213: Austin Jochum on Bringing the Training Session to Life: A Creative and Transferable Approach to Athletic Development | Sponsored by SimpliFaster

Today’s episode features strength and athletic movement coach 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 also hosts the Jochum Strength podcast, and was a former D3 All-American football player and a hammer thrower at the University of St.Thomas, where he is now the strength coach for the football team. In training athletes, amongst many other lessons, I’ve learned two big things in my 8 years as a full-time strength coach.  One is that the athlete experience supersedes the need for a traditional written training structure, and two is that better performances in the “big lifts” are often not an indicator for having better performance on the field of play.  To dissect these issues and achieve multi-lateral development with more potential transfer to sport, an approach that considers emotional and environmental factors in the training process is a must.  Athlete autonomy, decision making, emotional growth, and creativity are universal structures that can find transfer to other areas of life outside the weight room, including sport. I was a guest on Austin’s podcast a few months ago, and in talking to him, truly enjoyed his approach to holistic athletic development, and his digging into the total process to a much greater degree than simply building up lifts and taking athletes through canned mobility and stability progressions.  Austin is a young coach with a huge passion for finding transferable performance to athletes on all levels.  Through a variety of methods, he gives athletes the maximal opportunity to become the strongest version of themselves through creative methods that prioritize autonomy, emotional development, and decision making.  On today’s show, Austin covers the experiences he had as an athlete that has impacted his creative approach to coaching.  He goes in-depth on the emotional development of athletes, fostering autonomy, and how each session facilitates a maximal “aliveness” and intention, as it moves from creative/perceptive movement training, into the primary strength work, and then autonomy-driven auxiliary training. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more. More show notes at just-fly-sports.com/podcast-213-austin-jochum/