Just Fly Performance Podcast

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, by far is one of the best things.  Our distance girls at the end of every one of their aerobic runs does hurdle mobility, our sprinters hurdlers and jumpers every Wednesday does hurdle mobility.  We teach them to bounce, they don’t just step over” “This is the point of the critical mass system, I want to make decathletes, I want my athletes to be good at everything” “I want to make sure I’m honoring the athletic experience by stimulating them like they are a heptathlete, like they are a decathlete” “Running 24x200’s is an abuse of a developmental athlete” “I have two days in a 14 day micro-cycle where we are going really really fast and then two competitions” “With short-to-long the psychology is that I don’t want to go run a 150 now, while my philosophy is lets rip the bandaid off on all of those things” “You flip flop the key performance indicator workouts the following week; I have a week that’s built around speed, a week that’s built around power, a week that’s built around endurance, and then a recovery week” “We’ll do a fly 10,20,30 with different variations of movement, for example we are going to do a run for 30 meters, and we are going to have you go with as long as stride as you can, then the next as high of frequency as you can” “We want to constantly require a kid to deal with something novel and new while sprinting” “We go from hills to a resisted sled, to vests, to a bullet belt, so we are constantly trying to go from basic skills to more advanced” “One of the best things about sleds is it teaches an athlete how to push” “(With sleds), I like to go heavy, medium, then light, we get potentiation and we are mindful of coordination.  Early on, hills might be the best because you can get a lot of people in it at once… from a pure management perspective” About Ryan Banta Ryan Banta is a coach with over two decades of experience and the author of the Sprinter’s Compendium. At the high school level, his girls track team has had 7 top-five finishes at the state championships, a team state title in 2022, 7 district championships, 6 district runner-up finishes, 7 conference team titles, 248 state semi-finalist (sectionals), 174 state qualifiers, 3 state records (3200, 4×800, and 100HH), 20 national ranked events, 163 All-state Medalists, 16 state champions, 21 runner-up performances, and 2 Gatorade athletes of the year. He has been elected Missouri Track and Cross Country Coaches Association (MTCCCA) president and served on the Missouri State High School Activities Association (MSHSAA) advisory board.  Ryan is a frequently appearing podcast guest and writer on many popular track and field, and athletic performance platforms.

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, but it didn’t translate.  Someone like this I’ll use a stable to unstable continuum.  The most unstable thing you can do in moving is over-speed maximal velocity.  On the other side is a slow, deliberate wall squat, acceleration type drill” “We increase instability and add velocity in order to nurture that conversation” “Big guys struggle to find knee flexion in early acceleration, because they are so big” “In my coaching, I’m never trying to acquire more information about what I’m doing, until I know what information I have can do” “People are very attracted to shiny things, not the simple, consistent things” “You’ve got 4 levels of speed age: Learning to sprint, training to sprint, sprinting to compete, and sprinting to win” “We’ve got physical capacities, we’ve got technical capacities and cognitive capacities” “If we can’t find rhythm, timing coordination at sub-max velocities, how the hell are you going to find it when putting your foot to the floor” “So if slow, heavy sled walks are working, do them until they stop working” “I had a prop, a big prop forward, and he would literally do 3 to 4 low level drills, and then we would do bouncy runs for 40 meters for his whole session; 10 meter time under 1.7 seconds, over 9 meters maximal velocity inside 40yd, and he was 125 kilos, and that’s all we did” “You go from bounce runs to high cycling runs, so you train the other side, you are spinning your wheels faster; I’m a massive proponent of running slow with high frequency before running fast, because it’s easier to put speed on frequency, as opposed to frequency on speed” “The people who understand psychology the most as coaches, will be the most successful coaches” “If you are not training at sport speed, then it’s not sport speed” “The reason we need things to be harder is to prove our worth… I’ve made this thing more complicated so it reinforces what I do, my sacrifice and everything, so I’m going to get the most reward out of it because it’s hard… rather than, let’s make this the most simple and easy thing, so I can go home when I’m finished, and I can be with my family, and I can go to sleep.  I can tell you my whole system inside of 5 minutes, and if that’s OK with you, let’s give it a go, and that’s what we need to be working towards” “If you ever consider why a player is disagreeing with you, or not fully buying in, you don’t know how they see themselves, you don’t know the story of how they see themselves as a player” “Your powerlifter archetype equates strength with performance; you got the crossfit archetype which needs to put work in their body, because they probably come from a background that has been built on hard, high-volume work” “The sprinter, their linear speed is not a problem, they just need to learn how to play the game” “Everyone has a story, and if you are living out of your own story when trying to help someone else, you are not helping their story” About Sam Portland Sam Portland is an athletic performance coach from the UK, the creator of speed gate golf and the Sports Speed System. Following a lengthy career in professional sport he now consults with athletes/teams and helps guide coaches to happier, healthier and more financially fulfilling careers. Sam has worked with premiership rugby, American football, Olympic athletes, international competitors across a plethora of sports including hockey, bobsleigh, and track and field.  Aside from this Sam keeps in touch with the grass roots aspects of athlete preparation by hosting his ‘combine program’. This program is a long-term athletic development program filling the essential gaps in physical literacy that are not fulfilled at school or by club sports.

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” “That transition leaving baseball into football, they might be like, I don’t know if I want to play this year, I always get that thing, but 2 weeks into football they are like, this is the best, I’m glad baseball is over” “Well play a game of tag with the kids, but make the space really small, which puts the priority on change of direction; then we’ll expand the field and put more priority on speed and hard stops” “I can only do so many hurdle jumps in the summer before I need to turn the hurdle jump into a dive roll and sprint” “I miss covid because you had to be outside with athlete, and you had to get creative; I would put medicine balls and sticks in my truck” “We’d start linking exercises together, and we found kids really enjoyed putting those pieces together, and set by set changing the activity we were doing, and it made training a lot less monotonous and a lot more fun, and they really would focus more” “I have a high school (football) group that comes in every day and they just lift for 2 hours… they just want to lift, and I can’t get rid of them, that’s all their mindset is.. if I took them and told them that we are going to do games or chaos I don’t think they would like it as much” “(my one son) he thinks the thing that will help him the most is getting as strong and as explosive as possible.  My other son doesn’t think he needs the weight room as much, but when he does a skill clinic, that stuff engages him a lot.  Two kids, and they are completely different” “I’ve had such great success with kids just coming in from practice, and asking, “how do you feel… I’ve had kids get stronger by just going day to day, there’s nothing written out”” “It’s not only fun for kids, spinning or flying through the air, but it really taps into their vestibular, proprioceptive system… especially a kid who is a fairly good mover, they are going to find activities that allow them to do those things” “What I see is that the kids who are the best athletes right away are the kids who can manipulate their bodies through the air” “The kid who had an in-ground pool could always swim and could dive and do a bunch of tricks” “I would do this stupid game where my kids would jump on the trampoline, and I would throw them the ball in the air, and the would jump and catch the ball at the highest point, we played that so much and I think that’s a big reason they can catch a football now” About Jeremy Frisch Jeremy Frisch is the founder and performance director at Achieve Performance Training in Clinton, Mass. He is the former assistant strength and conditioning coach for the Holy Cross athletic department. While there, he worked directly with the Crusader men’s basketball team, in addition to serving as the strength coach for Holy Cross’ men’s soccer, men’s and women’s lacrosse, baseball, softball, field hockey, tennis and women’s track & field squads. Prior to joining Holy Cross, Frisch served as the sports performance director at Teamworks Sports Center in Acton, Mass., where he was responsible for the design and implementation of all strength and conditioning programs. He also served as a speed and strength coach for Athletes Edge Sports Training, and did a strength and conditioning internship at Stanford University. Frisch is a 2007 graduate of Worcester State College with a bachelor’s degree in health science and physical education. He was a member of the football and track teams during his days at Worcester State and Assumption College.

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, simply by virtue of having more steps, you are doing more reps of the specific skill” “There is something to be said about including longer sprinting in your training, just don’t go overboard with it” “It would be unwise to overlook that a great number of athletes who compete at a high level do a significant amount of longer sprinting in some form” “Most of the time, I look at the longest they are going to run (for their race), and then I shorten it up just a little bit” I’ll just finish (an acceleration session) by 1x150, or 1x90, so that way I’m incorporating speed endurance through a longer portion of the year, but the dose is not very high” “If we can build up a huge volume wins in practice, feeling good in practice, that’s what’s going to lead to feeling good in competition and being able to express their abilities” “What do you want your body to remember, the fastest rep, or the slowest rep?” “You get a lot out of doing 1 rep (of a speed endurance run, like a 150m)” “Last year I was (really strong in the deep squat) but was running slower in acceleration than I had in multiple years” “I believe that the ability to generate force in the early stages of movement is a skill that can be developed” “If anything, I want athletes to relax in the top half of a lift (hex deadlift) because I don’t want the body to hold on to contractions” “I might start with an 8” step up, then I might progress to a step up where I’m stomping the box, and my focus is on the instant my foot hits the box” “With athletes who aren’t that skilled, I don’t think (pushing cues) work very well… usually I focus more on impulse” “I almost never say drive your knee…. drive your knee is super slow” About Cody Bidlow Cody Bidlow 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.  He is a personal coach for professional MLB athletes, track athletes, and a consultant for coaches around the world.  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.

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 only been exposed to winning” “I’ve never seen an athlete get more confidence in their pass-rush moves, who didn’t have a pass rush move, by lifting more weights” “I have yet to have a college football player come to me who doesn’t know how to produce force” “What most people need to do is what they are bad at, but nobody wants to do that” “I want to create addicts of skill acquisition, and you really need to create an environment around that” “A person that suffers from trauma, one of the worst things that happens to them is they don’t play any more, and when you don’t play you can’t imagine, and when you can’t imagine you can’t move forward at all” “Go ask a great athlete what they are imagining in their head” “I’m not going to take that (lifting) drug away from them” “If you have students that you’ve created to not ask questions, then that automates your life as coach. They aren’t asking questions and that’s super easy for you” “As soon as my coach started to pay more attention to me, he gave me more cues, and as soon as he gave me more cues, it made me a worse thrower” “I like a med ball if I want to slow down the velocity (of the game) to slow it down, I can use a smaller field, bigger ball” “If you want an athlete to jump higher, give them something high to jump over” “I go to thrift stores all of the time, and the weird sport section of the thrift stores, and I look for something cool I can grab. I grab the cool thing and I force myself to come up with a warmup off of that, and that is where the best warmups come from” “We had athlete jumping over hurdles for 30-40 minutes this morning… I put hurdle hops until disinterested” “The work that you get done during play is so under-rated” “Fast = can you solve the movement problem faster than the person next to you” Show Notes Gnarly spinal isometric hold https://www.instagram.com/p/CmfXukDNSDE/ About Austin Jochum Austin Jochum 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 was a former D3 All-American football player and a hammer thrower (MIAC weight throw champion) at the University of St.Thomas,

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.

Richard Aceves, an innovative movement specialist with a diverse athletic background, discusses the mental, physical, and emotional elements of the total training process. He shares his near-death experience and injury that kickstarted his journey into the inner aspects of human performance. Richard highlights the importance of creating a supportive and positive training environment, balancing mental cognition, physical training, and enjoyment of sport. He also explores strategies for performance enhancement, creating a safe space for movement, and relieving back pain through neural connection.

Today’s guest is Nick DiMarco.  Nick has been the director of sports performance at Elon University since 2018, and is a leader in the realms of high-performance ideology.  He is both a former professional athlete (NY Jets and Baltimore Ravens outside linebacker in 2014), and has a Ph.D in Health and Human Performance.  In addition to being well versed in the intuitive aspects of athleticism, Nick is skilled at applying logical models to a high-performance training environment.  He has been a guest on multiple episodes of this podcast, speaking on the physical preparation process with a focus on American football. In the preparation of an athlete, all roads must ultimately lead towards the specificity, chaos and decision making of the sport itself.  The days of putting outputs on a pedestal (such as a squat max or “canned” SAQ score), are still with us, but integrative coaches are seeing the higher-links within the total training equation, and the win-loss column.  Ultimately, a good sports performance program never loses sight of the ultimate goal, which is to prepare players towards their sport as well as possible.  If you caught the recent episode with strength coach, turned football coach Michael Zweifel, this message likely hits on an even deeper level. On today’s show, Nick gives an overview on the Elon football team’s performance over the last few years, and the integrative factors that contributed to their recent success and low injury rates.  He gives his evolving take on the important elements to cover in preparing players for the speed and movement demands of the game of football, including acceleration, maximal velocity and agility/change of direction.  In this episode, Nick goes in depth on his weekly speed and strength training format, talks about the metrics he measures, gives his take on deceleration training, and much more.  Nick’s ideas are both cutting-edge, and incredibly pragmatic, useful for any sports performance coach. 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 2:41 – An overview of how the last season went for Elon football 4:50 – What strength/sport coach interactions need to be prioritized for the high performance model to be maximally effective 12:47 – Nick’s updates or thoughts on the game-speed agility model that in the last several years 23:19 – Psychological aspects of perception-based game-speed training for Nick’s athletes 28:54 – Nick’s weekly offseason training format, and his balance of more traditional “tempo” running, versus more specific sprint conditioning for his players 40:18 – What metrics Nick measures and gives feedback to the players on 45:38 – How Nick looks at things like “deceleration training”, relative to chaotic change of direction 51:23 – Nick’s take on the agility categories (mirror, dodge chase, score) in context of other sports, such as court sport 53:57 – Where Nick recommends sports performance coaches to expand their knowledge base, in regards to the breadth of the field, as well as the sports they are working with 57:42 – How being a father to young children has impacted Nick’s athletic performance process 1:02:18 – If Nick had to pick between wearing a shmedium polo shirt, waving a towel, or warming up with jumping jacks on the whistle, which would he pick, and why? Nick DiMarco Quotes “We had very low injury rate for us, and I think strength coaches want to pat themselves on the back and say that was their job, but it goes hand in hand with our head coach, he does a great job with his practice design, and doing everything to maximize our weekly layout, keeping guys at healthy and fresh as possible” “Anything that is physical related, we should try to inter-twine with the sport coach as much as possible” “You can do a great job in the weight room for your portion of the year, but if you pass the baton, and you are no longer involved, (sport coaches) hammer the guys with volume, and every day is physical contact, you are going to have injuries and issues no matter how your offseason went” “Early on I valued (general speed) too much… (now being more specific) we’ve had more of a reduction in our injuries and we are giving them the exact stress they are going to feel on the field, appropriate doses, and that is the best agility work they are going to get” “We’ll hit our 8 vector tempos, so it’s in different directions instead of just being linear” “You don’t want to replicate a garbage scenario for the sake of it being specific” “Psychological stress is an element you need to have in your conditioning in some way… there’s a lot more that goes into rest than just standing there” “Monday our max velocity day is more rate of force driven.  Tuesday we will hit some linear tempo with a decent amount of volume, but that day will remain linear.  Wednesday is a moderate intensity day, it is our practice session day, on that day we do our 8-vector (creative change of direction) tempo day.  Thursday is a drawn out performance prep with a large focus on mobility, and an upper body volume day.  Friday is our acceleration focus; that is our heaviest strength focus day for our younger athletes” “Our line guys, that’s a huge portion of their conditioning, the combative stuff” “Even though it’s not that taxing from a neuromuscular perspective, when you start asking people to change directions a bunch of times, you are going to get more muscular soreness” “We do not do any sort of L-drill, pro agility, I don’t see those as a good use of time” “We don’t have a max day ever…. every day is a chance to PR” “The fly 10 stuff, the more I’m around it, the more I think of it as a dose of high speed to keep people safe, versus actually improve (game speed)” “If you are looking at 40s for a combine guy, the easiest way to improve is that first 10-20 yards” “You want to take anything and everything into account that you can, but there’s not a ton of stock in “one guy went from this (sprint time) to this” so I guarantee he is going to be really good at football this year” “The sport of basketball they play year round, soccer plays year round, tennis plays year round, all of these other sports have a chance to play their sport consistently, that it’s not as big of a deal as it is for football when you don’t get a chance to play your sport except for isolated bouts throughout the year” “So much of basketball is trying to stay in front of another human being and sort through information” About Nick DiMarco Nick DiMarco is the director of sports performance at Elon University, a position which he has held since 2018.  Nick is a leader in the NCAA University coaching system in the realms of high-performance ideology.  As a former professional athlete (NY Jets and Baltimore Ravens outside linebacker in 2014), Nick is well versed in the intuitive aspects of what it takes to be a high achieving athlete. With a thorough understanding of training loads, and the components behind transferrable agility training, Nick has a unique array of insights he brings to the coaching table.   Nick received his undergraduate degree from William Penn, and Master’s from California University of Pennsylvania, both in the sports performance sector.  He has his Ph.D in Health and Human Performance at Concordia University of Chicago.

Today’s podcast features Henk Kraaijenhof.  Henk has several decades of experience as a performance coach in a broad array of sports.  His coaching credentials include working track athletes such as Nelli Cooman (former 60m dash world record holder), Merlene Ottey, and Troy Douglas as well as elite team sport competitors. His specialties are physical and mental coaching, stress and stress management, technology, and the methodology or training.  In addition to world-level performance, Henk’s coaching has also bred longevity, as Ottey and Douglas ran world class times in their 40’s. In the current coaching age, it’s easy to think that because we are doing “new” looking drills, have increased our data collection, and have created various technical models of sport skill, we have a massive edge on what athletes were doing 50 years ago.  At the same time, general trends in injury rates and performance markers should have us thinking twice (for example, Bob Hayes running 9.99s in the 100m in 1964 on a chewed up cinder track).  At the end of the day, it is more “core” elements of training philosophy that stand the test of time, and help us to better understand the needs of the athlete in front of us. On today’s show, Henk digs into speed training through the decades, and how many perceived “new school” elements, are actually much older than we think they are.  He talks about how he approaches “technical models” of sport skill (sprinting specifically), coaching the current generation of athletes, and where our modern world is heading in general on the level of technology.  He talks about the skill of patience in our current coaching environment, and shares some key philosophical ideas on the nature of coaching track and team sport athletes, and what we can learn from nature itself.  Finally, Henk gives his views on his own current technology use in his coaching role. 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 3:18 – What prompted Henk’s return to coaching sprinting, and key themes he has brought from his learnings in the hiatus 16:58 – Henk’s take on coaching sprint technique, technical models, and a “no system” approach 24:31 – Where and how Henk looks to make changes in an athletes training, and mistakes he made in the past listening to other coaches and opinions 31:44 – Henk’s take on the current generation of athletes from his perspective, as well as the role of technology in modern society in general 38:08 – Philosophy of the role of sport in modern society, and what Henk really values in the process of athletic training and performance 50:16 – Autocratic vs. democratic forms of coaching, and impacts on performance 54:54 – How much technology Henk uses today in coaching a single athlete, versus coaching multiple athletes as a younger coach 1:05:42 – Henk’s view of nature in training, and both observation Henk Kraaijenhof Quotes “One difference is that you can film everything now (vs. 2004), everything has become more focused on data processing than before; the smartphone took away a bit of the human aspect of it” “You see a lot of people trying to hit the track really hard now, you see a lot of hamstring injuries, after this trend came” “You don’t have a frontside (mechanic) without a backside (mechanic)” “If you go against your natural preference (in sprinting) you might be in trouble” “We are lousy jumpers compared to the flea, the cat, the monkey” “Most coaches fall in love with their own school” “Why do you think it could be better if you change it; why is it not the most optimal way the athlete already chose?” “Patience is one thing that is readily declining” “I’m much more positive about the younger generation than most coaches” “Technology was our slave, and now we have reached a tipping point where we are a slave to technology” “Sports is life in condensed form” “I would never exchange one of my athlete’s silver medal for a gold medal, but pay the price of being mentally or physically wrecked by my workout, that’s not a price I am willing to pay” “Coaches are driven by the tendency to control, and the anxiety that an athlete doesn’t do enough” “There is always more risk involved in working on limitation, versus working on things that come naturally for you” “I can see how the workout is going to be when she enters the track” “At the end, you will see that old school becomes new school” “Monitoring without consequences is useless” “For athletes I don’t know, I would do more testing” “Technology has its limit in usefulness for us, now we have to be useful for technology” “We forget that philosophy is a foundation, it’s not the product of your training or going through the motions” Show Notes Bruce Lee, “No System” and the “Punch That Throws Itself” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhvBTy28VJM About Henk Kraaijenhof Henk Kraaijenhof has several decades of experience as a performance coach in a broad array of sports.  His coaching credentials include working track athletes such as Nelli Cooman (former 60m dash world record holder), Merlene Ottey, and Troy Douglas as well as elite team sport competitors. His specialties are physical and mental coaching, stress and stress management, technology, and the methodology or training.  Henk’s coaching has also bred longevity, as Ottey and Douglas ran world class times in their 40’s. Henk Kraaijenhof currently works for Vortx and his blo is helpingthebesttogetbetter.com. He has published work in performance, training systems and protocols for elite athletes and has also conducted research in the development and application of scientific training systems. Henk is also involved in scientific research projects in human sports performance in Norway, Estonia, Italy and the Netherlands. He is the author of the book “What We Need is Speed”, and is currently coaching Nelli Cooman’s daughter in the sprints.