Today’s guest is Jeremy Frisch. Jeremy is the founder and performance director of Achieve Performance Training in Clinton, Mass. He has been a multi-time guest on the show on the topics of youth and long-term physical development, game-play, and the integration of all these things into a greater training philosophy. Jeremy is one of my biggest influences in how I see and connect the child to scholastic to adult continuum of sport development and performance.
As much as coaching is prescriptive on the level of exercises and progressions, it is even more intuitive in nature. So often we seek the exact exercises, drills, and cues that will help athletes to achieve more specific strength or a better technique. These are helpful in key situations for athletes, but we must also build and understand a bigger picture (by coaching in many different sport situations and developmental stages), which helps us break into more expansive ways of seeing the picture of athleticism.
On today’s show, Jeremy gets into how his work from the spectrum of youth training, up to adult fitness has improved his general ability to coach and implement creative solutions for athletes. He’ll cover important developmental steps in early childhood that lay a foundation for improved abilities later on, and then get into games, field size and game speed elements of sport. Finally, we’ll finish off the show with a chat on concepts of creative and engaging training, as well as a take on how the traditional strength and conditioning type mentality may serve some athletes well, where others may find more confidence in their game and sport skill abilities.
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Timestamps and Main Points
5:33 – How Jeremy runs his adult fitness classes in comparison to his youth and scholastic training sessions – How Jeremy views game-speed, in young athletes, and as they move through maturity 28:11 – How a child’s strategy and disposition based on formative years leads to the type of athlete they become later on (i.e. offensive, defensive, hustle/grinder type) 37:42 – How to manipulate field sizes and playing spaces in sport development 47:44 – Using creativity to make training more engaging for the athlete, and how to keep the game-like nature of movement in training 53:22 – Jeremy’s thoughts on the traditional strength and conditioning mentality working better for some athletes vs. others 1:05:37 – Aerial ability and training, and how it relates to general athleticismJeremy Frisch Quotes
“We replaced box jumps for adults, with step-up jumps”
“That’s what I tell younger coaches who walk through our doors, you might not love it, but realize that the group you are working with is going to make you a better coach down the line”
“When a baby is born, you have an opportunity to put a baby in an environment to be a competent mover… and that’s floor time, belly time”
“The floor is the child’s neurological workshop… when you put the baby on the floor, or in a playpen and you just leave them alone, they are going to figure out how to lift their head, push off the ground, reach and move”
“The great thing about a crash mat is that it (gives safety) so now kids are going to try a million different ways to land”
“If you set up those early years in life for them to become a competent mover, then you have a great foundation to build on later on”
“Let’s say you get some kids and put them in basketball, and they are OK, but you put them in soccer in that wide open space, they see the field and understand soccer more than they do in a closed space”
“That transition leaving baseball into football, they might be like, I don’t know if I want to play this year, I always get that thing, but 2 weeks into football they are like, this is the best, I’m glad baseball is over”
“Well play a game of tag with the kids, but make the space really small, which puts the priority on change of direction; then we’ll expand the field and put more priority on speed and hard stops”
“I can only do so many hurdle jumps in the summer before I need to turn the hurdle jump into a dive roll and sprint”
“I miss covid because you had to be outside with athlete, and you had to get creative; I would put medicine balls and sticks in my truck”
“We’d start linking exercises together, and we found kids really enjoyed putting those pieces together, and set by set changing the activity we were doing, and it made training a lot less monotonous and a lot more fun, and they really would focus more”
“I have a high school (football) group that comes in every day and they just lift for 2 hours… they just want to lift, and I can’t get rid of them, that’s all their mindset is.. if I took them and told them that we are going to do games or chaos I don’t think they would like it as much”
“(my one son) he thinks the thing that will help him the most is getting as strong and as explosive as possible. My other son doesn’t think he needs the weight room as much, but when he does a skill clinic, that stuff engages him a lot. Two kids, and they are completely different”
“I’ve had such great success with kids just coming in from practice, and asking, “how do you feel… I’ve had kids get stronger by just going day to day, there’s nothing written out””
“It’s not only fun for kids, spinning or flying through the air, but it really taps into their vestibular, proprioceptive system… especially a kid who is a fairly good mover, they are going to find activities that allow them to do those things”
“What I see is that the kids who are the best athletes right away are the kids who can manipulate their bodies through the air”
“The kid who had an in-ground pool could always swim and could dive and do a bunch of tricks”
“I would do this stupid game where my kids would jump on the trampoline, and I would throw them the ball in the air, and the would jump and catch the ball at the highest point, we played that so much and I think that’s a big reason they can catch a football now”
About Jeremy Frisch
Jeremy Frisch is the founder and performance director at Achieve Performance Training in Clinton, Mass. He is the former assistant strength and conditioning coach for the Holy Cross athletic department. While there, he worked directly with the Crusader men’s basketball team, in addition to serving as the strength coach for Holy Cross’ men’s soccer, men’s and women’s lacrosse, baseball, softball, field hockey, tennis and women’s track & field squads.
Prior to joining Holy Cross, Frisch served as the sports performance director at Teamworks Sports Center in Acton, Mass., where he was responsible for the design and implementation of all strength and conditioning programs. He also served as a speed and strength coach for Athletes Edge Sports Training, and did a strength and conditioning internship at Stanford University. Frisch is a 2007 graduate of Worcester State College with a bachelor’s degree in health science and physical education. He was a member of the football and track teams during his days at Worcester State and Assumption College.
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