The constraints-led approach to basketball training is transforming how coaches develop players—but the path to adopting evidence-based methods isn’t always straightforward. Jeff Schmidt didn’t set out to become a basketball trainer using CLA. After more than a decade as a high school head coach and 22 years in education, he faced a choice many coaches know well: continue grinding through 60-hour weeks, or find a way to stay in the game while prioritizing family time.
Five and a half years later, Schmidt Performance in Fort Collins, Colorado serves nearly 90 clients. Jeff has built a thriving training business using constraints-led approach basketball methods, established a sustainable membership model, and now prepares to leave teaching at the end of this year to focus on training full-time—all without sacrificing family time.
In this episode, Jeff shares:
- How he transitioned from traditional coaching drills to constraints-led approach basketball training
- Why the membership-based business model freed up 5-6 hours every Sunday
- The small group training strategy that creates game-realistic development
- How differential learning principles transformed his shooting development approach
- Why his youth teams are beating opponents who used to win by 30 points
- The systems that let him coach his own sons’ teams while scaling his business
The breaking point: choosing family over the grind
For Jeff, the decision wasn’t about falling out of love with coaching. It was about being present for what mattered most.
“My legacy isn’t going to be as a basketball coach—it’s going to be as a father,” Jeff explained. “I have two boys, 11 and nine, and my time was getting short with them. They were growing up fast.”
After more than 10 years as a high school head coach, Jeff stepped down to reclaim his evenings and weekends. But he wasn’t ready to leave basketball behind entirely. His wife and brother-in-law suggested private training, though Jeff was skeptical at first.
“I didn’t know what a trainer really was. I know what a coach is,” he said. “I thought I’d probably be back coaching high school or college soon.”
He started with one client—someone they knew personally. Word of mouth took over from there, and what began as an experiment became a sustainable business model that’s only grown stronger.
The evolution from copycat to authentic coach
Like many trainers starting out, Jeff’s first instinct was to study what successful trainers were doing and replicate it. For about six months, he followed the standard playbook: high-rep shooting drills, ball-handling circuits, and the structured workouts that dominate Instagram.
But something felt off.
“This isn’t what I want. This is not me. I’m a coach,” Jeff realized. “I need to get down a road that I really feel comfortable with.”
At 40-something, Jeff wasn’t the young trainer who could demonstrate every move at game speed. He needed a model that played to his strengths: coaching, teaching, and creating practice-like environments. His solution was to build workouts that felt less like traditional training sessions and more like competitive team practices.
“Kids don’t come to me to try and get better for practice. They want to get better in games,” Jeff explained. “So let’s create a team practice game atmosphere that we can duplicate over and over again, but individualize it so they can get individual and team skill out of it.”
This shift toward game-like training naturally led Jeff to discover research-backed training methods that aligned with his coaching instincts—methods that successful trainers like Tyler Leclerc have also used to scale their basketball training businesses from solo operations to multi-location facilities.
Discovering the constraints-led approach for basketball training
Jeff’s journey into the constraints-led approach (CLA) and differential learning (DL) wasn’t academic—it was practical. He was already searching for ways to simplify training and make it more game-relevant when he encountered these frameworks that basketball coaches worldwide are adopting.
“I ran into the CLA, I ran into DL shooting, I ran into all this evidence-based basketball,” Jeff said. “It just kind of synced with me. Principles of play, all those things—I was looking for those things anyway to simplify.”
For trainers unfamiliar with these approaches:
Constraints-Led Approach (CLA) in basketball focuses on the performance side of player development. Rather than teaching isolated skills through repetition, CLA creates practice environments that encourage players to solve problems and adapt. Jeff describes it as using constraints—rules, space limitations, defensive pressure—to guide learning without prescriptive instruction.
Differential Learning (DL) emphasizes variability, particularly in shooting. Instead of drilling one “perfect” form through thousands of identical reps, DL introduces variations that help players adapt to game situations. As Jeff puts it: “If you watch good shooters, they shoot it different ways every game. Steph Curry shoots 10 shots in a game—all 10 shots are going to look a little bit different.”
Jeff’s challenge was translating research into practical application. Without a background in motor learning or sports science, he sought out practitioners who could explain these concepts in accessible terms.
“I wanted to find people that could explain it in layman’s terms that I could simplify even more,” he said, “so I can give it to an eight-year-old, a ten-year-old, a fourteen-year-old, or a parent who has no background in CLA.”
This focus on simplification and real-world application defines Jeff’s coaching. Every session becomes an opportunity to experiment with constraints, test variability, and refine his understanding—exactly what modern basketball training approaches demand.
The business model: small groups, big impact
Schmidt Performance doesn’t operate like most training businesses. Jeff runs exclusively small group sessions—no one-on-ones unless only a single client signs up for a time slot.
“I want it to feel and look like a game, so we want that context every single time they step into the gym with us,” Jeff explained.
His groups typically include hired coaches who can defend, compete, and create decision-making opportunities for clients. This model serves multiple purposes:
- Game-realistic training: Competition and defensive pressure in every session
- Better player development: Athletes make reads and solve problems rather than just completing drills
- Scalable business model: Serving multiple clients simultaneously without sacrificing quality
- Coaching satisfaction: Jeff gets to actually coach, not just rebound and count reps
The group-focused approach also supports his constraints-led approach basketball methodology. CLA thrives on constraints and competition—elements that are difficult to create in individual training but natural in small groups. This is one reason why group training generates significantly more revenue per hour than individual sessions while also developing better players. Tools like CoachIQ’s session management and program features make it easy to track group capacity, manage skill-level segmentation, and organize the small-sided games that define his training.
The membership model that changed everything
For years, Jeff managed his business the way most trainers do: cash payments, Venmo transfers, and Sunday marathon texting sessions to coordinate the week’s schedule.
“Every Sunday I was spending five or six hours texting potential clients, kids who’d been with me, trying to fit in an individual here, a group there,” Jeff recalled. “I don’t think this is the right way to do this.”
When Jeff discovered scheduling automation that eliminated his Sunday texting marathons and membership-based payment processing that created predictable income, it transformed his operation. Instead of chasing individual session bookings, he moved clients to monthly memberships with predictable commitments.
The results were immediate:
Time savings: Sunday scheduling marathons disappeared. Clients book directly through his system, and he spends maybe an hour per month reviewing the schedule instead of five to six hours every week managing it manually.
Predictable income: “When you have income coming in that you can count on, that you know about, that you can foresee, you can start to really dial in your year,” Jeff explained. Monthly memberships provide the financial stability to plan for rent, equipment, and coach salaries without hoping payments arrive.
Better client development: Membership models keep clients committed long-term rather than booking sporadic one-off sessions. “When you have them for multiple months, you can really help them and get them better,” Jeff said. “That’s really what it’s all about.” This longer commitment period is essential for constraints-led approach training, which requires consistent exposure to build adaptability.
Reduced friction: Automated payment processing eliminated awkward Venmo requests and the mental overhead of tracking who paid and who owes money. Centralized client management keeps all client information, progress notes, and session history in one system instead of scattered across notebooks and spreadsheets.
Jeff acknowledged that some clients left when he switched to memberships—the model wasn’t convenient for everyone. But he added more committed clients than he lost, and the business became more sustainable as a result.
“I love my business model,” Jeff said. “Hope will not allow you to do this as a full-time gig. Hope will make you broke.”
Implementing constraints-led approach basketball methods with youth players
Beyond his training business, Jeff coaches both of his sons’ teams—a third-grade squad and a fifth-grade team. These teams have become laboratories for constraints-led approach basketball principles.
“We’re running full CLA practices, full-blown skill development, team development, transformational coaching,” Jeff said. “The whole nine.”
The results speak for themselves. Teams that beat Jeff’s fifth-graders by 30 points a year and a half ago? Schmidt’s CLA-based approach has reversed those outcomes.
“We’re beating those teams now that were beating us by 30 a year, year and a half ago,” he said. “The parents see the improvement. The players are definitely improving.”
More importantly, the kids love it. Three of his players gave him Christmas cards with a common theme: they love coming to practice.
“A lot of kids don’t say that,” Jeff noted. “A lot of kids don’t say that for a lot of reasons—one probably because of coaches, because of traditional coaching. They’re not having fun in practice. They’re doing the same boring, mundane stuff that they can’t stand.”
Jeff’s teams don’t run plays. They operate on principles of play—simple offensive concepts that let players make decisions based on what the defense gives them. The result is players with exceptionally high basketball IQ for their age.
“We’re keeping it very simple. We don’t run plays except an out-of-bounds play or two,” Jeff said. “The kids are getting so good at it. They’re becoming really smart players.”
Automated communication tools help Jeff keep parents informed about this unique approach to youth basketball development without endless back-and-forth texts explaining why practice looks different from traditional team drills.
The joy factor: bringing fun back to basketball
If there’s one consistent thread through Jeff’s training philosophy, it’s joy. Whether working with third-graders or high school athletes, he wants players smiling.
“It just makes it fun,” Jeff said. “It’s brought the joy back into basketball. I haven’t had this much fun coaching and doing my business since I probably started playing basketball in the fifth grade.”
This emphasis on fun isn’t soft or frivolous—it’s strategic. Players who enjoy training show up consistently, work harder, and develop faster. They also stay in the sport longer, which matters in an era of youth sports burnout. This emphasis on engagement is why reducing no-shows starts with creating experiences players don’t want to miss.
Jeff’s evidence-based approach naturally supports joy. CLA and DL create variety, competition, and problem-solving opportunities that keep sessions engaging. Every workout feels different because it is different—not repetitions of the same drill, but new constraints and challenges.
“If they’re smiling in practice, they’re smiling in workouts—man, that’s when you know you’re doing a good job,” Jeff said. “If they’re not smiling, you might want to change it up.”
The five-year lesson: patience and curiosity
Jeff is quick to emphasize that Schmidt Performance didn’t become successful overnight. It took five years of learning, experimenting, and refining to reach this point.
“This is a long road for me,” he said. “This is not something that I just took off right away and had it all figured out. It’s taken time.”
His advice for trainers building their own businesses? Patience and curiosity.
“It’s okay to not know all the answers, but man, you got to be curious,” Jeff said. “I’m super curious about getting better and making players better. It’s growing every day, learning something new, getting out of your comfort zone.”
Jeff had no business learning motor learning research or sports science. But he knew these approaches worked, they made sense, and they aligned with his coaching values. So he learned—through reading, conversations with other coaches, and daily experimentation with real athletes.
“I have the lab to do it,” Jeff explained. “I have the teams on the team side and I have the training side. So every day I can just explore, try new things. Hey, that sucked—we’re not doing that again. Or hey, I can just tweak this a little bit. Boom, let’s go.”
What’s next: full-time training in six months
At the end of this school year, Jeff will retire from teaching after 22 years in education. For the first time, Schmidt Performance will be his only job.
The transition is possible because of the systems he’s built: membership-based revenue, automated scheduling, streamlined payments, and a small group model that scales efficiently. These are the same coaching business management systems that help trainers across the country grow without burning out.
“I’m excited, man,” Jeff said.
The journey from skeptical high school coach to full-time constraints-led approach basketball trainer took five years, two jobs, plenty of Sunday scheduling marathons, and a willingness to experiment with methodologies he didn’t initially understand.
But Jeff found what he was looking for: a way to stay in basketball, prioritize his family, coach his sons, and build a business that brings joy back to the game.
For trainers wondering whether it’s possible to make the leap—Jeff Schmidt’s answer is yes. But bring patience, curiosity, and a willingness to build systems that let you work smarter instead of harder.
Connect with Jeff Schmidt
- Instagram: @SchmidtPerformance
- Email: SchmidtPerformance@Outlook.com
Ready to build systems that scale your training business? Discover how CoachIQ’s all-in-one coaching platform can help you automate scheduling, streamline payments, and give you your time back—just like it did for Jeff Schmidt.