In this solo episode, Joel Smith explores the principles of programming for speed and power training. Drawing from his own evolution as an athlete and coach, he discusses early influences like high-volume jump programs, Soviet-inspired plyometrics, and classic periodization models. Joel outlines five key programming systems: high-low structure, potentiation sequencing, weekly changeovers, factorization, and autoregulation, while highlighting common mistakes such as excessive volume, overemphasis on one training variable, and over-programming. He emphasizes balancing speed, strength, and capacity, keeping systems simple, and using tools like AI as a thinking partner rather than a replacement for coaching intuition.
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Timestamps
3:30 – Early Training Influences
18:50 – The Big Three: Speed, Strength, Capacity
22:25 – System 1: The High-Low System
31:14 – System 2: Potentiation-Based Training
33:38 – System 3: Australian Jumps & Factorization
38:53 – System 4: Bondarchuk’s Pyramid of Abilities
43:24 – System 5: Triphasic & Wave Loading
49:00 – Programming Mistakes
57:25 – Principles that Work
1:06:31 – Using AI as a Programming Sparring Partner
Joel Smith Quotes
“We have to zoom out and look at that more slow-cooked, patient, or planned process to get the big picture of things.”
“Training is not just going out and doing skills; it is doing a set structure over a set of time.”
“We should understand what it’s like to have that high-end training day and how long it takes to recover from it because a lot of training setups don’t really account for that.”
“How do you know which of those stakeholders is really, if we look to the 80-20 principle, 20% of the program being 80% of the neural stimulus? How do we know how that thing is contributing?”
“To maximally simplify any training process, we want to achieve a polarization.”
“Doing those easy days really well is one of the pieces of the art of coaching that’s not talked about so much.”
“The system of an athlete is an amazing thing; it can adapt to the simplest thing. That’s actually what makes humans and training and adaptability pretty cool, we don’t need that much complexity to adapt.”
“Do simple better. It’s an important place to start and remind ourselves.”
“With aggressive programs, use them strategically, not permanently.”
“Don’t live inside one system. I think it’s valuable to have a few tools in the toolkit with the systems you’re familiar with, so you know when and how to use them.”
“Make [AI] a sparring partner, challenge your thinking. If you can use it as play and challenge, don’t let it do your thinking for you.”
About Joel Smith
Joel Smith is the founder of Just Fly Sports and host of the Just Fly Performance Podcast, one of the leading podcasts in strength and conditioning and track and field coaching. A former collegiate strength and track coach, Joel has spent over a decade studying speed, power, and human movement. He is the author of multiple books and online courses on sprinting, jumping, and elastic training, and works with athletes and coaches around the world to develop more powerful and creative approaches to training.
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