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,