435: Jamie Smith (Strength Culture) on Isometric Exploration and Challenging Traditional Strength Paradigms

Today’s podcast features coach and educator, Jamie Smith. Jamie is the owner of Melbourne Strength Culture and has over a decade working in high-performance training. He has a variety of experiences in high-level strength and conditioning in both Australia and the United States and is heavily involved in the development and education for strength coaches. Jamie has a deep understanding of current biomechanical models and training frameworks, along with integration of “Bio Psycho Social” concepts for a complete training experience. Most methods focus on frameworks, technical models, sets, reps, and percentages. However, there’s little emphasis on the athlete’s subjective experience, which influences their results, learning, and enjoyment. In this episode, Jamie discusses building awareness and encouraging movement exploration to enhance athleticism. He emphasizes giving athletes ownership of their bodies and expands on the “bottom-up” training concepts from his last appearance, including the key “dials” of athlete experience. The show wraps up with his critique of conventional ideas of stability in athletic movement. This episode offers deep insights into human performance. Today’s episode is brought to you by TeamBuildr’s Gym Studio and Athletic Development Games. Use the code “justfly25” for 25% off any Lila Exogen wearable resistance training, including the popular Exogen Calf Sleeves. For this offer, head to: Lilateam.com TeamBuildr is an online software for coaches and trainers. Use the code “JUSTFLY” for a free 30-day trial of the TeamBuildr software. For a Gym Studio 14-day free trial, head to gymstudio.com View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Main Points 10:37- Awareness Development for Clients and Athletes 19:13- Individualized Approach to Training Progression and Optimization 24:58- Enhancing Athlete Experience through Self-Awareness Training 32:05- Key “Dials” of Training That Modulate Athlete Experience 51:11- Load Management for Injury Prevention and Performance 54:35- Enhancing Training Through Movement Exploration and Sensory Engagement 1:15:30- Reevaluating The Concept of “Stability” in Strength Training and Human Performance 1:32:24- Evolution of Movement Strategies through Tensegrity Quotes "There is no optimized weight selection, rep range, set prescription, total amount of jumps. Like any of these objective things are just ways that we as coaches have tried to create a structure that we feel confident that we're doing the right job in and moving in the right direction." Jamie Smith "Everybody argues about the external load, everybody argues about how much volume, everybody argues about proximity to failure... However, once you actually deal with an athlete, it's the individual response to the training that actually matters and you have to be reactive to the individual response which is the psychological impact as well." - Jamie Smith “Just get them with the bar, put the bar on their chest and just move. Feel their scaps. Feel. All right, well, hang on. Maybe tuck the elbow, Change your head position, change your rib cage position." “All of a sudden they'll find a position. It's like, oh, I feel strong there. And that thing's gone. All right, let's do some reps there. Can you hold that shape? Can you feel that shape? Yeah, I can do it. And then all of a sudden it just becomes like a better painting of how they're moving rather than the coach coming in and just being like, your shoulder hurts because of X, Y and Z and you're missing this” - Jamie Smith “So, like, those explorations are huge. Go to the position you want to explore and just play around with stuff. Play around with foot pressure, shin position, hip position, pelvis, rib cage, whatever the exercise is.” - Jamie Smith “You start very isolated, you start quite a little slower, maybe on the ground and feeling certain things and then start to build them up and add speed, add sort of less ground, less feeling, less sensation and moving that. The motor learning process is the same for everyone” - Jamie Smith "The squat is such an easy pattern. If you don't know any of the technical sort of ideas around movement and the models around movement. The squat is so easy. You sit down and you stand up like that. For a client, for an athlete that's ultimately all they have to think about is, is going down and up and, and the biggest sort of deviation from going down and up is moving forward or backwards which is shifting forward to the toes and starting this extension moment that comes into the system." - Jamie Smith "Once you can zoom out and see that all of a sudden you don't even have to know what the muscles are you don't even have to think about where it originates and inserts or any of those sort of things. You just. You just know that. All right, to achieve this task, I need to get the leg back in this position." - Jamie Smith About Jamie Smith Jamie Smith is the owner of Melbourne Strength Culture, a strength and performance-based gym in Australia. Jamie worked at high-level S+C in Australia and the US prior to starting his coaching business with Strength Culture. Now he is heavily involved in coach development and education for strength coaches looking to make strength coaching a career. You can follow Jamie through IG at @j.smith.culture