Richard Graves (00:01.166)
Well, Matt, welcome back to the Science for Sport podcast. It's been a while. I was going through our archives and I think October 2023, so nearly three years ago, was the last time we heard from you on this platform. So welcome along.

Matthew Ibrahim (00:14.013)
Well Richard, thank you for having me and I I appreciate that. You're right. It it's been quite some time and like you and I were alluding to before the before we hit the play button, a lot has happened in those coming up on roughly three years now.

Richard Graves (00:26.178)
You've certainly been busy. Before we get down to all of that and give our listeners your background and history, I know you're based out there in Massachusetts at the moment, your Moldan Catholic College about 10 minutes outside of Boston. We are just removed from the end of the World Cup. You guys had a visit from the Tartan Army. Tell us firsthand what it was like.

Matthew Ibrahim (00:49.203)
Yeah, the a lot of different people were in town in Boston at the bars, at the restaurants, and it brought a lot of excitement to the area for the World Cup and you know, it was great. You know, I'm sure, you know, bars g got got rid of all their their, you know, alcohol and whatnot. And so it w it was good. It was nice to have soccer here in the States, you know, or football, right? And so for me that's the sport I played. That's the sport I captain of in high school, favorite sport of all time, Lionel Messi. Too bad they didn't win, but you know, that's the sport where you want to see

United States foster more of that development. And they did they did a solid job. but it was great to have all those different countries and representatives i you know, in the US. It was awesome.

Richard Graves (01:28.838)
And for the Tartan Army members, athletes of a different kind, Okay, for our regular listeners who perhaps aren't so familiar with your story, just tell us a little bit about yourself and the journey that's led you to Moldan Catholic College.

Matthew Ibrahim (01:31.987)
Of a very different kind.

Matthew Ibrahim (01:45.447)
Yeah, I think I think the simplest way to go about it, Richard, is, you know, I struggled mightily as a high school student, as a college student. You know, didn't do well. Took six years to finish my un my undergraduate or my bachelor's degree. Yeah, flunked out academic probation the whole bit. And then I think I took it I took school and academics more seriously than ever. Got some other degrees along the way, fortunate enough to get my doctorate, some other certificates, et cetera, et cetera.

And then now I'm here back at the so it's so it's Malden Catholic, right? And so it used to be high school only, where it was grades nine through twelve. over the past probably seven to eight years, they also added a girls division. So it was boys only for many, many years. Then they added the girls division, grades nine through twelve high school. And then last September, I literally started last August. Last September we we brought in grades seven and eight boys and girls as well.

And so we like to look at ourselves as a college prep grade seven through twelve school. So it's a college prep school. but technically speaking, it's what you would refer to here in the states as middle school and high school. And so but yeah, it's been great, it's been wonderful. So now I'm back at that level where I struggled so mightily. So although my background is strength and conditioning, you know, I step into a new role as of last Monday as assistant athletic director health, performance and wellness, technically speaking.

I look at myself as I'm mentoring and impressing upon the youth on how to build better skills, character, behaviors, if you will, in the realm of health performance and wellness.

Richard Graves (03:24.844)
Yeah, and I was reading a little bit about this new position that you stepped into just a week or so ago. And it said that it was part of a strategic initiative aimed at a complete revamp of the athletics department at Molde and Catholic, tying in academia and guided by sports science insights, along with data analytics. So from your perspective, what does this entail and how do you fit into it?

Matthew Ibrahim (03:52.221)
Yeah, so I'm fortunate enough to work for a great principal, Principal Jeff Smith, who saw the vision from day one, new athletic director Riley Christie, and you know, great staff at administration coaches, jet people who work in athletics. I think the big thing that the school is trying to do from an initiative standpoint is strategically, is how do we continue to build out academics with h horizontal and vertical alignment classroom-wise, as well as how do we blend that in.

with what we're doing in the weight room, with your typical strength conditioning as well as physical education or PE classes, we call them human performance and wellness here, because we wanna make it integrated. And so what we came up with is the Lancer Rise model. So R being resilience, I being integration, S being science, E being education. If what we're doing in the classroom andor the weight room does not connect to one of the R I S E or Rise components, then we're not putting it in. In other words, everything has to be integrated. So for example, today's a great

Great example. I had a meeting with administration. I had a meeting with people on the academic side, I had a meeting with people on the athletic side, and so the nature of my role, I view it as the Maven, the connector of all departments, where we can help each student as well as each student athlete champion their health performance and wellness. We want to make sure that they feel confident, they've mastered some of those skills from a mental skill standpoint.

From a physical development standpoint, the weight room, they want to learn we want to teach them and educate them. Nutrition habits, sleep habits, recovery habits, you know, stretching, different ways to you know get in touch with the mind, the mind-body, right? And so, like we have some wellness classes, some yoga, there's some stretching, there's mobility, there's meditation type skills, but how do we make sure that we're really

Putting our best foot forward for the student athletes so they feel comfortable and feel confident. And so we're trying to increase the athletic prowess while making sure there's a level of inclusivity for all. So it's not an easy thing to do. You know, started last Monday and we're building a lot of different things out. So with the data piece, so admittedly, I did a PhD. It took me an extra year because a lot of life stuff happened, but got it done in five years. And so I was always intrigued by the data.

Matthew Ibrahim (06:09.34)
But I initially thought, okay, well, if I don't know how to apply it, I'm not gonna dive in. Well, I'm sure as you know, anyone who's taken a PhD or a doctorate, like you have to understand how to disseminate the research and make it digestible and chewable for someone. So and have context. And so when I was at the college level as a professor, a little bit different, right? I'm working grade seven through twelve. Research is not necessarily seen as the highlight of their day. How do we make it fun and actionable? And also

Richard Graves (06:24.46)
have context.

Matthew Ibrahim (06:38.834)
You know, you look at a lot of some of the great sports scientists in in our profession, and you know, they constantly talk about, well, why you're doing what you're doing and so what about the information. And so for me, it's like, okay, well, we have all these different objective performance metrics like jumping, sprinting, s squatting, lifting, etc. Then you have these subjective, maybe wellness questions, maybe sleep questions, maybe rate of perceived exertion questions. All of this is cool.

But which ones are the most applicable and why? If I cannot define that, then I can't put it into play. So for example, you know, I've called about 15, I've had about 15 different phone calls over the past month as I step into this new role with people who sit in a same role, assistant or associate AD of health, performance, wellness, et cetera, at the Division One, Two, and Three College level, at the pro level. Hey, like, what are questions that you're asking? How do I ask better questions? How do I take what you're doing?

And implement it into our model. So a good example is John Wagel at the University of Notre Dame. Fantastic in this role at at the collegiate level, I mean at at a high high performance model level, is they're doing a lot of sleep research and sleep questions, and how do I implement something like that here, but will be respectful of some of the different protocols like FERPA, right? Family education, something, something. I forgot the whole acronym, like we need to be mindful of not just HIPAA, but FERPA as well and compliance and

you know, privacy and so I'm trying to navigate what's most important, get approval on it, of course, right? Principal and AD. Those are why I report dual. So I report the principal as well as the AD in my role and figuring out the best practice of employing it with our our grade seven through twelve students. So it's been fun, but when it comes to the data piece, it is extremely important. But it's also important to make that information

bite size, whether it's a sport coach, whether it's a parent, whether it's a student, whether it's an administration. If I don't give them something that they can understand quickly and in their format, whether they want it written, whether you want it on Power BI like a dashboard or a visual, something simple, then it's not gonna be it's gonna be all for naught. So that's the tough fun part of my job.

Richard Graves (08:46.554)
Well, you said there in midst of your answer, it's about asking the right questions. And there's one question that immediately leapt out at me when I was reading the job description that you've taken on. said, areas of focus, objective performance data, subjective wellness and readiness, and criteria-based return to performance. Across the industry, everybody talks about return to play. Is there a difference here? And if so, what is it? Why return to

performance.

Matthew Ibrahim (09:16.87)
Yeah, so I think i the the way to look at r RTP or r return to play, which we've all seen in the research for many years, is are we getting the athlete back to their, you know, normal playing status? Are we getting them better than that? Are we getting them to a position where they're just available to play the sport, but they're not psychologically confident to cut turn, change direction, so on and so forth, making like ACL return, right?

So you look at a lot of the professionals highly esteemed in the sports rehab, sports medicine world, and they talk a lot about this on social media, a lot about this in the research and the development of that context of the difference between return to play and return to performance. So what we're trying to do is look at all of the frameworks that are out there in current evidence-based practice. You know, frameworks for return to performance, what we're looking at, and then certain criteria or criteria on to based on what we're doing.

We're trying to work with our athletic trainers from the sports medicine staff. Okay, how are we building out with the technology that we have, hawkenynamics force plates, hawkenamics true strength for the isometric dynamometer for like isometric strength testing? We have some sprinting gates, we're looking at some VBT. How are we tying all of this in, especially as it pertains to someone returning from a certain type of injury or setback? It might be a hamstring strain, like a grade one or two.

Probably grade one because anything to or above, you're looking at something a little bit more serious. you know, if it's an ACL return to play, if it's a low back, if it's an ankle, a calf, an Achilles, if it's a groin, a hip flexor, shoulder, so on, so forth. We're trying to put together based on the evidence, what are our frameworks for quick, effective criteria based return to performance? So it's not it's incomplete at this moment. We're having ongoing meetings this summer into the fall. Okay, what are the common soft tissue at least issues we're looking at? Think of like return to p return.

To playing a sport from having the summer off. Think of like, okay, you have spikes in load, which is one of the easiest determinants of potential risk for injury. You have kids, I mean, I'm literally listening to the basketball the basketball dribble and the and the music going on in the other room. They're just shooting some hoops in the summer, playing some basketball, whatever, getting after with their friends. They may not be seriously practicing basketball, seriously developing skills right now. They might not be seriously training in the weight room, you know, speed, strength, power, etc.

Matthew Ibrahim (11:34.343)
But come mid-October when they get back into the basketball fluidity of things, volume's gonna spike, right? Frequency, intensity is gonna spike. Are they prepared for all those stressors and the rigors of the sport and the demands? And so the questions we ask ourselves is, okay, well, what are they gonna be doing a lot of? Jump landing tasks, right? Calf Achilles right away, it's basketball. Okay, how can we prepare them from a weight room standpoint to be protective and proactive versus being reactive? And also, what's important to test?

Is seated isometric, you know, soleus strength important? Is standing, you know, gastroc muscular endurance important? Like what is important to us? And also the most important thing is we have so we have about roughly between a thousand and thirty and a thousand and fifty total students in the both buildings that which you know connect basically via a 20-foot walk across the street. You know, with the law of attrition, maybe there's five or ten percent that decrease, but it's a it's a it's a moving number. So let's say we have a thousand.

How do we control the variables there? How do we make sure that we have enough time to do all that we want to do? We have to be really skinny. We have to make make sure, okay, what's the most important thing for, for example, a basketball player? Calf Achill calf and Achilles complex. We need to really target that. What are the one or two tests that we absolutely have to do and why? And maybe, just maybe, we can get s glean some other information from your typical counter movement jump that we do at least once, if not twice a week for every single kid. So we have some normative data to pull from and say, okay, well, Richard.

Is typically jumping, we'll just use inches. It's a simple metric to utilize. Okay, 17 inches on average for the past six weeks. All of a sudden, he's at

Richard Graves (13:11.294)
My days of jumping 17 inches on average are long behind me, let me tell you Matt.

Matthew Ibrahim (13:15.27)
Let's just pretend, right? And so all of a sudden after six weeks of 17 inch, which is your average height for jump, right? Let's say you come in on Monday and it's 13 inches. You maybe we sit as a staff and a coaching staff, like, hey, you know, Richard's a little bit lower than his normative data. What's going on? Is there something that we can talk to counseling about? Hey, is there anything going on when you meet with this student from a you know mental standpoint that maybe you're flagging, right? let's talk about nutrition in the classroom. Maybe the student it hasn't have the opportunity for the adequate

nutrition, right? Maybe the cafeteria, let's just educate them on some of those components. Hydration, sleep. Too much, you know, light late at night time with TikTok, Instagram, you know, so on, so forth. So our goal is to have this integrated overarching approach approach holistically. It's a lot of work, but that's the point, right? If it's important, you do the work to make sure they get the outcome. Because any sort of school where it's too you know it's tuition based, you know, this is not a scenario where, you know, it it's

It's you know low cost, like there's there's a certain cost allocated to that. So if you're thinking about service-based mindset, which I always think about because that that's my origin where I came from, you know, service-based strength edition training facilities, how are we serving the end user, the client, the student, this the student athlete, the parent of said student or student athlete? How do we know that they feel like they're getting the whole value with their dollar? For me, it's we have to turn over every stone in that process.

Richard Graves (14:44.13)
Well, I tell you what, I mean, my school days are long behind me, but I envy the opportunity that some of these students that you're working with have right now because it sounds like they're in the best possible environment to excel at whatever sport they decide to go on. They're certainly exciting times, modern Catholic, as they are on the Science for Sport platform. Because we said you've been busy recently, you've been integral in developing a new course. It's called Frontal Plane Fundamentals.

lower body training, starting simple terms first of all. What are we talking about when we say the frontal plane?

Matthew Ibrahim (15:20.082)
So I'm sitting at a desk right now, right? And if I look to the left of me, there's plenty of space, right? And let's say you were sitting on the other side of me looking at me, if you will. I wouldn't all of a sudden get up and lunge to my left and say, Hey Richard, you get that email I sent you. No one does that. People rarely move side to side. Think of like if you played high school sports, you probably know what the term lateral shuffle or sh side shuffling is. But as we get older, as we move

Up into our lives, whether it's you know college, after college, adult, etc. etc., we want to remain athletic. How do we remain athletic, strong, and powerful while moving side to side? That's technically what it's based on. So it's the fundamentals. I'm all about the basics. I think the journey is the reward, not the end result. And so, like, how do you perform side-to-side movements? What those typically refer to are a lateral squat. It literally means what it says: squatting laterally or to the side. Some people call it side squat.

That's where your feet are flat, they don't go anywhere. You sit your butt back, bend your left knee, right leg stay straight, down, up, so on, so forth. A lateral lunge or a side lunge is stand tall like a tree, literally create a dynamic or a distance, lunge out to the side, and then come back. Those are the two basic foundational movements in that course. And then our goal is to build off of that. One of the things that I think we don't appreciate enough, we're talking about return to performance and return to play earlier.

you know, hamstring strains. you know, athlete came back from a summer off playing soccer all of a sudden, they're you know doing two-a-day soccer practices. my hammy, you know, the mid the middle of my hammy is a little a little tight. I f I hurt a little something, maybe it's a grade one. Great. You would do some direct or isolated hamstring strengthening or loading exercises. Something, and I'm not here to argue this conversation. I think everything's great, like RDLs, one-leg RDLs.

Nordics basically eccentrically lengthen the hamstring under load, isometrically create tension. When when we're lengthened, you know, making sure we understand the anatomy of the hamstring, right? So knee flexion, hip extension, and combo movement. So just target all of that. But why don't we do the same thing when it comes to the groin or the muscles in between my thigh in between your thighs? You think of groin, think of the adductors. It literally is to adduct or bring in closer to the midline of the body. Those are pivotal, they're the neighbor of the hamstrings.

Matthew Ibrahim (17:39.76)
I don't think we give those muscles, tissues enough appreciation in a training program.

Richard Graves (17:45.039)
But you know what some student athletes will come to you and say, Matt. They will say, what benefit is it to me to work on training side to side? How does that make me run faster, jump higher? How does it ensure injury prevention? The sceptic will say, I don't see it. Argue that.

Matthew Ibrahim (17:47.718)
Yep.

Matthew Ibrahim (18:03.868)
Great question. So the beauty of, and I think I'm I'm very fortunate, I don't have many skills. the two skills that have is time management and being able to talk to anyone. And I don't have any of the skills, these are the ones that I I lean on the most. So what I try to do in my role is I give high fives and positive praise whenever I see the kids. Fist bump, what's up? How are you doing? Checking in with them. So right there and then it builds that basic or base level of trust. So now all of a sudden I see them in my class or I see them in the weight room. Again, positive.

You know, fist bump, how you doing checking in? Great job, awesome work, right? And I genuinely mean all those things, but I'm trying to build that relationship. Now we've built up a little trust, we've built that relationship, they know me, I know them. We always acknowledge other in the hallways, on the school campus, etc. etc. Now on the weight room. Those are the people who are gonna advocate for what I'm doing because they already they're I've already championed them, right? They they know I think they're awesome, and I genuinely do. So then I wanna make I want to make a connection, okay? Hey, you play hockey, Richard, right? that's awesome, great.

You're gonna be able skate, right? You don't skate like this. You stride at a 45, roughly, right? So you need your groin muscles to be strong and powerful to do those things. Because they're friends with your hamstrings and you know your hamstrings are strong. It's building that buy-in, having that rapport. I would say, like someone might sit in and argue, well, it's really easy to do with kids grade seven to twelve. I would argue it's not, because they are big, big skeptics. Because if

their friend who put something on TikTok or Instagram didn't swear by it, they really don't believe you. And so I'm I'm in the fortunate position that I am in front of the students all the time, whether it's the hallway, the classroom, the weight room, before school, during school, after school. You know, there there's that presence that I'm very fortunate to have with them. So it's a slow build over time. Now having had them for the past, well, going on a year, because it'll be it'll be a year in August, they know who I am, I know who they are, I know what their likes and dislikes are, I know ways to

Reach them, talk about their sport, talk about their likes outside of school. So I think you have to find a way to deliver the message where it will be heard on their end.

Richard Graves (20:07.126)
Okay, you've got the buy-in. We want to know more. If an athlete's listening right now, give us one simple exercise that can set them on the path to start the program with and they will see noticeable improvement in two, three weeks down the line.

Matthew Ibrahim (20:24.346)
Absolutely. So I think what you do is take a dumbbell, put it under your chin, nice and tight to your chest so it doesn't leave your shirt, and just feet nice and wide, feet flat, toes are forward, sink your hips back, bend your left knee, get to the bottom where you feel your right inner thigh muscles work, stand back up. Eight reps aside, three or four sets. I would do it maybe once a week, and I would say go relatively heavy, maybe

Richard Graves (20:43.17)
And you do that every day, would you?

once a week.

Matthew Ibrahim (20:50.012)
Start out at 60 to 70% of what you feel is really heavy. And then maybe after a couple weeks of doing that, maybe you move to 70 to 80% of what you feel is very heavy. After that, there's plenty more to dive into, but that's a good starting point.

Richard Graves (21:01.43)
Absolutely, we're all about good starting points. The course is called Frontal Plane Fundamentals Lower Body Training. It is on the Science for Sport platform right now. But your work, doesn't stop there because not only are you happy with starting a new role at Mold and Catholic, not only have you been invested in designing this new course, I hear you're authoring a new book as well, Strength-Based Health Performance and Wellness, which I believe is due to be published at the start of next year.

Matthew Ibrahim (21:29.318)
Yeah, so we're looking at so Brittany is our i is our editor. I'm co-authoring it with Rachel. Rachel will be tackling all of the anatomy chapters, she's exceptional at that. And then the go the goal of the book is to come out hopefully by mid to late 2027. I think I think it's all due by August twenty twenty seven. So you have probably have maybe two, maybe three month review editing process and then it pushes it back to us. And then who knows, maybe early twenty twenty eight, the final product is done.

Richard Graves (21:57.167)
And this is aimed at student athletes as well, is it?

Matthew Ibrahim (21:59.271)
That's the goal. So the unique thing about this, I had this thought and idea as moving into this new role, wanting to really highlight our Lancer Rise model, which we created as a high performance model. You look at something like or somewhere like Dartmouth College, right? Dartmouth Peak Performance DP2. You look at Stanford University, you look at Duke University, you look at, you know, all of these academies, IMG for example, right? What are they doing from a high performance standpoint where there's the mental, the social, the physical, all connected, right? And so for us,

It's hot my goal was how do I continue to portray and build up that model and maybe write about it in the process. Pitch the idea to HK or human kinetics as a potential second book, and they actually already had something built out. So talk about timing. I got very lucky. The goal with this one is interesting, Richard. It's it's meant to be handed to the middle school or high school student. So it's essentially the high s middle school or high school student's guidebook on how to tackle health, performance.

wellness with strength and conditioning being the nucleus, if you will. That it's everything everything that binds it all together. And so although it's guided for that reading level audience, which is gonna be really fun to write, to be honest with you, I've always wanted to my wife has always joked like, you know, I've always wanted to somehow educate the younger kids. I used to work at summer camps, gr you know, ages like, you know, four to twelve. And so for me it's i it's that fun part, but that's who it's gonna be written for.

Richard Graves (23:01.634)
The thing that binds it all together.

Matthew Ibrahim (23:25.68)
Right, middle school and high school students, there's gonna be some supplementally suppl supplemental or auxiliary components where if the instructor of a strength editioning program or a health and wellness or PE class wants it to use it, we can have some of that as well. But yeah, I actually our first couple of chapters are due middle of November, so it's another fun project.

Richard Graves (23:44.493)
Absolutely, and I know you've said there that it's aimed at student athletes, but in terms of parents, coaches, teachers, is this something that they can access as well? And intertwine it with whatever program these student athletes are on at the time.

Matthew Ibrahim (23:54.855)
Yes.

Matthew Ibrahim (24:00.369)
Yes, yeah, that that's the goal. So we we want to integrate everything. And so the student who maybe doesn't play a sport can pick it up and and and get benefits from it. The student athlete who wants to compete at a higher level can get it and get benefits for it. The parent of a student or student athlete can read it and have benefits for their children as well. And so we want this to be the the vernacular is gonna be very very at that level, right? That middle school, high school level. It's not gonna be over their heads.

you know, I was joking with Rachel who's doing all of our anatomy chapters. She's exceptional at that, has done many some other books with HK with an anatomy except biomechanics. She's gonna have to figure out ways to okay, how do I make this language digestible for that? I think it'll be fun. A lot of visuals, a lot of a lot of art, if you will, and graphics. training programs are going to be embedded into the book as well. So it's basically if you're ch if you're a middle school, high school kid, you walk into the weight room. What do I do? Where do I do it? How do I do it? What do I know what to do in here?

It's gonna be your guidebook for handbook for all of those components.

Richard Graves (24:58.828)
What would merit success out of this book then for you, be it a student athlete, coach, teacher, reads it, if they look at it, I don't know, 12 months from now, two years from now and say, yeah, I remember that book by Matthew Ibrahim. What would be the overriding message that you'd want to come out of it that sticks with them?

Matthew Ibrahim (25:19.058)
It's a great question and I think, you know, like I I think about that a lot. Like why am I writing a book? Why why do you want to write book? It's certainly not for money, I'll tell you that right now. I think there's a component where like I want to pay it forward to a field that's given me so much. So I w I I think the word legacy comes to mind. I would love to see a grade six through twelve or seven through twelve or some school two grades K through twelve adopt this book.

as their primary source for strength editioning slash physical education courses.

Richard Graves (25:52.706)
Well, we wish you very best of luck with it. At August 27, it's to be published.

Matthew Ibrahim (25:57.253)
It's due to be all of the chapters submitted for edit.

Richard Graves (26:00.786)
Okay, so we might have to wait just a little bit longer for that but certainly keep an eye out for that one. A reminder again of course, if this is a conversation that's grabbed your attention, go to the Science for Sport platform. That new course that Matt has helped put together is Frontal Plane Fundamentals, Lower Body Training and if like me they've been drawn in by what you've had to say in this discussion. Matt, where can we find you on social media?

Matthew Ibrahim (26:26.768)
Yeah, Instagram. So Instagram's the best place to find me. D R period, Matthew period, Ibrahim. So I B R A H I So that's where I'm most active. I'm certainly active on LinkedIn as well. those are the two that I I really toggle with the most. I have Twitter or X, but Instagram and LinkedIn, those are my spots.

Richard Graves (26:44.802)
Fantastic, we'll be across those. And we're approaching August now, summer wherever you are in the world. Are you taking any time out or is it just full steam ahead?

Matthew Ibrahim (26:53.67)
You know, some we get summer Fridays here at Malden Catholic off. So we have some trips, you know, as a family trip on the Cape. Every Friday is is my day with my daughter Juliana, who'll be two in September. So like the past two weekends, you know, we went to six different farms for animals, for vegetables, for produce. So I think right now just you know the the long weekends. But other than that, you know, when I'm here full throttle, I think there's a lot of work to do and I think that's what what drives me in

enjoying that journey in that process.

Richard Graves (27:25.026)
Well, listen, your passion bounces through the earpods that listeners have got on or through the screen if you're joining us on our YouTube channel, Science for Sport. Dr. Matthew Ibrahim, it's been an absolute pleasure and I hope to do this all again soon.

Matthew Ibrahim (27:40.764)
Thanks so much, Richard. I appreciate your time.