Austin Jochum on Flowing From “Chaos to Order” and The Process of Multi-Dimensional Athletic Development

Our guest for today’s show is Austin Jochum. Austin is the owner of Jochum Strength where he works with athletes and “washed up movers” to become the best versions of themselves. He is also the host of the Jochum Strength Podcast. Austin was a former NCAA D3 All-American football player and a hammer thrower (MIAC weight throw champion) at the University of St. Thomas, where he is now the speed and strength coach for the football team. Austin has appeared on episode 213, and also has written numerous articles for Just Fly Sports. One common theme of this podcast for so many years has been finding ways to make one’s training transfer to sport more, not just on the physical and mechanical level, but also on the mental and emotional level, and on a perception-reaction level. At some point, the hair splitting that happens in regards to weight room exercises (arguments on what set-rep scheme to use, single leg vs. bilateral lifting, etc.), or the minutia of biomechanics, can start to take away from developing other important components of athletics. Austin Jochum is a pioneer in the blending of sport elements into the traditional gym setting for athletes. He is a meathead, but also a die-hard athletic-mover, and passionately trains in a way that encompasses both the archetypes of strength, and performing ideally in one’s sport and movement practice. For the show today, Austin speaks on the art of developing a love for movement and play in athletes, how to build a “scorer’s” mentality, as well as how to optimize game-based scenarios in the gym to help improve transfer to the field. He then gets into an excellent discussion on exposing athletes to their weaknesses in a gym-game setting, and finishes with how he sets up his own training programs from not only a physical, but also a mental/emotional perspective, moving from external to internal states, relating each type of training stress to the emotional state of the athlete. 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 5:00 – A story of two different soccer coaches and their approaches to training with their groups 11:00 – The link between love of movement/sport, obsession, and subsequent greatness, 15:30 – How to preserve, and grow, love for movement in coaching athletes 18:30 – Thoughts on “leveling up” on the levels of movement, as well as mental and emotional levels, in a training session 27:30 – How to set up games in a training session that can help to build a “scorer’s mentality” in athletes 29:00 – How to modulate the space of the field, and 1v1, or 2v2 type situations that can help athletes 36:00 – How to transfer between what athletes are really good, and really bad at, in their sport in order to create more robust athletic ability 44:30 – Insecurities that are wrapped up in not being able to expose one’s self to failure 51:30 – The importance of being on the fringe, and evolving the field, and realizing that no one individual has all of the answers 59:30 – The line between order and chaos within a training session, and how a strength session looks for Austin, and how he moves from fun, to funneling the energy into outputs or skill, then taking the athletes into themselves “If you listen to really really good athletes talk, I look at my own past successes, it is because you are obsessed with it… and how do you become obsessed with something? You gotta fall in love with it” “Something we’ve been doing is saying, “if this kid scores”, it’s worth two points, so now the stud who is always scoring is going to find a way to give the ball to someone else, he is going to expand the field” “Watch when your athlete, the first time you meet your athlete, watch how they walk into the gym, because you’ll know right away, almost 100%, what they are thinking in that moment, who they are, how they interact with the world” “(To create a scorer’s mentality) let them score from all angles, in all situations” “Let’s say you have a really fast athlete that is struggling with some change of direction stuff, then you make the space wider and shorter” “We’re talking about sets and reps, and this exercise selection, and it doesn’t matter if you aren’t looking at it on the field” “Conjugate style your games, expose them to as many games as possible, and then ebb and flow between what they are good at and then what they suck at” “Maybe there is an arrogant athlete… expose them to something they suck at… and how do they handle that? I would much rather you lose in this (gym) setting” “There are so many fringe pieces that we can experiment with, but our egos don’t let us” “Joy, looking forward to training and learning a skill is really important for skill retention. In the weight room, having freedom has a ton of benefit with things like soreness, then what do you do with that energy? Now we funnel it into something we want to work on that day” “Now, how can we ebb and flow back into, how can I hold this position for 5’, or doing 1000 drop-catch reps… now they have to internally focus, and can you bring them back out of that?” “Not very many athletes are good at going internal; in those iso’s, they want to move, they want to twitch, in that stillness practice… so expose that to them a ton until they do master it, and have conversations about it” Show Notes Eli Franke water polo story https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9SBkUA-Iwg About Austin Jochum Austin Jochum is the owner of Jochum Strength where he works with athletes and washed up movers to become the best versions of themselves. He also operates The Jochum Strength insider which is an online training platform for people trying to feel, look, and move better. Austin was a former D3 All-American football player and a hammer thrower (MIAC weight throw champion) at the University of St.Thomas, where he is now the speed and strength coach for the football team.