Latest / The Strength In Numbers Podcast / EP 18: Dave Downey | Navigating Imposter Syndrome In Coaching

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EP 18: Dave Downey | Navigating Imposter Syndrome In Coaching · The Strength In Numbers Podcast

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  The second thing is, is building a Bank of success.
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  I keep all of the things, big or small, that I've ever done
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  really well on my phone. So when I do have those negative
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  feelings, I can look back and reflect on like, OK, this is a
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  pretty long list. I must be doing all right.
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  It's much easier to admit fault and be a human and then gain buy
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  in from that than it is to pretend that we are just like
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  this infallible, perfect human being.
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  If something kind of rubs you you the wrong way during an
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  interview, whether it's on Zoom or on campus, it's probably
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  going to rub you the wrong way the entire time that you're
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  there. Welcome to the Strength in
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  Numbers podcast. I'm your host, John Bloom, and
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  today's guest is Dave Downey. Dave is a strength conditioning
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  coach at Brown University where he works with men's basketball,
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  swim and dive in equestrian. He's also the author of Imposter
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  Syndrome, Mental Health Strategies, and Strength
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  Conditioning, which is where a lot of our conversations focus
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  on today. We talked about what imposter
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  syndrome actually is, where it shows up in coaching and
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  strategies to both recognize and navigate it.
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  Enjoy the episode, Dave. I'm really excited to have you
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  here, man. For those that don't know you,
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  could you just give a little background like who are you and
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  what do you do? Yeah, of course.
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  So right now I'm a sports performance coach at Brown.
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  I've been here for three years. I primarily focus on men's
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  basketball, men's swim and equestrian, But before that I
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  was the AD for sports performance at Fairleigh
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  Dickinson for three years and then I spent five years at
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  Lafayette College at the assistant director of strength
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  conditioning. So I've been in the game for a
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  pretty long time and now my focus is kind of beyond like
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  the, the XS and OS of strength conditioning.
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  I'm I'm looking more into, into the mental game, into, into
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  different leadership qualities and really playing a lot more
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  with, with the mental space. Which is, yeah, now it seems, it
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  seems like, I feel like that's a trend you hear so often is like
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  kind of for people in their beginning of their careers.
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  Like, OK, we're focused on the X&O's of lifting sets, reps,
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  training or coaching or whatever aspect you're in.
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  And you spend more and more time and you see, OK, like that
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  matters. But there's all this other stuff
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  that matters just as much, or probably just way, way more than
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  just the weight room stuff. I'm sure you've seen that with
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  Beyond Yourself. So many other coaches too.
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  Absolutely. Like just with how many athletes
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  I've worked with now being 10 plus years in the game, like all
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  of the new technology, the new exercises that you see, like
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  there's, there's so many different things.
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  But if you're not mentally sharp, if you're not prepared
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  mentally to play your sport or to attack whatever you have in
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  front of you like, it doesn't matter how strong you are, it
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  doesn't matter how skilled you are, you're going to fall apart
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  if your head's not right. Yeah, and I mean, and, and a lot
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  of a conversation is going to be about coaches more so in their
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  mental party, right? It's the same for coaches,
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  right? If if you, if you got all the
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  skill in the world as a coach, all the knowledge, but you don't
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  have the mental skills as a coach to withstand the monotony
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  or the grind or the different hurdles that are going to be
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  constantly thrown at you. Like you're not going to make it
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  either as a coach to in athletics.
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  For sure, this is, this is a brutal game.
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  It's, it's only getting more and more competitive as the required
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  education gets higher and higher.
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  When I started as an assistant, like a bachelor's degree was
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  fine. Now bachelor's degree was fine
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  and if you wanted to be ahead, you would get a master's degree.
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  But now it's like entry level assistant jobs.
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  You have to have a master's and a year plus internships see two
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  or three different schools. So it's it's only getting harder
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  and. Yeah, yeah.
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  Well, for those of you don't know, Dave also wrote a book
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  centering around imposter syndrome, right?
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  And I want to dive into some of the concepts that you go into in
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  that book. You know, a lot of people use
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  that term right and talk about imposter syndrome.
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  What what actually is that? And, and where, where do you see
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  it showing up in the world of coaching especially?
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  Yeah, for sure. So imposter syndrome really
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  boils down to two things, right? Like you have your internalized
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  feelings of undeserved success, of not belonging, self doubt,
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  inadequacy, you know, the list goes on and on for that.
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  But the other piece that's, that's almost a little bit more
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  important is deceiving those or a feeling of deceiving those
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  around you into thinking that you're competent, right?
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  So if I'm really successful and my teams are getting stronger
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  and we're winning games and we're, you know, we're well
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  conditioned, we look good and my coach comes up to me and says,
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  Dave, you're doing a fantastic job, right?
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  Like how I accept that compliment or don't accept that
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  compliment tells me whether or not I'm have those feelings of,
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  of imposter syndrome, right? If I don't believe that my coach
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  is telling me honestly what he thinks and he's just saying
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  like, Hey, you're doing a great job, but I'm not actually, or
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  I've convinced him that, you know, I don't actually know what
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  I'm doing. I'm doing and I just got lucky.
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  That's kind of the, the breakdown of imposter syndrome.
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  Another big piece is like, if you look at the feedback loop of
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  someone who has a positive mindset versus someone who is
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  dealing with imposter syndrome, like there's, there's some, some
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  breaks there. Same thing.
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  Like if you're, if you're given a challenge that you are
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  unfamiliar with, say like it's, you know, it's, it's a new job
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  that you're coming into that's initially uncomfortable, that
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  triggers some anxiety, right? Like you might say, like, oh,
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  maybe I'm not ready for this new job.
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  Maybe it's, you know, you're going from an assistant into a
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  head or or whatever it might be some kind of new, new difficult
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  challenge, right? You can say I'm not ready for
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  it. There's a lot of self doubt.
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  There's fear of failure. There is, you know, continued
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  negative self talk and then you kind of talk yourself out of
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  what could be a really successful position.
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  Maybe you avoid it. Maybe you over prepare for an
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  interview and you crash and burn.
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  That's kind of where imposter syndrome rears its head.
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  The separating pieces like say that same person is successful
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  somehow and they do get the job. They just convince themselves
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  same thing, that it was either luck or they were able to trick
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  whoever is interviewing them into thinking they actually know
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  what they're doing. So any kind of success in the
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  imposter syndrome feedback loop, right?
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  Like any success is immediately discounted as some sort of
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  external factor, right? Like it has nothing to do with
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  me. It had everything to do with
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  luck or tricking somebody where you know, when you're talking
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  about a positive mindset, like you go through all those same
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  stages, right? Like there's discomfort, there's
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  anxiety, maybe there is negative self talk.
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  But when you do either find that success, maybe you're successful
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  in that interview, you get the job.
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  Now that's something that you hold on to.
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  It's like, OK, maybe I am good enough.
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  Maybe I am good enough to be here.
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  Maybe I'm where I'm supposed to be.
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  And that's kind of the separator, right?
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  Like, are you internalizing success or are you externalizing
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  and discounting it? Yeah.
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  What do you find that people often have it more frequently
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  when there is that like job transition to a new place versus
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  somewhere you've had a little more continuity with?
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  Yeah, for sure. It's all about comfort too,
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  right? If you're in the same job for a
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  long time or you're probably getting into routine, you know
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  everybody, you know what their personalities are like, You know
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  how people react like those, those stories that you make up
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  in your head become a little bit more accurate and a little less
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  scary. So it's easier to just keep
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  moving. When you're in those
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  transitions, you don't know how people are going to react.
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  You don't know what what kind of reactions you're going to get.
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  So it's easier to elevate those to the next level and make them
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  super scary for sure. Do you feel like there's ever a
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  time that imposter saying it could be helpful in the short
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  term where like right fear can be a great motivator.
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  So if I'm getting a new job and I'm feeling this like feel like
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  I've got to push to prove myself or or feel all this, is there
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  any benefits sometimes to that in the short term?
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  Obviously it's not sustainable thing with longevity, but do you
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  think for performance in the short term it could be
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  beneficial in terms of like pushing and motivating you in a
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  way? Yeah, I think so.
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  But there's like there's 22 kind of angles you can go with
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  imposter syndrome and, and in those transition phases, I don't
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  know if you would necessarily even call it imposter syndrome,
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  right? Like that's just a new challenge
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  in your life and it's hard and and you're going to have some
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  doubt like it's that's perfectly normal.
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  But the two directions you can go are overwork and avoidance,
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  right. So overwork is about
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  perfectionism, putting in extra hours over preparing.
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  You know, you're you're always available to answer that call.
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  Like if that potential job calls you at 9:00 PM, you're picking
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  it up first ring. And maybe that's see, that's not
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  necessarily a bad thing because you are well prepared for the
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  situations that are coming up because you are putting in that
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  work. It's a problem when it becomes
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  obsessive. And then on the other side with
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  avoidance, you know, you're procrastinating, you're not
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  speaking up when when something maybe negative is occurring,
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  like, Hey, we want to offer you the job, but it's about 30% of
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  the salary you and this really asked for.
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  And you're still going to say like, OK, sure, that would be
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  more of an avoidance angle. But talking yourself out of the
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  challenge, out of the opportunities, avoiding any kind
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  of conflicts or challenge that comes up and then overwork being
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  all of that effort in to the point where it becomes maybe too
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  much. So yeah, it could, it could be
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  beneficial depending on the the route that you choose.
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  And I guess more of your personality, what you tend to
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  fall back on. I know personally, like I'm a
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  big overworked guy. Like when I first, when I spoke
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  about this at the NSCA conference in 2024 in Rhode
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  Island, like my presentation was done about 5 months in advance
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  and I had just practiced it live every week until then.
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  Yeah. Was that necessary?
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  No, for sure not. I would hope that by that point
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  I knew the material and didn't have to do that.
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  But everybody that came up after said it was, it was really good.
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  It was. And they, they took a lot from
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  it. So I could say like, yeah, that
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  overwork was probably a bit overkill, but it, it ended up
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  being successful for me. And and now I can hold on to
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  that success and and hopefully come back a little less frantic
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  and maybe prepare a a few more weeks later instead.
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  Yeah, Yeah. So as you talk about those two
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  kind of routes you take of overwork or avoidance, you
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  mentioned like that being your personality type.
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  Do you feel like it is like personality type that drives you
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  in one of those two directions or there's certain situation
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  specific factors that might do that?
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  Or even with like the same person in some situations they
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  might go 1 route, another they might go another rally.
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  What have you seen there? I think it's definitely
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  extremely situational with something like a presentation
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  where it's, you know, there's there's a set date, there's
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  stakes, there's people watching it.
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  Like being over prepared is obviously better than avoiding
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  it completely and bombing out because now I'm talking in front
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  of my peers and I look like an idiot.
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  So that's definitely not something I want to do.
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  So I'm definitely going to go the over prepared route for
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  something that might be a little lower stakes.
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  Like like if we think about our athletes training over summer,
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  right? Like there's like, yeah, they're
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  going to come back and we're going to find out that they
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  didn't train, but nobody's watching them, right?
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  So it's easier to avoid doing work when someone is not on top
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  of you or there's not, There's a little bit less at stake, right?
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  So that's probably one way you could or one scenario, or you
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  could go one way or the other. Yeah.
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  So, yeah. So kind of whether there's
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  stakes or not at the end of it, kind of right.
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  And I, I mean, for most people are talking about coach, like
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  you're usually going to be pretty hard work and performance
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  driven. So it's like you're not going to
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  want to just, you know, not do it.
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  When, when, when you're going to be out in front of people in the
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  works kind of show. But you know, then there's a
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  situations where you know, it's really you're the one who knows
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  you're not doing it so that you can talk yourself out of not
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  doing it because nobody else is going to actually know maybe or
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  or see the results of you not doing it.
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  Right. And the same thing like if the
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  same situation with the job interview, you could just not
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  apply to the job like that's that you could consider that
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  avoidance for sure. Yeah, no, that makes sense.
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  Now you mentioned like the stories we create in our mind
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  and and that one example in the beginning when you talked about,
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  OK, that cut comes up and like is congratulator thanking you
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  for like helping them and and doing this great work.
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  And you can either go one way of like how you accept that, Like
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  what are the stories that we create in our head that makes us
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  view that negatively? Like like that, we do have that
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  imposter tension And look, we weren't responsible for that
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  work and and we're scared that they're going to find us out
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  that we actually weren't beneficial to that.
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  Yeah. I mean, some of that is just
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  it's it's a whole lot easier to deflect on to something else,
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  right? Like, yeah, so anything
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  interesting because it's like we tend to be hyper humble, right?
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  Like that's kind of our MO. We're background guys.
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  We stay out of the way. We do our work away from game
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  day. And then game day is about the
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  athletes. So it's easy when a coach comes
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  up and says, Hey, you're doing a great job to be like, don't
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  worry about me because I'm just, I'm just here to show up and
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  then do my job. And, and all the athletes you're
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  putting in the work, you're you're organizing the team.
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  Like it's easy to deflect away. And I do think that our culture
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  is very much kind of encouraging that not to say that being
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  bragging about how great you are is, you know, a super positive
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  thing, but being able to just accept like, yeah, like I, I
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  read all the books, I have all the education, I organize the
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  work. Like, we do a ton behind the
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  scenes, and yeah, it is behind the scenes, but it doesn't mean
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  that it doesn't have a significant impact on whether
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  it's wins and losses, whether our athletes are successful on
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  and off the court. There's a million things we can
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  hang our hat on and it's just a matter of do you choose to do it
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  or not? Yeah, I mean, it really comes
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  like obviously like we don't want to be out there like on
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  social media, like I'm the reason we're winning and like
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  boasting and, and, and having all this pride or everybody like
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  we do need to. There does need to be an
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  internal recognition that, hey, I am skilled at this and I'm
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  doing my job at a high level and recognizing how you're
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  contributing to success and still reflecting how we do
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  better. But I'm kind of that delineation
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  between like, just like pride and ego versus recognizing that
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  I am doing a good job and allowing that to lead to
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  confidence and the ability to continue to do a good job in the
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  future rather than feel that we're faking or people are going
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  to find us out. Yeah, definitely.
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  What like what strategies can people use to one recognize if
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  we are having these types of thoughts or dealing with
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  imposter syndrome and then what strategies to overcome or change
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  the mindset during those times? Yeah.
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  So as far as recognizing it right, like I think imposture
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  syndrome can show up just about anytime, whether it's an acute
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  feeling and a new challenge is coming up, whether it's a new
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  job, new team, even just new freshmen are coming in and now
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  you have to introduce them to what you do and who you are.
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  There's there's always going to be some kind of new challenge.
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  And that doesn't necessarily mean that because the challenge
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  is like a short amount of time that you don't have those
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  feelings, but recognizing that you are deflecting things away,
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  whether it's compliments, whether it's, you know, any
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  successes that you have to be perfectly honest.
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  Like we're we're the only ones that look at our numbers super
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  in depth, right? Like our sport coaches are, are
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  looking at them for sure, but they're not looking at them in
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  the and the depth and the analysis that we do.
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  So really the only ones who can attribute success to ourselves
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  is ourselves, right? Not our coaches, not our admins.
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  You know, obviously our athletes can, can help a little bit there
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  because they're the ones doing the work and they can, they can
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  see what's happening. But as far as, yeah, just
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  recognizing those feelings, like what challenges are around you?
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  How are you talking to yourself? And yeah, like, really, really
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  just those two. Like what challenges are around
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  you and how are you talking to yourself as far as overcoming
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  that? I like the first one, which is
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  kind of like this floaty psychology kind of crap or like
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  is externalizing the negative thoughts I had.
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  I had a coach that I worked with who, you know, for the short
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  version of it. Like you don't take criticism
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  from people you don't believe are doing the right things,
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  right? Like I try to externalize my
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  negative thoughts when it when I get those thoughts, like, hey,
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  you're not doing well, you're not doing good enough, you're
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  unsuccessful. I tried and think about that.
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  That coach is telling me those things.
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  And so I'm not allowing my own voice to say that I'm not good
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  enough. I'm putting it on someone who I
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  don't really, you know, someone who I don't really believe in,
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  right? So when it's him telling me,
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  it's much easier to say like the hell does this guy know?
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  I'm not worried about him. The other part of that is
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  internalizing those positive thoughts, right?
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  Like, so I am good enough. My athletes are getting better.
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  Like this is how much we've improved year over year.
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  Like my athletes are telling me how great they feel.
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  They're all healthy. There's no injuries, you know,
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  attributing those kind of factors to what you do and who
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  you are and externalizing those, those negative thoughts as much
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  as as possible is helpful. Granted, like, you know, we're a
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  very much data-driven and 1 + 1 = 2 kind of group.
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  So like that's not something that everybody's going to latch
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  on to. So the second thing is, is
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  building a Bank of success. I keep all of the things, big or
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  small that I've ever done really well on my phone.
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  So when I do have those negative feelings, I can look back and
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  reflect on like, OK, this is a pretty long list.
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  I must be doing all right. Like remember when I put in that
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  screen door with no issues and I had to drill through my wall to
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  make sure it fit right? Like, like those kind of little
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  things. And then up to, you know, hey,
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  we were regular season champions.
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  We won, you know, this, this indoor track and field
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  championship. We 10 or 12 of my athletes have
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  gone on to play professionally in their sport.
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  It could be tiny, it could be big, but a big thing is just
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  just having that kind of Bank of success.
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  Another piece is, you know, making sure that you accept and
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  believe the compliments that you do get.
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  Are you deflecting them away like we talked about earlier, or
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  are you able to accept them? That's a big piece of it.
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  Like once you start actually accepting, you know what, maybe
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  I do deserve to be thanked once in a while.
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  Maybe that's OK. The last piece I'll talk about
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  is, is just creating boundaries. And this is probably the hardest
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  one, right? Like if you're a guy who leans
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  into overwork and you are programming constantly, you're
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  always in front of the computer. If you're not on the floor,
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  you're always answering your coaches calls at any hour of the
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  night. Like that's that's kind of a
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  hard habit to break. But being able to create those
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  boundaries like, hey coach, it's it's 10 O clock at night.
• 19:17
  I'm going to, I'm going to get you back in the morning, if
• 19:19
  that's all right. Like just trying to create that
• 19:22
  time for yourself kind of allows you to feel more valuable.
• 19:28
  Like if I'm not being chewed up and spit out by everyone around
• 19:32
  me, then OK, maybe I am worth something.
• 19:34
  It's OK for me to demand, you know, talking hours between 6:00
• 19:41
  AM and 6:00 PM. Like, I think that's OK.
• 19:43
  You know, like that kind of thing.
• 19:44
  And then another piece is just like looking at are you people
• 19:50
  pleasing? Are you doing the right things
• 19:53
  for the right reasons? Or are you just agreeing for the
• 19:56
  sake of being agreeable? Like it's it's hard to go to
• 20:01
  your coach and say like, hey, I don't think that we should be
• 20:04
  practicing this long or whatever it might be.
• 20:06
  Like I don't think we need to be doing XY and Z to be successful.
• 20:10
  Or maybe we're doing, you know, we're doing too much over here
• 20:13
  and we need to change this. Like it's hard to.
• 20:16
  Give honest criticism to someone else when you're not willing to
• 20:19
  attribute any value to yourself. If you don't think that your
• 20:22
  opinion is worth anything, it's much harder to stop being a
• 20:26
  people. Pleaser yeah, yeah, you know, of
• 20:29
  those things you talked about that was great.
• 20:30
  Like I really, I really like the the concept of that bag of
• 20:34
  success. I feel like I've heard a doctor
• 20:36
  Michael Gervais runs the finding masterpiece.
• 20:39
  I guess talk about something similar to that.
• 20:40
  And I've, I've got to believe there's also even benefits to it
• 20:43
  of in the moment by just keeping that like actively looking and
• 20:47
  recognizing those moments of success in that one moment.
• 20:50
  Like something happens and you go to add it to that list like
• 20:53
  and and and more consistent, internalizing those successes
• 20:56
  and confidences even just along the way, regardless of going
• 21:00
  back and referring to that list at other times too.
• 21:03
  Yeah, absolutely. Because if you, if you're
• 21:05
  writing something down, you have to acknowledge that you were
• 21:08
  successful. You can't just write something
• 21:10
  and not think that it was good, right?
• 21:13
  Yeah, yeah. No, no, I think that's a great
• 21:15
  one. Now, as you talk about
• 21:16
  boundaries, and we talked about this a little bit before, but do
• 21:19
  you feel like there's a place early in your career, early at a
• 21:22
  new job, where you work with really no boundaries for a
• 21:26
  period of time so that you can then get to a place in life
• 21:30
  where you create greater freedom and greater autonomy and greater
• 21:33
  boundaries that you can then have because of the work that
• 21:37
  you put in before? Yeah, I mean, that's the hard
• 21:40
  part, right? Like when you come into this
• 21:42
  industry, you don't really know what to expect, or at least I
• 21:45
  didn't know what to expect. My first job, I was working like
• 21:49
  7:00 AM to 7:00 PM. Every hour on the hour, a new
• 21:53
  group would come in. And for me, like, it didn't feel
• 21:56
  like I needed to create a boundary just because of how
• 21:59
  much I loved doing it. It was it was so interesting,
• 22:03
  it's so compelling. Everything is just so brand new
• 22:05
  that like there wasn't really a boundary I felt like I needed to
• 22:09
  create. Like granted, I would get home
• 22:11
  and just like pass out from being so tired.
• 22:14
  But I'm I'm fairly certain that every restraint killer starting
• 22:18
  out is kind of in that boat where they're working non-stop.
• 22:22
  And like, I don't know what the the long term solution is, is
• 22:25
  for that. Like I said, our our field is
• 22:28
  getting more and more competitive.
• 22:30
  So that really the only thing you can do is continue to work
• 22:33
  to try and stand out. But once you do have that, have
• 22:37
  that first like real job. I do think it is important to
• 22:40
  set boundaries early on because it's much harder to go from the
• 22:45
  nice guy to the mean guy than it is to go from the mean guy and
• 22:49
  then be a little bit nicer moving on.
• 22:51
  Yeah. And, and even as you talk about
• 22:54
  boundaries too, like I think, or as we talk about the stories
• 22:57
  that we create in our head, I think sometimes when it comes to
• 23:00
  things like this, we create a story in our head that it's like
• 23:03
  people expect us to always be available or always do this,
• 23:07
  this and that. Whereas sometimes when we just
• 23:10
  stop doing some of those things or we communicate, hey, I'm only
• 23:13
  going to do this, this and this or hey, I'm not going to do
• 23:15
  that. The other people are actually
• 23:16
  like, oh, OK, Like, cool. Whatever.
• 23:19
  Yeah. And we create this story in our
• 23:20
  head though, that it's like if, if, if I don't do this, like I'm
• 23:23
  going to get fired or they're going to think I'm not committed
• 23:25
  or I'm not fully into this, invested in this job or, or
• 23:28
  whatever it is like. Well, what's your thoughts on
• 23:30
  that? No, I think that's 100% right.
• 23:33
  Like we always kind of really, really elevate what other people
• 23:37
  expect of us. And I don't think that that's,
• 23:39
  that's the case 95% of the time. Like usually when I, when I have
• 23:44
  like negative news to tell somebody, a coach, whatever,
• 23:49
  I'll usually think about like, OK, what's the, what's the worst
• 23:52
  possible thing that could happen?
• 23:54
  Right? Like, and we, we talked about
• 23:55
  this before, like I could walk in there, tell the coach the bad
• 23:59
  news and he, you know, picks up his chair and throws it at me
• 24:02
  across the room, right? Like, that's probably the worst
• 24:05
  thing that's going to happen. Best case scenario, you know,
• 24:07
  he, he, it comes in, brings me into a Big Bear hug and cuts me
• 24:12
  a check for $1000. Like, don't worry about it, It's
• 24:15
  all good. Yeah, I like.
• 24:16
  So obviously both of those scenarios are not going to
• 24:19
  happen. 90% of our our situations are so extreme and,
• 24:23
  and everything is going to land somewhere in the middle and it's
• 24:26
  going to be relatively normal. So I think, you know, that
• 24:29
  little thought experiment is, is nice and helpful for sure.
• 24:33
  But yeah, it really comes down to just dealing with your
• 24:37
  coaches more and more often, and the more you can speak honestly
• 24:41
  and authentically to yourself, I think the better off you're
• 24:44
  going to be in the long run. Yeah, that's good.
• 24:46
  What role do you feel social media plays in all of this?
• 24:52
  Especially where like we're always when we're on there
• 24:55
  seeing people's highlights and people's successes and that's
• 24:59
  all we see. What does that do in our heads
• 25:02
  as we're just seeing that? Yeah, I think at this point,
• 25:05
  social media has been around long enough for everyone to know
• 25:08
  that it's not good for you, but especially for us.
• 25:11
  Social media is oftentimes where we sell ourselves if we're going
• 25:16
  to output any kind of tangible, tangible data on what we're
• 25:22
  doing. Like social media is where
• 25:24
  people are looking, right? Like there's so many coaches
• 25:27
  that are putting out tons of fantastic content that we can
• 25:30
  learn from, right? But there's also the flip side
• 25:32
  of it where, OK, I'm seeing that Clemson just built another
• 25:38
  weight room, their like 25th white room in the past five
• 25:41
  years. Like, wow, I, I don't have any
• 25:43
  of that. Like I don't have any of that
• 25:45
  technology. I don't have any of those
• 25:46
  resources. Like am I not doing a good job
• 25:49
  because I don't have those things?
• 25:51
  Or like it's, it's easy to get into that rabbit hole where
• 25:54
  you're not, where you don't feel like you're doing enough.
• 25:57
  And then the other piece of it is like, you see these mostly
• 26:01
  private sector guys like inventing new exercises, new
• 26:04
  modalities, all this new information that's really just,
• 26:08
  you know, the pendulum swing back and forth of what what fads
• 26:11
  are in our field. But if we're not crafting the
• 26:15
  newest exercises, like are we missing something?
• 26:18
  Are we doing our athletes A disservice by not, you know,
• 26:21
  diving into all these different guys and all their different
• 26:24
  materials? And so it's, it's definitely
• 26:26
  really easy to fall down a rabbit hole of, so I'm not as
• 26:30
  smart as this guy who's putting out this information.
• 26:32
  I don't have this resource that this powerful school has.
• 26:36
  There's so many different angles that we can look at that's going
• 26:40
  to hurt our own confidence. But same thing.
• 26:44
  The easiest thing is to be present where you are, like, are
• 26:48
  your athletes doing well? Are they happy with you?
• 26:50
  Are your coaches happy with you? Are you happy with you?
• 26:53
  And really just trying to separate as much as you can from
• 26:56
  like, like you said, those, those highlight reels because
• 26:59
  everyone has their problems no matter where you are.
• 27:02
  Yeah. For sure, and like, how do you
• 27:04
  think we can separate that? You're saying like how can but
• 27:08
  like with social media are benefits, right of connection of
• 27:10
  of learning? Like, you know, I've, you know,
• 27:13
  gotten a ton from it, but then half the time I almost convinced
• 27:17
  myself just delete it all because of how of the negatives
• 27:20
  of it. So how do you think we can get
• 27:23
  those positives without with minimizing the negatives and the
• 27:26
  downside as much as possible? Yeah, I mean, I reached out to
• 27:30
  you on social media and here we are.
• 27:32
  So that's pretty good. But yeah, yeah, I think the the
• 27:35
  biggest thing is, is being objective as much as possible
• 27:39
  with what you see, right? Like we we know that this is a
• 27:41
  highlight reel. We know that this is not what
• 27:44
  every day looks like, right? Like these coaches who are, you
• 27:48
  know, holding up the national championship trophies with
• 27:51
  confetti falling, right? Like that's not their
• 27:52
  day-to-day. I'm sure there's something that
• 27:55
  just annoys them to no end, even though they're at that kind of a
• 27:59
  school. So, yeah, just just trying to be
• 28:01
  objective in that and and really curating your feet as much as
• 28:06
  you can. You know, it's, it's not easy,
• 28:10
  but OK, maybe this person, I don't, I block this person, I
• 28:14
  hide their posts from. It's just really about curating
• 28:18
  as much as you can. And for me, I have a one hour
• 28:22
  screen time limit on social media apps.
• 28:24
  I don't think after an hour I'm getting a whole ton of benefit
• 28:29
  hanging out on Instagram. Yeah, Yeah.
• 28:31
  That's great for, for you personally, like as you've got
• 28:35
  through this journey of writing the book, learning about this
• 28:38
  and teaching and communicating it to others.
• 28:41
  Like how has that impacted you personally?
• 28:43
  And whether like in the day-to-day of, of how you you
• 28:46
  operate in your schedule or the, the thoughts you have in your
• 28:49
  head? Like, is this something that you
• 28:50
  still deal with but are able to now counteract or or or change
• 28:55
  your mindset or stories in a different way than you used to
• 28:59
  when you dealt with it? So for me, I got my master's
• 29:03
  degree in positive coaching and athletic leadership from a zoo.
• 29:07
  Super great program, highly recommend.
• 29:09
  I didn't want to double down and exercise science.
• 29:12
  I felt like taking the classes. No, no offense to to anybody who
• 29:16
  does that, but I just didn't feel like taking the same
• 29:18
  classes again. I thought I could broaden my
• 29:20
  reach a little bit by doing something else.
• 29:22
  The real reason I took this program was because just just
• 29:28
  talking to my athletes and how, how they would tell me what they
• 29:32
  were going through. And then hearing stories from,
• 29:37
  you know, the longer I've been in the game, the more stories I
• 29:39
  hear from coaches and the more similar they sound like of how
• 29:42
  hard they've worked to get to where they are and how they
• 29:45
  never feel like it's enough for really just stories from
• 29:48
  athletes, stories from coaches. That's kind of how I leaned into
• 29:52
  this, leaned into more of the mental game.
• 29:55
  And I, I definitely still deal with it for sure.
• 29:59
  And I think that talking about it as much as possible takes
• 30:03
  away the stigma of it. We talked about, or I'm sure
• 30:05
  you've seen like the Hidden Opponent by Victoria Garrick
• 30:08
  where she's, you know, really trying to, to reduce the stigma
• 30:11
  of or to improve awareness of mental health and reduce the
• 30:15
  stigma of seeking help for it. I think that that should
• 30:18
  definitely apply to the other side, not just athletes, but for
• 30:21
  coaches, like we're, we're in the same boat.
• 30:23
  We're working in college athletics where life is hard.
• 30:26
  Winning and losing can depend and losing can determine whether
• 30:29
  or not you have food on the table.
• 30:31
  Competition is crazy hard and it's only getting worse.
• 30:34
  It's it's super easy to fall into an imposter syndrome kind
• 30:39
  of that feedback loop. So that's kind of my angle.
• 30:43
  Like the more I can talk about it, the more I can bring it up
• 30:46
  with more and more coaches and kind of bring light to this
• 30:50
  issue I think will be beneficial in the long run.
• 30:52
  And especially on the coaching side, we are so isolated and
• 30:57
  less you're doing a significant amount of outreach.
• 31:00
  More often than not, we are the only person who does our job at
• 31:05
  our school. And if we're not, so if you're
• 31:07
  in a big school, maybe you're in different buildings, you never
• 31:09
  see anybody else. And if you're in a small school,
• 31:12
  you're probably, like I said, the only person who does it.
• 31:14
  So it's not easy to have these conversations with someone,
• 31:19
  right? Like it's, it's hard to compare
• 31:21
  notes about how you're feeling when no one else is going
• 31:24
  through what you're going through And you know, any kind
• 31:27
  of like radius. Yeah, you mentioned some of
• 31:30
  those conversations with athletes and and how that pushed
• 31:33
  you kind of to that degree and our role as coaches.
• 31:38
  How can we proactively help our athletes with imposter syndrome,
• 31:42
  especially like as we talk about it often showing up in
• 31:45
  transitions? I feel like with athletes,
• 31:47
  especially if it's like, OK, high school athlete, best person
• 31:51
  on your team, probably one of the best in your areas.
• 31:54
  Now I'm going as a freshman to college and I'm now the worst on
• 31:58
  the team and, and dealing with all this.
• 32:01
  Like how can we help them in that transition and in their
• 32:04
  mindset and in their mental game there?
• 32:07
  Yeah, so for me, like I'm working at Ivy League school, so
• 32:11
  there's pressure everywhere, right?
• 32:13
  So it's academics from their family, from their social life,
• 32:16
  obviously from their sport, like they're getting hit from all
• 32:18
  directions. So it's definitely super
• 32:21
  overwhelming in these transition phases.
• 32:23
  Like, what are you talking about with freshmen?
• 32:24
  Like more often than not, this is the first time these kids
• 32:28
  have been on their own, living on their own, having to make all
• 32:31
  of the decisions about their life.
• 32:33
  So it's definitely a very scary time.
• 32:35
  Big thing from us is just making sure that they are aware of all
• 32:39
  their resources, whatever it might be.
• 32:42
  Tutors, sports psychologists, nutritionists, Maybe that maybe
• 32:45
  all of those things are just me. That's fine.
• 32:48
  But just trying to get them to a point where they can see like,
• 32:53
  OK, maybe I'm no longer the best guy in this school, but am I
• 32:58
  making incremental improvement, right?
• 33:00
  Like, can we focus on, you know, Carol Dweck focuses on like a
• 33:05
  growth versus a fixed mindset, right?
• 33:06
  How do we keep them from developing that fixed mindset?
• 33:10
  Like, hey, maybe maybe I, I'm coming in and I'm the worst guy
• 33:14
  right now, but that might not be the case tomorrow.
• 33:16
  That might not be the case the next day.
• 33:18
  As long as we're continuously focusing on incremental
• 33:22
  progress, I think we can kind of probably not a fully squash
• 33:26
  imposter syndrome, but we can head it off as much as we can by
• 33:30
  being incremental for. Sure, yeah, sometimes it's like
• 33:34
  if they're viewing a big picture, it's like I've got to
• 33:36
  get from one to 10. It's like that's a that's a huge
• 33:40
  gap. But if it's like, OK, let's just
• 33:42
  like I did a podcast and that'll be out by this time with Kyle
• 33:45
  Sargon, it's like and development that I get them to
• 33:47
  their next dot. It's like we just got to get
• 33:49
  them to the next dot, their next phase of development, rather
• 33:52
  than like, let's get them from A1 all the way.
• 33:54
  And that, that that's daunting, right.
• 33:56
  But let's, if we can break it down to small steps, just and
• 33:59
  narrow that step for them, it's like, OK that that's achievable
• 34:02
  there. Yeah, because, yeah, like I
• 34:04
  remember I had a basketball player where I said, hey, by the
• 34:10
  end of next year, you're going to split squat 300 lbs.
• 34:13
  And at the time he was split squatting maybe like 115.
• 34:18
  But you know, like, you see, like it's a big kid, big frame.
• 34:22
  It's not going to take a ton of effort for him to get those, you
• 34:25
  know, those quick jumps. But for him to hear a three on
• 34:30
  the front end of a number that he was supposed to do, it was
• 34:33
  like mind blowing. But then, you know, over the
• 34:36
  course of that year, we get to the next spring, He's like, all
• 34:39
  right, Dave, all right, you were right.
• 34:41
  You're right. I could do this.
• 34:43
  So yeah, you're right. Like going from one to 10 is is
• 34:45
  really hard. But knowing OK, we got to two,
• 34:49
  OK now from 2 we can get to 3 and just just building little by
• 34:53
  little. Yeah, for sure.
• 34:54
  You know, reading through your book, can you talk about how
• 34:57
  sometimes we need to leave a job that might be really good for
• 35:02
  the sake of growth in our own coaching career and life?
• 35:05
  Yeah, so I'll talk about my own example.
• 35:08
  I was in Lafayette College and I loved being there.
• 35:12
  I was there for five years. I started out as a paid intern.
• 35:16
  I eventually got up to the assistant director of strength
• 35:19
  conditioning and I was working for, you know, two guys, Steve
• 35:22
  Plunkett, the director of Olympic and Brad Potts, the I
• 35:26
  forget what his title now. It's like director of Pete
• 35:28
  Performance. It keeps changing.
• 35:30
  But those two guys are fantastic.
• 35:31
  I love working for them. They were fantastic leaders,
• 35:34
  super knowledgeable. But for me, like I had hit a
• 35:37
  ceiling like it's, it's a small school.
• 35:40
  I wasn't going to get, you know, any revenue sports, anything
• 35:43
  bigger than you know, your golf, tennis, fencing, track,
• 35:48
  etcetera. Like you're kind of like bottom
• 35:51
  of the barrel sports for, for strength initiating.
• 35:55
  You know, my salary was kind of topped out and those two guys,
• 35:59
  those two guys are still there today.
• 36:01
  So if I had waited to maybe move into one of their roles, like
• 36:06
  I'd still be waiting now. So like, yeah, like it was a
• 36:09
  really good job. Really good people love the
• 36:12
  athletes. But if I wanted to continue to
• 36:15
  grow as a coach, if I wanted to start making those those bigger
• 36:19
  picture decisions, I had to look for something else.
• 36:21
  So what led to that decision was really being honest and
• 36:26
  objective with what I want out of my career, out of my
• 36:30
  coaching, what expectations I had for for my own career.
• 36:35
  And then really also getting those kind of questions answered
• 36:39
  about my supervisors. And so of the people around you,
• 36:43
  like, what are their goals? What do they want to do?
• 36:45
  If they are happy where they are, which is fantastic, then
• 36:49
  you're probably not going to climb any further, right?
• 36:53
  Like it's, it's not easy to create a dual director of
• 36:57
  Olympic sports. I don't think I've seen one yet.
• 36:59
  So, you know, if you if you want to climb that ladder, if you
• 37:02
  want to make more decisions about like running a department,
• 37:06
  then yeah, like you'll have to make that move.
• 37:09
  And for me, like I went to an even smaller school with even
• 37:13
  less resources. But because of that, I was able
• 37:16
  to have my hands in a million different areas, right?
• 37:19
  Like, I was able to kind of build a nutrition station.
• 37:22
  I was able to build a weight room.
• 37:24
  I ended up being more of like a liaison with our sports
• 37:28
  psychology program and integrate them into athletics.
• 37:32
  So I for me and what I wanted to do, which was have my hand and
• 37:36
  all those things, make decisions about the department.
• 37:38
  If I wanted to do that stuff, I couldn't stay at this job that
• 37:42
  was good, but not ultimately where I wanted to be.
• 37:46
  Yeah. So for you, OK.
• 37:47
  So you make the decision when you're going to leave, when
• 37:50
  you're deciding on other job opportunities that you're
• 37:52
  looking at, what are the things you're evaluating to find the
• 37:55
  right fit for you? So I'm asking a ton of questions
• 37:59
  for sure. I I want to know about what is
• 38:02
  the culture day-to-day? Who is in charge of me?
• 38:05
  Who's below me? What kind of projects is a
• 38:08
  school running? What have they been working on?
• 38:11
  A lot of times I'll talk about like, okay, where do you as a
• 38:15
  department, as an athletics department, where do you want to
• 38:18
  be in five years? Where have you come from in five
• 38:21
  years? So asking a lot of questions
• 38:23
  about like, how does everything work?
• 38:25
  Does everything work the way that you want it to be?
• 38:28
  Whoever I'm talking to and what has improved over time?
• 38:32
  And I've, I've had schools with, with all sorts of answers that
• 38:36
  have just been all over the place, right?
• 38:37
  Like, oh, we aren't working on anything right now.
• 38:41
  What do you mean you're not working on anything?
• 38:42
  There's there's nothing. You have 20 sports or so you
• 38:46
  have all the staff, you have all these facilities.
• 38:49
  There's nothing you're working on.
• 38:51
  Like not even trying to like paint a a room, like, I don't
• 38:54
  know, reseed a field like there's nothing like seeing that
• 38:58
  kind of that. That's a big red flag for me
• 39:01
  that exposes like we're not trying to grow, we're not trying
• 39:04
  to improve. Like we don't really see
• 39:07
  anything here. And then asking specifically
• 39:10
  about my own position, like what does success look like in this
• 39:14
  role? What have previous people in
• 39:17
  this role done that you've liked?
• 39:19
  What have previous people in this role done that you didn't
• 39:22
  like? What does failure look like?
• 39:23
  How will I be evaluated? There's there's so many
• 39:26
  different questions and so many different possible answers for
• 39:30
  this that you'll have to really decide for yourself what that
• 39:33
  means. I know, like, how will this
• 39:36
  position be evaluated is a super hard question, especially when
• 39:39
  you're going for a head role, because you know, a lot of times
• 39:43
  administrators don't really have a good idea of what we do.
• 39:47
  So if I'm being evaluated on wins and losses, like that's
• 39:50
  kind of a red flag for me. Like I don't, I don't control
• 39:53
  who is being recruited, what kind of playing time, what kind
• 39:56
  of strategies we use. So being evaluated on that is
• 40:01
  not, not something that I would like, which does, you know,
• 40:05
  eliminate some, some big schools for sure.
• 40:10
  But then you also get. You get to know like if you ask
• 40:15
  that what the person talking to you knows about your field.
• 40:19
  If they do have good answers, like, hey, we want to know what
• 40:23
  kind of KPIs you have, what year over year on average A-Team
• 40:28
  looks like, you know, like there could be, they could give you a
• 40:30
  lot more details than you'd expect.
• 40:33
  And that's I would consider that a a good sign, But then a big
• 40:37
  one is just like following your gut.
• 40:39
  Like if something kind of rubs you the wrong way during an
• 40:42
  interview, whether it's on Zoom or on campus, it's probably
• 40:46
  gonna rub you the wrong way the entire time that you're there.
• 40:49
  So I remember this one interview I went on the the weight room
• 40:54
  was right next to the athletic director's office and while I
• 40:58
  was getting a tour of the weight room, the athletic director came
• 41:02
  in and was like, hey, you got to cut the music off.
• 41:04
  I have a meeting in 5 minutes. I'm just like, you know what,
• 41:07
  that's going to annoy me every day.
• 41:09
  So I don't know. That wasn't that honestly wasn't
• 41:11
  the deciding factor, but it sure didn't help.
• 41:14
  Yeah, no, I mean, if you're on an interview like they're
• 41:16
  usually going to be, if they really want you to be there,
• 41:18
  they're going to put their best foot forward.
• 41:20
  So if there's already things that are bothering you, you can
• 41:22
  probably amplify that by about 10 times when you actually get
• 41:26
  there and get into the day-to-day of it. 100%, yeah.
• 41:29
  And if they're rolling out the red carpet, like, great, good
• 41:32
  for you. Yeah.
• 41:33
  Let me know what that's like. Yeah.
• 41:37
  You talk about in the book when you were furloughed during COVID
• 41:40
  in your position and you weren't even like allowed to contact
• 41:43
  other staff during that time away when you were away from the
• 41:46
  job and and the the heckness of it and working with the athletes
• 41:50
  and other staff, Like how in what ways did that positively
• 41:53
  impact you for when you did return to actually coaching and
• 41:56
  getting back into college athletics?
• 41:58
  Yeah, so. Yeah, being at FDU, it was
• 42:02
  definitely hard, right? Like I was the only paid
• 42:05
  strength conditioning coach I had G as with me, I eventually
• 42:09
  got 5, but at the time I think I had two maybe.
• 42:13
  So as far as it being a positive impact, like I had to be super
• 42:18
  creative in a very short amount of time.
• 42:20
  And so I took a bunch of stuff home before everything got
• 42:25
  officially shut down. Like I loaded up my Rav 4.
• 42:28
  It was, it was sitting real low on the suspension just because
• 42:31
  of like plates, bars, everything I could, everything I could fit
• 42:34
  in bed in the back of there I took home.
• 42:36
  And that's when I like built a YouTube channel.
• 42:40
  Not interesting to watch, just a library of exercises.
• 42:43
  But creating all of that, all of those exercises like, OK, what
• 42:48
  do people have at home? And how can I keep athletes
• 42:52
  moderately trained and like interested and, and still
• 42:57
  moving, You know, because like, you have no idea what each kid
• 43:01
  is dealing with, you know, like being locked down.
• 43:04
  You don't know how their families affected.
• 43:06
  You don't know anything. So more often than not, I try
• 43:09
  and keep some level of normalcy going so that for like 45
• 43:14
  minutes they don't have to think about the world that is
• 43:17
  collapsing around them, right. So being super creative with
• 43:20
  that was definitely a positive. But then coming back, coming
• 43:26
  back to school was was definitely hard.
• 43:29
  Our parameters were one athlete per 10 foot square.
• 43:34
  We had one dumbbell, 1 dumbbell per kid and then like a small
• 43:39
  set of bands per kid. So it was basically the same as
• 43:42
  a them being at home. Sorry, super, super dry.
• 43:46
  I don't really talk this long. But yeah, coming back was, was
• 43:50
  was pretty difficult because we had, I said 10 foot square on
• 43:55
  dumbbell couple bands and I was churning out like 10 athletes at
• 44:00
  a time every hour for, you know, the same kind of like 6 to 6
• 44:06
  scenario. So like athletes were not doing
• 44:09
  a ton of different exercises. I would hardly call it sports
• 44:12
  specific. We were just kind of doing some
• 44:14
  stuff, right, like just trying to stay entertained as much as
• 44:17
  we can. But yeah, like just, I think
• 44:19
  that's where that's where like my creativity really flourished.
• 44:23
  And that's where like, again, like it started at Lafayette,
• 44:27
  kind of pushing that mental side, but really focusing down
• 44:32
  at FDU on keeping everybody motivated, keeping everybody in
• 44:36
  a, in that growth mindset. Like, hey, we can, we can still
• 44:39
  do something, right? Like keeping everybody moving
• 44:41
  forward is definitely something that I spent a lot of time and
• 44:45
  effort on during COVID. Yeah, man, I'm, I'm glad I was
• 44:49
  in Texas during that time because I know, I know it was
• 44:52
  still crazy, but we definitely were a little less strict than
• 44:55
  that with the rules we had to do.
• 44:59
  You know, Dave, what's what's been the most gratifying moment
• 45:02
  of your career so far? That's that's tough.
• 45:06
  I mean, there's it's the same one with this kind of question
• 45:10
  that jumps out to me like over and over again.
• 45:14
  I had a girl after you, women's soccer player terror ACL want to
• 45:20
  say like somewhere either in January of I don't remember what
• 45:25
  year, but somewhere in January, it's like super early winter.
• 45:28
  And we were able to like she, she worked so hard, like just
• 45:32
  non-stop every day she would come in like, what can I do?
• 45:36
  How can I, how can I get better? How can I get closer to, to, to
• 45:39
  being ready to play? And she trains with me
• 45:43
  one-on-one like four days a week from, you know, the second she
• 45:48
  was weight bearing all the way through towards the end of all
• 45:52
  the way towards like middle end of the season right before
• 45:55
  playoffs. And she was able to to play
• 45:57
  again that season and she was able to kick a game winner.
• 46:01
  So definitely, definitely gratifying there to get to get
• 46:05
  her to that point. And I'm going to disregard my
• 46:08
  own advice and deflect because she's the one that put in all
• 46:12
  that work. And I was just along for the
• 46:15
  ride. And that was really cool to see.
• 46:18
  Yeah, you know, yeah, it, it is cool to see like I know I've
• 46:21
  experienced situation like that too before and it's like the
• 46:24
  most like painful moments like like when they get that injury,
• 46:27
  like that ACL, it's like it's just, it's so hard.
• 46:30
  Definitely. I know for me, like I I take
• 46:33
  those injuries so personally and you know, you think about what
• 46:35
  you could have been differently and, and all those thoughts in
• 46:37
  your head and just the feeling, the heartbreak you have for that
• 46:41
  athlete. But then it it does make those
• 46:44
  moments when after months and months of work that nobody gets
• 46:48
  to see and a very non linear path to get back where it's
• 46:53
  definitely not always smooth getting back.
• 46:55
  When they finally do get back to those moments, they can go do
• 46:58
  the things that they love and be in the environment that they
• 47:01
  love and have had to be away from so, so long and then get to
• 47:05
  be so successful. And that is it's it's it's just
• 47:07
  always so cool to see those moments.
• 47:09
  And yeah, yeah, for me to, those moments are so gratifying.
• 47:12
  That's that's what's so great and so amazing about college
• 47:16
  sports. I will see what the NIL stuff
• 47:18
  comes down the line that's going to change things.
• 47:20
  But just having athletes who are so excited about what they do,
• 47:25
  their dreams are so big and being a part of their journey is
• 47:29
  so gratifying 100%. Yeah, Yeah, that's great.
• 47:33
  You know, only in the last three questions, kind of three
• 47:36
  questions I asked a lot of the guests.
• 47:38
  The first one for you is like like this podcast strengthen
• 47:41
  numbers and names kind of from the book I wrote a theme of that
• 47:45
  and really the theme of like mentorship and coaches impacting
• 47:49
  coaches for you and your career journey, like who are who are
• 47:53
  some of the people or the situations that have impacted
• 47:55
  you the most in that journey? Yeah, so definitely so same to
• 48:00
  you guys at Lafayette College. They gave me my start and
• 48:05
  really, like allowed me not only to, to coach for the first time
• 48:10
  and get paid for it, but to allow me to try whatever I
• 48:14
  wanted to like, whatever I could tinker with.
• 48:16
  Like they weren't like, OK, you're, you're on our staff.
• 48:19
  This is how you do everything. They asked me about their
• 48:23
  programs just as much as I asked them about mine.
• 48:27
  So it was a very collaborative space, which was definitely
• 48:30
  something I needed because I didn't know anything.
• 48:32
  The more I could collaborate, the better.
• 48:34
  So definitely Steve Punkett and BET Brad Potts and then Spencer
• 48:38
  Brown, who I had actually interned with a very long time
• 48:42
  ago. He's the Rutgers football
• 48:44
  strength coach now, but when I met him, he was the Moravian
• 48:48
  head strength coach, Tiny little D3 in eastern PA.
• 48:53
  And I had contacted him. I had I'd only had been an
• 48:57
  intern at Princeton at the time. I had just been contacting as
• 49:01
  many coaches as I could knowing that, OK, he's alone at AD three
• 49:06
  with football and however many other sports.
• 49:09
  Like he's going to want some help for sure.
• 49:12
  I'm definitely getting in this. Lo and behold, he's like, yeah,
• 49:14
  please come in. Somebody has much help as I can
• 49:17
  get. So like same thing.
• 49:18
  Like Spencer was actually the assistant under Brad Potts
• 49:22
  before years before. So they had known each other and
• 49:25
  that was the connection I had to Lafayette.
• 49:28
  But Spencer was the same way, very collaborative, letting me
• 49:32
  try whatever I wanted to, letting me get in front of
• 49:35
  athletes as much as I wanted to and coach as much as I could.
• 49:39
  So really, those guys helped me a ton just by allowing me the
• 49:43
  freedom to try and be whatever I thought was being a good coach.
• 49:48
  Yeah, and definitely corrected me along the way.
• 49:50
  Yeah, no, that's great. When you need, when you realize
• 49:54
  you need to improve a skill set, how do you start to close that
• 49:57
  gap for yourself? For me personally, again, go the
• 50:02
  overwork route and I obsess over it.
• 50:03
  Like there will be. I remember just just reading
• 50:07
  non-stop when I started. I carried the try phasic book
• 50:11
  with me. And if I had five minutes, like
• 50:14
  I was going to get a couple more pages then.
• 50:15
  And then just like I tried so many different programs on
• 50:19
  myself first so I knew how everything felt and how how I
• 50:24
  responded to it. So it was easy to then transfer
• 50:27
  it over to athletes. But yeah, a little bit of a
• 50:30
  tangent, but really just just obsessing over whatever skill as
• 50:35
  much as I can is is typically what I do.
• 50:38
  Trying to think of more recently, like now that I have a
• 50:41
  bit more free time, like I dove into wildlife photography and I
• 50:46
  spent a few years just on that and now I know my camera inside
• 50:52
  and out. I know editing software inside
• 50:54
  and out. I actually had a four month long
• 50:57
  gallery of my work being displayed.
• 51:00
  And then let's see what else. Like I recently started playing
• 51:04
  basketball and same thing. Like I'm, I'm watching
• 51:07
  breakdowns of NBA teams and how they play and I'm taking that to
• 51:12
  the Y, you know, like same kind of overworked kind of stuff.
• 51:16
  But like I do, I obsess over whatever, whatever little thing
• 51:21
  has sparked my interest, and then I master it, and then I
• 51:24
  find some other new skill. Yeah.
• 51:27
  No, that, no, that's really cool.
• 51:29
  I mean, I think yeah, like the the process of striving towards
• 51:32
  mastery or just learning new things is such an enjoyable
• 51:36
  thing, at least for me. Like especially when you get
• 51:38
  into something new and you're just fully immersing yourself
• 51:42
  and doing and like it's in your thoughts.
• 51:44
  When you're not doing that, you're just thinking about it
• 51:46
  and it's just something new and then not something you've been
• 51:49
  doing like your whole life. Life, I think that's just so
• 51:51
  much fun and and and so much it's an engagement and joy in
• 51:54
  that yeah, it's a ton of fun and it keeps that beginner mindset
• 51:58
  fresh for sure. I don't want I ever want to come
• 52:02
  up to my freshman and say, why don't you know how to do XY and
• 52:06
  Z? Yeah, I need to remember what
• 52:09
  it's like to not know anything for sure.
• 52:12
  So attacking a new skill every year or to every year?
• 52:17
  Yeah, no, I think it's, it is really easy like as a coach to
• 52:21
  forget what it feels like to be coached because we're always
• 52:24
  just telling what to do whatever.
• 52:26
  Like like there's a few times like I've over the past years
• 52:30
  gone and done like Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and it's like something to
• 52:32
  play new and getting coached. And you're right.
• 52:34
  Like it, it, it puts you back in that, that perspective in that
• 52:37
  situation of doing something new you haven't done and, and what
• 52:40
  that feels like and what it feels like to see coaching and,
• 52:44
  and get feedback there. I think, I think doing things
• 52:48
  like that is so valuable for when we go back to actually
• 52:50
  coaching to, to seeing the perspective of those other
• 52:53
  people where they might have been a basketball player their
• 52:55
  whole life and super good at that.
• 52:56
  But maybe this is literally the first year they've stepped in a
• 52:59
  weight room. And sometimes we take for
• 53:01
  granted that they're going to know certain things or be able
• 53:04
  to do certain things, but it's like, let's, let's, let's step
• 53:07
  into their shoes and, and really think about what they actually,
• 53:10
  actually understand and, and, and not take that for granted.
• 53:12
  100% And it's, it's even better if the thing that you're trying
• 53:18
  to learn is the sport that you coach like because I've, I've
• 53:22
  gotten a few individual workouts from our basketball coaches and
• 53:26
  not only do they enjoy putting me through the wringer, it's the
• 53:30
  athletes love it. Like they go in the nuts.
• 53:32
  They see me on the court trying to practice the moves that they
• 53:35
  do, and they think it's so much fun to see that, and they see
• 53:40
  that I'm investing in what they do, which then helps me program
• 53:44
  them even better. Sure.
• 53:46
  Yeah, Because then it's like, you know, right, obviously
• 53:49
  you're probably not going to be as good as they are in that
• 53:52
  realm. And you're, you know, you're
• 53:55
  being vulnerable and putting yourself in spots where you're
• 53:56
  going to fail. You might look silly or not look
• 53:59
  near as good as them. So it's like it helps create a
• 54:02
  vulnerability that they can then step into your realm and not
• 54:06
  feel like they have to avoid failure in front of you, in
• 54:09
  front of the other people there and you kind of creating a
• 54:12
  example of that for them. Or percent.
• 54:15
  And there's there's even been times where I've made mistakes
• 54:19
  in explaining something or the the example that comes to mind.
• 54:23
  I was conditioning women's soccer, same thing.
• 54:26
  And I had given them a time for their, I forget what it was for
• 54:29
  their just like out to half field and back.
• 54:32
  That just didn't make any sense, right?
• 54:34
  Like I blew, I said the time I blew the whistle, they tried to
• 54:37
  do it. It didn't work at all.
• 54:40
  I'm like, hold on, hold on. I did that math wrong.
• 54:41
  Let me start over. And like it's easy to say we're
• 54:44
  the we're the coach. We're supposed to know
• 54:46
  everything. We're not supposed to get
• 54:47
  anything wrong. And like, if I kept that mindset
• 54:49
  and just tried to whip them through that drill that was just
• 54:53
  not possible, then I would have looked Dumber than if I had just
• 54:57
  corrected it in the spot, right? Like, yeah, I was like, hold on,
• 54:59
  I messed this up, let me reset it.
• 55:01
  We're going to do it this way instead.
• 55:03
  And then we moved on, right? Like it's much easier to admit
• 55:06
  fault and be a human and then gain buy in from that than it is
• 55:11
  to pretend that we are just like this infallible perfect human
• 55:15
  being. Yeah, for sure.
• 55:17
  No, that's great. The last question I got for you.
• 55:19
  So what have I not asked you about today?
• 55:21
  That's really important we talk about.
• 55:23
  That's a, I mean, the only thing, and this isn't even
• 55:26
  something that maybe we talked about, but it's something that
• 55:29
  you talked about on on your podcast.
• 55:31
  Like I think, I think leadership development is such an
• 55:34
  underserved area of our field. We get wrapped up so much in X's
• 55:39
  and O's, get the data points up, making sure we're our load
• 55:43
  management is perfect, all of that stuff.
• 55:45
  But it doesn't really matter if we're not developing our kids
• 55:49
  mentally, whether that's through dealing with their their mental
• 55:53
  health and imposter syndrome, something like that, or just
• 55:55
  developing them as leaders so that they can be effective
• 55:59
  without us. You know, like, I think, I think
• 56:02
  the ultimate goal that I have is to not be needed anymore.
• 56:07
  I want my seniors to graduate. I want them to be fully equipped
• 56:10
  and not have to call me about, you know, Y&Z programming.
• 56:15
  I would love for them to call me, but I would love for them to
• 56:18
  also be equipped fully out in the world.
• 56:21
  I think leadership development, developing the athlete as a
• 56:24
  whole human being is something that should be talked about.
• 56:28
  And I do think that's something that that your podcast is, is
• 56:31
  attacking and that's, that's awesome for sure.
• 56:33
  Well, I really appreciate that and definitely, you know, I
• 56:36
  can't agree more in the importance of that.
• 56:38
  You know, this has been great. Dave, where can people, you
• 56:41
  know, if, if they want to go check out your book or, or check
• 56:44
  out kind of more of the stuff you're talking about, where,
• 56:46
  where could they go to look at that?
• 56:48
  Yeah. Send me a message on Instagram
• 56:51
  at Dave C Downey. All of the links are are
• 56:54
  available through there. If you do want to check out the
• 56:56
  book, it's listed on there. If you want to see my photos for
• 56:59
  wildlife, you can see that too. My Instagram is definitely not
• 57:02
  curated like a super super like super nice coaches like all all
• 57:08
  like nice blocks of athletes. It's my personal life.
• 57:11
  It's all tandem. There's athletes on there.
• 57:13
  It's it's, it's crazy. So, but if you do want to reach
• 57:16
  out, that's that's probably the the quickest and easiest way to
• 57:19
  to get today. Awesome, Dave.
• 57:20
  Well, well, again, I appreciate you being on there and
• 57:23
  appreciate the work you're doing trying to impact both your
• 57:25
  athletes and coaches and just the the mental aspect for
• 57:27
  everybody. Thank you.
• 57:28
  Really, really happy to be on here.
• 57:30
  Like I said, this is this is a great podcast and looking
• 57:33
  forward to to seeing where it goes.
• 57:35
  I appreciate that.