Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #351: Fireside chat with HoF Coach Randy Huntington Part 2 | Big Rocks, Coaching the Coach & the Long View of Track & Field

Transcript

#351: Fireside chat with HoF Coach Randy Huntington Part 2 | Big Rocks, Coaching the Coach & the Long View of Track & Field · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

• 0:00
  Hey guys, real quick before we start today's episode, which is
• 0:03
  going to be a banger. You're going to love it.
• 0:05
  Thanks for being here. Wanted to make sure you were
• 0:07
  aware of this pull promo that we're doing.
• 0:09
  This is amazing. We never do this.
• 0:10
  The pacer pull promo January 1 through February 28 by three
• 0:15
  pacer vaulting poles get one free.
• 0:17
  Now of course there's a few stipulations there, so check out
• 0:20
  the website gillathletics.com, but call your preferred gill
• 0:24
  dealer right now and tell them you want to take advantage of
• 0:27
  the buy 3 get one free. It's over into February, no
• 0:30
  more. We're not doing it, but go get
• 0:32
  it right now for your football coach out there who deserves it
• 0:35
  right now. Let's get on with the show.
• 0:38
  You're listening to the Gil Athletics Connections podcast
• 0:41
  with host Mike Cunningham. Track and Field world tuned in
• 0:49
  to our humble servant Mike Cunningham for another
• 0:52
  extraordinary message for Gil Athletics Connections.
• 0:58
  Alright, you're back here hopefully.
• 1:00
  So first, first of all, welcome back.
• 1:01
  I appreciate you guys press and play today on the Guild
• 1:04
  Connections podcast. Quick housekeeping, so you've
• 1:07
  seen the title of Conversation with Randy Huntington Part 2.
• 1:11
  I think each episode actually will kind of live on their own.
• 1:14
  But I would highly recommend go back to Part 1 because I'm sure
• 1:17
  we're going to refer back to some stories from Part 1.
• 1:21
  And if you haven't listened to it, you may feel a little left
• 1:24
  out of the conversation, some of the inside jokes, if you will.
• 1:26
  So if you haven't listened to Part 1, I highly recommend you
• 1:29
  to pause right now. Go back and listen to last
• 1:31
  week's Part 1 if you have listened to Part 1.
• 1:34
  Thank you must have been good because you're back and I
• 1:36
  appreciate that and I had a just a great time.
• 1:39
  We had a great time and we quickly, we need to keep the
• 1:42
  conversation going. And so that's what we're going
• 1:44
  to do today. Randy, welcome back my friend.
• 1:47
  How are you today? Good morning.
• 1:49
  Thank you. Yeah, that's it's good.
• 1:51
  I'm glad that we're extending this it it gives me a chance to
• 1:55
  practice my English. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:59
  Right before we hit record, some of you know, our audio version,
• 2:03
  the podcast is the most popular Ave. for us.
• 2:06
  But we do have these up on YouTube and we do get quite a
• 2:09
  good amount of YouTube viewership.
• 2:11
  So maybe some people saw this and we didn't talk about it, but
• 2:14
  we did before today before we hit record.
• 2:16
  You've got a couple of of little dogs this way.
• 2:18
  I shouldn't say dot little. You got some dogs this too.
• 2:21
  What's what's their names? I do.
• 2:23
  I have Maya and Zoe who are not in here.
• 2:26
  They're outside right at the moment, barking, but that's
• 2:31
  that. And I had another dog named Kaya
• 2:34
  who was wispy for 16 years, but I was gone for so many.
• 2:37
  She actually grew up, lived almost without me.
• 2:40
  Didn't go overseas with. You.
• 2:42
  No, no, no. My I had a my mother and brother
• 2:46
  lived here and and in Idaho and took care of him.
• 2:49
  And how did you, I'm always fascinated with people, how
• 2:51
  people come up with names for their pets.
• 2:53
  How did you come up with those three different names?
• 2:55
  They're they're cool names. I actually quite like them.
• 2:59
  I don't remember how I came up with, well, Kaya was prenamed.
• 3:02
  That's right. So I got her from a kill shelter
• 3:06
  out of Baker, OR I drove over and picked her up in Baker, Zoe,
• 3:12
  just because she she was supposed to be a a boxer mix.
• 3:18
  As it turns out, when I did, I did Adna test on her.
• 3:21
  She's Great Pyrenees. Oh, wow.
• 3:23
  Yeah, Great Pyrenees boxer mix. So she's, you know, but if she
• 3:28
  was sere, she'd be right here standing here looking at us.
• 3:31
  Yeah. She's she's a big girl.
• 3:32
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 3:33
  Tall, lanky. What is she's what a Great
• 3:36
  Pyrenees would look like if you cut the hair all off.
• 3:38
  Right. Got it.
• 3:40
  Only she's black. Yeah, white.
• 3:42
  I'd say more white with grey I think for Pyrenees typically.
• 3:45
  Almost all white. All white, OK.
• 3:47
  All white, they're they're, you know, in Newfoundlands, Great
• 3:51
  Pyrenees, similar, similar looking, same similar size.
• 3:57
  Great Pyrenees are very aloof, but great guard dogs or in
• 4:02
  particular for animals, other animals.
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  So they're very territorial if you wish.
• 4:10
  And the and the third name, I'm, I'm really surprised you don't
• 4:12
  have very specific reasoning. You're a very technical, precise
• 4:16
  person. This feels a little against the
• 4:19
  coaching grain that you're just like, yeah, it's whatever their
• 4:21
  name was. Well, Maya was just a playoff
• 4:24
  Kaya, which was a mistake because then they both looked at
• 4:30
  me because they didn't get M&K, but they did get Aya.
• 4:34
  They got Aya all right. So that was unfortunate.
• 4:37
  Poor Maya grew up wondering who she was.
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  And so I definitely went with a different sound for Zoe.
• 4:45
  My first dog was Choya, which was a Rottweiler, Akita mix.
• 4:51
  Oh, yeah, Yeah. And she was a big girl as well,
• 4:57
  about 120 lbs. Yeah, she was, she was big.
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  But I, I picked her up from the breeder.
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  I was a breeder, but basically a Rottweiler climbed the fence to
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  an Akita, whatever. And as I was, I, I, the, the
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  breeder gave me a paper and on the paper it said Joya de Welch.
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  It was, it's not how you pronounce it, of course, but
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  that's how you spell it. And I said, well, Joya, that's
• 5:26
  kind of a nice name. And then I said Choia.
• 5:29
  And because she was Kakita and this is how stupid I am, I'm
• 5:33
  thinking la Choi chow Mein, which is not Japanese, you know,
• 5:38
  obviously not even Chinese. But I went choya that sounds.
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  Later on, I course found out that there's the choya cactus
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  and and there is a Japanese liqueur, wine liqueur called
• 5:49
  choya. So I inadvertently named her
• 5:54
  after a couple of things. I love that.
• 5:56
  That's cool. And I love that Yeah.
• 5:58
  Not not a I'm a as explained to you earlier, I like dogs.
• 6:03
  I don't like to be the owner of that dog.
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  There's so the responsibility is just too much.
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  But every once in a while I start to crack and then I'm
• 6:11
  reminded of it's it's good to love other people's dogs.
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  Like I'm my neighbor has a big black lab and just love it to
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  death. When we first moved in, the dog,
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  just like they had gotten out and just walked into our house
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  and we're like, well, welcome to the neighborhood.
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  Dogs just walk right in and thank God that it was a nice dog
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  and all that. But I just saw a video this
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  morning. I can't tell you know, we're in
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  an age and stage Randy where every video you have to have a
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  little bit of Oz of doubt that it could be a.
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  Lot, a lot of Oz. This looked real.
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  So I'm going with a 90% that it was real because I was kind of
• 6:46
  talking about vegan dyes, you know, like dye in your clothes,
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  but dye in your, your dog fur. And it said, and because it said
• 6:52
  vegan dyes, that for some reason makes me think it's real.
• 6:55
  But there's all these dogs. Like 1 was dyed like a little
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  tomato. Another one was dyed like a
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  rainbow. Another one was like a lion.
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  It was, it was really kind of cool.
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  And I was like, I literally, I showed the video to my wife and
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  I was like, I don't know, this might be able to get me to get a
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  dog. And thank God my wife is smart.
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  And she was like, no, still no. I was like, OK, good, good,
• 7:12
  good, good. Yeah, but but I still have that.
• 7:15
  Not until your child is ready to take care of it.
• 7:17
  Yeah, I'm not sure they ever are.
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  I've got my kids a freshman in high school and pretty
• 7:22
  responsible kid, but still a freshman in high school.
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  So yeah, I'm not going to trust he will take care of it.
• 7:29
  I've got, we've got 5 Guinea pig.
• 7:30
  We're kind of like the Guinea pig restoration home.
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  Like when people have Guinea pigs and then after a year they
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  don't want them anymore, we just take them in.
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  So I've got, I've got 5, we've had 7.
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  So I think we had a couple pass away and those things are, thank
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  God my daughter loves them, so she takes care of him.
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  But man, they are messy, loud fur everywhere.
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  It's I thought, I thought a Guinea pig was like a little
• 7:57
  hamster essentially. But it's like a small dog is
• 7:59
  what a Guinea pig is. Yeah.
• 8:01
  So I've got. A it's interesting You've got
• 8:03
  all that anechoic foam up there. Yeah, yeah.
• 8:07
  To the side behind, yeah. Yeah, yeah, this.
• 8:10
  So this office, so this is this used to be my office office.
• 8:14
  And then I moved to an office on the other side of the building
• 8:16
  and this sat empty. And as we started, you know, I
• 8:19
  started the podcast without, I've done this several times.
• 8:24
  Luckily it's worked out so far with everything.
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  I just started the podcast without even telling the
• 8:28
  company. I was like, we need it.
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  I'll just start doing it. And literally it was, it was
• 8:32
  right before COVID and then COVID hit.
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  So I was literally doing it at the house because, you know, we
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  had to work from home and stuff and was just recording in my
• 8:37
  closet because that's one of the better places in your house to
• 8:39
  record. And then as we got back into the
• 8:42
  office and the company was like, oh, this is a really great idea.
• 8:44
  How can we support? So we actually turned this, you
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  know, what was an empty office into a studio.
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  So we had, you know, I put up all the foam and all that kind
• 8:51
  of stuff and then we expanded, we hired some more people.
• 8:54
  It was like, what are we going to do, Mike?
• 8:56
  You're the only we we thought more people like we'd do some
• 8:58
  webinars and stuff in here as well.
• 9:00
  And that just didn't turn out. So I just moved in.
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  So now it's my office slash recording studio and everybody
• 9:07
  asked if I was going to keep the the foam up.
• 9:09
  And I was like, yeah, I kind of like the decor.
• 9:10
  So I'm just. Keeping it now and and it helps
• 9:12
  too, just as a tactical thing. How was the sound?
• 9:18
  Are you getting good work? Yes, yes, yes.
• 9:20
  You sound great. Yeah, well, these things.
• 9:22
  Are incredible by the way yeah, what is that they're.
• 9:28
  Hold on a second. They're called Stratus.
• 9:32
  OK. And can you still hear me?
• 9:35
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK.
• 9:36
  They're called Stratus. And I've never, I've never heard
• 9:40
  any earbuds and come anywhere. Close to these things.
• 9:42
  Interesting. They're they've got 3 speakers
• 9:45
  in them. So instead of 1, you got three
• 9:49
  different speakers handling each different component.
• 9:52
  And then obviously, I was just curious about the microphone and
• 9:55
  the microphone looks to be pretty darn good.
• 9:58
  You know, I can tell they're they're pretty good because one
• 10:01
  of the major technical issues we have to get through on the
• 10:05
  podcast is most people don't have any kind of headphones or
• 10:08
  microphone, right? They're just using their laptop
• 10:10
  and and those speakers when you use those speakers, anytime we
• 10:14
  over talk each other, it it's only one way.
• 10:16
  So if you're talking and I go, oh, wait, what did you mean it
• 10:19
  cuts you off? We're here.
• 10:21
  We're able to like we're going to talk at the same time and
• 10:24
  people are able to hear and and I, I don't do any any editing.
• 10:27
  So I don't go back and try to figure those bad.
• 10:29
  I go, hey man, you'll figure it out.
• 10:30
  We're all good. We're all good, Okay?
• 10:33
  No one came here to hear us talk about the podcast.
• 10:35
  Yes. Yeah, yeah, that's background.
• 10:37
  But I I love these. We've lost them already.
• 10:39
  They they've already going on, going on.
• 10:41
  I, I love this aspect because I want people to, you know, my
• 10:45
  goal is for people to feel like you and I at the coffee shop
• 10:48
  having a conversation and they're just lucky enough to be
• 10:50
  able to hear that. And that's what happens when
• 10:51
  this is a great example. And this is the kind of thing,
• 10:54
  this won't get edited out. This will be on on the podcast
• 10:56
  and you know, we'll lose somebody, but they're going to
• 10:59
  miss out on the rest of the gold here.
• 11:00
  So that's the that's their their fault.
• 11:02
  OK, Randy, last yesterday or slash last week for our
• 11:06
  listeners, we were talking so many topics.
• 11:09
  It was amazing. We want to continue the journey.
• 11:11
  I want to pick us up at Michigan State.
• 11:14
  Now there's a lot more. We we've actually passed some
• 11:16
  things and you know you and I's conversation.
• 11:18
  So I will get back to them because you mentioned the word
• 11:20
  Gretzky. I know nothing about hockey, but
• 11:22
  I know that's AI know who Gretzky is.
• 11:24
  So I want to we'll get to those as well.
• 11:26
  Get us up to Michigan State. You, you, you do get a We were
• 11:30
  struggling to get a college job for many, many reasons.
• 11:33
  Now we get a college job. How did that go and what
• 11:35
  happened? You know, I'm, I'm from Michigan
• 11:39
  and so for me, although I'm not an MSU guy, I'm a Michigan guy,
• 11:46
  but but I do like green since I'm an also an Oregon guy.
• 11:49
  So I worked it out. But when in I had originally
• 11:58
  helped tie saving actually get the job at Michigan State first.
• 12:03
  Love him. And so Ty was there, well, not
• 12:10
  not too long. I mean, he came in in September
• 12:13
  and then he left April 1st for a head coaching job down down
• 12:17
  Louisiana. And coach called me said, Hey,
• 12:22
  do you know anybody? And I said, jeez, right now, no,
• 12:26
  I really don't. And I said, I don't know, but
• 12:31
  maybe I'd be interested. And he goes, really?
• 12:33
  And I said, well, I've never been able to get a job, so maybe
• 12:37
  this would be a good start. And it's home and, you know, I'd
• 12:42
  love to come back and help my own state get better.
• 12:46
  So I did. I left AI left a job as a
• 12:50
  manufacturer's Rep in the plumbing industry, which I'd
• 12:53
  taken for two years to try to, to make money, you know, and
• 13:00
  that was right after I left, excuse me, the Olympic training
• 13:02
  center and, you know, went there and Walt Drenth was the cross
• 13:09
  country coach. The, the, the two head coaches
• 13:13
  were minorities at that time. And Long story short, head men's
• 13:20
  coach got relieved of his duties when he got relieved.
• 13:27
  Then the women's head coach got relieved of her duties and the
• 13:30
  associate AD called me in for a meeting and said is there
• 13:34
  anything else you'd like to do? Like damn, I just got here.
• 13:42
  Not it was more than just got there.
• 13:43
  I mean, it was I had a April and then into the next season.
• 13:47
  So it was about 8 months later. But it was fun.
• 13:54
  It was before it got really crazy at the collegiate level,
• 13:57
  which is where it is now. You know, I, I, I had to look at
• 14:03
  that daunting NC 2 a test at the moment I went, you know.
• 14:08
  Really. And and then one person said,
• 14:13
  oh, it's really the easy. So if it benefits the athletes,
• 14:16
  just answer no. It's not probably far from the
• 14:21
  truth. That's a good.
• 14:21
  Point well, as it turns out, at least back then, yeah, back then
• 14:25
  and completely different now back then.
• 14:27
  So I took the test passed it was great and proved my innate
• 14:32
  intelligence because I didn't study for it, right.
• 14:35
  And and I and I actually kind of followed that law and it and it
• 14:38
  worked so. But I did learn, you know,
• 14:42
  learned there's so many roles obviously how you can figure
• 14:46
  them all out. I mean, I really respect those
• 14:49
  compliance officers. Back.
• 14:50
  Oh my goodness. Yeah, they had their hands full,
• 14:52
  you know, full with all the different sports.
• 14:55
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and you know what?
• 14:59
  So I went back there as the throws of all things, as the
• 15:04
  throws and field events, coach the rest of the field events.
• 15:11
  God, who was coaching this? Oh, wait.
• 15:12
  And Daryl was coaching the sprints and so I wasn't involved
• 15:17
  in the sprints at all. We had not a tremendous amount
• 15:21
  of talent. Michigan State had always been a
• 15:23
  good pole vault school, so we had good pole vaulters.
• 15:28
  Ty had recruited some guys, red shirted one.
• 15:32
  They were, I think five of your guys coming out of high school.
• 15:35
  One was 495 somewhere in there. I can't remember Brad Gebauer
• 15:42
  who is now the Rep for Kaiser in the Midwest.
• 15:45
  Yeah, Is that right? Oh, I.
• 15:46
  Didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, Brad was the first
• 15:49
  My, my, my second vaulter there. Really.
• 15:51
  Yeah, that's the first one was a young guy out of who just
• 15:55
  transferred graduate student and he was like I don't know what
• 16:01
  470 vaulter you know and came in and we got him to 52530.
• 16:07
  I think he might have even gone higher.
• 16:09
  Got to remember he made NC 2 as that year.
• 16:11
  Anyways, got there and and broke his pole.
• 16:15
  Jeez. Oh yeah, but he was, he was
• 16:17
  going to be good. Really smart kid, tall, fast,
• 16:22
  and I'm just needed to just learn a little bit.
• 16:25
  Brad had a couple technical flaws, had another kid, Mark,
• 16:30
  who didn't thrive under me, but ended up being Big 10 champion
• 16:35
  the year after after I left. A great athlete.
• 16:39
  Jeez, it was an incredible athlete.
• 16:42
  Now a doctor, I believe. Yeah, it's really amazing.
• 16:46
  You know, triple jumpers, long jumpers.
• 16:50
  And I'll never forget. I walked on to the my my first
• 16:56
  week there. I think we went to Phoenix for
• 16:59
  the ASU meet. What?
• 17:02
  I can't remember what it was called back then that early,
• 17:06
  that early meet and and then the like the third or fourth meet.
• 17:14
  We had some local meets in Michigan and then we had the Big
• 17:16
  10 championships, boom, you know, And I walked in and I had
• 17:21
  my Michigan State gear on and, and I'm walking down and, and
• 17:25
  the coaches, one of the coaches goes, oh, no, you're not at
• 17:28
  Michigan State right here. I said yeah, and I I looked at
• 17:31
  him and said you're going to have to coach now.
• 17:33
  Yeah, right. It's a new sheriff in town.
• 17:36
  Yeah, that's exactly. Well, it was, I mean, it was in
• 17:39
  jest, but it was like, and he was a really good jobs coach.
• 17:43
  But I'll never forget Phil Lundean, who at that time was at
• 17:49
  Minnesota. It's just one of those things
• 17:51
  you don't forget Phil. Phil comes walking up, he goes,
• 17:54
  you know, now we're going to find out if you can actually
• 17:56
  coach because people don't believe you coach.
• 17:59
  I mean, they think it's talent. They think Mike Powell just
• 18:03
  became world record holder because he was Mike Powell and
• 18:06
  Willie, of course, and, and, and the others along the way.
• 18:11
  And I said, yeah, I guess we will.
• 18:13
  To make that story short, the next year we're at the Big 10
• 18:18
  championships, win a number of events.
• 18:21
  And Phil came up, he said, you know you can coach.
• 18:24
  Yes, you showed it. Yeah.
• 18:26
  Yeah, I love that topic, Randy, because you know, one of the
• 18:32
  things that we're seeing and I bet this is, you know, I'm not
• 18:36
  sure I'm a believer that anything is really new, that
• 18:39
  it's just recycled from 20-30 and which was probably recycled
• 18:43
  20-30 years before that, etcetera.
• 18:45
  Just maybe with maybe with just some new layers into it in
• 18:47
  regards to, you know, society, culture, social media, etcetera.
• 18:50
  So today a lot of it because of what's happened with the with
• 18:54
  how the NCAA is changing. So you have these, you know,
• 18:57
  instead of 16 scholarships or 12.6 scholarships or 18
• 19:01
  scholarships that you can cut up however you want.
• 19:03
  So you could have 100 people on your team that could have some
• 19:05
  form of scholarship. Now it's 45 roster cap, SEC has
• 19:10
  35 roster cap. And So what we are hearing from
• 19:14
  on our high school coaching side is that because of that, that
• 19:18
  that's one factor. The other factor is increase in
• 19:22
  international recruiting and how much.
• 19:25
  I guess it's easy because you know.
• 19:27
  It's a pet peeve for me because it's, I mean, I've been
• 19:32
  relatively outspoken about it and I feel as a taxpayer in a
• 19:37
  state, yeah, your kids in the state, come on.
• 19:41
  I get that. And I'm with and I understand
• 19:43
  the coaches. They're like, I got to win.
• 19:45
  That's right, now. And it's within the rules as it
• 19:48
  is today that that's my biggest thing.
• 19:50
  I was like, you don't have to like it.
• 19:51
  You don't. You don't have to like that a
• 19:53
  program decides to be all sprinters that but it's legal.
• 19:58
  But and with international recruiting today 2026, it's
• 20:02
  legal. And if they're 30 years old or.
• 20:05
  At 18 years old, that doesn't matter today, which I was
• 20:08
  surprised again. I haven't coached in 20 years.
• 20:09
  I thought. I thought I remember having an
• 20:11
  age cap on incidability, but maybe?
• 20:13
  That we did as well we did. I thought so, yeah.
• 20:16
  But I don't remember if it was 21 or 24.
• 20:19
  I think it was 24. Yeah, I had. 25 in my head but
• 20:22
  still I remember there being some I thought I'd do anyway but
• 20:25
  now I guess there's because we have 28 year olds are freshmen
• 20:28
  for. That, but I mean, I, you know, I
• 20:31
  just, it's going to kill us in track and field development
• 20:35
  wise. We're going to be in trouble.
• 20:37
  Yeah, we're going to be in trouble.
• 20:39
  The great ones are still going to rise.
• 20:41
  Hopefully they'll rise to be with good coaches, you know,
• 20:46
  and, and, you know, there was one point, you know, man, back
• 20:50
  in the in the 90s where there was 3 coaches responsible for
• 20:54
  all the jumpers in the Olympics. I mean, you know, 3 people and,
• 21:01
  and, and it hasn't changed much. Now there's probably two or
• 21:04
  three, which means that there's either talent not getting
• 21:08
  coached or there's not much talent.
• 21:11
  And it's, it's arriving at the same places all the time, right?
• 21:15
  Yeah. But I, I feel like, you know,
• 21:18
  you look at some schools and I sort of picked on a couple of
• 21:22
  them. One of them that's not too far
• 21:24
  from you that, you know, their roster is 30 percent, 40%
• 21:31
  foreign. And I'm like, I, I, I get it.
• 21:35
  But what about the kid that's, you know, a late developer And
• 21:40
  there's a ton of late developers in the Midwest.
• 21:43
  Absolutely. A whole lot of a whole lot of
• 21:45
  Swiss, Finns, German, Polish kids, you know, historically,
• 21:50
  culturally Slovenian, Czech. I mean, that's kind of the, the,
• 21:55
  in terms of the white kids, that's kind of the base there.
• 22:01
  And, and then of course, your, your great kids, the, the, the
• 22:08
  minority kids that have been around are going to go South if
• 22:11
  they can for weather, unless you can convince them to stay, you
• 22:16
  know, and, and that has been an ongoing battle.
• 22:19
  And of course, Michigan and Wisconsin and Illinois forever
• 22:22
  Ohio. It, it was on the international
• 22:25
  side. I remember someone posted this
• 22:27
  within the last month or so. It was an article, a snippet of
• 22:30
  an article from back in like, I think it might have been
• 22:32
  Dellinger. It was either Dellinger or
• 22:33
  Bowerman. It was one of the, you know, big
• 22:36
  names from back in the day. And the quote from either one of
• 22:40
  the bills was, I mean, you could have put 2026 on it and it would
• 22:45
  have been a quote today. It was, you know, we have too
• 22:46
  many internationals coming in, it's going to hurt development
• 22:49
  of American kids, etcetera, etcetera.
• 22:51
  And this was back in this was 60 years ago for crying aloud.
• 22:54
  And I and I look at the Olympics and go, I don't know that that
• 22:57
  panned out very well that our American distance runners at
• 22:59
  some point. And I believe that things have
• 23:01
  been flow. And you know, our American
• 23:03
  distance runners, which had not had very much international
• 23:05
  success for a while for good and probably even still today have
• 23:08
  AI mean they're we're a whole different distance team on Team
• 23:11
  USA today. It's it's really amazing to
• 23:13
  watch and, you know, kudos to the distance coaches for for
• 23:18
  coaching them up as they have, you know, but there there is, I
• 23:22
  think Peter Thompson did it, but somebody did it some point.
• 23:26
  Peter Peter's been on the podcast before.
• 23:28
  Yeah. Oh, yeah.
• 23:28
  Yeah. Peter was, you know, coaching at
• 23:30
  Oregon when I when I first got there.
• 23:32
  Oh. Yeah, such a good dude.
• 23:34
  Yeah. And just so much knowledge in
• 23:38
  there, but the there was somebody put up.
• 23:44
  How many medals were won in the Olympics by athletes coached in
• 23:48
  the United States? Not at, not.
• 23:52
  American athletes, Yeah. Not American athletes, right?
• 23:55
  Yeah. And it was a big percentage.
• 23:58
  Yeah. Yeah, it was a boatload, right?
• 23:59
  Right, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Overall, better coaching, better
• 24:02
  facilities, the quote UN quote, the American Dream.
• 24:05
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I can see.
• 24:08
  That for sure. Yeah, I mean you get to, if you
• 24:10
  go to a place like Switzerland, you know, which can have some
• 24:13
  talented kids, but they've got 1 semi indoor facility in the
• 24:17
  whole country, right? And of course Germany has a ton,
• 24:20
  I mean a lot of them. Holland doesn't have a lot, but
• 24:23
  they have a few. Now you going to China?
• 24:28
  It's stupid. I mean, it's stupid.
• 24:31
  Like the amount that they have? Oh, it's nuts, really.
• 24:35
  In Beijing alone there's 400 tracks.
• 24:40
  Holy crap, really? In Beijing alone.
• 24:44
  What's the population of Beijing?
• 24:46
  About 20 million. What's our biggest population in
• 24:49
  the States? Like I'm trying to get people.
• 24:52
  It'd be it'd be Southern California, be close to the same
• 24:54
  Southern California. All of Southern California.
• 24:57
  All of Southern California. Do we have 400 tracks in all of
• 25:00
  Southern California? I don't know.
• 25:03
  I mean, you have to look at the high schools.
• 25:04
  Yeah, that's a middle schools. Yeah.
• 25:06
  Yeah. Universities.
• 25:07
  There's not that many universities.
• 25:08
  Right, right, right. But that's just.
• 25:10
  That's just Beijing. Fishing, as big as it is
• 25:15
  population wise, is not big geographically.
• 25:18
  Oh, very dense. It's very dense.
• 25:20
  Yeah. I mean, there's there's second,
• 25:22
  third, fourth ring roads kind of like we have in the in the US
• 25:26
  And, you know, I would ride my bike around the 4th Ring Rd. and
• 25:30
  and that would take me an hour and a half to two hours.
• 25:34
  So, you know, it's it's I could go from north to South in an
• 25:39
  hour. That's, that's, that's, it's
• 25:42
  growing more now, but 400, I mean, just I where I was in
• 25:47
  Nanjing, within a mile there was 16 tracks.
• 25:51
  Oh, OK, that seems like a lot. Yeah, within a mile, that's a
• 25:53
  lot of tracks. So every school so and, and not
• 25:58
  to get off in tangent, which we're doing, but what has
• 26:00
  happened in China? Is it now to get in a good high
• 26:04
  school, but more importantly, to get into a good university, you
• 26:09
  have to pass the physical fitness test?
• 26:12
  Oh. Oh yeah, interesting.
• 26:14
  You have to pass this test. So, so their, their, their
• 26:19
  health stuff is going. The dogs are barking and I don't
• 26:26
  know why. Mike, do you need to check on
• 26:33
  them? Yeah, go check on them.
• 26:35
  It's all good. To check on them, Hold on a
• 26:36
  second I'll. Be right back, mute your mic and
• 26:38
  go go check on them. All good, no problem.
• 26:40
  No problem as he checks on his dogs, we got to make sure we
• 26:47
  take care of our neighbors right with our dog.
• 26:48
  So let's he's going to check on that while he's checking on
• 26:50
  that, where I'm kind of going with this conversation with
• 26:53
  Randy is when he mentioned about, you know, some people
• 26:57
  think that when you work with elite athletes, you're not
• 27:00
  really coaching because they're already talented or, you know,
• 27:02
  the the genetics is already there.
• 27:04
  And I want to draw a parallel to some of our conversations where
• 27:09
  we have had about college coaches don't want to develop
• 27:15
  high school athletes that they only want the ready made
• 27:17
  package. And and you know, I think I've
• 27:21
  talked about this before where, you know, if you coach, let's
• 27:24
  use the men's boys 100 meter dash.
• 27:26
  If you coach an 11500 meter dash kid down to 10 seven, that's
• 27:30
  code, that's development is an amazing job.
• 27:32
  But if you coach 1010 kid down to 10 flat, that is also it's
• 27:35
  development. Obviously the percentage is
• 27:36
  lower, but it gets harder. So that's where I want to go
• 27:38
  with our conversation with Randy.
• 27:40
  OK, Dog's OK. Yeah, I'm back.
• 27:42
  Yeah. OK, good, good figuring it out.
• 27:44
  Perfect. So keep keep going where you
• 27:46
  were going. You're talking about to get into
• 27:48
  these schools, you'll take a physical test there and try.
• 27:50
  Yeah, they have to fitness test. So now all the high schools and
• 27:53
  middle schools all have tracks. And well, that's so cool.
• 27:58
  We need, we need that in America for sure.
• 28:01
  Well, I mean, yeah, look, you got the local high school and
• 28:04
  you can't get on it. You.
• 28:06
  Know you're, you're the gate's locked, you know, and we wonder
• 28:09
  why our kids are getting chubby and, and having trouble with the
• 28:13
  health and, and just the overall fitness of the country, you
• 28:17
  know, and the China's going in the other direction.
• 28:20
  I mean, they have a five year plan, a 10 year plan now it's
• 28:22
  total. But you know, it is too, because
• 28:25
  they're, they were seeing the same issue because first of all,
• 28:28
  computer games are are like a drug and they'll get you in
• 28:31
  there and, and, and then socially, the people just don't
• 28:35
  go out and they don't do social things anymore.
• 28:38
  So that's become a drive. I really like it.
• 28:44
  Some of the tests are a little strange, but, you know, it's
• 28:48
  it's not far from what we had in the president's physical
• 28:53
  fitness, which of course, I won't even speak to that right
• 28:57
  now because it's pretty obvious why it doesn't exist.
• 28:59
  Yeah. But, you know, like going back
• 29:05
  to where we kind of started with this.
• 29:06
  And that is, I mean, I fully understand people want to keep
• 29:10
  their jobs and, you know, recruiting foreign kids, but
• 29:15
  man, good Lord, at least don't let your good kids.
• 29:19
  I mean, you know, I look at someone like Shu Hao, who's the
• 29:24
  843 kid who was a 770 kid, you know, when I started with him
• 29:29
  and and then he he had a a windy up at altitude 830 boom out of
• 29:35
  nowhere, but nothing consistent. But he was a 1078 sprinter.
• 29:41
  You know, who runs 10:15 and 6:52 now?
• 29:46
  Yeah, that's that that's decent coaching, You know, little,
• 29:52
  little Lulu who is a long jumper, you know, 1220 to 1160
• 29:58
  and not even focusing on really making her this problem that she
• 30:02
  got fasting couldn't jump anymore.
• 30:05
  That was that was a problem. But I think that we we can we
• 30:10
  can help these kids. And I what it should do is it
• 30:14
  should open the door up for to Chris Parnos, the Minnesota
• 30:17
  states, the Wisconsin schools, the small Michigan schools, you
• 30:20
  know, Central Michigan, Western Michigan, Western drop their
• 30:23
  men's program. But and we're seeing more people
• 30:26
  drop the men's programs. But and, and track is, you know,
• 30:29
  potentially on the outs and a lot more schools, which means
• 30:34
  that and this is another thing that's happened in China is that
• 30:39
  they've now created track clubs. So in Guangzhou there's over, I
• 30:46
  think there's over 500 track clubs now.
• 30:50
  Holy cow. Yeah, yeah, fitness track clubs,
• 30:54
  Right, right, right. You know, Guangzhou is probably,
• 30:58
  I don't know, 45,000,000 metro area kind of thing.
• 31:04
  It's big, but, and it's also very, very big geographically
• 31:08
  too. But, and, and those numbers
• 31:12
  could be off by a little bit, obviously, but they're building
• 31:14
  all these little gyms for these high school kids so they can get
• 31:18
  fit, you know, and they're, they can, they can pass their test
• 31:23
  because they have, much like we may have D1D2D3, they have that
• 31:28
  academically level 1, level 2, Level 3, level 4 schools.
• 31:34
  You know, your level ones are Xinhua, which is the Harvard of
• 31:38
  of China and, and and and each province has probably one of
• 31:43
  those within it. Maybe not everyone, but so yeah,
• 31:48
  that's it's a very interesting pathway.
• 31:52
  You see us going one way then going another.
• 31:55
  But you also hear, I just feels pretty strongly that OK, you
• 32:01
  have some foreign kids on the team.
• 32:03
  I get it do it, but don't leave the rest of the kids in the
• 32:10
  state out Yeah yeah, I cuz you're the best coaches.
• 32:13
  You know, I, I. Relate to the idea of a state
• 32:20
  school. My taxes are going to pay for
• 32:23
  it. It's I I so even more so not
• 32:25
  just domestic versus international athletes, but even
• 32:28
  in state athletes. And of course, you know, that's
• 32:30
  going to be tougher for University of Wyoming versus
• 32:33
  University of Florida because of the state you're in.
• 32:35
  I I get that. What, what I go back to what one
• 32:40
  of the original statements that you made about, you know, we
• 32:42
  think sometimes on our elite coaches that you're not really
• 32:45
  developing because it's like, oh, they're already good.
• 32:46
  We've already proven that God's given them the genetics you're
• 32:49
  more maintaining or managing. And where I've heard this before
• 32:54
  is because of these caps specifically in our
• 32:57
  international athletes that are coming over.
• 32:59
  I'm hearing this a lot from our high school coaches that power
• 33:02
  for schools specifically don't want to develop athletes
• 33:05
  anymore. They only want the ready made
• 33:07
  product blah blah blah, blah, blah.
• 33:09
  And I completely disagree with that.
• 33:11
  First of all, if I go and transfer portal plays into this
• 33:14
  as well. But when I go and I look at like
• 33:17
  1 of the schools, a lot of schools do a good job.
• 33:20
  But one of the schools that I think does a really good job of
• 33:21
  posting their annual recruiting classes, the University of
• 33:24
  Florida good friend Mouse Holloway, also a Guild podcast
• 33:27
  alum. And, and I love looking at that
• 33:29
  list because first of all, top tier program.
• 33:32
  You know, their, their goal every year is to win the
• 33:34
  national championship, right? So that you so that's what
• 33:37
  they're signing kids for. And I love going through and
• 33:39
  looking at the kids and, and they always have their marks.
• 33:42
  And certainly some of them are just, they're the best of the
• 33:45
  best in America. They're some of the best in the
• 33:46
  best in the world, the the international recruit as well.
• 33:48
  And then they'll be more than one.
• 33:50
  They'll be a a good a good handful of the kids that you see
• 33:54
  their Marks and you're just like really University of Florida,
• 33:58
  like, you know, like this doesn't like I remember a couple
• 34:01
  years ago they signed a couple, a couple like two or three 1040
• 34:05
  ten 5000 meter kits, which you know, and I used to coach in
• 34:08
  that conference that don't you ain't making the semifinals on
• 34:12
  that. You ain't making the four by one
• 34:14
  team. And that happens everywhere.
• 34:16
  USC is signing a kid every once in a while that you'll see.
• 34:18
  And I shouldn't say every once while every year they'll sign a
• 34:20
  kid that you're like, really? I'm surprised that USC would
• 34:23
  sign that. What I push back on is when I
• 34:27
  hear and I always like to use mouse as my example because I'm
• 34:29
  friends with him. So I know he you know, he's he's
• 34:32
  a good person to use as an example that I push back on the
• 34:35
  the notion that a mouse because he's at Florida does not want to
• 34:38
  develop kids that he only once ready made kids.
• 34:41
  I think that is rubbish for a couple of reasons.
• 34:44
  One is I think people dismiss even if if Mouse signed nothing
• 34:49
  but 1010 kids. First of all, 1010 doesn't win
• 34:53
  NCAA's anymore. That used to be a fight.
• 34:55
  You can. I think 1010 hasn't made the
• 34:57
  finals in the 100 in the last few years too, which is
• 34:59
  completely bonkers. But but if you get a 10/10 kid
• 35:03
  and you and your goal is to score at nationals and win at
• 35:06
  nationals, you that kid has to run 98 now.
• 35:10
  Well, 10:10 to 98-A. Long Journey 3.
• 35:13
  Tenths of a second, less than 3/10 of a second.
• 35:15
  That is developing. That is hard by the way.
• 35:20
  Just like having having that conversation with people, it's
• 35:23
  like look 10:10 to 10:00 that's tough, Tough 10/10 to 9/9 that's
• 35:31
  really hard 9/9 to 9/8 that is EI mean that is.
• 35:36
  Who does that? No one does that.
• 35:37
  That's. Right.
• 35:38
  Really, really, really hard to do.
• 35:40
  I mean, and that's where you get people, you know, like Sue.
• 35:43
  Sue was essentially a 10/10, 10:15 guy.
• 35:47
  He had a couple races which he was faster, but to get him, you
• 35:53
  know, from 6:54 to 6:42 in the end, if I could have kept his
• 35:59
  doctor away from him, I think he would have beat.
• 36:00
  Yeah, I think he would have beat Coleman that in that race.
• 36:04
  But unfortunately, his doctor worked on his abductors for 30
• 36:07
  minutes. Like I just shook my head, but
• 36:13
  you don't getting those people that little extra that's that's
• 36:19
  just as hard as bringing someone from 1070 to 10:20.
• 36:22
  Absolutely, which is a good job. You you take a 10/7 to 10 too
• 36:25
  man. You have coached your.
• 36:26
  Tail off. Oh, absolutely.
• 36:28
  You take a 10/20 kid to 10 flat, you have coached your tail off.
• 36:32
  That is absolutely hard. So I push back on this ready
• 36:35
  made product stuff and just certainly you want the best
• 36:38
  athlete and that, by the way, is not always necessarily the time.
• 36:42
  There are other factors when you look at the kid and their their
• 36:45
  past training, etcetera. And that's why I think some of
• 36:47
  these, you know, 10410 five kids at some of Florida, I'm sure Mal
• 36:49
  saw the training was like, oh God, they're training like
• 36:52
  milers, not 100m guys. Get me, get them in my system
• 36:54
  and we'll be 1010 pretty quickly or we got a good high percentage
• 36:58
  that will anyway. Well, I think what you're
• 37:00
  getting at, Mike, is that every single event, regardless of what
• 37:03
  words you use, every single event is a tactical event.
• 37:08
  Every event is, it's not just field event, technical events.
• 37:12
  You're 10,000, the average, your marathon, you're 5, everything.
• 37:15
  It's other all technical events and you need to approach them
• 37:19
  all in that way. So yeah, you're going to be able
• 37:25
  to. I think the where I drop off on
• 37:26
  this conversation a little bit is the percentage of the amount
• 37:32
  of it's like, OK, when you got close to half your team is
• 37:36
  foreign. I'm, I'm getting a little
• 37:38
  suspect about what you're, what you're trying to do.
• 37:42
  And mostly because I got the kid down the street, you know who's
• 37:45
  running 1065, but you can see he's got the stride frequency
• 37:50
  and he just doesn't have the stride length yet.
• 37:53
  That very strong. I mean, you can see this stuff.
• 37:55
  You can see why they don't run faster.
• 37:59
  And certainly some coaches have built their career on, I don't
• 38:03
  need to see the results, the times let me see the kid and I
• 38:07
  can tell you if I want to work with him or not because of the
• 38:09
  potential, because there are other physical attributes,
• 38:12
  again, training background that absolutely play into the
• 38:16
  likelihood or less likelihood of them being more successful in
• 38:19
  the future. You never know out here, yeah,
• 38:21
  out here in Idaho, I mean, if you're recruiting in Idaho, it
• 38:25
  looks miserable. There's been some great athletes
• 38:27
  that I had. I don't know, but we have to
• 38:30
  understand that the state meet is the second weekend in May.
• 38:34
  Now there's a lot of years where we just got the snow off the
• 38:36
  track two weeks before or three weeks before.
• 38:39
  These kids don't have a chance at developing into, you know, if
• 38:44
  they'd move that state meet three weeks later, you know, to
• 38:47
  the like the California, Oregon, that that Memorial Day or the
• 38:50
  next week. That's an extra 3 or 4 weeks of
• 38:53
  of hot weather, you know, not even hot really here.
• 38:56
  But so there's states like that, yeah, that many people don't get
• 39:00
  a chance to develop. And you get to go around and you
• 39:03
  get to see all this and you. And I have a lot of empathy for
• 39:08
  our college coaches. I, I think if they had nothing
• 39:12
  else to do, sure, they could do more evaluation for development,
• 39:16
  but they are also in charge of the first of all their own team.
• 39:19
  We've made it to where, you know, in today's culture for
• 39:22
  high level college track and field, you know, a team is
• 39:24
  splitting up to five different meets on a weekend.
• 39:27
  Slight exaggeration, but not far off.
• 39:29
  Not necessarily. Yeah.
• 39:30
  They're also responsible for academics and nili mean.
• 39:34
  It's just, you know, I still think about just, you know, what
• 39:38
  a coach does and how many hats they're required to, to wear and
• 39:42
  they shouldn't be wearing some of those hats.
• 39:44
  We have other professionals that should be doing more of that.
• 39:47
  Like to me, it's kind of crazy that a coach gets a bonus for
• 39:50
  their team GPA. Like, and I know, you know,
• 39:52
  we're students first. I get all that, but it's like,
• 39:54
  you ain't responsible for that, buddy.
• 39:56
  You were not hired to keep the GPA up.
• 39:58
  You were hired to, to, to win or whatever.
• 40:00
  You know, the athletic side, there's an academic advisor
• 40:03
  that. Person the study center that
• 40:06
  should. Be bonused.
• 40:07
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. All those tutors, I mean, think
• 40:11
  about how much help they need and they get, you know, But
• 40:16
  yeah, I mean, not to get too far off subject and all this, but it
• 40:20
  is it it, I do think that it's hurting the depth of the, the,
• 40:26
  the, the, the base of the pyramid.
• 40:28
  Sure, sure, sure. It mean, I mean, you know,
• 40:30
  people say, yeah, but the great ones are going to still rise.
• 40:32
  And you're right. But you know, why do we not have
• 40:35
  more long jumpers and triple jumpers?
• 40:37
  Yeah. I'm with you on that because I
• 40:39
  think I even tend to say because my argument would be, well, look
• 40:43
  at the high school kids they're running.
• 40:45
  I always use the 100 meter dash as an example, but through all
• 40:47
  events, we're running faster from the mile to the 100 or
• 40:52
  faster than we ever had and more people.
• 40:54
  And I'd say the same thing in the in the college.
• 40:55
  I go look at the college where again, 1010 doesn't even make
• 40:58
  the finals and things like that for Division One.
• 41:00
  Heck, a Division Three kid ran sub 10 for crying out loud these
• 41:03
  past couple of years. But what we what and I say we
• 41:07
  and me and you know, there's others with us.
• 41:09
  What we're probably not focusing on is instead of looking at what
• 41:12
  our top person is doing year over year, what's the 50th
• 41:15
  person doing? Are we faster at the 50th spot?
• 41:17
  Because that's it's a numbers game, right to get people to the
• 41:20
  Olympics. You've.
• 41:21
  Got to have a. Lot of these kids, for one of
• 41:23
  them to come out. Yeah, that, that's a great
• 41:24
  point. I don't look at the 50th kid.
• 41:26
  I look at the three high school kids ran sub 10 and go look,
• 41:29
  we're doing something right guys.
• 41:31
  And, and, and the 100 is to a great degree genetically
• 41:36
  predisposed. There is a great degree there,
• 41:40
  just like the 10,000 has a certain degree of genetic to two
• 41:43
  different parts. But I, one day I just for the
• 41:46
  fun of it, and this is just last year I did it when I was home
• 41:49
  for a bit. I took out an old track and
• 41:51
  field news from like 1979 or 78 and looked at, you know, they
• 41:57
  have the top ten lists and looked at them and went no.
• 42:01
  Not much has changed. Not much had changed.
• 42:05
  Interesting. And the field events
• 42:06
  particularly, not much had changed.
• 42:08
  The women had changed. Yeah, of course some.
• 42:10
  Yeah, but but then that's because they were still in its
• 42:13
  infancy. But but the reality is not much
• 42:17
  had changed. Interesting.
• 42:19
  And. And so when I look at the high
• 42:20
  school, I'm like, you know, you go to a high school.
• 42:23
  I remember going to the Michigan State high school.
• 42:25
  I mean, I'm thinking I'm going to see some kids jump 22 feet
• 42:30
  went to I'm like, Oh my God, yeah.
• 42:33
  I remember recruiting a kid to Oregon 24 feet out of out of
• 42:38
  Ypsilanti and he he got nothing. I mean, I think he got books or
• 42:42
  something. Yeah, right.
• 42:43
  Right how much 24 feet in 1979 right, right, right.
• 42:47
  You know, and today he he could name his name his place, right.
• 42:53
  So it's, it's we're, we're when we look at the developmental
• 42:59
  side and, and we'll get off the subject real fast.
• 43:01
  But so I think we've lost the track coaches in schools a lot
• 43:05
  of cases. That's a big problem.
• 43:09
  We've we, we, we probably aren't getting the educational level of
• 43:14
  the high school coaches up. Not all of them.
• 43:16
  There's some great high school coaches, by the way.
• 43:18
  But in general, you know, you're looking, I mean, I can look
• 43:22
  around here and you're looking at people who never ran track.
• 43:25
  Yeah. They're they're taking the job
• 43:26
  because they can't find anybody else to do it, you know, And it
• 43:31
  and it's it's difficult. And I look at the a DS, I wonder
• 43:34
  how they they they can they make this happen because it's it's
• 43:37
  pretty hard to do. Yeah.
• 43:39
  And so technical events we really.
• 43:42
  Yeah. You know, I had a little girl
• 43:44
  here, friend of mine's daughter, and she was a long jumper and I
• 43:50
  think she would jump in like 12 two or something like that and
• 43:53
  13, I can't remember, 13 two. And he said can you come out and
• 43:57
  help her? I was like, yeah, I'll come out
• 43:59
  and helped her for two days. She was like 16-4, you know, and
• 44:05
  that's doing nada you. Know two days.
• 44:07
  What are you really doing? Yeah, and you are?
• 44:08
  Doing well, not just. There's a lot more.
• 44:10
  You could have done, but you had two days.
• 44:11
  There is, but it's, you know, here's an approach, you know,
• 44:15
  right, Right. Keep your feet up.
• 44:17
  I mean, whatever it is, it's, it's really small stuff, but you
• 44:24
  know, you know, and the, the fact is that it, we, we need to
• 44:27
  get, we need to get better education.
• 44:29
  I I don't know. It is amazing because in 2026,
• 44:33
  Randy, it's so much easier for me to find coaching education
• 44:36
  for our sport than it was in 2016.
• 44:38
  Even for crying out loud in 2006, I mean, it's hard to not
• 44:42
  to be able to find some form of competent coaching education on
• 44:46
  YouTube alone for free. It's.
• 44:49
  Well, the hard part, Mike, is you recognize what's good.
• 44:52
  You can discriminate and that's using the word positively.
• 44:55
  You can tell, oh, that's good. But the, the subtleties of it,
• 45:00
  you know, I was just on earlier, which is why I was a bit late
• 45:03
  with, with one of the Chinese coaches.
• 45:06
  And you know, they're doing, they're doing drills and I had
• 45:12
  to make him stop. I said, look, they're lifting
• 45:14
  too much here. This is not what you're trying
• 45:16
  to accomplish yet. You're trying to teach them how
• 45:19
  to apply force into the ground first and then respond to that.
• 45:22
  And and he got it. He's an English speaker.
• 45:25
  So he figured it out. But the nuance of that is a
• 45:31
  difficult one. And you know, you, you and to a
• 45:38
  degree, I almost wish we had a, a coaching staff at USA track
• 45:43
  and field, like, like we did have a national team staff and
• 45:48
  whose whole job was to go out and work with development and
• 45:52
  bring the coaches up. You know, got enough retired
• 45:56
  guys, they'd probably do it. They just have to determine that
• 45:59
  that's something instead of just.
• 46:00
  Being a priority, yeah, it's. Got to be a priority and USA
• 46:03
  track and field has to say we're getting close to a position
• 46:08
  where we're not going to be able to depend on the universities to
• 46:11
  do this. You know it's coming if we're
• 46:14
  not careful. Yeah, yeah.
• 46:16
  We've certainly had more and more limitations put on our
• 46:19
  college side with the access to facilities and again, even
• 46:22
  access to the coaches. I mean, they're, they're hired
• 46:24
  at XYZ University to coach the university team at the next
• 46:29
  level. And yeah, we, we, if we want to
• 46:32
  continue the dominance that we have had.
• 46:34
  Because here's the thing, we won't see this until 1020 years
• 46:38
  from now. That's the issue.
• 46:40
  It's, it's so it looks rosy right now.
• 46:41
  And it's like, well, keep doing what we're doing.
• 46:43
  It's like, well, we're, we might be, we might be heading down on
• 46:46
  this side and we think we're heading up and it's not, not
• 46:49
  true. It's.
• 46:50
  Certainly from a professions for a professional standpoint,
• 46:54
  coaches are getting paid pretty darn good these.
• 46:56
  Days much better than it has been.
• 46:58
  Yeah. Holy smokes.
• 46:59
  Still not. Still not enough.
• 47:00
  Still not enough? Still, well, for some, some are
• 47:02
  getting paid a lot. But I mean, in general, there's
• 47:06
  still and, and now with this the way it's going, those are going
• 47:10
  to be, you know, everybody's going to be going there.
• 47:13
  There's only so many slots. Yeah, that's a good problem.
• 47:19
  Yeah. But anyway, so let's let's go on
• 47:21
  to Michigan. State.
• 47:22
  Where do we go after that? Well, Michigan.
• 47:24
  State I got relieved of my duties because they wanted to
• 47:28
  hire minority coaches you know, and and women.
• 47:35
  So I was out of the out of out ended up not hiring minority
• 47:40
  coaches and couldn't find anybody who wanted to come.
• 47:43
  Ended up getting another guy that looks a lot like me just
• 47:47
  yeah a lot younger. And so for me at that point, I
• 47:57
  just so happens friend of a friend, I came out here to Idaho
• 48:01
  as Director of marketing for MBT shoes.
• 48:06
  So I'm not aware of those. Tell me.
• 48:08
  Oh, MBT shoes were the Maasai barefoot technology, the shoe
• 48:13
  that was around in 2004 through 2007 or 8 actually.
• 48:19
  And then I came out here and director of marketing and
• 48:24
  education training so that we put it all in one one thing and
• 48:29
  you had a great run. I mean, I was only there 10
• 48:31
  months, but we've done, I mean, we went from 400 stores to 1100
• 48:36
  stores. Wow.
• 48:37
  Yeah. And and trained them all.
• 48:40
  So we managed to get them all trained in that time period.
• 48:43
  Yeah, that's impossible. Yeah, Yeah.
• 48:44
  Yeah. No, I was.
• 48:45
  It was good. And then they, the owners of B,
• 48:50
  this, this, this was a distributorship in the United
• 48:53
  States owned by Austrians. They decided they wanted to buy
• 48:58
  it back, so they bought out the distributorship brought in.
• 49:01
  No offense to any women that are listening.
• 49:05
  Brought in a woman who was way over her head, ran it into the
• 49:08
  ground, destroyed. It was gone.
• 49:11
  She had, she did not know what she was doing, wrong ideas,
• 49:15
  wrong concepts. Didn't understand how to build a
• 49:17
  brand, thought she did, but thought the brand was more
• 49:22
  developed than it was. And we were very aware that it
• 49:24
  was not. It was one of those let's go to
• 49:27
  the big boxes. And I warned her you you can't
• 49:32
  go to the big box yet because if you fail there, you're done.
• 49:35
  You're cooked. Yeah.
• 49:36
  No second chance there. Didn't listen.
• 49:38
  Went to Nordstrom's, went to, I mean, just all the high ends
• 49:42
  gone dead. I think the company lasted
• 49:45
  another year and a half and then it's gone, you know.
• 49:50
  So I mean, it was, it was smoking.
• 49:52
  It was really, really going well.
• 49:56
  Yeah, I got fired over the phone on that one.
• 49:59
  Oh, it's fun. In the airport, in the airport,
• 50:02
  most successful, most successful trade show we ever had.
• 50:07
  Oh, by the way, I think I'm going to go in a different
• 50:09
  direction. And, and, and what happened
• 50:12
  there is that she fired all the men, all the men on staff that
• 50:18
  were executives. And they're like, OK, I sort of
• 50:21
  get it. But then, then, then, then, then
• 50:27
  the leadership was gone, you know, and after that it was
• 50:32
  people following her, which is what she wanted.
• 50:35
  She didn't want somebody to just to work with her.
• 50:39
  She wanted to lead. Don't blame her for that.
• 50:42
  If you know what you're doing, great.
• 50:44
  She did not know what she was doing and and it's unfortunate
• 50:48
  for that brand anyways. So back to a track coaching job.
• 50:52
  Yeah, why? No, before you go there.
• 50:55
  Why? You're on this podcast because
• 50:58
  you're known as a track coach for obvious reasons, but you've
• 51:01
  had involvement in a lot of other sport.
• 51:03
  We've already talked about golf a little bit.
• 51:06
  I know there's a hockey journey there.
• 51:08
  Why talk to us a little bit about some of the other sports
• 51:11
  and why did, why the pull of track?
• 51:13
  Why aren't you one of the top guys in the NHL or the NFL and
• 51:18
  things like that? It's a darn good question.
• 51:21
  I mean, again, again, you, I mean, you got to look at my
• 51:25
  intelligence. I'd be better take that IQ test.
• 51:30
  Yeah. You know, I, I was with the
• 51:33
  Broncos, came in as their speed coach after being pretty
• 51:39
  successful with a group of their guys.
• 51:41
  Offseason strength coach of the time wasn't really happy about
• 51:46
  having me around. But he's a good guy.
• 51:48
  Don't get me wrong. I have nothing to, you know, his
• 51:51
  passion is amazing. And I'm still a track coach
• 51:58
  though. And I had, you know, I was there
• 52:00
  and it was NFL and I had one of the guys come up to me after
• 52:05
  practice and he said, he said coach.
• 52:07
  And he said, hey, a tight end, he can't coach.
• 52:13
  You know, guys in the locker room were telling me I got to
• 52:15
  take growth hormone in this in order to make it the league.
• 52:18
  Oh, my God, Jesus Christ. And I, you know, I had the
• 52:24
  conversation. We said, look, this is a choice
• 52:26
  you're going to have to make. It's the NFL and track and
• 52:28
  field. We don't we aren't going there.
• 52:30
  I won't go ahead. I finished talking with him.
• 52:34
  I walked to the office, walked into Mike Shanahan's office and
• 52:39
  resigned. And I said, Mike, I can't be
• 52:43
  this. And of course, I sort of got
• 52:45
  caught up in the BALCO thing because of it.
• 52:48
  I wasn't, I was on the, I was on the other side of the BALCO
• 52:51
  thing, which people may or may not really realize.
• 52:54
  And now Victor's passed away, which is unfortunate, but yeah.
• 52:58
  So I was on, I mean, I sat down with the DEA for 8 hours.
• 53:02
  I, I hate drugs. I hate it.
• 53:04
  I mean, I, you know, I'm, I'm not going to mention names, but
• 53:08
  I know those coaches who made a boatload of money and it's, it's
• 53:12
  been sort of obvious that something's been going on.
• 53:15
  But it was one of those moments where I said, OK, I'm not going
• 53:23
  to be able to be at football. You know, I've been in a number
• 53:27
  of locker rooms and. Was this not that they are the
• 53:32
  model today, but they have certainly grown up in their drug
• 53:36
  testing. They used to be almost where
• 53:38
  there was no drug testing. Was this kind of those pre days.
• 53:41
  Drug testing was announced, Mike.
• 53:43
  It was on the calendar. Drug test will be here on this
• 53:45
  day. You know, it was in the calendar
• 53:48
  in the locker room. Yeah, I've saw it in a number of
• 53:50
  locker rooms. So yeah, it was, yeah.
• 53:53
  Like I said, people were just. I wouldn't put them in a model
• 53:55
  today, but it is certainly more stringent today than it was.
• 53:59
  Couple decades, yeah, I I don't, I actually don't know how people
• 54:02
  do it. I don't know how they did it
• 54:04
  before because it was just never part of my part of the
• 54:06
  conversation I had. But, you know, today, I mean,
• 54:12
  you know, you're working with guys like McCaffrey and Dijon
• 54:15
  and they beat up and you're like, dude, you get up every
• 54:19
  week and you do this. It's amazing.
• 54:22
  I mean, you get hit by you're stepping into the ring with Mike
• 54:26
  Tyson every weekend. You know, you know, even the
• 54:29
  boxers know enough not to do that.
• 54:31
  You know, even they take a year in between.
• 54:34
  Yeah, right, right. They're right.
• 54:36
  That's in the point. That's a good point actually.
• 54:39
  Getting the crap kicked out of him every week, you know, and,
• 54:44
  and so how do you train for that?
• 54:46
  I mean, you know, you have to take your hat off to these NFL
• 54:48
  strength coaches. These guys do not have an easy
• 54:51
  job. They got to find a way to get
• 54:53
  these guys back on the field. And you know darn well they're
• 54:56
  never playing at 100%. You know, that's it's but and
• 55:02
  and and that part of it that that that medical side is
• 55:06
  something that we as track coaches, I think do
• 55:09
  substantially better than the NFL does.
• 55:11
  I have to say, you know, having observed it in a number of
• 55:14
  teams, there's always these are not bad people.
• 55:19
  These are great, great guys who really, but they're constrained
• 55:23
  by time, by numbers, by everything, you know, And at
• 55:28
  some point the owners and the the coaches, the head coaches
• 55:32
  are going to have to sit down and go.
• 55:33
  General managers, you know, we, we need to, you know, where they
• 55:37
  get. I mean, they're in a 17 game
• 55:38
  season now or 18 games, Whatever it is, it's that's, that's a lot
• 55:43
  of human beings getting beat up. Yeah.
• 55:45
  I. Was surprised they continue to
• 55:47
  grow the regular season. Yeah.
• 55:51
  That's, I mean, look, they're they're growing it and it's it's
• 55:54
  they need tickets because they it's spending so much.
• 55:56
  It's the dollar. Yeah, yeah, But so after, no,
• 56:02
  actually that was before Michigan State.
• 56:04
  So, you know, there was a time period in there I came, came
• 56:10
  back, went and do some consulting with some gyms and
• 56:15
  then what? Went to the Olympic Training
• 56:17
  center in San Diego. Yeah.
• 56:21
  So moved down there, took over that program, and then they
• 56:25
  brought Brooks in to be the head coach.
• 56:28
  So I was out. Brooks and I.
• 56:31
  It's not that we didn't get along, because we did.
• 56:34
  We did. I mean, in certain ways, but he
• 56:37
  wanted me to stop coaching and to go be sports science so he
• 56:41
  could bring in another coach. And there's these things that
• 56:43
  were going on so dynamic that was just difficult because here
• 56:47
  I wanted to coach. I mean, I, you know, there's
• 56:50
  that, that I I can coach. Let me let me coach, you know?
• 56:55
  And but then he saw the sports science side of me.
• 56:57
  He's like, well, wait a minute, we we need that too.
• 57:00
  And I'm like, well, that's not really where I want to be,
• 57:02
  right. So I left and I went into
• 57:05
  plumbing. Yeah, year and a half.
• 57:10
  I'm sorry, that's not funny. No, I mean it's, you know, it's
• 57:14
  just like. It's a very 182.
• 57:17
  You're at Chula Vista. I'm going to plumbing.
• 57:19
  Yeah. Yeah, on my, my, I went to help
• 57:22
  my high school buddy who had a business and you know, it's tops
• 57:25
  for bottoms kind of thing, as he used to say.
• 57:29
  But it was, and that was different.
• 57:34
  It was unique in that you're dealing with builders and
• 57:37
  architects and construction. And so it was fun to wrap my
• 57:40
  mind up around something different for a little bit.
• 57:43
  When you were in some of these private sector jobs like this
• 57:45
  plumbing and some other. Even the shoe company does the
• 57:49
  coach I of yours always stay on, meaning you're in a meeting and
• 57:54
  you know people are walking in to get started and you're like,
• 57:56
  man, that kid could have been a good long jump or that guy.
• 57:59
  Like do you always kind of like, oh man, I wonder if that person
• 58:01
  ran track and Kyle, like, is it always on in regards even though
• 58:05
  you're far? Away from the track until you
• 58:08
  fulfill that. It's always there, yes.
• 58:12
  Until you're done with coaching, it's there.
• 58:16
  You will never be able to walk into a mall.
• 58:18
  Without, you know. People look at like, who's the
• 58:21
  strange old man watching people? You know, it's like, wait a
• 58:24
  minute now. I mean, it's hard to explain to
• 58:26
  people that when you're there looking, you really don't even
• 58:29
  see them. You see movements, you know, and
• 58:34
  you know, or, or, or, or you see kids, you'll see like, and you
• 58:38
  see like a 10 or 12 year old little girl or boy and you see
• 58:41
  the way they're walking and the movement and you're going that
• 58:44
  kids Got Talent, you know? I mean, you could just tell.
• 58:47
  And yeah, that switch doesn't get turned off because you're
• 58:52
  doing something else, which tells you you're probably doing
• 58:55
  the wrong thing still, you know, and.
• 58:57
  Yeah, you should be following that path.
• 58:59
  Yeah, yeah. And you should continue to
• 59:00
  pursue it. And so, you know, when I
• 59:03
  finished the MBT thing here, I was going to work on developing
• 59:06
  a facility that fell through. And so then I went, I went, you
• 59:13
  know, I worked for Kaiser once in the 80s and then I went back
• 59:16
  and worked for Kaiser for two more years.
• 59:20
  And I just remember the same sort of thing happening.
• 59:24
  But I also had to look at where the company was going and how
• 59:28
  much you could help Dennis and Randy, because to me, they're
• 59:30
  family and, and always have been and always will be.
• 59:36
  You know, I, I got it. I'd never taken.
• 59:38
  This is how I end up in China. I've never taken a vacation.
• 59:40
  Well, I never could afford to. And when you look at my Social
• 59:45
  Security numbers, I look at back and I go, oh, Jesus, man, how
• 59:47
  the hell did you live? You know, you look at the yearly
• 59:51
  salaries. Right.
• 59:52
  Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 59:53
  I haven't seen that before. I remember that.
• 59:54
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, hey, I had a few of 0
• 59:57
  years of 0 in there and and a lot that were under 14,000 so.
• 1:00:04
  Yeah, it was, it's not been an easy Rd. that way.
• 1:00:07
  So I I was sitting in a meeting one day and said guys, I'm going
• 1:00:10
  to take a vacation and I said where you going?
• 1:00:13
  I said not sure. So what do you mean not sure?
• 1:00:16
  I said, I don't know. I'm going to go to the airport
• 1:00:18
  and person that comes up on the board, I'm going there.
• 1:00:22
  Did you really do that and go? I did that.
• 1:00:24
  No. Way, of course, the boards are
• 1:00:27
  alphabetical and person that comes up is Beijing.
• 1:00:33
  I, you know, and I've been to China when I was brief actually
• 1:00:38
  in the in the middle there, I kind of forgot about this.
• 1:00:41
  I actually went to South Korea for 2 1/2 years.
• 1:00:43
  Yeah. Right, right, right.
• 1:00:44
  Right. Yeah, I was in South Korea for a
• 1:00:45
  bit and, and, and during that time we had the Southeast Asian
• 1:00:49
  Games in 2009 in Hong Kong. Dennis Whitby, who was in Hong
• 1:00:53
  Kong, asked me if I want to go to dinner, went to dinner and we
• 1:00:58
  had, I had dinner with Doctor Fung, who was the vice president
• 1:01:01
  of Chinese athletics. And Dennis was his mentor.
• 1:01:05
  So he had we're we're Doctor Fung and I are maybe 10 years
• 1:01:09
  apart, not quite, but so he, so Dennis mentored him in China
• 1:01:15
  years after he mentored me in the US.
• 1:01:17
  And we're here, we are sitting down.
• 1:01:20
  I'm going to bring this back around.
• 1:01:22
  So I get on the plane to Beijing.
• 1:01:24
  Before I go, I send an e-mail to Doctor Fung and I said, hey,
• 1:01:27
  coming over, would you like to have lunch, you know?
• 1:01:31
  And was the plan literally I'm going to Beijing for vacation,
• 1:01:36
  I'm going to go sightsee, eat foods and OK, you're not going
• 1:01:41
  up there like I'm going to go look at their tracks.
• 1:01:43
  You were it was vacation, vacation, nothing.
• 1:01:45
  It was total vacation. And what what was the plan?
• 1:01:49
  A Week? 2 weeks.
• 1:01:51
  It was 6 days I think it was that day.
• 1:01:53
  It was just enough to get around.
• 1:01:56
  And I'd been to Beijing once before, so I kind of knew it a
• 1:02:00
  little bit, but I'd never done the tourist thing there.
• 1:02:04
  I was only in and out of there for a couple days for a, for a
• 1:02:07
  conference, if I recall. But so I did that, got there,
• 1:02:13
  they picked me up, they took me and got me a hotel.
• 1:02:15
  I mean, you know, did. And for them it was Randy
• 1:02:18
  Huntington, the coach of Mike Powell.
• 1:02:20
  So that you get that that bit of recognition took me to the, you
• 1:02:24
  know, Forbidden City and went to the wall and did all this stuff.
• 1:02:28
  And then he we're having dinner and he says, hey, would you like
• 1:02:32
  to go to a track, mate? I'm like sure.
• 1:02:35
  It's been a few years not escape it.
• 1:02:37
  No, I said, sure, it's been a few years, but yeah, let's go.
• 1:02:41
  So he bought me a plane ticket. We went down to Fujen and they
• 1:02:46
  were having an indoor meeting and consistently in March.
• 1:02:50
  What level at the elite level they were that was their, their,
• 1:02:54
  their, their. I think it might have even been
• 1:02:58
  their national championships. So so I watched and observed and
• 1:03:03
  like, OK, this is fun. And he said, hey, would you like
• 1:03:06
  to talk to the athletes after? Sure.
• 1:03:08
  You know, so they bring in, there's like 60 athletes in the
• 1:03:12
  room that and I have a little thing with them talk.
• 1:03:17
  OK, great. We fly back, I do a couple more
• 1:03:20
  things and I go home. I'm back to work, you know, in
• 1:03:23
  the next week on Monday. And I'm there.
• 1:03:26
  And about five months later, I get an e-mail from Doctor Funk.
• 1:03:34
  And, and now I had been to China working with the Chinese
• 1:03:38
  distributor, the Asian distributors.
• 1:03:41
  And he said, would would you consider coming and coaching
• 1:03:45
  here because they had a pretty good long jumper named Lee
• 1:03:48
  Jinsei. It was an 832 or 833 guy.
• 1:03:54
  I said, well, not really in a position to, but, you know, let
• 1:04:00
  let me let me think about it. That was like in August.
• 1:04:04
  And so as time went on and, you know, I'm thinking, well, maybe
• 1:04:08
  I can help Kaiser Moore by being somewhere else.
• 1:04:12
  I mean, this what I'm doing is kind of somebody else could do
• 1:04:16
  this, but getting people to understand it in another part of
• 1:04:21
  the world, which is what's lacking, you know, because it's,
• 1:04:25
  it's the, the, the reason it's not become mainstream.
• 1:04:28
  And it's not just because it costs, because people just
• 1:04:30
  didn't really understand how it how it works and how it
• 1:04:33
  effectively changes your body. And I went into sat down with
• 1:04:38
  Dennis and Dennis, I'm thinking about this.
• 1:04:40
  What do you think? And it was just a time when
• 1:04:45
  things were a little topsy turvy, too.
• 1:04:48
  And. And he said, you know, maybe it
• 1:04:50
  would work. I said, OK, So I sent him a
• 1:04:56
  note, said, yeah, I'll do it. Wow.
• 1:04:59
  November 3rd I'm in Beijing. Living there.
• 1:05:05
  Yep. Moved to Beijing.
• 1:05:06
  How long did you think you would be there?
• 1:05:09
  Oh, a year, 2 years maybe, you know, yeah, 12 years later, you
• 1:05:14
  know, it's, it's, I mean, because I was looking at leaving
• 1:05:19
  after real. So 13 to 16, three years for
• 1:05:24
  sure. And then then they have World
• 1:05:30
  Championships. So they said, OK, could could
• 1:05:32
  you stay one more year and said, OK, I mean, I'm finally have
• 1:05:35
  plans. So sure, you know, and we didn't
• 1:05:38
  get paid a lot by the way, you know, initially it was, it was
• 1:05:43
  communist system. So all of us were getting paid 6
• 1:05:45
  grand a month. Well, I was kind of stuck.
• 1:05:49
  I'd had four jobs in a row in which I made 6 grand a month for
• 1:05:54
  like 10 years. So, so it was not about the
• 1:05:59
  money it is now or or or did become for a while because they
• 1:06:05
  start paying people a lot of money, couple couple coaches I
• 1:06:09
  know that are now getting paid an exorbitant amount of money,
• 1:06:12
  way less than what the US coaches are getting paid.
• 1:06:15
  Still, the good the the head coach.
• 1:06:17
  That's good barometer, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:06:20
  And so that that became, you know, that's I was getting ready
• 1:06:26
  to leave, is going to come home. And Mr. Lynn, who is the the
• 1:06:31
  event group manager for Sprint's hurdles and jumps, he came up
• 1:06:35
  and he said, hey, got a situation.
• 1:06:37
  He said, so what's up? He goes, Sue and his coach are
• 1:06:42
  they're they're they're kicking Sue out basically.
• 1:06:45
  And he's like, you're done. You're 28 years old, your
• 1:06:49
  career's over. We think it's time.
• 1:06:53
  And so they had scheduled for Sue to actually move to the US
• 1:06:59
  to go to university for his master's at that was being set
• 1:07:05
  up at Illinois Institute of Technology.
• 1:07:10
  Yeah, no way. Seriously.
• 1:07:12
  Yes, yes, I went to school there for a year.
• 1:07:15
  Did you really? Yeah.
• 1:07:17
  That's I'm like, wait a minute. You might have had a few Chinese
• 1:07:20
  kids there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:07:22
  Well, those Chinese kids, I mean, it became a yeah, so they
• 1:07:27
  had they were going to send like 15 people over to do their
• 1:07:30
  masters. And he said would you would
• 1:07:34
  would you coach him? Because I had been working with
• 1:07:36
  Wei Young Lee secretly because you know, the way it is in
• 1:07:40
  China, I'm not supposed to be coaching another event.
• 1:07:44
  But you know, I coach Wei to the Chinese record in the 60.
• 1:07:48
  Later on, she went to the US with Rayne and Randy coached her
• 1:07:52
  to sub 11 and did a great job with her.
• 1:07:56
  But that was kind of how Sue came about, you know, because I
• 1:08:01
  had and in those first years I had Sonny who Legion say, Eddie
• 1:08:08
  Wong, Jainan Dao. I mean, you know, it took kids
• 1:08:11
  that were 780 kids and brought them up to finalists in the
• 1:08:15
  world champs. Yeah.
• 1:08:16
  And medalists you know. Bronze medal at.
• 1:08:20
  World Juniors? Didn't you go 12?
• 1:08:23
  1313 yeah, 132 of the top ones out there.
• 1:08:26
  So, so that was part of the thing with, with Jainan in, in,
• 1:08:31
  in Eugene two years ago, three years ago is that is, you know,
• 1:08:35
  that last jump becomes up to me 5th jump.
• 1:08:38
  And, and I, and I just, I pulled him in and I said, this is my
• 1:08:42
  house and this is your house. Nobody beats us here because he
• 1:08:46
  was the gold medalist in 2014 in Eugene.
• 1:08:49
  And I said. Been here, been here, done that,
• 1:08:52
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:08:53
  And and he did, you know, I mean, what it was it a fault?
• 1:08:57
  A great jump? No.
• 1:08:59
  But that's not what happens in World Championships.
• 1:09:01
  In Olympics. It is about winning.
• 1:09:04
  It's not about necessarily distance in time.
• 1:09:07
  This may be a little bit of an ignorant question because I have
• 1:09:11
  so little experience internationally.
• 1:09:14
  Me, you know, I didn't coach very many international
• 1:09:16
  athletes. I haven't traveled outside the
• 1:09:18
  country very much. But so my question is, you know,
• 1:09:23
  thinking about what it's like to coach, whether it's American
• 1:09:27
  kids on the on the college side or American athletes, like on
• 1:09:31
  the professional side versus in in this encompasses everything
• 1:09:34
  culture, you know, where you are in the in the US and then in the
• 1:09:39
  world, What are tell us some of the same things that are the
• 1:09:43
  exact same? And what are some of the
• 1:09:45
  differences being over there and coaching in China, meaning like
• 1:09:52
  are the 18 year olds in China the exact same over here?
• 1:09:54
  They're sometimes they don't want to show up for practice and
• 1:09:58
  or it's totally different of their mic because of the
• 1:10:01
  communist regime. They are the most strict.
• 1:10:03
  I don't know. But what are some of the same
• 1:10:04
  things like you, you got over there and you're like, oh, this
• 1:10:06
  is just it don't matter if I can't speak the languages.
• 1:10:08
  This is the same stuff as 18 year old kids, 28 year old kids,
• 1:10:11
  whatever, blah, blah. And what are some of just a rat
• 1:10:12
  like, Oh yeah, they do things differently for good or bad, do
• 1:10:16
  the radically things different. Well.
• 1:10:21
  As I, we kind of talked about the generational thing yesterday
• 1:10:24
  and the last one, but the probably the primary 22
• 1:10:30
  differences that I can can really speak to 1 because you
• 1:10:35
  don't speak the language. There's three you don't speak
• 1:10:39
  the language, they can kind of get over on you, which they
• 1:10:41
  can't do with their Chinese coach.
• 1:10:43
  Right, right, right. That's one thing.
• 1:10:46
  Two, at a certain point, the athletes take over, they tell
• 1:10:51
  the coach what they're going to do.
• 1:10:54
  Really. Yeah.
• 1:10:55
  Yeah. That wasn't working too well
• 1:10:56
  with me. That was like, huh, you know,
• 1:11:00
  we're going to. Yeah, this is Yeah.
• 1:11:03
  Yeah, exactly. It's all of a sudden the Detroit
• 1:11:05
  part of Randy came out you. Don't forget the roots, baby.
• 1:11:09
  No, no. And then and then the next part
• 1:11:13
  is, and this happened in Korea, which we talked about a little
• 1:11:17
  bit and it happens there. You know, you, I forget exactly
• 1:11:20
  how they worded it because you know, there was a big story on
• 1:11:24
  Korean airlines and how that they had their junior senior and
• 1:11:27
  their communication systems weren't so good and they had a
• 1:11:31
  few plane crashes because you're.
• 1:11:33
  Talking the pilots. Yeah, the guys in the right seat
• 1:11:35
  couldn't tell the guy in the left seat what to do.
• 1:11:38
  You know, I love that you brought this up for those
• 1:11:41
  interest in what he's talking about.
• 1:11:42
  So one of my favorite author is Malcolm Gladwell.
• 1:11:46
  I don't know. If yeah, he wrote about it in
• 1:11:47
  there. Yes, yes, yes.
• 1:11:48
  He wrote it. And he's also talked about it on
• 1:11:50
  his podcast Revisionist History as well.
• 1:11:53
  But it's fascinating, again, culture that this, the junior
• 1:11:56
  guy does not correct the senior guy, even when they are
• 1:11:59
  literally flying into a mountain.
• 1:12:03
  It's like in America, we go, that's crazy.
• 1:12:05
  There's no way, Randy, you're my superior.
• 1:12:07
  But I would still tell you, brother, we're about to drive
• 1:12:09
  into a brick wall stop. And that culture did not have
• 1:12:13
  that at that time. And that cost lots of lots.
• 1:12:16
  Yeah. It's fascinating.
• 1:12:17
  Fascinating. It did.
• 1:12:19
  I mean, you had the New York crash and then you had the one
• 1:12:22
  in the UK with the cargo plane. Both Korean airlines, both same
• 1:12:28
  issue. Junior senior will not
• 1:12:30
  communicate age differences. You know, it's and, and, and so
• 1:12:37
  I experienced that in China. I mean, I experienced that in,
• 1:12:40
  in, in, in Korea and in in Thailand too.
• 1:12:44
  Thailand has a similar, similar system.
• 1:12:48
  And then I'm I'm watching people write the the thesis and all
• 1:12:54
  this stuff for professors who then get paid and get these
• 1:12:58
  accolades and they did none of the work.
• 1:13:00
  Like 0. Yeah, it was bad.
• 1:13:03
  But when I get to China, it is you can't lose face now.
• 1:13:09
  I didn't realize that, you know, you think, oh, you're going to
• 1:13:13
  lose face because I'm going to talk to you and make you look
• 1:13:15
  stupid. No, no, If you succeed, they
• 1:13:18
  lose face. And it has nothing to do with
• 1:13:24
  anything except you succeeded because then the assumption is
• 1:13:28
  they failed because they didn't succeed like you.
• 1:13:31
  So they lose face. And this was a this is a
• 1:13:33
  problem. Still is.
• 1:13:35
  I mean, you know, the male coaches can be pretty arrogant
• 1:13:40
  as we all all can be, and they don't listen.
• 1:13:43
  Well, the female coaches, they're great.
• 1:13:45
  They listen, they want to learn. I mean, it's like in a lot of
• 1:13:50
  cultures, you have one group that communicates well, another
• 1:13:53
  group that doesn't so much. And, and, and their training was
• 1:13:59
  like when I first got there, I had to observe this.
• 1:14:03
  I just couldn't believe it. So you know, I'm watching it at
• 1:14:06
  the track where I'm training and then I go to the first
• 1:14:08
  competition and I'm like, wow, every person, every single
• 1:14:14
  person in every single event doing the exact same warm up
• 1:14:20
  everybody, all events. And, and on top of that, when I
• 1:14:25
  first got there, I, I didn't do anything with them for three
• 1:14:28
  weeks. I just observed.
• 1:14:29
  I said, I'm just going to observe you.
• 1:14:30
  I'm going to kind of get a feel of what you're doing and see
• 1:14:32
  what the system is. And then I realized that they
• 1:14:39
  basically do the same workout on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
• 1:14:42
  Friday, Saturday, Sunday, every week of the year.
• 1:14:47
  Every year of their life never changed.
• 1:14:52
  So that's why you see really pretty good Chinese youth and
• 1:14:57
  junior athletes, and then they just stop.
• 1:15:01
  They just never got any better. That surprises me for, you know,
• 1:15:06
  I hear all about the academic side of Chinese education and
• 1:15:10
  they're like, well, they're smart people.
• 1:15:11
  They should know laws of adaptation and things like that.
• 1:15:13
  That's not going to work. But it also kind of calls into
• 1:15:15
  play of like the actual skill set of a coach of like, yes, you
• 1:15:19
  can be academically intelligent, but not actually, how do you
• 1:15:22
  apply that? That's interesting.
• 1:15:24
  Well, yeah, yeah. The other part is that these
• 1:15:27
  remember yesterday, the last one we talked about, that they start
• 1:15:30
  sports school at 14 or or thereabouts.
• 1:15:34
  Well, that is essentially the end of their formal education.
• 1:15:39
  So. Now they get degrees and
• 1:15:42
  everything without because they're sports people, not
• 1:15:45
  because they're academic. I got you.
• 1:15:47
  So all these coaches have never learned anatomy, Physiology.
• 1:15:51
  I mean, this is in the past. They're learning it now, but so
• 1:15:55
  they never learn all this and that system needed to change
• 1:15:58
  and, and, and until their credit, it's changing, you know,
• 1:16:04
  so, you know, I mean, like I, I stopped lecturing in China
• 1:16:07
  because they just didn't understand what I was talking
• 1:16:08
  about. Like no bio mechanics, no
• 1:16:10
  Physiology, knowing that they just didn't understand it
• 1:16:14
  because all they did was and, and we've all been through this,
• 1:16:17
  they regurgitated what they were taught and we've all done the
• 1:16:21
  start the message in the room and figure out what it says at
• 1:16:24
  the other end. And so they, that's what they
• 1:16:29
  did and that's why they carried it from youth to junior to
• 1:16:33
  elite. And that was the limitation
• 1:16:36
  because their, their training was basically like you would
• 1:16:41
  train a developing athlete. They're a little bit more volume
• 1:16:44
  based because they didn't have the testosterone and they, they,
• 1:16:48
  they weren't hormonally mature yet.
• 1:16:51
  And so they kept that same training.
• 1:16:54
  That's why they were done at 2423.
• 1:16:57
  They were done, you know, and then when we introduced
• 1:17:00
  intensity, they're like, oh, that's too hard, We're working
• 1:17:03
  too hard or, or we're not working enough.
• 1:17:07
  That was the big one, right? We're not working enough.
• 1:17:09
  And I'm like, no, no, it's that. That's not unlike here in
• 1:17:13
  America in certain. No, it's not.
• 1:17:15
  Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:17:16
  You're right. You're not running them until
• 1:17:17
  they puke. They're not working hard enough.
• 1:17:19
  And it's like, well, that's not the goal here, guys.
• 1:17:21
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:17:22
  I mean, you asked, you asked in the last one.
• 1:17:24
  You know what it was. You know, I, I talked about we
• 1:17:26
  were transferring in the early 70s from that, that militaristic
• 1:17:30
  type of training to a little more humanistic type or holistic
• 1:17:34
  and they were still very much military.
• 1:17:36
  OK, makes sense from what I feel like I know.
• 1:17:39
  Yeah, Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:17:40
  You know and. And their system wasn't set up
• 1:17:42
  for, like, coaching education. So they didn't have like, like
• 1:17:45
  their coaches could have the opportunity to go to level 1 or
• 1:17:48
  coaches. OK, yeah, that's not even in the
• 1:17:50
  realm. Right.
• 1:17:51
  Didn't exist. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:17:52
  Did not exist. It exists now.
• 1:17:54
  I mean, they, you know, it was, I mean, I just beat it into them
• 1:17:58
  for four years. You got to get these coaches
• 1:18:01
  educated. Please.
• 1:18:04
  Every, every slideshow I ever did starts with sports medicine
• 1:18:08
  sucks, you know, basically, I mean, it's, it does, you know,
• 1:18:13
  it's very interesting because health wise and you look at
• 1:18:17
  traditional Chinese medicine, the TCM, you know, for health,
• 1:18:20
  there's some great stuff there. But on the sports medicine side,
• 1:18:24
  they just didn't get it. And that, that that's still in
• 1:18:31
  transition, by the way, It's still an ongoing issue.
• 1:18:35
  And, and, and it'll take them, it'll probably take them another
• 1:18:38
  generation or so to get through that, yeah.
• 1:18:41
  Those aren't critics. Yeah, that's not a quick fix.
• 1:18:43
  It's been a short journey. No, you know, and, and there
• 1:18:48
  were some of the old is interesting because the younger
• 1:18:50
  coaches and some of the older coaches, cuz the older coaches
• 1:18:54
  were educated. They were they, they had to get
• 1:18:57
  go to university, they had to go to school, all of that.
• 1:19:00
  And then there then there's this group in the middle that didn't.
• 1:19:03
  And if they ran fast, then they became great coaches.
• 1:19:06
  They were there. Now that coach, you know like.
• 1:19:09
  Did you, you touched on this a little bit.
• 1:19:12
  Did you ever receive much pushback on your style, your
• 1:19:17
  philosophy of coaching? You talked a little bit about
• 1:19:19
  like, you know what they're working, the intensity is
• 1:19:21
  working too hard, but they're not working hard enough, meaning
• 1:19:24
  they're doing volume. But also, was there any like
• 1:19:28
  what's this American coming to teach us any pushback during
• 1:19:32
  your at least maybe during the whole time, I don't know.
• 1:19:35
  Well, I had two things going for me, Mike Paul and Willie Banks.
• 1:19:40
  And I was who were seen as like, yeah.
• 1:19:42
  And I was, if you will, yeah. Yeah, right.
• 1:19:44
  And I was 60 and so I was older than everybody.
• 1:19:48
  So they do have the other side of that positive thing is that
• 1:19:51
  they they do, you know, give respect.
• 1:19:55
  Like an automatic reverence to that, like, Oh yeah.
• 1:19:58
  And so. Contrary to the younger coaches
• 1:20:02
  that came over who got their basically their butts handed to
• 1:20:04
  them, it it automatically gave me a level of respect that you
• 1:20:12
  may not have been afforded otherwise.
• 1:20:14
  Interesting. And so they listened and, you
• 1:20:18
  know, if things were, things didn't change a lot, they were
• 1:20:22
  changing slowly. But then I had a meeting 2017
• 1:20:27
  National Games. The head of the Coc, well,
• 1:20:32
  unfortunately is now in jail. No, it's just, it's very weird.
• 1:20:36
  I was just talking with somebody about this the other day.
• 1:20:41
  They, they, they said, well, when he wants to meet you, you
• 1:20:47
  know, this is like, you know, he sits on the committee, but you
• 1:20:51
  know, he's one of those 24 top 1224 guys.
• 1:20:55
  And I said, well, that's great. How much time is he'll give you
• 1:20:58
  10 minutes. OK, well, let's let's go for it.
• 1:21:03
  So he drove me over, you know, bring me up there he is and sit
• 1:21:08
  down and we, we talked for about 5 minutes and I said, you know
• 1:21:12
  what, I'd like to show you something if you don't mind are.
• 1:21:15
  All these talks happening with a translator.
• 1:21:18
  Yes. So I don't know exactly.
• 1:21:20
  See the pictures. No, no, they're all.
• 1:21:22
  There's no English speaking going on here except for Doctor
• 1:21:25
  Funk. Everyone else for the most part
• 1:21:28
  didn't speak English and there was some some managers who did.
• 1:21:34
  So make a Long story short 3 1/2 hours later. 10 minutes.
• 1:21:39
  Yeah, you know, we we go through all of this and all of the what
• 1:21:44
  I see happening and where they can improve sport in China and,
• 1:21:51
  and, and then of course the other thing, it happens just
• 1:21:54
  like anywhere, success gives you a little bit of one up, you
• 1:21:58
  know. And so that very first year in
• 1:22:01
  2014, we had Legion say, with silver medalist in Toran at
• 1:22:08
  World Indoors. Later on that summer, Wong Jiang
• 1:22:12
  wins world juniors, first time ever.
• 1:22:14
  First medal. First medal.
• 1:22:16
  Yeah. Those are the first medals
• 1:22:17
  they've ever had in the jumps outside of China.
• 1:22:20
  Yeah. And triple jumper, unfortunately
• 1:22:25
  got hurt. But Don Bin, who then was gold
• 1:22:28
  medalist in Portland and then bronze medalist in Beijing and
• 1:22:35
  real as well, I think it was but and then 2015 we went, you know,
• 1:22:41
  3453 finalists and could have easily been 123 really that in
• 1:22:47
  that particular competition. And so people saw this rise and
• 1:22:52
  they saw the success. And at the same time, there was
• 1:22:57
  still the naysayers and there's still the negative.
• 1:22:59
  And as there is, I mean, yeah. And I, I didn't even know how to
• 1:23:04
  change that because by our nature, I think we're a critical
• 1:23:07
  lot, you know, and we're critical of each other and, and,
• 1:23:11
  and, and, and the funny part is that's so weird.
• 1:23:14
  The criticalness comes out of a positive place.
• 1:23:17
  You know, it means that we want to see someone be better.
• 1:23:21
  And so we're looking at why aren't they better?
• 1:23:23
  And we blame the coach, like he doesn't know what he's doing or
• 1:23:27
  he's not getting this right. You didn't care about the the
• 1:23:33
  the success of the athlete. You wouldn't even ask.
• 1:23:36
  They'd be like, who cares you? Wouldn't give a damn yes exactly
• 1:23:39
  it to be so so the so that the the critical component is not
• 1:23:43
  necessarily just aimed at degrading that coach.
• 1:23:47
  It's like they can be better over here.
• 1:23:50
  Why aren't you making them better?
• 1:23:52
  No. Are you missing something?
• 1:23:54
  And and that and that puts us always at odds with each other.
• 1:24:01
  It makes everybody distrust. It makes, you know, men not
• 1:24:06
  think women are good, women not thinking men are good.
• 1:24:09
  I mean, it's, it's just a it just descends into a spiral that
• 1:24:12
  doesn't help anybody in the sport.
• 1:24:16
  And you know, every one of us has done it.
• 1:24:19
  And I think that if we can out of this podcast, that we can
• 1:24:23
  come out of anything. It's like, look, let's just
• 1:24:24
  start being nicer to each other instead of the freaking bully
• 1:24:28
  world we're watching around us right now.
• 1:24:32
  Because in the end, it's all about the athlete.
• 1:24:34
  It's not about us. You know, I mean, it, it, it has
• 1:24:38
  always been athlete centered for me.
• 1:24:42
  And, and China's changing in that direction itself now.
• 1:24:45
  You know, it's finally getting that more so that sense of
• 1:24:49
  athlete centered and and that's a that was a foreign concept.
• 1:24:54
  It was the other way. So.
• 1:24:57
  You were there for 12 years. 12 years just I mean, I just came
• 1:25:00
  back last month. How much connection did you keep
• 1:25:04
  with the US? Meaning did you visit here
• 1:25:06
  often? Did you how often used to you
• 1:25:08
  had a lot of friends here? Did you contact with friends a
• 1:25:11
  lot or were you just immersed in the job and where you're?
• 1:25:14
  Looking I was, I was kind of out of it.
• 1:25:16
  I mean, I kept Facebook, obviously it's, I mean, it was
• 1:25:20
  kind of my connection. I'd come back once a year, yeah,
• 1:25:25
  normally in Christmas for an extended time.
• 1:25:29
  And other than that and not a lot.
• 1:25:33
  I was, I mean, you know, people would see me, the international
• 1:25:37
  coaches, the elite coaches would see me at meets and competitions
• 1:25:40
  in Europe or wherever, where else and whatnot.
• 1:25:43
  But in general, I've probably always been an outsider in USA
• 1:25:49
  in, in the USA track and field circles, Right, Right.
• 1:25:52
  You know, not because I was never, I mean, that circle is a
• 1:25:55
  collegiate circle. And I wasn't there, you know, I
• 1:25:58
  was, I had a cup of coffee in Michigan State.
• 1:26:03
  So I was never involved in that thing, even though I may have
• 1:26:06
  known a lot of people know me. I, I don't know them.
• 1:26:12
  And it's kind of what happens if you, you accomplish some goals.
• 1:26:15
  But yeah, I, I, you did not keep in touch with a lot of people
• 1:26:24
  back here. You.
• 1:26:25
  You mentioned that you don't speak Chinese even after 12
• 1:26:27
  years and they say immersion is one of the most the ways to
• 1:26:30
  learn a language, right? Do you literally not speak any
• 1:26:33
  Chinese? Really?
• 1:26:37
  Like even like, you know what, what are the stereotypical
• 1:26:39
  things? Where's the bathroom?
• 1:26:40
  Where's the light? I don't know why the where's the
• 1:26:41
  library is always one of those things we always think about
• 1:26:44
  when we learn a language. You don't.
• 1:26:45
  I mean, you know some of those things like.
• 1:26:47
  I didn't need to. I mean, to be honest.
• 1:26:50
  I mean, all you have to have is a modicum of intelligence and
• 1:26:53
  you can find your way around very easily.
• 1:26:55
  OK, you're a coach and you're definitely an immersion coach,
• 1:26:58
  meaning 24/7 you're thinking about track, but there is some
• 1:27:01
  off site. You're you're trying to watch a
• 1:27:02
  show on TV. You're you go down to the coffee
• 1:27:06
  shop to read the newspaper. You couldn't do any of that.
• 1:27:09
  I go to the coffee shop a lot but.
• 1:27:11
  You didn't read a magazine or a newspaper.
• 1:27:14
  Right. No, I would be writing workouts
• 1:27:16
  or thinking and you're watching video or whatever.
• 1:27:18
  You know, and I guess your phone, well, I don't know, did
• 1:27:21
  you have a phone like so you could check cnn.com and
• 1:27:24
  trackandfieldnews.com and those well some.
• 1:27:27
  Stuff you could, but I mean, you know, a lot of stuff in China's.
• 1:27:30
  Yeah, that's why. That's why I was like, yeah,
• 1:27:32
  maybe not. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:27:33
  Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, the VPN would
• 1:27:35
  maybe work sometimes and maybe not sometimes, right?
• 1:27:40
  I used WeChat a lot. So the people who were in the
• 1:27:42
  States had WeChat much better than anything we currently have.
• 1:27:45
  Still, I, I love WeChat. I mean, people think it's
• 1:27:48
  dangerous. I don't know.
• 1:27:50
  I'm not trying to be a criminal, so I don't really care.
• 1:27:54
  But as a tool, translator, whatever it it, it worked pretty
• 1:27:59
  well. I always had, you know, when I
• 1:28:02
  was in Beijing, we had other foreign coaches.
• 1:28:05
  So we would go out, we'd go get coffee together, going to
• 1:28:08
  dinner. No, we would, we would talk.
• 1:28:11
  You know, my roommate there was Damien in Ascencio, who's a pole
• 1:28:17
  vault coach. Yeah, really great.
• 1:28:18
  Yeah, really great French pole vault coach.
• 1:28:21
  So Damien and I would always go out and have coffee and talk.
• 1:28:24
  And there was others, a lot of Australians.
• 1:28:27
  So yeah, there was A and then of course you find that community,
• 1:28:30
  you find the expat community. Other sport coaches as well, or
• 1:28:34
  pretty much all in athletics. Or No, no, none in athletics,
• 1:28:38
  actually, I was the only. I was the only.
• 1:28:40
  We were Damon and I Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:28:43
  We're the only athletics coaches on site.
• 1:28:46
  Is that right? There were several Germans and
• 1:28:49
  an Italian. So like other sports.
• 1:28:51
  And Finn. Such as?
• 1:28:54
  Everything. I mean weightlifting, mostly
• 1:28:56
  weightlifting. Yeah.
• 1:28:57
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah.
• 1:28:58
  Most of the English speakers were strength, conditioning or
• 1:29:03
  medicine. Sports medicine were there.
• 1:29:07
  Yeah, Did you? So, So when you have these other
• 1:29:09
  sport coaches around, like I think about in the US system,
• 1:29:14
  we're getting better at this. Probably not.
• 1:29:16
  We're getting better. We're probably not at an ideal
• 1:29:18
  space like I, I see more cross pollination of sports.
• 1:29:21
  And what I mean by that is I see the lacrosse coach asking the
• 1:29:25
  track coach, hey, So what do you guys do to get fast?
• 1:29:28
  Maybe I should be doing more of that stuff and we're certainly
• 1:29:31
  getting better and again, not maybe ideal of of our strength
• 1:29:34
  and conditioning and track coaches talking over there.
• 1:29:37
  Did you have much of that? Were the other, you know, the
• 1:29:40
  the the the Australian coach coming in for the crew and
• 1:29:43
  rowing? Did did they sit down with you
• 1:29:44
  go, hey, talk to me more about your training and what you guys
• 1:29:47
  do and your beliefs or is it still much separate?
• 1:29:52
  Well, I think the like I said, the the foreign coaches that
• 1:29:58
  were there, volleyball was one, but but she was Chinese who, you
• 1:30:05
  know, coached the American team too to the gold medal.
• 1:30:08
  So she was an incredible coach. Synchronized swimming, which at
• 1:30:13
  that time was called synchronized swimming, was a
• 1:30:15
  Japanese American. What's it now?
• 1:30:19
  It's artistic. It's really Aquatica.
• 1:30:22
  Yeah, it's changed the name I. I only know it's synchronized
• 1:30:24
  swimming, yeah. Yeah, no, it the name's
• 1:30:26
  different now. Tells you how much I watch it.
• 1:30:28
  Yeah, yeah. And, and then a lot of
• 1:30:32
  Australian sportsmen, because they're easy to get up, aren't,
• 1:30:37
  aren't really well paid in Australia.
• 1:30:39
  So they come up and then they're doing well, strength and
• 1:30:42
  conditioning, a lot of Australians and New Zealanders.
• 1:30:45
  But in terms of head coaches, yeah, it was pretty, it's pretty
• 1:30:50
  rare, mostly because those sports that there were head
• 1:30:54
  coaches, it were in it were in different places.
• 1:30:57
  Like, you know, rowing was somewhere else in the country
• 1:31:02
  and and that was mostly Brits and Canadians, Poles that were
• 1:31:06
  the coaches. And during that time period,
• 1:31:10
  cycling was French or Australian and they were somewhere else as
• 1:31:14
  well. Weightlifting, Chinese, table
• 1:31:19
  tennis, Chinese badman Chinese, you know, you're not, you're not
• 1:31:24
  bringing a foreigner in there. No.
• 1:31:27
  Maybe sports medicine or strength conditioning maybe.
• 1:31:31
  But you know, so where we were headquartered, those were kind
• 1:31:36
  of the sports that were involved with gymnastics, Chinese, you
• 1:31:41
  know, and, and so the only foreign coaches were the head
• 1:31:45
  coach for synchronized swim, right?
• 1:31:47
  And it's volleyball coach. And you mentioned, you know,
• 1:31:50
  like the the circle and network of expats that are over there.
• 1:31:53
  It's something I'm starting to look into because my wife and I
• 1:31:56
  are like toying with the idea of maybe retiring to like Costa
• 1:31:58
  Rica. And so you start seeing expat
• 1:32:00
  communities and things like that.
• 1:32:02
  Where like, did you have a circle of friends that were
• 1:32:05
  former business owners and former art teachers or whatever?
• 1:32:10
  And they're like, man, you, you coach Mike Pat, Like, was there
• 1:32:12
  any? Knowledge of who we.
• 1:32:14
  Were cuz, you know, in our in our the track and field, you're
• 1:32:16
  a big deal, right, Randy? I always wonder like what our
• 1:32:19
  neighbors sometimes think about like the neighbor Boosh 6 and
• 1:32:21
  I'm like, does do they know who this guy is?
• 1:32:25
  Did you have that over there? No, not really.
• 1:32:30
  I mean, what I have now is, are you coach Sue?
• 1:32:33
  You know, I mean that Sue is, is, is because it's more recent,
• 1:32:38
  you know, obviously. But we had basically there was a
• 1:32:43
  little area of Beijing called Sanitou.
• 1:32:46
  And that is an expat area, all expats, because it's also the
• 1:32:50
  embassy area. And so you'd have all people
• 1:32:54
  from all over the world, you know, in, in walking around in
• 1:32:57
  there. And that's kind of where we'd go
• 1:32:59
  on Saturday night or Friday night.
• 1:33:00
  We'd, we had scooters. So we'd scooter our way over or
• 1:33:06
  a bike, whichever. And, you know, we'd, we'd go to
• 1:33:09
  malls, we'd eat. I mean, it would just just get
• 1:33:12
  out of the, out of the apartment, you know, and, and do
• 1:33:15
  whatever you could. And of course, I was the old
• 1:33:19
  one. I mean, everybody else was 25
• 1:33:21
  and 30 and I'm 60. And so I'm really far removed
• 1:33:25
  from their life. And yeah, it was, it was is some
• 1:33:34
  of the IT it some of the most stimulating stuff culturally.
• 1:33:38
  And yet as as you do this, it's also some of the loneliest
• 1:33:41
  times. And that, and I don't mean that
• 1:33:44
  lonely doesn't need to be a negative thing.
• 1:33:45
  It's alone time. But you can't get in your own
• 1:33:50
  head too much. We've all done that.
• 1:33:52
  You know, when you don't have somebody talk to you start
• 1:33:54
  getting in your own head way too much.
• 1:33:59
  But I would suggest that you don't for anybody to go do it.
• 1:34:02
  I mean, Jen, Jen's looking for a long jump coach right now. 1212
• 1:34:09
  thousand a month. Wow, is that right?
• 1:34:12
  Yeah, go. Go.
• 1:34:14
  He's talking to you guys. Go.
• 1:34:16
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's it, it, it, it, it was a
• 1:34:23
  great experience from that perspective.
• 1:34:25
  You know, you get to meet. I did get to meet through
• 1:34:29
  translators and whatnot, a a lot of other Chinese people.
• 1:34:33
  I did a lot of lectures, you know, around the country.
• 1:34:36
  I've probably been in 60 cities in China.
• 1:34:40
  I mean, pretty well traveled throughout.
• 1:34:42
  They were, they're still very it's interesting because they
• 1:34:46
  like they couldn't understand how I could get around without
• 1:34:49
  GPS. They don't get it.
• 1:34:51
  Like, how do you know where to go?
• 1:34:53
  Right? NS, you know, Rd. straight, Rd.
• 1:34:58
  curve. But hey, you could get turned
• 1:35:03
  around real easy in China. But it is Beijing is an easy
• 1:35:07
  city because it's a grid. You know, in the US, I would say
• 1:35:10
  if I went to Chicago versus I went to Miami, even though they
• 1:35:14
  were in the same country and we're all Americans, they're
• 1:35:17
  still English speakers. They're still like, it's
• 1:35:20
  culturally different in Chicago than it is in Miami.
• 1:35:22
  Food, the layout of the the town, etcetera.
• 1:35:25
  Yeah, but the water's still over there.
• 1:35:27
  Yeah, Yeah, you're right. Your location was but but what
• 1:35:29
  I'm getting at is, is in China, was it different in Shanghai
• 1:35:33
  versus like like when you were Beijing there was a certain like
• 1:35:36
  we had these types of foods and we bike more there.
• 1:35:39
  I I don't know just or is it all homogeneous?
• 1:35:42
  That's not homogeneous. No, not at all.
• 1:35:46
  But but one of it also is you could, I mean, you probably
• 1:35:49
  could set somebody down in any city and they would know what
• 1:35:51
  city they're in, OK. You know, in America, you feel
• 1:35:54
  like you would like, I know if I'm in San Francisco versus New
• 1:35:57
  York City. Yeah, Yeah, yeah.
• 1:35:59
  I mean, if you were in Shanghai, you could tell from the
• 1:36:01
  buildings, I mean you that you're in Shanghai if you're in
• 1:36:04
  Beijing. But there's a few cities where
• 1:36:06
  you might go. I mean, if you're plopped down
• 1:36:09
  in a residential area, you'd go, I have no idea where I am, you
• 1:36:12
  know, because all the stores are the same and, and everything.
• 1:36:15
  Yeah. But you know, the, the, the
• 1:36:18
  Shanghai is sort of like New York and Beijing is like DC that
• 1:36:25
  that's the, the feel you get out of those two cities.
• 1:36:29
  OK. But then you got, I mean, and
• 1:36:31
  you got Guangzhou, you've got Shenzhen, you've got Hangzhou,
• 1:36:35
  you've got Chengdu, you've got Chung Cheng.
• 1:36:37
  I mean, you have, you know, if unless you go there, you don't
• 1:36:41
  really get a sense of how big this country is, Right, right,
• 1:36:46
  right. And how much has changed.
• 1:36:48
  You know, the first time I went to Shenzhen 1998, I think it
• 1:36:52
  was, it was like, I don't know, half million people.
• 1:36:57
  You know, it's 15,000,000 people now.
• 1:37:00
  Dude, seriously. Yeah, I mean, it was, have you
• 1:37:03
  come in and get on the train station and you could see the
• 1:37:05
  city was right there, you know, and now you won't come in.
• 1:37:09
  It's the city's right there and it's for miles like that.
• 1:37:13
  And and it it's infrastructure, it's the the rate at which it's
• 1:37:19
  changed even in the time I've been there.
• 1:37:21
  So when I first got there, 2013 there was about let's say about
• 1:37:28
  1200 miles maybe or kilometers really 1200 kilometers of high
• 1:37:33
  speed train just that back then. Now there's like 12,000.
• 1:37:37
  Well, so I prefer getting on a high speed train.
• 1:37:42
  It it taking a train in China is wonderful.
• 1:37:45
  Is it cool? Yeah.
• 1:37:46
  Oh, it's. Great.
• 1:37:47
  I mean, I'd rather never get on a plane again.
• 1:37:50
  I don't know. Wow, Is that right?
• 1:37:51
  No. In China, I'd, I'd much rather
• 1:37:53
  get on the train and go, well, you're heck, you're, you're
• 1:37:56
  going 300 kilometers an hour anyways, you know, or 400 on the
• 1:37:59
  new ones and 600 on the newest ones.
• 1:38:02
  That's crazy. Yeah, I know.
• 1:38:04
  It's, it really is nuts. Holy cow.
• 1:38:09
  But you know, you, you and, and so food wise, yeah, all the
• 1:38:11
  cities, I mean, Shen, you know, you have a you have the
• 1:38:14
  different food, Chengdu. And, you know, I, I really grew
• 1:38:19
  pretty fond of a place called Lijiang and Dali, which are over
• 1:38:23
  in the far eastern westerns part, not the far western part,
• 1:38:27
  but the middle western of China. And it's, you know, up at 5000
• 1:38:31
  feet. It's, they call it the city of
• 1:38:34
  eternal spring, Kunming. And, and it was where the flying
• 1:38:39
  Tigers were during World War 2. It's where their base was.
• 1:38:42
  But it it either there's, there's cities there that are
• 1:38:46
  just pleasant, you know, and you could see I could live here, you
• 1:38:49
  know, I mean. You, you mentioned food.
• 1:38:54
  Did you eat more? I don't say natural cuisine, but
• 1:38:57
  you know, native cuisine or because I know they have the
• 1:39:00
  McDonald's and all that kind of stuff.
• 1:39:02
  Or or even cook your own. You'd you'd you'd no way.
• 1:39:06
  I always go out hardly ever cooked.
• 1:39:07
  Sorry. You drop back and punt once in a
• 1:39:10
  while for sure. You know you'd be looking at A
• 1:39:12
  at a burger. I mean, there's a place called
• 1:39:14
  the Blue Frog. Great burgers.
• 1:39:19
  A couple other places that were just good food and you knew it
• 1:39:23
  so you'd go there. But I always do hot pot in
• 1:39:27
  Beijing in the winter. You know, it's just, it's a
• 1:39:30
  natural thing to do it. It's, you know, you.
• 1:39:35
  Yeah. You, you, you, you just blend
• 1:39:37
  in. Yeah.
• 1:39:38
  And, you know, all their menus. I mean, they've been doing it so
• 1:39:41
  long, their menus have pictures. So you just go.
• 1:39:43
  I want that one. Yeah, that's, you know, even
• 1:39:45
  with American cuisine, it's very helpful for me.
• 1:39:47
  It's now, Yeah, Yeah, now. And, you know, I'm fat, so
• 1:39:53
  obviously I like the food, but the only negative part to it is
• 1:39:59
  that you just don't exercise as much because of the air quality.
• 1:40:02
  I mean, you have to make a decision like, OK.
• 1:40:08
  Am I going to let my heart lose a little because I'm not going
• 1:40:11
  to exercise and lose my lungs And you can hear my cough still.
• 1:40:16
  That's the Beijing cough so. That's a real way.
• 1:40:19
  After a while, Oh yeah, it's real.
• 1:40:21
  It goes away after a while. But you know, I, I mean, the
• 1:40:26
  pollution, it used to make me angry every day.
• 1:40:30
  I get so pissed off. And if I go into the indoor
• 1:40:35
  track and from one end to the other, you could see the haze in
• 1:40:39
  the track. So I start putting a monitor
• 1:40:43
  that actually I have it here, here, one of them.
• 1:40:46
  I'd take this little monitor and I'd put it up and say, OK,
• 1:40:49
  what's, what's the AQI reading? And if it was over 100, we
• 1:40:53
  wouldn't train. No, I'm not training.
• 1:40:56
  I mean over 100 is a bad day in LA.
• 1:40:59
  Right. You know, and there was times
• 1:41:02
  when it was 300 and a normal day in Beijing during the winter in
• 1:41:07
  those early days, 350 to 500 was normal.
• 1:41:12
  Wow. I mean, you'd walk out and it's
• 1:41:15
  like, so I wore a mask full time when COVID came, that was no big
• 1:41:17
  deal. Yeah.
• 1:41:19
  What do you. I mean, I'm, I'm look, I'm
• 1:41:20
  listening to Americans going, what the hell is wrong with you?
• 1:41:23
  Damn mask on it. No big deal.
• 1:41:25
  Who cares, you know? Well, we used to wear.
• 1:41:28
  We used to. We didn't even look twice at a
• 1:41:30
  mask. And then it became political.
• 1:41:31
  So now, yeah, now we assume everybody's making a political
• 1:41:34
  statement when you wear a mask, when in reality it's probably
• 1:41:36
  health related. Move on.
• 1:41:38
  Yeah, you're trying to keep everybody from getting sick,
• 1:41:40
  which is really the reason why you're.
• 1:41:41
  Very nice of you. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:41:43
  Thank you for. Doing that?
• 1:41:44
  Yeah, exactly. Thanks.
• 1:41:45
  Not not because you're trying to make a statement, It's trying to
• 1:41:49
  help her. Your mom, who's 90 years old,
• 1:41:51
  does. Not die, you know, Very
• 1:41:54
  fascinating. Yes.
• 1:41:55
  What? Why?
• 1:41:57
  Why come back? Where?
• 1:41:58
  Where? You know when I say why come
• 1:41:59
  back? That sounds terrible, Randy.
• 1:42:00
  Why didn't you come back? What?
• 1:42:01
  What? It sounds like that chapter
• 1:42:04
  might be over and we're back. In well, it's not it's not
• 1:42:06
  completely over. I mean, you know, like I said,
• 1:42:09
  I'm just but my time there, I just need to be here for a
• 1:42:13
  while. I need to get my health back.
• 1:42:17
  It's not that, you know, I need, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm doing
• 1:42:20
  all the biohacking stuff right now, just trying to figure out
• 1:42:23
  where I am and, and I've got to get, you know, riding a bike and
• 1:42:28
  cross country skiing and doing whatever I can and just enjoy a
• 1:42:31
  little bit. Maybe meet somebody, you know,
• 1:42:35
  have a, have another part of life which I have not really had
• 1:42:38
  a chance to experience a bunch of.
• 1:42:40
  And I don't even know if that's possible anymore.
• 1:42:44
  But it, it just felt like it was time.
• 1:42:50
  Like I know there's a certain amount of passion and attention
• 1:42:55
  to detail that you, you know, this is the South end post you
• 1:42:58
  get, you know, I got to be able to do this for them.
• 1:43:03
  And I'm at a point where I don't think I can do that as well as I
• 1:43:07
  used to. So I'm better off coaching the
• 1:43:10
  coach than I am coaching the athlete.
• 1:43:13
  OK, good. I love that.
• 1:43:14
  So which leads me because it's it's interesting the word I'm
• 1:43:17
  about to use. A lot of people think it's a
• 1:43:20
  it's a negative. It's the R word retirement.
• 1:43:23
  It's it's a very, you know, both sides of selfish and selfless.
• 1:43:27
  Like when I see like recently Bucky, you know, retired from
• 1:43:30
  Arkansas and on one hand I'm like, oh, I'm so happy that you
• 1:43:34
  retired. Like you deserve to retire and
• 1:43:36
  go be on a ranch or whatever you know you want to do outside of
• 1:43:39
  this all consuming profession. Yeah.
• 1:43:41
  How old is he now? He's got to be 80.
• 1:43:44
  Oh, I don't know that Bucky's that old.
• 1:43:46
  No, no, I want to say he's. The women, The women's coach.
• 1:43:52
  Lance. Lance Hard.
• 1:43:53
  Or he might be. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:43:54
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:43:55
  That's another great too. But I love him to death.
• 1:43:59
  So that's the the self list of me is like, oh, I'm so happy.
• 1:44:02
  The selfish of me is like, man, I'd love to have I'd love Lance
• 1:44:05
  harder to death. I'd love to have Lance and he
• 1:44:06
  still is involved, but I'd love to have Lance still leading the
• 1:44:09
  program like I saw or Bucky leading, you know, but I'm like,
• 1:44:13
  where are you in retirement? And maybe you, because I love
• 1:44:16
  how you just said that about coaching the coaches, is now the
• 1:44:19
  turn of your attention in regards to athletics, coaching,
• 1:44:23
  education and things like that? Or do you still see like, yeah,
• 1:44:26
  I still got one more right in me, I'm going to get another
• 1:44:29
  860, long 870, whatever, plus long jumper.
• 1:44:32
  Where you at in that realm of retirement now?
• 1:44:34
  I don't know if I, I mean, there's part of me that's pissed
• 1:44:38
  off at the US for being so poor in the jumps and well, in, in,
• 1:44:43
  in the men's side of it, at least right now.
• 1:44:47
  It's like, OK, somebody stepped in and get this thing rolling.
• 1:44:50
  You know, I think Eric Canard is taking over that area and moving
• 1:44:54
  it from what I understand. I don't know Eric very well, but
• 1:44:57
  I know him. But it I am in in a position
• 1:45:05
  where I want to take a little time away right now.
• 1:45:07
  Yeah, good. It's healthy.
• 1:45:08
  Do this. Do this and talk and share.
• 1:45:14
  Certainly share with a lot of coaches.
• 1:45:17
  When I left China, I basically took the, the materials that I
• 1:45:22
  use sort of this on a daily basis and gave it to them.
• 1:45:25
  Said here, start showing people how to use this.
• 1:45:28
  How do you use flying 30 to determine your, your, your
• 1:45:31
  intensities, for instance, simple, simple stuff that we've
• 1:45:34
  been doing for 40 years, but they don't get and you know,
• 1:45:40
  mini hurdle. Well, whatever you want to call
• 1:45:43
  them, but I call them mini hurdles, you know, how do you
• 1:45:46
  set that up? How do you use GT to set up your
• 1:45:48
  mini hurdles training think things that are just simple,
• 1:45:53
  but, but people could benefit from a lot.
• 1:45:58
  How do you use tools that we talked a little bit the other
• 1:46:02
  other day about the integration tools.
• 1:46:08
  How do you use those? When do you use them?
• 1:46:11
  You know, and, and if you're not using them, you know, why not?
• 1:46:14
  Is it money? And what what is it?
• 1:46:18
  So, yeah, I think that's where I am.
• 1:46:20
  I looking like, you look in Costa Rica.
• 1:46:24
  I'm looking at where do I want to retire to?
• 1:46:27
  I mean, although I live, you know, in the Sun Valley area,
• 1:46:30
  you know, which is everybody comes here to read, you know.
• 1:46:32
  Yeah. As I say in the place.
• 1:46:34
  Yeah, yeah, it's not bad, but you know, is it, is it?
• 1:46:39
  You know, how many more years of the the snow do I want?
• 1:46:42
  I mean, if you don't do something in the snow, it's
• 1:46:44
  miserable for a lot of people. I hate, I hate but but cross
• 1:46:47
  country, Sam, we got 260 kilometers of groom cross
• 1:46:50
  country trail out here, You know, 2-3 ski mountains, Alpine
• 1:46:55
  ski, God bless. You for doing that I all I hear
• 1:46:59
  is misery. Yeah, mountain biking, you know,
• 1:47:02
  a great mountain biking and you know, it's and I'm usually the
• 1:47:07
  biggest mountain biker and biggest skier out there.
• 1:47:10
  Our biggest? Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:47:12
  Gotcha. Look, a bowling ball on skis,
• 1:47:17
  lookout. Yeah.
• 1:47:19
  Move, move over. He's taking up more of the lane
• 1:47:21
  than he should. Yeah, it's I think, you know,
• 1:47:28
  retirement probably for track coaches.
• 1:47:29
  I don't know if we ever retire. You know, it concerns me.
• 1:47:34
  Well, it, it, it, it, it does. At the same time, if I had a
• 1:47:37
  family, I probably would retire and go travel or do if I could
• 1:47:42
  afford it, you know, and money's the other issue.
• 1:47:45
  Where's, you know, where's, where's your money going to go
• 1:47:48
  as longest. And you know, people like, well,
• 1:47:54
  how much do you charge to do a lecture?
• 1:47:55
  And I'm like, well, I don't know what I mean, Not a lot because I
• 1:48:00
  think that it's it's important. You still got that part of me
• 1:48:03
  that's like, coaches are poor. They need to help give, you
• 1:48:08
  know. Give what?
• 1:48:09
  You got, I've talked to this a lot of people about these
• 1:48:12
  things, this aspect of, you know, charging for your
• 1:48:15
  knowledge, right? And, and, and boy, you're,
• 1:48:20
  you're not uncommon here. You're not, you're not unique in
• 1:48:23
  this one, Randy, where people are like, man, I want to help we
• 1:48:25
  because we to be a track coach, you have to be selfless.
• 1:48:28
  So you want to give, you've given to athletes for decades.
• 1:48:31
  You've given your education that you've you've worked hard to
• 1:48:35
  gain, by the way, whether it's monetarily and also, you know,
• 1:48:38
  the physical strain, etcetera, and time.
• 1:48:40
  And then there's also the other tug side of it of, well, I, you
• 1:48:44
  know, just because I retired doesn't mean expenses stop.
• 1:48:46
  I still need to make some money here.
• 1:48:49
  And that's where I encourage people, you know, to, to charge,
• 1:48:53
  charge for charge for your knowledge.
• 1:48:55
  And, and that, that's where I think with you, Randy, it's like
• 1:48:58
  Mandy, you have so much knowledge and experience in many
• 1:49:01
  events. Obviously you're the long jump
• 1:49:04
  guy, you know, the jumps guy, but you know, you have a lot of
• 1:49:06
  experience in a lot of events. And even just the, you know, we
• 1:49:08
  talked a lot about the, the commonalities of events and the
• 1:49:12
  base of events, right? Instead of this 1% knowledge,
• 1:49:15
  like you actually, if you get this 80% done, you you're going
• 1:49:18
  to have better athletes just on that alone.
• 1:49:21
  And that's where I would encourage, you know, guys like
• 1:49:23
  you. Like I remember who, gosh, who
• 1:49:28
  retired and I was like, oh gosh, maybe it's Gary, Gary Winkler.
• 1:49:32
  When he retired, I was like, yeah, that's cool you're
• 1:49:34
  retiring, Gary, but you have a lot of knowledge like, and we
• 1:49:37
  need our coaches to know that knowledge.
• 1:49:39
  Let's find ways to expand that while while making money.
• 1:49:43
  You know, maybe coaching education isn't $1,000,000
• 1:49:46
  endeavor, but there's there's money to be paid.
• 1:49:47
  And I think we're so I think COVID helped us to have a base
• 1:49:52
  of like we understand we need to pay for coaching education as
• 1:49:55
  well. We the formal has always been
• 1:49:57
  paid for, right? You pay for USATF level 1 and
• 1:49:59
  USTF CC academies and all. All this has changed the game as
• 1:50:03
  well in regards to professional coaching development and you pay
• 1:50:07
  to go to Acps and stuff like that.
• 1:50:09
  And they, they've done an amazing job.
• 1:50:10
  I just think there's something there, whether it's in an
• 1:50:13
  organization or even on your own Patreon there, there's something
• 1:50:17
  there to where the, the knowledge that you have has
• 1:50:21
  monetary value as well out there.
• 1:50:23
  I think it'd be great for you as well to help continue expressing
• 1:50:27
  your ideas and knowledge that you have in the sport and also
• 1:50:30
  for our our coaches, young and old by the way, to to learn and
• 1:50:34
  gain from that experience. Yeah, I mean, I think the, you
• 1:50:37
  know, having the opportunities to do that, it's, it's, it's a
• 1:50:40
  little hard for me. I, I, it's not that I don't work
• 1:50:44
  well, but I'm, I'm probably, you know, for, for high school
• 1:50:47
  coaches. I mean, I, you get to the point
• 1:50:50
  where you're, and once we talked about middle school and foreign
• 1:50:54
  language, you know, you get to the point where you, you start
• 1:50:58
  to understand the big rocks really well.
• 1:51:00
  And you know, there everybody's seen that video with this
• 1:51:04
  particular point where the guy puts the big rocks in the glass
• 1:51:06
  and all of that. And you know, and yet when I sit
• 1:51:11
  at Olympic Games, I see the big rocks not being done.
• 1:51:15
  I'm like, OK, will somebody please do a penultimate step?
• 1:51:19
  Someone, I don't care who it is, just somebody do a penultimate
• 1:51:23
  step out here, you know, or could you guys reduce your hop
• 1:51:28
  height a little bit, just carry your horizontal velocity to the
• 1:51:32
  jump. But the little things that are,
• 1:51:37
  you know, I had to just this this just this year with the Joe
• 1:51:42
  who who won the national game fourteen O 619 years old, 1359
• 1:51:48
  before that and most of the time 1320, you know, 1359 was that
• 1:51:54
  one jump she had. But you know, the coach who'd
• 1:51:58
  spent quite a bit of time with Jeremy, he just didn't
• 1:52:01
  understand the jumps and didn't understand what a penultimate
• 1:52:06
  was, didn't understand the hop, the approach, rhythm, these
• 1:52:11
  things. And a bit stubborn guy willing
• 1:52:16
  to learn from me and just making those changes, you know, little
• 1:52:22
  long jumpers. She goes 685 and practice from
• 1:52:26
  16 steps. I'm like, OK, this girl can go 7
• 1:52:29
  meters it's just a matter of time if you keep reinforcing
• 1:52:33
  these things. She'd never done a penultimate
• 1:52:35
  in her life. Everybody says that's the
• 1:52:39
  American way. No, it's physics, dude, not the
• 1:52:43
  American way. It's physics, it's bio
• 1:52:47
  mechanics, you know, and, and, and just just getting that, that
• 1:52:53
  if and, and if you look at, if you were to go look at the
• 1:52:56
  triple jumpers in China now versus even 8 years ago, they
• 1:53:00
  have gone from this to now they're starting to skip the
• 1:53:04
  stone across the water and starting to maintain the
• 1:53:07
  horizontal velocity better. And what's funny is when you go
• 1:53:10
  back, go back earlier. They used to do it, and then it
• 1:53:14
  got lost somewhere. Yeah.
• 1:53:16
  That's what I think's no, no, that's what I think's
• 1:53:17
  interesting about you. You know, Randy, I, I think of
• 1:53:20
  coaches, I think there's a lot of really, really good coaches
• 1:53:23
  out there. And then I think from my
• 1:53:25
  experience, you know, there's maybe 5 that transcend that.
• 1:53:29
  I've always put Boo in that area, Dan is in that area and
• 1:53:32
  you are in that area. And that is something that like
• 1:53:36
  I like to look at, you know, these individuals very well, Dan
• 1:53:39
  and Boo as a comparison, which had both of them on the podcast,
• 1:53:43
  some amazing individuals in their stories.
• 1:53:45
  Don't think I realized until I had really Dan on the show how
• 1:53:48
  big of an influence Dan was on Boo.
• 1:53:50
  I kind of for some reason thought of that was parallel.
• 1:53:52
  But no, it was like Boo actively calls Dan his, his mentor, Dan,
• 1:53:58
  both of them intelligent, super intelligent people.
• 1:54:00
  Obviously their success on the track coaching side is
• 1:54:06
  unmatched. Dan, when he taught for me, for
• 1:54:09
  a guy, I'm, I'm probably your average coach.
• 1:54:11
  I was an OK coach. I was not superior.
• 1:54:14
  I certainly wasn't beginner. You know, I got to pass my
• 1:54:17
  beginner stage. I was a pretty good coach.
• 1:54:20
  When Dan talks and he's saying super smart things, he he, his,
• 1:54:26
  his way of teaching his, his thinking process is too high for
• 1:54:30
  me. There's things that I'm like, I
• 1:54:31
  know he's saying good things, I just don't have the background,
• 1:54:35
  whether it's educationally, etcetera.
• 1:54:37
  I'm not grasping 100% of what he's saying.
• 1:54:39
  Boo, on the other hand, has this gift of being able to speak to
• 1:54:45
  to me to a guy like me, almost as if he's talking to me as a
• 1:54:48
  fifth grade level. I I know he's not, he's not
• 1:54:50
  doing a condescending like, Oh, I better say small words for
• 1:54:53
  Mike, but his teaching style when boot when I did level 2
• 1:54:58
  with Boo, which changed my life, changed my coaching career and
• 1:55:01
  changed my just my personal life of how I think about things.
• 1:55:06
  I remember I don't like the pole vault at all.
• 1:55:07
  I like the pole vault, but I can't coach it.
• 1:55:09
  I don't like a guy. I've once they put the plant,
• 1:55:12
  the pole in the box, I'm like, I'm lost and what the heck
• 1:55:14
  happens? I can do the runway.
• 1:55:16
  Everything else. I'm just lost.
• 1:55:18
  I walked out of that level to honestly thinking maybe I can
• 1:55:23
  coach the pole vault. Wait a minute.
• 1:55:24
  He makes me feel like I can do that.
• 1:55:26
  I never to the thank God for all the pole vaulters.
• 1:55:29
  I did not coach them at all. So luckily I got past that.
• 1:55:33
  But that's what I think about with you, Randy.
• 1:55:35
  Randy, you're so intelligent. You've done so many amazing
• 1:55:39
  things and so many great athletes and we've seen
• 1:55:40
  development of athletes that were good that become great and
• 1:55:43
  record holders and things like that.
• 1:55:45
  What you did with the Chinese athletes, I mean, it's hard to
• 1:55:49
  match what you what you've done over the past decade plus alone,
• 1:55:53
  not even counting your entire career.
• 1:55:55
  And so I think of you as one of those five when I, if I had to
• 1:55:57
  officially list out my top five and in my kind of area, sprints,
• 1:56:00
  jumps, hurdles, things like that, you would be amongst Dan
• 1:56:03
  and Boo, right? And so sometimes we get fearful
• 1:56:07
  of like, man, how am I going to learn from Randy?
• 1:56:09
  He's going to be talking about that one.
• 1:56:11
  Obviously he is the master of the last percent and in reality,
• 1:56:17
  you might actually be the master of the big rocks, the base.
• 1:56:22
  And so I think of like basics, the basics with Randy.
• 1:56:26
  Like I think about this like because you know, one of the
• 1:56:29
  here's common sense is not so common, right?
• 1:56:33
  The basis is not so common. There is a YouTube channel.
• 1:56:37
  This guy, he grew up without a father.
• 1:56:40
  And so he knows there's a lot of other people like, like myself
• 1:56:43
  that grew up without a father. And so we didn't learn how to
• 1:56:45
  tie a tie, how to change a tie or how to redo grout.
• 1:56:48
  I don't know all these things that maybe, you know, your,
• 1:56:50
  your, your dad might have done. And so he runs a channel called,
• 1:56:54
  I can't remember what he names. I don't like, I almost said he
• 1:56:56
  calls himself my, your daddy. It's not like that, but it's
• 1:56:59
  something like, you know, like I'll be your dad, you know,
• 1:57:02
  here's how to do XY and Z. And that has millions of
• 1:57:07
  subscribers and it's basics. It's how to tie, tie how to
• 1:57:10
  change a tire basics, not how to become a millionaire by picking
• 1:57:15
  stock differential basics. And that's where I kind of like
• 1:57:21
  I just had this, this thought, this vision of you.
• 1:57:25
  It's like, oh, basics with Randy for for track and field.
• 1:57:27
  And it's like, man, he he ain't talking about the, the, the 1%.
• 1:57:31
  He's talking about fly 30s. He's talking about penultimate.
• 1:57:35
  I mean, things that are, you know, but if you're not doing
• 1:57:37
  these things, you ain't getting the anywhere close to the Max
• 1:57:39
  out of here. That's so valuable.
• 1:57:41
  I think out there in a very. Big.
• 1:57:43
  Sport. You know this big participation
• 1:57:45
  sport here, buddy. Yeah, no, I, I, I, I I use the
• 1:57:50
  big rocks analogy all the freaking time.
• 1:57:53
  I like that. Don't forget the big rocks.
• 1:57:54
  I like that. You know, I mean, even recently
• 1:57:57
  with Christian and Dijon and these guys, I'm like, don't
• 1:58:00
  they? We're like, well, we got to get
• 1:58:01
  to do this. No, no, no, no, no, no.
• 1:58:03
  Let's get this right first, OK? It's really easy to find
• 1:58:08
  yourself floating through YouTube looking for little
• 1:58:11
  things that are, if you twist your pinky this way and you hold
• 1:58:15
  your ear, you know, and shake your right leg, you're going to
• 1:58:18
  be faster. I'm like, dude, that doesn't
• 1:58:21
  matter much if he's not effectively reaccelerating his
• 1:58:25
  thigh back to the ground. I mean, you know, and, and yet
• 1:58:29
  they can be effective tools, Right, Right, right.
• 1:58:32
  But, but they're not the big rocks.
• 1:58:34
  That's right. I love, I love that analogy
• 1:58:36
  especially. I don't know how many people
• 1:58:37
  know when you say big I, I remember when you're talking
• 1:58:40
  about the the beaker, if you will, and the rocks and all the
• 1:58:43
  sand and that that kind of the. Well, yeah, he.
• 1:58:45
  Goes. He goes to the big, he puts the
• 1:58:47
  rocks and it's this full, Yeah, OK.
• 1:58:49
  Then he goes right, right, right, right, pebbles.
• 1:58:51
  Then he puts small pebbles. That's it.
• 1:58:53
  Then it goes with sand, and then he finally finishes up with
• 1:58:56
  water. Yeah, that's, that's right.
• 1:58:58
  And I think that's a lot of us are looking for the granule of
• 1:59:01
  sand and you're missing the the boulder that should be right in
• 1:59:06
  front of your face, but in fact it is in front of your face.
• 1:59:08
  It's it is, I mean, I, that's why I said I, I, I watch, I
• 1:59:12
  watch the Olympics and I'm like, dude, why aren't you sprinting?
• 1:59:17
  Well, what's with all this high back kick behind you?
• 1:59:21
  I mean, this is, this is sprinting one O 1 in today's
• 1:59:25
  world, you know, fix it, fix it, you know, so that, that this is
• 1:59:31
  the start with learning how to Sprint, OK, and then figure out
• 1:59:35
  the rhythm. And then how do you attack the
• 1:59:37
  different phases? Can you get into minutiae really
• 1:59:40
  easy? And, and when you do, you lose
• 1:59:43
  the athlete typically. Yeah, you know, when and, and
• 1:59:46
  most of us, at some point in our careers, we're trying to prove
• 1:59:49
  that we're really smart. And we're talking, you know,
• 1:59:52
  and, and people say that about Dan.
• 1:59:54
  And it's no offense to Dan at all.
• 1:59:56
  It's like, Dan's still trying it.
• 1:59:58
  Dan's still being the smartest guy in the room.
• 2:00:00
  And more often than not, he probably is.
• 2:00:02
  Yeah. Yeah, that, that's.
• 2:00:04
  The word you're, you're skirting around here is ego because I
• 2:00:06
  want to be seen. And you're right.
• 2:00:08
  I I will absolutely say that because I want to make sure no
• 2:00:10
  one thinks I'm disparaging Damn path.
• 2:00:12
  Love that. No, you're not at all.
• 2:00:14
  He might be the smartest man in the room.
• 2:00:16
  He does not think he's the smartest man in the room, nor is
• 2:00:19
  he acting or trying to be that smart.
• 2:00:21
  That is the difference, right? There.
• 2:00:23
  He comes at it with no ego. He is literally just trying to
• 2:00:25
  figure out how to make you a better vaulter, runner,
• 2:00:27
  sprinter, jumper and such. Yeah, yeah.
• 2:00:30
  And I've had people tell me, well, you're like really dumb,
• 2:00:34
  Dan. It's.
• 2:00:35
  Kind of a compliment a little bit.
• 2:00:37
  Well, it is a little bit a little bit you just.
• 2:00:39
  You just simplify it all so easily.
• 2:00:41
  And I'm like, well, I mean, both Dan and I come from basically a
• 2:00:47
  teaching background and Brent McFarland, 4th grade, 5th grade
• 2:00:52
  teacher, I mean, nobody could break it down like Brent.
• 2:00:56
  One of my favorite nobody I got to this is how actually I found
• 2:00:59
  out about Chula Vista. He invited me and Mario Wilson,
• 2:01:02
  now the head coach at Lynchburg University, to a winter clinic
• 2:01:05
  with his Canadian team. This is the Christmas of 2000.
• 2:01:09
  Yeah, Christmas of 2000. And so I got to meet Brent,
• 2:01:12
  Brent and Linda, what's his wife's name, his wife and stuff.
• 2:01:17
  But got to just for a week and a half, got to be around Brent
• 2:01:22
  24/7. And oh, my God.
• 2:01:25
  I mean, you talk about setting me off like, oh, this is what a
• 2:01:28
  coach can be, a professional. And this early, early in my
• 2:01:31
  career, I was blown away and I'm so grateful that I got to have
• 2:01:35
  that man in my life. He was one of the best but out
• 2:01:37
  of down and we were roommates several different times and
• 2:01:40
  talked and I tried to help him towards the end of his life with
• 2:01:43
  different things that was was going on and and and actually
• 2:01:49
  had some really interesting success.
• 2:01:52
  But yeah, I mean, Brent is the epitome of what I think the
• 2:01:58
  communicators should be. Yeah.
• 2:02:00
  You know what? What's his name?
• 2:02:02
  I I remember watching him. Oh, gosh, I'm gonna, I feel bad
• 2:02:08
  I'm forgetting his name. High jump coach now married to
• 2:02:15
  USATF, former USATF Wheaton. Oh, Paul Souza.
• 2:02:23
  Paul yeah, thank you. Just I didn't use people's.
• 2:02:25
  Names. Well, we'll get it together.
• 2:02:27
  I'll I'll look it up. I'm not ashamed, but I remember
• 2:02:28
  he's starting to go down. So I'm not Paul Souza.
• 2:02:31
  Also a great musician by the way, but.
• 2:02:33
  Yes, Paul. Yeah, Great, incredible.
• 2:02:36
  Yeah, but but hit the. But the way Paul does clinics is
• 2:02:40
  he's entertaining. I mean, he is on stage and you
• 2:02:43
  know, and and really. And you can tell the natural
• 2:02:47
  musician in him comes out when he's doing that.
• 2:02:51
  And, and I think in the end, there's a lot of us that, you
• 2:02:56
  know, I, I, I, you know, that's a little part of Randy's life.
• 2:03:00
  You know, I talked about Ken Aldrich, who at the University
• 2:03:03
  of Oregon, who was a dance instructor.
• 2:03:05
  Well, Ken talked me into being in a dance group.
• 2:03:09
  I had two left feet. You know, I mean, I was
• 2:03:11
  horrible, but he needed guys. He couldn't get any guys and so
• 2:03:16
  he recruited guys. And so for two years I was in a
• 2:03:19
  dance group. That's funny.
• 2:03:22
  And. Like what kind of what kind of
• 2:03:24
  dance I got to have a. Vision, it was all, it was all
• 2:03:26
  folk. It was everything.
• 2:03:27
  Actually it was, it was folk, dance, disco, everything.
• 2:03:31
  I mean, you know, we could back in the day with with the
• 2:03:35
  partners we had, we could tear, we could tear up any floor in
• 2:03:38
  the Atlanta. We were we were really, really
• 2:03:40
  good. You know, it was but but you
• 2:03:44
  learned so much. And part of my warm up comes
• 2:03:46
  from that, you know, and, and and people go.
• 2:03:49
  So how did you develop this warm up?
• 2:03:51
  And I tell them look. Sit down, this is not going to
• 2:03:55
  be what you think this. Is going to be a story, I said.
• 2:03:59
  Part of it comes from Balkan folk dancing.
• 2:04:04
  Part of it comes from sitting at the 1985 NC 2A Championships in
• 2:04:09
  Texas and just sitting up in the stands and observing, writing
• 2:04:14
  down every all the drills that I thought and then formulating
• 2:04:18
  them. And then the majority of it,
• 2:04:20
  though, comes from Steve Savage. They were way ahead of their
• 2:04:26
  time. UCLA volleyball.
• 2:04:29
  OK, Yeah. My warm up is UCLA volleyball
• 2:04:33
  warm up in 1969. Seventy.
• 2:04:36
  And Steve, I think Steve's still with us, but I Steve came to do
• 2:04:40
  a volleyball clinic at the University of Oregon back in 70.
• 2:04:44
  Must have been 76 or 77. And you know, he did this warm
• 2:04:49
  up and I'm like, Oh yeah, this is a dynamic warm up, Jack.
• 2:04:54
  You know, I mean all the arm swings, everything you can see,
• 2:04:57
  it came out of the Russian, East German system, maybe even more
• 2:05:03
  Polish, Hungarian system really. But that was so I pulled these
• 2:05:08
  pieces together. I think it's a great lesson
• 2:05:11
  about curiosity for you to be, to have gone past what you had
• 2:05:17
  to do for the dance class. That takes curiosity to, to go
• 2:05:21
  to a volleyball clinic when you're a when you're at that
• 2:05:24
  point, you are like, oh, I'm going to be a track coach.
• 2:05:25
  You know, it was not an athletics coach.
• 2:05:27
  You were like, I'm going to be a track coach.
• 2:05:29
  That takes curiosity. And I think curiosity is a
• 2:05:31
  superpower. And sometimes we get, again, it
• 2:05:33
  kind of goes back to this, I'm going to be a sprints and
• 2:05:36
  hurdles coach and I'm going to go so deep and all this kind of
• 2:05:38
  stuff. And we lose curiosity of what
• 2:05:40
  other events are doing, what other sports are doing, what
• 2:05:42
  other activities are doing. And there's a lot of lessons to
• 2:05:47
  learn from other activities and other sports and other events.
• 2:05:50
  That takes curiosity, though that not everybody has that in
• 2:05:53
  spades. It it it takes curiosity with a
• 2:05:55
  little bit of intellect to be able to figure out how to
• 2:05:58
  analyze and synthesize the information.
• 2:06:00
  Correct. Yeah, you have to bring it back
• 2:06:01
  into the the the event or events, Right, right, right.
• 2:06:04
  But because I never could really competed in track and field
• 2:06:06
  where I had, you know, coaching and throw that I had no
• 2:06:10
  predetermined ideas about how you're supposed to do this.
• 2:06:13
  And I didn't have, I mean, I had Dennis Whitby for a short time,
• 2:06:17
  but I was, you know, Lauren, all those guys, they're all together
• 2:06:20
  over at LSU. Gary's out there with burn and
• 2:06:24
  doing their thing. I had, I didn't have any, I had
• 2:06:26
  to develop all of it. I had on my own.
• 2:06:30
  And you know, when I, when I, when I look back on that time
• 2:06:35
  trying to figure all that out and thinking, man, Andy, that
• 2:06:38
  was those, those were about 5 or 6 years of pretty intense
• 2:06:43
  reading. And you know, I still, I still
• 2:06:47
  carry my library and hard drive. I've got I think 18,000 articles
• 2:06:51
  in this little hard drive. Really.
• 2:06:52
  Holy crap. Yeah.
• 2:06:54
  That thing's valuable. Years and years and years of it.
• 2:06:57
  Yeah. And I give it away to people
• 2:06:58
  here. Do you need it here?
• 2:06:59
  I just give it to them, you know, But I, I agree with you.
• 2:07:05
  It's, it's, it takes a level of, of intellectual curiosity to, to
• 2:07:11
  cross pollenize, to pull things from different sports.
• 2:07:16
  You know, I mean, I remember sitting with, with John Smith in
• 2:07:21
  Berlin 2009 and we were out there.
• 2:07:24
  He was finished warming up and I was finished with my, with my
• 2:07:27
  Koreans. And we're sitting, we're just
• 2:07:29
  sitting on the lawn. I said, you know, John, you're,
• 2:07:31
  you're really fortunate because now you're, you're able to, to
• 2:07:37
  pull from your own experiences in, in, in the in these races
• 2:07:40
  and, and with the coaches that you had and you're able to pass
• 2:07:44
  that on and said, I, I just don't have that.
• 2:07:47
  And, and John turned to me. He goes, yeah, you know, man,
• 2:07:51
  but you can feel things like I've never met anybody who can
• 2:07:55
  feel an event like you can feel it without ever having done it.
• 2:08:00
  You know, that comes from the dance.
• 2:08:04
  That's what you learn and dance. You learn how to feel.
• 2:08:06
  You learn, you'd learn all the different pieces and where your
• 2:08:11
  body is in space and time. Gymnastics, same thing.
• 2:08:16
  And I think when we back in those days had to take all these
• 2:08:19
  activity classes, even though we were horrible, we learned we
• 2:08:24
  created the base of the pyramid in terms of physical activity or
• 2:08:28
  biobotar skills, if you wish. Today we don't have those
• 2:08:32
  biomotor skill, the skills, the athletes, we're not seeing them.
• 2:08:36
  So are the peak of the pyramid is, is less than and you know,
• 2:08:42
  back to Doctor Hay for a second. I remember I had some female
• 2:08:49
  long jumpers and I just couldn't get him to take off the ground.
• 2:08:53
  And we were, they were doing penultim, but they, they just
• 2:08:56
  go. And so I, I was with Doctor Hay
• 2:08:59
  one year and we were, you know, he'd always take us to dinner
• 2:09:03
  out at the Amana colonies. We were sitting there and I, I
• 2:09:06
  just said, Doctor Hay, I'm going to ask you a question.
• 2:09:09
  I said, what's the precursor to jumping?
• 2:09:13
  What biomotor skill is it? You know, I mean, there's,
• 2:09:15
  there's leaping, there's skipping, there's things.
• 2:09:18
  I said, what's the precursor? He looked at me because, you
• 2:09:23
  know, I don't think I know. I mean, I'm not sure, but I
• 2:09:27
  will. I will let you know.
• 2:09:28
  I will find out. And he sent me a note.
• 2:09:34
  And, and this is when e-mail was in its infancy, but he sent me
• 2:09:37
  an e-mail because Willie and I had, Willie and I got emailed
• 2:09:40
  together in in 1987. I mean, we was, it was prodigy,
• 2:09:44
  CompuServe prodigy. We were on e-mail.
• 2:09:46
  Back together, I was I was early in early 90s.
• 2:09:49
  You are way early. Hope we were, it was just came
• 2:09:52
  out. We both had computers and it was
• 2:09:55
  boom. I mean, I was doing, I was doing
• 2:09:59
  video calls with Mel Sif in 1990 on our on our Macs.
• 2:10:05
  We could do it with our Macs back then.
• 2:10:07
  It wasn't very good, you know, but it.
• 2:10:09
  Was there? It was amazing back then, yeah.
• 2:10:11
  Yeah, because your modem just damn enough did but but modem.
• 2:10:16
  So doctor hey did this and and he he he sends me an e-mail and
• 2:10:20
  says it's galloping. You have to learn to gallop and
• 2:10:27
  and and so that day I I went and I went to the elementary school.
• 2:10:32
  Of course there's the, there's the freaky guy looking at the
• 2:10:36
  kids. And so I'm watching all the kids
• 2:10:39
  and I'm like, OK, those kids are galloping.
• 2:10:44
  Those kids are skipping. Why aren't they galloping?
• 2:10:48
  And when do they? So you gallop first and then you
• 2:10:51
  lose it. And if you never learn to
• 2:10:54
  gallop, you can't, you don't, you don't know, understand a
• 2:10:57
  penultimate right. And so that's when I brought all
• 2:11:00
  the galloping drills into high jump and pole vault and long
• 2:11:04
  jump and, and everything to start teaching people.
• 2:11:07
  You got to learn to gallop to get this right.
• 2:11:10
  And, you know, Doctor Hay handed me a book.
• 2:11:13
  I think I saw him maybe a couple months later at a competition
• 2:11:17
  and he handed me a book that you know to this day outside of
• 2:11:23
  Thomas Meyers 1st paper on and fascia that I read in in in in
• 2:11:29
  1998. It was Mabel Todd's thinking
• 2:11:34
  body should be mandatory reading for every coach.
• 2:11:37
  I'm not aware of this one, Yeah. Oh, yeah, That's that.
• 2:11:39
  She's 1937. She was way ahead of everybody
• 2:11:43
  in the thinking body, the way the body moves.
• 2:11:47
  And, and, and then of course, Gideon would always talk about
• 2:11:54
  how to utilize your elastic power, but we weren't at that
• 2:11:58
  particular point figuring out the fascia was, was, was it?
• 2:12:02
  So once I put, so I took Gideon's information, Mabel
• 2:12:06
  Todd's information, Thomas Myers information and went, oh, well,
• 2:12:11
  this is how this is working. Fascia is the power, you know,
• 2:12:15
  muscles set up joints or reposition joints to take
• 2:12:19
  advantage of the elastic power and the fascia, you know,
• 2:12:22
  creates that. And the next one I, I talked, I
• 2:12:26
  remember calling Thomas Myers and then calling, what's his
• 2:12:29
  name? MF said you got to get Myers
• 2:12:31
  involved. You got to transfer this from
• 2:12:33
  the massage world to our world because this belongs in our
• 2:12:37
  world. And, and, and where it came out
• 2:12:41
  of was looking at ground contact times.
• 2:12:45
  And I know, let me see. You get a false start at .1, you
• 2:12:49
  know, but our ground contact times are .85, right, 085, Yeah.
• 2:12:55
  Well, wait a minute, if this is volitional, then what's this?
• 2:13:01
  And that means that this is non volitional, which means that now
• 2:13:04
  you're into an elastic world, you're in the fasher world.
• 2:13:08
  And, and that is, you know, this is in the night and early, late
• 2:13:11
  80s, early 90s and then later in the 90s and I started to kind of
• 2:13:14
  put it all together and coming to grips with that volitional
• 2:13:21
  versus non volitional. And you know, because everybody
• 2:13:25
  was strength training, you know, it's but that's volitional.
• 2:13:28
  We got to get, we got to figure out how to, as I go, integrate
• 2:13:32
  this non volitional and volitional components to create
• 2:13:39
  power, you know, and then there's high velocity power, low
• 2:13:42
  velocity power. So there's all the stuff that,
• 2:13:45
  so people who talk to me are like, I'm either a water
• 2:13:47
  specialist, strength and conditioning on speed, you know,
• 2:13:51
  and, and Danny's kind of like me, You know, we back in the
• 2:13:58
  day, we didn't have any therapist.
• 2:14:00
  There was no medical people around.
• 2:14:01
  We had to learn to do it ourselves.
• 2:14:04
  Dan was fortunate with a lot of the Canadians to really meet
• 2:14:07
  some great guys. I had some people in Southern
• 2:14:10
  California, some people in Europe and you pull them in and
• 2:14:13
  you start doing these these therapy people thought I was a
• 2:14:18
  therapist for a few years. We were in Europe, you know,
• 2:14:21
  because I work on Mayank Roger Kingdom, some other people and I
• 2:14:25
  can know I'm I'm I'm might coach with your what?
• 2:14:28
  Yeah. You're actually coach, you know.
• 2:14:30
  So that's interesting. I love that I, I have gotten,
• 2:14:34
  so, you know, it's been 20 years since I've coached so far away
• 2:14:38
  from like actual coaching. And I, I keep enough just to
• 2:14:43
  kind of see what trends are and things like that.
• 2:14:45
  But I have just like I've, I've gone a complete 180 away from
• 2:14:49
  like, oh, I was put on this earth to help an athlete become
• 2:14:52
  better to now where it's like, oh, I'm here to help the coach
• 2:14:55
  with their profession, even even above their, even though
• 2:14:57
  coaching education is still near and dear to my heart.
• 2:14:59
  It's like, yeah, I encourage and you should go do those things,
• 2:15:01
  but it's like, how do I help you in your profession?
• 2:15:04
  You know, how do we get paid more?
• 2:15:05
  How do we have more positions, things like that, that when you
• 2:15:08
  talk about those things, somebody, somebody got a lot of
• 2:15:10
  value out of what you just said there.
• 2:15:11
  And I appreciate that. You know, first of all, my
• 2:15:14
  education level, you were over my head on those things.
• 2:15:17
  There's things like I got like when you talk about fascia, it
• 2:15:21
  was, I did find it interesting when you talk about the
• 2:15:23
  difference between a block start and our ground contact time,
• 2:15:26
  like because I, I was always very interested in ground
• 2:15:28
  contact time And I of course have opinions about the, the
• 2:15:31
  fault start rule being point O1 for that as well.
• 2:15:34
  So, but I do appreciate that. I want to make sure I I.
• 2:15:37
  Yeah. I mean, even if you take a
• 2:15:38
  stopwatch and go, yeah, you know, you're getting point O 9,
• 2:15:43
  right, You know, and then, which is about as volitional as it
• 2:15:46
  gets, right, Right, right, right.
• 2:15:47
  Right. Yeah.
• 2:15:48
  And you'd go faster than that, of course.
• 2:15:49
  But yeah, that the that, that that's what piqued my interest
• 2:15:55
  and all that. See that that's where OK, so
• 2:15:57
  that OK, great example here going back to I'm going to call
• 2:16:01
  your new YouTube channel that you're going to start big rocks
• 2:16:04
  with Randy, but that is where now you have that knowledge and
• 2:16:08
  I think that's important knowledge that's getting closer
• 2:16:10
  to the 1% that's not a basic that you just talked about what
• 2:16:13
  we. Well, it should be.
• 2:16:15
  It might be your basic, but when I think about Cindy, who is
• 2:16:19
  coaching at Champagne Central High School, who's the math
• 2:16:21
  teacher, there are 100 other things I believe Cindy needs to
• 2:16:25
  learn first before she gets to that size rock.
• 2:16:29
  There's different. Well, here's another thing.
• 2:16:30
  Well, that's part that's part of the that's part of running
• 2:16:32
  drills is the main ingredient in running drills is understanding
• 2:16:37
  how to access the fascial power. Yeah, and and and you know,
• 2:16:41
  it's. And this is not black and white.
• 2:16:43
  It's not big rocks and sand. It is big rocks, little bit
• 2:16:46
  smaller rocks, tinier rocks, sand, water, etcetera.
• 2:16:50
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just thinking like I'm I'm
• 2:16:52
  being very basic one like big. Blocks.
• 2:16:55
  I get it. I mean, they need to get the
• 2:16:57
  kids fit, you know? I mean, come on, you know, it's
• 2:16:59
  kind of half the battle to begin with.
• 2:17:01
  And there's a big difference between what a coach in
• 2:17:03
  Wisconsin high school coach does and what the college coach at
• 2:17:06
  Miami does as well because of time, facilities, etcetera.
• 2:17:12
  We just had actually, this is very funny.
• 2:17:16
  I so next week boys and girls will have the coaches from the
• 2:17:19
  universe of Wisconsin Stevens Point.
• 2:17:20
  How do I know that? Already recorded it, But we talk
• 2:17:23
  a lot about Wisconsin high school coaches and you only have
• 2:17:26
  you have March, April, May. That's all they get.
• 2:17:27
  They're not allowed to have pre practice.
• 2:17:30
  And you know what March in Wisconsin's like because you
• 2:17:32
  grew up in Michigan, you ain't got no practice in March
• 2:17:35
  basically. And like on the 10th day is when
• 2:17:36
  you have your meet. So you start doing meats on day
• 2:17:38
  10. Take that to my college people
• 2:17:41
  who start practice roughly call it Labor Day.
• 2:17:43
  And your first meet, sometimes it's in December, but really
• 2:17:45
  maybe it's in January. So you got four months to
• 2:17:49
  prepare this kid. So rocks look a little different
• 2:17:52
  there, but there are some foundational raw.
• 2:17:55
  I love this analogy of the big rocks for you, by the way, just
• 2:17:58
  because it's the literation of the R, the rocks and Randy, but
• 2:18:01
  but there are some foundational big rocks there that the here's
• 2:18:06
  the crazy part. The information is out there.
• 2:18:08
  It's some of it's over here, some of it's over here, some of
• 2:18:11
  it's over here. I, I think hearing your voice
• 2:18:13
  say these types of things would help the coaching body because
• 2:18:17
  you're going to say in a way that some people go, Oh, I get
• 2:18:19
  it now where I didn't get it when I saw it at this clinic or,
• 2:18:24
  or whatever. Yeah, I, you know, I, I, I think
• 2:18:28
  back and when you look at this this big rocks concept and I
• 2:18:36
  look at my own education was very fortunate at at Oregon to
• 2:18:41
  come up with that education. But the, the, the part that I
• 2:18:49
  continue to struggle with is how to get these simple concepts
• 2:18:56
  across to people. And, you know, I mean, sometimes
• 2:19:02
  every, every once in a while, you know, you'll be watching TV
• 2:19:05
  and, and old some kids program comes on and you go that, that's
• 2:19:14
  it. That's how you communicate it
• 2:19:16
  right there, you know, and you take out your phone and you're
• 2:19:19
  like, OK, you know, remember that.
• 2:19:23
  If you ever have to need it, use it.
• 2:19:26
  And, and, and I think we, we, we, we have the opportunity as,
• 2:19:30
  as as older coaches to, to give back and help people understand
• 2:19:38
  what are the necessary pieces. And those are the big rocks, you
• 2:19:41
  know, learn those high school. Yeah, your, your GP PS you know,
• 2:19:46
  two weeks long, you know, maybe maybe three if you're lucky.
• 2:19:51
  And of course, if you look back at Tony, you know, obviously did
• 2:19:54
  it incredibly well in Colorado in a 40 yard hallway.
• 2:20:01
  And I, I remember sitting down with Tony in San Diego and, and
• 2:20:06
  I said, Tony, I'm, I'm going to criticize you for a minute here.
• 2:20:10
  And you know, that's Tony. I'm like, he's like, well, what
• 2:20:12
  are you talking to me? You know I said look your girls
• 2:20:15
  are great but they don't know how to achieve Max velocity yet.
• 2:20:20
  And, and, and I said, you're, they're stuck in acceleration
• 2:20:23
  mechanics. And I said, I know why.
• 2:20:25
  It's because of what you up against.
• 2:20:27
  And that's what we, we, we sat there for a couple hours.
• 2:20:30
  We went through all the drilling, all the Max velocity
• 2:20:32
  da da, da, da. And to Tony's credit, he did it.
• 2:20:36
  You know, now all of a sudden that 11:30 girl was running, was
• 2:20:39
  running 1113. The national record was
• 2:20:41
  dropping. And, you know, bless his heart,
• 2:20:45
  you're talking about a guy that was the best of the best and
• 2:20:48
  taught everybody a lot. And it was like, I just wanted
• 2:20:52
  to help him. He's like, I mean, I, I I was
• 2:20:55
  like, I was frustrated for him because I knew he could not do
• 2:21:00
  what he was capable of doing because of the constraints of
• 2:21:03
  what he had. That's right.
• 2:21:06
  You know, But if he took the drills, yeah, he could
• 2:21:09
  incorporate those drills into helping develop that later.
• 2:21:14
  And that goes back to where we talked about you're not in the
• 2:21:15
  huddle. You don't know the play.
• 2:21:17
  A lot of people, I remember this when Tony was in the heyday, you
• 2:21:21
  know, records at the records. And people were still like, oh,
• 2:21:23
  yes, kids aren't very good. They if only he did this and
• 2:21:26
  that. And it's like, yeah, brother,
• 2:21:27
  did you know he was in a hallway and that's all he had.
• 2:21:29
  Like, like, come on. We like to think that everybody
• 2:21:32
  has this ideal situation except for ourselves, by the way.
• 2:21:35
  Yeah. And so you should be getting it
• 2:21:37
  done better than me because I'm the one who has a tough.
• 2:21:39
  You've got it perfect. And you're like, you have no
• 2:21:41
  idea what's going over the on over there.
• 2:21:43
  What's there's a name for that? What's that called when you.
• 2:21:49
  It's kind of the same thing like when when someone cuts you off
• 2:21:52
  in the car, like when you're high, when someone cuts you off,
• 2:21:54
  they're a jerk. But when you cut someone off,
• 2:21:56
  it's like, no, I just had bad news or, oh, I didn't see them.
• 2:21:59
  There's an actual term to that. It's actually very fascinating.
• 2:22:02
  Again, it helps me with judgement, lack of judgement.
• 2:22:05
  It's like, oh man, I, I have no clue.
• 2:22:07
  That person that cut me off, they might have just gotten a
• 2:22:09
  phone call from their spouse saying that it's over, or they
• 2:22:11
  may have just found out their parent passed away.
• 2:22:13
  I have no idea. Don't know what's going on
• 2:22:15
  there. It didn't hurt me.
• 2:22:16
  I'm, I'm safe. So why do I get mad?
• 2:22:18
  I, I, I move on. There's worse things that are
• 2:22:21
  going to happen in life. So I just think it's
• 2:22:23
  rediscovering empathy. Yeah, yes, yes.
• 2:22:27
  And, and, and certainly don't look to the current leadership
• 2:22:30
  to try to discover it. This is not who we are as a
• 2:22:33
  country, not who we should be. It's about as big a political
• 2:22:38
  statement as you're going to hear me make.
• 2:22:42
  But you know, because our, our job is to raise somebody else's
• 2:22:45
  child just to help the brains can.
• 2:22:46
  That's right. It is whether you want to or
• 2:22:49
  not. You may be spending more time
• 2:22:50
  with that person's child than they are and and certainly
• 2:22:54
  communicating a different level more than likely.
• 2:22:56
  It may have more influence. Yes, substantially and, and, and
• 2:23:02
  we take that and I think majority of people do take that
• 2:23:05
  very seriously and how important it is culturally for this
• 2:23:10
  country to be able to do that. Well, you know, you're, you're,
• 2:23:15
  you're we, you know, we talked about raise the village race,
• 2:23:18
  the child and and it's it's true.
• 2:23:21
  I, I do really think that at if we can stop, I don't know if we
• 2:23:29
  ever stop, but, you know, finding a way to be uniquely
• 2:23:33
  critical. I don't know if that's the right
• 2:23:35
  word, the word used, but where you can say, look, I, I think I
• 2:23:39
  can help you with something or here's what I see.
• 2:23:43
  And, and find a way to get people to understand how they
• 2:23:48
  can, they can change stuff to help their athletes because in
• 2:23:53
  the end, you know, you want to help them, help them because
• 2:23:56
  they're the, they're the dreamweaver and, and that's
• 2:23:59
  their dream. And you're just back here, you
• 2:24:02
  know, and you got to help that coach weave that dream for that
• 2:24:07
  athlete. That is its own challenges, you
• 2:24:10
  know, and, and in a lot of cases, breaking people out of
• 2:24:15
  their current thought patterns is one of the most difficult
• 2:24:19
  things to do, you know. So this retirement thing is
• 2:24:24
  going to be. Yeah, interesting.
• 2:24:26
  Yeah, You know, Randy, some of the I like the sound bites,
• 2:24:30
  right? We're a sound bite, sound bite
• 2:24:31
  society. And I am no different than that.
• 2:24:34
  One of the things that I think about over the last few hours
• 2:24:37
  that we've had together, you know, I remember the influence
• 2:24:42
  that the Western Michigan coach that said, the basketball coach,
• 2:24:46
  it was like, like you, you're good at this.
• 2:24:48
  Like, wait a minute, what's going on?
• 2:24:50
  And just how much, you know, decades later, that is still a
• 2:24:54
  core memory of yours. I love that aspect cuz that
• 2:24:57
  makes me think of, you know, it's, it's easy in our sport to
• 2:25:00
  think about the, the, the, the, the Wooly Banks and Mike
• 2:25:04
  Powell's of the world. And I mean, I'd love to coach a
• 2:25:06
  Mike Powell. I'd love to coach a world
• 2:25:07
  record, love to coach gold medal.
• 2:25:08
  Well, 99.9% of the kids you ever coach are not going pro.
• 2:25:13
  If you're in the high school, they're not going to college,
• 2:25:15
  99% of them are not going on, but 100% of them are going on to
• 2:25:20
  become moms, dads, business owners, doctors, etcetera.
• 2:25:25
  And that's your real influence. You hit the nail on head there
• 2:25:27
  just a minute ago in regards to coaching track and field.
• 2:25:30
  And so I think about that impact that that coach made on you.
• 2:25:36
  I think about your, what you say.
• 2:25:38
  I mean, if you said it was a, it should be rule or law or highly
• 2:25:41
  recommendation, you should coach middle school and foreign
• 2:25:44
  language coaching at some point. I never thought about the, the
• 2:25:47
  foreign language aspect. The middle school made complete
• 2:25:49
  sense. Begin as a communication.
• 2:25:52
  Again, the, the, the influence you have over young people is
• 2:25:55
  tremendous. And that is special.
• 2:25:57
  Whether they jump 16 feet or 30 feet does not matter.
• 2:26:01
  Yeah, what they actually jump Your influence over them is
• 2:26:05
  important to society. I mean, I had when I was, you
• 2:26:08
  know, volunteering at Oregon and and I was barely making it
• 2:26:14
  living, you know, I probably could have been homeless most of
• 2:26:17
  the time barely. But I went and took a job as the
• 2:26:20
  head coach for Monroe Junior High, which is over in, in over
• 2:26:25
  the other side of Eugene. And we had 7th and 8th graders,
• 2:26:29
  9th graders were already in high school there.
• 2:26:31
  And I just remember those kids. I mean, Archie son Rahmani's
• 2:26:37
  daughter was on the team. There was other these great
• 2:26:39
  Oregon athletes were, were whose kids were now at middle school
• 2:26:43
  age were on the team. And I'm thinking, Dang, but that
• 2:26:46
  team, I look back at them and I remember getting a letter after
• 2:26:51
  it was over And one of the kids names was he was, he was
• 2:26:55
  bullied. They call him Spaz, you know,
• 2:26:58
  well, Spaz went from Spaz to district champion in the 400 and
• 2:27:04
  he was nothing. All of a sudden he was, and he
• 2:27:08
  went on to become, I think, a Colonel in the military.
• 2:27:12
  I mean, his mom wrote me a letter that was beautiful.
• 2:27:15
  She's like, you changed his life.
• 2:27:18
  Those are the things that we some cases we live on, you know,
• 2:27:23
  but, but, but I, I remember, you know, these are 8th graders, 8th
• 2:27:27
  grade boys running 158. You know, that's a bit, that's
• 2:27:32
  Eugene, of course, you know, I mean that's, hey, was it all my
• 2:27:37
  doing? That's for sure.
• 2:27:38
  But these kids won the only district championship in the
• 2:27:41
  school history. And when I I walked in there
• 2:27:45
  maybe about five years ago when I was in Eugene and the
• 2:27:48
  leaderboard was up and those kids were still, a lot of them
• 2:27:53
  will still have the leaderboard. Well, it's kind of cool and sad
• 2:27:55
  at the same time, but yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:27:56
  I guess, yeah, it is. I mean, it's, it's, you know,
• 2:27:59
  it's, it's, I mean you have an eighth grade girl jumping 17
• 2:28:02
  feet, almost 1610. That's a big, that's a big jump
• 2:28:05
  for the 8th grade girl. You know, you, you 12 one 100
• 2:28:16
  8th grade girl running, you know, I think she's 14, seven
• 2:28:19
  for the hurdles. There's, there's, I mean, it's
• 2:28:22
  just the you look back and those kids that, that is some of the
• 2:28:26
  most fun stuff. And you try to bring that into
• 2:28:31
  the, the older, the older ones. I, I, I do, I often times say,
• 2:28:37
  and you kind of point it out a few times.
• 2:28:38
  I do say, and people think I'm being arrogant that I'm the 2%
• 2:28:41
  coach and, but you know, and, and you put it well, I may be
• 2:28:47
  the 2% coach in terms of the end result.
• 2:28:51
  Like that last 2% is bloody hard.
• 2:28:54
  That is, that's, that's as hard as this 98% over here, by the
• 2:28:57
  way. But all the 98% stuff you still
• 2:29:03
  have to do. It's not like, and in some cases
• 2:29:06
  you got to undo it and redo it because it is not done.
• 2:29:11
  It's, it's the limitation. Now what's you know, And so when
• 2:29:14
  you do your, when you're looking at the athlete, what are the
• 2:29:17
  limitations to success? You know, your needs analysis if
• 2:29:20
  you wish. And, and I do a SWOT analysis.
• 2:29:23
  I took it from business. So I look at strength, weakness,
• 2:29:26
  opportunities, threats, you know, I mean, I run, I do all of
• 2:29:29
  this with them, say, OK, what, what do they need and how can I
• 2:29:35
  get it to them? And maybe I'm not the person
• 2:29:38
  that can get it to, you know, it's likely.
• 2:29:40
  I mean, I think the knock on me has been that I have been
• 2:29:45
  probably too technical and not enough emotional, like I spend
• 2:29:50
  too much time that here and not how you feeling that you know,
• 2:29:54
  and and and and yet I am the opposite and in a lot of ways,
• 2:29:58
  yeah. Yeah, right.
• 2:30:00
  But you but I also find myself like in competitions, you find
• 2:30:06
  yourself it's there's a wall and there's only limited information
• 2:30:09
  you're going to give them because you're talking to them
• 2:30:12
  for too long. You're you're talking to them
• 2:30:14
  for way too long. You know, that's like.
• 2:30:16
  Stop. Stop.
• 2:30:17
  Get out of their ears. Stop talking.
• 2:30:20
  You know they're trying to process everything you're
• 2:30:22
  saying. Include and their own feelings
• 2:30:24
  and what they Come on now. Human beings can't do that.
• 2:30:29
  Give them a cue. Say one thing, maybe 2, but even
• 2:30:33
  2, maybe it's too much. And that's the art of coaching,
• 2:30:39
  learning how to do that in real time.
• 2:30:41
  Now, a lot of coaches don't have to do the field event.
• 2:30:43
  Coaches have to do it, but a lot of other coaches don't.
• 2:30:46
  They do it on the warm up track perhaps, but I mean, I see
• 2:30:50
  people having a freaking lecture.
• 2:30:53
  You just lost them. Yeah, I forget them.
• 2:30:56
  I hang out with all the football coaches at Meats for maybe
• 2:30:58
  obvious reasons with the company and stuff.
• 2:31:00
  And it's interesting. Like my favorite person to watch
• 2:31:02
  is is Earl Bell. And Kid will jump and Earl says
• 2:31:07
  one word, maybe 2 words, like, I mean, it's limit.
• 2:31:09
  And you're like, man, he's not coaching.
• 2:31:11
  And it's like actually he's coaching maybe at the best out
• 2:31:14
  of all of them. Because then I see the exact
• 2:31:16
  opposite where they're reading them a book and it's like, what
• 2:31:18
  is that a kid processing here? Guys come.
• 2:31:20
  On if you've done your job, you don't have to say a lot.
• 2:31:23
  Yeah, there's a minimal amount. We have a lot of learned
• 2:31:26
  helplessness in this, maybe sports in general, but certainly
• 2:31:29
  a track and field which goes beyond the actual runway, but
• 2:31:32
  also on the runway itself. That I, I'll, I'll pick on pole
• 2:31:37
  vault coaches pole vault, the vent.
• 2:31:39
  I see it more in the pole vault because maybe it's because you
• 2:31:43
  know, the three attempts and obviously the, you have an
• 2:31:45
  apparatus like the pole, which can change the same jump and
• 2:31:49
  things like that. But I see a lot of where it's
• 2:31:50
  like, man, they there's less of a vaulter going out and doing
• 2:31:55
  their job. And there's a lot of like, well,
• 2:31:57
  what I mean, like as soon as they hit the pit, heck, I've
• 2:31:59
  seen them as soon as they clear or don't clear the bar and
• 2:32:01
  they're looking over that coach. And it's like, man, there has to
• 2:32:05
  be some independence at your level.
• 2:32:07
  It continues to become more, more independence where you have
• 2:32:09
  less time during competition to even talk to them.
• 2:32:12
  Like they're across the field because of TV and running
• 2:32:16
  events. You don't get to communicate or
• 2:32:18
  you get a hand signal. That's it.
• 2:32:19
  You better start having some independence with athlete.
• 2:32:22
  My opinion, your athletes need to start having some
• 2:32:24
  independence. Of their events, you know,
• 2:32:27
  there's, there's that that transition from dependence to
• 2:32:29
  independence, you know, where there's interdependence and
• 2:32:32
  interdependence in the middle there and, and, and in in many,
• 2:32:37
  many events, you don't get to independence now in in the field
• 2:32:42
  events. Complete independence, you're
• 2:32:45
  saying? Complete independence, you mean
• 2:32:47
  because you. Have attempts?
• 2:32:49
  Yeah, you have. Attempts and but but but that's
• 2:32:52
  why I often times particularly in because I, I make meats, ABCD
• 2:32:57
  meats, you know, D meats are basically practices that but
• 2:33:01
  they have a little competitive atmosphere and I'll go, I'll go
• 2:33:05
  sit down, I'll be over here. Have fun, enjoy yourself, figure
• 2:33:11
  it out and let them do it cuz there's nothing.
• 2:33:14
  There's no risk. You know, the other risk is low.
• 2:33:18
  The only risk could be that their name gets associated with
• 2:33:20
  a low mark and they lose their points.
• 2:33:21
  And then you're like, oh, Jesus. I mean, we don't get those
• 2:33:24
  points. It takes away now we're not in
• 2:33:27
  the world rankings, OK? So you got to consider yourself
• 2:33:29
  that's that's A1 percenter problem there is the points you
• 2:33:32
  do. Yeah, yeah.
• 2:33:33
  The coach in the middle of Oklahoma is listening right now
• 2:33:35
  going What the hell is he talking about?
• 2:33:38
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but.
• 2:33:39
  It's, well, you know, in the art days, you could you change the
• 2:33:41
  name? I mean, you jump under a
• 2:33:43
  different name. Yeah.
• 2:33:45
  Wow. Yeah.
• 2:33:45
  Mike Powell jumped under a few different names in his day.
• 2:33:48
  Shut up. No way.
• 2:33:49
  Yeah. I mean, I think there's still, I
• 2:33:51
  think the track record at Azusa Pacific is still held by some
• 2:33:55
  guy. No, that's funny.
• 2:33:59
  Yeah, because, you know, because you couldn't do it.
• 2:34:01
  You, you you couldn't risk it. You go.
• 2:34:04
  Yeah, just go jump. You know, we're going to go
• 2:34:05
  practice. We don't care.
• 2:34:07
  You couldn't do it. You couldn't take the risk, but
• 2:34:08
  also you could do it. Meaning, like today, you know
• 2:34:11
  Mike Powell. It's like, but we know who Mike
• 2:34:13
  Powell. You ain't given the old fake
• 2:34:14
  name. Yeah, yeah.
• 2:34:16
  Yeah, yeah. You, you couldn't, but you know.
• 2:34:19
  And then you knew who the everybody knew who he was.
• 2:34:21
  But yeah, you know the hardest one, Yeah.
• 2:34:23
  Well, because you're going there to practice, I mean, and I
• 2:34:27
  think, I don't recall for sure, but I think Mike jumped like 27,
• 2:34:32
  three or something from 14 steps.
• 2:34:34
  We weren't even going full approach, you know, and but we
• 2:34:37
  did under a different name, which probably even was even
• 2:34:41
  illegal then. I don't know, but we thought it
• 2:34:43
  was funny. Statue of limitations has run
• 2:34:45
  out. We're all good.
• 2:34:46
  Yeah, that's. It we're we're good on that one,
• 2:34:48
  but you know, because you didn't if you if you didn't jump far,
• 2:34:54
  you didn't want the meat promoters in Europe to go oh,
• 2:34:57
  he's only jumping 25 feet. You know we can't we're not
• 2:35:00
  going to pay him. You know you just couldn't do
• 2:35:02
  it. So it's funny I.
• 2:35:05
  Never even thought about that. But what it does is it takes
• 2:35:08
  away that aspect of competition, which is it's the final stage
• 2:35:14
  training and you really need competitions as training comps.
• 2:35:19
  And, you know, it's, you know, and Mike's probably biggest year
• 2:35:25
  was maybe 30, almost close to 30 jumps, a little bit less, I
• 2:35:29
  think. Yeah. 30 jumps, not 30
• 2:35:32
  competitions 30. Jump 30 competitions, No, 30
• 2:35:35
  competitions, 3rd jump. Yeah, yeah, it was big.
• 2:35:41
  You know, whereas the Chinese are like 2-3.
• 2:35:44
  Well, you can't. You can't.
• 2:35:46
  You can't get better at 2 competitions those.
• 2:35:48
  Are two, I mean the spectrum there, Yeah, yeah.
• 2:35:51
  And and, you know, you need to get you need to get a rhythm and
• 2:35:53
  particularly like in the 100 I had last year, just this last
• 2:35:57
  year, she how got mad at me. He goes, you know, I ran 1057.
• 2:36:01
  It's your first race. You're not even ready for this.
• 2:36:05
  I mean, you know, we're you're just not having fun.
• 2:36:08
  And then he goes, yeah, but the other guy ran 10/18 or
• 2:36:11
  something. That's his 21st race.
• 2:36:18
  He's already had 20 races, right?
• 2:36:20
  You've had one. Don't compare yourself to him,
• 2:36:23
  right? Right.
• 2:36:24
  Go have 20 races. Let's talk about it.
• 2:36:26
  Yeah, But this world? Is a comparison world, and track
• 2:36:28
  and field is probably the microcosm of comparison.
• 2:36:32
  I. Mean.
• 2:36:33
  We're not Mike Powell. We are what's his?
• 2:36:36
  What's the what was his world record?
• 2:36:38
  What was his PR Mike Pals, pals, pals. 0895 between 4 1/2.
• 2:36:44
  I thought 895. I didn't want to say it.
• 2:36:45
  Wrong. Mike Pals.
• 2:36:46
  Not Mike Powell. He's Mr. 895.
• 2:36:48
  Heck yeah. Wait a minute.
• 2:36:49
  Hold on your e-mail address. Yeah.
• 2:36:54
  That's I just thought about that, but we are the microcosm
• 2:36:58
  of comparison. What was your PR?
• 2:36:59
  What's your PR like? It's I.
• 2:37:03
  I figured I'd never forget that number.
• 2:37:05
  So that's been my e-mail address since 1991, is that right?
• 2:37:09
  Yeah, yeah, I changed it right then.
• 2:37:12
  That's awesome. I love.
• 2:37:13
  Yeah. And so I remember when Brad Hunt
• 2:37:17
  the first time, I sent an e-mail to Brad and Brad was Mike's
• 2:37:20
  agent and he gets this e-mail and he's like, who's this from?
• 2:37:25
  You know, And it's like me, buddy, Yeah.
• 2:37:32
  Yeah. It's, it is, it's kind of funny,
• 2:37:36
  but it but it's yeah, like I said, as I get older, if I lose
• 2:37:40
  my mind a little bit, I probably will never forget that number.
• 2:37:43
  Yeah, that's true that that number is baked into it.
• 2:37:45
  That's for. Sure.
• 2:37:46
  Yeah. I mean like Sue's 983, you know
• 2:37:49
  which which I thought I actually thought Sue could run about
• 2:37:52
  976977. Yeah, I think I thought he was
• 2:37:56
  ready for that. So when he ran that, I remember
• 2:38:00
  coach from Holland came over and he goes, did you expect that?
• 2:38:02
  I said, yeah, I was hoping for a little bit faster.
• 2:38:05
  He's like, what I go, I thought, I decided, I thought he could
• 2:38:09
  run faster. Is that his PR?
• 2:38:11
  Agree. Yeah, that's his PR, you know,
• 2:38:14
  fast for a little 5 foot seven guy.
• 2:38:18
  You know who I who I didn't get a chance to really give the
• 2:38:23
  speed endurance component to him that he needed by some reason.
• 2:38:28
  It is fast, 98 trees rolling. That's.
• 2:38:31
  Fast. But it was the 629.
• 2:38:34
  That's impressive. Yeah, agreed.
• 2:38:36
  Agreed. That is like holy smoke.
• 2:38:38
  And you know, I didn't even know how fast that was until what's
• 2:38:44
  his name? France pointed it out to me
• 2:38:47
  because he he measured it and then he got the the numbers from
• 2:38:51
  from Tokyo. He's like he ran, 629 ran.
• 2:38:54
  That's faster than. Yeah, that's right.
• 2:38:57
  You know, and like, and I think you know, going backwards and
• 2:39:02
  just talk about that for a second, that if they hadn't had
• 2:39:05
  the fault start in that final, that he probably would have
• 2:39:09
  battled. He probably wouldn't under 9.
• 2:39:12
  He probably would have beat Degrasse.
• 2:39:14
  But the fault start, that was it.
• 2:39:16
  It was done emotionally spent. I remember Lance coming over to
• 2:39:19
  me afterwards. I mean after the the semis and
• 2:39:25
  he goes, he's done, isn't he? And he goes, yeah, he's
• 2:39:27
  emotionally finished because he was.
• 2:39:29
  He was. That's why I don't give people
• 2:39:33
  goals because they might meet them and then when they meet
• 2:39:37
  them, they're satisfied or not satisfied.
• 2:39:39
  Depends on the. But in his case, his goal was to
• 2:39:44
  make the final. He made the final.
• 2:39:49
  I mean, when you see that length of time he gave that emotional
• 2:39:53
  effort after running 93, you know, it's, it's a pretty
• 2:39:59
  special thing to be able to come off 983 and run another 9-8.
• 2:40:03
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And which they got those guys
• 2:40:04
  did. I mean, to their credit, they
• 2:40:06
  did an incredible job and and he came back and ran 998.
• 2:40:09
  I mean, it's not like it's bad, right?
• 2:40:11
  Right, Right. Yeah, that that's interesting
• 2:40:12
  with the with the bar events, I see a lot of times where if a
• 2:40:16
  kid PRS, it's rare that they hit another PR like and and rarely
• 2:40:20
  they even do a good shot at the next bar because they've hit
• 2:40:23
  their PR, their goal, their the emotion of, and then to try to
• 2:40:26
  get back on that runway and do it again and better.
• 2:40:30
  That's tough. So when I hear of a kid,
• 2:40:31
  especially if they're obviously if they're early development,
• 2:40:34
  it's a little less. But if they're a high achieving
• 2:40:36
  athlete and they double PR to meet in a bar event, I'm always
• 2:40:39
  like, holy crap. Like you had to have some
• 2:40:41
  emotional control and some like all this to get back in.
• 2:40:44
  Like, OK, that's done. That was that other jump.
• 2:40:46
  I'm back at it for another. That's so impressive to me.
• 2:40:50
  I mean, I just remember when I started coaching the pole vault
• 2:40:53
  and with Toby and all these guys at the training center and I was
• 2:40:58
  out of my out of my element. Obviously I wasn't out of my
• 2:41:00
  element for the approach, but I was once they got the pole in
• 2:41:03
  the box like you. But then I figured that out
• 2:41:05
  pretty quickly. But I'm asking questions the
• 2:41:08
  vault coaches aren't even answering.
• 2:41:09
  I'm like, so how come you guys keep putting it back at 580 and
• 2:41:13
  they keep missing? Why don't you just move it up a
• 2:41:15
  little bit? It's obvious the arc is here.
• 2:41:18
  Just stand here and look. Every time they do it the the
• 2:41:23
  center of mass is there and you keep putting the bar here and
• 2:41:26
  they keep knocking it. Off This is not rocket science.
• 2:41:28
  Yeah, but it's got to be the toughest event.
• 2:41:32
  Because I. Mean it's not just the bar at a
• 2:41:34
  bar event that makes it one of the tougher ones alone because
• 2:41:37
  it's not just jumping the highest, it's jumping over that
• 2:41:40
  bar without dislodging you. You have a pole in your hand
• 2:41:42
  that's different than the high jump.
• 2:41:43
  It's it's you only in the high jump you, you have you and the
• 2:41:46
  pole, which can radically change things.
• 2:41:48
  And and I didn't even think about this.
• 2:41:50
  You grab a good point. You get to move where the
• 2:41:52
  standards are. You don't get to do that in high
• 2:41:54
  jump. There's so much going on in the
• 2:41:57
  pole vault, man. I, I, I'm glad you figured it
• 2:41:59
  out because I just, man, I was like, I can get you fast,
• 2:42:02
  brother for like that's it. I I I'm not working on all that
• 2:42:04
  other stuff man. Well, there was there's little
• 2:42:07
  things like, you know, you've got you got some great pole
• 2:42:09
  vault coaches out there. And you know, I remember with
• 2:42:12
  Brad, we were sitting in some film and we were, I was with
• 2:42:18
  Hall with Greg and we're he was doing the Michigan State coaches
• 2:42:22
  clinic. And I said, Greg, take a look at
• 2:42:25
  this. I'm having I'm missing something
• 2:42:27
  here that's really basic because I'm not I'm, I'm not, I'm not a
• 2:42:31
  great bull ball coach yet or, or may I may never be, But he took
• 2:42:36
  one look at it and went, Oh yeah, it's pretty easy.
• 2:42:38
  Look at his head. And I'm like, how did I miss
• 2:42:41
  that? Well, I was just like, how did I
• 2:42:43
  miss that? You know, he he's hitting the
• 2:42:46
  pole, coming off boom and he's keeping his eyes right there,
• 2:42:50
  penetrating with his eyes instead of getting.
• 2:42:53
  It was such a simple move. And that took Brad from 525 to
• 2:42:59
  560 in weeks. Isn't that amazing?
• 2:43:05
  Yeah, I mean, he was knacke champion and they never.
• 2:43:09
  It was a little irritating for me because I would I had gotten
• 2:43:14
  let go at Michigan State. He went to the Knacke
• 2:43:17
  championships the next week, worked with him to be up until
• 2:43:20
  then he went and he won new record.
• 2:43:24
  It's not been broken, of course, but Michigan State would not
• 2:43:28
  give him the school record because of that, because he
• 2:43:32
  transferred to McNeese State. But he wasn't, he wasn't.
• 2:43:36
  Yeah, well, I said, look, you're going to have to go to Ty, you
• 2:43:38
  know, and, and, and and to me, it was like, oh, come on, guys.
• 2:43:45
  Yeah, He, he's just finished because he graduated.
• 2:43:49
  He's just finished like 5 days before and he's part of your
• 2:43:53
  team and you're not going to give him that record.
• 2:43:57
  Wow. There's a lot involved, the good
• 2:43:59
  egos, a lot involved. Not saying that specifically,
• 2:44:02
  but that one's tough. So we haven't even talked
• 2:44:05
  anything technical about any events yet.
• 2:44:07
  Yeah, yeah, really. Because we're not.
• 2:44:10
  No, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:44:12
  Because because you're going to bundle this in some form of
• 2:44:15
  coaching education, that's why. Oh, I see.
• 2:44:18
  Yeah, yeah. That's why you're going to
• 2:44:19
  figure out a. But Mike, all of this is already
• 2:44:22
  out there. I mean, you know, when people
• 2:44:24
  ask me and said, Randy, why don't you do more of this?
• 2:44:26
  I said, because it's all there. Yeah, I agree with that.
• 2:44:28
  The stuff, the stuff I'm doing now.
• 2:44:31
  I mean, and and I'll say this, someone asked me just last week.
• 2:44:35
  So how are you training the Christian differently than you
• 2:44:42
  trained Ed? And how is it different now?
• 2:44:45
  And I said, well, it really isn't because the basics are
• 2:44:49
  still the basics. The big rocks are still the big
• 2:44:51
  rocks. The only difference is we now
• 2:44:53
  have more metrics, more ways to be accountable.
• 2:44:56
  And you know that for for my particular coaching, that is
• 2:45:02
  what has changed. I have metrics I can now measure
• 2:45:05
  better. I mean, people don't realize I'm
• 2:45:09
  at the age where we didn't have video.
• 2:45:13
  I mean, I remember buying my first video camera, you know,
• 2:45:17
  and I was one of the first guys to have one.
• 2:45:19
  And people are like, wow, that's really cool.
• 2:45:22
  How do you do that, you know? Let me go back to something you
• 2:45:26
  said there because I think it's important and I've had to learn
• 2:45:30
  this. So I think you're right.
• 2:45:32
  The the big blocks and down to the small Brock's are out there.
• 2:45:37
  Like I said, especially in today's world, it's so easy to
• 2:45:39
  find coaching education that's out there, whether it's the
• 2:45:42
  formal, the USATFUSTFCA, Altus, etcetera, or informal
• 2:45:45
  peer-to-peer. Like I mean, right now,
• 2:45:47
  literally someone could call or e-mail Mike Holloway.
• 2:45:50
  Again, I just like using mouse as my example.
• 2:45:52
  Some good friends and he would answer a question for you, boob
• 2:45:55
  sectionator for sure. You know, just people that are
• 2:45:57
  just so generous with their time.
• 2:46:00
  But different people say the same thing in different ways.
• 2:46:07
  For one, like if you had Dan Path boost exonator and let's
• 2:46:11
  say Vince Anderson and they all gave separate talks all on
• 2:46:14
  acceleration, let's just talk acceleration, they would say the
• 2:46:18
  same thing. They're they're pretty much
• 2:46:19
  locking step in what we think would for proper acceleration,
• 2:46:23
  but they would teach it differently.
• 2:46:25
  So there's one reason why your voice is important in that
• 2:46:28
  respect. The other part of it too, is the
• 2:46:31
  receiver, so that the person who's in the the in the
• 2:46:35
  audience, their state of mind, where they are in their life and
• 2:46:40
  their career coaching is different every time they hear
• 2:46:44
  it. So let's say Boo Schneider gives
• 2:46:48
  the exact same clinic talk on acceleration.
• 2:46:52
  But it's, you know, one year, it's today, five years from now
• 2:46:55
  and 10 years from now. And I attend each of those.
• 2:46:57
  So today, five years, 10 years from now, he's going to say the
• 2:47:00
  exact same thing. It's still me, still the same
• 2:47:02
  person. I am going to be in a different
• 2:47:05
  receivership in each one of those.
• 2:47:08
  Meaning I may have had more experience coaching jumpers at
• 2:47:11
  the year 51. I may have.
• 2:47:14
  I may even emotionally I may. Everything may be going great in
• 2:47:19
  my life at year 10. I'm happily married and my kids
• 2:47:22
  are doing well. I'm excited about the track
• 2:47:26
  season because it's spring. I will receive that message
• 2:47:29
  differently, even though it's the exact same a message.
• 2:47:33
  I learned this from a guy. Do you know the guy, Gary
• 2:47:35
  Vaynerchuk, Gary Vee? Does that name sound familiar at
• 2:47:38
  all? He's a, he's a social media guy.
• 2:47:41
  He a business owner, a big, big into social media.
• 2:47:44
  And he has, I mean, every social media channel you can imagine he
• 2:47:47
  is on and huge like millions of followers.
• 2:47:49
  So obviously Twitter, TikTok, podcast, etcetera.
• 2:47:54
  And if you listen to his podcast, if you listen to it for
• 2:47:57
  a month straight, you'll hear probably 10 topics of his over
• 2:48:02
  and over and over. And the reason he that's a on
• 2:48:07
  purpose. He says, I do that because
• 2:48:09
  someone is going to someone has to hear it for the fifth time or
• 2:48:11
  the 6th time. You're not going to
• 2:48:14
  automatically get if I go listen to Boo one time, if I go listen
• 2:48:17
  to you one time, I'm not going to get it 100% of the time.
• 2:48:20
  I may have to hear you the second time, third time.
• 2:48:22
  You know, you've done this with articles you've read, books
• 2:48:24
  you've read, people you've listened to.
• 2:48:26
  That's why I think it's important a the basics and
• 2:48:29
  you're right, the basics have been taught 100 times by 100
• 2:48:32
  people, but it might, you might be that 101st that it actually
• 2:48:37
  that it helps the other 5%. Yeah, that, that they absorb it
• 2:48:40
  in. I mean, it's, you know, I, I
• 2:48:42
  always tell people, I said, look, it's it's frustrating as a
• 2:48:45
  coach because you're looking at somebody and you're going, I
• 2:48:50
  always use the same example, but I go, look, it's blue.
• 2:48:52
  You got to do blue. Just do blue.
• 2:48:55
  I've gone it when you get blue, I mean just blue and the other
• 2:48:58
  guy will come up and go, oh, you know, you just got to do blue
• 2:49:03
  and, and and you're like, I want to kill him, you know.
• 2:49:06
  I've been saying that forever. Yeah, yeah.
• 2:49:09
  What do you think I've been trying to tell you?
• 2:49:11
  And this is where when you, you look at the queuing and the work
• 2:49:15
  that Nick did and you know, we, when you really start to
• 2:49:18
  understand, I mean, in a lot of cases you're looking, you're
• 2:49:23
  just, you're just trying to fill in your queuing book.
• 2:49:26
  You know, your technical book's full, but your queuing book is
• 2:49:30
  not. And God help you, who knows
• 2:49:34
  what's going to work for that person.
• 2:49:37
  What type of queuing will work? Yeah, yeah.
• 2:49:40
  You may be the same coach, but remember, you're getting new air
• 2:49:42
  quotes here, new kids every year that also receive things
• 2:49:46
  differently, have different knowledge levels, different
• 2:49:48
  passion levels for your event you're coaching.
• 2:49:49
  That's exact queue. That's a really good topic that
• 2:49:53
  I've not heard anybody speak on is the queue library, if you
• 2:49:56
  will. That's exactly I agree.
• 2:49:57
  With yeah, I mean, have you had Nick on Winkleman?
• 2:50:01
  You should get Nick on at some point.
• 2:50:02
  He comes home once in awhile from Ireland.
• 2:50:04
  So, but you know, you, you, you look at that queuing and I, I, I
• 2:50:11
  look at team coaching versus this kind of coaching.
• 2:50:14
  And in team coaching, the players are the chameleons.
• 2:50:19
  In track and field or individual sports, the coach is the
• 2:50:22
  chameleon because they have to change in order for everybody
• 2:50:26
  else to actually, you know. But how many of us realize that,
• 2:50:33
  though, because what you're saying the opposite.
• 2:50:36
  If I'm not a chameleon, I'm I'm my high, my way or the highway
• 2:50:38
  guy, meaning you adjust to me and and you're right, that's not
• 2:50:41
  the right way. You got to be able to to teach
• 2:50:43
  acceleration to Sally and Larry and Tom and it and it could be
• 2:50:47
  completely different. You know, there's core basics of
• 2:50:50
  course, but how you speak to them, etcetera.
• 2:50:53
  That's exactly right. Yeah.
• 2:50:54
  And, and in a team, yeah, you know, it's you got to come
• 2:50:58
  together. That makes sense.
• 2:50:59
  The coach, the coach is here and you are all the ones that are
• 2:51:03
  changing based upon what he needs for you to do.
• 2:51:07
  Now, in the end, of course, there's still that that other
• 2:51:11
  chameleon part. But reality is, you know, we
• 2:51:14
  are. We have to be.
• 2:51:16
  Yeah. I mean, I think that's why
• 2:51:17
  there's so many characters of the.
• 2:51:19
  Sport, hold on, I'm going to convince you to you're going to
• 2:51:22
  get this done. I promise you what you just said
• 2:51:24
  there. I'm willing to bet I have heard
• 2:51:26
  this before. I listen to a lot of coaches.
• 2:51:30
  I bet you I've heard this before and now maybe because of the
• 2:51:35
  example you're using with a chameleon or maybe just today in
• 2:51:38
  my 350 first episode, I'm like, this makes so much sense to me.
• 2:51:44
  Like I will probably end up regurgitating this to to some
• 2:51:47
  people, you know, I host clinics and stuff.
• 2:51:49
  I'll probably on stage say something about using a
• 2:51:52
  chameleon example now because of the Today, even though I I bet
• 2:51:56
  you I've probably heard this a few times.
• 2:51:57
  Yeah, I've talked to Boo and Dan's and all these guys.
• 2:51:59
  I've probably have heard this concept before.
• 2:52:02
  But now today it it it's an aha moment for me.
• 2:52:05
  Like yeah, it's like, oh, it's the first time I'm here in this
• 2:52:07
  reality. It might be the night time and
• 2:52:09
  it's. Finally sinking in.
• 2:52:10
  Yeah, that's why a guy like you needs, we need to, I don't say
• 2:52:15
  exposed to the coaching community, but we, we need to
• 2:52:17
  hear that voice, that experience more.
• 2:52:20
  Well, it's, it's funny because my assistant, Zach Gray, who's
• 2:52:25
  been helping me out with the football guys this year, there's
• 2:52:29
  a a movie out there, I don't know if you've seen it.
• 2:52:31
  It's called Looking for a Documentary.
• 2:52:39
  I just forgot his name, but it's a folk singer from Detroit in
• 2:52:45
  the 1970s. And he really didn't make it in
• 2:52:52
  the United States, but in Australia and South America and
• 2:52:56
  Europe. The biggest of all, I mean,
• 2:52:59
  like, he was The Beatles. He was everybody.
• 2:53:02
  And the documentary is the story of these guys in South Africa
• 2:53:10
  going to look for him. Like what happened to him?
• 2:53:14
  Look, I got to look it up. I'm Googling it now because I'm
• 2:53:18
  curious because I love documentary.
• 2:53:20
  So there we go. Let's see.
• 2:53:24
  Yeah, dude, Detroit folk singer looking for.
• 2:53:27
  Looking for Richard. No.
• 2:53:29
  Looking for Lincoln looking for there's a lot of looking fors.
• 2:53:31
  No. Well, you said Singer.
• 2:53:34
  Let me put Singer in there. Yeah, it looks folk singer
• 2:53:36
  Detroit, 1970s Detroit. That's got the, I mean, I've
• 2:53:43
  even got the documentary here somewhere.
• 2:53:45
  Searching for Sugarman. Yeah, that's it right there,
• 2:53:48
  searching for Sugarman. And he looks at me.
• 2:53:50
  He. Goes isn't the Internet amazing,
• 2:53:52
  by the way? Oh yeah, no.
• 2:53:53
  That's so awesome. OK, keep going.
• 2:53:54
  Sorry. That's cool.
• 2:53:55
  But but, but so he says, he says you're Sugarman and he goes
• 2:53:59
  you're just like Sugarman. But the the story about
• 2:54:01
  Sugarman. You got it.
• 2:54:03
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You In China, people shut up and
• 2:54:05
  listen to you. And here in America, we're like
• 2:54:07
  Randy Who? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:54:08
  Yeah, exactly. You know, that's kind of what
• 2:54:10
  it's like. I agree, that's why I want to
• 2:54:12
  change. I'm I'm with you on that.
• 2:54:14
  But so you need to get that. You need to watch that
• 2:54:17
  documentary. It is, it is amazing that this
• 2:54:21
  guy, so he's a janitor in a high school in Detroit.
• 2:54:25
  That's what he did for a living. His kids knew nothing about him,
• 2:54:29
  nothing about any of this. And they, they finally tracked
• 2:54:33
  him down and invited him to South Africa.
• 2:54:37
  And he came back and his kids went with him, you know, and
• 2:54:41
  they're like, OK, we're good. He's going to, he's going to do
• 2:54:43
  play a little guitar. Rock star, Yeah.
• 2:54:46
  And is he walk into a stadium with 60,000 people and he would
• 2:54:50
  lights it up and they're just like.
• 2:54:53
  Can you imagine that's so? Funny, Yeah, Yeah.
• 2:54:56
  I mean, so it's a, it's a great story.
• 2:55:00
  And I was, I mean, I was in Detroit at that time.
• 2:55:03
  I'd never heard of him. He, I mean, you know, it's, it's
• 2:55:08
  amazing. And I've asked my friends who
• 2:55:10
  were really into the music scene, I said, did you, do you
• 2:55:14
  remember Sugarman? And they go, no, but I've
• 2:55:17
  watched the documentary now. It's incredible, you know, and I
• 2:55:21
  I don't know how we missed him because he sounds a lot like, I
• 2:55:27
  mean, when you listen to his music, he's it, he's everything
• 2:55:31
  that any of those poets were back in the 60s, you know?
• 2:55:35
  Yeah, Yeah. And and if you like that kind of
• 2:55:37
  music, but yeah. Anyhow.
• 2:55:38
  All right. So he so he calls me Sugarman.
• 2:55:41
  Yeah, I agree with that 100%. All right, Randy, we got it.
• 2:55:45
  We got to cut it off. We got it.
• 2:55:46
  We got a We got. A Yeah, we've already gone.
• 2:55:48
  Yeah, this was 3 hours so. Was it really you, Oh my Lord?
• 2:55:52
  You officially, unofficially are now going to be the longest
• 2:55:55
  episode we've ever had. I'd say unofficially because
• 2:55:57
  we're doing it over 2. But yeah, 1 long conversation.
• 2:56:00
  This is our longest one, some of our longest ones that we've had.
• 2:56:05
  Lamont, I almost said, Vaughn Lamont Johnson, now at San Jose
• 2:56:10
  State, and you know him, you know.
• 2:56:12
  Mom can talk, Yeah. I can get him for another 4
• 2:56:13
  hours. Give me my guy.
• 2:56:17
  Oh my gosh this is embarrassing. Former head coach of USC Long,
• 2:56:24
  you know, Long Beach Community College, Cal State, Long Beach
• 2:56:29
  and then USC. And now it's passed away.
• 2:56:34
  If it was, it was in the past couple of years because I had
• 2:56:36
  him on the show back when we started, so 2020-2021.
• 2:56:40
  Oh my gosh. Anyway.
• 2:56:42
  So not Ernie Bullard no before the other the.
• 2:56:46
  Foreign name? No.
• 2:56:48
  He would have been like retired late 90s early since now.
• 2:56:55
  Yes, Alice. There we go.
• 2:56:57
  Ron Alice, thank you, thank you, thank you.
• 2:56:58
  But you know, between us, we can name every coach in the in the
• 2:57:01
  country, right? We just got we got to help each
• 2:57:02
  other. Ron Alice went man, he went 3
• 2:57:05
  1/2 with me. He was amazing.
• 2:57:07
  But this has been fascinating. I mean, just absolutely
• 2:57:10
  fascinating and we've learned a ton and we and we got one of my
• 2:57:14
  favorite things that I'd like to just have kind of come up
• 2:57:16
  organically. I like book recommendations and
• 2:57:18
  you gave us a good book recommendation.
• 2:57:19
  Tell us that book again. The one.
• 2:57:21
  Back Mabel Todd Mabel Todd. What'd you say the name?
• 2:57:24
  Of it was, you said, some of the thinking, the thinking body.
• 2:57:28
  The Thinking Body OK great book recommendation and I love when
• 2:57:32
  these rarely happen Document documentary recommendations.
• 2:57:36
  I'm going to watch Searching for Sugarman.
• 2:57:39
  Yeah, I kind of like completely unrelated to track and field, of
• 2:57:42
  course. I don't care.
• 2:57:42
  We talked about the curiosity. Someone's going to pick
• 2:57:45
  something up from that. So I'd love we absolutely should
• 2:57:47
  be watching. So I'm going to go watch
• 2:57:48
  Searching for Sugarman as. Well, yeah, it's it's curiosity
• 2:57:51
  and it's watching an artist. Yeah, somebody who has that same
• 2:57:56
  sort of passion watching their journey.
• 2:57:59
  I mean, this guy was great in 70s and disappeared for 35
• 2:58:04
  years. And no, it was this was a big,
• 2:58:08
  this happened, this happened in like 2012 or something.
• 2:58:12
  So they went looking for him and they thought he was dead.
• 2:58:15
  They actually thought he was dead and they found him, you
• 2:58:18
  know, and the story of how they found him and all that, it's.
• 2:58:21
  Just yeah, it's on my yeah. So I love that he's since.
• 2:58:25
  He's since passed away, but OK. But but the fact is, I mean,
• 2:58:29
  that's the it's, it's just kind of cool to see.
• 2:58:32
  That I love story. Yeah, I love people stories.
• 2:58:34
  It's a story, right? So I, I, I'm on it for sure.
• 2:58:37
  The other box to check is did we uplift it on our your journey?
• 2:58:41
  Man, I hope so. You know, yours is interesting.
• 2:58:44
  You're not. Here's a here's the funny part,
• 2:58:46
  not funny part. Here's the interesting part for
• 2:58:49
  me on this side of of what we do here at the podcast, you know,
• 2:58:52
  350 plus episodes. So, you know, I've I've I may be
• 2:58:57
  the person in the world who's deep dived into coaches lineage
• 2:59:02
  more than anybody. You know, had a lot.
• 2:59:04
  And I thought when we first started this like, oh, there's
• 2:59:08
  going to be some central themes. There's probably 3 maybe five
• 2:59:11
  ways people get into coaching and how their career Mets out,
• 2:59:14
  man. It's 350 different ways of how
• 2:59:18
  people get into coaching now. There's central themes of it's
• 2:59:21
  typically someone has was a positive influence on them, but
• 2:59:25
  not always. In fact, I got into coaching
• 2:59:27
  because of a negative. My coaches were not bad people.
• 2:59:29
  These were terrible coaches and I was like.
• 2:59:32
  And I was the. Chip on my shoulder was like,
• 2:59:33
  well, I'm going to go become a good coach then it's not going
• 2:59:35
  to be my fault someone doesn't do well, you know?
• 2:59:37
  But your journey is, we have not had anywhere near a journey like
• 2:59:43
  yours over the past 300 and something episodes.
• 2:59:45
  So I love so weird one. You're a weird one.
• 2:59:49
  You've heard that before, Randy. That's OK.
• 2:59:51
  No doubt. I love sharing that because
• 2:59:53
  there's someone listening that either doubts that they can
• 2:59:57
  become a track coach because they didn't compete in track and
• 2:59:59
  field either, or, you know, whatever.
• 3:00:01
  And now they see your journey. It's like, wait a minute now, I
• 3:00:03
  may not end up going to coach Team China, but.
• 3:00:06
  Hold on. He, he, he got into this in a
• 3:00:09
  different route. Maybe I can get into that.
• 3:00:11
  So I'd love being able to share that and encourage having your
• 3:00:13
  story encourage other people. The one that the one that I used
• 3:00:17
  because I sort of kept me going was Jumbo Elliott.
• 3:00:20
  Never Yeah, competed, right. That's right.
• 3:00:26
  And I and I think, you know, the given that this is that episode,
• 3:00:29
  I think it's important to to kind of just genuinely
• 3:00:33
  acknowledge some of the people that we don't have with us
• 3:00:37
  anymore. Yeah, now, you know, the Doctor
• 3:00:39
  Hayes. But this year alone, Joe V Hill,
• 3:00:43
  the monster, you know, we just lost Bob.
• 3:00:47
  Fraley Yeah, Bob, that's right. Yep.
• 3:00:50
  I mean, what, you know, my time in Fresno was was wonderful.
• 3:00:55
  And Bob's contribution to the pole vault is unlike any other
• 3:00:58
  event in track and field. And he will be dearly missed,
• 3:01:03
  not just by his family, but by us all.
• 3:01:06
  And and then, you know, Dellinger being gone this year.
• 3:01:10
  And of course, we've talked about Joe Ralph Mann just a year
• 3:01:13
  ago now. Yeah.
• 3:01:14
  You know, boy, has it been a. Year.
• 3:01:16
  Yeah, it feels like last month, honestly.
• 3:01:18
  I know no, it's just just been it's probably a year ago.
• 3:01:22
  I I think it was second or third, something like that of
• 3:01:26
  January and you know, we would and and others, I mean just
• 3:01:31
  others that have what's it in the high school coach just
• 3:01:36
  passed away in Arkansas or Missouri.
• 3:01:40
  Shoot just forgot his name. We brought it up the other day.
• 3:01:45
  He just, he just passed away last week or I mean in, in, in
• 3:01:49
  November. But you know, there's, there's
• 3:01:51
  these people that are I I consider giants and, and, and
• 3:01:57
  who do we get to replace them? Who, who, who are the next
• 3:02:00
  giants that are behind us? Not, not us, but who are who's
• 3:02:05
  coming up behind us? That didn't come up and I think
• 3:02:10
  those people that are now in their late 40s, early 50s need
• 3:02:13
  to start to understand that that there's a responsibility they're
• 3:02:16
  going to have to this sport and to these coaches in the future,
• 3:02:21
  and hopefully they can become part of what you're doing as
• 3:02:24
  well. I I agree with that.
• 3:02:25
  You know that that's interesting.
• 3:02:28
  You know, one of the things that there is a, a method to my
• 3:02:31
  madness of who we invite. And you know, I, I semi jokingly
• 3:02:35
  say it's kind of like Pokémon. I do want to have every coach.
• 3:02:37
  I want to catch them all. I want every coach on here.
• 3:02:38
  And I, I find value in that coach who's coached for one year
• 3:02:42
  and that coach who's coached on their 70th year.
• 3:02:43
  I think there's value for their for their journey.
• 3:02:46
  I have this started a few years ago, started feeling a little
• 3:02:50
  bit of a sense of responsibility now that we've got some legacy
• 3:02:53
  toward, you know, going into the 7th season of like there's some
• 3:02:56
  coaches of like, I need to make sure their journeys on wax for
• 3:03:01
  the future because we're going to forget about them.
• 3:03:05
  And so like I, I'm so blessed that, you know, we had Brooks
• 3:03:09
  Johnson before he passed, like someone's someone today Brooks
• 3:03:12
  not with us anymore can go and hear how he got into coaching,
• 3:03:16
  etcetera. He's got an incredible story.
• 3:03:18
  OK, it was amazing. So he really touched it.
• 3:03:20
  Was it change? It affected me personally.
• 3:03:23
  Judd Logan. Big time.
• 3:03:24
  Throws we had him on before he passed, etcetera.
• 3:03:27
  And you know, the one that got me because he was a friend,
• 3:03:30
  mentor of mine and, you know, competed against him a lot is
• 3:03:34
  Dean Hayes. And, and when Dean passed, I was
• 3:03:37
  like, oh, like he was on my list.
• 3:03:39
  And that, you know, I, I, there's a tension of regret.
• 3:03:43
  I don't like regret, but I'm like, oh, there's people who
• 3:03:46
  won't know who Dean was because he wasn't big name school, but
• 3:03:49
  he was out of school for 50 stinking years.
• 3:03:52
  Is there? Forever that's a story people
• 3:03:55
  need to hear it was unbelievable successful and a great man and
• 3:04:00
  so I I start thinking about that a little bit with some of our.
• 3:04:03
  Well, did you did did you ever have I?
• 3:04:06
  I think he's still alive. Steve Simmons on.
• 3:04:09
  I did not. I've not had Steve.
• 3:04:11
  Another one that we have had that I just thought about that
• 3:04:13
  has passed Ralph Lindemann from Air Force Academy.
• 3:04:16
  Yeah, Ralph, that was so unexpected.
• 3:04:19
  Yeah, Ralph is such a great guy. And too young.
• 3:04:22
  Way too young. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 3:04:23
  No, no, no, shoot. From my perspective, way too
• 3:04:25
  young. And.
• 3:04:29
  And now you know you got Tony Sandoval.
• 3:04:31
  Yeah, yeah, I thought it was Tony.
• 3:04:33
  You know Joe, you. Really should get Tony on
• 3:04:35
  because it's just too good. And, and if you can, you know,
• 3:04:39
  you look at Rick. Rick.
• 3:04:44
  Washington State, Yeah. I know.
• 3:04:48
  You know, get get Rick because Rick had such a great career.
• 3:04:52
  Yeah, yeah, instrumental and you know our our relays coach for a
• 3:04:56
  while as well. I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 3:05:00
  It's something I've got, you know, it's a, it's a tug and
• 3:05:03
  pull on on, you know what is how.
• 3:05:05
  Many women How many women have you had on?
• 3:05:07
  Yeah. You know what's interesting
• 3:05:08
  about that, Randy? One of the things that I worked
• 3:05:14
  at work very hard at is 1 diversity in relationship to the
• 3:05:18
  coach themselves, meaning not just Division One coaches and
• 3:05:21
  all that kind of stuff. High school, all the divisions
• 3:05:23
  in AIA, JUCO, elite, middle school, summer, etcetera.
• 3:05:28
  And then also very much, and I am an advocate for minorities in
• 3:05:31
  coaching and for women in coaching.
• 3:05:33
  And you know, I've said this before, you know, when I look at
• 3:05:37
  big swath here, but when I look at our athletes, roughly 50%
• 3:05:41
  white, 50% black. Again, I know there's a lot of
• 3:05:44
  complexities that but you just stay with me.
• 3:05:45
  But when I look at our coaches, I don't see 50% white and 50%
• 3:05:48
  black. I see majority of white.
• 3:05:50
  Same thing with our male female. I look at the student body, it's
• 3:05:54
  roughly 5050. But when I look at my coaches,
• 3:05:57
  not 5050 anywhere close. And so I work hard at that.
• 3:06:00
  And so I, I invite the, the, you know, commiserate amount of, of
• 3:06:04
  women, women turn me down at a higher rate than men.
• 3:06:10
  How come? Here's what I believe.
• 3:06:14
  I believe there is. This is going to be tough.
• 3:06:17
  We've never had this on on the air before.
• 3:06:20
  If you're still listening, you're going to hear things that
• 3:06:22
  we've never discussed before. I'm I'm any questions?
• 3:06:25
  Yeah, yeah, no, I'm good. I'm a I'm a child of the 60s.
• 3:06:28
  So believe me, it's like fairness is.
• 3:06:31
  You know, I'm the host. I could cut this off at any
• 3:06:33
  moment. So yeah, yeah, I'm good with
• 3:06:35
  this. I'm good with.
• 3:06:35
  This here's what I believe. I believe humility is extremely
• 3:06:40
  important. However, I also believe some
• 3:06:43
  things that we that we act out in what we think is humility is
• 3:06:47
  actually false humility and that is a disservice.
• 3:06:50
  As an example, if someone, if you were to tell me, Randy Mike,
• 3:06:55
  well, you know, what you're doing with the podcast is so
• 3:06:58
  good. I really felt good about how you
• 3:07:00
  interviewed me. You do a good job with
• 3:07:02
  podcasting and and if I were then to say which looks like an
• 3:07:06
  act of humility. Oh, Randy, it's all about the
• 3:07:09
  guest. I'm just a guy that hits the
• 3:07:11
  record button. That's false humility.
• 3:07:14
  And what that does, why that's a bad thing is I'm, I have a skill
• 3:07:19
  set in this and I'm not showing that other people can do it
• 3:07:23
  because I'm saying, no, it's not really like, OK, here's a false
• 3:07:25
  humility. I hear all the time in coaching
• 3:07:27
  and I can't stand this. Randy, have you heard the term?
• 3:07:31
  I'm just the bus driver? Oh my gosh.
• 3:07:35
  Yeah, I met a few of the bus drivers.
• 3:07:38
  Yeah, Now some people, you know, like, OK, Ken Harden, I'm going
• 3:07:41
  to call Ken Harden now because he is one of the most prolific
• 3:07:44
  people of saying this. Ken Harden will always say when
• 3:07:47
  someone says, hey Ken, Congrats to your kid, One Nationals got
• 3:07:49
  all married, whatever PR blah, blah.
• 3:07:51
  Ken, it's his go to statement. I'm just the bus driver and it's
• 3:07:56
  like, Ken, you are. I got to talk to him about this
• 3:07:59
  personally one day, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I doubt.
• 3:08:04
  Ken is still listening after three hours, honestly.
• 3:08:06
  But Ken, you are pulling down the skill set and the importance
• 3:08:11
  of a coach. If it's if it's true that you're
• 3:08:13
  only the bus driver, then why in the world do we do clinics and
• 3:08:17
  level ones? Why do we do anything?
• 3:08:20
  We don't need any of that. If that's so true, if it's only
• 3:08:22
  genetics. And I know he doesn't believe
• 3:08:23
  that. I know because he's a very smart
• 3:08:25
  and a very good, very good coach.
• 3:08:26
  Anyway, that is an example of false humility, but it is and
• 3:08:32
  with with our women. Hold on one second.
• 3:08:34
  So to answer your actual question, why do I believe women
• 3:08:38
  turn me down more than men is I think there's a greater degree
• 3:08:41
  of humility with women in general.
• 3:08:44
  And I think there here's the feedback I've gotten is, Hey, my
• 3:08:48
  story is not important enough to be on that.
• 3:08:50
  Because they see honestly, there's a little bit of a like,
• 3:08:53
  like when I invite someone, I try to give them examples of
• 3:08:57
  other people like in their peer set of like, see, it's, it's
• 3:09:00
  safe. You know, So like when with you,
• 3:09:02
  Randy, when I emailed you, I, I probably said, Hey, people like
• 3:09:05
  Mouse Holloway, Brooks, John, like people like you're like,
• 3:09:07
  OK, well, if you know, those big guys can trust Mike, I can trust
• 3:09:10
  Mike, even though, you know, we have a relationship before that.
• 3:09:12
  So I'll say, you know, here's some women.
• 3:09:14
  Sue Humphreys has been on the show.
• 3:09:16
  You know, she's she's amazing. The Kitra Hayes down in Texas
• 3:09:19
  high school coaching does an amazing job, but they'll come
• 3:09:22
  back and say I have my story is not important enough.
• 3:09:25
  I don't have anything to say and I'll quick the rebuttal like
• 3:09:29
  that's not true yours. What you've done up to this
• 3:09:33
  point is extremely important and even if it's just for the other
• 3:09:38
  women need to see a. Woman.
• 3:09:40
  That you could do this, that there's a woman right here and
• 3:09:42
  she's maybe a mom and she's also still a professional.
• 3:09:46
  Track and field code like that is important.
• 3:09:48
  And so I I get turned down by women more for sure.
• 3:09:51
  Yeah, you know, it's it's for years, I always try to encourage
• 3:09:57
  women to move away from male only mentors and find female
• 3:10:02
  mentors. And for those females that have
• 3:10:04
  achieved power to become mentors, I think it's it's
• 3:10:07
  finally important to do. It's it's a different it's just
• 3:10:11
  different communication. It's different way I.
• 3:10:14
  I bet you we are, you know, back in the napkin math here, 12:50
• 3:10:19
  men to women coaches out of the 350 episode, that may be a
• 3:10:24
  little hard because that means 35 right out of 350, probably a
• 3:10:27
  little bit more than 35, but not, but certainly not 5050, but
• 3:10:31
  out of the top 10. So out of the top 10 most
• 3:10:33
  listened to, by the way, Boost exonators #1 that's probably not
• 3:10:36
  surprising to you. But out of the top ten, I think
• 3:10:39
  50% are women to like Diljit Taylor over at BYU, Oh my gosh,
• 3:10:46
  Beth Alford Sullivan, she's up there.
• 3:10:51
  Ashley, Althea Thomas now at Vanderbilt.
• 3:10:54
  And those gals are all in the top 10.
• 3:10:56
  So I'm like, I know people want to hear these stories.
• 3:10:59
  I just, and maybe it's just more bats.
• 3:11:01
  I need to invite more women. I'll invite 1300 of them will
• 3:11:05
  say yes. If I invite only 130 of them
• 3:11:07
  will say yes. I just.
• 3:11:08
  Well, if you're if you're at the convention, you know, you just
• 3:11:11
  OK guys. Randy, here's another one.
• 3:11:14
  Glad you brought that up. Every year at convention for the
• 3:11:17
  past four years. We just finished our fourth
• 3:11:18
  year. We do a live taping of the
• 3:11:21
  podcast on Monday night. OK, We, we invite coaches to sit
• 3:11:24
  down for five or two. It's, you know, it's not this.
• 3:11:26
  It's not, you know, hours. Long it's 5-10 minutes.
• 3:11:29
  Really laid back it's, you know, what's got you excited about the
• 3:11:33
  convention? What are you looking forward to?
• 3:11:35
  And then I usually have a, you know, a last question that I ask
• 3:11:38
  everybody out of those four times.
• 3:11:44
  So they're about 5 to I get about 18 to 25 because we now I
• 3:11:48
  go for three hours, but you know that they only come in for five
• 3:11:51
  to 10 minutes. I bet you 10% maybe have been
• 3:11:55
  women and this includes they do an amazing job at USTF, say
• 3:11:59
  there's this women in coaching forum that they do.
• 3:12:01
  It's awesome. Love it that's involved and some
• 3:12:03
  other amazing women have been leading this.
• 3:12:07
  They end like 30 minutes after we start.
• 3:12:11
  And I always see the leaders of the the forum beforehand, like I
• 3:12:15
  see them either at lunch or you know, and I always say, Hey,
• 3:12:18
  you're going to be ending like right as we are taping.
• 3:12:22
  I would love to show more women on the podcast.
• 3:12:24
  Can you make an announcement just saying, hey, you know,
• 3:12:27
  maybe join Mike for the podcast 5 to 2 minute reel.
• 3:12:29
  Some of these women have been on the podcast.
• 3:12:31
  So they know it's, you know, it's a safe place and I don't
• 3:12:33
  ask crazy questions and stuff like that.
• 3:12:35
  And they do, they make those announcements and I still get
• 3:12:39
  very few that'll come over. It's a little bit of a, a
• 3:12:45
  belief. My belief here would be it's a
• 3:12:47
  little bit of they don't feel worthy in general.
• 3:12:49
  Big again, big swath here. I'm talking.
• 3:12:51
  About I don't belong here. I don't belong here.
• 3:12:54
  How why would I put myself out there and in reality, it's like
• 3:12:57
  you 100% belong here. You 100% are worthy and we 100%
• 3:13:02
  need to continue to uplift women coaches in our sports, intermen,
• 3:13:07
  minorities, etcetera are coach. That's that's why I'm here.
• 3:13:09
  I'm here to uplift all the track and field coaches and.
• 3:13:12
  And I think, you know, the other yesterday I, I mentioned and,
• 3:13:16
  and I'm sure people are going to jump on this, but you know that
• 3:13:19
  a lot of women got jobs in the early, late 80s, early 90s.
• 3:13:23
  So that weren't, we're prepared for it yet.
• 3:13:25
  And yet those are the exact women you want to have on this.
• 3:13:30
  So to talk about that because now they should have had enough
• 3:13:33
  years behind them where it's OK to admit that the what was
• 3:13:38
  missing because they need to do that in order for other young
• 3:13:42
  women to understand what they need to do to achieve.
• 3:13:46
  Yeah. And and it's this is a
• 3:13:50
  profession. Yeah, that's right.
• 3:13:52
  Particularly. With the money involved right
• 3:13:53
  now, this is a profession now. They're making some good money
• 3:13:56
  in some of them. And I would like to see, you
• 3:14:01
  know, to me, women don't have to post up and say, you know, be
• 3:14:07
  equal to a man or whatever way you want to put that.
• 3:14:10
  It's kind of an ugly way to put it, actually.
• 3:14:12
  But post up and go pure of my deficiencies.
• 3:14:15
  This is what I had to change in me in my coaching.
• 3:14:19
  You know, Angela Goodman would be a good one.
• 3:14:22
  Love her, Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, Angela
• 3:14:25
  and I butt headed sit and then she could stay a little bit.
• 3:14:27
  I wanted I wanted Angela to be better.
• 3:14:30
  I mean it's like you gotta I I was just cuz I could see where
• 3:14:35
  she could what she could be so intelligent.
• 3:14:38
  So I mean, there's so much about Angela that was so very smart.
• 3:14:42
  Women needed her as a as a leader, but she didn't have the
• 3:14:46
  background yet. And although she came up through
• 3:14:49
  Fred, some of the others, I mean, she came up with some
• 3:14:51
  great coaches, but that that wasn't the preparation she
• 3:14:53
  completely needed yet. And you know, people go.
• 3:14:58
  So who are you to judge whether you have said, well, you know,
• 3:15:02
  I, I think I could comment a little bit.
• 3:15:05
  I mean, I've had enough experience to go.
• 3:15:06
  I know what you need and what you don't need.
• 3:15:09
  And I think it would be great to have someone like Angela on who
• 3:15:14
  who went through that. She got 2 head coaching jobs,
• 3:15:17
  big schools and then got released and then brought, came
• 3:15:20
  back to have a really great coaching career.
• 3:15:23
  Right, Right. What changed?
• 3:15:25
  What did she have to change in herself?
• 3:15:27
  And I think she's open enough to be able to, yeah, probably
• 3:15:29
  openly discuss that now, you know, and because it could have
• 3:15:32
  been painful in the past, but yeah.
• 3:15:33
  Absolutely. That's right too.
• 3:15:34
  That's a good. Point, you know, and and.
• 3:15:36
  People, one of the things, you know, you talked about some
• 3:15:40
  women who may have gotten jobs that they weren't prepared for,
• 3:15:44
  ready for at that time. You know the same happens to
• 3:15:47
  men. And I think that I I think.
• 3:15:50
  It's kind of weird, but I think we show that too because we've
• 3:15:52
  had some guys on the show that, you know, they'll say, Oh yeah,
• 3:15:55
  my first job was XY and Z and I'm like, that was a big old job
• 3:15:58
  for a 22 year old really, you know, and or you know, at 28 and
• 3:16:03
  they get their first head coaching job.
• 3:16:04
  I love my my question anytime get their get their first head
• 3:16:07
  coaching job was like, were you, were you ready?
• 3:16:09
  And because because it's a little bit of, it's actually
• 3:16:11
  again a humility test question. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 3:16:15
  And so far almost everybody has passed.
• 3:16:17
  They were like, no, I was not ready at all.
• 3:16:19
  It's like, OK, good. Tell me why.
• 3:16:22
  Tell me why. Yeah.
• 3:16:23
  Yeah, you know, well, Connie would be another one.
• 3:16:25
  Connie, I you know I love Connie.
• 3:16:27
  I'm. Actually, I'm actually.
• 3:16:28
  A little disappointed in myself that I haven't had Connie on the
• 3:16:31
  show because again, another person I love dearly, a great
• 3:16:34
  leader person, are women in their women's coaching forum as
• 3:16:37
  well. Yeah, I'm a little actually
• 3:16:38
  disappointed in myself that I haven't invited her on.
• 3:16:41
  I mean I. I felt, you know, Connie was
• 3:16:44
  great, great athlete, great communicator, just a wonderful
• 3:16:48
  person. Yeah, but but she was not ready
• 3:16:51
  to be a head coach when she was given originally the job.
• 3:16:54
  And it was very obvious to all of us that she wasn't quite
• 3:16:57
  ready. Did she have the skill set?
• 3:17:00
  Yes, she was going to have the skill set for sure, but she
• 3:17:05
  needed to be under another coach for a little while and then she
• 3:17:08
  was going to break it open because you knew she could break
• 3:17:11
  it open. She had that ability.
• 3:17:14
  And these are some of the women that I, I mean, I still look at
• 3:17:19
  them and I really appreciate who they are, but I really wanted
• 3:17:23
  them to be great. Yeah.
• 3:17:24
  I mean, I wanted them to show men and this is how women can be
• 3:17:28
  great. Now this sounds stupid coming
• 3:17:30
  from me, but it is. It's like you need to get out
• 3:17:33
  there and kick some ass and show that you guys are as good as any
• 3:17:39
  of these men that you think are better or are considered great.
• 3:17:43
  Yeah, and luckily we do. We have some amazing coaches,
• 3:17:46
  men and women out there that are phenomenal and doing a great job
• 3:17:49
  in a really, especially specifically, well, I'm, I'm say
• 3:17:52
  I'm going to say specifically in the college side because I'm
• 3:17:54
  thinking of NIL and all that kind of things that we talked
• 3:17:56
  about, but also in the high school side, man, I mean, just,
• 3:17:58
  you know, yeah, I, my wife is started doing long term
• 3:18:02
  substitution. So I, I understand closer to
• 3:18:05
  what a teacher goes through on a daily basis because of that man.
• 3:18:09
  I don't want to be a teacher today, brother.
• 3:18:11
  Holy cow, those guys and gals, God bless you.
• 3:18:14
  And then you go to the track for two to three hours.
• 3:18:17
  It's a coach, track and field. I got so much empathy for our
• 3:18:20
  teachers, our high school coaches that are teachers, man.
• 3:18:23
  God, there's a passionate group of human beings.
• 3:18:26
  Unbelievable. And they're doing so good.
• 3:18:29
  Go look at the high school marks dude.
• 3:18:31
  It's unbelievable in some states.
• 3:18:33
  It's nuts. What's going on with these?
• 3:18:35
  Marks, nuts. Unbelievable, it really is.
• 3:18:38
  It's quite impressive, impressive and I don't think
• 3:18:40
  genetics has gotten better. Genetics I think physically is
• 3:18:43
  all still the same. It's coaching happening out
• 3:18:45
  there, man. It's it's awesome, Randy, I
• 3:18:47
  agree. We every time I say we got it
• 3:18:48
  done, it's going to be another hour, brother.
• 3:18:50
  I love you so much, man. OK, I got I and my.
• 3:18:53
  Earbuds are going down so I know it's high.
• 3:18:56
  Yeah, we've been so long. Your earbuds?
• 3:18:58
  The battery. Yeah, the battery's going out
• 3:19:00
  and they were charged 100%. That's a good one.
• 3:19:01
  I like that's. A good I like that.
• 3:19:03
  I'm gonna brag about that Randy Huntington, dude.
• 3:19:07
  The most expensive thing in the world you can give me is your
• 3:19:08
  time, and you have given me hours and hours.
• 3:19:10
  You could have billed me a lot of money for the knowledge that
• 3:19:13
  you have dropped over the past couple of days, man.
• 3:19:16
  It's been fun to speak English this and be and be understood.
• 3:19:21
  Be understood exactly this has been greater than I could have
• 3:19:26
  ever thought man. I just want to say thank you for
• 3:19:29
  me. Thank you from the individuals
• 3:19:31
  that will listen to this because this again, I think all of them
• 3:19:33
  are extremely valuable. But I think people here in your
• 3:19:36
  journey, your experiences and and I must say I allowed you.
• 3:19:40
  I don't get into XS and OS and and training for for a couple of
• 3:19:45
  reasons. One is there's a lot of other
• 3:19:46
  great podcasts, things like that.
• 3:19:47
  Plus I haven't coached in 20 years.
• 3:19:49
  I've forgotten a lot. You know, they, they say, you
• 3:19:51
  know, a guy or gal has forgotten more about how to coach XY.
• 3:19:55
  Yeah, that's me because I've forgotten everything.
• 3:19:57
  I know how to coach. I don't I'm done.
• 3:19:59
  I can't coach my son to get out of bed in the morning.
• 3:20:01
  I'm just I'm done. But.
• 3:20:05
  Because of your knowledge experience, I I want I did kind
• 3:20:08
  of let some of the we didn't get in the weeds of exes and knows,
• 3:20:11
  but we got into some training stuff.
• 3:20:12
  So I think this this this two episode block with you man is
• 3:20:15
  gonna go down in history for our podcast.
• 3:20:17
  Honestly, I think it's gonna help.
• 3:20:18
  I hope people. Appreciate many people, I really
• 3:20:21
  do and I hope it helps you, my friend.
• 3:20:23
  I really do. You know, I like to I was to,
• 3:20:26
  you know, use this line just a minute ago.
• 3:20:27
  I'm the host. I get to do whatever I want.
• 3:20:29
  I like to challenge people. Sometimes it's challenging them
• 3:20:32
  to go back and say thank you to their mentors that they haven't
• 3:20:35
  thought about in a while. And now they've told them like,
• 3:20:36
  hey, you need to go back and say thank you.
• 3:20:38
  I remember telling one guest, I can't remember who it was.
• 3:20:41
  They need to go and call their mom right now and say thank you
• 3:20:44
  because mom done a huge influence over them.
• 3:20:46
  And they were like, man, I've kind of forgot about that.
• 3:20:48
  Yeah, go thank mom right now. Don't wait till Christmas and
• 3:20:50
  birthday and Mother's Day. Go do it right now.
• 3:20:52
  And so my challenge to you is going to be that what what is
• 3:20:56
  the next stage for you? Look in regard to you said these
• 3:21:00
  are your words coaching the coaches.
• 3:21:03
  I'm just going to challenge you to whatever the however that
• 3:21:06
  looks like IA 100% bless getting paid for it.
• 3:21:09
  Now. I'm not a guy that says you
• 3:21:10
  know, you, you you owe it to the coaches to do everything for
• 3:21:14
  free. You, you paid for that education
• 3:21:16
  as well, monetarily and physically.
• 3:21:18
  And and and all these books. That's right, that ain't cheap,
• 3:21:21
  and the time to read them ain't cheap.
• 3:21:23
  No, that, I mean that's, that's a lot of money behind me there.
• 3:21:26
  Your knowledge and experience is valuable and I want to challenge
• 3:21:30
  you to help make as many coaches aware of those.
• 3:21:34
  Those building blocks that you have, you paid the way for in a
• 3:21:37
  lot of ways and other people have paid the way to help you
• 3:21:39
  with them as well. So I just want to continue to to
• 3:21:42
  bless you for that and challenge you for what that next step is
• 3:21:45
  as you take the next step in your stage of life.
• 3:21:47
  Man, I'm proud of you and happy for you and want to want that to
• 3:21:50
  be a blessing for you. Appreciate it.
• 3:21:53
  I'll do what I can, that's for sure.
• 3:21:55
  That's all we ask. That's.
• 3:21:56
  Yeah, right. Right now I just want to get
• 3:21:59
  healthy, you know, so I can be around for a number of years.
• 3:22:02
  Yeah, we got good air there in Idaho.
• 3:22:03
  Now come on. Yeah, jeez, it's like 5.
• 3:22:06
  I mean, you like the AQ is five, you know, is that right?
• 3:22:10
  What a computer. It's really clean air here.
• 3:22:12
  I mean, it's it's pretty nice. And, you know, we're up at, you
• 3:22:15
  know, 5400 feet, so it's nice here.
• 3:22:18
  Your lungs start to open up slowly.
• 3:22:20
  And, yeah, you get out. And I'm gonna try to go cross
• 3:22:23
  country skiing a little bit later.
• 3:22:24
  So have fun. Yeah.
• 3:22:26
  Yeah. I can tell how enthused you are
• 3:22:29
  about that. Yeah.
• 3:22:29
  Exactly, Normally I'd say something like oh man, hey text
• 3:22:32
  me, let me know how that would. I don't even care bro, just
• 3:22:34
  don't get hurt. I do care about that, but I
• 3:22:35
  don't that stuff, Randy. Cross country skiing's fun.
• 3:22:38
  Thank you brother. Man, I'm so.
• 3:22:39
  Thank you for you. Appreciate you very much.
• 3:22:41
  Guys and gals, thank you again so much for being here.
• 3:22:44
  If you didn't do what I said and you listen to this whole thing
• 3:22:47
  before listening to Part 1, I encourage you to go back and
• 3:22:49
  listen to that. If you thought there was
• 3:22:51
  knowledge dropped in this, the whole segment, Part 1 and Part 2
• 3:22:54
  is really quite amazing. What I'll probably end up doing
• 3:22:57
  is so we'll publish this, you know, now when you're listening
• 3:23:01
  to it and last week, last week, I will probably put these two
• 3:23:03
  together and do we haven't done one this in a while, but mega
• 3:23:06
  podcast as a bonus to kind of again reiterate the message that
• 3:23:10
  Randy's giving us here. It's a lot of great stuff.
• 3:23:12
  So hope you enjoyed it. Let me know on Twitter, text,
• 3:23:15
  all that kind of good stuff all down in the the show notes down
• 3:23:17
  below. But grateful for you for all you
• 3:23:19
  do. We talked a lot about track and
• 3:23:20
  field coaches, men and women, high school college pro.
• 3:23:23
  Just know that, you know, both are hearts.
• 3:23:25
  I know where Randy's heart is, that is towards you and your
• 3:23:27
  craft and what you do in this great sport and for these
• 3:23:30
  individuals, be that person, be that basketball coach for him,
• 3:23:33
  be that positive influence because you have so much
• 3:23:36
  influence over these young people, whether they're middle
• 3:23:38
  school or pros. You have positive, you have
• 3:23:41
  influence. Make it a positive influence.
• 3:23:42
  So thank you so much for everything that you do.
• 3:23:44
  Appreciate you guys being here today.
• 3:23:45
  Join us next week. We'll do it all over again.
• 3:23:47
  See you guys. To go to appreciate the coach,
• 3:23:55
  the ones that point people most every season needs a voice of
• 3:23:58
  reason speaking the growth. You got to prep before you carry
• 3:24:01
  the load. Ice coffee to the soul.
• 3:24:03
  For those of us stay on the go. Proper handoff to stay in the
• 3:24:06
  zone which you're packing for the road.
• 3:24:08
  There's more than one way to go taking those that's paying your
• 3:24:11
  toe. It ain't practice if your
• 3:24:12
  purpose ain't clear. It can't happen until you
• 3:24:15
  listen. With both is can't mentor
• 3:24:17
  without a mentor of years of experience.
• 3:24:19
  You can reinvent those years every plan's got to stand and
• 3:24:22
  deliver to and the price sacrifice can you give up you.
• 3:24:25
  It's a choice and a fight, not a win or lose.
• 3:24:28
  It's not a ploy boy device. Y'all can make more moves.
• 3:24:30
  It's not about how to, it's all about why you don't know till
• 3:24:34
  you know who you are inside 6,000,000.
• 3:24:36
  Waste of time, choose none so y'all cross the finish line.
• 3:24:39
  The work ain't done so we learn from the experts but y'all got
• 3:24:42
  to put in the network. Guild athletics use the network.
• 3:24:45
  It's all about connections put together for the profession to
• 3:24:48
  where every track coach could be blessing.