Performance coaching beyond sets and reps.
Just Fly Performance Podcast is a technical training show built around long-form conversations with coaches, researchers, and performance practitioners. Recent episodes move from sprint transfer and isometrics to movement archetypes, reactive strength, jump testing, and exercise devices for astronauts.
PRESS PLAY
Just Fly Performance Podcast is a long-running athletic performance show centered on the craft of developing better movers. Its conversations are technical, but rarely narrow. Recent episodes move through first principles, sprint transfer, isometrics, plyometrics, movement archetypes, reactive strength, jump testing, and the softer forces that shape great athletes. The show is especially interested in what happens between the exercise prescription and the result. Intention matters. Rhythm matters. Social structure, coaching environment, confidence, and the athlete’s own movement signature keep returning as part of the training equation. In one episode, Mike Guadango and the conversation explore why two athletes can complete the same rep with the same load while producing entirely different qualities of movement. The discussion does not reduce performance to a spreadsheet. It keeps asking what the athlete was thinking, feeling, and trying to create. Daniel Coyle brings the lens of a writer shaped by Alaska, curiosity, cooperation, and distance from the usual center of American life. Danny Lum brings Singapore-based high-performance experience and isometric training research into questions of elasticity and sprint transfer. Sarah Miller connects stunt performance, dance, theater, martial arts, and strength work through the idea that athletes need awareness of what their bodies communicate. Richard Burnett turns combine preparation into a discussion of feedback, jump testing tools, and explosive isometrics. Vern Gambetta pushes against overly mechanical coaching and argues for frameworks that let athletes express their own movement. Dan Cleather adds a fascinating edge with research on an exercise device that lets astronauts jump repeatedly in microgravity. Tanner Care brings basketball speed drills, athlete classification, foot and ankle strength, and force-plate thinking into practical conversation. Across these episodes, the show favors coaching nuance over simplified prescriptions. It can be dense. It is also grounded in training rooms, athletes, and measurement problems. The best fit is a listener who enjoys hearing experienced practitioners reason through why something transfers, when it does not, and how to coach the person in front of them.
Made for: For strength coaches, sport coaches, performance researchers, and serious athletes who want detailed conversations about speed, power, movement, and transfer. It especially suits listeners comfortable with training terminology and applied coaching nuance.
What sets it apart: The show combines technical performance detail with persistent attention to the athlete’s environment, intention, rhythm, and individuality. Recent episodes range from combine prep and stunt movement to Singapore high-performance sport and astronaut exercise research.
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.
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Mike Guadango and the host consider why the same lift can look so different from one athlete to another.
Two athletes can clean the same weight and leave very different impressions. Mike Guadango and the host begin with that contrast, paying attention to how a lift looks and sounds when it is crisp. The weight alone does not explain the difference they are trying to describe.
A bowler's return from injury frames a discussion of technique, rhythm and individual movement.
Winter Olympics viewing and long-course speed skating lead into a question about how athletes find their own way of moving. The most useful example is a bowler returning from a serious injury.
Tanner Care discusses speed work in basketball practice and what force plates tell him about isometric holds with track athletes.
Tanner Care starts with a basketball drill: a full-court sprint, a thrown ball and a layup. From there, he considers how to fit speed work into practice and check an athlete's speed without losing sight of the time available.
Evidence, iron, and fitness-culture skepticism.
Sports science with practice in view.
Film craft, body, business, and story.
Dan Cleather discusses his work developing a space-aged Pilates reformer for astronauts to jump in microgravity.
Vern Gambetta discusses plyometrics, movement, and the art of skilled athletic development, with a focus on speed skating and coaching philosophies.
Fast bowling coach Steffan Jones discusses integrating isometric training as a foundation for strength and skill development in high-velocity sports.
Mike Guadango discusses his experience with Exodus 90, a 90-day spiritual and physical discipline program involving cold showers and daily prayer.
Daniel Coyle discusses how his upbringing in Alaska shaped his perspective and curiosity, influencing his writing on talent and success.
Danny Lum discusses his background in strength and conditioning, his PhD research on isometric training, and his work with national teams in Singapore.
On the Just Fly Performance Podcast, Sarah Miller explains how stunt performance, dance, and motion capture shaped her approach to athletic development.
Just Fly Performance Podcast episode 507 features Joel interviewing Richard Burnett about reactive strength, explosive isometrics, jump testing, and combine preparation.
Vern Gambetta argues that the term "functional training" became a marketing label, not a precise coaching concept, and says he was influenced by Lois Klatt, PhD at Concordia University and 'Total Body Training' by Guide and Dominguez.
Dan Cleather discusses his work developing a space-aged Pilates reformer for astronauts to jump in microgravity.
Strength coach Tanner Care discusses athlete classification, isometric standards, and a basketball drill using overthrows to check speed residuals within practice constraints.
Martin Bingisser uses Swiss stone throwing, an 83-kilogram event with four-meter throws, to show why adaptable speed can matter more than maximal strength.