WHOOP Podcast - Brandon McDaniel, a Director of Athletic Development & Performance Science in Major League Baseball, talks training methodology, gameday preparation, and how his organization uses WHOOP data.

Episode Date: March 19, 2019

An MLB Director of Athletic Development & Performance Science Brandon McDaniel discusses his individualized approach to training (5:35), overrated metrics in baseball (14:42), why pitch velocity has increased in recent years (17:19), how his team uses WHOOP (22:09) and what they learn from the data (30:41), what he tells a player who's "in the red" on gameday (34:41), pre-game dos and don'ts (37:53), the value of naps (39:31), players' use of caffeine and tobacco (42:08), different recovery techniques for older and younger athletes (52:59), his World Series experience and what he saw on WHOOP (59:21), losing 70 pounds in 6 months (1:04:45), and what he does to keep learning and improving (1:06:40).Support the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

We discovered that there were secrets that your body was trying to tell you that could really help you optimize performance, but no one could monitor those things. And that's when we set out to build the technology that we thought could really change the world. Welcome to the WOOP podcast. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of WOOP, where we are on a mission to unlock human performance. At WOOP, we measure the body 24-7 and provide analytics to our members to help improve performance. This includes strain, recovery, and sleep. Our clients range for the best professional athletes in the world,

to Navy SEALs, to fitness enthusiasts, to Fortune 500 CEOs and executives. The common thread among WOOP members is a passion to improve. What does it take to optimize performance for athletes, for humans, really anyone? We're launching a podcast today. deeper. We'll interview experts and industry leaders across sports, data, technology, physiology, athletic achievement, you name it. My hope is that you'll leave these conversations with some new ideas and a greater passion for performance. With that in mind, I welcome you to the Whoop podcast. It's making our young athletes understand what their sleep

looks like, what their recovery looks like, what a day on the field looks like, when their field and ground balls taking BP running sprints, doing work in the weight room and understanding what load really means versus just trying to say, and I went four for four tonight, and that was a hard game. How are we doing, everyone? Today on the podcast, we've got Brandon McDaniel, director of athletic development and performance science for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Brandon's methods and philosophies have helped guide the Dodgers to six straight

National League West Division titles and back-to-back World Series appearances. That's pretty damn good in professional sports. This is a unique podcast in that the Dodgers are a client of ours at Whoop, and Brandon has been willing to come on and actually talk about how he uses Whoop data to improve the Dodgers organization. So overall, I think it's pretty fascinating. This is definitely going to be interesting for whoop users who are trying to get more out of their data and especially those of you who are baseball fans or fans of professional sports.

Brandon and I discuss his background and rise through the Dodgers organization, how they assess new players and determine which training techniques will have success and why it's so important to develop programs based on each individual athlete's needs. We go into everything about how Brandon uses whoop with his players at different levels, why he feels it's essential. They make a choice to use it on their own, and the various pieces of advice he gives to the players when they are in the red on game day.

I really hope you enjoy this. Brandon shares a lot on training, recovery, nutrition, travel tips. I think everyone's going to find it useful. Brandon called in from spring training with the Dodgers, so apologies for some of the subpar sound quality. We did the best we could with it. Here's Brandon. Brandon, thanks for coming on.

Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me. Looking forward to it. So in 2011, you start as a minor league strength coach at the L.A. Dodgers. And now you're the director of athletic development and performance science for the entire organization. So that's quite an eight year run. Last two years, obviously you guys went to the World Series. And congratulations on that. I guess talk to me a little bit about those early days in 2011. You joined this organization. did you expect to be overseeing the whole thing? You know, it's eight years, seems like, about eight weeks as fast as it's when. You know, I was very fortunate. In 2011, I was working for athletes' performance now exos as a strength coach in the military.

And before that, I'd worked in baseball and, you know, I had an extreme passion for it and wanted to get back into the game. Like, I caught myself in the mirror a couple times in the weight room in the military, doing like pitching mechanics and hitting mechanics. So I knew it was, I knew I was going to get back in or wanted to get back in. Very fortunate at the time that Sue Balsoni was hired as the head trainer for the Los Angeles Dodgers. She was the vice president for Exos at the time. And she decided to bring me over and be the AAA strength coach and help kind of implement, you know, AP's philosophy, methodology into the Dodgers.

And so, you know, I think it gave me. a little bit of a head start having an understanding of what they were trying to do and what the global vision was, but I never envisioned, you know, in October of 2011 when I accepted this job that in 2019 that, you know, I'd be as, you know, be where I'm at personally, but more importantly, like, the success that I've been able to be a part of with the organization is totally exceeded my expectations. Well, it's amazing, man. You guys have won six straight National League West titles.

You've made two consecutive World Series. It's been a great run. I think one of the best runs in baseball today. You know, how have you tried to train your athletes? What is your methodology? Yeah, I think the one thing that I've probably changed the most over time or really bought into is this individualized approach to each athlete.

And so, you know, there's some staples that I believe that everybody should be able to do. From a movement standpoint, everybody should be able to squat. They should be able to lunge. They should be able to move their, you know, their upper body and all planes of motion. Upper body pull, upper body push, horizontal, vertical, circumduct, all those things. So, you know, from that standpoint, it's really the diagnostic standpoint that I take a lot of pride in that if you walked in to our weight room at the major league side you would be able to see that you know all the athletes look like they're doing very very similar stuff but it's all

tailored to them and all the way down to the dominican that's the goal is to make sure that that you could walk in and say that's a dodger program that's a dodger workout or methodology but we've tailored that to 16 to 18 year old latin american kids and you know from a conditioning standpoint, I think it's one of the things that it's been taken for granted for in baseball because everybody says that it's just a sprint sport and you don't need to have anything that speed, conditioning, and

endurance really isn't important, but boy, it's a long season and if you don't have any endurance, if you don't have any aerobic base buildup, it's really hard to recover from night to night, week to week month a month, and if you're, you know, if you're as fortunate as we've

been season to season, then we have a short off season. So we we've got to kind of stay in shape. There's no time to get into shape. Yeah, I mean, look, that makes a lot of sense. And the personalization that you're referring to is a very whoop mindset. I mean, when I was a college athlete, one of the notions that I rejected was the concept that, you know, the whole team would trade hard on Monday and then train hard on Tuesday and then taper on Wednesday and then peak for Thursday. You know what I mean? And I think we're seeing this now more in professional sports, this idea of

personalization and it's making its way to college and beyond. Clearly, you've built it into your organization, which I think is phenomenal. Yeah, I think that you look at basketball, you look at hockey, and you look at the numbers that they have to deal with, or even in the NFL, they have 53 guys on the active roster and some more on the practice blood, 250 to 300 athletes in our organization. So, you know, we have to take it on on a macro level, like a college. But I feel like that our staff and what we've developed here over time, we've really taken on the micro inside of that macro, which in my opinion has put us in a good position to put our athletes in a really good position to be successful physically. So walk me through this.

Like, I'm a minor league player. You guys just picked me up. What's the process now? now that I'm a Dodger. Yeah, I mean, it starts with a simple conversation and creating a relationship with the player, understanding why they're, why are they at this level? Let's say we trade for somebody to the deadline or we, you know, we draft somebody, whatever it might be. We've got to know why you're here.

Like, what made you really good? You know, are you a power guy? Are you, you know, a high-de-low fastball guy on the mound? or were you more of a finesse pitcher or, you know, from a hitting standpoint, do you drive the ball of the opposite field? Or we count on you to hit 30 home runs for us. You know, and then it's understanding what did you do from a physical preparation standpoint to get here? You know, were you a big weightlifter? Did you go to a college that believed in the big three and you guys benched press and deadlift and back squat quite a bit?

And you already had an engine build up versus, you know, acquiring somebody that's maybe a little bit younger and trying to decide. we need to put an engine in this guy. He's got a V4 right now. We need a V8 to support what we think he can do as a baseball player. And then from there, it's, you know, movement screens and understanding how these guys move from head to toe. You know, can they extend their toes? And can they get pro-nation and subination at the forearm level to, you know,

that's a fine, baseball is a fine motor movement skill. And so understanding how all of those things play together. and then we take a look at the physical numbers and understand how they jump and how they run and how high they jump and how fast they run and, you know, are the mechanics off? Are you a really fast runner with a long backside that potentially over the course of a 162 game season plus playoffs plus spring training, there's a potentially you might go down with a handstring strain. And so trying to understand, A, you know, like an FMS or a segmental movement screen and B, the global movement, how they run and how they run. rotate and how they jump and we try to tie all that together let the athlete have a ton of say and what they do because we want them to own it we want them to feel like they came up with their program and it makes sense to them obviously we're you know some guys we we lead them to

the water a little bit more than others that have maybe been around for a while and then really it's about it's about paying attention to the game and we have very little time with these guys in the offseason and the time to quote unquote train um so So once we get them, it's now supporting and accommodating to those baseball moves that they need to be able to do on the field. Well, you touched on a lot of really interesting concepts there. I mean, the first concept was just around listening to your athletes and trying to have an understanding of where they're coming from. I'm curious, when it comes to the diagnostic test that you were referring to, what exactly are you guys testing and how does that vary by position? Well, I mean, you take a look at, you take a look at a middle of the field player,

a shortstop, a second baseman, a center field, they're like, they're going to be able to need to move, and they're going to need to be able to cover some range and be fast. So we'll test them for speed, we'll test them for mobility to make sure that they can get in the positions to support the speed. We'll test them for strength, whether that's, you know, a lower body strength movement or even an upper body strength movement, because I think there is some core. relation and association there would be and what what speed test you know it depends you know it depends

i don't i don't typically go into too much that we that we we do we feel like that's proprietary to us but we you know it's pretty you can read between the lines when i say we'll we'll take a look at how somebody accelerates uh and we'll take a look at somebody's top end speed and there's a lot of like the major league level we have a lot of ways to look at that because we can uh we get information in-game, not end-game, but from the end-game, to kind of support what we're seeing. You know, does the guy get a good jump on a baseball in center field? And what top speed did he reach?

The guy that went from first to third, you know, did he reach his top-end speed quick? Did he reach it slow? Did he hold it when he got there? What was this efficiency when he was running? And so it's not so much. And I think this is where it gets lost. A lot of the times is you look at a combine,

and guys can run a 40, you put them on the field, and they can't really, it's not accessible to them to show that speed. I want to know what the accessible speed is when they're on the field. And so for us, it's measuring a lot of in-game speed, a lot of in-game movement qualities versus understanding what they do during a pre-program diagnostic necessarily. We compare the two to Kevin. You know, that's a really interesting point because I've seen this with athletes

across other sports too, where they've got very different efficiencies from a speed standpoint depending on what they're doing. And your point about, like, an athlete being able to run a 40 fast but not being able to run quickly in certain situations on the field, it's totally true. So it sounds like you guys have a good process for identifying that. Now, the in-game data is that something where you're looking at video software to try to pull various speeds? They have, you know, major baseball uses stat cap.

let's just the system that is available to you whenever you're watching a game and you see an exit velo or you know they say that cody belliger runs 29.3 feet per second whatever it might be like that's the software that they're using to gather that and there's I mean thousands of metrics that they gather every night like you're you got to have some idea where you're looking because you can get long. and a lot of data pretty quick. I totally agree with you. What are some data points that you think are overrated right now in baseball? Oh, man, I don't know. I think there's a lot of hot topics that are out there. You know, and I think that Velo for a pitcher can be overrated at times. Like if you're trying to put the car in front of horse and say that VLO is the most important thing

and you can't even throw a strike. And just describe that quickly for our audience who might be less familiar. So it was just philosophy how hard they throw. Because I've seen a lot of players over the time that throw, you know, upper 90s and get hit around really well because they don't know where they're putting the ball or the characteristics of the ball. It doesn't spend the same way or it doesn't have the same shape or whatever it might be aren't as adequate as maybe somebody who throws in the mid-90s or low 90s.

And so I think that, you know, velocity is probably a conversation start a lot of the times, especially for players when they're getting drafted or are getting looked at to become acquired, but how they pitch what, you know, what they're actually capable of doing. Think of Tom Brady. Tom Brady was, you know, notoriously, his combine was almost laughable, right? And now look at him. And so, you know, he is able to, he possesses some qualities both physically, and mentally, in my opinion, that allows him to compete on the field with, you know,

the parameters that are set with them with the offense that they run and the personnel that they have. And so it's about putting guys in a position to succeed from that standpoint, not just looking at these big physical characteristics and trying to fit them into, fit them on the team or put them into a model or put them into a position. And I think the weight room is a great example. of that. I really could care less how much

somebody back squats, how much somebody dead lifts, whatever if I don't care what their vertical is. I care how they do it because these guys are here to play baseball and again they were really good. Like, hey, we look and back squat's really clean. It's really good. Front spot's

really clean. It's really good. But we can add some strength to that, which might increase our size of our engine, which might increase this player's capacity on the field versus saying blanket everybody needs to be able to back squad, you know, two times their body weight, dead lift, two times their body weight, bench breast, one and a half times of body weight, whatever it might be.

On the velocity side, I mean, I would consider myself a bit of an amateur when it comes to understanding baseball, but it seems to me from just like maybe the last two decades, top speed for pitchers has gone up quite a bit. Like, I'm trying to think in the early 2000 or end of the 90s, like, I don't remember as many pitchers being able to pitch like 100 miles an hour. What do you attribute to that? Do you think that that's, like, people have gotten better at the mechanics. There's different techniques from a strength standpoint or an agility standpoint.

Or do you think people are paying more attention to velocity so that it's bubbling up more? Yeah, I think that gets the four-minute mile. like one guy broke four minutes and then six months later there was you know a ton of other guys that were able to do it and I think that it became the new norm in baseball to throw hard and it almost became a reason to get drafted or acquired or to be put on a roster or whatever whatever you were looking at and so I started training more for it I think in the last 25 years the last 30 years the strength and conditioning has become a much long larger component of baseball, even in the 13 seasons that I've been around, you know, baseball is really taking on strength and conditioning, so athletes are bigger. They are stronger, and they're working on throwing harder more often. So I think that sounds like a pretty simple recipe to increase velocity. Eric Cressy's written some really good posts on why he thinks velocity has changed.

I think you throw a couple of those same variables in there with weightlifting and with size. And I don't quote me on this, but the, I think the average fastball velocity is up one mile over the last like 12 or 13 years. And maybe to your point, maybe early 2000s. And you look at that time, like that's what a lot of these things started to get implemented in one mile per hour for an average. statistically to me sounds pretty significant that that many people from that much harder over the course of the last, you know, decade, decade, and a half for that to jump up that much. Yeah, and then it has interesting implications for hitters as well, right? Yeah, it's, you have less time to make a decision, right?

And so there's, I even saw, you know, I've seen different things on changes. the mound high it to the distance or things like that to make it probably to make it a little bit more offensive and the game to be a little bit more offensive so they they have a better chance but yeah I mean over the last 10 years or so pictures have had it seems like a pretty strong advantage now I will say on the other side of that like hitting is definitely making some rides in that area as well and you read about swing changes is an exit velo, how hard to hit the ball to bat or launch angle, what, you know, what's kind of the angle that's coming off the bat

or the swing is meeting the ball. And so, you know, I think that hitting is doing everything it can to kind of catch up to that right now. And that too probably has a lot to do with the game and who's watching it and why they're watching it. And for me, it's kind of like the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl is a defensive struggle. could say it was offensively challenged or whatever way you want to look at.

I thought it was a really good football game. And maybe I'll be like Trey Wingo here and say that I was into it. That was a really good football game. And I think pitching too, like a 1-0 baseball game is beautiful. Or a 2-1 game. That's a beautiful baseball game, in my opinion. And I think that typically we, you know, fans like to see more offense and more plays and more reasons to jump out of their seats

versus a no-walk, nine-inning shutout, 85 pitches, to some could be boring. I look at that and say, like, that's a masterpiece. I was actually at the Super Bowl this year, and I enjoyed it as well. So I'm with you on, like, the hard grind from a fan standpoint, although I don't know if that's as mass market. But I can appreciate how, from its statistical standpoint,

And from your point of view, like, why that's a sign that everyone's executing at a really high level. Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree. So I want to talk for a minute about WOOP because we're proud to have the Dodgers' clients on the ploff. And I know you've been using the technology for quite some time. So tell me how you were first introduced to Woop. Yeah. So we've went around, we went about it a little bit different. than probably a lot of organizations. Like, I want my athletes to want to use this. So our athletes have decided on their own,

and this is at the minor league level, to use the technology. And so that way that when they put it on and when they hook it up to their phone, and they're diving into it, I don't want us. I don't want to be the one that cares about it the most. And so, you know, we were introduced to it

a few years back at the winter meetings with the study that was produced about recovering in baseball and then Jake came down here and gave us a demo and we kind of dumped into it and, you know, for us, it's making people aware.

It's not going to produce a lineup for us. It's not going to make decisions on a higher level for us. It's making our young athletes understand what their sleep looks like, what their recovery, looks like, what a day on the field looks like, whether field and ground balls taking BP running sprints,

doing work in the weight room and understanding what load really means versus just trying to say, and I went four for four tonight, and that was a hard game. Well, you know, I appreciate the fact that you treat it as a voluntary thing. You know, so much for us and onboarding professional athletes on whoop is making sure that they themselves get comfortable with the data. And I've always believed that athletes first should, you know, see a reason to monitor this about themselves, like understanding your sleep, understanding your recovery, understand the stress that you're putting on your body. That to me

feels very fundamental if you're a professional athlete. So I think the way you rolled it out, to me, sounds really, really smart. And to the credit of the Dodgers, like, I've just noticed that you guys as an organization, and I haven't actually worked as direct. And I haven't, I haven't actually worked us directly with you guys as maybe I'd like. But I've just noticed from a distance that the Dodgers organization is very thoughtful about these things. Like it seems like you have a forward thinking point of view on technology. I know you're doing like a technology accelerator there, although we haven't been involved in any of that. And then, you know, clearly the organization's empowering people like yourself to, you know, to invest in technology and, and use it to improve. So,

talk a little bit about how culturally that got that's become important to you yeah i think it's with anything um we want an organic environment around here um it's very important that uh we don't forget why we're here and and why the players are here and why they got drafted or acquired um and we're here to support them especially on athletic development side like we're here to support those careers. So I never want to walk in and tell somebody that I have the answer or one of our strength coaches has an answer

or our sports scientist has an answer. We have a tool for you to support you and becoming a baseball player. And I think across the board with our organization, Andrew Friedman, our president of baseball operations, Jeff Kingston, our new vice president,

Brandon Gohm's, you know, director of player development. I'm like, it's the same in every room, every department when you walk across here, that, you know, you roll this out here, you get some momentum going with it, and the players will take it and run with it, and we'll learn more about it through letting them just kind of organically take it on, you know, jamming it down their throat saying, you need to wear this band or you need to wear, you know,

you need to do a questionnaire for us every day, or we need to figure out your HRV or you need to do a vertical jump for us to find out what your fatigue levels in. They go, whoa, whoa, what are you trying to do? Are you trying to get me better? Are you trying to point out the things that I don't do well? And so it takes a while. Don't get me wrong. When we changed the food for the Dodgers back in 2015, Gabe Kaepaer and now the manager of the Phillies like instrumental and kind of taking what I said was my five-year plan and turned into a five-week plan.

and rolling out like he had a way about him and it takes time that change nobody likes change you and I don't like change like it's hard and it's tough to understand

and so we just really feel like it's important that the guys do things because they understand that they need it and they understand that they want it and they understand that they like it well you know for

for our audience listening like what you described, I imagine, sounds very intuitive, but I have to say just for a second that it's actually quite unique. And I mean, WOOP now works with tons of professional sports organizations. And so I've seen technology implemented in different ways. And unfortunately, you have some organizations that have more of a like, hey, we pay you, you're going to do this attitude. And it's just, one, it's just bad for the culture, people. period. But two, it's a really bad way to implement anything new because then you don't have the buy-in from the athletes themselves. And those are ultimately the individuals that you're trying to help, you know, perform at a higher level. So it seems so counterintuitive to go about it any other way than what you're describing. And, you know, I won't name any organizations, but I'm sure that you've seen this throughout major, you know, other areas of major league baseball or of course across sports in general.

I think that I could give you 20 scenarios early in my career where I did it. And I call it my dusty toy box. Like I got a bunch of toys, tech toys that we've gotten over the years that are sitting in a box over in the corner that have been collecting dust because we didn't get buy-in the right way. And I think to the average listener too, that works a full-time job that thinks about. from their perspective, the way that they like to be talked to by their, by their superiors, how they like to be viewed by their colleagues. We're trying to create the same environment here. Like, these are young men that this is a professional job.

This is their sport in the minor leagues. It's a little bit more of the, you know, apprenticeship. You're kind of learning, learning what you need to do to get to the highest level. So there's a little bit more education down there. But nobody wants to be told. what to do. Now, on the other side, I think I think all players and I think all humans thrive off of structure, but I don't think structure and demands are necessarily the same thing. And so we try to set up a really nice structure for everything that we do. And then within that,

the players kind of take it on. And so, you know, band for instance, like somebody might be, somebody might not be recovering because their workload score, their strain scores. too high or somebody might not be recovering because their sleep isn't as good and so you know we're not necessarily uh using it the same for everybody right and and so like we kind of find that out and i think the second thing that a lot of organizations do and again i'll raise my hand and say i've been this way in the past too is like hey let's do a study let's turn this into a study well nobody want a player wants to be a go back to the first thing i said like we individualize everything. I don't necessarily want to create a study every time we get a new piece of

technology or a new metric we're trying to track. I want to find out, like, we know this is important. Let's just find out where you're at on the spectrum and then what's implemented from there. Well, I like that a lot. So, okay, so I'm glad whoop isn't one of the technologies collecting dust. And I love that you guys are obviously on the platform. Talk to me a little bit about how you'll, you'll use the data. Like if a player has been on whoop for a few weeks or maybe They're just early in the process and, like, you know, will you have players come over and ask you about certain data points? And how will you respond to that? Yeah, so it's, and this is true with anything, whether they're on move or not.

It's workload monitoring has become very popular and probably taken the wrong way, too. Number one, we never want to tell a coach or a player that they can't do something. We just want to give them suggestions when they've done a lot or a little. and about their potential kind of progression and regression with that. So, for me, going back to the conversation piece, Woot Band is a conversation starter. Any tracker should be a conversation starter with a coach, with a player, with a manager, with a trainer, whoever it might be,

say, hey, I'm not sleeping well. I did not sleep well last night. And no matter what, there's a game at 7 o'clock that you've got to be ready for. and so if we try to take you through a normal day and try to crush you on the field with a bunch of pre-game work and don't pay attention to hydration, to nutrition, and things that potentially could have been affected because of that because hormones get thrown off and we've done human inservice

so it's more about or excuse me, an injustice, it's probably the first place that we look to make sure that we build them up the correct way that day so the sleep score becomes really effective for that or you're chucking along and you got a strain score of 14 15 every day and all of a sudden you throw it 19 in there right pretty significant jump and now like we know that you get two or three in a row like now the body's going to be under risk whether you show it through you know getting a common cold or you show it through being really sore or you show it through getting a strain on kind of the exposed area of

your body that for muscle strain, hamstring, string quad, whatever it might be. And so paying attention to those strains for us, again, whether it's out of loop or just a typical workload tracker or even a wellness questionnaire, just want to make sure that we know what that looks like. So there's not these huge peaks in valleys. We play a consistent sport every single day, and we want to make sure that we kind of keep a consistent workload across the floor. I always like to say you can only really manage what you measure.

So your point about, you know, the data is one thing, but then figuring out, you know, it's sparking a conversation. I think that's a really good point of view. Like that's part of why I say that, you know, Woop can be empowering for coaches and trainers because now you just have more information to start conversations. And look, we don't try to be the coach, especially not at a professional. level. We try to empower, you know, Brandon McDaniel to do his job. And so that's where I think your whole point about it starting conversations is, is spot on. Yeah. I just, I feel like a lot of

times that at professional sports, especially everybody's trucking along looking for the answer, the one answer. And again, I've been guilty of that in the past. Like, oh, I got it. I got to figure out it was just this that's all we were missing and then three weeks into it you're extremely disappointed uh because a lot of a lot of really good technology a lot of really good training habits had been thrown out because they were probably implemented and they weren't you know they weren't uh they weren't the right diagnosis and the right prescription for that athlete and so we threw we threw them all out versus saying well that was a really good tactic we just pick the wrong guy for it, but that would be a really good tactic for this guy.

How have you managed the psychology of the data? You know, sometimes the data will say something maybe you don't want to hear, right? Like, okay, today's a game day, but whoops says I've got a red recovery or whoops says I didn't sleep well last night. You know, maybe it's noon and I come to you, Brandon, and I'm like, hey, whoops says I'm run down. What should I do? Yeah.

It's, again, like, what's the goal for the day? What do we have that day? Are you playing tonight? Are you pitching tonight? Is it a workout day? Is it a... I'm playing tonight. Let's play this on.

What are you telling me to do? And you're playing tonight and you're in the red? Yeah. And have you been in the red for multiple days? Let's say yes. Okay. So it's been a rough week. And how do you feel right now?

I feel, you know, I'm optimistic coach, but I'm a little tired. Okay. And what did you feel like last night after you get done with the game? I was pretty tired to be honest okay so rough night of sleep for you yeah and that's what the data says okay good well and so you know I think it's really important to just double check with the athlete because there's

sometimes that they're really good at lying to themselves or there's sometimes that you know they did fall off their wrist or the dog was in bed and somehow mess some things up not saying that's happened with whoop because it's connected to you, but there's other sleep tractors I've used in the past. And from there, it's like, all right, the most important thing is 7 o'clock. You've got to have you ready for 7 o'clock. And so let's go through some strategies.

You're really sympathetic right now. Let's get on a phone roll for a little bit. Let's make sure we stay out of the hot tub. Let's get a little bit of light cardio in and try to wake the system of, you know, how have your meal's been today? Have you eaten already? Yeah, I ate a bunch of carbs already. Okay, like hormones are off.

You're going to feel really hungry. you're going to feel like your blood sugar's like let's get some good fat and you go get an avocado go get a little bit of bacon and a little bit of carbs at the next meal or you know a chicken breast and some broccoli and a big piece of avocado let's try to stabilize you a little bit lay off the caffeine i know you feel like you need to drink of a lot of it right now but it's going to make you get really high it's going to make you really get low and be careful with too much sugar okay yeah got a coach that's great all right as we ramp up all right take it easy you take 20 ground balls every day yeah like maybe look at taking 10 okay you take four or five rounds bp yeah well once

your swing feels good let's get out of there before then i don't want to i don't want to put you in a position to fail tonight but like want enough enough get out of there and then when you come in after bp take it easy okay it's we don't you don't need to be on your phone you don't need to be tweeting you don't need to be texting everybody like have a little bit of you time and and and try to try to rest a little bit and then when it's time to ramp up about an hour 45 minutes for the game. Let's make sure we get some good carbohydrates in us. Let's get some good bad in there so we stabilize that blood sugar and let's go through a nice active warm up and I promise you we're going to get through this thing. Wow, I love that. I mean, there's a lot

there to unpack. That was really interesting. So the first couple things that you said, which I like, so you talked about the idea of foam rolling and not doing any hot tubs. So foam rolling, why do you think that's important? Because I think when you're sympathetic, like the best thing that we can do is get tone out of you. And not necessarily trigger points, but just trying, almost like a massage is like trying to relax. And so when you're in when you don't sleep, you're going to become very, very sympathetic. You're going to overcompensate. So I just want to try to balance that out in some way.

Hotep really stimulates you. And it really gets the blood flowing. And so in some cases, I think it's really great. At other cases, I think it just, when you get out of here, even more. exhausted because of the heat and so those are kind of my two my two go-toes right away that makes a sense the cardio the cardio to stabilize your heart rate right now and try to get quote unquote a flush try to wake the body and try to get some lubrication on the joints after you do that home roll and I think your body will feel a lot better and like even if you still have a little

bit of that feeling that you feel like you're flying or floating at least we got a your joints and their control. Really interesting. So that's almost like a flush for the system where, you know, maybe you jump on the treadmill for 10 or 20 minutes or the bike or jump rope or something. Yeah. Yeah. And jump rope would probably be a little bit too impactful for me.

But walking out of treadmill, doing a movement prep. Oh, so even as low intensity is just walking? Yeah. Yeah. Got it. And will you ever recommend someone to do? to take a nap? Oh, yeah, absolutely.

And it all goes into the day and where we're at and where the spaces. And some guys don't feel comfortable taking naps. And some guys, whether it's for mental reasons, they think they're going to be judged, which I think we're getting over that in professional sports, or they just, they can't wind down. But sitting in a dark room, wearing some blue light glasses, wearing some red, you know, some red glass.

Yeah, that's cool. And just trying to tune out a little bit. and we have to time that perfectly so you know number one we don't wake you up at the wrong time and number two we don't bring you down so much that you can't come back what do you think so like the optimal amount of time before a game to take a nap if you're going to uh i think i really think that's going to vary depending on the athlete you know i think there's some guys that that probably go through early work and and like to take a nap from two to three and feel like that that's a really good time for them

and I think there's some guys that can take a nap as late at 5 o'clock when the game's at 7 and the game is 7 I wake up and feel really good and all kind of depends on where you're at on that day if you're the starting picture that day like taking a nap at 5 o'clock is going to be impossible because you have one start every 5 days

so you're amped up from the time you wake up in the morning and you're also like you have to prepare if you're prepared for the other team. And so, like, you're going to be doing that pretty close up until game time until you start warming up. So that might be an afternoon guy versus the position player who plays every night and, like, chills out every night when he comes in and 5 o'clock off the field.

And at 5, you take a short nap and feel pretty good. Now, the diet piece of it, you called out the fact that if someone eats too many carbohydrates in the morning, that might concern you from the standpoint of them being a little tired. Yeah, I find, and again, I'm not a dietitian, and I don't try to play one, but I find it that when we don't sleep, we crave a lot of sugar, and we crave a lot of carbohydrates, and our body keeps telling us that, especially because our blood sugar spikes, and then it falls, and we eat them again, and then it spikes and it falls when we play this vicious game all day long versus like, all right, I had a bad night, I got up, I had my cup of coffee, and I had a nice, like, balanced meal so my blood sugar doesn't get out of whack for the rest of the day yeah that makes a lot of sense now leading up to the game uh if if a player's run down on their team and now we're on your team and we're talking about maybe an hour or two before the game are you then comfortable with them starting to bring caffeine back into their system or in general uh do you try to avoid

caffeine is a stimulant during athletic play? I mean, it's baseball and we play every day. I'd be lying if I said that caffeine isn't a part of it. And I actually think there's a lot of anything

in that regards will be good as long as you don't abuse it. So if it's the 12th cup of coffee at 4 o'clock, might have a problem with that. If it's the second caffeinated beverage or third caffeinated beverage we've had all day, like that I'm that I'm okay with.

I just hate the guys that like they've killed their adrenals by 4 o'clock because they've been so high strong and not caffeine just becomes like placebo at that point. I drank my coffee, I drank by whatever energy drink and like it's not

working like you're telling me you've had like 1,500 or 2,000 milligrams of caffeine in you know good luck. Yeah right. Well I mean we work with some basketball players and sometimes they have tip-offs, I think as late as 9 p.m. maybe. And so if you're having caffeine and you're tipping off that late and then you've got all the lights of being in the stadium and I mean, that's going to affect your sleep too,

even if you are conditioned to be drinking caffeine that late. So it's just another thing to think about. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Now, where do you stand on nicotine and tobacco? I mean, again, that's probably a podcast. and it's only you know

we know that we know it has a way of stimulating some guys that used it and we know the things that it does to the body in the long term so obviously we're not I'm not promoting it

but you know at the same time I'm not going to I'm not going to dive into that one too much with the athletes unless I feel like it's becoming a big part of tissue recovery or something like that. We have a lot of people on this game

hammering the negative effects of that. And so for me, in that global picture, making sure they understand the acute and the chronic downside of using chewing tobacco or I don't think there's a lot of guys

smoking cigarettes in the game anymore. But definitely letting them know what this potentially could be doing for their recovery. Well, the piece of it that I think is interesting is it's kind of back to the caffeine piece, right, where if the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning is you put in a chew and you're just chewing all day, then that's going to affect, you know, that's going to affect your performance over time, I would think, versus if you're doing it right before the game starts, then maybe it's a performance enhancement. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. That's totally, totally understandable. Again, I find it hard to believe that you could use nicotine as a performance enhancer, but I definitely understand where you're coming from. So you in general, you're skeptical of the concept that it's a performance enhancement.

No, I'm not skeptical of it necessarily. I just, I don't, I think it's fair to say I don't know enough about that side of it to know if it's good or bad for you, but, but in. intuitively, and based on what, you know, older players have told me in the past, I could definitely see that being it. I'm more skeptical promoting it. Yeah. So it sounds like you're somewhat hands off on it, but if it becomes like the 12 cups of caffeine thing, then maybe there's going to be a conversation. Absolutely. Which somebody has probably had with them before them. Right.

Now, how about travel? How does that fit into the equation? And what are some of your favorite, maybe tips for the consumer market around how to beat travel? This is one of my favorite questions for podcast guests. Yeah, I think that you've got to be conscious, especially traveling different time zones and getting adjusted, getting adjusted to the time zone as quickly as you can. I think that traveling west to east can be very difficult, especially when you're going three, four time zones. Traveling east to west seems to work out in your benefit, but we've still had some guys. that struggle with that, especially if we've been on the road on the East Coast for 10 days.

And I think that diet becomes a huge play in that as well. I've read a lot on fasting, traveling right now. I've done it myself a few times traveling overseas, and it's been really beneficial for me. When I get to wherever I'm going, that I adjust the time zone by having a nice meal and being tired after that and kind of either fall in a sleep for a long period of time or if I did sleep on the plane, maybe getting a couple hours of deep sleep. That becomes really helpful.

So talk through the fasting piece of that, Brandon. So you said that you'll fast before you get on the plane? I will fast. How long leading up to it? Depending on, you know, if it's a 12 to 18-hour trip, like I'll try to go the full 24. Oh, good. for you without eating and I'll have some fat and I'll have some you know some coconut milk

or I have some aminos or something like that to keep it going drink a lot of water yeah you know when I get there that I usually crush and try to fall asleep and you know the shorter the shorter trips depending on when I leave again it could be a 12 hour fast it could be a 16 hour fast because I didn't I ate before I left for the airport and you know, that three-hour window of getting to the airport, getting checked in, getting on the plane, and taking off 12 hours of flight, and an hour on the back side, it might be a 16-hour fast. And so I've done it a little bit different, but every time I've noticed,

other than just being on an airplane and watching everybody else eat isn't very fun, but when I get there, I feel like there's a benefit to it. So with something like that, and so we'll completely, come back to this. But with something like that, now that you've seen how this makes you feel and you've kind of been the guinea pig of it after doing some research on it, will you then go to a couple players and say, hey, this is something I tried and it might work for you if you're having trouble with travel? Yeah, I don't touch that in season too much. I let our dieticians take care of that side of it because it makes a little risky not understanding how

somebody's blood sugar works and how fasting can be tough for some individuals so yeah but for the off season recommending that they try it every once in a while and seeing if it's good or bad or indifferent like uh i think it's helpful and then when they get in season then i would feel much more comfortable about having that conversation with them so a lot of this is just personal and definitely anecdotal but um you know i think that i think that at some point professional sports will have to dive into that to see if it's realistic. Not good luck

because plain food is kind of sacred and in all professional sports I remember reading articles about Luke Walton you know being the acting coach for the warriors and then coming over to the Lakers and talking about like peanut butter jelly

is absolutely going to be on the plane there's just some like sacred part of that that will probably always hold through but if we are looking at travel as affecting recovery and we're not looking at nutrition as something that can affect travel or be a part of travel, but I don't think we've done far enough as an industry. Yeah, I mean, that makes perfect sense to me, the idea that you've just got all these

different factors and you're trying to weigh what's the most important, and then you're trying to weigh that for each individual. And again, that goes back to why I think. measuring a lot of this empowers you to manage it because if you don't know what the effect was on your physiology it's hard to know that fasting was effective or ineffective or it's just less it's it's more difficult let's put it that way yeah no doubt no doubt now you were saying a couple other things about travel that you think are helpful i think movement movement is the most important piece yeah that's a great point the ankles and the blood flow that you get from sitting

Like getting up every hour, moving around. If you have, you know, if you're a viewer on a private plane or a charter and have access to a little bit of space to get down and do some elbow head step and some circles, you know, some ankle circles, some Kelly Starrett stuff. Like, that's really important, even laying down, having your feet up to get that blood to rush out and back up through the body, I think, is extremely beneficial. And it keeps from the stiffness when you get off the plane and kind of the full feeling. of your lower half when you get off the plane

and that can accelerate your recovery and that can accelerate the way you feel the next day, whether you know, whether you're going on vacation and you want to go walk on the beach and not feel like you're tripping over your fat toes because they're filled up with blood or you're an athlete that needs to get ready to

play the next day. Like, it's all comparable and it has some pretty strong parallels in my opinion. Now, I've found benefits personally by trying to exercise like closely before the flight or closely after landing. This is more so for flights that I would say are over six hours or eight hours. So you're talking about a longer duration. Have you found that at all personally or with any of your athletes? The idea of, I mean, even just doing like 15 minutes

on a bike or something I find helps me feel much better when I land in a new destination. Yeah, I think you mobilize some physiology and you mobilize some anatomy and that can be very helpful. The one thing I usually caution our guys is like going to. heavy or working out too hard and now you're going to sit for six to eight hours that is that to me it can be really destructive to the next day but yeah by and large like getting guys to move around in the morning before we fly out and move around and we get there is definitely going to accelerate that what are some other recovery modalities that you guys use or you believe in you know there's all sorts of different things out there right now, right? Cryotherapy is very popular right now.

Contrast therapy is very popular right now. You mentioned foam rolling earlier. Obviously, massage therapy, acupuncture, these have all been things that have been around for the past decade or longer. What are some different things that you believe in or things that you don't believe in? And I guess obviously this is going to vary a lot by player. Yeah, I think that's the best way to put it. I'm not going to dive in anything that we personally do because we feel like we have a But, you know, we have a pretty good advantage on the way that we treat our players our athletic training staff. Sure. Therapists are outstanding.

But, you know, I think you can use your imagination and realize from that individual side that we leave no stone unturned. So, you know, probably sum it up the best way that we don't, I don't believe in anything. I don't believe in everything. That's smart. So, okay. How about more generally speaking? How will you think about a player who's, you know, in his mid-30s?

versus a player who's in his early 20s. Yeah, joints. It starts to me with joints. And, like, guys, like, they've, they got one time to get ready to go every day. And, you know, young players can kind of ramp up and cool off and ramp up and cool off as many times as they want to until they reach that certain threshold, whether it's age or innings or at baths. So, you know, the older players are trying to get them to time it perfectly. and get some good blood flow and get a little bit of some soft tissue in and maybe let's let's say it's like hip flexors and glutes and get their hips to free up so the low back doesn't get tight on them and some movement prep and on with some let's just say it's an easy day some med ball drills some rotational drills and then on your way into the cage and and on to the field versus you know the younger player can get away with like I said earlier like ramping up and ramping down and I'll lift it a little bit heavier and you know

and moving around quite a bit, or the timing for them isn't as important. It's more of the educational point. It's going to be like in a few years that becomes important. Do you find you ever have to manage that sort of, like that different psychology between the players? Like, you know, obviously you're talking about a very individualized program. And if you've got an older player doing something that's going to take longer or be slower and you've got the younger players doing something that's a bit of a quick hit, like is there ever a little bit of jarring between the old and the,

the young in that regard and you're sort of just telling people to stay in their lane yeah i mean there's the educated or the experienced athlete to me always tends to remind or uh let the younger athlete know that they're not going to be able to do that forever and so there's there's always that that old young jab that's kind of kind of fun to watch and then there's a little bit of this like, the young player comes to the big leeks for the first time, and maybe they're playing with their hero or the guy that they grew up watching, and they see how long it takes them to get ready every day, and they're like, holy cow, I didn't know idea.

He's putting a full day in just to get on the field, and then he's got to play. And so I never see too much jabbing from younger to older. Yeah. It's more of, like, amazement. They're like, wow, that's insane. so but you know and then again the older guy will remind him like you'll be here too one day just wait yeah i've found it from my interactions with professional athletes in the past few years that it's it seems to be more common for young players to admire the older players who have been able

to have those sort of extra honeymoon years if you will you know where someone's kind of got three more years on their career where maybe everyone else was, you know, didn't see that company. It does seem like something that's a popular moment in sports. And I think the fact that some of the best in their game, like Tom Brady or LeBron James, like, you know, even

Tiger Woods now coming back from injury, they're setting like a good example around that. Do you notice that culturally as being something that's talked about more? It's just the concept of extending careers. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think it's just a little bit of like taking care of the first.

front end and making sure that they don't do too much early on that they can't recover from later on in their career. And then there's obviously like, yeah, you can take it as far as not eating night shades or whatever, whatever foods that you don't want to put in your diet. It's pretty well documented that a lot of our guys don't do dairy because I feel like it helps them recover better and get rid of information, but also just taking care of their body is in the weight room and building up enough stress tolerance for the field, but it doesn't break them down.

What are some supplements that personally you buy into? And it could be related to sleep or it could be related to performance. Yeah. I think the one thing that I personally probably buy into most is magnesium. Yeah, that's a good one. I just don't know if I can get enough of it. And so, you know, the rest of it. But the rest of it's up in there.

It was some good stuff on there about glutamine and H&B, glucoseamine and all that. And I think in the right scenarios it is. But, like, cow mag is like, or magnesium in general is, like, the one thing that has seemed to give us the most anecdotal recovery. And especially myself, you know, I'll take some B vitamins to try to wake up. I've taken somewhere lower in the past to try to calm down. cortisol manager or whatever it might be that has it in there and that's about it I'm not like creatine and caffeine and bad aline and all that stuff but listen I know it's great I just personally I'm not at that stage of my life that I'm trying to be up there

or I'm trying to find ways to calm down describe the experience of being in the world series a little bit I mean I imagine that I would think would amplify everyone's you know that that problem you described of it's it's 12 and we got a game at seven and everyone's amped up like what are you thinking about at that point i imagine maybe you're amped up too how are you trying to manage everyone's bodies during uh what's obviously such a high spotlight time yeah it's about being available and yeah and what i've noticed and i've only got two two years 12 games to draw on on those two world series and it's about being available because everybody's going to be a little bit different.

So it's from a personal level. I just try to wear it. And from a professional level, it's just, if a guy needs to do something to calm down at 1 a.m., I want to be there for him. Or if they need to wake, if they can't, you know, stay asleep and wake up at 6 a.m. and need to move around and do something smart, I'd much rather be there for them. So your point of view personally was like, I just need to be on call 24-7, you know, for this period of time.

Yeah, no, that's probably the best way of describing it. And from a, I guess, a technique standpoint, you're just adapting to what the players are going through. I guess what are a couple examples of things that players go through during the World Series? Yeah, I think I was just describing it to like some guys that can't sleep and they wake up. That's not the biggest thing, right? Yeah, they need to, or the guys that, like, get dinner really, really early because it's obviously excited. Yeah, totally. There's a lot of stemmingless going on, so just trying to find ways to, there's a center balance for all of this.

And to me, if I had to describe myself from that standpoint, it's finding balance. And so with all the lights and all the cameras and all the celebrities and all the people and all the interviews and all of the, you know all the people that want a piece of them offering them balance a quiet place somebody to talk to a foam roll a bike whatever it is uh that's what that's what i want to be there to bring it back to the center line and not add to the can you sign my ball can you sign my back can you sign my world series hat because it just stresses them out my opinion with when there's too much of it yeah i mean that's a very whooped mindset the idea of um you know for all the stress you're putting in your life trying to find recover to go with it so uh i like that what was your

what were your stats like during that time period it sounds like you weren't you were you were necessarily as optimized for yourself so it sounds like maybe low recovery yeah depending on um depending on where we were at or how much travel like plane rides i got some sleep uh and i'm mixed in for i'm a guy that i can be in the green with four and a half five hour sleep And so, and I think the loop's just being nice to me at that point. Loop is not known to be nice. It's known to be honest. So you must have figured some things out personally.

Yeah, but I can still get in the 80s with four, four and a half hour if I take enough magnesium. If I eat and get enough diet, if I don't get too stressed out, if I get a solid, like, not too low, not too high intensity workout in. I can kind of pull it off. But, yeah, in the World Series, I'm sure it looked like a stoplight blinking. Right. Is meditation something that you do personally, or you've seen players starting to implement? No, I don't. No, not really, but I do a lot of yoga.

Yeah. More for the sweat and the breathing than for actual yoga, which I think that's probably what yoga is, is for the sweat and for the breathing. but obviously the joint lubrication and mobility and flexibility. But, you know, for me, for me just getting in a hot room and sweating it out and being able to, like, get into my diaphragm, it's hugely beneficial. And that I do see happening. I just don't, I haven't seen meditation really kick on yet.

So when the season ends, do you find that there's a little bit of a crash, like your body sort of crashes after, you know, so much adrenaline for, for you know such an intense period of time or is it kind of the opposite where maybe now you're relaxed because you're under less stress every year's been a little bit different you know I think that there's mentally you can let up a little bit and physically physically I always describe it as it's never the fall it's the landing and your body can be messed up and things can hurt and while you're falling, you don't feel it. As soon as you hit the ground, you obviously feel it.

And so I think at the end of the year, I'm usually a little bit more sore. I notice a few more little things about my body that I've kind of just driven through in the past. Now, for you personally, I'm reading here that at one point you lost 70 pounds in six months. Is that accurate? Yeah, no, it is. It's an amazing transformation. Yeah, my freshman year of college was, you know, as a senior in high school, I always wanted to play baseball, but football probably was going to be my ticket and snapped my ankle on foot on the first day of pads my senior year and, you know, played on it way too soon and did some things that probably led to some injuries later on in my career. but made the decision

pretty late that I was going to play baseball and was overweight, was built like office of blindmen. And so I didn't really know how to go about it. I don't know if I was mentally tough enough to go about it.

It was something about my freshman year of being on my own and you know, not having not having my mom there to rescue me or my family there. And I kind of started learning how to bed for my self, I really got into fitness, as you know, maybe the physical education at that point. I really got into running.

I really got into, I don't want to say eating healthy, but eating less at that point. And it was the first time in my life that I ever sought out something that long term and was extremely successful with it. And so as much as like from the health benefits that I got from losing all that weight, I think it set me up for the rest of. from a mental standpoint. What are some influences in your life when it come to health and fitness? I mean, it sounds to me like you're someone who, you know, likes to learn about this space and is trying to continue to evolve. So what are some things that you like to do to learn more and, you know, over time maybe develop an edge?

the best continuing ed that I get every off-season is traveling to see players and so I get to I get like a behind-the-scenes look of every popular trainer and every popular physical therapist and really get to dive into them because of my athletes and so I just I pick things off and some of them are you know a better way to train a 22-year-old a better way to train a 35-year-old like myself a better way to talk to my parents about health. So that's kind of been my big go-to is getting to meet all these amazing people out there in the field

and understanding what they do. And then, you know, it's trial and error after that for me, first. Like, I'm a guy that will do some... I'm not going to travel out of the world doing these different things. I don't have the time to, but I definitely like...

That's how I got an intermittent fasting that's how i've gotten into you know i've tried uh carb loading backloading at the end of the night i've tried uh keto i've tried zone or actins or all these different diets out there like they're like if i have a personal perspective on them that's a lot easier for me to talk about it just like you said with the surgery thing like me going through extremely beneficial the same thing with the diets and stuff uh and it sounds like there's a good culture in baseball about, you know, around, you know, around sharing things that are working, or at least, you know, otherwise you'd probably be less effective traveling around and getting to talk to players

or other coaches on what they're doing. Yeah, I'm all for mentorships. I'm all for continuing at. I'm all for seminars and courses, and I go to some of them myself. But a lot of times when you go to a course, they're giving you a problem and a solution that only have to do with that course. And so, you know, we need to be able to be adaptable and flexible and take things from those courses and apply them to the field that we're in and the people that we work with and the goals that we have. And I think it's very tough when you go to them sometimes to feel like you can just easily extract that information and dump it in your world. So being able to see other people that have implemented other things

and their practice is a much more beneficial thing for me. I'm a visual learner to see those things. What's the most relaxing vacation you've ever been on? I don't think I've been on a relaxing vacation. No, you know what? We went to a player's wedding a few years ago in Cabo. This is my wife and I. I have two kids, five-year-old and a three-year-old.

And that was one of the first times that I was able to let go. in a long time, and I don't know if I've been able to since, but definitely, definitely, Cava was a good one. When you hear the expression, optimal performance, who or what comes to mind? Oh, man. There's a couple, there's a couple things that flashed forward chase out, at least about everything that comes in mind the most, to watch him do what he did for so long, and to get to see him on the back end and how he

prepared and how he was adaptable. That's the person that comes to mind. That's awesome. Well, you know, this has been really fascinating, Brandon. If people wanted to learn more about your philosophy or they wanted to find you, like, is there anything online that you'd point them towards? Or how can people find you if appropriate? I'm not a big, hence their social media guy. But I am always open to conversation and questions.

My personal email is, BDMAC, excuse me, BD Mac 23 at gmail.com. And I'm always open to questions and thoughts and concerns and great conversation. I need to get better with the social media. But right now, if I have 20 minutes to spend with my kids or my wife or my athletes, I usually choose that over social media. I definitely love, I definitely love chat and emailing, you know, shadowing things like that. So it's the easiest is my personal email.

Well, with your permission, we'll put that in the show notes. And, yeah, this has been awesome. And congratulations on all the success that the Dodgers have had recently. Congratulations on your success personally, growing within the organization. And again, we're really thrilled at Whoop to be working with you guys. Yeah, we appreciate it too. I appreciate the time. And this was great.

I liked it. It was of the podcast that I've done. you have some really challenging questions and actually made me dive in and think about some of the stuff we're doing so it'll keep the wheels spinning for a while. Well, I appreciate that man, and I'm sure our audience

learned a lot from it as well. Great. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. Thanks again to Brandon for coming on the show. It was great to be able to share some insight into how an elite professional team finds value in Woop. And thanks again to our client, The Dodgers for letting us do this.

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