#153 Bill Bowerman (Nike)

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Nov 12, 2020

Discover the fascinating coaching philosophy of Bill Bowerman, where stress and recovery are vital for athlete development. His innovative training methods revolutionized the running culture in America and laid the groundwork for Nike. Delve into the tumultuous beginnings of the brand, highlighting the challenges faced by its founders. Bowerman’s relentless pursuit of excellence not only transformed athletes but also the sneaker industry, leaving an enduring legacy reflected in iconic campaigns like 'Just Do It'.

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ADVICE

Training Philosophy

Prioritize stress, recovery, and improvement in training.
Avoid overtraining, maintain balance in life, and seek guidance.

INSIGHT

Gaining Attention

Getting someone's attention is crucial before teaching them.
Bowerman used the "mule skinner" parable to illustrate this principle.

INSIGHT

Recovery Focus

Bowerman prioritized recovery as much as training, decades ahead of his time.
He emphasized rest and recovery, challenging conventional wisdom.

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Bowerman and the Men of Oregon

Kenny Moore

This book by Kenny Moore tells the story of Bill Bowerman, a renowned track coach who transformed the University of Oregon into a running powerhouse and co-founded Nike. It explores Bowerman's coaching career, his relationship with athletes like Steve Prefontaine, and his role in shaping Nike. The book also delves into historical events such as the 1972 Munich Olympics and the evolution of running coaching.

Jogging

William J. Bowerman

Written by William J. Bowerman, 'Jogging' is a seminal work that introduced the concept of jogging as a beneficial form of exercise for the general public. The book, which became an international bestseller, was based on Bowerman's experiences and studies, including his work with cardiologist Waldo Harris. It provided various jogging plans tailored to different physical levels and helped ignite a global boom in physical fitness and running. Bowerman's initiative in promoting jogging transformed the way people approached exercise and contributed significantly to the development of modern running culture[1][5].

The fish that ate the whale

The Life and Times of America's Banana King

Rich Cohen

This book tells the fascinating story of Samuel Zemurray, who started as a roadside banana peddler and eventually built a sprawling empire involving banana cowboys, mercenary soldiers, Honduran peasants, CIA agents, and American statesmen. Rich Cohen's narrative explores Zemurray's rise to power, his involvement in overthrowing Central American governments, and his complex role in American history. The book delves into Zemurray's personal life, his business exploits, and the moral implications of his actions, painting a nuanced portrait of a man driven by an indomitable will to succeed.

Sneaker Wars

Barbara Smit

Sneaker Wars by Barbara Smit explores the dramatic story of Adolf and Rudolf Dassler, brothers who founded Adidas and Puma respectively, after a bitter feud. The book delves into how their rivalry transformed the sports business, introducing high-stakes deals and endorsements. It also touches on the rise of other sports brands like Nike and Reebok, highlighting the intersection of sports, business, and family drama.

Shoe Dog

Phil Knight

Shoe Dog is a memoir that chronicles the journey of Phil Knight as he builds Nike from its humble beginnings as Blue Ribbon Sports. The book is a personal and detailed account of Knight's experiences, from his early days selling Japanese running shoes out of the trunk of his car to the global brand Nike is today. It highlights his relentless work ethic, the challenges he faced, and the key relationships with his partners and employees that were crucial to the company's success. The memoir also touches on Knight's personal life, including his family and the emotional struggles he encountered along the way[1][3][4].

What I learned from reading Bowerman and the Men of Oregon: The Story of Oregon's Legendary Coach and Nike's Cofounder by Kenny Moore.

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[0:01] Take a primitive organism, any weak, pitiful organism. Say a freshman. Make it lift, or jump or run. Let it rest. What happens? A little miracle. It gets a little better. It gets a little stronger or faster or more enduring. That's all training is. Stress. Recover. Improve. You would think any damn fool could do it, but you won't.

[0:25] You work too hard and you rest too little and get hurt.

[1:38] You cannot just tell somebody what’s good for him. He won’t listen. He will not listen. First, you have to get his attention.

[4:14] From the book Shoe Dog. Phil Knight on Bowerman: I look back over the decades and see him toiling in his workshop, Mrs. Bowerman carefully helping, and I get goosebumps. He was Edison in Menlo Park, Da Vinci in Florence, Tesla in Wardenclyffe. Divinely inspired. I wonder if he knew, if he had any clue, that he was the Daedalus of sneakers, that he was making history, remaking an industry, transforming the way athletes would run and stop and jump for generations. I wonder if he could conceive at that moment all that he'd done. All that would follow. I know I couldn't.

[8:02] Are you in this simply to do mindless labor or do you want to improve? You can’t improve if you’re always sick or injured.

[9:17] Bowerman was decades ahead of putting just as much of an importance on your recovery as you do on your training.

[12:11] In theory, as a coach, he should have been as interested in motivating the lazy as in mellowing the mad, but he wasn’t. “I’m sorry I can’t make them switch brains,” he said. But I can’t.” That left him free to be absorbed by the eager.

[17:00] One of the things that makes him so interesting is that he was willing to think from first principles. If he arrived at different collusion he thought was right it didn't matter if 90% of the people in his field were doing it another way.

[17:21] Bowerman understood that paradox—the need for both abandoned effort and ironclad control.

[18:47] He spent long hours in contented silence, solving a huge range of problems, and he was brutally eloquent when dissecting others’ psyches. Yet he kept the process of himself to himself.

[20:42] In his approach to the world, he would take stock, give nothing away, circle to different vantage points, and keep an eye out for a sign of something he might exploit.

[28:27] “Because of what he taught,” Bowerman would say, “I went from one of the slowest players to the second fastest. . . I learned from the master.”

[30:40] Bill Hayward was Bill Bowerman’s blueprint: He took from his scrapbook a photograph of Hayward. He had it framed behind glass, to preserve what Hayward had written on it: “Live each day so you can look a man square in the eye and tell him to go to hell!”

[32:29] Celebrate optimum rather than maximum.

[33:23] He killed a 7-foot rattlesnake with a clipboard.

[38:12] If you ask where Nike came from, I would say it came from a kid who had that world-class shock administered at age seventeen by Bill Bowerman. Not simply the shock, but the way to respond. He attached such honor to not giving up, to doing my utmost. Most kids didn’t have that adjustment of standards, that introduction to true reality.

[47:05] They shook hands on a partnership. Bill would test and design the shoes. Buck [Phil Knight] would run the company.

[47:40] Bowerman knew Knight would give the new venture the ceaselessness of a runner.

[49:45] Bowerman’s response to other coaches: “As a coach, my heart is always divided between pity for the men they wreck and scorn for how easy they are to beat.”

[53:13] “I don’t believe in chewing on athletes,” he once said. “People are out there to do their best. If you growl at them and they’re not tigers, they’ll collapse. Or they’ll try to make like a tiger. But the tigers are tigers. All you have to do is cool them down a little bit so they don’t make some dumb mistake.” His view was that intelligent men will be taught more by the vicissitudes of life than by a host of artificial training rules.

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