WHOOP Podcast - NFL left tackle Kelvin Beachum discusses visualization, overcoming the odds, and finding success in football and in business

Episode Date: August 12, 2020

Arizona Cardinals left tackle Kelvin Beachum joins the WHOOP Podcast to detail his journey from 7th-round draft pick to established NFL starter. Kelvin is one of the most thoughtful athletes in sports. He discusses his use of visualization to help achieve his goals, what he’s learned about how to succeed in his career and in life, and why he’s always thinking about what comes next after football. Kelvin dives deep on how he transformed his body to become an offensive lineman (4:03), why he’s doing more mobility work than ever before (6:45), the rigors of the NFL season (9:00), how he uses WHOOP (10:05), why he views sex as a primer for workouts (11:50), prescription drug use in the NFL (13:23), concussions (18:10), a day in the life of an NFL player (19:51), taking care of his body (26:27), why visualization is one of the keys to his success (28:33), performing on the big stage (30:49), and the importance of embracing the present (35:15).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

What's up, folks? Welcome to the Whoop podcast. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, the founder and CEO of Whoop. And we are on a mission to unlock human performance. That's right. As you all know, we build wearable technology. That helps better understand the human body. We measure sleep, recovery, strain. More recently, we've been focusing on respiratory rate, which we've found can be a powerful predictor during COVID-19. If you'd like to get a WOOP membership, you can sign up for 15% off using the discount code, Will Ahmed. That's W-I-L-L-A-H-M-E-D. I'm going to get to our guest in half a second, but I just wanted to call out some amazing things that have been going on in the W-P universe. First of all, I found out that George W. Bush, Mr. President, is a W-P member. That photo was sent to me by a countless number of W-P members, which I always appreciate. Mr. President, it is an honor to have you on WOOP. We are grateful to have you using our technology.

And I don't know if this will make its way to you. Probably not. But if there's anything I can do for you, I am here and ready. In case you missed it, we just announced a partnership with the NFL Players Association to put Woop on every NFL player as they go back to work this season. Patrick Mahomes was the face of that announcement. It's very cool to have Patrick on Whoop as well. And the NFLPA did a lot of research, frankly, on respiratory rate, on continuous health

monitoring, and really trying to figure out what are some of the best protocols that they can adopt to make sure NFL players can go back to work safely. That brings me to my guest, Kelvin Beecham, Arizona Cardinals, left tackle. Kelvin, someone I've known for years. He's an amazing guy. We actually recorded this podcast together earlier this year. So pre-COVID-19, this was actually at the NBA All-Star game. Kelvin and I sat down.

And here's a guy, by the way, who went from being the seventh-round draft pick with no guarantees to really establishing himself as a starter in the league. He's also a prolific angel investor in technology companies. And we talk a lot about how he uses visualization to help him achieve his goals, what he's learned about how to succeed in his career and his life, why he's always thinking about life after football. We go through a day in the life of an NFL player. We even talk about sex and how he views sex as a performance enhancement,

which I thought was quite interesting. Kelvin's a very thoughtful, very thoughtful athlete, and we're proud to have him on the team. So without further ado, here is Kelvin Beecham. Kelvin, welcome to the WOOP podcast. Happy to be here, brother long time coming. We got to know each other a few years ago because you became an angel investor in Whoop. You've made a bunch of interesting investments across technology.

We're going to talk a little bit about that. I wanted to start, though, by just asking you, did you always know you were going to be a professional football player? To be honest, with you, man, the goal was to be a professional basketball player. I loved basketball. I still love basketball. But it came to a point in time where I had an AAU coach, I played the AAU ball. During the summer, and he was like Kelvin, there are more scholarships for people on a football field than there are on a basketball court. There's five people that play.

It's 22 people that play on a football field. I think you may have a better shot at getting a scholarship. It wasn't even so much about being a pro-jured shit, but you have a better shot. This is in high school. You have a better shot at being a scholarship athlete, if you go to the football rider. And took his advice, started playing football. Well, not so much started playing football. It was already planned, but started taking more sense.

serious. Started really researching what, you know, an offensive alignment looked like, what I needed to do to be successful, what I needed to live to be successful, et cetera. How big were you in high school? Oh, man. So I'm looking at a stateline right now that says you're listed as 6-3-38 pounds. We'll come back to your weight. For sure. I think when I was playing high school football on varsity, I may have been like 2.30, 240. Okay. So that's still big for high school? It was. It was. I was a, you know, tall, slender. I mean, I try to get back to that size from time to time.

But, too, I want to say like 2.30, 240, when in the college, I want to say like 245, 250. And compared to, you know, high school rates, that's a big person. When I got into the college ranks, that was considered small. And over the course of the next four years, were you able to put on all of that weight? Put on a massive amount of weight and a short amount of time. What were some of the techniques that you used to put on that kind of weight? So, you know, when colleges, especially, you know, D1, D1 colleges, everything is about performance. So, you know, at that point in time, they were having protein shakes right after the workout.

You have a protein bar first thing in the morning. It got to the point where I was probably going through a loaf of bread a day. Oh, wow. Sandwiches and peanut jelly because for me, it was hard for me to put on weight. keep it on. I had a very, very high metabolism. And even when I got into the league, I was say until I got hurt, it was very hard for me to keep, keep the weight on, want to eat, get tired of eating, because it was always about eating to try to stay up to where I was supposed to be. So put on about, I would say 60 pounds from the time I got to college until my senior year when I

was like 320, which was a little too big. Got back down to kind of flirting around like the 300 range. I think I got drafted like 303. And then from then, I've really tried to keep it, you know, below 300. Now, I imagine your weight is a very important theme for your career. Like, how closely are you managing that? Is that something you're looking at every day, every week? You know, during the season, it's an everyday, everyday thing. During the off season, especially early parts of the off season, it's not really a big thing.

It's more about how do I feel and what am I eating? And I can tell, for me it's like I've gotten, you kind of get to know your, body really, really well where you know exactly when you're heavy and exactly when you're light. You know, the diet and the way that I eat becomes paramount, especially in the all season. Because the thing is, even though I'm working out, I'm nowhere close to burning the amount of calories that I would burn during season. In season practice on a Wednesday, on a game day on Sunday. So for me, the meals are a lot smaller during the all season, but it's a lot of meals. You're eating a lot of food. That's the bottom line. And what are you

doing for workouts? Everything is about getting back into some of the of the fundamentals of your craft for us for me as a left tackle my posture my stance the depth in my stance the feelings of different muscles and the way that they're supposed to contract in the right ways during this point in time my glutes my my my abductor's making sure that my abductors are turned on but this year they actually kind of picked things up a little bit and it's more more movement than it would be static because a lot of we do a lot of static and a lot of posture to work early on in the off-season, plios, jumping, it's like a glute blaster before we even start the workout.

Like we walk about, you know, three or four blocks, what they call them, slingshots, they go around your knees, and then we come into the weight room and we'll do all types of glute work, and then we do 81 squats, like 81 squats in different variations of your feet. So your feet pointed straight, pointed out, point it in, stagger, big stagger, short stagger. And the thinking there is you want to build strength no matter what position your feet are in? Well, it's really building strength and mobility in every as many planes as possible right now. Yeah. So we're working through a lot of different planes.

So we're going from five-plio jumping squats to a sled push to 10 kettlebell raises with resistance in a green band. And then pushing the sled back and that's one rep. And you're doing four reps of that. That's a lot. And you're going right from there. and you're going right to single-arm snatches. My last set was 90 pounds for one-arm snatches for five. Wow.

From there going to doing like glue bridges, and we're getting up to like full 500 for glue bridges for five. Wow. Right now again, we're talking about working on different planes. The planes we're working on is like open up your hips and squat. Come back, open up your hips and squat. So like it's all these different planes that we're working through that's different than what I've been accustomed to it.

and a number of the guys have been accustomed to in a gym, but it's really about working through different planes, having strength mobility through different planes, and then also being able to just have that bounce that you need, you know, as a season where it's on, and been able to build that stamina and build that foundation, that strong foundation right now. If you think about the evolution of the off-season into the season,

is the off-season where you put on strength and then the seasons where you try to maintain it, or can you actually get stronger in-season? For me, as I've got to, as I've gotten older, I've realized that I have to get stronger as a season progresses. For me, I consider my career, the way that I train, the way that I prepare as a crescendo to the end of the season. So it's this steady, slow crescendo towards the end of the season.

It's this slow build. So you're continuing to get better, stronger, more aware of your body as a season continues to grow and as a season continues not. You train very hard, get really strong, get in the training camp. You stop lifting weights. You get into the season. You're just maintaining. And you just barely getting by the last quarter of the season.

No, it's like I want to be getting stronger as we get into the last phase of the season and getting stronger as we get ready to go into the playoffs. I love that. And how does whoop fit into the equation? Man, whoop is everything, man. I'm not going on to you. I'm not saying that because I'm on here. But for me, whoop is what I use in every piece of my life, to sleep, to strain.

the recovery. I pay attention to all that. I love that. Even while I was on my trip, you know, my vacations, I didn't take my phone, but I made sure that my whoop was charged up the entire time. So when I got back, oh, that's interesting. I was surprised. I was actually, as an investor, I'm like, I'm going to see how this, how this goes. I'm going to not take my phone for two weeks. I'm going to make sure that my whoop is charged the whole time, and I'm going to see if it backtracks. And it does. It did fine. Every day, I can go back and see what it looked like three weeks from now. You know, and I was able to see how, I mean, I know how my body felt, but

to also understand with all the travel, with all the different time zones we're jumping through, how the body performs. And for me, you know, as an athlete sometimes, you almost get to experiment with yourself sometimes. You see what works, what doesn't work, how far you can push your body, how much you need to pull back. And you're able to really have a qualitative and quantitative view on that with whoop. Yeah, the self-experimentation piece is something that's been fascinating for me to see how athletes like yourself use whoop. What are some examples? of things that you've introduced to your lifestyle that you've found have improved your sleep

or your recovery, for example. You know, for me, just taking the phone out of the room, out of my bedroom completely. Totally. Like, I don't even bring my phone into the bedroom. And, you know, if you look at the inputs that you have on your phone and say, I mean, on your, the whoop app, the surveys, hey, were you on your phone before you went to bed?

Did you read before you went to bed? Did you have caffeine? Do you share the bed? the bed, you know, with a partner, you used to have another piece of survey after you took that off a couple years ago. Yeah, the whole night. I mean, that's a very, very powerful tool that, I mean, I... It's interesting, frankly.

It's funny. I will tell my wife, I'm like, look, I was in the green. You know what we did last night? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You know what I'm saying? And I've had my best sleep, you know?

Totally. Well, it's a very important theme for athletes and performance. And for years, there was this whole concept from boxers that you shouldn't have sex for a certain number of days. It sounds like you think that's bunk. Man, I've had some of my best workouts for making love in the morning before I work out. Really? I kid you not.

Interesting. Because the thing is, I think it's almost priming your body for strain. You know, like you just, I mean, you just had an exercise in essence. Yeah. So I, this is a funny story. So I've got a friend who works in the, you know, like the fighting industry. and there's a UFC fighter who's literally having sex

five minutes before he goes out into the octagon. Like, you know, he's with his wife in the locker and having sex right before they go out. But it's fascinating. That's what it takes for him to have an optimal performance. Yes. I mean, I've had the

best sleep of my life and I've had some of the my biggest gains have come on the eve or the morning of making love to my wife and then going going working out or going about playing a football game that's fascinating so uh any supplements in your life you take anything before bed um for me at tea that's like right now the camomile camomile because i mean it's not it's not caffeinated to make sure it's not caffeinated but that's the

that's the closest thing to any type of supplementation that i take before bed i try to stay away from a lot of supplementation during the offseason because we're on so much medication during the season so i want to allow my body to rest what kind of stuff for you on in the season all the types since I'm flammatories, man. Indeson, Celebrex, Torr-it-all, have had to take painkillers

from time to time with muscle relaxers, had a back issue. So it's times I've had to take a lot of medication just to get through the season or as a season, you know,

wanes on, you get into the last, you know, six games of the season where your body is just banged up. So for me, I try to take

dial it back, dial it back, take a step back, you know, you take fish oils and you take magnesium, all these different vitamins, it taxes your kidneys, especially if you're, even if you're drinking a ton of water, it still taxes your kidneys. So the thing is, is like, once the season is over, I go cold turkey. If I had any type of medication that was left over, I flush it down the toilet, if my wife finds anything, like, I mean, it's smart, man, that stuff's addictive too, right? It's, I mean, you know, that's a whole other conversation. But, Like, I think that, you know, you can be addicted to what you want to be addicted to.

I think everything is a choice and it's your choice, you know. And if I wanted to keep taking painkillers during the off-season, just to say I was taking painkillers, I could. But I know that that's not the best thing for me. It's not the best thing for my family. And it's not the best thing for my body from a performance. I mean, you've got a very healthy attitude. I remember reading about, like, Brett Farv, saying he used to take, like, 14 Vicodins before going to the S-Bs or something. And it just showed how completely off the rails it can get.

It can get. And I think it's, it's been moments in my career, I would say, when I was in Jacksonville, where I was coming off with a knee issue, where I would take a painkiller right before I went to bed because I knew, I know I'm hurting, I know this is going to, you know, help me sleep, sleep really well. So you see how things can really get really, really bad, really, really fast. And you think about how our NFL and how the game of football has evolved 10, 15, 30 years ago, how. obviously evolved to where it is now the way that doctors prescribe medication is just different. Like even to get painkillers, you have to have, they got to have a third-party doctor come in and evaluate why you're taking these painkillers. So you feel like there actually is a fair amount of regulation around you needing a painkiller? Because I think the perception from the outside

is, okay, if these guys need any type of drug, they'll have access to it. We do, but it's a ton of regulation around it. Like, it's not only state regulation, it's federal regulation. And the thing is, it's gotten to the point. So if, for instance, tour at all, tour at all is what you get before. It's anti-inflammatory that you get before the game. We've gotten to a point, it used to be a time where you can get your tour at all whenever you got to the stadium,

when whatever city you played in, when I first got into the league. Now it's come to the point where they give you a tour at all in a prescription bottle, you know, for, you know, you take a tour at all for the next four games. They give you that prescription bottle for four weeks ago and you have to ration out. that you're going to take one on Sunday, another than the next Sunday, et cetera. And then you have to come back to them to get another four pills for the next four games.

So it's very, very regulated. And you can only get it in New Jersey. So for us, for me, I played with the Jets. I can only get it in New Jersey. So if I forgot my tour at all and we went and played in Boston or we went and played in Miami or we went and played in Buffalo, I couldn't get, they wouldn't be able to, they wouldn't give me another tour at all because it was. was only prescribed that.

You're telling me there's no way you'd be able to get it. They will find a way to get it to you. That's my point. They will find a way but they're trying to get to a point where they're trying

to get that out of the game. Okay, all right. They're making a... It sounds like it sounds like more of a conscious effort. They're making a very, very conscious of it. You feel like the concussion protocol stuff's been good?

Um, I think it's been a mixed bag, honestly. It's a very slippery slope. It can go in a lot of different directions, honestly. But it's one of those things where so much happened years ago

where you're still feeling the ramifications of the lawsuit that happened. You're feeling the ramifications of Junior Seyal. You feel in the ramifications of the guy who committed suicide in Kansas City a couple of years ago. You know, even when... You're talking about athletes that have had, you know, clear cases of CTE clearly brought on about

by concussions, brain damage. And leading to depression and all kinds of issues. Yeah, and more times than not taking their lives. Yeah. You know, so those are still pretty prevalent and they're still recent.

I haven't even seen the movie concussion yet because I don't want to see it until I'm done playing football. Yeah, I think that's right. Because that's something that I just don't want to have to process or even have to think about at this point in time of my career.

Now, your position, probably a little less common to get concussions? No, we're probably, we're the highest. Oh, really? Yes, because you guys, I think of it. about it and in the trenches yeah you're getting hit in the head in some shape form of fashion every single play at some point so yeah practice the game it's amazing you know everybody sees a huge giant hits that knock somebody out of the game a receiver may get hit like that maybe

two or three times in a game say he doesn't say a receiver doesn't catch a ball in the game he don't get hit in the head have you found that there's anything after a game that was particularly physical whether to your head or the rest of your body that's helped you recover this could be mindfulness this could be ice baths this could be cryo what are some of the things that work for you yeah you know i'm one of those guys that i've done almost everything up under the sun um huge in the acupuncture huge in a chiropractic um i see my chiropractor uh every during the season every week every thursday in the all season every other week every other thursday i get i have phases where i pick my phases back up of acupuncture, so right now I'm not really doing acupuncture, but as we get

back into actual football movement and I'm going against somebody, I start acupuncture and I'll be doing acupuncture every week up until the end of the season. Ice baths, hot tub, cold tub, that's a daily routine. Like I start when we're in the season, I start my day in the hot tub, finish my day in the hot tub every single day. So you'll, I want to understand this. So you'll go into the hot tub. That's it. That's the first thing I do when I walk into the facility during the season. Okay. And so what? What time would that be at 545 in the morning? Wow. So 545 in the morning, what is this, Tuesday or Wednesday? This is Wednesday. So Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, same time. Assuming you're at home that week or? That doesn't matter. Oh, because you travel on Friday. We don't travel until Saturday. So we travel Saturday. But Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, every morning, 545, starting a hot tub. How long will you be in there for? 10 to 15 minutes. Okay. Sitting down, you know. And the thinking is that's going to warm your muscles.

up, warm your body out? It's just getting the body ready for the day, honestly. Getting the body ready for the day. I usually do a workout out of like 615, 620. So I do hot tub, and then I go get treatment. Any kind of ailments I got going on, knock out my treatment. Go get my lift in, knock out my lift, and then get ready to go get breakfast and start the actual meeting, the meeting portion of the day from a...

So you'll lift every day. I lift every day. That's what I talk about. It's really the, it's a crescendo of continuing to get better and better every single week until the end of the season, not just, you know, do everything in the offseason, don't do anything in season. But I lift every day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, well, Wednesday is kind of the only day. I'm a little lighter, but it's still some type of, some type of mobility that I go in

and do in the weight room. Because Wednesday is our heaviest day from a football standpoint. We're putting in new, new schemes. That makes sense, right? Because it's an equidistant from the game you play, so you've recovered, and it's, you know, the same amount of, it's a good amount of time. before the next game. Correct, correct.

The cold tub? Cold tub. Every day. Every day. 10 minutes, 15? Okay, I can get up to 20. So I do 20, 20 in the cold and come back into the hot tub. But you like to end hot?

I like to end hot. I've gotten really into contrast therapy where you go like from saun, yeah, fauna to cold. Just keep pingpying back and forth. It also improves your mood. From what I've heard it does. Now I've interviewed some people that have said they've used their whooped data to alter how long they'll spend in different, you know, modalities or anything like that. Say, for example, you've got, you know, you wake up with a red recovery, which is inevitable

in your, in your business. Will that make you think a little differently about how long you do something for? Not really because during the season, I'm so regimented. Yeah. I do the same thing every week, the same person. Monday is Monday, two days, Tuesday, etc., etc., etc. If I have a day, for me, sleep is like the most important thing that I look for. is what happened for me to get in the red.

Did I go to bed late? What did I eat last night? For me, one of the things... I imagine food could mess up your recovery a lot. Yeah, but for me, also, acupuncture. So I do my acupuncture. In Pittsburgh, I did it on Thursday nights, and Jacksonville, I did it on Sundays,

and then New York I did it on Friday nights. I would say after acupuncture, my readings were always much lower than they were on nights that I didn't do acupuncture. So the day after acupuncture, lower readings. Lower readings. I've always had lower readings after acupuncture. And I don't know if I actually felt like I slept well, but I think the treatment in itself was still working

and still doing what it needed to do. I think that's right. So then hopefully maybe the day after. The day after, you feel amazing. That's why I do it on Friday. I try to do it on Friday. So then you end up with the green recovery on Sunday. Exactly. Wow, clockwork. Brilliant. Who are some people that have helped you think about the way that you treat your body or people you look up to?

Yeah, yeah. You know, in Pittsburgh, I had a great group of men there. I had Troy Palomaloo who just got into the Hall of Fame. Yeah, I saw that. Ryan Clark, James Harrison, who everybody knows about. James Harrison's the notorious, strongest man in the NFL type five. But he takes very, very good care of his body. I bet.

I learned a lot from James. I had offensive linemen that taught me how. how to take care of my body at an early age as well. So what are a couple of the things, you come into the league, you're a young guy, what are a couple of the things that you learn quickly from people who have been in the league for 10 years? So Max Starks told me about acupuncture. Great. Willie Cologne talked to me about chiropractic work.

James, you know, the masseuse and the chiropractor that I now have are people that he introduced me to. Makes sense. Ryan, Clark, Troy, James, we all use a naturopathic doctor from time to time. What is that? So, a naturopactic doctor uses just natural herbs of the world to help with curing injuries. Oh, interesting. So I've been using her for years. So vitamins.

So like the equivalent, like Tiger Bomb would be under that type of umbrella, or is that even too commercial? I think that's too commercial, you know. But she uses just a lot of concoctions, whether it be through things, vitamins that you take, protein shakes that are grass-fed, like everything is... So more natural. Just very, very natural. Very, very natural.

But I learned a lot from them and have had people that I had back in my Pittsburgh days that have followed me throughout my entire career. I think those people have really allowed me to continue playing in the league

more than anything because I've seen people that I've came into the league with that are now out, people that were playing out of a very, very high level a while back ago that are out of the game. Because that if you... I feel just as just my...

opinion you have to have a very clear-cut regimen of people that that you use to make sure your body stays intact and it may work for some people it may not work for some people but for me I've had to have those people in place weekend and week out to make sure that my body is ready and capable of taking the strain and taking the load that comes in over playing this game well it was it was one of the insights that we had in the very earliest days of whoop was that the way sports was going and even the way that taking care of your body was going is it's not just about two or three hours of the day it's like what are those other 20 hours of the day and how is that affecting your recovery process how is that affecting you and it's it's powerful now to just hear

how clear of a thread that is in professional sports but if you go back 10 years ago it wasn't even quite the same level as it is today now there's all these stories about the tom bradies and the lebron James's of the world having these sort of weirdly long careers because they clearly have put such an emphasis on their bodies your body's your temple man yeah you know um i had a coaching college that talked about it was certain things he were put in his temple and you know he wasn't putting alcohol in his temple he wouldn't putting fried foods in his temple right because your body is your temple that's all that you have and for us as a professional if your body isn't working you can't go perform. If you can't go perform, you can't put food on the table. This is your job. This is

your livelihood. If you're not taking care of your livelihood, which is your body, you won't be in professional sports for a long time. And as you think about your career right now, like, what are some of the things that you've learned over the years that have helped you be really sharp in the game, in the moment, right? Is it just that you've now gotten so used to 60,000 screaming fans and playing the game, or have you also learned techniques, whether it's visualization, whether it's staying calm during the game, whether it's getting energized during the game, what are things that help you manage performance? You know, I think one of them is visualization. For me, visualization is used throughout the year, thinking about what it's like on 3rd and 4 on a 40-yard

line going in with the game on the line. In my case, what set am I going to use? What hand strike am I going to use where my eyes going to be love for me those those types of visualizations are happening all throughout the year at different points and times and will you do that literally in the morning will you be doing it just during a team meeting no this is like I mean it'd be times like if I'm flying in like last night take some time on the plane on the plane just thinking about it right and you'll consciously be doing it or just happens unconsciously it happens unconsciously sometimes okay I guess it's crazy man it's like I actually dream. It'd be times I'd be dreaming.

Yeah, of course. I don't know if you've ever had this feeling, but sometimes it's almost like you're dreaming about a dream and a dream. It's like layers of the dream that you're in. And it's been times that I can feel myself thinking about the dream that I want to happen during that dream. And it can be

very deep for me sometimes. It's like I can feel and sense how it's going to feel. For instance, I love playing in Baltimore. Baltimore is a fantastic stadium. And we played them on Thursday night football. And it's like you can, it's almost like deja vu because you've dreamt of being in that stadium performing in the way. You've been there before.

But that's such a powerful concept, man. And such a sign of how you've made it this far in your career. This feeling that you can visualize something so intensely that when you actually show up in the moment, it feels like it's already happened. That's a sign of world-class visualization. It's fun, though. And it's like, and it's not only just football.

It's visualizing the family. It's visualizing success off the field now in business. Totally. It's taking the time to, it's almost like you're creating your reality with the visualization that you're able to visualize or the meditation that you're able to meditate on. It's being able to put something in minds up, put something in a dream form, and then keep dreaming about that. And then, you know, who's to say that you don't have that dream come to fruition in person?

You know, I'm still dreaming about how I'm going to be feeling when confetti is raining down. after I won a Super Bowl. You know, you dream about that. You visualize that. You visualize that moment. You visualize what it's going to look like when your family is on the sideline after the Super Bowl.

You visualize having, you know, your child. Like I remember when I was a young person, a young dude, and I remember seeing, like, professional athletes having their kids on the podium while they were doing an interview. Totally. And this year, I have my son on the podium while I'm doing an interview. You know, so for me, it's visualizing and seeing what somebody did years ago.

had no idea that, you know, you had a dream, you had something that you wanted to accomplish, but you never knew how I was going to come into fruition. And then to have my son, I'm doing an interview during training camp, you know, with the Jets presser in the background, the step and repeat in the background, the reporters in the front, and I'm holding my son while he's tapping on the mic. You know, I dreamt about that. I thought about that. I visualized that, but I never thought it would really happen, but when it happened, it was like, wow, I remember when I thought about this, you know. So I think visualized. visualization is a very, very powerful tool.

It's been something that I've used for a very long time. I think, you know, you talk about performance and how do you handle being in a stadium of 60,000, 90,000. It comes to a point where it's just you and your craft. Who cares about who's screaming? Who cares about what your coach has to say? You hear the play from your quarterback. You hear the signal from your center.

You hear the communication from your left guard. But at the end of the day, your mind is focused on your coach. craft. And it gets to the point where I can care less who the defender is. I can care less who he is, what he's done, what round he was drafted in, who he was. And all I want to do is work on my craft. I want to work on my craft just like I was doing back in February, back in January, when nobody was watching, when nobody was in the gym, when it's, I'm in Arizona and it's freaking 32 degrees in the gym, because it's early mornings. And all I'm doing is worried about my craft, worried about where I'm driving from, where I'm driving to, is my glute loaded up

like I wanted to be, am I driving out to my end steps of my right foot? Am I catching the force from my right foot and my left foot? Am I replicating my stance over and over? Those things are what I think about in the game. So for me, it's like this game within the game. If I don't have a, if I have a pressure, if I happen to get too close to the quarterback, all right, assessing what I did, how can I make sure that I don't do that again? How can I get back to my core fundamentals and core technique is to get right back

and have that next play be the best play of the game so far. So I think it's this evolution that has happened that I didn't have. I didn't have. I didn't think like this when I was a rookie. I didn't think like this, you know, my fourth year in the league. I think after I had my injury in 2015, it caused me to think about the game much deeper than I was. Like I think early on in my career, I relied so much on being a good athlete, being young, talent, talent, bouncing back. You know, I'm in the bounce back time when I was 24 is a lot different than the bounce back time at 30.

that's just six years, you know. But I look at how things were years ago and how things are now, and it's the mental aspect of the game that's really transcended. I feel my athleticism by light years because of the visualization, the mental fortitude that's needed, the mental toughness that's needed. And I'm not talking about mental toughness that you've got to be mentally tough to sit in the cold tub, but the mentally tough toughness that's needed to be able to grind and be willing to grind, to be willing to be day and day out.

day in and day out and love the mundane. Totally. That's a big, I mean, that's a really good thing. You got to love the mundane, the most mundane task. If you love the mundane, you would be just fine. You know, you did a really nice job there describing two separate but related phenomenons. One is this vision of where it's going to be, what the outcome's going to be, the visualization

of that successful moment, the visualization of the confedity coming down, the visualization of the big play, right? You've done a great job describing. how you'll focus on that. And separately what you've done a great job describing is all the details of the moment, right? So you just describing what's the play call going to be, where are my hands going to be, what's the first step that I'm going to take, right? And so you're balancing these two things that in some ways feel actually quite far apart,

the outcome being this big moment, and then this very sort of minute detail level. And the analogy that I have as an entrepreneur is this feeling that your eyes are in the sky, but your feet are on the ground. You know, you're dreaming how big can this company be? How impactful can it be? How powerful of a talent stack can we have? How can we be the best company in Boston, the best company in the country?

How can we build this powerful technology with, okay, I've got six follow-up emails I'm going to send today. I've then got a staff meeting with my direct reports. These are the five topics I want to cover. I've got to do this follow-up phone call. And, you know, and it's not as sexy as what that dream looks like. But you have to attack each and every one of those things in a very disciplined way. And I would say even a piggyback can add to that.

I think you also fall in love with that process even more than the outcome. I think you're right. It's like the Super Bowl is fantastic. Like winning the Super Bowl is great. Winning the NFL game is hard. When you do win it, it's great. When you get on a win streak, it's great. But you start to realize and understand how much you love practice, how much you love the day-to-day.

the mundane the process and you realize you talk about the entrepreneur journey we have this thing in football and we talk about be where your feet are and you really enjoy to just embrace that moment and whatever that moment is you embrace that moment when you get to the next

moment you embrace that moment you get to the next moment you embrace that moment and you'd be surprised those slight edges and small wins that are those small deposits of capital that you put into and I'm not talking about money but the small deposits of social currency and the discipline currency that you're putting in from a personal standpoint. That stuff

starts to add up and you're able to build something that's really, really special. Well, there's another theme here, which is you're describing gratitude, right? You're also highly grateful for each one of those moments and each one of those details. And I think that's a powerful, in turn, feedback loop that builds on itself. It's because when you can get really focused on the details and then be grateful for being able to deliver on them, and then you have a picture of where you're going and what that vision is, it all just goes. It just happens. And it's amazing. You'll wake up one day, five, ten years later and be shocked to where you are. Hey, this is not going into nine years in the National Football League, and you couldn't

tell me it would have got me to this point. Well, you're an amazing, you know, you're an inspiration because you were selected seventh round. Right? It wasn't, it wasn't... 248, baby. Yeah, it wasn't obvious that you were going to be in the league for nine years and a starter and making the kind of money you're making. And a lot of it, I think, goes back to your attitude and a lot of what you've just described. I couldn't have wrote this script. Couldn't have wrote this script. Couldn't have called it like it is right now.

I mean, again, you can dream it, talk about it, visualize it. But for me, actually living in the moment, being at the NBA Tech Summit as an NFL player, investing in a phenomenal company in Boston, and then we're in the product and being able to talk about the product wherever I go, no matter where I'm at in the world.

Well, I'm highly appreciative of that. I'm lucky to have you in my life, man. True. But you, I just, you could have, I could, I would have never thought this little country boy from my heart Texas would have been investing in a company called Wu, speaking with the founder at a phenomenal, you know, recording studio here in Chicago. That's true. You couldn't have told me this, you know, in the country of Texas, man. So for me, those, those things and those experiences, those are things that you just, you work, you put the time in, but you never really know. at the end of the day what the outcome is going to be so it's like you yes the outcome is great yes

it's phenomenal to be able to do this but for me it's like all the other things that got me to this point of what for me give me the most joy now are you letting yourself think a little bit about life after football and visualize on that or not yet always man you know the work that you've done with whoop is a good example you know I'll say since I love for for college I've had to think that way because I never knew if if it was going to pan out you know Coming from where I came from in Maheia, usually, you know, you had one or two options. You'll go work at Maheah State School, which is the state support and living center for mentally challenged individuals. Or you go work, you know, on a farm.

Sure. That was your career path. Those were your career pass. You would develop some type of trade, you know, working on cars, welding, you know, running cattle. Those are the career pass. So for me, when I got to college, it was always, all right, I'm going to play football, but what else can I do? You know, all right, I got through the first year, all right, what type of degree or what type of career path do I see being as a possibility? I understand that I can always fall back on what I knew and what I grew up on, but at the same time, always putting something else, you know, kind of in the backlog just in case things didn't work at.

And I know that may not be the way to describe it, but for me, that was, that's kind of been my trajectory. When I got my undergraduate degree, I went and got a master's because I knew if football didn't work out, I wanted to make sure that I had something to fall back on. And I mean, even now as a pro athlete, you hear that a lot in our circles is make sure you get your degree, make sure you have something to fall back on if things don't work out, which, you know, the average career is like 2.6. It's crazy, right? It's only two years. If the average is 2.6, you know, what are you going to do when you're 26 years old and you're not playing football anymore? Like, you got to go do something. Well, I mean, even if you have a brilliant career of 10 years, right? True. You still are you going to do age 32?

Exactly. I mean, it's not like you're old at 32. Exactly. Exactly. So for me, it's been one of those things I wanted to put things in place that, one, meet the passions that I have, allow me to travel and allow me to meet very interesting. interesting people. And that's what I've been able to do in tech. And, you know, I... Well, look, you're well on your way. You've got Forbes 30 under 30. Check that box. NFLPA community MVP winner, 2016, 17, 18. All Stars of Giving Humanitarian of the Year Award finalist. Top 20 most tech savvy athletes. You know, look at all these awards that are well outside of professional football. So, congratulations, man. Thank you. Thank you.

Where can people find you? Twitter, Kelvin Beecham Jr., at Kelvin Beecham Jr. Same thing on Instagram. I love LinkedIn. Facebook, same thing. And then after being at the NBA Tech Summit today, I guess I need to make sure I get on TikTok. That's right, TikTok was a big theme today. A huge theme today.

So I'll go check out TikTok. I'm not on Snap yet. I do have kids, but I am not ready to get on Snap yet. Well, this has been a lot of fun, man, and congratulations on everything you've done so far in your career. And it's a pleasure for me to have you in my life. Yes, sir, always. Thanks to Kelvin for coming on the WOOP podcast and for being a longtime supporter of WOOP. A reminder that you can get 15% off a WOOP membership when using the code Will Ahmed.

That's W-I-L-A-H-M-E-D. You can follow us on social media at Whoop at Will Ahmed. We love to hear from you. Please subscribe to the podcast and give us all sorts of feedback. Stay tuned for lots of announcements coming soon. We at Whoop are wishing you a very green recovery week. Thank you.