Today’s episode features Keegan Smith, strength coach and founder of the RealMOVEMENT Project.

Keegan has worked with the Premiership winning Sydney Roosters in the Australian National Rugby League (NRL) along with 5 other professional teams. He spent 6 years sleeping on floors living in third world communities looking for solutions of how to make a difference.   He has a way of looking at human performance from a growth-oriented perspective, frequently utilizing calisthenics, juggling and other bodyweight challenges.  Keegan is an insightful, wise and experienced individual who makes a serious effort to walk the talk.

For this show, we dig into life experiences and philosophy, growth-mindsets, and how this filters into training athletes to reach their highest potential.  This podcast has always tried to get outside the box, and Keegan’s work is definitely helping coaches raise their awareness of not only athletic needs, but also that of society at large when it comes to strength and physical culture.

On today’s show, we discuss Keegan’s background and experiences in the sports performance field, as well as his diverse life experiences.  We get into his take on what an athlete centered performance model really looks like, and where to start when looking at the training and life environment that’ll yield best results.  He’ll get into his outside the box take on skill development, and finally chat a bit on barbell training and where he’s headed with REALMOVEMENT project.

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.

Keegan Smith Points

Keegan’s background in sports performance and strength training

Keegan’s thoughts on his time away from strength and conditioning to travel and learn in disadvantaged countries, and how this changed his philosophy on training athletes

Thoughts on an athlete-centered performance model in a high performance training environment

How diversity and getting “outside the box” in GPP can be the key to continued athletic gains

Keegan’s thoughts on barbell training and Olympic lifting

The next direction Keegan is heading in his career

Keegan Smith Quotes

“Everybody needs to feel like they are an important part of a social system, not feeling like you are part of a community is going to massively negatively effect (your) performance”

“You are not going to train the same unless you see (athletics) as a vehicle for social change”

“In strength and conditioning, thinking of someone as a human is often too zoomed in, start thinking of the requirements of a plant, and you might start to get better results with people”

“This is where strength and conditioning needs to start, the level of a living organism, the level of a living organism, the level of human psychology and human psyche”

“You can’t separate psychology from physiology”

“If everyone is fighting for their piece of impact, then that athlete is getting pulled all over the place… having a lot of coaches can be harder in a sense… less team members is probably better”

“I feel like I’m always the biggest limiting factor on the people that I work with, if I can jump a little higher, if I’m a little bit leaner, if I’m a little bit stronger, then everyone I work with will get pulled in that direction as well, by osmosis, by culture…. It’s pressure, but it’s also opportunity”

“It’s a shame for days to be passing when you don’t know what you are building”

“If you lose your ability to be a human, if you lose your ability to move in multiple directions, you become fragile and your peak will be lower”

“I don’t think you can get to the peak of physical performance by overly specializing”

“The stupider you feel about it, the more you should probably do it”

“I think of Olympic lifting as throwing and catching barb...