EP 97
Socializing Strength with Jamie Smith
Adam Omiecinski is joined by Jamie Smith to share his journey of rethinking traditional strength and conditioning practices, motivated by his observations as a father.
43 min
0:0043:55
Adam Omiecinski is joined by Jamie Smith to share his journey of rethinking traditional strength and conditioning practices, motivated by his observations as a father.
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In this episode, Adam Omiecinski is joined by Jamie Smith to share his journey of rethinking traditional strength and conditioning practices, motivated by his observations as a father. He discusses the importance of focusing on movement, autonomy, and embracing failure, particularly when working with youth athletes. Jamie emphasizes creating 'safe uncertainty' in training environments and shares his innovative approaches to warm-ups and strength training. He also highlights the significance of developing social skills and adaptability in young athletes, aiming to mold 'awesome human beings' rather than just great athletes.
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Esta transcrição corresponde ao áudio original em inglês.
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All right, so Jamie, like you have a relatively traditional background if you look at like your bio info on your website. What caused you initially to kind of look outside traditional S&C culture?
Well, first I became a father, and I've said this on many podcasts, right? It's like when you have When you create this little thing and you just watch, you know, so I had a daughter and you just watch her or him explore and just kind of figure out movement, figure out their environment, figure out the different task at hand.
It's just kind of like a light bulb went off where I was like, there's more to strength and conditioning, especially when you look at it from a pure movement standpoint. There's more than sets and reps. There's more than this specific technique with the barbell.
There's got to be more to this, especially to give the listeners background. So I work primarily with 6 years old to 21, 22. So I work with the youth. And you can apply this. I don't care if you're at the NBA level. I don't care if you're at the major Division 1 level.
All of these ideas can be applied, but it's just there was more to this. And so that's where I kind of dived down and was looking ecological dynamics, nonlinear pedagogy. And it was selfishly for my daughter, not for my business, not for my program, but it was just to understand, okay, how can I guide, not command, my daughter through her early stages of life?
And so I saw what she was doing and I was like, son of a gun. And the cool thing about, and I'm sure you agree with this, a lot of coaches, especially the coaches that appreciate the art of coaching, a lot of them are already doing a lot of these things.
They just don't even— they're just not aware of it, right? And so that's where it's just kind of really diving down the theories and having, you know, some of these non-traditional concepts and being like, okay, this makes sense. And basically I started off, I made one change to our pre-training or our warmup, and it just kept evolving and evolving and evolving.
And now almost 9 years later, You kind of see what I'm doing, and I try to be you know open with the content I share and the stuff I put on my website. Yeah, it's it's completely non traditional, but it all started with having this new life form and figuring out a way to guide her.
You know, because obviously you can't really communicate. It was just it was fascinating to me, and so I really went down kind of motor learning, but from more of a non traditional approach.
I'm like putting myself in that situation. I don't have a child, but like I was just around one of one of my buddy's kids yesterday, and I'm just thinking to myself, like how would that influence? influence like how I view movement. And to me, like, a couple things are coming in.
Big thing would be autonomy and buy-in, because the little dude's not going to do anything if he doesn't want to. So you got to make it intriguing to him. And I guess like, it's really— it is much more exploration and like playful— not playful, but I mean, I already kind of touched on that, but it's exploratory.
It's tons of failure. Whereas like in traditional S&C, at least my experience is like, We're told what to do essentially, and like, this is what you need to achieve versus, hey, here's this little play area, try some stuff. Is that more or less like what you're talking about where it influenced you?
100%. Like, so safe uncertainty, right? You do not see that in the traditional weight room. And that's something that a lot of S&C coaches, it's like we are taught that everyone follows the same technical model. Everything is done a certain way. We have these 12-week pre-planned progressions and we have all these microcycles and macrocycles and everything has to be to a T.
And it's like, okay, when you do that with a younger individual, it's just, it doesn't happen. There's too many constraints, there's too many variables, there's too much change. And especially when you're working with, let's just, to give context, let's say you're working with 10, 11, 12, 13, 14-year-olds where they're going through puberty.
Oh my God, puberty's just chaos. It's chaos internally, it's chaos externally, it's chaos physically, emotionally, socially, psychologically. It's just chaos everywhere. And so, yeah, it's just creating that concept of safe uncertainty and just understanding that failure is essential and embracing failure. And that's something that especially when I get new kids, that's what I say day one, I want you guys to fail.
Guys and girls, I want you guys to make mistakes. I want— because the first— I guarantee you, the first 6 months of being with me, we're going to make mistakes. And you could handle that one of two ways, right? There could be negative consequences with those mistakes where they're fearful, right?
Or it could be something where it's like, okay, this is part of learning. This is part of the process. This is me getting better, where I get to try this new acceleration. Like, if I'm trying to work on some sort of acceleration pattern, I'm working on a different 0 or 1 step.
If I'm working on landing, I'm going to try to decel a little bit differently. If I'm doing a push-up, maybe I'm going to change the width of my hand or my base of support. But allowing them to give the autonomy, understand it's okay to make mistakes.
Yeah, that's just the biggest thing. And that enjoyment factor, right? And so one of the things I share a lot is gameplay, right? And utilizing small-sided games, but specifically playful games where it's literally, it's something you would see when me and you were growing up.
It might be something me and you would create in our backyard right after we're running from the bus, right? And so, I try to bring that stuff back because to most, it looks random. To most, it looks like, okay, these kids are paying to just play.
But, when you break it down and you understand the design process, you understand the CLA, There's a lot that goes into it, right? But you have that enjoyment factor. And I think so many coaches, whether it's autonomy, exploration, safe uncertainty, enjoyment, just those components right there is that, in my opinion, are game changers.
When you're working with the youth, or even if you're working at such a high level where there's so much stress, there's so much pressure put on these individuals, And hell, let's just say a lot of these kids, you look at the NBA, they're still kids.
You know, some of these guys, they're still growing, they're still maturing. So yeah, so I would say those 4 key factors were the biggest game changers for me in my evolution of my approach and my program.
Well, speaking of evolution, what's something like recently that 5 years ago Jamie would be like, oh wow, you thought this is something you're doing in your practice almost every day? What's something More or less like you've really evolved on recently?
Oh God. So I'd have to start with the warmup because it's just, I completely, I completely, and this is what I, a message I try to get to coaches, strength conditioning coaches, sport coaches. We gotta kind of just reconsider or rethink how you approach the warmup because what I was taught was it's kind of like you want to do the same crap.
You want to do the same stuff over and over again. You want to start off with soft tissue rolling. You want to start off with static stretching. You then want to start to heat the tissues And it's just boring, man. And I feel like you're just wasting so much time, whether it's 5 minutes of your practice or for some 20 minutes.
I've been a part of some programs where it's literally a half hour of the program is doing a warmup. So I just, I view it differently now. I view it now as a teaching point, whatever we're trying, whatever the objective is for the day.
And this is obviously always context dependent, depending on the experience level, depending on You know, how many times I'm seeing them a week depending on the time of year. But I use that as a teaching time, right? And whatever our objective is for the day, I'm going to utilize that first 15 minutes to kind of set the mood, to set the tone for the rest of the session.
And this all starts with how I interact when the kid first walks in. And so when kid opens up, when I open up my door and I greet everyone, does the kid have a smile on his face? Is the kid quiet? Is the kid in a bad mood?
Is the kid frustrated? Is everything kind of normal, so to speak? And so I utilize that. It's like, all right, how are we going to do this? Are we going to start with games? Are we going to start with whatever it may be?
But I completely changed my thought process. That initial, let's say, 15 minutes, that pre-training, that warm-up time where it's like, my big thing is I'm going to wake the foot up, I'm going to wake the brain up. And then after that, We're going to do something to kind of set the stage, so to speak, for the rest of the session.
And sometimes that's gameplay. Sometimes that might be more strategic 1v1s. That might be some sort of, you know, I'll take a traditional speed drill, but then tap into some of like the repetition without repetition concept, you know, to challenge, let's say, a 5-yard acceleration burst.
But yeah, so that's the first thing is I completely changed how I approach the warmup. And I call it the pre-training process. The other thing I changed, the big thing, is that I look at the word strength training completely different. And before, if you asked me this a decade ago, strength training had to be done with a barbell.
It had to be. No ands, ifs, or buts. I was a powerlifter. It's a barbell. We are squatting, we are benching, we are deadlifting, and I'm teaching everyone to master perfect Technique of those big rock movements. Fast forward now, it's BS, especially when you're working with a team sport athlete or you're working with the youth.
You're going to get stronger a million and one different ways. And so instead of looking at it as strength training, it's force development. And how can we develop all the different force characteristics, force acceptance, force transmission, force production, force expression, How can we develop all of these different force qualities?
And you can do it literally in an unlimited amount of ways. So, those are the 2 big things. And heck, my business, Adam, is called the U of Strength. That is my brand. That is my business, right? And so, it was very difficult for me to kind of go away from the dominant where we're going to bench, we're going to squat, we're going to deadlift heavy.
And we still do those things, but—
Yeah.
I was using one tool for the entire process. Now I have unlimited number of tools that I use to develop, you know, kind of these force qualities.
Yeah, I guess it's just you've changed like the rationale behind your using what tools you're using. That's pretty much it. Curious, like, I guess the warmup would be a beautiful case study. What are some of the main pushbacks you're getting from other people in the strength community?
And like, what are your main retorts to some of those pushbacks? I'm sure you're getting pushback on like the warmup. Say, oh no, we gotta warm up tissues, we gotta open up range of motion, we gotta do these things. Otherwise the session just plummets.
Like, what is your retort to that?
So I say we're still doing that. Like if you look at, because that's the thing, right? With social media, right? You do. And this is why I, and I know I share a lot, but I share a lot because of this reason where you get a 60-second, a 30-second, a 10-second clip.
Of a 2-hour session of a kid, potentially I've been working with for 200+ hours and you're getting just a small snippet of whatever I'm trying to share. And so with the warmup, it's just, I don't know, we're still, I think, and I always go back to this where it's, we gotta stop having this reductionist approach.
We gotta stop operating in a vacuum and understand that when a kid comes to see you or an athlete comes to see you, We need to respect everything that's going on in the world, everything that's going on in his life. And it doesn't change when they step in and they're inside your 4 walls.
That doesn't mean they're a blank slate and all of those stressors and all of the constraints, all of that goes out the window. It just doesn't happen. And so that's where it's like, I always go back to the 4 pillars of athletic development.
We have physical, psychological, emotional, and social.
Yeah.
And are you tapping into those 4 elements? Because I would argue that if you are going to warm up the body, we need to warm up the mind as well. And so we need to understand these 4 aspects are interconnected and that doing an agility ladder, doing high knees, everyone in perfect lines, they're doing high knee grabs, high knee runs, butt kickers, and all, in my opinion, nonsense and a waste of time.
Let's just be more productive. Let's try to get in and start educating and start really taking ownership of everyone's movement signature, right? So everyone, every athlete, yeah, every, everyone is their unique individual. They're taller, they're wider, they're shorter, they're less experienced, they're more experienced.
Everyone has different constraints. And so how can you tell me that everyone is going to follow the same warmup The same technique, the same everything. It's just, that's just not how things work. And so the warmup is a time where we can start to address, we can start to evaluate, we can start to look at, you know, all of these, you know, different aspects to helping develop awesome human beings, right?
Because that's— I'm in the business of not developing athletes. I'm in the business of helping mold and guide creating awesome human beings. And so that warmup time is personally my favorite time because that's where we can start that process. But yes, we get pushback where it's like, all right, the warmup is time to heat up tissues.
It's to kind of get kids going, not ramping up too fast for what they need to do for speed and agility. And it's like, how many of these kids, especially when you're working with the youth, how many of these kids can actually hit?
How many of these kids can run fast enough to put enough stress on their body hurt themselves. And so I think this reductionist approach and this kind of narrowed focus on just the physical aspects of development is what limits people to providing pushback saying, no, that's BS.
No, you need to do this. You need to do that. I've been doing it for years. It's that path dependency, right? They did it. Their coaches did it. Their coaches' coaches did it. So I'm going to do it. We've had success. I just think there's, like I said earlier, there's more to it.
So I guess like something that's coming to mind is like, obviously we have basketball coaches as the main audience for this podcast. What questions do you think would be beneficial for a basketball coach to like ask either their current strength coach or when they're interviewing potential strength coaches to see if they actually have like this open mindset to actually have a more holistic approach when it comes to training their athletes?
Have them come watch your practice. Just have them come observe. What kind of dialogue are they having? Are they asking questions? Are they seeing what type of problems are emerging? That's what I would do. I would, because that's like a big thing is understanding the sport, right?
So I'm in a unique situation, right? I work with every— I love sports. I love movement. I love human beings, right? But when you talk about basketball, if I'm hiring an S&C or a sport performance, athletic development, whatever you want to call it.
If I'm hiring someone, I am bringing them to practice and I'm watching. I'm watching. I'm having them watch. I'm having a dialogue. What type of questions? What are they seeing? What are they hearing? How are they interacting with your players? That's the biggest thing.
Because if you don't understand the sport at hand, I think when it comes to actually Preparing and developing skills that will transfer, right? And transfer, I don't like the word transfer, but getting things to— I call it stickiness, getting things to stick so that they can apply it on the court.
You have to understand the sport. You have to understand how the coach approaches the sport offensively, defensively. So that's what I would do. I would just have them watch and just see and create some sort of dialogue. Because you'd be surprised, a lot of strength coaches, they feel comfortable inside their weight room, right?
They're the strong guy. They're the— that's where they puff their chest out. But you get them on the court, now you see them shrivel up. You see them get small. You see them start to hide because they're out of their comfort zone. And so that's where a lot of the stuff that I do with the small-sided games, that's where that transfer, that's where that bridging, that's where we can kind of— I use the bridge analogy, right?
We have strength and conditioning on one side. We have sport coaches on the other. We love to stay on either side of the bridge. But what I want to do is I want to start walking across that bridge and meet those sport coaches somewhere on that bridge.
My goal is I want to get on that other side. I don't want to stay in my lane. I think that is just, again, BS. I think that, yes, you need to understand your skill set. You need to understand the objective. But with what we do from a general standpoint to what basketball coaches do to the specific, that stuff should blend in my opinion.
Yes, there's going to be some stuff that you're going to do in the weight room that's general and there's a ton of benefit to it. But there's also stuff where it's like, all right, how can we take the general force production strategies or coordination or speed?
How can we get that to then start to transfer or blend into a more kind of sporting ecosystem on the court? So my big thing with that, I just want to see what type of questions they're asking. How are they interacting with the players?
What are they actually seeing in the sport of basketball? Because it's easy, right? It's easy. Strength and conditioning, when you look at it from purely a physical lens, it's not that hard, right? I have within a 5-mile radius of where my gym is, there's 20+ sport performance facilities within Kingsboro, Lowell, Westford, Chelmsford, Nashua, in this small, small community.
In Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire, there's 20+ facilities. Okay, it's not that hard from a physical standpoint, but when you start to look at all the other factors, that's when it's like, okay, there's a lot more to this. And so that's a big thing.
It's just getting them, getting them uncomfortable and just seeing kind of what are the behaviors, how are they responding to it. I think that's the biggest thing as a sport coach to an S&C coach. That's what I would want to see.
Just to build off that, I guess actually it kind of goes back to what we were initially talking about with like dealing with the kids with failure and stuff like that. What are some of like the biggest issues you're seeing day to day with the youth of this generation as far as dealing essentially with how you approach things and like making awesome human beings?
Being that, like, what are their main struggles that they're encountering?
First, my struggle is patience. And that's something as a parent, as a husband, as an educator, as a business owner, Patience is not my strong suit. So patience is the biggest thing. The other thing is, is that kids, because of this early specialization and kids playing one sport, and so I've kind of gone back and forth.
I'm always an advocate for playing as many sports as possible. I don't care if it's competitively. I don't care if it's in the backyard. I don't care if it's some sort of made-up sport that you enjoy doing. Go out and do it. But the modern-day youth league, I call young athletes youthletes.
They play one sport because that is what a lot of these AAU programs, club, a lot of these that are saying you got to play this sport year round to get exposure, to get better, et cetera. So kids come in playing basketball only, and so they can do something okay or very well, one thing.
And so when you start to get them to start to explore, and I call them tools, right? Start to utilize different tools.
Yeah.
You know, to complete the task. It's just, it's very awkward. It's very uncomfortable. It's very— they're out of their comfort zone when it comes to that. So kids will be very good at doing one thing, but that's not athleticism. That's not, you know, human development.
And so that's the first thing I see. The other big thing is social aspects. And I don't know if this is due to the pandemic. I don't know if this is due to tech, you know, technological advances with smartphones and whatever, and video games, et cetera.
But it's interesting when you get kids to interact from different cultural backgrounds, financial backgrounds, whatever it may be, sporting backgrounds, it's very awkward. And that's something that I try to promote is that everything I do is in a small group setting. It's 4 to 6 kids.
It's not a huge— and I work with teams here and there, but I Primarily focus on— it's like 4 to 6 kids a group. That is like the ideal, in my opinion, size because you get that social aspect. And that first 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, maybe 10 weeks of a program, it's interesting.
The social, I think, is overlooked and I think is really important, especially in team sport athletics. But the ability to socialize and to use the social system as a vehicle to develop movement is something no one thinks about. But for a younger individual, the social side of things, especially once you get them into a small-sided game, let's say like a 2v2 situation, it becomes— it's interesting.
And a lot of kids have a hard time with that. I'm not saying all kids, but the big thing is that they have one tool in their toolbox and the social system is underdeveloped, so to speak.
How do you feel like the social system can hinder performance?
So, communication, collaboration, team coordination, that ability. So, you might get one kid that's a really good— he's a really good mover. And then, you get another kid that maybe he's not the best mover. Put them on the same team, watch them communicate, watch them just coordinate together.
It's disorganized. There's a lot of failure that occurs. And so I pay attention to that stuff and I don't step— like, I'm not something— it's— this isn't something where I come in and say, you need to communicate better, you need to be— this is how you're going to do it.
Go home, talk to as many people as you can. This is just stuff that I pay attention to and I watch it evolve over time. But just simple things like with risk-taking or taking advantage of affordances, It's really interesting to see when you get kids of different walks of life, getting them to work together early on, they can't do it.
But if you let it happen over time, then you start to see that emergence happening that I call team synergies. You see that synergistic relationship happen, and then they're going to start to have some success, whether it's some sort of speed game or it's a 2v2 situation where they need to work together.
One guy's got to complete a task, the other person's got to complete a task, and then they got to complete another task together. But getting them to do that and looking at it from a social lens, it's just something that's interesting to me.
And it's something that I pay attention to, especially with the younger populations.
No, as you're describing it, I'm thinking of situations where it can be downright adversarial. He's not here for the same reasons as me, and that's a problem versus Like, I remember, like, you know, I'll step in with these in these situations that whether it can be something as simple as like a summer camp where kids are just like, this is not cool.
I'm going hard and you're just like drifting around laughing. That's not cool with me. And it really can be adversarial. And then I step in like, well, that's your teammate regardless for the next 4 or 5 days. How are you going to make this work?
What are—
Yeah, let's take another step, right? And so I see this getting more popular, and I'm not saying this is new by any stretch of the imagination, but we do a lot of roughhousing, right? A lot of rough play, right? And I do this— so I'm not saying I do this day one, but if I have a group of individuals, let's say that they've been with me and we have one new kid.
So say there's 4 kids, 3 of them have been with me for several programs, and then we have one newbie. Maybe week 2 or week 3, I start to introduce some of these roughhousing concepts. And it could be a simple tug-of-war game. It could be a simple hip battling activity.
But it's super interesting to see, like you're talking about, a kid that is confident, he's here, he's comfortable with being uncomfortable compared to another kid where he's very tentative. He's trying to get an understanding for that. And it's really cool to see a kid that understands everything that we're talking about, because I do communicate this to them.
I do explain to them the importance in layman's terms, very simple, but I explain why these 4 pillars are really important to athletic and human success. It's cool to see, say, a bigger, faster, stronger, more experienced individual. I don't want to say take a step back, but understand the comfort zone from a physicality standpoint.
So, he could put the kid right on his butt, But understand that if I do that, learning isn't— that kid is just going to— it's too much failure. It's too much uncertainty. And so, to me, that's social. That's understanding the boundaries. That's understanding how to interact with another human being for a collective goal.
And so, roughhousing is a great example of, yes, it's working on—
Yeah.
physical aspects. Yes, it's working on psychological and it's fun, but it's also tapping into social, the social side of learning.
No, I concur big time. I actually went to Rafe Kelly's retreat last spring and that's something that stood out to me big time was the level of roughhousing. And it didn't have to be— you would gain such a huge sense of who that person was through the roughhousing because we would have just a simple goal for the game, whether it be get on top of somebody or maintain this position or whatnot.
And you could see just how different people approach different things. Different people had more sensitivity around certain areas, and you really got to know and relate that human being. Whereas, like, if we were playing a pickup game of, like, volleyball or something like that, I certainly wouldn't be able to have conversations further down the line with them.
Like, hey, this was going on there. I actually knew how to approach them a little bit better.
Yeah.
In a weird sense, I don't know. I'm not sure why. I don't know if you have any inkling as why. Roughhousing has such an impact on us. Yeah.
Well, it's so intimate, right? And so, what I tell the kids and the athletes, it's you're solving problems in— I call it the bubble, right? When you're an arm's length away, everyone's got their bubble, right? And so, you're in that person's bubble and you are trying to burst that bubble.
And so, that's very intimate, right? And so, that's something where it's like, yes, it's uncomfortable, But like you're talking about, you get to know the behaviors. You get to know when the person, his or her likes, dislikes, and you get to know pretty darn fast.
I just think it's intimate. And I think that's something that, however many years, depending on where you were, we were taught to be 6 feet apart, to be staying away from one another. And so I think that is something that is missing. And obviously it's starting to come back to norm, and I'm giving air quotes, but—
Yeah.
That intimacy is, it's important. And again, this is something I get pushback on that too, right? Kids are gonna get hurt. This is, you know, a waste of time. You're just trying to fill in time by doing this. And it's like, okay, again, it just goes back when you have, you know, a model, theories, principles, concepts, when you have those and you always revert back to them, then you start to understand why it's like, okay, now I see a ton of value.
In, you know, roughhousing or in whatever, one of these, you know, non-traditional activities.
That perfectly goes into probably my last question. But what, like, because I know this is a problem especially, and I can speak for myself now, I'm like starting to venture into the S&C world. What are some of the things that you like come back?
What are your, some, some of your key underpinning things that you always reference? That way you actually kind of, and this is for all coaches out there, that way they don't essentially like get stuck in following like the new fad or whatever it is.
They can actually like sort through, all right, this makes sense for me because of X, Y, and Z. What are the principles you operate out of, Jamie?
Oh God. So the number one, and I'm kind of— I've already said this, but look at the human before the athlete. And so I think that is so— for so many coaches, you know, sport performance coaches, but we especially And I think this— and it's been a while.
I want to be honest, it's been a while. So 11 years ago, I was at the college level. So I've been in the youth for— and I work again, 25, 30. I have older athletes, but primarily I work with the youth. And so looking at the human before the athlete, I just think is something that is so powerful.
And instead of creating the best athlete, developing awesome, robust, and resilient human beings.
Yeah.
That is something that I don't know. It's something that I always go back to. So when I'm designing something, is this helping? Is this assisting? Is this facilitating? You know that overarching objective of developing awesome human beings. So that's that's one. That's like my biggest one.
The next one is kind of like I talked about understanding force, understanding the different characteristics of force development because that's another big thing that I always go back to where. It's like, yes, we can do regular strength training, but that's only tapping in again to one aspect, one tool, one force quality.
But understanding that we have force potential and force expression. With force potential, you got the acceptance or the yielding, you got the production or the overcoming, and then you got the transmission or the elasticity. And then the other one is you have the force expression.
which is the force potential ability, but within a skillful situation with time constraints, with different types of constraints like sport. And so utilizing the weight room, not just for force production, but understanding that we can use the weight room to develop all these other characteristics from a force development standpoint.
The other thing is, and I'm going to mess this quote up, but it's from the late Dr. Jurov Vorkashevsky, but sport's a problem-solving activity.
Yeah.
And so looking at everything we do as a problem, every step we take is a problem, every repetition we do is a problem, and utilizing that from a learning lens. Because in my opinion, with the youth, 99.9% of the time it's motor learning.
Yes, as you start to get older, you're going to shift between learning and performance, motor learning and motor performance. But for my specific The people and the humans I work with, it's majority learning opportunities, learning situations. Every rep, every step, every situation, every activity is a problem, and there's going to be solutions that come with those problems.
And so that, and then the last, I would say the last thing is that all this is nonlinear. And I think for strength and conditioning, this is very hard But if you look at nonlinear pedagogy, it does make a ton of— it makes a ton of sense.
And that's where I had a ton of light bulbs go off. But it's just this process is not linear. It's not preplanned. It's not predetermined. And that's hard conversations to have with coaches and parents saying, if I'm going to pay or we're going to do this, what are the expectations at the end?
And a lot of times I'm honest with them. I don't know. It's going to fluctuate. There's going to be good days. There's going to be bad days. And we've got to stop looking at the short term. But let's look at where Johnny is 5, 10, 15, 20 years down the road.
That's what I care about. But is that this is a nonlinear process. And then with that nonlinear aspect to it, you have to have patience. And that's one thing I do. I always give myself a grade at the end of the day, and I'm honest with myself.
I give myself a grade. I give myself an A, B, C, or F. And it's funny, the days I give my F, I just didn't have patience. And I'll be honest, the next day I tell the kids, I'll be brutally honest, I sucked.
I'm sorry, I apologize, I will get better. But having that self-awareness, I think, is important. But patience is huge with understanding that there is going to be— it is a nonlinear path.
So, can't help myself. I have 2 questions on those bookends, the awesome human being and the patience aspect. So, with the awesome human being, is there What is your KPI for this is an awesome human being is being developed right now?
So I would say my first KPI is when a kid comes in, and this doesn't have to be necessarily awesome human being, but this is a KPI that I don't know many— there's some that do this, but I don't know many. When a kid first comes in, is there a smile?
Or during the warmup, is there laughter? And, I know that sounds so woo-woo and BS, what have you, but that enjoyment factor to training, you need to have that enjoyment factor in life. There's enough of negativity, there's enough of crap in the world that being an awesome human being, we got to have that positive energy.
And so, smiling, laughter, and don't get me wrong, we still work hard, we still get after it, there's still grit, there's still some of these traditional elements. But when a kid walks in, is there a smile? And if there isn't a smile, how do I get them to smile?
Do I tell them a joke? Do I have them tell me a joke? Do we go right into gameplay where we start to have some fun? So I would say smiling. The other thing is I video a lot. I do a lot of the video analysis.
Perfect technology using an iPhone, right? I have 80,000 videos on my phone. And videoing everything and watching— yes, watching the movement patterns. Yes, watching some of the athletic qualities that we're trying to develop and train, but also that interaction, like we talked about before, from a social and emotional, but the interaction, like what does a kid do when there's failure?
Well, how does a kid react? How does a kid respond to failure, to mistakes, to working with someone that may be not as skillful as them? And so I look at the behaviors, I look at that and just seeing over time, You know, you might have someone that he gets really frustrated.
He's very vocal about it. To now, he's patient. He's he's he's communicating and just seeing that process over time. In my opinion, that's teaching them how to solve problems. You know, in stressful situations, that's life. And so taking videos and show, and I'll do this with kids where I'll put a video of day one to day one hundred.
And I'll put 2 specific situations in a video. And of course, I get the parents' permission. I'll text it to them, say, hey, look at this. And it's powerful, man. It's cool to see that. So kind of being able to interact with all walks of life, I think, is really important.
And then I think the other KPI is when I create a new challenge, and usually I will do this at the end of a pre-training, at the end of the warm-up. If I'm creating a challenge that I know is going to be difficult, how do they handle it?
Do they pout? Do they say, F that? Or do they say, hey, I'm going to figure this out and I'm going to try to find a solution to this. It might not be effective, but I'm going to try. And then I'm going to ask questions and I'm going to be curious.
I think those are the big things that I kind of pay attention to. With developing awesome human beings.
And as far as patience, like, what is your main struggle with patience? Is it trying to like achieve a certain— you obviously, when we create activities, we have certain things we want to see.
Is— Yeah. So my bad, I'm very competitive. I was a college athlete. I, I just, I love winning. I love it. I love it. I love it. And so a lot of these things, when you hear me say that, you're like, that's no way.
No, you don't. You're doing all of this kind of, you know, non-traditional stuff. There's no way that— because that's a strong traditional kind of view or characteristic, right? I'm just very competitive. And so understanding it's okay to be competitive because the passion I have— so I have a very strong passion similar to you, right?
Similar to Alex. We're very passionate with what we do, with the message we're trying to The message we're trying to send out to the world. And so sometimes that passion can kind of get in the way of that patience. And so a lot of times I just got to take a step back.
I got to take a deep breath and just take ownership when I mess up with it. But the patience, it's just, I just, I've never had it. It's just not, it's just part of me, right? I was like that when I was a kid.
I'll be like this to the day I die. But just understanding that. And sharing to the kids, right? Because it's we're always learning, right? To say that we're not learning every single day—that's just not true. Honestly, that's why we have these conversations. That's why we do these podcasts.
That's why I create these ebooks and share the. We're always trying to learn. We're always trying to evolve and get better. So yeah, it's just one of those things with patience. It's just it's something that I'm still working on, right? And it's something that.
I will always have to work on. But again, I would always take that passion because I love what I do and at times be like, hey guys, I messed up.
Yeah, we all got crossed the bear. And it's tricky too, because again, like we get excited about these things. I mean, majority of the people we work with are competitive in one sense or another. It's just we— and again, so much we're surrounded by what?
Immediacy, immediate gratification left, right, and center. So Why can't this development of human beings, this nonlinear complex process, why can't that be sped up? And why can't we get that faster? We can get it faster, but it's still nonlinear. It's still going to fluctuate, and we have to be able to ride that wave.
Absolutely. And with this message, right? So one thing I tell all the kids I work with, and for some, they could potentially take this the wrong way, but for most, they understand where I'm coming from. Where I'm on the mission of creating awesome human beings, and something I say is when someone is satisfied in the in our training environment, that drives me nuts.
And so that's where patience kind of goes out the window. Where I tell kids, I want you guys to be great at whatever you want to do in life, and if you are settling, if you are happy where you are, that is something that is not going to happen here.
I want you guys to be great. I want you guys to be awesome. I want you guys to dominate every aspect of your life. And so that is something, a message I say a lot, especially with the younger athletes where, like you're talking about, where everything is short-term.
Everything is, if I can't do this, then, oh, it's okay.
Yeah.
I don't know, man. I just think that is, again, that's another, like, staying in your lane. I think it's BS, man. I think that we can push the limits, but understanding it's nonlinear, understand you have to have that patience aspect to it. I still think that from a traditional side of things, I think not being okay with being mediocre is okay.
I want kids to just dominate everything.
So you're talking basically like kids are almost like checking off boxes within The workout.
Exactly. That is a perfect— oh my gosh, thank you. That was a perfect— that's what I was trying— I'm not good with words, man. I can coach, I can design, I can— but when it comes to stuff like this, words, thank God I have a very intelligent wife, you know, from writing and stuff and that type of stuff.
But exactly, that's why I hate when I hear sport coaches or strength coaches— it's common in S&C, I'm sure you hear it— where it's like, yep, we got this done, we checked it off the box. Oh my God, that drives me freaking nuts.
It drives me absolutely insane. Exactly. Well said. Exactly.
Honestly, that comes back to like the whole not setting problems. You're giving a checklist and like, hey, we got to get— I don't even care if it's a rep scheme, an exercise. If you start viewing it like that checklist, like we got to hit these parameters and then we're out of here, it's pretty dead and it's pretty lifeless.
And what else is going to happen? Then their output's going to go down because again, they're not emotionally engaged. They don't have You have skin in the game. And that's where the emotional aspect, social aspect, these things make a huge difference on performance.
And I mean, I oversee it myself, especially when I'm going about my workouts and stuff like that. If there's not a problem to be set and a clear measure, and that's where S&C probably really struggles. And I know Franz talks about this, Franz Bosch, is not having good feedback of like, this is clear success.
I don't have an endpoint to go to. I don't know if I'm actually doing this correctly. It's very vague.
Yeah. Yep. And so, yeah, the biggest thing is that with training, is your process alive or is it dead? Right? And that's what you're saying. And everyone's processes, from a traditional standpoint, it is dead. And I wrote an article about this on my website, but it's like, you want to create an alive process where you're solving problems, there's new challenges, there's exploration, everything we've talked about, you want that alive aspect to training.
Yeah.
All right, Jamie. Well, I won't keep you much longer, man. I appreciate your time. Thanks for coming on. Give people some contact information for how they can get ahold of you.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, first, thank you. I appreciate it. It was a great conversation. I love having this type of dialogue, especially with someone that is an outside-the-box thinker. So thank you. So yeah, so website, theyouarestrength.com. On the social, #youarestrength. And honestly, any criticism, any questions, any comments, I welcome it all.
theyouarestrength@gmail.com. Message me, DM me. I'm an open book. I love to have these type of conversations. So thank you.
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