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038 - Thrive Through Injury and Adversity w/ Dr Matt Zanis
134 Plays1 month ago
Ever wonder how Olympic champions build unshakeable mental fortitude? Dr. Zanis pulls back the curtain on his work with gold medalists revealing how they created an environment where these champion shooter continue to thrive on the world's biggest stage.
Zanis unpacks the revolutionary biopsychosocial model that's transforming coaching approaches at all levels, from youth sports to Olympic training. Matt also shares exclusive insights into how Olympic-level mental toughness is systematically developed through specific stress inoculation techniques that you can immediately apply with your own athletes.
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#BiopsychosocialModel #SportsPerformance #InjuryRecovery #AthleteMentalHealth #EliteCoaching #Olympics #ReturnToPlay #SportsRehabilitation #AthleteDevelopment #PerformanceCoaching
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Transcript
Principles of Training and Rehabilitation
00:00:00
Speaker
Training an athlete or trying to rehabilitate them back into the game, it's all really the same stuff. Just falling on different ends of the spectrum. It's really about getting that person 1% better each and every single day instead of just telling and asking.
00:00:11
Speaker
One of my mantras is taking out the control and leading with more curiosity. That's really the key to this because the curiosity is then going to allow me to get into their brain. and to realize and also discover how they think, how their brain works, what is their feeling and their perception around pain, what other dynamics and influences are potentially going into this.
00:00:33
Speaker
And then the athlete will tell you how to fix them. They'll give you all the information. And then it's really just our job as coaches, as PTs, to facilitate that trust and that confidence in their own bodies to get back into the game.
Podcast Introduction
00:00:45
Speaker
Welcome to the Captains Coaches podcast. We explore the art and science of leadership through the lens of athletics and beyond. I'm your host Texel Culkin and today we're going deep with Dr. Matt Zanis, physical therapist, coach, and performance specialist who's worked with Olympic athletes tip of the spear operators, and athletes of all ages and
Biopsychosocial Model in Injury Recovery
00:01:04
Speaker
experiences.
00:01:04
Speaker
In this episode, we'll explore the biopsychosocial model of injury and recovery, going beyond just the physical aspects to understand how psychology and social factors impact healing.
00:01:16
Speaker
Whether you're a coach working with young athletes or someone who's recovering from injury yourself, Xanus brings incredible insights on building trust, establishing healthy boundaries, and creating the right environment for both performance and recovery.
00:01:30
Speaker
With that, we'll pass it off to Dr. Zanis to help us raise the game. Ready, ready, and ready.
00:01:38
Speaker
action. Matt Zanis live on location. Welcome to my town. It's so great to be here, buddy. It's been a long time. I know. Probably a tactical conference here or there. Yeah.
00:01:50
Speaker
Which you will be speaking at the 2025 NSCA tactical conference. Had to take a breather last year. Just had to go to little thing called the Olympics, but then we came back and now we're ready to rock again. Yes, we are.
00:02:02
Speaker
Speaking of Ready to Rock, I have a lot of fun topics, and these are centered around conversations that I have with parents. So as a coach, I have some authority, but then there's certain questions and dynamics and aspects of a whole season, which I understand I am not qualified to answer certain questions.
00:02:23
Speaker
And then there's also a balance where there's questions I am qualified for. And then they find that they just choose not to believe the answers and guidance I give. So a lot to go on here.
00:02:35
Speaker
And I want to start helping our our listeners understand something I've really had value with and learned from you is the bio-psycho-social model and what this represents. It's not just the the biology of how I would think of things when writing a strength and conditioning program.
00:02:54
Speaker
It's also this psychology and then the social environment that comes into play. So what is our perspective from understanding that is, is take us into it to help a parent understand that about their athlete and a coach to understand it about not just the individual, this whole ecosystem that they're building.
00:03:12
Speaker
We call a team. Yes.
Building Trust in Athlete Performance
00:03:14
Speaker
Well, with the biopsychosocial model, it comes down to the fact that we are treating the whole entire individual, not just the injury and not just the pain that they're experiencing, because there's way more to it than goes into it than just the physiological healing parameters that everybody, as yeah as were as humans, has to abide by.
00:03:31
Speaker
And these other factors, the the psychological and the social, are going to play a much larger role in it. So the biology, the tissue, every single body body part that we have, tendons, ligaments,
00:03:43
Speaker
muscle bellies, joint capsules, all that stuff, they all go through their own healing process. And that's pretty standardized across the board. And yes, could be taking some chemical substances that help enhance that and whatnot, but generally speaking, they're all gonna follow the world similar timelines.
00:03:57
Speaker
However, the psychological aspect and the social, so the way that our brain perceives the and injury, how it affects our identity, and um and really our perception of threat and how it's impacting our life is really going to play a much larger role it. And then the last piece of that is the social, which is going to be family, friends, other people who are now influencing your brain's perception of that threat.
00:04:21
Speaker
And that, in its own right, will... impact that physiological piece of it where actually you're going to um different different chemical mediators impacted in the brain that are also going to inhibit the healing process or enhance it depending on, once again, how the how the brain is perceived and what's going on there.
Athlete Mindset on Injury
00:04:39
Speaker
Yeah, and i I feel you and I were were raised in an aspect where we were not allowed to get hurt, just in the aspect of we valued playing time, we valued practice,
00:04:50
Speaker
a lot. We valued the teams that we were on You were a baseball guy. i grew up playing football. So then we valued this so much we didn't want to get hurt. And then into my college lacrosse career, I i broke my ankle my freshman year.
00:05:05
Speaker
So I missed eight days before my first game. I missed an entire year. was able to red shirt shirt and get the extra year for grad school. But that moment, I i just a moment, the whole months, I was ripping myself apart not being able to play.
00:05:19
Speaker
So then I did not miss one practice following that, despite of any aches pain joints on functioning AC joint, which you can't play lacrosse without it, but you can play defense and heads a great weapon. So it does explain a It does explain a lot. It does explain a lot.
00:05:38
Speaker
It does explain lot. Kidding. So now an aspect and then I'm living it working with the middle school and high school levels. You're working with the limpy level.
00:05:49
Speaker
So there's this this gap again of, okay, I'm almost looking for excuses not to practice. I'm looking for excuses to miss game. I'm not feeling 100% today.
00:06:01
Speaker
It's game day. I'm not going to play. Where? Where does that come into play? And talk about environments. Like, help me understand so I don't freaking want to like shake a parent on the sideline for not letting their kid play.
00:06:16
Speaker
there're and Listen, I can say because i've I've seen this at the lower levels more than the professional and the Olympic level. I hope so. but Listen, if we find somebody at the professional Olympic level, that would be a new case study to look into. That's the basketball team.
00:06:31
Speaker
Basically the NBA. It's basically the NBA. Which, you know, we can go into a whole conversation about the NIL and everything and how that's playing out right now. i don't know if you saw the the kid from Tennessee. I was actually in Knoxville on campus when all the the news was breaking.
00:06:46
Speaker
So i I was speaking with strength coaches and coaches within the university scheme ah that didn't get in their opinions on that.
00:06:56
Speaker
So it was a very awesome experience. And I'm just sitting on the sidelines literally during this whole thing go down. It's crazy because Nick Saban even called it. Oh, yeah. how it would play out.
00:07:07
Speaker
of how how it's going to start impacting their decision-making. And there's a whole entitlement piece to it as well. um However, getting back to the how this like psychological component impacts it all, i think I think there's different personality types. And I think you see a little bit more in the younger levels because they're more influential.
00:07:26
Speaker
At that standpoint, the brain's still molding. and stillir These kids are still trying to figure out who they are. right And we've been there before. um I've gone through many different progressions in my own life of who I thought I was and my identity and everything. But I have seen it play out in the lower levels where kids would use pain and use injury to kind of get what they want from an identity standpoint. Because I'm on the team, I get to wear the jersey.
00:07:49
Speaker
oh yeah Right. Which that might be the ulterior motive. Like, hey, I got my Letterman jacket. I'm in the cool kids club. That's all that matters to me. So I can use pain and injury and use that as ah as a means to not have to do any of the hard stuff, but get all of the accolades and get all the positive stuff at the end of it.
00:08:08
Speaker
And so you you'll see kids that will catastrophize. Right. And so they'll make things seem worse than they actually are. And that's not going to be coming down to like, OK, maybe mom and dad are having an influence on that. we're like, ah you you're really hurt right now. And that becomes like the overprotective um helicopter type of a parent where they're going to start influencing the kid's ah perception of what is hurt versus what is pain, which is a totally different thing. and And here's here's the crazy part, though, too, is that.
00:08:39
Speaker
everybody's perception, everybody's feelings and emotions around pain are going to be extremely different. and But they're all valid. right And that's something that we have to really consider too, because yeah yeah you know i get somebody that used to come into my office and they're telling me that they're hurt.
00:08:55
Speaker
We have to have that conversation of like, what's the difference between sore? Do you just like work yourself really hard versus you know actual tissue damage where there's legitimate pain there? But they they may be describing it in a different way, if that makes sense.
00:09:09
Speaker
And so we still to validate those experiences with the value those emotions, but then try it and it's an art form, like play with it to help them really build a confidence and trust in their body again, which that's, that's really going to
Personality Types and Pain Management
00:09:21
Speaker
be the tough part. But then there are guys like you and me who we would do anything and everything possible to still stay in the game, different personality type,
00:09:30
Speaker
Also can be equally as detrimental though, because on the flip side of the coin, now we have somebody like type very hard nose, put the blinders on. I'm going to work through anything and pain doesn't exist. Pain don't hurt type of thing.
00:09:43
Speaker
And um that could get in the way. There is actually some type of tissue damage going on. And now we're making things worse but down the line. Yes. And here I am 39. joint, ankle. Yep.
00:09:56
Speaker
ac joint ankle it's ah It's all coming back to me. But thank you for the old bull program. Check that out to target these. And the, but this is where the, the social environment really comes into play for a coach now where I'm joking aside, like it is very important for coach to understand the relationship and dynamic that the parent has with the kid.
00:10:22
Speaker
So, and what is the parent relationship to the coach? So I aim to go out of my way to establish a relationship with the parent to then create the conversation and build the trust.
00:10:35
Speaker
Otherwise, if this bridge doesn't exist now, okay, well, they're rocking the jersey on the sideline, more likely. Well, then you're up the creek without a paddle too.
00:10:45
Speaker
So that that's where it's a little bit different in the world that you're in versus the world that I'm in. Like I'm working with the athlete, you know, and there's usually no other influence other than maybe the coach or spouse, kids type of a thing.
00:11:00
Speaker
um But there's there's not that overprotective parent that's potentially getting involved either. But from your standpoint, you have to deal with building trust, not only with the athlete, then also with the parent also with the coach, because you're right. Like if you get into a situation like that, who they going to go to? Who are they going to trust?
00:11:18
Speaker
And there's got to be some discernment there too. All right. So whose role is more apt to that specific question? You know, like return to play stuff. We're talking to the PT. Is the PT talking the strength coach? Is the strength coach talking to the coach? Are they all working together for the benefit of the athlete?
00:11:35
Speaker
Or is potentially mom and dad coming in and circumventing that because they think they know what's best for the kid?
Coaching with Curiosity
00:11:43
Speaker
I ah forgot to mention there's the ATC too.
00:11:46
Speaker
ah I am a recovering ankle taper. So, oh yeah. So then regarding feet and ankles, any kid with that comes to me with those, because we so we spent so much time within the the foot and ankle dynamic warmup preparation or targeted true eccentrics.
00:12:05
Speaker
So we spent a lot of time getting ahead of shin splints and tackling ankles. throughout the season. So anytime a foot injury occurs or rolled ankle, then prescribed the magic ice bucket.
00:12:18
Speaker
So that's 15 minutes in a five gallon Home Depot bucket of ice. And then you're going to elevate, like think, get into a dead bug position, feed against the wall for 15 minutes. And we're just going to do that until...
00:12:31
Speaker
It stops hurting. yeah You're still going to practice. You're still going to play. So then that was, I relayed that to the kids. They relayed that to the ATC and the ATC said ice was old school.
00:12:41
Speaker
Don't ice. Like, all right, well, Okay, so now ah now I need to go into like the true eccentrics and really like manipulate and show them so they can feel it versus me just telling because it wasn't enough for me to just tell.
00:12:57
Speaker
Yes, and I think that's where at least one of the mantras that i have placed into my own philosophy of training and rehabilitation because Training an athlete or trying to rehabilitate them back into the game, it's all really the same stuff, just falling on different ends of the spectrum.
00:13:16
Speaker
It's really about getting that person 1% better each and every single day. And what you just brought up there was instead of just telling and asking, one of my mantras is taking out the control and leading with more curiosity.
00:13:29
Speaker
That's really the key to this because the curiosity is then going to allow me to get into their brain and to realize and also discover how they think, how their brain works, what is their feeling and their perception around pain, what other dynamics and influences are potentially going into this.
00:13:46
Speaker
And then the athlete will tell you how to fix them. They'll give you all the information. And then it's really just our job as coaches, as PTs to facilitate that trust and that confidence in their own bodies to get back into the game.
00:13:58
Speaker
Because if they don't trust themselves and we push them to get back too soon, they may be physiologically healed. Tissue may be ready to may be strong. But if the brain isn't there and the and the brain's not trusting the body, that leads to hesitation.
00:14:13
Speaker
What does hesitation lead to? Well, a lot of different things. Yes. And mainly being we are not the hesitation is going to impact the way the body's moving. It's an impact coordination. an impact motor control. it's an impact proprioception and kinesthetic awareness.
00:14:27
Speaker
And now we're putting ourselves into a situation where we are almost bypassing a lot of these potential danger signals in the brain. And that's when injury occurs because we're hesitating with the movement versus just allowing our body to reflexively move the way that knows how to.
00:14:41
Speaker
Or trying kind of like think about like
Old Bull Program Promotion
00:14:43
Speaker
putting on the parking brake while trying to pull the or press the accelerator at the same time. It's not go to lead to a good outcome. No. Yeah. And you're going really hammer down that gas. You're going to treat you trying to go. Trying to go, but you're not going to be able to get anywhere.
00:14:57
Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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00:15:54
Speaker
taking your perspective from the olympics and they they have a whole ah world outside of them so now how does the the social media the social context of this whole world that exists not in front of us but it still has influence on performance influence on play so speaking from that perspective of the whole world is watching how does that affect performance and how are you helping your athletes get ahead of that?
00:16:23
Speaker
Well, talk about pressure. and think every year that goes by and how our our technology shifts and changes and the different eyes and outlets that we have on an athlete at any one given time, it's just constantly adding more and more pressure.
00:16:36
Speaker
So how do we, how can we influence the athlete's ability to manage and handle that pressure?
Stress Inoculation in Training
00:16:42
Speaker
It really comes down to stress inoculation. Okay, so as coaches and as as as PTs in that space, we can inoculate them to stress, you know, you think about how you would get a vaccine, but a little bit of ah a stressor into the body, so the body can remember it and come back to it later on if you get um if it comes in contact with it, can now mount the appropriate response.
00:17:01
Speaker
Same thing with managing stress at that high level, where can we engineer some experiences that and listen never going to be able to replicate the experiences at the olympic level it's never or professional like i think the nfl super bowl or even like ah you know major league baseball playoffs world series you can't replicate that stuff but we know that we have the controlled the environment of a gym setting we can stress the body and we can we can teach it how to handle higher levels of stress in that moment and i can speak even to the shooting stuff like
00:17:33
Speaker
we'll try and replicate everything we can. Like one of um one of my good buddies, he's a four-time Olympic ski shooting athlete, Vincent Hancock here. ah He's in Fort Worth, Texas. We would go out there and do crazy wild stuff to him leading up to the Olympics, meaning like trying to distract him.
00:17:48
Speaker
So people coming around like yelling, we have music blaring in the background, like tossing buckets of empty shells into the air to kind of distract his visual appeal. I would joke with him that would out there in the background doing naked cartwheels, but we we didn't get to that point.
00:18:01
Speaker
ah It's like the asses and the gorilla. You know that test? No, no. Well, I'm going to show it to you. okay But if you Google ah passing test, gorilla, people out there watch it. And I want you to count how many passes they do.
00:18:18
Speaker
And this is a fun psychological test. and I'm not going ruin it for you because it's fun the first time everybody does it. Yeah, I'll go back there. be a guinea pig for it. um And so... we would we would We would get him into these situations where we would try to increase the stress level on him.
00:18:33
Speaker
And the interesting part, too, is we hooked him up to heart rate monitors. Oh. And because I'm trying to quantify some of this stuff because nobody's doing a lot of this stuff and nobody's collecting data inside inside the shooting world at all.
00:18:44
Speaker
and um And having spent the last almost decade of my career inside the shooting sports, like there's still a lot lot to be learned there. And so we hooked him up to a heart rate monitor. And what we came to find out was that he is shooting his finals.
00:18:59
Speaker
at about 135, 140 beats per minute, which is falls right along for his age age age range inside that zone two cardio piece. So he is performing at a very high level with the heart rate going super high.
00:19:11
Speaker
Yeah. Crazy part, you know what makes him so freaking good? He doesn't feel it.
00:19:18
Speaker
Why? He's focused. He's focused. He needs learn how to manage that stress and manage that energy. And he, if, and listen, this comes down to a lot of nonverbal stuff. We talk about communication and whatnot.
00:19:30
Speaker
He's out there and he is literally embodying and and admitting this badass, you are not going with me type of energy. You can't beat me. And you see it.
00:19:41
Speaker
You can see him out there, chest puff forward, shoulders back, like head up, hand on the hips. but he When he shoots his station, he doesn't look at anybody else. He looks back at the crowd.
00:19:53
Speaker
It's like, I'm not even acknowledging that you're here. And he's ah he's not doing that necessarily intentionally. He's in his he's in the zone. He knows it works for him. But think about how that's perceived by the rest of the athletes. Big silverback gorilla is on the range, right?
00:20:06
Speaker
And you can you can watch the demeanor and the body positions of all these other athletes. It's like shrunken shoulders, head down, walking slow, looking down at the ground, watching all the other athletes, looking at their targets. He doesn't give a He's shooting his targets.
00:20:21
Speaker
It doesn't matter. But he's done that over time.
Athlete Program Development
00:20:24
Speaker
And he's built himself up into that that energy. You can't beat that type of energy. There's no way. And so then that's a psychological component of it. Then we look at the physiological. Okay, I know now as his strength coach,
00:20:36
Speaker
where can i build out his program to help him manage that stress level higher at that that the higher beats per minute with his own two cardio. We put him into situations in the gym. We get the heart rate up. We make him perform.
00:20:49
Speaker
We're not putting him on BOSU balls. We're not making like the stress from that. but We don't need to go down that path in this one, but um we're not putting him and into all these like weird situations. we're We're just getting him physiologically up there and then making him work hard and making him solve problems, movement problems.
00:21:06
Speaker
OK, because when I'm working with athletes, too, it's really more so about before I can plug them into a specific program, i actually have to plug into their nervous system first to understand how they think, out to understand how their body works, ah to understand how their nervous system is going to handle different stressors. And that's how we use we use that as kind of like the basis then to build out the program, progress it throughout the year, depending on his on his competition schedule.
00:21:30
Speaker
ah I like that. So you're searching to see how is nervous system response. And then I would, how how I would frame that, especially to, to connect at the high school level is I'm testing for the same thing, but it is on a, uh, respect to a team sport and team dynamic of how my decisions affect other people.
00:21:53
Speaker
So responsible decision-making. And then one thing I I'm really exploring is instead of responsibility, one word, responsibility so now breaking it into two words and then having components that then ah can gauge a reflection to create self-awareness create social awareness and then my uh my self-management of how my and this is aiming to to have athletes think this way which is a challenge certainly
00:22:25
Speaker
my decisions affect others around me.
Promoting Self-Leadership in Athletes
00:22:28
Speaker
And I have stepped into self-leadership, which then has a ripple effect. So hopefully this individual then establishes self-leadership before they step into a captain role.
00:22:39
Speaker
And then you understand how the social concept of leadership works, especially on a team where, you know, when the Saturday nights come around, you got to walk that fine line as a leader between like, hang out with my team,
00:22:52
Speaker
responsibility, responsible decision making, etc. So I like how you're framing this as central nervous system. I can certainly add that as a component to to bring physiology into this when I'm simply applying ah training stress and practice stress to see how they're their character comes out.
00:23:12
Speaker
But I like how you're adding the the physiological component. Certainly I see a path and connection to ah what I'm aiming to put into practice. Yeah, and we'll think about bridging the gap between those two.
00:23:23
Speaker
you know, you the physiological stuff, I know how much training the athletes are doing out in the sport or on the range for the shooting athletes. I know then how much stress I am personally applying to their bodies as a coach.
00:23:37
Speaker
But then we also have to take into consideration, where are all the other life stressors pinning too, right? Relationship stress, work stress, business stress, family stress. That's all going impact their ability to perform. and at School is a big one for from your kids.
00:23:52
Speaker
and like God knows what kids are thinking about themselves or what they're having to deal with with all the social media stuff too. like we We are in an age right now where there has... i i don't think there's ever been of a comparisonitis type of a phenomenon going on. no And school goes home.
00:24:11
Speaker
Before it was like, oh, school ends at 3.30. Okay, now I can get away or I can go to sports practice and then whatever. But now the the social aspect or the bullying, it follows you home.
00:24:23
Speaker
Well, and and so think about too, though, you mentioned something about how you're in self-development and leadership and you yourself are evolving as a leader. a lot of like young men are also searching for those role models too.
00:24:39
Speaker
who are they going to model their behavior after? some Sometimes it is the father in the home. you know Sometimes there is a strong role model there too, but a lot of times too, at least from like when you and I grew up, I modeled a lot of it off of, yes, my father, he was a very, very impactful leader in my life, but then also my coaches.
00:24:59
Speaker
big piece. And so they're, they're building their confidence off of the way that they're perceiving you carry yourself too, which is just, it's, it's kind it's massive to think about like the influence that you're having on these, on these kids' lives.
00:25:11
Speaker
And then you brought up like, okay, are we going to hang out with the team? There's a friend component of that too. Or are we going to have to ride the line of uber professionalism? I think that just comes down to establishing boundaries and knowing when one is more appropriate than the other.
00:25:27
Speaker
I will say just from you know my own success as a strength coach and as a PT at the highest level, one of my superpowers or strong suits is my ability to build connection.
00:25:39
Speaker
with the athlete. I, you know, well, want to have this conversation with you. I, do I joke about it all the time. like I could be the worst PT out there.
00:25:51
Speaker
I really could, but I'm so good at developing a connection with the person in front of me that they build so much trust and confidence in me that they know that I can get them where they want to go. And ultimately what is the role of us as coaches?
00:26:05
Speaker
Our role is to help somebody get somewhere where they can't take themselves. That they want to go. That they want to go. Not where we want to take them. That be the counterpoint. Exactly. Not where we want to take them, but understanding how what what they view as their life goals. What is their vision of where they want to go? And that's like our job as coaches to ask the right questions, to get into their world, to understand how we can actually facilitate growth down that path.
00:26:32
Speaker
But once again, control versus curiosity. We're not controlling them, taking them down the path we want them to go. We're staying curious and helping them to go down the path that they have and envision in their mind.
00:26:44
Speaker
And we're just a guide. We're just a facilitator. We're like the person that's coming with them to the fork in the road and helping them make decisions. Yeah. Yeah.
00:26:55
Speaker
i I feel a lot of that. the ah We're entering into, ah we're going to come back to injury, but we're entering into team team dynamics.
00:27:06
Speaker
So now how I've envisioned the development of a coach. So you enter into this this field, you're not giving a lot of responsibility. Now the the singular word.
00:27:17
Speaker
not given a lot of responsibility but you do have a lot of opportunity and downtime to connect with athletes on an individual level where the head coach he's leading the team making sure everything's running on time with purpose writing the vision the program practice plans whatever it may be and leading the games as an individual starting out now there's a lot of time between the whistles for you to establish an individual relationship and as you develop over your career Success based off your ability to connect and relate to individuals will then lead to your ability to lead a team.
00:27:55
Speaker
So now helping those younger coaches and leaders on the team, because senior, let me frame this. ah I'll finish the coach thought. So now help young coaches understand how they can connect and relate to an athlete because you're getting into this profession because you love sports.
00:28:13
Speaker
team sports, you love football or you love weightlifting, um I'm going to turn my career into weightlifting. That doesn't always translate. In the same respect, I see the the first year coach and then a team leader, a team captain on that same level where you're stepping into this authority figure role for the first time and you want to you want to overstep sometimes. so you take too much control.
00:28:38
Speaker
And then what led you to be the senior captain Nobody else is acting that way. So you get mad at them. Little do you know, you too were that freshman, sophomore making those poor decisions as well.
00:28:51
Speaker
So I see those two guys on the same level as entry level leadership from both the team captain stepping into authority. And then now ah my first year as a coach with the opportunity between the whistles to make an individual connection.
Ego's Impact on Coaching
00:29:07
Speaker
Mm hmm. Read the room, bro. Right? Like, we get it put into these different environments. And I think a lot of times ego can get into the way.
00:29:20
Speaker
You know, we've gone through the trials and tribulations to get where we've got to. And it doesn't matter if you have got yourself to the point where you're positioned now at a high school level or your college, college coach level, or and maybe you're into professional sports. Now you're getting into even the highest like tip of the spear type of athletics.
00:29:40
Speaker
Ego can get in the way at every single step. And so there's an awareness piece that has to come in of, is this serving me right now? right Am I in a position where my confidence is going to help facilitate change? My confidence is going to help get this athlete to where they need to go. My confidence is going to be the thing that bonds this team together.
00:30:05
Speaker
or is it going to be coming off as cockiness? And there's a fine line there, too. um And i you know what? i think I think athletes and coaches really do perceive that without even having to say anything about it.
00:30:21
Speaker
You know, it's an energy piece. It's an energy piece. And so um for me, through my career, I've made a lot of mistakes along the way to where I think that I know what's best for the athlete. I think I know what's best for the organization.
00:30:37
Speaker
And here's where I make the mistake and where I can helpfully hopefully help other coaches not make the same mistake is I would get into a situation where I do think I know what's best and I would make decisions or take action on something without considering the, really considering other people's feelings about it, considering other people's opinions about it,
00:31:04
Speaker
even if I didn't think that they were right or wrong, because that's the ego piece that's getting involved there. And I would just go ahead and go down that path without considering anybody else's opinions or feelings. And when you don't take other people's emotions everything into consideration, there is, people get their feelings hurt by that.
00:31:22
Speaker
And then you are then perceived as taking control of a situation. You are perceived as knowing knowing all and there's not a collaborative effect there when there's no collaboration that's where heads start to butt okay even if you might be in the right you still need to be able to have the wherewithal to once again stay curious and ask questions hey i think that this is yeah i think this is the right program for these athletes or i think i want to do this with them what are your thoughts on that Do you think that like, what's your input?
00:31:55
Speaker
Is this where we should go or do you have any other opinions on it? And so it's it's just that collaboration piece where people are allowed to to have their own say in it that helps the whole team feel cohesive versus one person trying to direct the ship.
00:32:09
Speaker
And then within the, ah man, I really enjoy that entry-level leader student athlete. So now getting them even to ask those questions.
00:32:20
Speaker
what would be like an an entry level for an entry lead level leader to start to open up the door to their team? What do you feel it is like walkout music, pregame music ah versus like, Hey, this is our soundtrack. Yeah.
00:32:36
Speaker
What are some entry-level leadership tips to start to say, like build trust like outside of ah crossing the responsible decision-making line? yeah ah Shift the energy.
00:32:48
Speaker
Shift the energy. shift the energy um Because I always go into this, and and we've used this line before, having that white belt mentality. okay Walk into a room like, I don't know nothing.
00:33:00
Speaker
okay And then that kind of puts you all at the at the same level playing field. But if you yeah know you bring up the walkout music or whatever, like you' hear in that if you're in the gym, maybe each athlete then has a say on a particular day.
00:33:13
Speaker
Inclusivity on it, right? um Or maybe they're going to pick it for the week. Or you you take a vote. Do we want some rock today? we want some country today? it just Once again, it's just helping them stay involved in decision-making process.
00:33:26
Speaker
That's really the key to all this. I like it. Yeah. The. Okay. So now graduating into more team dynamics, like how do you keep that low ego without being like a pushover?
00:33:41
Speaker
Because kids will test boundaries. So now, yes. yes but Not just kids. Yes. Not just kids. Grown ass adults will test the boundaries all the time.
00:33:53
Speaker
Athletes will test boundaries. So now how do you prevent your resting heart rate from going up to 135 when they start to test boundaries? And then now it's, okay, I want to be collaborative here, but now you're just being difficult.
00:34:09
Speaker
I think that there is a time and a place for holding accountability. Okay. So that now we're framing accountability. I like it. Yeah. So I think that... This all starts from the foundational level of taking the leadership role and taking responsibility as the leader to establish the boundaries and what they look like first.
00:34:29
Speaker
Otherwise, listen, like our whole role, I think as coaches or even like even even in the relationship sphere, whether it be romantically or at friendships or whatnot, and being in a more masculine role is to provide the structure.
00:34:44
Speaker
And undoubtedly, like we can relate this back to strength and conditioning too. When we're putting together a program, we are providing that athlete structure. When we provide the structure, we allow, we produce a container for all of those different athletic attributes and characteristics to flourish and develop.
00:35:02
Speaker
If there's no structure, we're basically just like throwing it against a wall and seeing what sticks. And then the athlete, you'll you'll know, you'll know. and and listen, I've been down this path before too, where,
00:35:14
Speaker
I'm in a kind of coaching container with an athlete and we're working through the program and then all of a sudden their level of involvement and curiosity and asking questions and and popping into like our WhatsApp feed or in like leaving feedback or comments inside the Train Heroic app or something, it starts to diminish. And that's like a huge red flag for me.
00:35:31
Speaker
I'm like, oh, their involvement is going down. That means they're not invested, they're not they're not still bought in, they're maybe not as confident where the program is going, how can I intervene and provide them a little bit more reassurance, a little more structure and confidence
Engaging Athletes in Training
00:35:43
Speaker
in there?
00:35:43
Speaker
okay Because otherwise, they're going to try and pivot. like We all have the attention span of goldfish when it comes to this stuff, right? We don't see the progression, we don't see the the outcome.
00:35:54
Speaker
Yes, and their passion is the sport, it's not the performance. not the performance. where we are Yes, details, perfect. Just to warm up. i don't care. I don't need that.
00:36:05
Speaker
so we did It'll go to the wayside. I'm a a supple leopard. don't need that. Level 99 supple leopard. I have now ascended to that that throne. um I'm not. I'm an old. ah I can't do the splits anymore, though.
00:36:23
Speaker
I let that skull go. I guess I'm not really a supple anymore, as I once thought. Hey, that's a box to tick. That's when I i tore piriformis muscle, and so... Yeah, we just, we we steer away, but but it did check the box. We got there once.
00:36:35
Speaker
I'm just... Hips, super supple. um They're supple for other things, too. But anyway, ah so you provide the structure in the training program, and then you also, in a relationship, need to provide the structure where the relationship's going.
00:36:52
Speaker
Okay, structure or container? like Both. Boundaries. Okay. okay Yeah. So I'm looking at at the container as being built by the structure of boundaries. um It's so funny because people are like very, very hesitant to put up a boundary because I think of like the emotional side effects that can occur of like, oh, am i goingnna am I going to hurt their feelings?
00:37:15
Speaker
Or is my boundary going to be crossed and then my feelings get hurt? Or am I an asshole for for setting up this boundary? By the end day, the boundaries create safety. I'll double down on that. yeah So from a ah coaching perspective, we can be friendly, but we're not friends.
00:37:33
Speaker
So the boundaries are very beneficial, especially for the the the younger the younger athletes who are learning about boundaries through athletics. Time out. Tex here at trainheroic headquarters meeting with the team to talk about the coaching experience that I'm able to provide for my athletes.
00:37:51
Speaker
So if you're a coach and want to put your program out there on an app that athletes actually enjoy using, trainheroics for you. I've been using it since 2014. delivering literally over tens of thousands of workouts to athletes. And Train Heroic allows me to provide the unique coaching experience that I want to.
00:38:11
Speaker
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.
00:38:27
Speaker
And now, back to the show. Ready, ready, and
00:38:33
Speaker
Excellent point. Continue on with this perspective of boundaries and containers. And then i mentioned self-leadership before, which is very important for a coaches. Coaches often give so much right servant leadership. I'm going to give that I also neglect.
00:38:50
Speaker
So how can these same ideas, concepts, principles of establishing boundaries, containers and relationships with our athletes help us off the field? Well, the boundaries are going to be healthy regardless of the relationship you're in, whether it's a coach-athlete relationship, a coach-coach relationship, friendships, romantic relationships. It's really all the same thing. provides safety.
00:39:13
Speaker
And what we spoke about before was how there's this kind of weird perception. that If I put up a boundary, people are going to be offended. or like my my And I think there's a big fear there too that like, oh how am I going react if that boundary gets crossed?
00:39:25
Speaker
But in reality, it sets up an agreement. And does agreements create safety? And so when you brought up the point about what if they start pushing the boundaries, well, now we have an agreement in place and like, no, no, this is where we can now hold them accountable and come back to like, hey, we agreed upon this.
00:39:43
Speaker
Are we going to honor that? Yes or no. And that's where you can push back because you have you have backing. You have a foundation to do that with. it Conversely, if you don't have the boundary set up in place and now some type of argument ensues, a rift happens or the resistance comes in.
Creating Safe Coaching Environments
00:39:59
Speaker
what do you have to go back to? It's like, oh like I guess I really didn't, we didn't really establish what was going to right or wrong here. And now you get left with this like and up to open interpretation on both sides and we both know how that goes, right? so now we have to go into like, okay, now we got to have a conversation, we got to hear each person's side and then ultimately, hopefully the solution we come up with is to set ah boundary out of that conversation. But Let's be leaders. Let's get ahead of it in beginning and set the boundaries.
00:40:26
Speaker
It's the same thing in relationships too. I mean, in the, in the relationships that I've been in, we've always set up agreements. Like, what do we stand for as a couple, right?
00:40:37
Speaker
What are gonna be our guideposts? It's the same thing and in the coaching world as well. And so inevitably, like there is no perfect relationship, we all know this. Inevitably, we're gonna get into some type of a disagreement, some type of an argument where we're gonna, you know, we're human, we make mistakes, right?
00:40:54
Speaker
But now, okay, we can always come back to that guidepost of, oh, we, great example here is, In our relationship, we are always going to be a team. It's us against the problem, not not like make each other the enemy.
00:41:09
Speaker
And so if we always have that in the back of our mind, now we have that to come back to. It's like, okay, maybe maybe we're kind of mad at the other person. Maybe we have disagreement of like what they did or what they said.
00:41:22
Speaker
But what's the problem? Reorient ourselves. And now we can start to attack the problem together as a team. okay Same thing with like the coaching dynamic as well. If we have an agreement set up ahead of time and there's some type of resistance of like, maybe let's let's bring an injury here.
00:41:39
Speaker
And this is a great great example. Return to play. This could be a conversation to set up ahead of time with the coaching staff of when an athlete gets hurt, what are our guidelines here?
00:41:54
Speaker
os Whose authority takes precedence? And you can establish that from the get-go. I've done that with my coaches within DUSA Shooting all these other organizations. It's like, somebody gets hurt.
00:42:07
Speaker
I know the parameters of how this is going to take place. Do you trust me to help them get back to where they need to go in a timely manner? And know that's in the best interest of the athlete and the team.
00:42:19
Speaker
And then we come up to that agreement together versus the same thing like with a coach. you can The coach is going to establish ah a guideline and a rule with who they're choosing to be on the team and in what capacity and then you know the playbook and the X's and O's and whatnot. And like we trust them to take care of that. that's their That's their role. But we can come up with those agreements ahead of time.
00:42:40
Speaker
And so now we don't run into a situation where maybe head coaches coming in and be like, I need him to get back on the field like today. but it's like, no, no, ah no, we agree this. He's like at week eight. He's not really going to be ready until week 12.
00:42:53
Speaker
Let's honor that. Or else. Or else. Or now we're risking potential re-injury and whatnot. Or worse. Or worse. It's all connected. It's all connected. Absolutely. the which A worse, which I do want to cover and get your insight on, is ah we speak up often about identity.
Breaking the Injury-Prone Mindset
00:43:14
Speaker
We identify as athletes. My career ends. What next? But within my athletic career, there's also an identity of... Injury prone.
00:43:25
Speaker
So now if a ah kid just identifies as injury prone or gets into the the the mindset of like, I'm broken, this always happens to me. ah So now it's maybe they don't say it to themselves, I'm injury prone, but they have this mindset of um bad luck.
00:43:47
Speaker
I always get hurt. Always this, always that. So how how can we help them establish and break this cycle that, I mean, i I would refer to it, there's a movement problem here, that maybe you're healing x this, but we're still moving poorly that is causing x y Z to happen.
00:44:08
Speaker
How would you approach this with an athlete who's just there labeled as an injury? Prone kid. Take him out the pasture. No, just kidding. Oh my God.
00:44:21
Speaker
No, I mean, listen, I was, I'll speak from, from my own personal experience here. I was that injury, injury prone kid. A malinger? You were a training room guy?
00:44:32
Speaker
Yeah. I've got lots of... I was in the training room because i really, really enjoyed that aspect of it. i just wanted to learn. To learn. Yeah, I wanted to learn. I i just...
00:44:43
Speaker
but You know, i I joke all the time that i was kind of a genetic jean trash can as a kid. Oh, I get it. Growing up. And so... Yes, I would practice, practice, practice. I would train more and and train more in the gym when I always just seemed to get hurt.
00:44:59
Speaker
um However, there's always, like you brought out there is an underlying reason why. And when I talk about this um with athletes, it turns into this like vicious cycle component, right?
00:45:13
Speaker
Because our mindset of it is going to be limiting us the most. And so i don't believe that there's actually any injury prone kids out there or any injury prone athletes.
00:45:25
Speaker
There's just, I think, poor management of the motor system itself. Or they're following a really unintelligently designed program and it's not really addressing the root causes of things.
00:45:37
Speaker
And so you still you you run into this vicious cycle.
Trauma and Compensation in Athletics
00:45:40
Speaker
and We see this in n PT world all the time where we're really great at taking away pain. but we're now great at like fixing the solution or fixing the the root cause at a problem of finding a solution.
00:45:50
Speaker
And so we get athletes to feel better, but they're not necessarily changing their movement. And so we kind of run into the same issue later on down the road where once again, we may improve the tissue's tolerance to stress and load, but then we exceed that again later on down the road.
00:46:06
Speaker
And so it's like this waveform of trough and valleys. And so what what really ends up happening is it all comes down to trauma.
00:46:15
Speaker
Athletes are gonna experience, well, as humans, we're all gonna experience trauma one way or another. Physical trauma, like an injury, but then there's also the psychological, psychologically emotional, spiritual, sexual trauma. It's all gonna dump stress into the same pocket.
00:46:28
Speaker
And the brain perceives it the same way. it doesn't It can't distinguish between all of it. And this is where you lead lead into psychological dysfunction that we would then label as like something like PTSD, or dysfunction from a movement perspective,
00:46:43
Speaker
limping, altered movement patterns, dysregulation, that type of stuff, right? So look think about an ankle sprain. Okay. You've experienced many of those. Big ankles. Easy. Yeah. Well, we're we're fixing that, right?
00:46:54
Speaker
Just big calves, dainty ankles. You're spare foot training now. You look great in heels, though. ah so called just They're in closed heels.
00:47:05
Speaker
um So the trauma happens. We see dysfunction. from a physiological perspective with and maybe an ankle sprain. Let's say you sprain your right ankle, what are you gonna do? You're gonna take weight off of a temporary or you're gonna limp on the left side.
00:47:19
Speaker
That's normal. That's a normal dysfunctional pattern to experience. However, what happens if you don't learn to trust the ankle again? Stay on the left. You stay on the left, right?
00:47:29
Speaker
Or, coming back to what we just talked about, maybe you go through a rehab process where we do all the icing, we do all the stim, we make sure that the ankle feels better.
00:47:42
Speaker
we may even improve a little bit tissue tolerance with some banded exercises or whatnot to the the muscle, but then we never change the way that the foot and ankle is actually transmitting ground reaction forces. And so ankle feels better, but the compensation patterns still abide. Okay. And so now we run into a situation where we had trauma, we experienced some type of dysfunction, which should be temporary.
00:48:04
Speaker
The dysfunction then leads into compensation patterns with art which are now permanent. And the crazy part here is that these compensation patterns may be conscious. You may know about it them. and You may be aware of them, but they, a lot of times become subconscious.
00:48:17
Speaker
And this is where, you know, people end up seeing me is because I have to help unravel those unconscious compensation patterns that they're just not aware are happening. And we just have to bring them to the surface level and that's when we can start addressing them.
00:48:30
Speaker
If those compensation patterns are not addressed, and listen, i don't want people to believe that compensations are bad. Elite athletes are the best compensators out there. okay However, those compensation patterns are going to lead into accelerated tissue stress to the same structures over and over and over again, one way or another.
00:48:50
Speaker
That accelerated tissue stress is then going to lead into one of two outcomes. Alchem number one is create enough stress that to develop pathological tissue damage, meaning you hurt yourself. You blow a tendon, you tear a muscle.
00:49:02
Speaker
Or, and and quite honestly, that one happens more so in men. because we have egos a lot and we will put our head wall to spite our body. We see it with our high level operators in the military all the time.
00:49:17
Speaker
Makes my job very, very stressful and frustrating. Anyway. But keeps you going. But it does keep me going because they're a fun, fun group to work with. Or outcome number two is we create new compensation patterns to offset the old ones.
00:49:29
Speaker
And so we see this more so in women, primarily, because women are, generally speaking, way more in tune with their bodies, and they're smarter than us men. It's true.
00:49:41
Speaker
It's true. I concur. Yeah. But point being is that we keep going around and around and around this vicious cycle because we never address the original. Uh-huh. Yeah. Trauma. How do we get down to that back down to that little original trauma? What we talked about in the very beginning here is curiosity questions because they may be putting themselves into situations, movement patterns that are triggering something in their brain as a threat.
00:50:03
Speaker
And that's the major issue. two One question to continue with the curiosity. The trauma, is it a matter of its contact or non-contact?
00:50:15
Speaker
Does not matter. So how I see that contact, then my reaction, I shy away from that or i ah change how I play to avoid more trauma.
00:50:28
Speaker
And then non-contact,
00:50:32
Speaker
I would just anticipate like a fear to get back at all. Fear to get back at all, but then also that's the trickier one because when you have some type of a non-contact injury, you are damaging the proprioceptors inside the tissue of whatever joint is involved.
00:50:51
Speaker
And so what ends up happening now is we have, at a psychological level, your brain isn't receiving the same amount of information or same kind of information that it used to. Mm-hmm. And so that's where the fear and the hesitancy develops on a subconscious level. You don't trust that ankle again.
00:51:07
Speaker
Or it's a new ACL. It's somebody else's ACL. Maybe. It may be somebody else's ACL, but maybe they got better genetics than you do. And so...
00:51:19
Speaker
It could work out for better. We can rebuild him. We don't to spend a lot of money. And he can become a RoboCop. um But the point being is that when you when you damage those those joint receptors or the tissue receptors, the brain doesn't have a very clear image of what that joint in our body part is doing in space.
00:51:38
Speaker
yeah This is a concept called Fitts' Law. and so Spelling? F-I-T-T-S, which states that there's a discrepancy between speed and accuracy of movement. oh Okay, and so our brain has a has an image of every movement pattern that we do.
00:51:55
Speaker
When we get hurt, nine times out ten, it's because we're moving at speed close to or near our end ranges of motion.
Fitts' Law and Movement Accuracy
00:52:02
Speaker
And when the closer we are our end ranges of motion, the less accurate ah perception of our brain. Non-contact.
00:52:08
Speaker
Correct. that has of it so think So think of like, a great example is going back to the ACL. Think about somebody cutting on the football field, trying to change direction, knee comes on the inside of the toe box, which it should be able to do.
00:52:21
Speaker
However, maybe it hasn't been there before. It's not used to going in that range of motion. And at that high level speed, like brain can't perceive where it's at, can't control it. And so something tears. Okay.
00:52:34
Speaker
So this then leads into, well, how do we improve that accuracy? How do we improve the brain's image of the of the body part? And this is going to come down to how we help athletes get into these different positions.
00:52:48
Speaker
And yeah I can't, I'm going get a little bit a soapbox here. Because it's crazy, like with the ACLs, we are actually no better at reducing the injury rate incidence of them. prevalence of them than we were like 30 years ago.
00:53:01
Speaker
We're terrible at it. And there's a lot of factors that I think go into that. um i would I can speak from the rehabilitation side of things. I don't think that we are putting these athletes or giving them the opportunities to get in these positions that they're going experience on the field because of whatever research has told us is the correct way to train it.
00:53:22
Speaker
Or, okay because the knee goes into valgus, comes on the inside the knee, we can't ever go there again. How are we going to prevent that? Like, I will tell you this. I had people walk on the inside of their ankles with the knee coming in and load it that way.
00:53:39
Speaker
Walking on it low level stress. And we progressively overload that over time. But because now I'm giving them an opportunity to experience it. So if we go back to back to Fitz law, the way that we help an athlete develop a clearer picture in the brain is to slow things down.
00:53:53
Speaker
So our passive flexibility, our passive range of motion always going to dictate our active dynamic. Because whatever whatever flexibility reserve that we have is going to dictate how fast we can move into it.
00:54:09
Speaker
And so, yeah, it makes sense if our hip doesn't have enough internal rotation in the femur. And go into a position where we need it, like in cutting changing direction, Now we're experiencing a tear because we don't know we don't how to get in there. So how can we create more in internal rotation? We slow things down, time under tension.
00:54:25
Speaker
Take advantage of the viscoelastic properties of the tissues. ah Give the body an opportunity to to feel into the load into that range of motion, into that stress. It's way more comfortable that way. They can start to develop a clearer picture of what that range of motion is supposed to be like.
00:54:38
Speaker
Now we can strain strain in there. Now we can press if we overload it. And now we can put them back into an environment where they're going to be able to express it dynamically. that's that's really That's the key to working past a lot of these injuries, and that is always going to be involved in that return to play criteria as well.
00:54:58
Speaker
I love it. Yeah, the... manipulation of foot position, all these different things do work into my old bull program for a seasoned veterans to find those things and then aim to breathe into them under load. That was one of the big things I learned from you is how we can really stress and and improve tissue health is through load.
00:55:23
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And then with the the injured kids that I'm working with, Achilles, a partial tear ACL, then it's it's it's introducing these things. And then I used to be such a perfectionist within the the movement realm, but now allowing them to to step into step into a valgus, navicular drop. Mm-hmm.
00:55:46
Speaker
And then what's cool is the different, and also stole this from you, just manipulating the different foot ah positions with wedges just to get them in there and then bringing awareness to their breath in these positions. I'm not telling them it's wrong or right.
00:56:03
Speaker
If we have a barbell on their back for the younger guys, then I still switch into perfectionist, but when we're just moving and adding a free weight load to, to all these different things, and I still continue to learn getting these younger guys. Cause I mean, they're, they're at the base base of puberty.
00:56:20
Speaker
So they still got four years to grow into themselves, but still experience these injuries. So yeah, always learning, but then I like how we're framing this. Yeah.
00:56:32
Speaker
yeah The, the passive range of motion helps dictate the active dynamic. Yeah. you know, it's it's interesting. you keep speaking about like these younger kids. Ultimately, and you know this, they need to develop a base level of strength first.
00:56:46
Speaker
Yes. Okay. that But that, and exactly, that's going to develop the mental fortitude and the robustness there as well and breed confidence into everything else that they do. Once they have a base level of strength,
00:56:59
Speaker
we can still help them improve their movement capacity, movement robustness, mobility, which is really just movement options, by just having them explore different ranges of motion. What do kids like to do? They're freaking competitive if they're playing the sport, hopefully, at least a little bit.
00:57:13
Speaker
Some, maybe. That's a bullet point we'll get to here. Also, they like to play. right so and it that's just getting creative as a coach and helping them get into these different ranges of motion it's all about the way that you frame it right so you can put them into those weird postures those weird positions as part of warm-ups as part of cool downs and that's at least giving them at least at that young age an ability to have exposure to it and start to developing stress in there while they're doing the meat and potatoes of the program and developing that robust level of strength and you know it's one of those things too where i think
00:57:46
Speaker
A lot of people dictate the success of strength conditioning program by failure, like moving towards failure, or we are using strength metrics as the goal.
Strength Misconceptions and Performance
00:58:02
Speaker
This is coming from somebody who was told as a high school lineman, I need to squat 315 out of 180 pounds to start in the defensive line, my high school football team. I was fast as super agile. That was my strength.
00:58:14
Speaker
That wasn't serving me. but I had hit the number. So I looked like a dog razor blades just to get it up. I've seen you squat. Talk about like, then rewind it 15 years.
00:58:27
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was absolutely terrible. Um, And so I think we're using some of those wrong metrics there. And this is where like my personal belief is like, we talk about strength and conditioning, but it's really should be the movement, strength and conditioning field.
00:58:40
Speaker
And that movements, that's very, very intentional. It should come first before the strength and conditioning. Let's help these athletes move well. ah Because the way I dictate success of a program,
00:58:52
Speaker
is through succeeding, right? Because we are progressively overloading them. Progress, progress, right? Progressively overloading them. It's just that 1% better everyday piece.
00:59:03
Speaker
um And because ultimately, you know, we come back to the nervous system stuff that we were talking about earlier. the nervous system will will shut you down. And there's a discrepancy here.
00:59:14
Speaker
Like, We know that like the cardiovascular system is always in the develop faster than the body will. than The body can adapt. so This is where you get people that can do something from a cardio output so much better, and their body starts breaking down over time. right because think They can push themselves past their limits.
00:59:30
Speaker
Same thing when it comes to training and everything and returning to play from injury. The body has its own... tricks. Obviously, the body is always going to try to adapt. That comes back to the whole entire like adapt or die response, but it can last for so long.
00:59:45
Speaker
And eventually, you reach a point where the nervous system has had enough, and it will shut you down. One way or another, it'll start to limit output. It'll start to make you feel more immobile. It'll tighten you up.
00:59:57
Speaker
But here, what's human nature? what do we think What do you think we do in that moment? We freaking double down. We push it. I'm not working hard enough. Hard enough. And so now get into a situation where we are adding more volume and then maybe we're adding more intensity to the volume and we can't figure out why we keep getting hurt. Coming back around to our injury proneness, right?
01:00:19
Speaker
We're doing all the things right. We're working hard in the gym, but maybe we're not moving effectively or efficiently. And those neural inputs that we' that we're now receiving, our body's super smart. It's trying to shut us down for a reason.
01:00:34
Speaker
Because it can't keep up with it. right So what do we do at that point? We've got to change the input up. yeah changed the body We've got to change the way the body is actually experiencing that load, the way they it's experiencing that stress.
01:00:48
Speaker
Then we change that by giving the body more options to work with. I like it. That's the key. So how have you communicated that to the type AA Olympian?
01:01:00
Speaker
Well, everything they did got them there. They are right until they're not. And i I'm going to I'm going to explain this with a story. Please. OK, so when I got into the shooting sports.
01:01:14
Speaker
They were not perceived as athletes. by even the Olympic Committee. Okay? So they never received like the same level of care and attention and everything like that. And so I knew that I can make a change there.
01:01:29
Speaker
And shooting is very much a technical-based sport. Right. lot of hand-eye coordination, a lot of accuracy. Margin for air. Is very, very small.
01:01:42
Speaker
We're talking like in the world of skeet shooting with the like the targets moving crossing patterns. You have to get both of them under 1.7 seconds. There's not a lot of room there at all for. So the more that we can make their movement patterns efficient, the more accurate they're going to be.
01:01:54
Speaker
In the shooting world, though, and tying this back into like this progressive overload piece, their only means of getting better was shooting more. Mm-hmm. more volume, more lead downrange.
01:02:09
Speaker
From a shotgun standpoint, more blast to the shoulder. And they would keep going, going, going until they hit a plateau. okay What did they do when they hit the plateau? Get frustrated, want more. Want more.
01:02:22
Speaker
Or they would reach a certain level of success and couldn't get any better. Yeah. Okay. And so... their Their genetic potential. Their genetic potential or podium potential... Podium potential....is now either going to stall out or when they were once great, now they can't replicate.
01:02:41
Speaker
And so when I got into the shooting sports and met Vinny, who's our now four-time Golden Nelson Skeet, say he's pretty successful athlete, okay? He was at a point in his career where he'd already been to four Olympics, okay? So he did um Beijing in eight, London in 2012, golds in both of those.
01:03:06
Speaker
Did not perform as well in 2016 due to a myriad of external influences, got in his own head, right? And so I met him in 2017.
01:03:19
Speaker
In that moment, he was at a very pivotal point in his career where shoulder hurt, back hurt. He was in the military before a body was breaking down. And we reached a point now where he's coming off a loss.
01:03:32
Speaker
Oh, yeah. So trying to rebuild that. And he's got, listen, he's got the mental fortitude to it. However, we got him to the point where we used.
01:03:44
Speaker
Bear with me here. I used my hands-on skills. to help his shoulder and help his back feel better. What ended up happening is nobody had ever been able to essentially use their hands get to get into the point where he felt that good.
01:03:57
Speaker
And so there was like that first little piece of buy-in.
01:04:01
Speaker
The second piece was going into education. and this And this is, I think this is across the board. Whenever the brain has more education and understanding about something, at the pain signals decrease because it it can conceptualize it. There's not as much of a fear or threat response in there.
01:04:16
Speaker
And so I started having him do just little body weight movements and he started to notice changes. Another piece of buy-in, more education. Okay, now we've got to move into more of the strength and conditioning because most of these shooting athletes weren't training at all or doing anything.
01:04:32
Speaker
it's It's a beer league type of sport where they can, and some people, some of these athletes do actually still, I think they shoot better hungover, which, you know, teach his own.
01:04:42
Speaker
But anyway, you could get away with it. Not saying that's performance enhancing by any means. um However, education he came in in the strength conditioning piece, and he started to see his capacity improve.
01:04:53
Speaker
So now he found that he can go out to the range, and he could do more with less. He doesn't need to shoot 300, 400 rounds. Listen, I've been around athletes, and this is an old Italian model, where they were having these guys, girls, shooting 500 rounds a day.
01:05:11
Speaker
When I say rounds, shotgun blasts, not ah there's a round of 25 targets, but um shooting, let's say 500 shells a day to the point where their shoulders were bleeding just because of improving capacity that by that means.
01:05:26
Speaker
But there no quality there's no quality there. wasn't actually making them any better. And then the old school model, as far as Exercise is concerned is like, go for a run. And so sure. Are you getting some cardiovascular? about yeah cardio Cardio benefits.
01:05:40
Speaker
Awesome. But people take that for granted where running is actually a very complex activity and there's a impact load, like eight to 10 times your body weight through the body. And so what ended up happening is they're just developing way more stress, too much stress, too much stress, too much stress.
01:05:53
Speaker
And so we go back to Vinny's case. Now you can do more with less because his body was had more capacity because we were building it in the gym. Mm-hmm. joints, muscles, ligaments, tendons are all getting stronger. And the reason why I'm telling you this is because it's like a stepwise process. It's like, let me let me establish this buy-in by making me feel a little bit better, but then let's layer that in with education.
01:06:13
Speaker
Baby steps. If I were to say, we got to go do do some like Turkish get-ups, we're going to do all these end range extension holes for the shoulder, he would have been gone. There's no way.
01:06:24
Speaker
because it much too soon. right It may have been the right thing to do, but it wasn't going to establish a long-term connection and mind with him. And so it was these little baby steps along the way that developed more trust, more confidence, more trust, more confidence.
01:06:38
Speaker
And got to the point where, and this is what, we're talking five, six, eight years now at this point, yeah where he went from little bit of hands-on work, little bit of body weight stuff away from shooting, to the point where transitioned to some body weight stuff and warmups with shooting,
01:06:54
Speaker
to the point then where you transitioned into some weight training away from shooting,
Trust and Progression in Training
01:06:58
Speaker
still got the body stuff around shooting, body weight stuff. Then we transitioned into, okay, now we are weight training in in in coordination with our shooting practices, but not around competition.
01:07:09
Speaker
And then we went into, okay, now we can do some weight training leading up to competition. And then we went into, okay, now his body freaking craves it. And now he's weight training all the way through it. Now, is it is it programmed in a way where it's, we're managing the stress load for it and we're periodizing it for competition? Absolutely.
01:07:26
Speaker
However, it was those little steps along the way over an eight-year time span that got him to where he wanted to go. And now we develop such a great friendship over it where we talked about boundaries earlier.
01:07:39
Speaker
We have boundaries that are established, you know, when we're in competition mode and whatnot like that. But we can go out and have a beer yeah on the weekend. it's totally cool because we agreed upon that. But it but it was those it was those little small steps along the way that led into this big overarching compounding success with him.
01:07:57
Speaker
And so to come back to answering the question, it is it's really not about what you say, but how you're delivering it and what you're doing from an action standpoint along the way of being mindful with the level of input that you're giving them in any one point in time.
01:08:13
Speaker
Because I could have let my ego get in the way there. I could have let the cockiness get in the way. Sure, I know what I'm doing. You didn't experience this before. I know this is going to be good for you, but that would have turned him off. And that would have been his fault for not listening exactly Exactly.
01:08:29
Speaker
Which is a trap that think a lot of coaches that we all fall into. um and How do you know when someone's really ready to return to full speed?
01:08:43
Speaker
Well, we can look at metrics. Okay, so there is, once again, if you keep bringing this back to the biocycle social piece, there are, you know, different strength curve ratios that we've got for an ACL like quad and hamstring. It's all useful.
01:08:56
Speaker
Absolutely. There's different tests and measures that we can do from an agility standpoint, with hops and skips and their ability to handle load. We can look at strength components in different lifts. Absolutely. That all plays a role into this too.
01:09:08
Speaker
But then once again, Confidence. How do we know that they are ready to return to play from a confidence standpoint? How do we even test that? That's the kicker, right?
01:09:19
Speaker
And so I know physiologically that they're going to be at the right point in time to return to play based off of those those set standard physiological healing parameters. We know that can accelerate that a little bit too with some chemical enhancements that are also safe.
01:09:33
Speaker
um Nutritionally, they're they're on on point with it all. But then we could also look at different measures from a psychological standpoint, the Tampa Kinesiophobia Scale. There's different questionnaires you can give them that will give you an idea of how confident they are in their body moving forward.
01:09:52
Speaker
But then the old tried and true conversation, you know that you can talk to somebody and you can gauge um whether or not that they are at a place where they can return to play and you can see it on their face.
01:10:05
Speaker
typically. And then that's where it comes down to a conversation of like, once again, questions, curiosity, like how ready do we think we are?
01:10:13
Speaker
What is your confidence level? Give me a percentage of being able to get back out onto the field. Okay. All these factors need to be brought into consideration for that. because that's going to give you then the whole entire picture.
01:10:25
Speaker
Otherwise, like we could say, Hey, you're, you're testing out all these physiological measures, but yeah, I don't know if we're ready yet. Yeah. And then the, like, athletes will lie to you.
01:10:38
Speaker
ah Yes. So establishing the the deeper you have within that relationship, you can tell if they truly are feeling that way. They truly are confident versus just, I want it so bad. And then but tragedy potential could strike.
01:10:54
Speaker
And I think that that's, you know, the depth of relationship that you have with that person, the more apt they're going to be to disclose that type of information to you, especially if they, if they trust you, if they don't, that's where going to lies come out.
01:11:10
Speaker
Yeah. Even if they're lying to themselves, they still trust you and you'll be able to, to, to read it. Well, I mean, your, your approach to thinking about injury recovery and including the human experience, I It's not normal for a DPT. That's why we're friends.
01:11:29
Speaker
So, I mean, take his take us back quick to that, like your entry-level leadership moment in physical therapy when you realized that there was more to the the test, more to what you should have thought worked but didn't.
01:11:49
Speaker
Well, I'm not your standard PT. I'm also not your standard thinker either. And I say that because there's always been something about me that never wanted to conform and always wanted to go against the grain.
01:12:05
Speaker
And for better or worse, it has led me to where I'm at right now because um i don't think that not necessarily harnessed it well in the beginning stages.
01:12:18
Speaker
because where I'm curious now but was just kind of downright disrespectful probably early on in the way that I questioned things. It was rude, but we've developed and we've improved that over time.
01:12:32
Speaker
ah But it's it's my ability to question the standards and question the norms that has really allowed me to develop into this philosophy that I have now, my ability to connect um with the athletes. Because i I started my career for the first couple of years working in a big box physical therapy clinic, seeing four people an hour.
01:12:53
Speaker
And like the burnout of that is just ridiculous, right? for me personally, like I got the department's like, who ended the day and I haven't taken a breath all day. And it's like, you're dealing with everybody's emotions.
Individualized Care in Physical Therapy
01:13:06
Speaker
And it ultimately came down to the point where, and I vividly remember this too, where in those scenarios, in those environments, the hands-on skills of the PT are preferred and prioritized.
01:13:18
Speaker
And so you would do an evaluation, And you would then do the mobilizations, manipulations, and dry needling, the soft tissue work on the person on the table. And this is the ass backwards part is what did we do after that?
01:13:33
Speaker
We sent them to like a high school tech to do the movement stuff. Oh, yeah. And I just got to the point where I was like, why is nobody getting better?
01:13:43
Speaker
They're feeling better on the table, but then it's like this, there's it's reoccurring. They're still coming back. Still and nothing's changing. Nothing's changing permanently anyway. And that's where I first had the realization. I'm like, ah, that's the missing link. And I knew that all the time.
01:13:58
Speaker
But then when you try to advocate for yourself in that type of environment, never going to go anywhere. Right. Because your role. Yes. And you're justifying to insurance companies and it's a whole, it's a whole thing.
01:14:10
Speaker
And so eventually what ended up happening there is i went rogue.
01:14:16
Speaker
I had no game plan. I just had an idea. i was like, I know that I can't do this. So I'm going to go just throw a table in the back of a CrossFit gym and see what happens.
01:14:28
Speaker
Because I knew that i can I can do better giving the athletes or giving my clients, my patients at that time, more time, one-on-one time. And I saw something that was different there. And I opened up opened up that door to be able to to really to solve the one problem, which was the time component.
01:14:49
Speaker
Now I had the requisite time to be able to work with the athletes. Now I can actually develop the connection with them. And really, because how much can you develop with them? And four people an hour, maybe, maybe, maybe maybe we got 15, 20 minutes with them at most.
01:15:03
Speaker
There's no way you can establish a connection. It's all surface level stuff. And like, so I had tell me about your day. Like, how's it going? What's your pain level? All right, let's get to work. There's no learning about the athlete. And so that allowed me to be able to have the time with them. And listen, my my to this day, my evaluations are an hour and a half to two hours long.
01:15:21
Speaker
Because the majority of that, worth it's spent talking. And then we're going to watch you move, and then we're gonna evaluate, and then we're going to put the game plan together. But it's all coming back to establishing that level of connection first.
01:15:31
Speaker
That's the most important. Which then allows for the release for a lot what's binding and potentially causing the pain. It's all pent-up energy. It's all energy.
01:15:43
Speaker
And a lot of times it is coming down to how they're experiencing it in every other aspect their life. And it's usually not about the nuts and bolts of the of the injury itself.
Energy, Experience, and Recovery
01:15:52
Speaker
No. And it brings us back to the nervous system and biopsychosocial.
01:15:58
Speaker
Yeah. It's all connected.
Guest's Social Media Impact
01:16:00
Speaker
It really is. Well, dude, I appreciate you. And one of the best follows out there on social because you're all over the world yeah helping people.
01:16:10
Speaker
ah Where can our listeners continue to follow your growth and journey as a practitioner and self leader in this world? Well, I am all over the Instagrams, so you can follow me at Rooted in Movement. It's R-O-O-T-E-D-I-N, and then the acronym, which I thought i was really clever with, MVMNT, no Stands for Movement, Vitality, Mindset, Nutrition, and Training. Try to be holistic, try to be very, very comprehensive in the way that I look at things, and so but I throw that into the brand. But Instagram is where you're going to see all my my travels. I post a lot of different videos on there, movements, and circuits and how you can rehab through different painful experiences in the body. um And then if you want to get in contact with me, Matthew at RootedMovement.com. Happy to answer any questions there too.
01:16:57
Speaker
Or slide into the DMs. Very good. Easy there.
Podcast Wrap-Up
01:17:00
Speaker
All right. Well, welcome back to Drip. Yes. And appreciate you coming out here. Always pleasure there. Yeah. I know.
01:17:09
Speaker
We can get you going for old time's sake. For old time's sake. Old tune-up. Old tune-up once every couple years. Contact sports, baby. You feel it forever. All right. Thank you for joining us for another episode.
01:17:21
Speaker
Bye. Take care. Awesome. See you.