Transcript
Speaker: It's the important lesson sports don't teach the lessons coaches do. and everyone's athletic career ends. So now what can they hold on to that allows them the confidence to remember that they can do hard things and that they're a leader.
Speaker: So it's it's it's coaching between the whistles that's going to take them farther than the the X's and O's. Welcome to the Captains and Coaches podcast. We explore the art and science of leadership through the lens of athletics and beyond.
Speaker: I'm your host, Texel Culkin, and I've got a A very special episode for you, a live Q&A from the second annual Soldiers to Sidelines Summit in Nashville, Tennessee from a few weeks ago.
Speaker: Soldiers Sidelines is an amazing nonprofit. They take the leadership skills that soldiers learn in their military career and they help translate it into sports to become character-based sports coaches.
Speaker: Amazing nonprofit. Check it out, soldierstosidelines.org. They have a strength and conditioning specialist and that's where the opportunity is to present to their strength and conditioning coaches and sit down on a performance panel and that's what we're gonna be viewing here today for this episode.
Speaker: So we got four rock stars on the stage. We got Kat Oswald, she's the Cognitive Performance Specialist for the Space Force. Nate Palin, founder of Any Given Day.
Speaker: He's also an ex-Green Beret and he's the Endurance Director for Soldiers of Sidelines. My pal Johanna Zabal, Coach Joe, Captains & Coaches podcast alum, also alum of my alma mater, Marymount University. We were classmates way back in the day. Amazing to see her, and she's the director of sports performance for Soldiers Sidelines now. That's probably the main reason why I'm sitting on this panel. so It's all live.
Speaker: There was no prep. I got asked to be on this panel like an hour before, no script. hit Live Q&A was awesome. So you're going to experience a full-blown hour of a panel. There are questions from all over the place.
Speaker: The soldier coaches in attendance gave them a live mic and they just fired questions at us. so Whatever professional we felt was best suited from the four of us to answer that question, they got the hot mic. So, super fun episode.
Speaker: Love Soldiers to Sidelines and everything they're doing. And I want to share this experience that their soldier coaches get annually at the Summit. just sitting down with pros and learn for the best in the biz, no matter of sport.
Speaker: This just so happens to be strength. So without further ado, I'll throw it out to our panel and look forward to this one. right, ready, ready, and break.
Speaker: All right, welcome everyone to the Ask the Coach panel. um If you have not been in here yet, I think I recognize most of your faces, but I'm Johanna Zabal. I'm the director of Power Sports Performance and Women's Programming. I forgot about that earlier.
Speaker: For soldiers to sidelines. And we've got... Nate Phelan. Although I'm asking if Kat Oswald wants to switch out so we have a different coaching perspective up here.
Speaker: Everything. questions from the audience yeah you can come up not switch out cute he's a presenter no that's cute that's cute that you think that we have more chairs we have more chairs more chairs yeah just scoot over want to know ladies um nate is the director of endurance sports performance for soldiers to sidelines and then we have Hi, I'm Kat Oswald. I have a master's degree in sports psychology and I currently work with athletes and service members on improving their cognitive performance.
Speaker: Tex McColkin, I'm just a guy. Never served, coached a lot, and a humble guy with a lot of experience. And I was just about to say, and great hair. Look at that hair, guys. can't even You can't even handle it.
Speaker: All right, so what I think what we'll do is some of you guys have entered questions into the chat, but um sometimes stuff is lost in translation in black and white. So why don't we start by opening it up to you guys, and we'll kind of go through that way. And when we run out of things to talk about there, we can move to the app.
Speaker: the app Also, there might be people that are that ask us questions in the app that aren't here, but I still think that that's um valuable because you guys might have that same question or the way that we answer it might not be what you were thinking. um Brooke is also going to be helping us out and being our microphone passer or rounder. So anybody want to start us off?
Speaker: We got one. right, sir. Oh, over for the oh oh we need the microphone. We're going talk into the microphone. really? Yes. What's your name? Mike Moore. Mike Moore. Which question? I want to know what age is, this might be a myth, but what age is good to start ah youngsters lifting weights without stunning their growth, unless that's a myth?
Speaker: Huh. I would argue it's not a myth. If you injure them and then some growth plate fractures are affected, then it becomes a problem.
Speaker: I would argue best opportunity we have if they're middle school, we can teach them to lift weights, maybe not yet a barbell. We're still using dumbbells to to squat, lunge, press, curl. Make sure you get curls in there. And then when we enter into freshman now, we are ready for team training with the barbell.
Speaker: So that that would be my fast answer that's scalable.
Speaker: I would also say, um i think the youngest that I've probably worked with, actually my five-year-old is the youngest I've worked with, but seven in a professional setting, seven-year-olds lifting actual weights and correcting form and doing all the things. um And again, like Tech said, like,
Speaker: as long as you're doing it and loading appropriately or not loading at all and just working on movement patterning, um, I think that's to be a really effective thing. The best time to start training was 20 years ago and the next best time is today. So like if we can start them off and start grooving those neural patterns and starting get to get their, their brains telling their bodies what to do in coordinative ways, um, early on, I think that's going to be better for them just in general.
Speaker: Nailed it. Oh, what's your name? ah am taking away I think that's what happened to me though, starting out, because I always wanted to be like 6'5", and I'm on like 5'7", most days.
Speaker: We're going to blame it on the training. Blame it on the training. Same thing happened to me. i'm but Look at Nate. This poor guy started training so early. day now. any day now
Speaker: Hello, I'm Damian Butler. And my question is about not necessarily to the to when to start training, but when to start adding weight. and like what I coach high school and most of the athletes don't come to my sport until ninth grade. So when do we add weight?
Speaker: So can't remember. No, you weren't in the last talk. So one of the points that I made was criteria driven, not calendar driven. So a lot of times,
Speaker: like have they demonstrated proficiency at X, Y, Z, okay? And for everything that we do as coaches, you guys all have this. You guys have a progression, whether that is a free throw, whether that is a, you know, a goal kick, whether that's some other skill in the sport, there's a progression of, of learning how to move weightlifting wise, and then how to, you know, start to progress those things.
Speaker: Like I said, like with my five-year-old, he absolutely strains himself. He's making, he's probably making more faces than, you know, whatever. but to pick up a 15 pound kettlebell. So we're like, yeah, buddy, you're not doing that.
Speaker: You're going to move down to this one. And if he's doing that and there's like, you can kind of see rate of perceived exertion on the face, right? Like he's actually like, this is, I'm rolling my eyes. This is so easy. um And then go from there. But if they're not moving well,
Speaker: right? We're not going to load that pattern, right? So we're not going to reward an improper movement pattern with load, right? Because then we're just training them in the wrong way. Practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect, right? So getting them into that proper positioning and making sure that they own that and they can have the attention span Right? And maybe you can talk a little bit more ah like developmentally, like attention span and things like that, like at a certain age.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. So I would think one of the other considerations is, is the athlete looking to be challenged and pushed at that point in time? We, of course, want the athletes to have some level of autonomy as they're aging and the choice to opt in to harder sessions. Because if you have an athlete who, let's say, is has the procedural memory where their body is doing the repetition with high quality, are they going to thrive in an environment where I'm making it more challenging, or are they at a point in their development where they actually need some more success in the bank to feel more confident with that movement pattern and so on? Especially as we're getting into more complex lifts, I would say.
Speaker: one are there's There's different forms of coordination. We can't just say uncoordinated. So there are stages of development and we want to stress them through that stages and that's how they we accelerate their coordination development is with load.
Speaker: So to use PVC pipe, I don't want the female athletes at high school level I'm working with only use a PVC pipe until it looks perfect. because that's gonna be never.
Speaker: So bench press, when they're introduced to the bench press the first time, we get these waves of motion they're trying to figure out, and their triceps and their biceps are learning about each other for the first time.
Speaker: Or they're squatting for the first time, we got the Bambi legs. That's a good thing. We don't wanna put them on the Smith's machine, which will force them perfect. We want their body to like, oh, hamstrings and quads, clicks.
Speaker: And we can start to add ounces. And for that, I say every ounce counts. So how much was the barbell you brought? 33? 35. So do we can we use 25 pound dumbbell in a goblet squat position?
Speaker: Yes. And then when that starts to look, all right, then we got a 30 pounder. OK, now we can introduce the 35 pound barbell. so where we want to be conservative we want to be smart but not too conservative because then we're missing some big windows the beauty high school they're a different kid from sophomore and freshman year because they grew and more so we have a lot of margins for errors because they're they're growing developing but once they get six inches dollars they got to re-coordinate So that's what got to remember because it's strength is weird.
Speaker: Coordination is weird. All this stuff is weird. We want to push and progress because we have the same expectations in sport. We just want to bring it to general movements in the weight room. But it's still coordination.
Speaker: yeah so with that with with weights the questions of adding weights and uh so it's kind of a two-part because my daughter is going to her sophomore year of high school she was first time playing a sport outside of martial arts was last year and she went right into track so I did not try to coach my child because I think that was would have been worst, right? However, I was concerned about, for one, her strength moving up from just martial arts, taekwondo every day, to running. Now we're into endurance and strength.
Speaker: So I allowed the school coaches to take to take care of that. But I did buy her a set of resistance bands. Versus her allowing her to use my weights Second what my concern were her shoes because there's so much talk around shoes Fortunately, she has like almost flat feet.
Speaker: So then we had to consider her shoes So is there any correlation with that when we're talking weights adding weights? whether it's squats, doing any type of lower strength, lower body strength training, also with resistance bands and the type of shoes that the market are selling schools and our student athletes.
Speaker: You answered a shoe question. yeah okay So I'm not mad at flat feet, but we can't just accept it. So get her out of those shoes as much as possible. She can't run track barefoot, but she can lift weights in your garage barefoot. That's for sure.
Speaker: And then there's these toe spreaders, like when women go to get the pedicures or manicures, which is the foot, the pedicure. I'm pretending not to know. i got five sisters. Yeah.
Speaker: I got five sisters. So those are toe spreaders. She can lift in those. She can just hang around the house in those. And that's going to help. And it's called triplanar arch development.
Speaker: And that's going to help strengthen that arch. So I got this brand. I don't want to name any brands here because they're not paying me. So. ah Oh, we just touched to toes, team, because we're wearing the same shoes. ah But flat shoes and surfer, biker, like, not biker, bicyclist.
Speaker: Cyclist. Biker, I'm an idiot. Like skate shoes. Those going to be great opportunities for her to lift weights at school with protective toe coverings. But ah in the garage, just go toots out. She'll be cool.
Speaker: What about resistance bands and usage of of that over weights and bringing that into the equation?
Speaker: I think less comes down to the implement, like for me anyway, when I'm framing exercise implements kind of the last thing that comes into play, ironically, because i think a lot of us when we learn to lift, we think through the lens of whatever implement we first became comfortable with. Right. So whether it's kind of bell dumbbell, barbell resistance band, I don't think anything is inherently safer or more dangerous.
Speaker: It's just a different way of applying stress or load. And so each of those is going to come with advantages. Each of those is going to come with limitations.
Speaker: So we think like resistance band, for example, right? Obviously, as we pull the band, put it on more stretch, resistance is going to increase, which means that part of the range of motion is not gonna probably receive significant or maybe even significant enough resistance to be useful.
Speaker: Part of it might even receive, say, too much. Certain movements are going to be harder performed with resistance bands than they might be with free weights. So again, I think pros, cons, I definitely don't wanna demonize any implement.
Speaker: I don't know that a resistance band is the most versatile as a tool in itself. I think it's a good idea to have it as a tool in the toolbox and maybe also consider some things that are gonna be more gravity fed than resistance band.
Speaker: I think even with that, like you're going to track and you're going into running, like to be better at running, you want to run, right? That's what's gonna make her better. um But when you are considering sprinting and the mechanics of that and the strength and the force that they're putting into the ground, having some sort of resistance is gonna be a positive net for her. Yeah, that's what would add to that.
Speaker: And Tom Brady loves him. TB12. TB12, baby. Time out. Tex here to take a second to talk about training. i want to extend a seven day free trial for my training program, Old Bull. It's the program I'm writing for myself. I'm staying active. I'm lifting heavy. I'm having fun with it. And it's flexible to move each day around. Heavy push, heavy pull, cardio, athletic strength. Moving those days around to fit my busy schedule between doctorate program, podcast, work, running a business,
Speaker: Everything. I got a busy life. So do you follow along with the training program with me seven day free trial. Click the link in the show notes. If you're watching on YouTube, it's right here. Don't want to hold you back anymore.
Speaker: Join us on the program. hopeful And now back to the show. Ready, ready and break. Let's go. What's your name? Brendan Nensel.
Speaker: So I've got through the endurance seminar online and then I came and I did the soccer one and football as well. So I've gone to some of the football and soccer ones. So um I'm worried about kind of like the training split as we're talking about that.
Speaker: We also have the mental performance aspect as well that you put in all the training sessions. But how much should be focused on a sport? Obviously, you want more of it sport focused. But what does – it's not going perfect.
Speaker: But a good training split between – strength and endurance work and then the actual skill work whether it it's soccer football or could be basketball
Speaker: in season awesome i yeah how old is your athlete progress both how old are the athletes and hu how oh let's say high school let's say high school okay yeah Well, cause I was gonna say if it is youth sport, like you want play to be involved as much as possible. Um, web, even if you are doing training, right. It's gonna be play competition organized around that. Otherwise you're gonna lose them. Um, and depending on the sport training age of the, of the individual, um,
Speaker: you might need a little bit more. It depends on what they need, right? So like if they are very young in the sport, even if they're in high school and they've never played XYZ sport before, they need more sport practice, right? Because we're not even like, I think, i don't remember who said it. I think Tex said it earlier in one of his talks. We're not trying to make people like really good squatters.
Speaker: We're trying to use squatting to make them very good basketball players or very good, you know, whatever. So i think early on you need more, sport um if they're juggling multiple sports at a time a lot of that also just yeah it depends on what the schedule looks like um yeah yeah i think part of it obviously we can't train everything all the time right i know i mentioned that in yesterday's talk And so putting some things into kind of gain mode, which means we're going to put more volume, more intensity, maybe even more days of the week or frequency toward those qualities that we're looking to develop.
Speaker: Other things we might put a little bit more in ah a maintain mode where we're just touching them kind of often enough to keep them alive. And what I often tell people is like, keep them alive might mean keep them at around 90% of best. It doesn't necessarily mean keep them at 100% of best. And then there might even be some qualities that we're willing to let slide or degrade significantly as we're leaning more into something else. So sometimes being okay with that and sort of choosing your battles within training, proximity to the event is going to dictate some of that, right? So somebody had asked even in the app about off-season, was saying as soon as we step into off-season, can be a good time to restore some general function and qualities and health and get away a little bit from some of the sports specificity.
Speaker: versus let's say in an endurance capacity as we are approaching an event the more of the training is going to look and feel and favor the event and the more we're going to pull back on things like you know lifting weights or other general qualities so one good example is training somebody for selection as we're in say our last couple of months leading up to a selection process let's say it's a really ruck heavy selection they're going to be doing more rucking. They're going to be doing more things, just touching, hey, wanna maintain some strength and power.
Speaker: I wanna maintain some general, let's say, conditioning qualities that could support the bigger picture, but at the end of the day, I have to make sure I'm doing the thing they're gonna have to go do at selection.
Speaker: And that's gonna get the most weight. And so like, that's your big rock, big rock has to come first. And then if we could fit some other stuff, great. But you gotta keep the main thing the main thing.
Speaker: Well, football aim is maintained, so you can't not lift weights during football season. Soccer, I'm not mad at it, but if we we dose the weight room now, we're not going to lose where we left off and worked so hard to get to.
Speaker: But if I neglect it for soccer season, we're going to lose that. So football is maintained, maybe lift twice a week in season. i Say we've got a Friday Night Lights game, we're in the Saturday and we're lifting.
Speaker: That's the best day. And then maybe Sunday off and Monday we're lifting again and then we're ready for the next game. So it's as much stretching with weights and recovery as it is work.
Speaker: And here's where the value is. I use a rep max model versus a percentage based model. So say Nate and I are on the same football team. I'm starting middle linebacker and Nate's just a guy.
Speaker: I just bled, gave everything I had for the game and we won. Nate clapped. His helmet, if you've seen Friday Lights, it was like on the sideline and he's just having a great time out there.
Speaker: He's like an extra in my movie. We're gonna both work towards a three rep max. My three rep max is going to be different than Nate's three rep max, because he's fresh, but we're both on the same program. We're training together in the same rack and probably my fatigue 3RM is equal to Nate's PR 3RM.
Speaker: It's too easy up here, guys. So that's how I would approach it we're all in the same program, but a rep max model, so my guy my my second stringers are getting work, my first stringers are getting work, it's more recovery and stretching with weights.
Speaker: But don't not lift in soccer, sorry.
Speaker: He's gotta clap back. no No, I don't attack my friends like some people. so i would even So the same example selection, right? week prior to them going, we're lifting two of those days.
Speaker: It's just a matter of what those lifts look like and how much of it I'm doing, right? A pretty common one I've done in the past, for example, like we'll do a triple around 80, a double around 85 and a single at 90%. Because I know if they can still hit a single at 90%, they're 10% off of, let's say theirre their previous best. So we're in a pretty good spot from like a strength maintenance perspective.
Speaker: So still not scared to touch those things, but to me it's different than training those things.
Speaker: You had a question? Yeah. Yeah. How about you? Start with your name. Um, Aliana Rogers. Um, my first question is how can you try to prevent athlete burnout mentally, physically, or emotionally during a long season?
Speaker: I think one of the hot topics recently has actually been cognitive recovery. So where are the opportunities for mental rest? So turning everything off, leaving, what happened at practice, at practice, transitioning out of game focus and debrief and where do I need to improve and what do I need to work on next week to actually going home and recovering.
Speaker: And then, of course, other physical recovery modalities that might fit in that time space as well that I'll let the strength coaches speak to. A few of the things that we're looking for is intentional time blocking.
Speaker: So saying, hey, i only have x amount of mental effort before we hit mental fatigue and the quality of my cognitive performance is going to go down. That's just how the brain works, just like a muscle, it only has so much capacity. For most individuals, that's around 45 minutes to 60 minutes. If you're working with very young kids,
Speaker: it might be five minutes of quality effort before you hit a point of mental fatigue. So time blocking and saying, how long am I going to ask someone to work and provide high quality effort before they're going to hit mental fatigue?
Speaker: um In the endurance psychology world specifically, there's a lot of interesting work with Samuel Mark Hora, looking at how to push that a little bit further for people who are doing triathlons, ultra marathons, and other endurance specific events where you do have to go longer than 45 minutes. But I would look at how are we going to break up training sessions or break up um even games with strategic breaks to say, hey, the halftime or break for water that we have, we're gonna take really seriously and actually recover. We're not hopping on our phones and scrolling through social media. We're not um using that time unintentionally. We have to use that time intentionally.
Speaker: that's physicals great Does anybody in here coach their children? Your own, okay. So I would just say something to consider in that regard is, you know, coaching them when you're coaching everybody else and be careful about coaching them outside of that time.
Speaker: Because we're talking about burnout, the kids at the dinner table, right, and asked you to pass the salt and you ended up giving them a lecture about what they did wrong in practice. So you're definitely going to be using up some of that mental bandwidth and pushing them toward burnout. So I would just say be careful about when you coach your kids in that capacity. If they ask and want some additional coaching within free time, great. But if you're the one to initiate it, you might be pushing them, accelerating them toward burnout.
Speaker: creative play.
Speaker: The question is how important is creative play from a scale of one to 10? What age are you thinking? All any age, all age? yeah The whole spectrum of long term development? Yeah, great question.
Speaker: You know what I'm saying?
Speaker: just you know weight on it yeah great question wait just read you know
Speaker: time
Speaker: child once they're be bed with you sand just group you know creatively working out. Yeah, I know I'm not doing anything, but he gave the example of how, you know, one of you guys is beast and the other one is just having fun, you know what I'm saying and stuff. But I'm just saying, highly important is just being creative and working out wherever you're at. That's what I mean.
Speaker: I would say from an athlete development standpoint, we're talking like a 12 out of 10. In large part because when we see athletes go from professional amateur to professionals at at any age, because any aged athlete can start taking themselves very seriously, I think a big part of that leap is when they look to start coaching themselves. and creating their own plays and their own practice sessions. And a lot of that can be play or creativity or exploratory based, but we look for that sense of autonomy and investment in themselves. elms And if the adults in the room are always providing the structure and here's how and this is what it's going to look like, we don't have that freedom of thought that actually creates great players in any sport.
Speaker: ah Two notes on that. One, I really enjoy working with middle and high school kids because they reach this point where having fun is being with your boys, playing grab ass, to being good.
Speaker: And then the switch, the light bulb goes off for different kids at different ages, but it's in this window where like, oh, I'm actually pretty good at this. And you see their posture and their focus change and intention starts to go in with reps.
Speaker: versus just joking around with their kids. Hopefully they never lose that. And so I always gotta remind them, we're also learning to play versus just memorize plays. So that's a good differentiator.
Speaker: And then my friends that are at the collegiate level, they're starting to see this at recruiting because the best kids are going to the best schools no matter what. But now the high school coaches are so worried about the kids playing catch up around them that they stop coaching the guys that got the scholarship. They just, hey, he already knows what he's doing.
Speaker: So he's not learning the the next level and he's not as prepared to go and and contribute as a freshman at the next level because coach is not worried about him. Oh, he understands. So if we're able to keep play, that's creative.
Speaker: And so now we're creating this athletic freedom in soccer, lacrosse, basketball. When our play doesn't work, Dude's got to be a dude. And those are the difference makers that that truly take that next step. So if we're able to play and then in sports practice, we call it short-sighted games, where it's 2v2, 3v3, 4v4 instead of always five on five.
Speaker: Now they gotta get creative because it's different. And I can throw stuff out. There is no play for three on three. It's just pick and roll. And it's different principles of the game. So that's how I would i would put constraints in versus always just cueing them to do that. So that that's an also, I'd write this down as like coaching through constraints and forcing our guys to think outside the box versus always doing what we're yelling from the sideline.
Speaker: And Tex, and this kind of goes with Nate too, what would you say and how would you translate that outside of the context of sport and youth? And as a gentleman is saying, when we're adults, when we're coming out of service, when we're trying to find some good creative things to do with our lives that have purpose.
Speaker: Yeah, I would say one, like lean into recreational opportunities, right? I mean, like things like beer leagues, stuff where there's a social component to it. Maybe play a sport you haven't played before or a sport that you played your youth. I remember getting out and playing dodgeball.
Speaker: right? And A, taking it way too serious, of course, right? And and seeing some some grown people kind of hurt themselves in the process. So like, be smart about it. But that also pressed some people. For example, I knew this like older lawyer who decided to play dodgeball, went out his first time, realized he wasn't as fit as he used to be, right?
Speaker: And so it's the first thing he did. I was actually coaching Jen Pop at the time and he can't be like, hey, what do you know about preparing me for this? So suddenly it gave him a reason to be in the gym and something specific to train for because he didn't like feeling like the old guy on the court.
Speaker: So I do think like a reconnection with plays literally to pick up a game, whether it's something you used to do that you love that you want to get back into and be competitive or something that is purposely, you know, you're not going to be as good at. So you don't have those high expectations.
Speaker: You give yourself a little bit more room to fail, a little bit more room to to learn. And I think having it be in a social environment is definitely a bonus to that. And stay in the gym. Continue to go to the gym. Protect yourself on that art hand, too.
Speaker: Pick a wall.
Speaker: Who else has questions?
Speaker: Sir, give me a second. You can hear my clicky ankle.
Speaker: I just ah i wanted to ask each of you guys to sort of recall a moment where you started working with someone and how your knowledge took them to a different level.
Speaker: Every day. no im you're both i know, to... Oh, I haven't spoken in a while? Okay. It's funny, and and this is actually something I was going to talk about in my talk about injury and reconditioning and stuff.
Speaker: And for those of you who weren't in there, the traditional course is let the sports med team do their thing. When the athlete is quote unquote cleared, then the strength and conditioning coach comes in and starts to bridge the gap between full return to play and performance. um And my argument to that or my rebuttal to that was, no, no, we come in at the same time assuming that you have a really good um relationship with your sports med staff. And I fortunately do, as with our cognitive performance specialists, as with our dietitian, and generally our whole staff is in there working at the same time, right?
Speaker: um And so we have this really great ability – as a strength and conditioning coach, like being on the floor with multiple different teams, possibly multiple different types of athletes to sort of,
Speaker: encourage them and you just like hear all their stories about their entire life and all of these things you get trauma dumped on you get all you know all they they tell you things and you have this very special relationship with them that they might not tell their head coach they might not tell other players I know as a female strength and conditioning coach like male soldiers tell me stuff that they haven't told anybody but I actually lost my train of thought of where I was going with that. But what I was saying ah on that end is like, we have an opportunity as strength and conditioning specialists or sports performance coaches or personal trainers or whatever you are um to sort of affect them through their rehab process um because we're the ones that they trust already.
Speaker: They didn't want to go to the physical therapist. They didn't want to have to be in the clinic They love coming to us because we do the fun things, right? um And so i think a lot of the time, if we if our presence is there throughout that rehab process and working with them, and again, if you weren't in the in the talk before, I was talking about like doing what you can do instead of thinking about what you can't so if you have an affected upper limb you're doing lower limb stuff with them and you're still their strength and conditioning coach and they're still an athlete so they're not losing that um identity that they have in that um but your question was let me get back to your question um when did i start seeing something i was doing influence another athlete i think a lot of the times in those moments in the weight room
Speaker: And it wasn't, for me, the special ones are never like, oh, I got a PR on my squat. Those are cool. I had a guy get a really big PR on his um deadlift this year, and it was awesome. But, like, he's a soldier, so, like, I don't care.
Speaker: You know? Like, oh, cool, did that make you a better soldier? No. um But guys have come up to me, and this has happened multiple times, but one that's coming to mind specifically is just this guy who – um he was like, Joe, I, I sleep like three or four hours a night, maybe two sometimes. And I was like, what? Like, I could not believe how he was functioning. Cause he's in the gym every morning and like pushing through really tough workouts. And, um,
Speaker: we talked and we, I mean, we talked trauma. We talked all kinds of stuff, not stepping outside of my scope, but just being a listening ear for him. And he was like, yeah I'm hypervigilant. I wake up at the same time every day in the middle of the night. And I was like, you don't have to tell me, but what happened at that time of night?
Speaker: And it could have been in a different time zone. And he was like,
Speaker: And then he started thinking about that and he started pushing into getting help from behavioral health. And then he decided he's so hypervigilant that his wife just going like that in the middle of the night makes him wake up.
Speaker: And so that's why he wasn't sleeping. He started diving into that. And so they got the separate mattress like things, but it's still one bed. And he's like, he came to me, he was like, Joe, I slept six hours last night.
Speaker: Now I'm sleeping seven hours. Now I'm sleeping, you know, and like, I don't think he's sleeping more than seven hours a night, um but that's a huge win. And like, it's those types of things that like, I don't really care about the weight room, honestly.
Speaker: You know, it's like, it's that, like him saying, I'm sleeping six hours a night and I'm thanking you for that because you, just started asking me questions like that affected that thing.
Speaker: Yeah, one saying that I love, I think it comes from, i think his name's Roy Sugarman. um I've heard it via coach named Stefan Underwood, but it's, not you're not an expert without an invitation, right? And so I think that's part of it. Your question actually specifically referenced knowledge, our knowledge. I don't know that my knowledge has ever done much of anything, but I do think that prioritizing connection over prioritizing trying to give somebody information has created the opportunity and an avenue for something to be influential.
Speaker: um you know i think to recall a specific moment, I don't know that I can, but I will say that to to Joe's point, some of the things that I guess have the strongest impact in my mind are when they start to extend beyond whatever I'm actually specifically coaching them for. when it starts to become, oh, I was, you know, I taught my son this warmup for his baseball and now we're spending time together and he's, you know, in the gym with me or, oh, I started to take some of these dietary changes that I'm making and apply them to my whole family. And now we all, you know, do this dinner together on Wednesday night, et cetera. Like, I think those types of stories are kind of the most impactful ones that have residual impact into people's lifestyle. and well beyond you know performance in whatever it is specifically.
Speaker: Again, to Joe's point, like really cool when somebody passes a selection and maybe gives you some of the credit for helping with the preparation, but at the same time, there's plenty of other people you've given the same information to,
Speaker: who either A, weren't successful, B, dismissed all the info you gave them and were successful, and it's because you maybe just lacked the connection that it took to have the moment to be the expert that can provide that influence.
Speaker: Yeah, I would say building off of that emphasis on lifestyle shifts, one of the things I ask a lot of my athletes is in 10, 20, 30 years, who's gonna remember what you did?
Speaker: on the field? hope you do, right? But when you hit 80, 90, maybe you don't even remember really. And at the end of the day, you know we're collecting memories, we're collecting experiences, and those experiences are shaping the type of person that you are and how you show up in other endeavors. And a lot of those lessons may be help you direct your effort in the future towards your priorities, your values, what actually makes an impact. Because we learn from all of our experiences is in sport and service. And I think when we see that shift from like the micro of, well, have this outcome goal I want to reach to the process goal of like what's the type of person I want to be, those are the transitions that I really like seeing. And again, i think that comes less from knowledge and more from
Speaker: being there from somebody and having the ability to sit and listen and reflect back to them and help maybe shape the conversation in a way that they'll hopefully pick up and run with.
Speaker: I recall there's this young man named Nate. I'm just kidding. I live in a small town and I absolutely love it because I see the families everywhere. Grocery store, coffee shops, church, it's awesome.
Speaker: So then the kids graduate and they stop appearing everywhere And then now it's Easter, it's Christmas, it's summer, and they're back in town. So then I run into them and i oh they always got a story for me.
Speaker: And yes, sent dudes to go play college ball, but they're not as excited as the to to tell me leadership stories or opportunities that they've created. as the guys are or just a guy.
Speaker: So taking over the just dominating fraternity leadership or having the confidence to go study abroad and then they're the only competent person. So then whatever real world job they got, all of a sudden now they got responsibility.
Speaker: And it's just like riding a bike for the captain captaincy always struggle with that word and spelling it for uh for what they experienced in high school so it's it's the important lesson sports don't teach the lessons coaches do and everyone's athletic career ends so now what can they hold on to that allows them the confidence to remember that they can do hard things and that they're a leader so it's it's it's coaching between the whistles that's going to take them farther than the the x's and o's
Speaker: and remembering that. And I'd encourage you, if kids' parents are late to pick them up, you got nowhere to be. You can be 15 minutes late for whatever it is. like They need a person, a leader, a mentor in that moment.
Speaker: Take their mind off of the the frustration that the when is mom gonna get here or whoever. So, like, that's a between the whistle moment. You can be a memorable person and then find out some crazy stuff about him that then you can either tease him about or continue to ask him. Time out.
Speaker: Coach needs a coach. I want you to take a second to reflect on this past season and what did not click? Were there moments where you lost your temper, lost your cool, felt your team was mentally soft, weak, not prepared to face competition? Were there moments where they put their heads down and were not ready or accepting?
Speaker: Did they quit on you? Did they quit on their their teammates during a game? What was that experience like? How did you manage it? How did you handle it? I have a course out here, it's called Why They're Not Listening, Coaching Today's Athlete, where I dive into a concept I've been working on that's called social emotional leadership. How do we use practices, how do we use strength and conditioning sessions to develop our leaders, to have self-awareness, social awareness, and then have a toolkit to then lead not only their teammates, but themselves.
Speaker: But it starts with you, coach. I encourage you to check out this. My first lesson in the course is free. To find that, head to listen.captainsandcoaches.com. Start preparing now for next season, and everything that you're investing will start to pay off.
Speaker: Now, back to the show. Ready, ready, and break.
Speaker: You got it. Okay, thank you. Yeah, so, interesting to know how you all look at athlete data. and tech broadly across sports performance, um you know both for tracking and managing programming in off-season, and then also managing load and in season and helping them hit you know max performance and speeds on game day.
Speaker: don't have any tech.
Speaker: Do you use tech? I'm not sure. Yeah, but I don't. So, OK. Well, I'm interested in how the military's evolved. OK, I was going to say, yeah, unfortunately, you have a lot of military coaches up here.
Speaker: We don't have an off season, so hashtag no off season. Right, so it's like, what are we doing? How are we how are we actually making sure they're ready?
Speaker: um Every two years, we have a 18 to 24 months, we have a mandatory assessment that our guys go through. um And literally, we're not doing anything with that information, but comparing them to themselves every 18 to 24 months. And these are a lot of guys who are closer to the end of their career. um And I work for a program that literally, i believe, is
Speaker: my job to preserve their life and vitality post-service and when i'm working with them yes i want them to be successful now but again like in the army i always always go like yeah you're not old but you're army old and like when you're in past 13 15 17 20 years right the just the beating and I work for an airborne unit right so like just the beating that they're getting jumping out of planes and doing all the like ridiculous stuff that they do
Speaker: um they're aging, right? And so we're looking more at, instead of doing this, we're looking at doing this less, right? So maybe not even this, but like,
Speaker: just like making that slope just a little less aggressive because they are going to do that, right? And ah at this age, if you're talking about younger athletes, obviously you want them doing this. Right now, we're at the end of their career and we're hoping that they don't do that, right? So we're looking at baseline numbers. What what we use, we force plates, looking at counter movement jump, and looking at isometric mid-thigh pull. um
Speaker: What we look at there is left-right asymmetry. Have they had an injury before? Is there reason for that left-right asymmetry that's outside of the the bounds that we have decided that that they should be within?
Speaker: Um, if there isn't, there might be soon, right? Because they have that. So we're going to encourage them to work with one of us to do a little bit more unilateral work, do a little bit more, uh, coordinate of, you know, something so that they're not just bilateral all the time. And they're not just sagittal all the time. Um, and same deal for like the, the power pole, right? Like the, the isometric myth, I pull, we're looking at a lot of left, right, asymmetries. We're looking at any degradation in there. movement quality or in their um in their actual like raw numbers from year over year. um
Speaker: I will let you know, like my guys, they know how to jump out of plane. They don't know how to jump. I jump out of plane. I don't jump off of ground. Right. So like they're like those are things that we're also kind of just assessing coaches. I have like, wow.
Speaker: Okay. you've never jumped before. We have a very few guys who actually like were like sport or field, field or court sport athletes. Um, and so they're very fit, but unathletic.
Speaker: Um, and there's a difference. There is a huge difference there. Um, and so, um Yeah, looking at that, it's more of like these baseline numbers, knowing that we are seeing them at the end of their career. So we're looking at more of this and giving them and the tools to maintain that when they leave us.
Speaker: um And then also seeing where this is. So if when they do jump out of that plane, that happens because we see so many injuries from airborne operations. um we can get them back to this or close to this. So we have a number, a true objective number that says this is where they have been before rather than like not knowing anything about them, them having that injury and then them coming to us and going like,
Speaker: I don't know, we'll get you to something, right? Or like at least 90% of the unaffected limb or, you know, something like that. um Our physical therapists also work with like a biodex and things like that to kind of look at um um unaffected and affected limb and things like that too.
Speaker: I think that's pretty much all we do in terms of data. Our cognitive performance specialist works with WHOOP and Aura. Do you guys do any of that? I'm not sure that we should talk about the watch. Yeah, we can. Yeah, okay. so i will of Yeah, you go ahead.
Speaker: Cool. So I think a few things. One, the most valuable, and some people hate to hear this, but to me the most value metric that we collect forever since the inception of all of these programs within the military setting is attendance.
Speaker: It just still is. The people that show up more often for coach-led or coach-involved sessions are going to see the biggest improvement period.
Speaker: So that is still the most meaningful metric. Two, let's always look at what we're already collecting and not doing enough with. Everybody wants to add tech. Everybody wants to add data points.
Speaker: Military members in particular being poked and prodded left and right, and they never see the purpose for all the pokes and the prods. So instead, like if we're in the army, we already have AFTs. We could do a lot with that. If we're in one of the other services where we just have run, push up, sit up, yeah, we can all sit up here and argue about how that's not a perfect test. Is it enough to give me meaningful information that I can use to be more effective?
Speaker: A thousand percent, especially in in our current setting. So again, I think like look at what you're already getting for free. And then as you start to layer on more things, make sure that it's meaningful. The other thing is a lot of these metrics we're talking about are specific within strength and conditioning.
Speaker: That's an underlying quality that's contributing to what actually matters. And so that could be an underlying quality that that contributes what actually matters, say, on the field. So I'd say, what are we collecting from field data, et cetera, that we can use to make some good decisions? Or for us, maybe it's downrange. So again, what information can we collect from there, if any?
Speaker: And some of it can even be subjective and still very meaningful that we can make some decisions with. So again, I don't know if anybody's heard the phrase like never has a generation documented so much of themselves doing so little, right? And that's like a little social media kind of joke about the youngsters of today. But I think a lot of us as professionals are also guilty about like never have we collected so much information that we've done so little with.
Speaker: So can we not grab fewer, more meaningful data points and make sure that we actually use it to make folks better and let them know how that process is happening?
Speaker: um We are at 423 right now. If people need to leave, if they're going to other sessions, want to respect that. But we also can, are you guys okay staying for a little bit to answer some more questions or if you need to bounce, Kat? We have a question here.
Speaker: So yesterday, me and Brooke had lunch, and we kind of discussed it a little bit. um But as far as being a member of member of the North Carolina National Guard, we don't have the H2F.
Speaker: Our H2F is a captain who sits in Raleigh and is supposed to be able to train the soldiers throughout the state of North Carolina. So sitting back, as in my role with primary prevention, I would like to know what you guys think would be the best way for me to be able to assist them in helping out, be it cognitive, be it about sleep, be it about performance or whatever.
Speaker: What could I do to assist the H2F to be able to force multiply and be able to do more with less. What is your role specifically? um I am IPP, so integrated primary preventions. I work with the workplace violence and harassment, but you know I do it all.
Speaker: I'll give probably a JV answer, then push it over to Kat for the varsity answer. But my thought is one that a lot of times when we get together, let's say for drill, which is one of the few times that you're gonna have everybody in the same place.
Speaker: A lot of times there's a PT session involved in that. I don't think that's inherently bad, but I think the PT session alone can only achieve so much. And it certainly isn't gonna move the needle from a physical fitness perspective. So I think even if we kept a physical session, but we really emphasized teaching within that, or some sort of component that is gonna bleed into the next 30 days before the next drill, that that is probably gonna be more effective for having an impact beyond just say that drill weekend.
Speaker: Yeah, I would say similarly, how do you maximize practical takeaways that are simple to integrate into everyday life? We often talk about, when we talk about behavior change, whether that's behavior change around sleep, nutrition, fitness, exercise movement in general, recovery modalities, it's often what's the ideal behavior and then what's the two minute version of that we can actually implement? Because if somebody tells you, hey, the barrier between where you are now and your best ACFT score ever is 90 minute workout five days a week,
Speaker: If you don't feel like you have 90 minutes one day a week, well then that's a non-starter. right What's the two minute version of that? Could I be doing two minutes of hand release push-ups once a day? That's gonna make more of an impact on your hand release push-ups than planning to do 90 minutes and then never finding the time.
Speaker: So you know what are those practical takeaways? And I think there's opportunities in h twof and some of like their share folders and things where there probably are already products that speak to that, that you probably could ask that captain to pull and have ready for when you do have drills. So you also have resources to hand out. And then at the end of the day, it's on the individual to actually have the motivation. But if you provide a path forward and there's Minimal resistance there besides having motivation and a little bit of time to commit to it I think you'll find more people invest in their health and wellness
Speaker: Just a real quick add is i would say the beware the a to lean into like a tech answer as an easy button.
Speaker: A great example is the Texas National Guard purchased a number of app based, you know, access for their folks. The user levels were something around, I want to say 7% and that might even be high.
Speaker: And so again, you're looking at 7% of the folks actually engaging with that solution. And so that's maybe not the place to start, even though it is tempting to think, oh, decentralized apps solves that, but is it just the decentralization that you're having to solve for? Are there other barriers, other friction points that might need to be addressed first to Kat's point, something like time or the discrepancy between our intention and our execution? Thank
Speaker: you.
Speaker: Okay, for working with college athletes or world team members, do you think having the athletes visualize their short-term goals, their long-term goals, or doing some type of other meditation practice helps them develop more awareness of them themselves in the sport than just like a normal, regular routine or ritual that they do?
Speaker: I think there's it multiple ways to skin that cat. One of the first ones being, i do want to shy away from rituals versus routine. Ritual has some sort of rigidity to it, where if I don't do my ritual, right, I'm wearing i'm not wearing my lucky shoes, I might have some...
Speaker: aspect that I'm undermining my own effort, I'm creating a self-fulfilling process, so that that that external aspect is so important to my process. and When we build routines, we want them to be flexible. When it comes to mental imagery, I think a lot of it depends on the buy-in of the athlete and how much they can create richness and detail and control their mental imagery.
Speaker: I know that when I was 13, 14 years old, at the start of every competition, they play the national anthem, and I would stand there, and I visualize standing on the podium with the American flag in the background, because they play the national championship, or, you know, at world championships, they play your national anthem when your country wins.
Speaker: So I would visualize standing on the podium, being like, I'm accepting my gold medal, this is that moment. And I think that created a lot of motivation for me personally, and I've had other athletes who I feel like are ready to lean into that, where,
Speaker: they want to capture the essence of that experience and they're they're willing to sit down and write some of that out and c create some richness and context for their mental visualizations, specifically for those big picture goals. I think when it comes to mental imagery on some of our smaller skills or pre-performance type mental imagery,
Speaker: really comes down to the number of reps and how intentional you're gonna be about your mental imagery. where We see a lot of research saying mental imagery is activating the same neural connections as doing the thing.
Speaker: That's only true if you're really good at mental imagery. I can't sit here and picture a basketball free throw and have my brain go through those neural connections. I don't have those neural connections. I've never done a free throw.
Speaker: right so i don't have those neural connections to run and actually activate so it needs to be something that a you already have experience with preferably and then b is it something that i'm going to sit down and create time for every single day and i think there's a lot of opportunities there let's say during off season where when someone's injured or while they're traveling where they can carve out 10 15 intentional minutes and say i'm going to go through x number of reps of my mental imagery and then have some sort of evaluation process too. right I'm not just letting the video play up there, I'm actually saying, okay, how present was I? Where was my focus? you know How much engagement did I feel in certain movements?
Speaker: How many people on the field of play was I able to integrate this time? Was I able to integrate any auditory or additional visual cues that would be part of that picture to increase that realism? um We also see that too with increasing realism in terms of what you're wearing or even what surface you're on. They've done research on golfers that if they're trying to visualize like hitting out of a sand pit, standing in a tub of sand increases the mental activation they actually experience. because that we have that tactile sensation. So actually putting on your shoes, standing in the right posture also goes a long way. And again, that comes with how committed is that athlete to using mental imagery.
Speaker: If you're just gonna futz around with it, your time might be better off taking a nap, genuinely when it comes to cognitive performance. If you're gonna give 100% effort to developing mental images as skill, think tons of benefit.
Speaker: All right, any other questions? Did I not any answer anybody's questions from the app? Because we can just like I can just type these out or any of these guys that you had questions for.
Speaker: Okay. I think we're going to call it then. Thank you guys so much for your time and attention.
Speaker: Scene. Thank you very much. Good luck.
