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Rett Larson ~ NoZombies

@rettasaurus

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Inspiring Coaches to make training less boring
Gold Medals🥇2016 Olympics & 2015 World Cup
👇Upgrade Your WarmUps with the NoZombies Library

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No Zombies — explained.

Traditional warm-ups work.
I used them for years.

But over time, they became predictable.
Athletes weren’t engaged—they were surviving them.

So I changed the purpose.

Warm-up became a place to:
• fix weaknesses
• build athleticism
• explore new movement
• solve problems
• wake the nervous system up

Sometimes that looks like hard strength work.
Sometimes it looks like play.
Both can be stimulus.

I didn’t want athletes sleepwalking through preparation.

I didn’t want zombies.

That philosophy became the No Zombies Warm-Up Library,
where I store the ideas, games, progressions, and puzzles
we actually use with elite teams.

If this resonates, the library is linked in my bio. by @rettasaurus

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9 months ago

Disc golf is fun. Disc golf where every miss makes your partner exercise longer is better. 😂

Everybody gets a Wingman disc and a partner. One athlete plays the hole while the other stays behind and works. As soon as you hit the target, run back, switch jobs, and now your partner gets to golf. So suddenly your accuracy matters to somebody besides you.

We started with an easy hole: land the disc on top of a platform about 10 meters away. Then I kept moving the goalposts. Drop it into a small ball cart. Get around the back of a backwards soccer goal. And finally, travel the length of the gym and somehow put it through a setter ring.

Meanwhile, I changed the exercise for the partner at each hole. That’s an important little detail. A short, easy hole might mean holding a handstand. When the throws get longer and the hole could take considerably more time, something like a wall sit makes more sense. The work has to fit the game.

And that’s really why I love warm-ups like this. They’re throwing, running, holding positions, cooperating, solving problems, yelling at their partners and laughing—and nobody is waiting around for their turn.

Make the shot. Save your partner.

Thanks as always to @Waboba for giving me toys I can turn into ridiculous warm-ups. And if you want more games like this, there are hundreds in the No Zombies Library — link in bio. taken in Istanbul, Turkey by @rettasaurus

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20 days ago

@rettasaurus tell us how much could be the power of the joy and energy to engage even the player that had her own warm up routine into his “No zombies” philosophy

Thanks Rett for sharing this exemple with us

#VectaVolleyballRoundtabll #Volleyball

💯Recordings available - Link in bio
🔜22nd October - Live Day 2 by @rettasaurus

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2 days ago

Volleyball asks a lot from the shoulder, so I don’t want our shoulder training built around the same three “shoulder health” exercises for an entire season.

We’ll find something we like, train it consistently for a couple of weeks, and then change the problem. Different angles. Different planes. Push. Pull. Rotate. Straight-arm isometrics. Fast forces. Slow forces. Different positions and different implements. Here you’ll see @ballbellz and @weckmethod RMT clubs.

The goal isn’t randomness for the sake of randomness. We keep the principles consistent while changing how we challenge them. Give the athletes enough time with an exercise to actually train it, then introduce another problem.

Because I don’t know exactly what positions or forces a shoulder is going to encounter over a long volleyball season. I just know we’re going to ask a hell of a lot from it.

So my goal is simple: build capacity in lots of directions and prepare it for as much as we reasonably can.

Prepare for everything. Get used to nothing.

I’ve got plenty more of the shoulder exercises and strength work we use with our volleyball athletes in the No Zombies Library — link in bio. taken in Istanbul, Turkey by @rettasaurus

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19 days ago

This lift isn’t designed to make anyone stronger.

We play tonight.

This morning’s 30-minute session is what we call an activation lift—or, probably more accurately, a game-day strength primer. The goal is to give the athletes a small dose of high-quality strength and power work that may enhance performance later in the day without creating enough fatigue or muscle damage to get in the way.

So the rules are different from a normal strength session: low volume, submaximal loads, explosive intent, very little grinding and careful exercise selection. Today that included submaximal hang power cleans along with a few simple pushes and pulls. Get in, move with intent, and get out.

And this isn’t just something we’ve convinced ourselves works. Research on resistance-training “priming” sessions has found that appropriately designed low-volume sessions performed several hours before competition can improve measures of neuromuscular performance later in the day. The details matter, though—more isn’t better, and turning the primer into a workout defeats the purpose.

We’re not trying to get stronger this morning. We’re trying to play better tonight.

That’s the game-day primer.

For more of the strength, power and game-day work we use with our volleyball athletes, check out the No Zombies Library — link in bio. taken in Istanbul, Turkey by @rettasaurus

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20 days ago

Some clips of yesterday’s warmup from the @eczacibasisporkulubu social media team. taken in Ankara, Türkiye by @rettasaurus

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4 days ago

Give me a few @Waboba Super Fly birdies and one of those little barrier ropes and I can build four mini tennis courts almost anywhere.

We usually start simple: two-on-two, keep the Super Fly alive and get it over the rope. From there, I can turn one basic game into an entire warm-up just by changing the constraints. Touch a cone after every hit. Run around the cone. Play it off your foot first. Play it off your knee. Make the teams cooperate and see how long they can keep a rally alive. Or make everybody circumnavigate the court so they’re constantly hitting and running to the other side.

That’s the part I like. I don’t need ten different drills. I need one interesting environment and enough ways to keep changing the problem.

The athletes are running, lunging, reacting, communicating and finding themselves in plenty of volleyball-ish positions—but they’re doing it with a completely novel object that they haven’t already handled ten thousand times. So they have to pay attention and figure things out.

Same game. New problem.

That’s one of my favorite ways to build a No Zombies warm-up. And if you want hundreds more games and constraints I’ve used with my teams, check out the No Zombies Library — link in bio. taken in Istanbul, Turkey by @rettasaurus

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a month ago

One team figured this out almost immediately. The other team lost 5–0 and could not score a single point.

And I loved it.

The challenge starts with a slam bounce over the net. Your partner passes it high enough to give you time to run underneath, grab the other end of a superband, and then the two of you have to use the band like a giant jump rope—looping it around the bouncing volleyball three times. Survive all three and somebody still has to control the ball into a cart on the end line for the point.

There are a bunch of little problems buried inside that ridiculous task. How high and where should the first pass go? How quickly can your partner get under the net? Where should you position yourselves around the bouncing ball? Who takes the final pass? And can you set the whole thing up so that third bounce happens somewhere near the cart?

One team solved those problems. The other team just kept getting agonizingly close.

But watch the team that failed. They’re diving all over the floor, getting low, communicating, cooperating, making volleyball shapes and laughing their heads off every time it falls apart. Nobody checks out because they’re losing. They desperately want to solve the puzzle.

That’s an important reminder for me with differential-learning challenges: the athletes don’t always have to solve the problem for the problem to be useful.

Sometimes the challenge fails. That doesn’t mean the warm-up did.

For hundreds more differential-learning challenges, movement puzzles and strange problems I’ve given my athletes to solve, check out the No Zombies Library — link in bio. taken in Izmir Turkiye by @rettasaurus

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a month ago

I stole today’s warm-up from basketball and netball.

The three-person weave has been around forever, but instead of running the traditional basketball version down the court, I made two athletes stationary “pillars” and had the third athlete weave between them with a 3 kg medicine ball. Throw to one pillar, run around them, receive from the opposite pillar, get the ball out of your hands quickly and immediately change direction again.

Four throws and you’re done. Seamlessly replace one of the pillars, the next athlete starts weaving, and the first team to get all three athletes through wins.

Then I started changing the constraints. The pillars had to hold an isometric squat. I moved them closer together so the exchanges became faster. We changed distances and forced more accelerations, decelerations and turns. Same basic game, slightly different physical and coordination problem each time.

And eventually I took away the medicine ball completely.

Now they had to run the exact same weave with a volleyball—but nobody could catch it. Every exchange had to be a set.

That’s one of my favorite ways to create warm-ups: steal an interesting idea from somewhere else, figure out what makes it useful, then start changing it until it fits what your athletes need.

We got medicine-ball work, running, change of direction, isometrics, coordination, communication, competition and eventually volleyball-specific touches—all out of one simple three-person game.

Steal good ideas. Then make them fit your sport. I was reminded of this one by @netballperformancecoach who is worth a follow.

And if you want hundreds more ideas I’ve stolen, modified and occasionally made completely ridiculous, they’re all waiting in the No Zombies Library — link in bio. taken in Izmir Turkiye by @rettasaurus

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25 days ago

Our full line-up for the Seeds of Sisu Webinar Series is capped with Rett Larson (@rettasaurus) and he is presenting his “No Zombies” approach to training athletes. The passion that Rett brings to this field is one big reason his work has stood out at every level, and we could not be more grateful for his participation.

Once again, 100% of the proceeds from this webinar will support our @rocsolidfoundation fundraiser, as we raise money to build a playset for a 3-year-old little girl currently battling leukemia. Our hope is that this playset will bring her and her family joy during this challenging time, and we are grateful for any and all support for this effort ❤️‍🔥

Registration link in bio 🔗 by @rettasaurus

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8 days ago

When VR goggles first became accessible, I went all in. I bought a couple sets, carved out a protected little corner of our volleyball gym, found games that challenged reaction time, peripheral vision and object tracking, and started letting the athletes experiment with them on recovery days and as supplemental training.

It checked a lot of boxes that interest me. There was at least a theoretical connection to qualities that matter in volleyball, it challenged the athletes neurologically without adding much physical load, and—maybe most importantly—it was inherently gamified. The girls actually wanted to do it.

Do we still use VR? Nope. Over time, the logistics of managing the headsets, space and training time became harder to justify, and other things earned that spot in the program.

But I don’t consider that a failed experiment. Coaching would get pretty boring if I only tried things I already knew would work. Some ideas become staples. Some evolve into something else. Some disappear completely. You still learn something from trying them.

That’s a big part of the No Zombies philosophy: stay curious enough to ask, “What if this works?”

And if it might make athletes better while putting a smile on their faces, there’s a pretty good chance I’m going to try it.

For hundreds of the experiments that did earn a permanent place in my training, check out the No Zombies Library — link in bio. by @rettasaurus

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a month ago

I hope this helps you see your trash cans differently.
This obstacle course was designed by the great @florian.voelker I believe, back when he did such things. by @rettasaurus

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a month ago