Joel Smith: Welcome to another episode of the podcast. This week's guest is none other than
Joel Smith: Stefan Holm, Olympic gold medalist and one of the most elite high jumpers throughout history.
Joel Smith: Standing at only 5 feet 11 inches tall or 1.81 meters, Stefan co-owns the height
Joel Smith: jumped overhead world record with a best of 2.40 meters or 7 feet 10 and a half inches.
Joel Smith: Since retirement, Stefan has taken on coaching and on today's episode I talk
Joel Smith: with Stefan about his early life as an athlete, his formative sport and athletic
Joel Smith: experiences, along with the tree of coaching that led to his own training methods.
Joel Smith: Stefan also covers his own training methodology, plyometrics,
Joel Smith: high jump practice, strength training, and much more.
Joel Smith: This was an awesome show, not just for training ideas, but also an opportunity
Joel Smith: to look into the formation and practice of one of the best of all time in their
Joel Smith: given sport discipline.
Joel Smith: Let's get on to the episode with Stefan Holm.
Joel Smith: Stefan, thank you for joining me for the show. I've been looking forward to
Joel Smith: this interview for really a long time, but I was really excited when Henrik
Joel Smith: could make that connection. So thank you for being here today.
Stefan Holm: Thank you for having me.
Joel Smith: Yes. You know, one of the, there's that video series of you and Donald Thomas, like that,
Joel Smith: I think a German TV company did and something that's really memorable to me
Joel Smith: or just stands out for some reason is it's you as a young boy jumping over like
Joel Smith: a high jump apparatus in the backyard. It looks like just like a hurdle jump.
Joel Smith: But I'm curious of your background, like growing up, your introduction to the
Joel Smith: sport of track and field, and what other sports you did.
Joel Smith: We call it soccer here in the United States or football. What was your athletic
Joel Smith: experience like as a child that led you into ultimately being a high-level athlete.
Stefan Holm: I really, I mean, my dream was to be a professional soccer player.
Stefan Holm: My father was playing soccer on a low level in Sweden.
Stefan Holm: And I loved football, I still do. But I wasn't very good at it, actually.
Stefan Holm: But already, I mean, growing up, what I did, we tried every single sport.
Stefan Holm: We played tennis, we played ice hockey, we played track and field,
Stefan Holm: we played football, of course.
Stefan Holm: We just played out, tried to do everything. but a friend of mine he was a couple
Stefan Holm: of months older than me he more or less beat me in everything in every single
Stefan Holm: sport but I beat him in high jump,
Stefan Holm: and then when I started the first class in school they usually have the high
Stefan Holm: jump pit outside because they used it in gym class so we started jumping there
Stefan Holm: and I jumped higher than the other classmates and higher than the older kids
Stefan Holm: in school and I realized that yeah maybe I'm a pretty decent high jumper,
Stefan Holm: and then in 1987 a Swedish guy named Patrick Sjöberg
Stefan Holm: he broke the world record and he also won the
Stefan Holm: world championships in Rome and then I had a classmate who was in she was training
Stefan Holm: track and field in a club nearby so I joined her for training and then I was
Stefan Holm: 11 and a half years old and then I I'm still in the sport since then so I mean
Stefan Holm: I I realized quite early the high jump,
Stefan Holm: I could succeed as a high jumper and of course I had high dreams you never know
Stefan Holm: what you're going to lead you to but,
Stefan Holm: quite I mean I won some competitions at a young age when I was 12,
Stefan Holm: 13 years old I was jumping pretty high and people encouraged me to keep on jumping Yeah.
Joel Smith: What Stefan, what sports did your parents do like in terms of,
Joel Smith: I guess people would look at what you did and think about
Joel Smith: well your genetics and but it's interesting because I you can't I wouldn't think
Joel Smith: that you're a person who has these insane genetics for high jump I mean obviously
Joel Smith: they were good but to what you actually did was incredible but I am curious
Joel Smith: what your parents did like what was their sporting background and and what kind
Joel Smith: of family you came from there
Stefan Holm: My father was playing soccer. He was a pretty good goalkeeper on a local level here in Sweden.
Stefan Holm: And he also played ice hockey in his younger age. My mother,
Stefan Holm: no sporting background at all.
Stefan Holm: She says she did some school competitions when she was like 12, 13 years old.
Stefan Holm: Maybe she was quite fast, but never training or doing sports on some sort of level.
Stefan Holm: My sister is pretty much the same. she likes sports, she enjoys to watch it
Stefan Holm: but never really did any sports herself,
Stefan Holm: but if there was sports on TV we were watching especially if there were football
Stefan Holm: games going on but it was a very very natural part of my life and also with
Stefan Holm: all my friends that we did sports in our spare time,
Stefan Holm: so I can't say that as you say I probably don't have that sort of genetics but
Stefan Holm: coming from from my background i still think that i have a body that that could
Stefan Holm: take a lot of pressure take a lot of training and that's also good for genetics yeah.
Joel Smith: There's so many different aspects of trainability like there is like yes like
Joel Smith: having some fast twitch muscles and outputs but like you said like also how
Joel Smith: much training can your body take and i because one of the things that I wanted to get into today,
Joel Smith: and we could jump to it a little bit now, but I'm sure that there was a pretty
Joel Smith: high volume of plyometric and explosive exercise that you needed to do to get to where you were.
Joel Smith: And the question is sometimes is, well, could other athletes handle that same
Joel Smith: amount that you could handle?
Joel Smith: It's interesting to think about what different athletes can handle in that regard.
Stefan Holm: But I think you can handle a lot, all of you, but I think you have to build it up year by year.
Stefan Holm: I mean, doing these sort of plyometrics that I did at the age of 28,
Stefan Holm: 30, I didn't start there.
Stefan Holm: I mean, I started as a 12-year-old playing around with my friends and I mean,
Stefan Holm: building it up year by year by year.
Stefan Holm: And that's a long-term plan. but yeah you i think you could do a lot of jumping
Stefan Holm: if you really want to but you have to,
Stefan Holm: take it step by step you can't eat the entire elephant in one shoe you have to shoe it in small bits.
Joel Smith: Yeah the the ice hockey i it makes perfect sense being in a northern country
Joel Smith: and in sweden i it makes me think about there was a podcast guest i have who's
Joel Smith: the founder of sports Science Lab who grew up in Canada and he credited ice
Joel Smith: hockey to a lot of his athleticism, but I think he had to do figure skating.
Joel Smith: So he's like doing like a, like a full like pistol squat on a single leg skating
Joel Smith: across the whole ice and that kind of thing.
Joel Smith: But for those of us who maybe are in more Southern countries,
Joel Smith: I think there's a little bit of an underrated element of, of also being on skates.
Joel Smith: Cause I guess you think about like the foot and you're on this blade and there's
Joel Smith: just so many, yeah, different ways that we can train and move the body.
Joel Smith: So it's interesting to hear of all the different yeah your sporting background
Joel Smith: before you specialized in high jump there um so yeah
Stefan Holm: But i think as a kid as a kid you should try out all kinds of sport just go
Stefan Holm: to the i mean to a park and have some fun see what you can do.
Joel Smith: Yeah i with your development as well and having fun well one of the things i
Joel Smith: see in a lot of your training videos with your groups is it It seems like there's
Joel Smith: a lot of times taken to have fun or not take yourself quite so seriously,
Joel Smith: which I'm sure is probably a nice like pressure valve release in so many cases.
Joel Smith: And I wanted I did want to ask you about that.
Joel Smith: But I one of the things that I've seen a video, it was Simon Hunt who posted
Joel Smith: it was you were doing like six different types of jumps like you did the straddle
Joel Smith: jump and scissors and a California roll, which I never heard of.
Joel Smith: Like a forward somersault over the bar.
Joel Smith: And tell me a little bit about like that, like that fun or that diversity.
Joel Smith: Like, is there anything that brought up like the desire to explore all sorts
Joel Smith: of different types of jumps? Because I hadn't seen in a lot of high jumpers, I don't see that.
Joel Smith: Like, I don't see that like, hey, let's explore this all these different ways
Joel Smith: and have fun with the different ways we can jump.
Stefan Holm: Well, I started jumping for fun together with my best friend on his backyard
Stefan Holm: when we were like six or seven years old.
Stefan Holm: And we had to do the scissor kick because we didn't have a mat to land on.
Stefan Holm: We had to land on our feet.
Stefan Holm: So we did a lot of scissor kick from the beginning and also trying out this
Stefan Holm: straddle and trying to find new ways to jump over the bar just for fun.
Stefan Holm: We did that already when we were like six, seven, eight years old.
Stefan Holm: And then when I became a professional high jumper I mean it was still there
Stefan Holm: it was fun to try to pass the bar in different ways and I also think it's important,
Stefan Holm: for two reasons first of all it's important to know the history of your sport it's important to know,
Stefan Holm: how high jump developed over the years how did they jump 30 years ago 50 years
Stefan Holm: ago 100 years ago you could try that out because if they could do 2 meters with
Stefan Holm: the straddle in I mean 1930s You could probably do it now if you really try to.
Stefan Holm: And also, I think it's important to control your body, to find different ways
Stefan Holm: to jump. It's fun, but it's also good training.
Joel Smith: Yeah, I watch some of the... Just watching your technique, and it's just so
Joel Smith: clean, and technically you're so good.
Joel Smith: And I think so often, and of course there's so many technical drills and those types of things.
Joel Smith: But I can't help but think of what technique comes from, yeah,
Joel Smith: like you said, that exploration as a young child and just how that can also
Joel Smith: help make that learning easier later on.
Joel Smith: And is that something that with the jumpers, like if you, I know you work with
Joel Smith: younger jumpers and like you said, you did that when you were even like six
Joel Smith: and eight and younger, but even people who are 12, 13,
Joel Smith: 15 or 16, do you spend a lot of time doing still different types of high jumping
Joel Smith: for those younger groups?
Stefan Holm: We always do the scissor kick as a warm-up but i think
Stefan Holm: it's a it's a good way to warm up for the fosbury flop because
Stefan Holm: it's the same kind of approach the same kind of take off but
Stefan Holm: it's usually a little lighter on your feet so to
Stefan Holm: say it's not that much pressure uh but
Stefan Holm: i also like to you know trying to get them
Stefan Holm: to play around a little bit yeah but sometimes
Stefan Holm: it's hard because they always want to jump higher and
Stefan Holm: higher and higher and they wouldn't do the fosbury flop but we
Stefan Holm: of course we're working with the short approach and stuff
Stefan Holm: like that and different kind of technical um technical
Stefan Holm: exercises but the thing is for me for me
Stefan Holm: high jump came very very naturally i never
Stefan Holm: had to work very much on my own technique so it's that that makes it hard for
Stefan Holm: me to understand technical issues for other jumpers in a way because for me
Stefan Holm: just relax and let it happen come on how hard how hard could it be so i i have
Stefan Holm: learned a lot over the past 10 years being a coach,
Stefan Holm: because i used to say that people invent new problems because there are things
Stefan Holm: that i have never ever experienced myself but i think that's also good it's
Stefan Holm: a good part of being a coach you get to learn new stuff all the time yeah.
Joel Smith: Yeah they say that is that many of the elite athletes the highest level,
Joel Smith: they're the ones who, like you said, so often it just comes so naturally to them.
Joel Smith: And then we'll even see it with commentators on TV who had, who were a high
Joel Smith: level athlete or high level track athlete, and they're trying to talk about someone's form.
Joel Smith: And it's clear they actually never had to go through that technical,
Joel Smith: like, like kind of really getting into it to have to understand it.
Joel Smith: It came so natural to them.
Joel Smith: So it's interesting that, well, to hear you say that, And then you also have
Joel Smith: that awareness that, yes, it just came easy to me.
Joel Smith: And now you're in the mix of, and it's the same with myself.
Joel Smith: I was a very, I grew up playing basketball and just trying to do all the different dunks in basketball.
Joel Smith: And that was my jumping bit, like literacy, I guess you could say,
Joel Smith: or just always trying to jump up the staircase.
Joel Smith: I remember when I was like 13 or 14, there was a staircase at my school and
Joel Smith: I would just get a running start and see how many stairs I could get and always
Joel Smith: try to push myself to get another stair or try to jump and touch the highest beam on the ceiling.
Joel Smith: And then there was a few issues initially, but, and I had to just teach myself.
Joel Smith: I actually didn't really have a coach, but it was always so instinctive for
Joel Smith: me that when it came time to coach, I'm, I mean, I don't know.
Joel Smith: It was definitely, it's been a learning process the whole time for sure.
Joel Smith: Like going from that element myself to actually like having to get into it and
Joel Smith: then, and then digging into different athletes and what, and yeah,
Joel Smith: where there's missing links, where you did it and it just came and it just came together.
Joel Smith: Why does this athlete not get this step and how can I go into that and help them to achieve it?
Stefan Holm: Exactly. I mean, sometimes I wish that I have known 20 years ago what I know today.
Stefan Holm: But on the other hand, maybe I would have complicated things very,
Stefan Holm: very much for myself if I did.
Stefan Holm: But I think it's nice that you're always learning stuff from other people and
Stefan Holm: from other athletes, even from young athletes, I can learn something.
Stefan Holm: And i i have always wondered is can i
Stefan Holm: really learn teach someone how to high
Stefan Holm: jump or can i only learn them or help them to jump higher but i had a young
Stefan Holm: girl from a school a couple of years ago and she she really wanted to high jump
Stefan Holm: and i mean she couldn't she took off with both her feet she was running from
Stefan Holm: the wrong side taking off with the wrong foot and everything but,
Stefan Holm: suddenly we worked it out and in the end she could do high jump with the right
Stefan Holm: foot from the right side and at least i could teach her so that was also good for me to know.
Joel Smith: Yeah i i come to
Joel Smith: that thought myself especially earlier in my coaching
Joel Smith: years just with that idea of you improve
Joel Smith: the physical capacities i know my first coaching job i
Joel Smith: that was what my i really hung my hat on was hey we're
Joel Smith: getting stronger we're doing good plyometrics we're getting faster
Joel Smith: and it's showing up in
Joel Smith: their jump heights and it's definitely been later in
Joel Smith: my career that i've appreciated a lot of the more the more
Joel Smith: technical pieces of it all and i also the more
Joel Smith: i the more i watch like european approaches to the field events to the jumps
Joel Smith: and the technical pieces there the more i appreciate it more the older i get
Joel Smith: just because it's so good uh relative to a lot of the stuff not that there's
Joel Smith: not great jump coaches over here, but on average,
Joel Smith: there's just such a, I think there's a generally greater mastery of those things.
Joel Smith: And I wanted to ask specifically with Sweden, the coaching tree of high jump
Joel Smith: and track and field in Sweden, you mentioned Patrick Soberg,
Joel Smith: and that had to be so inspiring as you were young, but there was a trainer,
Joel Smith: his name was, I'm going to butcher his last name, and I totally apologize to
Joel Smith: everyone in Sweden who's listening, but it was Vilho Nwassen or something like that.
Joel Smith: And I remember when I was in my first coaching job at age 25,
Joel Smith: I was looking at Yannick Tregaro's, like he posted some of his workouts on the
Joel Smith: internet and I knew he had been inspired by Vilho's work.
Joel Smith: And I was trying to translate them. The translation was not like it is today
Joel Smith: where you just get AI, can scan it all.
Joel Smith: But I was trying to like go through these workouts and try to see what these did.
Joel Smith: Like, you know, the theme is like strika or whatever. Like, what is that?
Joel Smith: And going through the exercises and trying to figure them out.
Joel Smith: So I'm very curious about
Joel Smith: Uh his like his training concepts or the
Joel Smith: history of his training concepts and what that general philosophy is like did
Joel Smith: you train with those concepts i think your dad trained you but were those concepts
Joel Smith: at play in that training and tell me a little bit about the history of high
Joel Smith: jump training in sweden and how it impacted your training uh as an athlete
Stefan Holm: Well first of all i think you have to to apologize for the finnish listeners
Stefan Holm: because he's he's from finland.
Stefan Holm: It's a very very finnish name but yeah he
Stefan Holm: came to sweden in the 70s he started coaching a group
Stefan Holm: in guttenberg with patrick and some other young jumpers
Stefan Holm: both long jumpers triple jumpers high jumpers and
Stefan Holm: uh he he also had help from a guy
Stefan Holm: from former jugoslavia named dragan tansic he
Stefan Holm: was coaching Dietmar Mögenburg and Carlo Trernhardt and
Stefan Holm: all these great German jumpers in the 1980s so in
Stefan Holm: in 2004 if leading up
Stefan Holm: to my Olympic title in Athens I was in a training camp
Stefan Holm: in Estepona in southern Spain and there
Stefan Holm: was this guy who came out watching when I was doing
Stefan Holm: my plyometrics and he walked back into the gym and
Stefan Holm: then he came out again watching again and back into
Stefan Holm: the gym and in the end he came up to me and my
Stefan Holm: father and he said oh I think it's it's nice that you do in
Stefan Holm: my old exercises he said and that was dragan tanzic
Stefan Holm: because we had learned all these plyometric stuff
Stefan Holm: from bilio who had learned them from dragan like 20
Stefan Holm: 25 years earlier on but yeah
Stefan Holm: i think bilio was
Stefan Holm: very very good at inventing new exercises making training fun with different
Stefan Holm: sort of plyometrics and a lot of jumping stuff both in high jumping and over
Stefan Holm: the bar both with hurdles and boxers
Stefan Holm: and stuff like that also very much coordination he wasn't as good with.
Stefan Holm: Real strength training with the olympic lifts and so on but he was really really
Stefan Holm: good and having a good eye for for jumping and who could be a good jumper and
Stefan Holm: what do they need to do and as i say he made training fun and we we i learned
Stefan Holm: a lot of uh of the stuff that i still do today as a coach from him.
Stefan Holm: The first time I met him, I was 15. I just won the Swedish Youth Championships indoors.
Stefan Holm: And he invited me and my coach for training in Gothenburg with him.
Stefan Holm: So we went down there for half a year later, maybe we went down,
Stefan Holm: had a training session for three, four hours.
Stefan Holm: And those stuff that we did that day, I'm still doing with my jumpers today
Stefan Holm: because, all right, they're very, very basic, but you need to do them because
Stefan Holm: it's going to make you jump higher. It's as simple as that.
Joel Smith: Yeah, that's so interesting. I like that you mentioned, you know,
Joel Smith: Tanchit as well, Dragan Tanchik, because it's interesting what you find on YouTube.
Joel Smith: I don't even know how this popped across my YouTube feed the other day.
Joel Smith: It only had like a few hundred views, so it was not a popular video,
Joel Smith: but it was a 1980s, like a 1986 Dragan Tanchik, like two hours of him coaching
Joel Smith: high jumpers and going through all the plyometrics.
Joel Smith: Or I'm sure not all of them, but a lot of the plyometrics and a lot of his jumping technique.
Joel Smith: And I was just thinking to myself, this is so good. Like this is better than
Joel Smith: the vast majority of what I see today.
Joel Smith: And I, that's, I mean, I think that probably speaks to it. Like you're still
Joel Smith: doing and using those methods today.
Joel Smith: And I, it's interesting how we, it's almost like people,
Joel Smith: I mean, it's great to be creative, but I feel like so often we've
Joel Smith: lost some of the spirit of just how good some of
Joel Smith: that stuff was and it was also pretty simple it
Joel Smith: just seemed like a lot of like some of the things that i really
Joel Smith: appreciate that i don't see would just be like you're hopping on one
Joel Smith: leg and then there's a hurdle you jump over the hurdle and you continue
Joel Smith: hopping on one leg and there's another hurdle and you just keep you can
Joel Smith: just keep playing with that and working with that and building it
Joel Smith: up over time and it's the simplest thing but it's it's i
Joel Smith: don't know it's just also really and then integrate it but the perhaps even
Joel Smith: more than that is how we integrated that into the high jump approach
Joel Smith: so it's not just do plyometrics on the side and
Joel Smith: then that's that i mean and that's great but he would
Joel Smith: also have people doing bounding into high jump single leg hopping into high
Joel Smith: jump and i i just think it was yeah it was really to me that was just such good
Joel Smith: training and that i that's that was a two-hour video i definitely didn't get
Joel Smith: that much work done that day because i was just watching it and it was uh yeah
Joel Smith: i'll have to put it in the show notes of this.
Joel Smith: But yeah, so you mentioned the strength piece, though. And I do want to go back
Joel Smith: to the plyometrics. I probably said that too many times so far. I want to go back to this.
Joel Smith: But the strength piece I did, that was the early question I had for you, because I think
Joel Smith: I believe you didn't start like getting into strength training seriously from
Joel Smith: what I've heard until later in your career.
Joel Smith: And tell me a little bit about how that worked. Because people will talk and
Joel Smith: coaches will talk about, well, you know,
Joel Smith: don't strength train until this point and build just general good technique
Joel Smith: and the elasticity and the speed and then do the strength at this point.
Joel Smith: Yeah. When did you start really strength training and how did that impact you?
Stefan Holm: Yeah what i mean when i'm talking about
Stefan Holm: strength training that's weightlifting that's like half squat
Stefan Holm: deep snatch cleanse whatever
Stefan Holm: i mean plyometric is also strength training
Stefan Holm: but talking about weightlifting i started when i was 19 almost 20 but i i was
Stefan Holm: kind of strong already before so i i had the feeling that i didn't really need
Stefan Holm: to do it and also will you supported that he said that you don't have to start
Stefan Holm: already you can start later on,
Stefan Holm: but when I started high school when I was 16 we had a coach there who really really wanted us to
Stefan Holm: do weightlifting but I just said I'm not I'm following my own plan and as long
Stefan Holm: as I was jumping highest of the high school kids that was okay they couldn't
Stefan Holm: couldn't argue so much but yeah I,
Stefan Holm: I mean, I still did that for almost 15 years as a professional high jumper.
Stefan Holm: So you don't have to start when you're 12 or 13, I think.
Stefan Holm: But as you say, I think you should get your technique working.
Stefan Holm: There are so many skills that you could work on in the younger age.
Stefan Holm: And then you put on strength, the weightlifting, and then you hopefully get
Stefan Holm: an effect of that when you're like leaving the junior years.
Joel Smith: Yeah yeah your your experience it reminds
Joel Smith: me a little bit about well kim collins who was
Joel Smith: ran i think 9.99 in the
Joel Smith: 100 or something like that at age 40 and he
Joel Smith: didn't start lifting i think until he was like 33 or
Joel Smith: 34 it's funny to think about that that's
Joel Smith: amazing yeah but i think it actually it did i
Joel Smith: think it was a factor that pushed him from like 10
Joel Smith: 1 or 10 0 5 or whatever he was at 10.01 to just you know dipping under later
Joel Smith: but for you did it give you I mean obviously at a that you know that 18 to 20
Joel Smith: to 25 you're still going to be on the way up but do you feel like that was something
Joel Smith: that gave your system a boost from where it was yeah yeah
Stefan Holm: I think so I I jumped to 21
Stefan Holm: at the age of 19 to 18
Stefan Holm: the year before to 14 the year before that so I mean
Stefan Holm: i increased a few centimeters each year but then
Stefan Holm: starting lifting in the fall of
Stefan Holm: 1995 when i was 19 one and
Stefan Holm: a half years later i jumped 230 for the first time so i think
Stefan Holm: that i when i get used to it the first six
Stefan Holm: seven months that was rough because i i got muscles
Stefan Holm: that i couldn't control i got so much stronger and slower and just felt heavy
Stefan Holm: and everything but after i mean six seven eight months but i could get control
Stefan Holm: of everything then i really think that it helped me to jump higher and also
Stefan Holm: to get stable on higher heights i could do them more often.
Joel Smith: Yeah i i agree i i my experience was definitely similar uh when i started like
Joel Smith: really substantially strength training the the consistency got so after that
Joel Smith: initial period like you said the consistency got a lot better
Joel Smith: before that you said you obviously were doing a lot of plyometric exercises
Joel Smith: before that point when you started the olympic lifting and the heavier work
Joel Smith: were you doing i imagine you're doing like body weight training or or lighter
Joel Smith: more remedial exercises at that along with the plyometrics up until then
Stefan Holm: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you do this sort of circular training.
Stefan Holm: You do the sit-ups, the push-ups, the whatever you call it in English. You know what I mean?
Joel Smith: Yeah, yeah. That kind of stuff. Yeah. General strength. Yeah.
Stefan Holm: And also bounding, standing five steps, standing 10 steps.
Stefan Holm: Of course, a lot of drills with the hurdles and stuff like that. But yeah.
Stefan Holm: And high jumping. A lot of high jumping. Everything. All the time.
Joel Smith: Yeah yeah for yeah what kind of volumes were you doing throughout your career
Joel Smith: like like younger years like how often a week versus once you got we're jumping
Joel Smith: higher and you had more explosive capacity what was the type of volume that
Joel Smith: you were doing just for actual high jump training
Stefan Holm: I would usually high jumping twice a week during training seasons i mean during the,
Stefan Holm: competitive season i wasn't jump i was probably jumping once a week and then
Stefan Holm: competition so i was twice a week but once in training and when it comes to
Stefan Holm: number of jumps i mean i could probably do 40 or 50 jumps from full approach in.
Joel Smith: Training wow if
Stefan Holm: I really really really wanted to jump a certain height i jumped until i cleared it for good and for bad.
Joel Smith: Yeah yeah there's there's definitely both
Joel Smith: sides of that without question i i think about that a
Joel Smith: lot is you know that idea of you know
Joel Smith: only doing so many jumps that you know you're going to feel good like in a few
Joel Smith: days like you don't like tony holler says burn the steak like you know but then
Joel Smith: again there's having driven athletes i think that's something i consider a lot
Joel Smith: when i have a really driven athlete who will get really irritated when they
Joel Smith: don't clear that bar on the day there's that that dance if there's
Stefan Holm: A competition in three days coming up then.
Joel Smith: You shouldn't
Stefan Holm: Do 50 jumps in training but if there You're on a competition for two or three
Stefan Holm: weeks. Keep on going then if you really want to.
Joel Smith: Yeah.
Joel Smith: Yeah. In terms of the plyometric volume of what you did, you mentioned early
Joel Smith: in the show about just building that up slowly over time.
Joel Smith: And that's one of those things that I think a lot of people,
Joel Smith: I know myself, I watched that documentary with yourself and Donald Thomas.
Joel Smith: And I actually jumped against Donald like 20 years ago, but just when he first
Joel Smith: started and he had no idea he was sitting over the bar and he still beat me.
Joel Smith: So that was a good memory.
Stefan Holm: And he's still around.
Joel Smith: Yeah, his longevity is amazing. I'm blown away by that. Yeah,
Joel Smith: it is. Yeah, I'm absolutely blown away.
Stefan Holm: So am I. I mean, he came out of nowhere in the 2006, 2007 seasons,
Stefan Holm: and I mean, he's still around.
Joel Smith: Yeah. Yeah, it is interesting too.
Joel Smith: I wonder, sometimes I wonder as well, maybe this is a different conversation,
Joel Smith: but like how long you can sustain your ability.
Joel Smith: If you're naturally built to do the event, like like your your body your frame
Joel Smith: your tendons i part of me versus if you had to train
Joel Smith: like a madman to get where you were how long can you sustain that and not saying
Joel Smith: donald doesn't i'm sure he trains hard but i think about like how long we can
Joel Smith: keep up what we have based on how easy it our our body just lets us do it if that makes sense to you
Stefan Holm: Yeah, I mean, that's an interesting discussion, definitely. For me,
Stefan Holm: I retired at the age of 32, and then I'd been a world-class high jumper doing
Stefan Holm: 230 plus for 12 consecutive seasons.
Stefan Holm: But I was also, I was mentally soaked out. I felt that I'm done.
Stefan Holm: I know that I physically could have been around maybe for one more Olympics,
Stefan Holm: maybe for London 2012, but not on that high level and not in every single competition anymore.
Stefan Holm: So I just felt that I'm done.
Joel Smith: Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, it's, it's, I,
Joel Smith: the, the mental amount, like you said, like taking 40 full approach jumps in
Joel Smith: practice and being at that high of a level that you achieve for yourself based
Joel Smith: on what your genetics were and how high you and far you took that.
Joel Smith: It definitely makes especially with high jump too i feel like
Joel Smith: compared to where you always have three misses at the end of the day you always
Joel Smith: you always have a bar you didn't couldn't clear there is something about that
Joel Smith: i think that versus maybe like throwing the shot put or the discus or other
Joel Smith: events i do think there's something to it that just there's just so much mental and even
Joel Smith: Watching you i will actually i'll bring this up before we go on to the plyometric
Joel Smith: question but i would often see you doing a lot of like facial gestures prior
Joel Smith: to your jumps, like, you know, things with your tongue.
Joel Smith: And I was going to ask you if you had like a sports psychologist you were working
Joel Smith: with, or that was part of the mental piece of it in preparing,
Joel Smith: or was that just something that you came up with over time?
Joel Smith: I'm curious what that mental element of your training was.
Joel Smith: I guess because the more high level elite athletes I either talk to or observe,
Joel Smith: there is that ritual those rituals before they
Joel Smith: compete it's it's really substantial i think rafa nadal the tennis player i
Joel Smith: think he had 16 things he did with his water bottle and all this stuff it's
Joel Smith: and the more you see it the less you can unsee it so i'm curious what yeah tell
Joel Smith: me a little bit about all those little rituals before you jumped in all those mental pieces
Stefan Holm: Well first of all yes i worked with a mental coach
Stefan Holm: uh we started working together in the fall of
Stefan Holm: 1999 because i had a little bit of
Stefan Holm: an off season in 1999 i didn't raise my pbe i
Stefan Holm: didn't do very well at the world championships both indoors and outdoors and
Stefan Holm: i felt that i needed something extra i needed something more to boost myself
Stefan Holm: for leading up to sydney olympics so we started working out together in 1999
Stefan Holm: we're still very good friends he's the godfather of my son so i mean he's still
Stefan Holm: around part of the family more or less,
Stefan Holm: And yes, I had plenty of rituals leading up to competitions.
Stefan Holm: Not the one you see on TV though, that's not rituals, what ticks or I don't
Stefan Holm: know what you call it in English. But I couldn't help doing this stuff.
Stefan Holm: They just came when I was nervous and a bit tensed and throwing my hand over
Stefan Holm: my face. I was turning my wedding ring and doing this stuff with my mouth.
Stefan Holm: I couldn't help doing that. but i didn't
Stefan Holm: need to try to stop them because i knew they're just
Stefan Holm: leave them they're gonna be there but yes i
Stefan Holm: have plenty of rituals i always shaved before every
Stefan Holm: single competition i took a shower i jumped in the same underwear i took on
Stefan Holm: and off my clothes in a certain way between the jumps stuff like that i've always
Stefan Holm: pulled my singlet on on my way out to my starting my approach so yeah I had
Stefan Holm: plenty of rituals but you never saw them on tv.
Joel Smith: Yeah I'm glad you mentioned that because I thought I
Joel Smith: what I saw you know I was trying to put together based
Joel Smith: on what you know my the way my brain you know
Joel Smith: processes it so I'm glad to I've it's so interesting to hear about what you
Joel Smith: don't see and yeah I had no idea with um with exactly what was going on with
Joel Smith: those so I appreciate the clarification but it does confirm yeah like to do
Joel Smith: things at a high level There is so many pieces that behind it and rituals behind it.
Joel Smith: And that's something I'm trying to become more aware of, even in just how I
Joel Smith: tend to do things. So much of it.
Stefan Holm: For me, for me, I think it was all about, uh,
Stefan Holm: When you're standing there on these big stadiums, you're seeing the bar over
Stefan Holm: there, you don't want to start thinking about things.
Stefan Holm: You don't want to, oh, did I really turn off my oven back home? Did I pay my bills?
Stefan Holm: Did I take the trash out? I mean, you do all that stuff before you leave home.
Stefan Holm: You know, I've done this now. and the same thing leading up
Stefan Holm: to a competition doing the same stuff over and over and
Stefan Holm: over again because in the end when you're standing there
Stefan Holm: in the olympic final it's like any single training
Stefan Holm: jump i mean you should do the same thing that you have done before so you don't
Stefan Holm: start thinking about things and for me all these rituals led up to that i can
Stefan Holm: be stand here focus entirely on jumping over that bar and not thinking about other different stuff.
Joel Smith: Yeah. With all the mental process that I think about to be the person who jumped
Joel Smith: the highest over their own head in human history and to be at that level repeatedly
Joel Smith: over a period of time just the mental process and like you mentioned even the
Joel Smith: gestures that would come up on your face before the jumps.
Joel Smith: I mean that is such a feat to do just to think of. I mean even just to jump
Joel Smith: you know 10 centimeters over your head repeatedly is pretty substantial, let alone almost 60.
Joel Smith: And to do that over a long period of time, I think that the body and the mind,
Joel Smith: because they work together, and if not being the same in so many regards,
Joel Smith: has to do so much to get that to happen.
Joel Smith: So it's an interesting exercise too, just to even think about that.
Joel Smith: For those of us high jumpers who have put the bar up that high just for fun
Joel Smith: and you look at it you're like wow it's there's there's um there's definitely
Joel Smith: a lot that i think the mind you know then ritual to go through
Joel Smith: uh yeah a
Stefan Holm: Thing is that i i always thought that if i win the olympics which i did in athens
Stefan Holm: that i could stop doing all these rituals but i couldn't i mean i had to do
Stefan Holm: them because then i had to defend my title as the olympic champion and being
Stefan Holm: world number one so i had to do them even more focused so you could never really.
Joel Smith: Relax yeah yeah
Joel Smith: it's i i like thinking about just the body
Joel Smith: it's almost like our conscious what we're thinking
Joel Smith: consciously is only a small piece of what our whole body
Joel Smith: is is doing to prepare for something
Joel Smith: and it's just interesting to think about what your your entire
Joel Smith: being was doing to to channel it
Joel Smith: into that ultimate output um i just think and i just think that that side of
Joel Smith: it the mental side the ritual side i think it's it's the thing that it's not
Joel Smith: going to go viral on social media you know that those little pieces Everyone
Joel Smith: wants like the big exercises or the cool exercises or the new extra, whatever the novel,
Joel Smith: the new ways to put a plyometric together or whatnot, which I enjoy.
Joel Smith: But, but yeah, that, that side of it, I think is so important.
Joel Smith: It is so interesting and fascinating to me.
Joel Smith: So plyometrics though. So I did, this is something I think going back to the, that, that Dr.
Joel Smith: Minner, I think they talked about just how like your Achilles tendon and your,
Joel Smith: was so hard to like stretch, like compared to the, to the person off the street.
Joel Smith: Like your Achilles took, I think according to the documentary,
Joel Smith: like four times more force to deform and stretch.
Joel Smith: And so, you know, in addition to the high jumping and just that obsessive nature,
Joel Smith: Like the plyometrics, I'm sure, and all the things in the, and anyone who's
Joel Smith: watching this, I'll post the Tanchich video in the show notes,
Joel Smith: which has so much good stuff.
Joel Smith: But tell me a little bit about the jumping and the plyometric process that led
Joel Smith: you to your ability to deflect yourself off the ground. it like a superhuman.
Joel Smith: I mean, it was, you know, how, how, how does one slowly build up to that over
Joel Smith: time? Tell me a little bit about that process.
Stefan Holm: Well, whatever everybody sees is these viral clips, me jumping over like 170
Stefan Holm: hurdles or 150 hurdles or whatever there are.
Stefan Holm: But I mean, I started off on the usual lower hurdles.
Stefan Holm: That's 107, their tops.
Stefan Holm: And I was doing plenty of jumps as a kid and as a youth jumper,
Stefan Holm: as a junior. I didn't buy these high hurdles until I was 24.
Stefan Holm: So before that, I had to jump on these 107s.
Stefan Holm: And in the end of the day that got kind of boring so
Stefan Holm: we found these higher ones and then we could i could
Stefan Holm: start jumping higher and higher but then i had put a
Stefan Holm: very very stable ground with a lot of jumping uh i never in these years i didn't
Stefan Holm: count how many jumps i did in every single training but i did a lot of course
Stefan Holm: and also we come back to genetics i think my father comes from working class.
Stefan Holm: My mother's family, they were farmers from generations back.
Stefan Holm: So I mean, in a way there are genetics, strong genetics as well.
Stefan Holm: But I was surprised in the documentary as well.
Stefan Holm: It's actually a Japanese documentary that did that before the Beijing Olympics.
Stefan Holm: The miracle of the human body.
Stefan Holm: But yeah. But the thing is that my Achilles, they were hurting a lot so i never
Stefan Holm: thought that it was that strong but if i had known that before maybe i wouldn't
Stefan Holm: be so worried to to pull my achilles.
Joel Smith: Yeah i think i i wonder how
Joel Smith: many high jumpers like to to get that much output out
Joel Smith: of your achilles it's almost like a razor uh line
Joel Smith: you walk between you know being feeling healthy
Joel Smith: if there's so much force going through them there's just
Joel Smith: that's the thing that your body almost lives and dies by
Joel Smith: in a way and i've i've been there a lot myself i think i was just thinking about
Joel Smith: my mind was going to soda mayor the world record holder and just straight height
Joel Smith: jump and and his mental thing was always interesting i watched the mental thing
Joel Smith: you know he had a little different process but i know he i think he had to retire because of achilles
Joel Smith: um issues or pain or something like that it's just that that if you can load
Joel Smith: that spring so heavily It seems like it's something that is just it's always
Joel Smith: it's to be extreme on that on such a level.
Joel Smith: The Achilles is definitely going to have to take its fair share of load for sure.
Joel Smith: Uh do you so with the home hurdles one of
Stefan Holm: My my younger kids asked one of
Stefan Holm: my younger kids asked me a couple of weeks ago did you ever have pain when you
Stefan Holm: were jumping yeah i mean it was that was constant pain but you have to learn
Stefan Holm: to to to understand what what is an injury and what is just regular pain you
Stefan Holm: have to to find the difference there yeah.
Joel Smith: Yeah i agree and i think
Joel Smith: that's that's definitely one of the things you you learn over time
Joel Smith: and and especially as a high level athlete yeah with
Joel Smith: the home hurdles so that yeah like you said people will
Joel Smith: see you jumping over those like there was i
Joel Smith: think they were like 180 or something i mean it was clearly whatever however
Joel Smith: tall your head was was about how high these hurdles were and
Joel Smith: you would take three steps and jump off one leg and then land in
Joel Smith: three steps and so you started you
Joel Smith: said on the one meter oh sevens um but what
Joel Smith: um what was the volume like of like that like jumps that weren't high jump so
Joel Smith: you had high jump but then like like the home hurdle jumps and the plyometrics
Joel Smith: um you know relative did you do a lot of more like remedial stuff to prepare
Joel Smith: your tendons or was it just a lot of high jumping or a little about equal amount of both
Stefan Holm: I mean
Stefan Holm: the i had a session when
Stefan Holm: i was jumping over hurdles different kind of exercises
Stefan Holm: around 200 jumps in a session i also
Stefan Holm: did some some bounding 60 meters 24
Stefan Holm: times 60 and 24 12 left
Stefan Holm: right left right left right and yeah and
Stefan Holm: then six times on your left leg six times on your right leg
Stefan Holm: that was a very very fun morning actually so i
Stefan Holm: did a lot of jumping i did but uh i mean
Stefan Holm: the home hurdles they sort of evolved over
Stefan Holm: time i i mean that's a regular exercise you
Stefan Holm: take it off on your in my case left leg you're
Stefan Holm: landing on your right leg taking three strides so but
Stefan Holm: what i did i i i heightened the
Stefan Holm: hurdles and that was fun it
Stefan Holm: was also for me it was also a form
Stefan Holm: check like two three days before a competition if
Stefan Holm: i can jump this high in training on these hurdles and get
Stefan Holm: the right feeling for it then i know that i'm in good shape so
Stefan Holm: i never really tried to maximize them i did
Stefan Holm: like 170 maybe but i've never really tried to go as high as possible for me
Stefan Holm: it was more about a feeling i want to and that was a is what i tried to to learn
Stefan Holm: these kids that i'm coaching today i mean you're taking off and then you want
Stefan Holm: to stay in the air as long as possible you fulfill your.
Stefan Holm: Your motions and just stay up there and if you stay up there forever it's good,
Stefan Holm: they're going to pull you down again but no one has succeeded yet so it was
Stefan Holm: more about that, I mean trying to to get a nice feeling for flying not jumping as high as possible.
Joel Smith: Weighted vests have been around forever in physical training,
Joel Smith: but wearable resistance has been upgraded with Lila Exogen wearable resistance training gear.
Joel Smith: It features micro weights that you strap to the body and it feels like a second skin.
Joel Smith: The potentiation and the specific strength you get from it is second to none,
Joel Smith: and so many elite coaches and athletes are making use of this training technology.
Joel Smith: To check out Exogen, head to lilateam.com.
Joel Smith: That's lilateam.com, and you
Joel Smith: can use the code JUSTFLY2025, that's JUSTFLY2025 for 25% off your order.
Joel Smith: Today's podcast is also sponsored by Hammer Strength.
Joel Smith: Hammer Strength machines are
Joel Smith: engineered to work with the natural arcs of movement in the human body.
Joel Smith: With decades of trust behind their name, Hammer Strength delivers durable and
Joel Smith: intuitive machines that meet the needs of today's strength and athletic performance training.
Joel Smith: Yeah, that's interesting how you put it that way, feeling for flying and not
Joel Smith: jumping as high as possible.
Joel Smith: It seems to me like flying is a word, and I'm sure, you know,
Joel Smith: versus English versus Swedish, but like flying is a word that makes it feel
Joel Smith: kind of effortless and joyful.
Joel Smith: It's almost like the fun part of why you started doing it versus on the other hand,
Joel Smith: hey, high jump competition, you got to get over that bar versus you maybe,
Joel Smith: okay, I just had the feeling of flying And it's just that, and there's not necessarily
Joel Smith: the output and I have to jump this bar, I have to jump that bar.
Joel Smith: It seems like, yeah, maybe you need a little bit of both, the output and then
Joel Smith: just the feeling of jumping and bouncing and flying.
Stefan Holm: I mean, competition is about winning the competition, jumping as high as possible as you can that day.
Stefan Holm: But in training, it was more about finding the rhythm, finding the feeling,
Stefan Holm: finding, as I say, the feeling of flying.
Stefan Holm: That's a nice feeling that you could stay up there forever.
Joel Smith: Yeah. Yeah. The bounding, yeah, 60, but it is interesting to hear.
Joel Smith: Sometimes you hear about different workouts.
Joel Smith: It's always like almost like a legendary workout or an extreme workout that somebody did.
Joel Smith: And of course, like you said, the danger is, oh, well, Stefan Holm did 24 by
Joel Smith: 60 meter bound, so let's take our 14-year-old jumpers and have them do that
Joel Smith: or something like that. I killed them.
Joel Smith: But it is interesting because that sounds like such a massive volume.
Joel Smith: But I remember, it's funny because I remember this story so clearly. It was my first year.
Joel Smith: I was 29 or 30 working in my first job at UC Berkeley or Cal.
Joel Smith: And I was talking with one of the jumpers there. He was a long jumper,
Joel Smith: about like seven, maybe seven 50, seven 55 guy.
Joel Smith: And he was struggling with, I was the strength coach there.
Joel Smith: I wasn't his, his jumps coach or his track coach, but he was telling me when
Joel Smith: he was in high school, he didn't lift much, but they bounded across the entire
Joel Smith: soccer field, like several times. Like, and it was almost like every day.
Joel Smith: And I'm hearing this, I'm like, that's way too much. Or, you know,
Joel Smith: like, which I mean, it is in a sense.
Joel Smith: Yes, it is. But he had said, yeah, I was jumping so well doing that.
Joel Smith: And I guess, I mean, again, I wouldn't have everybody do that volume.
Joel Smith: But to me, it more kind of spoke that if he believes in it and he can tolerate
Joel Smith: it and he's an elastic athlete.
Joel Smith: You know, for that period, it was like, if you kept doing that,
Joel Smith: it's probably not going to be good. But some athletes can handle that higher level.
Joel Smith: And yeah, I've heard about, I had heard about in just maybe more in Europe,
Joel Smith: athletes who get a lot more plyometric contacts,
Joel Smith: even like low-level contacts for like, not an hour, but there's a lot of those
Joel Smith: remedial bounces and there's just a lot of volume over time.
Joel Smith: And, you know, bound is not as intense as a depth jump for sure but no it's
Joel Smith: um yeah it's just interesting to think about building up to that that volume and and
Stefan Holm: Being the thing is that i started out doing stand
Stefan Holm: standing five steps standing 10 steps and it
Stefan Holm: gets kind of boring in the end i mean you want
Stefan Holm: to do do longer and then after the
Stefan Holm: the indoor season 2000 i ended up
Stefan Holm: in fourth place as a european indoors and i was full of
Stefan Holm: revenge it's half a year i go to the olympics i really want
Stefan Holm: to train hard and being tough so i just said
Stefan Holm: to myself what happens if i do 60 meters bounding how
Stefan Holm: will i feel afterwards i'm doing it 12 times and then we'll
Stefan Holm: see what happens and 12 times was okay and the
Stefan Holm: next week yeah let's try 16 then why not and then
Stefan Holm: i found out that at 24 i did 28 one time
Stefan Holm: but that's 24 that's an okay amount so i'm
Stefan Holm: trying to do the same thing with with my son and with
Stefan Holm: the other jumpers that i'm coaching now they're doing standing five
Stefan Holm: they're doing standing 10 melanie down standing 15
Stefan Holm: maybe 50 meters 45 50 meters but doing 60 meters i mean that's rough but as
Stefan Holm: you say it's not that tough yeah as uh doing other sort of jumps because you
Stefan Holm: have a flow also in in in that sort of jumping,
Stefan Holm: it's tough on one leg but there is a story about a Bulgarian triple jumper Risto
Stefan Holm: Markov he won the Olympics in Seoul in 1988 and.
Stefan Holm: He says that, I've read this story on the internet, so of course it's true,
Stefan Holm: that he could do single leg jumps over 107 hurdles for 110 meters.
Stefan Holm: And that people came from all of Bulgaria to see his training sessions more
Stefan Holm: or less doing this on the football field.
Stefan Holm: So, why not?
Joel Smith: Yeah, that would be, you know what, if Instagram was around back then,
Joel Smith: that would be the ultimate. it than everyone would be trying to yeah that
Stefan Holm: Would be great.
Joel Smith: It makes me think sometimes too
Joel Smith: you hear about that stuff and before there was as much video
Joel Smith: evidence you you wonder like i don't know it's just interesting like some of
Joel Smith: these legends or it's like you know i i guess it was a communist uh country
Joel Smith: it's like that where the russians said that they were doing depth jumps off
Joel Smith: like three meter platforms to the americans to trick them or something but i'm
Joel Smith: sure that guy remember that guy,
Joel Smith: he had that really unique arm action and triple jump, like spinning around.
Joel Smith: I think, you know, people are like, oh, should we copy it? Should we not copy
Joel Smith: it? It's funny to hear that name associated with that type of thing.
Joel Smith: But I do think it is interesting, you know, to at least if you're a jumping
Joel Smith: athlete, it does make sense that at some point, once you're prepared for it,
Joel Smith: to start testing the limits of some of these rhythm plyos, I guess you could say, not just
Joel Smith: Like, I mean, I'm sure depth jumps, you know, I would be curious,
Joel Smith: like what, like depth jumps and hurdle hops.
Joel Smith: I saw you do a lot of hurdle hops. Did you do a lot of depth jumping exercises
Joel Smith: where you drop from the platform and jump over? I didn't see,
Joel Smith: I haven't seen as much of that on video.
Joel Smith: I've just seen more of the hurdle hopping type activities for you.
Stefan Holm: I did some drop jumps from like 60 centimeters.
Stefan Holm: I also had one of my favorite exercises that I had boxes that was 115 and 120.
Stefan Holm: So I had hurdle, box, hurdle, box, and hurdle.
Stefan Holm: The hurdles maybe 130, jumping on two feet, of course.
Stefan Holm: But that was also a thing that I did two, three days before a competition,
Stefan Holm: just to get some things starting in my legs, so to say.
Stefan Holm: But i wasn't jumping from that high heights
Stefan Holm: yeah i was talking to a former triple jumper he
Stefan Holm: he's got a son that's a few years younger than melvin but this guy he's almost
Stefan Holm: 10 years older than me so he was part of this era when you should do these jumps
Stefan Holm: from from a handball goal or from three meters down and i mean they kill them
Stefan Holm: they kill the knees yeah yeah.
Joel Smith: It's the definitely how high you can get up for high jump or for those depth jumps.
Joel Smith: There's that, I don't know if you've seen that Japanese high jumper who dropped
Joel Smith: off like a, almost a two meter box.
Joel Smith: I think it was one 80 and he did a depth jump.
Joel Smith: He did a little bounce out of it. I was pretty amazed.
Joel Smith: I think it was a guy who was like a two 30 high jumper or something like that.
Joel Smith: Those guys are really light too. I wonder if they can tolerate it a little bit
Joel Smith: better, but I don't think, I don't see that done often by most,
Joel Smith: maybe the, maybe Kristo Markov was doing that too. I don't know.
Stefan Holm: Yeah, but I can't see the use of it either. I mean, what's the point of jumping
Stefan Holm: from that sort of height down in the ground? Yeah.
Stefan Holm: But there's a story about this Swedish hammer thrower in the 80s.
Stefan Holm: He was said to jump from the rim of a handball goal, that's two meters,
Stefan Holm: with the weights on his back.
Stefan Holm: And then he got to the doctor because his knees hurted. And he explained to
Stefan Holm: the doctor what he had done.
Stefan Holm: And the doctor said, it's not the knees that's the problem, it's your head.
Stefan Holm: Because, I mean, that's a crazy exercise to do.
Joel Smith: Yeah. Yeah. That once you get to a certain height and that was,
Joel Smith: I know when I was younger, I would always think about like trying to get on the higher boxes.
Joel Smith: I, it's the funny thing is I never pushed, even when I was a coach in my twenties,
Joel Smith: I didn't, I never had my athletes do what I did.
Joel Smith: I think I was a little, I, cause I was jumping off of my best high jumping.
Joel Smith: I was jumping off of maybe like one meter 10, one meter 20 or something like
Joel Smith: that. Anything be above that would have felt crazy.
Joel Smith: But I, the highest I had my athletes do is maybe like 70 centimeters or something.
Joel Smith: It just didn't feel right to make them do that.
Joel Smith: I don't know. I think it was more experimentation on my own part to say,
Joel Smith: all right, well, how high can I get this box and have it still feel okay?
Joel Smith: Anything above a meter 10, I like, this doesn't feel, this really doesn't feel okay anymore.
Joel Smith: Yeah, the extremes of it are certainly interesting.
Joel Smith: So, yeah, plyometrics, and I've been getting through a lot of the training here.
Joel Smith: So, in terms of rhythm was something I wanted to ask you about.
Joel Smith: And you mentioned with the hurdles and the rhythm and, like,
Joel Smith: kind of the feeling, you know, the feeling of flying.
Joel Smith: I think this was, again, I mentioned Simon Hunt because I know he had done a
Joel Smith: few, like, plyometric pieces with you or gone to some workshops,
Joel Smith: I think, that you had done. But there was a lot of like rhythm that came out
Joel Smith: of it and and thoughts even in the weight room.
Joel Smith: Tell me a little bit about the role of like like rhythm.
Joel Smith: Do you ever do anything with music and movement or plyometrics or how do you
Joel Smith: how do you look at the rhythm of like of athletic movement and jumping in the
Joel Smith: way you approach training?
Stefan Holm: The thing is that i i can't clap rhythmically i
Stefan Holm: mean to music totally done my ex-wife just
Stefan Holm: laughed at me when i was trying she said
Stefan Holm: i was totally wrong but uh doing high jumping and i all i just i like to jump
Stefan Holm: to music as long as it's the right bpm because otherwise you're running too
Stefan Holm: fast or too slow i like to do this sort of little bit sort of rhythm work in
Stefan Holm: the gym with the light weights and stuff like that.
Stefan Holm: But I think it's coming down that you have to control your body.
Stefan Holm: You have to know what you're doing and how you should do stuff.
Stefan Holm: And high jump is a lot about rhythm because you have to do the same thing over and over and over again.
Stefan Holm: You can't try to run that much faster because the bar is a little bit higher now.
Stefan Holm: You can't try to push it even harder. You have to do the same thing.
Stefan Holm: You should do the same thing at 190 as you do on 220.
Stefan Holm: But so yes I think rhythm is important in the in the sense of knowing your body
Stefan Holm: and knowing how to do things and doing the same thing over and over and over again.
Joel Smith: Yeah yeah I would see some different
Joel Smith: like takeoff exercises that you do with like different like single
Joel Smith: leg jumps into the jump but looking at
Joel Smith: your approach it was a little bit where some guys come in
Joel Smith: they kind of run they got a few bounds it's like you
Joel Smith: got this little rhythm the bounty rhythm and then run again yours seemed
Joel Smith: like it was a little more just like like like like
Joel Smith: a little more simple like a simple structure if that
Joel Smith: makes sense like a little less of that like the big rhythmic changes if that
Joel Smith: makes sense i was curious if that you think that might play into it or if you
Joel Smith: just like that more just straight sprint style or for your body maybe that's
Joel Smith: just that speed that's how you got it i'm curious with any thoughts on rhythm
Joel Smith: and your approach in that regards
Stefan Holm: I think I've tried different ways of running over the years,
Stefan Holm: running faster from the beginning, or as you say, doing these higher strides and more relaxed.
Stefan Holm: But I ended up doing the way I did it, with a rolling start to start with,
Stefan Holm: and also trying to accelerate from more or less each stride I did,
Stefan Holm: especially accelerate through the curve of the last three, four strides.
Stefan Holm: And being a pretty short high jumper I know that I have to run fast and then
Stefan Holm: I have to build up that speed because the important thing is how fast you run
Stefan Holm: during takeoff not how fast you run 10 or 15 meters before the bar,
Stefan Holm: it's a thing that you have to accelerate through the curve and you have to reach
Stefan Holm: your highest speed when you plant your takeoff foot in the ground,
Stefan Holm: So for me, I think I just worked it out over the years.
Stefan Holm: This is the way I should do it. I tried to run like Sotomayor.
Stefan Holm: Sotomayor, I couldn't. I tried to run like Patrick Schoenberg.
Stefan Holm: I couldn't do that either.
Stefan Holm: Then I saw a remaining guy named Soren Mattei. And yeah, that was my role model.
Joel Smith: Yeah, he was a little shorter.
Stefan Holm: I tried to jump as Charles Austin as well, but I couldn't do that.
Stefan Holm: Yeah, he was, Soren was short. Charles Austin was short.
Stefan Holm: Hollis Conway was short. But both Hollis and Charles, they were more bouncy in their approach.
Stefan Holm: I love that. I mean, it looks great, but I couldn't jump like that.
Stefan Holm: So I had to run faster from the beginning and through my entire run-up.
Joel Smith: Yeah. Yeah, I just love paying attention. It's almost like someone's signature.
Joel Smith: Like, you know, your rhythm or your approach, it almost becomes your signature
Joel Smith: a little bit. And it's, yeah, yeah.
Joel Smith: Like, yeah, Hollis and Charles were about 1 meter 83 or 85 or something tall.
Joel Smith: I think, yeah, those guys weren't too tall themselves. so they were
Stefan Holm: So bouncy most of them.
Joel Smith: Yeah yeah it's it's it's
Joel Smith: so crazy to watch that and just those and back in the the 1990s
Joel Smith: too and just those guys jumping so high i just yeah i love the little the history
Joel Smith: piece of it all there with uh with the bounding it got me thinking um you know
Joel Smith: on the level of training i did you do any other events like substantially especially
Joel Smith: when you were younger Because I think someone would look at someone who did, okay,
Joel Smith: you did this in high jump and you reached this super high level and so specialized.
Joel Smith: But what was your second best, I mean, long jump, I'd imagine second best event
Joel Smith: or anything else that you like doing?
Stefan Holm: Quiz games is actually my second best sport uh but
Stefan Holm: besides that i would say long jump i did i jumped 718
Stefan Holm: i could maybe a jump around 750 if
Stefan Holm: i tried for it but i never really competed in long
Stefan Holm: jump then i would say probably high
Stefan Holm: hurdles because i didn't respect the height of the hurdles i could just run
Stefan Holm: i wasn't very fast so but otherwise i i mean i i've been to this uh you mean
Stefan Holm: you know superstar competitions or whatever they're called in tv and everything and i'm i suck.
Joel Smith: I mean i
Stefan Holm: Could i could do high jump and i could do quiz shows but i know no other sport
Stefan Holm: actually i was a lousy soccer player too.
Joel Smith: Quiz quiz shows that's
Joel Smith: i yeah i had one time i love
Joel Smith: jeopardy yeah i had um you
Joel Smith: might you might think this is funny when i was doing the strength
Joel Smith: and conditioning for men's water polo at cal one day
Joel Smith: we had like a big kind of we had a big relay
Joel Smith: race uh with the team and it broke it
Joel Smith: into four teams and they had to they just
Joel Smith: had to go throughout the whole gym and do different it was kind of like an obstacle
Joel Smith: course they had to do different challenges they had to do different like physical
Joel Smith: challenges but two of the stations were quiz stations
Joel Smith: and they had to go to a head coach and answer questions
Joel Smith: about like the history of the program and stuff like that and
Joel Smith: before they could go to the next before they could go
Joel Smith: to the next station so that was actually one of the
Joel Smith: more fun memories i had i don't know if i put any other questions in there i
Joel Smith: don't think i had like math problems in there or whatever but um yeah it was
Joel Smith: it was fun that was actually one of the more fun things about that whole thing
Joel Smith: is you're doing all these physical things but then you had to stop and you had
Joel Smith: to answer a quiz before you could get to the next next next part of it
Joel Smith: Uh, you, uh, I saw you had, I did want to ask you, I was going through your
Joel Smith: social media a little bit and thinking of a few ideas and I saw you had like
Joel Smith: a, like a master's master's like decathlon or something, but it looked like
Joel Smith: it was a lot like fun events or something like that.
Joel Smith: I think you only did one of them. It was like, like different,
Joel Smith: uh, your training group.
Joel Smith: It was like a, like usually there's like jumps decathlons a lot of times,
Joel Smith: like where it's like, all right, you're going to do the, you know,
Joel Smith: five bounds and 10 bounds and shot put overhead and you get a score.
Joel Smith: But you had like a lot of different events and everyone had,
Joel Smith: you know, it went not scoring.
Stefan Holm: Yeah, we did a high jump heptathlon once or twice.
Stefan Holm: I still have the plans up for it. But yeah, trying to do all these sort of high
Stefan Holm: jump techniques and stuff like that, I think it's fun. It's fun for training.
Stefan Holm: So we tried this a couple of years ago with my former group.
Stefan Holm: Most of them have retired now. but we did the heptathlon with standing high
Stefan Holm: jump two strides, straddle,
Stefan Holm: whatever it was and you had three jumps you could choose your height you could
Stefan Holm: height higher or lower it didn't matter but you had only three attempts on each
Stefan Holm: single one of these techniques,
Stefan Holm: but I think it's good for training as we talked on before trying to learn all
Stefan Holm: these sort of techniques is good.
Joel Smith: Yeah yeah athletes always appreciate like
Joel Smith: those anytime you can make kind of a special thing
Joel Smith: out of those competitions too i think athletes appreciate that so
Joel Smith: it lets coaches be creative like maybe that's where
Joel Smith: a lot of the the creativity is at its best with coming up
Joel Smith: with these little high jump competitions with the
Joel Smith: different categories and you know so uh
Joel Smith: the so with the strength piece i i did want to i wanted to
Joel Smith: cap off some of the training elements here and with
Joel Smith: people see you uh i know i've i've seen the videos
Joel Smith: with you doing the lifting and like olympic lifting
Joel Smith: and squatting and step-ups and i find it interesting because
Joel Smith: a lot of high jumpers especially like some of the taller ones you would probably
Joel Smith: only see them not only but a lot of it would be like half squats or quarter
Joel Smith: squats and you're taking several like well over a hundred kilos to full depth
Joel Smith: and so like doing very full range of motion squatting in those activities.
Joel Smith: What was like some of the balance between the full range squatting and depth
Joel Smith: work versus like the more partial type activities like less range?
Stefan Holm: Well, for me, I think the deep squat was a very good exercise.
Stefan Holm: I could handle it. Technically, I could do it well strength-wise as well.
Stefan Holm: So I think it was very, very good for building up a good sort of ground strength
Stefan Holm: to work from in the other exercises.
Stefan Holm: So I did, during my ground training part of the year, I did six by six deep squats.
Stefan Holm: I did six by six half squats as well.
Stefan Holm: Five by five when it came to snatch and
Stefan Holm: cleans and stuff like that but i always liked like
Stefan Holm: the deep squats and yeah people questioned it because they said oh you're gonna
Stefan Holm: hurt your knees it's gonna it's not good for you it's gonna hurt your back but
Stefan Holm: since i i could do it very well technically i think i never had a problem with
Stefan Holm: it so i try to do it with most of my athletes today as well.
Stefan Holm: Sophie Skoog who was in Olympic final in Rio 2016, she couldn't do a deep squat very well.
Stefan Holm: But she could do the Bulgarian with one leg instead at the time.
Stefan Holm: But I think it's a good exercise to build a good strength to stand on for the
Stefan Holm: other sort of strength exercises.
Joel Smith: Yeah, that's something that is interesting where people will see different variations
Joel Smith: and debate different variations.
Joel Smith: But for you, your ability to reverse reverse
Joel Smith: forces in that takeoff and deflect yourself was i
Joel Smith: mean the amount of strength needed for that was um you
Joel Smith: know incredible and it is interesting because your your legs definitely look
Joel Smith: like they had a little bit more mass you know then uh then like
Joel Smith: a maybe a length like you know obviously all high
Joel Smith: jumpers are light but your legs definitely look like they had a little bit more
Joel Smith: mass slightly more than a lot of other jumpers
Joel Smith: and i'm sure that that full range was probably helpful in that
Joel Smith: regards uh step ups too
Joel Smith: like so i i think there was you know videos of you doing step ups a pretty standard
Joel Smith: exercise for single leg jumpers and there's again there's the range in that
Joel Smith: too you can use a little higher box or you'll see some people on the really
Joel Smith: low teeny box like doing like 300 kilos or something but did you prefer more
Joel Smith: of a a fuller range or like a
Joel Smith: larger range in the step ups versus the the smaller boxes or was that different
Stefan Holm: During the build-up part of the year, I wanted to have 90 degrees more or less in my knee.
Stefan Holm: But then during season, when you put some speed on stuff and light your weights,
Stefan Holm: then I did a stair with 5 centimeters,
Stefan Holm: 25 centimeters, 50 centimeters, and I was sort of three strides up the stair.
Stefan Holm: But that was only like 20, 40 kilos on my back, so that was not very heavy lifting.
Stefan Holm: But I wanted maybe 35 centimeters that gave me 90 degrees in my knee and then
Stefan Holm: I had to push with my hamstrings and with my legs getting stronger.
Stefan Holm: And at the end of the day, I mean, a takeoff in high jump, it's all about reversing
Stefan Holm: the speed to a vertical speed.
Stefan Holm: I mean, that's all what it comes down to in the end.
Joel Smith: Yeah. Maybe with all the plyometric volume you were doing too,
Joel Smith: I think of this sometimes because the first time a coach told me about,
Joel Smith: oh, we do step-ups with 200 kilos or more on this low box, I was thinking,
Joel Smith: well, wouldn't you just do like some single leg hurdle hops instead?
Joel Smith: Like wouldn't in terms of specificity, if you're talking that sharp leg angle,
Joel Smith: wouldn't it be just as well to do a plyometric?
Joel Smith: And then if you're going to do the step-up, maybe use more range.
Joel Smith: So maybe in some ways, you know, you really contrasted all that very short range
Joel Smith: of motion plyometrics explosive with things that were just more range in the
Joel Smith: weight room because you've, you've used, like you said, plyos are strength.
Joel Smith: You've crushed that strength or done a really, really built up that quarter
Joel Smith: squat strength through all your plyos in that way.
Joel Smith: So maybe if you feel like that, it's, it's also, it's just a contrast.
Joel Smith: Like it's something that's just, you're, you're building just more of the muscle
Joel Smith: now and you're not worrying about some of the short range stuff like you get in the plyos.
Stefan Holm: I never thought about it that way, but when you say it, it sounds totally great. I think so.
Stefan Holm: But yeah, for me, it was about, I had to get stronger.
Stefan Holm: I have to lift heavier weights in the weight room, and then I have to jump over
Stefan Holm: higher hurdles in the plyometrics, and then I have to do longer in the standing
Stefan Holm: 10 steps, and then in the end, if I do this better,
Stefan Holm: all of it, then I'm going to do higher jumps and high jump.
Joel Smith: Yeah.
Stefan Holm: So as long as I get better physically, then I'm going to jump higher.
Stefan Holm: That's what it's all about.
Joel Smith: Yeah. You mentioned, yeah, for sure, everything is a little piece of building
Joel Smith: that pyramid of performance or that house.
Joel Smith: The last question I have for you, Stefan, is you mentioned your son, Melvin.
Joel Smith: And I'm curious how you mentioned you do a lot of the same plyometrics you did,
Joel Smith: like that came out of the Tanchik and Viljoo.
Joel Smith: Have there been any changes that you've made though with training your son like
Joel Smith: you know in it's like it's almost like it starts all over again in a way is
Joel Smith: there anything I or maybe in another way of phrasing it what do you do the same
Joel Smith: and what are you looking at differently in training him
Stefan Holm: Well, I do think that it's better to have quite few exercises and doing them
Stefan Holm: very, very good than having a lot of different exercises and doing them half well.
Stefan Holm: When I started coaching, it was the fall of 2014. I started coaching two girls
Stefan Holm: here in Karlsson and also helping out Henrik, who you know.
Stefan Holm: One of the first things that I told these girls is that if you want a lot of exercises and you know,
Stefan Holm: trying out new things all the time I'm definitely the wrong coach for you because
Stefan Holm: I'm going to give you like four weight lifting exercises I'm going to give you
Stefan Holm: five plyometrics and that's it and then we're going to do this over and over and over again.
Stefan Holm: So yes Melvin is doing a lot of the stuff that
Stefan Holm: I was doing him but i've also invented invented found
Stefan Holm: new exercises for him because we have
Stefan Holm: a different background i mean when i was
Stefan Holm: 11 12 years old i had
Stefan Holm: done all this football and ice
Stefan Holm: skating and cross-country skiing and playing
Stefan Holm: around with my friends climbing trees whatever we
Stefan Holm: did in the 80s and he never did that in the same way 30 years later so he had
Stefan Holm: a totally different background from me and he never played any other sport he
Stefan Holm: did he wanted to to do some high jumping for fun and then when he was 12 years
Stefan Holm: old he started competing and he was jumping very very well,
Stefan Holm: so i had of course to to do different stuff with him than i did myself but,
Stefan Holm: in the end of the day i mean if you get stronger if you can jump higher over
Stefan Holm: higher hurdles doing better in the bounding if you can sprint faster then you're
Stefan Holm: going to jump higher in high jump as well. So.
Stefan Holm: What I've come up to, I've been around this sport for many, many years now.
Stefan Holm: I've talked to a lot of people, coaches, athletes.
Stefan Holm: And I mean, we all do pretty much the same stuff.
Stefan Holm: We do our weightliftings, we do our plyometrics, we do the sprints.
Stefan Holm: And in the end of the day, you have to believe in what you're doing.
Stefan Holm: You have to trust that sort of process.
Stefan Holm: And if you don't do that, it doesn't matter what you're doing.
Stefan Holm: I mean, you could do all the right stuff.
Stefan Holm: But as long as you don't believe it it doesn't matter and you could do a lot
Stefan Holm: of wrong stuff but if you believe that that is right for you that it's going to work out in the end.
Joel Smith: Yeah yeah it is i'm glad you mentioned climbing trees because i i'm always i
Joel Smith: feel like kids don't climb trees enough uh but i i a hundred percent with with
Joel Smith: believing in the program i i'm the longer I get in my coaching journey, the more I see that.
Joel Smith: And, and that is becomes just such a part of my own awareness and field of vision.
Joel Smith: So it is, that is so interesting that, you know, yeah, with the background and,
Joel Smith: and we think about those of us who did grow up in the eighties,
Joel Smith: 1980s or the, the 1990s and how it's different for kids.
Joel Smith: And even to, I, to think about how it's different for kids in different parts of the world,
Joel Smith: what are all the activities of, you know scandinavia and
Joel Smith: versus canada and kids in the united states or kids
Joel Smith: wherever you are it's interesting to think about those like
Joel Smith: the things that all those kids did in the 80s and 90s versus what
Joel Smith: it's become and how how it is different so it's certainly
Joel Smith: interesting to think about that and what that means for training um
Joel Smith: the uh but yeah the um i
Joel Smith: wanted to mention was the oh yeah doing
Joel Smith: simple things well sorry just closing things down rearranging my
Joel Smith: thoughts but yeah doing simple better was a
Joel Smith: phrase that i heard a olympic swim coach mentioned one time
Joel Smith: for a year uh to his team that was their theme and that's that's really stuck
Joel Smith: with me so um absolutely love that theme and ideas so um i think it's it's really
Joel Smith: important to kind of nice thing to close with really like like to in terms of
Joel Smith: framing lots of means and methods out there but but that that That concept,
Joel Smith: I think, is also not talked about that often.
Joel Smith: So is there, I mean,
Stefan Holm: Things that worked out in the eighties are still working out now training wise.
Stefan Holm: I mean, you're still going to get stronger doing half squats.
Stefan Holm: You're still going to jump higher doing those plyometrics. You don't have to
Stefan Holm: complicate things too much.
Joel Smith: Yeah. Yeah. Without question. There's that, that, that core of good training is always there.
Joel Smith: And every time you just go back and watch an old video of really good training, it reminds you.
Joel Smith: And I think it's like a standard should be standard practice. you
Joel Smith: know i i love watching those old training clips it's so good
Joel Smith: so um stefan you i
Joel Smith: was gonna ask if if we'll see you on any like quiz is there any quiz championships
Joel Smith: quiz show championships in sweden coming up that we might see you on or i don't
Joel Smith: know if there's anything like that over there um you know if that's your your
Joel Smith: secondary event or or no i
Stefan Holm: I actually i have won the Jeopardy a couple of times, at least Celebrity Jeopardy
Stefan Holm: stuff here in Sweden a couple of times.
Stefan Holm: So hopefully there could be some
Stefan Holm: world championship Celebrity Jeopardy or something. That would be great.
Joel Smith: Well, I'll be looking for that. I hope so. But anyways, it was awesome having
Joel Smith: this conversation today, Stefan.
Joel Smith: Thank you for joining me. I'm really glad this conversation could happen. So thank you so much.
Stefan Holm: Thank you very much.