Today’s episode features Jamie Smith, founder and head sport preparation coach of The U of Strength.  Jamie is a passionate coach and learner, who strives to help athletes incorporate the fullness of perceptual, social and emotional, elements in the course of training.  Jamie has been a multi-time guest on this show, speaking on his approach to training that meets the demands of the game, and settling for nothing less.

The further I get into my coaching journey, the more I understand and appreciate the massive importance of stimulating an athlete on the levels of their physiology, their emotions and social interactions, and their perception of their external environment.  Coach Jay Schroeder had his term called the “PIPES”, referring to the importance of a training session being stimulating Physiologically, Intellectually, Psychologically, Emotionally and Spiritually”.  I certainly agree with those terms, but they could also be re-ordered, as per today’s conversation “Physiologically, Individually, Perceptually, Emotionally, and Socially”.  (Individual referring to individual autonomy).

On the show today, Jamie goes into how he “stacks” games, play, perception & reaction type work onto more traditional training methods, for greater “sticky-ness” to sport itself.  Through today’s conversation, he’ll get into concepts of variability in training as it relates to sport, driving intention and learning through a training program, older vs. younger athlete response to game play with potentiation, and much more.

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Timestamps and Main Points:

3:30 – How Jamie infuses “play” into basic exercises and warmup movements

21:50 – How infusing meaning into movement improves intention, immersion and movement quality

49:00 – The role of play in helping infuse natural variability in athletic development

33:38 – How the goal of play and variability changes through a training week

43:17 – Menu systems and autonomy within the scope of games and training sessions for athletes

49:39 – How Jamie’s approach to “High CNS”, max velocity days and how layers of challenge are added on, as athletes grow and mature

1:02:53 – What gym work and warming up looks like for Jamie’s athletes when those athletes are already playing their sport a lot outside of the weightroom (and how to help use social/emotional elements to create a more restorative stimulus)

1:15:34 – “Sticky-ness” of skill in training, created by blending “training” with gameplay

“Play hits those missing pieces of the strength and conditioning model”

“Game play can create athlete driven approaches to movement and strength and conditioning”

“We teach them for the first few weeks, just so they have a general understanding, “what is a crawl”… but once it gets to the point where they understand what it is, lets layer on challenges”

“A big thing with the gameplay, is we never repeat the same thing twice in a row”

“I believe in exposing them to a wide range of situations so they can see what works, and what doesn’t work”

“It’s all about intent, and when you add intent, it changes everything”

“(With play) I’m talking about focused variability, having a purpose”

“They are trying to solve a problem while getting pushed, shoved, knocked off balance; I call that kind of “sticky strength” qualities”

“On the low CNS days I am looking at the gameplay, the emotional side of things, the social emotional side of things”

“The social-emotional does have an immediate impact on (performance), it does influence the strength, the speed, the power qualities”

“You’re working with a 7th, 8th, 9th grader, you are going to see way better speed qualities emerge when that kid is trying to evade a trailing defender, compared to doing a band-resisted acceleration from one cone to another cone”

“If you’re in 11th grade, 12th grade, college, we are going to do our flying 10’s, you are going to hit that one rep (you have one opportunity) we are going to record it, and after, we are going to put that in an environment that is going to allow you to express that as well; after that we always put them into a contextual situation”

“Who is the individual in front of you, and what are the missing pieces”

“The input needs to be thought of, and managed, just as much as the output”

“In season, there is so much stress put on these kids so that, all I care about is that, when they leave, they feel better”

“If it’s “im exhausted, my dog died, I crammed for a test”, it’s definitely game based, long duration isometrics, exposing the foot to a ton of tactile information, and that’s about it”

“If you look at a whole year, and are doing the same thing over and over again, you are not pushing learning, you are not pushing their development”

“With older athletes 92-96% of the time their (vertical improved after playing a game).  With the younger athletes… when they went back to jump again, their (jump) actually went down… I thought it was really fascinating with the experienced athletes using the game play to potentiate, but the younger athlete with it being constantly changing”

“Stickiness; that’s where these small sided games, blending it with traditional environments and the weight-room, that’s where you can connect them”

About Jamie Smith

Coach Jamie Smith, CSCS, is the founder and head sport preparation coach of The U of Strength, LLC. He is passionate about guiding his athletes through their developmental process and discovering unique ways that blend physical preparation and skill adaptation. As a former athlete at Merrimack College, Jamie graduated with a degree in Sports Medicine and a concentration in Exercise Physiology. As a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist, he has had the opportunity to coach under some of the most knowledgeable and experienced coaches in the industry.

Jamie 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.