[00:00:00] James Breese: Strength Matters Media. Video. Print. Podcasts. 

[00:00:05] Josh Kennedy: On today's show, we have a great guest. He's the track coach at Plainfield North High School and a member of Illinois Track and Field Hall of Fame and co director of Track Football Consortium. In 1999, he created the revolutionary Feed the Cats and has diversified his Feed the Cat message for all sports and the classroom.

[00:00:23] Josh Kennedy: He's consulted with the New York Yankees. Uh, college lacrosse at Princeton, Georgetown, Penn, Arizona State, and Northwestern with Princeton, making the NCAA final in 2022. For the first time in 18 years, uh, hundreds of high schools now follow now use a feed the Cats approach, also known as sprint based football and is feed the cats.

[00:00:44] Josh Kennedy: D v D has been number one bestseller from 2018 to 2022 in the track and field category. He's also got a new book. out called tired is the enemy, which is due to be released in 2023. Uh, it's an absolute pleasure to welcome Tony Holler to the podcast. Tony, [00:01:00] thank you for joining us on the strength on this podcast.

[00:01:02] Josh Kennedy: Great to have you here. 

[00:01:03] Tony Holler: I'm glad to be here. Thank 

[00:01:04] Josh Kennedy: you. No. And that all went, everyone heard all that you you're excited, James. 

[00:01:09] James Breese: Yeah, I'm excited. So excited. You have no idea. Explain your 

[00:01:12] Josh Kennedy: excitement there, James, before I ask questions. 

[00:01:14] James Breese: Yeah, literally, because Tony's influenced so much of the work we're doing behind the scenes at Strength Manners recently.

[00:01:18] James Breese: Like, literally, like, he doesn't know it yet until, like, 60 seconds ago, when we did the talk behind it. But, like, just from a presentation by Mike Boyle, who talked about his new revolutionary approach of timing athletes in their facility. Like it's carried over to the work that I fold and I bought his resources read his books and watch his podcast and his youtube Videos religiously ever since so i've been like a secret stalker.

[00:01:42] James Breese: So there you go I'm, just totally secret stalker behind the scenes. So that's why i'm excited. It's influenced us I'm personally as well. So there you go. 

[00:01:49] Josh Kennedy: Absolutely. It is. Um, so Tony, yeah, great to have you on here, but in case some of our listeners don't know who you are or about you, could you just tell them a little bit more about yourself and your background in 

[00:01:59] Tony Holler: the [00:02:00] industry, please?

[00:02:00] Tony Holler: Well, I'm kind of strange to the industry because I'm truly a coach. Um, so many people in the industry are trainers or strength and conditioning people. Um, but, but I. Taught chemistry for 38 years at a public high school and and I've coached track and field for 43 years. I coached American football for 25.

[00:02:23] Tony Holler: I started my career as a basketball coach. Um, I was the youngest head basketball coach at a high school in the state of Illinois back in 1982. Um, my father coached basketball for 47 years. Two of my sons are very good coaches. So it's, it's, uh, coaching is kind of our family's Um, our passion. Uh, it's how we have fun.

[00:02:46] Tony Holler: So I bring kind of a different perspective. I think to athletic training because I coach groups. I coach high school kids. Some people dismiss me as a developmental coach. [00:03:00] And I, I fire back at them. Maybe they should be developing athletes too. Um, but, but, you know, yeah, I mean, you know, some, some of these people that, uh, uh, you know, hook up with a professional athlete, uh, when they're in their prime, I, maybe everybody needs developed.

[00:03:21] Tony Holler: So, uh, so anyway, I, My, my Feed the Cats approach has basically been created to make high school kids have a better experience in, in sports. And I think sometimes we just blindly believe that everybody has a good experience in athletics and, and they don't. I, I think that the majority of kids have the joy of sports taken from them.

[00:03:46] Tony Holler: Um, and, and, and, you know, I'm kind of on a campaign, a crusade. Um, to, uh, to put that joy of sports back into kids, which then is reflected back to coaches and makes coaches [00:04:00] lives better too. 

[00:04:00] Josh Kennedy: Yeah. Fantastic. So tell us a story then about the, behind the concept of Feed the Cats and where the name came from.

[00:04:07] Josh Kennedy: Well, 

[00:04:08] Tony Holler: it came from, uh, my son when he was 13 years old, told me he did not want to run track in high school. And I was. The track coach. And, and I, I said, why? And he said, because track sucks. And I said, yeah, it does. But, and then I caught myself and says, it really does suck. And what am I doing? coaching a sport that is kind of miserable.

[00:04:35] Tony Holler: Um, and what I decided to do from that point on, that was in 1999, is that I was going to severely undertrain my athletes. I was going to sell out so that good athletes would want to be on my team, would want to run track and field. I told him we would stop running. We're not gonna run anymore. All we're going to do is sprint and [00:05:00] jump and I, I believe that there was a chance that if I got the best athletes in my school to come out for my sport, that we would be good in spite of our lack of training.

[00:05:14] Tony Holler: What I learned. Was that by doing less and doing things that focused on pure speed and pure explosiveness that our kids became very good in all events. And it was really a crazy good way to train athletes. 

[00:05:36] Josh Kennedy: Because I was reading something, um, and I assume you wrote this, Tony, it's about your Harrisburg team in 1998.

[00:05:44] Josh Kennedy: And that you lost to Chicago Leo, is that correct? Yes, and that's where it kind of kind of came about and like you said they were like the best team track team you You had at the time and yet you were you run with your tails between your legs, which is obviously appropriate for feed [00:06:00] the cats So, how did the training change between your your 1998 team then in your 1998 and 1999 rather team?

[00:06:08] Tony Holler: Well, my 98 team was the last time that I bragged to my athletes that we are going to outwork Everyone in the country We, we are going to, you know, it was the old Protestant work ethic that, that more, more, more. If you lose, you need to work twice as hard. If, if, if, you know, that every great athlete got there for one reason, one reason only.

[00:06:34] Tony Holler: They outworked everybody else. If you, and if you talk to professional athletes, that's what they'll tell you. But it's not true. It's not true. The ones that didn't make it probably outworked them. And it, there's this entire industry of more, more, more. And in 98, I had a team that, that was very good in the middle distances.[00:07:00] 

[00:07:00] Tony Holler: Uh, but it was a, it was a hot day. And we didn't perform very well, and the team that beat us beat us by being super fast and great jumpers. And so I had the idea that, that maybe it would be much easier to win state championships, to be a championship caliber team, by focusing on speed instead of hard work.

[00:07:29] Tony Holler: And like I said, the results from that point on have been remarkable for me, and maybe more remarkable is the Dozens or hundreds or whatever number of people who have who have taken my methods and actually Employed them to even more success than I've had so I get constant feedback about how Feed the Cats has changed the lives of coaches and Giving them a competitive advantage.[00:08:00] 

[00:08:00] James Breese: Tony, do you think having your background as a chemistry teacher and like an outside perspective Like, had it, had, was able to give you a bigger influence onto the idea of the feed the cats. Like, taking it outside of his perspective into the world of fitness. Now, the only reason I say that is because I came from the world of languages and doing computer science and police work.

[00:08:20] James Breese: I didn't do fitness. I didn't go to the college or do a degree in bio sci, or biomechanics. mechanics and stuff like that. So I looked at it from a very different angle. Does this, that different approach and your experience of having your family as coaches as well, like help you draw those conclusions and get the feeder cats like system in place, so to speak?

[00:08:38] James Breese: Yes. I 

[00:08:38] Tony Holler: think both of those things have a huge impact. Um, the, maybe more so than any 64 year old in the world, I truly understand. their tradition of sports in America because I grew up with it. I was my father's oldest son. Um, he was only 20. He is only 23 years older than I [00:09:00] am. Um, all three of my mom's brothers were college football players.

[00:09:04] Tony Holler: Two of them were high school football coaches. And so I lived in this world of, of cliches and, and we're going to outwork the competition. And, and, you know, I just, I'm just very aware of the traditional approach. And so after being in that traditional approach for so long, I became kind of rebellious, I think.

[00:09:26] Tony Holler: So that was one thing. I rebelled against tradition, um, because I was so aware of the tradition. And then the other thing, like you say, I think I brought in kind of a fresh approach, because unlike so many people these days, when, when I became Uh, a track coach in 1981, uh, there, there was no Twitter, there was no online, I mean like...

[00:09:54] Josh Kennedy: And wasn't the world a better place without it? 

[00:09:57] Tony Holler: I don't know, Twitter's really been good for me, [00:10:00] uh, but, but the, uh... Yeah, it's kind of changed my life, actually, because I've become connected with people all over the world. Yeah, like, exactly. But you know, like, if I wanted to read something about running, I would read it in runner's world.

[00:10:16] Tony Holler: That was about distance running. I, I was 40 miles from the nearest university, I had four little kids, I was broke. I really had No mentors, so to speak. And so I kind of grew my ideas. Some of them good, some of them bad, uh, from a fresh perspective. Uh, nobody told me how to coach ever in track and field.

[00:10:45] Tony Holler: Now, I came from great tradition in basketball and in football, but in track, I had really no mentorship. And I, I think I read where Seb Coe, uh, uh, said that one of his advantages when [00:11:00] his father coached him was his father did not live in the echo chamber of, of training, that, that he did not copy everybody else.

[00:11:12] Tony Holler: And I, I think that, um, that new ideas a lot of times come from the bottom up. The top down just feeds you traditional crap. Mm hmm. 

[00:11:23] James Breese: I, I, I can't emphasize and agree with that more, because this is one of the things that when I, again, Mike, you know, Mike introduced the concept of who you are and feed the cats, I then went into your website and started watching some of your videos, and the thing that came across More than anything was your ability to simplify the complex and that's something I really admire Not just with you, just with yourself, but with other trainers and coaches as well because if you're taking the complex It's about how you explain it to your athletes and most of the athletes just they want to run fast like perform better Whatever they want to do.

[00:11:56] James Breese: They want to keep and have fun They don't want to know the ins and outs, the intricacies [00:12:00] of the aerobic and anaerobic systems and stuff like that. That's my experience anyway, but it's the way you simplified it to get that across. I thought it was a really fresh approach. It's what drew me to your work more than anything.

[00:12:11] James Breese: It wasn't the fact that the results, I knew the results were there because you could see it and everyone's talking about it. But it was the idea of your simplicity and your ability to convey complex ideas with the less is more approach. And that's what how it drew it into us. So I think it's a testament to what you're doing now and how we found it because we find that it's the best option most of the time with particularly people we're working with.

[00:12:29] James Breese: And I love it how you're doing that with people. Uh, and making that fresh approach because it's, it's warranted because a lot of scientists, let's call them scientists, particularly in the UK, they quote science. They're so good at quoting research and papers, but in practical terms in the weight room, on the track field, on the field, it doesn't work.

[00:12:49] James Breese: Like, and it's just like confusing all the time. So that's my hats off to you and what I think is brought to the industry in making sprint training and athleticism simple. In 

[00:12:57] Tony Holler: that sense, I think the [00:13:00] complexity of cells, you know, like the, I've gotten the opportunity in the last 10 years to meet a lot of very, very famous coaches.

[00:13:11] Tony Holler: And, and it seems like I call it kind of a pissing contest. Of experts where they they constantly want to find the next complex idea or the new type of terminology they want to come up with some crazy flow chart graph that means nothing. But it looks like a piece of art, and I've often said that simplicity does not sell, and I don't think it sells a lot, but it has been my niche, you know, like, because I do not join that pissing contest of trying to out expert the experts, um, I, I have gained an audience of people that truly work with kids, [00:14:00] and I, I think that is, I think you're right, that is my connection, My connection is not with the experts.

[00:14:07] Tony Holler: It's with the people on the ground doing the work. 

[00:14:11] James Breese: Yes. And that's, you've just succinctly said exactly what I felt. That's what I felt. I felt you were talking to me as a coach, not a scientist. Which is, you know, don't get me wrong, you know the background behind it. Like, I don't know the ins and outs of all the science because that's not my background.

[00:14:25] James Breese: I can tell you about computer design and stuff like that to the nth degree. But what I when I was coaching and working with police athletes and police officers, I had to break it down to the simple and figure this stuff out. So what I found was. The more complex, I got confused. If I was getting confused, how would the guys I know work with get confused and how it translates?

[00:14:42] James Breese: So, you know, like yourself, Mike, Dan, John, those, you know, people who make the complex super simple is what I, I resonate with because it has a more of a carryover to practical coaching to get results, in my personal opinion, anyway. 

[00:14:57] Tony Holler: Yeah, Dan, John, and Michael Boyle are two of my absolute [00:15:00] favorite people.

[00:15:00] Tony Holler: Yeah, doc. It's a funny story. Michael. It's a cool story about how we met. Um, we're both the same age. Uh, but he read a rather heavy handed article I wrote called 10 sprint facts. I wish everyone knew. And it was, I really made fun of meatheads and Neanderthals and, you know, weight room people. And I mean, I did it in kind of a humorous way, but I think some people wanted to kill me.

[00:15:31] Tony Holler: Uh, I mean, I got some. And stuff like that, uh, uh, you know, people wanted to fight and unlike those people, Michael Boyle found my, my contact information and asked if he could fly me out to Boston to talk to his people. And so it's kind of like, Hey, we introduced me. It's funny. He introduced me as a heretic.

[00:15:58] Tony Holler: Like him [00:16:00] and I wasn't really sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing But I I looked it up later and they talked about how heretics were burned at the stake for speaking the truth And and I was like, I like being a heretic and I liked Michael Boyle. That's brilliant 

[00:16:15] James Breese: It's but it's true Like I remember because that was he said a shortened version of that story for the article that's the article I read as well and I resonated with me and the reason I resonated with us a lot is because Let's take the world of cricketers as a good example.

[00:16:29] James Breese: Cricketers are like baseball pitchers, right? Let's think of it in terms of baseball pitchers. Right, the idea is to pitch a ball as fast as you can, or bowl as fast and run as fast and be as fast as possible. However, I was seeing a whole world of cricketers doing heavy barbell back squats. As in, heavy, they wanted to get to three times, but whatever it was they wanted to do.

[00:16:46] James Breese: And I just saw broken athletes who were getting slower and pitching slower. Constantly. So like, again, like a lot of people are like, well, why are we using barbell back squats to do that? It's just, it's just ridiculous. So we had a lot of hate [00:17:00] mail cause we're not anti barbell, but we're anti barbell and speed and some specific training for the right athlete.

[00:17:06] James Breese: It's the right tool for the right job or the right person. So we found that barbells are making our athletes slower, right? So therefore we have find other options, which are better. My god, the haymail we got on that back burner was like incredible. It's like, well, it's great, but it's a similar sort of thing.

[00:17:23] James Breese: It's like, that's what resonated to me, it's like the simpler, faster, to focus on speed. That was the focus. That was the ultimate goal. And what is it that's doing it? It's against convention because all the literature and research says you must squat heavy with a heavy barbell, back squat, etc, etc. And that was the, that's the thing that really tied it all together for us.

[00:17:42] James Breese: And like to get that concept through for us. So, anyway, slight anecdote in between that sort of thing. Yeah, 

[00:17:48] Tony Holler: and you know, with Michael, I think I spoke for three hours. And I think he took away one thing, but the one thing he still says changed [00:18:00] his life. It was like one of the biggest things, he said he'd been waiting at the train station for 38 years for a ship to come in.

[00:18:09] Tony Holler: And, and supposedly like, I was his ship that came in. Basically what he took was this, is that we are going to sprint, and we're going to time it, and we're going to do one of my... Not copyrighted, but one of my slogans is record, rank, and publish, and If you are not timing sprints and keeping track of it, you are coaching in the dark.

[00:18:35] Tony Holler: You don't know if those squats are making you faster or slower. You don't know if your dosages of training are making you faster or slower. And people say, some people say, well, you know, in some sports, max velocity is not that important. And I counter with the fact that I think A person's speed is a [00:19:00] barometer of their health and their athleticism.

[00:19:04] Tony Holler: If, if you are slow, slower after four weeks of training, you're not as healthy and you're not as athletic. So, so if you never know whether or not your people are getting faster or slower, you are not only training in the dark, you might be de training your athletes. Mm hmm. 

[00:19:26] James Breese: I, and I love that. It's, I love it on so many levels because Again, I'm using Mike as a, as an example.

[00:19:31] James Breese: That's what he spoke. That's what he spoke about on his, on his talk. And I remember there was like 30 people on this webinar. It's for Germany. It was for a German webinar company, right? It was just doing something for like, it's Perform Better Europe is what it was. And I remember going, like, the same thing.

[00:19:46] James Breese: He said, his words were, Record, Rank, and Publish were the biggest takeaway and the biggest change that's impacted our facility for the last 20 years. That's what I remember him saying that word, and I went, wow. I'm going to write this down. Record, Rank, and Publish. So, staying on that topic, I've got multiple [00:20:00] questions around Record, Rank, and Publish.

[00:20:01] James Breese: What was the aha moment for you to come up with Record, Rank, and Publish? What was it? What was the moment that you realised, oh my god, this is the thing we need to do and make sure we do it. What was that aha moment? 

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[00:20:48] James Breese: com forward slash website today. Well, when, when 

[00:20:51] Tony Holler: we, I said earlier that, that I promised the athletes at my school that they would not have to run. If they came out for track [00:21:00] that we are not going to run laps. We are going to sprint and anything more than five seconds is working on something other than speed.

[00:21:09] Tony Holler: So what we basically did is I, in America, there's a huge industry. Behind training athletes for the NFL Combine, where basically the number one thing you're trying to do is get really fast at the 40 yard dash. And there's a reason for that. There's all kinds of great research that says that people who are fast at the 40 yard dash have longer careers, better careers.

[00:21:36] Tony Holler: People who are slow have shorter careers. They get tired in the fourth quarter, blah, blah, blah. So, so... In doing that, what the basis of our training, like on day one of the change of the Feed the Cats movement, was that we started doing 10 or 15 speed drills, like the old Loren Seagraves type of [00:22:00] speed drills, um, and then we would sprint three 40 yard dashes, get timed, and I think because I was a chemistry teacher, and chemistry is maybe the most quantified science in the world, You know, I guess I'm kind of a scientist.

[00:22:18] Tony Holler: I write down numbers, you know, I used to tell my chemistry classes that science is basically trying shit and then writing it down and measuring it and then trying to come up with a conclusion. And so I was trying shit, you know, I was trying to run fast 40 yard dashes, timing them. I, uh, it was, uh, the very, uh, early stages of spreadsheets.

[00:22:46] Tony Holler: Where I was able to go back and be a nerd and enter the times on a spreadsheet. I would rank them, I would tape them to the wall of the weight room, and kids would be very interested. [00:23:00] And so I started to understand that Record, Rank, and Publish was truly the food of cats. That, that I was feeding... these athletes by timing them and ranking them and putting it up on the wall.

[00:23:13] Tony Holler: And then as a side benefit, I was able to show them where they used to be, where they used to be last month, last year. And that motivates kids that motivates all of us. When we feel like we are progressing, we become motivated. If all you do is hard work and you never see any Benefits, you don't see the improvement.

[00:23:39] Tony Holler: It's not measured. I don't think that motivational fire is fed The way it should be. So maybe I just stumbled into it, but I have been, I think in the early years, I was timing 10, 000 40 yard dashes a year. Wow. That's a lot. [00:24:00] 

[00:24:00] Josh Kennedy: Yeah, yeah, it is. That is, that's a good job. Well, we love, we love data at Strength Matters as well.

[00:24:04] Josh Kennedy: Don't we James? We, uh. We, we, yeah, that's what we, we go off when we assess our clients and feedback to them. And as you say, if it gives them a visual progress, visual visualization of their progress, um, and they love it generally, well, there's, there's so much to unpack in that first 20 minutes or so. Like one thing that, um, came into my head is.

[00:24:24] Josh Kennedy: Your concept of out, you know, the old school outwork the competition. I feel like that's how my football team Everton work. Um, and up until the weekend, they hadn't won a bloody game, but they look good at the weekend and they all seem very quick. Actually, they broke, they pressed, they broke really quickly.

[00:24:40] Josh Kennedy: They, they seem to be fast. So yeah, I don't know whether it was. But Sean Dice is Everton's manager. Yeah, I think he does work on a bit of the old concept of outwork the competition. Anyway, that's a complete side note. I was also going to say, James, and you, you, you kind of already pointed at it. Comes from coming, you know, technique, uh, old school coming from the top down, Tony, like, like you [00:25:00] said, and the good stuff comes from the bottom up.

[00:25:01] Josh Kennedy: Exactly. Like that's what they do in cricket. As, as you say, the. They're still doing the same old thing. They're 20 years behind the America in terms of the way they train, which is, which is ridiculous. Um, so Tony, could you then give us a practical example of how feed the cats works in a. In a sports setting, let's, I don't know, we could pick football, NFL, for instance.

[00:25:22] Josh Kennedy: Yes, 

[00:25:23] Tony Holler: um, if you're a feed the cats football school, and I deal much more with high schools than college or professional, even though I've been told that the Philadelphia Eagles, uh, that, uh, won the Super Bowl last year, basically have a feed the cats approach. Now they've... Would never give me credit or they would never, they would never say we feed the cats or anything like that, like that's some high school guy from Plainfield, Illinois, but this is what a feed the cats program would do.

[00:25:56] Tony Holler: You stop conditioning. Which all, [00:26:00] you know, like what I mean, conditioning, that's what makes men out of us, right? No, it de trains athleticism when we run guys into the ground. So we prioritize speed, number one, for all positions. Even the biggest guys on the field, we want to train them with small doses of max velocity.

[00:26:22] Tony Holler: Because if we don't, they're going to get slower. If you get slower, you play like an old man, or you play like a fatigued athlete. And we don't 

[00:26:33] want 

[00:26:33] Tony Holler: to be old and slow and fatigued. So we need a couple doses of max velocity. And we're not talking acceleration here. We're talking about getting up, getting those 300 pounders up to 20 miles an hour a couple times every week.

[00:26:50] Tony Holler: And, and so you prioritize health, speed. sleep. Um, that sounds weird, but you can't be fast without health and [00:27:00] sleep. That's why speed is a barometer of health and you want the healthiest possible team you can have. So there's no conditioning. Practices are short. Not long. Anytime you reduce, you make something better.

[00:27:19] Tony Holler: Every, every writer knows that Stephen King says that, that he, if he has a fourteen, uh, fourteen hundred page novel, if he cuts it down to a thousand pages, It's 

[00:27:33] going 

[00:27:33] Tony Holler: to hurt because he loved every page, but it's going to be a better novel. He's not going to cut out the good stuff. He's going to cut out the weak stuff.

[00:27:43] Tony Holler: And so if you go from a three hour practice to a two hour practice, your practice will be better because you will practice the right stuff, not all the stuff. And so it's a very essentialist, um, uh, way to coach. And I love the book Essentialism [00:28:00] by Greg McKeon. Um, uh. It is, uh, it is a speed based approach.

[00:28:05] Tony Holler: It's a, uh, we are if we lose, we're not going to work twice as hard the next week. No way. We are not going to punish our athletes. Our coaches will have a feed the cats approach as well. We are not going to sleep in the office. We're not going to try to outwork other staffs. We are going to go home and be with our family in the evening, and we're going to make breakfast for our kids in the morning.

[00:28:32] Tony Holler: And we are going to do less coaching, and when we do less coaching, we do better coaching. And I will go to my grave saying that coaches try too hard, they work too hard, they, uh, they, they become tired and fatigued, and when you do that, you drink too much, and all those things go together to make you a monster of a coach, a terrible coach.

[00:28:59] Tony Holler: That's what [00:29:00] we've been taught that every coach got there because he outworked the weaker coaches and it's it's total myth 

[00:29:07] James Breese: it's it's interesting you say that as well because less is less is more is type approach because the phrase we use is Growth actually comes by expanding your comfort zone, right?

[00:29:17] James Breese: So like that's the way we think about a good friend of ours over in Belfast is an expert powerlifting coach strength coach and he always talked about expanding your comfort zone to your peak Literally is expanded. So you just absorb the peak and you just, you just go further and further and further.

[00:29:32] James Breese: It's the same with what we see and have done over the years is that we never train weights to failure. It sounds crazy, right? But you know, for a lot of people, but we, we literally, we leave two to three reps late in the tank and we do volume nice and easy. So they feel, feeling refreshed and we add it up here, particularly for the aging athletes or the athletes in season.

[00:29:51] James Breese: Right? Athletes in season, the worst that, you know, tight, like your, your phrase, quote, I quote this all the time now, tired is the enemy, right? So like, like it's, it's what we say [00:30:00] with everyone. So we keep this fresh as possible. Like it's like, you know, you want to sprint as often as possible, fast as possible, you know, we say you want to keep as fresh, to stay as fresh as possible, but train as often as possible, staying as fresh, you know, that's this kind of mantra we try and go for, expand this comfort zone.

[00:30:13] James Breese: So you literally absorb, so your limits are no longer limits. They're just like well within the comfort zone. You keep going until it's relevant. So again on that on that basis now, what about in terms of like obviously that's the NFL side of things? One of your most famous workouts, I'd say, is the atomic workout, right?

[00:30:30] James Breese: Like the, the idea behind that, right? Which is why a lot of people are here. So people who don't know anything about you or like how you approach, you know, just talk about the atomic workout and how your approach is and why people may go, Wow, that's, that's so quick. Just, just, just like give, give, give an idea behind that.

[00:30:46] James Breese: Well, two 

[00:30:46] Tony Holler: things went into that, you know, and nothing comes truly from our own brain. Uh, I read Atomic Habits by James Clear. Which is a book that should be mandatory reading for every [00:31:00] person in the world, because we're nothing more than our habits and when he's talking about atomic habits, he's talking about small, the smallest habit, like it.

[00:31:10] Tony Holler: Like if you just go out and run around the block today and tomorrow and the next day, that could create a lifelong health habit, and it will expand. Uh, for example, 449 days ago, I said, I'm going to run a mile every day. And, uh. Yesterday, I ran six. I mean, all of a sudden, a mile turns into two miles, which turns into three miles, which turns into four miles.

[00:31:37] Tony Holler: And so, so I love the idea of atomic being the smallest whole thing, but also very powerful, because habits are really powerful. And when I was doing a bunch of work for Jamie Monroe, which, who is a lacrosse guru in the United States, he has several high school clients that are elite lacrosse players, and of course, [00:32:00] none of them speed train.

[00:32:01] Tony Holler: Um, because people just don't sprint for some reason. And so he brought me on board to work with these people. And I would give them a full, like, workout week. And what I found was that none of them were doing it. Because it was too much. It was too much. So, what I, along with reading the book, Atomic Habits, I said, what if I create a speed workout that you could do in 15 minutes?

[00:32:26] Tony Holler: Where you did 10 speed drills. And then we did two time sprints separated by a five minute rest, and we're going to time those two sprints. So in 15 minutes, you are going to work for 60 seconds. Do you think that you could do an atomic workout two or three times a week? And the kids would say, sure, that's easy.

[00:32:52] Tony Holler: I said, wait, wait, wait. You have to do it when you're totally fresh. You cannot do it after practice, after lifting, [00:33:00] after 12 hour school days. You have to do it when you're fresh. Do you think you could give me two 15 minute workouts, where you do 60 seconds of work, and they, like... Yeah, I can do that. So basically what I did was try to create that habit of like run around the block where maybe you'll turn into a marathon runner someday by just getting these kids out to do something.

[00:33:25] Tony Holler: And, and I believe the atomic workout. I know, I know the atomic workout can be effective. And as a side story, there are several football teams now. In the United States, they're doing the atomic workout in place of their old fashioned fatigue seeking warm up. Because you feel better at the end of the workout than you did at the start, and I think that's a great way to get ready.

[00:33:53] Tony Holler: to play football or basketball or anything else. So it is. It's so central nervous system [00:34:00] based. It's so electrical that even though it's just 60 seconds of work, your C. N. S. Is on fire. And that's the way you want to play games or practice. And just one other thing when we're talking about doing less and leaving some gas in the tank.

[00:34:18] Tony Holler: The one of the most forgotten things about that type of training is that you learn to love the training and we're good at things we love and we're willing to suffer for things we love. And that's why a feed the cats football team. Can play well in the fourth quarter when they're tired, even though they've done no conditioning because they love it.

[00:34:42] Tony Holler: We are willing to find the magic that it takes to win a game in the fourth quarter because we love what we're doing. We love the training. And when you love something, you don't have to be pushed anymore. It pulls you. 

[00:34:57] James Breese: Yeah. And Tony, just, just as an anecdote now for you. [00:35:00] So it doesn't, it goes beyond football, basketball and the American sports.

[00:35:04] James Breese: So the Atomic Workout was a big part of Cardiff Cricket Club here in Wales, right? Who play, like, just a semi pro level now. So we ended up this season third in the top division, right? Here in Wales, which is like semi professional leading to the next level here now, just to give you an insight. And last season we came eighth.

[00:35:24] James Breese: And it's been a few years of, like, middle to low table type, like, playing here now. So this season, they finally asked me, James, do you mind doing something with us at the start? Like, introducing things. So do you know what I introduced? I introduced a little bit of mobility. And I introduce the atomic workout for every session, right?

[00:35:44] James Breese: Where I time them, right? It was just a simple stopwatch. They had to like time each other. I had very little equipment. 10 to 15 minutes. They perform better all season. Do you know why? Because they are more athletic in the field. Right? And [00:36:00] what happened was they were all coming up to training, they're like racehorses at the gate ready to go.

[00:36:06] James Breese: Like, they wanted to see who the fastest was that day because I wasn't able to record, rank, and publish properly. But I'd like shout out times winner today is this and they'd always want to fight and get that and what would happen was like They're really out the gate So not only were they primed and getting faster and more athletic But ready for the next stage of fielding drills and before they start hitting a bat and ball it raised the intensity Of the training session up another notch and they're like wow So I've got a meeting tomorrow night where they actually wanted me to help them properly this year and map out Preseason and do it the same way, if not improve upon what we're doing last year, all based on the atomic workout and the work that you've done.

[00:36:47] James Breese: And I say transcribes all sports, even cricket here in the UK and the rest of the world, Tony. So there you go. 

[00:36:54] Tony Holler: Well, I say the speed is the tide that lifts all boats, because as you get faster, that's an [00:37:00] interesting thing. Anytime I ask a coach that says we recruit athletes. I said, describe an athlete, the first word out of their mouth, fast, fast, and we have some really interesting anecdotal information that says, as we get faster, things like the golf swing.

[00:37:23] Tony Holler: It's possible that a pitcher in baseball or a cricket player will throw faster as he gets faster. And the reason for that is that as our CNS is challenged, our CNS learns to fire quicker, to send bolts of lightning to our muscles. And all movement is controlled by the CNS. So as we get the most extreme challenge for the CNS is sprinting in a straight line and getting time.[00:38:00] 

[00:38:00] Tony Holler: If we train the extreme, I believe that every movement goes up. The speed is the truly the tide that lifts all boats. So that's why if I was training a swim team. I would still sprint train them on land, because swimming is CNS based, and as they get faster, they will swim faster. Yeah, 

[00:38:26] James Breese: it's, it's, it's incredible.

[00:38:27] James Breese: There's so many areas here now that we can digress and talk about, but it is, it is. That whole concept of what you're talking about is this, this, this principle, getting people faster and healthy. Now we can share, in the last 12 months, we've had some of the best running results for our 5k, 10k, half marathon and marathon athletes that we work with, who are 40, 50 plus.

[00:38:48] James Breese: All right, Josh, share what you're doing with, um, Teresa Warren and stuff like that, just very, just very quickly for Tony Notes. Oh, yeah, 

[00:38:54] Josh Kennedy: so we're, um, like you said, you know, using a lot of your, your, your drills and stuff, working [00:39:00] on speed. Although she obviously needs a bit of volume because she's doing half marathon, she's a distance runner, ultra, ultra marathon runner.

[00:39:06] Josh Kennedy: But within that, we're doing running drills as a specific twice a week, I think it is. Um, and she's just getting quicker, she's getting quicker. And she is 100 percent on target for... Under 145 in her next half, 

[00:39:19] James Breese: definitely. And she's 56 years old. She is 56, right? So she's literally, she hit a PB on her 5k at the age of 56, right?

[00:39:31] James Breese: Having not been able to PB since 2016, in the last 12 months. She's a working nurse. 

[00:39:37] Josh Kennedy: Well, even like, um, Sunday, who's been doing the, the... The Running Jewels warm up based on your work, Tony. She's just done a 10k for the first time ever. We haven't been training for a 10k. She's just done one with her friends this weekend, and she managed to get under 60 minutes.

[00:39:51] Josh Kennedy: She's never done it before, and she's like, Woohoo! Under 60 minutes, first 10k ever. She's very happy. 

[00:39:58] James Breese: Exactly. Not a professional athlete, but she's like, [00:40:00] literally, that, you know, all the walks of life. But what we've done is like, they take that fresh approach. So let's take Teresa's workout, for example, for a half marathon.

[00:40:08] James Breese: So what we've done is we've stacked up her weekend, Friday, Saturday, Sundays, as back to back volume training, right? Then she recovers. Then Tuesday and Thursday are her sprint days where she's had recovery to be and so she's fresh she can handle it But even her volume days aren't that great Comparatively because we're stacking them day by day It's the three day total so it leaves her fresh for the Tuesday Thursday sprint stuff Based on around the atomic workout and the other drills here.

[00:40:34] James Breese: So that's that's how we're using your system Tony for like behind the scenes here and it's made a massive influence on how we've approached not for our clients But just for me as well personally for my cricket training and prolonging my career So hats off to you guys and thank you very much for you know, all the work that you've done Quite literally.

[00:40:50] Tony Holler: I I love that approach You know, I I have a saying that let the sport train the sport in other words If your sport is, is marathoning, [00:41:00] let that be your sport, but away from the sport. Don't keep marathoning. Obviously, you have to train for the sport, but you must train as an athlete, too. And to train as an athlete, you sprint, you lift, you jump high and far, and you bounce.

[00:41:21] Tony Holler: So, athletic training is the same whether you're a marathoner, a lacrosse player, a swimmer. Train athleticism away from the sport. And stop trying to reverse engineer the sport itself in training. Love 

[00:41:39] Josh Kennedy: it. I think, um, we could go into, well, we could go into so much more detail cause I've got numerous questions that I haven't asked yet.

[00:41:45] Josh Kennedy: However, the plan is to keep this slightly shorter and get Tony back on the podcast again to talk about so much more, but before we do, um. Because I don't want to miss this out. Just tell us a quick bit about your new book, Tired is the Enemy, and when is it out? Where can we get it? You 

[00:41:59] Tony Holler: know, the [00:42:00] book is written.

[00:42:00] Tony Holler: It's, it's, it's about 400 pages. Um, I'm a prolific writer. Make it 200. Yeah, I, I, I need, I need to edit it down. Take my own advice. But you know, as a writer, you fall in love with every word. Uh, but it's, it's kind of strange. It's, it's... The book is so honest, uh, it's, it's, it's all about Feed the Cats, but it's also about me, and it's so honest that as a public school coach, you know, I'd hate to have my best selling book be the reason why I get fired as the, as the track coach.

[00:42:35] Tony Holler: Um, so, so it, it, it. Seriously, I'm a little bit concerned, you know, because I really pour myself out. I talk about all my mistakes and, you know, and all that kind of stuff and, uh, which will probably make it a good book. But, uh, I literally kind of think now that it'd be safest to wait until I'm done coaching to put that book out.

[00:42:58] Tony Holler: So, so [00:43:00] right now, just on my Google hard drive. Okay. 

[00:43:03] Josh Kennedy: Fair enough. Fair enough. I want to read the copy now. I want it. I want 

[00:43:07] James Breese: it to be released. Nah, honestly, Tony, from us, like, you got two fanboys here. Like, literally, hopefully it's come across to all the audience and listeners here. You have massively influenced all the stuff here, and I'd love to get you back on.

[00:43:19] James Breese: Um, and talk more in depth, but specifically, like, we've just touched, we've just scratched the, we've gone to the foundations a little and talked about the philosophy, but there's, there's so much more specifics about the intricacies of training and sprint training for athletes and stuff we can go into.

[00:43:32] James Breese: It'd be great to have you back on and using your term essentialism from his book. This is why we've taken our, our personal podcast down to 10, 15 minutes. And while we're trying to condense these interviews smaller to give more, you know, less is more sometimes and leave people hanging for more, essentially, like on that note.

[00:43:47] James Breese: Absolutely. They're going to have to 

[00:43:48] Josh Kennedy: come back for more juicy stuff. Exactly. You 

[00:43:50] Tony Holler: guys are definitely feeding the cats. That's right. 

[00:43:54] James Breese: And for that, you get a Strength Matters mug, my friend. Like literally going through the post, I [00:44:00] can't 

[00:44:00] Tony Holler: wait. 

[00:44:02] Josh Kennedy: Uh, James, uh, thank you, Tony. It's been an absolute pleasure and I can't wait to, uh, to have you back on and please do send me your, your book in, uh, in secret.

[00:44:10] Josh Kennedy: Um, it's, it's been great. Thank you guys, uh, for listening until next time. Thanks guys.