The Greatest Training Book Ever Written & How Strong Is Strong Enough w/ Joel Smith (SSOF Ep 164)

Joel Smith1:11

I feel like the more jargon you put in there, the more annoying and off-putting it is. So, just take neuro out of everything, and you actually have a much more readable book. But from my understanding, I think Dan Victor had done a lot of consulting with Jay Schrader and then it was out of the blue one day this guy emailed Dan I think saying he had a secret German compound and all this and the other thing.

And Christian Tibo thinks it's Brad Nuttle, a guy who worked with Jay for a while who was an engineer and so I guess, and to me that makes sense because if someone was to take Jay's basic methodology, not have the things that would just totally give away that it was Jay, which is the extreme ISO holds. And it's also Jay's system in a very engineering framing it up mindset. Maybe that's it. I don't know exactly.

But whoever wrote it had a lot of grandiosity, the best and it was a very interesting character. And so when that all came out, people were talking about major increases in jumping and sprinting and whatever sports skill. And I think what I took from it was the people who went through those programs, there was forums and people were like, "All right, here's my workout. It's neuro dur and neuromag and it's this drop off and all the jargon."

And that just was such a turnoff to me. I didn't even like to read those because it just reminded me being in calculus class or something or pre-calculus. I didn't make it to calculus. But it was just the jargon was so heavy. There's just something that is also away from the pure spirit of training.

And then what ended up happening with a lot of those people, they made good gains right away, but then a few of them said, "Well, hey, I got so sick of this, I just went back to regular training and I made the same gains once I went back." But I think there's something to be said about the intuition that a very precise drop off based system can give you.

And I could get carried away the nuances of the book, but I'll just say it was something that, jargon heavy, very precise. Like here is the exact things we're training and this is how to kind of mathematically put them together.

And that just taking it from a low-level face value I think is also really helpful because there's a few things that stick with me from that book that I use but without any of the jargon, any of the drop, even the drop offs. I think the drop offs are kind of silly on some respect. We can go into that if you like. But whoever wrote it's brilliant. I mean really brilliant mind.

James de Lacey4:50

Do you want to maybe go into those drop offs and why you wouldn't use them and then maybe the few things that you've taken from that book and used extensively for yourself?

Joel Smith5:26

Sure. Yeah. So the drop offs are one of the main features and I think that's one of those things where anytime you present a training system you want to present well why does it have an edge? How is it going to optimize what we're doing?

I think about the world of trading sometimes as a series of colors. Spiral dynamics is a system of understanding the world that I've been getting into more. And as you move up the spiral, you move into more complex ideas and ideas that are more useful from a community perspective. But one of the big jumps is going from blue, which is very rules-oriented. Think, okay, here's the strength and conditioning for sets of five and the exercise physiology and the Kreb cycle and all these rules of training.

And then the next layer up is the orange, which is individual success and optimization. And a drop off is a big step towards optimization because it's, okay, well, me and you, James, we could be doing sets of squats at 70% of our max and doing sets of five. And what's to say that five sets of five is better for you or me? Would I do better with eight sets of five? Would you do better with two sets of five or 10?

And so the drop off is essentially how many sets you can do before your performance drops off a certain number on the day. Now, strength, it's very difficult to measure that because you actually have to fatigue yourself to the point where you can't lift a certain weight. So, if I go to a 10% drop off and my squat max is 300, I have to get to the point where I could not squat 270.

And so, but it's logistically it's not necessarily easy to do that, but you can set it up so where I fail it or if my 3RM is 265 or 270, I got to set it up so I can't 3RM 235 or 240 or whatever it is with that 9 or 10% drop off.

So it's essentially just going till you can't do a thing. It works a lot better in sprinting. So, hey, you we got a 2% drop off and we're doing fly sprints. Okay, your best is 100 and if you can't go 102 or something, then you're done. Or based off the percentage on a day.

And so on the offset there's some good pieces to that because there are people who can handle more. There's people who need more in a session, there's people who need less in a session. So from a very baseline level, I think it gets you going in a good direction. But to try to be really precise with it, I think has some flaws because what a lot of coaches find, especially in speed, is it is very hard to get people to drop off for some workouts.

There's coaches who'll talk about a 3% drop off and they're like, "My athletes, we killed ourselves and could not drop off." And then you're just destroyed for a few days essentially. It's, wait, wasn't this math supposed to work? And the problem is it's a linear system. It's based off linear principles. And human beings are not linear machines. We're complex machines. We operate, we're systems of systems. So there's more in play than just one linear equation.

And I remember talking with Chris Corfus a while back who has, if you could say anyone has mastered that system of adapting DB hammer in track and field, which is a very pure output, it's Chris. And I'm sure if Dan was coaching track, and Dan's coached track as well, more football I believe, but Dan would be right there with him. And so Chris has mastered that.

But I asked Chris, I was like, "Man, what are you doing? Some of these kids can't drop off." And Chris said, he's like, "I just shorten the rest and make them drop off basically." And I was thinking, that's actually genius because you're breaking the rule of that linear

Because if I'm really going to be strict with that stuff, I'm going to say, "All right, you get whatever, three minutes recovery between each one, it's consistent," or honestly, even a full recovery, right? Because it's on the day, so shouldn't it be whatever is on the day you're dropped?

I think Chris just saw that it was going to be ridiculous to just keep doing it, so he would just steer it. And I think part of it is the athlete then believes, "Oh yeah, I hit my drop off." That plays in the equation. You saw you dropped off, in three or four days you're going to come back and you're going to be better. And so I think Chris was really good at steering the system of systems—or is he still coaches, obviously.

Yeah, so I think that's where it's more than face value. And I think that system, it's such a linear hyperbole, or it's an extreme of if the human was a computer and we just do all this. So that's a thing though, where with the drop off, honestly, I, for me it's kind of annoying to say on a podcast, and if I'm a young coach learning, but there is an intuition to just when an athlete's done.

And honestly, high jump's a good one because I cut athletes early when they want more jumps. I don't let them drop off. I kind of fit with where Tony Holler's like, "Don't burn the steak, leave athletes wanting more." I like that heuristic. So no one gets to really take it to the well, and you are forced to come back wanting more. And I think from a longevity perspective that's probably a pretty good idea.

But to be your best, I think where I've come around is, you're just going to have to let some athletes just keep jumping and just have a battle with the bar that day and get upset and misses and makes. And I think that at some point you have to start there. There's easy adaptation and there's forcing adaptation. And sometimes I think you have to dig into letting people force it.

But a lot of that integrates the psychology in the mind of an athlete. And that's something that goes beyond what a drop off can tell you, because leaving—letting athletes be pissed because they didn't get it and they have to wait, there's power in that. Letting athletes fight it out to get the thing and feel like they won the workout and they're satisfied, there's also power with that.

So there's just, as soon as you bring the psychology piece into it, there's just so much more. And for me, that world exists for me only in the speed, the actual speed and on track world or the sport specific. So whatever your sport is, I don't mess with it in the weight room, to be honest. I think that that's a waste for, unless your sport is weightlifting, it is a waste of resources, because I would rather just do a traditional thing in the weight room for the most part.

And then let's actually, if we're going to focus on something, let's focus on what's happening out on the track, out on the field, ring, or whatever it is.

James de Lacey12:15

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Yeah, I found I played around a few years ago just having the accelerometer on the bars. Okay, a lot of the research looking at drop offs and it's like, "Okay, 10% drop off for peak power development." And so I just started doing jump squats with it. I was getting to like 10 plus reps and I was like, "I can't do 10% drop off. I'm going to keep going. I'm going to keep going further."

Joel Smith13:30

It's impossible. I think maybe the guy was trolling us all too a little bit. I think he kind of was. I think he was just pulling stuff out and just like, "Yeah, anything's going to have some good," but then you're also going to have that like, "What do I do with this part of it?"

James de Lacey13:44

Yeah, exactly. It's actually a good segue into, I guess, traditional lifting. And obviously within—I would say I'm not going to say in certain sports, maybe, and in certain countries and cultures—there's a really big emphasis or push on kind of maximal strength development, like barbell lifting. I think probably the biggest representation, probably like college football or even American football, probably has the biggest kind of representation in that area.

So we just need to go through just your thoughts and ideas on kind of where this really fits with athletic development. Because you can, obviously, as with anything, you can overemphasize, underemphasize something. But what are you really getting out of maybe focusing on squat, bench, deadlift, et cetera, versus what could potentially be some of the negative outcomes, or maybe some things that you're missing from it?

Joel Smith14:38

Yeah. So I'll go to something you mentioned, James, with the bar speed and the accelerometer, which actually I like. I like feedback. Anything that can make something a game, I think is good, not that it always has to be. And you want to pick in any program, you want to pick where you have your games. If every single thing is a game, I don't think that's the—for some people it might be. For those people who just don't seem to like training, maybe it is.

Or like, I like to look at Diego Maradona as a good example of someone who I feel like would not respond well to a traditional strength and conditioning program. Like the night soccer guy who's absolutely insane and juggling and ball control, and he also has a spirit of a child.

James de Lacey15:22

Be pranking, drinking, and doing coke every night. You mean before training?

Joel Smith15:27

Yeah. Well, that was his game too. I'm sure that was the game to him too. But like doing rolls on the field as his warm-up and just being totally out there. I'm like, that's a guy who would not respond well to a traditional, unless you made it a game. He would probably eat everything as a game. And I think that's okay.

But yeah, with the traditional, it's interesting because clearly we get results from it. I think we always want to look at, well, how can we lay out a system that gives the widest swath of athletes the best chance and the best result? And I think that if that's the layer, that's probably—I would say it's more then, becomes more like isometrics as a base for the most part, bodyweight ISOs, lightly resisted ISOs. And I, by all athletes I'm saying I'm talking like the tennis team, the golf team, like the wispy high jumpers and distance runners, like the—on the track team.

Because yeah, football players are usually going to be built to do traditional lifting quite well, and so are a lot of collision and contact sport athletes. And I think it's a very good thing for them. But I just think it's from where I'm at now, I just see this, especially in high school, it is unbelievable to me how many athletes are actually not served well by a traditional lifting program.

And it's just, it's just what we do. But then the athletes, then of course there's athletes it's good for, and it's good to get stronger. And honestly, even if you mess it up, you're still going to have a lot of good collateral adaptations.

And so, yeah, for me, I think more of that just long bandwidth is just more bodyweight, more isometrics. Honestly, even more machines, funny enough. I don't say that just because Hammer Strength sponsors my podcast, but honestly, I have a lot of athletes. I mean, all the little tweaks athletes pick up or where their nervous system is kind of cashed out from like the—whatever high school triphasic crazy adaptation, that honestly happens way more than you think.

I'm like, I would just so much rather if athletes were just doing three sets of 10 on machines with the groups I get, because I coach track and I actually get kids who I don't do the weightlifting for, like my high school program, for example. And I would rather just have kids who do three sets of 10 on machines in many cases, because I will take care of all the speed and power. And it's like I'd rather have people who just have those very basic, easy remedial gains, strength gains, and then I will take care of the other part of it.

And I think it's tough because we all want to do the best we can. When I was the strength coach for the track team at Cal, I wanted to just rip it on all the levels, all theories, all this stuff. And actually, funny enough, I did get a little pushback. Some of the coaches were like, "Well, we just want a simple program," because it's the same thing. Like, "We want to kind of take care of that."

And yeah, it's an interesting—that's a lot of where I'm kind of getting into with like the weaving and the meshing of old systems in a program. Not—I mean, honestly, I write programs with oscillatory and all that stuff still. I think it's really good, but it's—

Yeah, I think, but if anything, even in the programs that I write—the strength I write, the speed—I tend to make the strength simpler and I make the speed more fun and engaging and complex as far as I've gone. And honestly, that strength that I write is it is barbell lifting. But where I've shifted is it's just nothing is bad. It's more just like, "Hey, instead of back squats with your feet flat on the ground, let's just do zerchers with your heels elevated." And honestly, it's still a bar, but that takes care of so many issues.

It's just such an easy, simple switch. Like, Anthony Cochril at SMU volleyball—I think he just posted some girl 5'11" touching 11 feet, like far nearer, or maybe a 40-inch vertical. And they do a ton of that, like just zercher, vertical torso type stuff, heels elevated. And I just wish that would catch on more.

And so for me, if you're going to do a barbell, setting athletes up so they have space to move into that—that, to me, is more important than saying, "Well, it's a bar and it slows down at the top," and, the dynamics of a bar versus something else like a flywheel or something. So that's, to me, I just try to keep my strength barbell, dumbbell stuff simple. And I do traditional set-rep schemes and, maybe like a 202 tempo, 303 stuff.

I did triphasic for a long time, but I've kind of moved into more of just a very simple rendition. Because again, I just try to—as long as there's enough variety in the weight room and the lifts are safe and we can have spaces to move into, I will get the outputs out of speed. And I'll do Olympic lifts when I can. I think those are great.

I will do like downloads into like, "Hey, we did some traditional reps. Now let's download with the plyos, or maybe an easy jump squat type activity." So yeah, I think barbells are fine. I just think it's just moving them, taking on the mentality of making sure you have space to move into in that lift. That's just the critical factor that not many people look into.

And it's still not taught in the textbooks. It's still not taught in the hand-me-down knowledge of strength and conditioning so much either. And I hope it is soon, because I think a lot of athletes would really be served well with that.

James de Lacey20:54

Yeah. I think it's good as well. You mentioned obviously variety as well. I think many—even people just searching stuff online—people go, "Oh, I need a lifting program for XYZ sport," and the first thing you get fed is like 5x5 or Starting Strength. And it's kind of like, sure, six or seven basic lifts done three times a week forever.

And at some point that becomes an issue. If you're a complete beginner, there's obviously a different story. But for most people, I think it becomes—that becomes an issue just because of the way the monotony of the training and then monotony of the loading on top of it and then the less amount of other qualities trained within those programs. It can become an issue, especially for athleticism.

I was going to actually go into—you've mentioned ISOs quite a bit. I've got that on my list to ask you. And one, I'm going to start with my specific ISO question first, and we can just go into ISOs generally. But on the oscillo ISOs—or the eccentric quasi, whatever you—sorry, not quasi—in the oscillo, or what's the other name for them?

I can't believe I've forgotten now—either way, oscillatory ISOs. You have one—you demo it where you hold the static position and you tense and you kind of relax and drop. And obviously there's other ways. I think that Cal Dietz may have actually shown or called them, where it's kind of just like pulsing on the spot.

Is there a difference to you in whether you do one or the other, or you just prefer doing the way where you're kind of holding that maximal tension, relaxing and dropping?

Joel Smith22:28

I would prefer the holding, honestly, just because—I don't know, it is kind of funny. You see all like the oscillo, and I think Cal has really gone in that direction with more of the straight oscillating. You saw with like Jay Schroeder, too. There was that—what was it called?—inertial machine where it's like the little Adam Archuleta. It's like the little handle and you're on a cable and there's like a slider that goes back and forth and you're like—

James de Lacey22:54

I don't think I've seen that.

Joel Smith22:56

I messed around—Tommy John had one that I used one time when I was—

James de Lacey23:00

Doesn't 1080 Motion have that feature on like their Quantum and stuff? They have like a—or something similar, I think.

Joel Smith23:07

They do something similar. I think the thing with—well, here's the thing: I like the static releases in the gym because I just think the gym is the place for more control and a little more methodological. Just, "Hey, feel the muscle, control the muscle. Okay, now relax it."

Because every time you sprint, you're kind of doing all the—every time you throw, like just throwing a baseball or a football, just think about all the muscles that have to turn on and off. It's just like pop. I mean, it's like the oscillo you might do in the gym, but it's even more—like two a magnitude higher.

And so I think, yeah, locally—I mean, I think a little bit of local is fine. I do that in person. Then I do some of the Marovich stuff with like these water bells, and you'll see people just doing like a lot of oscillo, like water bell, more extremity-based. I'll do that. I think that's—it's just lighter and it's a little bit more rhythmic because the water forces you to a rhythm. It's more attunement than it is power output.

And again, if I look at it like a cake, like I want to get my attunement—like I can do some gentle rhythmic oscillations and attune my body, and then I can do like static holds and drops to get like tension and management. But ultimately, when I want to be powerful, I want to sprint. I want to jump. I want to do depth jumps. Like, I mean, just doing depth jumps and like medball throws for distance—there's so much there that's really, really good.

So it's like, everything else, just to my opinion, just sets the stage for that. And that's really my ultimate litmus test. All this stuff is—I try to structure my workout so everything sets the stage for whatever the biggest thing I'm going to do is.

And that kind of tells me now—you're going to have to kind of pick out things a little bit. Like you could have something in the workout this early that's kind of stupid, but you did something else that was cool and whatever—it will work itself out. But I think that's just the art of it. It's like a song. You have all this stuff that crescendos up to about three-quarters of the way through the song, where that apex is. And if you did it right, the apex is going to be better. And so that kind of takes things away from just being a big bag of parts.

I think Adam Smith, who wrote Wealth of Nations, talked about pin making. And it's like, originally, just had the guy who made the pin. Now you have 20 people who have 20 different jobs, and it can actually take away from the spirit of just what makes a good tool. And so that's where I just—I think once I see oscillo and—I think you're just getting a little carried away. I think it can become much—I just, again, back to it, I like the static and the drop because it does have that spirit of muscle tension.

Because ultimately the weight room is like, "Can you activate a muscle, and do you have mastery over that activation? And then do you have mastery over the relaxation?" And I think you see people doing hamstring tantrums and stuff, and like the ball, and there should always be a rhythm behind that stuff. There should always be like a control, because you have a rhythm. And that can then feed up to something more powerful, like sprinting, or maybe like a tail kick with micro weights on or something that's more dynamic.

But to me, like that stuff is never the endgame. It's just—and if it's just to do it to do it, I don't know. Like even the Marovich stuff—stuff I did, like I did this with the tennis team a lot at Cal. You would see—I got this from Gary Minovich, who—he's a character, very intense—and he would just like pull the physio ball out and you would just rapid-fire your foot against the physio ball, kind of like a front tantrum, like, but it would be very command-based.

He'd be like, "Okay, foot!" You'd hit your foot. "And now hands! Okay, now you're going to hit your hands." So it's very alive and you don't know what to expect.

Versus, "I'm just going to do this and hit as fast as I can." And the more I just think stuff gets separated into component parts that are away from the decision-making, problem-solving, live athletic machine, I just think it starts to get diluted really quick.

So maybe that's a little bit of a long-winded answer of just saying, in this era where just there's so many dilutions and parts that exist—and the problem is, well, how do we put those parts together in a really meaningful way that when we do hit the sprint of the day, the jump of the day—maybe it's just a standing vert in the weight room if that's your measure—that that's better because of everything we did? Or maybe it's just a standard, boring, punch-the-clock weights, and we don't have to—we're not worrying about that stuff. We're just going to get the reps in, and that's fine too.

But if we're going to get the reps in, I just think it should be more about muscular tension mastery and just moving the tissues. So yeah, I just think the oscillatory—I don't want to be the person who says it's been taken too far, but I think it just can get taken way too far too easily.

James de Lacey28:15

I've always thought, how much of it—I guess, 'cause people using it for activation, relaxation—how much of that really transfers to the skill? I'm not saying that they're useless and they shouldn't be done, more so like, for example, if you just take punching as an example, where you have the double peak muscle activation, you're going like activate, relax, activate at when you're striking the target to facilitate the speed, and then you can do—well, that's developed just through years of doing the sport. And then if you add on maybe the oscillatory ice on top, how much more are you getting from doing that?

Now again, not saying not to do it. But is that ability to activate and relax, maybe trained through specifically through the exercise, is that going to transfer over? And that's just—I don't know. There's no real way to quantify it, is there? It's just kind of a guessing game.

Joel Smith29:09

It is. Well, it's funny. I was just thinking about my own critique of oscillatory, but—and where, like I said, I don't want to say it's what's too much or we're doing too much, those blanket statements. I was thinking about Graham Morris, who does a lot of different strength stuff, but, rugby but also martial arts, and he was talking about doing a lot of oscillatory leg work and then how athletes were self-reportedly, "Hey, my kicks are faster, my kicks are harder," a few weeks after that.

And that's awesome. That's what you want. You always want that thing to try to tag it to in a relatively closed loop just so you know that it's doing something, or maybe then you start getting creative and maybe you do kick and then you come back and do oscillatory in a circuit and as long as you feel like it's directly impacting the thing.

Where I've kind of gone with it, I'm always looking at, well, what's the simplest way I can get all this? What's the most efficient way with the least amount of noise? And just so I'm not getting carried away with an ideal. And it is interesting, in talking about fighting too, it strikes me that a lot of that fast and loose stuff, how if not even more important in a fighting situation.

But something I really like is just general shaking. There's a good, there's like a 30-minute portal video on just shaking. And he's like, "You start, feel the skin on your forehead melt and you're bouncing up and down." You go through your whole body. But if you can do body weight, just shake—just shake up and down. Let your head relax, bob around. Shoulders bob around like they're not inhibited. You're going through and scanning and kind of just going into where there's inhibition and you're loosening it out.

And you go through 10 minutes of that. Go through the whole body. You can even take your hands and just—you're just shaking your hands out, just like this, your feet, your legs. Do a tantrum without the physio ball and just let your hamstrings and quads contract and relax and let your shin whip around.

You should be able to just do that and then go do your sport or your fight or whatever. And you should feel—the goal would be to get what you need in a quick body-based activation session because the best athletes, I believe, have that already. Why do the best athletes move the way they do? Because they have no inhibition or very little of it. And it's very similar. I think animals are the best athletes, and don't we just want to have that lack of inhibition that an animal does? An animal doesn't need to do oscillatory with a band or whatever.

And even an animal though, you look at them—just shake out. Watch a dog shaking out. You watch a horse and the flies land on the horse and its muscles are just twitching to shoot the flies off. But it's just like this neural just shot. And I think about that visual sometimes when I'm doing these exercises and activities because that's the goal. I want to do it without needing all the stuff. And there's a confidence to that, too. It puts the power in the hands of you. I don't need—where you don't need a fancy weightlifting card or a fancy workout to get all those things.

You should be able to just have the tools very ready so that you can put it into your—maybe it becomes a part of your game more of, "Hey, we did this in the weight room and now I'm going to do it before my game a little bit." And yeah, for me, before I do a sprint jump workout a lot of times I'll do—I got this from Aaron Cantor, and I think he got a lot from, I believe, Frank Fenich—both very ancestral movement type folk, and it's shaking, swinging your arms loose and long, self-percussion, just tapping and tap your chest and your head and you rub your forehead, just feel that energy move, very esoteric. And then Aaron does rolling, just free rolling, dive rolls, backwards rolls.

And that's disinhibiting too, because it's like you're—it's like a depth jump with your body repeatedly. And I mean, you feel so activated and good after that stuff. And then it's basically whatever version of that—you could throw drops in there. I think that's where J Schrader—speaking of J Schrader, the juice is a five-minute iso lunge and 50 altitude drops. I don't—the five-minute lunge is pretty brutal. That takes a lot of willpower.

James de Lacey33:27

Yeah, I've done 90 seconds and I'm like, nah.

Joel Smith33:31

90—yeah, my happy place is 90 seconds to two and a half minutes for most people, just because once you have to start cranking up enough willpower to hit that there—willpower is finite and you can only force it for so long. But yeah, like that and the drops, very similar activation patterns. You can—and the drops though, to do the drops in a way where, instead of just falling free, you're lifting your legs into it and stuff, trying to get a little bit more dynamic.

There's a lot of ways you can do that. But yeah, I think once you get your own personal kind of feeling there, I think you can really—the goal is just to move like an animal would in their sport, and then the sport movement you do you get more out of, and then the cycle keep repeating itself.

James de Lacey34:20

Yeah, that—if you mention a few people I've had on my podcast too as well. For anyone who's interested and listen to some of these people, Graham Morris, Dan Fictton—they've all been on the pod too, I know. Vern Gamba was a big mentor of mine too, and you kind of reminded me that kind of a lot of talk of rhythm.

And as you mentioned with the inhibition, I wanted to—you go down this inhibition road too, 'cause I wonder—how do I frame this? You had Mike Scoffield on your podcast recently. We went to uni together back in the day, and I had him recently on mine. And he was talking about—well, we were talking about being almost too, what do you call, quote-unquote "gym-centric," and just guys that are just kind of grow up in the weight room and they're just doing a lot of traditional lifting, straight barbell lifting, and they—I'm not going to say struggle, but they do things differently.

And there is a point where someone can be inhibited by being too gym-centric, and it's usually people who kind of come from strength sport and stuff like that, not people who are using strength training as a supplement to their sport. But I'll be interested to kind of hear your take on it on—do you maybe have an idea or opinion of kind of where that line lies in terms of maybe strength training and this kind of inhibition area, and where it could potentially down to being quote-unquote "gym-centric" in a sense?

Joel Smith35:42

Yeah, I think that's just the thing, is I look at the field as it is now. Oh, I mean, it was trendy about 15 years ago to talk about the silos. You've got the strength coach and the nutritionist and the sport scientist and the actual sport coach and sports medicine or whatever. And everyone's kind of in their silo. And I think the only way sport can move forward is if there's just more of a—you think of it as a neural network. There's just more innate connections where there's more understanding between those systems.

I mean, if you want to see a group of defensive people in my experience, go into the sports medicine room. It's—oh, I mean, not that there's not great sports medicine people out there. I don't want to overly generalize, but oh man, it's just—it's everyone with their own ideas and, "This is what I think an athlete needs." It's kind of like the, all the blind people feeling the horse. Not to say we're all blind, but we have our own way we see the world. And a strength coach sees the world as in squats and deadlifts and muscle activations.

And the thing is, is I really enjoy—I'll just give a story with this and then I'll talk about kind of where that line is, because I think it's a very fuzzy line because there's a lot of ways to get what we would call—

But I'm coaching youth soccer now and soccer, I mean I did track. I did track and then I love the weight room. So those are very more individual pursuits. They're very, they're pursuits that are a lot more defined by, can be defined by more brute force than fine skill if you will. And so that was my path.

And but I love soccer. When I was six or five I went to my first soccer practice and just absolutely loved it. It was the best thing in the whole world. And but I wasn't that good of a player. I wasn't that skilled. I could hustle and I loved the game and I had good body control and things, but I also just wasn't very confident. So it's this mixture of not being as skilled as the other players, not being as confident and aggressive as them.

And then you start to form, well, you start to form this structure of yourself, who you are as an athlete. And then it becomes, well, I'll be better by working harder, by grinding more, by getting stronger than you, by jumping higher than you. And all of a sudden, I ended up playing basketball in high school. And it's funny because I saw my stat line from, I dug it up. My parents were cleaning out their basement or something. And they showed me my stats from my senior year.

And I thought I had way more assists and points to be honest. And I look at this, I'm like, "Oh man, I only scored eight points a game." I thought it was 12 or 13 at least. Man, I, but the assists I had one assist a game or .9 and I was like, ooh, I was very self-centered honestly. I was just thinking how can I dunk on people? That was my main goal.

And so anyways, so now I'm coaching youth soccer and it's all about learning rondos, learning basically monkey in the middle passing variations, how do you trap, pass and problem solve, and then even dribbling and juggling the ball. I'll be watching my daughter's game and I'll be just juggling to mess around. I always object manipulation and I'll do it and I just realize just how tense I am, how self-judging I am.

Every time I miss or the ball goes off my foot a weird way, just this instant judgment comes in and it is under the surface. I have to do it enough and spend enough time in awareness to see it, but it's there.

And then all of a sudden everything becomes, okay well I'll just try harder. Put me in a situation where more force helps me. Put me in a situation where I don't have to just be skilled. But then that's the thing is you got, to be a strength coach, a lot of that's your MO. I wasn't as skilled and that's why I love the weights. I love that grind. I love that push.

James de Lacey39:36

And I think that's a good word, push. It has a different character than bounce or rhythm.

Joel Smith39:41

Yeah. And Kevin Malke, who's both a strength coach and sport coach from Ireland, talks about this. He says the most play-based athletes, athletes who just grew up in play, that's why I mentioned Maradona or Pete Maravic. That guy was skinny as heck, but transformed the way we played basketball. They grew up in play. They grew up with object manipulation and so they were so good at that.

I'd imagine the strength piece was, it would have to be presented as a game for, in some respects. I'm, Pistol Pete probably, he could have used a little more lifting I think, and Maradona put together. But just all that to say is, yeah, our view of the world becomes so just centered on the barbell. And I just think if we can rather just see the athlete without that judgment bias, instant bias of, oh you're missing this, oh, even the way people look at LeBron James. That guy's already stacked physically.

James de Lacey40:34

But I just find it funny how people will make fun of his lifting program when I mean, that's why I mentioned the gamified. You look at a lot, what that does, it's weird balance stuff. It's all to me, it's all very, still feels like a game and he has the physical gifts that he can still have the strength he needs. So, it's, and so the line in my opinion is you need to get the needed qualities to be robust enough, to be strong enough, and that line might not be as high as you think it is for a lot of people.

Joel Smith41:06

I agree. Yeah. And for some it might be higher than you think though too. But a lot of people, it isn't necessarily that high. But then it's to look at them as the whole to say, wow, what makes this athlete great? And you have to look outside yourself and look at the games and be like, wow, they are so good at this part of their sport.

And then go try that part. Go try that thing they're so good at. Get an appreciation for it because the neural network, the only way we can make more crisscrosses is if we actually spend some time doing what they do and feeling how they feel. What's it like to be you?

And Jay Strader had actually said something about this. And Jay Strader has a lot, there's a lot of stuff Jay says that's a little very grandiose. He said like some, I'll make a team of Michael Jordans or something, or I, but I'll take it for what it is. But when I, he says when I create a program for a client I try to feel what it's like to be them and not just, a lot of times we write programs, it's like, hey I'm going to put my, hey I'm Joel Smith, I love plyometrics and cool creative weightlifting adaptations, so I'm going to give you that.

But, and cool, I hope you like it. But ultimately I want to feel like, what's it like to be you and to look at sport through the lens of how you see it, which is way more skilled than I am.

So I just think the more we can appreciate the superpowers of athletes, I think that's good. And I do think that's where games come in. It's not always appropriate. You have pro athletes and they're going to go play their games on the field if you're the strength coach. But I do think in situations where you can gamify some things using tennis balls and sticks or various, basic like spikeball adaptations or basic agility adaptations, and you can start getting decisions and you can start using vision and teamwork and creativity, just to be able to appreciate, maybe it's not the main adaptation, but just to appreciate the gamer, just to appreciate that archetype and just how good people are at that I think is really helpful.

And honestly, it is something where sport creates a lot of good adaptations. If you're strong enough and you go sprinting, sprinting hard and jumping high and making hard cuts, and guess what, and doing it in a disinhibited manner, guess what? Your body's going to respond. It's not dumb.

James de Lacey43:27

That's sprint training.

Joel Smith43:28

Yeah, exactly. Your body's not dumb. And animals obviously don't, you look at a jaguar hunting, doesn't need to go hit the squat rack before it jumps an alligator out of the water. I mean, there's certainly humans that need some, a good level of that to get up to what our baseline ability should be, but at the end of the day, it's like once you have it, you just integrate it.

And I like the word, it's Ken Wilber, a philosopher, talks about transcend and include. So it's like, okay, well, once you got strong enough, you kind of transcended the need to constantly be hitting the weight room and constantly hitting the ultimate pre-game lift or whatever it is.

Just include it. And that's why I like the shaking thing I mentioned. To me that's a transcend and include all the oscilly, because if I can just do a shake, arm swing, a little bit rolling, a little bit of self-percussion, I get all that feeling just in my own body just as a little bit of my warm-up. And what, maybe I'm good enough that I don't even need to do that.

It just shows up in how I move when I'm doing everything before the game, or a Maradona. That's why I just love the Maradona warm-ups. I love it. That is disinhibition at its top tier, top shelf, and don't care about what anybody else thinks. So good.

James de Lacey44:42

I watch that to get, I probably watch that about at least once every three or four months just to kind,

Joel Smith44:47

Reaquate. Yeah, it's a hype video. Requ.

James de Lacey44:50

So yeah, I guess so. Basically, if I had to say what's the line, it's fuzzy. I just think it is, there's a few parts and I think ultimately it's a feeling you get. But one part is you're doing too much lifting when it takes away, when you're starting to, when the spirit of the weight room becomes a substitute for the spirit of the sport.

Joel Smith45:15

That's a good,

James de Lacey45:16

I've seen it in swimming too. Guys aren't doing very good in the pool and they're just trying to get extra reps in the weight room. And it's like, bro, that's not going to help you in the long run right now because you're just taking it out in the gym. That's great. I'm glad it's a pressure release. But I've seen it enough times, you keep on that trail because you're avoiding sport. Sport, more live, more chaotic, more going to hit your insecurities. The gym is more safe and controlled. It's easy to bash the weights and come away.

And it's good to get those sessions in periodically. But if you stay there, if it becomes a substitute for what you need to do as an athlete, then that's a problem. Obviously anything, overlifting orthopedically, I get, there's robust and we should be robust or whatever, but just to stay just the right amount that keeps you in an orthopedically good place. And that's why I really like the Marinovich and Sport Science Lab stuff because a lot of people who go to that system were strong enough, hurt, stiff.

Joel Smith46:13

Yeah. And it's just very dynamic, alive, a lot of balance, discy type stuff and just to keep that going. So yeah, anything orthopedically and then just honestly just efficiency. I always think we just spend all this time in the weight room because we just happen, there just happens to be a Monday, Wednesday and Friday and there happens to be 24 one-hour blocks in the day. So hey, let's go three times a week for an hour each.

And then you just see people just putting stuff in there you don't need to because it's just, oh, we got an hour. Well, what can I put here? What can I put here? I mean that's why I just start doing games and body weight stuff at some point because I'm like look we're really squeezing it out after 60 minutes honestly after 30 to 40 minutes of really good.

You do your big lift, you do your Olympic lifting, you do some bodyweight warm-ups and I'm like man we're squeezing it out at 40 minutes here. To, we could just do more sport play, you could take a nap. There's a lot of options so yeah. I think there's a multifactorial piece to it but a lot of it is just athlete centered with exactly how much they need.

James de Lacey47:18

Yeah, I love how you mentioned play there as well and we didn't talk much before the podcast but I spent my career in pro rugby and as I mentioned how Vern was a big mentor of mine I guess within rhythm and play and I think it was like 2018-ish I started playing way more games during our field warm-up. So with the Austin MLR team here, then with Romania rugby and the Romania Sevens, and I would change, we would do different games, different rhythms, walking, jogging, running, different spaces. I would throw in different balls, tennis balls, mini basketballs, rugby balls would change that up.

And then further on, I started, I did this directly from Vern was actually changing the rhythm of the steps. So instead of it just walking now was okay, it's walking, but you're like through waist high water. So now they have to lift their legs and we'll play a tag game or something like that but with them walking different ways. So just different ways of playing games with different rhythms just to, yeah same thought process you just kind of just play exploring different ways of moving.

Athletes are just big kids as well. So as you know so it's kind of you're giving them the best of both worlds there. So that's been my experience that, yeah I love it. I love the game aspect and I love kind of that playing with the rhythm and playing with the different ways of just doing things and letting them figure out for themselves what to actually do in the end.

Joel Smith48:40

Yeah, I'd love to hear more. I know it's your podcast, but shoot James, I'd love to hear more about those rhythms in the games. That's my, right now, I mean, I'll take it for youth soccer. We'll do it. We'll do it at practice on Thursday.

James de Lacey48:52

I like, we'll do a chat after for sure.

Joel Smith48:56

Yeah, that sounds good.

James de Lacey48:58

Perfect. I actually had a couple of questions from the chat in here. Kind of goes on to, I mean I have a, I could go on forever but I won't. So they want to know what's your take on weightlifting derivatives versus snatches and cleans for explosiveness. He says he watched Gar Strength who says cleans are essential/better than derivatives for athletes.

Joel Smith49:20

Yeah. So there's two pieces to this. I think one just goes back to that filter, right? If I was the brute force person, if I was the strength person, I see the world through those strength means that I enjoyed. And so I think that will be, if somebody's good at Olympic lifts and they like Olympic lifts or that's a cultural thing. A track and field a lot of times that's a culture with track and field and I think it's a thing by the way in track. So then that will be what you present to the field.

You also have people who would argue against that. You could get it with a trap bar jump or whatever. I would say I am more in the Olympic lift side of things mainly because, and this goes back to the parts where the pin making where everything is little parts, little parts, little parts. It's like ideally, this is a Rafe Kelly quote, but you want to train at the highest possible level of complexity because you train at that level and you get all these knock-on effects. So, you do a clean, a good clean or a good snatch, and you get a lot of knock-on effects.

And I would actually say to the people who would say, "Oh, it's too technical." You know, I got 50 kids, I don't have time, or anything like that, which I get, I get that stuff because honestly, Olympic lifts done badly are not great. They're not great, but honestly, anybody can do a dumbbell snatch. I mean, in my programming I do online especially, I program a lot of dumbbell snatch, dumbbell split snatch, all that kind of thing.

And then even the workout I was doing yesterday just with the training partner is we were just doing cross body kettlebell swings. Just cross body swing, put in your hand, do a press, come back down. If anyone watches Clifton Harksky and all the kettlebell combo stuff he does, you can do really simple stuff with a kettlebell. It gives you a lot of the same sequencing. I do like kettlebell because it kind of lets really loosen up the shoulders the same way an arm swing does, especially the unilateral. So, I'm like, "Oh, that's really cool."

But I like that, to me the Olympic lifts, it's we argue about it so much on X's and O's, like force, like, oh, I could do this and get the same force. I just like that it's efficient and it's kind of a story. It's a, it has a greater meaning than its parts, if that makes sense. So, if you do an Olympic lift well, it has a greater mean than the sum of the parts.

The only place that, and for a lot of athletes, I think it's a really good thing for the most part across the board. The only place I think you can get in trouble because I've seen this with swimming. I've seen it with track, especially myself. And my athletes at Cal heard this story way too many times, but my best year in track was actually when my Olympic lifts kind of sucked, but only because I was taking them so hard.

I mentioned that weightlifting mentality where the weight room replaces the thing you really need to do. For me, Olympic lifting actually replaced all the good sprint work and plyometric work and actually doing jumps in a way that was going to be better from a coordination standpoint than what I had been doing. And when I finally got an environment where all those stuff were checked off, really good teammates, really good sprint workouts, racing, good plyo, good multi-throws, good technical practices, a great encouraging assistant coach that got me fired up.

And the way the clean, the Olympic lifting program was trash. It was like three sets of 10. So, I'm like, I don't care. I'll bar. This is stupid.

But honestly, that was fine because it just, it was just GPP for me. And then I'll just say this, I would see this curve with the athletes at Cal, especially the output source. Let's just say swim sprinters. You would see this curve where they're going to get a lot out of it and then they're eventually going to hit that curve where now you're just doing the lift to put five more pounds on and who cares.

So a lot of it is just, as long as you're doing the lift quickly, you're doing it fast, and you're just enjoying that pop, you're enjoying the process of being explosive, but you're not necessarily trying to force weight on the bar. I think that's the sweet spot.

Where I evolved the Olympic lifts to help negate some of the issues that I believe happen with just trying to push too hard and crank too hard on the Olympic lifts would be just doing more stuff from high blocks. More stuff from high blocks, more split catches, that kind of thing. A high block split catch is a really lightning fast movement. So you're always having a level of high quality, high reactivity in there.

I've moved more towards those than just trying to just keep maxing cleans or pushing the number because eventually you will get to a point where, let's just say your back muscles and erectors. I love those videos and pictures of the Chinese guys and their back is just yoked out. That's my dream. If honestly, if I'm a soccer player or a track high jumper, I don't need to have, that's cool, but that's extra weight. It's a little disproportional.

And you hate to be that, I don't want to be nitpicky, but honestly, there's adaptations that are a lot, become a lot more specific. And at some point, just that rate of impulse at mid thigh and the ability to drop under catch really fast in different positions, that's the thing I eventually want more. So yeah, if I, I mean if I was with a team, let's just say I was with a team right now where Olympic lifting was on the table, let's just say even football skill players, American football skill positions. I mean it's very similar to a lot of rugby type outcomes.

It would be a lot of that. It would become a lot of high blocks, a lot of split catches, a lot of high pulls with the bar speed, that kind of thing gamified. But generally not necessarily that heavy because I would just want to say, hey, are you feeling good? Is your GPS metrics? Is your top speed good? Is your jump mats and reactivity good? Is that in the place we need it to be or is it going up? Hopefully awesome. Then I don't care the weight.

I also want to create an environment as well with that stuff where you're an athlete. So if you're an athlete, weight is only one of like four things. I want those other three things to be really helpful, which is reacting under the bar, catching it, operating smoothly, like you're not tensing your face or throwing your head back or there's the fluidity of it as well. Maybe if there's numbers, maybe we make it a golf thing where like, hey, I want you to hit 240 meters per second peak or something exactly on this set, that kind of thing. Make it a game.

Those things I think are helpful. I mean again a lot of people just do max cleans and it's great but I just say this specifically from the track high jump world, really narrow infrarenal angle of super elastic types, you can actually over, if you just push weight of all those athletic qualities you actually start to drag the ship in a place you don't love for it to be. So,

Okay, bottom line, Olympic lifts are good. Complex things are good. If you don't love Olympic lifts, do dumbbell and kettlebell stuff. I just think hyper-parting, hyper-sectioning the athletic machine, all these little quantified things, I don't love that just because I always just want to have the thing. I want it to be a series of bigger things that carry a mythos to them that I think are useful.

So for that standpoint, I would be a pro-Olympic person. But I'll just say even myself personally, I don't do Olympic lifts right now. And I totally, just because I got other stuff. I don't have actually room to really do Olympic lifts around here. I have sandbags in my garage. I got a hammer strike machine. I got a Voltra. I have a hex bar. I do a lot of stuff with a Marine foot disc balance, so I integrate through the foot for every.

If I'm in a gym and it's got a nice Eleiko bar, oh, heck yeah, let's hit some cleans. But I don't, I'm at the point where just give me the stuff and I'll figure out a way to get something good out of it. I enjoy that almost more too, like that creative outlet. So yeah, that's ultimately, yeah, that's what I'll just leave it at that. I can just keep rambling. I'll just kind of stop.

James de Lacey57:17

Reminds me Jimmy Radcliffe when he talks about Olympic lifts is coordinating from the toes to the fingertips. Is one of the reasons he loves it there. So that's a good one. And one more question from the chat here. I mean, I've got more, but we have to save it for a part two podcast or something. But he's saying not a lot of people do Zerchers. That was your Zercher chat before. Like, he likes doing them, but a lot of YouTubers say they're dangerous for the spine or back. What are your thoughts? First, don't listen to YouTubers. I carry on.

Joel Smith57:43

I think they're better for your spine or back because this is the thing like, okay, back issues happen a lot. Not all of, I mean, there's no cover-all, right? But I find that people who go through a traditional strength training program and get back issues, because I've seen them, is if you have a bar on your back, it pushes you forward. When you get pushed forward, the facets of the back of the spine, that area will just get more compressed. If that area is generally more compressed, it's more susceptible to injury.

And I hate to be the Debbie Downer with that stuff. Look, if I'm a track athlete and every 1/100th of a second is going to depend on how much output I squeeze out on myself, yeah, I can validate throwing some more back squats in, great. But if I'm a team sport athlete and I want to be robust and injury prevention is even more big of a deal, yeah, I want to really be careful with where I'm compressing.

And so, yeah, with a Zercher you get two really good things. One is, instead of compressing, instead of getting pushed forward with a bar on your back, you're actually getting pushed back because the weight's in front. Simple as that. So now you have less of a compression point on the back. And I think, people complain of, oh, are we being too whiny about injuries? Look, it's a good thing. Ever since I've switched to it, everyone who I've switched loves it and it's a staple for me. And then yeah, Anthony Cochril as well, those girls, they do that more than front squats because it's more natural.

And then the other thing is, yeah, so it pushes you back. It's also a reach. So to cradle the bar, you actually have to let your shoulder blades go down and forward a little bit and that unloads the upper back and that's something that also tends to tighten up a lot of times. So you have these two things there.

I'll say as well, it makes it extremely easy to keep a more vertical spine and get depth. So you're going to get more legs. Your legs are not going to escape with a heels elevated Zercher. I mean, for me, I'll tell you, man, my hamstrings do not get hit easy. My back will take everything. And that's another reason much Olympic lifts, it just blows up my back.

And if you're a high jumper, that's not great because you want the muscle more in your legs. And I will get mega hamstrings doing barbell Zercher with a heel elevated. I'm like, ooh, there they are. I could never get them to work before.

So because it stacks the torso really well and it stacks the pelvis, you actually have access to hamstrings for a lot of people who otherwise might not get that in a squat. And you want that. You want as balanced of an outcome as you can. And that's why I like doing disc-based squats. On my Hammer Strength machine I'll do split squats with a disc and I get mega hamstrings on those because of the co-contraction and stabilization piece because it's a balanced system.

So the goal is to get a balanced system, then go hard. Yeah, we're strength coaches, we want to go hard, but let's get a balanced system first so all that output can really be more effective versus, oh well, it's just the thing we do. So yeah, I'd love, and Zercher, by the way too, Zercher split squat, a front foot elevated Zercher split squat is, yeah, that is, that might be my gold standard.

I got everybody, I got high schoolers, I have senior citizens basically. Everyone needs that one. I don't care. There could be less nuance. That one is the jam. It's so good. Yeah, it's a great movement.

James de Lacey1:01:07

Well, I know what I'm doing this week and there's going to be some kind of Zercher variation. That was a hype chat there. This was awesome, Joel. We'll have to do a part two because I've actually got, I've still got a list of questions we have to get through. It was awesome. For people who want to find you, follow you, keep up with what you're doing, where can they do that?

Joel Smith1:01:24

Sure. Yeah, so Just Fly Sports, Instagram and Twitter are probably the biggest area people find me. If anyone actually looks at websites and doesn't use AI, justflysports.com. I feel like in five years, I'm not even going to be saying that one anymore, but it's justflysports.com with all dashes and then the Just Fly Performance Podcast on all your favorite podcast platforms.

James de Lacey1:01:47

Perfect. I appreciate you coming on and we'll chat again.

Joel Smith1:01:47

All right, sounds good. Thanks for having me, James.