Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #188: Dan Pfaff-Pfaff Sports Consultancy

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#188: Dan Pfaff-Pfaff Sports Consultancy · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

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  Track and field coach, the ones that point
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  people most every season. He's the voice of reason.
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  Speaking, the growth gotta prep for you carry the load.
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  Talk to the stove. For those of us, stay on the go
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  pop, the handle, staying in the zone.
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  What you packing for the role is more than one way to go taking
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  those tests. And you told it ain't practice
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  it before it became clear. You can't happen to you.
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  Listen with both ears, can't Mentor, without a mentor, kids
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  of experience, you can reinvent those kids.
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  Every plans got to stand and deliver in the price sacrifice,
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  can you give up Hugh its choice and to fight not to win or lose?
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  It's not a boy, but if I see, y'all can make more movies, not
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  about how to All about why you don't know what you're you know
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  who you are inside. Six, many ways to die.
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  She's not absorb. Your faults Finish Line.
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  The work ain't done. So we learn from the experts to.
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  Y'all got to put in the legwork Gil athletic shoes Network.
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  It's all about Connections put together for the profession to
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  every track coach could be blessed.
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  Alright welcome back here to The Gila buttocks track and field
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  connections podcast. Hey happy New Year when you are
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  listening to this it is 2023. It's hard for a guy who
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  graduated high school in 94 to think about we're in 2023 and
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  just as fun as an exciting as a happy New Years, this is our new
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  season, we are blessed that you continue to listen to us and
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  allow us to do season for. For we're going to our fourth
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  full year here. Interviews of uplifting And
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  honoring coaches around the country.
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  So thank you so much for being here and listening to this
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  podcast. Literally doesn't happen if we
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  don't have listeners. It also doesn't happen.
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  If we don't have guests, an amazing guest and I've got a
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  good one for you to kick off season.
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  For last year. Season 3, we kicked off with a
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  personal mentor of mine and coaching in Boots.
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  Check Snyder. Well how about this I went out
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  and got his mentor. So help me welcome From the Path
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  Sports consultancy. The wise.
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  The wonderful mr. Dan path.
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  Dan, how are you today, sir? Yeah, hmm doing good.
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  Happy to be here and I'm anxious to see where this goes.
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  Okay, that makes two of us, good Dan.
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  It is really a privilege to have you.
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  Here you are, maybe one of the more prolific coaches out there,
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  when it comes to coaching education writing blogs videos
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  books, it's quite amazing, the amount of information you're
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  able to put out In today's world right now that we have YouTube
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  and zooms and all that kind of stuff, it's quite amazing.
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  So there are lots of opportunities for coaches out
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  there to learn, kind of your coaching style and philosophy.
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  What you believe in to help a pole vaulter get better.
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  A long jumper, get better and you certainly have done that
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  with many many athletes. We're going to take a little
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  pivot today instead of talking about X's and O's because
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  there's lots of places right now go to Altus dot, I don't know if
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  it's also That collar off to study, you just Google it.
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  You'll find many, many things. I know, Stuart McMillen the CEO
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  of Altis doesn't amazing Weekly Newsletter that.
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  Dan is the head writer of for a lots of lots of blog posts.
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  You. It's a must you must be
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  subscribed to those. So go do that today.
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  We're going to kind of learn what met Dan Dan, how did he get
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  to be? Today's coaching Guru?
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  I know he loves for me to call him that.
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  But how did he get to where he is today?
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  What people poured into him? What experiences did he have to
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  get to where he is today in 2023?
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  So Dan to kick us off here, you know, as a former athlete
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  myself, that's hard to describe. When you see so many great
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  athletes out there today. But yes, I did do track a little
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  bit, but at some point in my life, I realized that track and
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  coaching wasn't just something that happened to me, you know,
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  coach would bark out orders? I'd say yes, sir.
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  And go do it one time and I can still remember it.
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  Pretty distinctly, light switch kind of flipped and I realized,
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  oh, wait a minute. I could be a coach like that.
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  That's an actual profession. People do this and get paid,
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  where does coaching start for you?
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  Well, probably a product of my environment.
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  I grew up in Southwestern, Ohio, near the city called Dayton.
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  Father, ran a construction company and we were farmers, and
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  his people were in Wisconsin and they were all Dairy Farmers.
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  So I was back and forth, but I think growing up the son of a
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  construction Foreman in a farmer.
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  Really helped me become what I call a generalist.
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  You know, you got to wear a lot of hats in both of those
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  entities. So and grew up very rural in the
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  60s and that was a period where you did, whatever sport was in
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  season. So I played football and
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  basketball and bat baseball and track and field and ice hockey
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  on the ponds and Factory League, ice hockey and you name.
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  Now we lived in a really remote area, so that, you know, if we
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  got together to might be four or five guys tops.
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  So we had to invent variations of the sport.
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  So like two-on-two basketball were third guy rotated in or
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  four on three ice hockey on the golf course ponds.
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  Or, you know, we had decathlon's, you know, we built
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  high jump, standards, Post in the ground pole.
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  Vaulted into Our pits and threw a shot puts and what have you
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  and you know three-on-three flag football kind of stuff before
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  flag football is around. So hmm.
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  I was always kind of an organizer and a leader and
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  trying to figure out the essentials and the ABCs of the
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  sport. So it probably started you know
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  when I was an adolescent probably got more intense you
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  know as I got into what we call middle school now or High
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  School. How did that lead to, you know?
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  Today we know you more specifically as a track coach
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  but the loves us that no baby one layer down.
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  We know, you've worked with many, many, many other sports.
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  How did track become the sport. If it even did, how did it morph
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  into like you are track coach who branched out or have that
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  even come about? Yeah good Crush.
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  Well I played football back in the suspension helmet.
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  Deeds had a lot of concussions and it was pretty Or Terrian
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  top-down military punishment. You know we did ours of
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  punishment training and whatnot. I just it really bothered me
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  that you know I was paying the price for somebody else's
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  mistake basketball. I was a point guard.
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  I could pass like crazy and dribble and play defense so I
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  couldn't shoot worth a darn baseball.
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  I was okay in little league, but then when I got to class Eve
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  Walton and there was a curveball and I couldn't hit the
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  curveball, so that Was out we didn't have soccer back then.
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  I was kind of a short mesomorph power, good agility guy.
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  So ice hockey was there but it was cost prohibitive and it's
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  hard to find access to stuff. So track was kind of the default
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  because it was simple as easy didn't have to have a lot of
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  money to do it and luckily my high school track coach, we
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  didn't have Middle School sport because back then the bond
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  levees failed and all of that. So my first experience This was
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  organized sport outside, a little league.
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  Baseball was in high school and my track coach was a guidance
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  counselor and he was pretty what I would call.
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  Altruistic kind of am a slow guy.
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  And, you know, I was really intrigued by how he ran
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  practices and treated people and whatnot and so that kind of got
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  me thinking of all the sports out there and I love Sport and I
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  love all sports still today, it just felt better.
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  What do you remember his name? Yeah, Ken Carpenter, Ken
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  Carpenter. So what did can do?
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  That was kind of different from some of the other sport coaches
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  that you had. Well, like I kind of fell in
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  love with pole, vaulting. And, you know, he came over and
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  he says, you know, I've worked with a few pole vaulters but I
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  really don't know it. But, you know, if you go into
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  the library, he's here's a few books that talk about it, that
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  have nice photo sequences. And here's some coaching
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  journals, because he knew I was a reader, and I spent a lot of
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  time in the library, so that started me in my journey of how
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  people trained and using what we call Ken and G now back then,
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  they had photo sequences like can spill Elastic coach and
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  athletic journal and then Fred wilts track technique, you know,
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  they had to how you train sections, you know, like how
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  someone trains in the fall, and the winter, and the spring, and
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  then in season. So, Ken started me on this
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  research Journey on how people trained and you know what are
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  the essentials of the event? You know, that's interesting.
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  You know, in today's world someone can be called out pretty
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  quickly. If they say, I know everything
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  about how to coach X y&z, right? I mean, there's so many
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  resources back in this era, the only resource you had was the
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  library. There was no or any VHS cassette
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  tapes of things like that. And there was a probably, I
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  would imagine there was little to no formal coaching education
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  at that point as well. So, Ken in this, Town of
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  Southwest Ohio. Easily could have said, hey Dan,
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  I know everything about how to coach Vault just list.
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  Shut up. Listen, and let's go, but
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  instead there was this humility of like, hey man, yeah, I've
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  worked with a couple but if you want to get better, you might
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  want to help yourself go to the library, check out these books.
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  And, you know, start start the journey that way.
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  That's, that's interesting that humility.
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  Yeah, I think he was what I, we call now A nudge coach.
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  So, he'd come over during practice.
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  He say, look, you look pretty tired.
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  Maybe move your run up. Little bit, you're not quite
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  getting there or you know, we warm up for practice.
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  Need a reminder, we have pretty big head winds today so you may
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  want to grip down. So he knew a little bit about
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  the event but he, you know, he didn't stand there every day and
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  over coach or what not primarily, because he was the
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  only coach he had to coach all the events so that was probably
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  another gift to see how he managed, how he rotated through
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  the week, you know, like early practice with the long jumpers
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  and her Slurs and late practice time, you know the middle
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  distance guys. So got me thinking about how to
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  organize practice, when you got big numbers.
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  I love that, you kind of started as a pole vaulter or reminds me
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  of we had hairy, Mara on the podcast way.
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  Back season 1, I think now and he mentioned being at the boys
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  club Boy Scouts meeting and they just tied a rope between two
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  trees and got a stick and he goes and I just fell in love.
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  So there's something special about a vaulter specifically
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  when Get started into track and field.
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  How far did you take vaulting? Well, I started out in the steel
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  pole days. So the Swedish steel pole, say,
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  didn't ban as heavy as hell. I own gripped about halfway on
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  it because probably a 15-foot pole, and, and we landed in
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  sawdust and first year, and then we got smart and kind of rated a
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  junkyard and tore out car seats from buses and trucks and stole
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  Batting Cage. Net from a rival school and kind
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  of made our own pole, vault pit. Back then the standards did
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  move. They really post on the ground.
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  So there wasn't a lot of strategy there other than lower,
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  your grip, or raise your grip because you couldn't move the
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  standards. It was an asphalt Runway.
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  The runway I had on our farm was grass Runway and then we have
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  plywood at takeoff because it take off would get Dugout.
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  So we just kept moving plywood sheets and keep from jumping out
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  of a deep hole so I jumped all the way through.
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  School. I think, my best was like, three
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  meters 80, something like that, 12, something and tried to vault
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  in University. I actually went to Rose, hulman
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  to do track and field, his engineering Institute.
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  And as I say what an engineering school, is that right?
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  Yeah. And figured it out real quick.
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  I didn't have the Mac math background to do it.
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  So, migrated back to Dayton and then went to the state school
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  there, Wright State University and really had no idea what I I
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  was doing I just other than trying to avoid the Vietnam war
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  with the student deferment. It's so funny.
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  I went to an engineering school, my first year and same thing
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  math. I was like, oh yeah, no this I
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  can't do this at all and then went to Troy University to, I
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  studied public relations. I went real easy after the
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  engineering fail for me. Well, I, you know, most school I
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  grew up in we had Algebra 1 and 2 and geometry and trig.
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  So I was okay there, but I never had calculus in the first day of
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  engineering math, The guy goes this is a review of Calculus 1
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  and 2 number of review or even had this stuff.
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  Like I need to preview not a review as well as you
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  matriculate through right State, what is your mindset for a
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  career? Are you going in to be a coach?
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  Or you going to do something else?
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  What are you thinking as an undergrad there?
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  Well, I was, you know, obviously Mia, right?
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  Stay didn't have a track team and there were no track clubs or
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  whatever. So I was trying to bald as an
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  independent, you know, First year in University and, you
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  know, trying to find a meat. I was driving to Eastern
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  Michigan for an indoor, meet and south side of Chicago, for an
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  indoor meet. And then, you know, in the
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  spring you couldn't find meets, you know, in the summer you
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  could find some all comers and far as ass like this not working
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  real well and my school is that they were drastically
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  understaffed. And so I spent a lot of time
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  there just because I like Sport and my ad there.
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  Bob thank was Huge Mentor. He let me work all kinds of
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  Realms. You know, from equipment to
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  purchase aim to Turf Care. You name it while I was going
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  through high school and I spent a lot of time in his office and
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  you know, he said well why don't you volunteer with the football
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  staff and then they use, and why don't you volunteer with the
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  track staff? Or you know, why don't you want
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  here with the wrestling group? So I started volunteering back
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  then, they didn't have gaas or internships or whatever is just
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  cold volunteer and so I started coaching there and I think the
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  second year we were, we had our offensive line coach who didn't
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  have a lot of experience. I play dough line.
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  So I kind of became the de facto line coach and just things kind
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  of cycled from there. What what did you actually end
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  up? Getting an undergrad in?
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  If you had to make me bet I would have said biomechanics
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  that I kind of don't feel maybe that what was that?
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  Was it well. Far mechanics really wasn't a
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  thing back then if it was I would have been all over it.
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  I had an aptitude for science probably because growing up on
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  the farm and there's a lot of Science in farming and then a
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  construction there's a lot of engineering and science so I had
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  math science aptitude so I just kept taking a lot of science
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  courses. I ended up with minors in about
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  every science like physics chemistry I'd to be honest I was
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  dodging the Vietnam War so as long as I stayed above a 20 and
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  had a full schedule. Yeah and so is real bias by
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  sciences and then my last Last year, a counselor that had to
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  sign off on my, you know, course work he goes, what are you
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  doing? Is like, what do you mean?
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  What am I doing? He goes, you know what?
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  You've been here almost four years.
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  And I don't see a degree here. And I was, he goes, are you
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  dodging the war? And I was like, yeah, and he
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  goes, okay. There's a shortage of science
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  teachers and male science teachers.
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  And if you dive into this special program for science,
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  teachers we can get you a certification and that'll
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  probably serve as a, you know, a good excuse to stay out of the
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  war. And I was like, okay, I'm all
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  in. So that last year I just really
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  do vind, all kinds of educational curriculum and
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  courses, and ended up with a Comprehensive Science
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  certificate. So I could teach any science and
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  math you will Going to dive into this later on, but I'm noticing
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  a theme of non specialization of generalization and it would be
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  very hard for someone to pigeonhole you as a Sprint's
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  coach or a jumps coach. And we've had actually had this
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  topic. I think boo and I talked about
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  it, it certainly Brooks Johnson and I talked about it back in
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  season one about being a track coach.
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  Not necessarily being a Sprint's coach or distance coach but I'm
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  kind of noticing that theme even through your formal education
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  there. Right State your Like I just
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  took a lot of different sciences and mads and eventually it
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  pigeon-holed me. I shouldn't say, pigeon, only
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  drove me into a science degree so that you could teach.
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  That's interesting to my favorite classes.
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  One was in journalism and the other was in applied psychology
• 17:50
  and so I kind of went off on those routes to.
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  That's interesting. It's funny how that played into
• 17:56
  your career. Obviously psychology plays into
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  it as a coach and now today you're doing a lot of
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  journalistic stuff with blogs. And in what have you?
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  That's that's interesting. I tell coaches all the time,
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  build a big toolbox and build layers because you never know
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  when you're going to be called upon to use a tool like that.
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  Yeah, I just I am a tool so I just figure.
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  I'll get you something. So did you go into teaching High
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  School science? Yeah, so my first job was at a
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  small school Southwest today in called Carlisle, ironically.
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  It was in the same league that I grew up in.
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  So I knew a lot of the things and so I was like, offensive
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  line, coach, and eventually Offensive coordinator track
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  coach with no assistant intramural director de facto ATC
• 18:44
  they didn't have trainers back then but because I knew science
• 18:47
  you know I ended up taping ankles and you know taking the
• 18:50
  Kramer trainers courses that they had in the summer and then
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  we started a weightlifting program because I coach throwers
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  they assume you know, I knew weightlifting and whatnot.
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  So us a summer weight, lifting guy and conditioning guy.
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  So Again wearing a lot of hats. So at this point is your career,
• 19:10
  you're like, what do you do when you'd be a high school teacher?
• 19:12
  That's what you're going to do high school teacher and coach at
• 19:14
  this point? Well luckily, the Vietnam War
• 19:17
  was coming to an end. So it's kind of open minded
• 19:20
  there and I was but to be honest I had a lot of fun and we had
• 19:24
  some great staffs and I grew tremendously as a coach.
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  You know, in those 3 years at Carlisle and I'm never really,
• 19:34
  you know, people always ask. Like when did you know you were
• 19:37
  coaching them like It's probably in my 50s because I always kept
• 19:42
  the door open. I was always looking for, you
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  know, something that, you know, would ignite the passion greater
• 19:49
  than the passion, I had coaching, but whether it's fate
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  or luck, you know, like nothing intervened, you know?
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  I know you very much as a teacher today teacher of coaches
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  at this point, are you teaching and helping other coaches while
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  you're at? I'll at this point or you still
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  kind of in absorb and learning mode as far as what the what
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  does it look like to coach offensive lineman?
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  What's it look like the coach throwers weight room coach Etc?
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  Yeah. I mean some of you know it was
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  kind of not really a top-down mentorship kind of environment.
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  So you know as the summer conditioning guy, the assigned
• 20:31
  another coach he had no clue. And so I was kind of like,
• 20:34
  showing him what I knew and what I thought and why the
• 20:37
  programming was X. And then I got a finally got the
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  school board approval system and track and field so you know,
• 20:44
  kind of getting that guy up to speed but I was always a
• 20:47
  believer in team leadership so I was Honestly, taking the seniors
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  and developing them as leaders and knowing about the sport and
• 20:55
  the intricacies in the lair, the sport.
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  So I think I was doing a lot of meat mentorship with what I call
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  Senior leadership, on the team's, you know, the Juniors
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  and seniors that, you know, because I can track.
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  I think I had like 40 athletes out and there's no way I could
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  be everywhere at once. And so I'd put the senior leader
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  of the Sprint, hurdle group in charge of the warm-up and you
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  know, the senior leader and the throw His group in charge of the
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  weight room. And so, I was probably already
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  kind of doing mentorship in a hybrid way, if you will, and
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  you're still pretty young at this point.
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  Where did that thought process come from?
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  Because, you know, a lot of us LG's means example, when I was a
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  young coach, you know, I was like the guy, put it all on my
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  shoulders, I'll do it all. So I would have tried to warm up
• 21:44
  and watch every workout of the Sprint.
• 21:45
  Hurdles, everything with the throwers instead of delegating
• 21:49
  and creating leaders. I actually would have been a cap
• 21:52
  on leadership out of sudden. It all comes through me or not
• 21:54
  at all. How does such a young age?
• 21:56
  Were you able to start learning delegation and Leadership
• 22:00
  teaching learning? You may not have officially
• 22:02
  called it that but that's what you were doing.
• 22:04
  You were uplifting leaders at that point.
• 22:05
  Well, again it circles back to environmental discussion when
• 22:09
  you work in construction or you work on a farm, you delegate,
• 22:12
  and you delegate fast, and you develop a network of experts.
• 22:17
  So, if we are having trouble with the crop, You know, I
• 22:21
  would, you know, talk to three or four surrounding farmers and
• 22:24
  like, what are you guys doing? Do you have this problem or
• 22:27
  whatnot? So, building a network of
• 22:30
  expertise just came naturally as the same thing in construction.
• 22:34
  Like my, we had a lot of Polish bricklayers my dad's company.
• 22:38
  So if, if there was a masonary problem, I went to the lead
• 22:42
  bricklayer and I was like, I don't know what's going on here.
• 22:44
  What what do you think? Or so on and so forth.
• 22:47
  So I think that kind of came intuitively.
• 22:50
  Just through environmental development.
• 22:53
  That's fascinating, not to jump ahead here, but using your
• 22:58
  perspective, you know, today, I would say, any athlete would be
• 23:02
  lucky to have you to coach them, as you look back to how you
• 23:06
  coach those throwers and sprinters?
• 23:09
  What kind of grade would you give yourself?
• 23:10
  What were you a good coach back then?
• 23:12
  Or do you kind of cringe? Like, I can't believe I used to
• 23:15
  do this to those kids. Well, like most Things, I think
• 23:21
  it exists on a spectrum. So I think I did a good job of
• 23:24
  identifying the essentials, the kpis and holding people
• 23:28
  accountable, you know, establishing a technical model,
• 23:32
  and some allowances for that model depending on development
• 23:35
  Health time of year, what not interpersonal.
• 23:40
  I was terrible are still a little bit of top-down military
• 23:46
  way over you cynicism, huh? Probably interpersonal skills,
• 23:54
  although most athletes thought I was a player's coach.
• 23:58
  Now it's probably a little too biased to accountability and,
• 24:02
  you know, had absolutely no debrief plan at all is just kind
• 24:07
  of like, you know, get on with it.
• 24:12
  Yeah, that's how my boss feels about me, Dan.
• 24:14
  He's just like, you need to get on with it.
• 24:15
  Mike, so, where do we go from Carlisle?
• 24:18
  What was the next step here? But like I said, you know, this
• 24:22
  is before the information age. Like, if we if we wanted video
• 24:27
  we had a Super 8 movie camera with a cartridge and you'd video
• 24:31
  it and then you take it to a drop-off and you'd wait three or
• 24:35
  four days for it to be processed.
• 24:37
  And then you had a hand crank viewer, with a fan blowing on
• 24:41
  it. So the film wouldn't Melt while
• 24:43
  you stop and measured things. Well, do you know there's a
• 24:49
  lesson there for people? Well today who want to complain
• 24:52
  about iPads and how hard it is to work.
• 24:57
  You had first of all, the very fact that you had to send it
• 25:00
  away and had come back in three to four days if something takes
• 25:03
  three to four minutes to process.
• 25:04
  Now, we get all up in arms. Well, chances are the problem
• 25:08
  you're working on three or four days ago and either been fixed
• 25:11
  or eliminated. All right there.
• 25:12
  Rise stand. Yeah, my Master's thesis, I did
• 25:16
  an angle angle analysis and she double a pole, vault finals.
• 25:20
  And so I would project stuff on the wall put onion skin paper
• 25:24
  trace, the figure, the shadow, take the paper down and measure
• 25:28
  the angles with a protractor, every jump, every step for 18
• 25:33
  finalists. That was quite a load.
• 25:36
  Oh yeah, as I say that had to take some time.
• 25:39
  Yeah. So getting back to your
• 25:41
  question, one of the big age for me was back then.
• 25:47
  They had what we called. Coaching clinics.
• 25:52
  So Scholastic coach would sponsor a few Sometimes some of
• 25:57
  the indoor meet sponsored a coaching Clinic.
• 26:00
  Like we had the Cleveland Mead in the Louisville Mead and
• 26:04
  whatnot. And so I would travel, you know,
• 26:07
  if I had access and, you know, I'd sleep, in my car, whatever,
• 26:10
  I'd go to these coaching clinics and one of the first ones, I
• 26:15
  stumbled into Tom to Les. He was filled event coach at
• 26:18
  UCLA them. Then and he got up and I think
• 26:22
  he was talking on jump Dynamics or something and I was just
• 26:26
  blown away. Like here's a guy talking about
• 26:28
  biomechanics and Kinesiology in the scientific process and
• 26:32
  whatnot. I was like, you know, that's me.
• 26:37
  So I started stalking a guy like if he spoke I was there and
• 26:41
  after he spoke I followed him around and ask questions and I'd
• 26:46
  get up for breakfast like at 5:00 a.m. and sit in the back.
• 26:49
  Office for hoping he came down for breakfast and then add kind
• 26:52
  of bump into him and so I was stalker.
• 26:57
  So I had quite a bit of success as I School coach and I thought
• 27:03
  you know might want to try this University level stuff but so I
• 27:09
  sent out thousands of letters and back then they were just
• 27:12
  starting this graduate assistantship concept or
• 27:15
  Paradigm and I wrote to all of them, Joe piane and Notre Dame.
• 27:20
  You know if the guy had profile I wrote and I got zero responses
• 27:25
  I was like Well, the mail into things isn't working real well.
• 27:32
  so my last year in high school coach to Les was hired away from
• 27:37
  you, silly to start the program in Houston and I ran into him
• 27:41
  and I said coach, you know, I'm looking to do a graduate degree
• 27:44
  and I know Houston has a they're starting a sport Science,
• 27:49
  graduate degree in that's kind of my realm and you know I was
• 27:51
  wondering if I came to Houston study you know could I help out
• 27:56
  with the team and he was like well we don't have any money and
• 27:59
  we yeah we're short-staffed and it's A startup he goes, we can
• 28:04
  always use help. But like, how are you going to
• 28:07
  serve us? Well, you know, I teach driver's
• 28:10
  ed. I can substitute teach my wife
• 28:13
  works as a bookkeeper, you know, we'll find a way and he was
• 28:16
  like, Well, whatever, and I think he was kind of blew me
• 28:20
  off. So I went home to my wife were
• 28:22
  moving to Houston. So we packed up U-Haul Grove in
• 28:25
  Houston, who didn't know, a soul, rented a house kind of did
• 28:29
  some homework food, our Coach T lived and we rented an apartment
• 28:33
  really close to where he lived, fuck him on his run because I
• 28:38
  knew you ran every day. And I just showed up and he was
• 28:43
  like, what are you doing? As long as I'm here and I got
• 28:46
  into grad school and luckily Department h p or dance, you
• 28:54
  know, they have student teachers and they were short supervisors.
• 28:58
  And I was the only grad student at ever taught school.
• 29:01
  So I got drafted into, being a supervisor for student teachers.
• 29:04
  So I'm driving all over Houston, observing teachers, and writing
• 29:08
  critiques. And my little Chevy didn't have
• 29:14
  air conditioning so you can imagine driving around Houston,
• 29:17
  you know. Yeah, I know that jacket, you
• 29:19
  know, I was going through four or five shirts a day.
• 29:22
  So the grad program was at night, which is perfect.
• 29:25
  It was night school. It's designed for coaches to
• 29:28
  come back. And so, during the day in the
• 29:31
  morning, I do the student teaching stuff from the
• 29:33
  afternoon. I would do a good coach, you
• 29:35
  know, I helped out measures steps.
• 29:37
  Rake pits, shag, shots, clean up the way room, whatever it took.
• 29:44
  And then in the evening, I did grad school.
• 29:48
  I can't imagine the worst part of the whole story was the
• 29:50
  driving around in a suit and tie in Houston that that probably
• 29:54
  had to solidify a little bit of like yeah I'm not an office guy
• 29:57
  like I'm not a suit and tie guy. I'm a Coach Guy well teaching
• 30:01
  drivers and inner-city kids with the Houston.
• 30:05
  Freeway system was probably the marsh most heart-rendering task
• 30:09
  I had. So, spend some time here with
• 30:15
  your time, with Coach to Les, you know, I never got to know
• 30:18
  coach to Les very well just know of the Godlike status in regards
• 30:22
  to coaching. I remember, I think was Buu who
• 30:25
  told me once that coach to Les had just an amazing?
• 30:28
  I like he didn't need to video anything.
• 30:30
  It's probably maybe there were some hyperbole there but I don't
• 30:33
  know for boo to be very hyperbolic though, but that
• 30:37
  coach to Les could watch a long jumper and like in his own mind.
• 30:42
  Mind, he could help. He could slow mo that down, so
• 30:44
  he could see the positions and stuff like that.
• 30:47
  How was that learning from someone and observing someone
• 30:50
  with those type of skills like, drinking from a fire hose?
• 30:56
  So Coach T did a lot of film? Well, a lot of film work and
• 31:01
  this before be a chest, a sua still.
• 31:03
  The same thing, you had to send it off, get it developed, but
• 31:06
  because it's a Houston and they had football film and whatnot,
• 31:10
  they had a faster processor. Usually, we could get the film
• 31:13
  the next day and there's still the same thing.
• 31:16
  Hand-crank projector with a fan blowing on it, and I'm looking
• 31:20
  at things. So that's where I really got a
• 31:26
  big foundation on that technical model and then I'm Lounge band
• 31:30
  widths for the various technical model components.
• 31:34
  So it started there and then, you know, coach was a tough
• 31:39
  teacher, you know, I need someone to throw, it goes what
• 31:42
  you see and I'd say something goes.
• 31:44
  Yeah, but that problem was caused by something way earlier.
• 31:48
  What did you see earlier? And I was like nothing and so it
• 31:53
  kind of started out where I could watch the pathway in the
• 31:56
  movement of one foot and then I could watch two feet at once and
• 32:00
  then maybe the foot and the lower leg.
• 32:02
  So I just kind of worked up the food.
• 32:04
  Akane, you know, kind of looking at postures and body segments
• 32:08
  and whatnot. So it was a process and you know
• 32:12
  50 years on as you know, I'm still nowhere close to what
• 32:15
  coach can see is that something that can be learned and we're
• 32:20
  getting just a tad close to X's and O's, but I am curious, you
• 32:23
  know, I, when I coach, I could see generalities and of course,
• 32:28
  you know, I only coach ten years.
• 32:29
  I was a baby and still a baby in the coaching world but I needed
• 32:33
  that that film. Be able to slow mo and see, you
• 32:36
  know, where the foot placements are?
• 32:37
  Is that what you're talking about there is that a gift?
• 32:40
  You think that can be learned with repetition, or is that a
• 32:44
  god-given ability? That's just like, man, you
• 32:45
  either have it or you don't, well, I think it exists on a
• 32:49
  spectrum. Some people see motion and
• 32:52
  shapes and whatnot, you know, the artists perspective of
• 32:55
  things and then some people are math people.
• 32:58
  And so they're probably seeing angles more.
• 33:00
  So what not? But yeah, I mean, we teach, you
• 33:03
  know, coaches, I Tough all the time like for postures first,
• 33:07
  foremost shapes of the body at various phases of movement body
• 33:12
  segments, angles of the joints and so on and so forth.
• 33:16
  So I think you can develop a checklist and overtime, improve
• 33:20
  your coaches. I'm and yeah, I think it's
• 33:23
  always important to follow that up with video analysis, to kind
• 33:26
  of serve as a check and balance on your eye, you know, working
• 33:32
  with Coach to Les, I'll go ahead.
• 33:34
  And say, it is assumed that it had to be pretty special.
• 33:37
  What were some of the Lessons Learned again?
• 33:40
  Not-exes knows not what to do with a sprinter or jumper.
• 33:43
  But the how to coach lessons that you gained by working with
• 33:47
  Coach T, We'll probably first and foremost was accountability,
• 33:52
  like you didn't slide, like, if you did something, he told you,
• 33:56
  what you did. And what?
• 33:57
  He thought needed to go better or whatnot, or what have you so
• 34:02
  strong accountability. Programming.
• 34:05
  Very simple, very basic. Not a lot of menu items, you
• 34:09
  know, like II new anywhere in the world at any time of the
• 34:12
  year. What people are doing?
• 34:13
  Because the program was a program.
• 34:17
  Now, he had some bandwidth allowances and whatnot in that,
• 34:20
  but he was what I would call a minimalist and really identify
• 34:26
  the essentials, like what needed to be trained, he wasn't a big
• 34:30
  drilled guy mean. He had some teaching
• 34:33
  progressions, you know, like With combined event athletes
• 34:36
  learning a new event, but, you know, I really wouldn't call
• 34:39
  them. Drills is more teaching
• 34:41
  progression, so he was kind of a new interim.
• 34:46
  Real-time, are detect are correct, kind of Coach.
• 34:50
  Excellent on feedback and sifting through need to know
• 34:54
  versus nice to know, really, really well.
• 34:58
  And are you still working with called the complete spectrum of
• 35:02
  track and field? Are you zeroed in on sprinters
• 35:04
  or A throwaway Coach T? Yeah, he had a small staff, so
• 35:10
  he was coaching everything. He had some assistance or
• 35:12
  whatnot, but he had his hands all over the place.
• 35:15
  So, yeah, I was there. And how are you Ryan, was a
• 35:18
  distance coach and, you know, I'd help him monkey workouts and
• 35:22
  you know, when guys are all spread out through a park or
• 35:25
  whatnot, so yeah, I was coaching or I was, I wasn't coaching.
• 35:29
  I was there helping and every event, I wouldn't say I ever
• 35:34
  coached it The U of H was what timeframe is this.
• 35:38
  And the only time frame, I can kind of think of is Carl and
• 35:41
  Leroy in Florida. I was there Carl's first two
• 35:44
  years, you know, so I can't. So I saw him.
• 35:47
  Come in as a freshman, he had had some knee issues and back.
• 35:51
  Then we didn't have arthroscope surgery, so Coach, T switched,
• 35:55
  his jumping leg. Lot of people don't realize in
• 35:58
  high school. When he went to the Pan Am games
• 36:00
  in meddled, he did that was on his left leg in the rest of his
• 36:03
  career, was on his right leg. So, I saw that transformation,
• 36:07
  and we have a lot of decathletes and have two athletes.
• 36:10
  So, you know, again, a big General Universal, see how
• 36:14
  things fit, kind of puzzle, and I'd be remiss if I didn't
• 36:18
  mention another Mentor, Victor Lopez.
• 36:21
  He was a grad student at Houston at the time and eventually
• 36:25
  became longtime coach a rice and Victor came from Puerto Rico.
• 36:30
  As coaches were influenced by calve AC and but Tori in Italy
• 36:34
  and and some Cuban influences. And so from Victor, I kind of
• 36:38
  learned the art side of coaching where Coach T, I was drinking
• 36:41
  from the fire hose in the science.
• 36:44
  So I really had a beautiful set up there.
• 36:47
  You know, I all day long in the office from Victor it was the
• 36:50
  art of coaching Rhythm and you know, seeing the big picture and
• 36:54
  the patterns and what not, and then all afternoon with Coach to
• 36:58
  use the science. So I was really blessed to grow
• 37:02
  up with two incredible mentors at that.
• 37:04
  Each of my career, what was it? Like you're coming from Carlisle
• 37:09
  and Southwest Ohio, small school, middle of nowhere, type
• 37:13
  of area. To first of all, big city
• 37:16
  mention the Houston Highway systems, which if you were
• 37:18
  saying they were messed up back then.
• 37:20
  I don't know how you would describe them today because it's
• 37:23
  10x on what they have going on in Houston now.
• 37:27
  But you also you're talking about a time when you talk about
• 37:29
  Carl and some of the other guys and so you're getting athletes
• 37:33
  out of high school there that Our.
• 37:35
  I mean I'd have to assume you did not even think could be
• 37:38
  imaginable in Carlisle. How was the was there any kind
• 37:42
  of intimidation Factor was there any kind of just like the story
• 37:46
  you told about Coach to less switching Carl's leg like that?
• 37:50
  To me is a big thing. This you know, Carl was the man
• 37:53
  out of high school as well. Let's not forget that and you
• 37:56
  know obviously became Legend Houston and then legend for Team
• 37:59
  USA. What was your mindset of like
• 38:02
  these athletes? You got some amazing athletes
• 38:04
  around. And you didn't even realize that
• 38:06
  at that point, you know, coach to Les and Coach Lopez and Carl
• 38:10
  and the Gang. Did you kind of realize did you
• 38:12
  even have a any kind of sense of like I'm kind of in a mecha
• 38:14
  right now? Soaking it all up.
• 38:17
  Yeah I mean it was kind of like going to Disneyland every day to
• 38:21
  be honest intimidation. No because coach to Les you need
• 38:26
  to eat taught in Parables a lot of times and you know what one
• 38:31
  day he was watching me. I was helping to catch steps or
• 38:34
  something and I said something to an athlete and he pulled me
• 38:37
  aside he goes down sometimes it's so much.
• 38:39
  What you don't say is to what you say.
• 38:41
  And that like whoa so he was being kind I was over coaching
• 38:46
  and probably over reporting. And so it really wasn't
• 38:52
  intimidation Factor because like I said, I wasn't like really
• 38:55
  directly coach his. Kind of I knew my space and he
• 38:59
  established the boundaries and guardrails and you know, I
• 39:02
  respected those. So how long were you there with
• 39:06
  Coach to Les and what was next? Yeah, I was here for three years
• 39:09
  and then he said, it was time to leave the nest.
• 39:13
  So I went to Wichita State and work with harm Wilson per year.
• 39:19
  Financials were a little bit shaky then back then they had
• 39:23
  the you staff meet, you know, where the college guys and and
• 39:27
  the pro guys kind of got together because back then it
• 39:30
  was a you and the NCAA battles and this meat was kind of the
• 39:34
  only meat in the an America where they commingled.
• 39:38
  Well that was the year that Congress passed a bunch of the
• 39:42
  antitrust stuff and whatnot. So then meet died on the vine
• 39:45
  and I was left holding the bag had no money.
• 39:48
  So I basically Ali worked in Wichita for a year for hardly
• 39:52
  anything. And I think coach to Les felt
• 39:55
  kind of bad, you know, that he helped me get that job and it
• 39:59
  blew up, so he helped me get a job at UTEP.
• 40:02
  And so after Wichita, State and went to UTEP and for the 83-84
• 40:07
  season and that, that was a real education and baptism Under
• 40:12
  Fire. Any thoughts at this point?
• 40:15
  You know, you go to, uh, and I don't say, you did it on a whim,
• 40:18
  but there was, You know it's not like you had a formal invitation
• 40:21
  like you said you showed up and Coach T was like oh hi thank
• 40:26
  God, he allowed you to still be that everything.
• 40:29
  Then you go to Wichita on this blows up now you're going down
• 40:31
  to El Paso, any part at this time.
• 40:34
  You know, you're married with with your career about like is
• 40:37
  this the right thing for me? Should I be trying to do
• 40:39
  something else as a little bit more stability?
• 40:43
  Well, to be honest, I was so driven by the journey, you know.
• 40:48
  Luckily, I had a wife that kind of open-minded, I don't think
• 40:51
  she was happy. I mean, we moved 18 times and 47
• 40:55
  years of marriage so, you know, she finally, she just planted
• 40:59
  her feet in Austin. Said, you go work, wherever you
• 41:01
  got to work, but, you know, at the time we were young, and it
• 41:06
  was exciting and, you know, El Paso was like going to Mars, you
• 41:11
  know, we grew up in the West with all that and then Houston
• 41:15
  and you go out to the desert mountains and a total different
• 41:18
  culture is like, so it's just is exciting.
• 41:23
  You mentioned being so focused on the journey at that point of
• 41:27
  your age and stage and life and career was there.
• 41:31
  An in-game Insight, was it like I am working towards to become a
• 41:35
  head college coach, or to become an Olympic coach, or was it just
• 41:38
  the journey was to coach, it was just a coach, like, to be
• 41:42
  honest. Like at UTEP, I was named head.
• 41:44
  Women's Coach, I wasn't prepared wasn't qualified, but that was
• 41:48
  the role and then men's field event coach.
• 41:51
  So, again, baptized another Under Fire, you know, I'm
• 41:54
  coaching, you know, world top 10, ranked people, you know, 84
• 41:58
  Olympics. I think I had seven athletes in
• 42:00
  the Olympic Games. Had two gals, one metals, and so
• 42:03
  at age 30, I thought, wow, Greg ingenious, I got this one
• 42:07
  figured out but you know, then reality hit real quick.
• 42:14
  We've all had that at third. I think 30 is that year were you
• 42:16
  just going on like genius and then 40 or like, what in the
• 42:19
  world was I thinking? But I've never had the desire to
• 42:23
  be a head coach, or a director or whatnot.
• 42:26
  You know, I've had those roles placed upon me, but I'm more of
• 42:30
  a behind the curtain guy like team photos.
• 42:33
  I try to not be in or stand in the background or whatnot.
• 42:36
  It that I've never been a me out in front.
• 42:39
  Kind of guy, I don't know. Why that's just me?
• 42:43
  Yeah, my experience with the I would agree with that, you know,
• 42:46
  I will get to a story that you really impacted my life when
• 42:50
  you're at Florida back in 05. But kind of same thing, you're
• 42:54
  just kind of, this is not meant for any disrespect, but you're
• 42:57
  kind of a in the shadows in the corner guy.
• 43:00
  But at the end of the day, you know, who's there's gonna be
• 43:04
  little bit of over 70, you know, who's pulling the strings what I
• 43:06
  mean by the who's coaching? You never, you never does never
• 43:09
  in doubt. It's just, you're not the guy
• 43:11
  I've never seen you. Be the guy that's in front Roar.
• 43:13
  Aah yelling at athletes. I just have never seen that nor
• 43:18
  heard that at all not much. So I'm quite amazed, we're in
• 43:23
  around 84 at UTEP and the people that have been around.
• 43:28
  You are quite stunning, you could stop right there and you
• 43:31
  have a Mount Rushmore. People from Victor.
• 43:35
  Lopez Thom Tillis. Herm Wilson.
• 43:37
  Come on, many people. Probably.
• 43:40
  Today don't remember her Wilson. First of all, the guy was
• 43:42
  amazing, amazing person, but also an awesome coach.
• 43:45
  I'm just kind of floored by this this people that you either
• 43:51
  surrounded yourself with or found yourself surrounded by at
• 43:54
  that point in this coaching profession.
• 43:56
  Yeah. So I give her some credit, like,
• 44:00
  mmm recruiting to Wichita, Kansas wasn't easy and he
• 44:03
  basically recruited Kansas, Colorado, Kansas City area, and
• 44:09
  so hours and hours in the car. Car and home visits, and looking
• 44:14
  for sleepers and whatnot. So I really learned the
• 44:18
  recruiting gained from her arm and her mom was frigging, genius
• 44:22
  at finding sleepers and developing people, you know,
• 44:25
  eight have top, 20 cross country teams and all the guys were from
• 44:30
  about an hour away. You know, just really good at
• 44:34
  developing local talent. And so he taught me the
• 44:38
  recruiting side of things for sure.
• 44:40
  And then you It's more, Larry had a breakfast, a head coach,
• 44:44
  but it was more of the athletes, you know, when people like Burke
• 44:47
  Cameron and Mill Dottie and my to medalist can turn her,
• 44:50
  Charmaine Crooks and Cynthia Henry in the long jump.
• 44:54
  And, you know, I started coaching a hammer and I've never
• 44:57
  even seen the hammer on guy walks in my office to Tori
• 45:00
  honest. And he's like 68 280 pounds from
• 45:04
  Norway. Hi, I'm Tori.
• 45:05
  I throw hammer. Do you know him or?
• 45:07
  And I was like, no I don't but I'm here to learn And then a
• 45:12
  year later, he broke the world record in the indoor weight
• 45:14
  throw. And, you know, it's just the
• 45:17
  athletes here and that started me on my International
• 45:19
  networking, then because in the Summers, I'd go to Europe by
• 45:24
  eurail pass and travel all over Europe and go to these guys and
• 45:28
  gals clubs and see how their coach and meet their personal
• 45:31
  coach and their Federation people trying to get background
• 45:34
  and, you know, going to meet some, you know, following the
• 45:38
  Russians East Germans around, see how they were.
• 45:40
  And up for meats and what they did and all of that.
• 45:43
  And then I stumbled onto another mentored in that process Bjorn.
• 45:47
  Bloomberg, he was a Swedish coach and following at their
• 45:51
  sport high school and he was a big throws guy and he became
• 45:55
  super influential and Bjorn was Estonian by birth.
• 45:59
  So he had studied in Kiev at the Moscow score at the kids for an
• 46:03
  Institute and Leipzig in the East German.
• 46:06
  So he had access to all the Eastern, Bloc literature and
• 46:09
  share. Slowly.
• 46:11
  So that's where I really expanded my understanding of
• 46:14
  programming, and the essentials and, you know, integrated Sports
• 46:18
  Science, you know, in a high performance setting now, Dan,
• 46:22
  one of the things we have two main goals here.
• 46:25
  One is to uplift and on our your journey, which, you know, we're
• 46:28
  not even halfway in and it's astounding.
• 46:30
  I'm just, I'm like a kid in a candy store here.
• 46:32
  The other goal is to bring value to those who choose to listen to
• 46:36
  us. We're just so, humbled that
• 46:37
  anybody would press play, these are not easy podcast to listen
• 46:40
  to Cause they're hour hour and a half two hours, we're going to
• 46:42
  be all of two plus hours today. So I want to sprinkle in a
• 46:46
  little value here because you just mentioned something that I
• 46:49
  think might be fairly common. I was going to pigeonhole this
• 46:54
  to college coaches, but maybe High School coaches to you said,
• 46:58
  I'd never coached hammer. And in walks, this six foot
• 47:02
  eight, that may be the first place to start get someone who's
• 47:04
  6-foot a hammer thrower, how did you again not?
• 47:08
  Tell my Texas knows what actual drills and That you did with
• 47:11
  with this guy but how did you start to learn the hammer?
• 47:16
  Then you're kind of thrown into it.
• 47:17
  You got to hammer thrower. I'm thinking about Florida, just
• 47:21
  added the javelin not too long ago for high school so here are
• 47:25
  a bunch of High School. Coaches, probably really good at
• 47:28
  coaching the shot and discus and now they're forced for some of
• 47:34
  them. Others are super happy that
• 47:37
  they're going to start coaching the javelin.
• 47:39
  How do you as a coach who Ooh, you're good.
• 47:41
  You know what a coach. But here's a brand new event.
• 47:43
  How do you Embrace that and do write for the athlete as, as the
• 47:47
  coach? well, the first thing is,
• 47:51
  there's a lot of commonalities in various events So throwing
• 47:57
  throwing them in the hammer. Throw a guy's turns around the
• 48:00
  circle few times and then releases the hammer and there's
• 48:03
  vertical horse mom horizontal factors translational factors so
• 48:08
  what are the essentials for throwing?
• 48:10
  You know, teach what you know. So from the shot in the disk,
• 48:16
  you know, certain postures at certain phases of those rows,
• 48:19
  and then you start looking okay. What are the postures?
• 48:23
  And I've always been a common denominator rather than mine.
• 48:26
  Whoever's hot is like, who are the 10 best and what are the
• 48:29
  common things they're doing at the various phases of the pro?
• 48:33
  So my first stop was to get just shitloads of photo sequences of
• 48:38
  the top Hammer throwers get or McMurray had all these Super 8
• 48:45
  films that you can buy from track and field news and I got
• 48:49
  everything he had on the hammer throw in and you know I put that
• 48:52
  up and Torre would come in and we would talk about it.
• 48:56
  You know, we'd have film of Tori.
• 48:57
  So we put up compare and contrast and say, okay, double
• 49:01
  support here you are. And here's where siddiq is,
• 49:05
  here's single support, and here's your posture and you
• 49:08
  know, we'd look at orbitals, you know, like there's some
• 49:11
  Essentials to throw. So we know like the orbitals
• 49:14
  highs and lows should kind of stay on a line and if the
• 49:17
  orbitals are offset and then you probably going to split vectors
• 49:21
  and not throws far so it was kind of respecting the
• 49:25
  essentials and Common denominators, using a lot of
• 49:28
  compare contrast from, you know, best model best practice to
• 49:32
  where you're at. And then, you know, coaches,
• 49:37
  kind of we hierarchically ranked viruses, we see an athlete.
• 49:41
  So dysfunctional, movements are things and bother us or whatnot,
• 49:44
  so developing a nice tie. Our key list of problems Tori
• 49:49
  was 68 really long waisted so he lost his upper body positioning
• 49:54
  a lot. So that was a theme as Like, you
• 49:57
  know, we got to stabilize this upper body.
• 49:59
  If you're leaning this way in this way your back or whatnot,
• 50:02
  you know, those are big rocks. Like let's get the big rocks,
• 50:06
  done really well and then luckily, he was, he knew the
• 50:11
  event really well, and we had a bunch of post-collegiate, guys.
• 50:14
  Peter farmer. And Terry gent.
• 50:16
  There were around still throwing and you know, radical ideas
• 50:20
  Peters from Australian and trained a lot in Europe, and Jet
• 50:25
  was from Ireland. Ireland, he had the Irish look.
• 50:28
  And so there was kind of a commingling of philosophies and
• 50:31
  whatnot, and just step back and conductive reasons like he
• 50:36
  believes this. This guy believes us.
• 50:38
  This guy believes is probably somewhere in the middle.
• 50:43
  You know, I'm picturing that where you had those kind of
• 50:47
  grams of your the top 10 and you have it, was it Tori?
• 50:50
  That is now you have Tory and you're like, all right.
• 50:53
  See where you are? Well, okay.
• 50:55
  Maybe we need to do this. It seems like sounds like you
• 50:58
  really leaned into collaboration with the athlete?
• 51:01
  Yeah, abolishment collaborator. Like I said, when I was young
• 51:05
  coach, I wasn't very good on debriefing.
• 51:07
  In there really wasn't a term until what probably ten years
• 51:11
  ago. But I always interviewed
• 51:15
  athletes like before practice, how you feeling where you soar,
• 51:18
  anything stiff, you know, how's life 101?
• 51:21
  And then informal debriefs during the workout, you know,
• 51:25
  like how hard was that, you know, on a 1 to 10 scale or you
• 51:29
  know, at the end of the workout, what did you like, what did you
• 51:32
  like, what didn't you understand?
• 51:34
  You know. So I've always kind of been a
• 51:37
  collaborator because I think as a young coach, or, as a young
• 51:42
  athlete, I was, never asked what's going on in my world.
• 51:46
  And, you know, a lot of my coaching principles, probably
• 51:50
  came from bad coaching as a high schooler, you know, top-down
• 51:55
  authoritarian Punishment. No, dialogue, just do it.
• 52:00
  You're injured rubbed or nanak, keep going.
• 52:04
  You know, those kinds of things that always stuck in a Min and I
• 52:07
  always swore that, you know, I would never Coach.
• 52:10
  The way I was coached by a lot of the various coaches I had.
• 52:14
  And then also, I think I saw it all kinds of advice.
• 52:20
  And, you know, a lot of times people just wouldn't respond
• 52:23
  coach, to Les was one of the few that would answer questions
• 52:26
  after he gave a speech at a clinic or what not in House of
• 52:30
  that was another box. I was like, if I'm ever
• 52:33
  positioned to help a young coach or an athlete, I'm going to do
• 52:37
  it because I know what it's like to be in a young Athlete asking
• 52:40
  for help and not getting it or young coach asking for help not
• 52:44
  getting it. So I think those scars, if you
• 52:48
  will really drove my operational mindset and still to this day.
• 52:54
  Speaking of that. Where are you in regards to you?
• 52:57
  Teaching others at this point? Are you speaking at clinics at
• 53:00
  all? Are you?
• 53:01
  I don't know if there were tried.
• 53:03
  Technique was around there. You write any articles?
• 53:05
  What are you doing? Coaching?
• 53:07
  Ed Wise? Well, I consult a lot with the
• 53:10
  alkanes group and we have all kinds of courses and exploration
• 53:15
  courses and we have mentorships, you know, live mentorships, I
• 53:21
  have mentorships through various organizations around the world,
• 53:25
  you know? I advise, probably 50, 60
• 53:28
  coaches. Weakly I'm sorry, what were you
• 53:31
  doing there? At this point, you're at UTEP.
• 53:33
  What are you doing and UTEP? No, I was in my own world.
• 53:37
  Yeah. They started coaching and then,
• 53:41
  so, the, I think, one of the first projects as you went to
• 53:44
  the Olympic Training Center in Colorado, Springs and they had
• 53:47
  these learn by do courses. So they had guys like jovial,
• 53:52
  coach to Les and Ken Shannon and Jon Runyan.
• 53:56
  The hurdle guy from northern Cal and you spent a week at the
• 53:59
  training center sleeping in pretty bad condition, seating
• 54:02
  pretty bad food and you had to go out and learn these events
• 54:06
  kind of the ABCs And so that was another trip.
• 54:10
  You know, I got in the station, wagon drove, two days to
• 54:12
  Colorado, you know, spent a week doing that.
• 54:17
  And so coaching Ed was just starting and then at UTEP Pub,
• 54:20
  they, they started the I think level one and back then it was
• 54:26
  Tac. And so I was kind of on the
• 54:30
  ground floor with that with Birmingham bed and Gary Winkler
• 54:33
  and Coach v hill was kind of The Godfather coach to Les and In
• 54:39
  coach feet over, kind of the Godfather's on that.
• 54:41
  So, I was kind of on the ground there and then simultaneously
• 54:44
  Victor started, the Knack hack group and the Caribbean, right?
• 54:48
  So, I started, you know, presenting courses and talking
• 54:51
  about events and whatnot with Victor.
• 54:53
  You know, all of us did Lauren Seagrave, her and gambetta Gary
• 55:00
  Wilson Jerry all of us were, you know, in the Caribbean and you
• 55:06
  know, level one down there, I think was a week.
• 55:08
  Level two is two weeks and so we'd take time away and help
• 55:11
  Victor out with that for like no money at all.
• 55:14
  I'd come back. My wife and go you lost money.
• 55:16
  Like, why are you doing this? And so, in my UTEP days is
• 55:22
  started with the tack group and then the neck have group my own,
• 55:26
  I don't think not kak was the name them but you know, that was
• 55:30
  the foundation. Yeah, I've ever that, I only
• 55:33
  knew of that because of Victor. I still remember those little
• 55:35
  ads. He would have & Track and Field
• 55:37
  news and Track technique. I remember those absolutely.
• 55:41
  So we're how long that you tap and what we're Allied next two
• 55:46
  years and then we had a huge Scandal.
• 55:48
  So they, you know, the athletes were being paid young, we had
• 55:52
  world number one guys and they're getting money under the
• 55:55
  table and whatnot and it blew up and everybody left town.
• 55:59
  Except for me I was kind of left holding the bag and you know,
• 56:02
  ultimately, you know, I was cleared of any wrongdoing and
• 56:05
  the Ada Jane so I bumped in Lorne, see you're a veneers like
• 56:20
  Hey we're trying to, you know, really build the women's program
• 56:23
  at LSU and we need a men's field event coach and you'd be the
• 56:28
  guy. And so we moved to Baton Rouge.
• 56:32
  Wow, that's a pretty good place. And with a pretty good guy,
• 56:34
  Lauren Seagrave to learn from you'd already had experience
• 56:37
  with him. Yeah, I'm Billy Maxwell was the
• 56:39
  men's coach and I mean we had a crazy staff and even can us he
• 56:44
  was a Canadian Sprinter hurdle coach Okay.
• 56:46
  Yeah, Sam seems was kind of the Ops director before that term
• 56:52
  was even out and it was 11 years of incredible experiences.
• 56:58
  You know, when we got there I don't think women had ever even
• 57:00
  had a gal, make it to Nationals. And in 11 years, we won 19
• 57:06
  national titles indoors and out with them.
• 57:08
  And when like I think 11 in a row with the women and, you
• 57:11
  know, it was It was ground up, it was a wild west days him.
• 57:16
  Probably half the rules in the rulebook came from, you know,
• 57:19
  gray areas. We explored while we were at
• 57:21
  UTEP, but it was tremendous learning experience, and journey
• 57:27
  and great people in Louisiana and culture and food and still
• 57:33
  my wife's favorite place to live or our kids were raised their,
• 57:37
  you know, during their adolescent years.
• 57:40
  And so a lot of fun memories of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
• 57:43
  Hannah. I love connecting all the pieces
• 57:45
  because as you're mentioning Billy Maxwell, and although,
• 57:48
  that gang I was like, wait a minute.
• 57:50
  We had seemed seems on the podcast back in October, and
• 57:54
  remember, Sam talking about, that's where he kind of got his
• 57:56
  coaching from Western Kentucky, another steel pole vaulter, by
• 57:59
  the way, back in the day and Kentucky.
• 58:01
  So I love that connection there. It's hard to imagine you
• 58:05
  mentioned that LSU really hadn't won anything at that point.
• 58:07
  That's hard. You know, my history only goes
• 58:10
  so far back and all of my history with LSU.
• 58:13
  Is they always win? There's always national titles.
• 58:15
  There's always all Americans national champions there.
• 58:18
  You guys were kind of on that ground floor of actually
• 58:21
  building that up and Lauren and Billy.
• 58:23
  I mean just amazing crew there. Yeah.
• 58:26
  I think the men had won a national title in 1933 and you
• 58:32
  know SEC they weren't on the radar and on the women.
• 58:36
  I mean it was, it was Ground Zero.
• 58:37
  I mean first couple years, we took a big risk and probably
• 58:43
  This more than we hit. But, you know, it was pretty
• 58:45
  hard to attract people to a school that had no history or
• 58:48
  culture or reputation and you know, we had to Bang.
• 58:52
  Bang, the trees, you know, my International connections and
• 58:56
  Annie's Connections in Canada. We had to kind of lean on the
• 58:59
  foreign arm quite a bit initially and then Billy had a
• 59:04
  lot of East Coast connections. So we recruited the crap out of
• 59:07
  the east coast and talent pool. And Louisiana was was pretty
• 59:13
  Bars, to be honest, the level of coaching wasn't that great.
• 59:16
  But we went out and bang the trees and found sleepers and
• 59:19
  whatnot. You know, I'd probably say third
• 59:21
  of the athletes were all Americans for me.
• 59:23
  Were walk home kids from Louisiana.
• 59:27
  What do you as you're going through that?
• 59:30
  And I love that. You ended that story with that
• 59:33
  sentence. There that you know, third where
• 59:34
  Walk-Ons from Louisiana. Do you get more satisfaction out
• 59:38
  of that? I'm not even throw numbers
• 59:41
  because because that would pigeonhole you into Event a
• 59:43
  walk-on type of kid that goes on to become an All-American or
• 59:47
  that All-American high schooler. That comes in and goes on to a
• 59:51
  great pro career. Where's more satisfaction for
• 59:54
  you? I'm not a favorite sky.
• 59:58
  So am I buying our curtain and not a favorite sky?
• 1:00:01
  So I get asked all the time. What your favorite food or
• 1:00:04
  country or what not? So you know its spectral.
• 1:00:08
  It's like, where am I at what's going on?
• 1:00:11
  You know, they're both tremendously.
• 1:00:13
  Rewarding, I had to bias because of how I grew up.
• 1:00:19
  You know. I'm probably the underdog guy,
• 1:00:20
  the walk on guy. Yeah, I'm probably a little more
• 1:00:24
  driven. You know, with that walk on
• 1:00:27
  athlete and you know, a prima donna entitled, parachute
• 1:00:32
  helicopter athlete, I would have been a great disappointment for
• 1:00:38
  you. I would have been that Underdog
• 1:00:39
  but I unfortunately would have stayed the underdog you I would
• 1:00:43
  have challenged all your coaching and how good it could
• 1:00:45
  actually change a human. Well, I mean sometimes, you
• 1:00:50
  know, a shift of one inch is way more powerful than a shift of a
• 1:00:55
  mile. You know?
• 1:00:58
  That is so over my head that was such a smart thing.
• 1:01:01
  I can't even concept that never I went to school high school and
• 1:01:04
  college in Alabama, dance. So, you know, you got to tone it
• 1:01:08
  down a little bit for me to understand.
• 1:01:10
  Okay, where are you at? At this time with LSU, you're
• 1:01:15
  growing that program with the crew that is with you there.
• 1:01:18
  And again just another you know who's who Mount Rushmore people,
• 1:01:22
  great coaches and great people and just in really, you know,
• 1:01:26
  for my generation groundbreaking coaches and you're right there
• 1:01:28
  with them. You know you're doing things
• 1:01:29
  that we never would have thought of that were even possible.
• 1:01:33
  Where are you with your other sports?
• 1:01:35
  You know today, I know you as a guy that can go work with
• 1:01:37
  baseball players NFL people of course track are used strictly
• 1:01:41
  just trackers or any Branching out with any other sports
• 1:01:45
  athletic training your, those other things that you are highly
• 1:01:48
  skilled at today. Yeah, I'm kind of developed by
• 1:01:52
  then kind of a reputation on return-to-play work, you know,
• 1:01:55
  coming back from injuries or rehab or whatnot.
• 1:01:58
  So, as dabbling on that and a lot of the sport coaches, like
• 1:02:02
  Jeff McDonald. The tennis coach are if they had
• 1:02:04
  a injury factor of the gymnastics coach or whatnot.
• 1:02:08
  You know, I don't make suggestions or try to work
• 1:02:11
  around the training room. Not step on toes or what have
• 1:02:15
  you. And then Jerry Sullivan was a
• 1:02:17
  receivers coach and he'd have guys that were maybe a step slow
• 1:02:21
  getting ready for the combine or whatnot.
• 1:02:23
  And, you know, I'd work with his receiver guy.
• 1:02:26
  So, that's how I kind of got into the NFL world and had
• 1:02:30
  success with a few guys through Jerry.
• 1:02:34
  And, you know, during you know, all through his career, oil
• 1:02:37
  would always send guys, a step slower guy coming off a surgery
• 1:02:40
  or whatnot. So that was the beginning of a
• 1:02:42
  long. Term relationship there, but,
• 1:02:45
  you know, some basketball guys will come in, you know, coming
• 1:02:47
  off a knee injury or gymnast off and, you know, knee surgery or
• 1:02:51
  ankle surgery and whatnot. So that was started, probably
• 1:02:55
  the beginning of that, kind of branching out into the return,
• 1:02:58
  to play World and consultancy world, you know, a guy like me,
• 1:03:03
  I see those as two fairly different things, meaning the
• 1:03:07
  return to play in the coaching track and field.
• 1:03:10
  Did you see them as two different Avenues or was All
• 1:03:14
  kind of the same. I'm learning very much about you
• 1:03:17
  Dan here, Spectrum, absolutes are not absolutes or did you so
• 1:03:23
  did you see those as two different branches?
• 1:03:24
  Or was that a spectrum of the same type of human performance
• 1:03:28
  if you will? Well, whether it's track and
• 1:03:31
  field or a different sporting event?
• 1:03:32
  I'm kind of use the pyramid analogy, you got physical
• 1:03:35
  literacy is the base. So, you know, identify the
• 1:03:38
  components of physical literacy. And then the next level is
• 1:03:41
  global sport. Or C, select wanting change in
• 1:03:45
  direction or what have you. And then there's specific sport
• 1:03:47
  literacy. So whether you're with a healthy
• 1:03:50
  athlete or an injured athlete, you still have to respect, where
• 1:03:53
  they're at on the pyramid. So for me it's pretty similar
• 1:03:56
  operating paradigms in its regardless of the sport because
• 1:04:03
  in I'm going to maybe maybe answer this because track is the
• 1:04:06
  basis of all sports, you know, receiver is running track,
• 1:04:08
  right? Alignment is doing a lot of
• 1:04:10
  track movements. Is that the Y?
• 1:04:12
  You can go. From sport to sport sport, it's
• 1:04:14
  really athlete not sport driven. Well I think in track and field
• 1:04:19
  meet you kind of have to wear biomechanics head and Physiology
• 1:04:25
  had in a programming hat in a plan B hat.
• 1:04:28
  When you let's be honest track field coaches or genius Plan B
• 1:04:32
  Because plan a cell seldom happens.
• 1:04:35
  So I think you're kind of used to wearing all these hats and
• 1:04:38
  you know when to put one on and take one off.
• 1:04:43
  Like them. Okay, keep us moving forward LSU
• 1:04:48
  for how many years and 11 years. 11 years.
• 1:04:52
  And to this day was your wife's favorite place.
• 1:04:54
  So this had to be kind of hard to leave and go to the next
• 1:04:57
  step. So Public Schools were a
• 1:05:03
  challenge in Baton Rouge back then, and we had two kids
• 1:05:06
  entering primary school and they were both from private schools,
• 1:05:10
  which at the time was Is about 10K.
• 1:05:13
  Each and my wife had a job, I had a job and unfortunately LSU
• 1:05:18
  kept firing football coaches. So the track coaches number.
• 1:05:21
  Got raises, there wasn't a bonus system, we were running all
• 1:05:24
  these Nationals and it was kind of a handshake and here's a
• 1:05:27
  certificate. So financially, we were
• 1:05:31
  struggling, you know, we still hadn't been able to buy a home.
• 1:05:35
  We're still running and whatnot, and Bubba Thornton called me,
• 1:05:40
  just got appointed the head coach.
• 1:05:42
  Texas. And he said, you know, I'm
• 1:05:43
  looking for you know Phil event to mine a bad guy and you know a
• 1:05:49
  guy that can do a lot of the duties.
• 1:05:51
  I don't like to do like travel and equipment and management and
• 1:05:55
  I was like yeah I'm your guy and so it was a monster, pay raise
• 1:05:59
  and we could put our kids in a public school.
• 1:06:01
  We moved around rock with really good schools.
• 1:06:04
  So it was not only a pay increase, but a bugie income
• 1:06:07
  increase because of the private schooling cost.
• 1:06:11
  And so eight years at the University of Texas, tremendous
• 1:06:17
  education on politics and bureaucracy but work for a
• 1:06:23
  tremendous ad deloss. Dodds who was track coach long
• 1:06:26
  time, track coach at Kansas State.
• 1:06:29
  The only ad I ever had come into my office after a meet and talk
• 1:06:33
  shop. Is that right?
• 1:06:36
  Which I would expect that from delays.
• 1:06:37
  I know you do big track background.
• 1:06:39
  There. No other AD even like he's had
• 1:06:42
  to go or hey I saw you guys broke this record.
• 1:06:44
  Nothing Nope. Oh man.
• 1:06:48
  I just makes me sad for a d. That's not good.
• 1:06:55
  Texas in Bubba Thorn, amazing coach.
• 1:07:00
  A guy that kind of gets lost because he hasn't coached in a
• 1:07:02
  while now. So not like he in our young
• 1:07:06
  acute memories we forget what Bubba did at the school that he
• 1:07:10
  was at and at Texas and the many, many all Americans and
• 1:07:13
  sprinters and just full teams he had there, are you at this
• 1:07:17
  point? I mean, it's quite disappointing
• 1:07:21
  but probably Understandable, maybe that you mentioned being
• 1:07:26
  there at LSU for so long and, you know, your statement was we
• 1:07:29
  still weren't even able to buy a house like that just so
• 1:07:32
  disappointing, right? That, you know, are track
• 1:07:34
  coaches. Like, I mean, just bare minimum.
• 1:07:36
  Care can afford a house, you go to Texas, which changes some
• 1:07:40
  things there for you. How was the experience of now,
• 1:07:45
  are you Dan path? Someone like in today's world
• 1:07:48
  your damp app. Someone people seek out it It
• 1:07:52
  feels like somewhere maybe at the LSU level it switches
• 1:07:55
  because it before that I'm getting the feeling of like
• 1:07:58
  you're certainly leading but people are you are still seeking
• 1:08:00
  out other people and getting educated and being educated and
• 1:08:04
  going to Europe and learning different systems.
• 1:08:07
  Does that did that flip it? LS?
• 1:08:08
  You were to that flip a Texas. How do you you think about that?
• 1:08:13
  Well, I think it probably started the tail end of Ella's
• 1:08:17
  shoe and then really blew up at Texas.
• 1:08:20
  So, I started coaching some post-collegiate said LSU and
• 1:08:24
  they had success on the world stage and then more and more
• 1:08:28
  people came. So like a Donovan, Bailey shows
• 1:08:30
  up, you know, people like that. And so because of that profile,
• 1:08:37
  more and more people would visit, you know, European
• 1:08:39
  coaches, European athletes people from Australia,
• 1:08:42
  Australia, whatever. So probably the success of the
• 1:08:47
  post Collegiate athletes on the world stage, probably drove the
• 1:08:52
  mentorship or people coming by to you know talk shop or you
• 1:08:58
  know dialogue or you know, increase each other's Network or
• 1:09:01
  what have you. So I would say the
• 1:09:04
  post-collegiate expansion, probably drove that more than
• 1:09:08
  what I was doing on the college level, that said you With
• 1:09:12
  Victor's, work, in the neck region, you know, a lot of
• 1:09:15
  Caribbean coaches are athletes, would stop in for various
• 1:09:19
  lengths and visits. So I would say the exposure and
• 1:09:22
  then at kak Region and then the success of our post-collegiate,
• 1:09:26
  on the world stage, probably drove the, the expansion of the
• 1:09:31
  network, if you will. And you've had success at kind
• 1:09:35
  of the three levels high school and that's a little bit down
• 1:09:39
  playing when I say success here, a lot of success and high
• 1:09:41
  levels. Excess at all, kind of three
• 1:09:44
  levels here, the high school, the Collegiate, and
• 1:09:46
  post-collegiate. So you've worked with 16 year
• 1:09:49
  olds. 36, year old that are high level high level mentally, as
• 1:09:54
  far as like, wanting to be better, you know, listening yes
• 1:09:56
  or no sir. What do I got to do?
• 1:09:57
  You know, those kind of things? Is there a level or any of those
• 1:10:01
  levels easier than the other? And what I mean by that is, I
• 1:10:05
  think of and I coached high school and college.
• 1:10:08
  Definitely don't have anywhere near experience on the
• 1:10:11
  post-collegiate side. But on the high school level, I
• 1:10:14
  could answer that. And say, yes, it's easier in
• 1:10:16
  high school because their kids, they want to have fun.
• 1:10:18
  That's more fun, that's easier. I could also say for college.
• 1:10:22
  Well, that was easier because I had higher quality athletes when
• 1:10:24
  I was at Mississippi State. So we got to do more things and,
• 1:10:27
  you know, maybe it's more fun to win an SEC title than it is to
• 1:10:30
  win a, you know, Corn Belt High School Conference title.
• 1:10:34
  It's an actual conference around here but also maybe you could
• 1:10:38
  tell me on the post-collegiate like yeah, you know what's
• 1:10:40
  easier and more fun man wedding. A gold medal.
• 1:10:43
  Like that's, that's more fun and easier.
• 1:10:45
  Is there a level for you? That is more enjoyable, more
• 1:10:48
  satisfaction. No, mmm.
• 1:10:51
  I kind of crave diversity. So, you know, currently I, you
• 1:10:54
  know, I coach age, group kids, in my neighborhood, you know,
• 1:10:58
  tennis basketball or baseball, or I've got 80 year old Masters
• 1:11:03
  athletes. I work with, and currently
• 1:11:04
  directly coaching three Paralympics foreigners around
• 1:11:07
  the world. So, you know, each stage or a
• 1:11:11
  pen or sport is a unique puzzle and I like Puzzles and I enjoy
• 1:11:16
  the puzzles. And I really need diversity.
• 1:11:20
  Like I kind of saw a trend or pattern myself like, you know,
• 1:11:26
  in the in the University setting is a season, goes down your
• 1:11:29
  squad numbers, go down. And so you go, you know, you
• 1:11:33
  might start out the fall with 40 kids in your field of and group.
• 1:11:36
  And then, by the time you get to Nationals, there's probably five
• 1:11:39
  or six left standing, right? And I just saw a trend that I
• 1:11:42
  over Coach the shit out of these kids when the group got too
• 1:11:46
  small. So, One of those guys that kind
• 1:11:49
  of needs a bigger group and diverse groups.
• 1:11:51
  And, you know, I've had stops were on the throws guy or the
• 1:11:57
  jumps guy or the Sprint sky and again those are Slippery slopes
• 1:12:02
  for me. So I just figured out real early
• 1:12:05
  on that. I need diversity and I need
• 1:12:07
  numbers. That's me, you mentioned, you're
• 1:12:10
  working with younger athletes. In the eight, nine, ten years
• 1:12:13
  old? Do they have any idea who you
• 1:12:15
  are? No.
• 1:12:18
  To their parents. Yeah.
• 1:12:20
  Most of the parents in this day and age they Google you.
• 1:12:23
  Yeah whatever. And but most of the kids I'm
• 1:12:28
  just Mr. Dan and his like hey I'm having trouble with free
• 1:12:33
  throws can you can you watch me and you know you have for hey I
• 1:12:36
  rolled my ankle. What should I do?
• 1:12:38
  Mr. Dan I love that. It's still the Deep South right?
• 1:12:43
  That's right. Yeah absolutely I love that.
• 1:12:46
  I wonder if there's like a parent who doesn't do their Due
• 1:12:49
  diligence and Google you and they're like, you know, that Dan
• 1:12:52
  guy, I just don't know that he knows what he's talking about
• 1:12:54
  and it's like may just hit the Google button buddy.
• 1:12:57
  Well, I say this from a lot of presentations, you know as a
• 1:13:02
  coach you got to reprove yourself every day and I don't
• 1:13:07
  care what your CV is, you know, especially in this day and age,
• 1:13:13
  you know, you got to reprove yourself everyday, on a lot of
• 1:13:16
  levels. Yeah that's good.
• 1:13:18
  That's a good. Like keeping your humility in
• 1:13:22
  check as well. It's like you know, if you keep
• 1:13:23
  thinking you're you don't have to prove yourself anymore.
• 1:13:26
  It's like well do you does that mean?
• 1:13:27
  You still don't try to learn more.
• 1:13:29
  Does that mean you're not trying to experiment and do what's
• 1:13:31
  right for athletes? Athletes are different today
• 1:13:33
  than they were yesterday. This athletes different from
• 1:13:35
  that athlete. How do you keep yourself?
• 1:13:37
  Hungry, if you will to keep the knowledge level and going, yeah,
• 1:13:41
  I just got off a call this morning with one of my direct
• 1:13:44
  athletes and we're going looking at film from behind, and Looking
• 1:13:49
  at movement Pathways of the foot axis and all that.
• 1:13:52
  And you just point blank, he goes.
• 1:13:54
  Are you sure that that's just not how I am?
• 1:13:58
  And I'm like, yeah, I'm pretty sure that we can fix this, or
• 1:14:03
  coming this up. And so, you know, and I've been
• 1:14:05
  with this guy since 2009 and I'm, you know, I'm still having
• 1:14:10
  to revalidate my stance. Love it.
• 1:14:16
  All right. Well, we got a lot of topics to
• 1:14:18
  keep going. So I want to keep pushing
• 1:14:19
  Pushing forward in the career Dan how long at Texas and what
• 1:14:23
  was next? So I kind of got burnout on the
• 1:14:27
  politics and The grind of college coaching, you know, like
• 1:14:37
  unfortunately my family, my wife and my kids paid a tremendous
• 1:14:42
  price for my career and I was really looking for a way to kind
• 1:14:46
  of back off, you know like n-c-double-a track.
• 1:14:50
  You started traveling beginning of January and then I was in
• 1:14:53
  Europe all summer with these post-grad.
• 1:14:55
  So basically nine months a year I wasn't around and so I thought
• 1:15:00
  well you know I'm having successful these Pro guys.
• 1:15:03
  Guys, let me give a small program and and where I can kind
• 1:15:06
  of control things a lot more and maybe bring in an assistant to
• 1:15:10
  do some of this stuff. And so I went into a private
• 1:15:13
  practice which was probably not a great idea.
• 1:15:16
  One of the first profile clients was Marion Jones and Mikey had
• 1:15:21
  kind of hired me to oversee her and Tim Montgomery and that
• 1:15:26
  ended up to be quite a shitshow and five years of lawsuits and
• 1:15:30
  million dollar and legal cost. Mistake.
• 1:15:34
  And while I was recovering from that to safeguard assets, my
• 1:15:41
  lawyer suggested, I moved to Florida because Florida is a
• 1:15:44
  great place to protect your assets.
• 1:15:47
  And so luckily there was an opening at Florida and my
• 1:15:50
  Calaway called me Media or opening.
• 1:15:53
  And so I moved to Florida in January.
• 1:15:57
  I think it was 05 maybe and so I coach two years and University
• 1:16:02
  of Florida while we fought Bought all these legal battles?
• 1:16:05
  I did not realize that was going on.
• 1:16:08
  During this time, I knew it was 05 because that's when you and I
• 1:16:11
  overlap, I'm at Mississippi State and you are at Florida.
• 1:16:15
  I have to imagine you do not diving into all the fluff that
• 1:16:20
  was going on, but for a guy who seemingly really enjoys being on
• 1:16:25
  the track, or the field with athletes and solving problems,
• 1:16:29
  all that side of things, the court saw.
• 1:16:33
  And all that stuff had to be some of the most the the least
• 1:16:38
  enjoyable time of your life. Like all that is the exact
• 1:16:41
  opposite of being on the track helping people move better.
• 1:16:46
  Well I'll be honest it was the first time I ever thought about
• 1:16:49
  leaving coaching geralyn's like you know my whole life I've
• 1:16:52
  helped people been honest transparent and then you know
• 1:16:56
  this happens and like I'm not exaggerating we were probably
• 1:17:02
  about 1.2 million. Ian in the hole with legal costs
• 1:17:05
  because this went through four or five appeals and all kinds of
• 1:17:08
  stuff and then people declare bankruptcies and whatnot and
• 1:17:13
  sponsors bail out and you don't have the legal power to go after
• 1:17:17
  you know, a corporation like Nike.
• 1:17:19
  So basically you're just left holding the bag and, you know, I
• 1:17:24
  actually had to call Amy Acuff, the high jump gal, that I was
• 1:17:27
  working with and get along, just so we could pay her rent for a
• 1:17:31
  couple of months. So, it was pretty.
• 1:17:33
  Our times and it almost got me out of coaching.
• 1:17:37
  Yeah, not sure anybody would have blamed you.
• 1:17:40
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:17:42
  So when you go to Florida, this is where you and I intersect
• 1:17:47
  personally. So I had been to some camps and
• 1:17:51
  clinics that you had been at and read a lot of your stuff.
• 1:17:54
  And at that time, I think 05 we're probably still VHS in.
• 1:17:58
  Its I probably watched a few VHS tapes, tapes that had you in.
• 1:18:02
  I'm in the 05 Season. I'm in my second year at
• 1:18:05
  Mississippi State coaching jumpers and helping with the
• 1:18:09
  sprinters and we go to scc's at Vanderbilt and you had a really
• 1:18:16
  fantastic athlete. I believe his name was Mike
• 1:18:19
  Morrison, I believe he was the long jump, triple jump and high
• 1:18:23
  jumper. Is it that I get?
• 1:18:24
  Is it was it Mike Morrison? Yeah, from Jersey of course, of
• 1:18:27
  all places hires love Jersey athletes.
• 1:18:29
  It's quite phenomenal. They have pleats are coming out
• 1:18:32
  of the come out of that state. Well He was also 45-point
• 1:18:35
  related guy. Oh, I don't think I knew that.
• 1:18:38
  Gosh. So we're at Vanderbilt for scc's
• 1:18:42
  and I don't know what you've been to so many tracks.
• 1:18:45
  You are completely forgiven for not remember this.
• 1:18:47
  The long jump was over by the chain-link fence, outside of the
• 1:18:51
  track and the trees were not cut.
• 1:18:54
  So like there was a branch like, right at your at the Penultimate
• 1:18:57
  for the launch of is just terrible.
• 1:18:59
  But we're having this battle long jumping and my Kid the
• 1:19:03
  Christopher Lewis who was like a 19-foot kid out of high school.
• 1:19:07
  Love the Christopher Lewis, a genius genius guy, he takes the
• 1:19:10
  lead, Mike Morrison. Comes he it was really unkind to
• 1:19:14
  Mike Morrison because he was also high jump at the same time
• 1:19:16
  so he was running back and forth.
• 1:19:19
  Mike took the lead or put pressure well all said and done
• 1:19:23
  my kid from Isuzu State ends up winning.
• 1:19:25
  I think Mike was second like my other kid was forth and that was
• 1:19:28
  phenomenal. That was my first SEC Champion
• 1:19:30
  for like my out. Like, I'd helped Dudley in the
• 1:19:33
  crew. The Sprints and we had some
• 1:19:34
  amazing sprinters there. But this was my first, like,
• 1:19:36
  okay, I took over all of the Christopher's training and we
• 1:19:40
  won a long jump titles, amazing, right?
• 1:19:43
  And I'm just so pumped. I'm so excited.
• 1:19:45
  Kendall pints the kid who got forth for me.
• 1:19:48
  It's just, we are all happy and then Dan path.
• 1:19:53
  You purposely walk over to me, extend your hand and say hey,
• 1:19:58
  congratulations and Dan. I know it's hard.
• 1:20:03
  I think about when you're in the moment and who you are and
• 1:20:06
  you're so humble that sometimes maybe you don't remember you.
• 1:20:10
  You I think you honestly think of yourself as mr.
• 1:20:12
  Daniel, I understand path. And I'm just Mr. Dan, I just,
• 1:20:14
  you know, help kids but when you came over to me, When you
• 1:20:19
  purposely came over to me that was the Wolves very succinct for
• 1:20:22
  me. It wasn't like we passed each
• 1:20:23
  other and you. Fist bump.
• 1:20:26
  But you you came over to me and shook my hand said, hey,
• 1:20:28
  congratulations. That is one of the top moments
• 1:20:33
  of my coaching career my friend. Because here was this guy that I
• 1:20:38
  looked up to, he was my Mount Rushmore of coaches, who easily
• 1:20:44
  you didn't have to come over. You didn't if you probably had
• 1:20:47
  somewhere else to go Mike Morrison Polly had another event
• 1:20:49
  to do, you the humility, the humbleness that you showed by
• 1:20:55
  coming over to a young coach and saying, congratulations and
• 1:20:58
  shaking my hand. It made me feel on top of the
• 1:21:01
  world, it gave me so much. Not credibility, what's the word
• 1:21:05
  I'm thinking here confidence? It's like, oh my goodness.
• 1:21:09
  Maybe I actually can do something this world.
• 1:21:13
  I don't know if I can become a Mr. Dan, but maybe Maybe I can,
• 1:21:17
  I can be something in this profession.
• 1:21:19
  It was it's a Memory that was 2005.
• 1:21:22
  So that's, we're getting close to 20 years ago.
• 1:21:24
  That's how old were getting Mr. Dan, it's quite amazing.
• 1:21:27
  And I remember every second of that film if you will of my life
• 1:21:34
  that happened, man. So I don't know that I've ever
• 1:21:37
  gotten a chance and I'm so humble that I get to do this
• 1:21:40
  publicly right now. Thank you so much.
• 1:21:44
  Here's what I know, I know I'm one Like 1,000 coaches.
• 1:21:47
  That have a story like that, that you have touched other
• 1:21:51
  coaches, young, coaches lives in such an easy manner, right?
• 1:21:55
  It wasn't you didn't come over and say, you know, if you would
• 1:21:58
  do your penultimate this way, he would have jumped XY and z or
• 1:22:00
  Hey, but well, it was just a gratitude and thankfulness
• 1:22:04
  humbleness to say congrats and I meant the world to me, my friend
• 1:22:09
  and I'm just so proud that I get to like publicly.
• 1:22:12
  Thank you, I get to represent thousands of other coaches that
• 1:22:15
  right now are going. Oh, yeah.
• 1:22:16
  Dan did that to me, too. And Dan did this.
• 1:22:17
  And if Dan went and told me this, or if Dan wouldn't have
• 1:22:20
  spent time with me after this Clinic, I wouldn't be who I am
• 1:22:23
  today. I'm just, it's kind of a cool
• 1:22:25
  little thing being the host of this podcast that I get to.
• 1:22:27
  Like public represent, thousands of people that you have
• 1:22:31
  positively affected really around the country, and around
• 1:22:34
  the world, not just the Countryman.
• 1:22:36
  So, thank you so much for your humbleness there.
• 1:22:40
  Well, thanks for saying that. Hmm, you never know how you're
• 1:22:43
  going to touch people. And, you know, it doesn't always
• 1:22:45
  have to be a A bird or whatnot. And you know maybe I'm a little
• 1:22:49
  bit old school but I think sportsmanship is an important
• 1:22:52
  component of sport and coaching in you know, there's probably a
• 1:22:57
  few guys. I wouldn't shake hands with it
• 1:22:59
  because of how they've done it but you know if someone did it
• 1:23:06
  right and they kicked my ass and you should congratulate him,
• 1:23:10
  they be you? Yeah, that's awesome.
• 1:23:13
  Well I again I you know, half the reason I wanted you to
• 1:23:16
  Podcast was so I could publicly tell you.
• 1:23:17
  Thank you, man. It really was.
• 1:23:19
  It was like I said, it's a moment nearly 20 years ago that
• 1:23:23
  I will, I'll never forget. I'll never forget that.
• 1:23:26
  You came down to my level and said, congratulations, man.
• 1:23:31
  Well, hopefully, you know some of the takeaways for people on
• 1:23:34
  this will be that words matter. A conversation matters and you
• 1:23:40
  know a few words can change a person's career or life?
• 1:23:43
  Yeah absolutely you did. It's amazing.
• 1:23:46
  Okay, you're at UF your with mouse one of my favorite people,
• 1:23:50
  guess number 30, by the way, on the Gill connections podcast,
• 1:23:53
  just a humbling humbling man, who really has, I mean, you
• 1:23:57
  think about 05 Mouse to 2022 Mouse.
• 1:24:02
  He's got a few more rings and a few more Olympians and records
• 1:24:06
  and since then he's done an amazing job and it really go
• 1:24:10
  back and listen to his podcast if you're listening today
• 1:24:12
  because again, a lot of mentors that poured into his life.
• 1:24:15
  Again, we don't do This on our own, we do this on the shoulders
• 1:24:18
  of others in Mouse's, certainly one who has transitioned from
• 1:24:22
  being on the shoulders of a lot of people to now, having a lot
• 1:24:25
  of coaches on his shoulder as he mentors people around around
• 1:24:29
  around the world, really around the country and around the
• 1:24:31
  world. So how long at Florida as you're
• 1:24:34
  going through this? Just utter crap through the
• 1:24:36
  court systems. Does it renew any things you
• 1:24:40
  talked about? You know, there was a heartbeat
• 1:24:42
  there about maybe getting out of this coaching profession that it
• 1:24:44
  bring back any passion or What how did that go there and
• 1:24:47
  Gatorland? Well I wasn't, you know, I was
• 1:24:51
  probably in a fog, you know? So it was kind of doing things
• 1:24:57
  my memory or what not, and probably didn't do and it's
• 1:25:01
  probably not my best. Two years of coaching mouse was
• 1:25:05
  super understanding and supportive and gave me a lot of
• 1:25:09
  latitude things that stood out from Alice's.
• 1:25:13
  He developed a very defined culture and accountability and
• 1:25:19
  we'll see. Super organized.
• 1:25:21
  And so, it was easy to operate in the fog in that construct.
• 1:25:26
  But I would say, my two years here, I was kind of in a fog,
• 1:25:29
  you know, I was trying to hold a marriage together and try to
• 1:25:32
  avoid bankruptcy and, you know, as flying in and out of court,
• 1:25:36
  appearances and still coaching a few Pro guys, on the side and
• 1:25:41
  whatnot in, I'd really say the, some of the key athletes of
• 1:25:46
  Florida and some of the key Pro people that I was coaching,
• 1:25:49
  Really kind of pulled me out of the really deep dark hole that I
• 1:25:54
  was in. Yeah, we talked about stressors
• 1:25:57
  for athletes and how it can affect performance as well.
• 1:26:00
  We forget that, you know, coaches are humans too.
• 1:26:02
  And so you've got all these stressors just beating it from
• 1:26:05
  the outside. It kind of makes you not want to
• 1:26:07
  go to work that day and and what motivation do you have to
• 1:26:11
  continue to educate yourself and get better?
• 1:26:13
  It's like, man, I'm just trying to wake up tomorrow morning at
• 1:26:16
  the end of the day, you know? Yeah it's yeah.
• 1:26:19
  I would kind of Cold was two years, there's tread water years
• 1:26:22
  you know. Like hopefully I didn't do
• 1:26:25
  extreme harm but you know I really wasn't my two best years
• 1:26:30
  of coaching by any stretch you kind of look back and think,
• 1:26:33
  man, I could have done X Y & Z. I just wasn't in the yeah.
• 1:26:36
  Yeah, yeah. That's too bad.
• 1:26:38
  What happened? After those two years?
• 1:26:41
  Well, so then we moved to the Bay Area, a me cuff and Susie
• 1:26:45
  Powell had befriended a builder, some startling It was developing
• 1:26:51
  a training center in the Bay Area and it at the time it was
• 1:26:55
  called tiger bar. Yes.
• 1:26:57
  And so we developed a small training group out there.
• 1:27:01
  You know that people like Amy and Susie and tie, harby Amy's
• 1:27:05
  husband and Brad. Walker came in Tommy Skipper
• 1:27:10
  came in and take remedial and and Becky holiday came in.
• 1:27:14
  So we probably Brian Kakuna. He had a group of about L've
• 1:27:19
  Athletes Training in a kind of a warehouse on an island.
• 1:27:24
  I remember. Yeah, I did just a California.
• 1:27:27
  And then unfortunately, the housing collapse occurred,
• 1:27:32
  right? As we were getting started and
• 1:27:34
  so the Builder kind of had to pull away and we were left
• 1:27:38
  floundering. And so we ended up with the pole
• 1:27:40
  vault Club in the Bay Area and they had connections in
• 1:27:45
  Stockton. So we rented a warehouse in the
• 1:27:49
  Port of Stockton. can an old Naval warehouse and tie Harvey
• 1:27:53
  got a starter from the Olympic Training Center and we built
• 1:27:56
  runways and tracks in this big, huge Naval warehouse and Bill
• 1:28:01
  pole, vault runways, and long jumper, and ways, it was cold as
• 1:28:05
  balls in there in the winter and we had a dining tent, we wrapped
• 1:28:08
  it in plastic with a space heater and you'd go in and warm
• 1:28:11
  up and then jump out and we had space heaters at the end of the
• 1:28:15
  pole vault Runway warm your hands and tie had set up a These
• 1:28:19
  security camera. So we had cameras from every
• 1:28:22
  perspective, all singing. So it was kind of cool.
• 1:28:27
  I can't remember the year on that, but we put quite a few
• 1:28:31
  people in the, the world team, then think it was a soccer.
• 1:28:36
  And so, that was kind of a three-year detour to the Bay
• 1:28:40
  Area. And then from there are segue to
• 1:28:43
  running the Olympic Training Center in San Diego.
• 1:28:46
  The usoc had overtaken it from the Federation and I was hired
• 1:28:50
  by the usoc to a kind of run the program and successful gig
• 1:28:55
  there. I think the most I'd ever had on
• 1:28:57
  a national team before us was three or four athletes, and we
• 1:28:59
  put eight on, you know, the Olympic team that year I didn't
• 1:29:05
  remember to Lavista. I remember the tiger bar,
• 1:29:08
  because I remember driving out, you said an island.
• 1:29:10
  I remember that was kind of a winding and I hadn't been to
• 1:29:13
  California very many times and I remember, I turn the key in the
• 1:29:17
  car turn, you know, around the corner as I'm traveling.
• 1:29:19
  And out of nowhere. There's this peacock.
• 1:29:21
  It was just like, like, right there.
• 1:29:22
  I was like, what? No, we're like.
• 1:29:23
  This is such a Strange Land out here in California, man.
• 1:29:27
  And then, that's where I first met Brad Walker.
• 1:29:29
  You were working him out. He was doing so weird.
• 1:29:32
  How you remember these things, this single leg, you know, had a
• 1:29:35
  barbell in his hand, single leg support, you know, toe-touch
• 1:29:38
  kind of thing I should and you're like, hey, this is Brad
• 1:29:40
  Walker. And you know, he was the
• 1:29:42
  University of Washington when he was University Washington,
• 1:29:44
  right? Yeah.
• 1:29:45
  And I was just like that's like what a life.
• 1:29:48
  I was like. I don't even know where the
• 1:29:48
  world I am and there's It's up the pole vaulter and dance here
• 1:29:52
  just a crazy crazy time. I forgot about that and you
• 1:29:56
  transition from there, it's Olympic transfer.
• 1:29:57
  I don't know that I knew that was it still the Olympic
• 1:30:02
  Training Center was at the Chula Vista training.
• 1:30:04
  So I'm still in Olympic Training Center.
• 1:30:06
  I'd like some usatf and had a lot of management problems.
• 1:30:10
  So the usoc had taken it over for a year hired by a guy named
• 1:30:15
  Jay Warwick. He was a portfolio manager for
• 1:30:17
  track and field and I had Thai. See been on the staff, I'll join
• 1:30:24
  her. Hmm, who's imprisoning an 800
• 1:30:29
  guy not one. Not one tree.
• 1:30:34
  No. No Cruise Cruise.
• 1:30:36
  Yeah. And so, you know, kind of
• 1:30:39
  management that we kind of turn things around.
• 1:30:42
  Reorganized financially, got solvent and have you and I think
• 1:30:47
  that was 09 if I remember, So that was German meet German
• 1:30:53
  World champs. Yeah, I was thinking tiger bar,
• 1:30:56
  was around 08 for me when I went out there because I think I was
• 1:30:59
  out there for Sacramento for either USA's or NCAA something
• 1:31:04
  for Sacramento and then came out that way or flew in a different
• 1:31:07
  place. So round, 09 I've ever done big
• 1:31:10
  Training Center. I used to do the Juniors, High
• 1:31:13
  hurdle camps out there for usatf and just always thought what a
• 1:31:17
  beautiful area and could Thrive and it never got going.
• 1:31:21
  So it's kind of good to hear that you kind of brought them
• 1:31:23
  into solvency. And really, they had some good
• 1:31:25
  years even through Chula Vista taking over and Chris Mack.
• 1:31:29
  And the crew really doing a good job with a lot of Team USA
• 1:31:32
  people, you have team members coming out of those groups.
• 1:31:36
  Yeah, so at this time you go through tiger bar, which is kind
• 1:31:41
  of this, not kind of it's a private coaching, go to Olympic
• 1:31:44
  Training Center which is more public coaching, but it's not
• 1:31:47
  University bound. Is there any Ugh, University to
• 1:31:51
  pull you back or you happy with where not at all.
• 1:31:54
  You're happy with where you're going at that point.
• 1:31:57
  Yeah. So um, I've always kind of been
• 1:31:59
  a coach / therapist and, you know, holistic and all of that
• 1:32:03
  and the NCAA rules were just getting more and more,
• 1:32:06
  ridiculous. So really the toolbox that I'm
• 1:32:09
  good at, you know, half the tools.
• 1:32:12
  I couldn't use in University setting.
• 1:32:14
  So, you know, really, I didn't see it as a viable option.
• 1:32:18
  Yeah, that makes sense. What comes after the me
• 1:32:20
  transgenders, this, when Altus comes into the picture or world
• 1:32:24
  world pro-social, what happened then, the USA Track & Field
• 1:32:29
  threatened Court action against the usoc.
• 1:32:31
  So, usoc gave it back to USA Track & Field and I wasn't going
• 1:32:35
  to work for those guys for a lot of reasons there.
• 1:32:39
  And so long time friend, Charles Raymond Coleman, he had just
• 1:32:43
  been appointed head coach for the UK track program, but in the
• 1:32:47
  four-year lead-up to the home Olympics, And they were in San
• 1:32:51
  Diego, for training camp and Charles.
• 1:32:54
  And I went to dinner and goes, what's up?
• 1:32:56
  And I said, well, I'm looking for work and he goes, I got a
• 1:32:59
  job and I was like, doing what? And he goes, well, we need
• 1:33:03
  somebody to run the London, training Centre will make use
• 1:33:07
  training center director and you're in charge of all these
• 1:33:09
  people and you got 80 athletes and we got three and a half
• 1:33:15
  years to figure this out and you're the guy and I was like
• 1:33:18
  what was no way of my wife. She's moving to England and
• 1:33:20
  right. I have no desire to live in
• 1:33:22
  England or whatnot but I tried to a couple other projects and I
• 1:33:28
  was coming up dry financially and then he stayed after me.
• 1:33:32
  So I'll write up a contract. So he's close friend, we'd
• 1:33:36
  collaborated on athletes for years, out of Holland and
• 1:33:39
  whatnot. And so I wrote up this
• 1:33:42
  incredible contract, I knew no one would buy and hid.
• 1:33:46
  They bought it. He called me.
• 1:33:47
  So, get on a plane. It's done deal.
• 1:33:49
  And I was like, oh shit. So I think there's a lesson to
• 1:33:56
  be careful what you ask for. So I land in London and I had a
• 1:34:05
  PA and she, you know, previous visit, she'd set up a driver and
• 1:34:10
  all this stuff. So I only ended and I got my
• 1:34:11
  bags and I'm like Julia. There's no driver.
• 1:34:14
  She is all we run into a car and I was like what?
• 1:34:19
  And so I've never drove a right hand car on the left side of the
• 1:34:23
  road. Trying, you'll figure it out.
• 1:34:27
  So I'm going to the car rental place and it takes me an hour to
• 1:34:30
  get the car out of the parking spot and everything Lord, doing
• 1:34:34
  all these three points and the car stalling, it's a stick
• 1:34:37
  shift. I drove manuals, but not on that
• 1:34:40
  side. And then I get out and there's a
• 1:34:43
  roundabout and they don't have directions, it's just City.
• 1:34:46
  So if you don't know the cities, you don't know what exit out of
• 1:34:49
  the Around about. So I'm calling her pulling off,
• 1:34:52
  couldn't 3 hours, to get to my apartment that she had rented
• 1:34:55
  for me. And so, that was my introduction
• 1:34:59
  to that. Make you long for the highway
• 1:35:03
  system of Houston. Yes.
• 1:35:11
  Already. So what did you do is this when
• 1:35:14
  you met because I know you worked with Steve Lewis for a
• 1:35:18
  while. This is where Steve Lewis came
• 1:35:19
  into the picture as you're working with UK and in
• 1:35:21
  athletics. So basically, my role is to be
• 1:35:26
  Center Director. So, coordinate and overseeing be
• 1:35:28
  the gatekeeper for sports medicine and sports services and
• 1:35:33
  Coach development, and athlete monitoring and all of that.
• 1:35:36
  It was our performance director. Worship.
• 1:35:40
  And then Charles and I have a meeting.
• 1:35:44
  He goes, we got about six or seven athletes that are injured
• 1:35:47
  or troubled children that nobody wants to coach and I think you
• 1:35:51
  could help these people and I was like great and so I got
• 1:35:55
  people like Steve Lewis pole vaulter Goldie Sayers, British
• 1:35:58
  record holder in the javelin. Rob Tobin, who was a 400 relay
• 1:36:04
  guy and Rhys Williams, 400 hurdler, some sprinters like
• 1:36:08
  Dwayne Chambers, Marlin debisch. Oh yeah, Krishna Malcolm.
• 1:36:13
  And so my story my life, I get the lost, the homeless, in the
• 1:36:18
  broke. And you know, so I ended up, you
• 1:36:20
  know, part of the day I'm Center Director and part of the damn
• 1:36:23
  personal coach to these people. Is that part of your spectrum?
• 1:36:28
  That you like though when you talk about the broken in the you
• 1:36:32
  know, like I said I'm the underdog guys.
• 1:36:35
  Yeah, right. Yeah.
• 1:36:36
  The guys who aren't supposed to do it anymore.
• 1:36:39
  So like you know one of the most profile people was Greg Roth.
• 1:36:43
  So look right--yeah world champion, Commonwealth game Euro
• 1:36:47
  whatever. And so we came to me at age 23
• 1:36:50
  and his injury report was amazing like 17.
• 1:36:53
  Hamstrung tears on one leg 15 on the The other three foot
• 1:36:56
  surgeries like, health problems after Yuzu and nobody wanted to
• 1:37:02
  coach him. And he was averaging maybe two
• 1:37:04
  or three meats a year or so, like kind of get well, doing me
• 1:37:07
  get re-injured. And so, you know, he was
• 1:37:11
  probably one of the most lost broken athletes that I helped
• 1:37:16
  resurrect, you know, with the team around me, it was
• 1:37:19
  definitely a team project. And all that run through the
• 1:37:23
  twelve Olympics. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:37:27
  What happens after that though, because this whole thing was the
• 1:37:30
  for the twelve Olympics, right? Yeah.
• 1:37:31
  So tremendous experience and whatnot and totally burn out
• 1:37:36
  like I think everybody involved in that project had health
• 1:37:39
  problems for about a year or two after it was just wow.
• 1:37:42
  Combat fatigue. Post-traumatic stress disorder
• 1:37:45
  because you're fighting all kinds of stuff, you know, gender
• 1:37:49
  and massage, knee and politics. You know, it was a war on a lot
• 1:37:55
  of fronts, ilo's and power struggles and whatnot.
• 1:37:59
  So I was my plan was financially, it was a lucrative
• 1:38:02
  gig. I was going to take a year off,
• 1:38:04
  kind of Catch My Breath to a little consoling there and John
• 1:38:08
  Candy, not called me. And he'd started the world's
• 1:38:10
  throw Center there in Phoenix and was looking to expand and
• 1:38:14
  wanted to expand kind of into the jumps and combine them as
• 1:38:18
  and asked me if I had any interest and I was a lie, I
• 1:38:20
  really need a either. And he again, he said, well,
• 1:38:25
  write up contract and I wrote it up and they said, okay.
• 1:38:28
  And I was like, oh shit. So I started doing the commuter,
• 1:38:33
  Mara being like three weeks in Phoenix, who week back in
• 1:38:36
  Austin, back and forth and so that the world athletic center
• 1:38:40
  eventually, morphed into out Isuzu.
• 1:38:42
  We see today, so we envisioned it is coaching resource center
• 1:38:47
  and a home for athletes, you know, for athlete development
• 1:38:51
  and you know, Network, Isshin and it's amazing that transition
• 1:38:57
  we had John on the podcast not too long ago.
• 1:39:00
  Last season, John became a just a very close friend of mine
• 1:39:04
  through world world throats and I don't know how do people even
• 1:39:07
  know the history of Altis because all this is done so well
• 1:39:10
  under Altis but you know, world throws Center World Athletics
• 1:39:13
  Centre and and then transformation at all test.
• 1:39:16
  You might be maybe you and Andreas are you to the only
• 1:39:20
  people still from the original? From way back, a star came in a
• 1:39:24
  little bit later this kind of Journey like John contacted me
• 1:39:28
  and he'd also been talking on dries and then stew and Kevin
• 1:39:32
  were kind of in there. So yeah a little bit was kind of
• 1:39:35
  in a year period of time where all the satellites came to roost
• 1:39:38
  and yeah and now in Atlanta for crying out loud, that's amazing
• 1:39:42
  on its own thing. Stewart is doing an amazing job
• 1:39:45
  that whole crew is quite amazing.
• 1:39:47
  So talk to us about what do you do for Altis?
• 1:39:50
  You know they have become you guys have become when Mentioned
• 1:39:54
  coaching education, not too long ago.
• 1:39:56
  I would have said for formal coaching education out of said,
• 1:39:58
  usatf level 1, level 2's u.s. tfcc a through the academy with
• 1:40:04
  blue running through that. And then I would probably would
• 1:40:07
  have stopped and said in there's some private camps clinics, you
• 1:40:09
  know, those kind of things. But today, now, when I mentioned
• 1:40:12
  coaching education, if I ask someone, hey, what do you do for
• 1:40:15
  coaching education? I mentioned, you know, do you do
• 1:40:18
  usatf u.s. tfcc a Altis? I mean there's a very formalized
• 1:40:22
  amount of Education and mentorship.
• 1:40:24
  Let's make sure we talked about the program's you do there as
• 1:40:26
  well. That have come through their
• 1:40:28
  talk to us about building that and what the goals are for those
• 1:40:32
  programs. Well, Cameron, Tyler when he was
• 1:40:36
  in UK, was in charge of Coach development and he started to
• 1:40:39
  you coach program, which was an online format for coaches, all
• 1:40:45
  over the, the home countries and what have you?
• 1:40:48
  So there was in person, symposiums, and workshops but
• 1:40:51
  the bulk of it was on And Coach development and I've worked with
• 1:40:56
  Kevin at the Canadian coach Institute that they had their in
• 1:41:00
  Edmonton and also so Kevin had those two Realms.
• 1:41:05
  You know, that he brought into the whack at the time which is
• 1:41:08
  now Altus. And so, like we said, we wanted
• 1:41:12
  to be a resource center for coaches.
• 1:41:14
  So we started The Apprentice coach week where coaches could
• 1:41:17
  come out and spend a week and see what best practice look
• 1:41:21
  like. And then, we started building
• 1:41:23
  Adding this online content. So like I was responsible for
• 1:41:27
  the high jump and the pole vault, we got booed to come in
• 1:41:30
  for the horizontal and we got on Babbitt to come in for the
• 1:41:33
  throws sections. Then on dries did a hurdle thing
• 1:41:39
  and then stews kind of gone into the Need for Speed, kind of
• 1:41:42
  stuff for multi-sports. And so it's really just in back
• 1:41:47
  to the original one of the original mission statements of,
• 1:41:51
  you know, being a resource center for Coaches.
• 1:41:54
  It's quite amazing because at least in my relatively short
• 1:41:58
  time with track and field. No one's been successful at
• 1:42:02
  creating a home base for coaching education you know
• 1:42:05
  usatf is level ones, around the country, kind of bring in the
• 1:42:09
  curriculum to others and then you know kind of a once a summer
• 1:42:13
  hot spot for level 2's UST of CCA is kind of the same thing.
• 1:42:17
  A lot of different areas where they'll have a cat amides.
• 1:42:19
  This was very much a hey, we're going to have the resources.
• 1:42:23
  Isis. Here you come in a week at a
• 1:42:24
  time for like the acps and things like that, that was
• 1:42:28
  pretty radical, maybe still radical today, but but
• 1:42:34
  successful like today, like said you talk about coaching
• 1:42:36
  education. You have to put Altis in there.
• 1:42:38
  How was it from the get-go? That was the reception.
• 1:42:42
  Was there ever a moment of like, hey guys, this just isn't gonna
• 1:42:45
  work or was it always just dogged determination of like
• 1:42:48
  this is going to work if we keep pouring into it.
• 1:42:51
  Well, I'd love to tell tell you we had to plan and that the
• 1:42:55
  plans working but in this internet age, there's a
• 1:42:59
  saturation of online. Sure stuff.
• 1:43:02
  And there's probably a saturation of, you know,
• 1:43:04
  internships and and what have you.
• 1:43:07
  So you know, work we're in the midst of those battles.
• 1:43:11
  How do you separate yourself from from the industry?
• 1:43:15
  So to speak, and how do you educate consumers to be more
• 1:43:19
  discriminating in their selection and whatnot.
• 1:43:22
  So those are a lot of the battles that we're currently
• 1:43:25
  fighting. Fortunately, we were early in.
• 1:43:29
  And so, we've got a worldwide network of people that, you
• 1:43:33
  know, collaborate with us that we brought in and now part of
• 1:43:37
  the Aldous family, and, you know, they're doing work related
• 1:43:41
  and unrelated, but tied to us. And so, So, it's really a word
• 1:43:46
  of mouth. Mark and even more.
• 1:43:50
  So than, you know, we have a big social media footprint for sure.
• 1:43:54
  But you know most of our attendees, whether it's in the
• 1:43:58
  mentorship courses or the acps, or whatever, is usually
• 1:44:02
  word-of-mouth referrals and people had a good experience and
• 1:44:05
  you know can express why they had a good experience in that.
• 1:44:08
  Encourages people to maybe spend time with us and talk about that
• 1:44:12
  mentorship program, because it's one thing to do coaching
• 1:44:15
  education and you'd certainly are doing some Leak things
• 1:44:19
  inside of the coach and education.
• 1:44:21
  I think about the Fireside Chats again just kind of a it's a
• 1:44:24
  formalized informal way of doing it, which I love I think that
• 1:44:27
  helps maybe kind of bring people's guards down.
• 1:44:30
  So they're able to ask the questions that sometimes they're
• 1:44:32
  afraid to ask a little that aspect of it, but you're doing
• 1:44:36
  this. I don't know.
• 1:44:37
  I can only think it really one other aspect that I'm aware.
• 1:44:41
  I'm sure there's something in the usatf, but in u.s. tfcc, a,
• 1:44:45
  they have an amazing women's mentoring program.
• 1:44:48
  Where they put a female with a another female mentor-mentee
• 1:44:53
  relationship a formalized. Like there's you know there's
• 1:44:55
  stages along the year you guys are doing a mentorship program
• 1:44:59
  as well. And I think this is so important
• 1:45:01
  in our career. If you think about when you
• 1:45:03
  first started, when I think about, when I first started to
• 1:45:04
  have like a formalized mentor, like I've been a million times
• 1:45:08
  better than what I ended up in my career.
• 1:45:11
  Talk to us about that matters program and your role within it.
• 1:45:16
  Well it probably starts with SWOT analysis, you know, so what
• 1:45:20
  are your strengths, your weaknesses, what are
• 1:45:22
  opportunities and threats to where you currently exist and
• 1:45:26
  then from there, you know, you build out, you know, encourage,
• 1:45:30
  you know, I think a good Mentor it's not just one-on-one and
• 1:45:33
  it's back and forth but they also build a network around
• 1:45:36
  people in a diverse Network. So a lot of our work is and you
• 1:45:40
  know, connecting people for areas that they have concerns.
• 1:45:45
  Her interest or passion about and then, you know, alert them
• 1:45:49
  to blind spots. So a lot of it's a SWAT.
• 1:45:53
  Continuous SWAT. Auditing process.
• 1:45:58
  We have different tiers, so we have small cohort, meanings.
• 1:46:01
  We have you no longer presentations discussion,
• 1:46:04
  meetings and whatnot. So we try to have a lot of
• 1:46:07
  layers to where people can find some comfort.
• 1:46:12
  To get transparent. Hmm, no, yeah, wow, yeah, that's
• 1:46:18
  let's say that again, to where they can find comfort, so they
• 1:46:21
  can get transparent. Yeah.
• 1:46:23
  Yeah. That's really imperative
• 1:46:25
  important taking away. Those are natural walls.
• 1:46:28
  We build up walls for a lot of different reasons.
• 1:46:31
  We're scared to talk to people were scared of looking like a
• 1:46:34
  fool, all those kind of things. How do we kind of strip those
• 1:46:37
  layers bear, and realize that? Okay, we're gonna quote unquote.
• 1:46:40
  Safe place we can talk and have Purity is here and help each
• 1:46:43
  other. Yeah.
• 1:46:44
  Well, we had an interesting debrief from one of our last
• 1:46:48
  mentorship group, so we kind of went around the room and, you
• 1:46:51
  know, so like what are your three big takeaways or
• 1:46:54
  experiences of the mentorship that really hit you and a common
• 1:46:59
  theme came up in? This was primarily driven from
• 1:47:01
  The High School coaches, we have in the mentorship you know?
• 1:47:04
  And they all to a person said I was really interested in track
• 1:47:09
  and field and in particular my event area.
• 1:47:13
  But, you know, now I'm in this mentorship and we got rugby,
• 1:47:16
  guys, from Ireland and AFL football coaches from Australia
• 1:47:21
  and skiing coaches from Canada and whatnot.
• 1:47:23
  And I never realized how there were common denominators or
• 1:47:27
  common issues, or problems or whatnot and so it really brought
• 1:47:32
  down the curtain on a lot of the biases that people have.
• 1:47:37
  And, you know, that's heartwarming when you get that
• 1:47:40
  kind of feedback because that's one of our objectives is to tear
• 1:47:45
  down some of these curtains. It's easy for us to think.
• 1:47:49
  Oh, we're at we're the only ones who have these problems.
• 1:47:52
  We're the only ones who have these struggles and it's like
• 1:47:55
  athleticism it again Human Performance.
• 1:47:56
  You how do you make a human better at skiing Australian
• 1:47:59
  Rules, Etc, a lot of commonalities in the issues that
• 1:48:02
  are dealt on, you know, a lot of the common denominators, is
• 1:48:06
  power struggles. You know, control communication?
• 1:48:11
  You know, or things like programming, like how do you
• 1:48:15
  identify a Essentials and how do you rank Essentials?
• 1:48:19
  You know, you can't train 8000 things all at once on a given
• 1:48:22
  day. So how do we rank these things?
• 1:48:25
  And determine what day to do what you know programming is
• 1:48:29
  universal and Sport and you know like one of the marathon
• 1:48:35
  coaches, we had on, you know, glean some incredible Insight
• 1:48:39
  from in season training by rugby.
• 1:48:41
  Coaches, how they look at things and how they match things
• 1:48:45
  together and whatnot. And she said, like that was
• 1:48:48
  probably one of the most powerful programming sessions,
• 1:48:52
  she had on the mentorship. Maybe we're never thought a
• 1:48:56
  marathon coach listening to a rugby guy in Ireland, you know,
• 1:49:01
  gained Insight. That's why I was exactly what I
• 1:49:03
  was gonna say is like, I never would have guessed.
• 1:49:05
  That Marathon would have learned anything from rugby and vice
• 1:49:08
  versa. By the way, I was like, let me
• 1:49:10
  name to completely the distant disciplines of Athletics and yet
• 1:49:15
  there was commonalities to learn from each other.
• 1:49:17
  Wow, hmm. That's interesting.
• 1:49:21
  So what is your today? What's your percentage of?
• 1:49:25
  How much are you actually coaching and athlete versus
• 1:49:28
  coaching coaches today. Well, like I said, I have three
• 1:49:34
  direct paralympic athletes that I coach directly.
• 1:49:41
  And they're the only ones outside the kids in the
• 1:49:43
  neighborhood that I'm helping, where I would call it direct
• 1:49:47
  coaching, I do a lot of advisement.
• 1:49:50
  So I might have a coach that I mentored and I'm helping them
• 1:49:54
  with an athlete, whether it's return to play or programming or
• 1:49:57
  whatnot. So there's probably about 20 to
• 1:50:00
  30 coaches that I help, you know, from that kind of
• 1:50:03
  perspective. And then there's other coaches
• 1:50:07
  were, you know, maybe not as frequent, but You know, monthly
• 1:50:11
  check-ins on their programming or, you know, SWOT analysis on
• 1:50:15
  what's going on or life management and our power
• 1:50:18
  struggles or resources. Hey, I need some help in this
• 1:50:22
  area. So I would say probably
• 1:50:26
  advisement and mentorship has with the bulk of the day, but
• 1:50:30
  then I do a lot of return to place work with pro athletes.
• 1:50:36
  So that kind of Ebbs and flows. So someone coming off of
• 1:50:40
  surgery. I'm pretty heavily involved,
• 1:50:41
  we're doing Zoom practices and whatnot, the first six months
• 1:50:46
  and then it you know, it filters down.
• 1:50:49
  So we have a pretty big listenership here Dan including
• 1:50:55
  power 5D ones, someone's going to hear this and be like, Dan.
• 1:51:00
  I've got a position for you here at XYZ University.
• 1:51:04
  What's the any shot at getting you back into Collegiate
• 1:51:08
  coaching 0. All right.
• 1:51:10
  You're high. You heard it there 0-0 percent.
• 1:51:13
  So everybody put your phones down.
• 1:51:14
  Quit calling them right now it's over he's doing much bigger and
• 1:51:18
  greater things. I think for our sport, I don't
• 1:51:21
  know about that. But like I said, you know, the
• 1:51:23
  rules and University or High School setting of have changed
• 1:51:27
  so drastically that I don't know that I have the skill set or the
• 1:51:32
  energy to recreate, you know, coaching style that would fit in
• 1:51:37
  the confines of current dictates Yeah, I hear you.
• 1:51:42
  Okay, dance. So we've got a few more minutes
• 1:51:44
  with you here. I'd like to with your
• 1:51:47
  permission. I've got it just kind of a list
• 1:51:49
  of topics and a lot of them are topics that you have recently
• 1:51:52
  written blog post about through Altis.
• 1:51:55
  And again, if you're not following all this, if you're
• 1:51:58
  not on the newsletter, highly recommend you to go get this.
• 1:52:02
  If you, if you want Dan to be a mentor to you and you don't have
• 1:52:06
  the resources to go out to all this and get them internship
• 1:52:08
  program. You kind of got a little mini
• 1:52:10
  Mentorship through these blogs. It's kind of Dan, I don't know.
• 1:52:15
  This is the right term here, Dan but kind of regurgitating the
• 1:52:18
  knowledge and experience that you've had over these years into
• 1:52:22
  written form, and it's really quite phenomenal.
• 1:52:25
  So, with your permission, I'd like to kind of give a topic and
• 1:52:28
  let you just kind of Riff on it a little bit, just to try to
• 1:52:31
  bring as much value to listeners out there that work, okay?
• 1:52:33
  With your kind of Blindsided, you didn't even bring that up.
• 1:52:35
  Really in our pre-interview said.
• 1:52:37
  Okay, hmm. Well, give it a go.
• 1:52:39
  I like it. 34 Like I love it, that's easy.
• 1:52:43
  That's how we work well together, Dan.
• 1:52:44
  That's exactly right. Okay.
• 1:52:46
  You recently had a nice perspective about work-life
• 1:52:53
  balance. What would you say?
• 1:52:55
  You know, and I was guilty here. Hand raised, there was no
• 1:52:59
  work-life balance when I was a coach.
• 1:53:01
  I'm not sure there's much better now, but definitely during
• 1:53:05
  coaching and I think it showed, you know, I had no serious
• 1:53:08
  relationships through a coach. And I was always in 10 years as
• 1:53:12
  a five different institutions, it was always move move, move
• 1:53:15
  Etc. What do you say to coaches out
• 1:53:17
  there about work-life balance in general?
• 1:53:21
  Not even give an example of what maybe someones dealing with just
• 1:53:24
  in general. What's your thoughts and
• 1:53:26
  feelings now looking back on a coaching career of so many
• 1:53:29
  successes, right? A lot of people would say, I
• 1:53:31
  want his successes. What is your thoughts on Looking
• 1:53:35
  Back Now, on work-life balance as a coach, Well, I'm probably
• 1:53:41
  not the guy to talk to you about this because I failed massively
• 1:53:44
  on that front. I think it's a bit of a myth
• 1:53:50
  that you can have work-life balance.
• 1:53:52
  I think it's kind of a roller coaster.
• 1:53:55
  If you will, you have periods where you're really a mashed and
• 1:53:58
  work, and then you have periods where you should be in mashed,
• 1:54:01
  in your family and, you know, neighborhood and things like
• 1:54:05
  that. So to me, I didn't get on the
• 1:54:09
  roller coaster. I was just on a friggin freeway
• 1:54:11
  or an Audubon and it was all about coaching career whatnot.
• 1:54:17
  I think it's about except a blushing boundaries and
• 1:54:20
  guardrails and you know having people in your network
• 1:54:23
  accountability partners that let you know when you're going off
• 1:54:27
  track or you know you you're blinded or you know you're too
• 1:54:31
  driven or you need to step back and catch your breath.
• 1:54:36
  So a lot of mine counseling or mentorship them and front is
• 1:54:40
  like, you know look at it as a roller coaster and learn how to
• 1:54:44
  ride the roller coaster. I think we go through phases in
• 1:54:48
  career development, or living life, or what not like I'm
• 1:54:51
  wearing the 20s. We're building a career.
• 1:54:53
  So we're getting certifications and degrees and we those initial
• 1:54:57
  jobs and where our initial networks and we're just all in
• 1:55:01
  and it's all encompassing and we're overwhelmed, we're having
• 1:55:04
  to write programs and, you know, politics and power control
• 1:55:08
  struggles and all of that. And we're just, you got to be
• 1:55:11
  immersed. And then in the 30s, the dust
• 1:55:15
  starts to set. A little bit, your little more
• 1:55:17
  secure in that but you're expanding and you're growing,
• 1:55:20
  you're expanding the network and growing responsibilities in your
• 1:55:24
  toolbox and all that. And then in your 40s, you kind
• 1:55:27
  of catch your breath and maybe start to see that you're short
• 1:55:31
  changing, your family a little bit or you know, the self-care
• 1:55:34
  Justin are and it comes on the radar, you know, maybe I should
• 1:55:39
  look at that and then, you know, in your 50s your kind of secure
• 1:55:43
  what you're doing and management, you're just doing
• 1:55:45
  tweaks and not. Somewhat not and then in your
• 1:55:47
  60s your kind of the Wise Old Sage.
• 1:55:50
  So kind of my perspective when I was in my 20s I was kind of like
• 1:55:55
  the big brother to the athletes. I was coaching and then the 30s.
• 1:55:59
  I was kind of like, the crazy uncle.
• 1:56:01
  And then, in my 40s, I was kind of like the young dad, and then
• 1:56:04
  my 50s, I was kind of, like, the old dad and now I'm in my 60s.
• 1:56:08
  I'm kind of like the grandpa. So I think we go through these
• 1:56:11
  phases of life and development, whatnot.
• 1:56:15
  But my, Best advice is to realize it's roller coaster and,
• 1:56:19
  you know, set boundaries and guardrails and whatnot.
• 1:56:22
  And, you know, it just be where you're at.
• 1:56:25
  If you're with your family and it's walked out, be with your
• 1:56:27
  family, you know, shut the phone off or whatnot, or go on a
• 1:56:31
  vacation or I think that While my kids were growing up, I think
• 1:56:36
  we went on three family vacations.
• 1:56:39
  Total that's bad. I like a said that it's a roller
• 1:56:47
  coaster and learn how to ride the roller coaster, right?
• 1:56:49
  There's rules and regulations for it.
• 1:56:51
  And so, when is the right time to be immersed in?
• 1:56:54
  When is the right time to be shut off and in all the times in
• 1:56:57
  between that. So I think there's some really
• 1:57:00
  good stuff coming out on self care, whether it's executive
• 1:57:03
  burnout or coaches burn out. Like Cody Royal does a great job
• 1:57:06
  on you know coach burnout and what have you.
• 1:57:09
  And so there's a lot more information out there like I've
• 1:57:13
  developed a checklist on. So Cure that I kind of go
• 1:57:16
  through with people that I think they're struggling with burnout.
• 1:57:19
  And a lot of times it's just unawareness of the essentials of
• 1:57:23
  burnout and the tactics and strategies that counteract those
• 1:57:28
  those burnout drivers. So I think just like we are with
• 1:57:34
  mental health. I think we're slowly moving in
• 1:57:37
  the right direction with what I call out, coach self care.
• 1:57:42
  You mentioned guidelines and regulations kind of adjacent to
• 1:57:47
  those topic that you just ripped on there and I love that so much
• 1:57:50
  value right there. You mentioned in your 20s.
• 1:57:54
  You're kind of you know, Big Brother 30s, you know, crazy
• 1:57:59
  uncle that's love that explanation there.
• 1:58:02
  What I see a lot with coaches and again, no finger point.
• 1:58:05
  This is completely guilty. I did this as well, you know,
• 1:58:08
  coaching you actually might be able to help me with this.
• 1:58:11
  Us. No one else is able to give me a
• 1:58:13
  third. There are two titles that I can
• 1:58:16
  think of in my experience that travel with us.
• 1:58:18
  Professional titles, no matter where we go.
• 1:58:21
  One is coach, right, and your neighbors, call your coach.
• 1:58:24
  And, you know, gosh, I haven't coached in 17 years.
• 1:58:28
  I've been a gill for 16 years and I still get people that say,
• 1:58:32
  hey, coach, and it's a little bit like flattering.
• 1:58:34
  Like now you still think of me as a coach because that's a very
• 1:58:37
  lofty title in my opinion, but it's like it's also a little bit
• 1:58:39
  like I'm not worthy of that title anymore.
• 1:58:41
  But coaches one, right? Cody knows again neighbors you
• 1:58:45
  go to buy a loaf of bread in the clerk's like a coach, you know,
• 1:58:47
  it's kind of travels with you and then the other title is
• 1:58:49
  Doctor. All right, you call your doctor,
• 1:58:51
  a Doctor John. Hey, dr.
• 1:58:53
  Smith that travels with you. No one knows.
• 1:58:56
  If you're an accountant, you don't call your neighbor, he
• 1:58:58
  accountant. Jim, if your business owner, you
• 1:59:00
  don't call him CEO Sally. You just don't.
• 1:59:04
  And what I've seen is because of that coaching role, we have all
• 1:59:10
  these different roles, right? Father, Mother husband wife,
• 1:59:14
  son, brother sisters. We have all these roles.
• 1:59:18
  I've seen a lot of us, put the coaching role as number one, so
• 1:59:21
  over self-care relationship, care, Financial Care, Health
• 1:59:26
  Care, Etc, and wood that comes along this relationship with
• 1:59:31
  athletes. And we had, we had a coach last
• 1:59:35
  season. That said, I want to be that
• 1:59:37
  coach, that God forbid. If they need it, they can, but
• 1:59:41
  they can call me. At 2:30 in the morning.
• 1:59:43
  And I cringed, as a little bit, I understand where they're
• 1:59:45
  coming from, but I'm also like really, are you the right
• 1:59:48
  person? Should they be?
• 1:59:48
  I mean, there's some learned helplessness here, shouldn't
• 1:59:51
  they have their parent or trusted for every, you know,
• 1:59:54
  where do you sit with Coach athlete relationship in regards
• 1:59:57
  to like all these hats and responsibilities and just
• 2:00:02
  overabundance of the coach versus a lot of other resources
• 2:00:06
  that we should have, as people for help and friendships and
• 2:00:09
  things like that? Well, I think that's probably
• 2:00:14
  down to your coaching methodology and your outlook
• 2:00:17
  can, you know, your philosophy and what not me, you know, most
• 2:00:20
  people will use the cliche we want to develop an independent
• 2:00:24
  athlete. Right?
• 2:00:26
  That's right. Absolutely right.
• 2:00:28
  Question is what are you doing to Foster that?
• 2:00:33
  And so hmm. You know, having the athlete
• 2:00:37
  know who to reach out to and when and how and what not as
• 2:00:40
  part of the educational process. But that said, I think coaches
• 2:00:45
  ultimately are the ultimate gatekeeper, you know, we're
• 2:00:49
  Universe. Listen we got the network and
• 2:00:51
  we've gone down the road and we have all these experiences.
• 2:00:54
  So people think like if it falls under the coaching umbrella,
• 2:00:58
  this is my go-to guy. So I think a lot of times it's
• 2:01:02
  just extremely Expediency response out of the athlete.
• 2:01:05
  Like, you know, you know, I could call our HR department or
• 2:01:09
  I could call our sports psychologist or I could talk to
• 2:01:12
  the ATC person. I really get along with but my
• 2:01:16
  problem is massive and it's Unique and I'm special.
• 2:01:19
  So I'm going to go to coach That's what it is.
• 2:01:26
  It's probably an educational failure, to be honest, or an
• 2:01:30
  accountability failure, you know, like, you know, helicopter
• 2:01:34
  parents, parachute parents, you know, like it's the same
• 2:01:38
  problem. If you added, you could add in
• 2:01:42
  academic. So instead of going to the
• 2:01:44
  counselor go to the coach first class is going to interrupt
• 2:01:50
  practice, did you talk to your guidance, counselor?
• 2:01:53
  Instead that you came to me, you know, Are so it's just amazing.
• 2:01:56
  First of all, I don't necessarily think all coaches
• 2:01:59
  are putting those hats on themselves.
• 2:02:00
  We as Society inside of our athletic departments and
• 2:02:03
  culturally are putting a lot of those hats on there too.
• 2:02:05
  I get a little cheesed off, when a coach, gets nailed in the
• 2:02:09
  media because one of the athletes and this could be Pro
• 2:02:12
  here goes out and does something, you know, steals a
• 2:02:16
  car and it's like, well, that coach it's like really you think
• 2:02:18
  the coach was okaying car theft come on, you know, that that was
• 2:02:23
  that guy or Making that bad decision.
• 2:02:26
  Not the leadership of the coach I think is society.
• 2:02:29
  We have a problem putting certain professions on
• 2:02:31
  pedestals, you know, like doctors make mistakes doctors.
• 2:02:35
  Don't know everything about everything or whatnot, you know
• 2:02:40
  or you know economists or CEOs. You know, we put these people on
• 2:02:45
  pedestals and we assume that they know everything about
• 2:02:48
  everything and they don't you know, that's the beauty of being
• 2:02:54
  immersed in the The scientific process.
• 2:02:56
  I mean, Basically the scientific process is a designed to prove
• 2:03:02
  though. We don't know what we're doing
• 2:03:05
  or what we thought was valid isn't valid or whatnot.
• 2:03:09
  So I think we kind of got this thing twisted around a little
• 2:03:12
  bit. Okay let's go back to mentorship
• 2:03:17
  here real quick. We talked about the mentorship
• 2:03:19
  program there that you're running with Altis.
• 2:03:21
  What do you recommend for coaches on how to get a mentor
• 2:03:26
  whether it's through? Something much formal like you
• 2:03:30
  at all to this or the women's program through USC FCC.
• 2:03:34
  A and an add-on to that is, is there an age and stage?
• 2:03:38
  Where we don't need a mentor, like it, your agent stage?
• 2:03:41
  Do you have mentors and kind of wood that or is it a
• 2:03:45
  transformation of do you transfer from having a mentor to
• 2:03:48
  be in a mentor? I gave you a lot there.
• 2:03:50
  Let me back. You know I have a lot of mentors
• 2:03:54
  and you know as I've aged Diversified the Layers in the
• 2:03:58
  types. I have mentors and radiology and
• 2:04:01
  surgery and you know, gait analysis, I have mentors and
• 2:04:06
  management. I have mentors and mental health
• 2:04:09
  issues women in sport issues. You know, some of my
• 2:04:14
  encouragement is, is to reach out to diverse populations and
• 2:04:19
  diverse people. You know, it's not always
• 2:04:21
  sport-specific door or what have you get?
• 2:04:24
  Multiple mentors? You know spiritual mentors.
• 2:04:28
  Mental health mentors. Relationship mentors in this
• 2:04:32
  internet age. It's it's not that hard to see
• 2:04:35
  The Umbrellas that exists out there and, you know, you might
• 2:04:41
  get 10 nose but all it takes is one.
• 2:04:44
  Yes in. I think it's how you present
• 2:04:47
  yourself and what you're chasing and what you're looking for.
• 2:04:51
  You know. I get a lot of requests and I'm
• 2:04:53
  like you know what's the issue? Where do you really need help?
• 2:04:56
  And then I'm like, Like, you know TimeWise, I'm a little bit
• 2:05:00
  Jam but these two people are excellent, they're good friends,
• 2:05:04
  their colleagues that they have space, Maybe explore them.
• 2:05:08
  If this isn't working after a while get back to me.
• 2:05:11
  So you know back to our delegation topic.
• 2:05:17
  So for me, the key, one of the key components of mentorship is
• 2:05:21
  building these layers and diversities of mentorship.
• 2:05:24
  Sore influencers, you know, in your life.
• 2:05:29
  That's pretty eye-opening because I'm pretty myopic.
• 2:05:32
  When I think of mentors inside the coaching world, I think of
• 2:05:34
  other coaches, only, I never thought about mental health
• 2:05:37
  professionals, and people who have experience in women and
• 2:05:41
  gender issues and concerns, I never even thought about those
• 2:05:44
  as potential mentors for our track and field coaches as well.
• 2:05:48
  Well, like, one of the things that happened in the UK was
• 2:05:51
  social media explosion. So Twitter became huge and
• 2:05:56
  Instagram became Huge and Facebook and YouTube videos.
• 2:06:00
  I mean, it just exploded. So we went from zero to like,
• 2:06:05
  you know, we had people, you know, athletes on social media,
• 2:06:09
  89 hours a day, they were just freaking fried.
• 2:06:12
  So we had to bring in experts on how to manage social media and
• 2:06:17
  you know, how to set boundaries and guardrails and time,
• 2:06:20
  allotments and use, and The Perils of posting and how to be
• 2:06:25
  transparent but not too transparent and The so I have no
• 2:06:29
  idea about social media. Like I did, I didn't use a cell
• 2:06:33
  phone until the late 90s, so I wasn't the guy to ask.
• 2:06:39
  That's what he said that because you are pretty prolific on
• 2:06:43
  Twitter specific. I'm a Twitter guys.
• 2:06:44
  I'm always on Twitter and I see you on there and if you use
• 2:06:46
  other social medias, but you seem to be a user of Twitter in
• 2:06:50
  a user and maybe in different aspects.
• 2:06:52
  I don't necessarily see you posting a lot but you it seems
• 2:06:55
  like you use maybe that for like a news resource and and culture
• 2:06:58
  resource if you will. Yeah.
• 2:07:02
  Well, part of our marketing is to have a social media footprint
• 2:07:06
  at Alta so I was kind of forced into it and once you get into it
• 2:07:09
  it's like crack cocaine. You know, you can't stop some
• 2:07:13
  but, you know, I find a lot of interesting, you know, research
• 2:07:16
  papers presented or perspectives and whatnot.
• 2:07:20
  And you know, I'm very diverse. You know that I follow certain
• 2:07:24
  immunologist and certain Mental Health Practitioners and you
• 2:07:29
  know, various coaches coaching Realms.
• 2:07:32
  So again I try to stay pretty diverse and you know try to look
• 2:07:38
  at the other side of things 10. Yeah I love it and that it just
• 2:07:42
  you know, go back 2005 when we met there and Vanderbilt I never
• 2:07:46
  would have got first of all we didn't know.
• 2:07:47
  It wouldn't have guessed anything of Twitter because it
• 2:07:49
  didn't exist but would not have guessed that.
• 2:07:51
  Yeah. Damn.
• 2:07:52
  Pass going to be on Twitter all the time you wouldn't have
• 2:07:56
  either you don't like no Twitter.
• 2:07:57
  What you talking about? I'm trying to reduce my
• 2:08:02
  addiction it's not easy. I found I watched that
• 2:08:08
  documentary on Netflix, The Social Network, I think it was
• 2:08:12
  and they talked about, you know, the what the social media
• 2:08:15
  networks do to get you on there and I took all of my social
• 2:08:20
  medias, including my email. I consider that kind of a social
• 2:08:22
  media. Is just a different form of text
• 2:08:24
  messaging, which I think is social media.
• 2:08:26
  I think a podcasting is social media.
• 2:08:28
  Kind of lump those all into one, huge bucket.
• 2:08:30
  But I took all of them except for Twitter and turned off all
• 2:08:34
  notifications, I just don't have them pop up.
• 2:08:38
  I'll check Facebook maybe once a day or twice a day, but I'm not
• 2:08:41
  going to get that special on weekends.
• 2:08:43
  I'm not going to get that notification Twitter because I
• 2:08:45
  use that as almost like a text message you know, that's why I
• 2:08:48
  could DM request and conversations.
• 2:08:50
  That's what I like about. Twitter's it's more
• 2:08:52
  conversational than say an Instagram so I do keep that
• 2:08:56
  notification on but I have I've found myself.
• 2:08:59
  I don't know if I can quantify and say that I'm happier or less
• 2:09:02
  stressed, but I, and I grabbed my phone a lot, but I don't grab
• 2:09:05
  it as much as I used to when every Instagram like would pop
• 2:09:09
  up every Facebook, comment would pop up.
• 2:09:12
  It seems to be, it's worked, for me, at least a kind of shut
• 2:09:15
  those down except for one of them.
• 2:09:17
  Well, circles back to our discussion guardrails and
• 2:09:20
  boundaries and whatnot, you know, like, when I block my
• 2:09:23
  calendar, like the first thing I put in, as my exercise routine.
• 2:09:27
  That's mandated, it's blocked. There's no excuse, not working
• 2:09:31
  around. And some emergency may come in,
• 2:09:34
  but I just slide it down, it doesn't disappear.
• 2:09:36
  And then I have reading walked out.
• 2:09:39
  And then I have half our emails in the morning, half hour in the
• 2:09:43
  social media for an hour here and an hour here.
• 2:09:46
  So I could just block that out and I'm pretty good about
• 2:09:50
  sticking to the plan. Yeah, wow.
• 2:09:52
  That's that's pretty disciplined.
• 2:09:55
  Well, I grew up in a German household so no choice.
• 2:10:00
  Yeah, right. And on the farm, there's no
• 2:10:01
  choice and when things got to get planted in when they got to
• 2:10:03
  be picked up. Yeah.
• 2:10:04
  All right. A couple few more questions
• 2:10:06
  here, Dan? I love you man.
• 2:10:07
  Thank you so much for this. There's so much value here.
• 2:10:10
  I'm just in awe here recently you had a blog post and I think
• 2:10:15
  I'm paraphrasing here a little bit so you correct me and give
• 2:10:18
  us the the the information here. I believe you hypothesized on is
• 2:10:24
  coaching. Worth the grind and I can't hit
• 2:10:28
  those. Were your exact words.
• 2:10:29
  Do you remember that post? And what do I see?
• 2:10:34
  It's not. I didn't do my research.
• 2:10:37
  You know, Annie per fish and profession that you're in.
• 2:10:41
  You know, like we said it's a roller coaster and so always did
• 2:10:45
  a SWOT analysis at the end of the year.
• 2:10:46
  I'd write a list of the positives and or a list of the
• 2:10:49
  negatives and when the negatives really outpaced, the positives
• 2:10:53
  it was time to move on or change operating procedures so I kind
• 2:10:59
  of don't like the word grind. A lot of time, social media, I
• 2:11:03
  get overruled on what the title is or the concept because They
• 2:11:07
  got clicks or what-have-you, right?
• 2:11:10
  But Tim to me, when people use the term grind in there,
• 2:11:17
  probably early or mid stage burnout.
• 2:11:21
  So to me, when I hear grind, it's kind of a red flag and a
• 2:11:27
  announcements that tells me you're struggling with
• 2:11:30
  management. I heard a we're going in
• 2:11:36
  something to our workplace here at gil.
• 2:11:39
  It's from a author. If you heard the author, Patrick
• 2:11:41
  Lencioni. Five dysfunctions of a team
• 2:11:44
  ideal team player. He's got a new one called the
• 2:11:46
  six types of working genius. And he had this analogy about
• 2:11:49
  burnout and it kind of, it really was a different way of,
• 2:11:52
  you know, thinking. And looking at it for me, at
• 2:11:54
  least when we hear burnout. We think about here, at least,
• 2:11:57
  in the professionals side of life, we think about burnout,
• 2:12:01
  psycho give them extra days off. Let them get away from the
• 2:12:05
  office at cetera. And he used the analogy of a car
• 2:12:08
  running out of gas. That's kind of a burnout ish
• 2:12:11
  type of analogy, right? And he When a car is running out
• 2:12:14
  of gas, you don't park it on the side of the road, and that's how
• 2:12:17
  it fuels back up. You give it more fuel, you give
• 2:12:20
  it the thing that it needs. And so some people are coming
• 2:12:23
  close or experiencing burnout and you give them a few days
• 2:12:26
  off. Well that's exact opposite.
• 2:12:27
  They don't want to be sitting around, not doing, they need to
• 2:12:29
  be doing more of what they love. And that's kind of where his
• 2:12:31
  work ingenious assessment comes in of.
• 2:12:34
  Like, here are things that are your god-given wired to love and
• 2:12:37
  it gives you energy and hear the things that sap you away from
• 2:12:40
  energy. It's not, you can't burn out
• 2:12:42
  when Or doing things. You love that are giving you
• 2:12:44
  energy but you can, when you're doing the other things, I just
• 2:12:47
  think about that burn out of like it with coaching, it's hard
• 2:12:50
  because it's hard for us to take days off.
• 2:12:52
  But then it says it, a shifting of priorities or shifting of
• 2:12:55
  responsibilities, amongst the coaching staff and all the
• 2:12:59
  again, the many, many hats. You where's our way to take off
• 2:13:01
  some hats and give it to someone who loves that aspect and you go
• 2:13:04
  over here and do the things that they don't like to do in that
• 2:13:07
  can maybe Stave off burnout? Yeah, that's why I keep saying
• 2:13:11
  it's management puzzle. Mmm problem.
• 2:13:14
  You know, it's a tug-of-war between, you know, polarities if
• 2:13:18
  you will and where should our laundry list of self-care and
• 2:13:23
  like social interaction, you know, do you have time for a
• 2:13:26
  coffee with a friend or, you know, can you do know a weekend
• 2:13:31
  group thing with your neighbors or whatnot?
• 2:13:34
  How do you recharge, how do you refuel and how do you reduce
• 2:13:38
  psychic, vampires and energy drains and stuff like that?
• 2:13:42
  But that's Salih management puzzle they yeah, I don't think
• 2:13:45
  we're very good at that. I don't know if it's something
• 2:13:48
  that that people who are inclined to be coaches, aren't
• 2:13:51
  very good at. Or if it's part of the
• 2:13:52
  profession that makes us not very good at it but it's a bad
• 2:13:55
  combination. Well I think there's a helper
• 2:13:59
  Gene and us as coach certainly we want to serve and help and
• 2:14:03
  what not and you know if you look into helping professions
• 2:14:07
  like nurses and psych psychologist and psychiatrist
• 2:14:11
  and police and In fire, the burnout rates are off the chart
• 2:14:17
  in and you know it's probably driven by this huge desire, this
• 2:14:21
  underlying driver of helping people but we don't know how to
• 2:14:25
  help ourselves. Yes.
• 2:14:28
  Yeah. Very true.
• 2:14:29
  Very true. Okay.
• 2:14:31
  Dan. We alluded to it earlier, you
• 2:14:33
  know, some of the top coaches and, you know, you can't really
• 2:14:37
  say that until they get near the end of their career because of
• 2:14:40
  their whole body of work, but Brooks Johnson.
• 2:14:42
  And boo sik Snyder yourself. You are what we would call a
• 2:14:49
  generalist, your track and field coach.
• 2:14:51
  You're not a hurdles coach, you're not a distance coach,
• 2:14:54
  you're not a Sprint's coach throws coach Brooks kind of
• 2:14:59
  described it as every event is kind of the same, you're just
• 2:15:02
  moving the center of Mass center of gravity in some you do it.
• 2:15:07
  Do in circles some you do it down a Runway some you do it
• 2:15:10
  around the track and cetera. Some you do it for a marathon.
• 2:15:13
  It's just, it's just as the biomechanics issue of how you're
• 2:15:15
  doing it and the most efficiently.
• 2:15:19
  And again, guilty here hand raised, I wanted to be when I
• 2:15:22
  got into coaching because I fell in love with the hurdles.
• 2:15:25
  I wanted like, I took a little offense when someone was like,
• 2:15:27
  yeah, you're a sports. Coach, my god.
• 2:15:28
  Oh no. I'm a hurdles because I might
• 2:15:30
  coach the Sprint's, or I might coach the jumps in fact, when I
• 2:15:34
  went to go do my first level 2, I wanted to do Sprints and
• 2:15:37
  hurdles, because I was a hurdles coach, that's what I wanted to
• 2:15:40
  do, and might corn calls me up and says Oh hey, the class is
• 2:15:44
  sold out but I do have a spot in the jumps and I was like yeah,
• 2:15:49
  coach that but and that's my secondary.
• 2:15:51
  I'd really want to do Sprints and hurdles and Mike tells me he
• 2:15:55
  goes, hey, you'll trust me. You'll get a lot out of it.
• 2:15:58
  It was taught by boo schexnayder, of course.
• 2:16:00
  So yeah, I got I'm so thankful that I did, you know that I did
• 2:16:03
  that, but what is your advice to coaches, whether they're getting
• 2:16:08
  into it today, maybe they're 10 years, even 20 years and
• 2:16:11
  they're, you know, they're the Sprint's You are there the
• 2:16:13
  throws Guru. What's your advice about being a
• 2:16:16
  track and field generalist? I love that the term you put in
• 2:16:20
  there versus the hyper-focus go. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea on
• 2:16:25
  one specific area of track and field.
• 2:16:29
  Well, I don't think it's a simple linear equation.
• 2:16:32
  You know, I think there's periods where we need to be
• 2:16:35
  Specialists. Like, you know, that roller
• 2:16:38
  coaster that we talked about. I mean, there were years where I
• 2:16:42
  had a great throws group and I mean, I'm biased a lot of my
• 2:16:45
  reading, my research, my energies, my passion into the
• 2:16:49
  throws, didn't mean I turned my back on the other events, it's
• 2:16:53
  just, you know, I put more Time and energy into that group.
• 2:17:00
  So it's a little bit of a roller coaster, you know, like I said,
• 2:17:02
  I've had years where I was known as a jumps coach.
• 2:17:05
  I've had years, were always a strength coach always, you know,
• 2:17:10
  throws coach, and all use a hammer coach noise, a jam on
• 2:17:13
  Chris, like, in the UK, when I started coaching Goldie's,
• 2:17:15
  here's the throws Community was up in arms.
• 2:17:18
  Like, what, what's his friggin? Sprints guy doing coaching the
• 2:17:22
  javelin. So I think it's kind kind of,
• 2:17:26
  like, work-life balance. So, you know, I think there's
• 2:17:29
  his juggling act between specialization and
• 2:17:32
  generalization, and I think it's dangerous to be at, either pole.
• 2:17:37
  Hmm. So you expand on that just
• 2:17:41
  little bit, you're saying you think it's if the two poles are
• 2:17:45
  I am only going to focus on learning and becoming the best
• 2:17:49
  Sprints coach in the world. Versus I am going to learn every
• 2:17:51
  single event out there. You're saying the polarity is
• 2:17:54
  being on the complete Far Side is wrong again.
• 2:17:57
  That Spectrum, we keep bringing that in there, you think more
• 2:18:00
  inside of the spectrum. Well time of year stage of
• 2:18:03
  development mathletes, you have the environment you working in
• 2:18:07
  and whatnot. I think we just need to realize
• 2:18:09
  we're going to slide on that spectral scaly kind of like a
• 2:18:13
  volume knob and there's certain time periods of our career and
• 2:18:17
  time with unique athlete groups were we may be more specialist
• 2:18:22
  than others but, you know the danger of being a generalist is
• 2:18:26
  you really don't get deep into the layers of an events.
• 2:18:31
  So, you know, I'm biased to being a generalist.
• 2:18:34
  Well, also, pretty curious. So, you know, like in our
• 2:18:40
  example with Tori Onsen like, hey, for six months, I was
• 2:18:44
  frigging driven to figure out the hammer so I was super event
• 2:18:49
  specialist, but I was also the field amounts coach they had
• 2:18:53
  women's Coach. You know, I had to coach a lot
• 2:18:55
  of other events. So I had to kind of, adjust that
• 2:18:59
  volume knob day to day, or week to week, or Cycle to cycle.
• 2:19:03
  And so like, you know, once I called Tory's, like I need spent
• 2:19:07
  a lot of time in the weight room, not so much time on the
• 2:19:09
  cycle. So then I can go back to being
• 2:19:12
  more of a jumps, coach whatnot. So, this one I mean about
• 2:19:15
  environmental constructs really kind of dictate how we slide
• 2:19:19
  that volume bar. I love it hard, and my last
• 2:19:22
  question for you, sir. You, I have done 100.
• 2:19:26
  Almost 190 interviews. Now through the Gill connections
• 2:19:29
  podcast. I've never asked this one.
• 2:19:31
  Question. Great.
• 2:19:36
  What is something that I didn't ask you that I should have?
• 2:19:41
  Whoa, that's a good one. Think about that.
• 2:19:50
  I really don't have an answer. I'll probably ponder that one
• 2:19:53
  and get back to you. We may do because we're
• 2:19:56
  recording this earlier than when you're listening to it now.
• 2:19:58
  Dear listener. So I just wanted to make sure
• 2:20:01
  you know Dan's Fountain of Knowledge and that is a big ol
• 2:20:05
  Fountain here. You know we don't get these
• 2:20:07
  opportunities very much and I'm so glad that we had this
• 2:20:11
  opportunity today Dan and so I wanted to make sure again
• 2:20:13
  because your knowledge level is, you know, Unbelievable for, for
• 2:20:21
  a part of the, the area that I'm so passionate about, and that's
• 2:20:24
  coaches. And so, I just know that, you
• 2:20:26
  know, there's been you've done, a thousand interviews, you have
• 2:20:31
  talked to a thousand people. You've asked questions, think
• 2:20:34
  about that. And if there's something that
• 2:20:36
  you're like you know what might, you know, it's something that
• 2:20:37
  coaches need to hear X y&z, get back to me.
• 2:20:40
  We might jump on and get five ten more minutes to add to the
• 2:20:43
  end of this. So so light bulb went off.
• 2:20:47
  All right, let's go. And I knew it, I knew it state
• 2:20:50
  of sport. Okay, what about it in society
• 2:20:54
  today? Yeah.
• 2:20:55
  Tell me more so, early specialization, you know, the
• 2:20:58
  club teams and getting away from schools, the university chaos
• 2:21:03
  with the super 50 schools in the ni L, and people transferring
• 2:21:08
  and transfer portal. And, you know, the reduction of
• 2:21:13
  competitive opportunities, and track and field worldwide.
• 2:21:17
  Because of financial stressors and you know, World politics and
• 2:21:22
  boycotts and whatnot. It's truly a, an earthquake
• 2:21:26
  Moment In Sport for me, you know.
• 2:21:28
  I'm never seen so many confluences, interrupting or
• 2:21:32
  affecting Sport, and the execution of sport, you know, in
• 2:21:36
  Mike 68 years a living Where does it all go?
• 2:21:41
  I have no idea. We need leaders, like you and as
• 2:21:46
  important leaders, like, you have built in our building to
• 2:21:50
  set us on the right path. Well, some of it is, you know,
• 2:21:56
  usually when there's existential crises there, there's more wise
• 2:22:01
  sages or mentors or, you know, pillars of experience, that can
• 2:22:05
  kind of guide, the boat where I, you guys, my age were at a
• 2:22:10
  tremendous disadvantage because we didn't grow up in the
• 2:22:13
  information. I'll age in the social media
• 2:22:15
  influence and the politics that are moving and how money is
• 2:22:21
  morphing sport. Like we don't have the
• 2:22:24
  background in that in. So that's why we need to network
• 2:22:28
  and bring in multi-generational. Analyses and expertise for this
• 2:22:36
  puzzle. So like this ni Elle Fanning,
• 2:22:39
  you know, is bizarre and you know transfer portal, you know,
• 2:22:43
  I had one coach had 14 athletes in the transfer portal and then
• 2:22:48
  seven realize they were getting a look and They begged to come
• 2:22:51
  back and they'd already filled scholarships and they, I mean,
• 2:22:55
  it's, I've never seen this kind of chaos.
• 2:22:58
  I think that's the right word chaos.
• 2:23:01
  And then our High School coaches, I'm friends with a lot
• 2:23:04
  of High School coaches in the area and my neighbor came over.
• 2:23:09
  14 year old daughter volleyball rock star and ask me.
• 2:23:14
  Should we dump the school program and just have her stay
• 2:23:19
  in this really elite club? And, you know, it's well, what's
• 2:23:23
  the end goal? And it's scholarships and, and
• 2:23:26
  all of that. And so, you know, they're even
• 2:23:29
  at this level at the neighborhood level.
• 2:23:31
  We're wrestling with some major. ER philosophical issues and to
• 2:23:35
  your point about guys and your agent stage, and I would put
• 2:23:38
  myself in this age and stage with you, when we grew up
• 2:23:41
  specially where you grew up in your ear and where I grew up in
• 2:23:43
  Small Town, Alabama, what do you mean not play for your high
• 2:23:46
  school team? That's the only option you have
• 2:23:49
  is to play with, you're not playing in the streets with your
• 2:23:51
  friends. You're playing for the hight
• 2:23:52
  school or the middle school team.
• 2:23:54
  There's no clubs. There's no way Lee travels it
• 2:23:57
  boggles me. When I hear that type of
• 2:23:59
  situations like what do you mean?
• 2:24:01
  You don't play for high school team like so, On start, I've got
• 2:24:04
  a case study of one. I'm helping this Major League.
• 2:24:06
  Baseball pitching. Prospect local neighbor front,
• 2:24:11
  17 years old, six, five, two hundred pounds thrown over 100
• 2:24:15
  miles an hour. Can throw over 90 with four
• 2:24:17
  different pitches. He's a rock star.
• 2:24:21
  Well he's got a pitching coach, a batting coach, a strength and
• 2:24:24
  conditioning coach. She's got a soft tissue
• 2:24:27
  therapist, he's got a chiropractor, he's got preschool
• 2:24:31
  practice, he's got post School. Practice all this.
• 2:24:34
  And you know, they came to me and said, like, we're stressed
• 2:24:40
  out and I was like, yeah, sure. Yeah.
• 2:24:43
  At 17. This guy's got a bigger team
• 2:24:46
  around him than I got guys in the Major League Baseball.
• 2:24:50
  And they're having to make decisions on how to use what
• 2:24:53
  when and how right? Wow.
• 2:24:58
  Like like when I came home with a complain about my coach.
• 2:25:02
  My dad said, well you got two choices of just do what he says
• 2:25:06
  or quit. That's exactly right.
• 2:25:09
  Yeah, it's pretty simple. Pretty simple.
• 2:25:13
  Not a lot of stress back then on that regards.
• 2:25:16
  Well. My physio think I'd have no
• 2:25:17
  physio when you talking about. Oh man, Dan we're at time man.
• 2:25:23
  Thank you so much. You know again one of my Really,
• 2:25:29
  it's a responsibility of mind. You know, I represent thousands
• 2:25:33
  of voices right now that don't get a chance to talk to you to
• 2:25:36
  email you, but oh, so much to you and are just so thankful for
• 2:25:42
  some things that they know directly.
• 2:25:44
  So as something as direct as, you know, my experience with you
• 2:25:47
  is you know coming up and finding me and shaking my hand
• 2:25:49
  and saying congratulations to indirectly.
• 2:25:51
  They don't even realize. Again, I didn't realize the
• 2:25:54
  influence you had over my Dear Mentor friend.
• 2:25:59
  I mean just everything. My pillar everything that you
• 2:26:02
  mentioned, boosh X nighters. I mean if if there's people not
• 2:26:05
  like you, there's not a booth and the form that he is today,
• 2:26:08
  if there's not people like coach to Les, there's not a Dan in the
• 2:26:11
  form of today. So, you know, it's a real
• 2:26:14
  humbleness here that I get to represent thousands of people
• 2:26:16
  and tell you, thank you. You know, from direct help with
• 2:26:21
  actual the X and 0 and Y of coaching to the, how do I be
• 2:26:27
  Coach, how do I be a person who chooses to be a track coach with
• 2:26:31
  work life balance and just life in general, man, I'm just so
• 2:26:35
  thankful and just want to say thank you from the bottom of my
• 2:26:38
  heart and the bottom of many, many people that right now are
• 2:26:42
  there shaking their heads and in telling you through me how much
• 2:26:47
  you mean to them? So thank you so much for what
• 2:26:49
  you have done, what you are doing.
• 2:26:51
  And what's amazing is, you're still doing my friend.
• 2:26:54
  It's, it's quite a journey that isn't over.
• 2:26:57
  We're not at their that into the book here, my man, you are still
• 2:27:00
  right in your journey, and I'm just so proud of you and so
• 2:27:03
  happy for you and so, thankful for you.
• 2:27:05
  Well, thanks for having me, and it has a little bit of a cliche,
• 2:27:08
  but it truly does take a village.
• 2:27:11
  So, let's build a great Village. Absolutely.
• 2:27:13
  I mean, I love. That's the that's the mic drop
• 2:27:15
  right there. That's the end of it.
• 2:27:16
  Dan, thank you so much, man. Have a great rest of your day.
• 2:27:19
  I appreciate you more than you'll ever know friend.
• 2:27:21
  Thank you so much. All right, thanks for having me.
• 2:27:24
  Yes sir.