NSCA’s Coaching Podcast

Ryan Metzger, Senior Assistant Strength and Conditioning Coach for Clemson University, talks to the NSCA Coaching Program Manager, Eric McMahon, about their internship program going virtual amidst the pandemic to provide young strength coaches the education they need to grow despite the lack of in-person training. Topics of discussion also include early sport specialization and burnout, as well as being a role model for female athletes. Find Ryan on Instagram: @clemsonolystrength or @coach_metz | Find Eric on Instagram: @ericmcmahoncscs or Twitter: @ericmcmahoncscsShow Notes“An intern at Clemson, our program is going to be very demanding. We expect a lot out of our interns, not only time commitment on the floor, working with athletes, but what we're asking them to do outside of the weight room and outside of time with us.” 19:02 “So as a strength coach, you're not just someone barking at somebody or counting reps or whatever it is. It goes beyond that. You're often a teacher and a leader to your athletes…” 28:05 “Athletes are people, and they have real challenges, concerns, problems, good days, bad days. So are the coaches. So there's always that overlap. There's always that conversation, and you know, it's sort of that triage.” 35:20 “There's so many times that your conversations with your athletes are going to go beyond “All right, you've got another set coming up”. So like you said, just thinking holistically of the person first before the athlete.” 36:10

Kelly Dormandy, Assistant Athletics Director for Sports Performance at Loyola Marymount University and Head Strength Coach for the Los Angeles Sparks Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) team, talks to the NSCA Coaching Program Manager, Eric McMahon, about championship culture. Topics under discussion include constantly seeking new challenges, training WNBA athletes, and being proactive about networking in the field. Find Kelly on Instagram: @kdormandy | Find Eric on Instagram: @ericmcmahoncscs or Twitter: @ericmcmahoncscsShow Notes“And you have to be somebody that wants to bring the best out in other people. And I think that's when you truly realize how gratifying this field is.” 6:49 “And at the end of the day, you've got to have an unwavering determination and drive and resiliency to make it in this field.” 19:03 “I believe it's my responsibility to put them in a position to believe in themselves and believe that they're fully capable of accomplishing whatever it is that they want in life, whether it's winning national championships, conference championships as a collegiate athlete.” 20:19 “I think the biggest key is being a lifelong learner in this field, being hungry and being willing to learn from people that are in places that you haven't been, but that you aspire to be in.” 33:06

Brice Long, Director of Human Performance Experience at O2X, talks to the NSCA Coaching Program Manager, Eric McMahon, about O2X’s holistic approach for fire, police, military, and federal agencies. Topics under discussion include the value of training as a firefighter, physical tests and assessments in the National Guard, and being diverse in your skill sets as a coach. Find Brice on Instagram: @o2xhumanperformance or Twitter: @o2xhp | Find Eric on Instagram: @ericmcmahoncscs or Twitter: @ericmcmahoncscsShow Notes“Athletes, even athletes that have long careers don't even come close to the continued operational demands of someone in the public safety profession. Most fire departments, 25, 30 years before someone retires, so that's a lot of abuse, and a lot of changes happen to the human body through that time, and there's a lot of time to make mistakes.” 4:46 “You've got to pick up a 210-pound firefighter that's covered in soaking wet gear up to your chest to get him or her out of a window. That's a big lift that needs to happen really fast.” 8:28 “If you're going to be working with firefighters, you need to take the time to understand what the mechanics are for throwing a 24-foot extension ladder, for stretching an inch and 3/4 hose line from a fire engine, forcing a door. You need to know the lingo. You need to know how much bunker gear weighs. You need to understand the nuance of breathing with a respirator on, SCBA, which is a whole different ball game for a lot of these folks and really dive into the background of the area in which you want to focus.” 26:59 “I think you can learn a ton of the fundamentals working in a sports-specific weight room, and a lot of the concepts that make you successful there will translate to the tactical space, but the communication is going to be very different.” 29:48 “…learn your audience, be an effective communicator and an expert in the field where you're working, and two is diversify your resume and have some experience and education and at least, at a minimum, interest in being more than a coach because the tactical space requires it.” 33:06

Richard Howell, Head Strength and Conditioning Coach for the Indianapolis Colts National Football League (NFL) team, talks to the NSCA Coaching Program Manager, Eric McMahon, about his impressive 21 years with the organization. Topics under discussion include going from pre-medical to strength coach, building relationships with athletes and staff members, and how technology provides hard numbers for sport coaches to understand stress management. Connect with Richard through email: Richard.howell@colts.nfl.net | Find Eric on Instagram: @ericmcmahoncscs or Twitter: @ericmcmahoncscsShow Notes“…that's the biggest thing in our business. You got to have a relationship with the players. And you may know everything in the world. But if the players don't believe you, if they don't trust you, you know, it's not going to do any good.” 8:33 “I think what's also important as far as getting to the NFL or a job in general, what I've always told from older coaches, whether they were football coaches, strength coaches, whatever may be, was always be the best at the job you have right now.” 21:22 “That's probably the most important relationship with players where they can see the trainers and the strength coaches on the same page. Then you got total buy-in from a player for a system-- not rooms but for a system.” 29:18 “And each year, you're fighting to see that happen again and again to try to do that kind of camaraderie, you know, that team aspect, to see guys laying it on the line for the guy beside him, to see that, and to hopefully, eventually, get that ring, you know, when it's all said and done.” 35:50

Chris Morris, Director or Performance Science at the University of Kentucky, talks to the NSCA Coaching Program Manager, Eric McMahon, about the importance of capturing athlete readiness through data and technology. Topics under discussion include Dr. Morris’s time as a University of Kentucky football player turned PhD student, how sports science is critical to understanding athlete’s capacities on a much deeper view, and developing interpersonal relationships with athletes to create trust and buy-in. Find Dr. Morris on Twitter: @CMorrisPhD | Find Eric on Instagram: @ericmcmahoncscs or Twitter: @ericmcmahoncscsShow Notes“It's a very nice pretty picture of we have a stimulus, we have fatigue, we have compensation, and then supercomp, and it all occurs within 72 hours. It's a beautiful concept. But in reality, very far from it.” 6:22 “We profile the game through our GPS technology to really understand what the demands of the game are, which aligns with NSCA's profile your sport or needs analysis of sport.” 12:14 “To be a good sport scientist, you have to understand both sides of the equation. You have to understand how your inputs and strength and conditioning are going to affect your outputs, so you can have an idea of what we're really measuring.” 16:07 “So I feel like a lot of people are going to be most valuable when they are good strength coach, and also have the ability to be a good sport scientist.” 17:07 “…if I can lower the stress outside of the training facility, identify areas in the athlete's life where we can reduce stress, then I can have a higher adaptive response in the weight room.” 25:41

Dr. Trent Lawton, Senior Strength and Conditioning Specialist with High Performance Sport New Zealand, talks to the NSCA Coaching Program Manager, Eric McMahon, about coaching the athletes of the New Zealand National Rowing Team. Topics under discussion include the balance of coaching the individual versus the team, constantly chasing knowledge in the field, and efforts to push forward through the COVID-19 pandemic. Find Trent on Twitter: @Chad_Bling | Find Eric on Instagram: @ericmcmahoncscs or Twitter: @ericmcmahoncscsShow Notes“It's not important to have the ability to run 9.7 for 100, but to actually do that 28 times in some sports.” 7:33 “My job is to create competitive training environments where the people want to excel. So they want to compete off each other. And they need to have the desire to win.” 10:52 “And one trick I tried is, rather than me say "go deeper," they get the force or they get the distance deeper. So we change it to the length or the dip. And I say to them, make that the biggest number you can. And that's the sport of rowing. Row long. So squat deep.” 12:38 “So it's about creating learning to empower that athlete to adapt their training to the situation which they find themselves in. And my role is to help them think about that.” 22:00 “…sometimes the things that we do have to be so simple and obvious that the person connects to it, that the overload is progressed in such a predictable way that it seems too basic. So we need to go the opposite way of making the problem complex, making it so understandable that people can take action.” 32:52

Brett Bartholomew, keynote speaker, performance coach and consultant, best-selling author, and Founder of Art of Coaching™, talks to the NSCA Coaching Program Manager, Eric McMahon, about the importance of communication as a foundation of coaching, understanding the messy realities of leadership, and how reflection can help the profession grow. Find Brett on Instagram: @coach_brettb or Twitter: @Coach_BrettB | Find Eric on Instagram: @ericmcmahoncscs or Twitter: @ericmcmahoncscsShow Notes“So that's what we focus on-- the messy realities of coaching, leadership, and the fact that it's much deeper than we've been led to believe.” 3:36 “A coach that says they can't apply communication strategies with large groups is somebody that shouldn't be a coach, because communications are the foundation of coaching.” 10:56 “Why would you periodize your athletes programs, but not periodize your career and not periodize your learning?” 21:39 “But I hope in the next five, if not less, we really embrace more on the communication science and human dynamics and sociology of coaching.” 46:35 “…the art of coaching is the science of connecting, and we very much have a lot of literature on how we build relational dynamics and influence and persuade people.” 47:12

The NSCA Long-Term Athletic Development (LTAD) Special Interest Group (SIG) Executive Council Members, Joe Eisenmann, Rick Howard, and Tony Moreno, sit down with the NSCA Coaching Program Manager, Eric McMahon, to discuss LTAD as a framework for the field of strength and conditioning, and the importance of establishing physical literacy in athletes. Find the Long-Term Athletic Development Special Interest Group on Facebook: NSCA Long-Term Athletic Development SIG | Find Eric on Instagram: @ericmcmahoncscs or Twitter: @ericmcmahoncscsShow NotesFrom NSCA's Coaching Podcast Production Team: The NSCA Coaching Podcast strives for the utmost quality in producing each podcast episode. Due to technical difficulties, we apologize for the noticeable interference on the host audio feed in this episode. We hope you will enjoy the insight and information on Long Term Athlete Development (LTAD) from our knowledgeable panel of experts. “We just want to make sure that things are not only done right, but into the right hands of the right people that are dealing with kids, whether it be in a community recreation setting, a school setting, or a club sports setting. We just want to make sure that it's good material, and it gets in the right hands.” 10:55 “But I think we really, really need to emphasize how critical physical education and community recreation are in really defining the participation pathway. Because you look at this crisis now that we're in, and I'm just looking out my window right now. And I haven't seen any kids outside doing anything. Maybe once or twice in the past week riding a scooter for 10 or 15 minutes, and they run back in the house.” 28:39 “…we have a lot of parents and youth coaches trying to microwave young athletes. And we're really skipping those early stages of fundamental movement skill acquisition…” 32:05 “And along those lines is also this tendency that we see of over competing and undertraining. Where you sign up for AAU basketball, and you're playing six to eight games in a weekend or youth baseball, and you're playing five, six, eight games in a weekend. And all you do is compete, compete, compete. But physically, you're not really ready for the demands that are going to be placed upon your body and to proficiently execute some of those sports skills.” 32:53  

Mary Kate Feit, Assistant Professor and Associate Director of Strength and Conditioning at Springfield College, and Adam Feit, Coordinator of Physical and Mental Performance at Springfield College and Assistant Director of Performance Nutrition at Precision Nutrition, talk to the NSCA Coaching Program Manager, Eric McMahon, about being a married couple in the world of strength and conditioning. Topics under discussion include the unique positions they hold at Springfield College, how becoming parents has changed their perspective on coaching, and why diversity is so important for the future of the field. Connect with Mary Kate via email: mfeit@springfield.edu | Find Adam on Twitter: @Adam_Feit or Instagram @aefeit | Find Eric on Instagram: @ericmcmahoncscs or Twitter: @ericmcmahoncscsShow Notes“I was the youngest head strength and conditioning coach in Division I at the time. I took over a team that was the worst in the nation. So you talked about growth mindset and an opportunity to learn and get better.” 11:11 “Just being someone who's able to step up. If we send out a message, hey, we need someone to do this, we're looking for that person who's going to respond right away. I'm on it. Can I help?” 13:45 “However, what are they doing with that knowledge and how are they translating that into real life situations? So can you be adaptable? Can you be reliable? Can I count on you to treat everything as it should?” 14:29 “And even when I see professional athletes, I still think. I mean, they're younger than us now, most of them. And I still think of them as someone's child. And I think that changes everything. It's not about winning. It's about this individual. And I think I always kind of saw it that way.” 20:15 “Be the coach that people want to hire. Now we have technology. We need a sports science expert. We need a nutrition coach. We need a FMS corrective coach. We need a VBT coach. And I would say a coach, but a skill set. And now I look at it as be the coach that can do a lot of many things.” 38:48

Paul Comfort, program leader for the Master’s degree in Strength and Conditioning at the University of Salford, talks to the NSCA Coaching Program Manager, Eric McMahon, about his desire to continuously learn through practical application and research in the field. Topics under discussion include creating the post graduate program for the University of Salford, being a founding member of the United Kingdom Strength and Conditioning Association (UKSCA), and the complexities of technology in the weight room. Find Paul on Twitter: @PaulComfort1975 or Instagram: @PaulComfort1975 | Find Eric on Instagram: @ericmcmahoncscs or Twitter: @ericmcmahoncscsShow Notes“Find out why certain training interventions, methods, dietary interventions, et cetera are working, and then almost build that back up to the whole body. And then keep refining that process.” 10:10 “But certainly when you're in a situation with a group of other coaches, don't just jump in and offer your opinion all the time. Listen to what people have got to say. There's a huge amount that you can learn from other people.” 22:04 “You've got to look at that in those different scenarios and the different sort of context of what they're actually discussing and why. But I think that's the biggest thing is to listen, learn, and be critical of everything you read and everything you hear.” 23:56 “Whereas if you stare at the device while they're performing the exercise and they either got a higher or lower velocity, you have no idea why they got higher or lower velocity. They might have had awful technique or they might have had really good technique. So you've still got to coach the individuals that these devices aren't a substitute for coaching.” 29:58