Barbell Shrugged - Feed Me Fuel Me — Passion Before Paychecks w/ Rachel Balkovec — 82

Episode Date: April 12, 2018

Rachel Balkovec is the first female strength and conditioning coach in the history of professional baseball. She has spent the past seven years as a strength and conditioning coach for organizations such as Arizona State University, Louisiana State University, Los Tigres Del Licey Beisbol and the St. Louis Cardinals.   Most recently, Rachel has joined the Houston Astros as their Latin American Strength and Conditioning Coordinator. Her mission is to live courageously while empowering others to do the same. In this episode, we learn the value of being persistent, why academia isn’t always the best route, why you need to work to learn, not to earn, and much more. Enjoy! - Jeff and Mycal ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Please support our partners! Thrive Market is a proud supporter of us here at Barbell Shrugged.  We very much appreciate all they do with us and we’d love for you to support them in return!  Thrive Market has a special offer for you. You get $60 of FREE Organic Groceries + Free Shipping and a 30 day trial, click the link below: https://thrivemarket.com/feedme How it works:  Users will get $20 off their first 3 orders of $49 or more + free shipping.  No code is necessary because the discount will be applied at checkout. Many of you will be going to the store this week anyway, so why not give Thrive Market a try! ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: Website: http://www.ShruggedCollective.com Facebook: http://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast Twitter: http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged Instagram: http://instagram.com/shruggedcollective

This is episode number 82 of the Feed Me, Fuel Me podcast with our special guest, strength coach of the Houston Astros, Rachel Bolkovic. Welcome to the Feed Me, Fuel Me podcast. My name is Jeff Thornton, alongside my co-host, Michael Anders. Each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message related to our three pillars of success, manifestation, and nutrition our intent is to enrich educate and empower our audience to take action control and accountability for their decisions thank you for allowing us to join you on your journey now let's get started.

What's good crew? Welcome to episode 82 of the Feed Me, Fuel Me podcast. There isn't Jeff coming at you with Rachel Balkovic, strength and condition coach for the Houston Astros and longtime friend of mine. How are you? I'm doing fantastic. If you know anything about where I've been in the past three months, then you know I'm doing fantastic. If you know anything about where I've been in the past three months, then you know I'm doing fantastic. Where have you been the last three months? I've been looking at you for the last five years. You've been here, there, and everywhere. The last three months I've been a month in Europe,

and then I went a month in Asia, and then a week in L.A., a week in San Francisco, and now I'll be in Phoenix for a month. Nice. Good for you. Some good places. What's good there? Yeah. Still jet lagged,

though? Oh, man. It took me like five days to get over Asia, but well worth it. It was good. What part of Asia? I was in,

so I was in Laos for two weeks in like a small village just in the middle of the country, northern part. And then... Doing cleans

with water jugs and shit. Dude, I really, no, it was, that was like. You got to see your social media. Oh, she's doing it. Okay, yeah. I'm telling you what, and for all the listeners, there are no gyms in Laos. So if you're going, be prepared to be weak when you come back. I don't think there's a single gym in the country of Laos.

Really? But definitely, I mean, I fucked up because I went, I knew I was going to this small village and I did not bring like a TRX, some band, something. I didn't bring anything. And there was like literally nothing to do. So I was just doing body weight the whole time. That's crazy. I'm going to see this water jug workout.

Yeah, I lost 12 pounds. That's not bad though. I'm not kidding. Yes, it is. That's a lot of weight. I'm not kidding. Yes, it is. That's a lot of weight. I lost like 10% off all my lifts. Like I was, yeah. Did you get it back already?

Nah, it's coming. Okay, yeah. Yeah. So for everybody, so a little back story on Rachel and I. We were in the grad program at Arizona State right after I got out of the Marine Corps. And I've since been told I was wrong. But I remember having a lot of conversation with you regarding because you were working your way into the Ph.D. program. Right.

And, you know, you wanted to do what you're doing now on strength and conditioning and professional baseball and all that good stuff. And I remember just having some extended dialogue with you regarding the validity of a Ph.D. with regards to your career progression is strength and conditioning. And, you know, as we were talking offline before the show you know not so much it's not so much that the phd wasn't going to do you any favors but that program probably wasn't right for your career progression um but as far as uh your your education and your progression and strength and conditioning for everybody doesn't know who you are where you came from and how you got there. Can you walk us through that process? Man, it's so, you know, like when I met you, I think it was 2013, I think. Yeah. So second semester of grad school for me. Yeah. Yeah. And, and that was like a pivotal moment in my life. So I'm going to like fly through a bunch of this and I'm going to stop at that point and

then we'll fly through again to where I'm at now. But but um so okay i was born omaha nebraska played softball in college i went to creighton university my freshman year transferred went to university of new mexico if anyone out there is listening everybody's a lobo she knows what's up yeah i'm with it no so anyway um so i finished there and then my last semester um a professor of mine named chris frankel who's now the director of human performance for trx in san francisco he basically i asked him where the best place to go do an internship was and he said at the time was athletes performance which now is now is exos um at the time was where the best place to go do an internship was, and he said at the time it was Athletes Performance, which is now Exos. At the time it was like the hot place where all the professional athletes went to train.

It was very much not what it is now where there's a performance training center on every corner, but at the time it was actually pretty rare. So anyway, I went to Athletes Performance for an internship, roomed with a girl that was another intern who was a javelin thrower at LSU. I then visited Baton Rouge, um, was enchanted by LSU. Uh, long, long story short, I had a year I had to wait, but I did a graduate assistantship at LSU then for two years. And then after that, I worked for a company called Marucci bats. I did an internship with

Arizona state. I then did an internship with the St. Louis Cardinals. They had called LSU asking them to recommend somebody. And, um, that kind of got my foot in the door with baseball. I did that internship with, with the Cardinals. After that, I moved to the Dominican Republic. I did an internship for a winter ball team over there. And then I moved to Phoenix, which is where I met Michael. And I probably skipped over a couple of things there, but so Phoenix was interesting because I had, I had done an internship in baseball. I'd moved to the Dominican Republic. I did my graduate work at LSU. I was a college athlete. I, um, I was at athletes performance. I had this like great young resume as a young strength coach. And I moved to Phoenix. I thought I had a job lined up

that fell through. So I started waitressing. So that was good times. But I was like, hey, no problem. It's Phoenix. There's 15 baseball teams in Phoenix. I don't even know if you like remember this about when we first met, Michael. Like you probably don't. 2013 was a rough year. So anyway, I was like, okay, no problem. There's 15 baseball teams that are based out of Phoenix, which means there's a lot of baseball jobs in Phoenix.

Um, and certainly conditioning there's at minimum 15 jobs that I could have gotten in the city and also gone to school at the same time. And I was like, cool, no problem. I've got this great resume. I sent him my resume.

I think I applied to like eight or nine jobs and like literally did not hear back from anyone. And I was like, fuck, I was like, okay, this is like going to be a little harder than I thought. And I was like, well, shoot, like maybe I'm just not qualified, you know? And I was like okay this is like gonna be a little harder than i thought and i was like well shoot like maybe i'm just not qualified you know and i was like this is really weird and i'm

meanwhile i'm waitressing finally i get a call from an organization and i went through an interview process with them and i was like i went through two interviews they were like you know you're a girl this is cool we're gonna get you signed up two weeks go by nothing happens and i'm like what's the deal finally this guy called contacts me back and he's like hey uh i really want to hire you but you know we i'm just not gonna make it happen because you're a girl and i was like get the fuck out of here no way that was the conversation yes yes now like this guy, like, felt bad. There's no EEO against that? Of course there is.

Come on now. You think people actually follow EEO? Yeah. That's crazy. So, anyway, yeah, it's crazy that he actually said it, but I'll tell you, I appreciate that a lot more than me just sitting at home wondering. Because then, through the grapevine, like, four or five out of those other, like, eight or nine people that I applied for, I, like, heard through the grapevine like four or five out of those other like eight or nine people that i applied for um i like heard through the grapevine from a friend of mine in the organization or

whatever like oh yeah my boss got your resume but we can't hire a girl type of thing so but i was just sitting at home like do i suck like this is this resume like everything i've done to this point i can't even get like a low level internship position with the baseball club and so anyway, so he actually was like, I'm really sorry. What's happened over the past two weeks is that I've tried to reach out to other clubs on your behalf because we can't hire you.

And like, no one's willing to. Wow. And so, yeah. So I didn't know you were doing all that. Yeah. Okay.

So, um, anyway, so that was like my kickoff to 2013 because that was like spring training and then i was waitressing like going to pay my bills for school and everything and i actually the restaurant of which i was waitressing which is a really good restaurant um the owner of that team that the guy called me was actually a regular at that restaurant oh there you go just by chance sure so like i didn't know the whole time like i nothing happens by chance by the way right by chance air quotes

air quotes for anyone you know the listeners by chance um right so that was like i don't care what you think god buddha universe whatever that was like right in my face staring me right in the face every day i was like can i get you more water serving this guy is like a representation of my rejection anyway so that happened and i waitress for a better part of the year i was going to start phd nutrition stopped the phd figured out that wasn't the route for me at the time um got back into like strength and conditioning world. I interned for Arizona state for the second time for free if anyone's counting. So I got, so I just need to get my foot back in the door and they, they were nice enough to let me come back and intern again. And then I started working at

Lululemon selling yoga pants to people in Scottsdale. And then I finally got like kind of a foot back in professional baseball when I did an internship with the White Sox and so if there's any like people who are getting into the field who are struggling with being broke or like doing crazy shit to keep your head above water or whatever so at the time I was let's see I was working at Lululemon for like I don't know it was like $11 an hour and then I was interning at Arizona State for free and then I was interning at arizona state for free and then i was interning um for the chicago white socks who are in glendale and arizona state is in tent b so you can imagine i was like and then i was working in the quarter is that what it's called yeah quarter so i was like literally driving probably you got no gas oh man i was like driving everywhere i was so so broke i i was not

getting paid arizona state getting paid 11 bucks an hour with Lululemon. I was getting, I think it was $30 a day for the White Sox. And so basically I was broke AF and I couldn't afford meat. That's crazy. That's when I was a vegetarian by not my choice. By circumstance. Now I'm a vegetarian by choice, but then it wasn't by choice damn so that was like by year 2013 paychecks yes that's such a good like little tidbit i'm gonna steal that

so yeah so at this point this is like so i told you i was gonna slow down in 2013 so i think it's like an important story to tell people um but yeah i was like so desperate by the time it came to apply for actual jobs. Not like I was doing that little internship with the white socks, which is very, very minimum. They were just like basically letting me come in and like clean the weight room and like oversee things, which was nothing. Um, so anyway, I, I started applying again, but I was like so anxious about the the being a female and getting hard rejection that last year that i changed my name on my resume to ray i don't know if you know this no yeah so um yeah like the whole time i knew you i was like going through a real personal struggle so i

changed my name to ray on my resume and like made everything gender neutral. So it was like NCAA, um, not softball catcher, but NCAA division one, like catcher. So I was like, I, I just changed my name on everything and immediately got responses. Like so fucking fast.

I was like, what? And then, so like immediately like that, I got two emails back and then I got a phone call and on i've told the story before but i answered the phone call i didn't recognize the number and i was like hello and i was outside i can't remember where i was i was like outside somewhere maybe with friends and they're like hey this is so and so from this such and such organization and i was like they were like is

this ray and i was like uh i was like yeah this is she i was like oh my god in my and i was like they were like is this ray and i was like uh i was like yeah this is she i was like in my head i'm like it worked i can't believe it and there was like a massive shuffling of papers in the background and he was like uh and i was like he was like oh sorry i just wanted to make sure i had the right name and i was like i was like yeah you there's only one way to say ray you have the right name. And I was like, I was like, yeah, there's only one way to say Ray. You have the right name. You just didn't know I was a girl. Got you. So anyway, so like it was a very awkward conversation, but I was like, Hey, I'm really sorry. This isn't a good time. Can I, can I call you back later today? Called him back later that day. Didn't answer, send an email, email nothing never brought me back never got back again

so pretty quickly though after that i just felt like first of all i felt kind of guilty because i was like oh like that actually i was like surprised it actually worked and then second of all i just realized like i even emailed those other two people back that had written me and said you know okay thanks for applying if you're interested let's set up an interview type of thing. And I emailed them back and they never emailed back either. After I wrote back and was like, I signed it Rachel. So once they found out I was a girl. So, and then I just felt bad about it.

I was like, okay, I just need to take the perspective of if they don't want to hire me because I'm a female, then I don't want to work for them anyway. So I just very quickly was like, this is stupid. I'm trying to like work for people that don't even have work for them anyway. So I just very quickly was like, this is stupid. I'm trying to like work for people that don't even have respect for me anyway. So why am I working so hard to get an organization that seems like they're, you know, way behind the times. Yeah. So I just like gave up on that.

The Houston Astros came to the picture. Basically, there's a lot of people. So I'd worked for the Cardinals. I'm sorry, Houston Astros. I'm skipping two years. This is still the slow 2013 talk. So I'd interned for the Cardinals, not 2013, but in 2012 shortly. And I made an impression on them.

And then I was sitting. Do you remember my friend Katie? Yes. I'm going to tell her she made it on the podcast. So I was literally sitting. This was right after I changed my name. And I felt bad about myself. And I was sitting at her apartment with a glass of wine in my hand.

I was like, God, something's got to give. What do I have to do? I have five or six internships at this point. I had so little money in my bank account. And I was like, I am not giving this shit up. Something's got to give. I was sitting in her apartment. I got a call from the major league strength coach for the Cardinals.

And I was like, why is this guy calling me? He's like, hey, I just want to know if you're interested in the coordinator position. I was like, do you have the right number? Like who are you talking to? So long story short, I interviewed with them. And I ended up getting the minor league strength and conditioning coordinator position for the Cardinals. So that's another good lesson is like sometimes you think, you know, there's not a straight line from point A to point B. So sometimes you think you're like, you know, and especially from the outside, you're kind of like gliding along in a straight like a flat line.

You're kind of like doing little jumps like off your flat line. And then all of a sudden it's just like through the roof, like something happens and you skyrocket. rocket and so i went from not being able to get like a small extremely low level internship that didn't even have a salary to all of a sudden i'm in charge of overseeing 230 athletes and all of our affiliates for the st louis cardinals who aren't doing too well right now but at the time i've been a pretty history organization with being successful and getting to the playoffs so anyway that was 2013 rough times so. But great times, you know. Yeah. Both.

So I went to the Cardinals. I was there for two years. And then the Astros picked me up. And I've been there for two years. This is going on my third season with them. There you go. Nice. So, yeah.

Wow. That's a freaking journey. That's not even like. Let me take a breath real quick. You said cliff. That is the cliff notes. There's more. Yeah, there's more to that.

Wow, that's incredible. Well, congratulations on the perseverance. Hell yeah. Shit. It's like looking back, is it just like anything else that adds to the story? I wanted to stop you a couple of times, but I was just like, no, I'm just going to let you go.

I saw George Mason. Ask questions. No, ask questions. The double desk. Was it time to jump in? Yeah. Okay, well, I'm done now. That's an incredible story.

That's amazing. Holy shit. Okay. So we were talking offline about your next about your, your next progression, you know, where, where do you go from here? And, uh, how you applied to school every year for the last five years. So, which I thought was absolutely hilarious based on our previous dialogue so many years ago about just education in general, but you brought up a very good point about you know the the program that you get into from here and how everybody outside of America looks at performance research and you know we'll just use Arizona State

as an example since we were both in that program. A lot of the research coming out of there has to do with people who aren't optimal performers, sedentary populations, people with sleep disorders, diabetics, type two diabetics specifically. And whereas and that's where all the funding goes versus Australia is a huge one of note in, you know, they pretty much throw money at performance research. And we've actually had this dialogue with Joe Marsit over at Arizona State because he's trying to change the consult, change the culture to the point that you have two degree tracks, legitimate degree tracks one for fitness and conditioning and the other one for a more clinical base track um because they're not the same at all and um but in uh australia you know or around the world so a lot of these

educational systems want to know what the high performers are doing well and scale it down to the masses versus the way we look at it in america in terms of what research is funded and trying to figure out what's making people sick and how to make them better when we all know the the answer is obvious, we just do it backwards here. That's a really good way of putting it. I haven't, like, quite said it like that. But, yeah, that's. I have these conversations a lot.

Yeah. Yeah, I can tell. So to answer your first question, which will help, I think, talk about this. But the first question you asked was like the shift of progression and I think for me the next step and or 15 steps which is really what it's going to take me is being a general manager of a of a baseball team extremely long-term vision is I want to I want to change the world through the game of baseball and so there's like a huge part of me that's very philanthropic and i think that uh with what's

going on in latin america and how we're doing as a as a business as um as a whole major league baseball um and helping our guys that are coming from latin america which is almost 50 of professional baseball in case you didn't in case anyone out there doesn't know that um i think we're doing a little bit of a disservice to those guys so So I want to make some major strides there with education for those players, but also like education for our players who are, you know, who are in baseball. So right now we have a crop of guys who are, I call them the lost boys because they get drafted and play baseball for seven, eight years. If they have a degree, by the time they get done, they're completely outdated.

They have no work experience. If they don't have a degree, they don't go back and finish usually and so like we are you know we're doing a great job of like focusing on getting baseball better but i would like to see more of baseball affecting the world and uh you know making the world a better place sure so that's like that's like the overall very very like bird view. But anyway, going back to like what you were just talking about is I, I've wanted to go back to school for like at least 30 years now, probably more like five. That was my, might've been an exaggeration, but I took a trip to Australia last year and I went to the ASCA conference there.

And the difference between the ASCA conference and the NSCA conference is basically like ASCA. Is that Australian strength and conditioning association? Okay. Yep. So it's basically the Australian version of the NSCA. And so the difference is, is that they're presenting completely like research.

It's all, all their presentations are like numbers research. This is what we did. This is what happened. These are the outcomes. This is the technology we use. This is how we measured it. There's this percent error. Like everything so specific and i was like damn like there

there's no there's no like well the athlete felt like this and our culture is this and now i think there's good things to both and i'm a huge huge mindset culture person so that's like that's numero uno for me, but I also realized the value of data. So I also on that trip got to visit the Australian Institute of Sport, which I don't know if you know what that is, but it's in Canberra and it's actually kind of the birth of sports science is what I understand. Okay. So I think in the early seventies, I could be wrong, but I think early seventies, basically Australia sucked at Olympics. Okay. And so the government was like,

we're going to change this shit. So they basically poured like a ton of money into, into the Olympics and built the Australian Institute of sport, which is basically the largest. I was so impressed. I walked on onto their like facilities. It's a campus really. It's like, is it their OTC?

Their Olympic training center. Yeah. But it's like is it their otc their olympic training center yeah but it's like yes okay but i've seen our otc and like a couple and i was like yeah it's not even close like not even remotely close really they've got yes they've got like 45 sports physiologists on staff they've got like a whole different a whole team of sports psychologists which is like 20 people it's not like two or three right it's like they they have just the resources they have there and the money and as as you mentioned the money that's going towards research in actual like sport and not 12 year old sports which is important in its own right but like they are doing research on the elite of the elite right and so I used to think when I was like an undergrad,

I'd be like, why the hell are there so many articles on rugby and cricket? Like who even plays those sports? Is cricket even a sport? What is that? Yeah. And so like now it's all clicking like, Oh,

this is why, because they're doing so much research in this area of the world. So I visited a few Olympic training sites there, visit a couple in New Zealand, and even going to, I went to France. So I was in Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam this year in Europe. And even there, I was like, okay.

So it's very clear to me that my next step will be to go back to school, and my degree will be, depending on where I go, it's basically like biomechanics with a mix of data analysis. Sure. And so, and I'll have an opportunity to also do a year of research in either degree. And so basically my mindset is our world of professional sports, definitely. And also in college sports, you're seeing a huge push of data driven decisions. Yep. Um, I'll just speak for

professional baseball cause I know it well, but I mean, basically if you're not looking at data and baseball, you are, I mean, there's, there's not too many organizations that aren't anymore because it's so far behind the times. Yeah. So a lot of the decisions that they're making are simply based on,

on data analysis models that like nerds are doing in offices somewhere. It's like, it's like they're in the cloud, which I actually like love our nerds and our organization. So that's a dig that's like they're way way fucking smarter than me yeah um so yeah so i think the next step for me is to immerse myself in something that i've been missing and i think it's like i've recognized that in my repertoire it's a huge hole and you have to be self-aware of those things sure because in my mind if you're not really in strength and conditioning and team sports if you're ignoring it and you're saying like oh who cares about sports science and who cares about those numbers you're gonna be out of

a job in 10 years right which is coming quick if that yeah so a lot of people are going overseas to hire sports scientists because they have this background and as we talked about offline it's like as you said i mean i can remember my my data collection was like the treadmill walking test for obese people not like my our sports sciences for the astros jose fernandez who's awesome he came from spain and he was like literally like in a lab making force plates for his undergrad and i'm like how different are our worlds yeah so in their mind they exercise science is literally sports performance sure not where i grew up exercise science was like like you talked about general population now i think there's 50 minutes a week of moderate physical activity you

know just what are we talking about nothing that applies to what we do now i think there's a lot more programs popping up in the u.s you know that are like either a strength and conditioning specific yeah you know um degree but definitely when i was going to school those were few and far between well it's really interesting because now at the national convention for the nsca uh which was in october uh that was the last one i was at they actually have uh everybody uh a lot of undergraduates from those universities, um, presenting their, their theses and stuff like that. Uh, and then the list of universities here in America that offer that stuff, you know, aren't just, it used to be, the list used to be super short, etsu like 20 schools yeah maybe and uh

you know of note would be miami usc alabama big schools with a shit ton of money so they can so it's like oh you want to study that cool here's some dough you know um now that list is like i think it's over 50 schools yeah and but the list uh at the graduate level is still really small so you can like get your foot in the door and then you know walk the path that you've walked you know via internship after internship after internship maybe a ga you know for the practical application of things but the still the the research pool at the graduate level and beyond is still extremely small yeah yeah so i'm trying to get ahead of that because it's it's like i feel like it's just starting and that's way again way more schools than yeah when i was going

to my undergrad but it's coming like the wave is coming and if you're not and you know if you're not staying ahead of it then you're gonna be irrelevant pretty soon so do you think that show that sports science show you know the one i'm referencing that used to be on television on espn yeah it's on espn now but it was back in the day was on spike tv when i was in college that gave a lot of transparency into the industry like initially when i was in school because i have a computer science background okay and all those guys do data driven like, like you said, hit plates or impact plates, whatever they call them. And that sort of gave exposure to the industry. Do you feel like that sort of helped move that industry forward a little bit further where institutions are starting to implement that in their programming?

Because you see now, like Florida State, even the football teams, they have their impact plates and their you know accelerometer programs and their their shoulder pads and it says okay this player's exerting x amount of energy he needs to take them this many calories he's running this fast whatever you know do you see that like well has that been a help in there at all um are you referencing the television show specifically this was the show specifically but i mean as a no you've never seen it i i don't think i've owned a tv since i moved away from phoenix yeah i don't even like i'm so far away from that but i will say in reference to what you just said about and i don't i don't know what's going on at florida state and and somebody out there is gonna be mad that i said this but um i think at this point the U.S. is aware of sports science. We are starting to collect data, but we collectively,

that doesn't mean that some school out there isn't doing a great job, so hopefully if you're out there doing a great job, good for you. But we're doing a really poor job of applying it. So we're like, oh, look at all the technology we got. And then recruits come in and they're like, got uh we got concussion stuff in the helmet we got catapult to chocky running and then and then we don't use it right where as as like in research or as in science you would use it because you're actually using those numbers to get to a certain point whereas right now we're just collecting a shit ton of data and we don't know

what to do with it, which is why that's the whole reason why people are going overseas to get people who have used this data and looked at this data, their whole careers so that they can actually use it out that we're collecting to make decisions. Nice. So what's an example of like using the data for instance, for example, um, so acute to chronic workload ratio is something that, uh, I'm trying to think,

oh, Gabbit, Tim Gabbit, maybe. Um, he's out of Australia, I think, and he's done a ton of research with this. So basically acute to chronic workload ratio is, it's the ratio of what you've done over the past, let's say three days as compared to what you've done over the past month. And so if your ratio is at a certain point, like let's say that you, over the past three days, you ran 1,000 yards in the field, whereas over the past month, your average was only 400 yards. So that means that you've done a ton of activity in the past three days compared to what you've done in the last month that puts you at a higher risk to injury and so either so that's on like the high end of things and so from that perspective we would go all right you've done a lot of work which means that your body is taxed compared to what you've done in the

past month so we need to take your training load down and that could mean for us that would mean like either sitting out a game and like making sure that your body can recover because you just like jacked yourself up over the past three days or like in other people's fields it might literally just mean taking your training volume down and doing less run less conditioning for the day interesting and then like vice versa if you're really if you've been if you've had a training load over the past two weeks it's been i'm just like totally making these numbers up for for ease sake but you've you've had a training load over the past two weeks, it's been, I'm just like totally making these numbers up for ease sake, but you've ran 1,000 yards every single day. And then all of a sudden over the past three days, you only ran 100 yards. And so we would look at that and go, okay, in order to keep up your conditioning, like over the past three days, you only ran 100 yards in order to keep up your conditioning or to make sure that you're on pace with whatever you're doing.

That would probably be more of like a soccer player or someone who runs a lot. But then we would take it back up and go, okay, we really need to ramp you up tomorrow because you've been at a really low training load compared to your chronic usage over the past two weeks. Interesting. That's one example. And I'm probably even butchering that. Did you get all that? Yeah.

I mean, I absorbed it, bro. You were chronological. What devices are used to measure that, for instance? Say a pitcher compared to a catcher, I guess. Do they use different devices to measure that, or is it the same? Well, I mean, I don't know. I can only speak to what I know, but you would just use, like, so there's different ways to do it, I guess,

but one of the most popular ways would be just like a GPS unit. And so the guy, like, I'm sure you've seen it in football is like, I think we're early adopters more than anyone else. But just they wear like a tank top looking thing. Right. And then they have a sensor that goes in that shirt and it tracks them around and see how fast they're running, how many times they've ran that fast. It can even track like change of direction and stuff so you can track like rotational movement um because it has a gyroscope in it and so you can track like it's like your phone like you know your your phone has gps your

phone also knows if you you know if i pick up my iphone off the table it automatically lights up because it can tell that it's now facing a different direction. So all those, the sensor encompasses all of that. And so it tracks, it actually tracks a shit ton of data. Yeah. That's interesting. Cause that's exactly what I was seeing on the Florida state players where it's like you said, the plate essentially in there. Yeah.

Um, but I didn't like, they had so many different measurements like you're talking about. It was, I understand the technology behind it, but as far as the data points that they're collecting, that was a little bit more interesting to me. Yeah. I like that. I mean, when it comes to the research side of things, like you said, there's so much data accumulation, you really have to ask a very specific question to sift through all that shit to find the answer, the appropriate answer to the question you're asking.

Right. Otherwise, it's just, you have all these numbers that, you know, in the context of how things are being done, you know, the law of averages here in America, but you don't do anything cause it's just information overload. So,

so they don't even, they don't even know what question to ask cause they're just staring at so much information. Right. Which is where sports scientists come in. And it's, it's quite the process to take all that information, ask a very specific question. And then, You know, which is where sports scientists come in. And it's quite the process to take all that information, ask a very specific question and then, you know,

OK, we're going to look at this performance metric. Like parse the data after that. But, you know, this performance metric. But that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the question that we're asking. So let's look at this performance metric. And, you know, you kind of go through this test retest process over and over and over again the scientific yeah the scientific method yeah uh yeah um you know over and over and over again until you know there you establish the critical yeah the critical point of performance that answers that question specifically and that's a pain in the ass and that's you know but you know in america

but you know compared to how much we study the sick and sedentary in america where there's so much history behind that it's very easy to extrapolate data to answer a specific question we don't look at performance research that way here in america so that makes so you know that makes that process that much longer it's interesting yeah which is why they're outsourcing to overseas to go we need someone who has a solid background of this who's already done this for a decade right or more to come over and help us look at this data and actually come from a come from a data or a science background instead of just like well we worked hard today everyone fist bump fist bump see you tomorrow

exactly interesting and do you think you'll see pushback as you continue to like bridge that gap between the male and female within the sport or will it will coming from a sport and science background sort of be an easier path for you to get into these institutions like baseball or will there still be like a wall to break against well oh i mean i think it's uh i was telling michael i mean i think i think that it gets harder as i go along i thought it would get easier i think it's harder and so the i don't want to say i mean yeah sure the higher I get or the further along in my career that I get, the more established that I thought it would be easier and I'd be more

accepted. But I think at times that even makes it harder. I think at first when I got in, it was like, Oh, it's so good to have a girl here. And you're so cute. The token girl.

Yes. And now they're like, wait, are you serious? Wait, did you, you actually like want to do this for real so are you gonna like be here for a while that's so interesting like that mindset i don't know i i could be just i think the real answer is i need i need to have time away like after my career is done or after i've left the space i can probably look back and reflect a little bit better now i'm in it and i'm and i hear the things that are said about me to me

whatever and i have this feeling of like you know there's like the scrutiny is high just put it that way so do i think that going back and getting another degree is gonna make people respect me more respect women more the answer is no but i'm not doing it for that necessarily. I'm doing it, you know, because I have a goal in mind and, and that's it. So if, if that happens, that's great, but not necessarily anticipating that. Hmm. What, uh, you know, GM or not in your mind's eye, what substantiates your success? Like what def, what defines me as a human in your mind? What's what,

what defines what's, what's a better way to ask that question? Um, whether I make it to be a GM, general manager or not, at the end of the day, I look back on my life and am I successful or not? I think like

i mean that's the easy answer is is how many people have i affected positively and so the biggest rush that i get and the biggest like when i feel like successful when i feel like i'm high and i'm just like vibing out of control that's after i've spoken to a group of middle schoolers about, yes, like of middle school girls, speaking to them about, you know, being at the table and stepping up and body image and loving themselves and really like, you know, that's when I feel the most alive to be honest with you. And so, and also, you know, in my job the past two years, I've been the Latin American strength conditioning coordinator for the Astros. And so that means that I work with our little babies that sign and they sign at age like

16. And, you know, a lot of them, I won't say a lot of them, but there's a, there's a solid handful that don't have great education, came from a bad family life, don't even have a high school degree. The, the education they do have is like, you know, freshman year education. And that Lord knows what that knows in their community, wherever that was. It's not like my private school education that I got. And so, you know, making sure that people are becoming better humans is like my number one. And then

if I become a general manager, that's just just gonna allow me to do that on a bigger scale sure so that's that's the end goal is to okay you know i told you i want to i want to change the world through the game of baseball so my end goal is not to be a general manager and like win the world series like that's i don't even sometimes i like donate people like oh yeah astros are having a good year this year i'm'm like, Oh, that's good. Are we? Okay. Like I'm so out of touch with that cause it's, it's just focusing on human development and developing young men and taking those opportunities when I have them to speak to young women. Yeah.

And I, I started the virtual handshake Academy, um, for, to help young professionals and like that, that's what really gets me going. Explain the Virtual Handshake Academy. I'm not aware of that. So the Virtual Handshake Academy is, it's basically a resource for anyone out there who's deathly afraid of writing a cover letter and doesn't know how to do it,

doesn't want to do it, writes a shitty one, hands it in, closes their eyes and presses send. Anyone out there who doesn't know where to start with that stuff. So it's basically your professional materials is what I call your virtual handshake because nowadays it's pretty rare that you get an opportunity to walk in and shake someone's hand for real and like hand them your resume. That never happens.

And sometimes when it happens, they're like, why are you here? Don't come in my office. It's kind of like, don't, you know, don't come in here. you know it's kind of like don't you know don't come in here you can't just walk into a waiting room in a suit yeah in a suit and hand your resume to the head strength coach they're gonna be like get the fuck out of here sure so anyway your virtual handshake is just how you present yourself online and so the course is um it covers everything from writing the cover letter the resume which is like the big things but also talking about how to write your references how to how to um construct an email, a professional email. If

you're just cold emailing someone or even sending in your materials, um, just everything A to Z on, on that process, because I sure as hell didn't know how to do it when I was getting in. Um, and it actually took me getting somebody else's resume and being like, shit, this resume is so much better than mine. And I was like, Oh my gosh. And so restructuring my whole resume. And then also like reading somebody else's cover letter and being like, God, I just got inspired by this cover letter. And so I realized what was wrong with mine. And so it's, it's really, sometimes it's not about the experience that you have, but if, if you're only an email to somebody, if you're only a resume on a screen then

how do you look what is what is your handshake is it is it a good handshake is it dead fish you know is it weird is it awkward is it the claw hand you know so that's what that is that's legit i like that yeah so it's just a it's a pretty inexpensive resource for basically what i would consider mainly undergraduate students. How much does it cost? It's a hundred bucks. So I mentioned I've been broke. I've been broke many times, but I've been really broke a couple of times. And so I understand that process. So I try to keep it pretty economical for the young students out there.

That's what's up. That's an investment. I mean, that's what coming out of school you don't realize that that hundred bucks can go a lot further than you know the education that you didn't receive knowing how to write a check knowing how to in this case you know do your resume or cover letters that stuff they don't teach you that and you just don't come out yeah having that skill set so i mean that's a huge investment for for the price i mean yeah i'd buy that seriously that's huge yeah i mean i just think it's like probably one weekend at the bar if you're in a absolutely it's like for if you're if you say you don't have money for a hundred dollars to improve your resume then you don't have money for a lot of your vodka sodas either absolutely you know investing in

yourself's the biggest thing yeah so that's what that is. That's really cool. And working with the, you know, in the Latin American countries, Dominican Republic, correct? Yeah. How has the transition been, like the language barrier? Working with those guys, do you know, are you fluent in Spanish or anything? Yeah, I'm damn close. I'm not like 100% fluent, but I can say everything I need to say. Okay. But just understanding the language is still a little hard for me,

especially in the Dominican. They use a ton of slang and they speak really quickly. So that's still tough. But just basically, I mean, getting into baseball, you know what it was, actually. My first day on the job as an intern for the Cardinals, 2012. I was, like, you know, so excited. I was fresh out of LSU.

And if you don't know, LSU is the best school in the world, obviously But you don't think it's a big-time SEC school they expect the expectations are high the atmosphere was just like electric and so I Came out of that and I came straight into professional baseball and i was coming in hot and i was like all right ready like i'm ready to get ready to go they're on the line for stretch and these guys are just looking at me i'm like you know basically was taken through this dynamic warm-up and they were just like zombies like they were barely doing stuff right they're barely and i was i'm coaching the shit out of them and i'm like what's going on here like there's a language barrier they can't understand a word i'm saying. And if they can, they're pretending like they

can't, which also happens a lot. And I was like, that's it. I'm learning Spanish. So these motherfuckers don't have any excuse to not listen to me. So I was like, okay, basically you just think about it as a coach. We talk about this all the time. You're only as good as what you can communicate. So if you have all this knowledge and you can't communicate it, then what good, what good a coach are you? You're not sure, but this is literally like,

if you cannot communicate, if you cannot speak their language, literally, then what good a coach, you're not a good coach. Right. So I think there's plenty of people in baseball who don't know Spanish and they've gotten away with it.

But for me, it's been a vital, vital thing for me to not only communicate with the athletes, obviously, and develop relationships with them, but also it's opened up job opportunities for me. There's no way I could have been the Latin American strength and conditioning coordinator for the Astros if I didn't have a base in Spanish. So, I mean, I think it's been, it's almost like having another degree,

like to put that on your resume. I call that in the virtual handshake Academy. I call that the mic drop moment for me is like think it's been, it's almost like having another degree. Like, to put that on your resume, I call that, in the virtual handshake academy, I call that the mic drop moment for me. It's like, that's at the top of my resume. Rachel Blockbeck, RCC, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Spanish speaking. Done. Yeah, really. Like, you can't, that's just a vital, vital tool. Put you top of the stack.

Yeah. For me, it wasn't even an option. Like, when I was like, all right, this is a serious career move for me, it wasn't even an option. Like when, when I was like, all right, this is a serious career move for me. I was learning Spanish. That's dope. How long did it take you to, to learn it? Um, I would say to be capable as a coach, it took me just one summer. It's not bad. No, because I was like constantly asking them questions. I had my little notebook and just, I was constantly making a fool of myself saying things wrong you know and then having them correct me which creates another bond

because you become vulnerable and you're you're messing up spanish and struggling and i'm getting red and embarrassed and they mess up english because they're trying to learn english and so it creates that bond where it's like okay i'm going to help you you help me type of thing sure um and so that's like that it took me a very short amount of time because i mean it's like, okay, I'm going to help you. You help me type of thing. And so that's like, it took me a very short amount of time because I mean, it's just like anything else. How are you going to learn how to handstand walk? Well, you do a million fucking handstands. And then one day it clicks.

So, and with the help of people around you. So it's just like anything else. If you want to learn it, you can do it pretty quickly. That's pretty cool, man. I like to hear that because you hear a lot of people as they get older, they're like, I should have learned that one as a kid you know now it's a lot tougher all right so this is this is like kind of going on a tangent but yeah go ahead you're like yeah

go ahead this is what this is for um so i'm gonna start a podcast and it's i'm gonna name it i'm gonna name it plasticity plus plasticity podcast because it's like that'm going to name it, I'm going to name it plasticity, plasticity podcast, because it's like, that is such a myth. You know, if you read, if you, if you actually study a little bit of neurology, I mean, literally like science will tell you that your, your nerve endings, your nerves and your brain is constantly changing if you allow it to, and if you want it to. And so learning something when you're young, I mean, mean yeah probably it's easier to learn when you're young because you're in a structured environment and your job is to learn you're literally your job is to go to school when you're very very young and so that's what you do all day long you're in a learning environment but at the same time when you're young everything is brand new

right yeah so your neuroplasticity is at an all time high. Okay. Yes. Yeah. Because you're constantly changing, but you don't lose the ability to change. You just, it's just like anything else. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I'm 30.

So my metabolism, my metabolism slowed down. No, you're 30 and you're sedentary. And so that's why you're lazy. That's why your metabolism sucks. Yeah. But no,

like I, I just turned 30, um, a few months ago and i'm like three oh everything's downhill from here yeah but it's like i i talk about this all the time yeah now i can be lazy okay there are surgical issues you know like that's different but but like i'm broke as fuck but you're you're really the your ability to learn is like in your belief that you can learn sure yeah and so i mean i just i just remember thinking when i was i don't know let's say 22 like oh 30 like wow it's so old better hurry up before i die at the age of 30 like what now i'm 30 and i feel like i feel like i've got so much left in the tank.

There's so much left to learn. And I'm talking about going back to school, and it's like, no big deal. I'm not worried about, well, I'm 30, so my brain's slowing down. Like, that's a joke. Yeah. So where does your forever learning,

forever student mentality come from? Because as you just said, and as we've experienced on this show over and over and over again, it's a choice. Yeah. You know, but for a lot of us, that choice is a byproduct of exposure. mentors and coaches and stuff like that who are always reading and always putting themselves in uncomfortable situations to facilitate the learning process so where does that come from for you well i would have to say first and foremost shout out to bonnie and jim balkovic my parents um i don't know like and not necessarily not that they're not learning but not necessarily exactly that but just like just sickening work ethic just beat into me sometimes literally you know but most most of the time not literally um i don't think people today understand the value

of a good ass from time to time. That's your limitation on that one too. Yeah. So, I mean, they just really raised me to be forever seeking and just relentless in my pursuit of whatever it was that I wanted. And so that's first and foremost. And then I would say my mentor, Chris Frankel, I mentioned earlier, who's the director of performance for TRX, he's like, every time I'm with him, which I was just with him last week, I just feel stupid. And like you go to his house and he's, I think he's 55 ish, you know, and he's got like articles spread out all over the table

and like highlight. I mean, he's just a brain, like he's so smart. And so that's, that's who my first ever mentor was. And so, and like, I didn't realize at the time how golden that was and how smart he was. But I was fortunate. I don't use the word lucky a lot, but fortunate that we crossed paths and that he gave me an opportunity to be an apprentice under him. So that's none of us. Actually, I think there's two. I think the second ever professional baseball strength coach was just hired, a woman, just so you know. There you go.

So two. Breaking down barriers. So, I mean, it pushes me. I hear a lot of shit being talked so i'm like it it does drive me i'd be lying if it's i said i it didn't so that's that's part of it but the bottom line is is like i literally just want to be the best in the fucking world and so there's really not there's not a lot of options when you think about when if it's truly what you want so everyone says like there's a lot of ways to skin a cat and i say there's really only one best way to skin a cat there's really only one fastest way

most efficient cleanest way to skin a cat period yeah i don't really believe that there's a lot of paths to take if you if you want to be you know changing the world yeah you know so that's that's basically it. I love that. There is only one fastest, most efficient way to do it. I think that's extremely critical from the perspective with which you're pursuing your career. Because, like you said, it eliminates all the bullshit options. All the potential for shiny object syndrome and chasing false opportunities and stuff like that. You know, if it's, if it's not on your path, if it's not the cleanest, most efficient way to get you to where you want to go, you know, it's, it's a very fast and easy no, and you just keep it moving. Yeah. Which is hard. The shiny object syndrome is real.

For sure. It is so real. But you also said something that I thought was extremely important when it comes to coaching, because I talk to the female coaches I have and mentor all the time with respect to, you know, the same dynamic that you experienced in professional baseball. Sixty percent of our membership is male. And they have to coach them through the same progressions and everything, teach them the same movements that they do with the girls. And one of the most immediate hurdles when coming into this industry for women, in my experience, is the reluctance to coach because you can't necessarily do or do as well,

um, from a performance standpoint, you know, like IE, uh, you know, uh, Caitlin's five, four, 125 pounds, you know, and I constantly ask her, you know, requests of her, demand of her, you know, when we're testing squats, I was like,

get behind that dude and fucking spot him. Mm-hmm. You know, and it's, she's gonna kick my ass for throwing her out on the bus that way,

but it's, it only facilitates your credibility as a coach to step outside your comfort zone and do that which which terrifies you yeah that's something for like was that was that huge for you or is that something that you just accepted as fact and you know push through anyway or did you have to go through that same kind of thing that was never like in a different context i mean i always tell when girls reach out to me about like getting into strength conditioning yeah i tell them i mean i know this is probably someone out there's gonna get mad again

but it's like sorry you gotta be in good shape like you gotta lift heavy you need to be conditioned like you need to be doing the stuff that you're coaching right if it's crossfit you need to be conditioned like you need to be doing the stuff that you're coaching right if it's crossfit you need to be good at that now you don't have to be a games athlete and everyone is learning so that's something different but like look i'm in shape like i'm 30 and i got a six-pack so sure i know they're not stupid they know i'm a girl so they know i'm not going to out squat them right even though some of them I can out squat, which, okay. You know, but that's neither here nor there. I've seen you lift. You move weight.

You know, but I'm not even, and I'm not saying, again, like I'm not a world weightlifting champion. You know, I'm not this elite level athlete. I don't train like that. I don't train twice a day. Sure. But. You practice what you preach. Yeah, like 100 percent through and through. And I don't, I'm never ever will you see me eating

anything bad in front of the players? You know, I'm not going to say I don't go home and have, you know, whatever ice cream or something like I'm a human being, but overall I'm practicing what I preach and you gotta be in shape. There's, there's no, there's no excuse. And really there's no room as a woman, especially to not practice what you preach. Like I get out there and do conditioning with our players and I'm never going to beat them in conditioning. Really? I mean, I don't, I can't even think of a time that I have, but they see me out there. They see me like I'm sprinting to the max and I can recover in the same amount of time and I'm not doubled over like they are. And so like I'm in shape. And so I think

not only does it, does it show them that I'm practicing what I preach, but it also gives me that confidence. Like I don't, I don't care. I'm going to coach you. I know how to squat. I can squat relatively pretty good weight. It's not your weight, but they understand that. I think they get it. Sure. And they think like they, they see it, it you know they see how i carry myself they see what i do and it's you know that that barrier that i'm referencing um in your estimation would be more so a story that you're telling yourself versus actual fact everything is a story we're telling ourselves everything in our life is a story that we've told ourself i'm too old to go back to school i'm 30 so my metabolism slows down. I'm a girl, so I can't do this.

I tell myself stories. You probably tell yourself stories. It's a matter of being aware. So many people are so unaware of the bullshit limiting stories that they're telling themselves, and that's where you get into a lot of trouble. But if you can catch yourself and be like, wait, wait, wait, that's not the truth. I'm just making that shit up. Sure. Maybe that guy just had a bad day and doesn't want to talk to people. It's not because I'm a girl. Right. You know? And so if I, and I definitely used to do that and probably still at times do that where I'm like, Hmm, is that cause

I'm a girl, you know, do it a lot less now. I really think if a guy's being disrespectful to me most of the time, it's because he's disrespectful to everyone. Sure. Not because I'm a girl. You know, like if I ever have. He's an asshole to me. Yeah. He's an asshole to everybody.

Yeah, it really is. It's not like, I probably tell myself stories on the other end of things. I'm like, whatever. They don't care that I'm a girl. Like I've like told myself the story so many times. I'm like, I don't care that i'm a girl like i'm so i'm like i've like told myself the story so many times i'm like i don't care um but i i think yeah i think most of the time it's just if i have an issue with a guy everyone has the same issue with that guy and so it's a lot easier for me to be like oh it's not because i'm a girl it's just because this guy probably doesn't even want to be

here right so yeah i think no one can make you insecure you make yourself insecure no one can no one can belittle you yeah you know like you belittle yourself and so when especially like in that year 2013 when i was telling you that i was facing a lot of discrimination sometimes blatant sometimes behind my back but like most of the time i was good about saying if someone didn't want to hire me i was like what's wrong with these people like whatever why wouldn't you want to yeah me, I was like, what's wrong with these people? Like, whatever. Why wouldn't you want to hire? Yeah. I didn't say like, Oh no, I must be, you know, I must not be good enough or I'm not, you know, this, I was like, what's wrong with these people? God, don't they know I'm fucking awesome. But, but my point is to say that, you know, I I've heard, um, just, just a couple of people

I've been talking to lately and they're like, well, he, he belittled me and he did this. I'm like, he didn't do shit to you. You did that to yourself and you're telling yourself this story and it's really not a reflection of you. It's a reflection of whatever's going on with that person,

whether they're insecure or they got something going on at home or whatever. Like you can't let them impose their, their emotions and their beliefs onto you. You have your own beliefs. Yeah. Yeah. So my advice to anyone really, not just females,

but if you're, if you feel like insecure about something, you better take a hard look in the mirror. So no one else is doing that to you. Yeah. Yeah. In the world of psychology, we call that progression or projection.

Yeah, exactly. They're projecting it. Their beliefs onto you. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.

Interesting. Speaking of all of that stories and shit like that that you know you may or may not be telling yourself um you know michigan state's huge in the news right now with their misconduct and all that good stuff okay bad stuff i like i'm just detached from the world so up. You know what I'm talking about? No, no idea. Oh, so. I'm detached from the world. I don't even know either. Okay, good. So Dr. Larry Nassar. Oh, wait, the gymnastics thing?

Okay, yeah, sorry. I'm with you. So because of all the shit that he got into, now they've implicated the entire athletic department at Michigan State, namely the money-making programs, basketball and football. Right, right.

Not to say that wrestlers and everybody else, all the other sports don't have dirt as well, but they've been very, very explicit in their implication of the football and basketball programs. Did you experience or do you know of anybody that's experienced misconduct or maltreatment of any kind just because they were a female in the NCAA? Oh, I mean. Is it as rampant as the media would make it out to be?

I don't know about that. That whole situation to me is mind-boggling. I don't know too much about it. Sure. It's like the amount of girls that have come forth is just mind-boggling I don't know too much about it sure it's like the amount of girls that have come forth is just like mind-boggling sure um in college I I can honestly say I I didn't experience not one bit of that and I don't know anyone that did sure now I mean now as far as like the physical abuse and all that stuff like no definitely not you know now in my career for sure i mean it's it's not daily but it's like pretty often that i something said to me about

me behind my back this or that it's pretty yeah wow yeah it's pretty prevalent i would say and it's not even like it's not even about the Astros organization either. Cause I actually like love the Astros and I know it's going to sound like I'm just shame, you know, just plugging them for no reason, but I really do appreciate the organization I'm working for. But it's like other, you know, other colleagues around the field or other organizations, I hear this or that, or, you know, I mean, I'm trying to think of something I can share with, without like going into too much detail. But, I mean, like, an organization or staff that I heard of that has a picture of me posted up on their thing, like, from my social media.

They, like, make fun of me. And I just, I mean, I don't know. It's like, I just made a post recently on Instagram about bullying. It's like the bullying that you experience in sixth grade. It's the same stuff. Sure. You know, so if you don't have a strong if you don't know yourself and you don't have a strong foundation in yourself, then you're screwed because that stuff's going to crush you. Right.

Right. But, yeah, I hear it all the time. Like. Very frequently. That's crazy. So. Speaking of social media media because we were talking offline about uh your social media presence and its correlation with your career progression how

not many people in professional strength and conditioning with social media you know are are you more in line with the what andy galvin's trying to do and push you know the information to the masses that's readily digestible to them via social media you know because you definitely as a strength and conditioning coach have a better social media presence than most so but at the same time you catch a lot of shit for social media presence so I originally started like doing this social media stuff and I started a website in efforts to My social media is not directed at strength and conditioning information. It's directed at women's empowerment and so my content is more about like mindset and

just like being a strong presence for young females and whether they're getting into strength conditioning or not. And so, and my website, like, that's what I want to be speaking on more and more and more is, is to young women. And so it really has nothing to do with pushing out information to strengthening conditioning professionals, because I just don't want, I mean for good for the people who do but that's just not something that I want to do but yeah that's that's what mine was originally for and still is that's nothing to do really with like informing the masses on straightening conditioning and I think because that too it's it's like I catch some flack

for that because it's like oh I catch some flack for that because it's like, oh, is this, okay. So she wants to start a business and she's not in, she's not really invested in her job and, um, all of those comments that, that I received. But I told you from the beginning, like the way that I would define success is how many people that I can positively impact. Right. And that's what that started with.

And, you know, it's, it's actually like shame on me because I let what I hear about it. I let what I hear about it affect like, Oh, I don't want to post as much anymore. I don't want to post this because people might think that I'm not, you know, I don't even know, but fill in the blank. People might think whatever. And so I should just go full steam ahead because my passion in life is empowering people. And so if that's it, then, you know, that's what my social media is about. There you go.

Yeah. Yeah. Good for you. Yeah. Yeah. I'm proud of you. Oh. No, I mean.

Thank you. I didn't know you had all that shit going on behind the scenes when we were in class together. Yeah. you know when we were in class together um yeah but no that's that's that's big that you know you allowed your your persistence and your passion to carry you through all that the discrimination the lack of income you know the the countless hours of doing for free you know to get you to where you're at now so i mean all that stuff is an accumulation that turns into a launch pad you know and then all of a sudden you just you know from the outside looking in you end up where you're at and it's just like no no no no no like let me tell you about all the shit that it took to get here oh my gosh

yeah especially after i got hired as the marley cordia for the cardinals i heard all kinds of things about well she didn't pay her dues and this and that because i went basically straight in their eyes i went straight from being being an intern for the Cardinals. And then two years later, all of a sudden I was hired as their minor league coordinator overseeing a bunch of stuff. Yeah. And people are like, oh, she didn't earn it. And I'm like, you have no idea.

Literally, I have no idea. So there's no such thing as overnight success. So, yeah, that's couldn't be more true for sure. Before we let you get out of here today, um, I want to ask you two questions. You can answer on any level, mental, physical, spiritual, or, you know, whatever. Uh, the first of which is, what do you do each and every day to feed yourself and kickstart your motivation and create that mindset to attack the day? And then the follow-on to that is what do you do each and every day to fuel yourself so that you create and establish that carryover of momentum into the next day?

Oh, man. Can I go on a tangent? Go. Proceed. Yeah, like I was talking to this girl named Emily Schramm. Do you know who that is? Mm-hmm. All right.

So she's awesome. And we, on her podcast, we were talking about routines. And like, I don't, I just told you, I've been traveling for three months. I've been living out of two suitcases for three months. And, and really my life doesn't get much better after that. Like I'm going to be living one place for one month and then another place for six months. And then I don't even know where I'm moving after that. And so I don't really have like routines every day type of thing. And I know that it's like, you know,

the seven habits of successful people and the people make their bed. I'm just telling you right now, I don't make my bed. But what I do is like, I have like principle based routines. Like, so I, I do do these things at some point every day, but I don't, it's not like I wake up and then I have like principle based routines. Like, so I, I do do these things at some point every day, but I don't, it's not like I wake up and then I have my toothbrush sitting right here. And then I have my, like, usually I wake up and my shit's everywhere. Cause it's in suitcases and I'm like digging through stuff. So, I mean, basically it's the two things that I'm going to stick to is I'm going to train every day and I'm going to eat healthy every day. And if I put those two things in place, my life seriously like falls into place at all times. And so no matter what, if I'm in an airport, if I'm jet lagged as a mother, if

I'm, if I'm in the middle of nowhere in Laos and I, you know, like, I mean, talk about discomfort, like no, no running water, you know, no real toilets, squatting toilet. Uh, the alphabet is Laos. Like there's, I can't even make sense of anything. The alphabet's completely different. Like language barrier was ridiculous. Just, I was completely uncomfortable, which is why I went there. But I just kept telling myself like, all right, Rachel, today, all you're going to do is focus on getting in a training session, whatever that means, which was cleaning water jugs and like just running and pushups and stuff, get in a training session and make sure you're eating cleanly, which is not hard there. Cause they serve like insects and like the cleanest

food ever. So, uh, but I was like, as soon as I like, I was able to keep those routines. That's, that's my thing. Sure. So what do I do every day to like feed myself is those two things have to be in line and a training session, by the way not have to be killing myself it's sometimes it's body weight squats and whatever or it's a hike um fueling i would say like to me is is education and so reading and podcasts sometimes i over consume on that stuff but um i'm a huge podcast audiobook junkie so i'm like deep into um i'm deep into uh stealing fire right now if you know it's all it's it's it's in my queue you gotta i downloaded it last month but i have like five books in front of it right now yeah i mean i've got like 20 so i guess i know what you're saying but anyway so i'm i'm deep into stealing fire so I've been reading that. I got a 20-hour flight to Brazil on Thursday.

Yes, there you go. So I'm going to push through a bunch of that stuff. There you go. So yeah, I would say to fuel me is just education, like just reading. I've got, I know they say you shouldn't do this, but I like it. So I've got like my bedtime book at night. That's like, usually it's, so there's Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Oh yeah. book at night that's like usually it's so there's meditations by marcus aurelius oh yeah um that's by my bedside tao de ching which is just on daoism which is another good it's kind of like

it's i mean it's basically similar to meditations um senate because i'm other so i've got like bedtime reading and then i've got like studying so that's like my strength and conditioning like i just finished therapeutic neuroscience education which is is a great book. If you want to read about the science behind plasticity. Um, and then I've also got like my audio books. So I'm like, that's what lights me up. It keeps me going.

I think so. That's what's up. Dope. And then where can everybody in this community go follow you and support you? Social media websites, anything that you have going, I would say I'm most active on, um,

my Instagram, which is just Rachel.Balkovec. And then, how do you spell Balkovec? B as in boy, A-L-K-O-V as in victory, E-C as in cat. I've only done that a million times.

So that's, that's my Instagram. And then I'm on virtual handshake Academy a little bit more too now and then I do have a website also which is just rachelwalkfoot.com so you can pretty much find me easily cool loved it loved it you're rocking it you know keep crushing it though appreciate watching your journey

you know now that I know so much more about what was going on you know as we were becoming friends and everything no much much love and success. And, you know, for everybody listening today, you know, get out there and support the virtual handshake. Educate yourselves on, you know, being a consummate professional before you walk in the room. And support everything that Rachel has going on.

She's doing big things and she's going to change the world. We're looking forward to watching you do it. Thanks, guys. Yeah. Until next time, feed me, fuel me. And that'll do it for this week's episode with our special guest, Rachel Balkovic. If you want to check out everything that Rachel has going and support her, please go to the full show notes on feedmefuelme.com.

Also, be sure to connect with us on social media, including Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter at FeedMeFuelMe. me.com also be sure to connect with us on social media including facebook snapchat instagram and twitter at feed me fuel me we would love to hear from each and every one of you if you found this episode inspiring in any way please leave a rating and a comment on itunes so we can continue on this journey together we really appreciate you all for spending time with us today and allowing us to join you on your journey we would love to hear your feedback on this episode as well as guests and topics for future episodes to end this episode we would love to leave you with a quote by fabian frederickson the things you are passionate about are not random they are your calling

thank you again for joining us and we will catch you on the next episode. I know you're there. You got me feeling it. I know you're there.