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Primal Foundations Podcast
Welcome to the Primal Foundations Podcast! We will dive into what I believe are the 4 essential foundations you need to live a healthy lifestyle.
Strength , Nutrition , Movement , and Recovery.
Get ready to dive into discussions that will guide you on your transformative journey to unlocking your path to optimal health.
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Primal Foundations Podcast
Bonus Episode: The Next Four Years: Compete, Win & Thrive in College Sports w/ Angelo Gingerelli
Angelo Gingerelli brings 20 years of collegiate strength coaching wisdom to our first-ever guest episode, offering hard-earned lessons from his time at Seton Hall and beyond. He challenges the constant job-hopping in the industry, emphasizing the value of building roots, relationships, and revenue streams. We dive into early sport specialization, with Angelo dropping gems like, "Everybody wants to sell a single-arm dumbbell bench press on a physio ball to people who can't do push-ups yet." He shares how strength programs should be structured, the role of tech in training, and advice from his book The Next Four Years to help athletes transition to college sports. This episode is packed with insight for coaches, parents, and athletes alike.
Connect with Angelo:
Book: The Next Four Years: Compete, Win & Thrive in College Sports
PRIMAL FOUNDATIONS PODCAST-
Instagram: @Tony_PrimalFoundations
Website: Primalfoundations.com
The Strength Kollective:
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Welcome to the Lex Talk Strength Podcast, where we discuss programming, share coaching insights and dive deep into everything. Strength training. Today's guest is Angelo Gingerelli, known as Mr Fifth Round on Instagram. Angelo is a strength and conditioning coach for over 20 years, author, public speaker and the New Jersey NSCA State Director. Angelo also is the author of the Next Four Years Compete, win and Thrive in College Sports. Angelo, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Tony Nate man. Thank you guys. I'm super excited about this today.
Speaker 1:You are actually the first guest we've had on. It's only been me, nate and Nicky for a while and I think this is going to be the most appropriate for bringing the guest on with your experience, your knowledge and also your deep dive into becoming an author. For most people that listen to the podcast, that maybe haven't come across your page or anything, can you give the listeners a little bit of information of how you got into strength training and kind of where you're at today?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. I grew up at the Jersey Shore. If anybody watched that MTV show, the Jersey Shore, that's the town I grew up in, so I grew up right at the beach In the 90s. I just got super lucky. I went to a public high school that had a strength coach. That's a rare thing at the time. It's not super common on the East Coast now I know some states it is, but I just lucked out, man.
Speaker 2:I went to the weight room to get better at sports, like a lot of kids do, and I just fell in love with training. And the strength coach was a really great guy named Ron DeVito, who I'm still in touch with about once a month we talk now and then you know that was right about the time where exercise, science, kinesiology it was kind of major to becoming more popular and it was just the right time to jump into the profession. And again, now it's much more. You know it's a billion dollar industry now, late nineties, early two thousands. It was. It was a thing, but not like it is now and I was lucky enough to get in pretty early on that and and be one of the first people to pursue college training and conditioning as a as a full-time career.
Speaker 1:So, as you got into this um kind of what was your first gig coming out into university and things like that when did you end up first?
Speaker 2:coming out into university and things like that. Where did you end up first? Yeah, so I went to undergrad university of delaware. I interned there and then got a degree in exercise science from there. I was a grad assistant at virginia tech uh, two years working in the weight room, got a master's degree in health promotions from there. My first job was north toronto state university for a couple years and obviously I got super lucky. Our baseball program just did really good when I was there, which led to a job at the Pittsburgh Pirates Did that for one season and then in 2005, I was able to move back home to New Jersey, get a job at Seton Hall University and I've been there for 20 years.
Speaker 2:So I don't know if you or the listeners know, but 20 years in college athletics isn't a turn. Nobody does that in one place. But I just got lucky. I'm from Jersey. I had seen all starter jackets as a kid. I grew up a fan and got to make that a big part of my life and be a part of that, and then kind of stuff you alluded to before NCA, state director, author, all that other stuff.
Speaker 2:I think one thing our profession doesn't do well, at least on the collegiate side of things. We don't pay coaches enough, right? So people are always jumping from job to job trying to move up, make $3,000 more here, but you're moving five states away to do it. Get a better logo on your dry fitter underarm, which I think is a value to that. But one thing I would say is by staying in one place for 20 years I kind of stopped growing up career-wise. But I definitely grew out and did a lot more things outside of the weight room that I don't think I'd be able to do if I was moving from job to job every three or four years. So again, I always look at you know career-wise as a tourist. Versus the hair. I took the tourist approach. But I think I've done some cool things in the last 20 years that have worked out pretty good that if I just kept bouncing from job to job trying to make a couple of grand more each place, I probably wouldn't be able to do and create.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I uh anybody listening to this podcast just starting to hear you talk. They're like that guy's from jersey it's written all over me.
Speaker 2:There's no way I can. Um. That's why some people like I mean I got the seat on, I feel like I was back home. They're like, oh really like there's no question about it. So I just kind of kind of lean into it at this point me and nate.
Speaker 1:we go to different. We do workshops, uh, we're coaching clients. I'm a physical education teacher, that's my main job and I feel like we're always kind of bouncing around and doing a bunch of different things. Nate, like how is it? You know for you, because you have a full time job as well and you coach on the side.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it's it's. It's cool hearing that, angelo, like I, like that. You said you, you know at least sticking to a place I wanted them to see. Maybe you can elaborate on that a little bit more. Like, uh, like, what do you? What do you mean by like, you know, in 20 years, what did you get to do there that would you know? Kind of expand what expanded your career there for 20 years? Right?
Speaker 2:Great question. So I'd say that right away when I got there I offered a chance to do some guest lectures and some lab instruction which got me involved in the academic side of things, which over 20 years turned into adjunct teaching and doing a bunch of lectures and kind of the workshop stuff you do, which I just didn't I guess. I knew it was a thing but never got invited into that world until I was at a college for a couple of years, right, and that I guess kind of big picture led to writing a couple of books and doing the book publicity tour stuff and kind of getting out there as much as I can. And then I got elected, I guess three years ago now, to be the New Jersey State Director of the NSCA, which involves putting on a couple of big events a year and being a part of like event promotion, planning, producing events, booking speakers stuff like that. So again, I think you got to get really good at the weight room, at coaching and getting your clients better and writing programming. That's going to be first for everybody career-wise. And then once you get good at that, then you can kind of branch out into it might be being an author, it might be speaking. It might be a podcast. All those things are.
Speaker 2:Youtube channel, all good options, right, but I think you got to take care of the basics first get good at our craft and then kind of get good at some other things around it. Because one thing I think, and I'm not sure how you guys deal with your clients, but we have 250 student-athletes at CNY University. It's a small athletic department with 13 varsity sports. Right, I think I've done a good job for a long time with 250 kids a year. But if you want to amplify your voice we live in a great time right, you can have a day job as a phys ed teacher, strength coach, whatever you guys are doing. But you can have a podcast that gets a million downloads, you can have a YouTube channel with a hundred thousand subscribers.
Speaker 2:And you know, I think a lot of times you keep thinking about how do you monetize? How do you monetize? That's important. We all got to eat, we got to buy clothes, pay our bills I'm the last guy to say money's not important. But then, on our side of things and the fitness side of things, if you're really trying to impact lives, we've never had a better time to do that. Right. Everybody can have a megaphone and get good information out there and help more people than literally any other time in human history. So again, I think we live in a cool time to do stuff like that.
Speaker 1:Money isn't everything, but it's up there with oxygen.
Speaker 2:You know what? Actually, the joke I always make make to people is everybody that tells you money isn't everything, is already rich. Money is not everything. When you're driving a jaguar, when you're in the nissan like I am, I'm in nissan maybe money does matter. You know what I mean. Hey guys, I really liked your episode a while ago on the hot takes on fitness. I really enjoyed that. It actually got me doing some kettlebell front squats again, which which I haven't done in a while. Great exercise, but here's a hot take.
Speaker 2:We all agree, recovery is important, right, but do you find that everybody tells you to go to bed and get 12 hours of sleep at night? He's already wealthy, right? Lebron James sleeps 12 hours in a hundred-hour chamber. He's got $600 billion. Of course, he's sleeping a lot. If you're grinding, you're trying to do something. If you're sleeping a lot more than four or five hours a night, I'll sleep. When I'm rich, when I have a car with leather interior, I'm going to bed every night at 8 pm. Until then, I got to wake up at eight on a Sunday and do this podcast and sell more books, because my daughter got a little repayment due next month. She's making a travel team and she's starting to get this before old age. We're gonna go buy some perfume and makeup.
Speaker 1:Let's go I think I've heard you say this. You were saying something along the lines of, uh, angelo, about you know, if I'm, if I'm not with my family and I'm not at work, if, if I have this downtime, like how am I going? Like, every, every moment I that I have time, I'm going to figure out a way to make money, whether that's writing books, whether that's um, programming, private sector things like that. And that's the reality of training and where we're at, because there are the power five schools right, they have some of those strength coaches are on $500,000 a year contracts, maybe more. But then sometimes you have that one strength coach for that D3 school or wherever, and they're making $50,000 a year, getting up at I don't know, 6 am, maybe earlier, and then they got every single team and then they're not going to bed until like 10 o'clock at night. And that's five, six days a week.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's hard. It's a hard profession. That's why I marvel at guys like both of you and your other host that's in Portugal, not with us today but that you've made a living out of doing this and created enough value that your clients value what you do, enough to consistently pay you. Listen to your podcast from your speaking. I think it's a great thing. I think it's awesome.
Speaker 2:I think more young coaches need to learn that, because we're going to be realistic for every power five school man or woman making close to a million dollars, there's literally 50 people scrambling to make minimum wage in the fitness industry, right. So I think you got to be a little creative more creative than ever before and find ways to get your voice out there, build your brand to use a cliche and make some money doing what we're doing. Because if you're involved in this, you love to train, that should be a given right, but at some point to monetize that is a whole different thing and not everybody's great at it. So I think you got to put your time in and figure out where your lane is and figure out you know the combination of what you love to do and what people will pay you to do, and find that happy spot in between. It just seems like you guys have done a great job at it, from what I can see.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think we're living. We're really lucky. You know this industry, like you said, angela. I mean you were, you're in there in the beginning, right, Like you were in there when this stuff is starting to pick up. We're in it. We're in a spot now where the industry is growing and there's just so many ways you can like really expand this now, right, there's so many ways we can touch people and work with people. You know, I want to ask you this. I'm going to kind of steer this a little bit what do you think are the biggest mistakes you see for high school or even collegiate athletes making in the weight room?
Speaker 2:Perfect. So the biggest thing we see and I think I love being a part of the fitness industry the one thing I see is really early specialization, right, so that might mean a seventh grader decides he's only a pitcher and never doing any other sport again. But I think one thing our industry doesn't do well is we keep selling that idea of everything's got to be high level ton of equipment, ton of technology, baseball pitcher trains different than a shortstop trains different than a first baseman, every distance in swimming trains differently. I think there's a level to that right. But I think a lot of times we're building the second, third, fourth house without the foundation.
Speaker 2:And the joke I keep making is everybody I talk to wants to sell a dream of you have to do a single arm dumbbell, bench press on a physio ball to people that can't do push-ups yet. So I think there's definitely a place for kettlebells, dumbbells, bbt, force plates, all of it's awesome Once we master the basics and we're fast forwarding that a little bit too much or too many middle school and high school kids. Let's get good at push-ups, pull-ups, bodyweight squats and then look at everything on top of that. Would you guys agree with that?
Speaker 3:Dude, we talk about this all the time. But I say, angela, what I say I tell my client, my students, my clients. I say, hey, you're not going to build a house on a, on a shitty foundation, man like, you're not going to do that. So that foundation is key and the wider you build it, the stronger you build it. You know you, the sky's the limit. When you want to go specialize, at that point it just makes it a little bit easier. But you still got to have those abs down. You're not going to get the person to write cursive without you know, knowing the alphabet, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think to double back on the monetization part we touched on a couple of minutes ago, I think what makes our industry challenging to some extent is everybody kind of knows what you have to do to get started. It's simple, but it's really hard to do, right, like us three guys. I'm going to guess we all love training. Right, it's a Sunday morning. I'm going to go run later. You guys might go lift, do kettlebell, whatever we do later on a Sunday, because we have a day off, we get to train.
Speaker 2:If you're a person that hates to train and you're always looking for the next thing, the next pill, the next pattern, it's easy way out. You're willing to fall for, oh, lose 30 pounds this month, do X, y, z and then, shocker, it doesn't work. When in reality, what works is, in my opinion, simplicity, consistency and just work ethic, for lack of a better term. And then I think, once you master those things, you know, get your body weight down, have a solid body composition, you move well, you're pretty mobile, then it's time to look into what's the next level. Right, I'm good at the basics. How do I progress to step two, three and four? But we got to get that step one down first, before we start looking at step two, three and four.
Speaker 1:I can contest to this specialization, as I'm in a school, I'm in physical education and that's all I see is very, very early specialization. Not enough free play for these kids not learning different movement patterns. It's getting to the point where, unfortunately, this is a part of the business, this is a part of where we're at Sport coaches are getting their claws into families and saying, hey, we got to be doing, we got spring ball, we got this baseball, we have that baseball and you're going to go to the baseball performance coach and then all of this stuff Very, very costly, not a lot of big development, and you have the kid doing one thing all year round. What would you tell to parents that are kind of fixated on? Well, I have to get my kid into this one sport early or else they will not go pro.
Speaker 2:All right, a couple of things on that. It's an awesome question. Number one, the genesis of the book the next four years is exactly what you said. I'm not trying to plug it early, I'm just going to throw it out there.
Speaker 2:But the reason why I wrote it was the way youth, high school and college sports have gone in the last, let's say, seven years. Right, have gone off the rails in a way where there's a lot of people making a ton of money right, and I've been on a million podcasts interviews Nobody cares, I think, about the AAU basketball system, the travel baseball world. If Under Armour is making a trillion dollars from AAU basketball, nobody cares what I have to say about it. So my version was let's stop throwing out opinions that don't matter and write a manual for how to succeed in a world the way. It is right. And when I largely put it, I think the balance for parents is trying to find out yeah, your son or daughter probably does need to be at a couple of showcase camps a year. Right, you do need to get seen by college recruiters at some point. If we say that that's false or if we say it's not true, we're lying to people, right, but at some point where is the line between? You know, physical development can actually make us succeed at the next level and just creating a hype around ourselves to be seen and get a look at the next level for lack of a better term, right, you see it to some extent in the entertainment industry. I think is a better example of this where somebody gets hot on YouTube, somebody goes viral. You know, you see in the comedy world a lot where somebody has a hot YouTube clip and now they're headlining comedy clubs but they're getting crushed in front of real crowds because they didn't do the 10,000 hours in comedy clubs to know how to perform next to a master, whoever that means to you I'm not going to throw names out because comedy gets a little controversial but whoever you like, you can't. You know you got the YouTube views that tell you should be on stage with Comedian X, but then you open for Comedian X and it's a disaster, right? So that's what we see in the college world a little bit.
Speaker 2:You got the highlight film, you got the stats, you got all the travel tournaments under your belt and then you show up to University A and you're not ready to compete with those kids. So you got to find a mix in between of get exposure, get recruited, but then prepare to do that at the next level. And that might mean not going to every showcase, not going to every travel tournament, taking a final year just to train and then develop physically and get up to the next level and be ready when you get there. And the biggest thing I see is kids are being specialized when they're physically immature right, just haven't hit that growth spurt, that puberty yet. And then at some point you know you're developmentally maybe 13 or 14, but you're playing with 16 or 17 year olds and eventually you're going to get exposed and not be able to compete at that level or get injured playing people that are just much bigger or stronger.
Speaker 2:So I think as parents you got to look for long, longterm. And really I think one thing we mess up on in sports for a little bit is everything is now right, like we can't stop posting about a 14-year-old throws 98 miles an hour. That's awesome Statistically. That kid's getting Tommy John at some point before he turns 20. So let's look at this Do we want to have a hot YouTube page and a couple good recruiting letters from the house at 14? Or do you want to be in a major league at 24? I mean it's and it's a slippery slope. It's really hard to say where what part comes and goes and what's the most important. But I think as a parent and it's and a coach, you have to direct these young people to long-term success, because it's better for everybody if kids play longer uninjured and are good at a higher level longer later in life, right?
Speaker 1:absolutely. And cassine, how doesn't have football? Is that correct? They don't have no football, no wrestling.
Speaker 2:So our training age is really low. When we meet our student athletes, right, our baseball guys have trained a decent amount and I can say this because I was them 20 years ago. They're jersey shore guido meatheads that want to get jacked to go to the club on the weekends and that's fine. I like working with that right. And then our other kids that are really not trained at all.
Speaker 2:Right, the typical basketball player is so busy with AAU ball all year he or she never really goes to a weight room. Right, they might be really very physically gifted but they've probably never done a barbell back squat or a kettlebell swing or anything like that. And then our other sports are tennis or golf or cross country. Those kids' training age is zero. So the good and the bad is you get to really teach people the foundation and really build a good foundation. The bad is they're 18, 19 years old and really behind a lot of their peers, so you got to really kind of not hit the fast forward button, but get them going quick and catch up to everybody else.
Speaker 1:In those sessions. Right, you know, like, let's put football aside. We can touch base on some football in a second. But football aside, what do those training sessions look like in terms of like, hey, these are the things that in every single one of my sessions, all my athletes are getting. And then do you have some of these specific movements that are kind of tailored just to a specific team.
Speaker 2:Great. So normally I and I really believe it at the college level, at my college level not a power for, not a, not a super football powerhouse school kind of thing 75, 80% of what we're doing is the same across the board and not the sports are different. They're doing just swimmer, softball player, no question, right. But the the training age is so low we're teaching the basics for so much of the year anyway that goes across all sports. So I think it kind of makes sense to everybody. So we'll start out with a dynamic warmup, pretty normal locomotive stuff, jog back pedal, skip backwards, skip, karaoke, shuffle, all that kind of stuff to get the body moving and activated right. Then we'll do our flexibility and mobility stuff. So it's always going to be some kind of body weight squat variation, some kind of lunge, some kind of hip opener, some kind of just bring all the major joints of the body to a good range of motion. We'll do some leg swings, some leg overs, stuff like that, and then we'll go to our lift. It's not breaking the mold. I'm sure other people have said this to you guys before you're doing yourself. We'll do our explosive stuff up up front our med ball throws, our box jumps, our broad jumps, stuff like that. Then we're into our power stuff. It might be a trap bar deadlift, it might be a body weight, a barbell squat, something like that. Then we'll go down to our accessory work and then at the very end we might do some specialization stuff. For, say example, our swimmers might do some extra rotator cuff stuff because they're just going overhand swimming in a pool of 10,000 yards a day, right, whereas our soccer guys might do some dorsiflexion, calf raise, lower extremity injury prevention type stuff like that. And then we're going to finish with some core, maybe some conditioning, depending on the day, and that'll kind of be it.
Speaker 2:But again, I think a dynamic warm-up is super important, based on the things you want to learn. So look, I think most people would say you shouldn't heavy squat four days a week. I think that's reasonable. But I think should we do some kind of squat or warm-up every day to just keep crushing that motor pattern and get good at it? I think that's a good idea. So maybe on Monday we're doing bodyweight squats, slow and controlled, getting as low as we can. On Tuesday in the warm-up we're doing a PVC pipe overhead squat, working on posture and hip mobility. Maybe Wednesday we're off, thursday we're back doing like a speed drop squat something like that, and then maybe on a Friday we're holding a wall sit or something like that, just kind of get us moving, really get that motor pattern down. And then maybe only one day a week we're doing a heavy squat and then we're bouncing on some hamstring work and then kind of going from there with a lower external development.
Speaker 2:But I think you can do a lot of these movements, a lot if you're careful about it. Then the cliche coaching is an art and a science. You know the science is your body needs X amount of time to recover. The art of it is knowing your athletes and knowing we could get this amount of working on tuesday based on what we did on monday, based on what we're planning on doing on wednesday and knowing the calendar as good as you can we're gonna, I'm gonna touch base about the football thing real quick and then I'm gonna pop into you, nate, for football, right, because you're gonna get those most strength coaches are gonna be super familiar with football.
Speaker 1:They're gonna be into the weight room with football, you know. What do you think if you're training football players, do you think that the necessity of Olympic lifting needs to be in there because of that explosion piece, you know, cleans and things like that? Or is it something that needs to be, kind of could be taken out or could be, across the board, an okay thing as Olympic lifting?
Speaker 2:As a person that competed in Olympic lifting back in my 20s and really, really like it, still do it now pretty good amount of my personal training. I think it's situational and here's why I think the explosion, the triple extension of the lower extremity, I think it's awesome right. I think for certain body types and certain, if it's going to take you four months to teach a power clean safely, maybe you're better off doing some heavy back squats superset with box jumps for explosion, right. Maybe you're better off being a little bit safer and weighing risk versus reward. So I think if you had the right kids in the right environment and are picking it up quickly, I think it's a great way to train. I love it Right. I think if you're, for whatever reason, really having a hard time getting kids to do that effectively, you're probably better off doing explosive training, but doing it maybe a little bit easier. Motor patterns not as technique intensive. So, for example, if you're a football strength coach and you got three assistants and you put one guy you know one man or woman on every two platforms and just coach it up like crazy, I think Olympic lifting is awesome, right. If you're one strength coach with a hundred guys in the weight room. Maybe we're better off doing some other you know, kettlebell stuff and plyo stuff, stuff like that for explosion training where olympic lifting doesn't necessarily work for that group, right?
Speaker 2:The other thing I'll say real quick in football particularly and I've said this publicly a bunch of times I think the one thing that may end olympic lifting at the college level is the transfer portal. Right, we live in an era now where men and women are bouncing from school to school more than once a year. So we'll get a basketball player to come in basically start class September 1st, whenever we're done a tournament mid-March, he or she might be gone to the next school and they might do that four times, right? So if you're dealing with a student athlete that comes to campus literally a month before the first game and they're leaving the day after the last game, how much time are you going to take teaching them? Literally the most labor intensive than to teach in a weight room, right? So I think if you're in a place where kids are staying four years and you got a lot of time with them, and you're staying in the summer and you're reinforcing the motor patterns constantly, I think Olympic lift all day or not all day and mortar patterns constantly.
Speaker 2:I think Olympic lift all day or not all day. Do it smart, right, but get it in, whereas if you're in a place like I am, where kids are coming and going constantly, it's probably better to err on the side of caution. Do some other easier to teach explosive stuff and leave the Olympic stuff for people that are working with kids long term. As straight to that, if you're in a high school and you've got access to student athletes all year for four years nobody got access to all year for four years nobody transfers, nobody goes home in the summer I would teach that stuff freshman year and and drill it to death because those kids are going to really get benefit from it the way they might not at some other levels.
Speaker 3:That's just my personal opinion, what I've seen angelo, I like that, you, you know you, there's that's such an awesome theme like training. It seems like you're training qualities, right, like, like, like explosive, right. Then you got power strength to follow that up. That's how I train. I work with a lot of gen pop and I plug that into our programming sessions. When I'm working with people, like once or twice a week, I want to ask you like at that, at the collegiate level, right, what are some of the qualities that you see are missing at the collegiate level when kids come in, right, like, you know you're seeing them, you know they may be strong, but are they missing? Like the mobility piece, the explosive piece, like, what are some of those qualities that you think we can start earlier or that they're missing?
Speaker 2:The two that come to mind immediately are mobility Kind of like you led with it because it's probably on your mind too, but the idea of kids that are really good at a sports skill but not good at movement in general. Right, so you know, we'll get a pitcher throw a baseball 90 plus miles an hour, can't do a lunge, and that's a real thing at the college level. So I think, with the people working with high school kids and younger, if you can just get really good at the basic motor patterns, you're going to put the kids you work with ahead of most of their peers immediately, right. And then, if you're in a college setting or in a high school setting, work on that stuff every day during your warm-ups, right, every day. Some kind of mobility training Every day, bringing the body to the best range of motion we can and getting really good at the basic movement patterns, and that's number one.
Speaker 2:The other thing we see as an epidemic type problem is just a lack of work capacity, right. What I mean by that is we get high school kids that come from great programs. They think they know how to train hard, and then they tell you why you should go to the gym for three hours a day, but they were on the phone for two and a half hours that they were going to go in the gym, right and then. And then they lift on Monday, recover Tuesday, wednesday, come back on Thursday. That's an okay way to train.
Speaker 2:Unfortunately, in the college setting we're looking for you to come to the gym and crush it Monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday. So while you're going to school full time, while you're doing practice, skill sessions, injury, rehab, public community service, all these other things right. So I think if you can really work on building a really high level of work capacity, just to get as many things done as you can, you'll be way more successful on a college campus. Someone who comes here, just I play my sport and that's it. And now all of a sudden you know you went to high school for four hours a day and you had two study hall periods. Now you're in classes with labs and internships and just being, you know, the campus might involve traveling a three mile loop all day just to go to your classes and the dining hall and stuff like that. Just get ready for the work capacity and for your workload to be, you know, tripled, if not more than the first day you get to college.
Speaker 3:That's awesome Thanks. Thanks for that.
Speaker 1:The metrics that we see. Nowadays we have access to everything GPS, vbt, velocity-based training, we're looking at percentages on charts and things like that. Do you feel we have to have a marriage of two, of just having an intuition and also metrics, or do you think that metrics could be good for a certain amount of time? But it's really more of the, the movement pattern, because there's every single digital little piece in number you can collate, calculate. Where do you feel on that, angelo?
Speaker 2:Okay, I think if anybody in our profession says the technology, the wearables, the metrics are not here to stay, or the people at 25 years ago thought the internet was going to be a fad, right, and then 500 years ago they thought books were going to be a fad. So we're in the world where they exist, right, we have to use them, we have to speak the language, and I think a lot of them provided a lot of really good feedback, a lot of really good information. I think where men and women like us come into the equation is how do you interpret that to mean something to your client or your client's parents, or your sport coaches, the people outside of the world? So the thing I've been saying for the last couple of years and stuff if I could be 20 years old again and just break into this field, the three things I would learn, like the back of my hand or the. I would learn everything I could about VBT, right, velocity based training, how fast we're moving implements in our body. Number two GPS is a total ground cover, peak speed, average speed, all stuff like systems like catapult produce. And then, last, I would look at force plates and what we're learning from that and landing mechanics, everyone for force plates, and I would get really good at interpreting the data and making it easily understood to potential clients and athletes and coaches. I'm dealing with those three things the softball change, the tackle change but I think those three measurements are going to remain kind of the cornerstone of sports science for the next maybe 10, 12 years. It's a reasonable thing the way I look at it.
Speaker 2:Unfortunately, where I am now, we don't use a lot of that stuff. I got my hands on some of that stuff. We have force plates but we're not using a ton. But I think what we need to do is figure out a couple things as coaches and trainers, a couple things we're going to take to be our gold standard and measure them across the board. And I think the biggest thing is establishing baselines to realize that, okay, we're looking for the board to move, you know, 0.2, 0.5 meters per second on a clean pull, and if you're on the platform or somebody and they're not getting close to that, we need to make adjustments and figure out why that's happening. Right, but I think, like a lot of things, that technology, our expertise and our human factor, with the technology and numbers, is the future, not one or the other, right? I think the idea is eyeballing somebody lifting me like, hey, put five more pounds on that look pretty easy. That's probably kind of over for better or worse, right. And then I think the idea of just you only follow what the iPad tells you is probably not the best way to go either. You want to be somewhere in the middle, right.
Speaker 2:The other thing, the joke I make all the time too is, I think, whoop straps. I think every way you can measure it is awesome. I think it's a great thing. To quantify yourself and your performance, I think is great, right. But to some extent we still haven't found a way to quantify heart. We haven't quantified. I'm going to beat this, no matter what, right. Because the joke, I'm from the 90s.
Speaker 2:If Dennis Rodman had a whoop strap and load management, he would have never played an NBA game, right? He partied every night for his entire career and somehow found a way to lead the league in rebounds and win championships the bulls and be a monster. So does that guy not exist anymore in the world we live in? Do we tell a guy now you had a couple beers last night, definitely sit down tonight. You can't do anything, because I on my team, I want the guy that goes out as a couple beers and shows up and crushes it the next day right. So I think you know I'm not advocating drinking for, but if that's the way you want to live, you got to show up and come to work the next day, and I think a lot of technology is telling people that's not the way to do things.
Speaker 1:I think in reality we've got to find that balance Right you were just talking about some of the metrics and the things to really know coming into that space, the collegiate space for interns. Right, hey, I want to do this. I'm going to go to university or whatever. I'm going to get my certifications walking into um seaton hall or somewhere else that you've seen. What does an intern you know? Or what do you look for in an intern and what do they need to know? Coming in and like how do you know if they're going to last?
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 2:Number one it's really hard to know if they're going to last on an interview or a resume. It's just really hard. I think you guys have seen that too. Just even a full-time job, it's really hard to tell who's going to be a good fit for a 10-year career when you with them for 30 minutes, right. But one thing I look for. I think this is one place I think guys like us get this and some of the younger kids might not to make extreme regeneration Bare minimum.
Speaker 2:You got to love to train yourself right, you got to be. If you got a day off, you got a lunch hour, you're trying out new equipment, you're getting your. Whatever it is to you. You got to love to train themselves really have a hard time staying in this profession for any amount of time. They see it and think, oh, that'd be cool to teach people how to lift, and they don't love to lift themselves. And number one they love to lift. Number two especially early on in your career as an intern be open-minded, right, like, whatever you did before you met me is probably great. There's a million great ways to train. Whatever you do after you're intern-worthy might also be great, but for right now I need you to lock in and buy into what we're doing and this is the gold standard for right now. Next semester you're somewhere else. That's your gold standard.
Speaker 2:And I think once you intern a bunch of places, read a bunch of books, try a bunch of things yourself, you're mid to late 20s, you have some experience. Now you realize this is my philosophy, this is my theory on how to do things. But I think having a philosophy or theory when you're 18 or 19, you know, freshman sophomore in college, doesn't make a lot of sense because you haven't done enough things yourself or have been exposed to other things to realize what you like. Right. And what I would say is if you intern with me, you're not going to love everything we do, but if you get two or three things you take for the rest of your career, combined with two or three from every other mentor you had, now you got a philosophy. Now you got a training system. Now you got someone's going to work on their most environments, right, um? So be open-minded, love to train.
Speaker 2:And then, I think, number three, realize that the book is important. The books are important, the tech is important, but get really good at the human side of it right, like if you're in the weight room in a college and the only conversation you have with kids are, well, that 70 percent kind of rough. Let's go down to 68.5% for your next set of front squats. Sometimes that conversation's got to be how was practice? Oh, you hit a home run yesterday, great job. How'd you do on that math test and realize that we live in an era where, for better or worse, you can get your programming from AI and never interact with a human and have a good program? We're going to be honest with each other, right, but where we make ourselves valuable and become an asset to the department or clients is that human factor and being a real person they can relate to and and confide in and be their, be their confidant on campus yeah, I love that.
Speaker 3:I I think that's like really the x factor of coaching. And then the other thing I'll say too um, angela, I don't know if you're you're familiar Ripto, but like, right in the beginning of the book, like some of his books, he just talks about like time with the bar, like time in the gyms time. There's no amount of reading or experience you can get without like spending real time in the room and I think that, partnered, kind of like what you were saying in the last point, with technology, is just going to like allow and amplify coaches to like really hit the next level of what we're going to be in 10, 20 years. I do want to segue just with one question. I know Nikki, our third partner, is not here, but she did like she's like, hey, you know, with Angela on the podcast we got to get a nutrition question, and so I'm going to ask a nutrition based question for Nikki.
Speaker 3:You're working with collegiate athletes. What's one piece of advice you can give parents or maybe the athlete themselves on nutrition, right, like? I feel like maybe that's a missing, a key piece. It is one of the key pieces to success, I think, in the weight room, in performance, and you know what are some pieces of advice you can give parents and collegiate athletes.
Speaker 2:All right, this is much easier said than done, right? But I think the kind of stuff that everybody kind of knows if you can, with younger kids and high school kids, limit their intake of refined sugars to some extent, I think we'll kind of be a little better off, right? I have a nine-year-old that's incredibly active, she gets training, she loves going to the weight room with me, but if you leave her in a room with a thousand Jolly Ranchers she might eat 900 by the time I get back from using the restroom. That's the way kids are. Right, we're hardwired to love sugar, fat, salt and calories.
Speaker 2:You look at evolutionarily, it makes sense. Calories you look evolutionarily, it makes sense. The problem now is we have access to too many of those things that don't do no physical activity, right. So I think if you kind of just develop a taste for maybe, maybe, fruit, just some healthier things earlier on in life, we're going to be a little bit better off than someone who eats and drinks, you know, hundreds of grams of sugar every day. I think that's that's a good thing, right? Um?
Speaker 2:and at the top of that try to get people to know their body a little bit, that you know a stack of pancakes isn't a bad breakfast if you're going to go run a marathon that day, right. If your day involves just a school day and then six hours of Netflix, that amount of carbohydrate is probably unnecessary. Maybe you have eggs that morning, maybe you have some oatmeal, something like that. But I think just kind of teaching kids to almost match up activity and food intake earlier on is kind of better, right. And then exposing kids to new foods I think is important too. Right, like maybe maybe your son or daughter would like asparagus if they ever had it. They just never had it in your house. So maybe try to buy some new fruits, new vegetables, new cuts of meat. Exposing the things.
Speaker 2:And you know some kids are going to go to mcdonald's. That's a real thing, right, a couple of days a week. But you know, if it was McDonald's three days a week, but it's, you know, grilled beef or chicken or turkey the other four days or seven days, that's not a terrible way to live. So I think you know, realize it's moderation, but expose kids to healthy food earlier and think about just, you know, burger King some days, good food. Some days, I think you're going to be healthy long term in a good way, real quick.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you guys have kids yet or not, but I've noticed something. So my daughter's heavily involved in dance, heavily involved in softball and she's busy all the time, right? So sometimes we have to go to McDonald's. I don't like it, I hate admitting it on shows, but we have to. Just the way our days break down, go to McDonald's, right, and this is every single table. It's kids in sports jerseys sitting with overweight parents.
Speaker 2:So then what happens is McDonald's makes their money on people that are rushing around and can't stop to get better food, right. But the kids are so active because they're going from, you know, lacrosse to football practice and they're getting Big Mac in the middle. They're not seeing a long-term effect yet right. Long-term effects yet right. But the parents that are being forced to eat at McDonald's with the kid in the lacrosse jersey are seeing the hypertension, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes all things we see mean that kind of food. So again, I'm not anti-McDonald's. I think I don't love it, but it employs a lot of people. It's a good company in our economy, but let's be smart about it. And if you've got to get it, for your kids are rushing from practice A to practice B at least the next night or Sunday make a family dinner and try to get them something a little bit healthier.
Speaker 1:Love. That. I mean, that's real. That's real, real life stuff. You know, now going into your book, right, the next four years, you can't. You kind of talked about earlier of what inspired you to create the book, but you know I want to talk about a couple of the themes. You know, one of the themes you hit hard is talent alone is enough. Can you speak about mindset shift of young athletes and what they need to transition into college sports?
Speaker 2:yeah, it's been said a bunch of times. I think maybe I came out a little bit differently. But if you're a college athlete, if you're a division one college athlete, chances are you are the best player at that sport in your high school's history. Just statistically, that's the way it works out right, you're probably the best you know, whatever sport player in a 50-mile radius around your town if you're lucky enough to play at a Division I level. And now you get to college and everybody was the best player at their high school. Everybody was on the best AAU team, the best travel baseball team, the best travel softball organization, and now you've got to try to find ways to differentiate yourself, right. So you know, I live in a town where if you're 6'5" you're the center on the basketball team. Well, that's told to be a point guard in the Big East. So what are you going to do to make? How are you going to make that transition? You're going to go to a smaller college. What's that going to mean for you when you get there, right? And I think you've got to find a way to really really realize early on that everybody's good and the world we live in now, with the transfer portal, the grad year, the COVID year.
Speaker 2:If you're at eight, say you're a 17 to 18 year old freshman, right, you're a boy or a girl? You really are right. You haven't developed your man or woman characteristics yet. Now you're up on the floor of the court or pool with 23 to 24-year-old men and women. It was hard enough when the Rangers 18 to 22. Now, because of the way we're doing education in America, it's 17 to 24. It's a big gap. It's a big jump, right.
Speaker 2:So we've got to find ways to, I think, number one make yourself as physically strong and fast and injury resilient as possible. Right, take care of your body. And then mentality. Just realize the hardest game you played in high school will be like an average college game. That might be a practice, depending on where you're going. You're going to a good program and everybody's big, strong, fast. If you're a freshman and they're juniors, they know the playbook already. You don't know that. Start learning that stuff early on and just realize it's going to be hard. And to that stuff early on and just realize it's going to be hard. And the mistake we make in college recruiting is because of the way it works. We're telling kids and their families you're great. You're going to the Hall of Fame. We need you to compete. There's where your jersey is going to be. There's your locker with your nameplate on it. There's these weights with the logo embossed on it. All of that's true no-transcript.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's you know. And, like this next question, you talk a lot about time management in the book, right? What are some key habits that you think college athletes can implement to stay ahead of, like you know, academics or athletics?
Speaker 2:it's too expensive, there's too many majors don't lead the careers. But one thing I think causes incredibly well is professors give you a syllabus right and for the most part you learn to conduct your affairs around that syllabus right. So if you get the chemistry syllabus on day one, you realize I have tests on october 1st, november 1st and december 1st. They're 33 percent of my grade each. The weeks leading up to those tests I gotta got to buckle down and learn the periodic table, whatever it is for chemistry right. The week after I could take my foot off the gas on chemistry and focus on my psychology class, my whatever class is next right.
Speaker 2:And I think sports to a large extent have the same thing. You know your schedule, you know when the games are right. You have a rough idea of your practice schedule. Now it might change a little bit due to weather, travel stuff like that. But if you can kind of look at your life in college, as this is my school syllabus, this is my athletic syllabus, this is my kind of social fun time to do things and plan your life around that you'll be much better off.
Speaker 2:So the joke I always make for 20 years seeing old baseball has lifted weights at 6 am on Monday, wednesday and Friday morning. It doesn't change, we do it, the coaches like it, I like it, the play just works right. So that means for our baseball guys, on Sunday, tuesday and Thursday you got to be in house and go to sleep and be ready for 6 am. If you want to wild out and do the college thing, that's your Saturday night. So, whatever the other nights of the week, right, because I'm not delusional, I wouldn't tell people or you don't have a good time, but do it the right way. Right, and I always make the joke. Man, I'm behind the eight ball at that scene. All because we're in a small town in New Jersey. Down one road is New York City, the best nightlife on the planet. Down the other road is Hoboken, probably the fifth best nightlife on the planet, and the baseball house is right next door to the rec center, which is a rager three, four nights a week. So I'm just telling people hey, go to bed, eat plenty of protein, stay hydrated. And they're like nah, it's quiet for that.
Speaker 2:But I think you generally got to teach people to live your life right the way we do. If you guys are a public school teacher, that's Sunday night you're in the house getting your lesson plan ready, going to bed, packing your lunch. Friday night, maybe you go out and watch a game with your friends and you know, have fun and cut loose a little bit. Then Sunday you're back in it. So I think you know, attack life like a syllabus and just go at it the way you can.
Speaker 2:I always say the same thing for us as coaches too and teachers. You know we talk a lot about how we periodize our training. The last 10 years I figured out I got to periodize my life. What I mean by that is like my in-season at Seton Hall is basically August. When our fall sports come back, september, october, november, the only thing I could be is a strength coach at Seton Hall. I'm busy nonstop. All the kids are new. It's constant coaching. It's dealing with all the stuff we do right In December.
Speaker 2:That's a lot easier. I can write a book in December. That's a lot easier. I can write a book in December. I can do a public speaking in December. I can do a bunch of podcasts. We could come back mid-January.
Speaker 2:It's hard again, right? Baseball is getting ready to go. Softball is getting ready to go. Basketball they're wrapping up their season. Biggie's game is Biggie's tournament, stuff like that. I got to clock back into Seton Hall. We get to May, I can work on my next project. I can maybe pick up some personal training clients in the summer that I can't during the year, and I think that's one. Two things One by being at one place for a while you get good at that right. So, like Tony, you said, you're a phys ed teacher. You know that schedule right. You know when September comes, you got to lock into that phys ed job because that's your most important thing. You get to May or June when your year wraps up. Now you can do some other stuff right. And I think I stay at one job long enough and realize the way we periodize preach. You know pre-season versus in-season versus post-season training. That's where I look at my year as a strength coach yeah, love that.
Speaker 1:I think, yeah, and that's something to also think about if you are a strength coach too, or teacher or whatever it's like, look at the year, like you know, like you said, that's one piece of like, hey, no one special things are coming. You know like, oh, it's this exam week for here and it's this going to be. This uh, homecoming is this weekend, whatever it may be, and just knowing those, there could be some disruptions as well in the training cycles. But knowing the, the kiddos, knowing the staff, knowing the uh schedule of the university or whatever college or even high school you're at, you know, one piece also is and I would love to hear your take on this is dealing with coaching styles. As a kid, right, you know you might come four years from a high school and then get to college and not click with your coach. You know how do you see kids navigating college and not click with your coach. You know.
Speaker 2:You know how do you see kids navigating this with, not clicking with, a coach? I think if it does happen, right, it's unfortunate. When it does, it's a normal one. Happens too often because of what goes on in the recruiting process. Right, when you're being recruited, you're seeing your coach to be the coolest person ever and nicest man or woman will work with your schedule Once your parents at the games and then you get to the first day of practice and they're not exactly that right.
Speaker 2:So what I always say is I don't work with any coaches that are liars I really don't. But I work with a lot of coaches that are really good salespeople, right, and they're telling you what you need to take a car Like. If a guy tells you something about a car, that's true. If a guy tells you something about a car, that's true. But there's probably some other things about the car that you find out when you drive it off. The lot wasn't exactly what they told you and that does happen, right? What I say to any young man or woman with that is number one realize that in the era we live in now, at least where I am coaches move on a lot, so there's some chance you might be a student athlete at a place longer than that coaching staff is there. There's some chance of that right. Number two think long-term. An example I always gave if you're just buried on the depth chart on the basketball team and you're never going to get on the floor, but you're majoring in bio and it's a bio program that puts a lot of kids into dental school and you want to be a dentist when you're 35, you got to stay there and get through it and gut it out. I think that that's fair right. I think if you don't care too much about your major and the NBA is a real option for you and the coaching staff there is not showcasing your skills then it's time to jump in that transfer portal and see what's out there and see what your skill set's worth on the open market. But I think if you look at how many kids that actually affects, it's 99% of these student-athletes are getting jobs in things other than their sport. So let's look long term and look at all.
Speaker 2:The other thing I think I look at tell a young person too is sometimes the grass is greener on the other side. Sometimes it's greener where you water it for, to use a cliche, right. So look at the things that are really making you unhappy and then realize will that change if you go somewhere else? Right, if you just don't like a coach yelling at you for two hours a day but you like every single other thing about that school, you probably stay right. If you don't like the coach yelling at you and you don't have any friends and you hate the dining hall and your girlfriend's at home and you miss her, you don't like the temp of the climate, then maybe it's time to go right.
Speaker 2:I think you got to look at all things combined. But yeah, man, a coach has an incredible impact on a person's life. A head sport coach you can argue the biggest impact on a person's life. A head sport coach you can argue the biggest impact on a student athlete's life. And if it's really not working well, we live in an era now where you can move on and give somebody else a shot, which I think is a good thing.
Speaker 3:Then, angelo, we're going to ask you you know just from the book what are some of the biggest takeaways you hope readers remember after finishing it.
Speaker 2:Okay, I think number one when you're picking a school to play sports at, do your research right, figure out, listen to the recruiting pitch, have a good time on the trip and then deep dive into what you're really getting into. Right, that's number one. Number two once you sign the scholarship offer, it is awesome, it's a great time in your life. You're going to be a local celebrity for a couple days. Youtube views, instagram likes it's fire right. Days, youtube views, instagram likes it's fire right. The next day or two, wake up and clock in and go to work and figure out what you need to compete at that level, and what I would do is I would contact a strength coach immediately and find out what's going to be expected, right? Do we have a conditioning test? Do we do Olympic lifts? Do we do heavy squat, bench deadlift, whatever it is, and then start getting ready for that right away, right?
Speaker 2:The one thing I see with freshmen coming unprepared, which I've seen constantly, is they just didn't know what they were getting into. Um, and the other thing I saw at the time is you got about 100 days when you sign your scholarship to show up on campus, work for one hour a day over those 100 days and you will show up better than most of the freshman class, right, right. So go to your prom, go on your family vacation, enjoy graduation all great times in your life but at some point figure out all right. If I got to run a six-minute mile on September 1st, it takes me nine minutes on June 1st. I got three months to figure this out and to show up in shape and ready to go.
Speaker 2:And you just do that. Because the one mistake I think a lot of kids make is they show up we'll call it just quote, unquote out of shape, right, and they can't pass the conditioning test. They're throwing up during practice, just not ready for what's coming up. Then you do that. You put a bullseye on your back immediately as someone who can't help your team from your teammates and your coaching staff. So I think, figure out what you need to do and be ready to do that and be at the top of those drills, finish stuff early, be the best player in practice and not saying you'll play right away, but you give yourself a much better chance than if you're physically at a deficit compared to everybody else on the team that's.
Speaker 1:It's such a good point too. You know, some coaches know the kids aren't going to know how to lift right, they're not going to know the movements they know. The expectation is like I'm gonna have to coach these freshmen up. But if you come in conditioned you're like, oh okay, this kid is here and he's ready to work versus.
Speaker 2:You know, the kid hanging over the side of the garbage can puking after like the first conditioning set yeah, yeah, and I think that's one thing that the private sector might drop the ball on a little bit. We keep keep hammering on how important strength is and very important. You can't do things right if you're not strong enough. There's a lot of reasons it's important, but I think at some extent, during those couple months before you report to a college campus, conditioning might be more important, because that's the thing that's going to be apparent to your coaching staff right away when you get there. So if you've got the pivoting strength or conditioning, I would pick conditioning during those couple months. And then we all know how important strength is on every other phase of your life. But conditioning becomes very important during those that summer before you go away to college.
Speaker 1:And I want to kind of end with talking about continuing education. You know you are the state director for New Jersey for the NSCA. I'm going to do a little selfish plug of the NHSSCA, the National High School Strength and Conditioning Association for Illinois. I just went to their state workshop or clinic at Evanston, which was awesome. I never got to be inside their weight room and see the field house and things like that. These types of things, in my opinion, are really what kind of gets you grounded in this space. You learn a ton. Can you talk about kind of either New Jersey itself or even just the NSCA and what you've provided for them as the state director?
Speaker 2:So the NSCA similar to the NHCCA, I think you said it was. But they did their New Jersey event last month. I had planned on going and the way my schedule broke down until the last minute I couldn't do it. So I really I want to be more involved in that. So I think high school coaches are doing some great stuff, but the NSCA deals with all kinds of strengthening and distancing. So, from tactical, college, high school sports, specific special interest groups, my main thing as state director is booking our state clinic, which I'll do my free plug now, I guess May 3rd, at Monmouth University at the Jersey Shore. I book six speakers every time, right, and I try to fill in, kind of like we talked about programming earlier, kind of fill in specific slots, right. So always try to get a high school strength coach. Always try to get a college strength coach. Always try to get a private sector person to talk about the business side of it, right. Like how do you make your personal training studio generate income every month? How do you make that work? And that's super important and ignored too much by the NSCA, not sure about the other organizations ignored too much by the NSCA, not sure about the other organizations. I try to bring a tactical person on because that's a big part of our profession right now going to work with the military, police, firefighter industry and then I try to get the headliner of some kind right. So I'd like to bring in a strength coach of the Phillies, the Mets, the Eagles, something like that. I always joke around, I book it like a music festival where I have the headliners name and the big font and then kind of cycle down from there.
Speaker 2:And I just got to know from doing events over the years. You know you got, you got to fill the room, you got to make it a good experience for everybody. Try to get some sponsors on board to pay for some stuff and give people a first class experience. And I think that there's two things Hearing people speak that do our job in different environments or the same environment as the different institution, you learn a lot right. So you know I'm having a problem doing X and then somebody presents on X. You take that back to your place and do it. I think super valuable. And then and I think the networking side of this is super important so I think we learned during COVID you can get a lot from a seminar by watching it online, watching a webinar, watching a YouTube video, listening to podcasts you can, there's no doubt about that. But I think a lot of what you pay for and when you get out of these events and a lot of persons, you're exchanging business cards, you're talking, you're calling somebody. Hey, I really liked when you did the presentation on plyos for junior high kids. I'm dealing with even younger kids. How would you adapt it for that, whatever it might be? So I think if you're a young person going to conferences, you know, pay attention to speakers, network as much as you can at lunch early. If there's an after party cocktail hour, something like that, go to that, be a part of it and then, when it's over and this might be more important reach back out. If I do a presentation at an event on a Monday and somebody on a Tuesday hits me with an email hey, man, I really liked your presentation, I'm doing X. Can I come to see you all for a day? I never say no. I will always reach back out, try to help somebody out if I can. And those are where relationships really come into play, because that person, if they need a job recommendation or they're trying to do X down the line. I'll definitely help them out if I can. So here's one example that I like to say all the time In 20, I believe it was 18, I did a presentation at the NSCA state clinic, way before I was state director.
Speaker 2:Just presented, right Young man came up to me, introduced himself. The next semester he interned with me at Seton Hall. Right Two years after that he opened his own gym. It's called Mach 1 Barbell. It's a great company. They have an Olympic lifting team. It's awesome. Two it's a great company. They have an Olympic lifting team it's awesome.
Speaker 2:Two years after that, I needed a place to do my photo shoot for the next four years. He let me do a photo shoot for free in his facility and had his sister do the photography for a very affordable price. And that's what our profession really starts to work. And that all stemmed from him walking up to me when he was like 21 and said, hey, I want to break into this thing. And now he's a business owner that provided the photo shoot and a photographer in my book. And now we're working together, promoting getting better together.
Speaker 2:So I just think, don't be embarrassed or scared to walk up to somebody. And the other thing is man, if a strength coach, personal trainer, business teacher, whatever, if they big time, you that's them Like we're not celebrities, we're not billionaires. I don't understand people like I can't return your call because I work for the phillies and you only work for seat hall. Your job's making you hot right now. Next year you'll probably be fired or have a different job, and then then I, then you, then I won't return your call maybe, but I just don't understand the way that works at all. So I'm the biggest open book. Call me, d me, not in a creepy way, but hit me up and we'll make something happen, if we can.
Speaker 3:Angelo man, that's the best answer you can give, so thank you. Thank you so much for being our first interviewee and first guest on the podcast. Man, it means the world to us. Thanks for your insights. I learned a ton today. I hope our viewers listened and learned a ton. How can our viewers find you, man?
Speaker 2:Yeah, super easy. Again, email angelogingerelli at gmailcom and then on LinkedIn it's Angelo Gingerelli and then Facebook, not Facebook. How old are we here?
Speaker 1:MySpace MySpace.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hit me up on MySpace, I'll put you in my top eight, and then on Instagram and YouTube. It's Mr Fifth Round M-R, the number five T-H-R-U-N-D, and the new book is called the Next Four Years. It's available on Amazon. Check that out. Any questions, please feel right to me, send me a DM.
Speaker 1:We'll me send me a dm, we'll answer whatever you have. Yeah, we'll put all the the links, everything in the show notes so people have access to that spotify, apple, uh, podcast, youtube, everything but angelo, we really appreciate you coming on and and taking the time to share information about yourself, the book and all the knowledge over the past 20 years, so we appreciate it this is great man.
Speaker 2:Thank you guys so much. I really appreciate your time. Best of luck with the show.
Speaker 1:All right, thanks, angelo. Thanks for everybody listening to. Let's Talk Strength. We'll see you guys on the next episode.