Transcript
Speaker: The NHL does it all the time, National Hockey League. They just name the best young player captain. And I always think it's such a disservice to these young guys when suddenly somebody says, um Chicago just did it. And you take this guy who's 22 or 23 years old and say, okay, you're now the captain. And basically, you're now responsible for...
Speaker: 30-year-old men who have children and you're going to try to lead them. And I think it's a, I used to always look at it in the NHL and think, wow, why don't they just take the guy who's the best leader and make him the captain as opposed to trying to give this reward to the best player?
Speaker: Because you're not really rewarding your best player. You're actually burdening. In my mind, you're burdening your best player. You're saying to somebody, I'm going to give you a ah load you can't handle and I know you won't be able to handle it, but...
Speaker: it's gonna make you feel good or look good or you'll get to wear the C on your jersey. Welcome to the Captains and Coaches podcast where explore the art and science of leadership through the lens of athletics and beyond.
Speaker: I'm your host, Tex McQuilkin, and today I travel up to Boston, Massachusetts to sit down in person with legend Mike McQuilkin. Boyle. Mike opened up his facility in 1996 and since then has trained thousands of athletes and been named one of the top gyms in America. He spent 25 years as a strength coach for Boston University men's hockey team. He's trained the Boston Bruins, the 2013 champion Red Sox, two USA women's Olympic hockey teams, lacrosse star Charlotte North and many many more and developed more coaches.
Speaker: he's created the certified functional strength coach certification he's taught in over 20 countries and continues to be a leader in our strength conditioning field today today we get the opportunity to talk about culture consequence and captaincy why leaders must risk being unpopular and why strength coaches are the true culture creators for teams captains coaches parents This one is for you. If you enjoy this episode and like the topics we're discussing, encourage you to learn more, deep dive at captivesandcoaches.com and click the education tab at the top. I got two really fun courses. One, focusing on the individual development, taking them where they can't take themselves, taking the
Speaker: non-compliant kid and turning them into a captain. Next one is funishment, how we can reframe discipline in practice and really bring our team together. Lots of fun one, but I'm really excited for this episode. With that, let's hand it off to Coach Boyle who helps us raise the game. Ready, ready, and beret.
Speaker: State of an individual like your personal training and then the difference that your mindset goes to the team when leading that
Speaker: I mean, i think it's really, really different. I think private sector is really different from this sort of for-profit world. And even coaching, as I've said to you, I've done the plays lacrosse, and I have a bunch of his teammates that come in, and I've told them sometimes, I treat you differently because you're voluntarily here.
Speaker: yeah I think in a college setting, And maybe to a fault, you have a bit of a captive audience so you can approach it differently in terms of the demands that you're going to make. And you've got kids, again, and in my collegiate experience, mostly kids that were scholarship kids. So you're in a situation where you've, you know, you've got a guy who has, I think, i the school has invested in them.
Speaker: And I think they have a responsibility to give you a certain level back. So I think you can be I would say more straightforward. you can You can call kids out. You can punish kids. I'm not, honestly, in the collegiate setting, I'm not anti-punishment. I think sometimes we may have gotten too too touchy-feely where there's no consequence. I like consequence. I like consequence for being late. I like consequence for not being whatever properly ready, not being properly dressed. I think there has to be some consequence built in there for these guys to... Because I think that's how we've i mean we've seen... Incidences now where they're trying to develop, say, discipline or mental toughness with a singular type of workout. And I think you develop that discipline and that mental toughness over the course of time by creating a culture and by having expectations and saying... It was like with our guys...
Speaker: who If you were late, you rode 20 miles on the airdyne. That's what you did if you were late. I would say in a five-year period, I think two people were late.
Speaker: Because they didn't like it. It wasn't fun. It was an hour. It was a really shitty hour of time on that bike. And you thought, I'm going to be on time. But we established an on-time culture where everybody knew no one was looking at it and thinking oh i can you know um' i'm going to sneak in under the wire people were generally five minutes early and they were ready to go because they knew there was a consequence so i think you get here private sector you don't have that you don't have the the same hammer you don't have a head coach you don't have playing time you don't there's a lot of things that you're missing in terms of kind of levers that you can pull and so here it has to be because
Speaker: Somebody really does want to be here. they're there Or, and unfortunately, in this setting, sometimes it's their parents that want them to be here, and that's where the conflict is. There's a really big difference, a massive difference, I think.
Speaker: Yeah. And ah I love discipline and aim to teach it and hand it off tools to team captains so they can administer the discipline to then create the culture.
Speaker: So sometimes when the the exercise, the punishment, doesn't fit the crime or... It's not necessarily even but it's fair. Like this is your third time you forgot your shorts. We're wearing blue shorts today. You brought black. This is the third time we need to increase it versus a player's first time making this that maybe they don't have the hour on the bike.
Speaker: They got 10, 15 minutes on the bike, 15 miles versus 20, something like that. So then in, I mean the opportunity where your son's a team captain, What are some of the the challenges relayed to you that you're then guiding him to be a leader and create the culture outside of the head coach?
Speaker: The biggest thing is, we talk about this all time, you don't get any practice really at being a captain. Generally speaking, you're thrust into a role for which you are probably extremely unprepared and you suddenly now have to become, you're a peer leader.
Speaker: That's really what a captain is when you think about it and Suddenly as a peer leader, you've got to be able to look at how do i how do I wear this leadership role? One of the things I did, I i would send my son stuff from guys like you.
Speaker: And one of the things that I sent was something about, they had said it was in September, early September, but it was connection first. I said, you got to connect first. You got to get to know all these freshmen. They got to know you. You got to know them. They got to know your name. They're not just going to respect you because somebody said you're the captain, but if you know what high school they're from and you know what position they play and you even know the late Kurt Hester know if you ever had crossed paths with Kurt but I loved Kurt and in his book Rants of his Strength and Conditioning Madman he talked about
Speaker: even knowing who the most important person was in their life, knowing with these kids, do they have two parents? Were they raised by a grandparent? Are their parents divorced? What is their life circumstance? And then i think you can start to become an effective leader when you've done the background work. I know the years I worked with the Red Sox for two years.
Speaker: And the first thing I did the first year I went to spring training was I read the media guide. I read the media guide every morning during spring training so that I could learn about the players and figure out, okay, who went to college, who didn't go to college, who who signed right out of high school, who's married, who has kids. Because in the at the professional level,
Speaker: you've got a really broad range of people in terms of, particularly in baseball. In baseball you can have a broad range of cultures. You can have guys from Latin America, you can have Japanese guys, you can have Southern American guys, you can have even a different, African American guys are different because they're not, we had some African American guys who
Speaker: were said things like, well, I don't speak Spanish, but we tend to get all lumped in together into sort of one color group, which I thought was really interesting. There's just a lot of stuff that goes on in professional sports that, again, doesn't really go on in college sports.
Speaker: And so i think every level has its challenges, but you can meet the challenges, I think, from a a homework standpoint.
Speaker: if If you do the work and you get to know, okay, these are the people that I'm dealing with, I think you'll be a better leader. now Okay, that's me as a boss here. i think it's all the same. You know, we're talking about captains or coaches or running a business, but in all of those situations,
Speaker: the more information you have about people and the more you really know them, the better you're going to be able to lead them, I think. Yeah. And that's why I love sports is this controlled environment. We get the opportunity to get reps at conflict, at leadership, at calling each other out and still being respectful and teammates at the end of the day before we go into the real world where there are true consequences outside of an hour on an Airdyne bike.
Speaker: And that's why it's so valuable. That's why even Being on a team and being, if you look at being on a team or being a team captain, those are things that from a resume standpoint have a lot of power because people that are out in the business world know that, okay, this person has been in these conflict resolution type situations where they've had to, again, be a a peer leader. And then in the, or and even as a captain, you're a peer leader and you're a liaison because now you're you're somewhere in between the players and the coaches where you're going to meet with the coaches. So these are all They're all really great leadership skills that you wish everybody could get. And you wish, and this is what you're doing in terms of getting reps, but you wish that kids could get reps at this stuff before they're captain. One of the things when I was at Boston University, used to talk all time and think, it's so hard to select the captain because you might, a lot of times, captain would be more of a popularity contest. And you would look at it and think,
Speaker: hey, this is the guy that should be captain, but he might not get elected. And you were kind of hoping, much like the political system, are you're hoping that the election goes your way, you're hoping that the election gives you the result that you want.
Speaker: But in any case, I've seen some guys who I thought were gonna be good leaders be bad leaders. And i used to tell my guys all time, and you'd probably say the same thing, but to be a good leader, you have to be willing to risk being unpopular.
Speaker: And that's, I think, a big thing for a lot of guys is they don't like that situation where they're suddenly think, wow, I got to be a the bad guy here to some degree because now I am responsible for the implementation of this culture.
Speaker: And I'm going to be responsible for letting a lot of sometimes my friends and my good friends know that they are not meeting the standard. So it can be really difficult. Yeah.
Speaker: And that's the aim to help them understand. I'll quote Nick Saban here, if you want to be liked, go sell ice cream. But if you want to be a leader, you still have to have those conversations.
Speaker: And your real friends within your team, they're going to understand that they were in the wrong in that, and that you were right to call them out. And we've become closer together. So the risk is beneficial to the team.
Speaker: The risk, I mean, is trying to find out who your real friends are when you're saying these things. So ultimately, it's worth that gamble. And it is hard. so you're getting this rep that i can do challenging things which then pays off in sport because you're gonna have to take risks when you have the ball and yeah so i i feel strongly about those social emotional risks that kids can take to become better more confident athletes and it does translate to the field and life off of it yeah no question i think and that's but what you do find unfortunately is that
Speaker: Talent doesn't always give you those skills.
Speaker: And in some cases, it may withhold those skills from you. Because i think one of the things that that we saw a lot of was when you get guys who've always been the best, they don't tend to be really good leaders because they haven't been led and they haven't they themselves haven't been called out and they haven't failed very much. And so I think that's another reason why sometimes being a captain can be difficult when the The NHL does it all the time, National Hockey League.
Speaker: They just name the best young player captain. And I always think it's such a disservice to these young guys when suddenly somebody says... um Chicago just did it. And you take this guy who's 22 or 23 years old and say, okay, you're now the captain and basically you're now responsible for 30 year old men who have children and you're gonna try to lead them. And I think it's a, I used to always look at it in the NHL and think, wow, why don't they just take the guy who's the best leader and make him the captain as opposed to trying to give this reward to the best player.
Speaker: because you're not really rewarding your best player. You're actually burdening. In my mind, you're burdening your best player. You're saying to somebody, I'm going to give you a ah load you can't handle, and I know you won't be able to handle it, but it's going to make you feel good or look good or you'll get to wear the C on your jersey, whatever it is. But ah it's not. I don't think it's an effective way from a management standpoint.
Speaker: And that, I mean, is that common practice? i never In the National Hockey League, it is very common practice. Yes, it is common practice to name. ah a young superstar as captain early in their career. Yes, there's numerous instances of that occurring. And then from your experience, how does that affect the the training, the locker room?
Speaker: Does the leader still lead or the guys stay quiet and wait for that captain? I think leaders still lead. I think in some ways it becomes, you know, there are assistant captains or alternate captains. And I think those a lot of times will tend to be older guys who will really do the The leadership for the young guy is very much symbolic and very much, as I said, a reward for maybe a a big contract.
Speaker: But the the real leading probably will be done by somebody else. And or you'll really mentally burden a young guy unnecessarily, which I think is is the bigger problem. I would rather see somebody grow into that role than to be thrust into that role. Because again, particularly in professional sports, the range in professional sports, if you come in as an 18 or 19 year old, can be really significant. You might be coming from a situation where you lived in a dorm and had a roommate, and suddenly you're around grown men who have
Speaker: children in school and your your worlds are not the slightest bit parallel. Yeah. And I think that can be really difficult because when you talk about the kind of walk a mile in my shoes idea, there's no way that this kid could ever have walked a mile in that guy's shoes because in a lot of cases, this is a guy who's never been married, maybe never even had a ah serious relationship, much less had children and has to worry about things like schools and trades because again the professional sports world changes really drastically when you have children because suddenly now a trade means taking your kids out of a school system and moving them to a different part of the country or potentially even you know with the and nhl to a different country there's just a lot to it and
Speaker: And I think, obviously, a younger guy, is just he's lacking in experience. I think at the college level, I guess, everybody usually gets to be a senior, a captain when they're a senior. Some guys will get to be a captain when they're a junior.
Speaker: But you will have all people of relatively equal parallel experience levels. But I think in the pro sports, you don't see that. That's interesting.
Speaker: Yeah, I can still see the same problem at high school level where you're the quarterback, you're to be the captain. and they don't have the skill set or they they're more of an introvert, so then their performance takes a dive and they don't have those tools to step up.
Speaker: And so within, i mean, sticking with the world of professional sports and leadership in the locker room, I feel it's more player-led than coach-led. Is that where your observations see the coach step in to really show them how to lead? Or is it more X's and No, I think it's more, I would say in my experience, it's definitely more player-led than coach-led. The coaches, at least in my experience in professional sports, the coaches have been very hands-off. The experience that I've had is a lot of coaches think that I don't want to get to know these guys too well because they're very commoditized and they're they're going to come and go and if I really end up liking this guy I don't have any guarantees at least in college or in now college is very different too but in the old days of college you kind of knew you were gonna have a relationship with this person for four years and You were committed to that relationship and they were committed to that relationship now that is with this whole
Speaker: transfer portal thing, that's another area where you think about leadership and and you get, you realize it's really, really hard when these kids have been told now at 18 years old or 19 years old that it's, hey, this is all about the money.
Speaker: And it it's just how much money am I going to get? What's my NIL take going to be? here And that's why I think sports like lacrosse are great because NIL hasn't, it probably is touching lacrosse now a little bit, but not like it has in other sports. And you're not seeing kids who are going to leave Princeton or leave Cornell because suddenly someone's offering them a little more NIL money. I think there's a little more purity to lacrosse than there maybe is in a lot of other sports at the Division one level. But I think now basketball, football, it's straight up pay to play and you just poach the best players from the the next team.
Speaker: And so everything is just about poaching down a level. Yeah. I poach you, you poach me, he poaches the next guy. And if you're at the bottom of the food chain, you're in trouble.
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, it's... I feel there's still some value and sanctity at the strength coach level at those schools because they get these kids and they care for as long as they can and hope that they instill lessons that wherever that kid goes, they're going to hold on to.
Speaker: Yes, but I've talked to a lot of strength coaches who said, though, it's much more difficult now because you can have... You can have 25 freshmen and 25 transfers, so you can suddenly have literally half of your roster be new. I've talked to some guys who said, wow, i've really I've really had to simplify what we do in the weight room because I have so many new players every year. And I don't know a lot of times if I'm going to have this guy longer than a season. And the hard part is the better job you do with him, the higher the probability is that he leaves. Yeah.
Speaker: Which is obviously I wouldn't say it's it's demotivating, but it makes the job difficult where if you come in and I think, wow, Texas got great potential.
Speaker: But he if we really go after him and ramp him up really, really quick, he's going to be a one and done guy for us and he's going to go to another school. I think that that's a terrible situation to have to be in as a coach. I know for me, I just i would just coach you and be like, hey, what we're going to do the best we can. And if you're gone after a year, then you're gone after a year. But I know it can be really difficult when guys are looking at this. And even thinking about how much time do I want to invest. if i know If I look at you and think, wow, this guy should be at the next level up from us, then I know that probably at the end of 16 weeks, we're going to
Speaker: shake hands and hopefully part friends and you're going to move on to someplace else. And I think that makes that makes for really difficult leadership situations because now the athlete has all the leverage, particularly and even in—you have more leverage in pro sports because guy at least theoretically has a contract, even though a lot of the players don't honor the contracts and decide to hold out. But at least you have some—you might be able to look at a guy and think, OK, we're going to have this guy for X number of years.
Speaker: And the pro teams tend to, I guess it depends on sport, but they they trade less, yeah generally speaking. Like you look in the NFL, trades in the NFL are really rare. Teams don't tend to to trade players regularly, whereas and NBA will trade more in the offseason, it seems like.
Speaker: But and NHL will be is very active at the end of the season. There's a lot of the you know rental players and trade deadline players. So I think yeah everybody's everybody's situation can be a little bit different. But it it makes...
Speaker: I think it makes team dynamic just in general. And leadership obviously plays into that, but it makes it really difficult. So a lot of your high school athletes that go through the program here and go on to play in college, are they coming back in the offseason?
Speaker: We're getting more and more, which is really good. a Because kids start to they start to see that when they get to college, they are... infinitely better prepared than their peers. And the good thing is more schools, even like at the Division III level, have good strength coaches and they recognize kids coming in who have good habits and good technique and they will tend to not reward but applaud those kids and say, hey, this is great.
Speaker: kind of you know Where did you learn this? And when the kids get reinforced that, oh, I went to Mike Boyle's strength conditioning and They taught me the right way and their strength coach kind of applauds that. That I think leads the kid back here more. So we have more college kids than we've ever had. That's great. But the crazy part is we have more middle school kids than we've ever We actually have a situation where we won't take kids prior to 11 and we turn quite a few kids away. We have parents. i mean, we have parents who will lie about a 10-year-old to try to get them in when we tell them that it's
Speaker: 11 and this really I mean beyond kind of birth certificates. Yeah, like you would do in ah in a league literally it's really hard but That there's much more awareness of strength and conditioning Than there has ever been which is great for us. It's obviously it's a it's a great I Won't even call it a business problem. I don't know it what it how you describe it But it's a it's a great business phenomenon that people are more and more aware that this is something that has value and that their kids should be doing it.
Speaker: yeah And now for us, it's sort of trying to set that bottom cutoff, which for us is 11. Like, okay. Yeah. And talk to me about about those section sessions. Are they periodized planned or does it show up? We've got this many kids, we're going this creative. Is it loose template?
Speaker: It's really periodized planned. It's the opposite of loose template. It's very, very tight, very, very rigid. not at all play-based, which is one of the reasons I don't want kids under 11. I want kids who... I always think middle school is a good time for a kid because it's about the time where kids start getting cut. It's about the time where suddenly sports begin to change a little bit in terms of it's not... There's less of the every child a winner and everybody gets to play the same amount and there's more of okay, well, this is going to be a merit-based system and we're the best players are going to play and we're going to start playing with the intention of winning and we're going to be looking at win-loss records as a measure of how good our team is. And now kids realize that I think it's a time when a kid can start to look at this and think, this is part of the commitment.
Speaker: yeah Part of the commitment is is becoming... a Better athlete becoming a little bit bigger a little bit stronger a little bit faster So it's a it's the right time in my mind developmentally i always say the expression I say all the time is don't want to be in the childhood stealing business I don't want to be here with six and seven and eight and nine year old kids Ruining their childhood when they should be they should be riding a bike with their friends or they should be playing in a park somewhere and instead they're here lining up and doing drills and lifting weights. So we we just kind of have set our our floor at 11.
Speaker: No, it makes complete sense. Yeah, i I like that middle school age and introducing weight training to it because there's a moment with that group where having fun is playing grab ass with your buddies and then it starts to switch being really good at something.
Speaker: And we can get really good at lifting weights, coordinating and getting faster by introducing training and start to make that connection between hard work and progress. Exactly.
Speaker: that And what we always say too is that I tell everybody, When people ask, when should I get my kid in? I'm like, when he's 11. Because year one is always year one. If you just don't start lifting weights until you're a senior in high school, it's year one, and you're going to have to learn. And depending on the system that you're in, you're going have to learn to squat, and you're gonna maybe going to learn to hang clean, and you're going to learn to bench press, going learn to do a chin up.
Speaker: I'd much rather teach you that at 11 and then have you be able to build on that than I would be able to teach you that at 17. So that's where I think there is an advantage. And I look at it, it's it's funny with my son.
Speaker: he's He's not a huge guy. You know, he's six foot one he's 185 pounds or so. But he's relatively strong compared to his teammates. And the major reason is not that he was gifted for strength.
Speaker: He just has done more training than his teammates have done. Yeah, and that's a huge advantage when you start getting in the weight room and looking and thinking okay It it does pay off you can look at it and think it years ago I did a product called do complete youth training probably in trying to think if this is 26, I probably did it in 2017, it was nine years ago. And interestingly, my my son and one of his friends who was a female girl that he grew up with, they were my models for that.
Speaker: Now, my son is captain of his college team and Mia, the girl who was in the videos, is captain at Dartmouth of her college team. Oh, awesome. And it's strictly, i mean, not as strictly a function of that But you can see the benefit of them starting training at again at that 11 year old mark and then training straight through till they're 21 because they if nothing else you maximize your potential. I don't know if necessarily i always think I can probably make you a level better than you were supposed to be but that might be the limit of that in terms of if you get a kid who yeah
Speaker: Maybe wasn't gonna play in college and you get a kid who really commits to the process Maybe that kid becomes a pretty good division three player and if you get a kid who maybe without the training might have been a division three player suddenly that kid becomes a D2 player or a D1 player and It does make a difference Gets into a school. They wouldn't otherwise have gotten into tik well and that it's interesting though That is a uniquely lacrosse phenomenon. I know.
Speaker: Very well. Which is very, very interesting because in most sports, my daughter was an ice hockey player, and in ice hockey, the goal is full scholarship. That's what you're looking for.
Speaker: And some people will take a full scholarship at a lesser academic school. in order to say that they got a full scholarship. Whereas in lacrosse, it is absolutely, it is, i think lacrosse and crew are the two sports where they are very much an upper middle class origin. And the goal is hopefully to get into a school that you wouldn't have been able to get into because you look at you might get into Princeton. Or you might get into that yeah i am MIT. MIT has good lacrosse, and and they need lacrosse players.
Speaker: They've got a good Division III program. Or you might get into Cornell. You might get into Dartmouth. You might get into Harvard strictly because you're better at lacrosse than some other guy because they're going to need—I had a friend one time who he did sort of— It was like a college admissions counseling business and one of the things that he told parents early on he said if you're looking to play the numbers Have your kid play football and lacrosse he said because the number of recruits in football and lacrosse at the Ivy League is the highest football will bring in the most yeah and lacrosse will bring in the second most
Speaker: Things like hockey and basketball, even in the Ivy League, they're gonna bring in maybe five a year. Maybe. Maybe. yeah But lacrosse might bring in 15 and football might bring in 25. So he said, if your kids are in those sports, if if your goal is to get your kid into an Ivy League school,
Speaker: and you think you want to do that through athletics he said that the two biggest windows are football and lacrosse which i i thought was really interesting just kind of almost like an actuary would tell you somebody who was looking at it just just as a numbers guy like okay just numbers tell you do this so it's interesting and girls lacrosse is expanding so title nine there's a lot more female teams at than Males teams so especially and they need goalies. Yeah, so if you have a daughter start shooting as hard as you can Yeah trainer there within football and lacrosse observation Texas 50% of my guys play football
Speaker: and play lacrosse others only play lacrosse football gets the exposure to weightlifting and i mean over the course of four years you see a completely different human being so i'm aiming to introduce weightlifting into lacrosse So I'd love to highlight high school age.
Speaker: What's the introduction to the barbell? Is there a path from dumbbell to barbell or is it throw them into the fire? I think it's throw them into the fire. It's so it's like for us, it's very it's funny because we're always going to start out with the basic barbell movements. And we may move it like, we would move away from basic barbell movements as somebody becomes more advanced in our particular philosophy. But the beginning standpoint is bench press, chin up, hand clean, drop bar deadlift, goblet squat. We're not big back front squat people, but that's a ah whole strength and conditioning podcast that we don't need to get into. But it's,
Speaker: It is very much, I think like everything, it's let's master the basic stuff first, right? Even if you're thinking about lacrosse, like, okay, we're going to start teaching these kids to catch and throw. Because you can't have a practice if guys can't catch and throw.
Speaker: And you can't have a strength training program if you've got guys who can't bench press and do a chin up and do a squat. So I think the... Much like i said year one is always year one the basics are always the basics and I think sometimes people can maybe out fancy themselves yeah in the strength and conditioning world instead of looking at this and saying no we got it let's drop that baseline in and then decide where we work from there. Because I still think again my son and his friends college kids I mean we're know we're bench pressing and we're kind of qualifying
Speaker: how their upper body strength is going by how much they can bench press. And we're doing weighted chin-ups and we're qualifying how much their upper body pulling strength is by how much they can do in a weighted chin-up. And we're qualifying their lower body strength by how much they can trap our deadlift. i don't I don't think you you can ever get too far away from that and not be probably doing something that maybe is a bit regressive.
Speaker: And then In a scope outside of that, you're not just teaching them the movements, you're teaching them how to work together in the weight room. What's that mental lesson, whether you even thought about it, it's kind of instinct at this point, where you're teaching these guys to spot, to look out for each other, have situational and spatial awareness so nobody gets hurt.
Speaker: What's that intro lesson to the weight Well, I think there's that. With us, it even takes a step further back in terms of It's introduction to behavior in the weight room in terms of, okay, this is we're very, very strict in terms of ah and this people will say it's a silly rule, but our guys can't wear tank tops because one of the things I've seen in the gym culture is that if you let a guy cut the sleeves off his shirt, he will eventually cut his shirt to the point where there's no shirt left.
Speaker: So we just sort of said sleeves. got have Guys got to have sleeves. And then we have things like you can't have your phone, you can't have ear pods in, you can't have weightlifting gloves, you can't have we have... There's a lot of kind of cultural things, even we're restrictive about the music. You can't, you will not, you if you stayed here all day, you wouldn't hear one obscenity come through the sound system.
Speaker: And I think that all of those things... Culturally are important even what you know, you can wear your captains and coaches sweatshirt But if you came in with a Yankee sock t-shirt on I would make you turn it inside out because we're gonna even We're gonna talk about the messaging of the clothing that kids are gonna wear and say okay That messaging is not the messaging that we want to have so we would ask people to I don't allow you know alcohol t-shirts as a for instance so I think anything that promotes something
Speaker: that we think would be detrimental from a character standpoint, we're probably gonna ask you to change that and put a different shirt on or wear that shirt inside out, tell you not to not to wear that one when you come back again.
Speaker: so And then we're gonna talk about getting in line and following directions and looking at people when they talk to you. These are all things that I think supersede any introduction to the barbell we're going to be very strict about okay we're going to i'm going to tell you how much weight you're going to lift yeah and then you're going to you're going to show me that you can lift that weight and then we're going to try to find another weight that would be challenging but so it's a and that's why it's great to get kids in middle school because it's it's kind of a restrictive environment it's not and one of the interesting things is we don't do great with high school football kids because of that
Speaker: Because again, we're we're restrictive about like, you can't throw weights on the ground. You can't slam weights. You can't, I mean everything. You can't spit. You can't, I mean, we have we have an environment. If you came here and watched the whole day of training, you'd think, hey, your guys are pretty well behaved. They do things the right way.
Speaker: And it's because culturally we've established what we believe. And I always tell the great thing about here and it's much like in college, I get to decide. It does say Mike Boyle, strength and conditioning on the business and and we're not.
Speaker: We're not open to the public. You pay to be here. And so as a result, we can have standards. And I think that's the great thing about you can do that in high school. You can do that in college. I think, unfortunately, in high school, a lot of coaches don't do it. i go It drives me nuts when I see videos of guys lifting without shirts in high school.
Speaker: Drives me absolutely out of my mind because I think a bunch of high school girls could not come in and lift without shirts. And you know you get these guys you know sweating all over the benches. and it's just I always think if you want to look unprofessional, run a strength program where you guys are in there with their shirts off looking at themselves in the mirror. it's the To me, it's the peak of unprofessional. And if you want to look unprofessional, have crappy technique. 90% of the technique that I see on Instagram, I look and think, like oh, God, if i somebody did that here,
Speaker: We'd have to have a conversation. it would It would, you know, we're not, that's just not allowed. Like you, you're not going to see it. Yeah. And I think there's way too much, ah particularly male side, macho culture in strength training where a lot of things are, are performative and, and we're going to try to eliminate or severely limit the performative parts.
Speaker: Yeah, note on I'll come back to that but I would also see if you highlight how to teach these guys how to praise each other so Conversation with Jim key kibasa one of his rules is you got to compliment one of your teammates So say something nice to So these young men are getting reps a good set good job and it's it's tough during this first wave but then as they in in ah You know really continue to come and be part of the culture then it's just normal So that's great. No, and honestly, we probably don't do that. I think we do try to celebrate PRs, particularly when we're jumping or sprinting. We try to make sure that yeah that your you're recognizing when somebody does something great. but But we put a huge emphasis just on being positive all the time anyway, just as coaches that
Speaker: we always you kind of talk about the idea of catching people doing something right. I was listening to ah somebody talk about John Wooden the other day and I sent this because my daughter is a now coach's ice hockey. Awesome. And I think my son will eventually be a coach. He thinks he wants to be a strength and conditioning coach. But I sent them a John Wooden thing where John Wooden required that if the person that assisted on your basket, you needed to you need to, you know, on your way back down the court, point at them. You had needed to acknowledge that I got that basket because of you.
Speaker: And I think that that's something, again, if I was coaching and that's why I sent it to my daughter, again, it's there's so much celebration and so much about me that trying to teach your kids that somebody else helped you get there.
Speaker: and then And... and celebrating here, then the big thing that we do is we don't, and we do this very, very intentionally, we try to not stratify the groups. Our groups are co-ed and they are not generally limited by ability. There will be some exceptions in the summer where we'll group better athletes together for reasons.
Speaker: But in general, you could be you could be in the same group with a kid who just wants to make the team and you could be the best player on the team. And that's one of the great things. like We have some really good athletes here, and they interact really, really well with our quote-unquote normal clients.
Speaker: And I think they provide really, really good examples for the kids of, hey, this is how, like if you, Charlotte just left before you here, but Charlotte North is here all the time, and she's the best women's lacrosse player in the world. But if you saw her interact with anybody in here,
Speaker: you would clearly know that she doesn't think she's better than anybody else just because she happens to be better at lacrosse. And Megan Kell just left. She scored the game-winning goal in the Olympics for the U.S. team.
Speaker: And same thing. If you saw her, you would never know if I said to you, you'd look, you might go, yeah, I've seen her face because i've you know she's been in a bunch of commercials now. But they get really good positive examples. We have ah Pat Freimuth, who's the tight end for the Steelers.
Speaker: And he actually came in. He was bored last winter. was like, can I intern? And we gave him a red T-shirt and he was coaching in the afternoons and these kids were getting coached by a guy that's thats playing for the Steelers and he's out there just, you know, clapping kids up and and having a great time. So we've we really try to create a positive environment. There is very limited and I think that's if you go back to college. College you can have some negativity and sometimes you need some negativity because you've got to you've got to let somebody know when their behavior is not acceptable.
Speaker: Here, less so in terms of, we we still will still do it, but it will be extreme if we have to kind of call kids out or embarrass kids. And it will almost always be middle school boys.
Speaker: Middle school boys are the most difficult population group that you'll deal with. In any, I don't care what sport you're coaching, what activity you're doing, middle school boys will be absolutely, i would say they're the they're the amoeba of the sports world, the single cell organism. They just have, they don't really have a brain. they And they function strictly based on what they think their friends are going to want them to do or are going to laugh at.
Speaker: So they're they're the toughest. If I had my way, I would probably be like, okay, we'll take, 200 middle school girls and no middle school boys. It doesn't work that way. they They're getting those discipline reps in here.
Speaker: So it's a good thing. i'd I'd love to end with a ah caricature of coaching. and You referenced football. weight rooms and coaches that are loud or they're shameful and kids believe this is what leadership is. So when I get those football guys, like they they think they need loud but they're technique and I need quieter weight room so they can listen and two direction change their setup and execution.
Speaker: Or I'm not as loud and hype so they're not as loud and hyped versus creating this motivation themselves. So Within guiding your athletes here, how do you help them understand like what character, direction-driven coaching represents versus you know the loud Instagrams or the loud coaches, these caricatures of of hype that we see on the internet?
Speaker: Well, I think the good thing is here, they just they don't see it because it's not here. So there there will be no performative coaching here, no look at me coaching. And I think that's been big...
Speaker: I was very critical early on of a lot of the the the sideline dancing college strength coach. I jokingly wrote that strength conditioning coaches have become the the court jester of the football world. So they exist to entertain the head coach.
Speaker: And so their job is to run up and down the sidelines and jump up and down and make an ass of themselves. And unfortunately, that becomes people's vision of a strength conditioning coach, which to me is an insult to all of the great strength and conditioning coaches that I know in that suddenly people are saying, well, you know, I i want a hype guy. You know, I want a guy who'll get the guys fired up. And I look at and think, I want a really good coach. I want a guy who understands programming. And I want a guy who can coach guys in January and in February.
Speaker: I don't need a dancing bear. I don't i don't need a sideline clown. I need somebody who's really good at this. And we unfortunately, and I think the pendulum always swings and I'm hoping that the performative stuff will stop the the lifting on the sidelines, the bringing guys out in the cold with no shirts on it's There's just so much performative crap in our field right now that that I think really detracts from the professionalism. It detracts from people viewing us as professionals and it takes us back to sort of just being the dumb weight room supervisor as opposed to looking at it thinking, I've spent my whole life so that people will not think of me. When I first used to do it, they were like, oh, Mike's the weight guy.
Speaker: We weren't even strength and conditioning coaches. We were the weight guy. And And now you look at it and think we're so much more than the weight guy, yet we've got, and it's only football, American football, we have guys who are literally driving this thing backwards.
Speaker: with ah sideline performances that are designed to bring attention to them and really not bring attention to the players. So it's it's not good. But you will you will absolutely not see that here. i would not i I would not hire that person if I was in college. I would not hire that person if I had somebody. I just listed Mike Wojcik, who was my mentor and was a ah six Super Bowl rings, but he just did a podcast and he was talking about that that aspect of things and saying how he really made sure that his staff, we were never going to draw our attention to ourselves on sidelines. you You would hopefully not know who we were during the course of a game.
Speaker: And I think that, as a strength and conditioning coach, That should be your goal. If somebody knows who you are, it should be because a player or a coach praised you after a game for the job that you did and not because somebody saw are you making ass yourself on the sidelines.
Speaker: I concur. Yeah. And then the the coaches that do see that glimpse of what TV showed or social media showed, they think they have to be that 100%. And then we just create this...
Speaker: Copycat culture that is not right and that's that's been strength conditioning is particularly at the at the big-time football level There are a lot of coaches who they're looking for that guy unfortunately and that guy probably isn't the best strength coach and it's almost They're looking for somebody who'd better fit for dance team or cheerleading than strength and conditioning but it's it's an unfortunate.
Speaker: yes Well, but yeah, winding down, dude, I'm grateful for you opening up the doors for me. Email, reach out, you listen, and now we get the opportunity to to share some experience and knowledge with the captains coaches listening. So, Mike, appreciate all you've done for the industry.
Speaker: Grateful for your time, man, and continue the great work. and Thank you. Thanks for doing this. I love doing this. Like I said, I could be here for i could be here for hours talking to you about this stuff because I do think it's important. And I think it's really important that we continue to get the message out as you're doing to, to captains and to coaches and not just sport coaches, but to the strength and conditioning coaches themselves, because hopefully they're people that are going to listen to these podcasts too, and realize that, uh,
Speaker: I've always said one of the great things about this job is that we are the culture creators. We get to create the culture because we will have contact with the kids 12 months out of the year. And if you have a good strength and conditioning coach,
Speaker: as a sport coach, they can really assist you in moving the culture that you want forward. Because you know one of the things, and I'm dragging this out longer, but one of the things that I would always do with sport coaches is talk to them about what their philosophy was and, okay, what's gonna be important? And then I would tell the guys that, okay, this is an extension of practice and this is what coach thinks is important, therefore,
Speaker: It's important if if coach says, again, being on time, being supportive, you know, whatever it is, whatever his or her big touch points are, we're going to apply that into our strength and conditioning programming because we want that culture to always remain the same. And it would, it sometimes for me, it would create conflict with coaches because I'd go back to them and say, hey, you know, we this these guys aren't treating it like practice.
Speaker: And and then i think the one thing I know is as a strength and conditioning coach you are as good as your head coach Because if you have I was very lucky to be at Boston University and to work for a guy named Jack Parker who's the all-time winningest coach in one sport at one school I think you 890 something games all at the same school never left and I used to say to guys all the time when sometimes you get guys who don't maybe don't want to do anything or are giving you a hard time, and I used be like, go upstairs because Coach Parker's office was basically one floor up from the weight room. And I would just be, go, go.
Speaker: Go right now. Go up and tell them. Tell them you're unhappy. Tell them you don't like how I'm doing it. And no one. Not one guy ever climbed those stairs. Not one voluntarily went up and said, oh, I'm going to go and I'm going to take this into the office and and take it up with Coach Parker because they knew that he was 100% supportive of what we were doing and he knew that he would always say, he knew that it helped us win.
Speaker: Yeah. he was convinced that our strength and conditioning program helped us to win. And as a result, he was directly supportive of that process. And that really changed how the players approached it. Cause we had a lot, I mean, we had a lot of NHL players. I mean, we've got, we had, I think either three or four NHL head coaches from the time that I was coaching.
Speaker: And, Mike Sullivan, who's won a couple of Stanley Cups in Pittsburgh, John Hines, who's in Minnesota right now. But they learned about culture.
Speaker: They learned about how to, they learned what good support looks like. And I think that's the big, like when you think about, because we're talking to both captains and coaches, I think it goes both ways.
Speaker: Like said, great coaches make great stuff. Oh yeah, that's what I feel. I hope your son gets into strength because lacrosse needs more strength in addition.
Speaker: That's where it's lacking. I hope he does too. almost Selfishly, if i get to spend, say, 10 more years with him, it would be... a real gift. ah just him He interned this summer and just to have him around every day and to be able to see him every day and to kind of watch him grow as a coach and as a person was really enjoyable for me. so Yeah, that's great. Selfishly, I'm hoping. the Leadership takes reps.
Speaker: So him training those kids, that's going make him better this season. Absolutely. Awesome. Well, we hit our time. Mike, thank you very much, dude. Beautiful fall in Boston.
Speaker: Great. Thanks for coming. Yes, sir. I appreciate it. All right. See Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Captains and Coaches podcast. Thank you to Coach Boyle for opening up his doors, taking the time to sit down with me for a fun conversation. i also got the opportunity to squat and lift and hit some of the old bull program in his facility after the podcast. So thank you, Coach, for opening up your doors and letting lift amongst legends there.
Speaker: If you enjoyed this episode, I encourage you to like, subscribe, rate, and review the show. Share this with fellow coaches or team captains you feel could benefit from this information. If you want to continue to deep dive on team culture, individual development, captaincy, I encourage you to head to captainsandcoaches.com, click on that education tab. I got two courses up there and a lot of blogs. Click the blogs, see how I'm aiming to develop and take my captains where they can't take themselves that they want to go.
Speaker: That's Martin quote. so Awesome. Guys, i'll I'll leave you with that, and i I'm grateful for each and every one of you. And thank you, lastly, to our sponsor, Train Heroic. Allow me the opportunity to deliver all of my strength and conditioning programs to my teams through that app, and at the same time, give out my fun training program that I'm following along with, the old ball. Check out the link in the show notes. That's all I got with you. Thank you for tuning in.
Speaker: Appreciate each and everyone. And that's it. Bye. See you.
