A decade ago, I walked into University of Colorado with a plan. This week, I walked out the weight room for the last time as their coach.

It’s a simple sentence, but a lot more goes into those words than one might initially think. There’s nothing quite simple, or easy, about walking away from a place that’s played a part in almost a decade of your life, both professionally and personally. It’s a place where something that began as an opportunity slowly grew into something much deeper, something much harder to define, and something much harder to walk away from.

When I first came to the University of Colorado, I didn’t have a plan, per se. At least, nothing too concrete. Nothing too philosophical. Nothing too visionary. All I knew was that I was going to show up to work every day, work as hard as humanly possible, and help the people around me get a little better. And that was it. That was the plan. The end. Simple, right? Wrong. As the days went by, though, something began to shift. The role, which began as an budding opportunity, slowly began to evolve into something much, much more. The building, which began as a building, slowly began to evolve into something much, much more.

A great deal of what this profession is, and what it entails, isn’t necessarily seen by the outside world. They see the games, the games we win, the games we lose, the rankings, and the outcomes. They don’t necessarily see the early morning hours when it’s still dark outside and the weight room is just starting to come alive. They don’t necessarily see the long days, the days that go from training sessions to meetings to practice and back again. They don’t necessarily see the quiet moments after a difficult loss, or the daily work it takes to help the athletes navigate their performance and their everyday lives.

Legendary Strength and Conditioning Coach of Michigan State University Ken Mannie said it best: “Champions are made on a thousand invisible mornings.” That line has lived in my mind rent-free for years, and the longer I’ve done this, the more I know it’s true. It shows up in every corner of what we do. It’s in the discipline, the consistency, the choice to show up and give something of yourself daily, even when there’s no recognition waiting on the other side.

That’s where the real work exists, in those moments, in those daily efforts, in those quiet moments.

I think when I look back on these years, and the time I spent doing this, I would say it’s the people I stood beside every day. There’s a certain understanding, a certain type of connection, a certain type of camaraderie, if you will, between coaches who understand the environment, the same challenges, the same requirements, and the same expectation to show up every day, no matter what. It’s not necessarily a connection based on working together, it’s based on the experience itself, and the understanding that comes from working through the highs and the lows, the ups and the downs, the ins and the outs, and everything in between. You don’t necessarily need to say much when you have this type of connection, it’s the experience itself.

Trust is another element that becomes more significant as you get further into it. Being trusted with a group, with a culture, with a group of athletes is something that means a lot. It’s not just about creating a program or a workout. It’s about being a part of something bigger than yourself. Being a part of Colorado Women’s Basketball allowed me to come into a situation where there was already a strong culture and find ways to support and enhance it. There were moments where everything fell into place and it all came together as you hoped it would. There were moments where it tested you, where you had to adapt, where you had to be patient. Both are necessary. Both are important. Both play a part in how you grow as a coach.

What is not always talked about is the people behind the scenes who make it all happen. There is a group of people behind each successful program, and each day, everyone is showing up with a commitment to the athlete. These are the people you spend the long days with, the people who understand what the job entails without you needing to explain it to them. These people, over time, become one of the biggest rewards you have.

Within the group, the work is a constant cycle of problem-solving. Performance and medicine are always working in tandem, trying to find the right balance between challenging the athlete to get better and making sure the athlete is ready to perform. There is not a science to it, and it is not always easy. There is a level of uncertainty in each decision made. However, when you have the right people around you, you work through it and make it happen.

At the center of it all, though, are the athletes. They are the reason that any of this even matters in the first place. You can put together the best program, develop the most intricate system, and think about every single aspect of the way you develop, and it still won’t work if you don’t have the athletes that are willing to put in the work and invest in the process. It’s not necessarily what happens in the end that stands out, though, as much as it is the way you see the athletes grow as individuals along the way. It’s seeing confidence build, seeing resilience build, and seeing them begin to understand what it is that they are truly capable of.

And the truth of it is, it’s also seeing how they affect you in return, as well. It’s seeing how they challenge you to be a better coach, a better communicator, and a better representative of what it means to be consistent in what you do and how you do it. It’s seeing how they challenge you and test you in ways that you don’t even begin to recognize at the time.

It’s hard to put a finger on any one moment or any one season in particular that really stands out as a defining moment of my time at the University of Colorado, though, as much as it is seeing the way that it’s all added up and put together as a whole. It’s seeing the way that this place gave me an opportunity to learn, an opportunity to fail, and an opportunity to work on what it is that I think and how I work, in a way that really matters.

Perhaps one of the biggest takeaways, though, is seeing the way in which this profession is really a people-based profession, and seeing the way in which it’s easy to get caught up in programs and data and all of that, and seeing the way in which it’s really the relationships and the way in which you build trust that really matters in the end.

It’s not easy to leave a place like this. There’s a sense of what’s next, and it’s time to move on to the next challenge, the next change of environment. There’s also the understanding of what’s being left behind. The people, the daily routines, the familiarity of a place that’s been a part of your daily life for so many years. It’s not easy. It’s not easy. There’s the appreciation for what’s been, and there’s the curiosity for what’s next.

What I know for sure is that experiences like this one don’t stay behind. The learnings, the views, and the relationships move forward with you. They influence your approach to the next opportunity, your views on your place, and your ongoing growth within this industry.

If there’s one message that I hope to leave with the athletes and the individuals that I have worked with, it’s to stay curious. Growth, learnings, and progress don’t come from having all the answers.

It’s from continuing to ask better questions, staying open to new ideas, and being willing to adjust if necessary. The minute you think you know everything, progress starts to slow down.

Being consistent with your effort, your work, and your commitment to ongoing growth over time is the most important thing. Not one moment, one epiphany, or one discovery, but the accumulation of effort over time.

To everyone who was part of this journey, I want to say thank you. Thank you for the trust, the work, and the relationships that came from it. Those are the things that stay with you.

It’s not an end; it’s a transition. It’s a continuation of the same approach, just in a different place.

In a college weight room, a lot of noise fills the air; namely music (NBA Youngboy iykyk), 45 pound plates clanking, teammates talking. For most, it’s easy to get lost in it. But the best performers, the ones who consistently get better, know how to stay locked in when it matters. That’s mindfulness.

Right Mindfulness isn’t about meditation cushions or burning incense. It’s about attention. It’s learning to stay fully present inside what you’re doing; feeling your body move, noticing your breath, and staying aware of what’s happening in real time. In the weight room, that means focusing on the lift in front of you, not the one you missed last week or the one you’re doing later in the week.

Athletes who master this develop a sharper awareness of how they move, think, and react. They notice when their mind starts to wander or when frustration builds. Instead of letting those thoughts control them, they bring their focus back to the rep, the drill, or the play. Over time, this builds not only better concentration but also emotional control under pressure.

For coaches, mindfulness changes how we see and communicate. When you’re fully present with your team; watching their body language, hearing tone changes, catching subtle shifts; you can lead with more awareness. You catch more. You teach better. You respond instead of react. This is Mindfulness in Coaching.

Right Mindfulness is the art of being here, now. Not halfway in the next lifting session, the next basketball drill, or the next weekend game. It’s the skill that separates people who go through reps from people who own them.

Sports Insight

There’s a clip of Kobe Bryant, hours before tipoff, alone in an empty gym. He’s not sweating through explosive drills or launching threes at game speed. He’s slowly, deliberately practicing footwork; pivot, balance, reset. No headphones, no distractions. Just awareness. Every rep is a study in control.

That’s Right Mindfulness in Basketball Motion.

Kobe wasn’t merely working out; he was watching himself work. He noticed his breath between moves, the tension in his ankle, the exact moment his balance shifted. He practiced being present inside his body. That attention to subtlety, the feel of the floor, the sound of his breath, sharpened the precision that separated him from nearly everyone else.

True mindfulness in sport isn’t zoning out. It’s zoning in. It’s knowing the difference between pushing blindly and moving with deliberate control. When leaders, coaches, or athletes cultivate that kind of awareness, they stop reacting and start responding. Presence becomes power.

Weekly Challenge

This week, commit to presence. Pick one activity; training, meetings, even your morning coffee, and turn it into mindfulness practice.

Picture yourself as Kobe Bryant, "What Would Mamba Do?"

Be aware of your breath before you start. Notice the weight of your feet on the ground, the pace of your breathing, the tone in your voice. As distractions arise, don’t fight them. Acknowledge them, then gently bring yourself back to the present task.

During workouts, pay attention to the details you usually overlook; the grip on the bar, the rhythm of your breathing, how your body shifts through fatigue. The goal isn’t to perform better in the moment; it’s to see what’s really happening as it unfolds.

By the end of the week, you’ll notice how often your mind drifts, and how different it feels when it doesn’t.

Practical Reflection

Right Mindfulness isn’t about emptying your mind or forcing calm. It’s about remembering to remember; to return, again and again, to what’s in front of you.In coaching, leadership, or life, that means being fully where you are. When you’re in conversation, be in it. When you’re lifting, lift. When you’re at home, be home.

The practice is simple

but not easy.

Over time, mindfulness exposes the unnecessary noise; judgment, frustration, comparison, that clouds our perception. It doesn’t erase stress; it reveals our habit of feeding it. With awareness, those habits lose their grip. What’s left is clarity.

Presence is rare, and that’s why it’s powerful. The more we practice Right Mindfulness, the more our work, training, and leadership begin to carry that same quality, steady, aware, and unshakably real.

Until next Sunday,
– Adam

Most of our stress doesn’t come from the event itself but from the story we attach to it. In Buddhism, this is called taṇhā— craving.

We crave comfort, control, escape. When life throws us something different, we suffer because it doesn’t match our craving. The antidote is not to escape or resist, but to observe. Asking “what is this teaching me?” transforms the moment from an enemy into a teacher.

Inspiration from Zen/Stoicism:

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” – Maya Angelou (echoing Stoic thought)

The Stoics knew: pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. Zen adds: don’t cling to how you wish things were, meet them as they are. The lesson is hidden inside the difficulty — but only if you’re willing to look.

Sport Figure Insight:

Think of Michael Phelps at the 2008 Olympics. In the 200-meter butterfly final, his goggles filled with water. Most swimmers would have panicked, asking, “Why now?” But Phelps had trained for it — swimming blind, counting his strokes. Instead of “why,” he asked, “what do I do right now?”

The result: gold medal, world record.

Weekly Challenge:

This week, when something frustrating pops up — a meeting that drags, a workout that feels off, a conversation that stings — pause. Instead of spiraling into “why me?” ask yourself this: ➡️ “What is this here to teach me?”

Write it down once a day. Small re-frames add up.

Practical Story:

When Steve Kerr was punched by Michael Jordan during a Bulls practice, he could have sulked, asked “why me,” or checked out. Instead, Kerr reframed it. He later said that moment — standing up to Jordan, then reconciling — built trust and shifted his entire career.

The lesson? Every hard moment carries a teaching, if you’re willing to look for it.

This week, do the inner work. Shift the question. You’ll find strength where others only see setbacks.

Until next Sunday,
– Adam

Strength and conditioning coaches love to argue. Amiright? We argue about Olympic lifts versus trap bar jumps. We argue about depth on squats. We argue about velocity-based training, RPE, GPS, and whether an athlete should “just go heavy” or stick to 1RM percentages. I’ve sat in meetings that turned into debates, debates that turned into battles, and battles that turned into bruised egos.

Why “Right View” Matters in Coaching

It took me years to realize most of these clashes weren’t about who had better data. They were about perspective. About what we saw, what we valued, and what we confused for “truth.”

This is where Buddhism’s idea of Right View comes in. Right View doesn’t mean having the “correct opinion” or the “best training philosophy.” It means learning to see clearly. To understand what you’re actually looking at, and what you’re not.

In coaching, Right View isn’t about winning debates. It’s about clarity. It’s about knowing whether you’re dealing with an objective truth (225 pounds is 225 pounds), a subjective truth (225 feels heavy to a freshman but light to a senior), or an intersubjective truth (225 is the “respectable bench press” in our culture).

When coaches argue, it’s usually because they’re mixing up which truth they’re talking about. I’ve seen coaching friendships strained, staff rooms divided, and programs derailed—not because anyone was wrong, but because they were 'all right' in different ways.

That’s why learning to see truth clearly is one of the most underrated skills a strength coach can develop. It doesn’t just make you a better coach. It makes you a better teammate to the sport coaches, a better leader to your staff, and a better servant to the athletes you’re entrusted with.

This blog article is about that. It’s about how to apply “Right View” to the weight room, the playing surface, and the conversations we have every day. It’s about a parable with six blind men and an elephant. It’s about learning to separate objective, subjective, and intersubjective truths. And most of all, it’s about how years on the coaching floor teach you that coaching wisdom comes not from clinging to certainty, but from practicing clarity.

Three Kinds of Truth in the Weight Room

When I first started coaching, I thought strength and conditioning was a science. If you just read the right journals, got the right certifications, and memorized the right progressions, you’d know the truth. Ooof.

But the more I coached, the more I realized: there isn’t just one truth. There are at least three, and they play by different rules.

1. Objective Truth

Objective truths are measurable, universal, and independent of opinion. If you load a barbell with two plates, it weighs 225 pounds, no matter how you feel about it. If an athlete runs a 4.62 in the forty, that’s their time. If a force plate shows 4,500 newtons of peak force, that’s what the plate recorded.

These truths are the backbone of sport science. They’re testable, repeatable, and not up for debate.

I remember testing vertical jump with a basketball team. One coach wanted to use the Vertec, another wanted to use the force plates. The athletes didn’t care. The force plate was giving us force-time curves, eccentric rates of force development, and peak power outputs. The Vertec gave us a number of tabs touched. Both sets of data were true. But only one was objective in the scientific sense.

Objective truths anchor us. But they don’t tell the whole story.

2. Subjective Truth

Subjective truths are personal. They’re how something feels, looks, or lands for an individual. Two athletes can run the same conditioning test, hit the same times, and one feels fine while the other feels wrecked. Both experiences are true.

We often dismiss subjective truth in strength and conditioning because it feels “soft.” But ignoring it is a mistake. An athlete’s perception of effort, fatigue, and readiness has real consequences. Their buy-in, motivation, and willingness to train often hinge on subjective truths.

We ran a brutal conditioning session one August. Objectively, every athlete finished within their time standard. Subjectively, one athlete walked away saying, “That wasn’t too bad.” Another slumped against the wall, head in hands, convinced they were about to puke. Both were right. Both needed different follow-ups: one needed to be reined in, the other needed recovery.

Subjective truths remind us that athletes are not just data points.

They’re human beings.

3. Intersubjective Truth

This is the most misunderstood category; and the one that creates the most conflict. Intersubjective truths are 'shared meanings'. They only exist because a group agrees they do. Money, laws, traditions, cultural values, and yes, weight room dogma, are all intersubjective truths.

In strength and conditioning, these truths shape culture. We decide that squatting below parallel is “real” strength. We decide that a 225-pound bench press is the threshold of respect. We decide that showing up late is disrespectful. None of these are objective laws of the universe. They carry weight because we agree they do.

In one program, we decided that every athlete would squat to parallel or deeper. If you cut depth, it didn’t count. Objectively, partial squats still load the quadriceps and build strength at certain angles. Subjectively, some athletes felt safer squatting high. But intersubjectively, our staff had declared: this is our standard. That agreement gave it meaning, and consequences.

The Problem: Confusing the Three

The real danger comes when we conflate these truths. We treat intersubjective truths like they’re objective (“real athletes squat below parallel; it’s science”). We dismiss subjective truths as irrelevant (“she says her back hurts, but the numbers look fine”). Or we ignore objective truths because they clash with our philosophy (“I don’t care what the GPS says, this is how we condition”).

That’s when coaching breaks down.

The first step toward Right View is simply asking:

Which truth am I dealing with right now?

Because clarity begins with categories.

The Parable of the Six Blind Men and the Elephant

One of the oldest stories in Buddhist and Hindu tradition is the parable of the six blind men and the elephant. You’ve probably heard it in some form before, but it’s worth retelling carefully; because when I first started seeing this story through the lens of strength and conditioning, it changed how I approached every debate in the field.

The Story Retold

Six blind men are led to an elephant. None of them have ever encountered such a creature before, and each wants to understand what it is. Since they cannot see, they reach out and feel different parts of the animal.

• The first man touches the trunk. “An elephant is like a snake!” he declares.
• The second grabs a tusk. “No, it’s like a spear.”
• The third feels the ear. “You’re both wrong—it’s a fan.”
• The fourth lays his hand on the leg. “No, no—it’s a tree.”
• The fifth pats the side. “You fools, it’s a wall.”
• The sixth pulls the tail. “Clearly, it’s a rope.”

They argue. Each insists his experience is the true one. None can see the whole animal, so each confuses a partial truth for the whole truth.

The moral is obvious: truth is vast, and our grasp of it is often partial. Conflict arises not because we are wrong, but because we mistake our limited perspective for the complete picture.

Why This Story Belongs in the Weight Room

Now, think about the debates we have in strength and conditioning:

• One coach swears Olympic lifts are the gold standard for power development.
• Another argues for plyometrics and medicine ball throws instead.
• A third insists velocity-based training is the future.
• A fourth dismisses all of it, saying, “Just get the kids strong.”

Sound familiar? Each coach is holding on to a “part of the elephant.” Olympic lifts do build explosiveness. Plyometrics do train rapid force production. Velocity-based training does bring precision to load prescription. Raw strength does underpin athleticism.

The problem isn’t that anyone is wrong. The problem is when we elevate our intersubjective truth (our coaching philosophy, shaped by our environment and mentors) to the level of objective truth (a universal law).

That’s how camps, cliques, and turf wars form in our field. Just like the blind men, we end up arguing over partial truths instead of working toward a fuller understanding.

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The Blind Men as Archetypes of Coaches

Let’s stretch the metaphor a little further. Each blind man can represent a certain type of strength and conditioning coach.

The Trunk Coach (Snake)

This coach has latched onto movement as the essence of training. They emphasize fluidity, range of motion, and the art of athleticism. You’ll find them programming mobility flows, agility ladders, and change-of-direction drills above all else. To them, the “truth” is movement quality.

The Tusk Coach (Spear)

This coach is all about intensity and sharpness. They believe in aggressive outputs; max velocity, peak power, heavy loads. They design programs around testing limits. To them, the “truth” is sharp, focused stressors.

The Ear Coach (Fan)

This strength coach is fascinated by energy systems and recovery. Their programs revolve around conditioning, work-to-rest ratios, and flow of training. To them, the “truth” is about balancing exertion and recovery like the flapping of a fan.

The Leg Coach (Tree)

The traditionalist. The tree represents stability, rootedness, strength. This strength coach insists on foundational lifts—squat, bench, deadlift—as the true test of an athlete’s preparation. Their programs rarely stray far from the classics.

The Side Coach (Wall)

The system-builder. They see the big surface of things: culture, accountability, structure. Their focus is the program as a whole. Sets and reps matter less than buy-in, environment, and consistency. To them, the “truth” is the wall: what holds everything up.

The Tail Coach (Rope)

The minimalist. They believe less is more. Strip things down, use what you need, ignore the fluff. They see training as something you hold onto for leverage; simple, direct, utilitarian.

Individually, each coach sees something valuable. But if they refuse to acknowledge that they’re holding just part of the elephant, they end up in endless conflict.

The Elephant and the Weight Room

Here’s the real kicker: the elephant doesn’t care. It exists whether the blind men agree or not. The weight room is the same way. Athletes adapt based on stressors, not arguments. The body doesn’t care if your favorite philosophy wins the Twitter/X debate.

What matters is whether we, as strength and conditioning coaches, can step back and recognize that truth is often bigger than our corner of it.

When we fail to do this, we waste energy fighting over turf instead of serving athletes. When we succeed, we can integrate perspectives: using Olympic lifts and plyos, velocity-based monitoring and intuition, traditional strength work and sport-specific movement.

That’s what Right View invites us to do—not cling to the tail, tusk, or trunk as the “whole truth,” but hold our piece with humility, curiosity, and openness to others.

Problems When We Conflate Truths

Let’s tie this back to the earlier framework of objective, subjective, and intersubjective truths.

• The blind men mistake their subjective truths (what they feel under their hand) for objective truths (the entire elephant).
• When they argue, they’re asserting intersubjective truths (“my perspective is the perspective”), demanding agreement from others.
• The result is conflict and confusion, when in fact they’re all partially correct.

This is precisely what happens in strength and conditioning coaching debates. Ever attend the CSCCa National Conference? If you have, you've heard this battle of subjective, objective, and intersubjective truths play out.

One coach says, “Squats are the best exercise for athletic performance.” Another counters, “No, single-leg work is superior.” Objectively, both squats and single-leg work load the lower body and transfer force through the ground. Subjectively, one athlete may feel squats wreck their back while another feels empowered by them. Intersubjectively, certain programs or cultures elevate squats as the badge of “real training.”

If we confuse these categories, we get lost. If we can separate them, we gain clarity.

Applying the Parable to Coaching Conflict

I’ll never forget a heated discussion in a staff meeting years ago. We were planning offseason training for a particular sport team.

One coach argued passionately for more Olympic lifts. “We need to teach them how to move the bar explosively. That’s where the transfer happens.”

Another countered, “These athletes don’t have the time to master Olympic lifts. Plyos and med ball throws will give us more bang for our buck.”

I sat in silence for a while, then finally said: “You’re both right. The question isn’t which is better in general. The question is: which is better for this team, at this point in the season, with the time we have?”

The room went quiet. That moment shifted the tone. Suddenly, the conversation was about context, not absolutes. We stopped arguing about “the elephant” and started piecing together the parts we each saw.

That’s what the parable offers us: a reminder that the fight isn’t about whether the elephant is a snake, spear, fan, tree, wall, or rope. The fight should be about how to integrate partial truths into something closer to the whole.

The Takeaway for Strength and Conditioning

The parable of the blind men and the elephant isn’t just a story; it’s a mirror.

As coaches, we are all blind. None of us sees the whole elephant. Science gives us better instruments, but even force plates and GPS units only measure part of the picture. Experience broadens perspective, but even decades of coaching can’t eliminate our biases.

The key isn’t to find the “one true philosophy.” The key is to approach coaching with humility. To recognize that what we feel, what we measure, and what we agree on are all different types of truth. To stop mistaking our corner of the elephant for the entire beast.

Right View in coaching doesn’t mean never having opinions. It means holding those opinions lightly, open to challenge, ready to learn, and aware that what feels like ultimate truth may only be part of the story.

The Cost of Conflation in Coaching

Here’s where the friction really happens. Let’s play out some examples:

Mistaking subjective truth for objective truth:

A coach feels that heavy squats built their own athletic career. They universalize it: “Heavy squats are the best way to build power for everyone.” But athletes differ. For some, the risk-to-reward ratio doesn’t justify it.

Mistaking intersubjective truth for objective truth:

A department believes Olympic lifts are essential because “that’s what elite programs do.” But objectively, you can develop triple extension through many means; loaded jumps, trap bar pulls, sprints. The belief holds cultural weight, but it’s not a universal law.

Mistaking objective truth for subjective truth:

An athlete tells you they feel like their vertical jump hasn’t improved, even though the force plate shows a 4-inch increase. If you dismiss the data as “just their opinion,” you miss the chance to both affirm their subjective experience and ground them in objective progress.

Conflation leads to bad programming, fractured staff cultures, and endless online debates that go nowhere. It blinds us to nuance, the way the blind men missed the whole elephant.

Humility and Curiosity in Coaching Practice

The parable of the blind men and the elephant is not about who is right, but about how partial truths can be held with humility. When each man acknowledges that he only has a piece of the puzzle, collaboration becomes possible. In strength and conditioning, humility is the recognition that no single method, exercise, or philosophy captures the entirety of human performance.

Curiosity then becomes the natural partner to humility. Instead of defending your method, curiosity asks: What am I missing? What might another coach’s perspective reveal? What does the athlete in front of me need, not the athlete in my imagination?

Humility in the Weight Room

Humility shows up when a coach admits, “I don’t know everything about sprint mechanics” and seeks input from a track coach. Or when they test an athlete’s readiness and decide to adjust a pre-planned workout instead of stubbornly sticking to it.

Humility does not mean lack of confidence. It means recognizing that truth is often larger than our personal angle on the elephant.

Curiosity in Practice

Curiosity is when you watch an athlete move and instead of rushing to correct, you ask, Why are they moving that way? What does their nervous system know that I don’t?

It’s when you sit in on a peer’s session and instead of criticizing, you ask, What principle is guiding their choices? Could I learn something from this?

Humility keeps us grounded. Curiosity keeps us growing. Together, they transform how we apply Right View in coaching.

Applying Right View

Right View, in Buddhist thought, isn’t about possessing the correct opinion. It’s about seeing reality skillfully, acknowledging how perception is shaped by conditioning, culture, and personal experience.

In strength and conditioning, Right View is:

• Recognizing when you’re working from objective truths (force plate data, sprint times).
• Recognizing when you’re working from subjective truths (athlete feelings, coach intuitions).
• Recognizing when you’re working from intersubjective truths (industry trends, team culture).

The skillful coach can differentiate between these, move between them, and use each appropriately.

For example, imagine programming a taper before competition:

• Objective truth: The data shows the athlete’s workload has been high and their CNS is taxed.
• Subjective truth: The athlete reports feeling sluggish and unconfident.
• Intersubjective truth: The sport culture values hard practices before big games.

Right View helps you navigate this. Do you blindly follow the intersubjective pressure to “push hard,” or do you integrate subjective feedback with objective markers to make a better tapering decision?

It’s not about one truth overriding the others; it’s about holding them in relationship.

Wisdom is Built Through Reps

No coach is born with the ability to skillfully hold these truths. It comes with reps, not just in programming, but in navigating the human side of sport.

Every time you:

• Adjust a session because an athlete shows up exhausted,
• Defend your athlete’s needs in a meeting against cultural pressure,
• Integrate new sport science data into your methods,

…you’re building coaching wisdom.

Like strength, wisdom is trained over time. The first time you encounter conflict between objective and intersubjective truths, you may default to one side. The 100th time, you start to recognize patterns and respond with more nuance.

This is the essence of experience; moving from instinctual reaction to thoughtful response. Coaches who can “see the elephant” more fully aren’t smarter; they’ve simply put in the reps of making, reflecting on, and refining decisions.

The Broader Implications Beyond Coaching

These truths don’t just shape the weight room; they shape how we live.

• In politics, subjective truths (lived experiences) clash with intersubjective truths (party ideologies) and objective truths (data, laws). Most debates devolve because participants mistake one for the other.
• In relationships, conflict often arises when one partner universalizes a subjective truth: “I feel this way, so it must be the truth.”
• In society, we frequently mistake intersubjective truths (money, nationalism, cultural norms) as if they were objective.

Strength and conditioning is a microcosm of life. If we can learn to hold truths skillfully in sport, we can carry that wisdom outward into leadership, family, and community.

Seeing the Whole Elephant

The parable of the blind men doesn’t end with them seeing the whole elephant. But as coaches, we get that chance. By layering objective, subjective, and intersubjective truths, we can form a fuller picture.

Right View is not about being right. It’s about seeing clearly; with humility, curiosity, and compassion. It’s about knowing that what’s true for you may not be true for someone else, and that doesn’t make either of you wrong.

Strength and conditioning debates, much like life debates, lose their sting when we hold our truths lightly. When we recognize that we’re all touching the same elephant; just from different angles, we stop fighting and start learning from each other.

That’s the heart of coaching wisdom: not clinging to your piece of the elephant, but helping athletes and colleagues see the bigger picture together.

My Musings

A microdose of interesting things

What I'm Reading:

Vald Performance Reports & Asymmetry Profiles

I’ll be honest — I’m still chipping away at In the Words of Buddha, but this week my eyes are buried in Vald Performance reports. We just wrapped summer testing with Women’s Basketball, and now comes the deep dive into the data. First stop: updating each athlete’s asymmetry risk profile so I can pinpoint the biomechanics most in need of attention. Next, I’ll chart the progress — both individually and as a team — over the last six weeks. Given how ruthlessly we’ve attacked the weight room, I’m expecting big jumps in CMJ, IMTP, NordBord, ForceFrame, quad extension strength, and more. Numbers don’t lie… but they do tell stories, and I’m here to read them.

What I'm Watching:

SEC Football: Any Given Saturday

I’m nearly done with my Last Dance rewatch (yes, I’m savoring it), but football season is calling. Netflix just dropped SEC Football: Any Given Saturday, and as a basketball guy, I find the football world fascinating. The pace, the culture, the energy — it’s like visiting another country without leaving campus. Some of you probably live this every weekend; I’m just here on the outside, taking notes and admiring the grind.

What I've Bought:

YETI 24 oz Camp Mug

You know my YETI obsession runs deep. My trusty 14 oz camp mug has been my ride-or-die for years, but this week I upgraded to the 24 oz version. Ten extra ounces might not sound like a big deal, but when coffee is basically your love language, that’s ten ounces of pure joy. Right now, my new mug is in the dishwasher, so I’m sipping from the “old” one and already dreaming of our future together. This thing is built for long mornings, short nights, and everything in between.

What I'm Doing:

Enjoying the Calm Before the Storm

Summer training is wrapped, fall semester hasn’t started yet, and for a brief moment, I get to breathe. These short breaks are just as important for us as they are for the athletes — a little time apart keeps the relationship healthy. Because once the season starts, it’s seven straight months of planes, buses, hotels, and the kind of proximity that tests even the best of us. Right now, I’m soaking in the quiet… because I know what’s coming.

What I'm Listening To:

Nine Inch Nails – Industrial Rock Detox

The weight room soundtrack lately has been heavy on NBA YoungBoy’s MASA — great energy, but sometimes I need a palate cleanser. This week I’ve been dipping back into some old-school Nine Inch Nails. Trent Reznor’s industrial rock just hits different: dark, gritty, and oddly energizing. It’s the perfect soundtrack for clearing your head while still keeping a little edge.

Alright, that’s my week in five snapshots.
If you’ve got a killer mug recommendation, a Netflix binge I can’t miss, or a band that’s been your latest escape, shoot it my way. We’re all just trying to find the little things that keep us fired up.

Until next time—stay consistent, stay curious.
— Adam

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You’re not just nostalgic for the game—you miss the structure, the standards, the edge.

You didn’t stop caring about performance just because you stopped getting taped up before practice. You still track macros, chase strength, and wake up with that little voice pushing you to be more. But here's the truth:

You’ve been doing it solo for too long.

The Former Athlete Society isn’t just another group. It’s your new locker room. It’s where former college athletes come together—not to relive the past, but to build something better than back in the day.

Inside the Society, you’ll get:

✅  Proven training and nutrition programs—not generic workouts, but systems rooted in the same principles we used to compete at a high level

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✅  Real community—a tribe of former athletes who still hold themselves to a higher standard, and push each other to stay sharp

This isn’t about six-pack abs or shallow aesthetics. It’s about earning confidence again. It’s about building a new identity that honors your past, while charging toward what’s next. If you’ve ever thought, “I just need someone to push me again,” this is that push. The Society was made for people like you. High-performers who miss being around other high-performers.

You’re not done.
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Aerobic Conditioning in Women’s Basketball: A Deep Dive for Coaches & Practitioners

You’re leaving performance on the table if your off-season conditioning still relies on guesswork. This breakdown shows exactly how to build an aerobic engine for women’s basketball that fuels explosive play, outlasts opponents, and stacks wins—without wasting time.

Adam RinglerAdam Ringler

Optimize Athlete Sleep & Recovery: Screen Time, Blue Light & Nighttime Supplements for Performance

In this deep post, we explore why evening screen use isn’t just a habit—it’s a silent disruptor of athlete recovery. From dorm-room scrolls to tablet film sessions on the road, screens trigger biological responses that erode sleep depth, hormonal balance, and readiness.

Adam RinglerAdam Ringler

Creatine, Sleep, Social Circles & More: 5 Tactical Q&A’s for Former Athletes Getting Back in Shape

Former athletes: This new 60-min Q&A covers creatine, modifying lifts when you’re sore, deep sleep tips, healthy fats that actually work, and what to do when friends always want to drink. Tactical, simple, and immediately usable.

Adam RinglerAdam Ringler

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Become the dominant force on the court with my expert coaching and proven training methods. Welcome to the premier basketball training program of Boulder, Colorado - and now, remotely world-wide. I'm not just about drills and conditioning; I'm your digital partner in achieving your basketball goals.

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• Progressive development: The program evolves every three weeks, ensuring you're constantly challenged and progressing towards your peak performance.
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Survive & Thrive in Strength and Conditioning

In the fast-paced world of sports, success favors those who stay ahead of the game. Our FREE e-book, "Survive and Thrive: The Ultimate Guide for Aspiring Coaches".

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Hesitate, and you risk falling behind in the race to success. Don't wait – seize this opportunity now, and empower yourself with the knowledge to thrive as a strength and conditioning coach.

Are you a young, ambitious strength and conditioning coach looking to conquer the industry? Don't miss this exclusive opportunity to access the wisdom of a seasoned expert, Adam Ringler. With nearly 20 years at the forefront of college athletics, he's here to help you succeed.

In the fast-paced world of sports, success favors those who stay ahead of the game. Our FREE e-book, "Survive and Thrive: The Ultimate Guide for Aspiring Coaches," is your ticket to success. Inside, you'll discover:

• Proven strategies to elevate your athletes' performance
• Insider tips on navigating the competitive coaching landscape
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• Expert insights to make your mark in strength and conditioning

Aerobic Capacity in Basketball

🏀 Why We Still Train Aerobic Capacity 🏀

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Strength. Power. Speed. These are the qualities we chase—and for good reason. But too often, aerobic development gets tossed aside as “not specific enough” for team sports like basketball.

Here’s the truth: the aerobic system is the engine underneath all of it. And in women’s basketball, where we’re navigating 40 minutes of high-low movement patterns, game density, travel fatigue, and menstrual cycle variation—it matters more than ever.

In this post, I’ve included a full-length breakdown of how I approach off-season aerobic development for women’s college basketball. You’ll get the performance rationale, the physiological support, and a look inside how I structure real training blocks for real athletes.

Topics Covered in This Video:

📊 The Physiological Role of Aerobic Conditioning in Team Sport

● A full explanation of aerobic metabolism and how it supports repeated anaerobic bouts—think fast breaks, closeouts, second-chance rebounds.

● Understanding mitochondrial density, capillary networks, and cardiac efficiency as training targets to enhance performance.

● A breakdown of oxygen debt and EPOC (Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption) and why aerobic conditioning affects how well athletes recover—between shifts, quarters, and training days.

● Research-backed data on aerobic vs anaerobic demands in college basketball using time-motion and heart rate studies.

● The role of VO2 max, heart rate variability (HRV), and lactate clearance in basketball performance metrics.

⚙️ How the Aerobic System Supports High-Intensity Outputs

● Why anaerobic efforts (sprints, jumps, cuts) rely on the aerobic system for recovery between bouts.

● A look at glycolytic buffering and how aerobic adaptations improve lactate threshold.

● Practical examples of how better aerobic conditioning leads to less drop-off in repeated sprint ability.

● Why phosphocreatine regeneration is fueled by aerobic processes and why that matters for repeat jumping and full-court pressure.

📚 Program Design Considerations for the Off-Season Conditioning Phase

● My approach to designing aerobic capacity and power phases within an annual plan.

● How I structure a 12-week aerobic block without sacrificing strength and explosiveness.

● Sample timelines: when to train base aerobic capacity, tempo-based development, and how to transition to anaerobic intervals.

● How to modify training loads based on biomarkers, RPE scores, and menstrual cycle tracking.

● Exercise selection that balances joint load and cardiac output—from tempo runs to airbike intervals to loaded carries.

🔀 Concurrent Training: Making Aerobic Fit with the Weight Room

● What research says about the interference effect and how to avoid it with strategic programming.

● Practical scheduling: when to lift heavy, when to run long, and how to sequence sessions across a training week.

● How I use low-intensity high-duration work to boost fitness without creating residual fatigue that messes with the CNS.

● How aerobic work improves HRV, recovery quality, and sleep metrics—plus the downstream effects on weight room readiness.

🏀 Real-World Case Study: Off-Season Aerobic Block for D1 Women’s Basketball

● A full walk-through of how I programmed and monitored an off-season aerobic block for a Division I program.

● Breakdown of phases: aerobic capacity → aerobic power → lactate tolerance.

● Week-to-week adjustments based on data insights, travel, and individual readiness.

● Integrating skill work, sport coach demands, and rehab protocols into a unified plan.

💡 Practical Implementation & Coaching Tactics

● How to teach aerobic intent to athletes who are used to going hard, not long.

● How to sell aerobic work without sounding like you're putting them through “conditioning punishment.”

● Using language, progress tracking, and wearables to build buy-in for cardiac development.

● How to gamify aerobic progress with metrics like MAS (Max Aerobic Speed) and GPS data.

🔥 Bonus Sections and Mini-Digressions You’ll Hear Inside

● Why I reference Joel Jamieson’s Ultimate MMA Conditioning and how I’ve adapted those protocols to basketball.

● Why most athletes hate slow aerobic work—and how to modify delivery so it’s fun and effective.

● Real talk about the balance between energy system development and time/coach buy-in during the off-season.

● Strategies to work with or around sport coaches who don’t prioritize conditioning.

If you're tired of outdated or vague conditioning advice—and want clarity on how to develop aerobic fitness that actually translates to on-court performance—this video delivers the nuance and strategy you’ve been searching for.

Built for sport scientists, performance coaches, and strength and conditioning pros who want more than just buzzwords and zone charts, this breakdown takes you inside the physiology, programming tactics, and case-based applications that drive results in collegiate women’s basketball.

🧠 References & Frameworks:

● Energy system research and sport-specific conditioning analysis for basketball

● Real-world aerobic training blocks implemented within Division I women’s basketball off-season programs

● Key programming principles from Joel Jamieson’s Ultimate MMA Conditioning

● Integrated conditioning + strength models adapted from top sport performance centers

📈 Keywords for Search:

aerobic conditioning for basketball, women’s basketball performance, energy system development basketball, conditioning strategies basketball, aerobic vs anaerobic basketball, strength and conditioning for women’s sports, conditioning block structure, heart rate zone training basketball, HRV basketball athletes, off-season conditioning strategies, tempo running for basketball, aerobic base for court sports, Joel Jamieson conditioning model, concurrent training strategies, basketball player fitness programs, mitochondrial development athletes, conditioning drills for basketball players, aerobic training case study

💬 Comment below with how you're currently structuring tendon rehab protocols—or questions you’ve had about collagen, timing, and performance outcomes.

📩 Subscribe + hit the notification bell so you don’t miss the next long-form sport science breakdown.

For nearly a decade at the University of Colorado, I’ve seen how distraction—often subtle, sometimes crushing— as it undermines performance. Not just for athletes, but for us as coaches, as leaders, as managers and drivers of high-performance ecosystems.

In the early years (2017–2020), I was splitting my time between strength and conditioning coaching for Women’s Basketball and Volleyball and building a Sport Science model from scratch.

Those seasons taught me this: protecting attention isn’t a luxury. It’s an operational necessity if you’re serious about sustaining elite performance.

This isn’t a theoretical essay. It’s a field guide built on barbell chalk, AMS dashboards, IMU/GPS tags, and long nights spent programming microcycles. It’s for any coach, sport scientist, or practitioner who wants to regain control of their focus—and their program.

The Early Days

Balancing Plates and Chasing Clarity

When I first arrived in Boulder in 2017, I was an eager coach and sport scientist, but also, maybe a little naive.

Women’s Basketball was coming off a challenging season, rebuilding both roster depth and their team culture. Women's Basketball was ten toes down trying to establish and build a robust and thriving team culture. Volleyball eventually ended up ranked nationally, achieving a Sweet Sixteen berth, but battling nagging injuries across key positions. And the Athletic Department’s appetite for Sport Science was just beginning to stir.

I wore multiple hats. Mornings began with dynamic warm-ups and teaching squat patterns in the weight room. Afternoons bled into monitoring player loads via wearable technologies, parsing out accelerations and decelerations, and manually entering RPE scores into spreadsheets. Evenings? They were for reflecting on programming gaps while fielding late emails from athletic trainers about return-to-play protocols. Oh, how about raising a 3 year old daughter and 1-year old son? Doing everything, with any great focus, was almost impossible.

The demands felt endless. Notifications buzzing. Slack messages pinging. Meetings stacked back-to-back. I’d sit with an athlete, cueing her to “own the hinge” on a trap bar deadlift while my mind flickered to unread emails and wellness flags on our budding AMS.

Sound familiar? That fractured attention is the death of presence. I was coaching, sure—but was I fully seeing the athlete in front of me? Was I catching the subtle change in bar path, or the fatigue etched in her body language after three matches in five days? That's left up to debate – but I know my answer.

Those first years showed me the cost of distraction. It wasn’t just my cognitive bandwidth. It was lost opportunities for precision—whether adjusting a microdosed plyometric progression for a post-ACL athlete or recalibrating an in-season taper for Volleyball before NCAAs.

Eventually, I understood:

I couldn’t outwork distraction. I had to out-system it.

The Science of Focus

What Neuroscience and Athletes Taught Me

One athlete crystallized this for me. A libero, 5’8”, relentless motor. During 2018 preseason, she’d enter the gym with headphones in, no phone, no chatter. She had a presence about her—an unbroken thread of attention from warm-up to final set.

“Coach,” she once told me, “when I step through those doors, it’s all volleyball. Nothing else exists.”

It struck me because, neurochemically, she was onto something. In flow, norepinephrine heightens alertness, dopamine drives sustained effort, and serotonin reinforces satisfaction. Brainwaves shift from beta to alpha, fostering creativity and intuitive decision-making—the same patterns I chase during programming sprints at 5 AM.

Contrast that with our modern reality. One text message, one Slack notification, and your prefrontal cortex lights up with distraction. The “flow tunnel” collapses. It’s not a minor reset—it’s a neurochemical tax that leaves you cognitively fatigued before the session even ends.

In those early years, I didn’t just read about this; I lived it. Writing a 16-week off-season plan only to derail it mid-thought by checking Kinexon reports. Trying to analyze vertical stiffness trends and then falling down a Twitter rabbit hole. The cost? Hours lost, creativity dulled, decision quality degraded.

For athletes, the stakes are even higher. Flow states are where skill acquisition locks in. They’re where confidence grows under pressure. But the same dopamine loops that fuel focus also keep them hooked on notifications—paralyzing their ability to “be where their feet are.”

As coaches, if we can’t model focus, how can we expect them to?

Fortifying Attention

Tactics From the Weight Room Floor

Reclaiming focus wasn’t a single decision. It was a process, iterative and messy—just like building a high-performance department.

Rebuilding the Workspace

I stripped my office bare. No phone in sight. AMS dashboards closed unless I was actively using them. Printouts of force plate outputs and counter-movement jump trends on my desk—only what was immediately relevant to the block I was working on.

This wasn’t aesthetic minimalism. It was cognitive minimalism. In the same way we strip auxiliary lifts out of a peaking phase, I was stripping environmental noise.

Time Blocking Like a Periodized Macrocycle

I borrowed from block periodization:

• Morning Blocks (Neurocognitive Load): Deep programming work, RPE trend analysis, athlete readiness reviews.
• Midday Blocks (High Athlete Interaction): Full presence in the weight room and on court—no tech interruptions.
• Afternoon Blocks (Administrative Load): Emails, scheduling, staff development.

Each block had a goal, a rhythm, and clear boundaries. Just as I wouldn’t mix maximal strength work into a power development microcycle, I stopped mixing programming with inbox triage.

Digital Pruning

Notifications? All off. Social media? Deleted during in-season competition phases. I even disabled badge counters on my email apps. This wasn’t about asceticism—it was about creating a structure that aligned with the demands of coaching elite athletes.

The payoff? By 2019, my programming cycles were tighter. Readiness adjustments were faster. I was catching micro trends in AMS data that would’ve been lost in the noise. And my athletes? They felt my presence. They knew I wasn’t half-listening.

The Ripple Effect

Culture and Athlete Buy-In

By the time we hit the 2022 season, the transformation wasn’t just noticeable—it was palpable. The way the Women’s Basketball team entered the weight room had changed. There was a quiet intensity, a sort of collective agreement that this space wasn’t for scrolling or idle chatter anymore. Phones stayed zipped in backpacks. Conversations centered on matchups, scouting reports, and who had the edge in yesterday’s trap bar velocity leaderboard.

The shift didn’t happen overnight, of course. Early on, I had to lead by example. I remember one morning in 2021, watching a sophomore guard fidgeting with her phone before practice. I walked over—not to scold, but to ask her about her pre-practice routine. She admitted she hadn’t thought much about it. We talked about how mental state feeds physical readiness, and how each distraction is like letting air out of a tire—your ability to generate force diminishes before you even touch the basketball.

We implemented a “two feet in” policy soon after: when you step into the arena, you’re all-in. Coaches, athletes, interns—we were all accountable. Music stayed low unless it served a specific purpose, like driving energy during contrast training. Warm-ups became focused rituals. I saw players using diaphragmatic breathing drills not just for physical readiness, but to center themselves before high-volume, high-intensity trainingsessions.

Volleyball followed a similar path. I still think about the libero who started setting the tone for her team. She’d take a quiet corner to go through her hip activation and visualize serve-receive rotations. Other players noticed. One by one, they mirrored her behavior. Soon, it wasn’t unusual to see three or four athletes moving through their prep routines in near silence, headphones off, minds tuned to the upcoming work.

What’s more, this cultural shift didn’t start and stop in the weight room. It seeped into practice courts and film rooms. Coaches reported fewer moments where players’ attention drifted during walkthroughs. They began engaging in recovery strategies with purpose—asking about sleep hygiene, nutrition periodization, and even showing curiosity about our AMS data reports.

Among the staff, the ripple was just as clear. Our Performance Meetings became leaner, sharper. In 2017, these meetings often felt like a scattershot of updates—each practitioner jockeying to get their data heard. By 2022, they were true collaboration sessions. We’d review workload metrics, force plate asymmetries, and even psychological readiness markers, with everyone present and contributing. No one was half-listening while replying to emails.

This collective attention didn’t just feel good—it produced results. Our women’s teams saw marked reductions in soft-tissue injuries during congested competition schedules. Return-to-play timelines became more precise, informed by our evolving Sport Science model. By 2023, I was confident we had matured from the infancy of our high-performance system to a robust, athlete-centered ecosystem.

And here’s what hit me hardest: culture is fragile. It requires daily tending. One lapse—a phone out during a lift, a distracted coach glancing at a watch during a meeting—threatens to undo weeks of hard-won trust.

When you guard attention like a scarce resource, the buy-in you build compounds. The teams began to own their environment. As a coach, it was humbling. I wasn’t driving the culture anymore; I was watching it sustain itself.

Why This Matters

Focus as a Competitive Edge

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: in collegiate athletics, every program is searching for an edge. Everyone has access to platforms, monitoring tech, and performance nutrition. Strength coaches everywhere preach grit, resilience, and discipline. But how many are intentionally building systems to protect their staff’s and athletes’ attention?

That’s what separates programs.

I’ll say it bluntly—if you’re not actively defending focus, you’re forfeiting margins that decide championships.

Think about your own coaching workflow. How many programming errors creep in because your brain was split between writing a 4-week block and fielding administrative texts? How many readiness flags go unnoticed because you’re skimming AMS dashboards during a Zoom call?

For athletes, the stakes are even higher. Focus isn’t a soft skill; it’s a performance multiplier. In the gym, split attention leads to technical breakdowns—poor bar path on a clean pull, inattention during eccentric control drills. On the basketball court, it means missed rotations, slower defensive reads, and errors in transition.

During our NCAA tournament run in 2022, I saw the power of collective focus firsthand. Women’s Basketball entered a brutal stretch—three games in five days, across two time zones. The staff kept their heads clear, resisting the temptation to overanalyze or overload players with feedback. Athletes committed to pre-practice routines, avoided social media rabbit holes, and showed up to film sessions mentally present.

The result? Crisp rotations. Better in-game adjustments. A resilience that carried us through double-overtime against a higher seed.

And let’s not forget the cost of inattention among staff. A poorly timed training block, a misread wellness score—it’s not just a mistake; it’s a potential injury or season derailed.

As coaches, our job isn’t just to build physical capacity. It’s to shape an environment where attention flows naturally—where every rep, every drill, every meeting is an opportunity for athletes to train their focus as much as their bodies.

When you master that, you’re no longer competing on just talent or facilities. You’re competing on clarity, presence, and precision—the true currency of high performance.

My Closing Thoughts

The Coach’s Greatest Asset

I’ve spent nearly two decades in Strength & Conditioning, and if there’s one lesson that has crystallized in my coaching, it’s this: your greatest asset isn’t your training knowledge, your periodization model, or even your Sport Science dashboard. It’s your ability to focus, and to teach others to do the same.

Focus is the coach’s North Star. Without it, even the best-laid plans become noise—workouts lose their punch, meetings lose their purpose, and athletes lose trust.

Think of focus like tendon health. Neglect it, and you won’t notice the damage immediately. But over time, microtears accumulate. Cognitive fatigue sets in. Decision quality suffers. And one day, the system gives way—not because you didn’t care, but because you didn’t protect the tissue of attention.

That’s why, here in 2025, I guard my focus as fiercely as I guard my athletes’ workloads. It’s why I still wake up early to write blocks uninterrupted, still keep my phone out of sight during lifts, still preach presence during the most mundane of drills.

Because I’ve seen what happens when a team operates fully engaged. It’s not magic—it’s the natural outcome of sustained, protected attention.

For coaches stepping into this profession, here’s my challenge: build your own attention protocols like you’d build a macrocycle. Periodize your cognitive load. Eliminate distractions with the same ruthlessness you’d cut a poorly designed auxiliary lift.

Your attention shapes your athletes’. Their attention shapes their performance. And their performance? That shapes programs, legacies, and careers.

Guard it well.

I’ve watched this field change before my eyes. Speaking from my own personal experience, there was no established sport science framework in place when I first arrived. No clear path. It was a blank canvas—both daunting and freeing. And over the years, while working side-by-side with our Women’s Basketball and Volleyball teams, I saw the small ember of curiosity catch and turn into a slow, steady fire. Routine use of force plates came in. So did wearable workload monitoring.

We, including my counterpart working with Men's Basketball, started building better systems for communication, tracking athlete data, and supporting the very needs of the athlete. We weren’t following a trend—we were solving real, daily challenges that were impacting real student-athletes.

And yet, the biggest breakthrough wasn’t some sensor or metric. It was the realization that no system survives long without the right person guiding the machine.

"Leadership—quiet, consistent, aligned leadership—is what builds staying power."

Here’s what athletic departments need to know when hiring someone to lead their sports science and holistic health and performance departments: credentials matter, yes. But context, experience, and culture-building matter more.

Way. More.

Titles are cheap. Anyone can get one. But ask yourself this—has this person ever had to program a training session on a red-eye flight back from the East Coast? Have they juggled post-tournament recovery, midterms, and three different athlete personalities who are all processing burnout differently? Because that’s the real job. And if your candidate hasn’t sat in that kind of tension, you’ll feel it when they start leading—because they won’t be able to anticipate the chaos that always shows up in college sport.

When I started layering sport science principles into our team’s workflow, it wasn’t smooth. We didn’t have a clear roadmap. Some coaches were skeptical. Some athletes were resistant. And none of it was solved with policy and branding. It was solved with presence—by listening to staff frustrations, making small process changes, and working the problems shoulder-to-shoulder with them.

Leadership can’t be faked. You either show up consistently when things go sideways—or you don’t. And the programs that bring in people who’ve lived this work—not just observed it from 10,000 feet—are the ones that start gaining real traction. You don't have to look too far to recognize great programs across the country and the dedication, sacrifice, and work-ethic required to get the engine started.

What looks like innovation from the outside is often just old-school grit applied in smarter ways. Find people who’ve felt that pressure before. They won’t panic when it returns.

You don’t need to scroll LinkedIn to know someone’s worth. You just need to follow the breadcrumbs they left behind. Have they built anything lasting? Did the performance staff that worked under them stay, grow, and get better? Are there systems still in place at their previous stops that carry their fingerprints? If not, you’ve got a figurehead—not a builder.

When we started integrating tech with our Women’s Basketball team, it wasn’t flashy. It was messy. But the work left a mark—our warm-ups got sharper, our recovery windows were tighter, and our communication across departments actually improved. That wasn’t because I dropped in with a script. It was because I listened, made mistakes, course-corrected, and stuck around long enough to see the results unfold season over season.

You want to see progress? Talk to the athletic trainer that worked next to them. Ask the dietitian how that leader handled competing demands. Call the athletes—not the stars, but the walk-ons. That’s where you’ll hear the real truth.

Longevity in this field doesn’t come from charisma. It comes from steady, behind-the-scenes work that gets noticed more in hindsight than in headlines. Vet the trail they left behind. It’ll tell you more than any keynote speech or Twitter thread.

Let’s not sugarcoat it—there’s an obsession with credentials in college athletics. Everyone wants the “most certified” person in the room. And sure, education is great. I’ve learned a ton from textbooks, conferences, and certifications. But no one ever got a broken athlete back to the court using acronyms. They did it by connecting the dots between rehab, load management, team goals, and psychology. That takes experience and leadership.

I’ve sat in meetings where people with every credential under the sun couldn’t get through to their staff because they lacked "people skills". I’ve also worked with practitioners with fewer letters after their name but who knew how to lead with trust, communication, and clarity. I’d pick the latter every time.

Leadership, in this context, looks like:

• Knowing when to back off and when to push.
• Being able to resolve internal conflict without creating silos.
• Understanding how to hold a standard while still supporting autonomy.
• Creating space for younger staff to grow without feeling threatened by their ideas.

And above all, leadership means showing up—early, late, on days when you don’t feel like it—and demonstrating what a cohesive performance environment feels like. That’s something no certification can teach.

If your head of performance can’t manage people, they won’t manage progress. It’s that simple.

Let’s just say it: some of the loudest voices online are the least qualified to lead real people. There’s a massive gap between posting catchy graphics and building effective systems across departments that historically don’t communicate well. Social media is a marketing tool. It’s not a vetting tool.

I’ve seen people with slick online brands fumble their way through internal meetings because they didn’t understand how sport coaches operate, or how to align training plans with competitive calendars, or even how to give feedback without alienating their support staff.

You want someone with reps—not clicks.

Ask Yourself This:

• Have they built internal S&C and Sport Science education systems?
• Did they navigate an athletic director change without letting the department crumble?
• Have they earned trust from sports medicine and strength staff in high-pressure moments?

When you hire someone based solely on their content, you’re rolling the dice on whether they can lead a diverse team across departments, personalities, and priorities. And spoiler alert: most can’t.

Ask better questions. Vet their references with depth. And if possible, spend time in their environment before you hand them the keys to yours.

This part’s personal. At the beginning on my tenure, University of Colorado didn’t hand me a roadmap. We created one, year by year, with Women’s Basketball and Volleyball as our proving ground. We tested jump profiling, refined readiness protocols, and got better at asking “why” before throwing new tools into the mix.

But the throughline? We had leaders—coaches, administrators, support staff—who were willing to put ego aside for the sake of athlete well-being.

That’s what EVERY program deserves.

Leadership in performance isn’t about big ideas. It’s about humble action. It’s about keeping the vision intact even when things aren’t convenient—when two staff members butt heads, when data doesn’t match outcomes, or when a kid’s body starts breaking down under the weight of a long season.

Hire someone who treats their role like a craft, not a career move. Who protects the people doing the work while still pushing for growth. Who doesn’t need applause to keep showing up at 6 a.m. lifts and 8 p.m. debriefs.

Athletes thrive when their environment is consistent, clear, and full of care. That only happens when someone is truly looking out for the whole system—not just their slice of it.

Find that person. Give them support. Then get out of their way.

What works in one athletic department won’t always translate to another. But if you get the people part right—if you hire someone who’s lived this work, learned through mistakes, and grown alongside the athletes they serve—you’re setting the stage for something real to take root.

"There’s no plug-and-play model for building a healthy, high-performing department."

Skip the gimmicks. Pick the one who knows how to build from the ground up, because they’ve done it before. And if you’re lucky enough to find that leader?

Let them do what they do best—quietly, consistently, and with purpose.

Let’s cut to it—if you think being a strength coach in college athletics is just about designing training cycles and yelling “drive your knees!” from the corner of the weight room, you’re already missing the mark. This job isn’t about the sets and reps. It’s about people. It's about staying connected, even when your athletes are halfway across the globe playing professionally. It’s about relationships, reputation, and a ridiculous amount of discipline.

Over the years, coaching at the University of Colorado with Women’s Volleyball and Women’s Basketball has taught me more than any NSCA or CSCCa certification ever could. And after helping dozens of former student-athletes continue training remotely while navigating pro careers in Europe, Asia, and the WNBA, I’ve got a front-row seat to what actually makes a coach successful in this field—and what doesn’t.

Athletes don’t care about your program until they trust you

You can build the most elegant, research-supported, individualized program known to man—complete with RPE scales, progressive overload schemes, and optimal rest periods—but if the people you're coaching don't trust you, it won't land. Trust is the cornerstone of influence in the collegiate setting. And here’s the rub:

it’s earned slowly, over time, through tiny, invisible acts that may not even feel like coaching.

I've had athletes come into the weight room after tough practices or heartbreaking losses, and in those moments, they weren't looking for velocity zones or bar path corrections. They wanted to know I still believed in them. They wanted eye contact, a consistent tone, and some quiet assurance that the world wasn’t ending.

If you’re just pushing programs and not paying attention to their emotional temperature, you’re not coaching—you’re just organizing workouts.

Trust is built when you show you understand their sport, their body, and their story. It’s built when you know the name of the coach they’re scared of, or the class that’s draining their sleep, or the sibling they call when they’re homesick. It's built when you're the same coach on a Tuesday morning lift as you are on a Sunday recovery session. When you do that enough times? They’ll run through a wall for you. But not before.

You want your program to matter? Make sure your athletes know THEY matter.

Reps matter—but your experience matters more

Sure, the science matters. Your ability to coach movement, teach a hinge, or spot faulty scapular control is essential. But in this profession, experience trumps almost everything—especially in the heat of the moment. When you're face-to-face with an athlete who's hitting emotional rock bottom mid-season, all those CEUs you racked up in the off-season won’t mean a thing if you haven’t lived through it a few dozen times. This is a field where pattern recognition matters. And the only way to develop that pattern recognition? Exposure. Repetition. Time.

At Colorado, I've had days where we’ve had three rehabs running, a lift group on the floor, and a coach knocking on the office door to discuss a change in travel logistics—all at the same time. That’s when the reps matter. You develop a gut for what your team needs. You don’t panic when an athlete tweaks something two days before a game; you pivot. You adjust seamlessly, not because you’re guessing, but because you've been there before. You’ve already made those mistakes.

Experience also helps you zoom out. When a young athlete is frustrated because their squat numbers are stalling, you can show them the long arc. You can help them see the gains they don’t feel—better sleep, faster recovery, improved body language in practice. None of that comes from a textbook. It comes from seeing the same movie play out hundreds of times with different athletes. And it only happens when you show up, season after season, fully engaged and fully present.

The iron teaches, no doubt. But the floor teaches more.

Want respect? Earn it from your medical and coaching staffs first

You might be the most dialed-in strength coach in the building, but if you’re not aligned with the athletic trainer, the sport coaches, or the support staff, your impact will always hit a ceiling. Respect in this space isn’t given because of a title—it’s earned when people see you operate under pressure with calm, clarity, and consistency.

When I first started with our Women’s Basketball program, I quickly realized that our success on the performance side wasn’t going to come from the sets and reps alone. It came from establishing real trust with the athletic trainer who’s managing multiple rehabs. It came from syncing calendars with the ops director to ensure travel loads didn’t spike stress levels mid-week. It came from understanding the rhythms of the season so I could anticipate what the coaching staff needed before they had to ask.

Too many strength coaches operate like they’re on an island, frustrated that their input isn’t taken seriously. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: you have to earn that seat at the table. You earn it by over-communicating during preseason. By backing off when you sense a team is emotionally fried. By offering objective data without ego. And by listening first.

When the head sport coach knows you’ll never compromise the athlete's well-being, they start looping you in on bigger decisions. When the athletic trainer knows you're willing to adjust programming for a return-to-play plan without acting territorial, they advocate for you. When you handle conflict like an adult, and not like a weight room cowboy, your voice starts to carry more weight.

You want respect? Then be the kind of professional others want in the foxhole when things get messy. Because they ALWAYS will get messy.

You don’t get to “have a brand"—you earn one

Your brand isn’t your logo. It’s not the color palette on your training app or the clean font you used on your social media. It’s what people whisper about you when you’re not in the room. It’s how your name lands in conversations—whether it comes with a sense of trust or a shoulder shrug.

In collegiate athletics, especially in high-performance settings like at the University of Colorado, your "coaching brand" is how consistently you show up, day after day, year after year. It's how you carry yourself when you walk into a staff meeting or how you handle a surprise conversation with a recruit’s parents on game day. It’s how you react when your programming is questioned or when your lift gets bumped for a last-minute film session.

The reason former players now playing pro ball still come back to me for guidance isn’t because I marketed myself well. It’s because, for their four-to-five straight years, I was there. I asked the hard questions. I gave a damn when it was inconvenient. I showed up when they didn’t want to. And I kept showing up, even when there wasn’t anything glamorous about it.

When people refer you to others, they're not sharing your resume—they're sharing how you made them feel. Whether or not they could count on you. Whether or not you delivered what you said you would. That’s your brand. So if you’re early in your career and wondering how to build it, here’s the secret: don’t build it. Earn it.

Every rep. Every lift. Every meeting. Every moment.

Brand is what you leave behind when you’re not in the room. Make sure it reflects how you show up when you are.

Integrity shows when no one’s watching

Here’s the truth no one posts about: integrity isn’t measured when your program is trending or when your athlete hits a personal record with half the staff watching. It shows up when you’re alone in the facility, making decisions that no one else will ever see. Do you program each session with fresh eyes and attention to detail, or do you copy-paste last season’s spreadsheet because no one will notice? Do you offer your full attention to the athlete who's struggling and showing up late—or do you mentally check out because they're not one of your stars?

Athletes notice. Staff notices. And you better believe that YOUR LEGACY will be shaped by the things you do when there’s no immediate applause. I’ve seen coaches walk past racks without cleaning up, leave interns hanging with no guidance, or toss together rehab plans just to hit the quota for the day. It may not blow up in the moment, but those habits compound—and not in the direction you want.

What speaks volumes isn’t your Instagram reel—it’s whether your interns see you clean up after yourself, whether your athletes see you treat the third-string freshman with the same respect as the starting All-American, and whether you hold your standards when no one’s looking over your shoulder. I've had players reach out years later not because I got them an inch on their vert, but because I remembered their name when they redshirted, or followed up with them during recovery from a tough injury.

You build a reputation of integrity by doing the small things right, even when it’s not convenient. That means responding to the messages you could’ve ignored. That means showing up to early lifts even when your schedule is slammed. That means standing up for the athlete when a decision behind closed doors doesn't sit right with you. You might not win a popularity contest for it—but you’ll earn something more lasting: trust.

In this profession, integrity isn’t a trait—it’s a daily decision. A muscle you flex in the quiet moments. It’s what you do when no one’s watching, but everyone feels the ripple.

The relationship is the secret sauce

Here’s the thing no one tells you early in your career: you can run the most precise, data-informed, high-performance lift in the world—and it still won’t mean a thing if your athletes don’t feel like you care. Connection is what makes your program stick. It's the glue between the science and the sweat.

With Women’s Volleyball, I’ve watched athletes come into the facility carrying everything—tough losses, family stress, lingering injuries. What matters most in those moments isn’t whether their trap bar load moved 0.85 m/s. It’s whether I noticed the slump in their shoulders, asked a follow-up, and adjusted the session based on how they actually felt—not just what the sheet said. That connection doesn’t just make your coaching more human—it makes it more effective.

When your athletes feel seen and safe, they give more. They push harder. They communicate better. And that carries well beyond the season. I still get messages from former student-athletes now playing in the WNBA or overseas, not because they need a program—but because they want to stay connected to someone who believed in them when things were messy, not just when they were winning.

You don’t build that kind of trust with perfectly timed cues or beautiful Excel sheets. You build it by listening deeply. By following up on something small they mentioned a week ago. By staying calm when they fall apart. If your relationship is strong, they’ll lean into discomfort and let you coach them through it. But if the trust isn’t there? Even the best periodized plan falls flat.

Want to know what separates good from great in this field? It’s not the tech. It’s not the templates. It’s whether your athletes know, without a doubt, that you care about them as PEOPLE—not just performers.

Results are table stakes

Let’s be honest—no one is hiring you JUST to get results. Results are assumed. They’re the cover charge. If you’re working in collegiate athletics, it’s expected that you know how to program for strength, power, speed, and resilience. It’s expected that you’ll help your athletes improve their vertical, decrease injury risk, and maybe even shave a tenth off their ¾ court sprint.

That’s not impressive anymore. It’s the bare minimum.

What separates real coaches from program writers is how they deliver those results—and how those results sustain under stress. The real game is in keeping a freshman upright in her first full spring after redshirting. It’s in making sure your starters don’t crash and burn in March when the tournament games stack up and sleep gets sacrificed. It’s knowing how to subtly taper loads during an emotionally exhausting finals week—not because anyone told you to, but because you’re paying attention.

At Colorado, our Women’s Basketball team has had some deep post-season runs. That’s when your programming chops are tested. Can your athletes stay fresh? Can they still move the bar with intent? Can they trust that you’re guiding them with long-term durability in mind, not just today’s performance? These aren’t questions answered in a training block.

They’re answered over seasons. Years. Careers...

That’s why the pros I coach remotely still reach out. Because they know I don’t just build plans—I build continuity. I track patterns. I make adjustments based on the real human in front of me, not just the athlete on the screen. Results? We’ve got those. But what I’m more proud of is helping women stay healthy and empowered long after their college eligibility ends.

Results are table stakes. Excellence is how you deliver them under pressure, over time, with a personal touch.

Stop cherry-picking athletes

One of the biggest pitfalls I’ve seen in strength and conditioning is coaches who only showcase and work with the “shiny” athletes—the ones who respond perfectly to training, never miss a session, and make programming look effortless. Sure, those highlight reels and social media posts catch eyes, but here’s the kicker: real growth happens when you tackle the tough cases.

At Colorado, I’ve worked with athletes who bring more than just talent to the table—they bring complexity. Maybe it’s a volleyball player managing chronic hip pain, or a basketball player battling mental fatigue during a brutal exam week.

Those situations force you to problem-solve creatively, dig deep into movement assessments, and sometimes rewrite your playbook entirely.

That’s where coaching becomes an art, not just a science.

If you only stick to “easy” athletes who check all the boxes, you’re robbing yourself of crucial experience. How do you learn to spot a subtle movement compensation if you’ve never coached an athlete with a history of multiple injuries? How do you develop empathy and patience if you never meet a player struggling to juggle academics, family, and sport?

I’ve had athletes come to me after bouncing around other programs without progress. Some were dismissed as “hard cases,” but with tailored care and persistence, they’ve gone on to compete at professional levels overseas or in the WNBA. Those stories are a testament to what happens when you commit to every athlete’s journey, not just the ones who fit a perfect mold.

And let’s be honest—those “easy” athletes often have genetics or external support systems giving them an edge. But when the lights get bright and the grind intensifies, it’s the resilient, well-managed athletes who stick around and perform consistently. That kind of resilience? You cultivate it when you’re willing to get your hands dirty with the hard cases.

So, if you want to grow as a coach—and truly make a difference—stop cherry-picking. Lean into the messy, complicated challenges. Your future self (and your athletes) will thank you.

Every text, every session, every moment matters

In this line of work, small moments add up to big impressions. Whether you’re responding to a quick question from a current collegiate athlete juggling classes and practices or checking in on a former player training thousands of miles away, your responsiveness speaks volumes about your commitment. I've answered questions from athletes waiting in airport lounges, tapped out detailed feedback while on the road, and jumped on video calls late at night—all because I know those little touchpoints build trust and show that I’m present, no matter the time zone or circumstance.

A "departmental rebrand" wouldn't ever sacrifice what it takes to deliver that level of trust. That's a WHOLE different investment in the Athlete's experience.

Here’s the thing—consistency in communication isn’t just about being polite; it’s about showing your athletes they’re valued beyond their PRs or game stats. If you leave messages hanging or delay critical feedback, it can shake their confidence in the program and, by extension, in you as a coach. And trust me, in a profession where trust is everything, that kind of breakdown can be costly.

I remember an instance with a former volleyball player now overseas who sent a late-night text about tweaking her nutrition after a tough match. My timely response helped her adjust her recovery strategy immediately, and that small moment made a huge difference in her training week. Moments like that—when an athlete feels heard and cared for—can cement loyalty for years.

On the flip side, if you treat these moments as interruptions or nuisances, your athletes will sense it. They’ll pick up on the tone, the delay, the lack of follow-through. Money shouldn’t be your only motivation here. If it is, you’re in the wrong game. The best coaches I’ve known are those who care deeply about every interaction, big or small, because they understand that it’s these micro-commitments that create lasting impact.

So, if you want to be the kind of coach athletes respect and want to follow—even when you’re not in the same room—start by mastering the little things. Show up in every text, every session, every moment.

Know what you’re worth, but earn it every day

Pricing yourself isn’t just a numbers game—it’s a reflection of the value you consistently deliver. In collegiate strength and conditioning, your worth isn’t determined by a rate card or a fancy title; it’s earned in sweat equity, the late nights reviewing data, and the quiet moments supporting athletes through setbacks.

When I started working with former student-athletes who transitioned to pro careers overseas or in the WNBA, one thing became crystal clear: they keep coming back—not because of a price, but because they trust me to guide them through uncharted territory.

Remote coaching isn’t just about sending programs; it’s about providing ongoing accountability, individualized adjustments, and emotional support from hundreds or thousands of miles away. That kind of service demands dedication, expertise, and yes, it deserves to be compensated fairly.

But here’s the tricky part—charging what you’re worth means being brutally honest with yourself. Are you truly delivering beyond cookie-cutter plans? Are you showing up with more than just knowledge—are you bringing empathy, insight, and a genuine investment in each athlete’s journey? If the answer is yes, then stand firm in your value. If not, then keep grinding, keep learning, and keep refining until your price matches your impact.

One thing I’ve learned through my years at University of Colorado and remote coaching is that athletes won’t argue about your fees when they’re confident in your service. They’ll gladly pay for a coach who knows their story, understands their struggles, and adapts programming with precision and care. But if you undervalue yourself, you risk attracting the wrong kind of client—those shopping for the cheapest option rather than a true partner in performance.

So, find your worth, but remember—it’s not a static number. It’s a daily pledge to be better, smarter, more present. It’s earning respect with every session and every message. It’s showing up when others don’t.

Price is just a number. Your true worth is the trust and results you build over time.

Welcome to an in‑depth exploration of how evening screen use affects athletes—especially women’s basketball players—by disrupting sleep, HRV, hormones, and recovery.

In this deep dive, I break down hard science and practical strategies you can use tonight to preserve performance. Ideal for strength coaches, sport scientists, high‑performance practitioners, and serious athletes.

🌙 Introduction

In this section, we overview how devices—phones, tablets, laptops—though vital for film, academics, and team communication, can disrupt sleep architecture, heart‑rate variability (HRV), hormonal patterns, and ultimately, athletic output.

📱 Effects of Evening Screen Time

Here we cover the core impacts: blue light delaying melatonin, fragmented deep sleep, decreased HRV, suppressed growth hormone release, elevated evening cortisol, and disrupted insulin-metabolic cycles—resulting in lower reaction time, delayed athletic decision-making, and suboptimal recovery. I share real athlete case studies showing restored HRV, faster wind-down, and sharper game reaction times after adjusting screen use.

🧬 Hormonal Disruption

Explore the science behind melatonin suppression and cascading hormonal effects. Nighttime screen exposure delays melatonin, keeps cortisol elevated, shrinks growth hormone spikes, and shifts insulin sensitivity. These disruptions impair tissue repair, immune recovery, mood regulation, and energy metabolism—undermining physical and mental performance.

🛠 Strategies to Mitigate Device Usage

We don’t ban screens—we work with them smartly. Learn how to employ blue-light blocking glasses, device screen dimming, red-shift filters, and structured screen-free buffer time. I explain optmask use habits, timing, and light exposure studies. Includes case runs with teams adopting “paper review nights” and travel-specific protocols that improve sleep efficiency on the road.

😎 Blue‑Light Blocking Glasses

Dive deep into why spectral lenses filter below 530 nm, syncing sleep cycles. You’ll get timing tips—90‑120 minutes pre‑bed—and coaching protocols for team compliance. Hear anecdotal improvements in sleep inertia, HRV peaks, and sleepy travel lows. These glasses provide built-in accountability and a psychological cue to wind down.

🌗 Night Shift & Screen Dimming

Learn device‑level tactics—Night Shift (iOS), Night Light (Android), and apps like f.lux. We break down ideal color‑temperature shifts under 3,000 K, automatic scheduling, and multi-layer effectiveness when combined with glasses. Once teams adopt these simple settings, they report lower alertness at bedtime and easier wind-down transitions.

📖 Non‑Screen Wind‑Down Habits

Explore human-centered habits: paper reading, notebook journaling, relaxation breathing, light mobility, or meditative routines before screens ignite detection. I'll give examples of squads who replaced late-night device use with journaling or quiet conversations, leading to improved mood and team dynamic in morning meetings.

💊 Supplement Stack for Sleep

We cover nighttime supplementation with evidence: Magnesium Glycinate (muscle relaxation), Glycine (modulates core body temp & sleep cycles), L‑Theanine (GABAergic calm), and Apigenin (mild anxiolytic). Learn dosages, timings, and interactions—especially around device usage—to support melatonin pathways and parasympathetic tone.

🔗 Resources mentioned:

Roka x Huberman Wind‑Down shades
f.lux (cross‑platform blue-light filter)
Apple Night Shift / Android Night Light
Portal supplement stack: Magnesium Glycinate, Glycine, L‑Theanine, Apigenin

It's Show-Time...

🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿

📚 Why This Video Matters

This is a rare resource where high‑performance recovery meets practical habit design. Instead of catch-all advice, we layer interventions grounded in physiology, behavior design, and coachability. Perfect for professional teams, sport scientists, and athletes who care about details that compound to peak performance.

🙏 Like the video?

• Give it a thumbs up and share it with your team or coach.
• Subscribe and click the bell to stay updated on recovery programming, performance tech, and athlete wellness.
• Join the discussion in comments—what strategy has worked for you under travel fatigue?

Tendon pain? Rehab plateauing? Still loading eccentrically like it’s 2005? This video is for you.

In this long-form deep dive, we’re breaking down everything you need to know about tendon and ligament rehabilitation—from the science of load timing to why your collagen protocol might be missing the mark. Whether you're working with elite basketball athletes or managing chronic tendon stress in a weight room setting, this is the video you’ll want bookmarked and referenced repeatedly.

Topics Covered in This Video:

🧵 The Real Architecture of Tendons
● Collagen types, orientation, and what makes tendons strong
● What stress shielding is, and why it changes how tendons adapt to load

⏱️ Timing Matters: Understanding Tendon Refractoriness
● Why Keith Barr’s research shifted how we think about load spacing
● The 6-hour window for optimal collagen remodeling
● What happens when we overload too soon—or not at all

🦵 Isometrics vs. Eccentrics: What the Research Says
● Why isometrics may outperform eccentrics in tendon healing phases
● How load velocity matters more than you think
● Practical strategies for choosing protocols based on stage of injury

⛓️ Stress Shielding and Tendon Load Distribution
● What happens when some parts of the tendon don’t share the load
● Why improper loading can increase injury risk
● Movement variability and why it’s not just fluff

🧪 Collagen Supplementation and Vitamin C
● The timing of collagen intake for tendon remodeling
● What dosages are being used in real protocols
● Why gelatin may actually matter

💊 Estrogen and Tendon Stiffness in Female Athletes
● How hormone fluctuations can impact tendon resilience
● ACL injury implications and what we can do about it
● Strength training strategies to buffer hormonal softening of tissue

📋 Sample Tendon Training Protocols
● 10–30 second isometric holds: where and when they matter
● Protocol variations based on pathology and pain status
● Example week of tendon loading post-injury

👀 Who Is This Video For?
Strength & Conditioning Coaches
Athletic Trainers and Rehab Professionals
Physical Therapists
Sport Scientists
Collegiate Performance Staff
Athletes recovering from chronic tendon issues

If you're tired of blanket eccentric-only recommendations or need to sharpen how you load tissue under fatigue, this video gives you the nuance—and practicality—you’ve been looking for.

🧠 References & Credits:
Dr. Keith Barr (UC Davis tendon research)
Real-world protocol application from elite-level basketball rehab programs
Clinical best practices across elite sport and return-to-play models

📈 Keywords for Search:
Tendon rehab, Keith Barr tendon research, eccentric vs isometric loading, stress shielding tendons, collagen supplementation for tendons, vitamin C for tendon healing, estrogen ACL risk, tendon stiffness women, ligament rehab basketball, sports performance tissue loading, tendon pain recovery tips, long-form sports science tendon loading

💬 Comment below with how you're currently structuring tendon rehab protocols—or questions you’ve had about collagen, timing, and performance outcomes.

📩 Subscribe + hit the notification bell so you don’t miss the next long-form sport science breakdown.

Have you ever watched an athlete grunt under a heavy clean or push their limits on a prowler sled? There’s definitely some grit and perseverance in their face — determination that's palpably noticeable in their every action. Yet, here’s the article twist: the hardest weight to lift sometimes isn’t the barbell. It’s the mirror—seeing yourself, personal flaws and all.

You know what? Being self-aware as a leader of your strength and conditioning program isn't just necessary, it's essential to career longevity. You’re not just heaving weights or designing training programs—you’re shaping young people, personal and professional lives, and driving team culture. And that means getting real about yourself—your ego, your blindspots, your emotional ticks. The funny thing is, we often think we’re more self-aware than we are. Ooof.

Having introspective personal practices and social self-awareness really matter at every work place – maybe even moreso working with young people. But let me explain: in NCAA sports, this matters even more. It’s not just about feeling competent in the working environment. It’s about performance under pressure, camaraderie in training, trust in your voice—and sometimes, survival in the cut‑throat world of college athletics.

I’ve spent years inside the trenches—basketball courts, weight rooms, competition arenas—seeing athletes at their strongest and most vulnerable moments. Their grit reveals yours. Their candor exposes yours. And believe me: the moment a coach really starts asking, “What do THEY see in me?” — that's when things get interesting. And honestly? It’s often uncomfortable. But uncomfortable can be good.

So here’s where we’re headed: down the rabbit hole of self-awareness as a strength & conditioning coach. We'll unmask the myths, surface the mechanics, walk through real tools (think athlete load‑tracking, feedback loops, self‑trait inventories), and highlight moments when humility fuels elite performance.

Let's get it!!

1. Self-Awareness 101 for Coaches

First thing: this article splits the concept nicely into two types. We’ll call them introspective self‑awareness (knowing your own emotions, thoughts, tendencies) and social self‑awareness (understanding how others perceive you). Both are incredibly important—you can’t scrap by on one alone—especially in collegiate athletics or coaching in general.

A) Introspective Self-Awareness

This is like good form on a back squat. You need consistency and honest checkpoints. What triggers you—stress after film? Annoyance when someone skips a non-mandatory recovery session? Maybe you’ve caught yourself snapping after a long practice. These are your emotional markers. Spotting them, labeling them, and understanding them, helps you manage them—before they escalate into tension with athletes or staff.

B) Social Self-Awareness

This one's trickier. It’s the “Do they trust me?” question clear as a scoreboard. How do athletes see you? Are they resisting your cues because they think you don’t care? Are assistant coaches holding back insights during coaches meetings? Their body language and tone tell a story—if you’re watching. People are often stressed that we often think we’re inspiring trust—but fail to realize our own blindspots.

Think of social self-awareness as your relational radar. And if the radar’s off, you’re steering blind, crossing the meridian, heading into oncoming traffic.

2. Why We (Coaches and Athletes) Get This Wrong

Let’s be REALLY real—everyone usually thinks they’re more aware than they actually are. That’s the “illusory superiority bias.” It's human nature. Add ego and pressure, and let's be more honest – a somewhat narcissistic personality that often leads people into coaching – and self-awareness becomes a casualty.

A) Overconfidence Bias

How often have you drawn on your years of coaching experience and thought, “I’ve got this.” Then two weeks later, the training plan’s off—feelings are bruised, performance dips, trust wavers. Happens all the time, right? When you’re sure you’re clear—and you’re not. Athletes might nod, but their actions tell a different story.

B) Ego as a Barrier

Self-awareness isn’t about ego-surfing in the mirror. It’s about breaking it open. If you’re too proud to admit, “Maybe I’m too harsh,” or “I could switch how I explain tempo,” you're missing out. Pride clouds judgment. In the pace of where we're at now, navigating NIL, House v. NCAA, and the pressure-cooker environment of high performance sport—you need clarity, not ego.

C) Real-World Coaching Examples

Take Ella, a top recruit who never shies from feedback—except from the Coach. Turns out, every time she gives critique, she tenses up, changes tone. Athletes felt it. She started shutting down mid-season—and you can guess how that ended.

Or think of support staffers flipping into boss-mode in staff meetings, inadvertently shutting down assistant ideas. Underlying issue? Maybe she thought the team was inspired—but staff felt steamrolled. I mean, who’d guess humility could be a performance enhancer?

3. Hacks for Self-Awareness in D1 Coaching

There are actual real-world tactical steps we can take. While they're not always easy, they’re here to keep you honest. Because guess what—coaching gets messy, and perception shifts day-to-day. These are your checkpoints you can refer back to.

A) Self-Assessment Meets Peer Calibration

Grab a blank page. Self-trait list: “I’m supportive,” “I demand excellence,” “I panic under pressure,” etc. Then test it—ask two or three staff or players to jot down what they see in you. Surprise: the traits rarely match up. If you think your tone’s calm, and they say you snap—that’s gold. You can’t change what you won’t see.

B) Let the Data Speak

You already collect workload data, heart-rate metrics, and readiness scores. But what if you flipped the data on yourself? Record post-practice tone: how often you're redirected mid-session because athletes misheard cues? How long it takes for athletes to respond to corrections? That’s data on your delivery.

Metrics don’t lie—they reveal coaching blindspots.

C) Ask for Specific Feedback (Not “Am I good?”)

This is huge. General questions bounce back vague responses. Instead, shoot “When I asked Sam for a clean variation today—how could I have phrased it better?” Or “I noticed some athletes looked hesitant. Did I over-explain?” You’re training your social self-awareness muscle—slowly, deliberately.

D) Observe Behavioral Reactions, Not Just Words

Listen to what people say, but watch what they do. Their body language, tone, energy. When you ask for an exercise demo, do they mirror your actions? Or hesitate? Did breathing patterns shift? That split-second pause—they’re saying something. We just have to be aware enough to listen.

4. The Ego Trap in NCAA Coaching

Look around at NCAA settings: it’s intense. High stakes recruiting, public scrutiny, endless comparing—both internal & external. It’s a perfect storm for ego. And egos can sink ships.

But here’s the thing: successful programs that thrive are the ones that embrace doubt. They have cultures built on transparent communication, consistent tone-checking, and mutual accountability. Not “my way or the highway.” It’s “hey, maybe I need to revisit my approach here.” It's INSANELY colloborative.

I remember a season when we hired a younger coach—rock-solid credentials. But she came in guns blazing: volume high, corrections nonstop. Energy was fiery—but athletes started checking out. We got feedback: “Feels like she's preaching, not teaching.” That’s social self-awareness failing. We slowed the tempo, asked her to adjust tone, and within a few weeks the sessions felt more collaborative—and performance rose. The humility shift was subtle, but massive.

Elite programs? They talk about culture—because they get it. They get it because they audit themselves. They ask, “How did we do today” more than “How did I do today?” It’s collective social self-awareness. And it pays off—in trust, buy-in, results.

5. Tangential Reflections (But Totally Relevant, I Promise)

Bear with me—they connect back.

A) Seasonal Parallels in Training

Just like you progress through GPP to SPP to peaking, your self-awareness needs cycles. Build baseline insight (GPP), apply feedback loops and data to your own coaching (SPP), then refine at peak season intensity. Want to keep growing? Repeat that cycle. No one’s “arrived.”

B) Tools & Technology

There’s 360 feedback platforms—Qualtric Surveys, TypeForm, even free Google Forms. There’s wearable load monitoring, think Catapult Sports and Kinexon Sports, with automated metric summaries—why not mirror that for your voice? For example, use mood-tracking apps. Gamify self-checks: “Rate your tone today, Coach.” I personally have a Moleskin on my office desk that I try to write a simple "5 Minute Journal Calibration" every day.

C) Locker-Room Emotional Cues

Here’s where it can get real. Emotional cues are in the locker room—the post-practice banter, reflections after a tough weight room session, the way athletes share or shut down. You can see your impact in those moments. If they’re wary to joke, or voice concerns, that’s intel. Social awareness is alive there. And if you’re not tuned in—you risk losing micro-trust that builds seasons.

6. Court Talk: Translating Self-Aware Coaching to Wins on the Basketball Court

Let’s get hyper practical: self-awareness isn’t abstract. It’s linked to performance. How? Because trust, clarity, consistency—they impact everything from technique to fatigue to retention. It's the glue that keeps great teams – together.

Picture this: you’ve noticed spikes in muscle soreness and dips in reported recovery. Instead of assuming it's your load plan, you ask bluntly, “Does my coaching feel demanding right now?” Athlete responses: “Umm, yeah—sometimes.” From there, adjustments: tone-change, session flow tweak, maybe added recovery blocks. The result? Recovery scores rise. Trust holds. Athletes push harder. Performance uplifts—all from insight and adjustment.

Or another: Assistant says during staff review, “When you do redirect in front of the team—it can feel embarrassing.” That ping hits you fast. You shift to private feedback or sandwich it with affirmation. Staff stays engaged. Team cohesion improves. That ripple builds trust—and maybe gets you that road-game win.

7. Checkpoints, That Human Imperfection, and Why You’ll Mess Up—and That’s Okay

Here’s some truth, no coach is perfect. Actually, perfection blocks growth. You’ll fall into traps—harsh tone after burnout, forgetting to ask for feedback, letting ego drive day one drills and sessions.

The point isn’t to stop messing up. It’s to catch yourself, re‑adjust, and roll forward.

Let me illustrate this in a way. Last winter, I ate stress on a heavy travel week—sessions got rushed, feedback clipped. One athlete pulled me aside: “You seemed off Coach." Boom. That simple statement—social self-awareness slam dunk. It forced me to ask for context. Turns out, I was rushing things to get the team down to the trainer for necessary treatment and medical care. The result of this tempo-rushing was that it was seen as if I was agitated. I thought about it, I apologized, paused, rewound. Sessions regained rhythm. And next sessions and games? Athletes were more engaged, communication smoother, bodies more responsive.

All because I saw the mirror.

That’s humility + adaptability in action.

The Weight That Matters Most

So here’s the final rep of this article. Self-awareness for college strength & conditioning coaches isn’t a fluffy 'nice to have' concept, theory, or optional. It’s essential to longevity in this field. It's as critical as periodization plans, recovery protocols, or principle-based strength programming.

It’s the invisible glue. It’s understanding why athletes hesitate on your cue. Why staff seem underwhelmed. Why culture feels good—or doesn’t. It’s the glue that binds your cues, your tone, and the athlete’s buy‑in into performance.

Let me wrap this up simply. THIS build honest self-insight. You can test it against others. You can measure your impact. You'll have the ability to course-correct constantly. And when you keep repeating this process—season after season, the personal growth is astounding. The overall result? A coaching edge that doesn’t show up on paper, but feels loud in the weight room, in practice flow, in athlete trust.

And trust? That’s often the thin line between good and great.

We all coach in an environment that demands excellence—and resilience, adaptability, emotional intelligence. Being self-aware isn’t a soft skill. It’s a performance lever, a culture-builder, a relational foundation.

And really? It’s how you coach wins—not only seasons.

So, are you ready to stare that mirror down?

Maximize your well-being during air travel with these expert-backed strategies. In this video, we delve into practical tips to enhance your comfort and health on flights, including:

💎 Blue Light Blocking Glasses:
Maintain your circadian rhythm and improve sleep quality.

💎 Hydration & Electrolyte Balance:
Combat dehydration and altitude effects.

💎 Immune System Support:
Utilize supplements to stay healthy during travel.

💎Activating the Parasympathetic Nervous System:
Reduce stress and promote relaxation.

💎 Passive Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) Training:
Enhance circulation during flights and airport waits.

Key Takeaways:

🔹Implementing these strategies can lead to a more comfortable and health-conscious travel experience.

🔹Simple adjustments, such as wearing blue light blocking glasses or staying hydrated, can make a significant difference.

🔹Incorporating light exercises and relaxation techniques can further enhance your well-being during flights.

In this video, I go deep into the technical guts of data architecture for athlete management systems — breaking down what data warehouses, data lakes, and data lakehouses are, and why it all matters for elite sport performance environments.

🎯 Whether you're a sport scientist, data engineer, or just a performance nerd with a love for SQL, this session walks you through not just the theory — but how architecture choices impact the way performance data is stored, queried, visualized, and turned into insight.

🔍 What’s Covered in This Video:
✅ Data Lakes vs. Warehouses vs. Lakehouses
— Definitions, core differences, strengths, and tradeoffs
— Schema-on-read vs. schema-on-write
— Programming patterns and tooling (SQL, Python, Apache Spark, Delta Lake, etc.)

✅ Real-World Application to Athlete Management Systems (AMS):
— How AMS platforms like Smartabase (Teamworks), Kitman Labs, Edge10, and Apollo structure and process athlete data
— What architecture they likely use (data lake, warehouse, or lakehouse)

✅ Commercial Platforms vs. Custom Builds:
— When it makes sense to buy vs. build
— Cost, scalability, flexibility, security, and support considerations
— Tech stacks, system integration, and maintaining infrastructure

✅ Tech Deep Dive for Data Pros:
— SQL-based modeling vs. raw ingestion pipelines
— ACID compliance in athletic data contexts
— Managing performance, health, GPS, wellness, and biometric data across different storage layers

🧠 Who Is This For?
— Sport scientists and high-performance staff building their own data pipelines
— Data engineers working in elite sport or health analytics
— Directors of performance evaluating AMS vendors
— Anyone fluent in data architecture, SQL, or sports technology

📈 Tools, Systems & Languages Mentioned:
— Smartabase, Kitman Labs, Edge10, Apollo (as AMS examples)
— Power BI, Tableau, Python, SQL, Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake
— Data lakehouse platforms like Databricks and Snowflake

👉 If you’re deciding how to build or buy an AMS, architecting your next data stack, or just want to geek out on sport-specific infrastructure decisions — this one’s for you.

💬 Drop your thoughts or questions in the comments. Let’s talk architecture, latency, data normalization, and athlete availability metrics.

🔔 Like + subscribe for more tech + sport science breakdowns like this.

No, it's not just based on feel—but on real data?

In this video, we break down RSI-modified, a key fatigue and readiness metric from Vald Performance’s ForceDecks. You’ll learn:

💎 What RSI-mod actually means
💎 How to interpret jump height and contraction time separately
💎 Why RSI-mod is so important in women’s basketball
💎 What to watch for when numbers go up or down
💎 How ForceDecks gives you real-time feedback that matters

This isn’t just a number. It’s insight into how your athletes are moving—and what kind of strategy their nervous system is using to get through a jump.

📊 RSI-mod = Jump Height ÷ Contraction Time
🎯 Use it to train smarter, not just harder.