Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Coach Vern Gambetta on Movement & Human Development

Episode Date: October 21, 2016

Vern Gambetta is recognized internationally as an expert in training and conditioning for sport having worked with world-class athletes and teams in a wide variety of sports. In This Episode: -Learning to control his temper growing up -Being impacted by his dad’s strong worth ethic and mom’s appetite for learning -Not wanting to be labeled anything but “a coach” -Being fascinated by what it takes to be the best in the world -The importance of knowing what it takes to prepare -How he helps people focus on the present moment -The common qualities he sees in great coaches -Finding the right work/life balance -Learning to enjoy the moment rather than focus on what’s next_________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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functional sports training. And so the conversation is with Vern Gambetta. Some of you might know his work and some not. And the opportunity here is to learn from somebody who is a true innovator, who shapeshifted the field of athletic development based on his insights and his diligence and his ability to be open to learning and to push as far as he possibly could go. So Vern is the author of seven books on athletic development and speed. He's an exceptional coach. And so that's part of what this conversation is really about is how does he coach?

How does he bring people along the journey of growth? And he's done it for a long time with many of the best in the world. And we want to understand how he understands how humans grow, period. And it just so happens that he happened to specialize in the domain of athletic development. But the art, as I've come to understand Vern, is really about growth for humans. So that's really why I wanted to interview him is because he's an innovator and he understands the process of growth. And I hope what becomes very clear in this conversation is that he has a central question that he's been trying to answer for a very long time. And I'd hope that all of us have a central question in our life, maybe one, maybe two, but his is what does it take to be the best in the world? That's really cool. Okay. So we get into the nuances and the weeds of that, but it is not lost on anyone at the beginning of this conversation that obviously there's work, there's work that has to be done. And that's not just for them over there or those naturally

gifted people, you know, on the, the ridgeline somewhere else. That's for me. That's for you. That's for all of us is the laser focus to be able to adjust and pivot to the internal and EPS, EPS, the internal and external obstacles that come our way. But just that pivot, just being able to be resilient and pivot, it's not enough. Because if we're just constantly pivoting, but we're not pivoting with some real grounded intensity about the mission that we've set out in our own life, we end up pivoting into kind of a circular gyration in life. So I just love Vern's insights and I love this conversation. And coaching is not something you do to someone. It's something you do with someone.

And that's a quote from Vern. That's really cool. His life efforts are flat out the pursuit of excellence. I'm excited to introduce him to you. You can find him on Twitter at Coach Gambetta, G-A-M-B-E-T-T-A. And then you can also find his products at gambetta.com. So let's jump right into this conversation with Vern Gambetta. Vern, welcome to Finding Mastery. I'm really excited to be here. This is a cool thing you got going and getting to listen to a few of them. I'm really honored. I mean, it's an amazing game changer in some kind of way in their field has said the exact same thing, which I think that that's a really important, like, it's like an off comment almost, but I think it's really important, the humility that we try to capture that part of it. So yeah, you're starting it off right in that way.

Yeah, no, no question. I mean, you know, we, you know, it's so, it's so trite to say we stand on the shoulder of giants, but, you know, you sent me some things to kind of prep for this, and it made me reflect a little bit. I'm going, God, you know, the amazing people that you're able to interact with and that contributed to me being on this podcast is really what it comes down to. Yeah. Isn't that amazing? Like, so who have been some of those giants that you've been able to be around or stand next to or stand on their shoulders eventually? Like who are some of those folks? Well, some of, some of them, you know, and again, there are people that maybe nobody would have ever heard of, but some of them there was a, there was,

he was the assistant track coach at Fresno State, retired, became the head track coach, Red Estes. I went to Fresno State and graduated in 1968. And I wasn't sure what I was a very, I wasn't even an average football player. I was barely adequate to be a blocking dummy. And I didn't compete in track. And my last semester, I took his theory of track and field class. And he said, you know, you're really enjoying this, and we have to do every event. And he said, this shows how.

Maybe it's an intelligence test, too. And he says, you know, if you really want to be a track coach, what you ought to do is do decathlon. And I go, oh, that sounds cool. You know, like you just do the decathlon, right? So when I went back, I'm from Santa Barbara, and that was a hotbed of decathlon training. And I went to UCSB for my fifth year. And so he pointed me in the right direction and really encouraged me to go into coaching. And then I went to grad school at Stanford. There was a man there who was a cross-country coach, Marshall Clark, unfortunately, passed away.

And just the salt of the earth. And really kind of I thank him for toning me down. You know, like I can be a bit of a wild man and, you know, he kind of taught me to count to 10 sometimes before you say things you know even though you think you're right okay so so let's let's do this let's set kind of the the arc first is that so you've been in um a shaper in the field and of track and field of coaching of biomechanics of um you know, just really understanding how the human can go fast and, and, and become, you know, a better communicator in the art of doing it. At least that's kind of how I understand. I think that's fair. Yeah. So let's start with, let's start with where it began for

you on your path of mastery. Was it young? old was it like accidental you know in college like where did you start to notice that you were really fascinated by how speed and the and athleticism came to be it's about 15 years old oh yeah there was a special on ktla channel 5 in la after the night uh before the you know it's about the night it was about Rafer Johnson and C.K. Yang and they were they had both gone to UCLA and they were going to buy for the for the medal for the gold medal and it came down to the 1500 and it was with Ducky Drake and it was out at what's now called Bush Drake Stadium and I go that's amazing amazing. Those two guys are bitter. They're going to vie for the gold medal,

but they're helping make each other better. That was the coolest thing. Was that part of the story? As a young kid, competition was like beating the hell out of somebody. No. They made each other better every day.

They made each other better in the Olympic Games. Did they say that? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to step on you. Did they say that in the interview or did you infer that somehow or did somebody teach you that's how that they worked? I think I inferred it, but it was obvious. This was an hour-long special. You know, and I've tried to look up. They didn't have videotape, so nobody ever kept it, which would be an hour-long special. You know, and I've tried to look up. They didn't have

videotapes, so nobody ever kept it, which would be an amazing thing to watch. And you could tell just by the interaction that they were there to make each other better, you know, because C.K. Yang had strengths in some events that Rafer didn't and vice versa. And it wasn't staged. It was genuine. So that was pretty cool. And then I had an amazing, amazing high school basketball coach. Mr. Charles Keel was also my history teacher. And aside from my parents, he probably had the biggest role in my life in shaping me as a person. Because I wasn't a punk kid, but I was. I was immature and would kind of talk back or make faces. And he kicked me out of practice like five straight days. Never said a word. Pointed to the door. I went, took my shower and waited. And so the fifth day, he ran the student store at noontime and I needed a new pencil. I go up, I put my dime on the

counter there and he said, Vernon, do you want to play basketball? And I said, well, of course, Mr. Keel. And he said, well, maybe you ought to try finishing practice one day. Nothing else needed to be said. You know, and we laugh afterwards because during the summer when I, in college, when I was playing football, I went back and coached with him. And he was for, you know, really a reason why I became a coach and became a teacher. But it was so cool because he didn't, he didn't have to say anything. It was like one of those precious moments where he said, well, maybe you really ought to think about finishing practice. And I remember walking away

thinking, well, gosh, if I don't make faces at him and I don't talk back, I'll probably make it through practice. So high school coach was an influence. There was a video between two athletes that shared the spirit of competition that was attractive to you. And then you went into college. And before we get into the college kind of phase, what was the home life like? Did you have siblings? Oh, yeah. Was there a birth order?

Yeah. Parents were immigrants from the Italian part of Switzerland. My dad went to the eighth grade in Switzerland. My dad was about eight to ten years older than my mother. They emigrated and not together. My mother went to school from the fourth grade to the ninth grade in Gonzales, where Grapes of Wrath, not Grapes of Wrath, east of Eden, Steinbeck country, right? Because they were Swiss. They worked on a dairy. And my grandfather, my mother's father, said, women don't go to school.

Ninth grade, you're done. My mother had an incredible passion for learning, and that's where I got my passion from learning. She, for her whole life, and I remember this, she took me to the library, you know, and I mean, it would take time because they both had to work hard. My dad was, we had a corner grocery store for part of my childhood, and then my dad was a gardener, and my mother worked in a store. And she instilled an incredible – we're listening to Sean Hutchison thing – just an incredible desire to learn. And even as my career went on and I moved away later in life, we'd talk, and'd always ask me like, well, what did you, who did you talk to lately or things like that? You know, and my dad was kind of, was kind of a,

really kind of a rough, not, not, not into that, you know, too much. It was more like hard work. So I got that part from, you know, from my dad, but this just desire to learn. And my maternal grandmother, too, was, I remember I'd go to their house and spend time at their house, and she was very artistic and would draw and took time to teach me rudimentary Italian, which I've since forgotten. But they were, she was very into learning, too. The women were very into learning. The men weren't, you know, so big influence. And I had a brother who was still alive, older than me, 14 years older than me, an absolute great athlete. And so he was my role model in

terms of wanting to be an athlete. The difference was he was gifted and I had to work for, you know, it was entirely different, but it didn't matter. You know, it was pretty cool. Okay. So let me see if I got it right. You had a system in your home where there was a value in learning. You were inspired by a particular way of competing and you had an older brother who was a stud in athletics. And then you said, huh, okay, so I want to put all this together some kind of way. And this is you as a young person, right? And then, you know, was there a particular story that comes to mind about a way that your parents or mentors or peers really shaped you becoming a disruptor in the field of sport and performance?

With hindsight, looking back. Yeah, looking back. Boy, that's a really great question. I hadn't really thought of that. I think some of it, you know, I said my dad was definitely not an educated man and not into learning, but he's definitely not afraid to speak his piece. And he was definitely outspoken. And he really instilled that in me.

You got that from your dad then? I got it from my dad. If you're right, if you think you're right, you speak up. Because that is what you've done. That's almost, wow, that's really cool. Because that's almost what you've captured and stood for in the field. Yes. I hadn't thought of it that way, but you're right. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Like you. I hadn't thought of it that way, but you're right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

That's powerful. Well, it's really funny. And two, I'm not sure my dad ever really understood what I did because his ethos was work, right? Manual labor and that. Okay. So hold on. Hold on, Vern. Are you making this up? Because my head's like near exploding because we just started and you've captured your dad as work ethic, your mom as the curve for learning or the appetite for learning,

your dad saying stand for something, son, in some kind of way, right? And isn't that what we are working to help? Isn't that what the science and the art of human development is? Work your ass off intelligently. Have just a rich desire to keep learning no matter what age you are, no matter what you've already understood, and then stand for something. That's what some of the greatest leaders and people in the world is. They didn't know it all, and they stood for something. That's what some of the greatest leaders and people in the world is. They didn't know it all, and they stood for something,

and then either their actions or words backed it up. No, it's really funny. I hadn't thought of it that way because I think there's a little bit of a tendency because of my dad's persona and that to not, and I had, you, you brought that out. No, I, I, uh, it was, it was really quite funny because I told a story a week ago, we were talking about this generation, uh, of, of athletes, kids coming up, you know, that, that basically they're more of a blame generation in a, you know, which is a pretty fair thing. And just something that happened with one of the teams that I'm working with. And I'll never forget coming home after I made varsity and complaining about Mr.

Keel at the dinner table. My brother was gone. We sat down at the dinner table every night, got real quiet. My dad raised his hand and he slammed the table. And an Italian, he pointed at me and he said, you will never complain about a teacher or a coach again. They are right. You're wrong. Wow. Yeah. Look at you. So how old were you? 16, 16. And now whatever number of years later, you're a master coach. And so you're always right. Well, I realize that, no, not always right. You know, but you learn from your mistakes and that. But doggone it, you respect authority.

You respect those that are in. I mean, I have some of my mentors, I don't 100% agree with them, you know. And God forbid, at certain times times I would never say I did. Now I feel a little more comfortable because we're kind of on an even keel a little bit. You know, it's kind of funny. You know, those things are formative, and that's the thing. I had a conversation with some of the coaches I'm working with here and some coaches is the role of the family, the role of the parents. You know, this is kind of what's missing a little bit today.

I can look at some of the really sound athletes that are on the various swim teams and the teams that I work with, and it's that strong. There's that strength of a family behind them or a support structure. Even though it might be a single- parent family, it's still there. So there's two thoughts related to that is it's, I think because you do so much, it's not easy to get my arm, for me at least to get my arms around. You've done so much in the field. Maybe you can give work backwards, like right now,

what are you doing? And then work backwards and give, give us some of the arc. But then at the same time, um, I also want to ask what that support structure that you just mentioned that, um, supports great or supports young athletes in their, in their arc, like what are you noticing from the family structure? So maybe take either one that you want, but let, well, let's take sort of going backwards because this is kind of the story of my life. I'm the consummate generalist. And I think it relates back to the fact that I just wrote a long blog about learning. And I just – I would pursue my knowledge. And I started out as a track and field coach.

And I went into decathlon to learn all the events. Well, I couldn't do one event. I'd get bored. You know, I wanted to do 10 events. And people would say, what's your specialty? And I'd say, well, I don't have a specialty. I've coached world-class marathoners. I've coached world-class sprinters.

You know, the spectrum there. Today, and I segued into more what people gradually began to call strength and conditioning. I never was comfortable with that label because I felt it was an unfair label. It's more athletic development. I never thought of myself as anything but a coach. When I was director of conditioning for the White Sox, we put together a program where we dealt with the whole player. We didn't just work on his speed or his strength. It was doing that. So today, a lot of what I'm doing is basically being a mentor coach. So I work with six age group swim teams and University of Tennessee men and women. With the six age group teams, obviously, and with Tennessee, I do all their dry land training in that.

But with the age group teams, a lot of it is coaching development. It is, okay, what is good coaching? And then recognizing that if, like we're talking about the support structure, what is it? What do you have to do to be the best? Which has been my fascination. You know, and like this last summer, one of the girls, Claire Adams from Carmel Swim Club broke the world junior record in a hundred backstroke, you know, it's a big, big time record. And I look at, I saw Claire, I've seen her development for six years. I've been working with this club for six years. Incredible coaching structure, incredible support of the team, incredible family structure,

you know, incredibly focused on the task at hand, yet a really neat kid, you know, really good student and a neat kid. And, you know, those are the kinds of things that really bring for me. Yeah, the world record is a bonus. You know, it's this is a really good person, you know, and they were down here two weeks ago to train. And, you know, she's the same kid. She's got a really good chance to make the Olympic team. and she's the same kid as I remember her as kind of a gangly seventh grader. That's the neat part of this. I kind of rambled. I don't know if that makes sense.

No, I think you dropped some really important things for me to run with on here. You've got a central question. And that central question is, what does it take to be the best in the world? Is that the right way to say that? No question. In anything, not just sport. That's what fascinated me. So teach us. Over the 40, 50 years that you've been in the game, what are you coming to understand when you get to the essence of that? And the reason I use the word essence is because there's all types of new technology. There's always bells and whistles. There's all types of shiny objects that end up becoming clothes hangers at some point, right? If we're not careful. So when you boil it down and get to the big rocks to get in the container, what is it that you found to be

essential in helping people to become the best? Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, the given is there's a certain degree of talent. But like I said to the young swimmers here yesterday, sometimes it is an overwhelming talent. Okay, that's for sure. I think of Bill Toomey, which first I trained with him a little bit. And he wasn't like if you compare him to Ashton Eaton, it's not even close in terms of, you know, native ability in that, but just an incredible focus. I know everybody says that,

but laser focus, if there's anything tighter than laser focus, you know, and being able to stay the course, to stay the course regardless of obstacles in your way, you know, and recognize that, you know, that you've got to have help. Now, some of them have not, there's a lot of them, a lot of people will never admit that they had the help, but you've got to have help along the way, whether it's a coach, a parent, a partner, whatever it is, you can't do it by yourself, you know, to be the best. I am convinced of that, what I've seen. A certain openness and willing to learn, no question about that. And a willingness to expand your horizons. When I look at, maybe not so much the athletes, well, that's not true either, because a lot of the great athletes that I've seen, yeah, they have other, you know, some of their other

talents are music and art and things like that, but I look at some of the great coaches that I've seen, and North Thornton, who was the swim coach at Cal Berkeley, Matt Biondi's coach. Still, I mean, he's not in great health, but he's one of my mentors. Got a call from him the other day. The guy just, he never left one stone unturned to make himself better. So he went in and he went over and he's the guy that really went in depth in terms of mental training. You know, with a guy named Carl Moore, who was a music professor, a retired music professor that moved to Berkeley. So, you know, this diversity, this I've seen of the great ones is the great ones are willing to be and capable of being comfortable with being uncomfortable all the time, which isn't fun.

And a lot of times they make everybody else around them uncomfortable. I had the opportunity to be around Michael Jordan for two years with the Bulls and then in baseball. Let me tell you what. We weren't very good when two years with the Bulls and then in baseball. Let me tell you what. We weren't very good when I was with the Bulls those first two years. He made everybody around him on that team and everybody in that organization really uncomfortable with his drive and determination to be better. Sometimes he'd almost get in fights in practice because he couldn't stand the fact that players would be loafing in a scrimmage. I had a conversation with Steve Kerr, I think it was last year. And he and I were going on about the years at – and this is just a friendly conversation between us, right?

And we're going on about the years that he was with Michael Jordan. And he says – he just looks me deadpan in the eye and he says, it was not easy. And so when you say near fighting, he talked about like that and a little bit more. And so, yeah, I love the, I love the concept. It's so trite to say that become, you know, they have a interest in being uncomfortable or comfortable being uncomfortable, But it's so true. It's like it's it. I think it you use the word willingness. I almost think it's a hunger like they know that that's where finding mastery is brought to you by momentous when it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits or simply trying to be

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and to see how long they can stay in that edge because it builds capacity. It opens them up into new learnings. And that is really uncomfortable to many people. Yeah. No, it's no question. That along with the other one that I really observed. When I was at Irvine for a couple for three or four years, teaching and would go over to UCR,

I'd worked with my decathletes and got to watch Edwin Moses, was one of the great of the greats, right. And one of the things that really struck me about him, and it made me think, and I saw this with Jordan, I saw this with Jack McDowell, who was a Cy Young Award pitcher with the White Sox and things like that, an incredible routine. I watched the way 1984 lead-in was, and I was very involved in USA Track and Field and that at the time, the Olympic trials were in the Coliseum, and they warmed up at USC.

And I watched Edwin warm up every day, every day for 83 and 84. And you didn't need to watch. It was 3 o'clock, here comes Edwin. He went to one corner of the field at Irvine. But then when Olympic trials came, he did the same routine. Olympic games, you could go watch and warm up then, did the same thing. And that's something that, I mean, everybody's making a lot about Stephen Curry's, you know, that's a big part of this. That's a big part of being the best is having this impeccable routine. I call it an anchor, you know, or foundation would be better, wouldn't it?

So I can always, that's my security blanket. I can always go back to that too, you know. So those are some things that I've seen. I love this. And so on that last one, and then I want to go back to laser focus on that last one. I've come to have a bit of a rash around pre performance routines. And, you know, rash is probably the right word, because it's like, for me, it's tolerable, but I it's like, it's extra. And so I'd love to get your take on it because i understand the value of having form and structure yeah and and it's and and that does become an anchor but sometimes an anchor can be dead weight can hold you back right and it's the rigidity of the routine that i think becomes some sort of problem but it's like i it's a very formal structure to open up your joints to get a

sweat and open up your cardiovascular system and then to open up your mind that's that's what i see as a routine right you get a couple a couple nice oxygen gas exchanges where you're like right there's some physiology to it yeah there's some physiology to to. Yeah, there's some physiology to a routine. Then at the same time, I'm working from this model of going from form to formless. So form is that structure to go to formless, from the name to nameless, from structure to structureless is the idea of where I think, I think, Vern, is where that creative expression and the unpredictability and the beauty of adjusting and adapting to the unfolding and unknown takes place. Yes. a mistake by suggesting that the highest form of being is the ability to adjust and adapt to whatever and having a sense of how to purposely put yourself in the right frame for any condition, whether it's trials or it's games or it's a competition in a boardroom or whatever it might be that and let's use speak speaking for an example public speaking is that you and I have done a lot of public speaking and do you have a

routine for public speaking because I and I don't want to bait you into anything I don't and I just get really nervous I can tell you that. Oh, my God. My wife goes like, I said I'm really nervous about this podcast. And she goes, Vern, I could wake you up out of a deep sleep, give you a topic, and you could talk for two hours. I know. Yes. But that's part of my – I always show – my daughter put it on Facebook the other day. My daughter is an adult, and I used to tell her peanut. We called her peanut.

It's just about getting the butterflies flying in formation. If you don't have that, just get them. She'd say, I'm really nervous, Dad, before the state championship. Don't worry about it. Just get them flying in formation, and she'd smile and go away and kick the winning goal or something like that. It's a beautiful image. You're right. I don't mean to sound that it's rigid.

And I think each person has to do what works for them. Okay, that's key. I think these people, and I use the term a lot, and I kind of like your reaction to this, too. I want athletes and coaches that I work with, and I want to be not adapted but adaptable. I say the dinosaurs are adapted. Cockroaches were adaptable, and they're still around. That's right. So having some structure but without – I might have painted it a little bit too rigid. No, no.

I don't think you painted it rigid. I added that word because of like my rash to the concept. And I know that like 99% of sports psychology or performance psychology professionals would say a pre-performance routine is one of the staple mental skills. And how irresponsible to help somebody, you know, not have one. And I'm not saying there's not a place for one. What I'm, I want to, I'm working out with you right now, um, as a, uh, not working out, but I'm, I'm wanting to hear your response to like the ultimate state is this knowing that I can adjust to whatever comes up.

I know what it feels like to get my body switched on, to get my joints opened up, and to have my mind laser-focused and open to being the most progressive human being that I can possibly be. So I don't need to do A to get to B to get to C. It's that I have targets that I get to, and I know when I'm there. And so I don't need to do A to get to B to get to C. It's that I have targets that I get to, and I know when I'm there. And so I don't know. That's me being… I think a lot of it is learning to read your body. I abhor the term warm-up and cool-down anymore. I like it.

For me, it's preparation, and that's in total, in total. And it starts if I'm… For me as a coach, the pool is 20 minutes away. When I drive out of my garage to go down to the pool, I'm preparing. And I tell the kids that. Just start to switch to a different mode. And you have, you know, we talked before we came on about Bob Nidafer. Bob, I worked for Bob, and he got permission. He was working with Ron O'Brien and the divers at Mission Viejo and got permission to sit in on the interviews with him. You know, they got to sit in on the interview with Greg Louganis. And one of Bob's questions was, Bob had been a diver himself. For those of the listeners, Bob Nidafer was a pioneer sports psychologist. And was the reason I chose my university to go learn from him. Right.

And so hopefully Bob's listening to this at some point. And an author of a terrific book that might be out of print called The Inner Athlete that people should get. But I remember him asking laganus and laganus said he said i i do some you see he didn't say what he said i do some physical things but that was sony walkman there well before ipods right but he said i have two tapes he said and i'll tell you how i interpreted it he said if i'm having trouble getting going, I play, I don't remember who it was. I play something that revs me up. He said, if I'm too revved up and I'm over rotating, I play something. And I thought, dial up, dial down. So that's kind of become when athletes ask me. So I'll give them tools to dial it up physically, dial down. Because preparation is

learning to read your body. Yeah, that's exactly. It's that awareness. I don't know if you can get anywhere. And you've got to learn that. And I've seen some of these kids here in Sarasota grow from like 12-year-olds now to 18-year-olds going away to college. And it's been really cool. I went out there and I just sat back and I watched them.

We do a warm-up to swim routine, which is very orchestrated. But I told them when we started, this is A, B, C, D, E, F. But when you get really good, I don't want you to go A, B, C, D, E, F. I want you to pick what works for you. And it's been so cool to watch yeah you know they they know what make do what makes you feel good my god that's what it's about right yeah and if you don't have the awareness of your current state nor the awareness of what your ideal state is for whatever demand it becomes this um let's use your butterfly analogy, this swarm of butterflies that are just swirling. And so the way I think the way to line them up is to have a sense of who you want to be,

what it feels like to be at your best. And that's just some insight work. And that's, but I don't think it's more complicated than indexing on when you were at your best in your life, writing it down, talking it out with somebody getting really clear about what that feels like and then get into the game of the thoughts that precede that and the physical actions that accompanied it and then just master that like just really go after and master that so did you have a similar experience or is there something that you could add to my understanding there you mean for me as an athlete or as a coach? As a coach, yeah.

Being around the best and coaching the best in the world. Yeah. Again, they had a way of being able to figure it out and learned what they needed to do. I use Jack McDowell. I just saw something on Facebook that he posted. Jack McDowell was a Cy Young Award winner, Stanford grad, really a great guy. A lot of people didn't like him because he made people uncomfortable. He would not take some of the baseball bullshit, pardon my French, and that.

And he questioned. He questioned the coaches. But you know what? The players loved Jack because no matter what happened, they knew when he towed the rubber for that first pitch that he was going to give it everything he had. He'd warm up in the bullpen and couldn't throw 78 miles an hour and would pitch six innings. The players knew that, and they responded and responded accordingly.

That was an eye-opener, really kind of an eye-opener for me that he just knew what he had to do to get ready and and uh uh that that made a big difference and it made a big difference that was a team sport you know that made a big difference for the team too with all with all of the wisdom and insight and understandings that you've come to understand how do you translate the that knowledge and information to people that don't play sport how do you how do you try to do that and maybe you don't think about that very often think about it a lot i mean part of it is i i want to get into a little bit more of that and i'm giving a i'm giving a keynote talk in St. Louis on changing the world. It's not to coaches.

It's to educators. I love it. I mean everybody wants to use sports analogies. And I find myself – I mean we're on video. I can show you. Probably I spend – I read two sports books this last weekend. John Feinstein's latest book. And I can't remember what the other one was.

But I probably read nine or 10 books on other other areas, you know, aside from that, because the things that I see in sport, the same kind of creativeness, because I mean, to me, the ultimate creativeness is Usain Bolt running 957. You know, people don't think about it. They think that as being very mechanistic. No, it isn't. But now think of an artist, think of a musician, think of, you know, that. So think of a musician. Think of that. Think of a businessman having to make instant decisions. With trading, if you're working in Wall Street now, you don't even have time to make the speed at which everything is operating. I think a lot of it is making people comfortable with they have the tools to do this stuff. But they look on, you know, they turn on the TV or they go to a game or they go to the Olympic Games and they look on the athlete as being really different.

And I'm going, you do some of this stuff every day. You don't even think about it. You don't think about it in the same vein, do you? And so I came to this conclusion probably 30 years ago that in a lot of ways everybody's an athlete. I said I don't look at it through the prism of athletics. Yesterday, my downtown office, aka put in a plug for Pastry Arts if you're ever in Sarasota, you can usually find me there reading the New York Times on my iPad for some time during the day. And I just put the iPad down.

It was about 1.30. And I watched people walk by for about five minutes. And I go, this is amazing. Watch how people, a simple thing like walking. Watch how people saw. They don't think about it. They don't think about gravity. They don't think about the ground, how they solve movement problems. There was this one fairly attractive woman

in her 20s with like these insanely high heels on. And it was the most uncomfortable thing that I've ever seen. And I wanted to stop her and say, how do you do that? I mean that shows how weird I am. it i don't know if that answers the question but i think i think what people do every day in everyday life and work and is absolutely amazing if you take a step back and even take a time to think about it you know yeah 100 um let's go back to this laser focus for just a moment and sometimes people get confused with um laser focus like in life effort and then laser focus in the here and now and i interpreted what you said is laser focus in the here and now and i want to make sure that i heard

the right right on right laser focus in the here and now. Has to be. You know, I mean, there's nothing right now. If you're in the starting blocks, it's practice or whatever. There's nothing. How do you help? It's obviously a central part of my practice. And how do you help people do that? What do you do to help them become better at that? create an environment that's full of noise, you know, literally and figuratively. If they're having trouble with it, we're going to work on it, see how they respond to it. I remember my first year coaching. I remember the kid's name, Ramsey Jay, this little sophomore sprinter. And he'd come out of the blocks and he would just get so tight. And I said, Ramsey, you know, I explained relaxation. I showed him a movie of Tommy Smith and all of that.

Didn't resonate. You know what I made him do? I just made him go over to the bleachers and pretend like he was doing a deadlift and just get as tight as he could, right? Yep. As tight as he could and then just go get in the blocks. Yeah. Clear your mind. I use the Etch-A-Sketch a lot.

Here's the Etch-A-Sketch. Clear your mind. Go. You know, that feels better. So we just started doing that more and more often. So, again, it's a little bit like homeopathic medicine, isn't it? It creates this uncomfortable environment to help them, and then debrief right away.

Let them talk. Don't shut up, Vern. Listen to what they say, how they solve. Because I believe coaching, Michael, is giving the athlete problems, in this case sometimes movement problems or problems to solve. And let's give them the tools to solve the problem and shut up and get out of their way, you know, sometimes. And that's uncomfortable for coaches. Yeah, it really is because of the amount of control that feels like a person's giving up. But it really isn't.

It's a value and a collaborative experience. And do you have a sense that some of the greatest coaches really do collaborate well? Oh, yes. Yeah, me too. Just reading, because one of the things, one of my fascinations is reading about great coaches and great leaders. Obviously, there's, you know, there's, well, actually, even Vince Lombardi has been totally misrepresentative.

You know, he gave a lot more space in what people did. They like to do that. But gosh, you look at these, you look at some of these great coaches. I said Nord, and there's probably one of the greatest coaches nobody's ever heard of. Jim Steen, he's retired now at Kenyon College. I had the opportunity to have lunch with him. I worked with him, but I count him as a mentor now 32 straight nc2a division three championships i don't care if you're at little sisters of the poor elementary school if you were 30 and it was so cool watching jim coach and and i tell him every time i see him i saw a

session here in sarasota i worked with him for a couple of years doing their dry land training and they were down here at winter. And the sprinters were not getting it done. He said, guys, come here, just like that, not angry. And he said, okay, this is what we're going to do. And it was 45 minutes. I wish I would have had. There was no iPads 15 years ago.

And it was 45 minutes of absolute magic. When they got done, they didn't even look like the same swimmers that they looked when they started. And he was pulling deep into his bag of tricks. And most of it was very little talking, like get them going and feeling the water. It was cool to watch. And so that's what I see are the true great ones, the coaches that feel like they have to orchestrate every step of what they do. They're setting their athletes up for failure eventually, I think. Right, because ultimately the athlete also needs great athletes are making great coaches better. And then ultimately the athlete is responsible to make decisions on the fly, right? Whether it's a cage door that closes behind them or an open pool that

they need to make some decisions, whatever, like that's, that's the ultimate attainment is that they can adjust and adapt to the unfolding unknown. Okay. Um, all right. So how, what do you, if you could install, or if you could have this stamp of, you know what, that's a kid that I had. I was fortunate to have great influence. And if you just capture that athlete. Right. And then what would they stand for? That was like the Vern Gambetta signature belief.

Oh, I mean, great on the field or on the track or in the pool, but better people. Okay, and what's the belief? So that's what it looks like. That's the stamp, is that they're world-class in both domains, right? They're great human beings. The belief that I can do it. There's no question that I can do it. Okay. There's no question that I can do it and I will do it.

And if it is to be, it's up to me. If I don't do it, there's no excuses and I will move on and learn from the experience. And I think, you know, I've seen that. You've seen people stand on the podium and it's wonderful. And, you know, and yeah, so I think that's what it comes down to. And then how do you help people develop that? Like what is your process to help them install that belief that it's up to them, that they can do it even when they haven't done it yet. Even when they haven't done it yet. Well, it's like listening to your podcast about Karch, too.

He watched all those great players when he was a kid growing up. I watched my brother. I wasn't a great athlete like him, but some of it is mimicry. There's no question that that's a big part of it. You know, we talk about role models, but I'm talking about hands-on real life. You know, you're there at the pool or you're there at the track or the basketball court, and you're seeing people do it. That's a big part of it, okay? And giving them opportunities not just to succeed, but to test their early on, to test their ability. Notice I'm not saying limits, to test their abilities. Because I don't believe in limits. I have a quote from Roger Bannister.

You know, I mean, if Roger Bannister believed in limits, we'd still be wallowing around trying to run four minutes in the mile. And so, you know, what are your capabilities? Let them explore their capabilities. Set up workouts so, you know, their reach exceeds their grasp, so to speak, you know. And so that, yeah, okay, we didn't make it today, but doggone it. Tomorrow, we know what you did. Now we'll correct this. You know, boom, let's go.

What does that mean, their reach exceeds their grasp? I'm going to take that extra step. I can do it. I can take that extra step. Yeah, I might stumble. But it's Tom Peters, the management guy, fail forward. I love that. Fail forward.

Hell, if you fall, fall forward. It's okay. We're so afraid and our society's become... Now the big thing in Silicon Valley is failure, right? Because so-and-so failed five times before. That's baloney too. It's not okay to fail. You've got to learn. You've got to focus on the process. And to be able to go back, one of my mentors, Frank Dick, who has gone outside of sport and become quite

known in management circles and that. And he, Frank's in his 70s, and he was the chief coach of Britain in that. One of his big things, and I put this on my blog a few weeks ago, just a simple debrief. Teach you yourself, learn how to debrief. Teach your athletes how to debrief. It doesn't have to be a 16-item questionnaire. It can be just a process that you go through when you're – that's why I call cool down, reset. See, when I'm cooling down, I can, that's when I review the tape of the workout. Yeah, that was really good. Why was it really good? You know, I'm going to talk to coach and see if maybe we can do a little bit

more of that. You know, so there, Frank said to me, and something that he wrote before I ever met him is coaching is not something you do to somebody. It's something you do with somebody. It's a cooperative process. And I say that to a 14-year-old, and they look at me like, you're a 69-year-old. How are you going to, you know? No, no. You know, I showed, I mean, we did it yesterday with a couple of the kids.

We're in this together now, okay? We're going to work on making both of us better. I told the team yesterday, every day I come down, I don't go there every day. Every day I come down and work with you guys, I get better. I learn something. They looked at me like, yeah, I do. I learn things better how to make you better. that's the cool part of all of this, really cool part of this. Yeah, it certainly is. And you are one of the master coaches in our time,

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That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. What has been, if you could go down this path, what's been the dark side of you becoming one of the best in the world? Um, sometimes, uh, just hurting people without realizing it, uh, being so, so have such a laser focus that you, uh, ignore what was going on around you. I think that was the biggest thing. It took me a long time to see the bigger picture. And I've listened to your podcast and I've listened to others. I don't think that anybody

that's any good has, I don't know what the word is, balance, you know. But it's, I mean, I've said this to my adult children. My son is getting his Ph.D. at Princeton, and my daughter works for Esher and Sutton. They were together, and I said, geez, I really regret missing, I missed Kristen's first communion. I was in Japan speaking at a conference and different things like that and you know they both said that you were here when it really counted you know but deep down that's those are the regrets that i have you know i i wish uh i wish i would have been sometimes i was here but i wasn't present you know with family wise you know it's kind of like an

object in the chair, something like that. Because you're consumed internally about how to help. Going over in my head about, you know, the day or what we were going to do tomorrow or something like that, you know. How do you reconcile that? I mean, and the reason I'm asking, maybe reconcile is not the word, but how do you i i have that same thing where i'm working my ass off to be as president as i president present as i can you you might you might be a candidate here soon no i'm watching house of cards right now with my wife right now and it's like that's really scary but i so i work to be as present as i can And it's the time away that is really hard. So I'm looking to you right now to say, how can, can you help me? Because it's hard. And there is,

here's the hardest part. My wife is so supportive. And she says like, go chase it, go get it. Like, we're here for you. We're going to support you. I'll take care of the right story to, to Grace and our son. And, you know, and, and then my little, he's a seven-year-old and he's like, you know, just today he's, I've been home for like 10 days. And he says that he's going to school and he said, he grabs his arms around my waist and he says, dad, I just love that you've been here so much. And I got down on my knees and I said to him and I said, you know, Grayson, I love you so much. And I said, I have to leave tonight. And he just, this is before school. And he's just like, he's like kind of trying to hold it in a little bit.

And then he's crying a little bit. or definitely myself, about how to manage the quest and the thirst to understand the nuances in the space and the craft that we're working on at the same time, loving deeply. Well, I don't know. I feel like 46 years into this professional journey and at age 69, I'm starting to figure it out a little bit. And one of the things is just what you said with your son is, you know, don't be afraid to tell people you love them. You know, I, one thing that I said, Marshall Clark, who had a big influence on me. And I kept saying, I got to call Marshall. I got to call Marshall. Guess what? I get the call that he was out on a run, 69 years old, my age,

was out on a run with his team, died of a heart attack. How did I feel? I'll tell you a story, and this was the wake-up call for me. I coached a young man, graduate of the University of Utah, Scott Daniels, broke the American indoor record in pentathlon, whatever. He was a great athlete, decathlete. Anyway, this was in 1984, and I'd see Scott occasionally. I wasn't real close to him, but we would talk occasionally. And all of a sudden, this is about 2006, about 4.30 in the afternoon, the phone rings.

And a woman says, may I please speak to Vern Gambetta? I said, Gambetta, this is speaking. And she just burst out in tears. And I said, ma'am, what can I? And she said, she got control of herself. She says, I'm Scott Daniels' girlfriend, and Scott is dying. And I mean, right away, I go, he's dying? I mean, this guy is just like a Greek god, right?

He's 48 years old, and so she talked a little bit, and he had leukemia. Anyway, he was dying. He was dying like right now, not like three weeks from now or six months to live. She said, Scott wants to talk to you. He's dying. He wants to talk to you. Okay. Hold on, Fern. In that moment right there, you're on the phone. It's someone you cared about. There's emotion on the other side of it what what was your immediate response to that like why does he want to talk to me and I'm afraid I'm not afraid to say that I'm still not reconciled with not being fearful of dying and I'm thinking what does he want to talk to why does he want to talk to me and she said so she got on the phone and and she said well his parents are with him right now and we'll call you back this was 430 and

a half an hour hour two hours three hours I'm sitting downstairs I told my wife I'm in I'm emotionally like str out, crying, and I said, you must have died. You've already had the, oh, you haven't had the conversation. I haven't had the conversation. Okay. The phone rings. I answer the phone. Vern, it's Scott.

How are you doing? Like, what do you say? You know, what do you say? How are you doing? He says, well, i've been better and i mean right away my whole outlook change because he's a really quiet call him the quiet man because he was tough as nails and he no matter the hardest workout he never he drove me nuts because he wouldn't give me feedback we talked and and i said well you know i'm sorry to hear and he said you know he said, I just want to thank you.

And he says, I want to thank you for what you did for me. And what did you say? You know, I mean, I said, you know, just I don't even know what I said. It was probably something really stupid, you know, and we hung up and he went into a coma and he died two days later. That was probably one of the last words that he said, thank you. And that there, Michael, really woke me up in terms of, you know, you coach the person. I don't think I had that profound an effect on him, but I obviously did. And so being a coach and being a teacher and being a person of influence is a real special thing. And it made me come back, call the kids, tell them I love them, hug my wife, you know, I mean, get on the phone.

And, you know, and it's just it was sometimes you have to I guess you have to have those moments that are like a wake up call to just say, wait a minute, let's let's take a step back. Keep this big, this little bigger picture in mind. Don't focus on the megapixels now. Let's step back a little bit. I know that sounds trite. No, no, no, no, no. When you're recalling the story, where do you feel it in your body as we're talking now? In my heart. I mean, I'm almost in tears. I don't tell the story frequently, you know, but I do. I mean, it's, you know, it's an emotional experience, you know. And then what are you doing now to not cry? Like, what happens there? Well, to think about how more and more, I just think about how fortunate I've been to have people in my life along the way, good and bad. I mean, I've had some bad experiences with different people and that, but mostly good to great. And so taking the time, taking the time.

I had one of my Javelin Theracal. she's an All-American, she's a doctor now. We named my daughter after her, that's how much we thought of her. And she came down to practice one day my last year there. And she said, I said, you're late. And she goes, I won't tell you what she said. I mean, she started swearing. She said, let's go sit. And there's the Brutus Hamilton bench.

Brutus Hamilton is one of the greatest. And she sat there and she unloaded on me for about 20 minutes because she's really close to my wife and the kid. You know, my daughter wasn't born yet. And she said, you know, she said, you've got to take some time to enjoy this. What's going on here? You've got to take some time to step back. It's always, oh, we won this meet. Let's go on to the next one.

That would be the biggest thing that I would say, is learning that. Going back, now I take more satisfaction. Wins or losses, just the effort. What these athletes did and the things that I was able to do, you know, just take the time to be in the moment, you know, and enjoy the moment. You know, I think that's really, really important. You know, yeah, that's what allowed me to feel the intensity of, okay, you know what? I'm not going to wait for someone in my life to die to feel that. I'm going to use Vern's nudge right here.

And I'm going to tell everyone that I always tell them I love them. I'm going to do it again. That's just a daily practice. And then what I'm going to do right now, maybe listeners can do the same thing. I'm going to do it again. That's just a daily practice. And then what I'm going to do right now, maybe listeners can do the same thing. I'm going to pick five people. And five people I haven't told them enough that I love them. But I think about them a lot.

I'm going to call them. And I'm going to do that today. I do that with my son sometimes because he's got an insane schedule at school. And I just called Kurt just thinking thinking about you, love you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, how hard is that, you know? I mean, and how does that make you feel?

It makes you feel pretty good. Yeah, it does. Okay. That's kind of the other interesting part of this. So it's not selfish, but it does. If you give, you get, you know? I think that that is one of the challenges to the altruism model that, you know, to do without any secondary gain, something kind and wonderful, is that when you actually do give, you do receive. And I like the idea that purity of altruism is purely doing for the right reason for good.

And it's hard for me to escape from the feeling that every time I do something wonderful, it feels like it comes back tenfold. So, shit, let me just keep doing wonderful things. Okay. Vern, Dr. Amir Vokshar is a neurosurgeon, neurospinal surgeon that has been a good friend of mine for a long time. And he goes on, I asked him this question, and I'm going to pay this question to you forward. And I ask everybody, I'm going to ask you this question in a minute, like, what would you want to ask a master of craft? And I'm going to ask you that in a minute. But when I asked him that question, he said, you know, can you ask somebody if they're more interested in going long and deep in a handful of relationships or having global impact with many? And I'd love to hear your take and how you would respond to that. And maybe it's not an and or, but what is your approach to impact?

Question mark. I would rather go long and deep. I mean, I don't know if that, again, comes from my upbringing or something like that because I don't have a lot of acquaintances, but I don't have a lot of, you know. There's Facebook friends and then there's your friends and your family. And to me, in-depth relationships and that. Because I found along the way as I became successful, people just wanted to be like Facebook friends. They just wanted to say, well, I had lunch with Vern Gambetta at this conference or something like that. And that's not cool to me. You know, I want to sit down and talk about the books we just read or the concert we're going to go to. Or one of my friends in Madison is,

I sent him this thing. I didn't know this. I should have known that this thing on public television about Jacques Pippin or Pippinpin i'm not very good at french on the other night and it turns out it was his hero you know and he's he's got some cookware and that kind of stuff and then we went and talked for an hour about cooking you know and that's cool i i love that you know and that not what it's not what you appear to be it's what's in depth. That's what's fun. To me, that's the essence of it. Is there a phrase that guides your life? Yeah.

That's a good question. Pursuit of excellence sounds trite. Pursuit of excellence has its own rewards. You know, you're going rewards. Sometimes you win the medal. Sometimes you make money. Sometimes you don't. But to me, it's really fun and interesting to pursue depth and excellence. I think that's been, for a long time, been my guiding mantra, so to speak.

Have you found what you're looking for? No, not yet. Still looking. I chuckle. Yes, I have. I think I was joking with the kids that at 65, maybe when I started taking Social Security, I kind of grew up a little bit. But no, I'm still not quite sure where I want to go with some of this stuff. And I'm not afraid to admit that.

I mean, I have some goals. One of them I'll share with everybody. I, I still, I have this crazy idea that I want to get my PhD and I'm trying to figure out how to, how to reconcile it. Now, what, what that'll get me? I have no idea. It's just kind of the, I want to get in depth in this whole idea of coaching excellence. And I think that might be a vehicle to help me be able to do that. After we say goodbye to each other on this conversation, I want to pick up and have a conversation with you about that. There might be a project that you might find really interesting

that I'd love to bring you into. Okay. Is there a word that cuts to what you understand most? About life? One word, love. Wow, there you go. Has to be. I mean, that underscores everything. And it goes back to my mom and dad.

My dad didn't express it the same way my mother did. But, you know, it goes back to my mom and dad. My dad didn't express it the same way my mother did, but, you know, it's love. It's, it's, and that not physical, sensual love, but the, you know, the caring and all those things that go with it. I think that's, you know, and you got to love what you're doing, you know, and I think there've been periods in my career where I didn't't wasn't having a lot of fun and then you kind of take a step back and go yeah this you know you you are this pretty cool you're pretty good stuff you know if there is do you have do you have a um when i'm thinking about your relationships that you have with people and you're working on athletic

development um what do you think of the phrase high performance coaching relationships that you have with people and you're working on athletic development. What do you think of the phrase high performance coaching? I don't know. I don't know what it means. I don't know what it means. I mean, high performance has become such a trite thing. I know it's drive down the street here and there's a gym that says high performance gym. I don't think people really know what it is. That's the best of the best. That's the upper crust. That's the place where many are called and few choose because it's a really uncomfortable place to be when you talk about high performance because when you do it, then you've got to repeat it. I think that's what's really hard hard that's what's hard in coaching i i admire guys like jim steen and people like that that nor guys that could come back year after year i've thought of myself god what if you won the ultimate championship what if you coach somebody

you know to a gold medal or something like that part of me was thinking god i i would i get satisfied and just pack it in? I don't know. I haven't had anybody win a gold medal in the Olympic Games anyway. Are you serious? No, I haven't. No. Oh, my God.

That surprises me. But I've not been the direct coach. Oh, the direct coach. You've been part of teams that have won gold. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, there you go. Okay. part of teams that have one goal yeah yeah yeah yeah okay there you go okay um how important is

in your take like when you think about an athletic development model and how important do you find that and maybe we can break it out like physical technical equipment you have a traditional model that you probably work from right mental um medical you know a traditional model that you probably work from, right? Mental, medical, a traditional high-performance model or athletic development model. How do you find the weight of mindset and the mental part of the game in the overall model? You've got to do the physical work. No question. I joked with you about, I think we lost the national championship at Cal because we forgot to run sometimes.

We were doing a lot of visualization. If your foot doesn't hit the ground, that's not true. It was bad coaching, too. But look, the mental part, and I got to spend a couple of hours with Harry Mera, who's Asht record holder, Jenner a little bit in the decathlon, different world record holders at different times in the decathlon, and world record holders in track and field events. This guy is off the scale mentally, so strong and so together, and watching the interaction between he and his coach

and his wife that's part of the team they're they're a team boy they're a strong bonded team is just amazing and i'll tell you what um when that before the workout i've known harry for years we trained together and stuff back in the day. He said, take a look at this. And he handed me a 30-page document. And I kind of flipped through it. And I'm going, this is amazing. I didn't have time to read it.

He said, Ashton gives me that at the end of each month. And it's just reflections. This is what I, you know, it'll be like written sometimes in first person. Harry said this. I think maybe I need to do this, blah, blah, blah, blah, like that. And I thought, man, in all my years of coaching, I've never, that's pretty hyperbole, whatever. I agree with you. That's pretty amazing, you know.

So can you learn that? I think with you. That's pretty amazing. So can you learn that? I think you can. You can get better at that. But that mental part of it is just – that is really important. That's what you do. You work on that. That's what we do. That's what I do as a coach too.

I mean, you know, I think we end up working on their heads more than we work on their bodies. By the way we structure work, you know, don't think about it that way. But, you know, you're working on weaknesses but not letting the weaknesses consume you. You know, fine-tune your strengths, but, you know, and all of that. So that's, okay, so as an approach, are you working on an asset-based approach or a liability shore-up? Like are you taking their strengths and trying to accentuate them or are you focusing on what they're not doing well and trying to fix some of those? You've been listening in to some of the debates we've had with my colleagues. I mean that's an eternal dilemma. I always say, I call it priority training, which sounds really cool when you do a clinic or you write a book.

What's it mean? I mean, look, I've done this. I've done this to my athletes. I did it to myself as a sort of average athlete where I had a few strengths, but I knew what my weaknesses are. I spent all my time on my weaknesses. My strengths eroded, and then I became average at everything. So it's a balance scale. It's how do I do that.

I think you pick your spots because you've got to get – there's overriding weaknesses. You could see we could name people in a bunch of sports right now. Right away, this is what's – the NFL draft is coming up. So they're good at picking out people's weaknesses. You've got to address those. But if that's all you do, you can bring everything down to one level. We've got to bring everything up to a level. There's a science to it, certainly, at certain times. And that's when the art

of coaching comes in. That's when communication skills. That's when working with a performance team. That's where maybe at certain sessions I'm going to say, I'd really like to have you at the pool today. I think you can help me reinforce something, you know. And I think that's how we have to do it. It's not easy. It's a process.

What do you think about sports science right now, the field of sports science, measuring to better predict? Too much focus on the numbers and not enough how the numbers are being achieved. Yeah, of course. The numbers are one-dimensional and performance is three-dimensional. And we've gotten wrapped up in a lot of metrics. And we certainly, and somebody asked me this a couple of months ago. It's like a dream and a nightmare. We can measure things we never thought about being able to measure.

But, and I've seen this happen. I'm seeing this happen right now where you can take your eye off the target by focusing in on minutia. So it's, and again, I don't want to, I love science. I'm infatuated by the science of it. But I think we've got to really, really take a step back and assess where we are with all of this. And real art is taking understanding why the numbers can help because so many of the first, second generation coaches that in current times are like, listen, I've done it a certain way for a long time and I know what feels right. And you're telling me something 180 degrees different, you know, based on numbers so it's like knowing what the numbers are saying and then figuring out a way to communicate um in the right time in the right space and the right pace about what could possibly be a small and impactful change today yeah yeah um i think sometimes we also just just one one last point there um again it comes back to this coaching being something we do with. I think we need to involve the athlete a little more.

I always say the athlete's the focal point and the captain of the performance team. If you look at the model, it's like everybody's – the athlete should be in the middle of the concentric circle. What's meaningful to them? Some athletes don't want to know some of this stuff you know just i don't need to know that you know and and we've got to respect that even though it might affect how we construct workouts or something like that you know so we've got to those are things we have to learn you know what do you think of like um is it called orange theory yeah is that the fitness movement yeah so orange theory what do you what are your thoughts of that which is using bio data to identify an ideal target zone in a competitive group setting in one physiological

parameter though just heart rate just heart rate yeah i mean i can visualize and get my heart rate up you know and certain people it doesn't there's a, to me, I've got to be careful because I'm not 100% familiar with all the nuance of it. I think for the general population, and I say the general population, given that hopefully they do some evaluation beforehand, I think it's okay. But see, I struggle with, really in any population, with one size fits all. And, you know, they'll say, well, you're in your zone. But as soon as I see your heart rate next to mine, I know if we do that with athletes, you know, I'm going to do something to get my heart rate up. And, I mean, before heart rate monitors, we used to take, you know, just palpate heart rate. And I had this one girl at Cal who ended up All-American.

And she goes, how come it takes me longer for my heart rate to come down than everybody else? You know what my answer to her was? I said, Lynn, where do you finish on Saturday? I said, the stopwatch doesn't lie. That's your physiology. I think this is a concern that I have a little bit with our ability to hone in on numbers, though. It's like homeostasis versus allostasis. Homeostasis is very just physiological, where allostasis is looking at life stress, and it's looking at the emotions and the brain and all these other kinds of things.

I mean, the body is an incredible mechanism, and it's smart. And sometimes we treat it so dumb by just focusing in on lactate or heart rate or one parameter instead of taking a step back and saying whoa wait a minute how does this all fit together you know okay so on that thought is that you know we're in a world right now where there's incredible stress and that it's not that there hasn't been stress 2 000 years ago but there's there's lots of stress now that we have. And it's a fast-paced moving world and there's lots of external noise. And it seems like we've missed, at least in America, we've missed a lot of the coping skills to be able to, and I don't really even love the phrase coping, coping skills to be able to adjust to the demands of the environment. Okay. So we've got

internal noise and external noise where it seems to me as a general thought, people are under-recovered and, um, not necessarily over-trained, over-stressed, right? I don't think, yeah. Right. So over-stressed. And so in the athletic world, we're looking to find that right balance between, um, proper, uh, stimulation and, and, uh, stress and proper recovery. What would you give as a general rule one of the greatest accelerants for recovery for athletes and non-athletes? I think the game is about recovery right now, not stress, right? Yeah, we've discovered recovery. Some people aren't doing hard enough work to warrant recovery on one sense.

I chuckle at baseball. They're doing all this recovery work, and I'm going, first you've got to do the work. Okay, but sleep. I mean, Ariana Huffman's got a book out now. But sleep, naps, we're definitely a sleep-deprived society. There's no question. And it's social media. When I travel, I notice the difference.

When I travel, I read on my Kindle. And it's harder for me to get to sleep. When I'm home, most of the time I go to bed with a book. I read for half an hour and then the book's reading me. Not with the Kindle. And my brain is revved up. Most of the time, I go to bed with a book, I read for half an hour, and then the book's reading me. Not with the Kindle. My brain is revved up. It's sleep.

The whole recovery thing for the athlete, though, it comes down to thorough and complete planning and really getting to know the individual athlete. I mean, I look, I'll use Ashton again as an example because Harry has shared things with me. If you look at, he has no problem taking two days off. You name me one world record holder who in today's world in swimming or track and field, you know, race kind of sports, who's just willing to say, I'm going to take two days off. I guarantee they go nuts. And that's where he's got his mental state together that he can do that, you know, and that makes a difference. So when he comes back,

he's ready to go, fully engaged. So how about for the rest of us, the rest of us who are not training, you know, five hours a day physically, you day physically to the red meter, but we still have incredible stress. Yeah. Would you say invest in coping skills and the mechanics to be more adjustable? Or would you say just get your sleep in, get your hydration right, get your food to be high quality? Is there anything else? Exercise. Yeah.

Exercise is the number one thing. Just go for a walk. Find a time and stick to that. It just sounds so simple. But I can tell you personally, sometimes, and again, this goes back to the other thing, it's hard for me to turn it off. Vacation, I need the first third of vacation's hard for me to turn it off. And then like vacation, I need the first third of vacation I need just to turn things off. You know, I don't know how you feel, but when we go on a vacation, I can't. It takes me like five days of a 10-day vacation to get in a vacation mode because I can't turn all these other things off in my head.

Not on-off buttons, you know, and that. But the idea of just a walk and not a walk with a, you know, with a walk, with no music, with nothing. Just be comfortable with yourself. Yeah. You know, and I mean, I don't want to, I repeat all the same old trite stuff, you know, about, about sleep and that kind of stuff. But what I, what I'm trying to work on, you asked about future, I'm trying to identify what are the, what are the real stress points and how can I, is that in my control? If it isn't, what can I do to change the locus of that or whatever? I think in today's world, it takes an ongoing awareness and assessment of where the stress is coming from.

And sometimes, as you know, it's from inside us as much as it is from outside. I'm with you. Okay, how about this, Vern? Pressure comes from? Within. Okay. And then tell me more about what that means to you. I think we have this crazy idea that the whole world is watching us.

Maybe probably in Rio the whole world might be, but they're not watching you. Yeah, no kidding. And not very many people know that you're working with the volleyball team, but you think that everybody is doing that. So that's the way I look. When I first started coaching, and I use this in a talk before the coaches roundtable thing. They said, you know, there's that time there was 200 million Chinese that really don't care about the outcome of this meet. And I got somebody to fake a letter in Chinese alphabet.

And I opened the letter in front of all these coaches and I said I had this translated today and it said beat San Marcos so I said there is 200 million Chinese that matter but that's your perception you know it really is you step back you know you just the absurdity of it sometimes really that that's, again, I can look through the prism of time now, you know. My last meet at Cal was against Stanford. And they were supposed to beat us. If we had a good meet, they'd beat us by 50 points. Okay.

And I was walking from the office down to the track, Strawberry Creek, and there's this little granite pebble. I think I have it over here. And I go, how the team is going to perform today. They knew how bad I wanted to beat Stanford personally. Some of the kids did. My javelin thrower did. And I saw this little rock and I put it in my pocket. And any time I wanted to show that, I just held on to the little rock. Oh, nice little, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not very good at having a poker face. I mean, that is something I'm trying to work on the rest of my life, you know, to not,

because I wear my emotions on my face like a, you know, so, but yeah, because I think the perception of what pressure is versus what pressure really is, is a lot different. So that's true. Because I think the perception of what pressure is versus what pressure really is is a lot different. I love the phrase, and I don't know if Dan Marino was misquoted on this, but if you think there's pressure, you're right. I haven't found the original source, but I'm looking forward to one day meeting him to ask him that. How about this? It all comes down to... For me? Passion. ask him that but okay how about this it all comes down to for me passion success that's the fuel passion is the fuel that's the fuel that you don't have passion you just you just go through life like a zombie you know if you gotta have you gotta believe in what you you know and and and and be okay with expressing it.

And then saying, damn it, I'm wrong. I'm not happy about being wrong, but I'm wrong. I love it. It's passion. That's so good. Maybe that's the Italian part of me. Yeah, so my family is Sicilian. I identify with my Sicilian roots as well.

And then the other side is Irish. So, yeah, I call it fire. Fire. So that's – I just – fire in the eyes is one of the recent podcasts but i call it fire in the belly yeah and just that inner fire to to be switched on to be engaged and you know to to have that sustainable is really important okay success is? Doing your best. And then when I say the word relationships, what happens? Caring, love.

What's the other word I'm looking for? Caring, love, trust, sharing, all of those things. How about this? I am. A little bit crazy. No, I mean, that's the passion part of it. And I, I, I do, uh, I, I think to, to put yourself out in the realm, like people, I'm not saying I'm not successful, but acknowledge, you know, that you have to be a little bit, a little crazy, you know, just to take some of the risks and do some of the crazy, crazy stuff you have to do.

I love it. Okay, so in your words, how do you articulate or define or describe or capture this concept of mastery? Well, I prepped a little bit here. To me, mastery is a process and a journey. It's not a destination. And the process for me, because you caused me to really reflect on this yesterday afternoon and last night, it's all about connecting the dots, and it's definitely not linear. It's definitely not linear.

You might have A to B connected, and then the next jump is to Z and then you might come back to M or whatever using the alphabet as a thing. It is truly a journey and I hadn't even thought of it. There's a book and I don't know if you've been exposed to this guy. I was exposed to him a long time ago, George Leonard. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a good little book. I look at my bookshelf and it's Mastery. So after I wrote down what I thought Mastery was, I go, I think I borrowed it from George Leonard. I don't know if that was my idea. I always recommend that book, by the way, to coaches. To me, that's what mastery is.

It's a constant journey. That's, to me, what makes it really fun because in sport and in life, just about the time you think you have it figured out, there's going to be another question pop up. That's what what what i like about sport is in life it takes longer in sport it's a little bit more instantaneous you know there i mean you solve this movement problem and then okay but i solved that movement problem but now stay with the swimmer so that affected this so we've got to now solve that. You know, and it's that constant challenge is what's really, I think, neat. I love it. Okay, where can we find out more about you?

I do a, I have a professional development network called the GAIN Network, thegainnetwork.com. We do a yearly event, and's my emphasis going forward from that. At Coach Gambetta is my Twitter handle. I never thought I'd be on Twitter or Facebook. My daughter said, Dad, you have to do it. Twitter hasn't been in existence 10 years, whatever. And it has really been a fun thing. I don't follow if somebody aggravates, you know, as causes stress, I unfollow them. I hope they disagree with me. I don't know that. But I have learned so much from the people that I follow. That's how I found out about you. I mean, I was aware of you, but then this and things like that, because it just leads to so many really cool things way far afield.

I know. It's beautiful. From ADD nature, it's perfect. I love it. So thegain.com, is that it? Thegainnetwork.com is that it the the gain network.com there you go and uh and then if you there's also gambetta.com which we're gradually phasing away over the next two or three years because i i'm trying to get it away from gambetta and make it more about the network i love it yeah I understand that for sure. And then, you know, it's been really cool to know that you and I have been around so many similar circles and we're finally just getting the chance. I mean, whether it be Red Bull and Nike

and, you know, it's just been wonderful to see your career and to see the influence you've had on thinkers in making a difference and athletes doing the difference that you've challenged them to do. So Vern, thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate it. It's been really fun, really challenging. You got me thinking on stuff. Here we go.

Cool. So I look forward to more and I don't know what your shape or that'll look like. But, you know, those of us who are still listening, you know, check out thegainnetwork.com. I know that Vern is active on social media, so get with him. Ask him the questions. And then you can find us at findingmastery.net. And then you can go to iTunes and subscribe and hopefully write a review if you enjoyed the conversation. And then hit us both up on social.

I'm at michaelgervais.com. And I'm looking forward to having some extended conversations online. So Vern, I look forward to when we get to see each other. Yeah, so we'll see. Hopefully this year we'll be able to connect. Definitely. Okay, Vern, have a great day. Okay.

Okay, take care. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback. If you're looking for even more insights, we have a newsletter we send out every Wednesday. Punch over to findingmastery.com slash newsletter to sign up. The show wouldn't be possible without our sponsors and we take our recommendations seriously.

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