106: Flow Based Training and Planning for the Robust Athlete with Mladen Jovanović | Sponsored by SimpliFaster

Today’s episode features strength coach and sport scientist Mladen Jovanović. Mladen is the owner of complementarytraining.net and is a thought leader in physical preparation, particularly in the arena of building the best possible training programs for team sport athletes. Mladen brings in the work of many of the world’s great philosophers and thinkers in his process, fielding universal principles that often supercede existing periodization theory. Mladen has worked in a variety of elite level sports in countries including Serbia, Sweden, Qatar, Turkey, Australia and the USA. A leading individual in the sport science community, Mladen’s interests include velocity based training, statistical modelling and the philosophy/management of sports programmes. I’ve been looking forward to having Mladen on the show for some time, as I’m always impressed by his work and thought process. It’s always great to chat with those who utilize reason from a variety of other fields to lead us towards a better path in athletics. One of the biggest things I initially wanted to chat with Mladen about was the use of mental heuristics in how we tend to view and create workout programs, but our chat led us down the paths of flow and free play in athletic performance, robust vs. “peak-performance” training, flaws of classical periodization theory and real-life experiences, as well as velocity based training ideas. In the aftermath of episodes such as with Dr. Tommy John, and then our sport play roundtable, as well as my own experiences training with intuitive minds such as Paul Cater, I’ve realized the shortcomings of strict, planned, drill and internal cue based sessions, and how “breaking out of the robot factory”, so to speak, is one of the most powerful lessons coaches can learn and use. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster.com, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more. View more show notes at Just-fly-sports.com/podcast-106-mladen-jovanovic/