February 14, 2019

137: Joel Smith on Improving the Workout Experience: Dopamine, Motor Learning and the Experiential Brain Network | Sponsored by SimpliFaster

51 minutes

Today’s episode features your host, Joel Smith, talking on various elements of optimizing the manner by which an athlete experiences a workout.

You could have similar workouts on paper, say 5x3 cleans or 10 jumps over a high jump bar, but the subtleties and nuances by which those repetitions are executed mean everything in how well an athlete will adapt to the movement, as well as move into the next workout with maximal freshness of the central nervous system.

When you understand how to stimulate dopamine release, how to frame a workout to tap into the experiential brain, how to utilize sensory information to coach technique rather than internal cues (or even external), as well as how to make training fun and exciting when needed, you have the tools to turn an average program into an outstanding one.

This isn’t to say meat and potatoes training isn’t important, because it certainly is, but having the tool-set by which to really optimize the way the athlete experiences the training process, both the fun and the repetitive, can really improve our effectiveness as coaches.

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.

View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage.

Key Points

How to get into the experiential mode network while training, and not the default mode network and why it matters

Training Gate Golf

Long Jump Golf

Low Rim Dunking/Playing Jump Games

5x200m Hurdles

“Tricking” athletes into doing work (team sport principles)

How the Easy Strength principles apply to speed and power training

Ideas on making basic lifts more “experiential”, Olympic lift examples

Olympic lifting

Various ways to experience the bar and the second pull/sensory

Some athletes just twitch different; when you do an Olympic lift well, it’s a harmony

Various ways to approach the catch, etc.

Keiser Jumper or anything else with a quantitative output

Impulse in Keiser jumper is what matters/step up jumps

Thoughts on VBT stuff

How to structure a workout to maximize the manner in which the athlete processes and responds to the work

Warmup/Meat and Potatoes/ISOS and super slow

About Joel Smith

Joel Smith, MS, CSCS is a NCAA Division I Strength Coach working in the PAC12 conference. He has been a track and field jumper and javelin thrower, track coach, strength coach, personal trainer, researcher, writer and lecturer in his 8 years in the professional field. His degrees in exercise science have been earned from Cedarville University in 2006 (BA) and Wisconsin LaCrosse (MS) in 2008. Prior to California, Joel was a track coach, strength coach and lecturer at Wilmington College of Ohio. During Joel’s coaching tenure at Wilmington, he guided 8 athletes to NCAA All-American performances including a national champion in the women’s 55m dash. In 2011, Joel started Just Fly Sports with Jake Clark in an effort to bring relevant training information to the everyday coach and athlete. Aside from the NSCA, Joel is certified through USA Track and Field and his hope is to bridge the gap between understandable theory and current coaching practice.

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By Joel Smith, Just-Fly-Sports.com

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