Today’s episode features James Smith, owner of the “U of Strength” in Tyngsboro Massachusetts.  

James has coached a variety of athletes from the novice to the elite skill levels, some of which include current NHL, NBA, and MLS players and the 2011 NCAA Men’s Basketball National Champion UConn Huskies. Through adaptive, creative, and experience-based program design, Jamie assists athletes in reaching their full potential on and off the ice, court, and field.  

We have had several coaches on this podcast previously in the world of perception and reaction.  At the end of the day, barbell training is nice, but it can only help an athlete improve by a particular amount in their sport, and honestly, getting athletes strong is easy to do.  

What separates a great coach from a novice is the ability to see patterns in the gym (and turf warm-up) that indicate an athlete is actually going to see playing time in their sport rather than riding the pine.  How many athletes have we seen get stronger and even faster but still not make an impact in their actual sport?

This quote by James says a lot.

“We used to have your typical dynamic warm up and it wasn’t productive”

James Smith is the epitome of a forward thinker in the field.  He realized that canned warmup drills and simply getting athletes strong wasn’t giving them their best chance of success in sport, which led him down the path of reactive training that mimicks the dynamic athlete-to-athlete decision making process.  

On today’s episode, James talks all things perception and reaction, how he got to the point he is now, and how it is making a big difference for his athletes.  At the end of the day, the best athletes in sport should probably be the best at the exercises you are selecting for the brunt of your training program.

Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.  

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Key Points

The “skill gap” that exists in the way that many high school sports are coached

James first steps in implementing perception and reaction based work

How and why athletes lose creativity through over-coaching and too much robotic drill work

How perception-action work can transfer globally to sport play

How to make weightlifting reps more variable and “game-like”

What James is seeing through the implementation of perception/reaction based work instead of canned agility training

“I believe at the younger level you can have a big impact on anticipation, pattern recognition; that part of their developmental process”

“At some point (regarding the closed agility drills) I just took them out”

“In the off-season we run 2-3 days of “problem solving” activities (we don’t call them agility)”

“I still find a ton of value in our sprint work… if you want to talk about on the turf on the basketball court before we get in the weightroom, we always start with a problem solving activity”

“We design the activity based on situations, 1v1, 1v2, 2v2, basically small sided games”

“When you work with a younger athlete you have to be very careful on how you say things”

“We used to have your typical dynamic warm up and it wasn’t productive”

“(Regarding perception/action constraints) the defense is mimicking the jumping pattern of the offense”

“I’ve seen a big difference in decision making, anticipation (in using perception/reaction work)”

“One of the consequences of doing all these pre-planned robotic drills is that athlete’s creativity is gone”

“Your activities, drills, etc. needs to be as representative as possible, but sometimes logistics/facilities can be an issue; when I’m training these skills it’s opponent on opponent… I want them in offensive and defensive situations”

“We train every quality throughout the year, the only thing I change is the volume”