Latest / The Strength In Numbers Podcast / EP 54: Mason Hays | Filtering What Matters, Master Problem-Solving, and Making it in the Private Sector

Transcript

EP 54: Mason Hays | Filtering What Matters, Master Problem-Solving, and Making it in the Private Sector · The Strength In Numbers Podcast

• 0:00
  Is the exercise selection stimulating?
• 0:02
  Like is it accomplishing what I'm aiming to accomplish?
• 0:06
  And then on the other end it's is the specific exercise
• 0:10
  stimulating and does it need to be there in the 1st place?
• 0:13
  Like do I, do I need to stimulate?
• 0:15
  What even theoretically this should be stimulating?
• 0:19
  There's so many times I can reflect back on so many
• 0:21
  different things that we had in programs that I'm just like, I,
• 0:25
  I don't have the best justification in the world for
• 0:29
  why this is in here. And so I think for a lot of
• 0:32
  stuff that I did early on, I probably drowned it out what
• 0:36
  needed to be the stimulus. I was plugged into a system that
• 0:40
  managed this really well, but there was still countless times
• 0:44
  where I would get to the end of sessions and kids would be
• 0:47
  dragging or just completely fried.
• 0:50
  And I kind of start digging in at that point and realized that
• 0:55
  I should not have done a single thing that I did with them in
• 0:58
  the entire session that day had I just communicated a little bit
• 1:01
  better on the front. And that's kind of like the
• 1:03
  analysis I'm running in my head for every athlete is I'm just
• 1:07
  trying to gather the information to put all the puzzle pieces in
• 1:11
  the right places for them and try to find the low hanging
• 1:15
  fruit. And it exists somewhere there.
• 1:23
  Welcome to the Strength in Numbers podcast.
• 1:25
  I'm your host, John Bloom, and today's guest, Mason Hayes.
• 1:29
  Mason is the VP of Sports Performance at Elite Performance
• 1:31
  in Frisco, TX after working as the Training Director, APEC in
• 1:35
  Fort Worth. We dive into his journey from
• 1:37
  APEC athlete to APEC training director, building a coaching
• 1:41
  identity that you're known for and how to make in the private
• 1:44
  sector. Mason breaks down why it's so
• 1:46
  important to be a generalist and a master problem solver and how
• 1:50
  to remove trash volume and filter your program down to
• 1:53
  what's actually going to provide the needed stimulus based on
• 1:56
  your goals. Last but not least, Mason gets
• 1:58
  into his outline on long term athletic development along with
• 2:02
  common mistakes in youth training, finding a balance
• 2:04
  between data and tuition and how he profiles athletes, plus his
• 2:08
  key KPI's. This is an incredible episode
• 2:11
  that you definitely want to listen to from start to finish
• 2:14
  with Mason. If you're getting value from
• 2:15
  these conversations, give the show a follow and leave a
• 2:18
  review. It helps us continue to reach
• 2:20
  and impact more coaches. Let's get into today's episode,
• 2:25
  Mason. You know, since we got this one
• 2:27
  locked and I've been I've been super excited.
• 2:29
  You know, you've been always someone that I've really enjoyed
• 2:31
  watching what you put out and then your training of yourself,
• 2:34
  of your athletes, how you do that and always really wanted to
• 2:37
  connect and heard heard great things from like Andrew Neelow.
• 2:40
  So man, I'm, I'm, I'm super pumped to get to talk and
• 2:42
  connect for the first time today with you.
• 2:43
  Dude, I appreciate it. It's an honor.
• 2:45
  I'm glad that we called out the time to chop it up.
• 2:47
  Yeah, man, you know, for, for people that don't know you and
• 2:51
  you know, when I, when I, when I think kind of of what I've seen
• 2:53
  of you, you know, it started at like APEC, but I know you were
• 2:56
  an athlete there, then kind of started as an assistant there.
• 2:59
  And, and I feel like that's when I started to see kind of videos
• 3:01
  you're putting out. You worked your way up there and
• 3:03
  now you're a new spot. But you kind of give a
• 3:04
  background of kind of that progression from starting out
• 3:07
  building your way up at APEC and the now where you at with EPT?
• 3:10
  Yeah, man, I mean, it really started.
• 3:13
  It started when I was in high school.
• 3:15
  So I grew up. I was born and raised in East
• 3:17
  Texas. I'm from Longview, if you have
• 3:20
  any idea where that is. But out there you play
• 3:24
  everything. So playing baseball, basketball,
• 3:26
  football, ran track all the way through my senior year.
• 3:28
  High school football was kind of the thing that gave me the most
• 3:32
  opportunity after high school. So ended up playing a year to
• 3:36
  junior college and then went on to play at Texas State for four
• 3:39
  years. But all through high school, you
• 3:41
  know, APEC was the only thing in East Texas, which was an hour
• 3:46
  from, you know, door to door from my house to where it was
• 3:49
  located that you could get really high quality training.
• 3:53
  And it was something that I was just like obsessed with from the
• 3:57
  genesis of even understanding that, you know, training was a
• 4:00
  vehicle to get better at sports. Like that's that's all I cared
• 4:02
  about. And so I did anything I could to
• 4:05
  be like in the building all through that time period.
• 4:07
  So anytime that I can make the drive over there, you know, I, I
• 4:10
  trained there all through high school.
• 4:11
  And I think the little that I did know, I knew enough to know
• 4:15
  that the way that they were doing things was a little bit
• 4:18
  unorthodox and different, but it was good.
• 4:22
  I saw what I did for myself. I saw what I did for the people,
• 4:24
  you know, that were around me that I was training with.
• 4:26
  I kind of felt the culture in the ethos of what was going on
• 4:29
  in the building and started to grow really close with, you
• 4:32
  know, Bobby and Kai and kind of the brains behind that whole
• 4:34
  operation. And so, you know, I, I did what
• 4:37
  I could to like plant my seeds there.
• 4:39
  And because I knew if I was never, you know, playing a sport
• 4:43
  that this was what I wanted to do.
• 4:45
  Luckily, that paid off in the long run.
• 4:47
  I finished up at Texas State and then trained at the Fort Worth
• 4:51
  location to get ready for a pro day.
• 4:53
  That was 2020. So I had a late pro day in
• 4:55
  April. COVID happened before that.
• 4:57
  Everything shut down. And then when the dust kind of
• 5:01
  settled and all of that, I got a call and, you know, they asked
• 5:04
  if I wanted to go out to the Fort Worth location because they
• 5:06
  need more help there. And I went out there and sent
• 5:08
  it, which huge blessing in disguise because in the long
• 5:12
  run, I think there's way more opportunity being on Fort Worth
• 5:15
  when I was, you know, my whole life prepared just to go back to
• 5:18
  Tyler just because it's close to where I was from and what I
• 5:21
  knew. But really glad that I ended up
• 5:23
  there and kind of, over the course of a number of years,
• 5:25
  kind of worked my way up the chain and was the director of
• 5:28
  that location for a handful of years before I took the more
• 5:32
  recent opportunity that I got literally a year ago this month.
• 5:36
  And now I'm located out in Frisco, TX at a beautiful
• 5:40
  building inside the Star called Elite Performance and have been
• 5:43
  doing that for the last year. Yeah, no, that's awesome.
• 5:46
  And I think I feel like that's something I think about this
• 5:48
  sometimes, like athletes don't always understand, like, like
• 5:52
  you said, about planting seeds, like the opportunity they have.
• 5:54
  If they like they if they want anybody coaching sports semi
• 5:57
  like how much of an opportunity they have to like set themselves
• 6:00
  up for getting into coaching based on how they interact with
• 6:03
  who their coaches are and and they're pro wherever they're at
• 6:06
  like that. They're going to have such a
• 6:08
  head start. If they, you know, those coaches
• 6:11
  trust them and you know, they want to get into that.
• 6:13
  They had a great, you know, position to jump into that like
• 6:16
  like you. What was that?
• 6:17
  A pretty surreal moment when you became the training director at
• 6:21
  APEC after all those years of being an athlete yourself, and
• 6:24
  really not that far removed from being an athlete yourself there.
• 6:27
  Oh for sure man. I mean like the the entry point
• 6:32
  there is still it's still the same grind that you get from
• 6:36
  like the classic like being Aga to collegiate setting.
• 6:39
  It's it's not high paying, it's long hours.
• 6:42
  You know, to get to that point, I had to, I wouldn't you call it
• 6:47
  taking a lot of risk. I had to be up early when I
• 6:49
  didn't necessarily have to be there and be around training
• 6:52
  groups that I wasn't necessarily assigned to be on.
• 6:55
  But I knew that if I wanted to Foster and create the Loreal,
• 6:58
  the relationships that I needed to go get into that position at
• 7:01
  some point, that it was something that I had to do.
• 7:03
  And I did that for, I mean, three years, almost 4 before any
• 7:08
  like real payoff happened. But I mean, my first gig there,
• 7:12
  like out of college with a degree, having known the
• 7:14
  background of the system, everything was still starting
• 7:18
  out at 15 bucks an hour and grinded that out until they
• 7:22
  said, hey, we're going to put you on a salary, which I thought
• 7:25
  was the greatest thing ever. And realized after my first
• 7:27
  paycheck, I was making less than I was when I was out because of
• 7:29
  the hours I was worth. So yeah, man, like when when the
• 7:32
  opportunity did come, like it was it was it was surreal.
• 7:36
  But like by the time I got to that point, I mean, it was I was
• 7:40
  so prepared for it and was so excited about it.
• 7:43
  And it just felt justified for how much like pride I had in
• 7:47
  that place. Like I was bled it and was
• 7:52
  branded by everything APEC for such a long time.
• 7:55
  So being able to have a prominent voice to cut lead the
• 7:59
  front after so many people that mentored me had kind of come and
• 8:02
  gone with the company was pretty surreal.
• 8:05
  Yeah. And man, I, I've said it before,
• 8:07
  I think I hear about, I'll say it over and over, like when it's
• 8:10
  early, like, like you're saying, man, like chasing experiences
• 8:13
  growth and like the right place is so much more important than
• 8:17
  trying to chase what maybe could be a little bit more money right
• 8:20
  out, right out the gate, but not as good a spot for you to
• 8:24
  develop yourself. And you know, you know, might be
• 8:26
  1234 years of not getting paid anything.
• 8:29
  Like you're saying, put yourself in the right room, put yourself
• 8:32
  around the right people and opportunities to develop
• 8:34
  yourself like that will exponentially grow you.
• 8:37
  But then also like the amount you can earn like in 5-6 years,
• 8:41
  then if you maybe took the little higher paying job that
• 8:44
  you know maybe doesn't actually grow you quite as much right at
• 8:47
  right in the beginning. Yeah, for sure, man.
• 8:48
  Like that's what I was alluding to earlier.
• 8:50
  Like even just if I had ended up at a separate location, if I
• 8:53
  ended up in the same company, but in Tyler versus Fort Worth,
• 8:56
  that itself changes the entire landscape of like where I am
• 9:00
  right now. When I talked about there being
• 9:01
  more opportunity in Fort Worth, the opportunity had nothing to
• 9:04
  do with anything that I was assigned to technically coach
• 9:08
  all through those early days. It was like it was a lot of off
• 9:12
  site stuff. So I was coaching at high
• 9:14
  schools all around the Fort Worth area, coming back in the
• 9:17
  evening and coaching like youth and kids class really late into
• 9:20
  the night. And then it was my choice to
• 9:22
  turn around if I wanted to be at the first NFL group in the
• 9:25
  morning and go help out with MLB and you know, do those things.
• 9:28
  But I mean, had I not, then the path is not paid to like do what
• 9:32
  I'm doing now. So it's made it all worth it on
• 9:34
  the back end. But I mean, I'd be lying to you
• 9:36
  if there wasn't a year to a year and a half stretch where I was
• 9:39
  like, dude, none of this is worth it.
• 9:41
  I've continued to do this. Like the opportunity hasn't
• 9:44
  come. The ceiling's over my head.
• 9:45
  I feel just, I feel fortunate. I feel blessed for how things
• 9:49
  happen at the time that they happen and ultimately all the
• 9:52
  stuff that I did back then has paid off, yeah.
• 9:55
  Yeah, but this is a great leading because I wanted to ask
• 9:58
  you about you made a post recently about like how to make
• 10:01
  it in the private sector. And one of the things I'm going
• 10:04
  to read you, you, you one point you made was you've got to
• 10:06
  develop a coaching identity. People can name.
• 10:09
  If someone can't describe what you're about, you're not there
• 10:11
  yet. Get a clear point of view on
• 10:13
  training, on athletes, on the industry, get known for
• 10:16
  something. So when you say that and and you
• 10:18
  think about yourself like what do you hope people name from
• 10:22
  seeing you as your training identity?
• 10:25
  What I think, what I would say and what people, I mean, I think
• 10:28
  people online probably know me a lot for who I train or or where
• 10:31
  I've trained. I think personally and everybody
• 10:35
  that I interact with, like in the building know me as a
• 10:38
  problem solver. And if I was answering to you,
• 10:41
  you know, what do I want to be known for?
• 10:42
  It's, it's exactly that I, I'd make that post and I also would
• 10:46
  tell you that like I'm still a generalist, like in this kind
• 10:49
  of, I mean, it's how I was as an athlete to like Jack of all
• 10:52
  trades, master of none. I'm pretty good at a lot, but
• 10:55
  like was an elite enough at anything specific to still be
• 10:58
  playing a sport for a living. But I think having, you know,
• 11:02
  having all the experience I've had from so many different
• 11:05
  people and good mentors and coaches, it's just allowed me to
• 11:10
  to try to solve a lot of issues for people that walk into our
• 11:13
  building. And the population that I
• 11:14
  typically see is just people at some point trying to get better
• 11:17
  at their sport to some capacity. You can get into a niche and
• 11:20
  like, I think about speed, I think about Altus, I think about
• 11:23
  damn half, I think about Les Spellman.
• 11:25
  You want to throw like fashion there.
• 11:26
  I think about Dan Foley, you know, like there's everybody's
• 11:30
  kind of got their thing. And I am speaking to that when I
• 11:33
  make that, but like being true to what my identity is, it's
• 11:37
  exactly that. Like I feel like I've brought in
• 11:39
  my horizon enough to be able to make a name for myself to just
• 11:44
  solve issues, make you better at your sport when you walk in the
• 11:47
  door, like be able to be the one that can identify the KPI and
• 11:51
  then have the blueprint to go solve whatever that is that's
• 11:54
  holding you back. And so that's maybe like a like
• 11:58
  a two way political answer to say, Hey, you got to build an
• 12:01
  identity in something specific, then say that my identity as
• 12:04
  being a generalist. But I think it's the end of the
• 12:06
  day that like that's what I do is I solve problems.
• 12:09
  Yeah, I mean, I think one of my favorite books, I think you read
• 12:12
  Range by David Epstein and you know, why, why generalists will
• 12:15
  triumph in a specialized world. I think like when I think about
• 12:17
  coaching, like I feel like you have to have that.
• 12:20
  You have to be able to, you know, look outside your trench
• 12:23
  to other realms of psychology of, you know, you know, rehab
• 12:29
  of, you know, speed, you know, all these different things and
• 12:31
  be able to mesh those things together and use the like you're
• 12:35
  saying, use the tool that you need to solve whatever problem
• 12:37
  in front of you. Like, like, you know, I, you
• 12:39
  know, all the people you said like Altus less, but all those,
• 12:42
  like they're known for those things, but they're, those are
• 12:45
  not the only things they know, right?
• 12:46
  They, they, they, they've got a wide, you know, array of
• 12:50
  knowledge and all these other areas.
• 12:51
  And there might be something that they're known for really
• 12:54
  specialize in. But like, I feel in, in any room
• 12:57
  of coaching, you've got to have like a, a background of a lot of
• 12:59
  different things to give context to what you're doing to be able
• 13:02
  to, you know, adjust your, your problem solving to whatever the
• 13:05
  situation is. Yeah, dude.
• 13:06
  And I think depending on the field that you're in, certain
• 13:08
  things matter more. But like in that same caption
• 13:11
  that you're alluding to, I had the point about like, if you're
• 13:13
  in the private sector, there's a hell of a lot to learn from
• 13:17
  things in the marketing realm and communications and public
• 13:20
  relations. Like those things weigh far more
• 13:24
  than anything, you know, from an exes and those perspective like
• 13:27
  there's too many coaches that I can point to that trump smarter
• 13:32
  coaches just off of their ability to communicate and be a
• 13:35
  likable human being. So I think you can take it from
• 13:38
  that perspective. And then I think you can take it
• 13:39
  from the perspective if you want to expand your own tool back,
• 13:42
  like being able to go dive into gymnastics and learn things
• 13:45
  about ground based movement, go dive into even yoga or in other
• 13:48
  practices that are also within our silo.
• 13:51
  There's there's there's Nuggets you can take away from
• 13:53
  everything. And I think all of those
• 13:55
  accumulating and building up who you are as a coach are what
• 13:59
  makes you complete and what makes you successful.
• 14:01
  Yeah, and sometimes I think about this like if if I'm, if
• 14:04
  I'm a, you know, a coach just starting out, I'm I'm listening
• 14:07
  to talk about this right now and it's like, OK, like I've got to
• 14:11
  try and learn all these different skills now.
• 14:14
  And like I don't have any of them yet.
• 14:15
  Like how do you find that balance?
• 14:17
  Maybe especially starting out where it's like, OK, I don't
• 14:19
  want to go so broad that I don't actually get good at anything,
• 14:22
  but like I've got to, you know, build an array of skill sets
• 14:25
  versus just going in one thing. Like how do you kind of find
• 14:28
  that balance initially of how deep you go, how wide you go?
• 14:31
  I. Think I think 1 experience is
• 14:34
  like is your road map. I think the moment that you can
• 14:37
  get into the setting that you want to be in, it will very
• 14:41
  quickly show you where you need to be navigating your learning.
• 14:45
  I think as soon as you end up in the environment, it's going to
• 14:48
  show up and tell you, should I get plugged into a building and
• 14:51
  realize that I have no idea what anybody's talking about from a
• 14:54
  coaching in queuing perspective. OK, I think that immediately is
• 14:57
  going to show you that you're going to need to learn more of
• 14:59
  the XS and OS to be more confident in what you're
• 15:01
  speaking on in the 1st place. But I think if you are someone
• 15:04
  that has a pretty dense background in that and you walk
• 15:06
  into the building and you still feel very uncomfortable being in
• 15:09
  front of a room having to coach in queue.
• 15:11
  Well, then I think that's going to tell you pretty quickly and
• 15:13
  maybe going and reading How to Win Friends and I Influence
• 15:16
  People or I might be screwing up the title on that.
• 15:19
  Mike Boyle will tell you it's his his number one book that any
• 15:22
  coach should go read. But diving more into kind of the
• 15:24
  communication rabbit hole is kind of what I'm getting into.
• 15:27
  I think that the experience will kind of pave the way for you.
• 15:31
  So that would be advice number one is to try to get somewhere
• 15:34
  in the setting if you're not already in the setting.
• 15:36
  And I think as soon as you do, it'll kind of show you the road
• 15:39
  map. Yeah, yeah.
• 15:40
  You know, you talked about yourself being a problem solver
• 15:43
  when when you're faced with problems that you're struggling
• 15:46
  to find a solution or answer to, like where do you go for
• 15:51
  answers? People first coaches that are
• 15:54
  kind of in my circle that I trust the amount of of
• 15:58
  consumption that I've had through podcasting, ironically,
• 16:01
  because we're sitting on one now like until interns a lot like I
• 16:04
  get questions like did you learn this in school?
• 16:06
  Did you read this book or that I was I was weird and erotic about
• 16:10
  this stuff when I was still an athlete from the time that I was
• 16:14
  16, I didn't listen to a ton of music.
• 16:16
  I would listen to podcast years ago whenever my early fitness
• 16:23
  journey consisted of just like getting on bodybuilding.com and
• 16:26
  reading different articles because that was the only source
• 16:28
  I knew to really go to. Corey Gregory was one of the
• 16:31
  first people that I would start to kind of look at his programs
• 16:33
  and learn from. And he did this whole like lunge
• 16:36
  and learn things and he goes out and does walking lunges for
• 16:39
  miles, which is insane. And he would play like audio
• 16:42
  books and things like that. And so that actually pushed me
• 16:45
  into some of the some of the habits that I've kind of built
• 16:48
  just as a human that enhance who I am as a coach, but are not
• 16:51
  coaching related, kind of like what you were alluding to.
• 16:54
  And so that was kind of the first time that I was like, oh
• 16:57
  dude, I can just like play this in my headphones and kind of be
• 17:00
  doing other activities that I enjoy doing, but kind of be like
• 17:03
  doing self development along the way.
• 17:06
  But pretty soon after that, like once I got through some audio
• 17:08
  books, I realized like these training podcasts existed.
• 17:11
  And so just fly sports performance.
• 17:13
  I think you could go on there and there's 650 plus episodes
• 17:18
  and I would be willing to say that I probably have learned
• 17:21
  more through that podcast alone amongst some others then I
• 17:25
  probably did in the four years of my undergrad.
• 17:28
  Not to knock anything that I did in school, but it's just it's
• 17:31
  every you, you have access to the smartest and best coaches in
• 17:35
  the entire world at the tip of your fingertips.
• 17:38
  You can hear things that are directly related to what you
• 17:41
  were doing on a day-to-day scenario.
• 17:43
  And so, I mean, for the last, I was 16 when that started.
• 17:47
  I'm 28 now, about to be 29 next month.
• 17:50
  I mean, I've been doing that ever since.
• 17:51
  When I'm driving in the car, that's typically what I'm
• 17:53
  listening to. And there's, I can't tell you
• 17:55
  the amount of times over the last decade that I have been on
• 18:00
  my way to the facility going to or from been listening to
• 18:03
  something. A new idea pops in my head is
• 18:06
  constantly just sparking new creative thinking.
• 18:09
  And I'm like, well, I'm going to have an opportunity today to go
• 18:12
  apply some of this. And then you rinse, wash and
• 18:14
  repeat that for however long it's been.
• 18:16
  And I think, you know, it's been an incredible resource to me.
• 18:19
  But when I get into really complex problems, to get back to
• 18:22
  your original question, yeah, there's there's people that I
• 18:25
  trust that I think have smarter brains than I do that I kind of
• 18:29
  piggyback off of. I'm lucky to have some of those
• 18:31
  people in my own building, but that's typically some of the
• 18:34
  main sources. Yeah, that's super quiet, you
• 18:37
  know, as you're talking about the podcast.
• 18:39
  So she's starting out when you're back here, you know,
• 18:41
  still, you know, an athlete and starting to listen to those.
• 18:43
  I, I, I feel like you're talking about, you know, back when I was
• 18:46
  in college and stuff too. And then doing all that.
• 18:48
  You know, I had a, a recent episode though, with, with Jared
• 18:51
  Wilson, really, really awesome episode.
• 18:53
  And he is talking about how right.
• 18:55
  So he, he, he worked, he had a gym and he went with John Wall
• 18:58
  and was just just with John Wall only traveling full time as
• 19:01
  director of performance. And then when John retired, he
• 19:05
  kind of went back to his gym. And now, now his mission is like
• 19:08
  he, he felt like he really saw what high performance was where
• 19:10
  he was coordinating, you know, all the, you know, massage
• 19:13
  therapist, doctors, nutrition, like on court work with the
• 19:16
  strength work, they're OK. Like I saw what this looks like
• 19:19
  at a high level now. And he's like, I want to, I want
• 19:21
  to try and bring this high performance to as many athletes
• 19:24
  now, you know, more youth athletes at his gym and you
• 19:29
  know, bringing in aspects of not just the training, but
• 19:31
  nutrition, recovery, sleep, you know, stress consolidation,
• 19:34
  different things like that for you.
• 19:36
  When, when you're thinking of the work you do with youth
• 19:38
  athletes, like is that, is that something that you're trying to
• 19:42
  do too? Because obviously it's hard,
• 19:43
  right where there's, you know, there might be lots of athletes,
• 19:45
  you know, whatever the setup is with groups, small group, you
• 19:47
  know, and you might not have as much time, you're not around as
• 19:50
  much. But are you trying to bring
• 19:51
  those aspects in, especially with like the scheduling aspect
• 19:54
  and, and working with them on, you know, where, where we're
• 19:57
  pairing up, you know, club stuff with, you know, stress?
• 20:00
  Consolidation with club and lifting and school stuff and
• 20:04
  just having those types of conversations.
• 20:05
  For sure. I mean, I love that.
• 20:07
  For one, I love that Jared's doing that because I mean, it's
• 20:09
  kind of the ethos behind what we're trying to do at Elite
• 20:12
  Performance. Our building is our buildings
• 20:15
  made for it. We're in a space where we have
• 20:18
  the resources to actually go do that at a really, really high
• 20:21
  level. And it's something that I feel
• 20:23
  like the quality is solid enough that I can stand behind it and,
• 20:27
  and feel good about, you know, the service that we're offering
• 20:29
  from all of those fronts. Because I mean, that's that's
• 20:32
  The thing is that, you know, you want to bring that aspect to, to
• 20:36
  youth. And the reason pros have that
• 20:38
  is, is they have the resources with the with the time, the
• 20:41
  money, it is their full time gig.
• 20:43
  They're not logged down by school or other priorities.
• 20:47
  But to your point, I think, I think the main way in going
• 20:49
  about doing it is, is primarily education and specifically
• 20:53
  education on usually the parents part, depending on what age
• 20:57
  you're talking about. And so, yeah, I mean that that's
• 21:01
  a huge priority of ours. I think the way it looks in my
• 21:03
  world currently is being able to expand myself a little bit.
• 21:07
  Like I oversee a staff now. And so it's not like it was my
• 21:11
  early APEC days where, you know, I, I go through a typical day
• 21:15
  and, and do coach 5 year olds all the way through pro athletes
• 21:19
  and do a dual fitness all in a 24 hour time frame.
• 21:22
  Now there's there's some more delegation where I can do what I
• 21:26
  can to help educate other coaches who are in communication
• 21:30
  with other kids and other parents and kind of have the
• 21:33
  oversight of trying to put all of the proper systems in place
• 21:37
  to try to create this training ecosystem that helps foster
• 21:42
  everything that you're talking about in the easiest way
• 21:44
  possible. If we want people to do all
• 21:46
  these things well, how do we make that as easy as we can for
• 21:50
  them? And then how do we, how do we
• 21:52
  give them the knowledge to be able to make the best decisions
• 21:55
  for themselves whenever the resources aren't is readily or
• 21:59
  easily available? Those are all things that I'm,
• 22:01
  that I'm working on doing from a day-to-day.
• 22:03
  That's just, that's my job. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 22:07
  Let's go in. You know, obviously one piece
• 22:09
  that you know, it can be hard at the youth levels, like there's
• 22:13
  lots of stuff you don't have control over, right.
• 22:15
  Obviously, you know, especially in RA or here in DFW, it's a
• 22:18
  good thing there's there's lots of great high school strength
• 22:21
  coaches and most high schools are in this area like have
• 22:24
  either a strength coach or they're contracting some group
• 22:27
  out. So then when people are coming
• 22:29
  in the private sector, it's like, you know, we have to
• 22:32
  figure out how do we complement that, right?
• 22:33
  So for you with so many people having programs that they're
• 22:37
  they're probably doing their schools like how are y'all
• 22:39
  trying to complement that and add value along with that versus
• 22:44
  compete with what they're already doing?
• 22:46
  Yeah. Well, credit to Bobby Stroop on
• 22:48
  this one because I mean this, this is if you are in the
• 22:52
  private sector, especially in an area like we're in, like our
• 22:55
  system is built to complement what kids are doing
• 22:59
  traditionally at schools. And I learned that from Bobby.
• 23:02
  Like my my programming is, is taking all of those things into
• 23:08
  account. Like when you come into elite
• 23:10
  performance for a training session, the level of technical
• 23:15
  coaching that you're going to get centered around different
• 23:18
  forms of speed is not what you would go get in a regular high
• 23:22
  school SNC workout. Not because any coach is absent
• 23:26
  of the knowledge to be able to do those things, but they are
• 23:29
  confined by their time and resources and the amount of kids
• 23:32
  that they have. Everything that we're doing is
• 23:34
  in a relatively small group session.
• 23:35
  So what we have from a space perspective, an equipment
• 23:39
  perspective vastly changes the training opportunity that we
• 23:43
  have. And so I would say from what we
• 23:45
  do, from the speed standpoint, what we do from like a plyo, I'm
• 23:48
  using air quotes, power training perspective is going to be very
• 23:52
  different and very supplemental to what kids do at school.
• 23:56
  They're not getting the exposures that they're getting
• 23:58
  in our doors. Typically when it comes to our
• 24:00
  strength training, the programming is written just as
• 24:03
  that, a supplement to what they're already doing.
• 24:05
  I'm not coming in and then and barbell back squatting and power
• 24:08
  cleaning all the athletes. And so within that, I think the
• 24:12
  most important aspect of that, because what if you do have the
• 24:15
  one off kids who are not involved in anything at their
• 24:18
  school? They come in and do like your
• 24:20
  air quote again, supplemental type program and they're missing
• 24:24
  all the mink potatoes. No, we have systems in place and
• 24:28
  communication is a huge part of this where we're meeting weekly.
• 24:32
  Coaches are communicating with athletes daily and we're able to
• 24:36
  create a system where we can easily make the necessary
• 24:40
  changes on the fly for everybody within the group.
• 24:42
  We manage group size that way for a reason.
• 24:44
  We have our equipment laid out specific areas for a certain
• 24:47
  reason so that we can make we can keep all of this quality
• 24:51
  where it needs to be and make the necessary adjustments on the
• 24:53
  fly to keep everything cohesive with what somebody could be
• 24:56
  doing outside of our building. Yeah, yeah.
• 24:58
  No, that's great, Mason. And you know, how do you think
• 25:01
  about with that, like being able to deliver enough of a stimulus
• 25:06
  that you're actually making some adaptations and making
• 25:09
  improvements and the things we're trying to do, but not too
• 25:12
  much more than it is competing or you know, you know, overload
• 25:15
  them too much. Really.
• 25:16
  You know, some of these kids, you look their their schedule
• 25:18
  and that the whole month of 00 days off, but we're, you know,
• 25:22
  we're actually like providing value and making them better,
• 25:25
  but not in a way that's just adding too much to their bucket
• 25:28
  that that's already super filled.
• 25:29
  Yeah, I think the number one thing I'm going to come back to
• 25:31
  is the communication aspect. So kids don't know it, but when
• 25:35
  they're walking in the door and I'm touching classes, it's kind
• 25:37
  of the first fist bumps, handshakes.
• 25:40
  Hey, how are you? What's been going on?
• 25:41
  What's what, what y'all have at school today?
• 25:44
  Like you kind of just starting to navigate into some of those
• 25:46
  questions and get a sense of like what what is the last seven
• 25:50
  days to 10 days look like? Like form And that entire time
• 25:53
  as a coach, yes, I'm having a very organic conversation with
• 25:56
  the athlete, but I'm also in the back of my brain just kind of
• 25:59
  articulating, OK, this is this is what they got.
• 26:02
  I know that they hit a bilateral force dominant lower body lifted
• 26:06
  school today. OK, they did some conditioning
• 26:08
  here and there, so good from speed aspect.
• 26:11
  CNS might be a little fried from some of these things.
• 26:14
  OK, how can I adjust what they're doing today with what we
• 26:17
  have planned to make sure that I'm not bogging them down or
• 26:20
  wasting their time? And so it's kind of a constant
• 26:24
  just auto regulation process. And I think that you get good at
• 26:28
  that through reps, but reps mixed in with, with really good
• 26:33
  communication early on. I, this is not how I, we, we
• 26:37
  wrote programming and I was plugged into a system that
• 26:40
  managed this really well. But there was still countless
• 26:43
  times where I would get to the end of sessions and kids would
• 26:46
  be dragging or just completely fried.
• 26:50
  And I kind of start digging in at that point and realized that
• 26:55
  I should not have done a single thing that I did with them in
• 26:58
  the entire session that day. Had I just communicated a little
• 27:01
  bit better on the front end. And kids don't communicate well
• 27:04
  in the 1st place. So you got to be able to connect
• 27:07
  with them and then ask the right questions to pull out of them
• 27:10
  what you need to. And so I think learning the art
• 27:12
  of all of that is kind of what helps assist you in the process
• 27:15
  to be able to do that. Yeah, no, I think I think that's
• 27:17
  a great point. Even like you're saying about
• 27:18
  them not always being this communicating sometimes like
• 27:21
  you'll ask him and like you're saying from like the fiscal
• 27:24
  stuff, you can tell like they're they're feeling a little bit,
• 27:27
  they're struggling a little bit walking in.
• 27:28
  And then some of them that like, you know, that they want to work
• 27:31
  hard, that they're, they're great workers.
• 27:32
  They're like, no, like I'm good. And you have to have those
• 27:34
  conversations like, like, I know you could work through it, but
• 27:37
  like, like, I want to give what's best for you.
• 27:39
  And sticking to this plan might not be what's best for you based
• 27:42
  on where you're at today. And to that point, getting
• 27:45
  creative about how you hide the work.
• 27:47
  Like, I can come in and make an athlete feel like, you know,
• 27:49
  they busted their ass, but do it in a way that I'm not totally
• 27:53
  taxing them and ruining what they're doing for the next 72
• 27:56
  hours. Yeah, yeah, do a do a long ISO
• 27:59
  split squad hold and and they'll be feeling that there.
• 28:02
  Yeah, exactly. You know, I saw you, you put out
• 28:05
  something about getting away from trash volume.
• 28:08
  What? What do you feel like that?
• 28:10
  How does that usually show up in programs?
• 28:12
  Number one thing is going to be is is purpose.
• 28:14
  So anything that doesn't have a defined purpose.
• 28:16
  And so if it's gone through the filter in my eyes that the
• 28:21
  reason that they're in here in the 1st place is because X.
• 28:24
  And so because of the reason that they're in here, I decided
• 28:27
  to put these splits together on these given days, focus on these
• 28:31
  certain things. And I feel like this specific
• 28:33
  exercise selection is conducive to helping that.
• 28:37
  OK, then that checks the box and it stays put.
• 28:40
  But anything outside of it that's not making its way to
• 28:43
  that filter. And I can't clearly defined as
• 28:46
  helping towards what the end goal is, not just because I
• 28:49
  think it needs to be there. I would consider that as part of
• 28:53
  that trash volume and I think that's somewhere where I've had
• 28:57
  a ton of growth as a coach in my first probably one to two years
• 29:00
  from the rest of them is that for a long time I, and I think
• 29:05
  everyone does this, would just reflect back on recent
• 29:08
  experience of things that I remember as an athlete or
• 29:11
  different programs I've done and systems I've been in to do XY
• 29:15
  and Z because all those things were were present.
• 29:19
  I always just felt that that was justified and that I had to find
• 29:22
  a way to work everything into what I was doing or what the
• 29:26
  athlete I was coaching was doing.
• 29:28
  And there's so many times I can reflect back on so many
• 29:31
  different things that we had in programs that I'm just like, I,
• 29:34
  I don't have the best justification in the world for
• 29:38
  why this is in here. And so I think for a lot of
• 29:42
  stuff that I did early on, I probably drowned it out what
• 29:45
  needed to be the stimulus. And so I think I've navigated
• 29:50
  that decently well over the last four to five years and kind of
• 29:53
  grown out of that a little bit. But it was a process for sure,
• 29:56
  and a process of really challenging myself on the
• 30:00
  questions that I was asking whenever it came to what what is
• 30:03
  this really doing and how is that conducive to this athletes
• 30:07
  goal for the reason that they're in the.
• 30:09
  Door. Yeah.
• 30:10
  No, no, I love that. That's something I need that I
• 30:12
  need to get better at too. And it's like, you know, I love
• 30:15
  what you're saying. It's like, let's get targeted,
• 30:17
  like instead of just a shotgun, let's what it what are you?
• 30:20
  What are your goals? What are your needs?
• 30:21
  And let's do what's going to help drive that up and, you
• 30:24
  know, not worry about the other stuff.
• 30:26
  What what have you found over those years as you've talked
• 30:30
  about getting better at that? Like what have you trimmed out
• 30:32
  and and shed out of of that trash volume to to get to the
• 30:37
  signal and get rid of the noise there?
• 30:39
  Dude, everything from movement prep stuff in my warmups to I
• 30:44
  would say probably the biggest point is going to be kind of
• 30:47
  that Gray area mill zone of the force velocity curve.
• 30:50
  Unless I feel like it has a really justified reason for the
• 30:54
  movement patterns that we're working to conditioning stuff
• 30:58
  that I was doing certain movements that I felt just had
• 31:01
  to be a part of strength because they had been part of a lot of
• 31:04
  the strength stuff that I had learned in the systems I've been
• 31:06
  in the past. It comes back to kind of like
• 31:09
  twofold. Like on one side it's like, is
• 31:12
  the exercise selection stimulating?
• 31:14
  Like is it accomplishing what I'm aiming to accomplish?
• 31:18
  And then on the other end, it's is the specific exercise
• 31:22
  stimulating and does it need to be there in the 1st place?
• 31:25
  Like do I do I need to stimulate what even theoretically this
• 31:29
  should be stimulating? And so I kind of see stuff
• 31:34
  through that lens often now. And that's kind of a lot of what
• 31:37
  I feel like I'm constantly trying to educate like younger
• 31:40
  coaches and interns. That's always kind of like my
• 31:42
  challenge when I see different exercise selections that I'm not
• 31:46
  going to say I don't agree with, but it's kind of like, are you
• 31:48
  thinking through justifications for why that's there?
• 31:52
  And so, yeah, man, it's, it's been a lot of it's been a lot of
• 31:56
  that. I think I still wrestle in my
• 31:59
  own mind on kind of the force velocity curve argument.
• 32:03
  I know everybody wants to kind of crap on everything that
• 32:06
  happens through the middle zone. And I'm not going to, I'm not
• 32:10
  going to be the one that justifies like power and
• 32:13
  strength, speed versus speed, strength, but I'm still going to
• 32:16
  justify that. I do think you need to move
• 32:17
  submaximal loads as fast as you can.
• 32:20
  And I think you should do that through a variety of patterns
• 32:23
  and different orientations. And we have our own ways that we
• 32:27
  do that through kind of like our 3D movement thoughts and a point
• 32:31
  vector stuff. But yeah, if there's if there's
• 32:36
  a place that I've eliminated the most, it's been kind of in that
• 32:40
  that power zone. Yeah, yeah, no, I love it.
• 32:43
  What? And you can take this any
• 32:45
  direction you want. What other areas or what are the
• 32:48
  things do you think a lot of people get wrong about
• 32:50
  development? Development as far as coaches or
• 32:54
  like the athletes. Athletes, physical skill or
• 32:58
  whatever, whatever aspect you want to, you know, take it in.
• 33:00
  Getting to advance to quick would be my biggest one and
• 33:05
  getting measurable early, like specifically with youth
• 33:07
  athletes, like getting into numbers too soon, basically
• 33:11
  treating them as if they're if they're older and more developed
• 33:14
  than what they are. And I think when you're in the
• 33:16
  private sector, you're, you're at the pressure of what parents
• 33:20
  want. And unfortunately those things
• 33:23
  that I'm saying I think are the mistakes are what sells.
• 33:27
  But youth development, good youth development in my eyes is,
• 33:31
  is very broad. It's very play based.
• 33:34
  It's very unorganized. And I think we as S&C
• 33:38
  performance coaches see it and love it.
• 33:41
  But I think parents don't see the point in paying for play,
• 33:47
  which is fine. It's just like, OK, get it, get
• 33:50
  them in a cheap organized U Sports league or go take them
• 33:53
  out to a park and let them let them do this there.
• 33:55
  But this is what they need at the end of the day.
• 33:58
  So yeah, I think it's it's both physically and psychologically
• 34:04
  limiting to to take a young athlete who is my goal is you
• 34:07
  know what your question is development.
• 34:09
  Try to get them into to worrying about time sprints early or
• 34:14
  vertical jump heights or strength when they don't even
• 34:18
  have the proper hormones or haven't got on the other side of
• 34:22
  puberty to even even drive that quality.
• 34:25
  Like, you know, I can go up there and coach acceleration
• 34:29
  mechanics so I'm blue in the face, but they physically don't
• 34:32
  possess the outputs to even hold the shapes to move their center
• 34:36
  mass through space the way that I would go coach a combine
• 34:39
  athlete. So yeah, I think that hands
• 34:42
  down, if we're talking about athlete development, is the
• 34:45
  biggest. Yeah, no, I think that's really
• 34:48
  good. And you know, I love, I love
• 34:49
  asking people this question and especially I'd love to hear, you
• 34:52
  know, your perspective from, you know, your experience with such
• 34:56
  a wide range of, of ages. But like if you, if you had a A5
• 35:00
  year old that you're in full control of their physical skill,
• 35:05
  develop all aspects from five years old to now they're
• 35:09
  training with you as a pro athlete.
• 35:10
  Like what would those different kind of blocks in time of, of,
• 35:13
  of what you, what, what they're doing, what that looks like
• 35:16
  throughout that, you know, the ages and ranges of development
• 35:19
  look like? I think the one thing that I
• 35:22
  mean, yeah, you're asking this question on my I'm sure I'll
• 35:24
  have a 5 year old here in the next 5 to 10 years for sure that
• 35:27
  I got to really think this through.
• 35:29
  But when I kind of glance into the future and think about it,
• 35:33
  it's it's kind of a a weird spot to be in with our lens that we
• 35:37
  kind of see everything through. But the psychological aspect of
• 35:41
  everything is, I think what I as a parent when I get there and
• 35:46
  going to try to foster the most. I think letting my kid have as
• 35:50
  much controlled choice as possible to make decisions for
• 35:54
  themselves so that I know that they foster a healthy
• 35:56
  relationship with sports, with training, exercise, their, you
• 36:00
  know, nutrition, their diet, what all that looks like.
• 36:03
  I think I've just seen it enough.
• 36:05
  The overbearing parent that tries to kind of pseudo control
• 36:08
  everything the kid does. You I have I've seen that be
• 36:12
  really bad from the jump and really hurt in athletes
• 36:16
  development. And I've also seen it have kind
• 36:18
  of its spike and peaks where the kid is relatively advanced for
• 36:21
  their age because of what their experience has been with their
• 36:24
  parents to get them involved with every single skill coach
• 36:27
  and a speed coach really early on and and the weight lifting
• 36:30
  early. And I've been around long enough
• 36:32
  now and I've coached for a number of years to see all those
• 36:36
  athletes grow up. And I just think it's some point
• 36:39
  for 99% of them as fizzles out. And I think there's enough
• 36:44
  stories that you can you can ultimately point to with even
• 36:47
  kind of early on prodigies and where they end up either later
• 36:50
  in their career. And so I think if I got to
• 36:53
  control the variables, dude, I'm taking them to every version of
• 36:58
  organized sports that they can get involved in.
• 37:00
  But also making sure that there's tons of free form play
• 37:03
  that maybe I can control the environment enough that I kind
• 37:07
  of like set up a little bias to the things that they're choosing
• 37:11
  to do. Like I'm going to maybe take
• 37:13
  away some of their options so that they have to pick to go
• 37:16
  play outside. But I think one thing that I
• 37:20
  didn't do in my childhood that I would do with my kid is is like
• 37:25
  involvement in things like just gymnastics and even those like
• 37:28
  American Ninja Warrior gems that pop up now and things like that.
• 37:32
  Like anything that kind of builds that early development,
• 37:35
  relative strength I think is huge and probably something that
• 37:39
  without them thinking about it gives a ton of exposure to like
• 37:41
  extensive plyometrics really early and stuff like that.
• 37:44
  I think it is just kind of how I would play things out, at least
• 37:47
  early on. Yeah, Yeah.
• 37:49
  No, no, I love that. I like you're saying about kind
• 37:52
  of kind of using constraints. I was thinking about like with
• 37:55
  with my, you know, daughter coming up and when we have kids
• 37:58
  and stuff like just trying to create all these games that they
• 38:01
  think they're just playing games.
• 38:02
  It's like I'm going to manipulate all these constraints
• 38:04
  to help them develop all these things.
• 38:06
  But hope hopefully having fun and then doing things that they
• 38:09
  want to, you know, as you talk about like the American Ninja
• 38:13
  war, like the gymnastics and one thing, like when I watch videos
• 38:18
  you put on stuff, I feel like with your training, you have a
• 38:21
  great blend of like movement, feel and flow, but then also
• 38:27
  still like data based and then output based, output based too.
• 38:32
  And like a good balance between the two sides of that.
• 38:35
  And I feel like sometimes it can be easy for people like go all
• 38:38
  in on one side and kind of leave the other.
• 38:41
  How do you think about kind of having the yin and Yang of both
• 38:44
  of those together in training? I think that's a good question
• 38:47
  because if I'm answering that, I would tell you that through the
• 38:52
  experience of utilizing both, I've kind of earned the right to
• 38:56
  try to go back and forth and, and use them in tandem with one
• 39:01
  another. Like I, I have my KPI's, we have
• 39:04
  our performance markers that we're trying to drive and I've
• 39:07
  taken every single one of them through that filtration process
• 39:10
  that I talked about earlier on. You know, does this have a place
• 39:13
  and does it have a place for a reason for me to deem it
• 39:16
  important? And everything that we measure
• 39:18
  and track from an output perspective has gone through
• 39:20
  that, and I deem it that. And so, yeah, dude, we, we chase
• 39:25
  outputs. And we have the simplification
• 39:28
  of progressive overload where we feel like we need it and try to
• 39:31
  keep consistency long enough to be able to drive those markers
• 39:35
  to where what we think is adequate based off the
• 39:37
  population that's in front of us.
• 39:39
  But with all that being said, my intuition drives everything and
• 39:44
  Trump's all of that. And the only reason that I feel
• 39:47
  comfortable enough to do that is because, like I just said, I
• 39:50
  feel like I I've earned that right through working in tandem
• 39:53
  with both size of the equation. I think you'll have athletes who
• 39:56
  respond really, really well to dangling that carrot and giving
• 40:00
  them the performance goals to go hit XY and Z number on whatever
• 40:03
  movements. I think there's some athletes
• 40:05
  being able to chase those marker sound gives them a lot of
• 40:08
  confidence and kind of elevates them going into a season and
• 40:11
  they go play great and they they kind of rely on the confidence
• 40:15
  in the feeling they get to be there.
• 40:18
  And then you have a lot of athletes who just mentally it
• 40:21
  beats them the crap down to. And not be there.
• 40:24
  And it's hard for them to to climb their way out of the hole
• 40:27
  because psychologically it's just a reminder of being
• 40:30
  inadequate anytime that they're not at a specific number.
• 40:33
  And there's too many athletes that I can point to on both
• 40:37
  sides of the equation that I've got to see personally who defy
• 40:41
  all the numbers and are very, very, very, very accessible.
• 40:45
  I think everything kind of exists on different ends of the
• 40:48
  spectrum. And if on one side of the
• 40:50
  spectrum you have your your GPP, so think of all your outputs and
• 40:54
  general physical preparedness. And on the other end of the
• 40:57
  spectrum, it's tactical skill. I think athletes that fall all
• 41:01
  the way on one side or the other have more room for air to have
• 41:04
  less of the other. So if I'm an athlete who has
• 41:07
  tons and tons and tons of that elite level tactical skill, I
• 41:10
  think of like a Patrick Mahomes. I feel confident enough to say
• 41:14
  that I could walk in and maybe beat him in a 40 yard dash, even
• 41:17
  the vertical jump. Right now, Patrick, he's a
• 41:19
  freak. Do not take this the wrong way
• 41:21
  and whatsoever, but he's way, way, way better at football than
• 41:25
  I am and specifically playing the position of quarterback than
• 41:29
  I am. That's the reason he gets to do
• 41:31
  what he does and I coach. But you have the other side of
• 41:35
  the equation where you have an athlete that's in absolute freak
• 41:40
  tester, they could go in and they're going to put up crazy
• 41:43
  numbers at the NFL combine. That athlete has more margin for
• 41:47
  error from what they lack from a tactical skill perspective.
• 41:51
  And depending on the sport you play and the position you play
• 41:56
  within certain sports, it's going to buy us more of one than
• 41:59
  the other. If I'm a person or an athlete
• 42:02
  who has tons of that GPPA crazy output and I don't have any of
• 42:08
  the tactical skill, I probably don't play golf.
• 42:11
  But on the other end of the spectrum, if I have tons and
• 42:14
  tons of that just finesse and that tactical skill and I can go
• 42:18
  out and execute more finite strategies really, really well,
• 42:22
  I'm probably not an edge rusher or play left tackle.
• 42:27
  So that's just kind of how my brain sees things.
• 42:30
  And I'm kind of on a tangent now and I'm not even remembering
• 42:33
  what the original question was. But no, no, that's really cool
• 42:37
  points that you made there. And as a thing, I've been
• 42:40
  thinking, I've been working some with Richard Burnett from Triple
• 42:43
  F on kind of trying to build a the better profiling system
• 42:46
  right now for for my business. I think the way he does it is
• 42:49
  really, really awesome. And you know, as you're talking
• 42:51
  about that, like, I guess one, do y'all have some form of
• 42:55
  profiling system where you have like you mentioned like that
• 42:58
  the, the metrics that you're looking for through that filter
• 43:01
  of what, what's really important to you?
• 43:02
  But with that, like are you factoring the skill into that
• 43:06
  profile or is it more, OK, let's see where they're at from a
• 43:09
  physical standpoint with kind of our metrics, what we're looking
• 43:11
  at. And then we can kind of weigh
• 43:13
  that, you know, subjectively to their archetype of what type of
• 43:17
  sport, what type of player they are and kind of where they are
• 43:19
  in that spectrum from, you know, athleticism to skill.
• 43:22
  Yeah, great fashion. So I've also gone to Rich
• 43:24
  because what he does is absolutely phenomenal.
• 43:27
  He's a wizard with Google Sheets.
• 43:29
  And so we, we tried to build out something similar.
• 43:32
  What was fortunate for I was blessed to to be at APEC for the
• 43:37
  time period that I was and be able to get as many reps as I
• 43:40
  did, measuring as many different things as I did with so many
• 43:43
  different populations. And with the accumulation of all
• 43:46
  those reps, we were able to kind of start to identify some
• 43:50
  meaningful KP is and got to a point where we could literally
• 43:53
  start to like to rank them across every age group, male,
• 43:57
  female position, sport, so on and so forth.
• 44:00
  And so that's kind of when I talk about like those KP is I've
• 44:03
  carried those with me. And so I think all of that falls
• 44:09
  under that GPP physical umbrella.
• 44:12
  And so if I have an athlete that walks into the door and I'm
• 44:16
  going to take them through our testing protocol, you want, you
• 44:19
  want to know where you stack up, I can take you through all those
• 44:21
  things. I can measure that similar to
• 44:23
  what you've seen Rich does. He's got that one page
• 44:26
  spreadsheet that he can go put in front of an athlete or a
• 44:28
  parent or another coach. Even in it, it looks awesome.
• 44:31
  It paints a really, really good picture about their physical
• 44:34
  development. We do something similar to that.
• 44:36
  If an athlete walks in and gets a perfect score on that and
• 44:40
  they're still not achieving what they want in their respective
• 44:44
  sport, that in turn is telling me what I need to know about the
• 44:48
  tactical skill component. So that's what I would look at
• 44:51
  and identify as like, OK, I'm going to ask questions about
• 44:54
  like, what does your practice look like?
• 44:56
  How often do you do it? What school are you at?
• 44:59
  Who are your coaches? I'm going to start to try to dig
• 45:02
  in and understand a little bit more and what I see our role as
• 45:07
  is trying to be the oversight for all of the variables, trying
• 45:12
  to account for all the stressors are really, really, really like
• 45:15
  my mentor told me a long time ago that all we are stress
• 45:19
  managers and that's not just the physical inputs, that's
• 45:23
  everything. And so trying to have the right
• 45:25
  communication like we talked about earlier to account for
• 45:28
  everything. I got to know what's going on in
• 45:29
  the 1st place to be able to manage everything.
• 45:32
  But once I gather that information, be able to
• 45:35
  appropriate immediately put all the things in the right place
• 45:38
  and try to manage the volume and intensity of all the stressors.
• 45:41
  And so if you got an athlete with the perfect score that's
• 45:44
  still not as good at their sport, well, I'm not telling
• 45:47
  them to come in five days a week to our private sector facility.
• 45:50
  Try to coordinate them with the right people and people that I
• 45:53
  trust to do the things that I don't, that I don't do at an
• 45:56
  expert level, which may be the skill oriented part of their
• 46:00
  sports. I'm going to say, hey, here is
• 46:02
  what we need to maintain your strengths of what you do well,
• 46:05
  which is a lot of like what we do here.
• 46:08
  But I wouldn't commit more than one to two days a week to doing
• 46:11
  these things. And you need to take the
• 46:12
  allotted time that you have outside of here, probably this
• 46:15
  much and Orient it towards this, but that rarely happens.
• 46:21
  You don't have a lot of athletes that that walk in the door that
• 46:24
  feel like they come in because they need training because
• 46:26
  they're already big, fast, strong, and can jump high.
• 46:29
  It's usually the opposite. They usually probably overvalue
• 46:32
  the skill training if anything. And then you're trying to do
• 46:34
  what you can to educate them enough to say This is why you
• 46:37
  need this and this is what I can do for you.
• 46:39
  I know that you're trying to get better at the execution of your
• 46:44
  mechanics when you throw, but sometimes you just need a bigger
• 46:48
  engine. And that's, that's like my with
• 46:51
  the whole golf journey I've gone on lately.
• 46:53
  It's just like that's, that's that sport.
• 46:56
  I, I am not. I don't embody the identity of
• 46:59
  the point that I'm trying to get across.
• 47:01
  Have the GPPI don't have the tactical skill, but the rest of
• 47:05
  the sport has. There's 100% you can go gain out
• 47:10
  of tactical skill has gathered 99 and they're sitting here
• 47:13
  trying everything they can to muster up another 1% when all
• 47:18
  you've soaked out of the GPP side of things is 10% out of
• 47:22
  100. And all the low hanging fruit
• 47:24
  exists on this other end of the spectrum.
• 47:27
  And so that's kind of like the analysis I'm running in my head
• 47:30
  for every athlete is I'm just trying to gather the information
• 47:33
  to put all the puzzle pieces in the right places for them and
• 47:37
  try to find the low hanging fruit and it exists somewhere
• 47:42
  there. Yeah, yeah.
• 47:43
  I mean, that's so, so good. You know, when we talk about all
• 47:47
  those tests from all those different populations, you got
• 47:50
  to run and kind of figure out, OK, this is like what, what's
• 47:54
  important to to you? Like what, what are those things
• 47:57
  that that you've kind of taken with you that, OK, these are the
• 48:00
  the metrics of the KPIs that that really matter for, for who
• 48:04
  we're training? Yeah, Some of them are specific
• 48:06
  to just the resources we have within our building.
• 48:09
  That's kind of unique. But I think the ones that I deem
• 48:11
  the most valuable are a few times Sprint variations to give
• 48:15
  me an idea of what initial coloration looks like Max
• 48:18
  velocity. And we've come up and this was a
• 48:22
  process that we've messed with over the last couple years.
• 48:25
  But our own version of like a change of direction test that
• 48:27
  involves kind of some acute cuts, but also like a curb
• 48:30
  linear component. We've talked about something
• 48:34
  that if we were going to change it again at any point, they like
• 48:38
  involve some decision making to give like a kind of like a true
• 48:42
  marker of like agility versus just like COD qualities.
• 48:46
  But currently that we haven't settled on anything yet.
• 48:48
  And it just kind of gets complicated by making things
• 48:51
  reliable, valid, being able to have people progress on and
• 48:54
  things like that. But RSI is going to be the other
• 48:57
  big one. And specifically, the more I
• 48:59
  listen to Rich talk, the more I'm kind of just pulling from
• 49:02
  him from afar and directly just reaching out to him.
• 49:05
  But I know lately he's kind of been biasing more single leg
• 49:10
  stuff with RSI and double leg, which I'm kind of in line with
• 49:14
  and ingredients upon. But those are those are kind of
• 49:16
  the big ones. If if you have force plates,
• 49:19
  being able to take some CMJS and like isometric mid dipoles are
• 49:23
  nice. And it's just a easy way to for
• 49:26
  us to measure total force production without having to do
• 49:28
  like a one RM test or get anybody on like a DVT system and
• 49:32
  do like a full force velocity profile to get asked one RM and
• 49:36
  things like that. We do a few things for like
• 49:39
  relative strength is some chin up tests and things like that,
• 49:41
  but collectively map it all out. We tweak it a little bit
• 49:45
  depending on the sport and the population, but trying to get a
• 49:48
  good sense of what those different speed qualities look
• 49:51
  like. What is their jump and power
• 49:54
  effort ability look like and what is strength look like.
• 49:56
  We have a conditioning test that changes depending on sport and
• 50:00
  population. But yeah, I think it it starts
• 50:03
  with, like we talked about the qualities first, what qualities
• 50:06
  do I think they need? And then what's the best tool in
• 50:09
  my toolbox to reliably assess this?
• 50:12
  And do I have enough normative data to know what's good, bad
• 50:16
  and average? Yeah.
• 50:18
  So if you weren't in that beautiful 60 yard or whatever it
• 50:23
  is in indoor turf that you have and you know, for people,
• 50:27
  listen, maybe they have like 2530 yards of your distance.
• 50:31
  Like how would that change the speed training that you're doing
• 50:35
  and kind of what you're looking at there?
• 50:37
  And I'll tell you how you're just trying to develop speed if
• 50:39
  you don't have that space anymore.
• 50:40
  I think we talked about the I talked about the value in my
• 50:44
  eyes of like RSI think one, I would do whatever I could to get
• 50:49
  out and find, find the space, even if it included like if if
• 50:53
  my last resort is running on concrete, we're going to go out
• 50:56
  and we're going to run on concrete.
• 50:57
  I'm going to, I'm going to do what I have to do to find a way
• 50:59
  to try to get a, a Max of ELO stimulus or invest in something
• 51:03
  that can get me close to it. But I think outside of that,
• 51:07
  what I see most athletes struggle with from a speed
• 51:09
  perspective is the reactive strength, the stiffness.
• 51:13
  They, they can't take the force that they're putting into the
• 51:16
  ground and there's too many energy leaks coming up from the
• 51:20
  ankle, the knee, the hip to be able to handle the force that
• 51:23
  they're applying in the specific directions that they're trying
• 51:26
  to apply it. So I think repetitive effort,
• 51:28
  jumping, single leg hops, bounds doing extent apply OS, you don't
• 51:32
  need a ton of space to do any of those things.
• 51:34
  And I think they have have massive, massive carryover to
• 51:39
  the type of qualities you express to go Sprint very fast.
• 51:43
  And so if I was in a setting where I couldn't do it, the
• 51:46
  times that I was inside the confines of my building, if
• 51:49
  there wasn't a ton of space, it would look like a lot of that
• 51:52
  mixed in with some very, very heavy concentric strength stuff.
• 51:55
  But I would say as a side note, I'd be trying to find a way to
• 51:59
  go find the space to to Sprint them and ideally do some Max
• 52:02
  velocity sprinting at least once to twice a week.
• 52:05
  Yeah. Is there something that you used
• 52:07
  to really believe that now you don't?
• 52:09
  Yes, I think I mean there was, I mean there was a time where the
• 52:14
  programming that we were doing was based on kind of the whole
• 52:19
  force velocity curve idea intermixed in with a movement
• 52:25
  tree approach where we would try to, we would try to take our
• 52:29
  exercise selection and made sure that it embodied every form of
• 52:34
  way like anatomically we could move.
• 52:36
  And so if I'm trying to like really break that down, that
• 52:39
  would be doing hip and knee dominant movements being that
• 52:42
  bilateral and unilateral. So making sure that like all of
• 52:44
  those are accounted across like a a split.
• 52:47
  And so this may be a seven day split, this could be a 14 day
• 52:50
  split, could even be 21, so on and so forth.
• 52:53
  Making sure there's frontal and transverse plane movement
• 52:55
  intermixed into that. So I'm still just, I was talking
• 52:57
  about the lower body and then for the upper body, obviously I
• 53:00
  can still go bilateral and unilateral movement, but I could
• 53:04
  do that vertically and horizontally and making sure
• 53:07
  with the Trump that it can flex, extend laterally, bend, rotate
• 53:10
  and do the anti of all of those things.
• 53:13
  And so I know I just kind of quickly and buzzing through all
• 53:16
  of that, but it's like that's a lot of different movements.
• 53:21
  And within all of those movements, also trying to make
• 53:25
  sure that we are touching kind of all of the spectrum of the
• 53:29
  force velocity curve. So trying to make sure that I'm
• 53:32
  doing that with a very, very heavy load that is force
• 53:36
  dominant, trying to do it at maximal speeds, trying to do it
• 53:39
  at everything in between to a point where, yeah, you're you
• 53:43
  are probably rolling your programming over every 14 to 21
• 53:47
  days just to be able to fit everything in.
• 53:50
  Yeah. I think as time has progressed
• 53:53
  on, that's where a lot of the questions that I was telling you
• 53:56
  that I've asked myself over the last couple of years, just kind
• 53:58
  of like watching specific movements.
• 54:00
  Like I can remember in my first to second year at APEC, watching
• 54:05
  like a a kid do like a Kaiser, like rap fire pull down.
• 54:08
  And it's an easy one to butcher to like, I'm not saying there's
• 54:11
  nothing to get out of it, but kind of like watching it at the
• 54:14
  load that it's being performed at and thinking to myself, like,
• 54:17
  like velocity is supposed to be the stimulus here.
• 54:20
  Like we're doing that to kind of justify the curve And just
• 54:23
  thinking to myself, like, OK, well then what, what if we do no
• 54:26
  load? Or like, what if, if velocity is
• 54:29
  the goal? Why not like overspeed this
• 54:31
  somehow, like intuitively, if you would watch them like that's
• 54:34
  ridiculous. Why would you try to do an
• 54:36
  overspeed single arm pull down? But just kind of like working
• 54:40
  through those questions and like asking myself like, am I is this
• 54:44
  in my programming right now? Just because it's it's been here
• 54:47
  in the past and it's what I like did and know versus what I think
• 54:50
  is like stimulating and accomplishing the goals of why
• 54:53
  this athletes here. And even thinking about the fact
• 54:56
  that he just ran a fly 10 and his cap and shoulder girdle was
• 54:59
  moving way faster than it is right now in this pull down when
• 55:02
  he was running that fly and thinking, I've really already
• 55:04
  checked the box there. So yeah, I think that it that
• 55:07
  entire just kind of thought process.
• 55:09
  And that's just, I mean, that's a small example of so many, but
• 55:14
  kind of back to the whole filtration idea, Anything that
• 55:17
  hasn't made its way through the filter is kind of found its way
• 55:20
  out. And I I wouldn't say I currently
• 55:22
  believe in in what I did one time.
• 55:25
  Yeah, yeah. And I feel like that ties in
• 55:27
  perfectly to the getting rid of the junk volume from earlier.
• 55:30
  You know, you're, you know, you said, I think you said 28,
• 55:34
  almost 29. But you're in a you're in an
• 55:36
  awesome position already. Do you have a further down the
• 55:41
  line long term goal of something you want to accomplish or place
• 55:45
  you want to be in your career? Though yeah, man, I feel, I feel
• 55:49
  incredibly fortunate for where I am now.
• 55:51
  I, I really from a private sector perspective, I can't
• 55:55
  think of like a better gig, like the autonomy I'm given and, and
• 55:59
  the resources that I have in the building and, and who I'm
• 56:02
  surrounded with, just like a staff coaching perspectives.
• 56:06
  It's incredible, like it really is and who I get to engage with
• 56:09
  from an athlete perspective on the day-to-day and stuff.
• 56:12
  I'm extremely happy. I think some places that I, that
• 56:16
  I'd like to scale given where I'm at or maybe more on the
• 56:19
  education front. So starting to, I've obviously
• 56:23
  helped other coaches inside our own building for a long time,
• 56:26
  but I think maybe creating some resources and stuff to give some
• 56:30
  practical knowledge on everything that we've talked
• 56:32
  about in the last hour and just kind of scale that side of
• 56:35
  things. Building out our own curriculum
• 56:37
  a little bit more has been something that I've worked
• 56:39
  really, really, really hard on in the last year to get to a
• 56:42
  point where I and we all feel very comfortable about taking it
• 56:45
  out to the public, something that they can tangibly take and
• 56:49
  learn from. Yeah.
• 56:51
  So I think those are some of the bigger steps moving forward.
• 56:55
  I want to continue to scale what we're doing in our building,
• 56:58
  whether it gets outside of our doors a little bit more or kind
• 57:01
  of enhance the way that we're doing it.
• 57:03
  But as far as his career goals go, being being in the team
• 57:08
  sector and things like that, it's just it's you're, you're
• 57:12
  tied to, tied to a coach and a team's performance and not
• 57:15
  really directly your own. So I've kind of always enjoyed
• 57:19
  the the stability of of being in the private sector in the
• 57:22
  capacity that I am. Yeah, yeah.
• 57:24
  You know, it's funny because I feel like a lot of people from
• 57:27
  the team sector would look at the private sector as being less
• 57:32
  stable and like more of a leap. You're not getting a salary, but
• 57:34
  you know, all those different things.
• 57:35
  But yeah, you know, it, I think it's definitely different when
• 57:39
  you're in it too. Obviously there's kind of that
• 57:40
  jump if you're moving from the team sector, but like you're
• 57:43
  your own boss, you, you know, instead of being, you know, one
• 57:46
  person's making decisions to pay you now you got a lot of
• 57:48
  different people. So, you know, one person leaves,
• 57:49
  you still get a lot of other people still paying you.
• 57:52
  But you know, that that that's really cool about the education
• 57:54
  piece that, that that would be something that I would be, you
• 57:57
  know, love to learn from you guys on, you know, as you've as
• 58:00
  you've put in a lot. I mean, you know, we talked
• 58:01
  about the first couple years especially, you know, the grind
• 58:03
  there of not getting paid much and getting there and obviously
• 58:06
  working really hard. It's still where you're at.
• 58:08
  Like what are some of the costs that you've had to experience to
• 58:14
  try and chase being a weed at what you're doing?
• 58:16
  Man, I think, I think time was the is the biggest thing early
• 58:20
  on. I didn't have any of that
• 58:21
  through the first four to five years.
• 58:23
  I still feel like I don't, I don't have much of it.
• 58:26
  I definitely have more than what I did then, but I'm intentional
• 58:31
  about how I get it. And you know, there's a there's
• 58:35
  a there's an earned right to go get to that point.
• 58:38
  I think I mean, I go, I go back to the things that I was doing
• 58:42
  before I even got into the profession.
• 58:44
  Like you, you asked how to get to a point where you feel elite.
• 58:48
  If I fall in that category, it's it has a lot to do with the
• 58:52
  experience that I've gotten over my time coaching.
• 58:55
  But I think if I to for somebody that may be wanting to fast
• 58:59
  track that process, I'd have to be speaking to somebody young
• 59:02
  enough to be doing this. But like start early, start now.
• 59:06
  Like I was. I was thinking about the
• 59:08
  coaching lens as I was an athlete in our college football
• 59:13
  weight room at Texas State and just how I had, I had two in my
• 59:17
  4 years there, but just how the operations were of everything,
• 59:20
  what the programming look like. I've spent time in their office
• 59:23
  after the fact gaining knowledge for them, arguing with them on
• 59:26
  why we were not doing this or that, comparing and contrasting
• 59:31
  the two. So the first guy from the second
• 59:33
  out of the way on the flow was from that what we did, what I
• 59:35
  liked, what I didn't like, just all of it.
• 59:37
  And I think though those things were they were they a sacrifice?
• 59:42
  Like I didn't, I didn't spend a long time.
• 59:44
  I went to a school that is an awesome area in the Hill Country
• 59:49
  of, you know, just South of Boston to Texas.
• 59:51
  And there's a lot of fun things to do and get into.
• 59:55
  My brain is just always had a liking for this stuff.
• 59:59
  And I've been obsessed with with it ever since I realized that I
• 1:00:03
  could do something about what my current athletic ability was
• 1:00:06
  like the day that I realized I am when I am now.
• 1:00:10
  But like, I'm not like stuck to the confines of this, like I can
• 1:00:13
  do something about it. I love the concept of that.
• 1:00:17
  And I just think from from that moment forward, you can call it
• 1:00:20
  a sacrifice to, to the things that I could have been doing
• 1:00:23
  over spring break versus just going back to APEC and learning
• 1:00:26
  from people or spending all my time there through Christmas
• 1:00:29
  break or spending the free hours I had when we had to be at
• 1:00:33
  school for summer 1, summer 2 workouts to turn around and go
• 1:00:38
  to an internship in Austin. And I learned from the guys that
• 1:00:40
  trained from the game, you can see it all as a sacrifice.
• 1:00:43
  But it was it was all just a good opportunity for me.
• 1:00:47
  And it's all paid dividends in the long run.
• 1:00:49
  Yeah. I love it.
• 1:00:50
  And the last question I got for you is like, when do you feel
• 1:00:53
  closest to your purpose and coaching?
• 1:00:55
  Man, when, when some of these athletes that I've coached early
• 1:00:59
  on and known for a long time come back around and there's
• 1:01:02
  there's an impact that I've had on their life.
• 1:01:04
  Yes, to the vehicle of the performance stuff that I've done
• 1:01:07
  with them. But just from the overall
• 1:01:09
  relationship that I've made with them.
• 1:01:12
  Makes me feel like to think about the fact that I have had
• 1:01:15
  some athletes that within the last four months that were a
• 1:01:19
  part of my very, very, very first coaching assignment in May
• 1:01:24
  of 2020. I had to go to Fort Worth
• 1:01:26
  Christian High School and it was the middle of COVID.
• 1:01:28
  They had six racks, but because people have 6 be 6 feet apart,
• 1:01:32
  we can only use three of them. And I've never coached before in
• 1:01:35
  my life. Obviously I've been obsessed
• 1:01:37
  with and had the past experience that I've had, but I've never
• 1:01:39
  LED any groups to any capacity, not even in facility at this
• 1:01:42
  point. And I go out there with her
• 1:01:44
  three racks and their grandma's garage set of dumbbells and
• 1:01:48
  there's 70 kids staring at me in the face with mask on.
• 1:01:51
  And I have my mask on and I have to run their summer S&C dude,
• 1:01:55
  like I had, I had to figure it out.
• 1:01:57
  But dude, I foster some awesome relationships with those kids
• 1:02:01
  and you know, everybody that I've met along the way.
• 1:02:03
  But recently the quarterback for for that high school at the time
• 1:02:08
  that was a huge part of like one of the core leaders of that
• 1:02:11
  group is working out in Frisco now and is in the adult group at
• 1:02:16
  Italy performance. And so I get to see him on the
• 1:02:19
  day-to-day with that. And so I don't know, just him
• 1:02:21
  kind of coming back around and, you know, talking about some of
• 1:02:24
  the things that we used to preach and say to them, yes,
• 1:02:27
  from a training perspective, but things outside of it.
• 1:02:29
  And just kind of see the people that become who they are and
• 1:02:34
  kind of watching them develop over the years has been has been
• 1:02:37
  what gives me what I would call my purpose.
• 1:02:40
  Yeah, no, man, amazing that that that was awesome.
• 1:02:42
  This has been such a cool conversation and tons of tons of
• 1:02:47
  knowledge from a coaching standpoint, but also career and
• 1:02:50
  then also just life and, you know, trying to make make a, you
• 1:02:54
  know, great, great, you know, living and and purpose in this
• 1:02:56
  thing. Man, I appreciate you doing
• 1:02:58
  this, especially, you know, 915 and 9 man make million time.
• 1:03:01
  Maybe talk about cost and sacrifice and time, but man, I I
• 1:03:05
  can't thank you enough for doing this.
• 1:03:06
  No, man, thank you. I, I love this stuff.
• 1:03:09
  So anytime I get the chance to kind of connect and talk with
• 1:03:11
  somebody who's who's interested enough to listen, it's, it's
• 1:03:14
  always fun for me. So I really appreciate it.
• 1:03:17
  Yeah, now you know, if if people you wanted to check out, you
• 1:03:21
  know, you got great training stuff out there.
• 1:03:23
  I know you've also got some different programs to like.
• 1:03:26
  Where do people go to check out more?
• 1:03:27
  Learn more from you? Yeah, I mean, Instagram's the
• 1:03:30
  big one. That's where I'm probably the
• 1:03:31
  most consistent. Anything from a programmer's
• 1:03:33
  perspective. I got a couple that you can look
• 1:03:35
  up on my link tree. The big ones going to be the
• 1:03:37
  Blueprint training team. All that is, is is my own
• 1:03:40
  training that I continually update for anybody that wants to
• 1:03:44
  subscribe to it. And so you can follow all that
• 1:03:46
  just remotely through an app and get your sets, reps, videos,
• 1:03:49
  everything that comes along with that.
• 1:03:51
  So those would be the big ones. Awesome.
• 1:03:53
  Well, this is a great Mason man. I appreciate you again for doing
• 1:03:56
  it. For sure man, Thank you.
• 1:03:58
  If you enjoyed this conversation and want to go deeper.
• 1:04:01
  Check out my book Strengthen Numbers, insight from top
• 1:04:04
  coaches, and how to build your career.
• 1:04:05
  Handle failure. And achieve long term coaching
• 1:04:08
  success. It brings together insights and
• 1:04:11
  wisdom from over 100 coaches across all levels in sports.
• 1:04:15
  You can find it on Amazon and LinkedIn, the show notes.
• 1:04:18
  And if this episode helped you, follow the show and leave a.
• 1:04:21
  Review. It's the best way to support the
• 1:04:23
  podcast and help it reach more people.