoring very well and doing very well. We all know these people heal differently, right? Everybody has a different ability to heal or come back.
And certainly, the rent guys to are the bigger body that is putting more weight on those types of injuries probably struggle more than a guy who’s built like Kevin Duran who’s thin. Right. So when they do come back, there are fewer pounds per square inch. So to speak on those injuries, I’ve heard a lot of doctors talk about a lot of things in the MBA over the years.
So I’m sure there’s a factor in that my medicines are better re you know, rehabilitation is better. It’s advanced. So I agree. And I’m sure the guys’ garden, Kevin Durant agrees with the Well, that’s true. It’s different than, you know, Kevin Duran, as opposed to somebody like Shaq and that same injury. I wouldn’t have been able to recover as quickly carrying an extra 150 200 pounds on them.
Yeah. You know, I, I coached Yow and Greg Godin, both big guys who had lower extremity injuries, you know? Yeah. Mostly with his feet. Right. It’s just really difficult, way more difficult than a six, four, two hundred and five-pound guard that has the same injury, you know, And you were talking about before with golf like you mentioned some of the things that you were doing and then some of the things that helped you with your game.
So going back to the golf thing, what did you, what were you saying to me before that helped you gain some yardage and see a difference in your golf game earlier? I was just saying it in terms of the stretching part of it and what that does for your body. In 2013, when I was with the rockets, they redid the arena.
In the summer, so I got about a four, four, and a half month stretch where we didn’t go in. So I spent a lot of that summer besides just doing my normal workouts was the most that I had ever stretched and done yoga. And in my mid-forties at the time, and the flexibility that I gained, I mean,
I started seeing me personally, pretty immediate results as far as like distance on my ball, particularly off the tee, like 10 or 15 yards, it was the furthest side, hit the ball and long time. And there’s no doubt in my mind, that it was due to stretching more, and more regularly doing yoga. And I know that because then the next year when I started doing it less,
I reverted kind of back to where that part of my golf game was the same. So there’s no question in my mind. And I’ve seen it just with pro athletes got to look, it’s, well-documented what Tom Brady and LeBron in particularly, I mean, they’re obsessive about their craft, but they’re equally, if not more obsessive about their bodies. And there’s a reason that those two guys are performing at the level that they’re performing at the age that they are,
it’s no coincidence. So you would say, and that’s a big factor in their recovery. And moving forward in the game, No question, you know, from ice baths to, you know, this compression sleeves, you know, that guys put on and in our guys do that too. They all would rather do that than get in the cold tub or,
or do the cryo. Right. Cause that’s, it’s not a perfect, right. It’s all you’re trying to do is be as preventive as you possibly can and continue to perform at whatever your maximum performance level can be at whatever age you’re at or stage you’re at in your career. So it’s a double benefit. I think It’s funny, that you say that about like the compression sleeves and the ice baths,
JJ watt and pro football. They showed him after his workouts, he went into, a lake that was frozen in the cutout, a big square in the lake, and went in the lake with the ice there and held himself up under the water. I mean, it was insane how cold that would have been. And that’s what he did to recover after his workouts.
And I was thinking like, you see these guys do these ice bath challenges and like these polar plunge things. And, and that’s kinda caught on a lot. A lot of these guys will do that and then even run right into a sauna or vice versa, just to try to get that contrast ice and cold and hot therapies in there. And you got,
you probably see that a lot now, like in the training there, and guys are swimming more and doing things like that to stay mobile. Oh, absolutely. I think in the MBA, all the facilities, you know, with the way the facilities are now you have your hot tub right there. And then right next to it, you got, you’re not,
it’s not tall, it’s a cold pool. Now, the way these, you know, like a 10 foot by 10 foot or multiple guys can, you can walk right down in there and then walk out and then walk right into the hot tub or over to the regular swimming pool. You don’t have to get in the old-fashioned, 10-looking looks like a horse.
It looks like a horse trough, right? Like days I’ve been in those. Yeah. You know, I like I tell our guys, I just tell them, go home. And if you don’t do anything else, just take a cold shower or draw cold bath water, just throw some ice in it. You know, it’s like most things in life it’s uncomfortable,
but most uncomfortable things are really at the end of the day, what we need. So what would you say to the listeners in their quest for a better range of motion and things like that, whatever sport they’re playing, what do you think are some of the best things they can do to attain that, to move ahead in their sport?
You know, myself and my wife who’s fanatical. I mean, she does all the things to stretch and all that stuff, yoga that you’re supposed to do daily, I’m a little less diligent, but I can just speak from my own two experiences. One, like you, said, seeing what pro athletes do every day and how that’s evolved. And then I can just tell you from my personal experience of that stretch of four,
four, and a half or five months where it was the most time I ever spent on it, just me doing it personally. And the benefits I saw now, I still do some other things, you know, with the foam roller on stuff. I’m pretty diligent about that. My net role yup. Got a role by inserting in, my feet.
You know, I’m pretty diligent the yoga and stretching self-confession. I haven’t been as good, but I can tell you that when I was doing it, there’s no question. I saw the benefits and I don’t spend a lot of time doing it every day. And I didn’t spend a lot of time doing it in particular last summer. I,
I just stretch more, a little bit in the morning and that night, and I did yoga for 30 minutes, like four or five times a week, you know, just in my house, we didn’t go to a studio. We didn’t, we just had the old, you know, DVD plan or, you know, YouTube and enter or whatever.
But I’ve had several NBA players. They do the regular yoga and the Bircham, the hot yoga. And they swear by it, how it’s helped them. It’s funny. It’s usually the older guys, the veterans that have been around for a while that are trying to prolong their career, but they all say the same thing. Geez. I wish I would have done this when I was 21, 2, 3, 4 versus 31, 2, 3, 4,
you know? Yeah. I think it’s really interesting. The growth in the staff is unbelievable. Certainly the preventative maintenance part of it, everybody has a chiropractor, but he’s got him size therapists. Everybody’s got a physio, some teams like we had an acupuncturist and those people are all full-time. They’re there all the time. It is in, they don’t come from the outside.
Pretty interesting. So Dean is, is now at the University of Texas Rio Grande valley. What conferences that again? Yeah. So we’re in the Western athletic conference, which is ever-evolving, or at least over the last couple of years. It has. So now this year, there’s a Texas division, which is ourselves. Lamar’s common in the league, Sam Houston,
Abilene Christian and the people who watched the tournament last year had a really good tournament wrong. Yeah. Tarleton State, and Stephen F. Austin. And then the Western division in New Mexico state grand canyon, which is where Bryce drew, who was the coach at Vanderbilt is at now Cal Baptist Dixie state, which is in Utah, Seattle. So there’s kind of that division in Texas division.
And it looks like it’s going to be this way for a good bit of the foreseeable future. Well, I’m happy for you. You found a good school and I want to wish you a lot of luck in your season. There’ll be nice. You’ll be able to have fans again at these games. And I think that’ll, that’ll be fun. And it was cool watching some of these NFL games over the weekend and seeing all the fans again.
So it’ll be nice to have a full arena to go play under, You know, the coach has missed the fans, I think is obvious, but you know, I can tell you that no one probably misses it more than the players, you know, like feed off of it, whether you’re home or away, you need the energy. And so I think it’s really good.
I can tell you what it’s been like here for the fall sports. I mean, I went to the soccer game, but they’re almost 2000 people at the soccer game soccer games. So the attendance has been really good. I haven’t been to a volleyball game yet, but they said the attendance has been great. So I think people just want to get out and see live sports again,
you know? So it’s cool. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I’m excited and watching college football and pro football span the U S open with people there. Yeah, absolutely. Was, was fun. So it’s been great. And I appreciate you having me and I got to get some tips from the golf pro We can, we’ve done well, we’ve done too.
We had the two recent episodes that we did on golf. And then I had Mike Hicks on a couple of times, so you can go back and listen to his episodes, but there were a lot of good episodes. We were going to do some more golf stuff. We have a lot of listeners that love golf and we’ve been moving in that direction more lately.
And it does cross over to other sports too. So I like talking with you about this and, and with basketball and, and everything related to that too. Great. Well, I appreciate it. Thanks so much. Thank you. And I look forward to seeing as soon. Okay. You can catch it on ESPN plus by the way. Oh yeah.
Yeah. My producer is Frank Sardella. That’s him that’s his go-to is ESPN. Good. Thanks. Thank you. So, one of the things I wanted you to take away from this episode that Dean talked about was specialization in sports. A lot of kids are doing that now and even adults as well. And it’s really important to do multiple sports because if you don’t get multiple sports,
you’re not doing different motions, different range of motions, different activities, and different kinds of training that you do for these sports. And it has a lot to do with how well you’re going to do in these sports because you do the same sport all the time. You’re gonna have a lot of overuse injuries and relate this to what we talked about with the golf episodes.
It still comes down to posture, range of motion, flexibility, and previous injuries. There are a lot of ways that these guys are doing rehab. Now they’ve moved a lot of way from just doing heavy weights and just kind of being the strongest guy in the room to incorporating yoga, incorporating other stretching techniques and recovery techniques. And on top of that,
just having multiple people around, like they said that now they have chiropractors, acupuncturists, physiotherapists, and PTs. These are important to have in your life and sports. And Dean said it best about having the flexibility to do these things in multiple sports, because it’s important. Again, not to specialize. There has been a great guest and I look forward to speaking to him again.
And hopefully, when he’s back in Nashville, we can catch up and play some golf, maybe together. I wish him a lot of luck on the season, over at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, and the whack. And again, if you’re dealing with any of these things, the biggest easiest thing you can do is just look in the mirror, look at your posture,
and see if one of your shoulders is high then the other. If your head tilts to the side, if you’re, if one of your hips is higher than the other, take a look, because these are easy things you can see in the mirror. And if you notice anything out of place, you notice anything that, that doesn’t look right. DME on Instagram at Sporting Good Posture PM me on Facebook at ideal health and wellness center.
Tell me what’s going on and I’ll tell you what I think. Remember the coach’s door is always open. This is coach Frank I’m Sporting Good Posture. How about you? The Sporting Good Posture podcast is a broadcast wellness production powered by an ideal health wellness center, all content copyright 2021, and all rights reserved by executive producer, Frank Sardella, and coach Frank Pierce, courtesy of the ideal health wellness center in Franklin.
For more information, visit SportingGoodPosture.com and follow the coach on Instagram at Sporting Good Posture. I don’t know, say whatever comes to your mind frame.