Jeremiah Flood on The Speed of Body and Mind in Athletic Development and Performance

Today’s show is with sports performance coach, Jeremiah Flood. Jeremiah is the owner of Flood Sports, a sports training company in Southern California whose mission is to facilitate the development of mindful and adaptable athletes. Jeremiah is a former NCAA D1 defensive back at FIU where he earned his B.S. and M.S. in Exercise Science. After becoming a CSCS and working with Women's Volleyball and Soccer at his Alma Mater, He found the sport of Rugby, spent some time in USA rugby academy and garnered a professional contract. Jeremiah looks to enhance the soft skills, such as decision-making and confidence in training the speed of both the mind and body in training. Strength is a relatively easy quality to develop in athletes, while speed on the other hand, is a more complex, but in many ways, more rewarding venture. In the realm of athletics, “speed” is multi-factorial, and just because an athlete is fast over 20,60, or 200 meters, does not mean that they will be equally as fast in the speed of a game. Game-speed involves complex decision making processes, mixed in with emotional management and confidence under a variety of stressful conditions. To be skilled in facilitating means to improve game speed requires a holistic and dedicated approach. On the show today, Jeremiah takes us through his unique approach to building the speed of the mind and body. On the physical level, we talk about his approach to testing and training linear outputs, such as sprinting and jumping. On the mental level we get into the facilitating of the development of self-awareness, confidence and specific reactivity in athletes as it pertains to sport, and how speed and power can be blended with mental elements. Finally, Jeremiah gives us some great “nuts and bolts” talk on how a daily training session unfolds under his process. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to www.lostempireherbs.com/justfly View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 5:55 – How Jeremiah pivoted his training as a result of the covid-19 pandemic 7:30 – Training athletes when there’s no official tournaments or competition 10:08 – How to play “Gatorball” & why it’s a great game for young athletes to play 15:05 – Why blend cognitive development with physical development? & Jeremiah’s experience evolving as a college athlete 17:52 – How Jeremiah gives feedback to athletes on self-talk, self-reflection, and having a routine 22:32 – Jeremiah’s thoughts on working with an athlete who doesn’t seem motivated to formally “train” or do particular exercises or drills 27:17 – How often is pure speed the limiting factor for athletes to reach their goals? 33:06 – Basic “game speed” principles and practices 37:25 – The duties of a strength coach for high school and middle school athletes 40:48 – Jeremiah’s approach to testing athletes’ performance 49:44 – Toughness & the significance of doing things you don’t want to do 57:05 – Neural-perplexity: Challenging an athlete’s cognitive load and speeding up the brain’s reactivity 1:02:42 – What does an average training session look like for Jeremiah and his athletes “If I could go back in time, I would loved to have had a physical preparation coach who not only could’ve helped me in my physical abilities, as I loved, but also to tie that in with the mental and emotional, perceptive and reactive, all those elements that, holistically speaking, can help us maximize our outputs in the games we play.” “When I was transitioning from college football to rugby, it’s obviously a huge difference in skillsets, perception, action as far as catching, keeping your eyes ahead of you and passing… it really forced me to build that ability to scan the field. I didn’t have that when I first tried to play rugby and I thought I could just use my speed and physicality, but in rugby everyone has that, so I had to find a way to differentiate myself or just evolve myself.” “I was working with these kids… and I just started implementing things based off feedback from parents that there was a disconnect between speed training, performance training, [and] their actual game.” Questions Jeremiah gives his athletes to reflect upon and talk about: “What are my goals? What do I enjoy about sports or about the game I play? What do I want from this? What are my strengths and what are my weaknesses?” “My job [as a strength coach] is to put a smile on kids’ faces and you’re going to be happy because you’re getting stronger and because you’re getting faster but you’re also going to have fun and play games that may have a lot of relevance to your sport, or maybe they don’t and it’s fun because it’s just a game and you’re generally enjoying moving your body and reacting!” “We time every time we’re at the field… and during the pandemic, we brought the Vertec to the track. Honestly, it was really up to them… We don’t really put that much thought into it because, again, we use it as a confidence tool. Like okay, you’ve leveled up, how are you going to apply it?” “If they can express themselves autonomously, they can also self-soothe and recover by themselves.” “Our warm-up is usually either a series of different isos or we’ll just play a small-sided game for a couple of minutes and it usually depends on the demeanor of the athletes, the way they come in. If they’re really bogged down by playing tournaments that they’re already doing, we’ll spice it up.” About Jeremiah Flood Jeremiah Flood @coach_jflood is the owner of Flood Sports, a sports training company in Southern California whose mission is to facilitate the development of mindful and adaptable athletes. Jeremiah is a former NCAA D1 defensive back at FIU where he earned his B.S. and M.S. in Exercise Science. After becoming a CSCS and working with Women's Volleyball and Soccer at his Alma Mater, He found the sport of Rugby, spent some time in USA rugby academy and garnered a professional contract. With his playing days behind him, Jeremiah focused on developing athletes of the future. His philosophy in the development of growing athletes is that there is more to sports performance than just power, speed and agility. Although these skills are extremely important, He also looks to enhance the soft skills, such as decision-making and confidence in training the speed of the mind and body.