The Real Reason Athletes Never Reach Their Potential | Brett Morse

Welcome to the Legacy All-Stars Podcast. We feature inspirational stories from people who dedicate themselves to helping others. Here is your host, Alan Pavlosky. All right. All right. All right. Welcome back to the Legacy All-Stars Podcast, where we shine a light on remarkable people who are using their success to make a meaningful impact on the lives of others. I'm your host, Alan Pavlosky, and today I have the pleasure of speaking with Brett Morse. Brett is a certified strength and conditioning specialist and a former 3-time NCAA All-American athlete who studied human performance at SUNY Cortland. Today he's the founder of Brett Morse Training, where he coaches highly motivated athletes online to get faster, stronger, and more explosive, helping them compete at the next level and beyond. What I love about Brett's story is that he didn't just walk away from the sport. He turned everything he learned as an elite competitor into a system that's helping hundreds of athletes right now. Brett, welcome to Legacy All-Stars. Good to have you.

Thanks, Alan. I appreciate you having me on, man.

Yeah, let's jump right into the questions because I'm really excited to hear more about your story. Take us back to your time competing as a 3-time NCAA All-American. What was the experience like? What did it teach you about performance, discipline, resilience, etc.?

Yeah, good question, man. I, uh, I'm only a few years out, so a lot of this stuff is still very fresh in my memory, but I learned a lot. I actually personally think college athletics turned me from a boy to a man. I think I learned especially some character traits and a lot of things that I've taken with me outside of athletics now in the real world. So for example, just learning how to be disciplined, not having your parents hold your hands anymore, and Learning how to keep yourself accountable. That was one thing. I definitely noticed that with like teammates and other individuals on my team where if they didn't really perform the way they wanted, they would point blame or this and that. And I was never really about that. It kind of taught me, I guess, extreme accountability because in a sport like track and field, it's just you versus you out there. It's me in the starting blocks and I cannot blame anybody for a bad time except myself. So I've learned a lot in regards to discipline and accountability and just being able to get done what needs to get done. And holding myself accountable when things go wrong. And a lot of that I see carry over to what I'm doing now, building a business, because at the end of the day, again, same thing, it's me versus me doing this thing. So I definitely, of course, learned a lot in terms of like physiology and competing and the science behind training and all that stuff. But biggest things I've learned were just like these character traits and just mental models to actually go into the real world and carry with me long term. So Yeah, it's definitely something I'm beyond grateful for that I got to do that for as long as I did.

Yeah, outstanding. When you were competing at that level, what did you wish you had in terms of coaching or guidance or mentorship that you did not receive?

Yeah, I went to a small school, SUNY Cortland, D3, upstate New York, for about 30, 45 minutes south of Syracuse. So I guess there were some things that could have been better. I mean, the funding at the school— It was primarily focused on athletics. So we were lucky relative to other D3 programs. I had a very hands-on approach with training. My coach was a really knowledgeable guy. He had a ton of results to show for it. But in terms of coaching staff, we didn't really have a full-scale staff. It was really him, one assistant, and that was really it. And I guess one thing that looking back at it, I wish we had a little bit more of specialized training in the sense of event group specific stuff, as opposed to one coach handling it all and there's 100 different athletes weights he's trying to manage. That in combination with strength and conditioning— we never had a strength and conditioning coach. It was our coach making the stuff for him, or making the stuff for us, and that was great. He did a good job. But now knowing what I know, I definitely could have done things a little bit better, especially in the weight room. But end all be all, like, I can't really complain about it. I'm very happy with what I've achieved, and I'm more than grateful for what he gave me. And he allowed me to take this knowledge I learned and pass it on to the next generation.

So yeah, what were your events?

I did the 110 hurdles, I did the 100, 200, I did the long jump and 4x1. So all the short, fun, explosive stuff, anything 200 meters or under.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

How did your studies in human performance at SUNY Cortland shape the way you think about athletic development today?

Yeah, that, uh, I guess it helped me learn the why behind certain workouts and certain things that were programmed within our training. So I used to always do these workouts and I would just trust that they would work, and they did. I just never knew the why behind them. And then learning that why allowed me to take that knowledge and individualize it into program for my athletes. So I can take an athlete who has a specific goal and a specific time period in which he wants to achieve that, he's X amount of years old, and then I can take all that knowledge and apply what I think would be best for him in terms of programming. Now In the past, I never really used to know the ins and outs of like the physiology behind training or anything like that. But now knowing that, I can see exactly what I can prescribe to an athlete to give them the best results for their specific goals, their weaknesses, their strengths, etc. So yeah, biggest thing was really just learning the why and learning the science behind it, learning the literature to support the training. And at the end of the day, if your training doesn't have any evidence behind it, it falls through. So that's how I've gotten good results with my guys is I keep it applicable. I make sure that it's something that they're going to enjoy doing that they can stick to for an extended period of time. And I add the science behind it, the human performance. I have my CSCS that taught me a lot in terms of training and all of that put together into one form of coaching that I think has worked very well so far. Yeah.

I'm actually going to ask a follow-up to that. And that is that, let me look, I've been an entrepreneur for 40 years plus, and it always is remarkable to me that people in many cases don't really get to their why of what they're doing, what they're doing. And getting your why is probably one of the most important things you can do in order to unlock that achievement zone that you want to get to. So how would you relate that to athletics and then other aspects of life that you coach people and how would you relate that to those subjects?

Yeah, it really just gives you the confidence in what you're giving and you knowing that it's going to work. So when I give someone a specific movement or a specific program, I know that if they execute it how I explain for them to execute it, then the results are just going to be a byproduct of that. Now that's the biggest thing. So it kind of shows where they went wrong as well. So if I give them something and they don't get those results that most other athletes have, Then we get to figure out where they've gone wrong on the way to it. So that's where like accountability can kind of come in, like how many workouts did you get done, all this type of stuff. But yeah, it really gives you confidence in your decision-making and relating that to business, having systems and tracking data and doing all of these things that help build your business, it allows you to see what's working and what isn't. So like for myself, growing a social media brand, I would look at my posts and I would see which ones are performing well, and then I would break down certain aspects of those posts ask myself, why is this one better than the other one? And then I would double down on the ones that would work. So that was kind of like the system I approached it in, and it relates to training because it again gives you confidence in what you're doing, and the chances of success are 10 times higher than if you were to just guess and have moon shoots.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Let's talk about the athletes you work with. Who comes to you and what problems are you trying to solve for them?

Yeah, I primarily work with high school and college athletes. I have a few professional athletes I work with, a lot of people pretty much all over the world, primarily guys in the United States for sure, but I have a few international clients and I do work with some individuals that just like to train like an athlete. So individuals in their 30s, 40s, 50s that want to get into sprinting, jumping, doing Olympic lifts, these things that they see higher level athletes do, but they're not competing in. So I have a pretty, I guess you could say niche specific client base. My primary, I guess, specialty is speed development. So I work with athletes that are looking to get faster. So I have a lot of track and field athletes, And of course, a lot of like skill position football players, soccer players, individuals that are just looking to improve their speed. That is essentially my specialty. I take all the info I've learned both as a track athlete and now in my studies to put together the best speed program for them. And then with athletes that are not competing, I teach them how to introduce sprinting into the routine without blowing an Achilles out, for example, or doing certain things that'll get themselves hurt. So yeah, I love, I love working with all different client bases. And primarily though, if I had to kind of narrow it down, I would say probably 70% high school, college athletes, and then that other 30% individuals just looking to train like an athlete— look better, feel better, move better.

Got it. You've talked about athletes who are training hard but not seeing the results. They lose their spot, they get overlooked by college programs. Why is the gap so common, and what's usually missing?

I think some of it can come from social media. Like, you will see athletes and they'll hear one thing from one coach and then another thing from another coach, and And they don't really base it off the coach that gets the results. Now, this is why I'm so vocal about the athletes that I've worked with, that I've helped, because it shows that what I'm giving, it works. Now, what you'll see happen is you'll maybe see athletes where they see someone on social media or a coach in their area who doesn't really have the results, but they're very, like, personable. They, they like what they're giving, but they don't know if it works. So they could go all in on that, and then end all be all, they don't really get anything out of it. That could be one thing. Another thing could just be habits outside of training. This is a big thing. So if you're training really hard, putting all the days in, but you're not eating good, you're not sleeping good, you're not managing your stress levels, none of that matters. So I think that's like kind of two sides of the coin there. Like you, you just kind of buy into the wrong program with the wrong individual. You just misinterpreted the results you'll get, or you have a good training plan but you're not dialing in your nutrition, your sleep, your habits, all of that stuff. I think those are the biggest outliers with that. Work ethic is usually something where as long as you know what you're doing is working, you can work your butt off and you'll get the results. But the issue is if you know it's working or not. So those two things, at least in my experience, that's kind of what I've seen.

Yeah. So let's talk about your online coaching model. It's very holistic. You cover programming, nutrition, recovery, sports psychology, community. Why did you build it that way instead of just sending workouts?

Yeah, that's a good question. So I think that when I was an athlete myself, I, when I was putting this coaching package together, I thought back and I was like, what would've helped me the most when I was competing? Like what things did I do that helped me in my performance and what did I not do that could've helped? And I pretty much put all of it together and I mentioned like diet, sleep, stress levels, all that stuff. If those boxes aren't checked, it doesn't matter. So you could again have an Olympian training you or an Olympic coach training you, but if you're not dialing into nutrition, if you're sleeping 4 4 hours a night, it doesn't matter. So for me, I had really good training, but my issue was my habits outside of the sport. I was partying too much, making bad choices, eating kind of whatever I felt like, really wasn't sleeping the best. You get it, just college lifestyle. And then I dialed it in junior, senior year, and that's when I made that jump to 3-time All-American. And what I did is I took that knowledge that I've learned, add some science behind it, make sure that what I'm giving them is real applicable info that actually has some literature to back it, put that into one coaching package. And my thing is like I'm gonna check every single performance-related box that you need, whether that's on the track or that's at home, what you can do to manage your stress levels or how to manage performance anxiety. That's another big thing. So you said like sports psychology, recovery, all that stuff. I just make sure every area of performance, it is addressed because the stuff you do outside of training, in my opinion, it matters just as much, if not more, than what you're doing in training.

Yeah, definitely. Can you share a story without necessarily naming names of an athlete you've worked with whose trajectory genuinely changed? Because of what you built together.

Yeah. So I actually had this kid, he came to me last year around this time actually, and he had issues with really bad shin splints. He had stress fractures all down his legs, could not finish his outdoor track and field season. He was a gifted athlete. He was running like low 11 seconds, like 11.2, 11.3-ish, which is good for his age. He was a junior in high school at the time. He knew his program really wasn't giving him the best in terms of training. They would give him a lot of what's called tempo training, where you just run very long distances for an extended period of time at like 70%, and it's just a ton of volume, a lot on the, the shins. So he got a lot of that, and as a result, he was looking for some guidance indoors. So the winter track and field season, since his school did not have a program, I worked with him from like June all the way until, like, I'm still working with him, but for his indoor season until like February, March-ish. And from there, we took him all the way to the extreme in terms of training. I dialed in everything. I fixed his nutrition, his sleep, his recovery. Plus, I gave him a high-level structured plan that was individualized to him for his strengths, his weaknesses, his goals. He went on to not only win the Ohio Indoor Track and Field State Championship for the 60-meter dash, he then went to New Balance Indoor Nationals and finished 9th with a time of 6.79 seconds. And for any track and field guys listening, 6.79 for an 18-year-old kid is flying. So as a result of this, he just got a scholarship to run D2 track at, I believe, Tiffin University. Great school, great program. So proud of that kid. He put the work in. He never really questioned anything I gave him. He was always just really all in on what I'm giving him. He trusted my programming, trusted the plan. He showed up every day and he got the results to show for it. So yeah, he had a, a really rough junior year and he came to me. I was fortunate enough to be able to work with someone as talented as he is and the work ethic that he has. When you combine all that into one package like that, you get the results. State title. So yeah, he's right now in his outdoor season. He's just starting his season now. So hopefully we can continue with that success. But yeah, I'm very proud of that kid. He worked his butt off.

Great stuff. It's so rewarding when you mentor somebody or you're involved with somebody's success and then you see it come to fruition.

Yeah, man. Yeah. Can't beat it.

You've helped athletes get faster, stronger, more explosive, but beyond the physical results, what transformation do you see in the young people you coach?

Yeah, like I said, kind of doing what I did for myself and turning them from a boy to a man or a girl to a woman in a sense. So I guess just really dialing in the habits that are gonna take them and allow them to continue with successes outside of the sport. Because yeah, we all want to be professional athletes, but that's the top 1% of the 1%. And that's great. People can continue down that road and they can get paid for their sport. Awesome. But end-all be-all, majority of individuals don't have that blessing. So what I do, I personally try to instill the values that took me all the way until I was like 22 to learn. I try to get that in them at a very young age. My 16-year-olds, I'm teaching them the stuff mentally that helped me about like, hey, if you're not feeling motivated and you don't want to train, none of that really matters unless you have a physical injury. You have to get your butt out there. You got to get the training in because there's another athlete in your position that doesn't care about that stuff. They're staying disciplined. They're not worried about their motivation. Same with the accountability. Same with perseverance. Like if you're going through a rough patch in terms of performance and you have 3, 4, 5 bad meets in a row, eventually the dam is going to break. If you're the type of person that can just keep your foot on the gas, you don't give up. Some individuals, they'll get a couple of performances in and then they'll give up. They don't get that reward. So I teach to them like, hey, if you keep doing the right things, it's going to fall in place eventually. You just have to make sure you don't give up when times are hard and then holding yourself accountable like we mentioned earlier. Not blaming other people when times are tough, you name it. So like one of my guys, for example, he actually— this happened this past week. He had about 3 meets in a row where he was running an 11.1 in the 100, and his goal was anything under 11 seconds. And he was like super discouraged. He's like, Coach, I'm getting frustrated, yada yada yada. I was like, listen, man, the things you're doing, they're correct. You just have to just keep your foot on the gas. Don't give up. Don't get discouraged. This past weekend, he ran 10.91, school record. That was his biggest goal of the season. And he's like, yeah, I'm so grateful that you mentioned that to me because I was not feeling good. I was definitely seeing that I wasn't getting results. But what ended up happening is I trusted the process. I trusted the plan. It all paid off. And like I said, the dam broke.

So, I mean, look, in sports, in business, in life, most people fail because they quit right before they were getting ready to have that tipping point to succeed. It's just, it's just a fact. You got to keep at it in order to make sure that you have the opportunity to fulfill your dreams. And I think that's true of any, of any sport or business or anything in life.

Definitely. That's the perseverance, man. And that's definitely something. I'm not sure if you've heard the saying, and I myself, I don't condone any of this stuff. I don't do gambling, nothing. But people always say, like in sports betting, so silly, but it makes sense for other areas of life. Everybody's one bet away from hitting big and then they quit. It's the same for things that are actually productive. So you could be one performance away from hitting your PR and then you quit. So it's the same way. I actually like that analogy, even though it's something, something not in any way, shape, or form I condone. But yeah, that's the way to look at it. You got to persevere when times are tough and just keep your foot on the gas.

Yeah, for sure. What's your message to a young athlete who's watching from the sidelines right now? Someone who doubts that they have what it takes to compete at the next level?

Yeah, I mean, end all be all, I use myself as proof. I was never really genetically gifted. I was a good athlete. Like, I have good coordination. I can pick up on sports very well, but like muscle fiber composition, I'm never going to be Usain Bolt. I don't have that natural talent to where like I can put 25% effort in and get a really high level performance as a result.

Right.

What you got to do is you got to really dial in your work ethic. You have to treat what you're given and take what you're given and make the most out of it rather than complain about what you don't have. I just don't think that's going to get you anywhere. Yeah, it can be tough if you're younger and you're listening to this and you're not in the position you want to be in, but it's up to you to change it. I mean, people around you, they can support you. I can help you. Your parents can help you, but they can't force you to do those things. So just know that, like, yeah, work ethic, that's going to get you to the point where you are going to reach your genetic potential. That ceiling, that potential, you can't control that. That's just what you were born with. But your ability to control your work ethic is where you can see if you're going to get to that potential or not. A lot of people, a lot of young individuals, young athletes, they never dial in and put that work ethic into play, and then they'll never see what they were capable of in the first place. So yeah, it happened with myself. I took the time. It took me until about, I want to say, senior year of high school to really realize, like, hard work, it pays off. I would see it in track and field, and I used to do football, I used to do other sports, and like, team-based sports are great, you can learn a lot from that, but you could be the best kid on your team, and if the quarterback's not throwing to you or your coach doesn't like you, you're not going to get the stat sheet you want. It doesn't matter. So with track, I would see, okay, I would get stronger in the weight room, I would work harder in my workouts, and then as a result, I'd run faster times and I'd jump farther or jump higher, whatever it may be. That's when I saw, okay, you get in what you put out. So there's a direct correlation with that. I mean, that's what has worked for me, and I know it still continues to work for me in business, not just in athletics, but it's just so much more correlated in athletics, especially in a sport like track where it's just all numbers-based, time-based. You work your butt off, if you put the time and the hours and the effort in, you're going to get the results in return.

So yeah, you know what, same thing I love about track is what I love about math. The numbers are the numbers. It makes sense. And I've always loved track, and so it's really good to hear you talking about that as one of your motivations for why track was such a good sport for you.

Yeah, yeah. I recommend it to every younger athlete. At least try it once. Even if you don't like it, you're going to get better at your other sport as a result. But it teaches you so many lessons.

Yeah. You went from competing to coaching. Is there a moment where you fully realized that your greatest contribution might not be what you accomplish athletically, but what you do to help others?

Yeah, totally, 100%, because I, uh, I'll never be a professional athlete, and that's okay. I accept that. But I can definitely say that I can do things as a former athlete that other coaches can't do to help my athletes. I have the lived experience. I always say that every sport performance coach, you don't need to be a former athlete, but you should be damn sure you're at least training yourself like one. It's hard to I guess the word is, is like, the best way to put it is like, it's hard to listen to someone that is not in a position you'd want to be in yourself. That's a philosophy I love to live by. It's like, I would not take advice from someone who's not where I'm at. So I try to live up to that. I try to not only talk the talk, but walk the walk. So I still train myself like an athlete. I still train to improve my 40-yard dash, my 100 meters, my jump metrics, one rep maxes, all that stuff, because I think I can relate a lot better with athletes when they see me doing it. They trust that what I'm doing is going to work because not only does it work with other kids, it's working with myself. And they can see that like what I'm giving them, there's no BS behind it. So yeah, I think that kind of goes for everything in life. And like, I'm very young, I'm only 24 years old, but at least from what I've seen is like, if people are giving you advice on things and you really don't want to be in their position, don't listen. Go find someone in your shoes that you want to be in the next 10 years. I try to consume a lot of content from individuals that I aspire to be. And I take that and I see it work. So I try to be the same way with my younger athletes. I try to set that example of like not just talking the talk, but walking the walk, being that applicable experience. Like that's definitely something that separates me. I've been at the NCAA level, I've been at high-level meets, I've dealt with performance anxiety, I've dealt with really hard periods of training, I've dealt with terrible meets and how to rebound from that mentally. All of these things that like coaches that only study the literature, they can't say. So I think that's definitely an advantage, I guess, that I have as a coach now, is I've had both ends of the spectrum.

So, well, this show is Legacy All-Stars, so I'm going to ask you a legacy question. When you think about the legacy you're building 10, 20 years from now, what do you hope Brett Moore's training will have meant to athletes who came through it?

Yeah, I just want to give athletes a means to reach their genetic potential in an easy-to-understand, applicable manner, whether it's with me as them being in my coaching or whether it's them using my content to apply it to their training and immediately see result. I've gotten a ton of messages from athletes like, hey man, your videos have helped me a ton. Like, I appreciate you and everything you put out. And that's kind of all I'm trying to do. End all be all. Like if I had to put one thing behind it, it's just help people, help the next generation of athletes do the things that I never got to do and then take all my knowledge and experience and pass it onto them so they get way better results than I ever had. So I think if you, in business, I think if you approach it from an ethical standpoint and a moral standpoint, you can make a lot of money without tearing other people down. So yeah, that's my goal. It's like, help people, try to do good, try to promote a good service that is gonna change someone's life. And as a result, the money just becomes a byproduct. And that's kind of the way I see it. And I feel better about that. I can put my head on the pillow at night and know that I'm doing good and not the complete polar opposite.

I had an early mentor, and I've shared this on this show before, but I had an early mentor that said, look, don't apologize for making money. Money is good.

Yeah.

As long as the money you make is in direct proportion to the people you serve.

Nailed it.

And, uh, I try to live by that every day. So glad to hear you talk about that.

Yeah. It's definitely something you don't see that much. I mean, maybe, I don't know. It's hard to really, like, I guess just in today's society, a lot of people get rewarded for doing the wrong thing. And I don't, I don't want to get into the weeds of that, but like you see it, like the healthcare industry and there's a lot, I myself, the only reason I mention that is like I've had a, uh, I dealt with an autoimmune condition for a very long time. I myself am finally healthy. I took my health in my own hands and I just see how like sometimes profit can drive individuals in a space that's supposed to help people. It drives them to make the wrong decision strictly for the finances. And you see that in every industry, whether it's healthcare or anything else, it's just people get driven by the dollar sign. And again, like you said, it's great. Make money, do your thing, support your family. Provide for those around you. But I think that you'll never really be fulfilled unless you do that in a way in which you're helping people and not tearing other people down.

So yeah, for sure, you couldn't have said it better myself. And I happen to believe, yes, there is a lot of that, but there's also more people than you could imagine that are aligned with us in that way. And I try to surround myself by those people, so I see it every day. Yeah, those people that are focused on service and being good to others are the ones that make a lot of money in the right way.

So yeah, it's definitely the bad apples that ruin it for the rest. Like you should say, like when I mentioned like healthcare, like every single doctor I've ever worked with has been an incredible person to help me, but you get other people that are in that system that it's like, I don't know, like I said, this is a whole different topic, but it's just the first thing that came to mind where it's like, yeah, money can drive individuals to do things strictly for profit knowing that they're hurting other people as a result, and it's It's definitely frustrating to see, and you see it in all walks of life, in all areas of business or whatever it may be.

Right, right. Well, let's talk about coaches, trainers, or athletes that are listening today who want to connect with your work. Where can they find you?

Yeah, I'm on all platforms at Brett Morse Training. You can go to BrettMorseTraining.com to look into my coaching. I have a podcast myself. It's just called the Brett Morse Training Podcast. It's a little bit kind of similar to this, but more about just like 10-15 minute episodes, giving as much info as possible to help younger athletes in any specific area. Of speed development or performance. But yeah, pretty much everything, just Brett Moore's training. If you search that into any social media platform, I will probably come up. Hopefully it's not someone— hopefully not someone else.

Great. All right, Brett, thank you for sharing your journey and your mission with us today. You're building a legacy that is not about necessarily what you achieve for yourself. It's about the doors you open for others. And I love that the athletes you're coaching are getting more than faster times and bigger lifts. They're gaining confidence, direction, and belief in themselves. And that really matters, especially matters to me. To our listeners, I hope you're inspired by Brett's journey and will find a path to leaving your own legacy. I'm Alan Pavlosky, and this has been another episode of the Legacy All-Stars Podcast. Awesome.

Thanks, Alan. I appreciate you having me on, man.

Yeah, I appreciate you too, Brett. Thanks.