Transcript
Speaker: The language we use is stay within striking distance. yeah And he's like, well, what do you mean by i'm like, well, you're not like chasing peak performances in anything. Number one, as soon as you peak, like there's repercussion of that. Well, if they're expected to show up for a shift, and you've just peaked something, some physiological stimulus. Like you want them to be exhausted when they show up on shift or you want, you know. So you've got to kind of ride a wave but somewhere in between that 70 to 85% range, every now and then just teasing out or tinkering with something a little higher end.
Speaker: And that's different for everybody. Their tolerance of it's different, depends on the age category, the experience level, the you know the training age, all those things will will play a role in deciding what that wave looks like. Welcome to the Captains and Coaches podcast where you explore the art the science of leadership through the lens of athletics and beyond.
Speaker: I'm your host, Tex McQuilkin, and today travel to College Station, Texas sit down with Bo Sandoval. Bo has spent nearly three decades proving it. from a moldy weight room in a small Presbyterian College of Mississippi to the U.S. Olympic Training Center working elbow-to-elbow with world and Olympic medalists to nearly a decade inside the UFC Performance Institute training champions, David.
Speaker: Today he's building the next generation of practitioners as a professor Texas A&M University. This conversation isn't really about strength or conditioning.
Speaker: It's about self-leadership. How you lead yourself before you lead anyone else. Helper, student, governor of your election. Back with him and I'll come over to help us raise the game.
Speaker: Ready, ready, and break. Action, welcome to College Station, Texas A&M University. I'm sitting with Bo Sandoval at the Texas A&M Kinesiology Department.
Speaker: Appreciate you having me. My knowledge of Texas A&M and College Station, you come here for just seven on seven high school football tournaments.
Speaker: And all my buddies that went here, they're all doing all sorts of crazy stuff, and it's not coaching. So I'm excited to see the evolution of the industry get a foothold, especially one of my local schools within my community. Yeah.
Speaker: You know, when you're in it, you don't realize that, but I can see exterior from the exterior point of view. Yep. We're small. Our, our program in particular, our masters in spring conditioning is small. I would like to say though, there is a, there's definitely a lineage here. There is a longstanding tradition.
Speaker: of some great strength coaches that have worked through here in the athletics department that have also cross-pollinated in the academics department. So what we've been able, myself and a few others and in in our department have been able to establish in the last couple of years, it definitely helped to have that momentum of this history of um of athletics tradition, particularly the training environment, physical culturing of athletes for better preparatory practices.
Speaker: That's been around a while. It's just been, and a little closet. So we're trying to pull it out. That's what we're here to to shine a light on. And then I'd love to talk through your experience. And you gave a presentation at SummerStrong.
Speaker: It was like, Beau, have you been up to? Yeah, that's it. And then proceeded to talk about like, I mean, three plus decade long career that you've been up to a lot. And i want to pull some themes out of that. And I feel one of the biggest one listening to the the presentation in person there was self-leadership.
Speaker: Because you need to guide these UFC fighters. You need to guide these collegiate athletes that are they're the the biggest fish in their small pond, and all of a sudden they get to Michigan. And now there everybody is better than them or equal, and you've to find your footing.
Speaker: And now you're in a position to lead students without the scaffolding structure of high school. So you've got to grow up. So that's that's what I'd love to highlight, man, and yeah and find some parallels throughout your career, whether you're working with a one on one, the team or now in the academia. Sure.
Speaker: So, I Where do you want to start? Well, I'd love start with UFC. Yeah, sure. you have a connection to fighting, and then we had a mutual friend, God bless her, Lexi, police officer from Seattle. yeah. Wonderful. Incredible woman. Yeah. I know she was getting in the ring herself, so I was working with her for some training, and...
Speaker: Just that I couldn't get over just the the mental preparation that she took even to to cross that hurdle to get set up for that Yeah, so that in itself is self-leadership to you're not fearless You're acknowledging fear. She actually gave me a book. It was the gift of fear So that's that's what I want to start with is accepting that challenge that you're aiming towards and realizing that you can do it Yeah, I think um I'll give a couple of different perspectives on the the UFC venture in in particular.
Speaker: Anywhere you go, and I say this humbly for those that are still in their academic studies and maybe venturing into that first job opportunity or early in their career, onto someone that, you know, I was in my almost 18th year of coaching when I moved on to the UFC. Maybe not that much, maybe 15th year.
Speaker: and wherever you go whether you are starting out or you're a little bit more experienced as soon as you walk in the door and they put that shirt on you expert you're labeled expert right away um and so dealing with that that that's critical because you have the opportunity to position yourself you can position yourself to be unsuccessful by over promising and under delivering and you can also position yourself to be a bit on a learning curve and a discovery mode. I've found that to be way more fruitful for my career, but also in terms of
Speaker: bridging and building relationships along the way. There are some things that I know that I know that I can instill. But there's also a ton of things that I'm discovering as we kind of go. So you get into a place like the UFC, we're walking into a $21 million dollars brand new facility, state of the art, everything.
Speaker: We've got some highly acclaimed PhDs in the building, we've got the best physical therapists, dietitians walking the planet. um And so right away, you kind of get a little bit of of shell shock on like, what can I contribute? Like, holy smokes, you know? But if you take it with the right approach, it's more of, wow, look at all that I'm gonna have access to. you And then I'm gonna bring my strengths to the table to contribute. So I really tried to position myself as a helper. And that's how I introduced myself to everyone.
Speaker: Whether it was um Gray Maynard, who was a, you know, almost 15 year veteran at that point, former title contender had trained with all kinds of strength coaches, including the Marinoviches. And i mean, he has seen all sorts of training and been exposed to it.
Speaker: And, but coming in and saying, Hey, I'd like to put together a plan. And so I'm not discrediting anything he had done previously, but really trying to figure out where he was at and how we were going to move forward with his current goals and objectives and his current baggage and injuries and everything else that was coming along.
Speaker: And that's how I presented it And he was one of the first ones that I met with was like, I'm here to be a helper. So in order for me to help, first I need to download information. So let me get to know everything about you, what you want to achieve, what our Nesca objectives look like.
Speaker: um Brad Tavares was another one, again, ultimate fighter. um He was on maybe season five or six, maybe seven.
Speaker: But I've been almost 10 years in the UFC at that point, very successful middleweight. He was ah he actually before where the doors were open, Forrest brought him in on a tour and he was like, let me know when it opens. I wanna be your first consultation.
Speaker: So he was an early one as well. Same thing, and just said, look, I'm here to be a helper. He was like, I need you to tell me what I need to do to to make my way to the championship. I said, well, we can get there, but First, i want I'm going to put myself in a spot to be helpful to you. I need to know what you're currently doing. Historically, some stuff has worked very well for you. So let's let's continue that and then start to supplement where I think we can turn some corners. So positioning myself as a helper is big.
Speaker: Now, depending on who you're in front of, you do have to make an impression in terms of being an impactful contributor to what they're doing. There's no payment associated with the UFCPI. They're they're not required to go there. It doesn't cost them anything to go there. The only thing that would incentivize them to go there is them thinking that you have something to offer them.
Speaker: And sometimes you might have 30 seconds in a conversation to make that connection and you might not see them again or they'll be, okay, when will I see you Monday? And they start booking appointments.
Speaker: So we learned pretty early on the initial consultation meeting and that was really important. There is, MMA is one of those sports where the circle very tight and the walls are really thick, but they're super hungry for information. So if you can just get through that thick wall, and sometimes it takes 30 seconds, sometimes it takes a couple months, then you're in and you're in the circle. Now, the downside of that circle is they're super confidential. Like the sharing in that sport at the time, it's gotten better, but it was much very limited.
Speaker: One of the more innovative things I think that helped me in that point too, Dr. Duncan French at the time was like, we need to put on ah symposium where we have all these like top 50 coaches in the world that coach MMA fighters to come in an open forum style scenario and let's start cracking them open and get them to share. Well, everyone that we talked to that had been historically linked in the sport about that, that was like, that's never gonna happen. You're not gonna get those guys in the room at the same time. Was it performance or was it fighting skills? These are fighting, lot of skills coaches, some of the best head coaches in the world.
Speaker: And then some that were just individual practitioners, that like BJJ instructors or kickboxing instructors. And then some head MMA coaches from some of the bigger teams, American top team, AKA from the West Coast.
Speaker: you know, alpha male, like your bigger, your bigger teams and Jackson link. And it it started out, it was a two, i think it was a two day event.
Speaker: And, you know, we started out just showing them some of the different offerings of the PI and kind of where we sort of put the performance, how the performance paradigm seemed to make sense to us from an MMA or an MMA needs analysis.
Speaker: And the first time we got in the room with all, I think we had 55 and we paid for all their travel. We paid for the room and board to come. It was crickets. We couldn't get them to interact at all. We we actually got some of our subject matter experts that give presentations and try to lead discussions and price and Q and a nothing crickets. Wow. Finally, I forget who broke the ice. It might've been Eddie Bravo from 10th planet jujitsu or, um,
Speaker: or no, I was another one in there. Maybe Trevor Whitman who works with Justin Gaethje. Anyway, they just started kind of blabbing a little bit. and then And then it sort of festered a little, well, there was one coach at one point that stood up and I was on a panel with like Forrest Griffin and oh, what is his name?
Speaker: Wrote a great endurance book on m MMA, conditioning for MMA. Joel James. Joel's there and We just had this great cross pollinating discussion on, i think, conditioning for fighters.
Speaker: Starting to have some, you know, trying to get some interaction. And this one coach, i forget who it was that saved a life of me, but he was like, you guys understand, like we can't talk about our strategies in here. Like I'm literally sitting next to the opponent that we're gonna fight.
Speaker: And it was awesome because it just teed up. And i I was just like, listen, man, if you're still in a stage where you think there's secrets in this game, there's no secrets, there's strategies and recipes. And there's competitive there there is competitive vantage points.
Speaker: Now you can take your strategy and put your recipe together. And I can take the same strategy and recipe, but I got a different subject matter. and it may not work but that's the competitive side of it right you take your stuff you stack it up i take my stuff we stack it up we compete on saturday and let's see who comes out on the top on top If you think by you sharing a methodology that you found success with is going to give someone something that is no longer an advantage to you, i'm like, man, I just think that's a really naive way to think.
Speaker: I was like, there's no secret. Please tell me what the magical move is that you're doing that no one else in this room is aware of. And of course, they're not going to say that because soon as you do, another coach is like, I've been doing that for 20 years. I've been doing that for 15 um So it really kind of, they all just like, oh, and we're like, this is a safe spot. This is actually where we go to learn. Like you're going to pick up tricks and things from different people, with different insights. Not to mention, we're in the business of trying to take better care of fighters. i don't think there's anybody in here doesn't care to a very deep level about the health and welfare of their fighters. You want them to fight as long as you possibly can and enjoy what they're doing.
Speaker: This is part of it. You know, your strategy. Yeah, this is your strategy and how you do that. It's all part of it. So You had to get in a position now you become a more authoritative like driver of thought provoking discussion versus this, hey, I'm a helper, let me let me evaluate. And so there's a few different hats, but I won't lie, there's always pressure because you've always got that thing stuck on your back that says he's an expert, ask him.
Speaker: And in reality, we know we're not always the expert. Luckily in that venue, we had a lot of experts in some different areas They were always close by. So you always had a good good person to bounce a question off of.
Speaker: And as our team grew, that superpower grew as well as we started to expand. um So yeah, that was, um I would say I felt that my first job coming out of college, Belhaven College, small Presbyterian school in Jackson, Mississippi, about 430 athletes. I was by myself.
Speaker: They had a weight room, but they hadn't had a strength coach in a few years. The strength coach they originally had who was their first ever His parents donated the weight room. So they donated, paid for it. He ran a program for a couple of years and then moved on.
Speaker: I wanna say it was one or two years, they didn't have a strength coach. So coaches were just kind of using the facility. And I was 24, fresh out of grad school, maybe 23. And first thing was there was mold on everything.
Speaker: So I had to move all of the equipment out. i didn't have to, but I wanted to. got all the equipment out of the building, ripped the floor out, met with a donor, I think he donated like $3,200 of his own money so I could order some rubber floor to lay down there. He actually came in on a Sunday after church in his slacks and helped me lay this floor down. wow There wasn't an office space in there, so there was nowhere to do any any office work. So I did a little bit of masonry work and some glass work when I was in college. was a part-time job. So i built an office, installed some windows, ran power to it, and kind of had to do that. I did that in my summer coming in while we were doing summer training.
Speaker: And did they have football? They had football, football, all the all the big three, football, baseball, basketball, and men's and women's basketball, softball, baseball. We had cross country, we did not have track and field.
Speaker: We had men's and women's soccer, men's and women's tennis. so It was awesome experience because that was the least experienced coach in there. yeah And we had a Hall of Fame baseball coach at the time, Hill Denson, who I think there's two parks in Mississippi named after him he's in the Mississippi Hall of Fame.
Speaker: And so for me, when I looked at that, I was like, okay. It was actually a former mentor who told me, as soon as you walk in there, they're gonna you're the expert. They're going to label you that whether you want it or not. So that kind of intimidated me. But then the way I looked at it was like, man, I got access. there's there's The nearest coach to me had 11 years of experience coaching a sport.
Speaker: And so im like I like, I've got an opportunity to learn all kinds of stuff. and theres Everyone around me knows more than me. So I took that approach and I thought, okay, everything I don't know from a technical and strategy standpoint yet, I can overcome with being super organized, very consistent and reliable.
Speaker: And that that's really what I sort of built my brand off of in those first three years of coaching there. Um, and then I picked up the technical stuff as I went along yeah and, um, or more of the technical stuff.
Speaker: Um, whereas then I got to flip when I, in that presentation you referred to, i always feel like, mean, I, I felt this way coming out of school.
Speaker: You're just like, man, anyone gives me an opportunity. I'm going jump on You're not real selective. You're just like, I need a job. I got to pay bills and I'm on my own, you know? Um, well, when I've, I looked at a few different, I had applied for a few different jobs, some assistant roles.
Speaker: And when that Bellhaven job popped up, I was not excited about it. And my boss and mentor at the time at Southern Miss was like, Hey man, you gotta, you gotta look at it the right way. Number one, you're gonna get a ton of experience with a bunch of different sports. You've only worked with four while you were here.
Speaker: And then two, like you're gonna have the autonomy to run a program. And while that might seem daunting, daunting, cause you've only assisted a program. there's a lot of benefits that come with that if you're diligent.
Speaker: And so he really changed my perspective on using it as a diving board versus seeing it as like this barrier or some setback. Well, it worked out that way.
Speaker: because You should put a timeline on it or wait until the right opportunity came along. So I want to say i interviewed for probably three or four other jobs. and I got really excited about these little low paying entry level jobs. Some were even part time. But I think what was exciting was because it didn't seem overwhelming from a responsibility standpoint. And i didn't even know I was falling into that trap.
Speaker: Whereas when this popped up and it was a ton of responsibilities, 13 or 14 sports by yourself, no intern, no GAs, no nothing. I mean, I was there, i was setting up fields at 4.30 in the morning and I was breaking down my last whatever equipment in the weight room. or I was usually out of there by 7.30 p.m.
Speaker: Now, not married, no kids, had all the freedom in the world to do that, right? I think back then my rent was like 600 bucks. I think $21,000, I think was my salary. Like you can do that.
Speaker: Now that wouldn't fly, especially in Texas with our property taxes. But anyway, um it really set me up well having that mindset because when I went to the Olympic committee after that,
Speaker: I had a lot of experience. I think I had a lot more wisdom in terms of management, but then I got moved into not an entry level, but a very assistive role with acrobat and combat sports in the beginning. So now I got to take my new wisdom and then really start to get in and learn some specialties.
Speaker: i got to spend a lot of time with Dr. Randy Wilber in the the high altitude performance lab. I got to spend a lot of time with Dr. Bill Sands um in his lab and also on all of his you know bill's world renowned for a lot of his periodization schemes with usa gymnastics and usa figure skating um so i was getting a jump down some deep rabbit holes with some folks that wrote the books i was reading when i was in college wow so um You could see how that shift went from, I got to be the expert, lead everything. Now I don't have to lead that much. I can kind of be the student again, but I'm still coaching quite a bit. And that's also where the combat sports kind of took a heavier hold on me. Now back up a tick. When I was at Southern Miss, my head strength coach invited me in my junior year in college. I'm still an undergrad intern to come to a jujitsu class. okay So I started doing that training jujitsu all through college, did it through grad school.
Speaker: I went to Bellhaven. I didn't get to train that much. When I went to Colorado and I interviewed, they're like, this is primarily for wrestling, boxing, judo, fencing, and taekwondo.
Speaker: I was like, cool. you know One, I was getting more interested in the weight classification sports and that whole idea around weight cutting and weight class selection on top of performance improvements and things like that.
Speaker: Well, now I'm doing it with national team coaches, tons of experience, a lot of former world medalists, Olympic medalists that are now coaching future medalists. And then the developmental pipelines, which gave you a bigger, broader picture. We had training camps with 12 year old kids in it.
Speaker: being led by some of our current world team members that were going to come in Colorado Springs. Yeah. So, um, you know, wrestling was one of our bigger resident sports still is now, but, um, back then for sure it was one of the bigger resident sports there. so we were just immersed in it. We had freestyle men's and women's and Greco Roman all right there under one roof.
Speaker: Um, so, That is where I got to get a bit more granular in a lot of high level ways of thinking in terms of program structure, prescription, and then dealing with high pressure coaching scenarios.
Speaker: Those coaches, when it's time to compete, you know, everything gets a little tighter. Emotional decision making gets a little bit more rambunctious and they like to just switch stuff on the fly. And so it really nurtures something in you to be able to guide those discussions, especially we're based on planning principles, we're based on structure and strategy so that we can monitor variables and and intentionally adjust variables at the right time, not emotionally just rip one out all a sudden and throw another one in, right? And so there's there's articulation to that and there's there's patience with that.
Speaker: And then when you're doing that with someone like Tom and Terry Brands, who you know were our resident national team coaches at the time, they currently coach at the University of Iowa. Kevin Jackson, who's one of the coaches at Michigan now, who was a former UFC tournament champion, who was another national team coach at the time. These guys mean business.
Speaker: And when they have an opinion, it's it's it's strong. It's not unbreakable. It's not like you can't have that you can't talk them into a better solution. And then sometimes they have great ideas. And so it's learning how to have those high pressure situation talks with them.
Speaker: Because at the end of the day, they're trying to win medals. They got the best athlete we have in that division in the country, and they're trying to put them in position to go and dominate the world. You have to really respect that perspective. It's not because they have some selfish point of view on some dogma, you know, of an exercise that needs to be done or a certain timeframe, something needs to be done.
Speaker: They only know what they know. And that there's no shift to what they know if you don't have those conversations. So that was really beneficial. i would say that empowered me a ton. Time out. Tex here to take a second to talk about training. want extend a seven-day free trial for my training program, Old Bull. It's the program I'm writing for myself. I'm staying active. I'm lifting heavy. I'm having fun with it. And it's flexible to move each day around. Heavy push, heavy pull, cardio, athletic strength. Moving those days around to fit my busy schedule between doctorate program, podcast, work, running a business,
Speaker: Everything. I got a busy life. So do you follow along with the training program with me seven day free trial. Click the link in the show notes. If you're watching on YouTube, it's right here. Don't want to hold you back anymore.
Speaker: Join us on the program. oal And now back to the show. Ready, ready and break. Skip over the next eight years at Michigan when I did get to the UFC. you're talking with a coach that's already coached four or five different UFC champions, you wanna be obviously respectful of their knowledge, but also impactful in what you bring to the table. So there's a balance to that.
Speaker: when you When you brought up the talk at SummerShrong a couple years ago, one of the things on that, kind of going back to this, we feel like we got to take whatever job is available kind of thing. um I really hit a lot on controlling your path and being being directional. So only choosing to go and do things that you want to do. If you can't find a reason on why you want to do it other than, hey it's going to pay my bills.
Speaker: And I think that's what I've been good at finding is finding the bright side. Okay, what can I leverage out of this? What's this gonna give me? I think that's the critical one. Cause the biggest question I get all the time, people think I'm crazy. Like, how would you ever leave the UFC? Why would you leave the UFC?
Speaker: And it was really just another one of those critical points of like, I'm gonna control my career and I'm gonna do what I wanna do. Not to say that haven't thoroughly enjoyed or thoroughly benefited from what I've been doing,
Speaker: But I think in really continuing to broaden your horizons and grow in the directions you want to grow, you got to be selective and and kind of point yourself in those things. Now, on the first two of them, sometimes you like you make those decisions you do, you know, like, oh, did I make a mistake? that i What do I, you know, what's the next move? But then you just got to be convicted. And if you then spend the time really thinking through it, you can find that conviction.
Speaker: Yeah. So that opportunity to reflect, versus spiral, you're not caught in this doom loop. yeah It's reflecting on, okay, I'm here now, what is forward? So that that in a sense is self-leadership versus self-loathing or any of the negative traps that people tend to find themselves in.
Speaker: And we see it within athletics and military when they're out. did they just go the woe is me and i'm caught in this loop or yeah what lessons that i take away from those that are going to propel me in the next opportunity yeah i mean look at those great examples that have taken um experience like that and have turned it into a positive light or an educational resource or you know something's just motivation or it's it's life skills i think of guys like nick lavery you know like know, he's taken his traumatic career in the military and he's guiding so many people to a healthier avenue way of living, but also this discipline mindset on, and when you hear him explain it's not the typical definition of discipline. It's a deeper thought into being very concise and direct about how you think, how you behave, how you care for people.
Speaker: um and And so, man, there's, when you have folks, like that that didn't just kind of wallow in whatever misery they experienced they decided to figure out what can i leverage from this to go and pay it forward or or give something return or make a new career path for myself in his case um yeah i mean i don't i don't see why you would ever choose the opposite but i know like we're emotional creatures and we get pulled into holes and we get pulled into certain ways of thinking And support systems are important, right? If you got a good support system that's encouraging you in the right way, i think that's a that's a major piece that can't be missing.
Speaker: um When you talk about like these maybe leadership qualities or things that you learn or kind of pick up, one of the biggest things that I've recognized early on when I started getting this wild idea that I was in love and I wanted to get married was I was like, you know, I could see this being a superpower for a coach because I've seen so many coaching careers fall apart when their when their personal life falls apart.
Speaker: yeah Particularly the ones when they get drugged through the media and and all their stuff gets kind of thrown out on the front page. But even before that point, when they're just unorganized at home, they're going to be unorganized at work. They'll be distracted. they'll be Their mind will be somewhere else. So I ah locked in on that pretty early.
Speaker: I got married in 2010 and right away i was like, I need to be good at a couple of things. One, when I come home, I need to leave work at home, which I've sucked at badly for the first few years of marriage. that was just I just wasn't wired that way. I was wired to like, I need to be devoted to this. I'm not as good as I need to be. I gotta to be better.
Speaker: Coaching is my career. I've gotta be the best at it. Like that, there's no questions about that. I didn't really know how to balance that with being the best person at home. Well, then when kids start coming around, now you got another responsibility.
Speaker: And it really quickly, I started to find some great mentors in that space that were home run hitters at home and they're home run hitters at work. And I'm like, that's what I wanna be.
Speaker: And then I kind of figured out there's a there is a prioritization of that. the you know the The horse has to lead the cart and the horse has to be home. When home is together and and that is a well-oiled machine,
Speaker: I'm stress free. um I have no reason to be distraught or financial stress or whatever other kind of stress that can come on. It's almost nothing as long as the home life is organized and supportive and the energy is good.
Speaker: so I've really held on to that. The other thing is man, there's a lot of athletes that I've worked with that especially you get in the fighting world. Home ain't that great. The background ain't that great.
Speaker: And it's inspiring to them to be around someone. You meet a female fighter that has been abused or came up through a rough upbringing. And the first thing they hear you talk about is how much you love your wife and your family and you can't wait for them to meet them.
Speaker: that changes the the perspective real quick. They're like, I wanna to be around this person. I don't know if he knows anything about strength and conditioning yet, but the fact that he values that, that's ah that's a massive thing. So I've figured out there's a time and a place to leverage that kind of stuff.
Speaker: to show like, hey, I'm not just here from nine to five trying to be a good person. I'm actually a good person all the time. I'm just shifting my energy to you when I'm here because you're my number one priority. When I'm there, you're not.
Speaker: Yeah, that that's what I aim to still coach in high school, but model. is something that i hold on to it's modeling how i respond to referees it's modeling i'm showing up on time but then also publicly get the opportunity to speak to gentlemen like yourself and really fantastic people but then share those stories so then that's inspiring oh we can learn from other models in there versus me being really talented at my sport and then just getting drunk and digging off on weekends. yeah That's no.
Speaker: yeah that That's not an opportunity for you. So let me represent and model the best I can. We're aiming up always. Not to say I'm perfect, but aiming up. But then that providing an opportunity from what they're seeing potentially at home or from their former high school buddies in Arlington College, yeah doing things that I know are not going lead to success. So just aiming to and also watch my language, which around high school is you're going to. Yeah. And tell them there there are other ways to communicate other than sure those seven words. I think everything you just said to kind of revolves around a governor.
Speaker: You start to learn how to have a good look. I'm emotional and I'm aggressive and I'm competitive. But if you have no governor on those things, you get outside your scope real quick. And then you even get out, you even reposition yourself where you're no longer the instructor, you're just another fan.
Speaker: And I don't need to be a fan. The athletes have plenty of fans. They need an educational resource. They need an instructor, they need a guide. They need and an external governor.
Speaker: And so having a governor on my own emotions and having a governor on my own, you know, masculine tendencies or aggressive nature or whatever like that's extremely important um if you're trying to be an ultimate provider in terms of a practitioner, you gotta have a governor on those things. Otherwise you look real silly real quick. when you You're blurting the wrong four letter word at the wrong person or, you know, yeah, that's not fun.
Speaker: No. You mentioned imperfections. One thing I've definitely think, humanizing yourself, as soon as you become the mentor, the mentee gets to the point, they will get to a point, they think you can do no wrong.
Speaker: In fact, they're expecting perfection from you almost every day. I think it's really important to humanize ourselves every now and then and talk about, man, I screwed this up this morning. going believe what I did. and you know And just blur them out every now and then, just to let them know, like, this is a regular dude.
Speaker: He's got to go do his laundry too. And he's got to go like set an alarm. And, you know, I think that's really important because they do put you on a shelf at the point where then they think, man, this is that's not attainable for me.
Speaker: like I can't, and really that's not accurate. And so I think that's always been important is like, look, man, I'm just a dude like you. I'm battling through the same stuff. Yeah. And you're, you're modeling how to admit you're wrong or come with your hat in your hand yeah and show them that, Hey, this is okay. Cause I still care about you. umm I'm allowed to make mistakes. You're allowed to make mistakes. And how do we decide what to do next? no A big thing that I've experienced and seen at all different levels is when dudes do make a mistake and then how the the coach, their mentor comes down on them.
Speaker: Is it pushing and and shame? So I've learned to differentiate shame and guilt. Like you're allowed to feel bad about your mistake, but realize that you made a mistake versus shame is you are a mistake. yeah And then there is no mentorship and walking back to it. But with guilt, we could walk back to your decision and see the fork in the road. So the next time you face that, I know what happens when I go that way.
Speaker: I'm going to go this way see what happens. Sure. I don't think that shame thing should really come in until, if there's a pattern of behavior, then that's something to be maybe shameful about. When someone has made a mistake, that's a learning opportunity. That's an opportunity to to influence.
Speaker: I've been fortunate. I've had some tremendous mentors and and still a lot that I lean on. i would say not a one of them was ever to the point where it was like shaming. Now, definitely when it when it needed to be harsh, was harsh. That was to express the importance and the critical nature of it.
Speaker: But it was instantaneous. It didn't linger on for weeks and days and hover over your head. The lesson was taught. You make the adjustment. And then it's the expectation. We're not going to revisit that again because you you learn it now. You know it.
Speaker: And the other thing is, too, there's mistakes that are non-malicious. And then there's mistakes that can look malicious. And I think that's up to the person, too, that makes the mistake. The quicker you own up to it, the quicker you put some critical thinking and devise a solution on fixing it, you remove this idea that it was malicious pretty quickly.
Speaker: The second you show no remorse and you're not putting thought into, and yeah, dude, it looks really malicious. looks like you screwed that up on purpose or neglected something intentionally. So yeah, owning up to it.
Speaker: We're teaching that with our eight year old right now. My 12 year old is a saint. My eight year old, is's he has a hard time owning up to his mistake. He'd rather lie about it and and wait.
Speaker: And it's like, dude, just blurt it out right when it happens. Let's talk about it and then we move on. Now, here we are, it happened two weeks ago. We're still talking about it. Why are we talking about it? But yeah, it's just owning up to it, you know letting the water flow under the bridge and then moving forward. that's I think that's the best advice you can give someone.
Speaker: Time out. Tex here at Train Heroic headquarters meeting with the team to talk about the coaching experience that I'm able to provide for my athletes. So if you're a coach and want to put your program out there on an app that athletes actually enjoy using, Train Heroics for you. I've been using it since 2014. delivering literally over tens of thousands of workouts to athletes.
Speaker: And Train Heroic allows me to provide the unique coaching experience that I want to. Uploading video, providing coaching feedback, directions, and building a community, that's why I love Train Heroic. And if you want to take your athletes where they can't take themselves, that they want to go, head to trainheroic.com slash captains and check out how you can deliver programming to them.
Speaker: And now, back to the show. Ready, ready, and written.
Speaker: Yeah. And I imagine throughout your career, you've met 28 year olds that have still have not learned that lesson you're aiming to teach right now. I mean, there's some 40 year olds out there you know that are my age and it's like, but they've walked a different path and they're influenced by different things. And all I got is, you know, maybe the 60 to 90 minutes I got with them to make a dent and to hopefully be a positive, more encouraging figure.
Speaker: on be competitive, be the best in the world. don't accept losing or quitting or any of that stuff. but also do it the right way. Yeah. I think that's, you know.
Speaker: Was there a ah moment in your career where you accepted the role of mentor? Because it's, I'm coach. Yeah. i it I'm still trying to piece myself together. I'm coach. Or I'm still learning stuff. I want to continue learn so you neglect your responsibility to lead. Was there a moment where you accepted and put on the the gold jacket of yeah yeah when I was at Michigan um there was a point in time where I very much I was a coach and i was heavily invested in athletes um without knowing it I was leading several staff members we had 11 coaches on that staff at the time and um and we had a couple of GAs we had some interns and I was leading quite a bit of them without really even knowing it and Mike Faber who was my director at the time sat me down was like hey
Speaker: I want to give you these responsibilities. I'm like, dude, I have 220 athletes right now. Is that necessary? Can we sort of um spread this out a little bit? And he's like, whether you know it or not, you're already leading in these categories. Now I'm going to give you recognition for it.
Speaker: with a title change, but there's also more accountability. Now you're actually responsible for these things. And look, man, I need them to be more like you. But but I have flat out say it, I need you to influence them to be more like you.
Speaker: um And I really took that home and chewed on it for a few days. And of course, right away, I'm like, yeah, whatever you need. Yes, sir. But I took that home and chewed on it for quite a while.
Speaker: um Because i had great relationships with all my co workers, and I didn't want to pivot how I was behaving currently, but I needed to be able to be a bit more intentionally directing some of their initiatives and and steering them. um And so that was, I would say, one the mentor shift was like, okay, you're gonna have to learn how to do this. I did have an ambition, no doubt, to move into more leadership roles. But I was like, you got to get good at this. Obviously, you've worked with other people that are really good at this. And this kind of has to be, I would say at that point, I was great at leading and influencing athletes. I was great at leading and influencing and cohorting with head coaches. I just hadn't done it a whole lot intentionally with coworkers, um nor had really, I mean, we didn't really even have that many tiers of leadership
Speaker: at the Olympic Committee, where we had three or four at Michigan with the depth of our staff. And so it really teed me up to be, I think, ready and and able with moving on to something like the UFC some eight years later.
Speaker: um So it was it was beneficial. But I'll tell you if you take it seriously, like it is at a it's a challenge when someone, especially if you're in a place where there's lots of eyeballs on you.
Speaker: If you're in a place where there's not a lot of exposure, you can lead however you want, no one knows the difference if you're doing it right or doing it wrong. When you're in a position where you've got a lot of exposure and there's a lot of eyeballs on what you're doing, then yeah, there's more pressure on Not only do I need to be doing this appropriately, I need to be doing it world, they're expecting world leading, you know, bespoke service and bespoke leadership. And so that incentivizes a bit more extracurricular thinking on how you're gonna do this. yeah So yeah, that was a big turning point for me and during that time, him sitting me down and having that talk.
Speaker: At the time too, there was a position that I had applied for as a director position a division one school. um And I was an assistant director at Michigan at the time.
Speaker: And it was probably three times the responsibility because of limited resources. um and the exact same pay that I was getting as an assistant director.
Speaker: And my boss told me, he's like, one, I'm excited for you if you're excited for that kind of leadership position. But two, just because there's a title doesn't mean it's a leadership position. If you look it at it on paper, you're doing the exact same thing there and maybe even more responsibility in what you're doing here with less resources.
Speaker: And so it really gave me having some of that mentor experience, mentorship experience before that gave me the lens to be able to look at that to say, that's not the right position. that's that would i don't even think that's a lateral step, might be a backwards step.
Speaker: And then it was like nine months later, the UFC started calling. So, yeah. that time frame again through that mentoring process and mentoring other professionals and talking and guiding them through their career decisions and dealing with their coaching issues and their struggles with their sports it really kind of just broadened my lens whenever i was looking at more critical things like that so and to this day i mean i've said it over and over again but mike favor is a tremendous i mean he's a 30-year veteran in the field now um
Speaker: If you want to nerd out on wrestling, then that's your guy. he's He's been involved with the sport of wrestling for almost all those 30 years. Army veteran as well. um Served in Desert Storm and just a tremendous figure. But yeah, he had a massive impact on me when it comes to that side of the leadership house. Man, you found yourself in that chair now having those similar our conversations and being like,
Speaker: All right, I feel comfortable here because I sat through it. That's a tough question. I like to say that there's sometimes I wear those shoes well. I don't know that I'm at that level yet, but that's the role I'm in. So I got wear them.
Speaker: You know, when I came to lead the department at A&M, I had a really young staff except for Ray Ellsworth, who is 40-year veteran in the field, just retired a couple years ago.
Speaker: And I came in right away. Yeah, yeah. I came in right away, and first thing, we went and had dinner and had some drinks, and I said, what do you want to get out of? She had told me, she's like, look, I'm probably maybe two, three years, and I'm gonna retire. I'm like, okay. I go, what do you want to get out of this? Yeah.
Speaker: She was like, you know, I've had some ups and downs here and I haven't always been treated well. And I've had some amazing experiences as well. She's like, I just wanna have a great three years. So I was like, look, that's my number one goal. At the time I was like, hell bent on this idea. I thought it was really sad. i still do to an extent, but the number of college strength coaches that don't retire as strength coaches, they pivot and do something else. I'm i'm in that category now.
Speaker: And i told her, I'm like, dude, you're right there. Like what I wanna do I see you right off end into the sunset as a retired, accomplished strength coach, not to mention the woman is a freaking mastermind.
Speaker: So coming in, i was excited about that relationship, but then across the board, I had a really young staff. And so I was excited about leading some of them. I wanted to do it different. I wanted to be able to empower them. I wanted to really give them a lot of autonomy in what they did. Now I'll be a little bit of a boarder,
Speaker: on you know keeping you in certain lanes. But outside of that, like I wanted them to cultivate their own designs and ideas. and And I wanted them to do it based on the context that was in front of them, not based on what other softball teams are doing. That's always the comparison comparison trap, I feel, in college athletics. It's always like well what's the SEC doing? well What's the Big Ten doing?
Speaker: And then if you drill it down, it's like, well, what's Alabama doing? What's what's Tennessee doing? At the end of the day, it doesn't matter. Their context is totally different. They got different flesh and blood right in front of them. Like, what are we doing? What's our strategy based on what we're analyzing right in front of us?
Speaker: So really empowering them to do that and not be so pressured about what everybody else is doing and trying to keep up with the Joneses. um So I was I was excited about that. And then moving into this academic role,
Speaker: When I decided to resign from A&M Athletics, wasn't the right fit. The AD that that brought me in that I was really excited about working with, and I'm a big believer. If you're gonna go in and install your expertise, you gotta have great support on the leadership front. They gotta and understand you and what you can bring to the table so they can actually empower you to do that.
Speaker: When you have leadership that doesn't, if they don't know anything about you or don't even have an interest really in about you, then it's really tough to do that. It's tough to get yourself onto the front line to really be as effective as you designed to be.
Speaker: So anyway, I kind of went for the yin and yang of both of those. I was on a high for three years with this this guy that really convinced me of of their vision and their strategy and let me employ supplemental strategies to help with that. Big problem with A&M when I got here was integration.
Speaker: We were one massive silo. mean, it was just silos everywhere. And the left hand never knew what the right hand was doing. And there was a bit more integration with football.
Speaker: yeah Everything is in-house. They're right on top of each other. Duncan used to tell me all the time, like, dude, you want better integration? You got to put people right on top of each other. So as soon as we got to the UFC, we scouting out where offices were going.
Speaker: We picked this area right in the center of the second floor. And we're like, we're putting everybody right here. And and no no walls. We had little partitions. But then we had private meeting rooms. So if you needed to have a one-on-one meeting with somebody, go use that.
Speaker: But our day to day, we're going up each other's butt rubbing elbow to elbow. You got you got physiologists messing with PTs with dietitians and strength coaches, the cross pollinating conversation going on all day, every day.
Speaker: And so they really gave me the autonomy to sort of start to establish a little bit of that here. um And then, you know, new leadership comes in, they don't have the same vision, totally goes back kind of the other way. So when I've decided to resign. I really didn't have, I hate to admit it. i didn't really have a plan. I just knew that my ambitions were getting scratched. i was getting miserable.
Speaker: And then the second, as I mentioned, the home life before that my wife recognizes, Hey man, you're different. that um I don't even bat an eye. i like, yes, ma'am. Okay. I'm good. I got walk away. I'm done.
Speaker: And in that departure step, but through relationships I had built with doing some guest lecturing and some speaking over on this side of the tracks, um, a department chair reached out to me and was like, Hey, I heard we were losing you. I'd really like to talk to you about an opportunity and, and being an influence in our master's program.
Speaker: Um, so I said, well, yeah, I'm all ears. I don't have any, I mean, I'm either going to start landscaping or something, you know? And so I came and talked to her and she's a brilliant mind herself, but she really wanted, they were trying to get more adjunct professors and just teaching roles that have a more practical background to advocate and also supplement some of their more formal lectures and and and lab experiences here.
Speaker: um And then on top of that, she's like, look, she's the first one I heard it from. It was like, we we're not a destination when it comes to performance physiology, but I wanna become that, but we gotta have some people that have actually done the job.
Speaker: yeah And so that really enticed me. I'm like, huh, so we have a different brand right now and you're trying to rebrand it, which umm um I love that. And so that's what we've been working on and doing. And then some of that, i would say my role is about 40-ish percent teaching And the other 60% is outreach. It's placing masters in and undergraduate and sometimes PhD students and different internship opportunities. So helping to use my network yeah to get them out. And historically, most of them from here, they they do a local Texas high school or a little Texas college or university.
Speaker: They don't get out outside the borders too much. So just trying to get them out into some different areas, but then also surrounding some different itches. I mean, but I just had a master's student, a second-year master's student finish up a 340-hour internship with with Houston Ballet.
Speaker: And he's a former wrestler, a performing arts guy, really wants to go into performing arts as a performance practitioner. And we we located those guys, had some good conversations. He's had his an incredible experience while he's been there. Wild.
Speaker: We've had some others go on to work with with PBR. Just finding some other avenues outside of... Now, we do have our kids that are diehard. Coach, I want to work with football. Great. Call Coach Moffitt down you know with our football program and try to get them teed up with opportunities. So we still do those, but it's having the opportunity when you've got someone that wants to go out and you know look at something that's different that's still in the performance world, even in those tactical spaces. That's still relatively new in the performance space.
Speaker: And there's a lot of opportunities out there. And there's a lot of folks that they find more valor or, you know, it's it's a more noble job to them to be dealing. They don't have the interest in competitive athletics, but they love the physiology side, the training side.
Speaker: where I can go work with someone that's actually serving a really important role in our society. So it's a different kind of itch, but we have a lot of those as well. So there's no off season. There's no off season. So it's whole different athlete. I just had this explanation the other day. I i'll forget who I was speaking with.
Speaker: Um, There's a guy that owns a security company out in California. We have a mutual friend in the wrestling community. And he's like, how do you peak? He's like, up I got a bunch of former officers that come in work for me. but like How do you peak these guys in training? I'm like, I don't even use that language. Like the language we use is stay within striking distance. yeah And he's like, well, what do you mean by that? like, well, you're not like chasing peak performances in anything. Number one, as soon as you peak, like,
Speaker: there's repercussion of that. Well, if they're expected to show up for a shift, you've just peaked something, some physiological stimulus, like you want them be exhausted when they show up on shift or you want, you know, So you've gotta kind of ride a wave but somewhere in between that 70 to 85% range every now and then just teasing out or tinkering with something a little higher end.
Speaker: And that's different for everybody. Their tolerance of it's different. depends on the age category, the experience level, the you know the training age, all those things will will play a role in deciding what that wave looks like. But so yeah, that's ah it's a different ball game. they um you know They're not peaking for competition. They have to stay at the ready.
Speaker: around the clock. Yeah. Striking distance. I like it. to To wind us down here, pulled out some words, helper, authoritative, reliable student, organized, and then having that that self-governor.
Speaker: So taking all this into consideration, you have a view, a one-liner, or perspective of how you would define self-leadership for the theme of this episode to close this out? m That's a tough one.
Speaker: Could have gave me a couple days of prep on that. I still got time. Magic's in the inning. um Man, I think...
Speaker: Trying to sum it up.
Speaker: I'm a bit of a rambler, it may be a couple of phrases, but I think... Constant evaluation. I think evaluation can't stop. People will say you got to be where you are, be where your feet are planted. I don't think you can even do that if you're not constantly evaluating. I should be evaluating every sentence I've just spit out the last 30 minutes. But I think if you're constantly self-evaluating with an open mind to grow, you always have opportunities to lead.
Speaker: And that's that's how I try to start it. Mark it. You didn't need two days. up There you go. Two seconds there. So, yeah, Bo, appreciate you, man, making time. Absolutely. Before the semester gets rolling here. And thank you to our listeners. If they want to continue to learn from you, where should they go? You can definitely shoot me an email, bsandoval at tamu.edu.
Speaker: I'm on Instagram, bo.sandoval. um Yeah, I always say, man, I try to answer everybody. I'm really good at answering everybody. It just might always be fast. So pester me, bug me. You're not gonna irritate me. I love interacting.
Speaker: Definitely admired the show and I'm super pumped to see you guys grow. I know that Dr. Mann is extremely excited about you coming around. and yeah i know he was bummed that he he was that he's out of town on a last ditch effort to get some vacation time before But yeah, thanks for making the trip.
Speaker: Okay. Yeah. Try to make it just a little closer to the pool. Oh, absolutely. Dude, let us know. We'll get you over. I mean, that's why I started the pool. Yeah. That can happen.
Speaker: All right. That's it. I know you gotta go. So sweet. Thanks again. Yeah. Thank you.
