Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / BONUS: The Podcast About Podcasts – Featuring Just Fly Performance
Transcript
- 0:00It's bonus time. Here we go.
- 0:02This month in February of 2025, we are doing a podcast about
- 0:06podcast. We want to introduce you to
- 0:08other track and field themed podcasts that are out there that
- 0:11might be great for your listening pleasure.
- 0:14So all month we're introducing a new podcast each and every day,
- 0:17showing you who they are, what they are, how they are, why they
- 0:20got started and even their favorite episodes and most
- 0:23popular. And hopefully this adds to your
- 0:26podcast listening library. So here we go.
- 0:28Let's get started with today's podcast about podcast.
- 0:32All right, let's hop right into it here.
- 0:34Why don't you start by introducing yourself, kind of
- 0:37give us like a 30,000 foot level 30 second version of who you are
- 0:40involved in our sport. And what's the name of your
- 0:42podcast? Sure.
- 0:44So my name is Joel Smith. I've been coaching track now, so
- 0:47I'm 41, so I've been coaching for almost 20 years, been a
- 0:51strength and conditioning coach for almost 20 years as well.
- 0:54Have worked on the club level, high school, college, D3,
- 1:00strength coach for D1. So a lot of different
- 1:03populations within track of the field and then a lot of other
- 1:06sports as well. A lot of time is swimming too.
- 1:08It's so interesting. Parallels.
- 1:09And then with the podcast. I started that eight years ago
- 1:12because my daughter's 8 and that's how I keep track.
- 1:15So yeah, it's, it's been a great journey so.
- 1:17Far and and give us the name of the podcast.
- 1:19That's what we're here for today.
- 1:20Of of course, yeah. Just Fly Performance podcast.
- 1:23Just Fly performance. So what is the significance of
- 1:26the name? Just like how'd you come up with
- 1:27Just Fly? That's a good question.
- 1:29So that name existed before the podcast.
- 1:32That was, I want to say I I started the website company
- 1:37about five years before the actual podcast 2011.
- 1:40And I think it was just because I was always known in track back
- 1:45in the Internet a long time ago. To keep this quick.
- 1:47I was one of the first people, I think, who was just starting
- 1:49writing and blogging when that was a thing, Blogger and all
- 1:51this stuff. And so my initial, a lot of my
- 1:54initial and that was a jumper in track.
- 1:56And so a lot of the initial knowings was in jumping, but I
- 2:00also kind of viewed it as the this like evolutionary, like
- 2:06just trying to evolve performance and track and our
- 2:09knowledge of training, my own knowledge of training.
- 2:10So that's where the flight comes in.
- 2:11So and it's just kind of taken off from there.
- 2:13I think there's been a lot of a lot of different topics that are
- 2:15talked about, track and otherwise.
- 2:18Love that. What kind of tell us about the
- 2:19style? You know, there's solo podcast,
- 2:22there's interview podcast. What's kind of your your main
- 2:24style? You may switch up of course
- 2:26sometimes, but what's the main style of the podcast?
- 2:29Yeah, it's almost always one guest.
- 2:31I do some solo shows that are almost always Q&A or question
- 2:35and answer. I've done topic shows, but I it,
- 2:38it's funny you'd ask my wife, she tells, she'll tell anybody.
- 2:42I like to talk, but I get really self-conscious.
- 2:44Honestly, if it's just me in front of the microphone, I don't
- 2:47have anyone else. I don't, I think sometimes it's
- 2:49just you don't have another person that you're reading
- 2:51visual cues. And so I much prefer to have
- 2:55conversations with other people, both for the sake of having
- 2:58someone else's or highlighting someone else's knowledge.
- 3:01But I, I've also found over the eight years of doing this, that
- 3:03talking to somebody else, it's like a resonance chamber for the
- 3:06way my own brain thinks. So I've learned so much through
- 3:10this podcast. Yes, first and all these, the
- 3:12wonderful guests I've been able to have.
- 3:14But just in talking to the guests, it helps my brain to
- 3:16work differently. So it's usually a guest, but
- 3:19then when I get two or three guests on, sometimes it's even
- 3:21better. And I try to do that when
- 3:23possible. So it's it's just more fun.
- 3:26The more people, the more challenged, but maybe the more
- 3:28value that comes out as well. And for people thinking about
- 3:32this podcast, let's do what is kind of the average length.
- 3:35That may vary, of course, but what's an average length of an
- 3:37episode? Sure.
- 3:39I would say about an hour 15, hour 20.
- 3:42It's that's skewed by the ones that go an hour 30, hour 40.
- 3:46I would say the average I try to make it about 70 just because I
- 3:50think once you get to a certain length and it's like all the
- 3:52things you can use and remember, but then it a lot of times it
- 3:56ends up being a little bit longer.
- 3:58But I, I like the long form. I find if it's about I, I did 2
- 4:02podcasts for example in a row yesterday and one was 70 and the
- 4:05other was an hour 30. And by the end of the second
- 4:07hour 30, my brain, I could barely think.
- 4:10I was slipping on words. So my brain only has so much
- 4:12capacity to take notes and do this for so much time.
- 4:16So 70s like the sweet spot, a lot of them end up a little bit
- 4:19longer. Yeah, I love that.
- 4:21So why you mentioned you started this eight years ago.
- 4:24I love that you have a marker, by the way, your daughter 8
- 4:26years old, so you know how how long it's been going on.
- 4:28I love that. Why?
- 4:29What was the motivation to start the podcast in the first place?
- 4:33It's a good question because I would have never seen where it
- 4:36is gone in a sense of when I started it.
- 4:38You know, of course, all the traffic for my website and
- 4:41things is on the website. And then I, I had no idea that
- 4:45the majority of it eventually would be mostly on the podcast.
- 4:48And it's social media too, which is its own animal,
- 4:51unfortunately, an attention span based animal.
- 4:54And that's where podcast is great because you you sit down
- 4:57and you're more dialed into the whole thing.
- 5:00But yeah, it's it's, I just did it because I had there was a
- 5:03couple other podcasts I remember very well.
- 5:05There was the Physical preparation podcast, which is
- 5:08Mike Robertson's. There was Jay Demaio's, which is
- 5:10Central Virginia sports performance, Both sports
- 5:12performance. I don't even know what was
- 5:13popular in track, honestly at the time, but I saw those.
- 5:17I was like, oh, I guess this is a thing and I suppose I should
- 5:20be doing this. And then the other piece with it
- 5:22was, and that was really it. I just saw the people were doing
- 5:25it. And I feel like I should.
- 5:26But the bigger thing from a personal level was I had spent
- 5:30so much time being very much of A lone wolf.
- 5:32I'm going to read. I remember it's a reader.
- 5:34So I study books and I read on my own and then I synthesize and
- 5:38whatnot. But I realized I just needed to
- 5:40have more conversations with other people to continue to
- 5:42grow. So a lot of it was just my own
- 5:44personal journey. And that has dramatically, and I
- 5:48would say exponentially changed like even my own coaching
- 5:51ability. It's like if people think about
- 5:52I am a podcaster, but I I'm a coach.
- 5:54And so this whole thing has been a learning conduit for me.
- 5:57And selfishly at the beginning, the heritage just to try to be a
- 6:00better learner with other people.
- 6:02Yeah, I was going to say the same.
- 6:03You know, there's a lot of, you're doing it for a lot of
- 6:05altruistic reasons, but there is some selfishness of like I get
- 6:08value as the host of interviewing these amazing
- 6:10people that choose to be track coaches.
- 6:12Absolutely. You know, sometimes things
- 6:14evolve. Your coaching evolves, right?
- 6:16You continue to hopefully get, you know, a little bit better
- 6:17every year. Has the podcast evolved at all
- 6:20or has it stayed the same in regards to the style that your
- 6:23motivation, your thought process of what you're trying to put
- 6:25out? That's a really good question
- 6:28just because it is interesting. It's like the frog in the
- 6:31boiling pot or whatever, right? Like it not, not that it's like
- 6:33a bad ending here or anything like that, but you don't
- 6:35sometimes it's interesting to be aware of what's changed as you
- 6:38go along. And I think for me the when I
- 6:41started, it was like, OK, wow, I have a podcast.
- 6:43Well, I can interview this like level, you know, this
- 6:46popularity, I guess that's awesome.
- 6:47Oh, I got this popularity and you're you're first you're so
- 6:50excited that all the big names in the industry you're
- 6:53interviewing and this is great. And then there comes a day where
- 6:57you kind of checked all those people off in a sense, you know,
- 7:00and it's like, well, now what do I do?
- 7:02And, and you always have to find a guest.
- 7:04And sometimes people ask me, wow, how do you keep finding
- 7:06people? And it seemed, you know, like
- 7:08for the longest time was just funny because I would just run
- 7:10out of ideas. And then someone like, send me
- 7:12their book and I'd be like, all right, I'll read the book.
- 7:14And I was like, ah, this is really good.
- 7:15Let's do a podcast. And that happened, that type of
- 7:17thing happened for a long time. And I will say, I think once I
- 7:21got to about 300, so six years in, it got a lot harder.
- 7:26I've had a lot of repeat guests on.
- 7:27But I think that how I just see the whole education and training
- 7:31sphere has changed in the sense of when I first started like
- 7:34just happy to have people on. Then it was more probably
- 7:37getting into what you would call more typical training
- 7:38constructs. Here's exercises, sets, reps and
- 7:41those types of things. And a lot of it has evolved
- 7:43into, for me, the things that excite me is like motor learning
- 7:47and environmental team environment factors and things
- 7:50that I think there are things that the longer you've been
- 7:53coaching, the more you're like, yes, this is the thing that
- 7:55really does take the time and the skill to develop over time.
- 7:57This is what makes a coach artful.
- 8:00And but it was interesting is if I do a podcast on motor
- 8:02learning, it gets less views than if it's like, Oh, the
- 8:06speed, you know, something big speed podcast, just like the
- 8:08very general, everyone loves that kind of thing.
- 8:11But I to me, I've been a lot more drawn into the motor
- 8:14learning space. The format's the same, even the
- 8:16same little tunes, like the little guitar and tornado is the
- 8:18same. My, my, I will say one thing,
- 8:21I've gotten better as my pre roll where I used to introduce
- 8:24the guests to talk about the show.
- 8:25It was like 4, even 5 minutes at the beginning of this whole
- 8:28thing, which is insane. And I hated doing it.
- 8:31And I still don't like doing that part.
- 8:33And now it's like 45 seconds just because it's like no one
- 8:36wants to hear this. Like you realize you learn about
- 8:38yourself. And so that I've improved a lot
- 8:41just to try to really put that, you know, guest experience 1st
- 8:44and also get myself out of the way.
- 8:46But yeah, I've also kind of, I think the the things that I see
- 8:49are different. And it's also interesting
- 8:51because you get to see almost everyone's, the ideas, like
- 8:53everyone has a shade of the truth or a lot of the truth, you
- 8:55know, but everyone has a perspective on the truth.
- 8:57And so you start to accumulate all these little perspectives
- 9:00looking at the same thing. And to me that's so fascinating
- 9:03because you just see the arguments on different sides.
- 9:04Sometimes it's like, oh, well, I know these people have this
- 9:07thought. You also see the personalities
- 9:08behind it, which is cool. I'm getting a little bit long
- 9:10winded, but that's been a really interesting and rewarding part
- 9:13as this has really gotten into its.
- 9:15I don't know what stage it's in, the latest stage in the middle.
- 9:18I don't. I really don't know, but it's
- 9:20been interesting for sure. I love that you know, for in
- 9:22business businesses will create a profile called their ideal
- 9:27customer profile. It's who is the person that
- 9:31you're creating new products for marketing, trade showing,
- 9:34etcetera. So if like here at Gill, you
- 9:36know, certainly we do have moms and dads who buy some of our
- 9:39equipment, athletic directors, construction contractors, but
- 9:43our ideal customer is high school and college track
- 9:47coaches. That's who we focus on and
- 9:49everything that we do And the rest honestly is residual.
- 9:51If a mom wants to buy a discus, well, we didn't make that for a
- 9:54mom to buy a discus. We made that for coach to help
- 9:56his athlete. Who would you call for your
- 9:58podcast, your ideal listener profiles?
- 10:01There's a lot of people that might listen, athletes, coaches,
- 10:04strength coaches, the the people who just in general want to know
- 10:07more about fitness and things like that.
- 10:09But who is who are you really trying to speak to on each one
- 10:12of your episodes? Yeah, that's a really good
- 10:14question because like I mentioned, personality, my
- 10:17personality is, is one that goes in many different directions.
- 10:21You can call it ADD, but it's ultimately cap.
- 10:24I like this. Just I want to know everything
- 10:27there is to know about human performance.
- 10:28Like I want to dig in as far as I can dig in.
- 10:30And that mentality is actually I have, yes, a lot of track
- 10:34coaches. I have a lot of sports
- 10:35performance coaches, but I actually have more very
- 10:39interested athletes and parents than I had thought.
- 10:41Like I have people reach out. It's like, oh, I'm just, you
- 10:43know, I not just a bit like, because no one's adjusted this,
- 10:47but hey, I'm an athlete. Like I don't coach, but I really
- 10:49love this. I listen to all your podcasts or
- 10:51I'm a parent. I, I love sports performance and
- 10:54watching my children grow and, you know, learn and move.
- 10:57And so it's really that I and, and I don't know what that means
- 11:01for a population. It's probably a bad business
- 11:03plan to be honest, but it's just, and a lot of it's just
- 11:06been capped on my own curiosity, which which tends to filter into
- 11:10a variety of of sectors. So that would be, it's more of a
- 11:14trait, I would say, than a specific population, yeah.
- 11:18I love that, you know, you've been doing it for eight years.
- 11:19You got lots and lots of podcasts, episodes out there.
- 11:22What has been your favorite podcast episode that you've
- 11:26done? And maybe another way to ask it
- 11:28is maybe what's been your most popular, because those two might
- 11:31not be the the exact same. What's been maybe the most
- 11:33popular episode and what has been your personal favorite one?
- 11:37Oh man, well let's see. I would say the most popular one
- 11:41in in as per most statistics would be like Keith Barr.
- 11:47The first tendon health and performance episode I did with
- 11:50him. I've done 2, but the first one
- 11:53that he did is was just a runaway hit because it
- 11:55transcends so many populations. You could be a strength coach,
- 11:58you could be a track coach, you could be an athlete with tendon
- 12:00pain or something. You could be a researcher.
- 12:03And so it's just so universal. And it's also a real simple
- 12:06premise. So that one, I don't even know
- 12:09how many views it got, but it was far and away the best in so
- 12:12many ways. And another one that I'll say
- 12:14it's my favorite, just, I mean, there's so many in the sense
- 12:18that it was a total like, OK, here, I'm here.
- 12:21And now I heard this and now I'm like, wow, this is a huge can of
- 12:24worms. And I'm so excited to like go
- 12:26into this was Christian Thibodeau, not a track coach,
- 12:29but a Canadian strength coach. He had just started to come with
- 12:33a system called a neuro typing system based off like 5 athlete
- 12:36types, which is Charles Poliquin had something like that.
- 12:39And he's going through these types and as he's going through
- 12:41them, I'm like, oh, this is that athlete.
- 12:43This is that athlete. This is and all these things are
- 12:46starting to make sense and granted that that idea and
- 12:48philosophy has been dramatically debated by other professionals,
- 12:51but the basic ideas of these these types and some of the the
- 12:56the ways to look at different buckets of athletes really got
- 13:00me on a journey that it was. I had even like Ross Jeffs, the
- 13:04track coach came on and he was in familiar by Christian and he
- 13:07had his three types of sprinters, concentric,
- 13:09scholastic and metabolic, and that was the kind of like the
- 13:12underpinning was Christian's show in so many ways.
- 13:13I'm sure I know Ross was influenced by a lot of others,
- 13:16but to me that that set my mind going like nothing had in a
- 13:21really long time, if ever. And so from just the like the
- 13:24ideas and and seeing the world of training differently.
- 13:27That was just absolutely massive.
- 13:28It was really popular too, up there with Doctor bars.
- 13:31But yeah, those two are very just very noteworthy in that
- 13:34sense. You know, our listeners, we
- 13:37certainly have a percentage of our listener base that have
- 13:39maybe been with us from day one or you know, you've been around
- 13:42for eight years now, maybe year 2 and have listened to all of
- 13:45them. But most of our listeners kind
- 13:46of come in and out depending on who the guest is or the time of
- 13:50the year for them. But you as the podcast host,
- 13:53you're there for every single one of them.
- 13:55What have you learned? What about your own evolution as
- 13:58a podcast host? What have you learned about
- 14:00maybe yourself and maybe, and not necessarily like you talked
- 14:02about there with Thibodeau and those guys about what you've
- 14:04learned, like how to go coach better and things like that, but
- 14:07you as a podcaster, what have you learned through these eight
- 14:09years? Yeah, I'm glad you asked me that
- 14:11question because when you first said I was like, it was going to
- 14:14be as if it was going to be. What did you learn that you're
- 14:16putting into your coaching? I'd be like, I don't even know
- 14:18where to start. It's just like it's the notion.
- 14:20Too much. But as a podcaster, that's a
- 14:23great question. Much more, you know, finite in
- 14:26the sense of being able to answer readily.
- 14:28And I don't edit so many of the shows anymore, but I used to
- 14:33listen to all of them. So I'm listening to myself and
- 14:35all that stuff. And even now as I learn more
- 14:37about myself, I realize if I could put in a word, it would be
- 14:42grounded. Because the, the ground being
- 14:44grounded is you can speak slowly and confidently and you know
- 14:48which direction your mind is going.
- 14:50And so for me, a lot of times and I, I, I know this myself
- 14:54doing this when I'm talking, there's two things that I tend
- 14:57to do that can get out of hand. And, and this, the podcast
- 15:00experiences allow me to get a hold of those.
- 15:01One is my mind goes too many directions at a time.
- 15:05I talk too fast and I don't have this internal grounding,
- 15:09patience and confidence with the topic at hand.
- 15:12That can also happen very easily if IA guest I'm talking to is
- 15:16extremely intelligent and it's actually overwhelming me
- 15:19intellectually. Like I'm sitting in calculus
- 15:21class and I can't absorb, but I have to come up with something
- 15:23to say. My mind just starts to go in all
- 15:25these directions to almost validate, hey, look, I have
- 15:27something to say. You know what?
- 15:29And it's it, it when it gets difficult.
- 15:30So I see that tendency in myself and I can also notice it when I
- 15:33coach. And then the other thing would
- 15:35be just if this is just kind of funny.
- 15:37This is out of something called neuro linguistic programming.
- 15:39And it's like eye movements and you know what someone is saying
- 15:42or think thinking based off the direction of their eye motion.
- 15:44I think it's more conjecture than I don't think there's been
- 15:46like Stanford's peer reviewed research found this, but I find
- 15:50it very interesting to watch. And when I am talking all the
- 15:53time, I see myself doing this, I will start looking up and to the
- 15:57right or up and to the left and that's associated with how
- 15:59you're processing. So I learned about myself, I
- 16:02tend to be someone who processes things first more as an idea or
- 16:06collection of ideas versus being on the ground first, if that
- 16:09makes sense. So I just realized that about
- 16:11myself. But I also realized it's that
- 16:13can be hard for the listener to really process well.
- 16:16And so to start from that place of groundedness and just to come
- 16:19back to it more often, not only in this, but in the coaching
- 16:22medium. And even as I'm talking, I'm
- 16:24like, I'm becoming more grounded because I'm seeing this in
- 16:26myself again, because I, you know, the last podcast I did,
- 16:29I'm noticing this to myself. So those two are just big ones
- 16:33that I've learned about myself. And then also, I'll just say to
- 16:35the brevity, I used to have this really long winded pre rolls.
- 16:38I've cut those down. And a lot of it is just
- 16:41understanding what's important to the listener and getting my
- 16:43own ego and and chatterbox out of the way there.
- 16:46Yeah, that, that there's my problem right there, getting my
- 16:48own ego out of the way. Exactly right.
- 16:51I love that. All right.
- 16:51Last two questions here, Joel, where can we find the podcast or
- 16:55what may be of the major apps? And are you maybe on YouTube,
- 16:58anything like that? Tell us where we can find it.
- 17:00Sure, so just Live performance podcast on Spotify and iTunes
- 17:04seem to be the ones that everyone goes for.
- 17:07I think it's on everything. I don't know.
- 17:08I have a guy who puts it out there for me, so I'm assuming
- 17:11it's pretty much everywhere. You could find podcasts.
- 17:14I just started to put a lot of the older episodes on YouTube
- 17:17because people would say, oh, I could only go back 200 shows on
- 17:20the app. And so I really try to make it
- 17:22so, hey, if you wanted to find like that Christian Tibideaux
- 17:25show I did, it's there. Or like your rant when I had
- 17:28Randy Huntington on several times, that was really popular.
- 17:31So eventually when that becomes, you know, ancient on the on the
- 17:34apps, you can find it on YouTube.
- 17:36So it's also on YouTube, all the backlog, there's no video.
- 17:39So it's not very exciting there, but you know, you can get it.
- 17:42So those are some places to access that.
- 17:44I encourage all podcasters to put their stuff on YouTube,
- 17:48whether you have a video component or not for two
- 17:51reasons. One, it's another library for
- 17:54you and two, it is really popular for people to have
- 17:57YouTube on in their offices without the video, you know, so
- 18:00tapping to a different thing and doing their work.
- 18:02And and so it's like a a podcast coming from your computer, but
- 18:04it's just through YouTube. So I love that you do that and I
- 18:06love that you had Randy Huntington on your podcast.
- 18:09I love Randy very, very much so All right, so we know I'm a big
- 18:13podcaster. So I've taught podcast
- 18:15one-on-one classes, things like that.
- 18:16And through all my research, I know that the average podcast
- 18:19listener listens to between 7:00 and 10:00 different podcasts.
- 18:22So I'm going to go out on the limb and say that you are
- 18:25probably a podcast listener since you create podcasts.
- 18:28What is your favorite podcast that's not track related?
- 18:32Oh man, that's a good one. You know what, I, I let me real
- 18:36quick, I can actually, well, I could say in the, in the
- 18:39strength and performance here. I have them up in front of me
- 18:41actually right now, so I can be a little bit better with that
- 18:44one. But I've been listening a lot
- 18:46that's not track and the just in like the strength and
- 18:48performance. I, I've been listening to Bill
- 18:49Hartman's podcast a lot. He's a he is, he's a physical
- 18:52therapist and does strength and conditioning, but his view on
- 18:54bio mechanics like I find trying to weave that with what I see on
- 18:58the track is just it's like to me it's like the same excitement
- 19:01as Christian Tibideaux system. You see all these all the times
- 19:04you saw someones technique. You feel like I queued him but
- 19:07then nothing changed or they feel like they couldn't change
- 19:09or there was a physical structure they're working on.
- 19:11Bill stuff has been really helpful with that.
- 19:13Other than that, it's hard to say.
- 19:15I I'm pretty eclectic. I can just generally tell you
- 19:18topics more or less is probably like, I think very typical
- 19:21entrepreneur like things that are more than the personal
- 19:23development space that just so a lot of podcasts like whatever I
- 19:27was listening to very typical. But the last one, I'll just say
- 19:29the last podcast I was listening to was Tony Robbins was on Theo
- 19:33Von's podcast I. Find it interesting?
- 19:35Yeah. Absolutely.
- 19:36So like that's that's just an example of that I.
- 19:39Love that. That's very cool.
- 19:40I love that. Well, listener, here's my
- 19:42challenge to you. So we're we're pretty much done
- 19:45today, right? So hit pause and the same app
- 19:47that you're listening to this right now, just search for just
- 19:50fly sports and it'll pop right up.
- 19:52And maybe the best way, kind of the way I think about trying out
- 19:55new podcast is 1 is maybe the most obvious.
- 19:57Listen to the latest episode that will kind of give you a
- 20:00flavor of what you know where the podcast is today.
- 20:02And then some of those favorite podcasts of his that he talked
- 20:05about and the most popular one, maybe those are good ones to go
- 20:07search that library and check out those.
- 20:09So go check that out right here in the same app that you're
- 20:11listening. To and even on YouTube, again,
- 20:13you can just search just fly sports, but I just challenge you
- 20:16to go check those out, hit the subscribe button.
- 20:18Then you'll know when his next episode's coming out.
- 20:20And maybe that'll be a blessing to you and your career and your
- 20:23entertainment as well. So thanks for being here.
- 20:24We're going to do it all over again and see what the next
- 20:27podcast might be. Thanks, Joel.
- 20:28Appreciate you being here. Yeah.
- 20:29Thank you, Mike.