Today’s podcast guest is Andrew Iselin. Andrew is an Australian sprint and hurdles coach and head coach of AAA Squad in Brisbane. He’s coached athletes from the junior ranks through to the Olympic level, including sub-10-second sprinter Lachlan Kennedy and Australian representative Calab Law, with a strong reputation for developing speed at the highest level.
In this episode, Andrew Iselin joins me to discuss athlete development, sprint coaching, and the value of exploration over rigid technical models. We get into developing Lachlan Kennedy (9.85s 100m dash and Oceanic Record), coaching asymmetry, relaxation and sprint mechanics, game-based speed work, movement literacy, resisted sprinting, tempo training, and why coaches may need to “shut up” more often and give athletes space to self-organize.
Today’s episode is brought to you by Hammer Strength and the Just Fly Sports Online Courses
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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.
In this episode, Andrew Iselin joins me to discuss athlete development, sprint coaching, and the value of exploration over rigid technical models.
We get into developing Lachlan Kennedy (9.85s 100m dash and Oceanic Record), coaching asymmetry, relaxation and sprint mechanics, game-based speed work, movement literacy, resisted sprinting, tempo training, and why coaches may need to “shut up” more often and give athletes space to self-organize.
Today’s episode is brought to you by Hammer Strength and the Just Fly Sports Online Courses
View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. (https://www.just-fly-sports.com/podcast-home/)
Topics
0:00 – Multi-Event Athletic Development
3:14 – Coaching ADHD Athletes
8:03 – Andrew’s Coaching Journey
13:39 – Developing Lachie Kennedy
18:31 – Exploring Sprint Mechanics
25:14 – Rethinking Technique and Symmetry
32:12 – Building Movement Exploration
34:36 – Athletic Literacy
39:46 – Strength and Movement Assessment
42:21 – Rethinking Sprint Positions
45:52 – Asymmetry and Compensation
50:05 – Sprinting With Constraints
54:29 – Resisted Sprinting
1:03:22 – Tempo and Athletic Capacity
Andrew Iselin Quotes
“Yeah, definitely in Australia, we’ve got this little athletic system and that system almost makes kids try every single event because they’ve got weekly rotational programs. So it’s really good for their fundamentals development to take place.”
“The thing is with over-queuing with kids with ADHD and the like, you know, they just forget. So you’ve got to sort of be deductible.”
“Yeah I really didn’t like the long slow running so I broke everything up a lot and sort of took decent breaks between sort of shorter reps and that way I could keep interested”
“Well, exactly. And it’s also just letting those athletes explore, giving them sort of little simple cues or little simple things to try and do during a session and just getting them to come back and tell you how that felt and then booking yourself and seeing if it’s made any of a difference.”
“It’s so athlete-specific as well. There are some athletes you can sort of say a cue that does not work for anyone else and for some reason it just hits home with them. So that’s why I like to sort of just play around with things with different people um see what sort of reaction I get and a lot of times it does go bad and you’re like well don’t think about that”
“People create compensation patterns for limitations, like myself. I’ve got right side limitation. I created patterns to actually work with my disability. And whenever I tried to make it symmetrical, I’d get injured.”
“So over time, I’ve just, I’ve learned to shut up. I learnt not to just say something for the sake of saying something”
“I don’t like to put too many limits on the athletes, especially when they come up with a suggestion and they want to actually give it a go.”
“But it just goes to show like someone can try every event, But if they’re not allowed to actually properly explore themselves, they just become this robot for each event they do.”
“Athletes are so individual like shouldn’t we just be looking at movement quality and determining whether it’s too much resistance based on that”
“I’m all full tempo. I love it. And it does allow you to, at a sort of safe aesthetic, explore a little bit more as well.”
About Andrew Iselin
Andrew Iselin is an Australian sprint and hurdles coach and the Head Coach of AAA Squad in Brisbane. A Level 4 High Performance Coach with Australian Athletics, he has coached athletes from junior development through to the Olympic and international level. His athletes include sub-10-second 100m sprinter Lachlan Kennedy and Australian representative Calab Law, and he previously coached sprint standout Torrie Lewis. Iselin was named a Queensland Athletics Coach of the Year following the 2024 season, in which Kennedy, Law and Lewis all represented Australia at the Paris Olympics.
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