Strength Coach Collective
Welcome to the “Strength Coach Collective” podcast, where we bridge the gap between cutting-edge fitness science and real-world coaching.
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Strength Coach Collective
Dave Durante: How Power Monkey Blends Disciplines to Elevate Coaching
Today on the “Strength Coach Collective” podcast, host Chris Guerrero is joined by Dave Durante, a multiple-time USA Gymnastics national champion, alternate in the 2008 Summer Olympics and co-founder of Power Monkey Fitness.
In this episode, Dave explains how Power Monkey brings together experts in gymnastics, weightlifting, endurance and mobility to help coaches sharpen their craft, regardless of their method or the level of their athletes.
According to Dave, every advanced skill is based on an understanding of body shapes and static positions, and he believes spotting is one of the fastest ways to build trust and confidence in athletes.
You’ll also hear his take on what really makes a great coach: how traits such as curiosity, empathy and patience separate the good from the great and matter just as much as technical knowledge.
If you’re looking to grow as a coach and build a system that prioritizes long‑term success over short‑term gains, tune in to hear the full conversation.
Links
Strength Coach Collective
2:05 - Scaling Power Monkey
8:51 - Integrating gymnastics principles
20:27 - Multidisciplinary training
34:52 - Going from athlete to coach
37:18 - Gymnastics and longevity
47:24 - 2 traits of great coaches
What's up, guys? This is Chris Guerrero and welcome back to the Strength Coach Collective. You can find us at strengthcoachcollective.com or the Strength Coach Collective on Facebook. This show is for coaches who want to sharpen their craft and deliver better outcomes for their clients. Here we bring on leaders in the industry to break down their methods, mindsets, and principles that actually move the needle in your coaching and your athletes' results. Today, we're joined by Dave Durante, a multiple-time USA gymnastics national champion and a member of the 2008 Beijing Olympic team as an alternate. After retiring from competition, Dave transitioned into coaching, helping Stanford University secure an NCAA team title in 2009, and he has continued to give back to the sport through his leadership roles with the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee and the USA Gymnastic Men's Technical Committee. Dave is also the co-founder and operator of Power Monkey Fitness, a leading educational resource in the fitness world that blends the expertise of world-class coaches, athletes, turned coaches to elevate movement quality across fitness community. Under his leadership, Power Monkey has expanded to global events, digital coaching, and innovative fitness equipment, impacting coaches and athletes worldwide. Dave lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, Sadie, and their two daughters, continuing his mission of helping people move better and train smarter. Dave, welcome to the show. Thanks for that intro, man. That was great. Appreciate it. You're very welcome, man. Thank you so much for being here. We were talking before we got on. I know Dave from my past life as an athlete, and he helped me quite a bit with my gymnastics. And I remember, what was the... What was that first apparatus you came out with? Like people were in a harness to be able to... Yeah, that's our ring thing.
SPEAKER_01:That's our ring thing. The
SPEAKER_00:ring thing.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. We still got that on our website, selling strong. It's in most of the biggest CrossFit gyms in the world, at the National Training Center, at most NCAA gyms. It's a great tool if you're looking to work on your ring movement.
SPEAKER_00:Awesome. Well, let's jump in. I want to talk to you a little bit about PowerMonkey. So PowerMonkey has grown... From a concept to a global educational brand with events worldwide, digital coaching, equipment, what have been the biggest challenges and lessons in scaling an education-based fitness company while maintaining high-quality coaching?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, man, that question could just be an episode in and of itself, right? I think... Personally, if I'm being totally honest, I don't come from a business background. And I'm a coach. I was an athlete. In fact, I didn't even envision myself as a coach. When I was an athlete, I was adamant that I had no business being a coach. I didn't want to have anything to do with the coaching world. I was so focused on being a top level athlete and was observing just from a distance the way that my coaches coach. And I said, I just don't have that in me. I don't have the ability to resonate with athletes in the same way that my coach was doing for me. And so I was pursuing careers that were, you know, polar opposite on purpose away from coaching and just circumstance pulled me back into the world that I ended up falling in love with. But not coming from the business world has created a learning curve that is substantial, something that every day I'm finding new ways to direct the resources that we do have. We're a very small company. We've continued to kind of chip away. I think maybe people think we're a bigger company because we've been around for a while and we have a pretty good social media presence and have some really top level coaching, but we're still a very small brand and not coming from a business background has been a learning curve. I would say I'm kind of getting my MBA on the fly and it's created a lot of challenges and mistakes and pitfalls. And I look back and say, geez, what was I doing five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago when we were starting PowerMonkey and every day today I'm still learning. So I think from my perspective, I view things from the perspective of I love coaching. Now, I love working with people. I love the ability to kind of transfer my expertise of the gymnastics world to people who found it later in life. And the business side of things is something that I've had to really, really dive into and learn a little bit more on so that we can actually make this thing grow even more.
SPEAKER_00:So with the transition of you being an athlete, because I want to touch on something you said, you never envisioned yourself as a coach. You were actually the antithesis. You were like, hey, I don't have that in me. What happened? What changed? I mean, obviously, all athletic careers have a shelf life, right? So what changed from that feeling of like, hey... that's not me, that's not what I want to do, to now it's something that you're so passionate about and have been sharing your expertise with people all over the world.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I think the first thing is the perspective came from an athlete, someone who was striving to be the best athlete possible, you know, trying to be one of the best in the world. And when you're in that mentality as an athlete, you're very selfish. I think any athlete at the higher level will tell you that that's the case. You kind of have to put everything off to the side and just focus on what's going to make you as an individual better. And in that sense, what I was observing, as I mentioned, is the way that my coach coached me and And I truly believe that he was the best coach in the world. You know, every coach that I've had along the way taught me something absolutely critical in my career, something that I brought to the last stages of my competitive gymnastic career. But the last coach I had at the Olympic Training Center, he taught me the mental side. He was able to, you know, he would create a plan for us. He would create a yearly plan. And then every day we'd have what we were going to plan on going into the gym with. And at the Olympic Training Center, what's really unique about it is that Well, gymnastics is– I look at gymnastics as a team sport. Like we're out there looking to win medals for Team USA, not as an individual sport. I think most people would view it as an individual sport. But when you're coming into the gym, we had maybe eight– 10 guys that were living at the training center at the time. And every one of those guys trained differently. Every one of those guys had the same objective, but some guys would complete the task in an hour or an hour and a half and other guys would complete the task in six hours. And so our coach needed to come in and say, okay, this is the plans we have to get done for the day. And he would be able to basically read our minds depending on how the previous day practice went or how our bodies were feeling, what injuries we had without even saying anything. And he would individually just on the fly be able to make a plan that was absolutely correct for each of us individually. And I was always so in awe of his ability to do this. He was so in touch with each of us, just how he was going to get the most out of us on that particular day that I said, I just don't have that ability. I don't have the ability to read my athletes or other people the way that this guy does. And if I can't, I don't think I want to pursue that. I don't want to be you know, less than, I just don't have that innately in me to be a coach at that level. And so it was always something that I was like, I'm gonna move into something completely different. And in fact, I moved to Italy right after Beijing. I went back to Stanford for that year, and then I moved to Europe. An injury pulled me back into the coaching world. I fell skiing in Austria, my first time skiing. I tell this story a lot. It's kind of funny now, but I'd never been skiing before. I went up to the Innsbruck, Austria, hosted two Winter Olympic Games, insane top of the mountain there. I was with a buddy of mine from the Austrian gymnastics team, and I don't know what I was doing at the top of that mountain. And I had blown up my knees twice prior to this. Always had bad knees in my career. And I went down in the first 50 feet. I fell and I blew my knee out again. I had to walk back up the mountain with a torn knee up and ended up having my third surgery in Rome. And during that recovery process after my surgery, I was doing rehab in a local gymnastics gym in Rome. And I started coaching the kids as I was rehabbing. Kind of a little bit of a fire was lit around like me actually enjoying working with these kids that just enjoyed having me in the gym. And that kind of grew more and more. And I fell in love with the idea of, you know what, I actually have a lot of knowledge here. I have a lot of what I can give back to the sport. And my love for gymnastics is so strong that I've always wanted to find out ways to deliver information about what a great sport it can be, no matter what your age is. And I'm just grateful that kind of CrossFit emerged as I was finding this path so that we could work with people that didn't grow up with the sport. And that's been a kind of our avenue to be able to say, hey, you know what? There's a way for us to help grow our individual sports.
SPEAKER_00:What are some unique ways that gymnastics training... in particular helps clients and athletes. So you could say like high level athlete, just a regular client, build body awareness. And how can like some of our coaches who are listening to this better integrate these principles into say like a CrossFit setting or like a micro gym setting that's not strictly just gymnastics based?
SPEAKER_01:Sure, sure. Well, USA Gymnastics has a slogan that I think is great to kind of initially answer the question is begin here and go anywhere. And basically what that means is gymnastics training does not necessarily mean that you have to go and train towards an NCAA or a USA gymnast, an Olympic type career. The foundation built around what gymnastics can do for you from a body awareness perspective can go on to help you with whatever sport you're going on to do. And so the most simplified way that we try to preach this when we're working with PowerMonkey is that we believe that gymnastics movement and skill-based training is broken down into kind of a four-phase process. And the first phase of that process is something that everybody should be doing on a regular basis. It's about creation of body shapes. Can I get my body in the shape that I need for whatever application I'm trying to use it for? And that creation of body shapes is broken down into two subcomponents, one being more core work. And when we talk about core, we're talking about the entire muscle. midline everything that encompasses that midline needs to be strong and capably moved and then also more mobility i need to be able to access my ranges so if i have limited mobility in a weak core my shapes are going to be shit i'm not going to be able to actually apply it in a workout let alone with intensity let alone with high volume so we need to be spending a lot of time on creation of shapes without external load before we can actually start applying it to workouts gymnastics does that innately you go to any gymnastics gym no matter what the age the kids they're going to be working on their mobility, building their ranges, and they're going to be working on their core stability. So for us, it's one of the things that we preach endlessly through the app that we have. We have a free core workout every single day to kind of build this understanding of, hey, this is something that you really need to put some attention into. And then mobility side, we have some mobility instructors. My wife is a contortion circus performer and does a lot of our mobility plans. And so those two worlds need to be merged together for any athlete. It doesn't have to be someone going on to the gymnastics world.
SPEAKER_00:And now with, so like in the world of, of gymnastics, like as I understand it, like building body awareness, body weight strength, like how does that differ? Like if you see online on social media nowadays, there's a lot of debate between like building like an ideal physique and there's people who are all body weight type training or, you know, weight training. Is there, in your opinion, a difference, not in the technical definition of what gymnastics is sport is, but gymnastics and calisthenics or body weight training? And what is the differentiator between the two or as you would describe it if there is one?
SPEAKER_01:I think... They both kind of have their basis in a very similar field, similar mold to it. Breakdancing kind of is in that space too, I'd say. Body movement, being able to kind of put your body in places like parkour is an extension of it. You know, there's a bunch of different specialties. Gymnastics is very technique-focused, where it's very regimented. It's skill-based, creating sequences, creating routines. And so there's a specific... form that goes into gymnastics where the true name of the sport of gymnastics, artistic gymnastics, where we're putting on a performance. And so there is a performance component to gymnastics I think is a little bit more unique to than what the calisthenics world is doing, where they're building for function and they're building for, in some places, aesthetics and things like that. But there is a performance component to gymnastics that I think is quite unique to that specific realm of training. I think sometimes the calisthenic world focuses so much on strength building that there's this little bit of a battle between gymnastics using swing techniques or momentum-based movements and thinking that as a lack of understanding of how to build strength, but it's not. It's an understanding of different movement patterns and how they all kind of coincide to create extensions of movements patterns. So it's not one or the other. It's about understanding how to utilize all of those things properly so you can expand the types of skills, the types of training you can actually work on.
SPEAKER_00:very cool yeah i mean i've never heard it explained that way but i really like the the show and performance aspect of what you just mentioned and making it more of a sport uh i just want to back up to the to the shapes that you were talking about like the basic shape so like let's say like in a practical setting we have coaches who want to integrate more of this i i will for for lack of a better term i will call it body weight body awareness type training modalities into a gym, whether it's a one-on-one personal training setting or a more of a group dynamic. Someone obviously with not your level of expertise in the field, what are some basic drills or things that our coaches can start to teach people to start to build better awareness around their shapes, like you said, because what do they say? Gymnastics, it says start here and go anywhere. So like, how could we implement that? The
SPEAKER_01:average. Yeah. I mean, yeah. So, you know, we can go over specific drills and positional awareness pieces, but the reality is that that's not, there's no, revolutionary one thing that's going to do it. I think most coaches at least have a general awareness, especially if you've been in the kind of the CrossFit or functional fitness space for a while. You know what hollow is. You know what arch is at this point. I'm doing courses almost every weekend now. I'll ask just the general member. You guys know what hollow and arch are. At this point, everyone knows what those shapes are. How do you achieve it? You can attack it from a bunch of different ways. The most important thing that most people are not willing or able to do is be consistent with your training. Consistency is absolutely the most important part to all of this. Pick whatever drill you want to do. If you hammer that home on a regular basis, improvements will be made. And so the specificity of the exercise is less important than how often you're doing it. And so to me, like we can go over specific drills. I can give you a couple of drills on hollow or arch or positional awareness pieces. But to me, the thing that I think we need to hammer home is needs to be consistent and things take time. Things take time. One of the other things that I mention a lot when I'm teaching people is, I always like to bring this up, and this may be interesting for you too, Chris, just to understand some general knowledge around the artistic gymnastics world. And all of our skills in the gymnastics world are on a letter scale from an A in our code of points. They're all rated on a letter scale. From an A-level skill being the most basic all the way up to now J-level skills being the most challenging. And when I retired after 2008 games, maybe like the first G-level skill had come out. So over the past 15 plus years, the sport has continuously evolved. It's getting more and more challenging. The apparatus is getting better. The athletes are doing insane things. But along this continuum from an A to J, a strict muscle-up doesn't even fall into the A category. It has no value. So people are devastated when I tell them this. And it's more perspective than to demoralize people, so kind of keep that in perspective for your listeners. But it's to give you some awareness around how long it takes people to really work on these skills that are considered to be fairly basic in the artistic gymnastics world. Iron cross is another one. This is one that I always used to bring up. Iron cross is a really challenging movement pattern. Holding yourself out on rings horizontally with those arms. Up until just a couple of months ago, that was a B-level movement in our code of points. A B, an iron cross, insanely difficult movement, a B-level skill. They just upgraded it for the first time after the Olympics. It's now a C-level skill. But these skills are not... learned in days or weeks or you know an open workout when someone's screaming in your face you make something for the first time you think it's great and you can't understand why you can't repeat it ever again it's because the consistency is not there the timeline chipping away understanding that these things need to be working the process is really what we need to get after and so in some cases things take months years and in iron cross took me 12 years to learn We're talking decades in some cases to learn a B-level movement. And so we have to understand the consistency and timelines really need to be appreciated if your hopes are to become more capable with how you're applying these movements.
SPEAKER_00:So I think, I mean, that is just such an important piece because a lot of the athletes that I train online that are looking for novelty or nuance or different movement patterns all the time, I'm like, guys... I'm my biological age is going to be 41. My training age is probably that of like a 70 year old man. I've been training really hard for a long time. I literally use the same 12 to 15 movements on repeat. All that's happened to me is I've lowered my training volume and increase the intensity to a degree with how hard I push myself. And I'm still getting results to these days, but I think the difficult thing, at least not for the coaches necessarily, but for some of our clients to understand, so say the basic, the average person who comes into the gym three times a week, they wanna get in shape, they wanna lose some weight, they wanna build some muscle, and they could get that from pretty much any workout program if they're consistent. Have you found anything with, I mean, because you work with world-class coaches all the time, Anything that you guys have utilized to help clients understand that the boring, consistent, repetitive work over time is what's going to lead to these, they seem incremental, but going from not being able to do an iron cross to all of the things that you build up to be able to get to that point. How do we convey those kinds of messages to the average person so that they don't just get bored or quit or give up? Yeah, I
SPEAKER_01:think that's a lifelong challenge. I think one of the things that, because it's a challenge for us too. It was a challenge for me as an athlete because I wanted the end result, right? I want to be at the top of the podium. And the things that get you there are the small incremental steps along the way. And one of the things that we have up on the wall in Stanford's gym is a sign that would just take pride in the process. And I think we need to continuously convey the idea that the process is as important, if not more important than the outcome. And so if you as a coach can convey that And this has always been something I've been trying very hard to preach is you need one person to buy in. You need one person in your gym to buy in that the process matters because if that person buys in, the results will slowly start to fall in line with that person and other people will be asking why. It's because they bought in to understand the process matter rather than the end result. And so I've always tried to say, okay, who's the person in the class that's understanding what I'm trying to preach here? And try to lean into that a little bit and use that as an emissary to then say, that person, hey, let's see if you can convey this to one other person and pull them in. And so if we can get one person to understand the importance of the process, it slowly starts to trickle into the rest of the people buying in.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, that's great. Now, in terms of like... Power Monkey and all the coaches that you work with. Like you guys work with people from all different backgrounds, obviously gymnastics, weightlifting, endurance, mixed modal sports. How is working in this multidisciplinary environment shaped your approach to coaching and programming? Because I'm sure working with all these people coming from different fields, there was a lot of different viewpoints on the Maybe not, for lack of a better term, the best way to achieve said outcome. How has that shaped your evolving approach to coaching people?
SPEAKER_01:I think it's one of the things I'm most proud of with PowerMonkey has been this integration of so many different viewpoints where everyone has been able to learn and make their individual vertical better because of it. And so I've become a better gymnastics coach from working with Mike Service and Chad Vaughn and Cheryl Hayworth and Wes Kitts and these other incredible weightlifting coaches and from Chris Hinshaw on the endurance side and from Jeff Martone on the kettlebell side or with Jason Leiden from having worked with so many CrossFit athletes over the years and Dave Newman on the jump rope side or Rika Geiser or Lindsey Shoup on the rowing side, Olympic gold medalists. And so for us to be able to have this staff that is so vast in so many different areas and for us to collectively work together. And I think this is also something that we do very unique is we don't just come together and do our individual seminar, right? You can go to any weekend seminar and learn from an expert and that expert is then gone, right? We don't do that. We have built our coaching methodology with each other. And so there's a through line in the way that we coach and at all of the different stations and all of the different individual specialties, there is a piece of gymnastics in the way that Mike teaches his weightlifting. There is a piece of endurance and running technique in the way that I teach gymnastics, capacity training in the way that Chris has taught that and instilled in me some of the important tenets around capacity training for running. Have I changed the way that I teach gymnastics? 100% absolutely, yes. And so one thing I do now, my daughter's in gymnastics now, and I'm having her lift and work on her leg strength and work on her stability on her landings. One, because maybe it's a genetic thing, but I'm I've blown up my knees three times and I may be a little bit paranoid about genetics being a factor in whether or not my kids' lower halves are going to be strong enough to be able to sustain gymnastics landings in a long career. And so we've been implementing weightlifting techniques at a club level here, but also it's something I've implemented with the guys I work with, Team USA. And on the functional fitness CrossFit side, We've taken some really interesting things from the endurance world, and me, Chris Henshaw, and Chad Vaughn have put together something called Capacity WOD to undertake some of the tenets around building an engine in the endurance world and apply it to skill-specific training. So what are some things that we can do around building for an athlete who's looking to compete in CrossFit? How can we take some of the tenets from the endurance world and apply those same things to skill-specific training? Prior to this, I mean, if you ask a gymnast 10 years ago, 15 years ago, and, you know, it was kind of emerging on the scene. How many, how long does it take you to do 30 muscle ups for time or 50 muscle ups for time? Gymnasts would have no idea. There would be no reason for a gymnast to ever do something like that.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_01:Right. So we kind of like laugh, like, I don't know, I'll give it a try, but there's no reason for me to know that number. But now obviously it's something that people try to attain and it's not, there's an actual application for it. So we build processes to understand how can we actually get better at it rather than a sledgehammer approach of just saying, do more. And so working together has completely transformed the way that I view coaching and also the tools I have in my tool belt to be able to make, whether it's a gymnast or whoever, a little bit better.
SPEAKER_00:So I think something you touched on, which I kind of wanted to ask in the beginning and you touched on it now. So when you were training for like the Olympics in Beijing, was there any– weightlifting or weight training associated with what you guys did on a regular basis? And then to what you said now, do you incorporate weight training into the gymnastics training that you do with people? If so, what's changed and why?
SPEAKER_01:The answer when I was training was virtually no, virtually nothing. Living at the Olympic Training Center, there was, now there's a beautiful new gym that was built a few years back. When I was there, it was attached to the weightlifting gym. Anyone who had been out to Olympic Training Center during the years where the weightlifting crew was still out there as a resident program, the weightlifting training center, the wrestling room, and then the strength conditioning room were all kind of in one little area. And so it was available to us. I became friends with the strength condition coaches at the training center, many of whom have gone on to do incredible things in the strength conditioning world post the Olympic Training Center, which has been very cool to see. But it wasn't something that was... and in many cases it was something that was actively it was preferred that we didn't do our coaches wanted us to do very specific training so we had you know dumbbells most of our training for our skill specific work on rings or parallel bars or whatever it might be was done predominantly with dumbbells or with doing the actual skills themselves so ring movements iron crosses Maltese crosses inverts those kind of things were done on the apparatus themselves or with dumbbells or spotted work however Because of my knees, I kind of went out of my way. I don't think anyone else on the team really did this, just because our coach actively told us not to. But I worked a lot of my lower half. I did a lot of squatting, probably not nearly as much as I should have, but I definitely spent time with the barbell more than the rest of the guys on the team, just because I was a little bit scared of my lower half strength. And my susceptibility to knee injury. Looking back now, it's something that I wish I would have done even earlier. And I would have done even as I started my collegiate career.
SPEAKER_00:And now is this something that is like present day Olympic teams? Is it still, I don't want to say frowned upon, but... are they using strength and conditioning training to help improve their gymnastics? Or is it still mainly just focused on very similar tenants? Because obviously sports evolve. I mean, I remember when I was playing basketball 20 plus years ago in high school, our strength and conditioning was running suicides. There was no strength and conditioning. So I'm just curious how that's evolved.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think it's program to program. I think some guys are a little bit more into it and see the value rather than others. I don't know if coaches have totally bought in yet. to understand the value. I still work pretty closely with Stanford and know what programs they're doing. I go down there every so often to check in on the team and the coaches and they're implementing some much more than when we were on the team. So I can see the evolution is definitely happening at that level. I'll say somebody like Dave Tilly. I'm not sure if you're aware of Dr. Dave Tilly, who's a PT champion clinic out in the Boston area. Dave was a gymnast at Springfield College in Massachusetts, and has gone on to be an absolute critical voice in the gymnastics world around the importance of strength and conditioning. And he's doing it a lot, creating programs and working a lot more on the women's side. And we're seeing the value that comes along with that. And he's been implementing some really, really impressive studies over the past five plus years to show the value of it. So it is happening more and more, but I still think it's kind of in its infancy.
SPEAKER_00:And then with the people that you implement it with in terms of gymnastics, are you using it more as like an injury proofing, bulletproofing, like strengthening ligaments, joints, and tendons to be able to support their training more, I'm assuming? Yes.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's how I would use it more. Gymnasts need to be light and strong. We're not trying to put on mass. We don't want to lose flexibility in those things. And so most of the training we're looking at is more around stabilizing, understanding how to prevent impact injuries, balance exercises, those types of things that come along with becoming a better gymnast.
SPEAKER_00:Awesome. So kind of, I guess this is more of like a personal question, but I feel like a lot of the coaches listening to this would agree. So like I find in my gym, adults feel intimidated by gymnastic based movements. So what strategies help them build confidence and competence when teaching? Well, now that you use the ABC chart, these complex skills like handstands and muscle ups to the general population, which To some of these people, those might seem like J-movements, even if they are not even A-level movements. What can we do to help them build confidence? This has
SPEAKER_01:been our mission since we started PowerMonkey. And our goal is to get more coaches and owners capable of creating confident and comfortable members. And so it requires a capable and confident coach. So how do we do that? We get people to work with us. We get people to come to PowerMonkey to understand our coaching techniques so that you understand how to view someone who needs an additional spotter or needs a different viewpoint or needs a different progression that's a little bit more in line with where their limitation is. And understanding that one scaling option is not appropriate for a group of 20. And so... It's something that we've actually spent the last 15 years working on a coaching curriculum to help build coaches and owners that are more capable of answering this question, no matter what type of athlete comes into your room. Obviously, it's difficult to answer. I would just say one thing that's an area of need for most coaches to become more capable to work with athletes that are scared or worried or unsure about doing a gymnastics movement that is seemingly insurmountable, is to become a better spotter. Spotting is a gateway to becoming an incredible coach. And if you can become the most capable and confident spotter in your gym as a coach or an owner, you will become the most highly sought after coach in your gym because people will come to you to keep them safe. They will trust you to keep them safe on movements that scare the shit out of them. And so we've built a spotting curriculum. The first time that I actually tested it out was at Jason Leiden's gym in Milford a year and a half ago, two years ago, when he put on that Northeast Coaching Summit. And I think it went over really well. I think coaches were understanding the value that comes along with, where do I position myself? If I don't know how to spot, how am I going to convey this value? level of comfort and assure the person that I'm working with that they're safe. You know, you mess up on a spot one time with someone who's getting inverted and scared shitless of it and they fall, that person is never going to want to get it upside down again.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So it's imperative on you as a coach to understand how to create comfort and confidence through spotting techniques and becoming more capable of understanding what that person individually needs.
SPEAKER_00:And it's really interesting that you say that because it's very rare. I mean, outside of like maybe like a pull up, right, where you can like physically assist someone. I don't see many coaches with the skill set of understanding like, hey, where should I stand if I'm trying to teach someone how to handstand walk? I remember personal, man, this was probably back in like 2011. I was teaching one of, oh, I was teaching a class. of handstand walking and like one of the coaches was taking the class because I was trying to kind of break it down. And I wasn't sure where to stand. So I was kind of helping spot the guy when he kicked down. He kicked me right in the face and I'm like, well, I can see now why I should have been standing on the other side. And there's probably a way to figure out what leg he's going to kick up with and what side to stand on. But I couldn't agree more. So like, I guess to reiterate for the coaches, building this confidence and spotting these more complex movements that our clients are scared of, because like, let's just say we're spotting them on a handstand and they fall, they're probably going to lose their confidence or trust in us to be able to help them if we don't understand that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's exactly right. And I would say spotting does a few other things too. One, I think when I'm spotting someone and I do the work the first time, um, there's a lot of this response of, well, yeah, I did it because you spotted me. And people look at it almost like a negative. It's not a negative. It's part of the learning process. I think sometimes we equate doing all of the strength component to understanding and mastering of the movement. When a spotter is there and helping, they should be taking the strength component out of the equation to allow you to focus on the technique of the movement pattern so that your brain can get wrapped around what... What shape should I be creating? What am I supposed to be feeling like with my fingertips when I'm inverted, let alone understanding should I be breathing right now? And so if we can understand where the value is by saying, hey, we're going to remove these parts of the equation so we can focus on these other components. You allow the athlete to start building some confidence around what the movement should look like. And then we layer back in strength on top of that. You go to any gymnastics gym, you're going to see a coach spotting an athlete through a movement. maybe sometimes two spotters, and then they slowly start to ease off of it as the athlete becomes a little bit more capable. It's part of learning skills. It's part of the learning process. What we don't have right now is enough capable and confident spotters, and that's something that we're trying to work hard on the PowerMonkey side to be able to kind of build that within the coaching community.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, and this is like a perfect segue into what I wanted to ask next, which was like you have to be a pretty, I guess not only– good coach but a great coach to understand some of these concepts and be able to teach them to others so like you built a team of former world-class athletes who have now transitioned into coaching when you're looking to bring on new coaches into the power monkey family how do you help them uh translate their athlete background into effective coaching for others
SPEAKER_01:yeah so it is a process and and we're we're kind of always fine-tuning the process but The first, we get a lot of inquiries about that. Hey, I want to become a Power Monkey coach. And a majority of our head coaches, actually all of our head coaches, were former elite athletes and transitioned into coaching. So that's how we built our team. It's a very unique approach. And I think most people, you know, this is not saying anything revolutionary again here is, you know, just because you were an elite athlete doesn't mean that you're necessarily a good coach. In fact, most elite athletes are terrible coaches because It came innately to them and they didn't need to learn the process or convey it. But our coaches were athletes at a high level and have become just incredible coaches. They can convey those things really well. However, a lot of the people that come to us don't come from those same backgrounds but want to be a coach. They're adamant and they love the coaching world and they love the way Power Monkey approaches movement and they want to be able to convey that same thing. The first step in that process is coming to a Power Monkey camp. our week-long event that we host out in the woods of Tennessee that we've been doing for upwards of 13 years now. It's an incredible week of training. You'll get hands-on a full week, which is super unique, with all of our coaches, and you can dive into the specialties that you are most interested in. And from there, you become part of our... put a resume in to become part of our internship staff. And from there, you can become an assistant coach and you can work your way up into becoming an actual lead coach for us. And so we've had a bunch of people over the years that have gone through the process and are now coaching seminars for us. But it is something that starts with just participating and coming to a Power Monkey camp.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'm gonna have to make it out to one of these. I feel like a week of fitness and learning is, sounds like a dream for me and I'm sure that many other coaches. So a lot, and I guess a lot more now than when I got involved with coaching 15 years ago, weightlifting and strength training and building muscle has become such an important component in longevity. and what people wanna focus on now. Using gymnastics for longevity, not just performance, many, many people, at least I always think about it, and I think a lot of people think about this, because they view gymnastics as the Olympics, they associate gymnastics strictly with high performance and youth. How can gymnastics-based training actually support longevity, joint health, and durability in our adult clients that are the ones that we're, Most of our listeners are building their gyms around.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I mean, most of what you're doing on a regular basis is body weight, movement patterns, the things where, where gymnastics kind of hits its stride. And so, you know, if it's getting off the floor is your goal as you get older or being able to have the range of motion to put things in a top cabinet or to be able to squat down fully without a barbell on your back. You know what I mean? So yeah, The movement patterns, and we talked about creation of shapes as that first component, that's something that never goes out of style. I don't care if you're looking to go compete at a high level or just live the best, healthiest life you possibly can. Gymnastics-based movement, especially those early, we didn't go into the other phases of skill development. But just staying on that phase one of creation of shapes is so critical for anything moving forward. In fact, we prefer to work with the population that's looking for longevity and wellness moving forward as opposed to someone that's looking to compete at a high level because we feel like we can have more of an impact there. We can help an elite athlete, but it's not our main goal. There's a lot of things around grip strength, grip strength showing being a factor in longevity. I think Drip strength is just a more easily measurable strength component more than anything else than it is like a true factor of longevity. But it's measurable across the board. You know, it's something that's easily measurable from a 90-year-old person all the way to a 10-year-old person. It's easily measurable. So we can check on that a little bit more easily than we can a full range back squat, you know, max PR back squat. But Do I think that there's things in the gymnastics world that are beneficial in terms of longevity? Absolutely. Not to say that putting a barbell on your back and working on getting your back squad numbers up is not going to be beneficial as well. Absolutely. It's not one or the other, but that creation of shapes component will allow you to do all the other things more effectively.
SPEAKER_00:Do you think the component of the shapes and kind of like, I also think what I think of gymnastics like play is, and doing things that are fun and out of the ordinary of what you would do normally in a gym. Like people think of a gym, they think of weights, they think of machines, they think of barbells, they think of kettlebells. They don't think about some of the other skills and drills that are gonna build similar strength and ranges of motion to be able to do that. Do you think that has any inter-player factor into how it can be effective for adults to be able to kind of increase longevity in a different way than maybe, their friend is doing at uh f45 or a crossfit gym
SPEAKER_01:i think it's individual based i think it just depends on what someone's particular goals or inclination is when they come to what they find engaging enough to want to do something consistently so if it is like play to them like our we built a little gym in our house and we call it our playroom right because my girls play in there and they we have high rings or sometimes we put my wife's aerial equipment up and they're hanging from silks or you know in a big hoop or climbing on the stall bars or hanging on the ring and so do they know that they're improving their pull strength as they're climbing up the rope or working on grip strength it's not important to them it's them them having fun and playing so Can we do that same thing with adults? Absolutely. Turn things into fun and engaging ways to get better movement? Absolutely. But I think it really is dependent on what the person is trying to get out of it. If someone is just looking for an active way to have fun, it can absolutely be that. If someone is looking for skill acquisition, absolutely. We can create a structure around making sure that you're seeing real targets and goals and progressions along the way. If someone's looking to compete, absolutely. And that's the goal in the fitness kind of lifespan here. We can work towards that too. So it's all individual based in terms of how they're applying it, but can play be a part of that component with gymnastics as opposed to just being a performance or a competitive side of things? I think the answer is absolutely yes.
SPEAKER_00:Now, in your experience, what are the most common misconceptions? You've had coaches for the last 15 years coming up, Power Monkey Camps. What are the most common misconceptions coaches have about body weight and gymnastics training?
SPEAKER_01:Misconceptions, let's see. Coaches or the athletes themselves?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I guess anyone that frequents your camp. So whether it's coach coming to get better at coaching the movements, maybe they come with preconceived notions about what they think versus like what misconceptions they might have.
SPEAKER_01:I'd say the biggest missed opportunity for most people is the second phase, the one that we haven't mentioned yet. And the one where gymnasts and gymnastics coaches are preaching and working on endlessly. And we don't see nearly enough of it from athletes, coaches, members. And it has to do with static holds and controlled movement, slowing things down, and understanding positional awareness around static holds, you know, doing isometrics, working. And in fact, today, I'm doing something really interesting that I've been wanting to do for a while around some isometric work to be able to make it a little bit more accessible to the general population. But it's where we build all of our strength and stability in the gymnastics world is through a lot of static holds so we see it a ton in the weightlifting world right how many people are able and willing to do their pause and tempo squats and overhead position work and people dive into that without hesitation but that same population ask them how many are doing their tempo pull-ups or tempo dips or pause dips or just support holds not on rings on something static like parallel bars or between boxes how many people are spending time to build stability and connective tissue strength within those positions and the numbers will go down dramatically. You'll see hands kind of not being raised on that side of things, unfortunately. And I think that's where we try to preach endlessly at Power Monkey Campus is There is so much value training very similarly to how you're training in the weightlifting world if you just apply it to gymnastics-based movements, where you can then apply it to phase three, which is dynamic action using momentum or kipping and swinging to layer on top of what you have from a stable standpoint.
SPEAKER_00:So like, if you see like a room full of these athletes who have just said something like that, like they don't do the same kind of pause overhead work or pause overhead squats or things like that, how would you actually start to implement it into their programming to give them some touch points to see? Because I remember when I was learning to get more efficient with muscle ups, it was a lot of static holds in the bottom, static holds on top, just working on the transitions and coming down, like working through the different positions to actually get better at the full movement. How do you implement things like this into the programming?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so so one is just continuously break down movements into their most easily digestible movement pattern. So rarely do I have someone learning a muscle up continuously doing muscle ups, will understand where their individual breakpoint is, or their, their biggest area of need is and tackle that and then, you know, triage and prioritize from that standpoint. But the more we understand how to break down movements into their individual components, the more we can start tackling things a little bit more individualized for each member. according to strengths and weaknesses. So that comes from a coaching eye. That comes from the coach being able to recognize what the individual needs. And then it also requires the coach to understand how to have the tools in their tool belt to break down things appropriately. And it's what we try to do endlessly with PowerMonkey and say, okay, every skill has a list of finer components that are made up like a Lego piece. to finally show that whatever the final movement you're trying to build upon. And so the universal answer would be break down, understand individual components, individual members' weak points, and spend time in that phase two of static holds control movement like you talked about, bottom dip holds, support holds, top pull holds. The biggest area of need for most people is going to be around pull and push work at their peak pull and their bottom push. So building ranges around those two components is incredibly critical.
SPEAKER_00:As we start to get towards the end here, I wanted to ask you a question. So obviously in terms of coaches that you've worked with as an athlete, coaches that you've worked with now with PowerMonkey, Because we're speaking to a ton of coaches with this podcast, if you had to narrow it down, say two, one to two attributes that you think is absolutely necessary in order to be a great coach.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I was talking about this with somebody recently. I don't think it has anything, well, very, very little to do with coaching and technical expertise, to be honest with you. I appreciate that I have that. Yeah. But I don't think it's that at all, especially when it comes to retention of members. It's giving a shit. It's caring about the person that you're working with is one because a lot of coaching, especially as you get into small groups and personal training, it's you're almost acting like a therapist. You have to listen to what the person is talking. And that's the other side is actually actively listening, caring about what the person is actually coming to you for and not just saying, being overly, hey, I'm an expert here. I'm gonna tell you what I think you need. Listening and giving shit about who you're working with are more important, I found, over the years than anything I can give from a technical side of things.
SPEAKER_00:I couldn't agree more. And one of the things they teach us when we're becoming mentors at Two Brain is a lot of it is like, you should be listening 70 to 80% of the time rather than jumping in and trying to correct right away. Like listening to... what the person needs, meeting them where they're at and giving them what they need in order to get the, eventually get the outcome that you're looking for. So being able to listen and just being able to care. Now, those are kind of like, you can teach someone to listen more, but caring I guess it's a little bit harder to teach a coach. If you have a coach that doesn't really care about others, they're just kind of doing it. Would you say that that attribute specifically is something like you kind of either have it or you don't?
SPEAKER_01:I hope not. You know what I mean? I like to think that it is something that can be learned. Is it easy to learn? Absolutely not. You have to want to be able to strive towards that. But I'm hopeful that it is something that can be taught. Because we need more caring coaches, people that give a shit about who they work with rather than are there for a paycheck or for there to kind of punch in and punch out. They're a resource there that I think we need to continuously motivate and say, hey, you can become an amazing coach. One other thing I just want to mention on that listening component that I've started to implement a lot. I was out in Tennessee a few weeks ago at a kid's gymnastics camp, working with the next generation of gymnasts. I do that every once in a while. It's actually at the same facility in Crossville, Tennessee, where we host our Power Monkey Camp. And one of the things I do quite a bit when I'm working with athletes is, say someone takes a turn or does a movement or goes through a lift or whatever it might be, instead of automatically seeing what they did and giving your input, which is what I think a lot of coaches do. The first thing I do is I'll ask a question. Ask them what they felt or what they were thinking about. Ask them about the turn itself to get their immediate feedback, especially as it's fresh in their minds. And then from there, let the conversation go into what's next. If you force the athlete to become a little more thoughtful around turn to turn, you end up creating more thoughtful athletes in the long term where they can become a little bit more knowledgeable around what they're doing rather than just being force-fed what they should be listening to. And so a lot of the listening components is asking questions post turns. I found that to be incredibly valuable as a coach myself.
SPEAKER_00:That's a great. Yeah. So that's a great point. So not only just active listening, but also asking questions, forcing, forcing the athlete to think a little bit more, you know, think a little bit
SPEAKER_01:more from turn to turn.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah. That's great. So speed round, as we wrap up here, what is your favorite meal?
SPEAKER_01:Either my mom's lasagna. I'm a good Italian boy from the Northeast. I grew up in Jersey, just outside of New York City, and I'm 100%, 100% Italiano. And so my mom's lasagna, she'd kill me if I said otherwise.
SPEAKER_00:Favorite place you've either visited
SPEAKER_01:or lived in the world? I've been very, very fortunate to travel around the world. I've been many, many places with Team USA, with Power Monkey, with CrossFit. And so it's hard to pick one, but I'm partial to New York City. I know people hate it who are not from there, but I was born and bred. My mom grew up going to New York City, working with CBS and instilled that love of the city. And so New York is where my heart is.
SPEAKER_00:And then lastly, currently for you as an athlete, what is your current training split?
SPEAKER_01:I'm always doing some handstand work. If I'd say, if I have any specific goals as I get older, they're still within the handstand world because I, I've continuously seen improvement around that world. So every day I'm, I'm getting inverted. I'm working on something in the handstand space where that's handstand holds or handstand pushups or presses or one arm work. I'm working on different variations. And then I just pick and choose. I try to vary it up as much as possible. I live in Portland where it's a huge running culture. So I've, been running quite a bit i probably do probably five to ten miles a week which for a gymnast is quite a bit of running yeah and so uh i i do some lifting to make sure that my weightlifting coaches aren't making fun of my legs when i show up at power monkey camp and then uh just trying to stick with as much gymnastics as i can
SPEAKER_00:awesome man what where can we uh where can we find you Where can we follow you and get more information about you and PowerMonkey?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. So our Instagram feeds are probably where we're going to get most of our day-to-day tidbits and upcoming events at Dave Durante for my personal and at PowerMonkey Fitness and at PowerMonkey Camp. And then you can head to PowerMonkeyFitness.com and PowerMonkeyCamp.com for our upcoming camps and other events. You can also check out our app. We have PowerMonkey Training app in the app store. You can find kind of the account creation process on the website, but it's Most of it is around skill development plans. They're all assessment-based. They're very thought out. I'm very proud of what the app is able to do for someone who's looking to build a pull-up or handstand or handstand push-up or improve their handstand walking, whatever it might be. It's a great place to start and work with us.
SPEAKER_00:Awesome. Well, Dave, thank you so much for jumping on the show with us, guys. This is Chris Guerrero. This was the Strength Coach Collective podcast. Again, you can find us at strengthcoachcollective.com or join our free Facebook group at the Strength Coach Collective. Thanks. And we will see you next time.