Today’s podcast features Jason Feairheller (fare-heller). Jason is the Co-Owner and strength coach at Function and Strength in Bridgeport, Pennsylvania, and has been training athletes since 2007. He is the host of the Speed and Power podcast and has lectured on strength and conditioning as an adjunct professor at Immaculata University. Jason has a passion for speed and athletic movement training and is a sought-after speaker on the topic of multi-directional athleticism. He has developed the course “Improving Game Speed Through Multi-Dimensional Plyometrics”.
Humans are complex and so is in-game movement. One topic that I’ve considered ever since the start of this podcast was the idea of actually coaching change of direction and sport-speed techniques, versus decision-making being the priority, and then letting game-play dictate how athletes choose to technically move in space.
Jason’s passion has been all forms of speed and movement in athletes, and on this podcast, he goes into the fundamental principles of change of direction versus agility (perception) training, and how each method works into his athletic performance programming. Jason will also get into his use of plyometrics, and methods that quantitatively measure change of direction outputs, his take on deceleration training mistakes and misconceptions, agility games, and much more.
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Timestamps and Main Points
3:06 – What brought Jason into the game speed space as a primary focus of his training 8:49 – Jason’s thoughts on the place of change of direction training, compared to agility/perception work 16:36 – How the interplay between planned/rehearsed change of direction, and live agility occurs in a training session 31:45 – How Jason looks to quantitatively measure improvements in change of direction ability 41:11 – Considering “deceleration” training in light of having athletes fully stop, vs. redirecting speed 49:08 – Perception/Reaction and game-oriented work Jason uses for his athletes 51:51 – What Jason’s session looks like in terms of warmup, speed/COD training, games, and strength breakdown 53:21 – Jason’s favorite simple COD games he uses in his training 57:12 – Plyometric training concepts, particularly on the level of small hops, leading into larger onesJason Feairheller Quotes
“What makes an athlete really good at (speed in training), it was the ability to link one movement into another”
“When I do change of direction training, every single speed drill I do with someone is an assessment”
“Ultimately, people need to redirect force, and then get the other foot down quickly”
“For the most part, I don’t do a drill for more than 2 to 3 reps without changing it in some capacity”
“If I have my feet close together; and I put my feet out to the side, and back, and do a straddle jump like that; what I’m looking at is, how far can an athlete actually get their feet to the isde, and what is that shin angle, where their head doesn’t go up or down; and that distance is close to what they would actually have on the field”
“A 5-10-15 tells me how well someone can decelerate when speed is higher”
“I watch a lot of video from all different sports, and try to relate change of direction work to some sport scenario in my head”
“We have these rubber mats that are 2-3 feet wide, and we have max reps (pogo jumps) over the rubber (you can’t touch the rubber) for 8 seconds; a lot of jumps people track are vertical in nature; but a lot of what happens on the field is horizontal”
“I rarely tell people to stick the landing on a drill, the only time is altitude drops or something like that, because I need outputs to be my main goal”
“When people focus on only decelerating, they typically get into very deep angles of hip and knee flexion, but what we want to do is create enough strength within the athlete where they can decelerate with minimal knee flexion; and if they want to accelerate hard off of something there needs to be little knee flexion so they can quickly push off of that, because if you are going off of a single leg, you can’t get into those deep angles”
“If someone sprints straight ahead, unless it’s for 2 steps, they are not going to stop with their feet in line with each other, they are going to stop with their feet angled to the side, because that’s how someone is going to decelerate anyway”
“You have someone sprint 7 yards, but they have to stop by 9 yards, and you time it, and you know if their time is slow, you know they are decelerating too early (and can’t manage a fast stop/redirection)”
“I love drills where I’m trying to get both people, to get the other one to move fast in some way, because the faster someone goes, the less movement options they have”
“One of the things I try to minimize with people is taking a lot of choppy steps, to slow down”
“His ability to drop was way faster than his opponent and blew right by him; that’s another component I’ve been looking at lately; the ability to drop faster than your opponent can also help you”
About Jason Feairheller
Jason Feairheller is the Co-Owner and strength coach at Function and Strength in Bridgeport, Pennsylvania, and has been training athletes since 2007. He is the host of the Speed and Power podcast and has lectured on strength and conditioning as an adjunct professor at Immaculata University. Jason has a passion for speed and athletic movement training and is a sought-after speaker on the topic of multi-directional athleticism. He has developed the course “Improving Game Speed Through Multi-Dimensional Plyometrics”.
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