Episodes

Today’s guest is Bill Smart. Bill is a sport scientist and physical preparation coach specializing in elite fight-sports performance. As the founder of Smarter Performance and the Strength & Conditioning lead for the CORE MMA team, Bill integrates cutting-edge evidence with real-world high-performance systems to enable combat athletes to show up on fight day in optimal physiological condition. Much of the conversation in sports performance hinges on speed and power development, or conditioning, ...

Today’s guest is Sam Elsner. Sam is a former NCAA Division III national champion thrower turned motor learning writer and educator. He’s the author of The Play Advantage and creator of the Substack CALIBRATE, where he explores how humans learn movement through play, perception, and environment design. Sam brings a rare blend of elite athletic experience and deep skill-acquisition insight to help coaches and athletes move beyond drills toward true adaptability and creativity in sport. As athletic...

Today’s guest is Ben Simons. Ben is a British performance coach and two-time Olympic bobsledder with a background in sprinting and sports science. A former World Cup gold medallist, he’s now focused on helping athletes develop speed, power, and coordination through evidence-based, real-world training methods. Ben blends biomechanics, motor learning, and nervous-system training to build explosive, adaptable athletes. Many speed training topics and conversations focus exclusively on the most stimu...

Today’s guest is Cody Hughes. Cody is a strength and performance coach at Farm & Forge in Nashville, blending over a decade of collegiate and private-sector experience into a practical, athlete-centered approach. His work bridges foundational movement with modern tools like VBT and GPS tracking, always anchored by the belief that health drives performance. With the rising influence of technology in training, it can become more difficult to look clearly at the core facets of athletic force produc...

Today’s guest is James de Lacey. James is a professional strength and conditioning coach and the founder of Sweet Science of Fighting, a leading platform for combat sports performance. He has coached in professional rugby leagues across New Zealand, Europe, and the United States, and has trained athletes in MMA, boxing, Muay Thai, and BJJ. Through Sweet Science of Fighting, he delivers evidence-based programs and education for fighters and coaches worldwide. Strength training for athleticism typ...

Today’s guest is Manuel Buitrago. Manuel is a PhD, along with being the founder and director of MaStrength, a global education brand dedicated to authentic Chinese weightlifting. Since launching MaStrength in 2014, he’s taught 100+ seminars worldwide, authored Chinese Weightlifting: A Visual Guide to Technique and Chinese Weightlifting: Technical Mastery & Training There are many misconceptions in the world of strength training, especially as the lens of a skeletal pressure-based view is not inc...

Today’s guest is Jack Barry. Jack is the founder of JB Performance and a former ABCA DIII All-American (York College, 2021) who played at Salisbury University. After college, he worked at Tread Athletics, then built a remote+in-person coaching model. Jack has coached athletes from high school to pro levels, appeared on Baseball America’s 90th Percentile, and hosts the “Just Rippin’” podcast. On today’s episode, Jack speaks on athletic potential as a function of work capacity with quality, delibe...

Today’s guest is Romain Tourillon. Romain is a sports physiotherapist and researcher specializing in the foot–ankle complex, with clinical leadership at the Swiss Olympic Medical Center, La Tour Hospital (Geneva). His PhD at Université Jean Monnet Saint-Étienne examined foot muscle strength and sport performance. It’s important to train the lower legs in athletes, but the question is what type of training is best, especially when it comes to working the toes and forefoot, versus more general cal...

Today’s guest is Sam Portland. Sam is a UK-based athletic performance coach and creator of Speed Gate Golf and the Sports Speed System. After a career in professional sport, he now consults with athletes and teams while mentoring coaches toward healthier and more sustainable careers. Sam has worked with athletes from Premiership Rugby, American football, the Olympics, and beyond, and also runs a grassroots “combine program” designed to fill key gaps in long-term athletic development. In this epi...

Today’s guest is Phil Nash. Phil is a Manager of Coach Education at EXOS. He is a seasoned strength and conditioning professional who leads EXOS’s efforts to develop and educate coaches worldwide. Phil specializes in bringing practical, science-based training methods—like plyometrics and medicine-ball work—into performance systems, and regularly shares his expertise at major industry conferences On today’s show, we dig into training models ranging from the force–velocity curve to the idea of inf...

Today’s guest is Tim Shieff. Tim is a former world champion freerunner and Ninja Warrior competitor, and the founder of Way of the Rope. After years of high-level competition, he discovered Rope Flow as a way to restore rhythm, coordination, and resilience in movement. Today, he shares this practice worldwide, blending athletic creativity with a simple, sustainable philosophy: low-tech equipment for a high-tech body. In this episode, we explore the transformative power of diverse movement practi...

Today’s guest is Dr. Michael Schofield. Mike is a New Zealand sports scientist and track and field coach with a PhD in biomechanics and strength and conditioning. He has coached athletes to Olympic, World Championship, and Commonwealth Games finals in the throws, while also developing national-level sprinters and weightlifters. His strength and conditioning work spans multiple sports, from golf to stand-up paddleboarding. Mike has done substantial research in, and is a subject matter expert in t...

Today’s guest is Boo Schexnayder. Irving “Boo” Schexnayder is a world-class coach and consultant with over 44 years of experience in track and field. Renowned for producing 26 NCAA Champions and 8 Olympic/World Championship medalists, he co-founded Schexnayder Athletic Consulting and founded the Track and Field Academy. A former LSU coach and USA Track and Field leader, Boo’s expertise in biomechanics and training design extends to multiple sports, making him a sought-after mentor worldwide. It'...

Today’s guest is Kathy Sierra. Kathy Sierra is a computer scientist, author, and horse-movement innovator who bridges neuroscience, learning psychology, and equine training. Co-creator of the award-winning Head First programming series and founder of the JavaRanch community, she later turned her expertise in intrinsic motivation toward her lifelong passion for horses. Through her Panther Flow approach, Kathy helps horses and riders unlock confident, curious, and expressive movement, sharing her ...

Today’s guest is Tim Riley. Tim Riley is the Director of Sports Performance at Kollective in Austin, where he leads one of the nation’s top NFL off‑season training programs and works with elite athletes across the NFL, NBA, PLL, and AVP. He also serves as a Lead Performance Coach with C4 Energy and Head Strength and Conditioning Coach for the University of Texas Men’s Lacrosse team. Beyond the weight room, Tim shares his knowledge through his podcast, Coach Em Up, and his social media platforms....

Joel Smith speaks on 12 reasons why athletes and coaches may hit a plateau in their performance programs. These include: 1. Lack of stimulation in the training environment 2. Too much stimulation in the training environment 3. Not enough creativity or novelty 4. Lack of a clear plan 5. Too much weightlifting 6. Not enough weightlifting 7. Monotony from failing to wave training loads 8. A lack of representative play and exploration 9. Deficits in skill learning 10. Programs that feel too constric...

Today’s guest is Michael Zweifel. Michael is the Defensive Coordinator and Defensive Backs Coach at UW–La Crosse, now in his fourth season with the program. He previously founded Building Better Athletes (BBA Performance) in Dubuque, Iowa, training athletes from youth to pro levels. Michael also coached at Clarke College and the University of Dubuque. A former record-setting wide receiver, he won the 2011 Gagliardi Trophy and still holds the NCAA all-divisions career receptions record (463). In ...

Today’s guest is Will “Hoss” Ratelle, former All-Big Sky linebacker turned strength and conditioning coach, with experience at the University of North Dakota, the NFL, and the CFL. Known for his intense, results-driven training style, Hoss blends his pro football background with evidence-based methods to build size, speed, and resilience in athletes. He’s also the creator of popular programs like “Hoss Concurrent” and a respected voice in the online performance space. Most fitness and training e...

Today’s guests are Cameron Josse and Joel Reinhardt. Cameron Josse is an Assistant Strength & Conditioning Coach with the Detroit Lions. He’s previously led training at DeFranco’s and worked in college football at Auburn and Indiana, training athletes across the NFL, NHL, UFC, and WWE. Joel Reinhardt is the Director of Football Performance at Lafayette College. He’s coached at San José State, Stanford, UMass, and Nicholls State. Both Cameron and Joel are field leaders in applied performance, dat...

Today’s guest is Jay DeMayo, Jay is the longtime strength coach for men’s basketball at the University of Richmond and the founder of CVASPS—the Central Virginia Sport Performance Seminar. He’s known for connecting top minds in sport science and coaching, and for his practical, athlete-first approach to physical preparation. Where the emphasis of an athletic performance program can easily be centered from a narrow perspective, Jay considers a wide variety of inputs, from an athlete’s underlying ...

Today’s guest is Hunter Eisenhower, Associate Head Coach for Sports Performance at Arizona State Men’s Basketball. With experience in the NBA and NCAA, Hunter blends force production qualities, data analysis, and variability-driven human training methods to build explosive, adaptable athletes. He’s the creator of the “Force System” and a thought leader in modern athletic performance concepts. Most athletic performance training is centered around outputs. Movement abilities and qualities are disc...

Today’s guest is running and movement coach, Lawrence Van Lingen, a world-renowned movement coach known for helping athletes move better by blending scientific principles, psychology, biomechanics, and intuitive coaching methods. He’s worked with a range of athletes, from Olympians and elite runners, to everyday movers to unlock efficiency, fluidity, and performance. Running and what we would refer to as “functional strength” are closely related. Strength-based movements that train the gait cycl...

Today’s guest is Rett Larson, strength coach for the German Women’s Volleyball Team and creator of the "No Zombies" training philosophy. Rett coached Olympic medalists with China and the Netherlands, blending energy, rhythm, and purposeful movement into world-class performance. As sport expands into an increasingly more high-pressure, early specialization event that can easily suck fun and joy away, there grows a need for a "counter-culture" within athletic performance. Not only does a "physical...

More show notes at https://www.just-fly-sports.com/podcast-466/ Today’s podcast guest is Stefan Holm—Olympic gold medalist and one of the most elite high jumpers in history. Standing just 5’11”, he cleared over 140 bars at 2.30m or higher, won the 2004 Athens Olympics, and holds an indoor best of 2.40m (co-owning the “height jumped over head world record). Now a coach for Sweden’s national team, Holm brings deep insight into jumping training and performance at the highest level. On today’s episo...