Just Fly Performance Podcast

Today’s podcast features Dr. John Cronin and Joe Dolcetti.  John Cronin is a sport scientist with a physical education and coaching background, who after getting his Ph.D, has spent most of the last 20 plus years at Auckland University of Technology.  He has published over 400 peer-reviewed papers on speed, power and strength, along with having the opportunity to train a variety of athletes and teams, ranging from youth development to world champion level. Joe Dolcetti has had a 35-year career in high performance sport coaching, science, and conditioning training across the globe.  As an inventor, he has developed, and launched Exogen®, the world’s most advanced wearable resistance.  All in all, Joe has worked with many of the world’s top sporting programs including the NBA, NFL, NHL, Major League Baseball, the English Premier League, UFC and many others. Sports performance training is making the shift from the classical “1RM” powerlifting mindset, into athletic speed development.  This is great, but there are still many holes to fill in the athletic equation.  We may obsess over bar velocities in the gym, but the gym is dominated by many force-oriented levers while sport is uses many speed-oriented levers (third class), such as limbs swinging in space.  At some point we must expand our training awareness beyond the what (basic force) into the where (placement), and in the process deepen our understanding on how the body produces high speed sport movement. On the show today, John and Joe get into their journey of high velocity resistance training for athletes (such as wearables including vests and ankle weights, and then sprint sleds).  We’ll talk about the differences between training “stance” phase of movement, and aerial elements, and how the latter is a missing piece of training the force-velocity curve.  Finally, we get into the development of the Exogen system of wearable resistance, and how it encapsulates principles of high speed and specific training adaptation. Today’s episode is brought to you by Lost Empire Herbs, and LILA Exogen Wearable Resistance Training 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: 3:25 – John and Joe’s journey in exploring various wearable and external resistance training methods and how it led them to where they are now in their view of wearable resistance 16:00 – John Cronin’s early research and findings using weighted vests in pursuit of improved athletic performance 20:00 – Effects of sprint sled training versus weighted vest training 23:52 – Philosophy of training “stance” versus training what is happening in the air in athletic movement, and the implications of stance-based vertical force not being the holy grail of sprinting and athletic movement 35:35 – Lever systems, angular velocity, and ankle weights 42:18 – The principles behind the Exogen wearable resistance gear, and how it trains the angular momentum aspect of loading to improve athleticism 1:04:33 – Final thoughts on training sport speed through a focus on wearable resistance and angular velocity training Dr. John Cronin and Joseph Dolcetti Quotes “That’s where we’ve gone the last 6-8 years, unpacking that limb loading” “Where you put load, in many ways, is more important than how much load you are putting” “The one thing I’m confused with is the parachute, I tried them and just thought these are better for jumping out of an airplane” “(Training with a weighted vest) the vertical ground reaction forces will stay pretty much the same) when you put that mass on, you don’t jump as high, the center of mass displacement is compromised, and the (vertical) effect stays pretty much the same” “The weighted vest gives absolutely nothing in terms of horizontal ...

Today’s podcast features coaches Dan Back and Tim Riley. Dan Back is the founder of Jump Science and is a coach at Xceleration sports performance in Austin, Texas where he trains both track and team sport athletes. Dan has been a guest on episodes 263 and 337 of the podcast, speaking on sprint and jump topics. Tim Riley is the Director of Sports Performance at Kollective in Austin, TX where he supervises all pro, collegiate, and youth athletic development.  Tim currently oversees and conducts strength and conditioning sessions for NFL, PLL & AVP athletes. In the quest for improved athletic qualities, we often look at things in isolation.  We look at the most powerful training means, right now, to help us to achieve better performance.  For the best results, however, we need to broaden our view of training, and understand the qualities at the bottom (early athletic development) and the top (maximal strength and force training) to maximize potential.  We need to understand all of the iterations of skill and strength that come before the sprint, jump, throw, agile moves, etc.  you see on the field, and how everything works together in the grand scheme of training. On today’s podcast, Dan and Tim speak on their own early athletic experiences, the critical “base level” abilities explosive athletes need for a better vertical jump (as well as general explosive movement), where and how maximal strength work fits into the long-term development equation, warmup and game-based concepts, assessments, and more. Today’s episode is brought to you by Lost Empire Herbs, and LILA Exogen Wearable Resistance Training 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 3:30 – Dan and Tim’s early sport and training experiences 12:30 – Dan’s take on track and field speed and abilities within the scope of team sport performance and two leg jumping 18:00 – The potential of mass-amounts of calf raises to have a negative impact on speed later in life 23:30 – Core general physical preparation methods in athletic performance, such as grappling, hurdling, racing, tag, etc. 27:30 – Discussion as per the pyramid of jumping and jump preparation 37:00 – How Tim and Dan view the warmup process, considering more of a traditional warmup versus more of a game-oriented warmup 51:30 – Dan and Tim’s assessment process for athletes, and looking at macro-type assessments (performance driven) vs. more micro-level assessments (joint based or more discrete movements) 1:04:15 – Thoughts on how strength training can transfer more easily, given an appropriate base of explosive movement training and skill Daniel Back and Tim Riley Quotes “I can see (the martial arts drills) in my daughter’s ability to fall and get back up (in other sports)” TR “When I first started getting obsessed with jumping, my standard workout was 2 sets of 100 calf raises 5 days per week, and looking at myself in my 20’s I was a great jumper, but I wondered why my maximal velocity was so bad, and I really wondered about some of the negative influence of all those calf raises as a teenager, vs. what if those are all sprinting contacts instead?” DB “I saw these kids at 4 and 5 years old, 6 and 7, and the bulk of their training is broad jumps for distance, bounding for distance, jumping from one mark, and landing on one foot, climbing up wall” TR “Jump in a way that’s fun and do it consistently for years… and that should come on top of a base of more variety; and that’s where running, agility, interacting with other people and the ground that should be in the movement variety skill” DB “The best athletes were already really explosive, fast, powerful, good movers before they touched a weight… or took weight training seriously” TR

Today’s podcast features Adarian Barr and Jenn Pilotti.  Adarian is a former college track coach, a multi-national movement consultant and educator.  Adarian has been a huge mentor to me when it comes to the integrated workings of the body in a variety of sport and movement skills and has had many appearances on this show.  Jenn Pilotti is a movement coach, author and educator who has been studying the principles of movement for over 2 decades.  Jenn’s movement disciplines include running, dance, soft acrobatics, and aerial arts. Jenn regularly lectures and teaches workshops for movement educators and curious movers. She co-authored "Let Me Introduce You”, along with Adarian Barr. Training the feet is a lot more than going barefoot a little more often.  In sport movement, and locomotion, we have collisions of the feet into the ground that need to be managed skillfully.  There is nuance to the “force production” into the ground.  Great athletes can manage collisions extremely well, in regards to the specific sport skills they are being called on.  They also have the tissue adaptation that matches the pressure they need to output within movement. In today’s podcast, Adarian and Jenn discuss their process when it comes to the operation of the feet in locomotion, and important distinctions that need to be made on account of points of pressure within the foot.  They chat on the differences between sprinting on account of collision management, as well as vibration, talk about the balance of sensory work and outputs in movement, and much more. Today’s episode is brought to you by Lost Empire Herbs, LILA Exogen, and the Elastic Essentials Level II Seminar, July 14-15 in Cincinnati, Ohio 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 4:38 – How Jenn and Adarian got connected and Jenn’s early learnings from Adarian 8:05 – How Adarian’s process on the foot impacted Jenn, and how she integrated it into her running 14:04 – Looking at learning from the “hard” and “soft” side of movement, and how sensing the body fits in 17:26 – The origins of where Adarian started with his sensory approach to movement 27:46 – Principles of inputs and outputs as they relate to athletic movement 34:25 – Usage of the lateral aspect of the arch of the foot 38:19 – Pressure management and barefoot sprinting on a track 43:19 – How athletes manage shorter or longer collisions in their sport movement 50:30 – How to explore pressure as it relates to movement 58:01 – How to optimize and integrate foot pressure in the gym Quotes from Adarian Barr and Jenn Pilotti “I focused on keeping the pinkie toe long, and reaching it a little away from the foot; and it created a very different impact away from the ground… and I had like a 3 mile chunk where my mile splits were within 8 seconds of each other; and I’m not working any harder” “A lot of people just do and they don’t sense, or they just sense and they don’t do… we need both” “The body awareness you gain from the softer side just makes doing so much better” “Whenever I was drinking out of a glass (instead of a plastic cup) my hand doesn’t get tired; that started taking me down this whole feeling, sensing, imagining road” “In early track, I didn’t feel it.  I might jump well, but I didn’t know why I jumped well.  When I left Colorado I was struggling, because I was only jumping 51 feet, I left Colorado I spent a year training myself.. the first track meet I went to, boom 53 feet.  What happened? Now, I can feel this. “You want to feel the impact as you run, take time to feel the impact so you can learn what to do with it.  If you never learn to feel it, how can you even think about doing something with it”

Neurology expert and personal trainer, Scott Robinson, discusses the power of self-affirmation and mental reinforcement in training. He explores visual training methods, warm-up techniques, working with the subconscious mind, and the placebo effect. Additionally, he shares insights on rehabbing injuries, improving visual motor skills, enhancing eye function, and understanding mental and emotional states in training.

Today’s guest is track coach Ryan Banta.  Ryan has over two decades of experience, is the author of the Sprinter’s Compendium, and is a MTCCCA Hall of Fame Coach. He is a frequently appearing podcast guest and writer on many popular track and field, and athletic performance platforms.  His teams have achieved substantial success, including winning the 2022 girls Class 4 Missouri State Championship. One of the beautiful things about working with human beings is that there are multiple ways to train athletes towards their highest physical potential.  Different coaches achieve success with different training parameters and exercise selections, mannerisms and personal styles.  At the same time, there are also some core philosophies to the entire process of training that are foundational to progression, and can make training more understandable.  Some of the over-arching principles that are helpful to study are those of core training cycle setup, training the “ends” vs. the “center”, and principles of progression and variety in a program.  By better understanding these core ideas, we can have a better idea of where we are starting, and where we are heading in a program. On today’s show, Ryan gets into the core philosophies and principles of the Critical Mass training program in track and field, which is a broad-spanning path of development from freshman to senior that incorporates a span of abilities ranging from hurdles to the 400m.  Ryan then gets into his speed training philosophy, taking a “centrist” path to speed, and how that differs from going “ends to middle”, or taking a block-based approach to a training season.  Ryan goes extensively into concepts around his 14-day speed training cycle, how he adds variety into his program, how he utilizes resisted sprinting, and much more. Today’s episode is brought to you by Lost Empire Herbs, Strength Coach Pro, and the Elastic Essentials Online Course. 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. Find out more about the the online course, Elastic Essentials, by heading to justflysports.thinkific.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 4:35 – How Ryan’s recent track seasons have been coming along, and some of the recent successes of his track and field group 14:40 – The core components of Ryan’s speed training blocks and cycles, particularly his 14-day training cycle 24:18 – How Ryan includes the hurdles early on for his freshmen athletes, to help set up their skills throughout their high school career 42:15 – Ryan’s take on a balanced an athletic approach to 400m training, and his approach as they progress through high school 46:29 – Philosophy of going “ends to middle” vs. being more of a centrist in training 54:38 – How to avoid staleness over time while using a “centrist” system that is regularly training all main athletic qualities, and how to use constraints and novelty to improve one’s sprinting technique 1:03:50 – Ryan’s take on Tony Wells training system 1:12:16 – Ryan’s take on sled training and resisted sprinting Ryan Banta Quotes “I never build my sprint program around 7 days, we need to go 14 days” “Throughout the program, I believe in resting the system, but not necessarily resting the athlete” “I like to start in the middle, so I am going to start in the 200-400m area in my training, and then play with systems below that (100-200 focused days), and above that (more 400-800m days)” “Monday we might do max velocity and acceleration, Thursday of week do I am going to have something like looks like that again, but in the meantime there are going to be other sessions where those qualities get ticked off of the box” “You are either race modeling or competing every Saturday; competitions are your best practice” “I think that hurdles,

Today’s guest is athletic performance coach and consultant, Sam Portland. Sam has had a lengthy career in professional sport, and is the creator of “Speed Gate Golf” and the Sports Speed System.  Sam provides mentorship and education to coaches, athletes and teams looking to further progress their abilities.  His combination of skills ranges from physical coaching, to sport coaching, athlete psychology and beyond. With the impending AI and technological revolution, we must ask ourselves questions regarding the nature of coaching, training and progression in athletics.  On one hand, we have numerical outputs and data points relative to an athlete’s abilities, workloads, and suggested training routes, and on the other we have the social-emotional and intuitive elements that are much more human by nature.  In a sense, what is the most human about coaching itself is the “conversation of training” that happens on multiple levels within any training session. For today’s podcast, we cover the types of intensity and mentality that go into playing various sports (such as Rugby vs. American Football), Sam’s take on sport training technology, such as force-velocity profiling, an athletes “speed age” and how athletes progress through each level, and finally, we’ll get into the 5 types of player archetypes that range from bodybuilder, to sprinter, and how coaches can identify and optimize training for each unique athlete they train.  This is a show that highlights how having experience and skin in the game, not only training, but also playing the game Today’s episode is brought to you by LILA Exogen Wearable Resistance, Lost Empire Herbs and Strength Coach Pro. 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 3:29 – Sam’s experience working with, and playing American Football in Europe 8:00 – The types of intensity that is present in different types of sports, such as continuous sports (rugby, soccer) vs. interval sports (American football) 18:12 – Sam’s thoughts on Force Velocity profiling and technology in speed and game-speed training 30:41 – What Sam values in a speed and game-speed training program as opposed to a more data-oriented, mechanistic approach to speed 37:15 – Thoughts on heavy sled training and heavy resisted training in general 44:06 – Sam’s take on “Speed Age” in athletes, and how he looks at speed training progressions over time 59:13 – The importance of complexity and psychology in the process of coaching, and the conversation that happens between coach and athlete 1:06:50 – The 5 archetypes of athletes Sam categorizes and considers through the sport and physical preparation process 1:18:18 – Approaching the “games player” archetype in particular from a physical preparation perspective Sam Portland Quotes “With American football, one of the toughest things was that the play wasn’t building in front of me (like Rugby), the play was building behind me” “How do people become successful coaches? It is intuition, and it is getting reps on the field” “Nothing’s changed in the last 30 years, it’s the experience of the coach that creates the change, and we should do that by playing, 100%” “In part, the strength and conditioning problem is that everyone wants to develop speed, but they start in the gym” “I got more guys that run over 21 miles per hour, just by doing long accelerations, and specialized developmental exercises that I stole from Verkhoshansky” “I believe we are in the tech age… you remember when the first computer came out, we are literally there” “Movement is a conversation… everyone watches a wave break, but they don’t watch the magic that happens when it builds” “I had an athlete who could squat 250 kilos, and that was great,

Today’s guest is Jeremy Frisch.  Jeremy is the founder and performance director of Achieve Performance Training in Clinton, Mass.  He has been a multi-time guest on the show on the topics of youth and long-term physical development, game-play, and the integration of all these things into a greater training philosophy.  Jeremy is one of my biggest influences in how I see and connect the child to scholastic to adult continuum of sport development and performance. As much as coaching is prescriptive on the level of exercises and progressions, it is even more intuitive in nature.  So often we seek the exact exercises, drills, and cues that will help athletes to achieve more specific strength or a better technique.  These are helpful in key situations for athletes, but we must also build and understand a bigger picture (by coaching in many different sport situations and developmental stages), which helps us break into more expansive ways of seeing the picture of athleticism. On today’s show, Jeremy gets into how his work from the spectrum of youth training, up to adult fitness has improved his general ability to coach and implement creative solutions for athletes.  He’ll cover important developmental steps in early childhood that lay a foundation for improved abilities later on, and then get into games, field size and game speed elements of sport.  Finally, we’ll finish off the show with a chat on concepts of creative and engaging training, as well as a take on how the traditional strength and conditioning type mentality may serve some athletes well, where others may find more confidence in their game and sport skill abilities. Today’s episode is brought to you by LILA Exogen Wearable Resistance, Lost Empire Herbs and Strength Coach Pro. 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 5:33 – How Jeremy runs his adult fitness classes in comparison to his youth and scholastic training sessions – How Jeremy views game-speed, in young athletes, and as they move through maturity 28:11 – How a child’s strategy and disposition based on formative years leads to the type of athlete they become later on (i.e. offensive, defensive, hustle/grinder type) 37:42 – How to manipulate field sizes and playing spaces in sport development 47:44 – Using creativity to make training more engaging for the athlete, and how to keep the game-like nature of movement in training 53:22 – Jeremy’s thoughts on the traditional strength and conditioning mentality working better for some athletes vs. others 1:05:37 – Aerial ability and training, and how it relates to general athleticism Jeremy Frisch Quotes “We replaced box jumps for adults, with step-up jumps” “That’s what I tell younger coaches who walk through our doors, you might not love it, but realize that the group you are working with is going to make you a better coach down the line” “When a baby is born, you have an opportunity to put a baby in an environment to be a competent mover… and that’s floor time, belly time” “The floor is the child’s neurological workshop… when you put the baby on the floor, or in a playpen and you just leave them alone, they are going to figure out how to lift their head, push off the ground, reach and move” “The great thing about a crash mat is that it (gives safety) so now kids are going to try a million different ways to land” “If you set up those early years in life for them to become a competent mover, then you have a great foundation to build on later on” “Let’s say you get some kids and put them in basketball, and they are OK, but you put them in soccer in that wide open space, they see the field and understand soccer more than they do in a closed space”

Today’s guest is Cody Bidlow.  Cody is currently the head track & field coach at Arcadia High School in Phoenix, AZ, and a coach at EliteU working with NFL combine prep athletes. Cody additionally owns SprintingWorkouts.com and the ATHLETE.X brand, where he runs educational content on speed and power training to a large audience.  He was an all-conference sprinter at Grand Canyon University, and continues to train and sprint competitively. I’ve had a lot of sprint and speed training shows as part of this podcast series.  Speed training is an important aspect of both track and field and team sport.  Additionally, the principles of training speed, pushing a human being to the limit of a skill they have been using their whole life, requires an integrative and thorough process, the principles of which can carry over to any athletic pursuit. For today’s show, Cody shares insights on motor learning concepts in sprinting, the consequence of overemphasizing sprint motions or strength training, the role of longer, more metabolic sprinting on total speed development, ideas on “impulse” strength in the gym, and much more. Today’s episode is brought to you by LILA Exogen Wearable Resistance, Lost Empire Herbs and Strength Coach Pro. 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 3:37 – Cody’s athletic journey and how it has impacted him as a coach 9:36 – Questions Cody has asked in his own training journey that have helped him as a coach 16:47 – The type of sprinter that Cody is, and his learning about his own training response 24:41 – Why “over-projecting” in sprint acceleration can be a problem, and how that wasn’t the most successful strategy for Cody 28:09 – Experimenting at the “poles” or extremes of a sport skill, in order to find a better middle point 32:24 – Rationale and context of various sprint drills and exercises, and how to connect technical movements with a higher intensity sprint 36:03 – Using longer sprints, and “more work” in the 15-40 second bracket of training to help one’s overall speed and power abilities 47:33 – Principles on the maximal amount of longer running that Cody would put in a program 51:07 – How the mental and emotional elements of competition can enable better performance in longer sprints 59:59 – The “finisher” mentality in speed and power training and the complimentary impact of a metabolic element in a program 1:06:27 – A discussion on general and specific elements in the weight room for sprinting speed 1:15:41 – Over-pushing in sprinting, in light of the principle of “impulse” 1:17:19 – Cody’s take on the “push” type cue Cody Bidlow Quotes “Something led to that (sprint) position, that might have been a timing issue, that might have been a posture issue” “For me, if I do a bunch of deep squatting, I get super slow, for some, it might make them faster” “I’ve leaned in more to trusting intuition, and not outsourcing to other people as to the right way to do it… you have to trust in your own ability, not just rely on a famous coach that said what to do” “In learning to become better at speed endurance I’ve had to learn things like, not forcing stride frequency but letting stride frequency occur, locking in my posture” “In acceleration, one thing that disrupted me for a long period of time, was purely focusing on projection, and the big shapes idea” “By finding (movement) extremes, it opens up your abilities and gets you out of stereotyped movements, and that’s when progress stalls” “You aren’t doing a drill because it’s going to make you faster, you do a drill to work on one small feeling, and then we take that (feeling) into the sprint” “I think that there’s a skill development aspect of longer runs,

Today’s guest is 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 operates the Jochum Strength Insider which is an online training platform for people trying to feel, look, and move better.  Austin has a diverse athletic background, from being an All-American lineman and MIAC indoor weight throw champion, to regularly pushing his movement capabilities to new levels in arenas such as rock climbing, dunking and slow-pitch softball leagues. An interesting thing about the “athletic performance” field is that traditionally, it doesn’t work on things that are highly “athletic”, as strength training protocols can be some of the more controlled elements in the entirety of an athlete’s training regime.  This control and scalable nature is often reflected in the way that rudimentary plyometric, speed and agility protocols are carried out at scale, as per the same nature as a controlled and measurable strength regiment.  Having a controlled strength stimulus for an advanced athlete who is already a master of their sport skill is a helpful tool for managing tissue strength and balance, but for developing athletes going into “sports performance” programs, the ability to improve one’s skill building ability in a meaningful, athletic, problem-solving and creative manner is often lacking. In today’s podcast, Austin goes into the breakdown of finding low-hanging fruits of athletic performance in athletes and the philosophy of creating “skill-building addicts”.  We get into self-learning concepts, over-coaching, and then the nuts and bolts of his weekly flow of movement and game-speed building methods.  We also finish with a lightning round that covers a variety of topics and ideas Austin is working on right now in the training space. Today’s episode is brought to you by Strength Coach Pro and Lost Empire Herbs 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: 2:53 – The processes by which Austin shifted his typical, controlled warmup process, into a more dynamic training experience 7:32 – How Austin doing athletic things himself has had a strong impact on his coaching 11:13 – How Austin assesses an athlete from a global perspective, as soon as they walk in the door of his training facility, and how he challenges athletes who can’t handle losing, or haven’t won much in their sport experience 24:31 – The role of confidence gained from the gym, vs. having confidence in one’s sport abilities 31:48 – How Austin looks at how much time he would spend on gym strength vs. play based skills vs. perception work for athletes, based on need 41:15 – How athletes perceive difficult and challenging situations in their environment, and how to break athletes out of their typical athletic, problem-solving world-view 50:23 – Cues, coaching and creating a training environment that helps athletes to self-learn 1:02:03 – Austin’s weekly training setup, including games, speed and strength work 1:09:17 – Austin’s 5 greatest tools in developing movement and agility 1:13:34 – The training topic that interests Austin the most right now 1:17:14 – What “fast” means to Austin 1:18:06 – What Austin thinks about the term “arm care” 1:19:26 – The gnarliest isometric hold Austin is doing right now Austin Jochum Quotes “What makes them athletes is destroying movement challenges” “The worst athletes in the room could A-Skip, and the best athletes in the room could A-Skip” “If it looks pretty, it’s for you, it’s not for them” “I’ll put a guy who is easily triggered by losing, on a team that he knows he is going to lose. The goal is to level the athlete up and challenge them… the athlete who has onl...

Today’s podcast is a Q&A episode with Joel Smith.  Joel is the founder of Just Fly Sports and is a sports performance/track coach in Cincinnati, Ohio.  He hosts the Just Fly Performance Podcast, has authored several books on athletic performance, and in 2021, released the integrative training course, “Elastic Essentials”. Questions for this podcast revolved around high velocity and oscillating exercise concepts, acceleration and sprint development, training arrangement, and much more. Today’s episode is brought to you by Strength Coach Pro, Lost Empire Herbs, and the Elastic Essentials Online Course. 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 Find out more about the the online course, Elastic Essentials, by heading to justflysports.thinkific.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Topics: 3:47 – CNS “firing rate” and trainability. 14:18 – What differences between tension release OC ISO and rhythmic ISO, and when to use one vs. the other? 20:27 – What phase of training is ideal for using overcoming isometrics? 25:47 – Can a reduction in bodyweight allow for someone to be more elastic? 28:02 – Thoughts on non-linear periodization for max sprint work. 33:23 – To what age can one sustain high level explosive athleticism, assuming one stays active? 40:45 – It is really necessary to be fully recovered for every jump training session, or is fatigue needed to induce adaptations? 53:43 – Thoughts on internal and external cues in teaching acceleration. 58:33 – Giving athletes variation from intensity in regards to MaxV work. 1:04:51 – Drills for delayed knee extension out of blocks, but with a focus on projecting the hips. 1:09:59 – 3 training books I think we should read that are often left out of typical answers. 1:15:46 – Take on mental prep/race execution for track athletes. About Joel Smith Joel Smith is the founder of Just Fly Sports and is a sports performance/track coach in Cincinnati, Ohio.  Joel hosts the Just Fly Performance Podcast, has authored several books on athletic performance, and in 2021, released the integrative training course, “Elastic Essentials”.  He currently trains clients in the in-person and online space. Joel was formerly a strength coach for 8 years at UC Berkeley, working with the Swim teams and professional swimmers, as well as tennis, water polo, and track and field.  A track coach of 15 years, Joel coached for the Diablo Valley Track and Field Club for 7 years, and also has 6 years of experience coaching sprints, jumps, hurdles, pole vault and multi-events on the collegiate level, working at Wilmington College, and the University of Wisconsin, LaCrosse, along with his current work with master’s, high school and collegiate individuals. Joel has had the honor of working with a number of elite athletes, but also takes great joy in helping amateur athletes and individuals reach their training goals through an integrative training approach with a heavy emphasis on biomechanics, motor learning, mental preparation, and physiological adaptation.  His mission through Just Fly Sports is: “Empowering the Evolution of Sport and Human Movement”.  As a former NAIA All-American track athlete, Joel enjoys all aspects of human movement and performance, from rock climbing, to track events and weightlifting, to throwing the frisbee with his young children and playing in nature.