The BPS Model and the Psychology of Training

Today’s podcast features coach and educator, Jamie Smith.  Jamie is the owner of Melbourne Strength Culture, a strength and performance-based gym in Australia.  Jamie worked at high-level S+C in Australia and the US prior to starting his coaching business with Strength Culture.  Now he is heavily involved in coach development and education for strength coaches. Jamie has a truly expansive viewpoint on how we consider training in light of more global concepts.  In performance training, we must look at human beings on a complete (holistic) level.  To do that, it’s helpful to look at prominent and long-established fields of human collaboration and research, medicine to be exact.  In medicine, the “biopsychosocial” model was conceptualized in 1977 and has been prominent, particularly in pain science. On today’s podcast, Jamie talks about both the biopsychosocial and top-down/bottom-up models and how to integrate them into a training model.  Without considering the importance of mindset and culture, as well as “bottom-up” (using intuition in the training process) coaching, athletes are not going to get the possible level of result or enjoyment of the journey.  As Jamie says on the show, building awareness in the athlete or client is one of the most important things you can do, and by defining the overarching structures of the BPS and top-down vs. bottom-up training, we can better understand how our program is actually landing with those we train. Today’s episode is brought to you by Lost Empire Herbs and Exogen wearable resistance gear. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for free (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 4:04 – Discussing the “beer mile” and “milk mile” competitions as track and field spin-offs 7:37 – The BPS, or “Bio Psycho Social” Model, and how it applies to training 13:28 – BPS-based ideas as to why two athletes can be on the same exact training program and get a completely different training outcome 17:42 – The philosophical concept of determinism, in light of the BPS model 23:28 – “Top-Down” vs. “Bottom-Up” methods in looking at training 39:52 – Looking at “Top-Down” vs. “Bottom-Up” concepts in training, relative to global concepts, such as investing 45:28 – Practical steps to integrating balance in Top-Down and Bottom-Up elements of a program 48:27 – Client autonomy in light of training constraints, BPS model, and buy-in 51:19 – A bottom-up approach to assigning training de-loads 1:02:15 – Skillfully assigning load ranges based on BPS and bottom-up concepts in training, and helping athletes feel “wins” in a program Jamie Smith Quotes “I think there are a lot of S&C coaches who have never really trained for events” “The biology (in the BPS model) is the physical nature of the human” “The psychological is your software, your thoughts, feelings, expectations… and ultimately those psychological things shape the lens that we see the world through” “Social is the environment in which we place the human” “Our thoughts, feelings, expectations, shape the way we enter processes; I truly believe the BPS model is the most encompassing model to view how we do things or look at outcomes in life” “When you understand the BPS model, you can’t remove the mental from the physical, or the culture; when you say something, how this is going to be perceived by an individual is influenced by everything they’ve done in their whole life” “A lot of people, became physically attached as a representation of what (rolling and smashing) would allow them to become; when a coach would come along and bash that idea, they are challenging a belief system” “The way in which we communicate matter, the history of a person matters, all of this stuff matters all at the one time…. We are living in a subjective world, with subjective people, trying to make everything objective in the physical world, we are missing a huge portion of what is important in this endeavour of training and life” “The philosophy of the bottom-up world is that we have to be cognizent of training on an individual level (Mike Tucherer)” “The top-down model is a constraint-based model…. We are constrained by these things that we can’t change too much” “There’s always this connection of top down, we are “stuck” and we have constraints we have to work within, and then training should be very bottoms up, we meet athletes where they are at, we collect data and see what works, and we go from there” “Some individuals respond really well to top-down strategies…. Other athletes are not like that, they are a bit more inquisitive, they like to tinker” “It is important to have top-down, we need to have a structure” “At its core, RPE training is the first step to building self-awareness, and if we build self awareness we can get better, more informed information from the athlete” “Actually getting a client to be included in program design strategy, when they are included they are more likely to have buy in because they are making some decisions” “If you go in with a purely bottom-up session, it can be hard to prepare, versus constraining a few things” “It’s innate within us that, when we start this process of training, that we cultivate self awareness” “Your goal as a coach is to build as much self-awareness in a client as possible… I think it is the most important variable, an awareness of yourself” “As you become more experienced as a coach, you can build those wins, into your training strategy” Show Notes BPS Diagram An Enactive Approach to Pain: Beyond the Bio-Psycho-Social Model https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-24807-001 About Jamie Smith Jamie Smith is the owner of Melbourne Strength Culture, a strength and performance-based gym in Australia.  Jamie worked at high-level S+C in Australia and the US prior to starting his coaching business with Strength Culture.  Now he is heavily involved in coach development and education for strength coaches looking to make strength coaching a career. You can follow Jamie through IG at @j.smith.culture