Today’s podcast guest is Ryan Paul. Ryan is the founder of New Athlete and a sports performance coach with more than 20 years of experience developing speed, movement quality, and athletic performance. He has trained over 8,000 athletes, including more than 140 NFL players and 1,000 Division I athletes, while pioneering an integrated approach to movement and performance.
On today’s show, Ryan talks about blending sprint training with high-intent isometrics, plyometrics, and force-absorption work to build faster, more resilient athletes. He discusses the influence of Jay Schroeder’s system, using readiness data to adjust training, and creating environments that deepen athlete buy-in and intent. Ryan also explores “New Athlete shape,” the value of training through controlled failure, and why speed development requires more than simply running harder or adding traditional strength.
Today’s episode is brought to you by Hammer Strength.
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The Just Fly Performance Podcast is dedicated to all aspects of athletic performance training, with an emphasis on speed and power development. Featured on the show are coaches and experts in the spectrum of sport performance, ranging from strength and conditioning, to track and field, to sport psychology. Hosted by Joel Smith, the Just Fly Performance Podcast brings you some of the best information on modern athletic performance available.
Ryan Paul talks about blending sprint training with high-intent isometrics, plyometrics, and force-absorption work to build faster, more resilient athletes. He discusses the influence of Jay Schroeder’s system, using readiness data to adjust training, and creating environments that deepen athlete buy-in and intent. Ryan also explores “New Athlete shape,” the value of training through controlled failure, and why speed development requires more than simply running harder or adding traditional strength.
Today’s episode is brought to you by Hammer Strength.
View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. (https://www.just-fly-sports.com/podcast-home/)
Topics
0:00 – Speed Training Origins
2:52 – Adding Sprint Training
6:14 – Discovering Jay’s System
8:49 – Learning Max Effort
14:23 – Coaching Through Intention
18:37 – Failure as a Tool
21:11 – Running to Failure vs. ISOs
28:39 – Training for Repeated Efforts
29:56 – Asymmetry and Athlete Testing
36:03 – Readiness-Driven Programming
42:59 – New Athlete Shape
46:36 – Building the Training Environment
52:33 – Coaching the Individual
55:12 – Connecting ISOs to Sprinting
58:02 – Pin Lunge Progressions
1:02:39 – Progressing Plisometrics
1:09:38 – Four Essentials for Athletes
1:13:53 – Speed Summit and Wrap-Up
Ryan Paul Quotes
“If I can teach the athlete what the end result is and the reason why, that could change 50% of the result. And I would put that to any system, not Jay’s.”
“The dream is now the driver to change the intent.”
“I want to know why are you here and what is your reasoning for being here? And once we can establish that, then that changes why we’re doing what we’re doing.”
“I want you to fail because you’re going to fail anyways. I watched you last Friday, you dropped a touchdown. In a sense, that’s failure. But it’s not because I don’t necessarily like the word failure because if I microdose with failure and I use that as a tool to teach me to get better, then it’s not failure.”
“Once you start to use tech as a tool, you can then start to see where we can go further into training or we need to pull back a little bit. And I don’t want to pull back with the intent. I want to pull back with the volume.”
“What I’m seeing in the industry is you see all these coaches that talk about speed and their idea of speed is we’re just going to condition even harder and we’re going to run these guys into the ground.”
“I’m never going to just go, this is what Monday we have scheduled, this is what we’re doing come hell or high water. There’s too many variances and variables that go into what happens with athletes on each day.”
“I don’t care how goofy they look or how goofy they run, I want to see what I can do to make a change in them.”
“I would want to know from the isometric, how does it correlate to a movement that I’m going to try to do on the field?”
“When an athlete comes in, I don’t care what they squat. I don’t care what they bench. I don’t care what their deadlift is. It’s meaningless to me because I take a lot of these strong kids, have them do a CMJ on the force plate, and their braking RFD is terrible because they don’t know how to handle forces, but they can move a ton of weight.”
About Ryan Paul
Ryan Paul is the founder and director of New Athlete, where he has spent more than two decades helping athletes maximize speed, movement quality, and long-term performance. Since launching the company in 2001, Ryan has trained over 8,000 athletes, including more than 140 NFL players, over 1,000 Division I athletes, and dozens of All-Americans and professional competitors across multiple sports.
Ryan’s coaching philosophy blends speed development, mobility, and movement efficiency. He is certified in Functional Range Assessment (FRA), Functional Range Conditioning (FRC), and Universal Speed Rating (USR), where he also serves as a Northwest Director of Speed Labs. He is widely recognized for his expertise in integrating movement quality, corrective exercise, and performance training to help athletes move faster, reduce injury risk, and sustain high-level athletic development.
Over the years, Ryan has worked with athletes from youth sports through the professional ranks, guiding competitors who have gone on to the NFL, MLB, CFL, and other professional leagues. His facility has also become known for its work in athletic rehabilitation and return-to-play, combining cutting-edge recovery methods with performance training to help athletes reach their highest potential.
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