Here is a link to the podcast the the guy on Joe Rogan was actually referencing. Ryan Flaherty on Tim Ferris.
tim.blog/2017/05/07/ryan-flaherty/Here are notes on the podcast:
Force Production to Bodyweight Ratio
Ryan Flaherty is the Senior Director of Performance for Nike. Prior to that he ran a successful human performance business providing private training for elite athletes in San Diego. He is widely regarded as one of today’s top speed experts and is known for a piece of research he did with USA Track & Field. Below you will find a summary of key points from an interview he recently did on Tim Ferris’ podcast (Tim Ferris Show Episode #238 “The Savant of Speed – Ryan Flaherty”).
Key Points:
Speed is influenced by genetics but is also influenced by skill and adaptation and therefore to a large degree CAN be coached, learned, trained, and improved.
Speed involves stride rate & stride frequency. Both of these can be improved by improving technique (running mechanics, efficiency) and by improving the ability to produce force into the ground (power). More on the relationship between technique, force production and stride length/stride frequency below.
Force Production is most useful as it relates to your body mass therefore he uses a “Force Number” – force to body weight ratio
Experiment at USA Track
Elite Olympic level sprinters running on a force-plate treadmill
The key characteristic that made one sprinter faster than another WASN’T technique, it varied and sometimes faster athletes had more technique flaws.
Absolute force production also was NOT the key characteristic that separated the faster sprinters.
The key characteristic that correlated to being faster was – how much force can you produce relative to your mass (bodyweight).
Elite sprinter have an “insane” amount of strength/power in the lower body relative to their bodyweight.
He tries to improve this ratio by increasing force production without increasing bodyweight
In advance athletes (well trained, generally strong) he tries to improve strength while avoiding muscle mass gain.
Limit volume (total number of reps) and eliminate the eccentric phase of the primary heavy lift while training very heavy.
In novice athletes (young, untrained, weak) he will include a hypertrophy phase (higher volume, eccentric included, induce muscle mass gain) because the gain in muscle mass for them is helpful and prevents injury.
Novice Athletes vs Advance Athletes – Novice Athletes need general strength not specific strength. Spring mechanics are dependent upon the ability to hold proper positions, so they need general strength in order to improve mechanics and avoid injury.
Once athletes reach a minimal level of general strength, THEN specific strength becomes the focus.
He conducted an additional study/experiment. He looked for correlation between specific strength exercises and sprint speed. He was searching for the best way to improve force production to mass ratio. Over a 5 year experiment he found the Hex Bar Deadlift (a.k.a. Trap Bar Deadlift) had the best, really the only, correlation. Increased Hex Dead 1RM without an increase in bodyweight equaled improvement in speed.
Elite Athletes can pull 3.2 times their bodyweight.
He has female Olympic sprinters pulling 440 pounds at a bodyweight of 130 pounds.
Average people who want to improve speed should pull at least 2+ times their bodyweight
See below, in the appendix, his guidelines for training including actual workouts, exercises, sets & reps, etc.
Increasing stride length is vital to speed and is a byproduct of technique and force production, but mostly force production
Technique can improve stride length and stride frequency by improving efficiency of movement. This can be taught and learned very effectively and in a relatively short period of time this can be improved significantly.
Be careful when working on increasing stride length to avoid overstriding (foot strike in front of the center mass – hips).
Increase in force production to mass ratio has a significant impact on stride length. Once technique is improved, this may be much more important than anything else.
Elite sprinters often have variations in running mechanics and sometimes defy convention wisdom in their technique, but they all have insane force to mass ratios.
Usain Bolt runs his 100 meters in 42 steps, the next fastest man runs it in 44
Even in distance runners he has found that increasing force production improves stride length and stride frequency thus reducing the number of steps needed to reach a particular distance and improving times.
Max Velocity and Maintaining Speed during a sprint and the interaction of Force Production and Conditioning/Endurance
Once sprinters hit a certain speed, maximum speed, at 30 to 40 meters, they actually either maintain speed from that point forward, or most likely slow down a little over the remaining distance
The 10 meter splits from the point of max velocity onward are almost identical.
The best sprinters slow down the least after reaching max velocity.
He found that there is a strong correlation between the rate of slowing down and the ratio of force production to mass.
Athletes with the highest force production/mass ratio maintained speed better, slowed down the least.
Weaker athletes slow down more
Other studies have shown that strength improvements impact the ability to endure repeated efforts. There seems to be evidence that strength may play a larger role than traditional conditioning/endurance when it comes to improving explosive repetitive movements like sprinting and including multiple sprints like you find in team sports (see below)
Conditioning vs Strength
Many speed and sport coaches have focused on “conditioning” to improve the ability to maintain speed in a single sprint AND to improve the ability to run repeated sprints with limited rest. There is merit in this approach and it does work to a degree.
Improving cardiovascular conditioning does positively impact sprinting and repeated sprinting.
In conditioning, specificity is very important. You have three energy systems and you should be careful that your conditioning is sport specific and work to rest ratios are sport specific. This is a topic for another article.
Research has repeatedly established that conditioning with steady-state cardio (traditional jogging or cardio machines) will decrease strength and speed and increase injury risk for power athletes unless they are over-fat. So power athletes should avoid jogging for distance, unless fat-loss is a major goal (and even then, there are better ways).
Sprint intervals have shown superior results for power athletes and do not interfere with speed or strength while improving “conditioning.”
Recent research has shown that improving speed has a significant impact on ability to perform repeated explosive movements such as a sprint AND improves the ability to maintain speed in a sprint.
If an explosive effort such as running a pass route, or a fast-break, or running a base, represents 95% of my max strength/power output, then it will be difficult for me to repeat that effort several times at the same speed.
If through strength/power training I improve strength/power output, then that same effort to get on base or get open on a route will represent a lower percentage of max effort. So say because I’m stronger/more powerful, it only take 85% of my max power output to get the job done. I will be able to more consistently repeat that effort at the same level.
Research has shown that power improvement trumps conditioning improvements when it comes to repeated bouts of explosive activity.
This all sounds like linear speed (straight line) and a lot of max velocity stuff. What about team sports like basketball, baseball, football? Our athletes almost never reach max velocity. We live in a state of acceleration/deceleration/reacceleration. The same kind of research with the same kind of results has come out of Defranco’s Training. They have found that very heavy sled sprints (pushing or pulling a sled loaded with 50-95% of the athletes bodyweight) improves acceleration speed better than anything else – and this has now been proven by multiple studies. See more below. But first, what does Coach Flaherty recommend we do in our training sessions?
The Ryan Flaherty Workout
The Workout: Improving Force Production to BW ratio with the Hex Bar and …
Dynamic Warmup
Typical traditional skips, high knees, butt-kicks, walking lunges, high kicks, etc.
Activation Exercises (prep specific muscle areas)
Glute-Bridge 2X8
Quad – BW Step ups 2X8
Specific Warm-up: Hex Bar Dead Lift 2 to 3 sets of 50%, include eccentric phase, 1 min rest between sets, can add weight up to
65% depending on experience and feel.
Main Lift: Hex Bar Dead Lift: For most people, including novice athletes, start with a hypertrophy phase and don’t worry about gaining muscle mass, they NEED it. A hypertrophy phase would be 3 to 4 sets of 8 reps @65% of your 1RM for 1 to 2 weeks, then add 5% a week over the next several weeks until reaching 90% to 95% while reducing reps.
Example (after warm-up)
Week 1: 3 sets of 8 @ 65%
Week 2: 4 sets of 8 @ 65%
Week 3: 3-4 sets of 8 @ 70%
Week 4: 3-4 sets of 8 @ 75%
Week 5: 3-4 sets of 5 @ 80%
Week 6: 3-4 sets of 5 @ 85%
Week 7: 3-4 sets of 3 @ 90%
Week 8: 3-4 sets of 2-3 @ 95%
Advanced lifters would begin with 75% to 80% range.
The Hex Bar Deadlift is paired with squat jumps for 5 reps
After each set of Hex Dead take 30-60 sec rest before executing 5 vertical leaps or box jumps or another bipedal explosive jump.
After the jumps take 2-3 minutes before lifting again (4-5 minutes rest once you get up into the 85% to 95% 1RM range).
Unilateral Lift: Dumbbell Bulgarian Split Squat
3 sets of 6 each leg with focus on tempo, 30-60 sec rest
Tempo will vary based on assessment of athlete’s needs or coaches goal
How many seconds on the down stroke, pause or no pause, explode up or slow up.
Usually 2 to 3 seconds eccentric and 1 second concentric
Pair with a single leg plyo – he likes seated single leg jump
Stability/Proprioceptive Exercises
Step Downs 1 to 2 sets of 20 (see video) 3 seconds down and 3 seconds up
Helps with VMO imbalances
7 Way Hips to finish (see video)
Other Considerations/Concerns
Injury Prevention Problem Areas
Ankle Flexion
Glute-Mead
VMO
Internal Rotation of Femur
If you go to the Tim Ferris podcast link and scroll down the show notes you will see several links to Flaherty videos and how-to's from the workout I shared.
Also, here is an article I wrote combining Flaherty's info with Cameron Josse heavy sled training stuff:
sites.google.com/greenvilleschools.us/devildogpower/articles-tips-education/articles 
). They were significantly cheaper but we have some really short kids...i'm talking dwarves. When they used the trap bar, the ROM was almost nonexistent. So, we had to have those kids stand on a 45lbs bumper plate to generate more ROM.