243: Jeremy Frisch and Calin Butterfield on Advancing Complexity in Plyometrics, Jump Training Concepts, and Athletic Lessons from Downhill Racing Sports

Today’s show features Jeremy Frisch and Calin Butterfield. Jeremy is the owner and director of Achieve Performance Training in Clinton, Mass, has been a multi-time guest on the show with all-things youth and creative training, game-play and long-term development. Jeremy is not only a strength coach, but also has skin in the game as a youth sports coach, and provides an incredible holistic perspective on the entire umbrella of athletic development. Calin Butterfield is the high performance manager at U.S. Ski & Snowboard. He worked for EXOS for about 8 years as a Coach across all different spaces including Phoenix, Dallas, SF at Ft. Bragg, Adidas America, and the Mayo Clinic. Calin and Jeremy are working together now on concepts related to long term development of ski and snowboard athletes. So often, we have our “standard plyometric battery” in performance training, but we cling to these fundamentals hard when we would be served well to be observing jump training and movement in a variety of mediums to create ideas for our plyometric progression. Studying athletes in sports that demand fast reactions, impactful landings, high risk, and rewards for creativity have a lot to offer when it comes to looking at our own training designs for the athletes we serve. Together, Jeremy and Calin will talk about their collaboration together with skiing, the use and progression of games with young athletes up to college level, plyometric progressions and advancing complexity, and how the natural warmup process in ski and snowboard (terrain park) can give us ideas that we can port over into how we can prepare athletes for sport. There is a lot of great information in this podcast that can be useful for sport coaches, strength coaches and skiiers alike. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 05:25 – The background of Calin and Jeremy’s careers and collaboration 08:30 – How does gameplay fit into a sport like skiing? 16:42 – When people tend to peak in skiing and snowboarding and how this fits into proportion of game play at different ages 24:18 – The power in connecting to the outcome and having multiple avenues to get to that outcome 27:02 – Attrition from training + creating enjoyable training experiences for kids 36:48 – How autonomy and feedback in the warm-up process changes as athletes get older and the reality of “perfect landings” in plyometric exercise 41:52 – The relationship between landing variability and chronic sport landing overload 45:57 – Reducing training down to information + plyometrics and progressions in skiing and snowboarding 48:03 – Long-term development in skiing and supplementing with traditional land-based training 52:37 – What it looks like to build an athlete up in high-adrenaline sport training 55:22 – How the aerial nature of skiing and snowboarding have an impact on Jeremy and Calin in their training process “[Skiing is] an early engagement sport, technically, like there’s skills that you have to learn from a sliding perspective, but that oftentimes turns into really early specialization and spending too much time skiing.” “The mentality of most of the athletes that make it to a high level in ski racing or free skiing… is intense, it’s almost like dare devil, formula one… The game aspect and how it translates into sport, I think, is very much on the physical side. I think the mental side is completely unique.” “What we try to do… is really just force environments that get them to explore their bodies, their joints, how to maneuver around certain objects or other people, and really just try to get the out of their comfort zone and using games, it’s a lot more fun for them.” “We so underestimate the difference between a child and an adult and keeping people in flow states. I just think that’s such a mistake that’s proliferated.” “The stuff that we do with younger athletes… that’s their workout, like that’s their session for the day… when they get older, we take what those kids did and condense it to the warm-up.” “Then they’ll go into more high-intensity stuff, where we’re doing plyometrics… but even now I’m trying to get away from your traditional, perfect landings… I want these guys jumping off boxes and spinning in the air and landing, trying to get as creative as we can there because… I don’t like these perfect ‘stick the landing’ things all the time.” “[Kids] hate doing things over again because that’s old news. That hop and stick is old news, dude, let’s add some more! The more you can give them, the more you can layer pieces on top of each other, the better for them. I think they’ll enjoy training more and be more apt to give you better effort.” “When they’re excited about their workout and the things they’re doing, they’re going to have more intent, they’re going to put their effort into what they’re doing more and you’re going to get a higher level of training effect.” “Once an athlete is able to do something, change it.” “In free ski/snowboard it’s not about being form-perfect and executing the perfect flip or spin, it’s about steeze, it’s about the style, it’s about throwing the hardest trick you can with that signature style you have on it.” About Jeremy Frisch Jeremy Frisch is the owner and director of Achieve Performance Training in Clinton, Mass. He is the former assistant strength and conditioning coach for the Holy Cross athletic department. While there, he worked directly with the Crusader men’s basketball team, in addition to serving as the strength coach for Holy Cross’ men’s soccer, men’s and women’s lacrosse, baseball, softball, field hockey, tennis and women’s track & field squads. Prior to joining Holy Cross, Frisch served as the sports performance director at Teamworks Sports Center in Acton, Mass., where he was responsible for the design and implementation of all strength and conditioning programs. He also served as a speed and strength coach for Athletes Edge Sports Training, and did a strength and conditioning internship at Stanford University. Frisch is a 2007 graduate of Worcester State College with a bachelor’s degree in health science and physical education. He was a member of the football and track teams during his days at Worcester State and Assumption College. About Calin Butterfield Calin Butterfield is the high performance manager at U.S. Ski & Snowboard. He worked for EXOS for about 8 years as a Coach across all different spaces including Phoenix, Dallas, SF at Ft. Bragg, Adidas America, and the Mayo Clinic Calin has been with U.S. Ski & Snowboard for 4 years, where he works closely with the sports medicine team as an ‘athletic development’ coach on long-term rehabs and return to performance cases (all sports). Calin leads the integration with U.S. Ski and Snowboard clubs/academies to support talent and athlete development pathways, and lead business development and education with medical partners.