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Ian Russi

⚽️ High Performance Coach @ Portland Timbers FC ⚡️ I Help Athletes Achieve Elite Performance

05/21/2025

People only see the decisions you made, not the choices you had.

05/19/2025

Here's a quick read that nearly every athlete can relate to.

Growth is non linear and the only thing you can do right now is focus on what you can control.

I hope this helps!

05/13/2025

New post! I offer some unique insights in this one and its probably my favorite one yet because I was able to briefly touch on a lot of different topics that are so important to performance and just life in general.

I hope you enjoy!

05/09/2025

New post is out!! I'm having a lot of fun writing each week and I'm stoked to give this extra piece to those of you who are paid!

I'm biased, but this is my best piece yet.

If you are a free subscriber, you can redeem 1 paid-only post for your account.

Hope you enjoy!

05/05/2025

It's Monday and I just dropped my next newsletter!

This week I spend some time detailing the benefits of spending more time barefoot and how I implement this strategy with my athletes.

Give it a read!

04/28/2025

Excited to share that my newsletter launched this morning!

To kick things off, I’m introducing The Blueprint Series, where I’ll be detailing my entire performance training philosophy.

Part 1 is now live — I cover How to Prepare for Training through what I call Pillar Prep, along with sample exercises to give you a look at how I structure my programming.

Later this week, I’ll also be releasing a full Pillar Prep routine — the same one my athletes used this week to prepare for the demands of training at a professional level.

Check the link in my bio to read Part 1, and stay tuned for more!

Cheers.

04/23/2025

It's been a long time coming and I'm happy to finally take this next step with the launch of my newsletter focused on Long Term Athletic Development.

This industry is noisy and the youth landscape, in my opinion, has wasted peoples time and money.

I've been so blessed to work with such a forward looking team at PTFC and am excited to see our continued growth as a medical and performance department.

But as I look around, I have seen and continue to see a massive gap between what we do at the professional level and what is done at the youth level.

Honestly, there are a lot of pro clubs that don't even do it well...

But it doesn't have to be this way, and I intend to move the needle.

Give it a read! Subscribe if you like! Link in Bio.

I welcome all feedback and if you want a specific topic, let me know!

Cheers

04/12/2025

4 exercises to improve crossover mechanics:

1. Base Position Shift - This is a simple exercise to teach athletes what it feels like to load the outside seam of their foot and leg when they push off the inside leg.

2. Crossover to Base - Builds on the previous loading strategy and teaches the athlete how to dissociate their lower & upper body while pushing off the inside leg.

3. Crossover Run to Decel - Here you are putting it all together at speed for a crossover run. This is incredibly beneficial on the pitch if you want to be able to put yourself in an advantageous position to change direction without over committing and build on your decel mechanics.

4. Crossover Run to Decel + Accel - Same as before build incorporating a COD.

Today I spent a lot of time with both PTFC and my small group training in the AM exposing athletes to crossover mechanics, positions & patterns.

Each week I try to expose all my athletes to each movement skill once, which is dependent on the training day, to prepare them for the demands of the session.

This movement skill work is also extremely important as it develops holistic movement competency and acts as the foundation for the athlete to express themselves at speed on the field.

Technique governs everything in regards to health & performance. Period.

And if you can improve this factor in conjunction with your ability to produce force & do it quickly.

This is speed.

And the best athletes will look smooth and fluid while doing so.

03/09/2025

On a mission, every day.

Simple as that.

03/02/2025

Why do we drill technique?

Your technique and quality of movement is really the central governor of everything you do.

It's what allows you to have the best possible foundation to express yourself on the field.

In short, movement matters and drilling movements allows you to feel patterns in many different ways.

It's also not just on field like you see in these videos.

But in the gym as you prep before training and after training when you're lifting.

You are drilling patterns.

I mention this a lot, but it's Simple to Complex.

Slow to Fast.

Controlled to Chaos.

This is a proper progression.

And each aspect of our training day with PTFC moves along this continuum.

It's this continuous exposure to different movements, patterns and environments at varying degrees of difficulty that helps to improve athleticism.

This is also why being a multi sport athlete is so powerful for developing athleticism.

But not everyone is interested in that, and that's fair.

But understand you will have to explore other modalities in order to develop.

And not everyone has a professional environment to support that either.

But I hope this helps.

Drill Videos:

1. Pop, Float Skip

2. A-Exchange x1 w/ Punch

3. Triple Exchange

4. A-Run

02/17/2025

Intent matters.

Just working for works sake doesn't do anything for you.

You have to have real purpose behind what you're doing otherwise the work doesn't matter in the end.

Everyone wants to jump high or sprint fast and do all these fancy exercises.

But these things are earned far more often than not.

As a practitioner you have to be patient and be process oriented.

Take a principles first approach from the start of a session to the end.

Any monkey can give you a "good" sweat. And sometimes that's all you need. But it won't take you where you really want to go.

Know your weaknesses and attack it relentlessly.

Find out where you need to go because if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there...

Think about that for a minute.

Now as an athlete you have to EARN the right on the climb up.

And as you mature you'll understand that consistent ex*****on of the basics will take you the farthest.

It really is that simple.

01/22/2025

Swipe & read below to understand the comparison between reps and why it's important.

Continuing achilles rehab during preseason for .

Let's start from first principles...

The biggest GENERAL difference between acceleration and upright sprinting is the vector of force production.

Acceleration - primarily horizontal force
Sprinting - vertical force

For upright sprinting you want to cue STRIKING FROM ABOVE or HAMMER DOWN for athletes to attack underneath their center of mass.

This minimizes braking forces that would slow you down.

For Reo, you can see two different reps. All showing how he strikes with his INJURED Achilles.

Video 1: Very smooth, striking under his center of mass. This is shown in picture two.

Video 2: You'll notice a subtle hitch in his stride. Striking in front of his center of mass shown in picture 4.

This heel strike is applying braking forces and can be viewed as a compensatory pattern with the brain trying to protect the injured side.

This is also a motor skill dysfunction.

How do we address it?

First it's important to quantify both the FORCE & VELOCITY components of his Achilles.

I know objectively that the velocity component is lacking slightly and this picture reinforces that.

Both intensive and extensive plyo's are beneficial here but nothing is better than sprinting itself when capable and done properly.

Thats where the hurdles come in.

They force the athlete to HAMMER DOWN to avoid hitting the front hurdle while simultaneously driving the opposite thigh to the sky to avoid hitting the back hurdle.

This takes a constraints based approach to motor skill acquisition and is something I touch on almost every week with our guys.

Not every rep is perfect, but recording yourself can go a long way in providing feedback.

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