Coach’s Spotlight: Meet Jacob Martinez| S2:Ep23

In this FITLETE Radio Trainer Spotlight, meet Jacob Martinez, MA, CSCS, the lead performance coach for OrthoNebraska Athletic Performance and Adult Fitness in Omaha, Nebraska. Jacob works along a full continuum of care—surgery, physical therapy, then performance—helping youth athletes, college competitors, and adults (including joint-replacement patients) bridge the gap between rehab and real-world performance. He talks about how he collaborates with physical therapists, modifies movements instead of eliminating them, and focuses on what clients can do rather than what they can’t.​​

Off the floor, Jacob shares the story of his past life as a hip-hop artist and the chaotic show where an inebriated audience member unexpectedly turned into his unofficial hype man—an inside joke he and his wife still reference years later. In the episode, Jacob also dives into why active listening and trust-building matter more than “owning” people with research citations, how he shrinks client goals into winnable chunks, and why communication skills can be harder to train than programming. He wraps with a peek into the tech he actually uses—force plates, blaze pods, and why he’s intrigued by velocity-based tracking—as tools to support, not replace, coaching.​​

Guest highlights

* Lead performance coach at OrthoNebraska Athletic Performance and Adult Fitness, working with both athletes and general-population adults.​​

* Background as a multi-sport athlete and baseball player, now specializing in sports performance, knee and shoulder-related performance, and adult fitness.​​

* Experience hiring and onboarding coaches, giving him a front-row view of what actually matters when building a performance staff.​

Who Jacob coaches and what he does

Jacob breaks down how OrthoNebraska’s performance program fits into a hospital system that serves the Omaha metro, working closely with physical therapy to handle the “after PT” phase for both athletes and adults. He explains that his teams see youth athletes as young as 9–10 years old through college, plus adults ranging from joint-replacement patients to general-population folks who just want to get in shape.​​

How he coaches around pain, injury, and limitations

Working inside a continuum that runs from surgery to PT to performance, Jacob leans heavily on communication with physical therapists so he knows exactly what a recovering athlete is cleared to do. If something is off-limits, he pivots to movements and body parts that are safe, focusing on the goal of the movement rather than the specific exercise.​

* “I’m not married to an exercise. I’m only married to Krista Martinez.”​

* He emphasizes patterns (squat, hinge, push, pull) over exercises (back squat vs. split squat vs. landmine press) and uses variations like heel-elevated squats or unilateral work to find a trainable pattern that fits the person in front of him.​

* For adults with very limited options, he zeroes in on what they can do and layers in the tools that allow them to be successful and consistent.​

Tackling myths, social media noise, and “bro science”

When clients come in armed with TikTok tips, family advice, or half-true nutrition rules, Jacob’s first move is not to dunk on their sources. He builds trust and rapport, then uses active listening and open-ended questions to help clients unpack where their beliefs came from and how well those ideas are actually serving them.​

* “Nobody wants to meet someone for the first time and then hear, ‘That’s dumb. That’s not what the research says.’”​

* Rather than rushing to fix, he tries to guide people toward seeing why a misconception might not hold up—so that by the time he offers an alternative, they are already more open to it.​

* Once enough trust is built, clients are more likely to believe him over a random internet post without the constant back-and-forth debate.​

Helping clients juggle multiple goals

Jacob doesn’t see multiple goals as a problem by default—sometimes achieving one goal is exactly what creates momentum for another. But he notes that without structure, a long list of goals can quickly become discouraging if nothing ever gets checked off.​

He borrows the idea of “shrink the change” from the book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Dan and Chip Heath, using smaller stepping-stone goals that feel achievable right now. He also distinguishes between:​

* Outcome goals: things you want (e.g., hit a .300 batting average), which depend on many factors you cannot fully control.​

* Process goals: actions you can directly control (e.g., three 15-minute hitting sessions per week outside of practice) that stack the odds in favor of the outcome you want.​

* “Process goals are usually within your control; outcomes, not always.”​

* With multiple objectives, he clarifies the main desired outcome, then reverse-engineers process goals that make success more likely without overwhelming the client.​

What he looks for when hiring coaches

Because Jacob interviews, hires, and onboards staff at OrthoNebraska, he has a clear sense of what separates effective coaches from the rest. He resists the idea that there’s one golden certification everyone must have, and instead talks about balancing technical skill with communication and behavior-change chops.​

He looks for:

* Solid “X’s and O’s”: kinesiology, exercise physiology, and real programming ability.​

* Demonstrated interest in behavior change and active listening, which often are underemphasized in four-year strength-and-conditioning or exercise-science programs.​

* Communication skills and presence: the ability to command a room, hold attention (even with 7th–8th graders), and adjust coaching style to the athlete or client in front of them.​

He notes that great programmers who cannot connect with people will struggle, just like charismatic motivators who cannot design safe and effective training plans. In his view, certifications and technical knowledge can be taught more easily than genuine session leadership and charisma, so he tends to prioritize the latter when hiring.​

Where and how he uses technology

Jacob jokes that he feels like a bit of a boomer when it comes to adopting tech, but his team has chosen a few key tools that genuinely sharpen their coaching instead of distracting from it. At OrthoNebraska, they use:​

* Force plates instead of a manual Vertec, letting them measure jump performance, asymmetries, and power outputs in healthy athletes, then compare those numbers if the athlete later gets injured and returns through OrthoNebraska’s surgical and PT pipeline.​​

* Isometric mid-thigh pulls on the force plates to estimate strength and reduce the need for risky, time-consuming one-rep max testing in busy group settings.​

* BlazePods and similar reaction-based tech to create fun, competitive drills that also train reactivity and decision-making.​

Looking ahead, he’s interested in velocity-based training (VBT) trackers as a way to keep overzealous lifters honest about bar speed and intent. Having an objective number on the screen can back up coaching cues like “lighten the bar and move it fast,” tying the “trust the science” side of coaching into a format athletes respect.​

Three key takeaways for coaches

* Focus on movement, not specific exercises: patterns can stay the same even when the joints or equipment need to change.​

* Build trust before busting myths: active listening and rapport make your evidence-based advice more likely to stick.​

* Sharpen communication and behavior-change skills as much as your programming: they are often the true bottleneck in delivering great results.​

Connect with Jacob & FITLETE

* Learn more about OrthoNebraska’s Sports Performance and Adult Fitness offerings: JACOBS INSTAGRAM

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