Today’s podcast guest is Jake Dyson. Jake is the founder of Emerge Performance in Iowa, where he specializes in youth athletic development. A former chiropractor, Jake blends traditional strength training with creative, game-based methods emphasizing play, movement variability, coordination, and long-term athletic development.
On today’s show, Jake Dyson of Emerge Performance joins us to discuss the power of play, games, and variability in athletic development. Jake shares his journey from chiropractic to strength coaching and how he blends traditional strength training with creative, game-based methods. We explore the pitfalls of overstructured youth sports, the value of long-term athletic development, and often-overlooked athletic qualities like patience, conditioning, reactivity, and balance. Jake also shares practical examples of competitive games that build athleticism while keeping training fun.
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Topics
0:00 – Growing Up Through Sport and Play
8:36 – Coaching the Athlete, Not the Technique
13:16 – From Chiropractic to Sports Performance
20:58 – Why Play Builds Better Athletes
26:02 – Variability and Skill Development
30:44 – The Problem With Early Structure
38:37 – Building Play Into Training
42:44 – When the Game Becomes the Training
50:10 – Speed vs. Complete Athleticism
54:34 – Games During the Competitive Season
1:03:49 – The Overlooked Traits of Athleticism
1:11:12 – Conditioning and the Value of Endurance
Jake Dyson Quotes
“I think that’s a really bad habit in coaching; everybody’s supposed to do something the exact same way as everybody else.”
“Sometimes more structure just doesn’t equal more success.”
“When you get questioned, it holds you more accountable as a coach, and sometimes you don’t realize how much you don’t know.”
“My job personally, I think, is to make sure that they always are in love with fitness and health and movement.”
“The variability is the beauty of it.”
“How many ways can you shoot a basketball and it still goes in, you know? That’s why the professionals are what they are is because they can do that. It’s not because they have some perfect form.”
“Everybody seems to think bigger, faster, stronger all the time, but you know, it really just, it depends athlete to athlete.”
“In the end, they’re kids and they’re athletes and they want to play.”
“If they’re getting what I want out of the session in the game, we’ll extend it.”
“I think in terms of a year. I don’t think in terms of eight weeks.”
“I don’t think parents really think of long-term development as years and years. I think they think of it as 12 weeks.”
“You can’t solely think of if I’m fast, I’m athletic. If I’m strong, I’m athletic. You need athleticism; it encompasses it all.”
“We’re just going to lift normal. We’re going to get all our fun and our variability through the stuff that you see… because the basics work.”
“It doesn’t all need to be innovative.”
“There’s just so much more than strength and speed.”
“If you can outlast your opponent, you just have the competitive advantage.”
About Jake Dyson
Jake Dyson is a strength and performance coach and founder of Emerge Performance, based in the Iowa City, Iowa area. Originally trained as a chiropractor, Jake earned his degree in human physiology from the University of Iowa. His training philosophy emphasizes creativity, movement variability, reactive athleticism, and the use of games and competitive challenges to develop adaptable athletes. Through Emerge Performance, Jake works primarily with youth athletes, blending traditional strength and speed development with playful, problem-solving movement tasks that better reflect the unpredictable nature of sport. He also shares his innovative training methods and coaching perspectives on Instagram at @emergeperformance.
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