Latest / The Strength In Numbers Podcast / EP 52: Devin Young | Facing Imposter Syndrome, Omni-Contraction Programming, and Podcast Hosting

Transcript

EP 52: Devin Young | Facing Imposter Syndrome, Omni-Contraction Programming, and Podcast Hosting · The Strength In Numbers Podcast

0:00
I used to think testing mattered so much to everyone else, right?
0:05
Like we had to have these great test numbers.
0:07
If I sent this force play report to the coaches, like it was
0:10
going to be like, Oh my God, yes, you did it.
0:12
But I think the more I think about it, like testing really is
0:15
like, it's it's for me. It's for me to get a baseline of
0:17
where we're at. How am I going to change this
0:20
program? How am I going to change the
0:22
next 16 weeks to make sure that we're reaching a goal that we
0:25
need to be all right? I think when I was younger,
0:27
impostor syndrome was something like I didn't have the answers,
0:30
I wasn't good enough. Now it's a mindset of like, you
0:33
want to get better, like you're going to keep pushing the needle
0:36
to get better, and that's fine. If I think of him or someone
0:39
asked something of him, the first thing that always comes to
0:41
mind is pay it forward. Welcome to the Strength in
0:50
Numbers podcast. I'm your host, John Bloom, and
0:53
today's guest is Devin Young. Devin is the Senior Assistant
0:56
Strength and Conditioning Coach, University of Pittsburgh, where
0:59
he works with track and field, cross country and softball.
1:02
He's also the host of the Talk and Pit by Pitt Sports
1:04
Performance Podcast. And this was a really fun,
1:07
really wide-ranging conversation with Devin.
1:09
We dive into his personal development, what data he uses
1:12
to drive decision making, his implementation of the Omni
1:15
Contraction system, and how coaches can face imposter
1:19
syndrome. We also talked about how he
1:20
became the host of the Talk and Pit podcast, the skills and
1:23
connections has given him, and the most impactful episodes he's
1:27
recorded. If you're getting value from
1:28
these conversations, give the show a follow and leave a
1:31
review. It helps us continue to reach
1:33
and impact more coaches. Let's get into today's episode.
1:35
Devin, man, it's really cool to have you on today.
1:37
You know, we're just talking. It's kind of crazy that it's
1:39
been, you know, coming up on almost a year and a half since I
1:43
was on the Talking Pit, a podcast with you.
1:47
It does not feel like that long, but it also feels way longer
1:50
than that at the same time. But man, I was, I remember when
1:53
I was on, I was really impressed with the way you hosted and, and
1:55
how you communicated and did that and enjoy listening to you
1:58
on there. So man, I'm pumped, kind of
2:00
switch the roles here and have you on as a guest.
2:02
I'm, I'm excited. I think this is the third
2:04
podcast, maybe 4th I'm a guest on.
2:06
So I'm going to try not to steal your Thunder and start asking
2:08
you questions. I'm used to being on the other
2:11
side of the mic and all that, man.
2:12
But no, it's, it's crazy. Year and a half.
2:14
Your book floats around my house to random spots.
2:17
It's on the night stand next to the bed.
2:19
It's that like, again, it's one that I won't touch for a month.
2:22
Then all of a sudden I'll pick up and just like open pages and
2:25
just read a couple of them and all that though.
2:27
That's cool. Yeah.
2:27
I know some people tell me that they like to read it when they
2:30
go in the bathroom because they can just pick it up and read a
2:32
chapter or something while they go in the bathrooms.
2:34
Wherever, wherever, wherever you can get it in, you know?
2:36
Yeah, we'll come in for for people that you know, don't know
2:40
who you are, just tell them about where you're at, kind of
2:43
how you got there. OK, the good old journey story.
2:45
I'll try to make this not too boring.
2:47
You don't have to do the full journey.
2:48
Let's go. Let's go where you're at and why
2:50
you wanted to be a strength coach.
2:52
OK, that's, that's a simple 1. So I'm at the University of
2:55
Pittsburgh. I, I go by season.
2:57
So this will be my fourth in season with softball, track and
3:00
field. So I oversee softball, all of
3:02
track and field, and then Brenna and Aaron every time we're on
3:05
Zoom interviews like always say like I'm the Jack of all trades,
3:08
right? So if you need help with sports
3:09
science stuff, I got you. If you need help picking up
3:12
teams, like I kind of have put my hands on everything getting
3:15
in the pit. I came from AD 3 school prior
3:17
and then an HBCU before that. And then just kind of your
3:21
typical internships, different places and all that.
3:23
So Pitt's been the 1st place where like I've had access to
3:25
force plates. We have 10, we have all this
3:27
sports science stuff. And for me, I'm a kid in a candy
3:29
shop. Like I want to learn how to use
3:30
everything about it. On the flip side of that,
3:33
someone needs to use it. I'm mostly the only person who
3:36
knows how to use it, like inside and out.
3:38
Not saying no one else knows how to use it, but like, again, I go
3:41
hard in, especially the 1080. To me, that's one of the coolest
3:43
pieces of tech we have. Yeah, I run the Talking Pit
3:46
podcast. I started that, Oh God, maybe
3:50
over a year ago, maybe almost 2 now.
3:52
Coach Mock was running it. I was helping her on like the
3:54
back end of like editing, putting things together,
3:57
emailing guests. And one day she couldn't do it
4:00
and I ended up hosting it and it went well.
4:02
And then she was in volleyball season.
4:04
So I just kept doing it. And then it became my thing to
4:07
do. And I appreciate the kind words
4:09
of I'm a good host and I can keep the things going because
4:11
sometimes I feel like I just ramble and rant and it goes in
4:14
different directions. No, no, that's cool, man.
4:17
You know, let's let's get into that tech piece of as you kind
4:19
of brought that up. You know, that's one thing I'm
4:21
kind of diving right now with. I just got like Hawkins plates
4:24
for myself and really dive into that like, and I've really been
4:27
thinking about one like how we're using this data like dry
4:32
decision making, but also like how we're thinking about using
4:37
it to really create like an athlete profile.
4:40
So how let's start the decision making partly, OK, you said 1080
4:44
force place like you talking about what piece of tech you're
4:47
using and how that's actually impacting your decision making
4:49
with the teams you're with. So the force plates are probably
4:52
the one that impact my decision the most.
4:54
We only. So for context we only had
4:56
1/10/80 on the Olympic side and then track a year ago got two of
5:00
the newer small ones that are more portable.
5:02
So I would borrow the track ones and we would go up when our
5:04
indoor facility during some resistance Sprint days and it
5:06
was just easier than lugging hundreds of pounds of chains.
5:10
The sleds, the watchman calls, I could just have three out.
5:13
And we didn't do any load load velocity profiling.
5:16
So it was just arbitrary, like all right, we're going to hit 6
5:18
kilos today for everyone. Some people probably was the
5:21
right stimulus, some people probably wasn't enough.
5:23
Some people might have got crushed board.
5:24
But again, just for hitting some resistance sprints, it was just
5:26
easier. The force plates is probably
5:28
something I it's not probably it is something I use every week.
5:31
I check on multiple times a week to look at all right if we're in
5:37
this phase of training, right If I'm an accumulator station
5:39
block, what did my four weeks of training do?
5:41
Did we maintain jump height? Did we decrease jump height?
5:44
Did we increase whatever. It's really a way for me to kind
5:47
of like get an objective view of training on the team on a broad
5:51
scale, right. I've done a little bit of
5:53
quadrant stuff early in the fall of kind of bucketing my
5:56
athletes, especially on softball, into what quadrants
5:58
they are. And then that would kind of
5:59
dictate training a little bit more.
6:00
OK are we jumping high? Are we jumping fast cool.
6:03
Our training is going to look like this.
6:04
If we're jumping high but slow, we're going to have a little bit
6:07
more speed work. And I did that for my three
6:10
groups and honestly, it was nice because the kids felt it was a
6:14
little more individualized. It felt like we were attacking
6:16
their needs and all that. On the coaching side, though, it
6:19
was a little bit of like chaos because instead of just having
6:22
one sheet in my pocket, like, all right, you guys are doing
6:24
this. I'm trying to thumb through like
6:25
our group. You're in your quadrant 1, but I
6:28
think by the end of it, like we got to flow to where like the
6:30
first four racks was quadrant one, then quadrant 2, quadrant
6:33
3. We set up the Plios.
6:35
We utilize the room in a way where we could get the athletes
6:39
through in a quick manner because again, college, I only
6:41
have an hour to 45 minutes. We practice right after lifts.
6:43
But that was probably the biggest piece of using the force
6:46
plates was like kind of diving into the quadrant stuff and then
6:48
me looking at like kind of global scale of like, all right,
6:50
what did our offseason look like if I knew we were trying to peek
6:53
for our new one at Maxis or towards the end of the fall?
6:56
Does our trend line show that we're building up in the in
6:59
season? If I were trying to manage
7:00
fatigue, what does that modified RSI look like?
7:03
Is it trending up? Is it staying like that's kind
7:06
of really what I use them for is kind of that objective 3000 foot
7:09
view. Besides obviously like the best
7:11
information, just talking to your athletes, how you feeling
7:13
the day, how was left, how was practice like that is still I
7:15
think tried and true the best. For sure.
7:18
And as you're talking about, OK, you know you're looking after
7:20
these four week blocks like are we turning the right way,
7:24
obviously mentioned jump height, What are the other things that
7:26
really matter to you that you want to see?
7:29
And obviously might be dependent on what the focus of the block
7:32
was, but like what are some of those key metrics that you are
7:34
trying to see trending up long term?
7:36
Jump height, peak propulsive power because that's going to be
7:40
a good indication of especially if body weight staying
7:42
relatively the same where we able to produce more power at
7:44
the same weight. Jump momentum correlates really
7:47
well with early acceleration. So with softball just kind of
7:50
we're a big Sprint program here like anytime we Sprint, we're
7:53
timing, we're tracking stuff. Modified RSI system weight I
7:57
keep an eye on down to not so much, but again, it's just nice
7:59
to see if there's any major dips in that system.
8:02
Wait, those are probably the big 5 that I look at consistently.
8:05
There's a couple other ones I'll dive into like Net Impulse.
8:08
I've kind of looked into take off velocity, time to take off,
8:11
but again, take off velocity, your jump height are almost
8:14
going to be correlated, almost the same.
8:16
There's going to be a slight little difference, but they're
8:18
pretty much going to line up the same.
8:20
But those are the ones I kind of really look at, unless we have
8:22
something specific. Return to Play Girl.
8:24
Now we're gonna look at right to left asymmetry, either breaking
8:26
or propulsive, but those are kind of the Global 5 big ones.
8:30
Awesome, awesome. And he talked about quadrants
8:32
and kind of bucking them a little bit there.
8:35
Are you, are you taking, let's say data from, you know, like
8:39
you said, you're timing a lot of the Sprint, you know, different.
8:41
I think I've seen you do a lot of like 20 yard Sprint times, a
8:43
lot like taking those times, taking data from the forest
8:46
plates, you know, maybe some stuff from 1080, you know, all
8:49
these things and put it together and trying to create like an
8:51
overall athlete profile in any way to kind of assess or, or see
8:56
anything there from a from a more holistic standpoint with
8:59
all those things together. I I have not so I look at so
9:02
right now we just got a new director of sports science.
9:04
Mitch, I can't say chat, chat Mitch, I'm sorry if you're
9:07
listening. I can't say your last name, but
9:08
I apologize. Came from Nebraska and he's
9:10
already like redoing so a smarter base is kind of our big
9:13
AMS that everything floods into and it's always just kind of
9:16
been a hodgepod. He's really kind of making it to
9:19
where now like everything's living in there.
9:21
We can see everything He's asking us what are we currently
9:24
looking at either on Hawkins on Bold, have we made our own
9:27
dashboards as we're going through?
9:28
And he's kind of building it out in there, which I think it's
9:31
going to be awesome. Which hopefully in another year
9:32
I can hop back on and tell you how I'm kind of profiling and
9:35
looking at that a little bit differently.
9:38
But really it's low hanging fruit for me as our sprints
9:40
getting faster or our jumps going up right?
9:43
And even saying we did buck it, it was a great idea.
9:46
I liked how it went. I still think like softball is
9:50
such a high specialized sport. You've got high school softball,
9:54
you got club softball. Now you're on tournament teams.
9:56
I mean, these girls are playing softball almost more than some
9:59
like hockey players are. If you if you work hockey, you
10:01
know how that sport is where like a 12 year old could be
10:04
playing 70 games a season and you're like in a short period of
10:08
time and like there's just no real like development.
10:10
So like our low hanging fruit seems to be like still like kind
10:13
of the way to go, Like get them stronger, get them faster, Like
10:15
everything builds up upon that. I'm curious to see as this is my
10:19
fourth year at pet kind of four years of kind of like running my
10:22
system with this girls. I'm starting to see like my
10:25
freshman now become my seniors. Like what does that true trend
10:28
line look like on Hawkins? What does that look like on
10:30
bulk? Which hopefully when Mitch is
10:32
done building out this dashboard, it'll be something a
10:34
little bit cleaner to see like, OK, in that four years.
10:36
What that actually happened, where did we start to where we
10:39
ended? Like was there like a blip their
10:41
junior year where like they kind of just got stagnant like from
10:44
their sophomore year up, do they get stagnant?
10:46
Like again, I don't know. I don't have a true dashboard I
10:49
guess to say that answers your question.
10:51
Do you have a good amount of girls that are still there Now
10:54
there's the way the transfer portal is that you're going to
10:56
be able to see that still fresh from the senior year.
10:58
No, no, I got, I got 2 from my very first year that are still
11:05
here from my, we'll call it like full year because I got hired
11:09
like end of September my first year.
11:10
So my first full year coming in that recruiting class, there's
11:13
one left who is now going to be my junior class.
11:15
So right now I got 12 freshmen in this class right now.
11:19
And we have a good class, we've have a good team.
11:21
This is probably the first freshman class that our coaches
11:25
have recruited and brought in because we had a coaching change
11:27
after my first year. So this is that like their true
11:29
first year of like all right. We saw them as sophomores,
11:31
juniors and then brought them in.
11:33
So I'm hoping this group sticks together a little bit more.
11:35
You know, as you talk about that piece of, you know, hundreds of
11:39
games, you know, not as much development on the physical
11:41
side. And even looking at the kind of
11:43
that high school level before they're coming into you.
11:46
Like if, if you could, you know, whether it's hockey without
11:49
software, you know, with a lot of basketball, you know, across
11:52
the board, it's it's kind of that same theme most the time
11:54
and youth sports now. Like what do you think it should
11:57
look like if if you had the power to, you know, Debbie out
12:02
the hours of in in in focus of of development at that level
12:07
coming into you? Again, I'm, I'm not which way I
12:10
want to say this, but like when I came up like I played hockey
12:13
was my sport, right? But even at the 90s through like
12:17
the 2000s, like I played other sports.
12:19
I played soccer, I played baseball, I played all these
12:21
other sports because there wasn't your winter Time Team and
12:25
then rolled into a spring team, which then rolled into a summer
12:28
team. And then you also had a million
12:31
people that wanted to do power skating classes or individual
12:34
stuff. Now, don't get me wrong, like I
12:35
did some skill work and all that as I got older through high
12:38
school. But I think playing more sports
12:41
from the injury standpoint, right?
12:42
If we just think of like softball pitchers, how many reps
12:45
are they getting of throwing on that one arm on that one side?
12:49
Yes, we know softball pitching is a little bit safer than the
12:51
overhand version of baseball. The velocities are a little bit
12:54
lower. But if you watch how they have
12:56
to like for a rise ball for this, like the way the wrist,
12:59
like it's just repetitive motion over and over and over and over
13:03
again. And you're playing multiple
13:05
teams. You're not getting any kind of,
13:07
well, if you are getting training, it might be once a
13:09
week, but there's no like physical development to then
13:11
kind of make you an athlete. I think these kids are very
13:13
specialized in their sports, but they're not athletes, athletes
13:17
and it shows. And we're in like doing basic
13:19
plyometrics, doing some hurdle hops, like they can't do it.
13:22
Not saying they can't do it, but like it just it's it's like,
13:25
have you ever done this before? And luckily for me, I do get
13:27
some like at Pitt, we get some like we get some athletes,
13:30
right? We get some girls that are
13:31
athletic. We're like, you show it to him
13:33
two times, not great. Show it to him again.
13:36
You're like, yeah, that's exactly what it should look
13:38
like. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
13:40
No Fear. It is is funny like being back
13:42
the back in the college level. It's like, you know, you think
13:45
there's going to be this, you know, crazy level athleticism
13:48
with most people you have. And now look at us like even if
13:51
I was to compare numbers, like right now, it's like a bit of my
13:54
hashtag. It's like, well, their their
13:55
numbers are actually better or or equal to a lot of, you know,
13:59
these, these college athletes. Obviously there are some elite
14:01
college athletes up there, but it's like it's not always as
14:04
crazy like as you think or would expect if you're not in that
14:07
level. No, it's definitely, I would say
14:08
skill. It's like the skill of the sport
14:10
is what really what separates your high level college athletes
14:14
from like your mid majors and then obviously like your high
14:16
school kids. Yeah, yeah.
14:18
OK. So you know, you mentioned about
14:22
how you're kind of like a Jack of all trades and you know, you,
14:26
you, you've got your hand a lot of things you've very good in
14:29
technology, kind of different things like how how through
14:32
your, you know, listen the the solo podcast you did kind of on,
14:35
you know, your reflection account 1st 10 years.
14:37
Like, how have you been intentional in your development
14:42
as a coach about like, the skills you're building in the
14:46
areas you're developing yourself?
14:48
In all right, so this is probably going to touch on maybe
14:50
another one of the questions. I don't know if we'll get to
14:52
enough that you sent me and all that, but I'm going to say
14:55
probably I have the biggest case, the biggest fear of
14:59
imposter syndrome. Like in terms of like, I have no
15:02
idea what I'm doing. My program suck again, it's the
15:05
better my teams do if we come in.
15:07
And again, I think it was a post.
15:09
I did our last training block. If you look at our force plate
15:13
jumps, it's like every week everything's going up right?
15:15
Like we're winning games, like everything looked good.
15:18
My first thought is like, snah, something's right.
15:20
Force plates aren't calibrated, right?
15:21
Like the like, it's this fear of imposter syndrome of not being
15:26
able to give my athletes the absolute best.
15:28
Right. And I think in our field, like
15:30
if I asked you like, hey, define what, like success and strength
15:34
and conditioning is there? Like who is the best
15:36
strengthening addition coach or how do you get to the pinnacle?
15:39
Like, there's really no, there's no answer to that, right?
15:42
Yeah. Like, your kids can be strong,
15:44
they can be fast, but if they're all injured getting surgeries
15:47
after the year, is that successful?
15:49
If your athletes are staying completely healthy, you have
15:51
100% availability, you're slow and weak.
15:54
Is that successful? You had everyone available ready
15:57
to play. So I think it's kind of this
15:58
just like chasing, not perfection, but chasing like
16:01
trying to be the best, trying to provide my athletes with the
16:04
best in a world where like, I mean, I could spend the next 10
16:08
years going down. Oh God, Stuart Mcgill's books
16:11
right here just going down like lower back stuff, right?
16:13
Like how do we fix lower back stuff?
16:14
I could spend the next 10 years and I still won't know that you
16:17
could go in the Thibodeau's neurotyping and now you're down
16:20
that like, you know, I'm saying there's so many little nuances
16:23
and the longer I'm in this profession, the more I realize
16:26
of how complex the human body is.
16:29
Like you could give me 4 lifetimes and I'd never
16:31
understand everything about metabolism, the central nervous
16:34
system, how the brain works to something about Justin King from
16:38
oh God, Danya, Paul Danya. He was talking about eye
16:41
training. Now I'm trying to reach out to
16:44
him about teaching me about eye training and how that could
16:46
maybe affect AC. Like I don't know.
16:48
I just feel like there's so much that I'm always willing to put
16:52
more in. Like I think this year alone,
16:54
like Pit and Aaron, they do a great job with providing us with
16:58
continued education resources and funding to go to
17:00
conferences, clinics and all that.
17:02
I mean, I think this year alone, just out of my own pocket, I've
17:04
spent like 5 grand on continuing Ed, whether that's like
17:07
mentorships, clinics, things. Like again, it's maybe I'm sick
17:10
in the head, maybe I'm maybe I'm wrong, but like I just, I want
17:13
to provide the best for my athletes.
17:15
And like, I think I'm humble enough to know like I don't know
17:18
everything in this profession. So like, how do I keep getting
17:20
better, reaching out to people, finding people who are having
17:23
success and like trying to learn from them?
17:25
Yeah, yeah, I want, I want to come back to that imposter
17:28
syndrome piece in a second. But but first with OK, and, and,
17:32
and I feel the same way. Like, you know, you're saying
17:34
OK, you know, I hear this guy talk about this thing like I got
17:36
to go to that rabbit, you know, you hear this thing, I've got to
17:38
go to that thing. It's like, kind of like a, you
17:41
know, ADHD of like wanting to learn different things and like,
17:45
you know, you see all those things like I, I like, it's
17:48
like, OK, that might be like the answer.
17:49
That's what I need. And you want to go down all
17:51
these rabbit holes. Oh, how do you kind of put
17:54
constraints on yourself where you're actually going to get
17:57
valuable learning and be able to go deep enough in a certain
18:00
thing without bouncing all over the place and not actually like
18:04
getting valuable knowledge that you can apply to your athletes?
18:08
I'm going to try to answer this the best way I can.
18:09
So I think for me, I have to go down the rabbit holes, right?
18:12
I have to have to go right. I have to try something like I
18:15
think when I started my Omni contraction rabbit hole, which
18:19
is kind of what my whole system of training is built on.
18:21
I mean, it was multiple books, multiple reaching out to people,
18:26
but it was also understanding like, OK, I'll give an example.
18:29
Ben Prentice has probably become one of my biggest mentors in the
18:32
last three years I've been to a spot.
18:35
I've done a cohort with him. I've really tried to adopt his
18:37
system, but I also understand his system is built for his gym.
18:42
He owns that gym. He wants to all of a sudden he's
18:46
in a big flywheel phase right now.
18:47
So he's bought multiple flywheels, things like that.
18:50
All right, I don't have that luxury and pit to go to Aaron be
18:52
like, hey, I need 7 more K boxes, seven more K pulleys and
18:56
this and that, right? So I think with going down these
18:58
rabbit holes and trying to find value a finding people that are
19:02
having success or systems that are having success, right?
19:05
Like if you are reaching out to someone who has never trained
19:08
anyone, they're just kind of posting on social media, it's
19:11
their own training and all that. Might still be good training,
19:14
might be some knowledgeable, but like I'm going to say, a
19:17
bodybuilder is going to have much better results of getting
19:19
hypertrophy than I will for myself, right?
19:22
So might work great for them, might not work great for a team
19:24
setting. So finding people that are
19:26
having results in a similar situation that you were in, but
19:29
also knowing your constraints, right?
19:31
Like, what are my limitations? Is it hours?
19:33
Is it time? Is it resources?
19:36
And I think playing like using like nothing I do with my
19:39
athletes. I haven't put through myself one
19:41
or two times already, right? Like I haven't already
19:43
programmed for myself. Luckily, my staff, especially
19:45
Brendan McDonald, has always been willing to be a Guinea pig
19:48
for me of trying out programs. Alonzo Webber, jumps coach.
19:51
I don't know how many programs I've written for him where he's
19:53
gotten insanely results and then also has been like, yeah, that
19:56
was a terrible idea of what he did.
19:58
But again, having Guinea pigs that are.
20:01
Outside of just me, right. But I think running your own
20:03
programs and experimenting with stuff before you're throwing in
20:06
a team setting, yeah. And just kind of understanding,
20:09
all right, like this is great information, but maybe it's only
20:11
one piece of this information that's truly valuable or that I
20:14
can put into use that discard the rest of it.
20:17
When you're when you're going down those rabbit holes, do you
20:20
usually get like really locked into like this one rabbit hole
20:23
and it's like everything's invested in that and then you
20:25
kind of get to a certain point and then you kind of shift gears
20:27
to another one or you. Yeah, 100%, 100%.
20:32
Yeah, I feel that. Yeah.
20:35
And I also think like I, I go back to a lot of stuff.
20:38
Like I think like a lot of podcasts I listen to, a lot of
20:41
them were like probably like 15 times I've listened to the same
20:44
person on the podcast, right? Because I'm trying to see like
20:46
is there something a nugget I didn't pick up last time or is
20:49
there something I missed? Same thing with books and like
20:52
courses, which I actually think is good.
20:54
Earlier this winter I went through Tibidos Omni contraction
20:57
course again and I went through that like that was one where
20:59
like I got it in early summer, my first summer at pit and and
21:03
like that's all I did at work at home.
21:05
I ran through that boom stack of notes, watched it this winter
21:09
and I was like, I don't remember any of this.
21:10
Did I even write? Like again, it was just but
21:13
again, now I have three years of training a similar way, seeing
21:16
what worked, what didn't work, Also finding different
21:19
outsources of like someone else is doing this.
21:21
All right, the ship kind of run something similar.
21:23
Talking to him like how how's that different?
21:26
Like seeing Ben stuff for the last three years of just
21:28
completely mind blowing the way he trains his athletes and now
21:32
re listen to this course again. I'm like, I didn't think of that
21:34
or drying this down like. Yeah, yeah, no, I feel that it
21:38
is funny. Well, first time like I'll, if
21:41
I'm like in a rabbit hole of like somebody's stuff, like I'll
21:44
like listen to like 10 different podcasts of, of what they done,
21:47
just like all in the straight. But it is funny.
21:49
Like you go back like two or three years and you listen to
21:51
the same podcast or read the same thing and it's like, wow.
21:54
Like you see it just from a completely different lens of, of
21:56
how that can apply to what you're doing now.
21:59
That's cool. Yeah, I know I can relate to to
22:01
a lot of those things. I'm glad I'm not the only one
22:03
who bounces around like that though.
22:05
OK, Going back to the imposters in your piece, how do you write
22:09
Because like, you know, kind of kind of what I'm hearing and,
22:11
and and I can relate to this too, is like kind of that, that,
22:16
that I don't know, fear is the right word, but like I'm not
22:20
doing enough or at a high enough level.
22:23
It does drive you to get better at one level, but also you don't
22:28
want to it. It's probably not good to be
22:30
stuck in kind of that constant place of like, I'm not good
22:35
enough or I'm not at a good level.
22:37
So like, how do we find a balance of that?
22:39
We're like, OK, we have this drive to get really, really good
22:42
and continue to get ourselves better.
22:44
But also maybe this can, you know, level of being content or
22:49
not content, but like at peace with with what we're doing and
22:54
knowing that we are doing like a really good job at the same
22:56
time, but can still get better. So I can only speak to my
22:59
experiences, right? So everyone might kind of have
23:01
their own little versions of this, But for me, I think I'm
23:04
super blessed with the staff I have around me where they're
23:08
seeing what I'm doing right there outside looking in, right,
23:10
They're seeing when we're running our sprints and seven
23:13
girls this week, 3 girls like, like we're they're seeing the
23:16
PRS, right? I'm I'm in the the mix, right?
23:18
Like I'm excited for them, but like it might not be right in
23:21
front of me, right. Aaron, the force plates are
23:23
right next to Aaron's office. So when girls are jumping P Rs I
23:26
got a megaphone. I'm screaming at him like he's
23:29
right there. He's like, Oh my God, can you
23:30
guys just get done jumping? But he's seeing like PR PR,
23:33
whatever it might be. So I think having outside people
23:36
in your space who can kind of like pull you aside, like no,
23:39
like you are doing something or like I'm sitting in my office,
23:42
I'm diving into some hawk and stuff or I'm looking at a
23:45
program and Brenna is like my sister.
23:47
She knows as if I'm not having a great day if I'm having a good
23:50
day. No, like look at what you'd like
23:51
having people to kind of pull you back and see the bigger
23:54
picture to show success. Also for me, like past athletes
23:58
coming back for alumni stuff, shooting you a text message
24:01
showing I guess gratitude or like appreciation of like what
24:05
you did for them helping them out along the way or kids that
24:08
transfer, even if there was only with me for a year or two, still
24:11
reaching out like I missed the weight room.
24:12
Like I got so stronger. It like I'm at the point of my
24:15
career where like I have people now who are almost 8 years,
24:19
seven years away from college and like, we'll shoot me Adm
24:21
Hey, I missed training with you. Like I was the strongest.
24:24
I was the fastest there, whether they were and weren't.
24:26
I think it's just kind of that outside, not appreciation, but
24:29
like just reinsuring that like you're doing a good job, right?
24:32
And then your staff around you. Because for me, I'm always going
24:34
to think the glass is half full, right?
24:36
I'm always going to think I could be doing more and all
24:38
that. But I as I'm getting older, I'm
24:40
starting to realize, OK, when I step back and I look at spring
24:43
time for the year, I started looking at jump heights.
24:45
I can appreciate or at least understand like, all right, this
24:48
might have not been perfect. Every workout maybe not went the
24:51
way I wanted or the setup wasn't the way it should have been, or
24:53
we maybe missed something for these two weeks.
24:56
I can still see like, you know what?
24:57
We started here, ended here. Like I did my job in terms of
25:02
increasing performance, talking to our athletic trainer, like
25:05
what was our injury history? Like?
25:06
Did we have a ton of hamstrings? All right, well, performance
25:09
went up, but we had a bunch of hamstrings.
25:11
What am I going to do next year to mitigate that?
25:14
Yeah, I think, yeah, just a little bit appreciation, having
25:16
people for me on the outside that kind of pull me back to
25:19
show me like, no, like your stuff's working, like you're
25:21
doing a good job and like the athlete feedback for me.
25:24
And I just think getting older, I'm just realizing like, it's
25:26
fine. It this is fine.
25:27
I think when I was younger, imposter syndrome was something
25:30
like I didn't have the answers. I wasn't good enough.
25:32
Now it's the mindset of like, you want to get better, like
25:36
you're going to keep pushing the needle to get better, and that's
25:39
fine. And maybe that's just as I'm
25:41
getting older and just realizing what I want out of the
25:43
profession or kind of what, I don't know.
25:46
Sorry, that was a long rambling rant.
25:48
I don't know if anyone's going to get any value out of that,
25:50
but. No, I mean, I think those are
25:52
two great points, right? Having kind of that social
25:54
feedback, social proof and reassurance and also having the
25:57
objective proof of like, hey, you know, I might be feeling
26:01
this, but the data actually says, yeah, we are getting
26:03
better, you know. So I think those are two, two
26:06
great things to think about. If if you're not spot, you know,
26:09
you talked about the Omni contraction a little bit here,
26:12
but let's dive into that a little bit.
26:14
I know we were both at the the Omni contraction seminar at Ben
26:17
Prince's place. That was an awesome thing.
26:20
Sickest gym I've ever been. Like dude anytime me and my wife
26:23
go to Massachusetts I'm like can we stop at Ben's?
26:25
I just want to he changes it. I feel like once a month there's
26:30
some new piece of equipment. Sorry side brand.
26:32
I just think it's the dopest gym.
26:34
It's it's I've. Ever been to?
26:35
Yeah. No, pretty, pretty crazy place
26:37
there. So you've talked about, you've
26:39
been kind of this journey the last couple years of diving into
26:41
that, being mentored in that and kind of applying that
26:44
involvement to your situation. What, what is, what is that set
26:48
up? And maybe look at the offseason
26:50
portion for like softball, Like what does that look like for you
26:54
right now in terms of how you're setting that up?
26:56
So for me, there's there's two offseason programs, right?
26:59
For softball, 95% of the girls go back home.
27:02
Georgia, Atlanta, TX, they're all over the place, right?
27:06
I had two girls last year that were Pittsburgh that stayed and
27:09
trained with me and I think I'll have four this year. 2 of them
27:13
are about like an hour and a half north of the city.
27:16
So I'm not sure how much they're going to stay around and train
27:18
with me, right? But for offseason for this year,
27:21
I'm really going to dive into a lot of stuff I learned with Ben,
27:24
which is kind of like his quad current system, which basically
27:27
is an Omni system and then he just kind of molds it to fit his
27:29
system and all that. But First off, like our GPP
27:32
postseason block, like I'm really going to hammer,
27:34
especially for the girls that are with me and then finding
27:36
ways, and this is the hardest one because I'm sure you when
27:39
you were up at the clinic, he talked about his long duration
27:42
ISO protocol and all that. So I have a hard time trying to
27:46
get not a hard time trying to get by him.
27:47
But like it sucks. 2 minutes of a split squat sucks.
27:51
Four sets of 30 to 35 seconds of an end range push up ISO
27:54
building those two minutes sucks.
27:56
Like it is painful, but after going through his course and
28:00
just seeing the value of like like being able to control your
28:04
body, right, being able to own these positions, the the fascial
28:06
length will change is like the short and what is length and
28:09
length and what is short And like the getting these athletes
28:11
into more of like a parasympic state before building into your
28:15
say, accumulation block, whatever your first two blocks
28:17
of training is, is just so valuable.
28:19
So trying to find a way to like through team builder, through
28:22
these girls being at a Planet Fitness, because let's face it,
28:25
I'm working with 17 to 21 year old girls.
28:28
Some of them might feel a little weird in the corner on the floor
28:31
of a Planet Fitness, just sitting in a split squat for two
28:34
minutes while all these people are like, what do you do?
28:37
Like, you know, I'm saying like it might sound stupid to us, but
28:40
like you got to think of like all the factors that might go
28:42
into someone not doing or doing their offseason training packet.
28:46
But probably the big offseason for me is going to be my three
28:48
weeks of long duration Isos and then three weeks of submaximal
28:52
eccentrics, right? So that's six weeks of training
28:54
that I need to make sure through messages through the rest of
28:57
this semester talking to the girls of how valuable these six
29:01
weeks of training are. Because they are the
29:04
foundational piece. That's going to add to when we
29:06
had our first true accumulation block in the summer or
29:09
especially when we come back in the fall.
29:11
That if you did this to your best ability at 100%, we are
29:15
going to be set up so well to handle the stressors of that
29:18
first block of like an Omni style training and all that.
29:22
And then for the girls that are with me, like, hey, we're going
29:24
to, we're going to get after, we're going to go Monday,
29:26
Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. We're going to have long
29:28
duration Isos, 3 position Isos, more of like a recovery and
29:32
aerobic capacity day. And then hitting another long
29:35
duration ISO day And really trying to build out like these
29:39
three weeks of Isos, 3 weeks of eccentric before we get into say
29:43
like a true Omni, we're like each day is changing the
29:46
contraction types. So when when they do get in
29:50
there in the fall with you back to school, does it look
29:54
different for the girls that have been with you versus the
29:57
girls that have been their own? Or is it like, OK, those girls
30:00
got to adjust and adapt and and kind of get in with with
30:03
everybody like what you've built to assuming that they have been
30:06
training. So I basically treated like too
30:10
many ones, right. So basically you'll come out of
30:12
summer, you'll have anywhere between two to three weeks off,
30:15
usually two weeks again, travel, getting back to school, then we
30:18
we come back. I'm looking at that is like in
30:20
completely different offseason. So in years past we've had two
30:23
weeks of long duration isos mixed in with some eccentrics.
30:26
The year passed, we tested and then I just kind of assumed,
30:29
which could have been made an ass of myself is that they did
30:33
it. So we're going to roll right
30:34
into it. And then the in season, not in
30:36
season, the offseason during the fall for me, I mean, it's 15
30:39
weeks. Week 1 is our testing
30:40
assessment, athletic trainings, doing some stuff.
30:43
I'm doing some baseline testing. We've got fall break in the mix,
30:46
which usually happens on a Wednesday.
30:47
So that's half a training week on.
30:49
We start fall ball the second week.
30:51
So as soon as we're done that entry testing, technically my
30:54
first week of training with the girls is also their first week
30:57
of 20 hours. We started really early.
31:00
So that way the coaches have some better time for recruiting
31:02
on the back end of the fall. But in terms of my training,
31:05
like a, this is going to be like our highest volume, our highest
31:08
stressors plus the highest amount of softball you're
31:11
playing to at the same time in the fall.
31:13
So each falls kind of changed up a little bit differently of like
31:16
treating it like they've done nothing, take these 15 weeks and
31:19
kind of build it out. Other ones have been like, OK,
31:21
they should have done at least 80% of their summer packet.
31:24
This is where I believe we should be at.
31:26
Maybe scale back one or two and then build up from there.
31:29
As we've gone through again, I've had success both ways.
31:32
Some ways we've gotten a little bit faster, some ways we've
31:35
gotten a little bit stronger. Some ways injuries seem to be
31:38
really low on other ends, like I was battling a shoulder epidemic
31:41
like a year and a half ago. So like trying to figure out,
31:44
OK, what is the issues we're seeing?
31:45
How am I adjusting for it? And then for the next, you're
31:48
kind of learning, all right, what did we do?
31:50
What didn't we do? How can we make changes moving
31:52
forward? Yeah, Yeah.
31:53
No, that's great. When you so as you talk kind of
31:58
OK, your long duration Isos kind of couple weeks of eccentric
32:01
things get so kind of the true on the contraction where there's
32:04
eccentric day, isometric day, concentric day for people that
32:07
aren't too familiar with it. When we're looking at that like
32:09
eccentric day, as you start to get to try and you know, more
32:13
intensification of the eccentric, what are you using to
32:17
do that right? You know, you some people hit,
32:19
you know, weight release is really hard.
32:21
You talking about apprentice like really getting the
32:22
flywheels to do that. Like with your setting, your
32:26
equipment, your logistics, how are you attacking that?
32:28
So for me with softball, it's going to be more of like your
32:31
maximum eccentrics, right? So we're going to be anywhere
32:33
between like that, like 90 to 100% eccentrics.
32:37
We have weight releasers. We have 8 sets of them.
32:39
So I could technically go some like supermax or like even just
32:43
even if we did like 95% eccentric weight releasers.
32:45
Now we're kind of coming up with that less intensity.
32:48
I've done it with my throwers, I've done it with a couple of of
32:51
my high level jumpers. Just in terms of like the
32:54
training age with softball, the setup.
32:57
I just haven't felt comfortable doing it yet.
33:00
And maybe I'm leaving something on the table for that, right?
33:02
But we kind of then we'll go from like some Max eccentrics
33:05
extended time into more of like your traditional classic, like
33:08
Cal D. It's like 85 to 90%, three to
33:12
four second eccentric is going to be like our intensification
33:15
block. I will say we're moving into a
33:16
new weight room soon here with a project that pit built where we
33:20
will have a couple more flywheels, maybe like two more K
33:23
boxes and like I think we'll have 8 fly pulleys.
33:26
So I will try to start implementing more so in my
33:29
accumulation block, some flywheel stuff and then going
33:32
into possibly some more weight release yourself with softball
33:35
as we're going through again, it's just I've talked to Anthony
33:39
Cockrell about it. Like I've seen so many people do
33:41
it with different sports. Like I think it's just kind of
33:43
understanding that first week is going to be trash with
33:46
flywheels. Like it's a lot of teaching.
33:48
You're probably going to have a little bit less weight on the
33:50
bar. Like it's kind of figuring out
33:52
like which hole for the girls. Like, all right, you put an
33:55
empty bar, the weight releases on and have them squat.
33:57
Cool. Now you start to load it.
33:59
Does that depth change just by two inches?
34:01
Then all of a sudden they're just dangling an isometric and
34:04
the weight releaser. Just hang in there.
34:06
It's definitely something I want to implement cuz again, personal
34:09
training, especially with my throwers.
34:10
My throwers have gotten crazy strong using weight releasers.
34:13
And again, they're fun. It's a fun implement to add to
34:16
training to where you can really feel that eccentric.
34:19
We can fight it and then boom, you're coming up with maybe
34:21
7080% still being able to move fast.
34:24
But yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's cool.
34:27
Yeah, I've, I've played myself. Yeah.
34:29
It's the, the mass application is definitely the, I feel the
34:33
hardest part of using those and also feeling comfortable that
34:36
everybody's not going to mess it up if you're doing it with a
34:38
whole bunch of people and letting them kind of roll on
34:40
their own and not be able to be right there.
34:42
Yeah. I mean, like we pretty much have
34:44
8 racks and it's like 2 to 3 girls at a rack.
34:46
And like, again, just like the coaching trying to find that
34:48
angle, like again, it's just throwers is easy.
34:51
There's like 12 of them. So that's 4 racks of three
34:53
people. Like it's super easy to kind of
34:55
keep an eye on and a lot of them also do come in with higher
34:57
training ages, so it's a little bit more easier for them to buy
35:00
into it too. Yeah, yeah.
35:02
How is? How is your Sprint work paired
35:05
up with those different days? So in the offseason, Tuesdays is
35:09
my typical field day. So we'll live Monday, Wednesday,
35:12
Monday, Thursday, Friday will be in the right room.
35:14
Tuesday will be my field day and that's going to be like our
35:16
speed day. So we'll hit some kind of early
35:18
on. We're doing like, not really.
35:20
I've done mechanics, I've gone away from it to where like we're
35:23
doing resistance sprints, then we're getting time Sprint, we're
35:26
going to then go into regular sprints and then we'll end up
35:29
with like flies. So I kind of build it from like
35:31
resistance kind of just your normal 20 yards and then into
35:34
flies to kind of get more of like some top end speed with it.
35:37
I'll also mix in some energy system stuff on those days too
35:41
on the back end, which might not sound ideal, but just in the
35:44
situation I have, it's usually Tuesday Sprint, some kind of
35:48
like tempo work on the back end. And then Fridays we'll end up
35:51
with some kind of like assault bike work on the back end of our
35:54
training. So Tuesdays is always my Sprint
35:56
day in the field. And then I'll try to sprinkle it
35:59
also in on Thursday in the weight room down on the track.
36:01
And I usually will just pair it right.
36:03
So if we've got hang cleans, apply a metric, the third thing
36:06
would be a Sprint, right? And the only reason for that is
36:09
I don't have the time to spend the first 20-30 minutes of just
36:14
warm up down on the track. Everyone hits their four to five
36:17
sprints and then we go up and lift right.
36:18
I got to kind of keep it moving a little bit because we go right
36:21
to meetings, right to practice after lifts in the fall.
36:24
Also in season, it's the same thing.
36:26
I get them two days a week, we Sprint both days, which most
36:29
people would say that is stupid, that is dumb.
36:31
You're you're sprinting them back-to-back.
36:33
You need your 48 hours in between.
36:35
And I totally agree with them. In an ideal situation, I would
36:38
love that. I live in the real world world
36:39
where I get them Tuesday, Wednesday.
36:42
For most of the in season, we're going to Sprint both days and
36:45
knock on wood, I've had very little to any hamstring issues
36:49
sprinting them back-to-back days and all that.
36:51
And it's 2 to 3 reps It's not like we're doing a lot.
36:53
Like we're probably hitting between those two days at most
36:56
120 yards if most and we'll dial it back and all that.
37:00
But I look at it also like softball.
37:01
I mean, we're sometimes playing back-to-back games.
37:04
Like you have seven innings where you're like, you know what
37:06
I'm saying? Like the ideal of the sport
37:08
versus the idea of like how worked hard about sprinting of
37:11
like again, Max recovery. I give them, I followed the
37:14
minute per 10 yards rule to the best I can and I'm making sure
37:17
that they have high output. But I also understand you're not
37:20
always going to be in these perfect situations either in
37:23
game or even in the weight room. Like I think earlier this week I
37:26
got a text message messages, they were coming up like, hey,
37:28
you got 40 minutes. They got to be here earlier than
37:30
we thought. I was like, cool, all right,
37:31
we're going to trim this. We're going to move that.
37:33
And like sprinting was still important.
37:34
So it's like, do we keep it? Do we take it out as we go
37:37
through? Yeah, yeah, You know, that's
37:40
something too weird as the thing about like the sprints and that
37:42
like I've I've gotten more and more to it's like especially
37:46
when, OK, we're not doing these like huge volume Sprint workouts
37:49
like and most the athletes probably mean you aren't having
37:54
like the highest of outputs in terms of sprinting and
37:57
intensities there. It's like frequency is probably
38:00
going to be a great driver of of adaptation for us, right.
38:03
You could say, OK, we're just going to Sprint one week because
38:06
I don't want to go back-to-back. Like you're probably not going
38:08
to get as good results just hitting Sprint work once a week,
38:12
especially if now stuff starts to pop up with the game
38:15
schedule. The we need them here 30 minutes
38:18
early schedule and and now that if that one day gets wiped out,
38:21
it's like now where are we at where it's like, OK, if we have
38:24
I was, I think even I saw a post from Joe Padula kind of talked
38:27
about this yesterday. But like it's like if we can
38:29
just have more frequency there and it's not killing them,
38:33
that's going to help their skill and and their development at at
38:36
such a better level than trying to be perfect like you're
38:39
saying. No exposure is the key to the
38:42
game. And again, for intent for us,
38:44
it's always timed. We time every single Sprint,
38:46
even though it's a headache sometimes setting up the timing
38:48
gates. We've tried racing, we've tried
38:50
just hey, I need you to give me 100%.
38:52
Nothing drives the intent better for my girls than when I put the
38:56
timing gates on because they all get hyped.
38:57
Someone hits APR, the whole room erupts.
38:59
Someone is slow. I'm going to call them that like
39:02
you know, I'm saying it's just it's that driving intent.
39:04
And also for me now I can see session to session like, all
39:07
right, what how these three sprints, how fast did X go?
39:11
What's her average? So what intensity was she?
39:13
So I can kind of see week by week if I really wanted to, to
39:15
dive into of like what week of intensity are we roughly running
39:20
at individually or even as a team to kind of see are we
39:23
staying in that 95%? Was this true Sprint work?
39:25
Was it more like kind of that what fluffer Howard Charles,
39:29
Charlie Francis talks about a kind of that like in between
39:31
like 2 fast to be tempos too slow to be sprinting.
39:35
So now I can look at that and kind of say like, OK, was this
39:37
true speed work? Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's
39:40
great. Yes, that, that's awesome.
39:42
I want to shift gears a little bit now.
39:44
We, you know, you talked about how you kind of took over the
39:48
The Talking Bit podcast since you've been running that.
39:51
What is that given you as a coach, whether from like a
39:55
skills perspective, a network and connections perspective,
39:59
just like you know how you view things, you know like what one
40:03
of the biggest things that has changed or impacted you in.
40:05
The network has to be huge. Like it blows my mind.
40:08
And it's only happened one or two times.
40:10
We're like, I'll get a text message from Buddy Morris and it
40:13
was like a podcast recommendation or like if I have
40:15
a quite like my GA was at a small school in Saint Francis
40:19
and our assistant coach worked with Buddy that pit back in the
40:22
early 2000s. So that's where I got introduced
40:23
to him. And again, we've already spoke
40:25
about the rabbit hole. I go down to elite FTS, talks,
40:28
books, things like that, just going down this rabbit hole of
40:31
like this, like legend in the strength conditioning field and
40:34
the fact that I can shoot him a text message or a call and I
40:37
actually get an answer. Like I had no business being
40:40
like, I'm still, again, we can drive this right back to
40:42
imposter syndrome of like, why do any of these people want to
40:45
talk to me? But the networking man has been
40:48
huge. Again, me and you got connected
40:49
through Steph and we hosted this podcast.
40:51
So now me and you were talking, just the different people I've
40:54
been able to reach out to have conversations with, learn from,
40:58
and then from there just build information with like Joe
41:01
Padula. I had him on the podcast after
41:04
taking his first course and me and him, I think a couple days
41:07
ago, we're texting back and forth on some.
41:09
Like I'm saying, it's just crazy the amount of reach and people I
41:13
now have in my network where if I have questions, if I need to
41:16
reach out for something, hey, for our interns and fellows,
41:19
hey, they're looking for jobs now.
41:21
I maybe now literally one person removed from someone at a
41:24
different school or different spot to help them at least get
41:27
an interview. Not saying they're going to
41:28
guarantee get a job, but at least kind of that helping of
41:30
like, Oh yeah, we'll pull their resume and see if it's
41:32
worthwhile. So definitely the networking has
41:34
been 1. I don't know, I'm sure coaching
41:36
has helped me of like when freshmen come in and you get
41:39
that deer in the headlights because they've never met you
41:41
before and it's 7:00 AM in the morning and I'm on my third
41:44
energy drink and like I'm ready to go.
41:47
I think being able to read the situation right?
41:49
Like, is the guest getting bored?
41:51
Are we hitting a topic that maybe isn't too interesting?
41:53
How do I keep something flowing and natural versus like, I ask
41:58
you a question, 10 seconds of pause, you ask it.
42:00
I sit here and I'm saying just that natural, organic
42:03
conversation, like how to read a room even though it is virtual.
42:06
I would love nothing more than else to be able to do it.
42:09
Like, oh God, down in Texas, coach them up podcast.
42:12
I would love to be able to have people like either fly in or
42:16
when they're coming into town, sit down and have these like
42:18
actual in person conversations with them.
42:21
But again, I think being able to virtually read the room, read
42:24
someone's eyes, Are they bored? Are you excited?
42:27
It just helps so much in terms of that.
42:29
And I've always been told I've had a charismatic personality
42:33
and like easy to talk to and like, again, been able to work
42:36
with little kids old, like, again, just being able to be a
42:38
chameleon of just kind of adapt and be in the room I need to be
42:41
in. Yeah, no, it's cool.
42:43
Yeah. No, I, you know, we were talking
42:45
before about the, the one of the hardest parts of, of doing a
42:49
pocket is just the scheduling and and all that.
42:51
I'm like, I can't, I can't even imagine if it was in person
42:54
trying to do the scheduling and and that wouldn't that would be
42:57
that would be a lot of work. No, that's cool, man.
43:00
What are there? Are there a few conversations
43:03
you've had that you can kind of look back on and be like, Dang,
43:06
that like that really made an immediate impact on maybe the
43:11
way you're doing something, you know, the way you're just a
43:14
thinking about maybe your programming and your your
43:17
coaching or or just any anything there?
43:20
Well, two people already talked about Joe Padula having him on
43:23
the pocket. Like, again, I it's crazy that
43:25
he's almost 10 years younger than me, but he is light years
43:28
away of how he thinks and how he communicates his thoughts and
43:32
his training and his knowledge, right.
43:34
Like I think if he read the bot like the ingredients on a cereal
43:37
box, I would be so entertained just because the way he
43:40
communicates. Obviously, having been Prentice
43:42
on again, I'm biased, but like again, having him on early right
43:46
after that Omni contraction course to then trying to dive
43:49
into more of his thought process, how he coaches doing
43:52
stuff like that. Buddy Morris, again, I'm not
43:54
trying to name like all these big names, but it's people that
43:57
have done it for so long and that have taught you something
44:01
like like Buddy's idea of like research, like when he says his
44:03
desk is full of papers, like his desk is full of papers.
44:06
Like he's always trying to learn and trying to get better.
44:09
I think also like some of the private people I've had on, like
44:12
I'm going to butcher her last name, Jessica Burke.
44:14
Think it's the last name. And I'll be like talking to her
44:16
of like her transition from college to the private sector.
44:18
I don't care who you are in college athletics.
44:21
You thought at one point of like, all right, is this for me?
44:23
Is the 4:00 AM wake ups really what I want to do?
44:26
Right? We've always thought of is
44:28
private the answer? What's getting out?
44:30
Like, am I going to regret, right.
44:32
So listening to some of these coaches who have made the
44:34
transition from being in collegiate to private again,
44:37
it's just it's eye opening, it's information, it's thought
44:40
provoking of like, OK, like what is that?
44:42
What's the next step look like for me?
44:44
Is it going to another university?
44:46
Is it branching out to do my own thing?
44:48
It's just it's very interesting. But there's been.
44:50
So I'm trying to think of even more guests that really like
44:53
stood out to me. I mean, AK, the conversation I
44:55
had with AK yesterday, like just a great human being and like a
44:59
fun coach who's like experimenting.
45:01
I'd like someone else like me who's hey, I'm going to try
45:04
this. I'm going to try this on myself
45:05
and I'm going to share it and I'm going to see what happens
45:09
and go from there. But like, it's just it's been so
45:11
cool to really just meet so many different coaches and also the
45:13
same time see, like we always say, like everyone does the same
45:17
thing at different schools. I don't know if you've ever had
45:19
this with a coach of like, hey, what's so and so doing?
45:22
Because they're winning and you're like probably squat,
45:25
bench, hinge, like probably probably very similar to what
45:27
we're doing. But now actually being able to
45:28
talk to these coaches and be like, yeah, everyone's doing the
45:31
same thing with a slightly different spin on it based on
45:33
their environment and constraints.
45:35
Yeah, no, that's cool. One I love.
45:37
I love the one with Ray Zingler. You did.
45:40
Another great one. How did I forget about Ray?
45:43
That was another good one. You know, you were and you know,
45:46
as you're talking about that, you know, a lot of times, OK,
45:47
I'm you know, it's private sector.
45:49
The answer like what are you building to or or or or aiming
45:55
for down the line in your career?
45:57
Do you have a vision of like, I'm trying to get to this level,
46:00
whether it's, you know, a different spot in college,
46:02
whether it's something else, like do you have a vision of
46:04
that you're just trying to be great at where you're at right
46:06
now? I mean I can't lie and say like
46:08
I don't have aspirations and stuff, but like if you would
46:11
have asked me like 4 years ago, like it was going back to being
46:15
a director, I was a director at AD 3 school.
46:17
Now being into AP4 school, like being a director going on to
46:21
someone else running a department.
46:23
But me and my wife, man, we love Pittsburgh and my wife loves
46:26
Pittsburgh. She loves her job.
46:28
She works in the library at the medical school here at
46:30
Pittsburgh. So like, it's weird since
46:32
getting the pit, since being here, maybe it's the fact that
46:35
I've started to share a little bit more with my training.
46:37
My name's out there a little bit more because of running this.
46:39
Whatever the answer is, right? I've had more job offers in the
46:42
last two years than ever in my career.
46:44
But it's always like I like Pittsburgh.
46:46
I love the staff I work with. I mean that I think that is
46:49
probably going to be one of the hardest things ever if I did
46:51
leave is to leave the staff I'm on.
46:54
We are as thick as thieves. We are close, we support each
46:57
other, We talk shit to each. Like, you know, I'm saying it's
46:59
that perfect work environment that I think most college
47:02
strength coaches would want to be a part of.
47:04
But right now I'm just, I'm trying to see like, what can I
47:07
build for myself? I do a little online coaching
47:11
and I do a little bit of consulting on the side and like
47:13
just trying to see where I want to build that too.
47:17
Because again, I don't know if I want to be 55 waking up at 4:00
47:22
AM to coach softball at 7:00 AM, you know what I'm saying?
47:24
Like just trying to think a long picture of all right, what does
47:28
my 50s look like? What does my 60s look like?
47:30
Like what does retirement look like?
47:32
What like just those life things.
47:35
I guess as you get older in the profession, like you need to
47:37
start thinking about of all right, what, what do you really
47:40
want out of this? And kind of attacking it, But I
47:43
love Pittsburgh. I think if I wasn't at the
47:44
University of Pittsburgh, me and my wife would stay in Pittsburgh
47:47
and I would either find I'd find something open up my own spot
47:50
working in LA Fitness, maybe going to electric or plumbing
47:53
school, who knows. But my wife is very much sold in
47:56
Pittsburgh and she's put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into
47:58
renovating the home we're in. So anytime I joke of moving or
48:01
new school, it's like, absolutely not.
48:03
I put way too much time into this house.
48:05
That's cool, that's cool. What's one thing you've really
48:08
changed your mind on in the last year?
48:10
God in terms of strength and conditioning or life?
48:13
Either in terms of. Strength and conditioning, it's
48:15
one thing I've changed my mind. It's a good question because I
48:17
feel like my mind is always changing and I'm trying to like,
48:19
I feel like the things I'm set on are like basic principles,
48:23
progressive overload. Like the kids don't care what
48:25
you know until you know they care.
48:26
Like I'm trying to think of something I've really I
48:28
shouldn't. I'm not trying to not trying to
48:31
stall here, John, I'm sorry, but like I'm trying to really think.
48:34
What have I changed my mind on? All right, I used to think
48:38
testing mattered so much to everyone else, right?
48:42
Like we had to have these great test numbers.
48:44
If I sent this force play report to the coaches, like it was
48:46
going to be like, Oh my God, yes, you did it.
48:49
And not saying it doesn't matter.
48:50
Like if I send them like, hey, like we got 75% weaker over the
48:54
offseason. Like that's going to be a
48:55
conversation of like, what did you do with these girls or guys?
48:58
But I think the more I think about like testing really is
49:00
like it's it's for me, it's for me to get a baseline of where
49:03
we're at. How am I going to change this
49:06
program? How am I going to change in the
49:08
next 16 weeks to make sure that we're reaching a goal that we
49:11
need to be at right for track, We need to be stronger.
49:13
We need to be more powerful so they can be faster on the track.
49:16
Softball or ash tests are awful cool.
49:18
How am I going to make sure that we're increasing shoulder
49:21
strength, shoulder resiliency, I guess we'll call it, to make
49:24
sure that we can have the appropriate strength to throw,
49:27
catch, do all the things we need to do without getting hurt.
49:30
But in terms of like it mattering to other people, like
49:33
it really doesn't. What what what caused that
49:38
shifter or kind of change in in thought process there?
49:41
I think for me it was we would have great results and we'd have
49:46
great things, right, but we would still lose.
49:48
So like it didn't matter, like all right, we got so much
49:52
faster. Our jump heights are going
49:54
through the roof, like pitching speed goes down, or we're still
49:58
2 and 17 in the ACC. And it's like, it doesn't
50:03
matter, you know what I'm saying?
50:04
Or I would get really excited to, like, show something.
50:07
It would be like, cool, that's good.
50:08
I'm like, right, sweet. Like.
50:12
But yet on the flip side, I was like, hey, we went down 40%.
50:15
Then it's immediate conversation.
50:16
So it's kind of the thing of like, unless it's bad news, it
50:18
doesn't matter. If it's good news, it's like
50:20
that's the status quo. That's what it should be.
50:22
So like, it really doesn't matter.
50:23
Yeah. Yeah, no, that's funny.
50:25
You know, first thing I have for you is like when you think about
50:30
coaching, like when do you feel most that you're like in your
50:33
purpose within coaching? Yeah.
50:36
I mean in any aspect of code, whether it's in the field and
50:39
learning and, you know, anything there.
50:41
So like most in the zone, most when like like this is what I'm
50:44
supposed to be doing type feeling.
50:46
I mean, 100% on the floor, on the floor, like that's where I'm
50:50
at my best, right? That's where I feel at home.
50:53
That's when I feel that easy. Like I'm going to be honest, it
50:55
takes me forever to write programs because I think about
50:57
this, I think about that changing this.
50:59
I tell me if this was you too early on in my career as like a
51:02
SEC first year intern and UMass Lowell, maybe at Eastern
51:05
Michigan, I was like, I can't wait to write programs.
51:07
I can't wait for my thoughts to be on the paper I hate, right.
51:10
I would much rather someone be like, this is the workout you're
51:12
doing, go coach your face off with it and go through it.
51:16
It's. A lot easier.
51:18
Yeah. Again, I do like programming,
51:20
like I'm very into it. Like again, we both know like
51:23
the Omni contraction stuff, like you can get down in the weeds of
51:25
very much of how to kind of run that system, but definitely
51:28
being on the floor and then also helping out with like our intern
51:30
and fellowship education. I really love that giving back
51:34
piece, right? Or like trying to put these kids
51:36
on to game or put them on to some information and just put
51:40
them a step ahead, right? I'm very much and I came up
51:42
under Keith Vincey, Rest in peace.
51:44
He died a couple years ago from UMass Lowell.
51:46
Like he taught me a lot. But for some reason, if I think
51:49
of him or someone asked something of him, the first
51:52
thing that always comes to mind is pay it forward.
51:54
I don't know if he only said it to me once, if he said it to me
51:57
a million times, but pay it forward.
51:59
So that's something we're like trying to give these interns and
52:01
fellows, hey, if I can give you these 3-4 Nuggets, hopefully
52:04
that puts you a year ahead of where I was.
52:06
Maybe helping you with this resume or helping you with this
52:09
interview prep allows you to land that first job or GA faster
52:13
than I did and then fast track your career quicker than I did.
52:16
So definitely on the floor coaching.
52:18
And then just like being with our interns, being with our
52:21
fellows, the couple times I do get to have not interactions,
52:23
but like we'll split up like in like curriculum, like you teach
52:26
them this, you teach them that. Or like Taylor and Brendan run
52:30
our fellowship. Taylor does baseball, so he
52:32
leaves a lot in the spring. So all then maybe do like sit
52:35
down with them on a Thursday and we'll go over something that's
52:38
really kind of a spot for me. Yeah, I love it.
52:41
You know, you're talking like being in the zone while coaching
52:44
and he's like all this stuff we talked about like imposters.
52:46
And you're like, when you're doing that, like you don't have
52:49
time to think about that stuff. You don't have time to like, you
52:51
know, question or overthink whatever.
52:53
It's like you've got to make decision.
52:54
You got to go. Whereas like when you're, when
52:56
you're programming, you can you can go back and forth with the
52:59
decision as as much as you possibly need or want to.
53:03
I think that's also a good spot of showing like you don't have
53:05
imposter syndrome or you are good at your job, right?
53:08
Because I think for me on the floor, and I try to tell this to
53:10
our interns, like, yes, you're coaching, yes, you're overseeing
53:13
stuff, but most of the time you're a problem solver.
53:16
Hey, this rack's full or there's an extra team in here or you
53:20
came from practice and you rolled your ankle and now you
53:23
can't do any. Like I'm saying, it's like on
53:25
the fly, you have to all right, put out this fire, put out that
53:28
fire. We're changing this.
53:29
We're going here, all swims in here too.
53:30
And they're using lat pull downs.
53:31
All right, nevermind. Like, you know, I'm saying like
53:33
it shows you that like you have the capacity, you have the
53:36
knowledge to get the same stimulus, to get the same
53:39
training effect you want, even if your plan has to be
53:42
completely rewritten on the floor in that minute.
53:46
Yeah, yeah. No, no, I think I think that's
53:48
great, man. This has been, I've really
53:50
enjoyed this conversation. I mean, we kind of we've kind of
53:52
gone all over the place. We've gotten a lot, you know,
53:55
into training into, you know, life and mindset things.
53:58
But I think it's been really cool.
54:00
I've really man, I really enjoyed it and I appreciate you.
54:03
Hey, you've been here and doing it is fun to fun to switch roles
54:06
there. Yeah, I think.
54:07
Thanks for reaching out to me again.
54:08
This is, it's always weird being on the other side of this.
54:11
It only happened a few times, but not now.
54:13
I love talking to you. Like it's one of those things I
54:15
feel like we text every now and then or Adm, but definitely got
54:18
to stay in contact a little bit better.
54:20
Yeah, for sure. Now that you've been putting out
54:22
more information on your training and and showing some
54:24
really cool stuff you're doing there with the teams, where
54:26
should people go if they want to check some of that out or, or
54:29
see anything else you're doing? But I think my Instagram is
54:31
Devin under score, S&C under score Coach, if you go on the
54:37
PIT website, I have an e-mail there.
54:40
If you look to the right, somehow someone put actually my
54:42
own personal phone number up there.
54:43
So if you grab that phone number and shoot me a text, I'll yeah,
54:46
I don't know how that got put up and not my work cell phone
54:48
number. So that's.
54:49
Crazy. If you reach out like e-mail,
54:52
I'm 10% likely to get back to you.
54:54
I'm just a terrible emailer and all that.
54:56
But if you use that phone number and shoot me a text or shoot me
54:58
Adm, I'm always I'll get back to you.
55:00
It might take a day or two, but I'll definitely I'll get back to
55:03
you. But you guys can reach out to me
55:04
through that and anyone has any questions like feel free to
55:07
reach out. I have people all the time
55:08
wanting to hop on phone calls or shoot me a text.
55:11
If you're ever in the Pittsburgh area, anyone like reach out to
55:14
us. We always allow site visits and
55:15
people to come through so. Yeah, that's awesome, Devin.
55:19
I don't think I've ever heard of that of that, that personal
55:21
number getting thrown up on the school.
55:23
Everyone else has their work cell phone numbers.
55:25
Somehow mine my real phone number got put up there so I
55:27
don't know how that one got put up.
55:28
But that's funny. Well, awesome, Devin.
55:30
Man, I appreciate you doing this.
55:32
Hope you have a great rest of your day now.
55:33
Awesome. Appreciate it, John.
55:34
If you enjoyed this conversation and want to go deeper, check out
55:37
my book Strength in Numbers. Insight from top coaches on how
55:40
to build your career, handle failure in a achieve long term
55:43
coaching success. It brings together insights and
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wisdom from over 100 coaches across all levels in sports.
55:50
You can find it on Amazon and LinkedIn, the show notes.
55:53
And if this episode helped you follow the show and leave a
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review, it's the best way to support the podcast and help it
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reach more people.