Just Fly Performance Podcast

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.

Today’s podcast features movement focused strength and performance coach Julien Pineau.  Julien is the founder of Strongfit, which started as a gym, and is now a full educational program for coaches and fitness/movement enthusiasts.  Sports have been a part of Julien’s life since he was young, and he has athletic backgrounds in a variety of areas from competitive swimming, to mixed martial arts, strongman, and more. In 1993, Julien began his coaching career as a conditioning and grappling coach for the MMA gym where he trained and in 2008, he opened his own gym that focuses on strongman training. Julien has a fascinating ability to visualize and correct proper human movement patterns, and has worked with athletes from a wide variety of disciplines.  He is a man on a journey inward as much as he is outward. The current world of training seems to exist on a level of “exercise proliferation” much more than it does digging into the main principles of human performance and adaptation.  Coaches often times have their own favorite exercises and drills, and have athletes perform them to “technical perfection”, citing the ability to hit particular positions as a marker for program success. On today’s podcast, Julien Pineau goes into the fallacy of training athletes based on one’s preferred exercise selection, or technical positions, while rather viewing training on the level of the “human first”.  Julien views training on the level of the entire athlete, and has exercise principles starting with the “inner most” human mechanisms.  He gets into his ideas on internal and external torque chains extensively through this show, and describes how to fit muscle tensioning patterns to the needs of athletes in the realms of speed, strength and injury prevention. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, 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 View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 3:14 – Women’s work capacity and ability to adapt to chronic stress, relative to men, with the crossfit games competitors as an example 6:36 – How strength training setups may be modulated for females versus males in terms of extending work out over a longer period of time, versus more dense packets of work 9:16 – How one’s perception and attitude in a training session is a critical aspect of adaptation 11:27 – The importance of tension over position in strength and athletic movement 17:20 – The pros and cons of social media in athletic development 21:18 – The innate movement pattern element of sandbag training and its role in facilitating hamstring activation 23:17 – The origins of Julien’s thoughts on internal and external torque chains 33:51 – Squatting patterns in light of internal and external torques, and how sandbag lifting fits into the squat and hinge pattern and muscle activation 46:34 – Links between internal torque/external torque and sprinting, and practices in the gym that can lead to issues over a long period of time 54:19 – Olympic lifting and external torque, as it relates to block starts or sprinting 1:05:32 – Types of athletes who may be external torque chain dominant 1:07:56 – How the external torque chain fits with more sympathetic (fight or flight) nervous system elements, while the internal torque chain fits with more parasympathetic elements 1:23:43 – How various body types will impact one’s squatting technique, with relation to internal and external torque 1:27:08 – Upper extremity sport (such as swimming) concepts in relation to internal and external torque production 1:32:06 – How to determine how an athlete’s body wants to squat, and how to tap into an individual’s squat technique Julien Pineau Quotes: “We always knew women needed more volume than the men, but the question was, how far are we pushing this?” “Men are very good at acute responses; in terms of constant stress women can take almost anything” “Winning matters… if every time you went into a workout you felt like you lost, forget the hormonal levels, you are not going to be successful in the long run” “Go to the world championship and you will not see two people squatting the same way, but they are squatting world records.  The tension is the same, the position is not” “(As a coach) the less I gotta talk, the better we are doing” “Are you making them squat a barbell because it makes you look good, or because it’s necessary for the athlete?” “The position that comes to them is their position, not mine” “So you are supposed to create strength externally rotating to the outside, but how about rotating to the inside? Have you ever seen someone punching throwing his fist out (externally rotating)?” “It seems to me that either you go towards that (hara/center) point, or away from it, there seems to be two torque chains, one that goes towards the center, and one that goes away from it, that is the first principle I look at, when I look at movement” “If you train the adductors and inside fibers of the hammy, it will allow you to create more internal torque on the way down, which means you can load the squat better on the way down, in order to load the spring and release to lift more weight on the way up” “We do things the right way differently, but the wrong way the same” “Carrying a sandbag is all hammies and glutes, it’s not quads” “You shift to the right with the squat with a barbell.  I’m going to have you squat with a sandbag, bearhug it and squat it.  I don’t see the shift anymore.  You don’t have a squat problem, you have a barbell problem” “You make yourself look good (in your sprinting/sport still); all I can give you that muscle capacity and tension” “There are two ways to lose mobility, you can lose range of motion, or lose tension.  When you stop training the internal torque chain, you start to lose tension and you shorten your (sprinting) stride” “Her power-cleans (all external torque) were doing zero for sprinting, because it was not developing the internal torque chain… they were helping her out of the blocks” “At a full catch clean, you will produce internal torque at the bottom” “A standing box jump is fully external torque” “You need a massive amount of output in external torque… look at Klovov (more intense) lifting vs. a sprinter (more relaxed)” “Before an Olympic lifter start the lift, they are very relaxed, but as soon as they start, there is a lot of tension in the face (associated with external torque)” “So the better fight is when you are in flow, where the sympathetic and parasympathetic work together to create a high intensity under control” “When someone is in full sympathetic, they swing (punch) wildly in external torque, when someone who is using their parasympathetic, they will stay more centered in their punches” “Honestly, I think the more emotional the athlete is, the shorter the distance they are good at” “If you are going to attempt a max box jump, there is no way they can go about it chill” “If you lose your cool in a snatch, you might hit the pull, but you are not going to catch the bar” “To me the mind and body is the same… there is no such thing as movement, it is the person squatting; that is why it is tension over position” “Is that the 11th commandment, you should squat with your knees out? Says who?” “If you have very open hips, squatting with your feet straight is actually pigeon toed” “The most efficient squat is the best squat; if you have 6 different movements in a squat, that is a problem” “What I want is the tension of the sandbag on the hips to feel the same as the barbell back squat” Show Notes Torque Chains Visual Sandbag Carry Instruction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUlN6Hz0vv0&t=161s About Julien Pineau Julien Pineau is the founder of Strongfit, and a movement focused human performance coach.  Sports have been a part of Julien’s life since he was young, and he has athletic backgrounds in a variety of areas from competitive swimming, to mixed martial arts, strongman, and more. In 1993, Julien began his coaching career as a conditioning and grappling coach for the MMA gym where he trained and in 2008, he opened his own gym that focuses on strongman training. StrongFit was born and has evolved from a single gym to a full education program. Julien is trained to visualize and correct proper human movement patterns.  He has a fascinating ability to diagnose imbalances, find the root of problems, and provide knowledge to build a stronger, more fit, and a more resilient human. He is a man on a journey inward as much as he is outward.

Today’s podcast features Seth Lintz, a pitching performance coach, based out of Scottsdale, Arizona.  Seth was a second-round pick in the 2008 MLB draft, carrying a maximal fastball speed of 104mph.  Known as the “Pitching Doctor” on his social media accounts, Seth has trained over a dozen individuals to break the 100mph barrier in the past 2 years, using a progressive training system that combines a priority on neuro-muscular efficiency with intuitive motor learning concepts. Of all the high velocity activities humans can do, throwing a ball at high speed is the “fastest”, and is a truly special skill worth studying.  Within a high-speed throw comes critical use of elasticity, explosiveness, levers, and fine-tuned coordination of one’s movement options.  Seth is a coach who has a very high-level, innate feel for all of the factors it takes for a human being to achieve extreme throwing velocities, connecting elements of physical performance with skill acquisition, while integrating the all-important role of the mind. On the podcast today, Seth shares details from his early immersion in throwing mechanics, gives his take on the mental elements and kinesthetic, feeling-based elements of throw training.  On the training end, he talks about the ability to “surge” and change speeds within a movement, the use of different training speeds, from super slow to over-speed, and developmental aspects of throwing with different weights and objects.  Within the show, many connections are made to sprinting and human locomotion, and this is an episode that coaches from baseball to track, and in the spaces in-between, can find helpful in their process. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, 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 View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 3:34 – Details of Seth’s early start as an athlete, and his study of frame by frame pictures of Nolan Ryan and Pedro Martinez 11:49 – Thoughts on using visual references and positions in early athletic performance training, versus letting athletes build their technique off of instinct 20:50 – The mental element, and mental picture needed for an athlete to break velocity throwing barriers 24:26 – The critical skill of being able to feel in one’s own body, what a coach is trying to communicate visually 32:57 – Discussing the importance of different utilized speeds in high velocity training, from over-speed to extreme slow, and associating feeling with various velocities 39:22 – How athletes having too much awareness, or watching too much video of their throw, can actually present a problem in the learning process 44:42 – Tempo and “surges” of velocity in a fast throw 53:07 – Using different tools, weighted balls, and objects in nature to help an athlete connect to the feeling of intention in a throw, and the developmental boost that comes with it “Whenever I look at my throw now, I try to look for the kid in my throw” “With intent, your body will find its most efficient way to produce power at that given time” “Humans are infinitely capable at birth, and that moment is when the limitation process begins.  Everything they see from that moment forward is limiting them from what they believe to be possible” “For humans, throwing is an evolved skill for both hunting and safety (fighting)” “What your body is doing, and what you feel like it is doing are often two different things” “A mental picture is not a single faceted thing, it is your mental relationship to throwing, because when you have a mental picture, it gives you a feeling too… it should at least” “Anytime you are planning, you are slowing down… that’s the job of a coach, how to get you as a student to be aware of the change that needs to be made, yet deliver it in a way that you can attach that adjustment to being in a more efficient position without planning for it… that’s a skill” “The kids that can feel the way that you look, and then they can put that into their movement; man, that’s when you have a kinesthetically aware athlete who can make progress really fast” “Mechanizing your movements and being afraid of a bad position, that’s not it either” “The feeling when you can make that crossover from picture to feeling, you can use it in your actual throw, because the throw is not a position, it’s a bunch of positions woven together” “In training, all speeds matter” “I see guys going through extreme slows all the time, and it doesn’t actually look like their throw; but it’s very revealing as to what their mental picture is of their throw, and what they are trying to do to create power” “Perfect mechanics start with intent, and emotion, and unadulterated form is purely thoughtless” “I don’t discuss with them what their mental picture is for the throw; I have them do things that give me what their mental picture is for the throw” “I try to limit awareness on some things, and bring awareness up on other things, if I make you aware of too much, that acts as interference to the other stuff” “After bad days, I won’t send guys their video” “Guys will get bogged down in making things too fine-tuned and perfect and copying the wrong things or whatever else” “It’s not slow, faster, fastest… it’s fast, faster, fastest” “It’s the ability for the body to get moving at a fast pace, but then stay relaxed at that pace, so it can continue to act at the fast past” “With throwing (relaxation) is associated with throwing really light objects” “I think if you could learn to throw downhill, that would be very very valuable” “Whatever object a (child) puts in his hands that he throws the hardest, is probably the one he should be throwing the most… as soon as he feels it, it sends a feeling up here to throw with intent, to throw it hard; that’s where he is going to learn it the most, throwing” About Seth Lintz Seth Lintz is a pitching performance coach, based out of Scottsdale, Arizona.  He was a second-round pick in the 2008 MLB draft, carrying a maximal fastball speed of 104mph.  He goes by “Pitching Doctor” on his social media accounts, and has trained over a dozen individuals to break the 100mph barrier in the past 2 years.  Seth’s athletic and performance career began very early in his youth, emulating top pitchers such as Nolan Ryan and Pedro Martinez.  He uses a progressive training system that combines a priority on neuro-muscular efficiency with intuitive motor learning concepts.

Strength coach Zach Even-Esh discusses the importance of chaos and imperfection in training. He emphasizes the need for play and intensity in athletic training, the misconception of strength training causing slowness, and the trend of kids being involved in multiple sports clubs yet achieving less. Embracing chaos and leaving room for community and extra effort are highlighted, while the negative effects of technology are discussed.