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.

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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”