Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2890: Speed Training for Athletes | How to Sprint Faster Without Getting Hurt w/ Brian Kula

Episode Date: June 28, 2026

In this episode the guys sit down with elite speed and performance coach Brian Kula of Kula Sports Performance, the man who has trained Christian McCaffrey since he was 13 years old, Saquon Barkley, AJ Brown, and dozens of other professional and Olympic athletes. Brian breaks down his Bounce Fire system for building safe running mechanics from the ground up, why strong athletes like Sal who never sprint are actually at higher injury risk than deconditioned ones, how the nervous system is the real reason hamstrings pull, why cold plunges can shut down the nervous system for up to 24 hours before a game, the best strength training exercises for speed including trap bar deadlifts and overcoming isometrics, how he uses force plates and grip strength to gauge recovery, the role genetics play in athletic potential, why gymnastics is the best base sport for young kids, and the ACL injury connection to the menstrual cycle that most coaches don't know about.   Kula Sports Performance: https://www.kulasp.com ETS Performance: https://etsperformance.com   No BS 6-Pack Formula: https://nobs6pack.com Code: 6PACK for 50% off. Full two phase ab building system with updated videos and demos.   SPONSOR Butcher Box: https://butcherbox.com/mindpump No code needed. New users choose free thick cut ribeyes, top sirloin, or ground beef and bacon for a year plus $20 off at checkout.   LINKS Mind Pump Store: https://mindpumpstore.com Maps Fitness Products: https://mapsfitnessproducts.com Instagram: @mindpumpmedia   0:00 - Intro 3:31 - Running is a skill and why the injury rate is so high 6:06 - The Bounce Fire system — Brian's 25-year progressive running mechanics method  12:20 - Why reaching with your stride is the real cause of most hamstring pulls 15:44 - Sal's hamstring pop story and why strong athletes who never sprint are highest risk 20:28 - Recovery tools — force plates, fly tens and structured periodization 30:08 - Best strength exercises for speed — trap bar deadlift, box squat and overcoming isometrics 37:09 - Biggest changes in athletic training over 30 years and what went wrong with functional training  40:07 - Female ACL injury rates and the menstrual cycle connection nobody talks about  43:14 - CO2 paste recovery technology — why Brian thinks it beats hyperbaric chambers and cold plunges 51:00 - Biggest mistakes young athletes and coaches make and the multi-sport debate 1:00:25 - Stories from coaching Saquon, McCaffrey, AJ Brown and what separates elite athletes

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump. Mind Pump with your hosts. Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, one of the best athletic trainers in the world. Brian Kula came on the podcast.

He has trained professional athletes that you've definitely heard of. He's trained high school athletes, college athletes. he gets on the podcast today and breaks it down. I love talking this guy because he's one of the smartest athletic coaches out there. This episode is brought to you by a sponsor, Butcher Box. So what is Butcher Box? Well, they deliver grass-fed meat, wildcaught fish, pork, chicken, and more to your door. If you want high-quality protein, you want it at good prices, you want stuff that's treated right,

so like crate-free pork, for example, you go to Butcher Box. I love the grass-fed meat. It tastes the best. It's got a great fatty acid profile. They have gluten-free chicken nuggets. They're some of the best I've ever had in my entire life. Great macro profile, gluten-free, so it's super easy to digest. And then their wild caught fish is incredible.

Wild caught fish, by the way, has a much better fatty acid profile than the farm-raised stuff. It's also lower in potential chemicals and heavy metals and stuff like that. So butcherbox, healthy meat to your door, and check this out. If you go to butcherbox.com forward slash mind pump, new users will get your choice of free thick cut rib eyes, top soarloins or ground beef and bacon included in your box for a year for free plus $20 off. So you got to check it out. Also, this month we are re-releasing the no BS six-pack format. This is a workout program for your core. It builds your abs, your obliques, makes them visible, makes your abs look incredible, makes them pop.

This program is 50% off because of the re-release. new videos, new demos, blueprints are all revamped. The program with the 50% off discount, $28.50. That's it, $28.50. And you got yourself the best ab training program that's out there. Go to no BS6.com. That's no BS number six pack.

Dot com. Use the code number six. So six pack for the 50% off. All right, real quick, if you love us like we love you, why not show it by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at mindpump store.com. I'm talking right now. Hit pause.

head on over to Mind Pumstore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. Brian, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me, guys. So I want to ask you this, and you're the guy to ask, right?

Running. I want to talk to you about running for the average person. So many people will try to improve their fitness in one way, shape, or form, and they'll pick up running. But it's got such a high rate of injury. And we talk about this on the show all the time

that people don't appreciate or understand how much of a situation. skill running is. And to add to that, if you look at us in the way we're built, we're actually built to run. We have these big knee joints and we stand up right and we got this muscular foot and these big Achilles tendon. Yet this got the highest injury rate among most forms of exercise. So I'd like for you to kind of walk me through how you would take the average person

and kind of walk them through and not just run them. Like what do you address first and how do you get this person to be able to run so they can run to work out without hurting themselves? Sure, sure. Well, it's interesting. I think, you know, I think one of the biggest things with running an injury is just like it's a volume problem, you know, similar to other aspects of fitness. You know, you just jump in, you dive in. Somebody's going into a 20 mile an hour, you know, 25 or 20 mile week program and they're not quite ready for it, you know. So I think it's a volume tolerance issue that needs to be kind of microdosed in to get them ready. So that's kind of at a macro level, you know, you'd want to look at how much running you're doing to start. And we would do the same thing with an athlete, right? We wouldn't just throw them in and start. hitting high volumes right away or high intensities. So we'd start the intensities and the volume pretty low and then gradually, you know, periodize that up to where they could tolerate it and handle it. As far as, you know, for for us, we're working with athletes. And I think, I mean,

everybody's an athlete, right? If you move, you're an athlete. So I'm glad you said that. So explain that. What do you mean by that? Well, I mean, I think we, you know, we categorize like, you know, if, if mom goes to the gym, right, and she's doing athletic type movements, lifting weights, flexibility, mobility stuff, it's very similar in parallel. to what some of the athletes are doing. I think the differences are just kind of the intensities that they're being done with and, you know, what the intent is.

So for them, they just want to be fit and stuff. But I, you know, I'm a big proponent of like, you know, a female that wants to, you know, look good just for, you know, fitness purposes, should lift heavy weights. And that would be similar to what we do with an athlete, you know. So it's not just like there's two completely different worlds of fitness and performance.

I feel like there's some, you know, a lot of crossover. So when we're working with, an athlete, you know, we're going to dive into, you know, there's some mechanical things. You know, really it's a three-headed monster. It's neural. It's mechanical and it's structural. Right. So the structural piece is where a lot of the, you know, the people will get hurt because they start, they run too much and their body just can't handle it. Their tendons, their ligaments, their joints aren't ready for all that. So they have to have a level of tolerance. So, you know, we would start with some, our bounce fire series is something that we love to do because it,

it kind of exposes their body to some of those, you know, loads. and training volumes without actually going out and running. Then they can build up to a certain amount of, you know, of volume training that they can tolerate. So structural is a piece. The mechanics is another piece. A lot of poor mechanics are going to cause issues and problems from, you know, whether they have knee vulgis or they pronate too much or they overreach or are, you know, really backsided. Those things can all cause problems up the kinetic chain.

So we got to address things from a mechanical, you know, aspect as well. And then the neural piece is like, you know, our brains, the operating system. for the whole deal. And that also has to be challenged in order for it to be, you know, coordinated to be able to run well. So again, just to be able to go out and jog probably takes a lower level of coordination than it does to sprint at a high level. But there's still some level of coordinating the body that has to happen early. Go back to the first. Yeah. Yes. That's what is bounce fire? Yeah, yeah. So bounce fire is a system of progressive running mechanics that that has kind of been developed.

systemize over the last 25 years, let's call it. I kind of, you know, went to a coach and watched him, you know, 25 years ago, saw some stuff, put some things together, actually reconnected with that guy's daughter 20 years later. And we kind of, you know, formalize what we call the bounce fire matrix now. And really the bounce is kind of all in the foot. So it's all in the ankle joint of learning how to dorsiflex, get into a good loaded, you know, potentiated position with the foot, that it strikes in the right place under your center of mass to maximize, you know, the force, production. And we start there at the ground and then work up. The fire series then starts to get into the hip and the knee. We learn how to whip from the hip and, you know, produce the max amount of force from the top down. And it's just a series of drills. So the bounce series is one series where all we focus on is the ankle. And it's, you know, it starts, call it slow and, you know, low intensity and then works its way up, you know, to where you're potentiating up to like full in sprinting. And then the fire series starts to bring in the hip and the knee and we do it unilateral.

So what is it? I'm sorry, I got to stop because I'm so curious. So what does that look like? Am I, um, are you standing in place? Yeah, am I standing in place? Is it assisted in my life? Yeah, yeah. It's a movement series.

Okay. So it's, we, you can run it 15, 20 yards. Okay. Back and forth. I mean, if we had space out in your gym here, we could just, you know, clear path and move back and forth. You don't need a ton of space. Yeah.

Um, but, you know, what you're really getting is like, over time, thousands, if not millions of ground contacts, which starts to develop that, you know, rigidness and stiffness, the rate of force development, the stretch shortening cycle in the Achilles tendon, soleus muscle and all that kind of stuff.

So it's kind of been a little bit of our secret sauce that has been kind of a staple throughout training for me for the last, call it three decades. Yeah. And obviously it's evolved. But now we kind of have a systemized. We have about 30 signature drills

that we run through, linear, lateral, and change direction. Yeah. And so you start that, you progress through that, before you get into, let's go out and run.

Correct. Wow. And so that makes a big difference in the person's... Huge. Huge. What are the differences you see versus just someone going out and just running? Yeah. Well, I think, again, it goes back and it addresses some of that neural, mechanical,

and structural components. Because, you know, if I cut you loose and say, Saul, I want you to go out and hit five miles for me and then report back. Well, I don't get to coach you. You know, I don't get to see all the repetitive mistakes that you're making over time. Well, in a bounce fire series, they're right in front of me in 20 yards, you know, back and forth where I can coach you. and give them cues to dial in their mechanics to make sure that they're getting enough,

you know, the right kind of contacts in to develop the structure to be able to handle that higher volume later. And then the coordinative ability, you know, when you ask a kid to do like a single leg fire, which, you know, unilateral, if I took the three of you out in the gym right now, one of you at least would look like, you know, you have two left feet. But that's the, that's the coordinated piece, right? And so now we're developing neural. And not that it's just like this magic pill, but we really do feel like,

You know, when you go, I mean, running's not that complicated. There's an air phase and a ground phase that this set of drills really does address all three of those things. Oh, very cool. What are the common cues? What are the real common cues that you would give someone like the ones that you tend to notice that you have to repeat for a lot of people? Dorsal flexing, you know, having a loaded foot, making sure that they stay in that position for a long time. A lot of people when we first start running, they reach really bad. They get plantar flex and they kind of read before they hit the ground, which causes a ton of lower legs.

like leg exposure. So shin splints, like patellot tendonitis, like talus. Interesting. So that's from the reaching. So that's from the reaching. Yeah. I did not. I thought shin splints were a lot of times from my clients that lack ankle mobility and just the impact. It's certainly multifactorial for sure. There's a lot going on there. But I mean, if you think about it, right, like got three big strong guys here. If you know, if you put your foot out in frontian, we took a force measurement when you hit the ground, it'd be really high. Yeah. But if we put that more under our center of mass as we moved over it, it'd be a lot lower. Super interesting.

So rather than reaching forward with my leg, wait until I get over it and then kind of hit the ground a little bit. I talk a lot to the kids, especially about like the concept of pushing and pulling. I'll always say like, hey, if my car broke down, would we pull it to the gas station

or would we push it? And they're like, push it, coach. Why? Because it's easier. So pushing, right,

getting that foot under the center of mass and pushing the mass down the field, the tracks, whatever is more efficient than pulling. But a lot of times that's just, you know, we want to go big stride. So we,

reach and then we pull, which is, you know, not as mechanically advantageous. Is that, is that result the reaching? Does that result in more hamstring pull and absolutely? Absolutely. Because you're putting the hamstring in a stretched position. And then trying to explode. And for and adding force. So that's where most hamstrings actually go is in that face. Wow. Wow. So do you have like so flat footed sort of what other like common dysfunctions do you see that like, okay, we got to address this. Yeah. Here's how we're going to do that. Yeah. I mean, recovery is another really big one, right? So once the foot has struck under the center of mass,

the next thing it needs to happen is a heel recovery tighter to the hamstring versus like letting it come out the backside. So you'll see somebody that runs and their foot's kind of swinging out the back really bad. Again, all you can do there then is you get this hip extension. All you can really do is pull the leg through and land versus if you have a nice tight recovery, you can put that foot into a really nice, potentiated position to punch the ground on the next stride. Yeah. Right. Now, that's not necessarily applicable to your jogger, right? Because those guys have a slightly different gate and pattern where we're going to maybe more heel strike and kind of roll over the top. But with any kind of like sprinting or fast running at all, we want to have the most mechanically advantage. Is it easier to teach a sprinter to jogger to jump? I would imagine.

Yeah, I would think so. I would think so. I mean, I don't work with a lot of joggers, right? Like my thing speed, you know, athletes and stuff. I want to take this game easy. Can we slow down a bit? Guys are running me through the ringer here. I don't, I hate jogging. Because again, like, you know, for me, everything is about like type 2B muscle fiber recruitment and, you know, slow jogging is the opposite of that. So, yeah.

But, yeah, I mean, I think I'd much rather take a jogger and teach them how to sprint, you know, and fix some of those things than have to teach a sprinter how to jog. Yeah, yeah. I think that would be kind of different. Let's go back to hamstring because that's such a common. injury with sprinters. I'd say probably one of the most common, right? Would be a hamstring.

What are some of the things you do when you have an athlete that's like, man, I keep straining my hamstring? Is it all biomechanics? Are we looking at strengthening in particular ways? There's both, right? There's both. And I think where it starts number one,

there's a lot of new research out and stuff is it is neural, right? Like the inability for the body to relax after it contracts is kind of what the problem is. So they're trying to stretch while it's contracted. And they need to be able to relax in that and get into those positions. So, and again, some of the training,

like if you're into slow, concentric training, then you're not necessarily hitting the same energy system that you're hitting when you're sprinting. So, you know, it would make sense if you're doing slow RDLs, that over time, you know, if you're sprinting fast, you haven't really trained that system. That's right. And so exposures to speed is probably the most critical thing

you need to do to bulletproof hamstrings. There isn't really an exercise in the weight room that you can do that takes care of the hamstring. So old theory used to be, that we were so anteriorly driven. And so we had such quad development, and it wasn't the percentage of strength in the hamstring. Is there truth to that?

There is. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that's the, that was like the 70s bodybuilding, you know, wave that took over. And we kind of forgot about the posterior chain. Yeah.

I think that's been rectified, but now it's almost gone the other way where we think we can just fix it in the weight room with RDLs, with Nordics, you know, these are the magic exercises. But really the exposure to the speed is because it's neural. So there's a coordination factor of once you reach certain speeds, the body almost kind of shuts down because the nervous system can't respond appropriately. And that's when a muscle is going to pull.

So, Brian, this happened to me, how long ago was it? I tore my hamstring. Was it like four months ago? No. You just got up in sprinting. It was almost a year ago. So I could deadlift six and her. I got strong hamstrings.

But I never sprint. And I was in Hawaii with my family. And my 16-year-old daughter, she plays lacrosse and she's like, dad, why don't you race me or whatever? So, you know, I've got my dad. So I'm like, yeah, okay. Yeah. And we race and I beat her. And then she's like, no, I'm going to run even faster now.

So in my head, I'm like, I'm going to show you how fast I can run. Yeah. Pop. Yep. Totally pull my hands right. Yep. Someone like me, I've got strength. I've got muscle.

But I want to sprint. I want to be able to sprint without hurting myself. Yeah. And I know what's happening now based off of what you're explaining. Yep. What would be my progression to be able to sprint? Would it be like running a 50% for a while and getting good at that and then 60%? Like, what would I do?

I mean, if I'm, if I'm programming for you and saying, let's get you there, and it's interesting because you guys know Mark Bell. Yeah. So I'm actually, we've actually done this with Mark. You know, he's lost a bunch of weight. He's trying to do some sprinting now. And the first time I watched him run, I was like, oh, this is going to be tough. But he's actually, but he's actually followed the protocols. It's taken a long time.

But all we're doing is kind of exposing him through the bounce fire series on the Z tread, you know, kind of some exposures to those things. That's why you pulled your hamstring. It wasn't because you're weak. It's because you haven't, you know, your brain hasn't had to operate like that. And it doesn't surprise me, you did it on the second rep, except the first, you know, besides the first. Well, because the first you can kind of like, you got enough up here to kind of get through maybe that first rep. Now that system's a little fatigued. And we all know, like, I'm a big restroom recovery guy.

Like, you know, we'll talk about that maybe a little bit later. But that second rep, you're still, your CNS is under fatigue. Your body isn't, but your CNS is. And now you're asking it to go fast again. And it goes haywire. Hamstring. Wow. Wow. I'm so glad we're talking about this because I got a lot of shit

beginning of football season. Fantasy football. So my buddies, I'm the fitness guy, right? So of all of us, I'm the only real fitness guy of the 10 guys. And one of the guys who's the commissioner decides that the way we're going to do the draft this year is we're going to sprint a 40-yard dash. Oh boy. I refuse to do it. Yeah, yeah. I said, put me in the last play and everybody

was so pissed at me. You're the fitness guy. Yeah, and because I do not sprint at all. I'm very aware of that. I lift heavy-ass weights and I haven't trained like an athlete in a long time. And I feel like that's such a recipe for opponents. It is. No business. Just no exposure. I mean, it would be not that dissimilar if I was like, hey, I don't really ever bench press, but let's go throw 315 on it, see how many times I can do it. Yeah. It's really no different, right? And so I want to run really, really fast. And I have never, I haven't run fast in seven years, you're going to get hurt. And wouldn't somebody like Sal or myself who never trains that way,

be at even higher risk because of how strong we are versus like, let's say, a total deconditioned person. So who's, yeah, who's higher risk? A 45-year-old who does no training, no nothing, go out for a sprint, or the guy who's 600-pound deadlift, never sprint. They can rip. Yeah, like, because you still got some concentric and eccentric power. Yeah. So you might put yourself in a little higher risk category, you know. That's what I try to explain to them. You'll be able to put force in the ground, you know, and that 45-year-old deconditioned athlete can't do that. That's exactly what I was trying to explain to them. Like, yeah, you guys, all you soft ass dudes that never do anything.

Like, there's no risk for you. You don't even know how to get that output out. Like, my body knows how to push. You know what I'm saying? And said, I got a lot of muscle. Yep. But I don't, I respect training like an athlete and sprinting that I can't do that. Yeah, I'm curious because like in the sport specific world, like you'll see some

philosophy out there like speed of sport or like the Marinovich's and like, you know, where they're actually trying to create exercises where they are able to like apply acceleration. And that's the whole like point of it. How do you feel about that in terms of effectiveness versus just like, you know, doing that sort of graded approach of just running and getting exposure that way? I think some of those systems have some immense value, right? Like I'm a little bit of a study of like the Eastern Bloc, Soviet system,

Verkysh, Verkysh, and some of those guys. And I think what Marv-Marinovich and Jay Schroeder and some of those guys did is incredible. Now, I'm not like a baby out with the bathwater. That's all we're going to do, guy. You know, I'm like there are bits and pieces of it, though, that are really good. And so I think exposing athletes to some of the, you know, the overcoming isometrics, some altitude drops, you know, things like that where you're exposing the nervous system

to really high levels of output is a must. You know, that's always kind of been a thread in what, you know, I've done with my, you know, athletes now. I don't do it every day kind of like they did. And I don't know what would happen if I did. If it's better or worse, I still think that an athlete needs good concentric, you know, has to be really strong, needs to run fast, needs it, needs nervous system exposure. So it's a, you know, training athletes, that's why these are always great conversations because

everyone thinks they got the system. Yeah, yeah. And like, I think if we're, I guess, humble enough, we can set back and go, they probably need a little bit of all of it, you know, and putting that together is probably the best system. How do you determine recovery for an athlete? Is it based off of their perception? Is it based off of what you see? Are you looking at heart rate variability?

Like, what are your measures? I mean, I think after as long as I've done it, I kind of know what we're doing and how long that's going to take to recover at some level. I think I'm trying to max, I'm trying to max rest and recovery as much as I can, you know, which is kind of a paradigm flip from, you know, where we were, you know, when I went to high school and we just grinded and did as much as we could, as often as we could. With high level athletes that have really high output, the more rest, the better, right? More sleep, more days in between high, intensity days. You know, Charlie Francis was kind of a guy that was a high, low system, you know, guy. And I think he was spot on with, you know, you have a heavy day.

You better come back with a little bit lighter day than. next day. And again, that's all neural. You know, it's not like, I mean, I think our muscles and they can go. You know, we can, we can lift every day, things like that. But when it comes to the nervous system, you got to be really careful. So some of that would be like data outputs, you know, whether it's force plates and we're looking at their counter movement jump and we're going to make decisions based on where we see them. Do they need extra rest? Do they need another day? So that would be part of it would be the data collection. Would you do that? Okay, so we're, I'm an athlete. I'm training with you. We've been training for a while. When I first come in,

is there a series of like real basic tests like that that you do? Absolutely. Okay, what are those? Yeah, force plates. I mean, you know, we have some performance tests. We're always going to run like fly 10, you know, like a 20-yard build, a 10-yard fly. So we kind of know where their max velocity is. Yeah.

That's a huge indicator of kind of where they're at. Yeah. Now, we obviously have to get to a place of warm up, potentiation, run that fly rep. And now we know where they're at. And that might tell us what we're doing next, you know, so you kind of plan for, you know, part of the session and then see where it's going to. go from there. And then the force plates are another excellent tool to be able to, you know, get an assessment on a kid. And you could do that almost daily. I think sometimes if you go every day, it gets a little monotonous and the kids kind of stop, you know, putting into it. So it'd be more

of a maybe once a week. You're kind of just checking to see where they're at. Oh, they're, you know, they had four volleyball games this weekend. They jumped like dog shit on Monday. So we're going to take a day off, maybe even an extra day off and then we'll hit them hard on Wednesday. Yeah. I love this because this is very similar to how we teach trainers to assess. with clients before they go into strength. We use grip strength. Yep, grip strength. So it's like, yeah, see how they get a baseline.

They're squeeze at this all the time. Oh, wow, they came in. They say they feel great, but then they're squeezing at 50% of what they normally do. Like that's the data to back it off. Very similar with like the force plate. Yeah, yeah. We went down the last year, we used a lot of whoop data

and looked and studied that with our academy kids that we were working with. I mean, how helpful was it? Or was it? It was valuable to see, especially sleep indicators, right? To just kind of know how kids were sleeping and how they were recovering, you know, you definitely started to see trends, you know, now what we dealt with is, you know, we could make decisions on our end of things, but the sport

wouldn't necessarily make adjustments, you know, so now you're kind of battling in between that and trying to make sure they stay healthy. So, you know, one of the things the Soviets did really well was they would, I mean, they periodized, and it was like, I don't care how you feel. This is delode and this is what we're doing. Whereas the U.S. at that time was very much based off, let me just see what I can do and how I feel. how important is it for an athlete?

I would imagine it's really important because the athletic mind, especially at a high level, I might not even perceive that I'm tired like a normal person because I just know how to push myself. How important is it like, no, we're following this routine. I don't care what you say. It's huge. It's huge because to your point,

like all those high level guys that I get to work with, they never think they're tired. They want to go full till all the time. And so you really have to do a good job of like, I usually go in like a four-week block where we kind of have like, you know, a light week, medium, heavy week, and then we come back down to a light week

and we keep undulating on that in the off season. Just because if you just keep going, they'll just keep coming with you, which eventually ends to an injury. And with those guys, they don't need to be really fully ready until September. Like if we're being honest, and I'm training a guy in March,

I mean, how ready does he need to be for OTAs if he's a year seven guy? Yeah, yeah. You know, we want him healthy enough and ready enough, but then we're going to come back in the summer and really give them kind of a final. ramp up into their season, which is when it matters. When does it take, like, at what point in the, like, the training cycle with the athlete,

do you get that kind of full? Like, I, relating it to what we do, right? Yeah, yeah. So, like, there's a lot of times where I'm telling a client, like, you know, I want you do this, do that. And they're, like, skeptical as shit. Like, I feel like I can do more. I feel like I'm eating too much, all these things.

And then the, the, the, the, aha moment is, they hit a PR, body fat percentage goes down. And then it's like, okay, now they're bought it and they'll do that. What does that look like in the athletic world? Like, what is that? Because I'm sure you get guys who are like, I could do more, and this is not enough. You kidding me? I've spent 30 years defending what I do to, you know, especially the higher-end athlete.

You know, it doesn't matter if it's a pro or just a really good high school kid. And, you know, that kid's got a dad in his ear or a mom in her ear. And, you know, so you're always kind of having to justify what that does and looks like. I think, you know, success leaves clues. I think, you know, and I'm certain that you get a lot less questions than some of your junior trainers. Of course. You know, I think I'm probably similar in that I don't get as many questions anymore. But when I was young, I felt like I had to justify everything.

And here's what we're going to do and here's why we're going to do it. But then after, you know, a few state titles, a few NFL players of the year, a few, you know, people stop asking so many questions. Yeah, you don't get that shit now. I'm sure you don't get that at all. But if I get a new client, you know, like, I mean, I worked with a couple new clients this year, some big names. And they, you know, they were like, it's different than what he's done before. So I got to start with the reeducation process all over again. Like, here's why we're doing it.

Here's how it's going to go. Here's what you can expect. Yeah. And, you know, you kind of have to have to. have that on the tip of your tongue with those guys because they're, you know, they're multi-million dollar athletes. And what does it look like then? So getting that re-buy in is it like, is it the first time they see like a number

where their speed is a little bit, and they're like, oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. I'm listening to this dude now. Yeah. With the younger kids, it's really easy because you get a lot of data and you get a lot of data influx. When they start training, their numbers just keep spiking, right? And that's just that young, adaptable, you know, athlete.

The older athletes, we're not necessarily looking to like, you know, an NFL guy in his fifth year isn't going to put two miles an hour run in the off season. Sure. It's not going to have it. Really, it's more of how do they feel. Really, it's more of my body feels good. I feel light. I feel like I can jump again. I feel stable. I feel. So it's a lot of conversation just around how their bodies are feeling, which is massive. And, you know, that's, again, we were talking a little bit about this earlier with the human approach to coaching. You got to have a lot of interaction. And it can't all be done on a computer. It's not a spreadsheet thing, you know. And so we have to have a conversation, you know, what's your wellness

feeling like, and then as they start to go, man, now I, now I see it. And then they'll have a rep, you know, where they run like, maybe it's an acceleration, you know, rep. And they're like, oh, that felt good. Yeah. And it looks good. And we videoed it. You know, you know, then that's the validation. That makes sense because thinking from a, like you said, a pro athlete who's been doing this forever, it's like, I'm not probably hitting PR times, vertical. Like, I'm not breaking any records. But I do know how I've been playing in the league for six years. I know what my body feels like when I've played a game and done this and like, oh shit, I feel good. Yeah.

Like that's probably a big. And a lot of it's just the mind game, right? They want to feel good, right? They want to be healthy enough. They want to feel good. And if we can just kind of get them back to like, you know, baseline, we're in pretty good shape because a lot of those guys, I mean, they're in car accidents for 17 games. And it's just kind of putting Humpty Dumpty back together again, you know, to get

ready for OTAs, then get them back in the summer and now kind of, you know, spit, polish it up before training camp. Is there a balance that when you're taking a high, level athlete where you're seeing something biomechanically that you're like, oh, I could work on that. However, they've been running that way for so long and they're so good at it that I'm afraid to correct that because it might actually slow them down because is there that balance that you got to play with? And how do you deal with that with that high level athlete? Yeah, I think you do. I mean, I think there's certain things you have to address, right? I used like, I worked with

Sequin Barclay a couple years ago. And we were out on the track and he looked at me and said, coach, all this stuff you're telling me, I think I've been running wrong my whole life. he really was kind of a planter flex kind of a reacher guy but of course he overcomes it because he squats the whole studio you know i mean the guy's a monster but those that was something i felt like i needed to address you know now are there other things that maybe you just like let go by the wayside and also too like i'm not a physiotherapist right i'm not necessarily looking at you know i usually have a partner with me if there's like some kind of internal external rotational problem and we got to work on some muscles that are shut on or off you might need some like manual therapy you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you interaction with that and that's not my you know that's not my forte necessarily so you might have to work with somebody if it's really you know a small minute thing that needs to change do you have do you have like archetypes that you could kind of you know fall back on in terms of like okay this person looks like they're this uh for the running mechanics and then you can kind of sort of adjust their training in that direction or is it like pretty individual every person um i mean

i think what i always say is like i feel like every athlete needs everything it's just how much dosage. You know, it's like if we all made chili, at some point we'd all have kind of the same ingredients in there, but you might put more meat, you might put more beans, you might put more sauce, you know, or whatever it is. So I think with athletes it's very similar of, you know, but you might have like a really twitchy athlete that might not need as much neural exposure, but might need to just get stronger. So we're going to tailor them with a little bit more weight room, you know, a little more concentric strength work. Or there's an athlete that's just strong as heck and, you know, it maybe doesn't react to the ground well. So we're going to do a lot

more RFD work and, you know, jumping and plyometric work. Yeah, but it all gets individualized. Right. Give me the best strength training exercises that you've seen for speed. And are they different for young athletes versus older athletes? No, I don't think so. I mean, I think some of the top concentric lifts I like are trap bar deadlift. Safe, easy, you know, touches seven different muscle groups, really kind of mimic some of the

positions. You're pushing into the ground. I like that a lot. I think box squat is awesome, you know, where you get to break concentric, eccentric, chain and concentrating on both of those, both heavy but also in velocity. So making sure that you're lifting a little bit lighter weight, but fast. And then like overcoming ISOs, you know, like a split squat lunge, you know, getting in there for 10 seconds and really fire in there. That's a fast switch movement, even though you're not actually moving. The brain has to operate

at such a high level to hold you in place. And this is when you're like pressing into something that is not moving over. And you're just driving. Exactly. How, how often? often do you use isometrics? Every day. The data on isymetrics is wild. It's crazy to me how little they're used in traditional strength training. I mean, the strength gains that you see in the data, actually, there's faster strength gains in the first few weeks is isom as anything else.

So you say to use them every single day. Yeah, every day. And they're always a part of someone's routine. Yep, exactly. And there's yielding. There's overcoming. There's, you know, extensive isometrics, you know, long duration, one minute, three minutes kind of stuff. But, you know, if like kind of to potentiate the session, we'll get in and do like

a 10 second isometric, you know, overcoming. And you get at the beginning? In the beginning. Okay. So you set the routine up with that once they're warmed up. Because there's really low residual, right? You don't get really sore from isometric. There's not a lot of fatigue on the back end. But you can really get the system going. And then we'll usually pair that with like a ply metric, some kind of altitude drop or a, you know, box jump or something like that. Then we'll start to get into more the concentric, you know, heavy trap bar deadlift, pair that with a vertical jump, something like that. You know, it's wild about is is that was like a bodybuilder staple for a long time and then you just stopped doing them. And my theory is they just look boring.

That's a thing. Well, they are not very sexy. Yeah, I would say they are a little boring. But also, you don't do an Instagram post with it. It's like, here's me pushing into something that's for 10 seconds. Just keep watching. Yeah. They're hard, effective and safe.

Yeah. It's just like, yes, it's not stressed enough. There's such great results for tendons and ligaments. as well. And that's another reason we'd use them. That's why I say they're going to be in there every day. Because even if we're not doing it for like a strength exposure, we're going to hit it for some kind of like tendon tissue, you know, health.

Because if you get into like just a split, iso lunge, your, your petella knee pain will, like, go away. What are some of the biggest changes you've seen in athletic training over the last few decades? Because you've been doing this for a while. I have. What are the big, like, groundbreaking, like, changes or switches that, you know, now you see? I think, I got asked that the other day.

I think what I've seen is, like, full circle. I really feel like. You know, my dad was a strength coach back in the day, and he was big with, you know, watching Boyd Epley and Husker Power and kind of that, you know, whole scene. And a lot of it was influenced by the Soviets. Well, that's kind of what I learned. And then, you know, here we are 30 years later. And I feel like it's all coming back to some of that very same stuff. And we went like functional training and, you know, all these different.

I feel like you follow the same thing. Yeah, fast. Yeah. I feel like the stuff we talk about out is like the most basic shit that we knew 30 years ago. I think, I think the thing nowadays is like there's so much access to information. that it's just like flooded. And now it's just cutting through the noise and figuring out what really works. But if you look back and go, you know, hey, here's what I did with, you know, Christian, you know, a couple of years ago that seemed to work really well.

Kid had a, you know, phenomenal season. And then I look back at, you know, what they were doing in the 70s with the Soviets. I'm like, there's a lot of things that are common in there, you know. So, I mean, you got to be strong. You got to be fast. You got to, you know, rest and recover. What was wrong with the functional, quote unquote, stuff that was real popular, like in the late 90s? early 2000s, you know, when you're standing on like balance boards and physio ball.

Yeah. Yeah. I just think it lacked a little bit of like that exposure to concentric strength. You know, like I still think that, you know, again, it's the lowest hanging fruit. The kid gets strong and athlete gets stronger. They're going to move better. They're going to run faster. You know, unfortunately that it's not the only thing.

It can't stop there. But I still think that's got to be a part of the program. And so I think functional training just kind of took that out of there. You know, oh, we're not going to back squat. We're not going to, you know, pick up heavy. deadlift because it's dangerous and everything. Well, you know, there's some things that bulletproof you by picking up heavy deadlift, you know, strong low back, you know, glutes, like all the things that are good about sport,

you got to have that in there. What kind of young athletes are typically brought to you? Imagine it's very motivated and the parents are super into it. Yeah. Is it harder to train the kid or is it harder to work with the parents when you're dealing with that? You know, we haven't really had bad experience with parents. I mean, I think sometimes, you've got so much authority. I'm assuming they'd be like, you go.

Yeah. And even my staff, you know, like I've been out of the building now for, call it 18 months, and they're thriving. And I think our coaches have a great understanding of what relationship looks like. And we just haven't had a lot of overbearing. You know, parents get a bad rap these days, I feel like, right? Oh, this dad, this mom or this psycho dad or whatever. And I mean, they're, obviously, they've invested in their kid. They want them to come get great training. And I think, you know, how the trainer interacts with the kid makes a huge difference. And, you know, the kids show up and work hard. And I think because they're they're paying for a service. So they want to be. be there. It's not like they dropped them off and have to be there, which I think it's usually where problems start. So I don't think we've had really problems with either, to be honest with you. Is there any type of training that you can be done to help prevent

hand injury? Because that's such a unknown thing now. I mean, I remember reading data on soccer players. Yeah, even soccer. And CTE. Is there anything that people can do training-wise to help prevent that from? Is it like strengthening? I know boxers for a long time strengthen their neck. Is there any truth to that? Yeah, I know. I definitely think so. I mean, there's some things

you just can't help, right? Like if you're a NFL guy and, you know, you get hit, you know, back of the head, hitting the turf, it's going to happen. But I guess if your neck's a little stronger and you can lighten the impact because you're strong in your, you know, your neck and your upper chest, that's probably probably the way to go. I don't spend a ton of time on that, you know, necessarily with, even with my football players.

We'll do some neck exercises, but, yeah, I think sometimes a little bit unavoidable. My daughter was a college soccer player and she had, I don't know how many concussions from just even heading the ball, let alone. head to head with another athlete. So a lot of focus is speed. Let's make you run fast, which has got the greatest carryover for... Well, it's the... I mean, I really think it can be like a, you know, cover a multitude of sins.

It's ever... Fast, you can almost keep yourself out of trouble, right? It's like when you, you know, tiring shows. It's safer for collisions, right? You're accelerating through it. Yeah. And or don't have as many collisions because you're really fast. Yeah.

You brought up Sequin and Christian. You've trained so many. great athletes. Do you get impressed still? And take me through some like moments of like, you know, like I can only imagine first time working with Christian or Sake Juan and they did something. You're like, holy shit. Yeah.

Like I want to hear stories like that of like moments in your career. Like athletes, which athletes are impressed you like that. Well, you guys know I'm going to work with Christian when he was in high school. And I mean, from the time he was a freshman sophomore in high school, he was doing things where it was, you know, like, did that just happen? Like that kid's going to play on Sundays, you know, as a 16-year-old. Did you feel that like the moment you met him, like the first time you seen him move or do something? I mean, I watched him play eighth grade football and an eighth grade basketball game.

And I mean, I watched him dunk a basketball in eighth grade at like five, ten or five, nine, white boy. Yeah, that's not, that's not common. He was different, you know, definitely different. And then paired with that was his mentality of, you know, I want to be the best. And he did everything that he possibly could do to be the best. And now we have the best. So, yeah, he was different. I mean, I think I worked with Sequan a little bit in the weight room a couple days,

and it was just like, I've really not been around somebody that was just that, like, naturally strong. So that was, you know, he's kind of freaky. And this winter I got A.J. Brown a little bit. And that guy for as big as he is when he first, you know, started doing some speed stuff. And the way he moved at 227 pounds or whatever was, wow. I mean, it was impressive. So, yeah, all those guys, I mean, Solomon Thomas. You guys remember Solomon Thomas?

He was the number three draft pick here with the 49ers back when Christian got drafted. And I mean, I've seen that guy. You know, we do some gymnastics kind of stuff like on our Tuesday workouts. And he was with us training once. And he's down on all fours kind of like moving around the room. And I mean, it was like the most fluid thing I've ever seen. He's 285 pounds just like moves like a cat. So yeah, all those guys have a level of impressiveness to them that, you know, they just move different.

Now when you like work with these guys, like do you really, I mean, you're probably super busy. but do you still get the time to like sit and watch the game and watch like some of your work unfold? And like do you get, do you have an appreciation for that? Yeah, for sure. You see Sequin doing 360 over to top of someone's head and air like, yeah. No, I taught him that, right? No, I only got to work with him for about a week. But, I mean, it was, yeah, it's, I mean, people ask me, like, who's your favorite football team?

And I'm like, well, I'm kind of a fan of the player, right? Because when you spend a little bit of time with them, you know, I spent, you know, a decade with Christian or more. and some of those guys would come in for a week or two at a time. You're breaking bread with them. You're getting to know them. And, yeah, I mean, I can't wait to watch them play on Sundays, even if they only get a few snaps or, you know, they're playing the whole game.

I'm locked in. Brian, we probably have some parents of female athletes. And the rate of ACL tears of female athletes is significantly higher than with male athletes. Is there anything you can do that people can do or you do with your female athletes in particular to help prevent that type of an injury? Yeah, you can. I mean, I think that's almost similar. to the concussion deal of like when there's exposure there's just going to be incident and you know females have

there's been a lot of research and study out there of just their anatomy right hips are a little wider than their knee base and so they you know tend to have that that angle that's not great for that um menstrual cycle has a ton to do with ACL injuries oh really oh huge is it when they're what uh when they're when they're on their cycle it tends to be about i'm i may misquote this so you can check into it for me but i think it's over like 80% of when they tailor ACL are usually interesting and now that Probably connected to, I was going to say, hormones, sleep, and recovery. Yep, exactly. I would think those three factors play into that, right?

Which is, you know, it's nice to know, but like, how do you deal with it? That's the question. It's like, oh, we got a playoff game. And I'm, you know, I'm on my period. Well, you're going to play anyway, probably. So, you know, now there are some exercises and stuff, though, to prevent some knee valgus and make sure they have really good, you know, external hip rotation and stuff to keep things strong and in alignment, which would be helpful.

But a lot of stuff you see is even non-contact, which necessarily. isn't necessarily like a strength issue or whatever. They're just, you know, hormones or... Cut their own game. Yeah, exactly. So a lot of exposures, you know, to those, you know, the deceleration, the eccentric loading. Just get their body good at doing the things that tend to cause injury. Exactly.

Because if you just have all, if you're all gas, no brakes, in those kind of sports, you're in trouble, right? Because you might be able to produce enough force, but then how do you stop? Okay. I'm going to create a scenario for you. I just see if there's anything you could do. So you got an athlete who's training and they're like, you need some better recovery, but we got to gain. in a week. Like what are the tools

that you use to really help with recovery? Is it just mostly sleep? Is it, are you using ice? Like, what are the tools? No,

I think first and foremost is sleep and nutrition, right? Like I mean, I think you can't get too far away from that. You know, there's different products out there

of, you know, compression boots and saunas and things like that that I think would be beneficial. I'm working with a company right now called air therapeutics. And they have a CO2 delivery system of paste

and a suit where you can actually, it's called the bore effect. It basically helps deliver oxygen from the, off the hemoglobin into tissue and muscle. And so, you know, everything that you're always after with, you know, the sleep, with the, you know, all the different modalities

is to try to utilize oxygen better to repair and heal, you know, tissue. And so this actually gives us a really good option. And so the pace can be used as like a recovery. It can be used as a pretty... Is it rubbed on the area? Yeah, right on, right on. Interesting. Are we simulating similar benefits like the hyperbaric chamber would give you? Is that kind of what along those lines?

It's not like the hyperbaric because what a hyperbaric is doing is trying to drive more oxygen into your system. Yeah. And it also has, it's pressurized. So you're actually got some vaso-constriction going on. Okay. So you have less blood flow and you're trying to push more oxygen in. Okay. Well, more oxygen isn't any beneficial if it can't get delivered properly. Okay. So what the paste does with the CO2 is it helps actually vasodilate. So you get more blood flow. and then you get, you know, additional, that bore effect where it comes off of the hemoglobe

and it gets into the tissue more effectively. Localized. Yeah. So it's helping the nervous system. It's helping connective tissue, like all those things. So would you say, would you say then something like this is better for one of your athletes than a hyperbaric chamber? Yes.

Wow. Yeah. I mean, I think it's like revolutionary, honestly. Yeah. That's a big deal. Because I just, I've never seen anything like it. I've actually used it myself and I got a bunch of little ailments, you know, getting older that I know of a significant difference that I notice.

What? Yeah, it's a really, really cool product. I got some for you. Oh, sick. I totally want to try it. I'm never heard of it. So I'm trying to think of what the benefits would be for the average person with something like this.

And I guess it would be. My wife, hard workouts. Yeah, my wife, you know, had a little super spenatus kind of deal going on on her shoulder. She put the paste on twice a day for two days,

zero pain. Like, I mean, you know, I know some of the better, you know, physical therapist and chiropractor in town and we can go get treatment and stuff, but all she did is put the paste on and let the,

you know, let the body heal naturally, which is what it needs to do is just get that oxygen into the tissue and it went away. I use it. I get a little bit of like, you know, tendinitis in the elbow from lifting weights and stuff, and I'll just hit it a couple times. And it's not like something I have to put on every day. But with some of the athletes, I will encourage them like, hey, it's a max velocity day. Let's put some paste on the hamstrings. Let's get a little extra oxygen flow. So it's a pretty workout or is it right? Absolutely. Oh, wow. How long has this company been around? They haven't been around long.

I got kind of connected through them through ETS, which is my new performance company I'm working with. And they introduced me to their C.O. And he flew down to Nashville and brought the air suit. So they actually have a suit that you can wear where you suck all the oxygen out of it with a vacuum and then fill it up with CO2. And you just sit in it for half hour. And it has the same effect only systemically. So you actually get a little parasympathetic response. I do it at night before I go to bed.

Oh, did you notice a better sleep? 100%. Oh, my God. Oh, wow. That's what I know. How does a company like this get you to partner with them? Were they like, all right, let me meet you. Here's the data.

Here's the science. Then you got to test the type of deal. Yeah, kind of. I mean, it was a really weird, like, how we got connected. And it's funny because some of the NHL guys that I've worked with were actually using the technology. I didn't even know about it. And so when I met the doctor that came up with the technology, he's like, yeah, you know, these guys up in Winnipeg are using it.

And it happened to be a guy that I've worked with. So there was just some. relationships. And they came to me and I think they had the science. I think they got, you know, the operations of the business going. And they wanted somebody who could kind of maybe connect them into some of the marketplace a little bit, especially with the high end athlete. So like we got AJ Brown into one, Solomon Thomas, you know, some of these guys are using it. They're loving it. I mean, they're, you know, so right now. And again, I'm not the science guy, you know, bring the doctor out here to tell you all about it. But I know enough about it to understand what

it's doing. And I've even noticed it on myself. So I'd love to be connected to it. Super interesting. You know, since we're talking about recovery, I didn't hear you say. And I'm red light. You guys use red light? Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, another product that I've, you know, partnered with is DNA vibe. They, the little jazz band. And so it's a, you know, it's not red light. It's like a light therapy, though, unwearable.

Okay. And I think that stuff, I mean, again, anything that kind of work with your own bodies, DNA, the oxygen, much better than, like even leg boots, they're great.

You know, they make me feel a little bit better. Yeah. But they are compressing. Right? And so they're limiting blood flow at some level. And what we really want is blood flow. So you asked about ice. And ice is, it's like a no-no for me. Yeah. I'm not even a big fan of cold plunges. Well, tell me. Yeah, explain me. Explain why no cold plunge. Well, it, it resists. Yep. It shuts down your nervous system. I mean, it can shut down your nervous system at a high level for about 24 hours. So if you got some kid like, you know, high school, it was kind of popular at my place before I knew any better where the kids are going on a Friday and go cold plunge to feel better for the meat the next day. And then maybe they wouldn't run. well, you know, because it takes the nervous system some time to turn back on once you've kind of suppressed it like that in a cold environment. Interesting.

That's super interesting considering I would have thought in the athletic world it's even more popular because we've obviously it's, we've watched this in, you know, interesting, you know, the cold plunging has been around forever. Yeah. But the popularity of me, right? Exploded. Now everybody's doing it. Then you saw the big pushback in the bodybuilding world because it's like you want that,

that signal after you lift weights to build muscle. So doing it right after you lift weights is not an idea. deal time for the guy who wants to build a bunch of muscles. So that started to fall out there. But there was still being told or touted as you have a athletic training, if you have a high level athlete who's got to recover this, not. But you're saying you don't even look into the body building thing. It's the same thing, right? Like you want that that synthesis, you know, that happens post-workout to be effective and take in nutrition and stuff. You don't want to like suppress that and shut it down necessarily. And I'm not, again, I'm not a science guy to understand

all the, you know, positive things that might happen with that. I just wouldn't necessarily want an athlete doing that too close to a game time. Now, if it makes somebody feel good early in the week, like before a game or whatever, no problem. You know, I don't think it's like bad for you. But, you know, learning more about how oxygen delivery and the stuff with the, with air of the company, I'm just like, I'm all in on that. Tell us a little bit about ETS. So this is something you're doing this new. So explain. Yeah. Yeah. So ETS is a company based out of Minneapolis. Ryan Engelbert, who trained Adam Thielen and his wife Heidi started the company. And they've going since 2010, but they reached out when I moved to Nashville, and we kind of started

conversations, and they ended up buying Kula sports performance for me. And so now I'm a vested partner with them moving forward, helping them grow. They're now 80-plus locations growing fast. Wow. They have a tremendous, tremendous group of people, just faith-based group. And I went to their summit this winter and was just blown away, kind of reinforced, you know, it's really happy that we did partner with them. So I'm helping them with some thought leadership and education stuff and, you know, growth, growth strategies. But, yeah, they're exploding.

I mean, they'll be the largest performance company in the world. Wow. Is their target audience mostly like young athletes? It is. Yeah. I mean, we can serve, you know, the pros and the college kids and stuff. But, I mean, primarily you're going in and, you know, that youth population, 12 to 18 year olds.

And, yeah, they're crushing it. Stand-alone facilities are in gyms? Yeah. Stand-alone. Stand-alone. Yeah. They're all corporately owned. Yeah, so it's not a franchise model.

They have a really unique way of onboarding their coaches. They bring them up to Minneapolis for three months, and they onboard them with all the programming and training and, you know, business acumen and everything they need. And then they, you know, about a month out, they kind of start promoting and marketing in the area, and then they launch and open up. So now you're teaching them your system, all the coaches and going through that course.

They got great systems in place already. I'm just trying to enhance a little bit of the organization with the movement and the speed development, which is a little bit more my forte. And it's going really well so far. So a lot of education. You know, we have 80 directors and I think eight senior directors. Wow. So it's a really fun space to be in.

I just have really fallen in love with them. And they've been great to me. So, yeah. Was it tough selling Kula performance? You know, not really. Okay. I mean, they, they, they, uh, he's like, they made it to get off.

Wasn't that difficult, bro. Well, I mean, you got your name on it, your legacy, you know? They left the Denver building branded, uh, Cool of sports performance, which was a nice, you know, a nice gesture of them. That's cool. And I think it was pretty smart business-wise as well. But, you know, they've been nothing but good to me. I don't feel like I've just been absorbed.

And, you know, they really kind of put me on a pedestal a little bit. And I've been appreciative of that. So, no, I really haven't. I just, you know, for me, I mean, I didn't go into business to like, you know, put my name on a T-shirt. And, you know, I'm a bad self-promoter, I feel like. And so for me, this is like my opportunity to help another 50,000 athletes overnight. that's like the impact and the reach that I want to have. So for me, it was just a, it was a blessing.

What are some of the biggest mistakes, that common mistakes that young athletes are making or coaches in high school are making with their athletes? I think doing too much. It's always it, huh? Well, yeah, I mean, especially nowadays, and I say it until I'm blue in the face, but like the access to information isn't always a good thing.

So they're just doing too much. They're trying to do too much. They don't understand the impact of what all that has. And that even applies to the sport itself, right? We're playing, you know, a million AAU basketball games. We're playing, you know, we're just, we're doing too much. And, you know, I don't think it's that, you know, we're not trying to be a, I'm not trying to say we should be soft and, you know, whatever. But like, it's, it's a, it's a how much output do you have?

You know, how many, how many swings you got in there? You know, we, we haven't had this conversation in a really long time. In fact, we talked with Chad Wesley Smith, a long, long time ago about this. And I'd love for your opinion on this, you know, there was this idea back in the days that, that, you know, I've got a eight-year-old kid and bad he could swing a baseball bat. And so we put him in baseball year-round, every trial, like all that, all that. And that was kind of the old way of doing it. In fact, and what most of the research and science has supported is that having him in different sports would serve him better.

So how do you feel about that? Like, what's your philosophy? When you work with a young kid, you encourage the parents. Yeah. Okay, tell me what, tell me what I mean, what I tell parents now is like, at least until they get to high school, I'd like to see them be a multi-sport athlete. So I do think nowadays it's a lot harder. And I was even at a private school at Valor in Denver there that, you know,

we tried to preach multi-sport even through high school. It was just really difficult, you know. In theory, it sounds good. Yeah. But when it comes to the practical side of like, hey, man, I'm trying to make the baseball team. And those kids are taking cuts and throwing balls all year round. And now I'm coming out of basketball trying to make that team. Yeah.

It's tough. And so, you know, I get that. And so what I kind of shifted my mentality to is like, maybe even through your freshman year, play all the sports. Like get a good exposure, stay away from overuse injuries. You know,

some of those different movement patterns are going to pay off for you down the road. But then at some point, you're probably going to have to put all your eggs in a basket. Yeah. Because otherwise you're going to just fall behind. You know,

there aren't many sports where, I mean, I'd say football is still one of those ones where you might be able to jump in late and still have some success. Yeah. Because it's a little bit in some levels, you know, a lower skill game.

You know, you could jump in and play whatever. Whoa. I don't mean that disrespectfully. I mean, trust me, if you're a quarterback, if you're a wide receiver, if you're running back, I mean, there's different positions that are super skill. But, you know, I'm talking like take baseball, you know, where that level of skill, you know, precision. And it takes, you know, 10,000 hours, I'm sure to, you know, perfect a swing and a pitch and all those things.

And I don't know that you can miss all of that through high school and still be eligible to be a D1 or, you know, potentially a professional athlete. And I'm not delusional. I don't think, you know, most people need to understand. You're not going to play pro-pro anything, you know. So be the best you can be as a JV or, you know, varsity. That's a really cool perspective because that's, no one else's came from that angle. And I think you bring up such great points.

It's like, okay, in theory, if I had the perfect kid that I could train from, you know, elementary all the way up, you'd be in four sports a year all the way to almost college. But the reality is. That resonates so much because it's literally the trajectory. have already, like, with my youngest especially, because he, both my kids, I got him in gymnastics early because of some of the advice of like these world class coaches are like, this is where you want to start and then you're going to move into multi-sport and make sure to get exposure.

And it's like, so he was always like, and he's athletic and he has skill, but it's not at the degree where his knowledge isn't there. Like, so he's going to this sport. He's doing lacrosse. And immediately he's like somewhat talented, but doesn't know the rules and is like way far behind everybody else. And then it just like phased them out. And, you know, and so he's, he's now kind of reducing it down to like two sports.

But, you know, it is a challenge at the end of the day. And something you can't put your finger on until maybe way later. And sometimes it's too late is like, what's their passion like? Yeah. You know, the kid might show all kinds of promise, but he just might not like it that much. Yeah. And if you don't freaking love it, you ain't playing in the NFL or in the NBA. You know what I mean?

So there's got to be an obsession to it that, you know, some kids may. I just think it takes a long time to see that. And you can usually tell. I mean, I've been fortunate, even when I was at Valor. I mean, a lot of my pro athletes came out of that high school. And so I saw them as like freshmen and sophomores. I could have probably tagged the ones and told you that those were going to be the pro athletes. You know, and that was a school that had a high population.

I came from other schools before that. We never had a pro athlete come through. You know what I mean? But you could tell the difference of a Janine Becky, Christian McCaffrey, Mary Best Sant, you know, I could go down the list of Wyndham Clerk. who won the U.S. Open. I mean, that kid used to cut class to go train in the middle of the day up in the weight room. So you can just tell there was something different about those kids that ended up going and having success.

Is gymnastics still one of the best base things to do for your kid? 100%. And why? I think body awareness, a little bit of, you know, body weight, you know, strength, strengthening. And it's, you know, we get people that come into our facilities. Kids six, I want to train. And I'm like, ah, how about gymnastics for a couple of years? come back to us when you're nine.

Right. Yeah. You know, they'll assimilate better, right? Go get them some really quality movement patterns and a little bit of strength exposure and then bring them back to us and we'll start doing some of the speed stuff

because then otherwise what we're doing is kind of mimicking gymnastics. Right. Remedial stuff for them. Just go get it coached up by a gymnastics coach. I love gymnastics. I think it's great. What's one of the most difficult sports that you have to train an athlete for? Or some just harder than others?

I mean, I think sports where there's like multi, multi-capacity or like multi-energy system is probably the harder sports to train like soccer's one of them you know where you kind of have this I mean I I personally think it's more of a speed-based sport but then you're covering seven or eight miles a game so there's kind of an endurance component to it as well so it's not so straightforward right BV in that category too yeah so you got to kind of cover a lot of different you know things I think a sport like tennis you know where it's again endurance there's speed there's hand-eye coordination their strategy like all those things going into it but those are also. challenging. Do you help these young athletes with nutrition or is you just focus straightly, straight on the exercise? No, I mean, for for me, like when I'm working with an NFL guy, typically you're not having to, you know, talk about nutrition too much. They usually have someone cooking for them or they're pretty, you know, coached up on that already. Unless you're a D.K. Metcalf. But my wife does some of our nutrition consulting stuff. So she'll jump in and help out

young athletes if they need help. And again, for her, she tries to keep it really high level and just like, kind of coach them on how to, like, here's just your basic macros. You know, how much protein should you be getting, how many carbs and stay away from this stuff. And I mean, kids sometimes eat so poorly that you don't need to do much to move the needle. I mean, it's crazy. Just have one more protein shaking. I guess. I'm not a whole bag of like, you know, cheese bits. And we're going to be okay. Yeah, yeah. Do you have to, I mean, I brought up D.K. McCamp because I thought I would think that you'd have kids that are younger. Like, well, he eats skittles all day long and look at him.

My answer is you're not D.K. Metcalf. That's my answer, right? It's like, who is the running back that used to eat the Skittles on the sidelines? Oh, that's, uh, Marshawn Lynch. You know, and it's like, yeah, but you're not Marshawn Lynch. So you don't get to do that, you know? When you're a walking freak show, then you can do whatever you want to do. I mean, talk about that, how much, because I'm sure this is also a thing, too,

or parents or even the kid, you know, they have this expectation if I put it in the work. And like, what a role genetics play? Like, you just. Oh, I had a guy who was with the Tennessee Titans last. week and a guy came up to John Shaw, who's the speed coach there. And he, you know, I was standing in the wing a little bit. And he said, hey, coach, so who, who would you say is the best, the best speed coach in, you know, to go see? Who is it? And I, and I tapped them on the shoulder. I said, it's your mom and dad. You know, it's like, it is, genetics play a huge

part in it, right? And there's, you know, there's a few of us to do a pretty good job of molding that and, you know, have some good systems in place. But yeah, genetics play a massive role in a lot of this. Yeah, yeah. Do you, do you follow other coaches outside? Like, like one of my buddies, Paul Fabritz, does all the NBA players. Do you follow any other guys like that? Like, who are some of your favorite peers? I do. I mean, I, I feel like I'm a little bit of a lifelong learner. I'm in a little bit of a slow season of my life right now. You haven't made some changes in business and stuff like that. So, but I mean, on the daily, I'm looking at what other people are doing and studying it. And, you know, I'm back reading super training again,

which is a book that I recommend to every coach. It's, it's a tough read, man. It is really, really like, you know, intricate. And so, but I mean, guys, guys in my kind of neck of the woods, right, guys like Les Spellman, Tony Holler and Ryan Paul up in. There's a new guy that I've kind of started following a little bit, big Jay Schroeder guy up in Seattle, Cal Dietz. You know, there's just a lot of, a lot of guys out there. They have a lot to offer, you know, and I'm not going to go listen to them and then just

completely change what I'm doing. Yeah. But I can always get 1% better. Yeah. You know, so yeah, I'm a, I'm always poking in on what people are doing. What's one of the recent, more recent things you've learned where you're like, oh, that's interesting. I think I'll try that. Yeah, I think actually it's funny because we were down it outside the box in Florida with the Z-Tread guys.

And they brought in, it's outside the box. So they bring in these guys that are, you know, a little bit outside thinkers. David Weck was there. If you guys know, yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaking outside. He's a guy. He's a character. But you know what?

He's got some really good concepts. He's interesting. You know, he's an interesting cat. And so Ryan was a guy that showed up. He had never actually spoke at a clinic before, but he's trained like hundreds of NFL guys. And he's a J. Schroeder guy. And so he brought a lot of that kind of neural training stuff. And it reinforced some of the things that I had done in the past and gave me some even new, fresh ideas on, you know, how to do it.

And I spent an hour with him on the phone after the conference. We talked. He kind of walked me through his system. And I'm actually going to take a trip up there, hopefully in the fall to see him. Yeah, yeah. Because he's really good at what he does. And so, yeah, I mean, you know, that's kind of some of the newer stuff that I'm looking at right now is just, you know, how to, how to manipulate the neural side of the neuro mechanical structural.

Have you dove into David Weck stuff? I mean, I've gone through a lot of his stuff. Like in his big thing is like the coiling. Yeah, head over foot coiling. You know, he's got his finger stuff that he does. And yeah,

you know, for some of it with David, like it's the conceptually it makes sense. I think that practically for me, you know, when I'm working with athletes, I kind of wonder sometimes, well,

how do I, how do I make that happen? Sure. Now I have used. I just got one of his, uh, ProPulse vests. I don't know if you've seen those, but it's a weight vest.

Yeah. And inside the weight, it's got a spring at the bottom. So the weight actually comes down on the spring as you're loading. But then as you unload that spring, you almost get a little momentum off the ground. Interesting. It's actually really cool. So you can do everything from like plymetrics to sprinting. And I actually worked to walk in the other day, three and a half miles of listening to myself,

kuk, kakung, kakung, kakung, you know, as I'm walking drove my wife. Oh, that is interesting. I mean, it almost would give you similar like band assisted to like, plyometric type movements. Exactly. Yeah, that's kind of... Now, you know, he invented the Bosu ball. Yep. Oh, he did. He did. And so this is this ProPulse vest is kind of his latest invention. Those foot platforms that are like, yeah, that's right. That's right.

And he does those, he has those things that his little... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the concept of the vest is similar to the, to the hand weights. Yeah. Oh, that's cool. That's interesting. Supplements? Do you recommend supplements to some of your athletes? Yeah. I mean, you know, I try to steer clear of it a little bit with the younger athletes, right? I mean, even up and through high school, I just kind of feel like, you know, I think one thing my dad had a big impact on me on was like, don't start supplement until you've maybe maxed out yourself naturally.

And even though supplements can just be an enhancement, they're not like, you're not taking steroids or something ridiculous like that. But, you know, even like creatine, he always had me hold off on that and it was just coming out back then. But he's like, let's max you out. And then once you've maxed out, then we'll start supplementation. So I think creatine, as much research has been done on it, if an athlete nowadays isn't taking it, they're foolish.

I think it's got so many great positive benefits, you know, fish oils, you know, just some of the basics, minerals and stuff. I don't necessarily promote like a brand or, you know, big into supplements. I just don't like people to have to, I see your element box over here. My wife deals that stuff like a crack dealer. And we love that for, you know, the salt and potassium stuff. That's awesome. Have you, with the pro athletes, I would think that you're getting a lot of people probably asking you about peptides. and so like that.

Is that a common thing that you got to like, again? Yeah, I don't get hit with it a lot. Oh, really? I don't just because, like, especially with the NFL guys, there's so many that are on the banned substance list that it's kind of a non-option. It used to be a couple years ago, right? It was just a few years ago.

They took BPC and put it on the list because, I mean, most of our athletes were taking that, you know, by the, as much as they can get their hands on. Yeah. But now that's banned, and I think just about, just about all of them are on the Wada list now. Oh, they are all in the Wado. I didn't know that.

What's interesting is I don't know how they would test for them but still. Right, exactly. Well, and that's the thing. Even with BPC, it's got like a two-hour shelf life or something. So I don't know how you'd get caught, but... Plus your body makes it naturally. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Oh, interesting. Okay. I didn't know that. I didn't know it was on the why. Did you know it was on the while? Oh, yeah. All of them are. Oh, yeah. I didn't know that. I didn't know that's on one. Yeah. That's very, very cool. Well, that's great. So, so all these years, working with athletes, uh, do you like it as much as you did in the beginning? More or less? I do, man. I really do. Like I, you know, maybe I don't miss being on the floor eight to 10 hours a day and like,

you know, grinding. But I still look forward to, you know, working with an athlete, putting a program together, solving the problem, right? Because there's, especially I think now the difference is, it used to just be right a workout for all these kids and it's pretty much going to move, you know, it's going to work for all of them. And now it's a much different, you know, problem solving formula of, you know, hey, this athlete's got this knee issue coming out of the season. So how are we going to mitigate that and get him back and then we'll start our speed work. And, you know, there's a lot more planning that goes in. I have my NHL guy reach out to me last week.

Like, hey, I got a, you know, torn or a strained MCL. Like, I need to get stronger here. And here's what they're recommended. What do you have for me? So now I get the guy, you know, go in the lab and kind of figure out what we're going to do with him. So I still do love it. I mean, I right now is a little bit of a weird time for me because I'm not actively

training. I don't have an active gym that I'm necessarily involved with outside of the ETS, you know, stuff that I'm doing. And so it's kind of giving me time to, you know, put some ideas in place. I'm working on an ebook that we'll put. put out this summer on some training stuff. And so some digital, you know, products and assets that I've never really had time to do. So, yeah, I still love it.

For someone who's a personal trainer listening right now and they want to get into your field, what direction should they go? It's funny. I had this phone call a month ago. And I would say one of two things. Like if you have a real passion for it, you got to dive all the way in. I don't think that personal trainers that come out of that world that dabble in sports performance are ever going to have a lot of success.

They might have enough knowledge to be dangerous, but you got to go all in. And so my advice would be, if you want to do that, go all in. And by all in, it might mean an unpaid internship. It might mean taking a course with,

you know, us or Altus or, you know, whoever to really dive all the way deep because it's just, they're two different worlds. Totally. They really are.

There's a huge difference between trying to help your average, you know, mom do some athletic things versus training and athlete. Exactly. And I think a personal trainer who has some sort of, you know, sports performance background can help the average mom be a little more athletic with that, but you ain't taking no athlete to another level. Like that's a whole other game. I mean,

I know sports performance coaches that have been doing it for 10, 15 years and never really got their break to work with some big name or pro athlete, right? It just takes a lot of time to be really good at what you're doing and then have somebody take a chance on you before you actually reach that. And so just to be like, I'm going to dabble, like I'm going to keep being a personal trainer. And there's some damn good personal trainers. Don't get me wrong. I'm going to hire one of you guys to help me get big and muscle. But yeah, I think you got to be, you know, to your point, you got to be all in. Yeah. Yeah, I can see that. And it's also one of the harder fields or segments of our space to build a career. Yep. Yeah. Being a personal trainer, building your career is tough. Now you're going to

go into like specialized athletes. It's very difficult. And that's what I loved. That's what was one of the draws with ETS is honestly it's created opportunity for the young aspiring sports performance coach that is going to make 40 grand for the rest of their life at some college, you know, unless you get a break, you know, here and there, but that's pretty small. And it gives them an opportunity. I mean, they, you know, they start with a pretty good little salary and they can make upwards of six figures if they hustle. And that just isn't, that's an anomaly in our industry. So it's, they have a set up to help out some of those younger coaches that want to do it as a, as a career. That's very cool. Yeah. Well, Brian, this has been great, man.

Awesome. It's good to have you back on, my friend. It's great to have somebody, like, a really good coach, you know, on our show talking to athletes and trainers. So I appreciate it coming on. You guys are always a blast, man. Can we take my paste? That's right. I know. I'll get you all right.

So it improves blood flow. Whatever is can you rub that on? We'll talk about that off here. Thanks, Brian. Thank you. Appreciate you, bro. Thank you. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump.

If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at Mind Pumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes Maps Anabolic, Maps Performance, and Maps Aesthetic, nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos,

the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam. and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now, plus other valuable free resources at Mind Pumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes, and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is Mind Pump. Thank you.