Today’s episode features Jamie Smith, founder and head sport preparation coach of The U of Strength.  Jamie is a passionate coach and learner, who strives to help athletes incorporate the fullness of perceptual, social and emotional, elements in the course of training.  Jamie has been a multi-time guest on this show, speaking on his approach to training that meets the demands of the game, and settling for nothing less.

The further I get into my coaching journey, the more I understand and appreciate the massive importance of stimulating an athlete on the levels of their physiology, their emotions and social interactions, and their perception of their external environment.  Coach Jay Schroeder had his term called the “PIPES”, referring to the importance of a training session being stimulating Physiologically, Intellectually, Psychologically, Emotionally and Spiritually”.  I certainly agree with those terms, but they could also be re-ordered, as per today’s conversation “Physiologically, Individually, Perceptually, Emotionally, and Socially”.  (Individual referring to individual autonomy).

On the show today, Jamie goes into how he “stacks” games, play, perception & reaction type work onto more traditional training methods, for greater “sticky-ness” to sport itself.  Through today’s conversation, he’ll get into concepts of variability in training as it relates to sport, driving intention and learning through a training program, older vs. younger athlete response to game play with potentiation, and much more.

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Timestamps and Main Points:

3:30 – How Jamie infuses “play” into basic exercises and warmup movements

21:50 – How infusing meaning into movement improves intention, immersion and movement quality

49:00 – The role of play in helping infuse natural variability in athletic development

33:38 – How the goal of play and variability changes through a training week

43:17 – Menu systems and autonomy within the scope of games and training sessions for athletes

49:39 – How Jamie’s approach to “High CNS”, max velocity days and how layers of challenge are added on, as athletes grow and mature

1:02:53 – What gym work and warming up looks like for Jamie’s athletes when those athletes are already playing their sport a lot outside of the weightroom (and how to help use social/emotional elements to create a more restorative stimulus)

1:15:34 – “Sticky-ness” of skill in training, created by blending “training” with gameplay



“Play hits those missing pieces of the strength and conditioning model”

“Game play can create athlete driven approaches to movement and strength and conditioning”

“We teach them for the first few weeks, just so they have a general understanding, “what is a crawl”… but once it gets to the point where they understand what it is, lets layer on challenges”

“A big thing with the gameplay, is we never repeat the same thing twice in a row”

“I believe in exposing them to a wide range of situations so they can see what works, and what doesn’t work”

“It’s all about intent, and when you add intent, it changes everything”

“(With play) I’m talking about focused variability, having a purpose”

“They are trying to solve a problem while getting pushed, shoved, knocked off balance; I call that kind of “sticky strength” qualities”

“On the low CNS days I am looking at the gameplay, the emotional side of things, the social emotional side of things”

“The social-emotional does have an immediate impact on (performance), it does influence the strength, the speed, the power qualities”

“You’re working with a 7th, 8th, 9th grader,