Exploring the concept of mental toughness and growth

Today’s episode features strength and athletic movement coach Austin Jochum.  Austin is the owner of Jochum Strength where he works with athletes and “washed up movers” to become the best versions of themselves. He also hosts the Jochum Strength podcast, and was a former D3 All-American football player and a hammer thrower at the University of St.Thomas, where he is now the strength coach for the football team. In training athletes, amongst many other lessons, I’ve learned two big things in my 8 years as a full-time strength coach.  One is that the athlete experience supersedes the need for a traditional written training structure, and two is that better performances in the “big lifts” are often not an indicator for having better performance on the field of play.  To dissect these issues and achieve multi-lateral development with more potential transfer to sport, an approach that considers emotional and environmental factors in the training process is a must.  Athlete autonomy, decision making, emotional growth, and creativity are universal structures that can find transfer to other areas of life outside the weight room, including sport. I was a guest on Austin’s podcast a few months ago, and in talking to him, truly enjoyed his approach to holistic athletic development, and his digging into the total process to a much greater degree than simply building up lifts and taking athletes through canned mobility and stability progressions.  Austin is a young coach with a huge passion for finding transferable performance to athletes on all levels.  Through a variety of methods, he gives athletes the maximal opportunity to become the strongest version of themselves through creative methods that prioritize autonomy, emotional development, and decision making.  On today’s show, Austin covers the experiences he had as an athlete that has impacted his creative approach to coaching.  He goes in-depth on the emotional development of athletes, fostering autonomy, and how each session facilitates a maximal “aliveness” and intention, as it moves from creative/perceptive movement training, into the primary strength work, and then autonomy-driven auxiliary training. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage.   Timestamps and Main Points 7:05 Austin’s background as an athlete, how the weight-room directed mindset hurt his ability to fully express his athleticism, and how it has formed who he is as a coach 16:05 Mental toughness as specific to various outputs and game situations, and dealing with an athlete’s weak points 34:05 How Austin encourages problem-solving and athlete autonomy in his training sessions 42:05 Creating a training environment that allows for failure and exploration 51:10 Austin’s split between structured and creative training in his athlete sessions 56:10 How to approach auxiliary work at the end of a training session in a manner that keeps energy and intention up “This is how I look at it now, 'how can I expose athletes (to their weak points)' ” “As a strength coach, if I am not competing in a sport, or experiencing the same emotional stress, then I write this perfect program up of squats, bench, output-based.. they jump higher and sprint faster, so “I did a good job as a coach”, but can they process the emotional stuff?” “Is it output that matters, or is it sport that matters, and what you need to do in the situation?” “A lot of athletes come in these days and just want to be told what to do, but that’s not what happens, you have to make decisions” “Giving the athlete the opportunity to make the drill more realistic, the energy in the room went sky high.  The athlete knows that environment better than you” “When do we fail in training anymore?