There Are No Shortcuts: The Truth About Elite Performance Becoming Uncommon with Dr. Ben Moxness

What separates elite athletes from everyone else?

In this episode of Becoming Uncommon, Coach Chris Richardson sits down with performance coach and physical therapist Dr. Ben Moxness of THP Strength to explore the science and practice behind athletic development.

From his journey as a JUCO basketball player chasing the dream of Division I athletics to becoming one of the most respected voices in performance training, Ben shares powerful lessons on resilience, progression, coaching, and why there are no shortcuts to greatness.

Topics include:
• Why today's athletes are developing faster than ever
• The role of social media in modern coaching and performance
• Building athleticism through progression—not gimmicks
• Strength, speed, elasticity, and identifying an athlete's weakest link
• What coaches get wrong about youth development
• Why recovery is often the missing piece
• The difference between training hard and training intelligently
• Lessons from JUCO athletics, adversity, and personal growth

If you're an athlete, coach, parent, or performance enthusiast, this conversation will challenge you to rethink how excellence is developed.

Greatness isn't accidental. It is built through intentional progression, relentless learning, and a commitment to becoming uncommon.

🎙 Hosted by Coach Chris Richardson
📈 Follow for more conversations on coaching, leadership, performance, and athlete development.

#BecomingUncommon #SportsPerformance #TrackAndField #BasketballTraining #StrengthAndConditioning #CoachingEducation #AthleteDevelopment #SpeedTraining #VerticalJump #SportsScience

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

All right, what's up everyone? This is Coach Richardson, and this is another episode of Becoming Uncommon. And I have my guest here, Dr. Ben Moxness. Uh, Ben is someone that I've been watching and looking at. And when it comes to, you know, being a nerd in the sciences, but also being practical in what people actually need and what they want. Um, I guess a weird way to say it is you're making the hard sciences sexy again, kind of thing. And um just bringing it to, you know, a world that where performance is something that everybody's seeking and everybody wants an edge. Um, one thing that I've noticed Ben has done is shown that there's no shortcuts that you're gonna have to put the work in. And if you want performance, you want to reach your full potential from a um a physical output stamp, you know, standpoint, it's gonna take some work. And um, so he's been able to illustrate that. Also showing the track and field community some love. So uh, but with that being said, Ben, do you mind uh introducing yourself a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Yeah, sure. Uh so yeah, like he said, my name's uh Ben Moxness. Uh I'm a physical therapist and performance coach over at THB Strength, uh, where we work with a variety of athletes. We're mostly known for our jumping athletes, are like mostly volleyball, basketball, and our professional dunkers. Um, we have a handful of trek and field guys as well, and like even like pro handball and we have a pro soccer guy, so kind of a mixed bag, but mostly uh jumping at uh athletes. It's our kind of our niche. And uh oh, I lost a train of thought. We work with uh high school all the way to like professional and uh even some Olympians. So I get to see a wide variety of athletes, um, just some basic like educational stuff. I graduated undergrad with a degree in exercise science. I uh graduated uh with a degree and doctor's uh doctorate in physical therapy in last last May. So like I'm I'm in my first year as a clinician, I'm a board board certified PT and all that too. And then uh I also do some content creation on the side, some athlete and coach education. I'm definitely a science nerd, as you said. Uh and I, you know, try to provide the top-notch education, or the at least to the best of my ability. I read a lot of research and try and synthesize it and package it and make it digestible to the average consumer.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

So yeah, awesome. So going back, like um, you know, you said you know, doing your undergrad, your what is your sports background? Like, how did you get obviously you love sports? It looks like you've you dabble in a large variety of different sports, but what are what is your personal sports background and journey?

SPEAKER_01 2:49

Yeah, so my main sport was basketball. So I played college basketball just at a small NAI school here in Nebraska. I actually played juco ball, uh junior college ball my first two years, and then my last years I played at a four-year institution. So uh basketball is my main background, uh, but I grew up playing all the sports like I did baseball, track, football was actually my first love, but then I realized I was too tall and skinny to play football. And so I'm like, I have basketball's probably a better pivot for me. And uh uh yeah, and then I I really and then I special oh and I did golf too, and I specialized in basketball when I was like 16. So I had played you know three or four sports a year up until that point. And I kind of in not in until recently, maybe the last year or two, I started getting a lot more interested in trek and field. Like I had only done that up until uh junior high, and it is a great it's a regret of mine to not continue with like I did high jump and hurdles, and I was and I kind of regretted not continuing that, but I wanted to focus on basketball. But my mentor, John Evans, the head coach at THP strength, he's you know, he's big in the trek and field world, so he kind of got me into it.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Awesome. So when it comes to your you said middle school track, so you did you did did you compete in middle school track or yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

I uh I I I high jumped, I think my best high jump was six foot when in eighth grade. So I don't I don't know what I don't I don't know what I would have jumped in high school, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

That that's you know it's cool that here because I my oldest son, you know, he plays basketball in balls life. It's like yeah, that's just it's kind of like you think everything else just evolves around basketball, like that's just kind of what it is. That's the nature of the you know the sport. But um for from a basketball athlete, so when you started your c college journey, did you kind of envision doing what you're doing now? Or how did that all kind of take place?

SPEAKER_01 4:41

Yeah, I definitely thought, um, well, in high school, my big my big goal in high school was like, man, I like I gotta go D1. Like it's D1 or bus. Like, that's why I went to junior college. It wasn't because of grades, it was because I wanted to like give myself two more years. And of course, we didn't have like NIL or any like transfer portal thing. I mean, they had the transfer portal, but it wasn't like it was now, so it's a lot, it was a lot different environment in 2018. But um I so I thought I was gonna play D1, and then I thought I was gonna go play like professional basketball, but I always was going to eventually go back and be a physical therapist. Like I had kind of had that on my mind for a while. I've been interested in the performance space since I was like 13, like when I first wanted to like dunk because I was, you know, into basketball. So I've been in this space for quite a while, and then really it wasn't until maybe like I mean, I got into PT school, but then it wasn't until probably my senior year of college or so where I would like where I really was like, yeah, I do want to be a not just a physical therapist, but like also a performance coach. And then so that that's when I kind of exploring both avenues, you know. In um D in in PT school, I was an athlete of at THP, uh, where I work at now. And so I got to learn under John. John mentored me for like three or four years. I mean, he's still more uh mentors me today, and that's how I kind of got my in with working with athletes.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

Awesome. So because I'm looking now at the like the content side of things, what kind of got you into that? Like, because you've been doing it and you're doing it for some time. You've been putting out um some extensive stuff and some stuff that's like a little bit we'll call like highbrow and some stuff that's like very just like bare minimum, like just kind of wet the palate, just so that you know people can at least get a sense of what's going on out there. But what led to that? Like, what was the kind of the motivation there?

SPEAKER_01 6:39

Yeah, it was the bat the story is kind of it's it's somewhat funny. Like I had so I used so on my personal like Instagram page before I started my business page, I had you I had used to like go on just like random story rants about different performance trends that I disagreed with. And one of my best friends, he said he's like, dude, just create your own Instagram page. This is my the spring of my senior year of college, is when I created it, so it was 2022, so four years ago. He's like, dude, just create your own page and like do all that stuff on there and you know make some content or whatever. So that's so I I created the page, but I was terribly inconsistent with posting. I had no idea about marketing or you know how to make a video, like it was pretty much just me posting workouts and uh some of my dunks at the time. And it took me two years, so I had to count March of 2022. It took me until March of 2024 to get uh even a thousand followers, like two years to get well one thousand. And uh then I started to like actually look into you know what's social media marketing like, you know, how do you how how should a video flow? You know, and during this whole time, like I was reading, you know, in in PT school, I would just sit in the back of class and I would read two or three research papers a day. And I would just like I was, you know, I I finished school, probably read easily over a thousand. And then so I was like, oh, okay, I can start talking about you know, research or these books that I'm reading or or stuff that I'm uh learning in school, learning from John. And then um, so just kind of being able to synthesize all that information and actually like package it and make it in a 30-second to or 60-second video uh was a struggle at first, but eventually you kind of find just inadvertently what works, like you do enough experimentation, you look at your insights on Instagram and see like, okay, this is what the this is what the people want. And I was able to just to grow from there pretty much, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

It so because like a lot of times, or at least uh before that period, you know, post or pre-COVID, um, you know, people always looked at like Instagram in that science community or that, you know, performance sport. It was like there was always this don't want to be gimmicky, or you know, and there was that little bit of and to see the people that really invested in it and just did it well and just you know, I guess kind of hung their hat on providing quality information and content as it relates to just not just the information but the relatability, I think that those people really separated themselves, and that's I I think you're kind of on the forefront of that, you know, just I appreciate that putting all that together. Um, was there a little hesitancy with that just because they're you know, with that stigma, I mean that made of maybe maybe lingered into that time period? Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 9:36

I mean, it's tough because like coaches want to separate even coaches who make content and you know want to grow their pages or grow their business, they a lot of coaches want to separate themselves from like I'm a coach, I'm not a content creator, and because like you were saying, you know, Pete, there there is a stigma around it, you know, using a a hook or a catchy title or something is not uh what a lot of coaches coaches want to do, or they want they don't want to put their face on the screen. And I was definitely very hesitant at that at first. I mean, I'm pretty I'm a pretty outgoing person, but it's like, man, you know, I don't want these thousands of people to you know see me and judge me and stuff. And even though when I was small, it was like 500 people, so it did it, it did it, it didn't really even matter. But uh, but kind of getting over that mental block and say, hey, look, I mean, as long as the message that I'm putting out is good and the education that that I provide is quality, you know, I'm gonna do what it takes to put that out and make it reach people. Because, you know, if you don't in social media, if you don't have, you know, if you don't structure or template your videos a certain way, you know, the algorithm is not going to put it out and your message is not gonna reach, you know, as many people as you want it to reach, you know. Like the difference between a video getting 2,500 views and a hundred thousand views can literally just be what you said in the first six seconds and what your video looked like. It's it's I mean, it's it's pretty much that simple. And uh and figuring that out for myself, I was like, okay, you know, I do have to actually be kind of a content creator. I mean, a coach is obviously my primary job, but if I want to, you know, being an online coach, especially, like it's it's it's marketing is super important. So growth, you know, for my personal page also helps the business.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

So yeah. So going back to, you know, looking at kind of your undergrad pursuits, is there anything that you look back and you're like, dang, I wish I would have done this? Like, you know, prior to getting into PT school or even around that time, um, you know, being a student athlete is not easy. Looking at, you know, kind of being pushed and pulled in different ways, but what are some things that you look back? You're like, dang, I if I could do something a little different, I would do this.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

I would definitely read more books. Like I've been I've been interested in performance training. I've read a hand, I've read probably a handful of books, you know, from age 13 to like whatever, 22, like however old I was when I graduated college. But um, and I'd read a little bit of research and I'd read a bunch of like online articles, but my my primary consumption was probably social media, like the guys who was putting out content at the time, like on Instagram or YouTube, like that was my my indirect mentors. But I think if I would have because I mean there's a lot of good books that are out that were out of that time, you know, super training and science and practice, strength conditioning, Bompa's periodization, you know, all like you know, all the classics are high powered plyometrics. Like there were there were there was easily a there was tons of books I could have consumed. And if I would have just because like right now I read one, I I read a book a week, and I wish I would have done something similar in undergrad, especially knowing that I had the time. Like instead of doing reading books, I was I I'm I'm actually a small movie buff and I watched like pretty much all the IMDB top 250. Like I watched like 200 movies in a year, and if I would have spent that time reading books, I would have gotten to where I am now probably even sooner, and I and I would have you know been better now, since I would have you know had a much larger foundation.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

Yeah, because I think um being a student athlete, right, you kind of take that time for granted, and we want to be selfish with that time and kind of uh what we call like decompress a little bit. But um tell me a little bit more about like your athletic journey, just because you mentioned that you want to go D1. I'm a JUCO coach, I'm a Duke JUCO product, um, big fan of the the the pathway for a lot of people, like and it could help people mature and gain perspective about what their goals are as a student athlete. But for you, um, you know, kind of what were some of those uh I guess you can remember like pivotable pivotal moments or um realizations that you had along that journey, whether it's even deciding to go to JUCO, like what made you do that? And then what led to you choosing um the year NAI school?

SPEAKER_01 14:01

Yeah, so um out of high school I had like a handful of NAI and like D2 and D3 offers and interest. And so like I knew I was good enough for that level, but like I was really, I mean, I was really stubborn, and I kind of had the I was seeing the the world through rose-colored glasses, and um so I'm like, okay, well, I'm not gonna I like I'm not gonna settle and go D2. Like I'm gonna you know I I knew JUCO was a route to go D1. So then I went to my junior college, and it was almost immediately when I got to JUCO and started playing against like athletes, like guys who could really jump because you know I went to a small school here in Nebraska, like I my graduating class was 50. I mean, I had played AAU against you know, guys who eventually went D1, but I I did not realize, you know, the level of athlete that a division one athlete is, and I just flat out was like, yeah, I'm just not athletic enough. Like I don't jump high enough, I'm certainly not fast enough, I'm not quick enough. You know, I'm like I'm a great shooter, I had the skill, I had the size and length, but like I am just not the athlete that I need to be to play D1. And that was a very humbling experience for me. And then it I was much more comfortable, you know, going to, I mean, my COVID happened my uh in 20 my the spring of my sophomore year. So I didn't get to do any in like my sophomore year at Juco, like my last year. So I didn't go to so usually in JUCO, like as you know, they have a lot of like recruiting camps, and that's a primary spot for a lot of the sophomores and juke or the the guys in their last year at JUCO. Um that's where you pick up most of your offers and stuff. So I'd only visited so the my undergrad was Doan. I'd only visited DONE in like January, and I didn't get to visit any other schools. Like I had some more D2s and I had some D1 like feelers, but um, because of COVID, I didn't get to visit any of those. So I kind of chose Dome by default, but I still enjoyed it. I mean, it was still a really good visit. Um, I'm uh I I made some great friends there. We had a my my my last year we almost made national, so like we were pretty like a relatively successful team, and it like it was still a good experience.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

All right. Because yeah, like that in that journey. Um, were you ever thinking about like maybe hanging it up, quitting? Were there any like I guess moments where it got tough or a little bit tougher than you anticipated?

SPEAKER_01 16:19

Uh I wouldn't say I I I ever thought about quitting. Like I really I I had a huge, I have a passion for basketball that I eventually poured into uh performance training and you know I did it it kind of just bled into performance training, but I but I I I've always loved basketball. I know I know I was always a very disciplined person, and I didn't really like like quitting was never an option for me. My senior year actually, I had a uh so I my freshman year, I was uh I was six man at JUCO, and then I started my sophomore year, and then I started at Down my junior year, but then senior year because we had COVID years, some guys stayed for a fifth year, including our leading scorer, and one guy who was also in kind of my similar spot. And then we also had a transfer come in, and he was a freak athlete. Like he was he was he was from the he was from the town, the school was in, and you know, he was like 6'8, 40 plus inch vertical, was first team all conference first year, and so he came in, and I essentially like went from being a starter to getting like 10 minutes a game, sometimes not even playing, and like that was really, really hard. Um, I don't I I never thought about like quitting in that moment, but that was definitely you know the I by far the hardest year of my life with you know the the amount of adversity I had to face in basketball, really for the first time, but it was also a great growing experience, and that that experience, you know, kind of getting beat out by a better athlete than me also kind of ignited my fire with like a I want to see how elite athletes tick. Like, can I can this be developed or is this all genetic? And I eventually realized no, it's it's it's the former. Like, no, you can actually develop this level of athleticism.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

So yeah, in in the world of track and field, there's a phrase that goes around, it's called like trackflation. And um, you know, and really what it is is this I think is that people are performing at a higher tier on a much broader basis now. And I think it's just because of the advent of social media and sharing information, like making a lot of this data that was a little bit harder to find, or individuals that were practitioners were you know a little bit more uh you know conservative with sharing. And yeah, and now like like that is the mode. So everybody has access to so much information, so much good information. And I think just people not only just athletes are learning more, but coaches and parents are becoming more aware. Like a parent that chooses a trainer can discern whether this this trainer or this coach is like uh just shooting off the hip, you know. I guess that's the best way to put it. Or they a little bit more science-based, have a little bit more um, you know, qualitative, you know, data to back up some of their maybe quirky things that they do. And so, you know, that's where I'm seeing the trackflation come from. Um and so I wanted to kind of get your insight on like youth sport and and kind of where you've seen not just track, but also like basketball and other sports where these athletes are getting really good really early. And, you know, kind of what is your forecast of the continuation of this, you know, I guess, you know, dissemination of mass information.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

Yeah, I mean, I so I used to in college I used to ref or like in college and in an NFT school. I also I ref in the summers. So I got I I did kind of get tendencies evolved. Yeah, oh yeah, I get some some funny parents stories, but uh so exactly what you said is yeah, is is is what I was thinking is uh the kids are getting really athletic. Like what like the the level of athlete and also just the level of skill that you need to play college basketball now is way better than what I like when I was in the when I was in high school in 2018, like if you were to watch my high school mixtape, like I was a borderline like D1 player, but my skills in athleticism now, like I would be probably barely even be D2. Like the like the level has raised so much. Like this, like the kids, you know, I'm ref in a you know 13U game, and you know, a couple kids are like almost dunking. Maybe one kid is dunking, you know, they're like in-game and they're hitting you know 25 foot threes and they have all these uh dribble moves and making like like and and they're also really good at reading, reacting, like they're doing great backdoor cuts, like they move without the ball well. I'm like, wow, I did not have this skill when I was 13. Um you know, and like even in track, like how many how many high school guys have run sub 10 this year in the hundred? There's been like three. I didn't that was unheard of when I was unheard of 10 years ago, it doesn't make any sense.

SPEAKER_00 21:07

Yeah, that was reserved for like you know, special people, right? Like when you get into your late 20s, like maybe you'll go sub 10.

SPEAKER_01 21:15

Yeah, I I I I've been so yeah, it's like what like following world athletics and like all the track pages, like man, there are so many guys that are just crazy fast. And and I and I think like you were saying, that really just just speaks dividends to like this the amount of information that we have, and we kind of essentially have the blueprint of like, okay, here's where you need to be at at 16, at 18, at 20, at 22. Like, here's how you can develop. I mean, you know, we know that you don't want to be a hyper specialist anymore, like you want to be a great all around athlete, and then eventually, you know, move into specialization when you're like, you know, 16 or something, and like that's gonna make you an even better athlete and a more resilient athlete. And a a lot of it also comes from kind of a uh the The same lines that you were saying is, you know, there's been kind of a trickle down of information, is now we have you know our coaching trees. Like, for instance, so my Mike, my mentor, John Evans, he worked under Mike Young at Athletic Lab in North Carolina, and also Dan Paff at Altis. And then of course Dan Paff was mentored by Tom Telez. And but I'm sure back in the day, you know, you couldn't get access to Tom Tolez pretty easily, like you couldn't really get access to him. And then, you know, it's hard to get access to Dan Paff, but now they're second, third generation coaches, you know, these are the guys that are creating content or they're starting businesses, and now and now you actually get access to you know the Tom Talez, the boo sectionators of the world when before you couldn't, like you know, that that that all that info was under lock and key, and you and you had to go to Houston and and do a summer internship in order to like actually learn under him or something. And so um, I I I've really enjoyed learning from a lot of great coaches who have also learned from great coaches, and it's been really and really enjoyable. And I think it's it's it's helped our our sports tremendously.

SPEAKER_00 23:06

Yeah, it's a great way to look at it because yeah, I didn't I you know you're always aware of like the coaching tree, but you don't realize that when that coaching tree starts to expand and it's it's in gonna expand with the technology, the time, and and kind of what's going on. That's uh that's a great way to look at it. Because I think back to um David Epstein, um, who wrote the book The Sports Gene. Yeah, and that one really um I don't know if you're aware, but that one for me, this was like almost 12 years ago plus, it opened my eyes to the concept of like responder, non-responder, you know, um, because sometimes we pour into athletes and like you you are um a huge proponent of this, it looks like is this like I evaluate, okay, where are your limitations, like find your weakest link and then target it from there. Um, because traditionally it's like uh there was old school now. It's like you had it or you didn't. Yeah, yeah, you know, it's I rehear that one too.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:07

It's like ah, you just don't got it, you know. And now we realize, okay, if you don't got it here, you can get it somewhere else. So we're obviously, you know, looking back at your personal experience, you've kind of seen that. Where do you see yourself now? Like with kind of that philosophy of because you have a I'm uh just from my outside looking in, a wide variety of clientele. Um, how do you approach that concept of like athletes trying to find that weak link?

SPEAKER_01 24:35

Yeah, I mean, we we have a variety of assessments that we use. I mean, it can be as simple as you know, what's your squat power clean, what's your RSI on a 10-5 test, you know, what's your 10-meter fly? And we can get a pretty good kind of like overview of okay, here's here's where your strengths are, here's where your weaknesses are, or here's where your opportunities are. And then, you know, we have hundreds of progressions that we can put them on. You know, if somebody is really strong, maybe they have a good clean, but they're not very elastic. Well, we have like a six-month elasticity progression that we can put them on, and we can, you know, reassess every month to make sure to uh to make sure they're responding well. And it's a very easy and it's and it's something that I did not value as an athlete. Um, kind of like you were saying, like, you know, you you you either got or you don't. Like, for instance, I was not fast when I was in, I'm still not that fast, but I'm faster. But uh when I was in high school, and I'm like, well, you know, speed's all genetic, you know. I like I don't I don't need to sprint because I'm not gonna get faster. But you know, so I never sprinted past probably 15, 20 yards for 10 years because I'm like, well, speed's all genetic or whatever. And uh so no so knowing it's like, oh no, this is actually a highly trainable trait. You know, I can't turn a zebra into a cheetah, but I can make as the fastest zebra faster than the slowest cheetah, maybe. You know what I'm saying? So um, and being able to, and like that's where I've developed a lot more skill as a coach, is being able to discern, okay, you know, where you know, where are the where's the athlete right now? What are their deficits? You know, what bucket can I put them in? And then, you know, what is the progression going to look like? You know, we and I I I don't only want to just focus on their one weakness or their one deficit, I also need to make sure that their strengths are at the very least, you know, in a in their maintaining their strengths or they're even slightly bringing up their strengths. Because sometimes, you know, bringing up a strength can also bring up a weakness. Like, you know, if you get stronger, sometimes you can actually, you know, strength can bring up power, power can bring up elasticity. So you you never want you, you never want to hyper focus just on like, oh, I'm just not very elastic, so I I just have to do plyos. But then in reality, it's like, well, you might so like I if I'm gonna get nerdy here, you might detrain like your supraspinal neural drive, like your absolute strength or your max strength. And you know, that's not good either. Like I remember I took uh Rennie Huntington's course and he talked about Sue. He and he said, you know, Sue went went a period of time, you know, where he was not doing max strength work and he was just doing power work because he had he had gone to a different coach and his start was getting worse and he was getting slower. It's because, well, he had de-trained his max strength over a period of months or weeks or whatever it was. And so that's always so we went run, so we run what's called a conjugate sequence system um for our periodization model. So we're always touching on all the qualities they need for sport, you know, strength, power, elasticity, mobility, health, you know, all of the bi all of the biomotor capacities, uh work capacity. And we will touch on all the qualities that they need for sport, but we'll emphasize certain ones during their cycles and de-emphasize others, but they're still still be in there at low volume. So there's so we so we never get too far away from uh what they're good at while still bringing up what they're not good at.

SPEAKER_00 27:44

I love it because uh I'm a combined event athlete, right? I was a decathlete, you know. I always say I was a decathlete 50 pounds ago. I won't use five frames, but I'll use I'll measure and weight. Um, but that like that's kind of the the concept of optimizing combined event training. A lot of people think that, oh, if you're a decathlete or a hept athlete, you're not gonna be the fastest you could possibly be. And I would argue in some cases, you're actually gonna be faster because you're intentionally working all those biomotor abilities and capacities. And so um that's just me, you know, I guess favoring the combined events. But yeah, um, as a coach educator, you know, working with USA track and field coaches education, um, I'm constantly preaching progression. Um, what I realized over the last maybe five years, especially um, there's not as much, I won't say respect, but understanding your progression as a coach. And um what I I I bring it up to say, like I'm I get on this soapbox and I'm like, every coach needs to have a progression. And the way I simplify it to them is like that old couch to 5K model. Okay. If you have an athlete that's zero, like how are you gonna get them to X? Like, what is what are the steps? What are the you know, the KPIs? Like, what are all these things that are so important that you're gonna be able to touch on so you have the building blocks to get there? And you might not be right in terms of you know, individuals that make their own progressions, but whether it's a high jump or sprinter, doesn't matter the event. I feel coaches really need to kind of have their own um understanding of progression because what happens is sometimes I've seen coaches try to adopt others' methodology of progression, and they don't understand the the content, the context of going from you know step three to step four. And so I'm I'm seeing a lot of that. So I asked that to say or say all that to say, where or how do you guys develop your progressions, or what is some of your um, I guess, uh building blocks for you, because you mentioned your progressions and looking in and evaluating those things. Um, you know, kind of what is your take on that?

SPEAKER_01 29:59

Yeah, a lot of it is gonna come from what is the low-hanging fruit? Um, you know, back when I read a lot of like Virgo Shansky's work, one of the best quotes I ever heard him say was, you know, you don't cure a runny nose with the world's most powerful antibiotic. And that was with in response to a question that was on his forums. That was in response to uh the question was, you know, like I'm 13, should I do depth jumps? Or my son or 13, should he do depth jumps? And he's like, No, you just gotta you don't need to do you know the highest form of training when you're young because you can get the same results doing simpler things. And uh, you know, John uh has said before, like you don't you don't want to fire your magic bullet too early. You know, you have you know, you have it in the chamber when you need it, but if you can just pick the low-hanging fruit. So for a lot of athletes, I mean, this can apply to even probably even collegian athletes, because I would argue that most collegiate athletes really aren't even that well trained. Like they're not they're I mean, they're only 20.

SPEAKER_00 30:54

So yes, I get it.

SPEAKER_01 30:55

Yeah, so if you I mean, if you can get you know really strong, like baseline strength numbers, baseline power numbers. So we're talking, you know, a simple 2x body weight parallel squat or deep squat, you know, hopefully 1.2 to 1.5 clean, like, and then also just learning the clean, uh learning how to power clean, like technical proficiency in the clean snatch, like that helps with your neuromuscular sequencing. It's honestly it's also really fun, high intent. Um, so learning, you know, complex movements are good for athletes, and then getting in a good base of sprinting, being able to do you know, rudimentary uh rudimentary ply metrics, like can you hop? Can you bound? Can you gallop? Like, can you do you know uh Jim Rab Clips, Desirable Dozen, or whatever he calls them? Like, can you just do the basics? And athletes will hear that and they'll be like, Well, I want to do like I've I saw the other day some triple jumper, he was doing like 42-inch like single leg depth drops, and he I mean he was doing them well, and I mean, or it was like depth jumps onto another box, and then he did like another 36-inch one. I'm like, holy crap! But athletes will see that they'll be 16 and they'll see that and be like, okay, that's the training that I need to do. And I know I remember being that age, I remember being that age and be like, oh, I needed to go do that. You know, I'm glad I didn't hurt myself, but they don't understand, you know, and also like things self-intensify, you know, as you get better at, you know, say hopping and bounding, well, now you're gonna be able to hit the ground with more force, and you're like, that's a stimulus to your body, and then now you're gonna get better at it. Like, you don't have to do like look at like Bonderchuk. Like, he did like eight exercises or something, and you know, he made freak throwers. So you don't really need, I mean, you need a high variety of stuff. I mean, don't get me wrong, but you don't need the super intense, you know, Instagram type workouts yet. You know, when you get to like 25 plus and you're a very well-trained athlete, then sure, we could try some of that stuff. But I mean, just developing a base of sprinting, jumping, plyometrics, get strong, get powerful, which is not, I mean, which is easy in theory, but it's it's not actually simple in its execution because there is, you know, load management principles like how do you keep an athlete healthy? Like, how do you dose plyometric and sprinting appropriately? Because we've like we have a lot of guys that come to us, you know, they have done a ton of plyos, but they have a bunch of knee pain, or they have, you know, Achilles issues because they can't stay healthy doing it. So it's like, okay, how can you develop a program for an athlete to keep them healthy, to get, you know, at least the minimum effective dose? And, you know, can they do everything with good technical proficiency? And you'll be like, I was shocked when I first started training under John, like how simple the program was. But the but the program was simple, but the progressions were beautiful. And that's really what you need. Like you were saying, like progressions are extremely important. Like, can you intensify training? Can you keep athletes healthy? And you know, can you have enough variety in there to keep uh keep them engaged?

SPEAKER_00 33:53

Yeah, because yeah, keep it simple, right? Like it's in and do the simple things really good. Because I noticed that on you know Instagram and you know, social media platforms, no one's really posting and talking about rest days. I think I think you did for sure. Uh you know, no one's making a highlight video of their active recovery days or anything just because those aren't as sexy. So people think that, oh no, you even um I think you've seen it or you shared it uh with gout, uh gout gout. Gout gout, yeah, yeah. His his training split. Like it's you know, realizing like recovery is is where adaptation occurs. And um, all that other stuff is good, but if you don't understand how your body responds, um, you know, that's that's you very unique. Uh, what are I mean, I don't want to get too controversial here, but um, what is your uh take on like gender differences with some of those performing performance things? That's just something that came to mind, just because I have uh, you know, there's research on it and there's some old stuff, but kind of what are what is your experience with gender differences and creating um some of these um optimizing performance outcomes? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:04

So I mean, yeah, a lot of our girls are volleyball girls. Um one one thing we have to get them to stop doing is playing so much volleyball so they can actually train. Uh, but that's also but that that also goes for men's, like that's not exclusive to just to to to just females, but they play an egregious amount of volleyball. Yes, but uh like it's so it's like three hours a day for like six days a week, it's crazy. Uh but so in terms of the general in terms of gender differences, the programming actually doesn't look too dissimilar. We've actually found, I don't know if you've if you if if you've had this experience, but um, our girls can tolerate more volume than our guys. Um they they can generally their their volume because their volume loads are gonna inevitably be low uh lower because they're not gonna be as strong. Um, but girls can usually handle more volume than guys. The recovery's usually a little bit better. Like if we were to to track some of their sprint times across the week or even across the workout, sometimes like it wouldn't have as much of a drop just because they're oftentimes just a little bit slower, like their nervous system isn't as like not necessarily developed, but as like amped up as you know in like an elite male, maybe. But uh so they can handle higher they can handle higher workloads, and um a lot of times with girls, and I mean I see this with guys too, but girls can be pretty powerful, but they're not very strong. Like they're they don't have a very like they they need strength work a lot more. Whereas like guys can have a big gap between like say their squat and their power clean. Girls, it's actually usually to for us, it's a little bit they their power clean to squat ratio is smaller. Like, say, you know, we want it to be seven, like we want them to squat or that we want them to power clean 75% of their deep back squat. A lot of guys will come to us with only at like 60%, but a girl might be at like 75 to 80 percent. And then so she actually just needs to raise her strength ceiling to get her power numbers up, and you know, oftentimes like girls they they have the capability to squat, you know, one and a half times body weight plus, but they just haven't done the enough volume yet to actually get there. And I don't I don't know what your experience with that is, but that's kind of what we see with our athletes.

SPEAKER_00 37:23

Yeah, no, volume for sure is like one of those things that I say guy guys are more um better responders for intensity and females like with volume. Like if I had uh an elite athlete, I need to do a primer day. Like I can't just go from a day off or like a cold day right into what I would consider a very high performance or where I'm looking at you know good outputs. I need to make sure I have a primer day before going into that. And so, you know, the responding uh volume I've seen as uh, you know, kind of a big difference um from you know performance that I've seen. So yeah, that's cool. Just because I think, like you said, there is a resurgence of you know high performing and getting into the weeds of okay, how can I get that one or two percent? People are really looking for those things now. And I think again, you've really done a great job of kind of taking those, that science part and and making it digestible, synthesizing it and putting it to where people can digest it, you know, maybe in small doses here and there, and maybe realizing that, hey, we need some help or you know, maybe need some guidance in these areas. And with that said, um, can you tell me a little bit more about you know your business and um you know where people can find you and kind of what are some of the things that they can expect, you know, working with you?

SPEAKER_01 38:47

Yeah, so I'm a coach over at THP Strength. Uh THPStrength.com is our our our website. Uh you can just sign up on the website. Uh it's we we we try we we try to make it simple. We have different you know, month, six month, and twelve month packages. Like we have a deal right now where it's you can get half off the monthly if you sign up for the year. So if you just pay in one lump sum, then the accumulated total is only half the monthly. Um and we so we do it's like it's pretty much one-on-one coaching. So we have we do we do have a lot of athletes. Like, I mean, we have 2,000 plus athletes actually, but we have uh, but there's five of us coaches in the group chat. So athletes will get a group chat when they sign up for us or and we'll ask them some questions, you know, put them in the appropriate bucket on the right progression, and then they could just have an opportunity to ask us any questions they have every day. They'll send us videos of their jump technique and lifting technique or sprint technique, and we'll um essentially coach them up. Um, it's a little bit of a challenge at first because that barrier of you know being through a screen is a little bit different than coaching in person. Um, honestly, I like when I have coached athletes in person, it's it's probably a little bit easier because I can actually put them in positions that I want and demonstrate. Uh, but we do get guy, but we do get the guys and gals to where where we want eventually. Like they do become proficient in the lifts and the jumps and the sprints and then and the in the plows and all that. And uh yeah, they just ask us questions on on the daily and we'll respond to them. You know, we we we message in shifts, so they'll get three or four uh responses a day. We'll change their progressions as needed. You know, we have progressions if they have back pain or knee pain or Achilles issues, and then we have you know track and field progressions, we have progressions for our dunkers and our volleyball players. Um, so we have, I mean, we have like 500 different cycles, so we have a lot of um lots of different programs that we can put people on and they can train with us for five years and not do the same program twice.

SPEAKER_00 40:48

So yeah, no, I love that. Oh, that's because like I notice as well uh technology has um been curated to help individuals in remote places. So, like you said, a lot of it is virtual, um, and we're seeing a lot more virtual platforms out there. Uh, what would you say is you know kind of makes your your platform um maybe different than um you know, you know, the average one or the the general concept of what people think virtual training or coaching is.

SPEAKER_01 41:23

Yeah, so we have so we actually have like a service versus you know a program. Like I typically um you know, coaches will sell programs, you know, here's my 12-week jump program or sprint program, whatever, or triple jump or something. And but we actually have a service, like we, you know, we go in, like sometimes we will write new cycles for athletes if if if we need to. I mean, that that that's also how we update the uh update the training, but we you know, they have an opportunity to ask us questions. We we we we respond to them every day. It's not an AI responding to them. Like I do know of some like coaching services that's pretty much like as an AI built model that will like tell you if you're doing your form wrong and you know it'll give some generic responses. Like we're actually friends with a lot of our athletes, like we because if they're over, you know, if they train with us for multiple years, we and we have a common interest, like it's pretty easy to become friends. Um uh, but yeah, we just I mean, and then and and and it's also we also have the goal of eventually making the athlete more or less autonomous, which I like with the online coaching, is you know, a lot of our guys who are a year or two in, you know, they know how the training works, they know how we write the programming, um, like and and how it's supposed to flow, they know how to lift. So they don't even really need to ask us that many questions, and then it and then it just becomes a conversation of like, okay, here's what we here's where your deficits are uh here's where your deficits are at now, here's where here's where we need to do go, and you know, here's where where we need to be in six months, and then it's you know it's a more of a collaboration between the coach and the athlete. And I just enjoy it that's it, that it's a service and it's and it's not just a program. And I think it's it's honestly a very fulfilling job. I I I really enjoy working with all of our athletes.

SPEAKER_00 43:02

So that's cool. Yeah, I mean, you get to actually see, you know, like I said, the progression. You get to see the the growth and getting them to the point of um being autonomous is something I'm a huge proponent of. Like I I coach like with the the pure heart of an educator, and um I'm constantly in sometimes, yeah, they don't need to know what you know, they need to feel what you know, right? But at the same time, um they I want my athletes to be inquisitive and understand that, like, hey, it's just not me coming out and you know, throwing grass in the wind and trying to figure out a workout. It's like this is well thought out periodization, and and yes, we're gonna have some twists and turns, but at the same time, we're gonna really be able to, you know, kind of take you individually to where you want to go. But you touched on AI. Um, and is you know, what is your take of maybe if you had the forecast, you know, five years from now, where do you kind of see, do you see AI? AI taking a big stake in the um performance business or the performance game.

SPEAKER_01 44:06

It's I mean, I'm sure there will be some popular apps or certain like service or something that is more AI, but it's just gonna be the thing with AI is though, it doesn't it has access to a lot of information on the internet, but not everything. And it can't critically think right now. Like I've tested like Chat GPT or Claude or Perplexity, like, hey, write me a program. And you know, it has access to all this information and it's still it's still a terrible program. It's like this is like an athlete's and unless unless an athlete's 14, they're not gonna get better with this, the program. And like in a and and and because AI can't critically think, you know, it can't, you know, it can't make adjustments, it can't, you know, dose volume appropriately, it can't customize a program to an athlete's needs. Like, you know, an athlete, you know, we always write training in pencil and not pen. Like we can't we have our progressions that we want. We write out the like the programming ahead of time, but we also have to be able to adjust on the fly. We have to have regressions and progressions, and you know, certain athletes can't tolerate, you know, not all athletes can tolerate the same training volume, and like that's where the customization comes into play. And there's just I just don't see AI ever being able to have that level of knowledge, and it also doesn't even have access to like all of the research out there, like it has access to abstracts, but not you know the context of all like the the the methodologies and you know some of the discussion points. And I mean, I don't think it has access to all the books out there either. So um I it's really it's really really good for like business and content, like once you have like a template that you need, then it can help you with like your hooks on social media, your flow, you're like your storytelling if you make content. Um, but from a coaching perspective, I and I also I don't think an athlete would want to get coached by an AI. Like it would you want to be like, yeah, my coach is Chad GPT? I don't I feel like that, I mean, I don't think athletes would want that anyways. Like it's kind of just not it's just it's just not a very humane experience.

SPEAKER_00 46:03

Yeah, especially something so delicate. Like I tell coaches all the time, like athletes are putting their hopes and their dreams in your hands. And so, you know, when you when you're call yourself a coach, I think that is one of the highest titles just because of the the expansive responsibility you have to this particular individual. No matter if it's you know trying to be on an AAU team or high school champion, collegiate champion, or Olympian. Uh there are dreams are in your hands. And so we got to take those responsibilities, serve those responsibilities serious and kind of putting it off to AI, I think there is a um, or any type of you know, um learning system is just kind of takes that human part out of it, right? You know, kind of uh somebody that's going to help navigate the journey. The um I see a lot of people try to make friends with their AI chat bots, but um I don't know. Yeah, yeah, time will tell. Time will tell. But um, you know, as we wrap up, um, anything that you would any advice you would give to your former self as it relates to from a whether it's a performance standpoint, professional standpoint. I'm I'm I remember you mentioned read more books, but yeah, read more books for sure.

SPEAKER_01 47:20

That that that'll be up there. Read more books, do more sprinting, would probably be like too. I I did a lot of jumping, I got that part right, but I needed to do a lot more sprinting, and I need to do a lot more like heavy weight training. I didn't, I didn't, I used to not prioritize even though I was even though I loved training, I thought I did a bunch of playos, not enough just heavyweight training. And I just you know, if I lifted weights, it was like usually like lifting lightweights fast, but you know, if you have no force or power to actually actualize, it doesn't it it doesn't work. So sprint more, read more books, and lift some heavy ass weights, pretty much would be my my summary.

SPEAKER_00 47:56

It's funny. I say uh I tell people you lift like a basketball player because like I said, literally, yes. They don't like they don't like lifting. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 48:04

And we're still like still like that. It was the same way when I was in high school and even in college to some extent. And it's like I still see that. I'm like, you I if you want to be a great athlete, lift like a track athlete or a football athlete. Like that is what I tell people like train like those people, those output monsters, and you're gonna be like high tides raise all ships, and you're gonna be a like you're gonna be a beast on the basketball court if you train like those guys.

SPEAKER_00 48:26

Man, say it louder, yeah. Cause I don't know why. Because I think too, it's like uh image thing, because you do have to because you're not lifting, you're not able to lift like a beast early, like you're gonna have to like not look like and when you're 6'8, you know, you can't really squat that like that much, but it's you know, you could at least try, you know.

SPEAKER_01 48:44

Yeah, just because you you can't put 405 on the bar doesn't mean that it is it's not gonna be beneficial to you.

SPEAKER_00 48:49

Yeah, man, yeah, that's cool. No, I definitely appreciate your time. Um, you you know, your insight, your creativity, your perspective is so fresh, and um, I know a lot of people um really learn from the way you share information and uh definitely again just appreciate you doing what you do and your time here today. And um, if anybody wants to reach you, again, uh, how can they get in contact with you?

SPEAKER_01 49:16

Yeah, uh my Instagram is at athleticdoc, athletic dot doc. Uh you can comment or DM me. I I I try to respond to DMs if they're relevant. So you just uh let me know if you have any questions. Um I coach over at THP, so you can sign up for the coaching if you're interested in that. Um yeah, that's pretty much all my contacts.

SPEAKER_00 49:36

All right, awesome. All right, other than that, have a good day. Thanks, guys.