Joel Smith is the founder of Just Fly Sports and the JFS Podcast. He is an assistant strength and conditioning coach at the University of California, Berkeley, where he works with swimming, tennis, and water polo. Smith is the author of the books Vertical Foundations, Vertical Ignition, and most recently, Speed Strength. Before coming to Cal-Berkeley, Smith coached track and strength and conditioning at Wilmington College of Ohio.
Coach Smith has earned both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in exercise science, the first from Cedarville University in 2006 and the second from Wisconsin LaCrosse in 2008. He is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist through the NSCA and is also a USATF-certified coach. In this episode, Smith answers questions on speed, vertical jump, and general strength training posed by listeners on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
In this podcast, Joel Smith discusses:
- The correlation of single leg jumping and squat/deadlift to bodyweight ratios.
- Dealing with plateaus in speed and jumping.
- Effective drop-catch exercises.
- Training speed with a Masters-age athlete.
- Improvements in top end speed.
- Building ankle strength.
Podcast total run time is 54:56.
Joel has written for SimpliFaster about vertical jumping, optimal athlete movement patterns, and more.
Keywords: single leg, vertical jumping, shin angle, broad jump, strength development
