The Fumblerooski Podcast - Interview With Brian Cody -A Fumblerooski Special

Episode Date: April 23, 2022

Adam Wright sits down in an interview with New England Bearcats LB Brian Cody in an interview asking him about life as a Semi-Pro!

here's edelman broken up and the pass is no sign yet edelman comes down with a football they're saying it's a catch against. It's in. What? Takes! Side line! Touchdown! Unbelievable! Swings it way down the field to Watkins! Sammy Watkins for the touchdown! Good evening.

You are listening to the Fumble Rooski podcast by Power 88 Dean Radio and Fans Only Sports Network. I am Adam Wright in this special episode. So, as I mentioned last week, I'm interning for the semi-pro team, the New England Bearcats, doing play-by-play. And I will also be interviewing players right here on the show, on the Fumble Rooski podcast. It's going to be great. We had Chris Martin, the wide receiver, last week. He was awesome. This week we are going towards the defense,

and we have outside linebacker Brian Cody from the team. Brian is a coworker of mine from our local YMCA. Shout out to the Burroughs branch and he's also a personal trainer and he's a personal friend of mine. So Brian how are you doing tonight? I'm doing great Adam. It's a pleasure to be here man. Thank you for having me. I'm ready to talk some football so. Yeah it's gonna be great. All right so how about you introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey through football. Yeah. So, right. My name is Brian Cody. I play outside linebacker for the New England Bearcats now. But I've been playing football for about two years at this point, roughly. How I got into it

was kind of interesting. So obviously, you know, our quarterback, Frankie, right? Guy from the local boroughs, Jim, great dude, runs the juice bar there. But we had a long standing relationship. And before football, I was actually looking to play competitive basketball, either overseas or at some local events on the East Coast. And once COVID hit, we had, right, a lot of cancellations, a lot of plans fell through. And it looked like a lot of the things I was doing on that end actually weren't going to work out. So I had been spending all this time in the gym, working on like my athletics and everything, getting conditioned to play, you know, high level competitive sports. And then everything got shut down. So Frankie came along and was like, hey, I got this team,

actually a different team, the Mass Warriors, that they're having tryouts come through, see if you like it, see if it's something you'd be into. And I was like, yeah, sure. I got nothing else going on. You know, I do. I do my own personal training business, but that allows me to have a lot of free time. So I went, I checked it out. I had a great time. Great group of guys. Just like the entire aspect of it. I loved it. The contact, hitting people, getting hit, everything. Phenomenal. And I was, like, hooked immediately. So I spent about a year with the Warriors just working on, like, understanding the game, a lot of, like, just positioning, things like that. And we had a, we'll call it a rebuild season.

Wasn't so great, but, you you know it's a game of runs right we'll get next season which led me to once that team once we our playoff run ended we hopped over we had like some time off and um Frankie once again came to me and said hey I'm playing for this other team in the short season you want to hop on on with me? And I was like, yeah, man, I'm there. Sign me up. So I went over there and now I'm outside linebacker again. And I love it. That's great, man. That sounds, that sounds awesome. So you, you mentioned that you, you were, you were actually planning on going into, into play some, you know, some pickup basketball. But obviously, basketball is a very different, different sport than football. So what was it like the process of sort of being able to transition from basketball into football? Well, that's a that's a great question, actually, because there's

a lot of like, right, the athletics are there, the footwork is kind of there in terms of like being able to react and like, you know, figure out what's going on, spatial awareness, all that. The biggest things I noticed are like and these might be small things to some other people, but like, for example, you know, you catch a football like catching an egg in the fingertips and you cradle it in. Right. Catching a basketball, it's straight into your palm, right? So like you want it to hit here straight down to the ground. So one of the biggest things that I had to learn was just how to catch instead of trying to like grab the ball into my palm like that or like clamp down on it, being able to cradle and things like that. And then the other big thing that I noticed is, is right basketball is a lot of indirect contact so right it's physical but not to the same degree that like football is physical

right um i would even go as far as saying like basketball i would say is like more verbally aggressive right because like it's just constant like one-on-one back and forth like smack talking right things like that and that's that's when you're on the line it's not like when you're running down the court like you know so in basketball you'll be running post post and people will be just chirping you the whole time. Whereas I feel like when I'm guarding people on routes, like nobody's talking, we're all just focused to all go mode. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Well, the last thing I want to say is like going back to the contact is basketball, right? Like you never want to go straight into somebody. It's a charge, right?

Football. You're trying to go through people, right? You want to hit this dude and then you want to hit the dude behind him. So that mental switch of going, okay, I can, I can just hit this dude. It would took a lot of like getting used to. So do you have any, do you have any examples of where that, that, that, that different was actually like really apparent where you're like, damn, this is football. You know, is there any, is there any, do you have any, any examples of that?

I can, yeah, perfect example, right? Very first time I played in a game, kickoff, I was like L5 or L4 and running down. And, you know, like I made, I made eye contact with the guy in front of me. Ball was way over to the other side i was like oh we're not really in this like this doesn't really involve us so like in basketball there's a lot of waiting around or like you know you put get in your position you wait for the ball

to come to you to do something there's off ball movement but not the same so i'm running down and i start to ease off because i'm like all right we're not really involved in this this guy lays me out like just absolutely lights me up and I was like oh shit part of my language oh dang this stuff can happen you know like you don't want to dial back at any point it's all go all the time yeah definitely man I could I could definitely definitely understand the difference because I've, I've done a little bit of a little bit of both. And, you know, one, one is obviously, you know, it's an actual contact sport. The other one, it's just, there's going to be contact, but I mean, it's not technically supposed to happen. It does happen, but it's like when somebody goes through someone

in basketball, there's going to be a penalty. When, when you go through someone in, in, in football someone in football, that's considered a good play and you get fist bumps from everybody. So it's interesting, the difference. Yeah. And just it's that split second where you're like not used to hitting somebody where you hesitate and that's when you get wrong. Yeah, definitely. So I want to do, I want to sort of look, look over towards semi-pro in general. So I asked, I asked Chris this and he, and his, his answer was, it was interesting as well. Shout out Chris Martin. So there's a lot of media coverage of what life as a pro is like, but, but there's really not much on semi-pro athletes. So would you be able to take us through a little bit of, you know, what it's like to be as life as a semi

pro athlete? So honestly, I'd say on a day to day, pretty similar to like most daily lives, right? Like I have my other job, my personal training business. Um, and that is like i do that full time um traveling for games is definitely not as uh luxurious as you would think you know it's a lot of carpooling a lot of like you know making sure that you can get where you need to go uh obviously we don't get paid like some of the guys in semi-pro they get paychecks most of us don't right we play for a lot of game um and then more directly into like the football aisle right like you got guys like they live and breathe football they go home they do their workouts they watch their nutrition you know they're making sure they're taking care of their bodies things like that they show up on game day they ball out right but the

other side of semi-pro is you get guys who just like to wear the jersey and like to show up so it's uh it can be a bit of a circus at times i'll say that much but um overall it's pretty standard you know like your daily daily grind go practice back back to the daily grind, go to your game, so on and so forth. It's not bad, though. So would you be able to elaborate a little bit more about, you know, players kind of just, you know, they're there and they obviously love to play, but they're kind of just there to wear the jerseys. Would you be able to elaborate a little bit on that? Oh yeah, sure. And no disrespect to those guys at all. That's just not how I approach the game, but like, you know, with some pro we're not looking at the best of

the best, the cream of the crop. Those guys are going to the league, right? They're going to like higher end teams, arena football, things like that. We get guys from practice squads who come and work with us. But for the most part, you get a lot of general pop. So people who enjoy football or guys who played football in high school, college, and are kind of trying to relive those glory days or hold on to those glory days, if you will. And this is the biggest thing I'll say, right? There's a certain level of discipline that comes from pro sports and high level sports. Semi-pro, while it can be a high level sport, does not have that same level of

discipline, right? So what I mean when I say you get guys who show up and they just want to wear the jerseys, like you'll have guys who show up to the game, drinking booze, smoking cigarettes, whatever it is. And it's like, all right, if you were a high level athlete, you probably wouldn't be doing those things right before the game or during the game at halftime, things like that. So it's like, again, nothing against those guys, just not how I approach it. Right. So it appears that it's kind of one of those things where it's like again nothing against those guys just not how i approach it right so it appears that it's kind of one of those things where it's like you know they just they just you know they love the game so much that they just don't want to you know they still want to try and play but you know they're not looking to become like you know these all-time great athletes who are going to be in the nfl making big money being on espn uh or sunday night football and just you know they're just kind

of looking to you know continue playing because they they just don't want you know that time to be over is that kind of that basically the best way i can put it is it right it's a community and like there are people who just want to be part of that community. And that doesn't necessarily mean getting on the field and chasing down the ball or whatever. For them, it means just showing up and helping out and being a part of the community. Yeah, that's great. So I wanted to touch a little bit on... So you're a personal trainer um and a pretty good one if i might add you you've taught me quite a few exercises in our time

with the ymca actually most of the exercises that i know that those are ones that you taught me but um how do you so as an athlete who's also a personal trainer, what kind of workouts do you do and how do you structure them for the best performance on the field? Great question. I'll talk about my workout first. So I'm lucky having been in this field for a long time that I get to work with a lot of high level guys who have worked with pro athletes and things of that nature. So I currently am working with Chris Barnard based out of Florida. He's associated with Elliott Hustle Strength Camp. I don't know if you've heard of it, but all great stuff to check out. So right now I have a four day split where I'm working two upper body days, two lower body days a week. It's usually a combination of plyometrics. So like vertical

jumps, sprint drills, things like that, followed by your basic like strength training routine, bench press, pull ups, sit ups, all that good stuff. And then you finish off with your core, your mobility and your mobility, and your like prehab exercises. So things that'll get you right for the next time you're in the gym. As a trainer, if I'm programming for an athlete, so programming for athletes, right, a lot of it depends on the requirements of their sports. So like if you have a soccer player, you know, their transition is they're running, running, running, sprinting, running, running, running, sprinting. Football players are sprint, stop, sprint, stop. Basketball players,

that kind of sprint, stop, sprint, stop, with a little bit of distance running sprinkled in between if you get a lot of fast breaks back and forth. So you have to first look at what it is that the athlete needs for their specific sport. We'll talk about fall specifically, right? So because it's got a lot of that stop and go, one is you want explosive athletes, so people who are moving quickly, but also creating a lot of force as they're moving. So you want to look at drills like, you know, 40-yard dashes, two-point starts, three-point starts. All those sprinting mechanics are great. So anything that's going to help you with your running form on a straightforward path is something great to incorporate into a workout routine. You want to think about the requirements

when you're playing the game. So there's not a lot of overhead pressing for football players, right? Basketball players, they got to go up, get rebounds, things like that. And then they fight up here for the ball. If you're a receiver, you may be up here, but you're still bringing the ball down. So you want to make sure that you're working forward motions, reverse motions, and laterally. So from your side to side, those are the key things to focus on. So drills like your bench press, like the things I said

before, right? Your bench press is great for that forward push. Pull-ups are great. Your back, your stabilizer muscles through your shoulder so you're not getting injured. And then you got your classic squats, deadlifts so that you can push a lot of weight with your legs. Do you want anything a little more specific than that? No, that's, that's pretty, that's pretty, that's pretty specific. But, um, is, is there a sort of, is there kind of a difference between sort of, you know, when you're, when you're in season versus during the off season? That's a great question, right? So ideally, when I'm working with off seasons last about three months for most athletes, right? So you're working in a three month period, which is a lot of time to build up muscle. And that's the focus. So when you're out of season,

you want to build up strength, and you actually want to get to the point where you're peaking right as your season starts, right? So most people hit a plateau. You want to hit that plateau right as your season starts so that you're operating at your highest capacity during that season. And then once you transition into season, what you're doing is you're working on smaller movements, focused on maintaining where you've been at, right? So if you just play football and you stop lifting completely, right, those movements are vastly different and require way different like systems and like certain body mechanics to accomplish those tasks. So what you want to do is you want to make sure that you're peaking right as you get to the season. And then as you get into your season,

you want to make sure that the taper off that happens is as minimal as possible. So just to give you an idea, I have a soccer player who's in season right now. I still meet with him three times a week. What we do is we'll go through basic hip mobility, spine mobility, and shoulder mobility, make sure that he can move in the full range of motion, make sure that he's getting proper strides and everything. We'll look at his running mechanics, making sure that there's any tweaks that we need to make. We can make those and have them be applicable for his next game.

And then from there, it's just basic like, you know, lunges, squats at lighter weights, usually 70% of what they're maxing out at, something like that, just to make sure that the muscles are still used to strength training when they're out of season and then we transition back into that strength building phase. So kind of when you're exercising at 70%, you know, 70% capacity. Is there, is it, is it a possibility that your, your muscles become, uh, more, you know, uh, more dependent on, you know, that, on that weight and that becomes their, that becomes their max for how much they can, they can lift. So you should expect your maxes to drop a little bit during the season just because you're not creating those same adaptations the way you were out of season.

But you shouldn't there shouldn't be any concern about dropping off like 30, 40 pounds on your squat or anything like that. Right. So let's say you have 100 pound squat and you're working at 70 percent. You're still right. You're still playing your sport. You're still strengthening those muscles in a different way. You're working on what's called aerobic capacity or muscular endurance. And that kind of training still stimulates muscle growth. So if you're doing that alongside a little bit of regimented strength training, you're actually more likely to see improvements going into your next off season than anything. Does that make sense? Yeah, that makes sense. So how much off your max to lose would it be like a problem? So like when you're so a better, a better way of addressing this question is to say

that most athletes suffer from injuries due to repetitive use, right? So if you're running every day, all the time, the muscles, your body's eventually going to find the easiest way for you to move. And that might not necessarily be the best way or the safest way, right? It's just the easiest, like your body's like, okay, we got to do this. And eventually, wear and tear, it breaks down. When you're doing strength training, right, when you're doing your 70% squat, you're still strengthening those ligaments and tendons and working on your bone density, which is going to long-term allow you to continue to improve. When you don't do those things coupled together, right? If you're doing too much of one or the other, your body just breaks down. I feel like I'm not addressing your question. No, that's all right. So it, it, it appears that you're more that you're a little, you're more correct and correct me if I'm wrong. You you're you're more concerned about overworking yourself rather than in in season rather than overworking and uh than underworking yourself and uh and losing a

little bit of strength yes exactly right like underworking if you're in season that's more I hate to say this but that's kind of right, like on you, like, you know, if you're pushing yourself. So if you come home and you didn't push yourself at practice or at your game, right, chances are you're probably not pushing yourself in the same way. And if you're seeing drop off in weight, it's I would say it's more likely because of one of those reasons, as opposed to, you know, like your muscles atrophying or, you know, your muscle strength, your gains going away, if you will. We hear this a lot with runners where they talk about like, oh, you know, like if I do too much cardio, it's going to take away from my muscle growth. But we know that that is inherently not true. If anything, when you do like, you know, 20 reps of an exercise, 40 reps of an exercise,

we're talking about that muscular endurance again, and there's a little bit of hypertrophy that goes on with that, which is muscular growth. Again, what I'm saying is you should see growth even during your regular season. And what will happen is when you get to your regular season, your numbers might drop a little bit. But by when you get to your regular season, your numbers might drop a little bit, but by the time you're at next season, your next season starts up, your max should still be over what your last max was. Right. Because at that point you still, you might've lost a little bit, but you still kind of, you built up a lot of muscle that previous off season. So you're still, you know, a lot

better than where you were at the beginning muscle that previous off season. So you're still, you know, a lot better than where you were at the beginning of the last off season. That is correct. And the other thing, if you want to just throw that all out the window and take away one thing, I'll say this. The strength drop that you see coming out of a season is typically related to movement patterns, not to your overall. It's like riding a bike. It might not be beautiful the first time you do it, but after a couple of tries, it'll come back to you. Certainly. I just want to transition a little bit more towards the play on the field. So going into games, what kind of mindset do you set when you're about to play um in in any game um so for me personally like you're looking to hurt people not in a malicious way but like a very different mindset from when

like you're walking around every day it's you know like you want to get aggressive you want to get physical and you just want to kind of get into this state where you're like, you're ready to do damage to someone because one, it protects you. And two, like, you know, if I'm playing against somebody, I want them to give me their best. And if I'm going out there and I'm like worried about hurting somebody or I'm worried about like somebody's feelings. Right. I'm definitely not playing at my best. Right. Because I'm pulling away. I'm pulling back. So I want to go out there and my mindset is to like crack skulls and just break bones. Awesome. So, so your mindset is kind of just a lot of mainly kind of aggression and sort of setting, setting yourself to think, you know, well,

the other guy is the, the opposing team is going to, is going to come out the same way because this is, this is football that it's very physical and if you're not ready to play then they will be kind of like that right what's the quote it's a game played by big fast strong men right so the goal is to be strong be fast hit hard and you have like talk about belichick you have a to do, you want to go out there and do it to the best of your ability. My job is to tackle and hit a linebacker tackling guys blowing through guys forcing fumbles you're ripping the ball out all the time that's that's aggression kind of setting that mindset because they're going to be aggressive too you know it's a violent game right so you want to have a violent mindset if you go out there with something other than that you're not bringing your

best to the field certainly um so do you have any do you have any superstitions when you're about to play? None that I care to share, but I got a couple. I'll tell you, I always put on my left shoe first. Left shoe first? Has anything bad happened when you put on your right shoe first? Rolled ankles. That's something that's something that's translated from uh basketball for me nice nice yeah so that that's uh so every so is there

do you have a back backstory to that sort of how that kind of came to be yeah so i um as as bs as this may sound i swear to you like i was thinking about it for a couple of weeks. I tore my ligament in my ankle playing basketball. It took me about six months to heal. So when I came back, I just was always like loose on my right shoe. And I just like I just nurtured it a lot because it was like a pain in the butt to get my right shoe on. So I always started with my left. And I had one day where I was like, all right, I'm going to put my right shoe on first and just deal with this.

And the first play that I was out on the court, I rolled my ankle again. And I was like, no, it's got to be the right shoe versus the left shoe. I told you it's silly, but like, I swear there's some truth to that. So it sounds like it's a little bit of a luck thing so you know that for that one time that one time you put on the you put on the right shoe first you get an injury right away yeah i mean i knew why yeah that's so that's how you know that's how you know that it's it's something there's something going on there some sort of voodoo or something adam look man i would i would i would put my cleat on first saturday but i'm telling you like we don't want anything bad you don't do that don't put on your leg i will but you you want to i i

don't i don't know if i want to test that theory i'm not i'm not trying to go for rolled ankles any injuries or anything worse because i mean as you said football's really physical what if that luck takes it to the next level yeah man nah outside of that though um i got a couple of things that i do but those are those are on the down low those are secrets all right all right you can have your secrets i'm very you're making me more intrigued though you know that right you know it makes me more intrigued when i when you hear well i have some but it's on the it's on the down low you know you know how you know what i'm saying i don't know

what are we what are we allowed to say on this show if it's any swear word if it's any swear words you could just say just say like it's if it's f, just F word or something like that. If it's a sexual reference, I guess that's fine. Yeah, you know, like I said, we got some stuff. We can talk about it at another time. Maybe you're off. No worries. No worries. So going sort of a little more towards the field of play.

So unfortunately, you were only able to play for four snaps this past game. With expectations for you to be starting this week, what kind of contributions do you expect to bring towards this Bearcats defense for tomorrow's game? Well, in terms of our linebackers, I'm definitely on the more agile side, a little more athletic. So if we run any kind of coverages, things like that, it's going to be locked down, done deal. You know, flaps, hooks and curls, nothing there. That'll be my big contribution.

I'm hoping a couple plays in at DN, get some edge rushing in. We'll see how the game goes, but I just plan on locking down whoever's in front of me, securing my area, making sure the ball doesn't go there. So looking, so looking at, so looking at playing at the end versus a linebacker,

which would you say is your, is your best, the is sort of your best position to be in rushing the passer versus playing in coverage. Definitely. My strong, there's a definitely planning coverage. uh, rushing the passer versus playing in coverage? Definitely. I, my strong dudes are definitely playing in coverage. Um, a lot of that comes from basketball and reading defenders, right?

So there's a little bit of natural, just like being able to understand where somebody's hips are angled towards what they're doing, things like that. Um, I don't mind pass rushing, but like, there's some big boys down there and I'm pretty confident that I can knock the ball out of the air, stay running. And I'm not afraid of anyone by any means, but you know, I see my D end compared to me and I go, Larry, you got this man. It's all you. He was two 70, six, five. If he can do a better job than I can, I'll give it to him. Yeah, definitely. Do you have, so across all your time in semi-pro football, is there, do you have an all, all-time favorite memory from, from playing? Look, I'm going to be honest, last game, that win was a pretty nice feeling because coming from last

season where I was on a team and so for the, like for my last team, just to give you some backstory, we had like a two and eight season. And the worst part of that was it was not by any means on the defense. Like we would hold guys to zero points the entire game. And then our quarterback would throw like three interceptions for pick sixes and we lose so i went through a whole season dealing with that where like again like onside kick we get the ball back quarterback throws an interception uh force a fumble quarterback like fumbles the ball again other team takes it back for a score things like that um you know small frustrations here and there, part of the rebuild. Uh, so coming into this game and just having like such a dominant win right off the bat with like

a group of guys that I really enjoy playing with was a really nice feeling. I wish I got in a little bit more, but honestly, like that, that's probably one of the, that is probably a highlight for me. So looking at that that game so what were your thoughts on the the defenses uh you know their their performance being able to only allow six points and i believe i believe though that uh i don't even think that was on defense i think that was on that was the uh on the offense correct so exactly exactly what i'm talking about where um defense does everything right you do everything you're supposed to, but still lose games. That's definitely a frustration for me.

You know, you hate to see that on any on any team. Definitely. So is there so is there sort of I understand you don't you we've talked a little bit off camera before. You're not you're not a big follower of the NFL or anything, but is there any sort of athlete, anyone who you sort of look up to and kind of model your game after, you know, that's, uh, I've never really thought about it. I guess if I had to draw any kind of comparison and that's tough, that's a tough question, man. Yeah. I know you're not a big, you're not a big follower of the nfl um so i and

i do know that you're big on you're big on the nba so you could you know tap into tap into there if you'd like if you have anybody i mean that's okay yeah i will say in terms of a mentality like um i like to think of myself a lot like i uh a lot of comparisons to like cp3 but a little bit of like right being able to see what's going on and i i feel like there's a lot of comparisons to like CP3, but a little bit of like, right. Being able to see what's going on. And I, I feel like there's a lot of that that translates to the linebacker position where you have to be able to observe,

right. Watch your zone, make sure you know what's going on and then react to things going on in other places. So just in terms of being able to survey the field or the court, whatever it may be and react accordingly. That accordingly, that's probably, I would say, the comparison that I would draw. So CP3 is kind of a player who, I mean, it's a little bit outside of my area of expertise as a football guy, but I understand that he is one of those players, especially as a point guard guard who prides himself kind of in making everybody else kind of better around him do you see sort of a comparison there where he's sort of just

trying to distribute the ball and just put the team in the best position to win yeah like i said like um in terms of putting the team in the best position to win if i got a job to do like if he's like you know you're blitzing um or you know, you got man coverage, zone coverage, whatever it may be, doing that to the best of my ability is going to allow my teammates to do whatever they need to do to the best of their ability. It's not as direct as like distributing the ball. But if I can do what I need to do and cover my zone, my teammates will trust me. They'll be able to cover their zone more efficiently. And in that way, we elevate each other's level of play certainly i mean it's it's definitely like just just in the nature of football it's a team sport it's one of those things where if one guy at one position is doing their job

not as well as they could then you know the rest of the team really suffers and it really go just trickles down to you know every single position so i can certainly to, you know, every single position. So I can certainly understand where, you know, trying to just, just doing your own job could kind of, you know, could help make, um, could really help the entire team out. Exactly. Awesome. Uh, so just a couple of questions here. This has been, this has been awesome. So what is one thing that you've learned, uh, in football that you probably wouldn't have if had you not played at all how to channel aggression in a very specific type of way yeah and and so i guess to elaborate on that a little bit just like for me a lot of like there's a little bit of my like personal stuff but like growing up um you know taught to not be aggressive i had two sisters

you know very like stay calm you know you don't hit them whatever it may be you know what i mean yeah like just be a calm kid and so with football you know it's a very healthy outlet and a way of channeling aggression into something that is productive as opposed to destructive something like that um and like as you know like i don't follow the nfl i wasn't really big into football until the past couple of years so a lot of this while it may not be new to other people is relatively new to me interesting probably one of the biggest things i've learned and then also just like i'll say this people talk about like what's who's more athletic basketball players or football players basketball right they're athletic they're crazy they're explosive but until you're jumping

and getting hit by another like 220 pound guy in the air um who's literally just trying to knock you out of the air not go for like a block or something like that very very different level of physicality yeah i can certainly under understand uh what you're where you're coming from as you know earlier in the show you mentioned your adjustment to the game was kind of sort of there there's a lot more aggression in in uh in football than there is in basketball with that being a contact sport and kind of learning how to regulate that uh because there is aggression but not letting that sort of um but sort of being how to regulate that because there is aggression, but not letting that sort of, but sort of being able to control that a little bit and kind of monitor that.

Is that kind of. Yeah. Well, it's like for basketball, right? Like you get angry, you can't hit anybody or do it. You don't throw the ball or anything like that.

But football, right? Like you get angry, you can hit that guy twice as hard as you hit him last time. And it's completely acceptable. So that is when I say like, when you talk about like finding that level or channeling it or moderating it, that's what I think about is like, yeah, you can moderate it, but you can also escalate it in a safe way. Nice. Has there ever been, has there ever been a time where you just got angry and just decided to hit a dude as hard as you possibly could?

Every time somebody hikes the ball. Nice. I like the energy. But were you ever provoked? Was there ever a time where somebody was just being not the best sport and you're just, all i gotta i gotta i gotta absolutely cream this guy on the next play oh yeah you get guys in practice all the time who like you know like first couple of plays we're all taking it easy we're all like you know messing around shooting the breeze whatever it is and you get some guy who's some hothead who like has clearly never played a day in his life talking like all sorts of smack talking all types of crazy

and you go all right dude like you know you let him get the ball the next time and you light him up and you know like playing linebacker i got lots of opportunities to do that so give him a little welcome to the big leagues son exactly football i like i like this energy it's right here get him right in the chest knock knock them on their asses. I love it. So just one more question. So what is one piece of advice that you would offer for that kid, young adult, or anyone who's just starting out in football

and is looking to make an impact on the game? Somebody who's just starting off. Are you talking about like a semi-pro career or just at any level? In general, at any level. Just starting out and looking to get the most out of their experience playing football. I would say the biggest thing is to honestly stick with it, especially through the first couple of weeks, because there's going to be a lot of things that like if you're just starting off that you might not like and that could be anything from

the physicality of the game to like the way you know stereotypical football players are like i'm not saying everybody's like that but like you know um there's certain like personalities and things like that and not everybody always meshes. Like I've seen lots of players get in fights with like other players over stuff completely unrelated to the game. So if you run into things like that, if you butt heads with your teammates, right,

that's just part of it. And if you stick through it, eventually you'll find like what you're good at, what your talents are, how you can help the team and just grow from that. But the important thing is to stick with it. That's great, man. Um, so do you have any, anything else that you'd, you'd like to say before we, uh, before we end the show tonight? Um, if it's cool to plug my business. Yeah, that'd be great. Well, again, everybody,

my name is Brian Cody. Uh, I run above the Athletics based out of Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. We offer online and in-person training, work with all types of athletes from every age. So if you ever have any questions or need to reach out, you can find me. My Instagram is B underscore D-O-D-Y underscore. And my website above the bar athletics.org that's awesome man you guys heard him go check him out brian thank you so much for coming on to the show tonight we loved i loved getting all of your insight on the game and sort of you know your your insight on you know being on the training side of it as that really is up your alley. Speaking from personal experience, like I said, man, you showed me – like when I first walked into that gym, I had no idea what the hell I was doing.

I had no idea what back exercises there were for just if I was just – and I wasn't looking to be – to do anything athletic or anything. I was just trying – I wasn't training for anything. I was just looking to do anything athletic or anything. I wasn't training for anything. I was just looking to build things up. You showed me all of these back exercises. I've taken those, and I've made some modifications myself just as I've gotten stronger. But the basic structure of it, that hasn't changed.

So I thank you. I haven't gotten the chance to thank you for that, man, because, you know, a couple of months ago, I was able to reach a goal I've been trying to hit for a long time, which is to hit to bench 225 pounds for 10 reps. I never thought I would get to that point. And you helped me get to that point, helped me just be able to learn how to get up there and wait. So, guys, check him out. This guy really is the real deal. I can speak from personal experience.

But anyways, that'll do it for us tonight. Thank you for listening to us. Be sure to tune in to us live Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7.30 on Twitter and Facebook through Fans Only Sports Network. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel. We also have all our episodes available on Spotify, Spreaker, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Google Podcasts, and so much more. Also, be sure to follow our Instagram at FumbleRooski underscore podcast to keep up with our podcasts and the latest coverage on the NFL.

Brian, thank you so much for joining us. Guys, they are playing tomorrow. So Bearcats' next game is Saturday, April 23rd, in Haverhill, Massachusetts. It is going to be on Roku TV, so tune in. And it is also live on the Facebook page to see Brian Cody in action. Otherwise, we will see you next week. Over and out.