Above The Whistle
Welcome to Above The Whistle. The podcast that takes you beyond the X's and O's and into the mindset of greatness as we sit down with coaches/athletic directors/former players across the country.
Above The Whistle
Coach Zach Saffell: Building Champions
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Unlock the secrets to empowering the next generation of star athletes and leaders with Zach Safel, the innovative force behind Custom Built Strength. As we journey through Zach's unique philosophies, you'll grasp the transformative power of tailored youth athletic training. Experience the revelation of strength and explosiveness as cornerstones of athletic prowess, guided by a steadfast commitment to data-driven progress. Zach's approach isn't just about winning games; it's about equipping young minds with the skills to tackle life's myriad challenges.
Witness the careful crafting of resilient athletes as we tackle the precarious bridge from injury to peak performance. Delve into the pivotal role coaches play in not just rehabilitation, but in stoking the fires of motivation and mental endurance. The conversation shifts from the technical to the personal, confronting the impact of modern lifestyle choices on natural movement, and laying out a roadmap for safely nurturing the physical potential in children as young as eight.
Finally, we cast a spotlight on the broader implications of sports on personal development. Through storytelling and reflection, we celebrate the 'rabbit'—the pace-setter who inspires peers to new heights—and the indelible mark of a coach who shapes character, not just performance. This episode isn't just a playbook for elite youth training; it's a testament to the enduring legacy of sports as a crucible for honing discipline, integrity, and leadership in tomorrow's changemakers. Join us for a session that transcends the field and leaves a lasting imprint on the hearts and minds of athletes and spectators alike.
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You know, one of the most important kids you'll ever coach is the one that needs the program more than the program needs that kid. Welcome to Above the Whistle with your host, devin McCann. All right, we're rolling. Welcome to another edition of Above the Whistle. On today's podcast, we have the founder and owner of custom-built strength out here in Ogden. This has become one of the premier youth training facilities in the state of Utah, zach Safel. Thanks for joining, man. Thank you very much, man, happy to be here. I met you a few months ago actually. My middle child started coming. One of his buddies, kel Thompson, coach Thompson's youngest son, told us about you and we immediately got a group of kids together and got them over here and we love the results. I mean, the kids love coming here. What you've built here is really amazing. So, yeah, we're glad to have you on the show, man.
Speaker 2Thanks, man, I appreciate it and I appreciate you trusting me working with your kid and working with that whole team. Um, they're really they're a group of great kids. They, they come in, they listen well, they work hard. They all spot each other. They do what I ask.
Speaker 1Um, it's just been awesome training them yeah, yeah, they're really they're a great, great group of kids. Um, you know, there's those teams that just you see the kids and you see the team chemistry among them, and this is one of those, those groups that just they, they're all friends, they all get along, they all push each other. They're very competitive, yeah, um, and it really it drives them all to success. So, you know, it's fun to watch and, yeah, and what you're doing with them, I mean, yeah, they, they come home and I did, you know, this much today. Or you know, I did so many squats and yeah, it's fun to see, you know how competitive they are. Yeah, it's fun to see you know how competitive they are. So, yeah, let's go ahead and dive into it. Man Custom built strength.
Speaker 2Where did this? You know how did you come up with this? You know, where did where did you start? So I was coaching, I was. I was a football coach at Ogden High School and I was I've always been into strength training. So I've I've been lifting and strength training in one way or another for the last 20 years and I I was looking up at the record boards one day on weights lifted, 40 yard dashes, verticals, and I I just thought, man, those could be a little bit better than they are. So I started pursuing just studying about strength training more.
Speaker 2I got in touch with a trainer out in New Jersey. His name is Zach Evanesh and he's been training youth athletes for about the last 20, 25 years, I guess youth athletes for about the last 20, 25 years, I guess. So I met up with him and we went through programming how he puts his systems together, some of the results he's had, and I just felt like there was a need in this community. All over on the Instagrams of the world you can see other performance gyms that it seems like they're doing a really good job. They're offering high-quality training to athletes, but in this area I really didn't feel like there was very much of that going on.
Speaker 2There was some of these like speed and agility guru-type guys. You know that they throw down a ladder and they hoot and holler at the kids and they tell them this is how we get faster. And if you pump your arms just like this, that'll work. But in my opinion, kids got to get strong Running speed. It's about force production. So I wanted to create a space where kids could not only lift but they can work on getting more explosive. I wanted to give them trackable data. So here we track the speed that they run on treadmills. We use laser systems to track and measure how fast they are. I'll use a jump mat and that shows us how high our vertical jumps are, and then we track everything we do on all of our major lifts.
Speaker 1So I guess. Well, and I think that's the key about what you're doing here, right, it's you look for measurables. Yeah, you know, I mean there's a lot of these gyms that they have. You know they have high tech gear and things like that and it looks really cool on Instagram and the videos. But I mean it really comes down to just what's the raw measurable data and how do we go from you know this baseline that you go ahead and the athletes come in that first um, you know time they're with you, you run them through a. You know a course of different um drills, different drills and things like that, and then you track everything. You are just a data monster. You track everything. You get the kids to start tracking everything and really you start to see their progress.
Speaker 1I think a lot of times we talked about this a little bit before the podcast started, but especially with the youth, right, I mean, you get kids that come in here and you know they may have hit puberty before. You know some of their peers and so they are bigger and stronger and things like that, and they kind of become lax on that, right? Yeah, I think the kids that are constantly seeing their their performance, you know, increase week by week or year by year and you see a performance trajectory going up, as opposed to those kids that you know start high but they just they. They get lazy. For a lack of a better term, they sit on their laurels and they don't continue to grind and to work and and things like that. And then other people start to catch up in stature and in weight and things like that. They see their performance start going downhill. Yeah, so I love that you are so big on the measurables and what you can do with that.
Speaker 2Yeah. So it's kind of the old hard work beats talent, when talent doesn't work hard thing. You have a lot of kids that are really talented, they've crushed it their entire youth careers and then they get to high school and all of a sudden other kids start catching up and the the big difference maker is the type of training they're doing if they're training at all and what you'll see happen is there's a lot of kids that they were already good and they think that it's just always going to be that way. So they haven't really built up some of the work ethic needed to be able to elevate themselves higher. So what I like to do is, like you said, we show them their numbers right. When they get in here, month by month, week by week, day by day, they're always tracking something. So they know where their vertical jump's at, they know where their squat's at, they know where their bench is and their speed's at and their 10-yard sprints and their 40s, and everything that we do is working to improve those KPIs.
Speaker 1I love that you used the term KPIs. I mean, I don't know how many people know KPI and what that stands for. I mean, if you're in business and things like that, obviously, but in the sport world I don't know how many people actually know KPIs.
Speaker 2Go ahead and explain that. Yeah, kpis are just key for key performance indicators um.
Speaker 1So what are? The key performance indicators and do they kind of vary per sport? Like you know? For a football um player coming in here, 12, 13, what kpis are you looking for as opposed to, let's say, a 16 year old, 17-old, 17-year-old female volleyball player?
Training Youth Athletes for Success
Speaker 2To be honest, I mean, there's not a whole lot of difference in what I'm looking for as far as the difference between those two sports. There are things I look for with volleyball players strengths, weaknesses. A lot of them they're single-leg dominant. A lot of them haven't done any type of strength training, so they they have some red flags in certain areas that you really wouldn't see with a 13 or 14 year old most of the time. But as far as the KPIs, it's like, are they explosive? What's? Where's their jump at right now? Where does does it need to be? What's reachable and how do we get there? Same thing with their, I guess, a volleyball player. I'm not super interested in what their sprint is, but if they do sprint they're likely they're going to develop more fast twitch muscle fibers. So if they have more fast twitch muscle fibers they're going to be able to do everything they do in their sport better. So yeah, I think that we want to go sport specific a lot.
Speaker 2You know, you see a lot of sports specific talk on the internet and there are things that are sports specific to what I do with each sport, but for the most part I mean if they're jumping higher, they're getting more explosive they're running. I mean, if their time goes up when they're sprinting, then we're faster. If their strength goes up, we're getting stronger. All of those things combined, you got yourself a pretty good athlete. If you're improving those numbers especially when it's a kid, that they're already really good at their sport, but maybe they don't have any training age at all you take that kid, that's really good. You increase those kpis and then next thing you know you have a great player right in front of you yeah, um, at what age would you start recommending?
Speaker 1you know, kids coming in and starting to train? Um, you know that's always kind of been that age old question. You know is 12, 13,. Is that too young? I mean, what's your recommendation?
Speaker 2So right now, for the most part, I train 12 year olds and up, and that's not it's not necessarily because I can't train kids younger than that, it's just my gym's not fully set up to train a group of six year olds at a time. It's just my gym's not fully set up to train a group of six-year-olds at a time. So the age I think is safe. I mean, honestly, you can have eight-year-olds doing strength training, but it needs to be smart. You need to be smart about how you're putting together their programming, their exercise selection. I'm not as worried about what the max squat is of an eight-year-old like I would be of a 17-year-old high school football player.
Speaker 1Are you doing more just weight training? At that point I mean body weight training. I should say yeah.
Speaker 2Like with your boys, we started out with a lot of body weight, a lot of movement.
Speaker 2I mean, they probably thought it was crazy at first, because I have them doing cartwheels and bear crawls and they're doing rolls in here and jumping over man's hurdles and stuff, um, but the first thing I was trying to do with them is just develop some general movement qualities. You know how well do they move, like I, I feel like a kid should be able to cartwheel and somersault and bear crawl. Um, as far as their exercises go like, we started out with them we were doing basic body weight squats and then we progressed them to like a goblet squat once they started to develop a good proficiency with those. Then we ended up moving on to pvc pipes and then from the pvc pipe we've got we're five months, six months down the road and now they're using barbells for their squats. Yeah, um, I don't know if you've seen any of the videos I posted, but they do a damn good job at it yeah, I mean, I remember sending you a message.
Speaker 1Um, you know a crew and being like man, I think his, you know his squat his squat, yeah his form doesn't look great to me. He's a little over his toes, like you know. Is it just tight hammies? What? What do we got going on here? And yeah, and you've explained it really well and you've worked with him, and now I watch his video I'm like, okay, yeah, his squat looks a lot better. Yeah, um, he's in a safe position as he's going through the movement and he's starting to move with a decent amount of weight so it's fun to see.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean, um, with somebody like crew, with with a lot of them. Really I just wanted to see, you know, how tight are their ankles, how tight are their hips? Do do they have the ability to perform a squat? Well, and it sounds like it'd be easy. But I mean there's a lot of movement qualities little young kids are lacking these days, and I don't I'm I'm not old enough to quite say 40 years ago that everybody squatted good, but I am old enough to say like these kids should be able to move a little bit better.
Speaker 1What do you attribute that to? Because I mean, you watch, like you know, my daughter, you know, two and a half years old.
Speaker 2If I have her get into a squat, it's a very natural squat right and she can sit there for forever. Perfect.
Speaker 1I try to get into a squat position now. I mean, what a cow.
Speaker 2It's got to be. It's our stagnant lifestyle, I think. I think that for the most part we have comfy chairs, we're on our phones often we're at a computer desk, often For the kids, a lot of the time they're playing video games. I think that plays a big factor into what we're lacking in movement quality and kind of what you're seeing from it is. Now you're seeing kids with low back problems, hip flexor problems, like I think there's more hip flexor problems these days than about any time I ever remember in my life when I was an athlete and I think a lot of that has to do with just sitting still and not getting up. You know they're not spending 10 hours a day on the playground and you know I know good parents they try and get their kids out. They try and get them outside, they have them being active, but it's just it's hard to compete with that.
Speaker 110 hours hours, 12 hours of play time that people would have done in the 1980s when it was either ride a bike, skateboard, play baseball or play with your atari oh yeah, yeah, I mean video games were just coming out back then, when I was you know that age, and so I mean we just we played every sport you could think of. I mean we played from the minute we got home from school till it was time to eat dinner, and then we'd be right back out until it was you know time to come home, because it was just too late.
Speaker 2Yeah, and I, I, I mean.
Speaker 2I think that has that just has about everything to do with it. Um, and where you talk about the question, when is it? When are they okay to start training? I mean the reason I start young kids out with stuff like cartwheels, it's like if the play, if they don't have those play qualities already, we need to make sure they have those play qualities. They should be able to do that stuff, and so I wanted to see that with them.
Speaker 2And, um, I know a lot of times people are worried that lifting too young you know the the old is going to stunt their growth, thing, like that's the most common thing ever. Um, it's just simply. It's not true. Um, that was created through that whole. It was like a myth, pretty much created through studies. Um, of people saying, well, gymnasts do resistance training all the time and look at what gymnasts, how tall they are. They're five foot tall, 140 pounds. Well, the thing people don't realize is five foot tall, 120 pounds is the perfect, it's a model athlete for gymnastics yeah, so absolutely so, yes, they were doing resistance training, but it's also they were the perfect size for their sport.
Speaker 2So we were just looking at people, that a sport that is short people, right, right. So a lot of people saw that and forever it was kind of taught that it would break you. But from most studies, from what we're seeing, is growth plate injuries happen from sharing forces, so like a like a lateral type of force, not as a more vertical force of what you would see with something like barbell training. So it's actually you're a lot more common to have a growth plate problem playing and say you break a bone right in your wrist, right near your growth plate, or you fall on your chest and hurt your sternum where that's the last growth plate to close. So I just I think that that myth still hangs around and and I think a lot of people are still afraid to start their kids young.
Speaker 2But I know a guy I mean he's got a gym down in georgia and he's sending dudes to clemson, georgia, tech big power, five schools and he's got kids starting at eight years old really and oh, wow, I mean what's freaky is you'll see a freshman walk in and they've got a 315 pound bench press and a 450 pound squat. It's not because he has a superhero in there. It's because the kid started when he was eight years old, so his training age is eight years further along than when somebody else would start their kid. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1How much do you incorporate mobility into your weight training? Is that a big component to what you guys do here?
Speaker 2Yeah, every day we do some type of mobility. A lot of times I'll build it into the warm-ups that we do, whether we're doing hip mobility, shoulder, thoracic spine mobility, or we will be doing exercises that they've kind of got the term, you know, functional movement, but we'll be doing exercises that require a pretty impressive amount of mobility to be able to complete. So I build it into the warm-ups. Um, if I see something wrong while we're, while we're squatting, benching, jumping, um, I'll pull an athlete aside and then I'll do kind of a joint assessment on wherever I believe the mobility issue is. So, if they're squats looking bad, most of the time it's either ankles or hips for the most part, so I pull them aside and look at that. But yeah, I build it into the program every day.
Speaker 2And you know, like I said, I started lifting 20 years ago. We didn't have a strength coach in the room. Nobody knew what mobility was. Functional training didn't even exist yet. I mean, you might have got told to stretch sometimes exist, yet, um, I mean you might have got told to stretch sometimes. And so for the most part we were in the gym beating our bodies to death, trying to look like ronnie coleman or arnold schwarzenegger and then we would walk out.
Speaker 2We never stretched, or you know, rah, rah, I got it, and then 20 years goes by. I just recently had a hip surgery two years ago. I need a hip surgery on the opposite side. Both shoulders are hurt. So when it comes to my athletes, they're going to move well, because I don't wish what I've went through with my body on anybody. So I want to make sure all the kids that come through here move really well.
Speaker 1The sad thing is, you know, here I am 20 years later and I still don't stretch before or after a lot of my workouts. I think it's so important to go ahead and kind of incorporate that into just. This is what you do, this is part of the workout.
Speaker 2Because we didn't have that.
Speaker 1And so a lot of the times it's just autopilot, I just forget about it. But to be able to kind of incorporate that in and kind of create that just habit, I think these kids are going to be much better off than we are.
Speaker 2Yeah, well, when we were growing up it was like start with the 45 on the barbell for bench.
Speaker 1Absolutely. That was your warm-up yeah exactly Do your warm-up sets.
Speaker 2Add a plate until you can't move it anymore, until you drop it, and that's what we did, I mean, I think it speaks to a lot of why we have so many aches and pains these days, and I think, oh, I sleep on a heating pad most nights.
Speaker 1My wife thinks I'm crazy, but yeah, I mean, my back is just super tight. I never stretched and yeah, I did a lot of things and a lot of things were probably done. You know, trying to keep up with other people on the team where I got really sloppy with form or things, like that too.
Speaker 2Yeah well, I mean, I don't know, I doubt you guys had a strength coach at the time.
Speaker 1Oh no, it was your head football coach kind of ran that as well. Yeah, I mean, most of the time they were in the office blaring music, but you were on your own doing whatever.
Speaker 2Yeah, go. If you hope that you had a sheet to do or something on the whiteboard and if it was PR day they would kind of walk around and and notate like, okay, you did.
Speaker 1You know 310 today on your squat. Other than that they were in the office, yeah, grading papers or watching football film or something.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's, it's crazy, and so I build it into the warm-up and then sometimes I put at the end of the workout. So, as far as the athletes here know, they're just doing a warmup, right. But as far as I know, like I said, they're warming up, they're moving their hips, they're moving their low back, they're moving their thoracic spine, they're making sure their scaps are moving. Well, yeah, they're going to move good and they're going to feel good, and that's really important to me, oh, absolutely.
Sport Recovery Protocols
Speaker 1So we were talking a little bit before the podcast about this. My son, my oldest he had ACL surgery about six months ago. He's gone to PT a couple times a week for the last several months. We actually have an appointment this week, hopefully to get a little bit, you know, to get clearance for him to start moving a little bit more. Yeah, but I mean there is a huge gap in between you know PT and then return to sport. I mean what, what's your take on it? I mean you know what, what's the best way to get an athlete to recover from injury and get back to that optimal training level?
Speaker 2Well, I mean, I think, first of all, you do have to listen. You have to listen to your doctor, you have to listen to your physical therapist. I think it's really important to make sure you're finding a good physical therapist when going through that process, and that's been something like even, like I said, I had a hip surgery, so that's something that I've noticed is extremely difficult because there's a lot of PTs that they're used to working with older patients or they're just they get their you know, this is our 100th ACL that we've worked with this month run them through the program and get them out of here. But I think you want somebody, just like you would want a strength coach that cares about your athletes I think you want to find a physical therapist that cares about you. So I think finding a good physical therapist is important. Make sure they don't just throw you a stopwatch and say, go ride the bike for 15 minutes and then go get on the lightweight late press for 15 minutes and then at the last 10 minutes of the session, the specialist finally comes and sees you or the main physical therapist. Meanwhile the assistant just ran your whole session and they were just filling up time and collecting money and I I think that's unfortunate and I just think it's something people need to be aware of is make sure you're looking for a good physical therapist.
Speaker 2They're out there. They're not always easy to find, but I think it's worth it finding them. When it comes to, like, the return to sport protocol, they do have, they do have the final test. They do that. You know they're cleared to return, but I I also think I would. I would maybe take some of that, not not quite with a grain of salt, but I would be a little bit careful about that, because some people they can get cleared simply because they get good at doing those tests, because they want to get cleared. So they're practicing the test and sure they get good at those, but is their body really ready to to do what we needed to do, to do yet?
Speaker 1I think it was the trainer for, you know, michael Jordan Kobeant I'm drawing a blank on his name right now, but he had a very rigorous test, um, especially for, like acl injuries and return to sport, yeah, where I believe you literally. You know, I can't remember his 48 inches on a plyo box. You had to jump down one leg and be able to explode off that one leg and come back up 24 inches or something. Until you could do that, he would not give clearance.
Speaker 2See, and to me that's smart, because that therapist or trainer doctor he's working with is saying well, michael Jordan, you have about a 40 inch or whoever it is you have about a 40 inch vertical.
Speaker 1So you're going to be up that high, so you better damn well be able to land on one leg that way, right you need to be able to stabilize it as you come down with those you know negative forces and then be able to basically explode out of that, yeah, and get back up and we'll see if your knee is going to be able to hold, you know, hold up to those sheer forces there, exactly yeah, it's not just step off of a 12-inch box.
Speaker 2This is an extremely explosive athlete.
Speaker 2Yes, Like at a very high level, yeah and he doesn't exactly know that, hey, I can't do this.
Speaker 2His body knows, hey, you can jump 40 inches, but he doesn't exactly know well, I can't land on one leg like I used to. So these guys get out there and they come back down and you next thing you know, they just tore their acl again. And so I just think you need to be cautious with your return to sport. You need to make sure that that that you're really, really strong, and a lot, of, a lot of what you're seeing is a lack of, or a loss of mobility in the knee. So they don't have full range of motion like they had before, and I think that's probably a red flag that you know you kind of should be able to have that range of motion you had before, or close to it. So if it's not there, it's probably not okay to just say, well, you know, he passed the test, he's good to go. No, let's get him with somebody that's really going to put him through the ringer, just like what that coach did with them, and make sure they're ready, ready to be back.
Speaker 1What? How much of this is the mental game, though? I mean, as far as you know, returning back to sport, you had had a, an injury that sidelined you. How much as a strength and conditioning specialist or coach do you have to look at the mental side of things too and not only just return to sport, but just, you know, an athlete plateaus here in the gym. Yeah, I mean, what can you do to kind of tap into? Hey, you know, you know you got more in you. You know the mental side of things.
Speaker 2Well, it's interesting because so many athletes are different and so many of them have different things that make them tick. So not anyone is the exact same. So I think a lot of it's mental. I think it's my job as a coach to figure out what is it that motivates this person and to kind of pull those strings when needed to be able to motivate them, but also to know maybe at this time this is when I need to pull back as well, because you'll get the athlete that's trying to go rah-rah and just they'll crush themselves if you let them. So I think it's very important to be able to know when to pull back but when to push hard. And, like I said, so many kids are different.
Speaker 2I trained a kid over the last couple years and I was. I was just he's gonna win an award this next week and I'm so excited for him, but the kid has had three different major lower limb operations in the last three years and two of them were they were from like a genetic issue that he had with his knees, so pretty much it was very easy to dislocate his knees. The first one he dislocated and played basketball and then again and again. So he had to get like a good average tendon put into his knee. This kid text me the minute he woke up from surgery and said can I come train at the gym? And I swear, I swear, four hours later he was. He came to my garage, he was at my house and I was handing him weights. Well, he just sat his crutches down, sat sat on a bench and I was giving him weights and I watched him. He trained on one leg, he trained his upper body. His return to sport was extremely, extremely fast. But then the next knee happened and then the other thing happened.
Speaker 2But when you talk about a mental game, there's kids like him that they're going to text you right out of surgery. They're ready to get back to work and they're ready to hit the pavement. They want to be back and they need to be back and they're going to do anything it takes to be back. But there's other kids. When they have an injury and I kind of equate it to grieving the loss of a loved one really You'll see them get injured and next thing you know they fall into kind of a loved one. Yeah, really, um, you'll see them get injured and next thing you know they fall into kind of a depression and nobody really wants to call it that. It's like, oh, they're just laid up, well, the kids, laid up his what's kind of been built as his purpose, his whole life, whether it's regardless of the sport that's just been taken from them yeah and so they want to sit at home and do nothing, and I think those are the ones that well, not only that, but their friend groups are typically revolved around the sport that they play
Speaker 1yeah competition doesn't stop.
Speaker 2They're still out, playing in these different tournaments and traveling and playing, you know, games on friday night, yeah, and they're, you know, unable to participate and play with them yeah, and they're devastated and I think I think those are the ones that we need to be really, really careful on, like they need to get back to doing something, and that's why this kid with the the knee surgery that was the best.
Speaker 2Maybe I shouldn't have allowed him to come to the gym. His dad came with him to supervise and make sure he was okay, but that was the best place for him to be mentally at that point in time was in the gym doing something with his buddies lifting around him, and it's not like I was asking him to go to squats post-knee-op, but if he can lay down and bench press and hit a couple curls and he's with his buddies and he's laughing, he's ten times better off than he would have been if he was at home just starting another Netflix series for the 100th time, or playing Fortnite for the 99th hour in a row, you know yeah so I think it's very mental and I think if you have different issues with injuries, just be very careful about it and try and do your best to get those kids doing something.
Speaker 2I mean, most doctors are going to tell you that you should probably take it easy and just relax, and that's true. You need to take it easy, but sitting at home not doing anything is not always the best option. I mean if you try that as an adult, you're going to start feeling stir-crazy pretty quick.
Speaker 1Oh yeah, absolutely. We talked a little bit before. Once again, we should have got some of this AAU or seven-on-seven sports or just comp, whatever it might be volleyball things like that and just kind of the highlight reel that some of these kids you brought up that you're in here, the kids are working. Some of these kids like you you brought up that you know you're in here, the kids are working. But as soon as you break out your camera to you know video record something to put on your Instagram, all of a sudden they kick it up a notch and you know they turn it on. How often do you see that with this um, this generation nowadays?
Speaker 2Yeah. So I mean, as far as my gym goes, I don't see it a whole lot, but there is a certain population that I would say they're heavily invested in some of the 7-on-7 stuff, some of the AAU stuff. There is some of that population that you can tell they're highly motivated by it. They're highly motivated by the video, to the point that sometimes it makes you question are they doing this for the sport anymore? Are they doing it for themselves, or are we just doing it for clicks and for likes? And it's kind of scary to watch.
Speaker 2And I feel like it kind of gets worse and worse with you know, the current junior high age that we have, worse with you know the current junior high age that we have. And I think, as parents, we need to be really, really careful with what we're doing there, because of course, it's fun to go to the weekend tournament and get the highlight reel and the pictures with your buddies. And we've grown up at, or these kids have grown up at, a time where there was always a camera on them. Yeah, um, and so you know I think I heard you mention it before on an earlier podcast where a kid gets done with the game and the first thing they ask is did they record did? Did you get that on video?
Speaker 2Yeah, um, so I I just think that we need to be careful, because you see kind of what's going on at the college football level where it's about where am I, how much money am I making? Are they invested in the program? Are they really invested in themselves, or is it just money or sponsorships, nil, that type of thing? And I think what's happening is we're carrying that down to a young age to where now we get them involved in these seven-on-seven tournaments, young age to where now we get them involved in these seven on seven tournaments. And next thing, you know, they got to transfer schools because they played with the buddy on this team and their seven on seven coach plays on this works at this school and that's where they need to go and it's. I just think it's very, very problematic what we're doing and I think we need to be careful.
Speaker 1I a hundred percent agree with you. I just I, I think our intent, you know, with all this, I think it's pure and I think, um, you know where it originated from.
Speaker 1Um, I just I don't think we saw where this was going, but now that we can kind of see it and the pictures coming in, to focus more yeah I think we need to take a step back, especially as parents and coaches, and really look at what we're doing with you sports and what direction we're going with this, and is it really a direction we want to go?
The Impact of Seven-on-Seven Football
Speaker 2well, I mean, you know like you talk about. How did this seven-on-seven thing come when I was in high school? So this is back in 2007 and 2008 and 2009,. We played seven-on-seven in the summer with our football team, with our head coaches, with the kids we were going to play with in the fall, and that was a way to start doing football early, without doing full contact, and we would. We'd play for a couple months in the summer and then we'd look forward to getting pads on. But now it's turned into this thing that's it's kind of a year-round football type of thing. It's a year-round seven on seven thing.
Speaker 2The second actual football ends seven on seven starts and, like I mentioned to you earlier, the problem is is you have these kids growing up and you have ones that mature physically at faster rates than the others and maybe they're seven on seven all-stars. They go out, they tear it up, they're the tallest kid, they're the fastest, they're the strongest, they're, they're great at it. Well, what I've seen from coaching at the high school level is these kids will get to high school and all of a sudden the other kids start to catch up to them. It comes not how were you born and what genetics did you have? But the work ethic, the stuff they do in the gym, the film review, the studying, they do, all of those start to be a factor. The film review, the studying, they do, all of those start to be a factor.
Speaker 2And sometimes those kids that were the big outliers, they're not ready for that because they haven't had to work as hard as the other kids have. And then the other thing they find out is oh my gosh, this is hard now and I don't like hard. I've never had to deal with hard, hard things. What is that? Because it's always been so easy for me. And then, next thing, you know that kid. He's sitting on the bench, third string, second string, and he's not the all-star that he was. He doesn't have the Odell Beckham-looking Instagram profile that he built with his seven-on-seven team. His coaches aren't. You know, they're not holding up a trophy with a crown on and pajama pants every weekend.
Speaker 1You know what I mean. Oh, I know what you mean.
Speaker 2Yeah, you know what I mean. And next thing, you know real mental health issues start to set in and you talk about identity. With some of these comp programs we can create the identity that you know, as the kids say, you're him, yeah, you know you're, you're him, you're gonna be something special. And then you get to the actual sport and then you realize I'm not as special as I thought I was and it's just what's unfortunate and I I don't know how many people have been exposed to these stories, but I've seen kids that had actual mental health need to go to a therapist suicidal thoughts type of issues from this. And it's it's hard because, like I said, this was a development tool and it is a development tool.
Speaker 2It makes quarterbacks. If you're teaching good habits, quarterbacks should be throwing good. They should be making good coverage reads. If you're a wide receiver, you should be learning good habits and running routes, catching the ball well. If you're a DB should be defending wide receivers really well. The problem is is sometimes it becomes about wins and fun and the show. And what can I, what can I post on my instagram, and we get lost that this is for development and it's not.
Speaker 1It's not the only thing it's sad when you know my son, we're headed to a game. The other night it was, you know, friday night lights and we were headed there and he's like I have to run back into the house. I'm like, all right, dude, we're we gotta go, you know, and he comes back out and he has, you know, an arm sleeve on and a bunch of different stuff and he's like drip before talent. I'm like, oh my gosh, really like that's the culture around seven on seven and I I like I mean it's fun.
Speaker 1Yeah, I think you know you can develop a lot of great things, like you just touched on, yeah, but there is a certain culture around it that, yeah, the whole drip before talent and just the showmanship of the showboating of it all. And I mean I had to get after my team last week where it's like you guys, you play for me for tackle football, it's the same rules, act like you've been there before. We're not showboating, we're not you know, yeah, um, being flashy and all that we have a job to do. We're going out there. We, we're not showboating, we're not, you know, being flashy and all that. We have a job to do. We're going out there. We're playing our hardest, we're trying to improve. And that's my issue with a lot of the seven-on-seven stuff.
Speaker 2Yeah, you know I don't want to. I know parents, we're just doing what's best for our kids. We want them to have fun. We believe it's what's best, but let's just make sure that we're practicing good habits. While we're doing it, let's be respectful, let's thank the refs, let's thank our coaches, let's thank the parents that brought snacks to the games. Let's clean up after ourselves. I mean, I saw this one that they did at a local school a couple months ago. This tournament, you know, a big big name tournament ran through and I drove by the school the next day and there, I swear, there was a thousand water bottles out on the field and it's like you know, what would be a really good habit to help with development and young kids is to pick up after themselves where maybe you're the last team leaving. You want a good learning exercise. Let them go learn that we're the ones that do the right thing, right, right, even. You know that's where you talk about my core values, with integrity up there. Integrity do the right thing when nobody's requiring it.
Speaker 2Yeah yeah, when no one's watching. When no one's watching, I think that would be a great lesson for those kids to learn A hundred percent.
Speaker 1Where did these core values? We're looking at a poster on the wall that you have here in your gym for the listeners but custom-built core values discipline, integrity, leadership when did those three pillars come from and how do you go incorporate that into your programming here and just into the culture of custom-built strength?
Speaker 2Yeah, so it's kind of funny. I was talking with another gym gym owner and he talked about their core values and he's like, do you have them? And I was like, no, not really, I didn't have them, didn't have them really drawn out like I had them kind of in my head and you know, a lot of times you'll hear the attitude effort, consistency. You know that's, that's easy, quick, three core values, and I think they're great core values to throw out.
Speaker 2But I kind of pride myself on not being the same as all the other gyms and so you know, discipline it's kind of an extension of attitude, but discipline it's like doing what you have to do even when you don't feel like it. Right, I feel like crap today. Yeah, like I feel like crap today. I'm gonna stay home and just play the game or take a nap or whatever. No, you got to come to the gym and you have to get better. Um, it's, it's just so easy to decide to do something else and and choose what you feel like in the moment versus what you need to do to get yourself better.
Speaker 1So I think the biggest thing that a lot of kids and even adults don't quite understand is we look at someone that has what we want, or what we think we want Right, and you talk to them and it's asked them you know, what was it that got you to this point? What did you do to get to the level you're at? Yeah, and you always expect this big, you know just grandiose answer yeah.
Speaker 2And it never is.
Speaker 1It's always. They did the small things over and over and over again and they were just disciplined Exactly.
Speaker 2It's like you know, I used to train at 4 in the morning every day. I had a 315 alarm and I would train at 4 am and work from 6 am to 3 pm, and then I'd be at Ogden High coaching football from 3 pm to 7 o'clock at night. People were like, how do you do it? And it's like, well, I set an alarm clock and I try and go to bed, you know, before 9, and then, you know, I force myself to get out of bed because if I don't, when else am I going to fit it?
Speaker 1in Exactly.
Speaker 2There's some things and it's hard. I'm not good at it. All the time I've had streaks in my life where I was great at it. But I think we should all be working to be disciplined and I think if you're disciplined about things that you care about in your life, then magically you'll start being happier in your life, because discipline gets you closer to your goals yeah um, integrity, that one is just like.
Speaker 2I guess I came up with that, you know, while thinking about like what we just talked about with the comp sports, and it's just doing the right thing, and I think there's a lot of people that don't have a lot of integrity these days and I don't want to sound like the you know, the old grumpy, you know back on my law these kids or whatever.
Speaker 2But you see the videos on on social media of somebody's getting beat up on the street and a lot of people they pull out their phones and they start recording and you see the ones. There was that one that went around. It was from the tom hanks movie where the guy fell on the train tracks and again the phones come out and they they start recording. Or there was one I believe it happened somewhere in utah where a girl somebody was trying to kidnap her at a gas station and a person just continued pumping their girl. Somebody was trying to kidnap her at a gas station and a person just continued pumping their gas while somebody was trying to throw a girl in their car.
Speaker 2And it's just like how could those things happen if you had integrity? Because integrity says you need to do the right thing, and the right thing isn't to pull out your phone or just glad it's not me or I need to get my gas. It's help someone, help your environment, help what's around you, help your community, and so I just I want to try and teach the kids that I work with, that you know you clean up after yourself. Maybe you don't like somebody, but it might be the right thing to just be nice to them. Anyways, if somebody needs help, you help them. If their car's stuck on the road in a snowstorm, like you, could get out and push and it might take a small bit of effort on your side. But if everybody starts displaying more small acts of integrity, I think this world becomes a better place.
Speaker 1I 100% agree. I think integrity as well. Just if you're not living in integrity with yourself, then I think people around you can feel that we kind of perform at a certain frequency. In order to perform at a high frequency and to really succeed and be successful and things like that, we need to be in integrity with ourselves.
Speaker 1So, like you said, it's doing the right thing, even if someone's not watching us, Because we still have to look ourselves in the mirror and know, hey, did I help out that elderly lady, or you know. Did I pull out my phone and video record something that I should have actually kind of inserted myself into the situation and helped out? Did I leave my water bottle in my trash? Did I put my shopping cart that's a small, you know, insignificant thing that a few years ago I, I heard it and I'm like gosh, I'm that guy that sometimes just leaves the shopping cart, you know, out in the middle of the lane because I don't want to walk it back to the shopping cart. Corral.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1It's little things like that.
Speaker 2That shopping cart analogy. I think about that one all the time. I remember when that went around and I'm one of those people that get triggered if the shopping cart's out because I'm like it's right there.
Speaker 1Yeah, just walk 10 feet.
Speaker 2Just walk there and anytime I'm at the grocery store now, I just think, just return it. It's going to make somebody's life easier as opposed to making it harder.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2And it's the right thing to do.
Speaker 2Absolutely I think the thing that went around with the shopping cart. It was a deal that went on the Internet. It was just like the ultimate litmus test was who returns the shopping cart, who returns it? It does not. And then the leadership thing. That's kind of interesting because I was a football captain basically my entire career. I played football growing up, youth football in Ogden, then I played at Ogden High School, so it was nine years worth of football and I think for eight years I was a football captain.
Speaker 2And you know, I recognize that I have leadership qualities, but I also recognize that not everybody does have leadership qualities, but people have different leadership qualities. Qualities but people have different leadership qualities. And so with the gym, it's not that it's not that I can teach every kid to be me. Not every kid's going to be the, the loud kid on the, on the, on the court or on the field. Not every kid's going to be the one that's just going to outwork everybody and lead by example. But I think every kid has something in them to be able to lead with their skill set in the environment that they're in. Um, you know, I I do have a couple of the loud, raw, raw kids and I think they're leaders in some ways. I have a couple of kids that just they're quiet and they just grind super hard and and other kids see what they're doing and if somebody wants to start goofing around, I point them out and say, look at what this kid's doing, and then usually they get to work. But I have some kids that they're more of your passive type kids that really you wouldn't see them as a leader in a general sense by being the loud or the lead by example guy leader in a general sense by being the loud or the lead by example guy.
Speaker 2But it I mean one of them. He, he's a, he's a. Every kid here is an athlete. Um, I have one kid that's not an athlete yet but I'm working on talking him into being an athlete. Um, he's actually like a gamer kid, so it's kind of funny. But he leads by, he hurries through everything that he does. So we'll be doing a circuit as a group and this kid's flying through it as fast as possible and sometimes he can slow down. But if the other group wants to work a little bit slower, they're catching up to him the whole time. So, even though he's like the gamer kid and we make fun of him, sometimes about his Star Wars thing. He leads in different ways within the group um ed, my lead.
Speaker 1Um, he used to, or he's when he coached, or you know, I think he had a boy that he used to coach a little bit. He used to be like who's the rabbit? Who's the rabbit on that team? Who's going to set the pace? Yeah um, and I love that and I use it with my teams now and you can always pick out who that kid on the team is. That's going to kind of set the standard for everyone else. You're doing, you know, sprints. They're the one pushing the tempo. You do a long run.
Speaker 2They're the ones setting that tempo and coming in first so it's it's good to have a rabbit on your team that you can identify and and get them to kind of raise the level of everyone else well, exactly, and I, and I just feel like, with the leadership thing, if I I think parents, they send their kids to me.
Speaker 2You know they want them to perform better and ultimately that's that's got to be the number one thing that I do is I make sure that they get faster, they jump higher and they get stronger, but I also want them to carry good traits on into their adult life Whenever.
Speaker 2Whenever that happens, they go off into careers and I've just noticed for myself a lot, um in careers, as in different professions, and an adult um, you can lead in one way or another in your career and if you can find ways to lead with what you are good at, you're going to have a lot more success in that job or career field that you're working in. And you know you wouldn't go to an IT department and think there's going to be a loud, raw, raw guy, but maybe there's this kid that I'm talking about that flies through stuff and people follow him and he kicks ass. Yeah, absolutely, that flies through stuff and people follow him and he kicks ass yeah, absolutely. So you know, I want to develop leaders and I hope that they can all go on to be successful and I hope that their parents recognize it at some point in time, and I don't need the gratification from them, but I do want their parents to see you know this has not only made my kid faster, stronger, more explosive, but this is a.
Speaker 1This is a better individual that I'm looking at now that does good for himself and does good for the people around him well, I mean, it's custom-built strength and you know, in a lot of ways, just you know person and character and everything you're you're doing here, here. So, um, I'd love to the results.
Speaker 1I've seen from you know, my team, my, my son coming here. I know a lot of other people have seen that. Um, like I said, you are building your, your, you know a name up here at brand Um. I mean, you were pumping out some of the top athletes in in the state of Utah, especially up here in northern utah, and even more than that, just great young men, great young women. So, zach, we we appreciate you, uh, coming on the show today and, and you know, kind of giving us a glimpse into what you're, what you're doing over here, um, and yeah, uh, thanks, man, hey thank you, I appreciate it.