From Dictator To Guide: Building Adaptable Athletes Through Ecological Dynamics

What if your athletes actually got better at the game instead of just better at drills? That’s the question we chase with Coach Javi Miller Estrada—co‑founder of Ignite Performance, team member at Emergence, and host of the Adaptable Athlete Podcast. We unpack how ecological dynamics and a constraints‑led approach help athletes perceive what matters, set clear intentions, and discover solutions that hold up under real pressure. No fluff, no guru talk—just practical ways to make training look, feel, and transfer like sport.

Javi explains why “roll the ball out” is a myth and how the coach’s job actually gets more intentional: design representative tasks, scale constraints, and guide attention without over‑prescribing mechanics. From quarterbacks who crumble under constant internal cues to basketball players stuck on beef-era shooting rules, we explore how focusing on perception and problem solving creates robust attractors—multiple effective ways to win the same play. You’ll hear concrete examples: live, opposed football work that replaces empty indy periods; jiu-jitsu progressions that bridge drilling and sparring; and simple tweaks athletes can use when team practice is still stuck on rote patterns.

We also step into the messy, rewarding reality of coaching as a business. Javi shares straight‑shooting advice on parent education, testing for validation without losing the “game speed” focus, and hiring coaches who care enough to keep learning. His Modern Coach’s Planner was built for that purpose—session design, debriefs, athlete notes, and bite‑size explanations of key concepts that turn curiosity into consistent action.

If you want athletes who adapt instead of memorize, who can win routes in many ways and solve problems at full speed, this conversation gives you the blueprint. Listen, take notes, and try one change this week: make a drill more representative, set a clearer intention, or remove one unnecessary cue. Then tell us how it went. Subscribe, share with a coach who needs this, and leave a review so more people can find it.

Transcript

Welcome & Guest Background

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, Jeff here back with another episode of Down the Rabbit Hole. Thanks for joining me. And today's guy episode, guys, we have Coach Javi Miller Strada. Coach Javi is a co-founder of Ignite Performance out of Arizona, who works with athletes from middle school, high school, college, and professional. Coach Javi is also a team member at Emergence, which is a global leader in movement skill education. You might remember the uh the company Emergence from uh our previous podcast with one Greg Sauders, but also with Tyler Yerberry. Um I love talking with people about movement. I love learning about movement. And Coach Javi is a wealth of knowledge uh and practical uh knowledge at that, um, being a coach and working with everyone from again professional athletes down to high school, middle schoolers. Uh Coach Javi also is the host of Adaptable Athlete Podcast, which is an excellent uh podcast, uh really diving deep into a constraints-led approach and uh dynam uh ecological dynamics um and skill acquisition. Um Coach Javi is just it was such a joy to talk to him. Uh, I've never met him personally. I've listened to his podcast for many years. Um, you know, we've we've crossed paths at uh uh the movement seminar in emergence up in Minnesota in 2019, and I've watched him from afar on social media, but I've never had the good chance of getting to talk to him. And it was uh it was awesome. He he he's such a friendly presence and uh a wealth of knowledge in movement. Um, you know, with his background of just being a gym owner, I wanted to talk to him about his experience of that and as a as a coach and then also his experience of being a podcaster and everything in between. So I hope you guys enjoyed this episode as much as I do. Um, you know, Coach Javi, I'll I uh we talk about certain things he's got from his podcast to uh the product he came out for specifically for coaches. He he came out with his own journal, which I have myself. Uh it's sitting right next to me. I use it daily, and it is a great, great tool for coaches, specifically for coaches, uh, to help us to track our thoughts, to keep track of athletes, to keep track of sessions with athletes and and get things organized. You know, as coaches, you know, sometimes we just we're on the go constantly. We have athletes, you know, uh athletes all day, and in in our head, we might have an idea or in we know what we want to do, but sometimes we need to write it out, and having things written out uh can help us organize sessions better, can help us organize progressions or regressions better. And Coach Javi has an awesome product uh with his journal, which I'll put uh a link in the show notes and we we talk about it in the podcast. But uh, anyways, hope you guys enjoyed this episode as much as I do. Please give a like, share, and subscribe. And uh yeah, thanks. Javi, I hey man, it's it's been a little bit to get you on the call, man. But thank you so much for being patient. Thank you for uh hanging there with me, man. How's everything out in Arizona? How's everything out with uh with you, emergence, and and your facility? Well, thanks for having me on, man.

SPEAKER_02 3:06

Like you said, it's been a little bit of work, but you know, uh, I'm glad we're able to get it, get it going. Arizona, like we were talking about off-camera, off-air, you know, we're we're blessed.

Injury, PT Disillusionment & Coaching Path

SPEAKER_02 3:15

We have this beautiful weather relative to the other uh, you know, rest of the country. Of course, we won't be saying that in July when it's hot as hell, and you know, you guys are are living a great summer, but uh things are good here. Uh lots of things happening both with Ignite and Emergence. So, you know, you have a facility, you know, the beginning of the year can be crazy, especially in December. You got kids coming back, you've got vacation, so all that stuff is love, uh luckily in the rearview mirror. So we're looking forward to a big 2026 this year. Sports and the seasonality of it always keeps us on our toes. You know, baseball is getting ready to go in season, uh, football's up, you know, coming off their season. So uh there's always that shift in the athletes that we work with. Uh and then as far as emergence goes, we've got some big things coming down the line in the summer. We're doing a a conference this year, which uh, you know, you're gonna be uh a part of, which is which is exciting. So new format and um you know, yeah, always always things down the line that we're looking forward to.

SPEAKER_00 4:12

Yeah, man, I was I'm excited to get you on. I love talking movement. I love talking to anyone about movement, uh, but also uh getting to talk to you as a fellow gym owner. Uh I want to I want to get into that. Uh as a fellow podcaster, I wanted to get into that, man. I feel like we got some commonalities, but you know, for maybe the the few that are listening that may not know your story or what led you to this point in in time, sir. Can you kind of give us a bit of uh your background and in how we got to where we are?

SPEAKER_02 4:41

Yeah, man. Well, like most journeys, it it wasn't uh linear. I say that all the time. It was not nonlinear, uh, you know, but but it kind of makes all the sense in the world looking back, right? It's like you're on this journey, you're on this path, you don't know where it's gonna take you, but then looking back, okay, this is this is why I'm here. And so that's kind of where for me the strength conditioning world started to make sense because I think like most of us, I was an athlete and uh I wasn't obviously a great athlete, otherwise I might be playing sports and not helping athletes get better at sports. Had a lot of injuries, and that led me down the path of, you know, uh the why, which is always an important part uh of why um and why do what I do, just the why. Like, why did things work out the way they did? Um, you know, how did this happen? How did I um get to this point? And so I got in strength and conditioning uh with an initial emphasis on like a working with athletes who were broken, like myself at the time, working with athletes who were hurt or uh trying to regain skill. And that's always been something that I've been fascinated with. Like, how do athletes readapt, really, is probably a better word, uh, their skill after injury or as they age, as constraints change and all that. Um, and so at about uh eight years ago, we opened up Ignite Performance. So that's my my main gig, and I do that Monday through Saturday. Really, it's a 24-7 job, as you know, owning a facility.

SPEAKER_01 5:55

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 5:56

Um, we have about six coaches. Uh, I have a business partner that uh is is uh is part of that operation as well, primarily working with high school, uh middle school, some college, and a handful of higher level athletes as well. But our bread and butter is gonna be like that high school uh age athletes, which we love working with of all sports, but primarily volleyball, excuse me, uh football, and then also baseball, but also lacrosse, you know, basketball, a number of sports. Uh with Emergence, uh my role there is primarily through the podcast, the Adaptable Athlete Podcast, which uh hopefully many of your listeners listen to. If not, definitely check it out. It's it's an exciting podcast, and much like yours, it's a lot of in-depth conversations with people who are really thinking differently and not thinking just about like sets, reps, what's the best way to do a power clean and really diving into the why, you know, connecting back to what I just said earlier. Why do people move the way they do? You know, like what's uncovered in all this this movement, this idea of movement that that we love? Like, how can we dive into that and think about movement differently than what we've been told uh traditionally? So that's kind of a uh hopefully a good um synopsis of of what I do.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

Yeah. Um, so let's let's backtrack a little bit. You you said you were a uh athlete high school in a collegiate, you were hurt a lot. Uh did that kind of that that's what steered you into strength initially? Did you did you want to go into PT or chiropractic or anything like that? Or you just wanted to be a strength coach or yeah, the PT route.

SPEAKER_02 7:26

So I wanted to do the PT route, but you know, I I'd spend so much time working in that that uh domain, and I have a lot of respect for PTs, especially the ones that really understand sport, but I found it which wasn't for me. I found that it found it a little

Discovering Ecological Dynamics

SPEAKER_02 7:40

bit redundant. Um I found, if we're honest, like the modern outpatient PT system where you're seeing 30, 30, 35, however many it is, it's just it's like a factory. Um, and so it just wasn't for me. Uh I didn't enjoy that part of it. I, you know, I've worked with Gen Pop and adults, and that part I don't mind. I I think there's some uh it's it can be rewarding, but I just didn't really like the structure. So then I got down more of the strength and conditioning route and again, specifically started working with people who were like myself and trying to provide maybe a more comprehensive experience in what I got and really try to think about you know the athlete holistically. So right off the bat, I understood that there was more to this than just, you know, hey, let's just go ahead and do, and unfortunately, this is very common in physical therapy, let's do clamshells, step-ups, you know, bandwalks, and then hey, good luck up, they're playing basketball.

SPEAKER_00 8:34

Now, did you always kind of have an eye or a or a uh a love for watching movement, or did you kind of develop that as you got to work with more and more people?

SPEAKER_02 8:42

I think I did when I was younger, but I didn't understand, you know, I didn't understand maybe that connection to it. But as I got to more and more people, I think I always understood that things didn't necessarily like align with the traditional approaches with how I saw movement. Because it is always like, you know, you play sports and you see kids that are really, really fast or that time really, really well, but then they don't actually, you know, baseball, for example, they don't necessarily make any plays or they're not great defensively. So I think I understood that. Um, and but me, like most people, when they get in this profession, you do what was done before you, you do what like someone told you to do. And so I I definitely did stuff that was just not really intentional, not really conscious. I just did what people did or what you're supposed to do during agility. Um, so as I got older, I kind of started to question it. And then I met uh Sean, who who who you you know of and you know. Um he was the first person that kind of walked into the gym, and I was like, what is this guy talking about? What is he you know discussing? What are the words? And he brought some of his NFL athletes, and I started to see some different possibilities, and that kind of you know was a tip of the spear for everything else.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

Nice. Yeah, that uh that that kind of stuff with Sean does is is pretty awesome. So were you kind of like all in, or did you kind of like tiptoe around a little bit, try sprinkling it with a couple of athletes, uh, you know, once once you kind of were introduced to that that different side of things, and we'll we'll get into what that side of things really really is in a second.

SPEAKER_02 10:16

Well, I think it's been evolving, like lots of mistakes, like figuring out how it fits. Uh, I think one of the things that a lot of young coaches make the mistake of is they copy drills or they copy, you know, a uh a program, but they don't actually understand if it makes sense for their athletes. And the athletes at the time and what he does now that Sean works with are different than the athletes that I work with. So I can't be Sean. I have to be me. I have to do what makes sense for me and and kind of curate my own form of life, my own way of doing things. And so, you know, there's definitely a lot of mistakes, a lot of roadblocks, and probably just some imitating imitation, if we're being honest at first. And I knew Sean, I've known him for over 10 years, and he'll tell you this as well you know, eight, nine, 10 years ago, he wasn't doing what he's doing now. Uh so like one of my goals is to look back at what I did two years ago and think, holy shit, that was dumb. You know what I mean? Or wow, I didn't know what I was talking about. And so I would say that it's definitely been a lot of mistakes down, you know, over the years and a lot of things that I wouldn't probably do now.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

Um and then was that right around the time, I mean, when you really started getting into it where uh because I remember seeing you and I think your your business partner up at the 2019 emergence talk. Was that one of the first was that kind of like the uh the first conference you went to, or did you go to the years years before that?

SPEAKER_02 11:38

I went to the year before years before that. I had spent some time with Sean in Minnesota, so I had kind of seen how

What CLA Really Means In Practice

SPEAKER_02 11:45

he did things, but even at that time, like earlier years, he was still doing things, like I said, very differently. So uh as he evolved, I kind of evolved. Um I had rented my own, I had rented space at a facility, and so I started exploring things a little bit more because I didn't have to worry about like a boss, um, you know, like someone telling me what to do or kind of you know guiding things. Yeah, yeah. Um, you know, but and then it just started expanding when I had my own space and I could truly do what I wanted to do and have more, literally more space than what I had. Um, so um, yeah, that was kind of the the process.

SPEAKER_00 12:19

Um now what's can can you for the listeners that may not have listened to my podcast with uh Tyler or may not have uh heard any of your podcasts yet, which I'll definitely add in the show uh show notes the links to. Would you mind explaining this kind of what Sean does and now what you guys do at emergence and and what that means to practically?

SPEAKER_02 12:39

Absolutely. So I like to call the umbrella I like to call it the word is like modern skill acquisition or modern coaching philosophies, just because I feel like you know, anybody who listens to this, like I am really big on trying to reduce the friction between learning the language, learning what some of these terms are, and actually applying that, because I don't ever want that to be a barrier. And that's something that I'm really trying to put an effort into. But essentially what it is, is it's rooted in ecological dynamics and a constraints-led approach. People might have heard of CLA, it's becoming more popular now, people such as Alex Harama, such as Sean, Rob Gray. There was a New York Times article, um, I believe, I think it was at the Athletic or New York Times, where they talked about some of the teams such as you know, Cleveland Cavaliers and the Portland Fire, the new WBA expansion team are utilizing these ideas. So it's essentially taking these ideas and trying to make sense of them and apply them in a way that makes sense for coaches and makes sense for your athlete. So um, you know, ecological dynamics, one of the big things is the athlete's relationship with their environment. So traditionally, with skill development, we think of the athlete and the environment being separate, where the athlete performs some task out of context and is expected to transfer them in context. Well, with ecological dynamics, that is connected. They are connected. That athlete environment relationship is integral to understanding sport and understanding what movement emerges uh and what it looks like when the athlete is actually performing that movement.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

Um what are some of the uh I'm sure you've got this uh as well as I have. What are some of the biggest misconceptions that you have to constantly go against or or not necessarily persuade, but like some coaches be like, oh yeah, I do that, but like you know they really don't. Like, what are some of those kind of conversations that you have about this that that is you know misconceived?

SPEAKER_02 14:30

That's a great question, and there's definitely a lot of them, man. I would say one of the biggest ones is that uh that people see ecological dynamics or they're maybe haven't tried it, it's that you just roll the ball out and let the athletes play. And there is an element of play and exploration, but you're still coaching. It just flips the role of the coach as someone who is kind of dictating movement solutions and coaching off of one technical model to someone who's more of a guide, who is help shaping an environment, guiding athletes towards discovering their own movement solutions or towards self-organization. And that's another one. Self-organization doesn't necessarily mean just step back, self-organization is helping the athlete solve a problem that is based off of their own individual constraints that's going to be best for them. So it's an emergence of a movement problem, it's an emergence of a solution. And so that would be two of them. I would say one of them would be, and this is big, you know, jujitsu is really grabbing onto these ideas, as you know, Greg Sauders and several other people, Adam Singer, uh Scott Sievright. But one of them is that it's like, oh, we've been doing this already. It's drill, drill, drill, drill, and then live. That's the ecological part. And I've taken jiu-jitsu classes, I did it for a couple of years, but with the traditional way, is the drill is is like is dead. Essentially, it's against an unresisted opponent. You perfect it, and then you apply it in a live round. And the challenging part with that is that live round, the gulf, the gap between the live round and the drill is so big because now you're trying to do this shit against someone who's actually resisting, and it's a completely different problem. And so with ecological dynamics through scaling and and representative

Misconceptions: Not Just “Roll The Ball Out”

SPEAKER_02 16:20

task design is trying to bridge the gap between those two things.

SPEAKER_00 16:25

Yeah, I had uh I was very fortunate to get Greg on about a year ago on my podcast, and uh I've been a big fan of his for much longer, and uh my kids have been doing jujitsu, and he's ruined me a bit, uh, just because and he in my and I saw it in my kids. It's just like you said, they they go to practice and they practice these three moves, Coach Mike giving. And this is not a knock on any facility around here, man. Great people, but just like it's very old school. So you give a seven-year-old a move and they practice that move, practice that practice. Then here's another move, practice, practice, practice. Okay, now let's go into this live situation. And then it's like, you know, you're you're asking seven-year-olds to like remember where their fucking leg is and where their foot is and where their shin is and how to grab an elbow, and like they don't know that stuff, man. There's seven years old, they just want to play games, and like that was very frustrating. My kids would get very frustrated with that as well, because then the coaches would the instructors would get on them and like and they just wanna they just want to go, yeah. Um, so yeah, Greg, thanks, Greg, for for ruin it. No, no, God bless them. I wish there was a facility around here to try that that we could do that. I wish he was closer because he's in leave Delaware, right?

SPEAKER_02 17:32

He's in uh Rock, uh Maryland, Rockville, Maryland. I'm sorry, Maryland, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:35

Um Maryland, which is about a couple hours uh from from here. But uh yeah, I I want to get my kids there, but uh no, I love listening to Greg. Um now I'm gonna jump in real quick.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

Oh, yeah, go for it.

SPEAKER_02 17:45

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So you bring up a great point. Like when you're talking about how coaches coach athletes in that scenario, it's like, look where your foot is, look where this is, and then it creates this robotic, internalized, like athlete that can no longer doesn't even know what to look for, right? When you're looking for an affordance, you're looking for openings to pass guard, you're looking for all these things, and you you are simply focused on what your body's doing. It's uh it's funny. I was having this conversation yesterday, and my business partner was talking about I forget his relationship to this particular athlete, but a youth athlete, you know, girls' flag football is like very big right now, but it's huge, right? It's huge. And they told her to always catch in this triangle position. Always never let the ball come to your body, right? And so what's happening is she's dropping everything in practice because she's like using this solution when the ball is low. You know what I mean? And so she's literally locked in to this one single solution space that is not effective across a lot of different uh problems. And so that's also an issue when you constrain an athlete to only look for one thing or to have this one way of doing it everything, it doesn't fit the demands of the game. So I just want to point that out there because you I think it's a kind of a good like situation that you brought up that we probably all experienced as athletes, maybe when we were younger, or maybe we've even coached that way.

SPEAKER_00 19:09

I'll give you another example. Uh, I was blessed uh maybe five years ago to work with uh uh NFL class, uh uh the uh particularly with the quarterbacks. And I was out in California and I got to go sit on a on a practice with these quarterbacks, and one particular one, Justin Fields, they were these coaches were working on, and he was throwing live routes, and he looked like shit. And the coaches were trying to get him to do something with his body while throwing live routes, and the passes look like shit, and then he'd get pissed off and he'd throw a completed pass, which looked much better, but they he wasn't mechanically doing what they were asking, and they were just having this argument back and forth, and you could see Justin was getting super frustrated, and then after the practice, he ended up staying afterwards and um just wanting to throw more routes because he didn't like how it went, but it was just interesting to you, you know, you can't serve. I hate this phrase, but yeah, uh if you have a better one, please let me know. Can't serve two masters in the sense of like you can't consciously be thinking about your body while trying to throw, you know, uh into a live chaotic environment. And I, you know, that was a very interesting case that I tell a lot of the the quarterbacks and football players that I work with here that are trying to just do all this mechanical stuff, uh especially in in live situations.

SPEAKER_02 20:28

Yeah, no, I think that's a great example. You know, you can even see it with any sport. Um, so like basketball, for example. Like, you know, if you look at what I was taught playing basketball, which they don't teach us anymore. Like if you talk to people like Alex, it was like like if you think about it, it was beef. It was bend, eyes, elbow, follow through. Well, if you think about all of those, those are pretty much all internal cues. I mean, maybe not fall follow through to a degree, but they mean what what your wrist is doing, right? And so it's like imagine just being an athlete trying to figure this out. And yeah, you need to have an awareness of where your elbow is. You're probably not going to be very effective like this, right? But it's it's like, let's get away from that as soon as we can. You know, it's not necessarily don't ever say anything about someone's internal structures, but we can't live there. And that's what how most people relate coaching, or they get so freaking specific that it's completely like if you start talking about like specific degrees and angles that like that's really hard in, like you said, in a chaotic environment, that someone's supposed to remember that and and do that. It's just like I had a some sprint coach years ago would tell athletes, okay, you need to strike the ground, hit the ground with your outside toe first, and then like you think they're gonna fucking do that, like when they're yeah, when they're sprinting at at full speed, so it's just it's just completely uh unrealistic.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

Well, and then on I mean, and then to keep piggybacking off that you work with the same level athletes I do, high school, some middle school, and some college kids, you have kids that have no proprioception, they don't know where the Body is in space. And now I'm going to tell them a fucking cue that's just going to like take more conscious effort for them to just try to figure that out. They're going to completely screw up. And so, um,

Attention, Intention & Representative Design

SPEAKER_00 22:10

yeah, no, I'm with you uh on that stuff, man. Now, what uh so what is your uh in your opinion, what is the role of a good coach?

SPEAKER_02 22:17

Yes, that's a great, great question. I think the role of the coach is someone, you know, the to put it simply, most coaches are dictators or they want to be a dictator, right? I think as a good coach, you should be a guide. And that means you're open to input from your athlete. Tyler might say that you co-adapt with your athlete. Uh there, you're inviting your athlete to his own party, to their own party, is what he might say. And so what that means is that I'm not just thinking coach-centered, I'm thinking athlete-centered. Who is this athlete? What are their individual constraints? Uh, what is the sport they play? And that could be, could change how you think about sprinting, for example. Like, would I expect a 6'5 athlete to accelerate like a 5'8 athlete? Probably not, right? What are the demands of their sport? What is their form of life? Where are they from? What are their what are the social constraints in their life? Like thinking about all that, and then also allowing them to be authentically who they are. Another example would be uh that that I heard uh on an ESPN story, Aston Genty. He had kind of a rocky ear, but the whole Raiders organization did, so we can't necessarily fault him. But there was this article on ESPN, and he stands very upright in the backfield. And Chip Kelly, who's no longer working with them, was like, you gotta bend your knees, like you're playing basketball. It's like that guy is pretty damn good, one of the greatest college running backs of all time. What does it matter? If that's how he stands, like I just feel like I can see more. This is how I've always stood. Do we really need to change that? That that's who he is? Like if it's in it effective, if it's efficient, like why would we change that just because it doesn't look like the way we think it should?

SPEAKER_00 23:58

Those two words you just said, effective and efficient, right? Those are the ones that we gotta be asking. Is it effective? Is it efficient? Um, you know, screw your sometimes mechanical models, man. Is it effective? Does it get the problem fucking solved? And is it efficient? Is it not gonna lead to injuries? Is it not gonna get his head knocked off uh or anything like that, man? No, I love I love that. Um so if if you were to be a football coach, if you were the head coach, I don't have you ever coached before? I apologize. Let me back to you.

SPEAKER_02 24:25

No, I've never never been like a sport coach.

SPEAKER_00 24:28

So uh I'm kind of twofold here with the question. One, if you were the if you were the head coach, how would a practice look like for hobbies football team? What what would you you know what would be and I know that's a loaded question, but you know, what would be a what would a practice look like, man?

SPEAKER_02 24:42

Yeah, I think the first thing, the biggest waste of time in football is probably the indie period, where they go and do position drills. And especially at the high levels, man, like at the highest levels, those guys, as you know, they're Ferraris. Everybody is is bringing a Ferrari engine to the table. And the difference between those guys is their perceptual attunement, what how they can problem solve. And so I would be exposing them to more problems. At the very least, it would look, feel, and act more like the game. So instead of having them, you know, the famous running back drills that people think they're, you know, it's like they have the um, there was one, it was Quinshaan Judkins at the Browns, and he's holding a med ball, coach is pointing, and he's shuffling back and forth, and he's shuffling back and forth. And you're thinking, what relevance does that have for him? You know, you're just doing conditioning at that point. You know what I mean? You might as well do just do generic conditioning. And so I would reduce those indie periods and make them much more alive. And then I would probably do way more opposed work. So, you know, we think of a quarterback throwing on air, we think of someone like um an elite quarterback, Patrick Mahomes. Like, how does he does he really need to do that much on air? Okay, you like it, maybe it makes you feel comfortable with your receivers. Okay, do that, but now let's do that against uh actual defense. So there would be a lot more opposed work and strip away the majority of the unopposed work because at that level, you know, if you think about running a route, if you're running a route in football, running a route on air versus running a route against a defender is going to be different depending on where the cornerback is playing you, what type of coverage it is. You're gonna change your route slightly. And I heard a football coach tell me this one time. Uh, it was like you want to be able to win the route as many different ways as possible. So same route, but win as many different ways as possible, right? And so that's where again we talk about catching a football. You might want to catch it against your body sometimes. You don't always have to, yes, generally speaking. And so to put those kind of you know, shackles on an athlete, I think, is is a bad idea. So that's probably how it look like it would be a lot shorter because there's probably a lot less uh less time needed for all this stuff. And I guess the last thing I'll add is the warmup would be more interactive for sure. Like there's nothing like athletes just like going through the same warm-up they've done for you know a year and getting nothing out of it.

SPEAKER_00 27:08

Now, let me ask you this. So um I'm sure you get high school athletes, college athletes that come work with you, but they still have to do team stuff. How do you get them because I'm sure when they come work with you, like like the athletes I get to work with, they enjoy the live stuff. They love that kind of that gamifying live things, get in situations and try to problem solve. But when they have to go work with their team and they're back to that rope stuff, like is there anything you tell them to make it more alive, to try to get more out of it? Or you know what I mean? I are you kind of just shackled like as far as like what you can and can't can't do with that?

SPEAKER_02 27:49

Yeah, that's a great question, man. I think that's a reality, right? We would love the world to be a certain way, but we have to accept it for what it is and try to do what we can. I think for me, if I have an athlete and they're going to be doing closed, uh very rote repetitious drills, then what I would probably have them do is try to add slight changes in how they're starting, unless their coach is really demanding, okay, you're going through this drill. Okay, hey, I want you to vary slightly every now and then just change the width of your stance. Okay, at least there's some variability there. It's not a lot. Um, like slightly move over to the left a little bit. Or, okay, you're running this route on air, slightly vary how you would do your your release, your quote unquote release. There's no cornerback there. So I would try to get them to add variability

Coaching As Guide Not Dictator

SPEAKER_02 28:35

within that repetition as much as possible. Really tough if you have a coach coming in and say that you have to do it this way, because then you have to do it this way, right? Because they're the coach, they're deciding whether you play or not. I would also probably tell them to, hey, I and I we tell our athletes this, hey, when you when you're not in the drill, because that's the other frustrating thing about sometimes drills, is there will be 30 kids standing around and one athlete doing the thing at a time. It's like, dude, like you have all these athletes, right? Let's let's take advantage of them. Uh pay attention to how the other athletes move. Like, what do you notice that's different about how they move versus how you move? And so I think there's some something to be learned there. Like, pay attention to how they accelerate. What how is it different from you? And so I think there's a general like understanding of movement that they can probably grasp. That's probably useful for them.

SPEAKER_00 29:22

Now, some of the phrases that get used a lot in the CLA emergence crowd are like attention and intention. And I think you're kind of alluding to that. But can you kind of, for the listeners that may not know what those things mean, can you kind of explain what that is and then maybe give some examples?

SPEAKER_02 29:39

Absolutely. So an athlete's attention is essentially what they're perceiving. What are they trying to pick up? And that's where, as coaches, sport coaches have a tremendous impact because they're going to have an intimate, deep knowledge of what their athletes are kind of seeing. So it could be like, for better, for lack of a better word, a visual cue. So if I am a point guard and it is a screen and roll situation, maybe one of my attention is to what is the uh big man's defender, is what type of coverage are they playing? The distance between me and uh and and the defender that might dictate to whether I shoot the ball, I pass the ball, I pull up for a jump shot, I take a layup. So that would be like attention. Um in jujitsu, it's okay, it might be um where where are my opponent's hips are at, or what type of guard they're in. I'm just throwing something as someone who's not a huge jiu-jitsu guy, but as someone who has a little bit of knowledge of it, that might be something. For intention, it might be what is my goal? What is the task goal of this particular situation? And that's where oftentimes you just tell an athlete, like, this is what you're trying to do, without necessarily a super narrow bandwidth. You're not just trying to do this, you're just trying to essentially pass this person's guard. And you did doesn't matter how you do it, you're trying to pass this person's guard, whether it be like a kneecut or you're trying to fake this way and you're going the other way, whatever it may be. So that's where the intention is, and making that very clear with what the athlete. That's what Greg does, probably as good as anybody, is he'll design these games and it's like, okay, bottom player, put your feet on the top player. That's okay, that that's their intention. That then the game's over if you do it, you know, or whatever it may be. Um, or if it's a basketball coach. I'm not trying to teach a move. Like I was working with my nephew actually the other day, and he's new to basketball, and he was trying to understand. He's like, Well, how how do I get good at dribbling? I was like, Well, what are you trying to do? You know, you're trying to keep me away from the ball. And he was dribbling the ball like right in front of me. He's like, So what can you do? Can you turn your body this way? It's like, oh, okay, so that's his intention. Just keep me away from the ball, keep possession of the ball. And so by giving an intention, you allow athletes to solve it in a way that's more unique and more suited for them.

SPEAKER_00 31:55

Love it, man. Now, how do you get how do you get coaches to become more uh guiders than dictators?

SPEAKER_02 32:04

Ooh, that's a tough one. Uh I I would say be comfortable with less control, be comfortable with uh a little bit of mess. I think reframing this idea of what the coach's role is, there is a difference between performance and learning. And I think we equate uh the two to be the same. There's a difference in what transfers and what looks good now. There's a difference between an athlete exploring and an athlete repeating. And I think when coaches can understand that difference, then you can really start to step back and understand your role is a little bit different. At the end of the day, your role is preparation for a game day. Your role is to create an adaptable athlete, not to create somebody who looks good on Wednesday. And so that's, I think would be the start.

SPEAKER_00 32:58

So if you have an athlete,

Designing Football Practices That Transfer

SPEAKER_00 33:00

that one of the words that get sometimes thrown around, right, is attractor states. Um, right. And you mind one explaining what that is, but then two, if you have an athlete that I don't know if you watch a game film before they come to you, or if you're doing some alive stuff and you keep seeing that there's kind of stuck in this one attractor state, what are ways that you kind of try to get them to break through and see a little more possibilities?

SPEAKER_02 33:24

Yeah, so an attractor state, think of it as a stable solution for an athlete. An athlete that this is their go-to. And so when we have, like the example I used earlier, the football player, and I'll use another one here because that's super relevant in rehab. Um, when we had an athlete and all she was doing is she's just catching the ball like this. This is her one deep, you know, attractor that she can do, right? Not very adaptable in her movement. She can't catch it here, she can't catch it with one hand here. And so we want an athlete to have many different attractor states. You want athletes to have many different ways of solving said problem and not just one single way. And so what I have noticed, particularly in athletes who are coming off of injury, I'll use uh an example. So I have a had a softball athlete that I worked with, and she had two-year history of shoulder issues. And when you're watching her throw, and she played outfield and sometimes middle infield, when you're watching her throw, everything was here. Nothing was able to get over the top. And if you think about that, if she is playing center field, this is what she played, and she has to have a do-or-die throw, run around second, I have to throw it to home, play. It's gonna be really hard to throw the ball sidearm very accurately and with a lot of velocity. And so one thing is that this was not no longer an attractive option for her. She no longer did this. And so, what we do, one of the things that I did is I created a game where this became a more attractive option for her. So I called it like headshot. Basically, her job was just we were standing some some distance away, and you get a point for hitting me like right here, right in the head we were throwing. So this becomes now more attractive. I didn't tell her how to do it, because if I just told her how to do it, it was probably unlikely that that movement would emerge. So she solved that problem that way. Another thing that we did was get her to utilize her arm in a more overhead manner, but not necessarily with softball, because I don't know exactly the reason for this, but there for her, the connection between softball and throwing overhead meant pain. And she told me one time in one of her sessions, she says, I feel like my brain won't let me throw hard. And I'm like, holy shit. You know, okay, that's interesting. And so, okay, let's play some spike ball. So we played spike ball and she's hitting the ball overhead. Okay, cool. Let's do that. Uh, let's play what we call uh we did wall ball. Let's play wall ball. And so all of these different arm angles are kind of emerging. She's not thinking about softball, she's just being an athlete. And then we did what we call apocalypto. If you remember that movie Mel Gibson made, yeah. There's a scene. Great movie. Yeah, great movie where the guy's like getting spears thrown at him and he's running in in an angle, right? He's not running straight, he's like running in an S. And so where I would come across the gym and I would have to get like 10, 15 yards, and she and another athlete would have dodgeballs. And so they try to hit me as I'm coming across. And you would hear that dodgeball like like whizzing. Whizzing, man. Yeah, you know what I mean? It's like, oh, you're throwing this hard, and you know, I didn't tell her this. So things like that is is a is a way of so exploring, gamifying it a bit. Another example would be another injured athlete who was coming off of an ACL injury. And you sometimes find with athletes ACLs or any sort of lower extremity injury, and if if it's the affected side, they will no longer plant off that affected side. It's unattractive. And so we basically try to constrain the environment to where let's just say he always goes off of his right, he's always cutting from right to left. Okay, well, I'm gonna position a defender there to where that's not possible anymore, right? He's not gonna solve that problem. So maybe we take away a certain side. It's like think of a basketball player forcing an athlete to their opposite hand. And so we would do that, and oh wow, you can actually do that. And then we started to build on that and add more complexity. So those are just a few examples of what you might uh might do.

SPEAKER_00 37:30

Nice, love it, dude. Now, as a former or as a business owner, um when you get a new client and and let's just say the parents are a little more helicoptery, um, and they want their they come to you for hey, I my my kid my kid needs to be quicker, right? Their agility sucks. Uh

Working Around Team Drills & Constraints

SPEAKER_00 37:50

one, I'd be curious to know what do you say to them about that. But then two, when you don't bring out the agility ladders or you don't bring out the cones, how do you sell them on these games and things? Because some parents, like if it doesn't look neat and clean, if it doesn't look like what I did or you know what I saw on fucking TikTok or something like that, they they they don't like that. So like I'm curious, how do you approach these situations?

SPEAKER_02 38:16

Man, that's the hardest part. That's the hardest part about owning a business and doing things differently because everybody has an idea of what training should be. I cannot tell you how many times I have been told by by people, and you probably have gotten this people like what training should be, or I saw this exercise for my daughter or my son. Can you include this? And so having a lot of those conversations, unfortunately, is part of the job. What we've tried to do is preempt those conversations with a little bit of parent education. So in our onboarding sequence, there's an email about why we do what we do and how it's different. Certain phrases that you can utilize, game speed, right? That's not trademarked, but it's definitely something that's helpful. If you say game speed, you're like, okay, I want my athlete to get better at a game. Now we still do testing because parents want to see their athlete get faster and they there needs to be some measurement. And so we'll still test vertical, you know, we'll test acceleration and all that, and making sure that they know that, hey, we're also getting your athlete faster in a traditional sense. It just may look a little bit different. So I think having those conversations before, you know, using analogies like boxing is a good analogy because most people have done some sort of boxing, like cardio kickboxing or something. Okay, would that prepare you for a fight? And the answer is generally no, they they understand that. So using analogies, using phrases like game speed, real agility, whatever you want to call it, you know, and then preemptively answering those questions is how we do it. But it is definitely an ongoing battle to do it this way.

SPEAKER_00 39:56

Just a question just came to my mind, uh, because I have a couple practical examples that that I've had historically. So like I've had I work with a lot of soccer. Soccer is a big sport up here, and uh that's that's what I get. And uh yes, you have to find the times because you parents do want to see that, coaches want to see that. It's it's it's nice to let the kids know that hey, it's validating, it's validating for sure. But when a parent or a coach then says, Well, I don't see that transfer to the field, you know, uh one of the things, and I'd love you to get into it with CLA is representative design. So trying to take aspects of their sports of again soccer and try to make it smaller, constrain it so we can work on things, but we can only do so much, right? Because we're not their soccer coach. So when you hear that and you like does any like I'm just curious, how do you approach that? Because for me, that seems more like a coaching problem, but I can't say that because that's not my job, that's not what the parents want to hear, that's not what they're paying me for, but at the same time, I'm just curious because it seems like there's some um I don't know, anxiety, but you know, there's there's there's this thing where like it just it's not I don't know, when they're in a team setting, you know, the example I give all the time is you go watch kids play basketball pickup and they're fucking loose and they're having fun and they're doing shots and they're just playing, but then when you get those same kids in front of a coach, they don't look like that anymore, they don't play like that anymore. Like there's something that's the there's a there's something that blocks them. I'm curious, how do you approach that? What are your thoughts on that kind of thing? Is that something you've seen? And do you have any examples?

SPEAKER_02 41:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:37

Sorry, that's what I'm saying. No, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_02 41:39

That's a it's a great question. And I think, I mean, honestly, I don't have a great answer. I think you gave a pretty, pretty good one, and and I think that's something we're we're both gonna have to maybe collaborate and work through because I have I have gotten it before where it's like, oh, there, you know, we get it, for example, in volleyball where they're they're just not, you know, like they're fast, but they're just not reacting to the ball. Well, well, I know that that is not simply just to do with reaction time. It's perception. Are they perceiving the ball? And are they are they comfortable? Are they like a lot of the times you said this, it's are they comfortable in that space with the coach or are they gonna make a mistake and then get the get pulled out? And then are they going to start playing more stiff and and not relaxed? You're exactly right. I've seen that so many times. And one of the things that I've tried to do is have conversations with athletes

Parents, Buy‑In & “Real Agility”

SPEAKER_02 42:30

because I can't always have like you and I aren't gonna walk into, you're not gonna walk into the the high school coach's room and say, hey, your training sucks. Uh, you need to start, you just, it's not gonna happen, right? Because you're gonna lose that relationship. You just can't. It's just not possible. So what I what I try to do is just, if an athlete is in that situation, is have conversations with them, say, hey, listen, like, how do you feel when you're out there on the court? Well, I feel like I'm I'm I'm nervous because I'm gonna get taken out as soon as I make a mistake. Well, I tell them, well, you can't control the coach, but what you can control is how you approach the situation. If you get taken out, so what? It's happened before. But you know, when you play this stiff and rigid, like you're not at your best and you're not showing up to be your best self on the court. So you might as well just try to play as loose as possible. If you make a mistake, you make a mistake. You know what that's like. And so I try to have little conversations like with them like that. Maybe if it's a parent I'm comfortable with, I will bring up the coaching. Yeah, but you have to be careful with that because that is a delicate relationship. So unfortunately, I I don't have anything um perfect, but I agree with you. It is that is like we have an impact for sure. But man, if that coach runs bad practice, it's really hard for us to overcome that.

SPEAKER_00 43:40

Yeah. Um, Greg having Greg on, he he talks about uh the difference between just the domesticated dogs and wolves and not having to handhold athletes, right? He wants wolves. He doesn't want domesticated dogs that have to be weight to be fed. How do you handle athletes that come to you and just kind of give you those eyes of like, okay, what's next? Or, you know, like they can't, like what what are what are strategies you go through? Because man, that is a frustrating fucking thing. And I don't want to yell ever at any of my clients. I don't want to yell in general, but man, that sometimes it's like, hey, I, you know, I want you to figure this out. Like what are what are strategies? I mean, is that something you see? And then what are strategies you use to like get them to more of the uh like problem-solving domesticated or the wolves part than being a domesticated dog?

SPEAKER_02 44:27

I do like that analogy from Greg. And I think you and I are similar. Like, I don't, I'm not a yeller at all. Very, very rarely. Happens a couple times a year, um, very rarely, but I have a I've I've seen it, an athlete who does a rep and then looks to you like for instant feedback. And and it's it's frustrating. Those athletes have obviously been brought up in a system that gives them copious amounts of feedback. They might have a parent at home that's constantly coaching them. So I'm trying to understand the constraints that are at play here, their form of life. And so oftentimes it's just a simple conversation. It's like, hey, I'm not gonna be there for you on the field, on the court, and whatever you're doing. So it's really important that you own this process. And we actually tell parents in the beginning, one of the catchphrases is like, hey, we want the athlete to drive the car. We don't, we we're passengers, but the athlete has to drive the car. Like, one of the questions, this is somewhat related, but one of the the things I've get from gotten from parents is like, can you help my kid get motivated? I'm like, dude, like, like I I don't have a great answer for you. I I like if they don't want to do this, then we might be SOL here. You know, they have to want to be here because if you drag, and we say this in the beginning too, if you have to drag them to training, which our training's fun and and they like coming in, but if you have to drag them, this isn't gonna work, and we're just wasting everyone's time. So, you know, the athlete has to be an active participant, they have to step up and you have to nudge them towards that.

SPEAKER_00 45:55

Dude, the amount of times I've gotten parents asking me to be motivating for them, I'm like, no, that's that's not my job. You know, uh that that's not I I oh gosh, that is one of my biggest pet peeves as a business owner. Um, now how long have you had your your facility? Uh since 2018. So seven years. I mean, what did you like were you just a coach that wanted to open your own practice, or did you kind of have any business background? I mean, for me, I was just a coach and I was just tired of following other coaches and their terrible training programs, and I wanted to kind of do my own thing without having to look over my shoulder for every little drill or exercise or whatever we did. But uh just curious your journey to being a business owner.

SPEAKER_02 46:38

Yeah, man. I I mean it sounds similar to yours. I definitely did not have a, you know, my major was kinesiology. I did not have an MBA or anything like that. But I, you know, when I left my the gym I was at and looking for space, I looked for a place and I remember looking. I'm like, there's nothing that really fits with how I'd want to do it. And it was a little early at the time. And then I was only at the the place where I was running space for maybe a year, maybe a little bit more. And it came to a point where I had to turn down business basically because of the space issue and and capacity. And then I realized, okay, well, maybe we should try this this gym thing. And uh I realized, I was like, well, you know, and I I do this exercise all the time whenever

Business Lessons From Running A Facility

SPEAKER_02 47:20

I have a decision. Like I go through what's what the worst that could happen. You know, what's the worst that could happen? Okay, so worst case scenario, it doesn't work out. Okay, like what will I have gained in the process? What will I have learned about myself in the process? And can I get back to this point of just training people in a shared space at some point anyway? It's like, yeah, it wouldn't be that hard. Okay, gym closes, I just go back or I go to another place. So that's what made me do it. Like, I honestly didn't want to open it. Like, if you'd asked me before that, I'm like, I don't want to deal with the gym and deal with all the shit that comes along with it. You know what I mean? But but you know, you get into it, you realize, okay, this is this is fun. It's it is a roller coaster, but uh that that's how I got into it.

SPEAKER_00 48:03

Uh what lessons have you learned in in your uh what eight years, you know, uh both but both you know, lessons in general, but lessons as both a coach and and a business owner.

SPEAKER_02 48:13

Uh man, great question. So many, so many lessons. I'd say, and I'd love to hear from you if you don't mind answering after after me, because I'd love to learn from you as well. Yeah I would I would say coaches, so when it comes to staff, staff is a is a different animal. If you have staff, I would say you have to be, I heard somebody tell me this one time if you're the CEO, you have to also be the CRO, the chief reminding officer. Because if you're trying to set a culture with people, you have to remind them. Another one is what is explicit or implicit to you in your head, what you think you know how to do, that you've done so many times that you can do backwards, you cannot assume that people do the same thing. That would be another one. I would also say stories. We create stories. Like, for example, we create stories about intention that other people have, whether it be an athlete, whether it be a coworker. Oftentimes it's not that story. People are just doing things the best they can and the best that they know how to do it. And so sometimes when you bring that story to the process, you end up complicating it or you end up making it more dramatic than it is. So for conflict resolution, for example. I as a coach, I would say, I mean, this is sounds maybe a little bit generic, but every athlete just wants to be seen. They want to feel that you care, which I think is something we do really, really well. And the methods matter, but they really just want to know that you're gonna get them a result and that you care about them. And as long as that you do that, then you're probably gonna be in pretty good shape.

SPEAKER_00 49:53

Um yeah, man, I you know, I've been fortunate 13 years here uh at Pittsburgh. It's it's been a journey. Um you know, not having a background in in business, trying to run a business and then making it through a pandemic and shit. Um you know, I have not had the good fortune of finding good help around here. Um, so it's just me. It's always it's been me. I've had some people come and go as far as employees. Um but for me, that's been hard because one, the educational piece of what I know versus and I don't mean this in any disrespect or saying that I'm fucking all-knowing, but like this just talk about what we're doing right now, the movement stuff versus what they learn in school. And then like now the fires and the battles we have to we put out and like the time it takes to educate, and um, and same with strength and conditioning, it's just going against you know, uh the five sets of five or three sets of five or the conventional stuff. And it's that's been hard because that is Pittsburgh is very uh old, very old school to this day. It's a very old school town, and tradition dies very hard here, as we just saw Mike Tomlin finally leave after 19 years, you know what I mean? And they've been calling for his head since I've been here. Um, you know, it's been very hard that way. So I don't have you know, I just I don't know, man. It and it also the other part is like for me, I'm very probably seems very similar to you. I care about my athletes in and out of the gym, man. I care about them as people. I want I'm trying to create good people, not just athletes, man. I want good fucking people. And the people I've had just have been more floor managers, you know, they just they just care about them when not on their floor, but as soon as they they clock out, they don't care. They're not sending the text of hey, good job today in class, or hey, let's work on this, or hey, how'd that test go? Or just reminders of things. And you know, it's it's that that personal thing. And that that for me is so big because I love I love my clients. I'm very blessed um to to have the clients that I have. So it's been very hard, man. You know, um I don't know. I liked what you said better than what I have to say. It's just been it's been a it's been a struggle, man. You know, I've been just trying to be a problem solver for people. Um you know, it's it's uh everyone has different problems, and I'm trying to, you know, it's it's very much a uh I'm very much a psych psychiatrist as well as a uh as a trainer, you know, directly.

SPEAKER_02 52:23

And that that's that's huge, dude. That's that's a huge part of it. I would say one thing I just the comment on the we've been lucky, we have a great staff. Um two of them were former athletes of ours. And so like that is like you know, like

The Modern Coach’s Planner

SPEAKER_02 52:40

a blessing. And then the the other, well, we have two more. We two were all have been either former athletes or interns. And so that's our preferred method of hiring because we get coaches younger before they've been corrupted by all this BS out there. But even then, like we have a coach that graduated and he showed me some of the stuff, but luckily, like he trained with me and he knows me, and there's a built-in respect and uh it there. But he showed me some of the stuff he showed in you know in college and my alma mater too. And I'm like, oh my god, dude. This is so it's not even up, even if it's different philosophy, it's not up to date. You know what I mean? And it's and and I'm like, man, this is the best that that they're this is what they're teaching kids. And so you're right, you have to unlearn all that crap. So if you get somebody who's you know our age, who's coming into your facility, you have so much crap. Like I was lucky to have to walk into younger into my career to walk in, and I didn't really know what I was doing, someone like Sean who at least questioned things. And so I was like, okay, this this makes sense to me. And I've just happened to be open-minded. So you have to find people that are younger, realistically open-minded, and that like, and I tell our staff this if you just want to learn like passively, you are never going to be great in this field. If you just want to go off of what you learned at ASU or whatever school or University of Pitt, you're not, you have to seek out like learning opportunities. If you're not passionate about this field, there are so many better ways to make money. You know what I mean? Like you go drive for drive for Amazon and uh have none of the bullshit, you know what I mean? So, like, you gotta find people that have a deeper meaning than just showing up and that, because it's not gonna work out.

SPEAKER_00 54:21

No, to 100% to your point. The best interns I've had have been former athletes of mine. The unfortunate part is, well, fortunate, unfortunate part, they're not lawyers, they're fucking medical doctors. They didn't want to get into this field. Yeah. But when they would come in the summers and intern for me or during the breaks, like, dude, yeah, because they they knew the system, they knew how things should flow and operate and and how to problem solve better than just the coaches that are just coming straight out of college. So, yes, I've been very fortunate to have had several uh former athletes who were fantastic interns. Unfortunately, now they're they're wake making like five times more than I am in their professionals enjoying their lives, man. Yeah, smart kids. Very smart kids. Now, um, I would be remiss, Javi, if I did not talk about your journal. Sorry, my my screen's a little fuzzy, man. Yeah, I you know, just got it a couple weeks ago. Um, it was on back order. I've bought uh throughout the years many journals because I'm trying to be uh I'm I'm a very uh right-brained person. So I'm trying to be a little more left-brained and have things better organized. Because in my head, I know what I want. I know kids, but I I need to do a better job of writing things down. So for years, man, honestly, I've bought a ton of journals, business journals, daily operational journals, fucking creative how to be more creative journal. I've bought all I have, I wish I had them with me, stacks of journals. This has been the first coach's journal I've ever seen. Um, so for anyone that doesn't know, how he came out with his own uh journal, the modern coach's planner. And it's fantastic, man. It's got it's got like okay, here's here's my athletic development notes, okay, for these athletes. So I've taken notes on my athletes and you know their current strengths and their rate limiters and things like that, you know, laying all this stuff out again that I know in my head, but it's great. It's another thing to have it written out. Um and then you know, going into the sessions and the session debriefs and and what what we did and what we saw, and what I, you know, the feedback and all that stuff. You have QR codes that take you to videos and things you've done. You have um uh quotes in here, man, uh resources, uh weekly attumants, you know, things that we should be doing. I it's it's stacked, dude. Like, first of all, what gave you the idea to do that? Um let's just start there. Fuck.

SPEAKER_02 56:40

Yeah, thanks, man, dude. Like, I really appreciate that. And uh, you know, you we're I think we're similar in that way. I have to over-index on organization because I'm not

Current Rabbit Holes & Closing Thoughts

SPEAKER_02 56:50

naturally organized. So I have bought every planner out there too. Like I've I've had so many because what I'll do is I will have speaking of athletes, you have to have an intention. I have to have an intention with my day because otherwise I'll want to do Jeff's podcast, I'll want to write the email that I need to do, I want to read this book that I'm reading, I want to do this and that, and then I'll feel like crap at the end of the day when I didn't get any of that done. Yeah. So I have to be organized, and that's how I feel like coaches. What I found, and I've been able to do more like speaking and talking with coaches. Most coaches don't have an intention. It sounds really simple. And so what I found is coaches will just do stuff because they do stuff. You're obviously someone who's questioned things, you're obviously someone who has audited what they do. People don't do that. And so I wanted to create something that was user-friendly for them to be able to at least approach something with an intention. Also, I wanted to cut down on some of the friction between I like these ideas, but I don't even know how to organize it. Because I like, how do you when when you're not thinking, okay, everybody knows how to write a program? Okay, I've got A1, A2, you know, B1, B2, B3, whatever it may be. And that's great for strength and conditioning. But if I don't know how to organize my movement, like, or at least have some record of what I've been doing, how do I progress? Because there does need to be progression. And that's another, we go back to myths. This is not just, hey, let's just do random stuff and hope that it works out. Like you have to have an intention of why you're doing it and what you're doing. And so that was my idea to let's reduce the friction, let's create something that coaches could interact with along the ride. There's there's key, like you said, there's key terms that are broken down in in coach speak, you know, so I don't have to think about, well, what the hell's an affordance? Okay, well, let's just make it as simple as possible, you know? And so that was inspiration. It was something that I would have loved to have. Because I, to be honest with you, with you, you asked me this question earlier about was it did I go all in? No, it was choppy as hell, man. It was like, I remember looking at some of the stuff, I'm like, why did I do that? You know, and because there wasn't a resource. There's more resources now. Rob Gray, people like Greg, make the podcast, but like there wasn't any of that. And so I wanted to create a resource that people could utilize with their coaching sessions and get better over time and actually be able to serve their athletes in a way that makes sense and aligns with more modern approaches.

SPEAKER_00 59:20

Love it. Where can uh where can coaches find it, man?

SPEAKER_02 59:23

Yeah, thanks, man. It's uh dcoachhav.com and that's J-A-V uh short for Javier. So people don't don't go H O H O V or H H O B or anything, but dcoach Hav.com. I'm back in stock now, so this is perfectly timed. Um I was able to do the first run that sold out, so they can find it, uh, you know, and you can you can get a copy over there. And if you have any questions, like I'm open to conversation, so if you have any questions on how to use it, you know, please reach out.

SPEAKER_00 59:51

Yeah, man, I'll I'll be sure to put the link in the show notes. Uh now, last question for you, buddy. As the podcast is called Down the Rabbit Hole, what rabbit holes are you putting down? You know, where where are you at right now when you're kind of sharpening the knife, coach, coach, you know, trying to better yourself type of thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:08

Oh man, I I would say I'm really interested in a couple things, but I guess the one I'll I'll say right now is is variability, like even more into this idea of variability, not just as uh as athletes, and I believe variability is a really important if you want to talk about a fundamental. Like if you think about variability just from an evolutionary standpoint, like it doesn't really make a lot of sense that you know, this might be down a rabbit hole, we'll see if it lands. That the the the species that would continually propagate, if you look at the history of human evolution, right? The person that could only do a few things well, they probably died. You know, they that they they did not, their genes weren't propagated. So as a species, it's probably inherent for us that variability is a good thing. Like, you know, when people, I just feel like I need to change things up, or we talk about HRV and why that's important. I don't study that a lot, but I probably should. We think about like, you know, I I've read before about everybody has slight leg length discrepancies. You know, is that a is that a function? Is that a bug or is that a feature? Or this idea that imagine, you know, I have a coffee cup here. Imagine if I broke my shoulder or I had a frozen shoulder. Shouldn't I have another way to grab this coffee cup? Or think about where uh how long it takes a human to become an adult, a fully formed adult, how long that incubation period is compared to every other species, and how we can do things that other species can't. Is that core? You know, so to me, there's something about variability in a deeper level than just let's see how many different ways you can throw a left hook in boxing. There's something deeper that's inherent to who we are as humans and the connection to the human experience that I think is very interesting to me right now.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:04

Yeah, we still have a deep passion of mine is looking at uh I was a history major, so I was a social studies teacher. I'm very into anthropology. Um, and uh I've been fortunate to talk to Rafe Kelly uh on podcast and Todd Hargrove and really big into looking at uh uh how we evolved. And we are the most adaptable moving species of animals on the planet, right? We can throw, we can climb, we can run, we can swim, we can sprint, we can jump. You know, I mean, we can do all of these things. That's you know, some animals can do some of it, but they can't do all of those things. And so uh, because we had to adapt, we had to adapt to to survive, and that's kind of how we got to where we are. And so, yeah, I'm huge into that stuff, man. I I love looking, especially tracing things back on, you know, how do we get to here? But let's start, let's start back at our history, man. So I love that stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:53

Well, what what what's your do you have a rabbit hole that you're current uh currently diving down? Fuck, Javi.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:59

Um dude, I got I got too many. So I um I'm big into neurology. So I I study a lot with uh I'm big into looking at functional neurology, neurological development, particularly, like how does the brain develop from childhood to adult? Um, but also from an uh an evolutionary standpoint, how did we evolve? Um, so I'm I'm very much into into that. Uh, you know, I dude, it's with my ADHD, sometimes it's like depends on the day, man. So like I'm trying to read up as much as I can to get ready for the emergence seminars so Tyler doesn't fucking make me look like a complete schmo. Um, you know, trying to on that stuff, uh learning about reflexes um and how to use them. Uh well, their their role in development, but their role in in in guarding for injuries and how to use them to get people out of pain. Um, dude, I'm all over the fucking place, man. You know, I listened to I was uh currently re-listening to your podcast with uh Greg because it was awesome to listen to him with his uh with his athletes and get his athlete's perspective on things, which is really, really fucking cool. I I Greg is questioned, he's made me question me as myself as a coach because of how broken down and how well thought out he is with just everything he does there and the how well he can explain it, man. It's like, all right, I don't think I'm as good a coach as I think I am because that guy, that guy can he he could sell a kept chip popsicle to a woman in white gloves, you know. Um, you know, he he's just got it so well well laid out. So I'm trying to do a better job of that. But uh yeah, man, just depend uh ask me on a uh on a random day and I'll tell you probably a different answer. You know, it's just kind of where where I'm at, man. I'm all over the fucking place. But uh um just trying to sharpen the knife as best I can as a coach, as a practitioner, as a business owner, and as a as a father and a parent.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:50

Yeah, man. Well, I mean, that's how I think uh this we all should be. We all should try to excel in in all the areas. So man, I appreciate your hunger for learning and curiosity. And I know it's gonna be great June 5th and 6th. Uh I like I'm excited to see you again in person. And um, you know, I think your willingness to just show up and engage in the in a in a you know intellectual joust, and Tyler's this way too. You know, he's he's open-minded. So I think it's what our industry and coaches need. We need more of that. And so, yeah, kudos to you for for for doing that.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:26

Why why why why would fucking wouldn't I? Like, why wouldn't a coach? Like, you know what I mean? Be surprised, man. It's oh no, oh dude, I I know, you know, um, I get it, but like like why not, man? Like, we're just trying to trying to get better, man. Like, I don't I'm a resultsist, so I want the best results, but I'm also an efficientist. So I want the best highest results at the least expense of time and effort. So if what you guys are doing is better than what the fuck I'm doing, then man, I man, I'm I'm following you guys. If so and so is doing something better than what I'm doing that's more efficient, effective, and efficient, you know what I mean? Getting better results, like, dude, I I don't Swing from any one camp, man. Like I'm I'm I'm a resultist. So uh but no, I love I love talking movement and I love listening to people smarter than I am and trying to surround myself because if you're you're the smartest one in the room, it's time to get a new fucking room. Yep. But uh Javi, hey man, listen, I I've taken up your time. I'm thank you again for your patience to come on. It's been a couple months. We've been trying to plan this finally here, man. Thank you so much. Um, you know, got any final words or or anything for for the listeners?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:30

Uh, you know what? Um, thank you for bringing me on. And I would say if you're a coach and listening to this, one thing that's great about your podcast is just curiosity again. Like if you're a young coach listening to this, whether you agree with anything I say or what Jeff says or or not, but just be more curious. It'll benefit our industry as a whole. So I would just say leave everybody with that. Coaches, embrace curiosity.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:55

Love it, dude. Thank you so much, Holly. It was a pleasure, man. Thanks for having me on.