How to Build Fast Athletes with Ryan Patrick

You're listening to the PT Profit podcast, episode number 361. Today I'm sitting down with Coach Ryan Patrick and we are discussing how to build fast athletes.

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Hi, I'm Beverly Simpson, former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner. And this podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how to increase client performance and movement, package and position their products and services and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast.

What's up, coach?

Thank you so much for joining me in another episode of the PT Profit Podcast. I'm your host, Beverly Simpson. And if this is the first time you're hanging out with me today, welcome. I'm super excited that you're here. I cannot wait to dive in with you and bring to you this very special guest coach, Ryan Patrick. He has been a facility owner for over 14 years and has been in the industry for longer than that. He specializes in how to build a resilient athlete and really help them specifically dial in their speed protocols so that they can be strong, powerful, competitive and excellent athletes. And today we're discussing how we're going to do that. So for those of you who already know you're curious about how to bring in elite level of performance into your business, then I invite you to join Ryan Patrick in a very special training that he is doing October 1 called Speed Simplified Build Fast Athletes Faster. This training is going to walk you through a step by step protocol that he uses to really build resilient athletes and how you can do too. So we'll make sure that we will link all of that in the show notes, if it's not already there.

It will be.

And stay tuned because this will be a powerful training for you if you work with active adults or upcoming athletes. So without further ado, let's go ahead and roll that interview.

What's up, Ryan? Thank you so much for joining me on the show today. How are you doing?

Great, Bev. I'm really excited to be here.

For those of you who are new and tuning in, maybe for the first time or being introduced to your work, can you share with us a little bit about who you are, who you.

Serve and how you got there?

Yeah. So my name is Ryan Patrick. I own a brick and mortar facility in Northern Kentucky. For those of you who are not privy to Midwest geography, I say Kentucky, but really we're about 10 miles south of Cincinnati, Ohio. So kind of a, you know, suburban area, but we are close to that city. And I've been running my business, peak fitness and sports training. This is my 15th year, so we just had our, our 14th birthday and we're diving into, you know, kind of a new, a new segment. You know, like a lot of people, I think my business, the look of it really changed after Covid. So we went through some structural changes in terms of, you know, our service offerings and what we did. But I think one of the biggest changes for us was we really transitioned pretty aggressively at that point to working with more athletes. So it was kind of a fortunate opportunity. We had a one NFL player who joined us prior to Covid. We got literally a handful of sessions in during the off season, and then everything shut down. Well, there were nowhere for these guys to go. They couldn't go to the stadium to train. Pretty much every gym was closed. And so I just kind of said, hey, like, if you're willing to work with me through this, we can do this in the garage. And my garage was not really carved for this. So we, we started moving all, all of our equipment out of the gym. Got as much into the garage as I could. I'm buying shelves and storage stuff, which, you know, at that time is really, really hard to come by because pretty much everybody was selling out of home stuff. So eventually, yeah, so we eventually got the garage set up and, you know, success with one athlete kind of led to another. So at one point I had, you know, six to eight just massive men training in my garage. And it, it was fun. It was very underground. It was kind of raw. You know, I'm always looking at, you know, doing optimizing things. And we just kind of back just training hard and training aggressively and it was so much fun. And coming out of that, I realized, you know, this is definitely a population that I want to continue to work with. Not the, not the pro guys specifically. I think they're, they're very much about building street credibility and showing that you can make a difference with athletes of that level. But for me it was more of the high school kids. And so that began a journey of a couple years of just really changing the look and feel of my business. So we went from, you know, doing a lot of adult group classes and athlete groups to really changing and doing more individual stuff. So currently my business runs exclusively semi private training and we are probably at this point about 70% athletes, 30% adults. And I would really like it to stay there. I still love working with adults, we have some fantastic people who've been a part of my business for 10 plus years. And the running joke is that, you know, the athletes are certainly more fun to train. We get to use a lot more tools that we have in the toolbox, but the adults are uncontested in having better conversations. So, you know, we still, we still work with a lot of high school kids and they're goofy and they're fun and they keep me young, but that's, that's really where I am today. And so, you know, over the, in this evolution, it's changed a lot of how I approach my business as an entrepreneur. So one, one thing I think I've been guilty of and probably many people in this industry is, you know, just being very ambitious, the following the grow at all cost model. And it exhausted me. And, and so, you know, in changing this, I've really been able to, to accomplish a few things. Number one, my guys are working fewer hours and getting paid better. So nobody's, nobody's burning out. I have a lot more flexibility. So my team is small and tight. And I think for our market, this is really where I want to be because at this point it's more important for me to go deep in terms of, you know, building relationships with the athletes rather than to just really going wide and trying to get anyone that we can into our facility.

So. Good. So now of the adults that you train, I'm just out of curiosity, like, do they tend to be the parents of your athletes that you're working with?

We certainly have some parents now that come in when their kids work, work out. But I would say a majority of them have just found us, you know, the way anybody comes into personal training, just over time through referrals. But we've done a really great job with them. And I, at one point, I meant, I thought my team was like, my team was a little bit bigger in the past and they probably looked at me cross side. I'm like, I swear to God, like, if we run one more like hot for the holidays, New year, new you lean for Halloween challenge, I'm like, I will burn this place to the ground.

Summer shred.

Oh, gosh, all of it. And you know, it was, it was so great for bringing people in the door. But similar to our athletes, we, I think the client or the niche, if I even have one, is just people who are on a path and it doesn't matter to me what that is, but people who have identified that they have a goal that's big and audacious. We tend to work really well with them. You know, so for athletes, I think this is easy to understand. There's kind of three buckets that they would fall into. One is, you know, a kid who wants to go to college. That's, you know, very ambitious. Two, I really love working with some of the underdogs. So the kids who are like, you know what, I go to a high school and we're really competitive. There's a lot of other talented athletes around me and I really want to play, I want to contribute, I want to be a part of the team. I don't want to ride the bench. And they, they lock in in a very special way. And it's so rewarding to see them be successful. And then third, the population that we work with is of kids who are on a path is those who are coming back from injury. So that's, you know, obviously, especially if you're only playing high school and you don't do club, that's most injuries, especially like an ACL, that could be a year, you know, it's 25% of the time lost. But to, to flip back to, to our adults, they seem to be on a path as well. They're like, you know, I, I want to be, I want to feel like I just have robust energy. I want to be able to play with my kids. I want to get rid of this pain. I just want to live life and do it at a high level. And I love training and I love seeing myself progress. And so we just tend to work much better with those clients and those who are there for the fat loss market. And not that we don't do fat loss and not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just we seem to really connect to people who have just kind of a bigger vision than just, you know, losing a few lbs.

Okay, so when you are referring to athletes, is there a specific athlete that you, that you work with or is it athletes in general?

Athletes in general. So we have a pretty broad spectrum, broad spread of team sports. We have, you know, a lot of baseball players, we have basketball players, very few football players. Football guys, they tend to be overserved in terms of the strength and conditioning that's available. And so a lot of times I feel like we are somewhat reactive. Like, hey, coach got mad. So, you know, we lost. We got our butts kicked on Friday night. So Saturday was like all mental toughness. You know, we had an ABC come in for an 8am workout because we, we didn't execute and so in some cases, it's hard to, to add more training to that. But soccer, volleyball, baseball, softball, sprinters, we, we're pretty agnostic about who we serve. You know, obviously, because we do things more individualized. There's always slight nuances to what the programming looks like for each of those athletes, you know, but it's not to say because our baseball guys are squatting that no other team sport athlete is going to squat. It's just the variations, the execution, the tempos, the unique structure of where the athlete is. You know, especially for guys, there's a massive difference between your freshmen and your seniors just physically, thanks to puberty. So, you know, all these things go into account. But I enjoy working with kids from, from every sport. I think there's always unique challenges, there's always certain injury patterns that you have to be aware of and how to navigate that. And it's just, it's a lot of fun to kind of figure out how to solve this puzzle for each kid.

It's interesting that you said that football players, you tend to find to be overserved. I'm curious, in your opinion then, what are the sports or the team sports that you feel are underserved and why do you think that is?

I would say just the females in general. Everybody wants the high profile male athletes. You know, they, those sports are still attended at probably a higher rate. You know, the football players, the basketball players, and the, the females. Although it is improving quite a bit. You know, initially we tend to not see a lot of them until they are injured. And it's like, wow, I tore my acl and not only do I have to come back from this injury, but I have to physically prepare myself to play the sport. And I think it's, it's getting a lot better. But in general, I do really enjoy working with the female athletes because there's fewer competing commitments in terms of other strength and conditioning programs that they're doing. They're various. Responsive to our style of coaching, which is very. It's not coach hard ass, if I can say that. We have a, you know, kind of a mentoring style and you know, to tr. To try to articulate this in a really clear way. It's like, hey, you know, if I'm, if I'm trying to hit a home run, that doesn't mean I go up to the plate and I just hack at the ball with as much force and aggression as I can. Right? There's a technique to the swing and we coach, you know, sprinting or change of direction. Or any of the physical capabilities that we want our athletes to develop. In a very similar way, there are times where I need high outputs. There are times where I want you to really just lock in and go. And then there are other times where maybe we got to slow things down and refine and talk about some of the nuances of, you know, maybe how your, your plant angle is when you change direction or whatever it is. But it's, you know, this style of, of kind of balancing those two worlds seems to be really effective for the, the athletes that we work with. But, you know, with females not having as many opportunities, it's not to say there's none, it's just, it seems to, to be a population that we have really clicked with. And so, you know, to answer your question, a lot of the guys, there's plenty of options. Sometimes too many. Some of them just need to chill and probably take a nap instead of trying to add more speed training. And for the females, I still think there's abundant upside. And because puberty isn't as pronounced for them as it is for the males, I think you can easily demonstrate the physical prowess of the girls who train versus those who don't.

So I'm curious. Okay, so when you talk about the difference in, in puberty for the females versus the males, what are some of the biggest differences? Like what causes you to say that? The, the, that it doesn't have quite as an effect like some of the biggest differences that you notice.

The boys, I mean, just the fact that they're going to have so much more testosterone. You just see the accumulation of muscle mass, of strength, of power at a pretty pronounced rate. And so I think, I think the difference between your freshmen who are, you know, 14, 15 with two armpit hairs is much different than a senior, you know, who's been training for a few years with the luxury of testosterone. Girls, certainly there is an effect, obviously just the physical development that comes. There is gonna still be some pretty massive differences between your upperclassmen and your lower classmen, but it just seems to be less so than the males. And I think the biggest contributor of that is probably testosterone. And probably just in general, males are training more because even if they're not training with their team, you know, the boys are probably going to the gym and at least doing arms or something with, with the other guys. So you, you, you definitely see just, I think a greater disparity in that.

So in an, an enhancement in adaptation really is what we're talking, is what you're talking about.

It, it is like, it is physiologic miracle grow.

Okay, great. So now I'm also curious, right? So when is your a difference in approach from the athletes versus the adults? Because based on what you said, it sounds like you're working with high performing adults. They're not interested in, like, how do I go from couch to 5K? Like, these people have been active and want to get back to being active. So I'm just curious, what is the difference in your approach in their programming?

Well, I treat everybody like an athlete. And when some adults start, that can be very intimidating because they're probably like looking in the mirror like this body, like, as an athlete, like, I, I don't know about that. And so I try to break it down. I'm like, look, athletes, when I coach an athlete, I have some very specific and measurable ways I want them to get better. And for you as an adult, there are ways that I want to see you improve. So if we're talking about improving your energy and your conditioning, we have some metrics that we can track that I want to see you get better in measurable ways. I don't want you to just come here and think that I've got to baptize you on the altar of exercise and like, serve you up to the gods and that this has to be the hardest, most impossible thing you've ever done. I want you to understand that there's a way, like, to get better. You know, if we're talking about strength, there's measurable ways to get better. So, you know, maybe Johnny be good at baseball is power cleaning £200, and maybe you're doing some jumps over a line, but we're still gonna have some element of power, we're still gonna have some element of strength, we're still gonna have some element of, you know, conditioning. It's just the exercises and how high, how high you progress up this pyramid of complexity and intensity just might be a little bit different.

So can you walk us through how you actually build out the program for your athletes and how you build out, you know, what's your thought process in terms of, of, you know, carrying someone through a program?

Yeah. So I think one of the popular analogies is, you know, we're building a roadmap, and if we're going to New York, the directions are going to be different if you're coming from Cincinnati or if you're coming from Florida. And those two travelers cannot have the same path. And so it starts for us with an assessment. We want to Get a really clear picture of where the athlete is today. We want a blueprint, right? And so for us, I want to see how does this athlete move? This, to me, is just a measure of their capacity. How much range of motion do they have at various joints when there's no load, when there's no speed, when there's no fatigue? And then from there, we're going to progress into some higher performance stuff. So I want to see when we put this stuff under a little bit of stress, how does it manifest? How do they navigate any perceived limitations that we have? And so, you know, we use a, a variety of tests. We have force plates, so we do some jumps on there. We have a Proteus motion, which is like a 3D robotic arm that you kind of whip around. It's actually really fun to, to train on. Our adults love it. And so especially for.

That sounds so cool.

Oh, it, it's, it's very cool. So if you're not familiar with it, I, I recommend looking it up. It. It's somewhat intimidating, but everyone who gets on it is kind of like, ooh, this is like, it's fun. So imagine it's. The best way I can describe it is, you know, you, you have this handle and you swing it through space. There's resistance in every direction, so it's almost like moving through water, but you can just really get after it. And it's a safe to fail thing. So our adults love it for power training too. But one of the really unique things about that is all of the data collected from that goes to a central cloud. And so I can compare my athletes to their peers. So athletes of the same age and skill level, we can get an understanding of where their rotational power is or some of the other movements compared to, you know, where they, where they are. And we can look at, okay, well, if you want to go to college or you want to compete with the upperclassmen, what does that population look like? What kind of numbers of power are they able to produce? And so it gives our kids a really clear picture of where they are today and where they need to be. And then, of course, because we have athletes, we are going to do some sprints and timing gates and, and things like that that allow us to, you know, figure out are they fast enough to do what they do. And from there we start to, you know, introduce our program. And phase one, I think of it, it is a little more generic, right? So we spend all this time trying to individualize things, but I think of it like carving A marble statue. You know, in the beginning we've gotta hack away at some big chunks. There are certain things that are gonna look the same for everybody because I want them to understand our language. We have our own unique made up language in the gym. And I want them to understand the positions, the postures, the cues, the overall objectives of the program and the tempos. Just a number of things that they need to understand of what it means to be an athlete in our facility. And as we go, you know, we're carving the statue, it starts to get a little bit more refined, a little bit more individualized. And then we can start to worry about things like where are they in the competitive calendar, where are they in their overall physical development? So, you know, the programs look more specific over time. But I will say this, they never get too complex. We want to keep things very simple. We want our athletes to do basic things at a high level. So we always say brilliant at the basics. Because strength training in general is general it, you know, if we try to get overly specific, you know, next thing you know, we're, we're trying to do like a baseball throwing motion with a cable and we're ripping somebody's rotator cuff out. So I am always very clear, like, I don't teach my athletes how to spike a volleyball. I don't teach them how to hit a jump shot, I don't teach them how to swing a bat. I'm giving them the speed, power, strength and movement capabilities so that they can go do their sport at a higher level. Said another way, I just want their sport coaches to have some better clay to work with. And this is not unlike what we do with our adults. You know, when they start. Maybe the test is not as. The testing process is not as robust, it's not as in depth. We're not doing time sprints with our adults, though some of them would love it because they watch the athletes. They're like, well, I want to do that. I'm like, okay, we need like a 12 week progression because, you know, I'm rounding the corner to 40. I'm like, we're both going to blow some hamstrings trying to do this. But we do, we do some assessments, we give them an idea where we are and we just communicate those objectives really clearly with them and talk about what they can do to fulfill this as quick as possible.

That's so good. So now I love, I love the mentality of brilliant at the basics. What I'm curious about is, I'm curious about two Things, but so I'll go here first, is that, you know, for a lot of sports we're also, we're dealing. And I'm thinking specifically for softball and specifically for baseball. I always think softball first because I have two daughters. But for me, you know, you have a lot of overuse in specific ranges of motion and rotation is often going to be your first culprit. Right. Whether you're a pitcher, whether you are, you know, just playing the sport. I mean, and I'm thinking of tennis and thinking of lots of different, you know, even swimming compensation patterns due to overuse. So I'm curious how you manage the training program in off season versus in season.

The number one thing that it comes down to for me, Beverly, is just continuing to reassess our athletes and understand where they are. Because, you know, as baseball season or softball season starts, I know that the volume of throwing, the volume of swinging and hitting and doing those activities is going to amplify to a very significant degree. And so we want to balance that in training. Now it's not to say we only do the opposite, you know, direction. So for example, if I've got a right handed batter, we will tend to do a little bit more like left handed side throws to counteract that rotation. But for baseball and softball specifically, there's a couple, I think, important underlying factors. We're built asymmetrically, we're playing an asymmetrical sport on some level. I think that asymmetry probably does confer some performance advantages. And so we kind of have this bandwidth that we want to stay in. How much asymmetry are they displaying? Now we can see this in their output on say the Proteus, or we could look at some different med ball velocity throws and see that we can also look at certain ranges of motion. Are they retaining adequate shoulder range of motion? Do they have sufficient trunk rotation to the left and to the right? And I think in most cases, if we're able to keep these within a certain bandwidth, which for us is definitely under 15%, ideally 10 or less, then I feel pretty confident that they're going to be able to display variability. And this term variability I think gets confusing at times because there's not a lot of clear definitions. But if you really look at some of the research, there's a very specific way that variability is talked about. One, I know that if my athlete has adequate range of motion and we'll just use a squat, for example. Cause it's very, very easy to, to understand when you see somebody new squatting they display a lot of rep to rep variability, meaning their knees cave in on one rep, then they're on their toes the next rep. And it just, it doesn't look consistent rep to rep over time. What we find is those repetitions look very, very similar. Somebody squats, it's beautiful every time. But we actually find that the athletes who do have good range of motion and are displaying that, that same looking squat, that they're actually loading the tissue slightly different every single rep. That's what we really consider variability, is that, yes, they're not. It might look the same to our naked eye, but they're actually loading slightly different each rep. And what that does is that really starts to prevent some of the overuse trauma. Because if we don't have a lot of variability or they don't have the ability to make slightly nuanced variations to their technique, they're gonna load the same tissues in the same way through multiple repetitions. And that's when we start to see breakdown. And so it'll start with like, ah, you know, like, my back's a little sore, but then I warm up and it's feeling okay. And then becomes a little more persistent and then it becomes, oh, now I have a pars fracture and I gotta sit out 12 weeks. So to, to answer your question, I think there's, there's a couple big things. One is, you know, we want to kind of revisit the assessments. These things were really important in the beginning. No different than if I'm on, you know, traveling this roadmap. I want to make sure that, oh, you know, I'm on Pennsylvania Turnpike and I'm supposed to be on, you know, some other road. Like, this is a problem. I'm not going where, where I'm going anymore. And so I got to reroute. Luckily, GPS will re reroute us right away. And so in a sense, like, we want to try to keep a pulse just like a GPS on how our athletes are moving throughout, throughout the season. And we simply just kind of bake continuity of assessments back into training. And so our athletes are testing on a variety of things every week. It just allows us to keep a sense of where they are and how they're physically evolving during the course of the season.

Oh, good. Now, something you had mentioned was revisit the assessment. How often are you doing that?

Every week we're testing or retesting something and that just helps us kind of get, you know, data points. Every three to four weeks, we might revisit some of the same tests. So we're timing sprints, they're jumping on the force plate so we can see if there are any left, right asymmetries and they're. And how they're actually putting force into the graph. A lot of our athletes are using the Proteus. We can reassess that. If I'm watching an athlete do a movement, and again, everything is really an assessment. Right. So I'm always constantly refining technique. But if something looked off or they're complaining about something, you know, I may put them back on the table and test some joint range of motion and just get a really clear picture. I'm probably doing less of that. That's kind of on an as needed basis, but I find in most cases, if we structure the volume appropriately, we understand the competing commitments and they're also clear about identifying those ties that we're able to stay ahead of most of this.

I'm also assuming that the approach probably is very similar, if not the same for your adults. It's just the level of variability and intensity is probably different.

Yeah, adults are, you know, they can't sleep, right. So they come in with a bad back and an athlete's like, oh, you know, I was doing this dumb thing with my friend after practice and we hurt ourselves. So.

Funny and so true. As someone who just turned 42, I. It's funny. So I'm also curious, you know, speaking of injury, you know, given the nature of what it is that you do and the fact that you've done this for so long, can you begin? Is there any sort of anticipation or warning signs that you typically see when you're dealing with, you know, trying to be preventative instead of reactive?

Gosh, that is so, so tough to address. And my conversation with a lot of athletes is this injury is number one. There's no injury prevention. Sports are chaotic, unpredictable, highly reactive. These in and of themselves are going to expose you to some risk no matter what you do. However, this is kind of like predicting the weather. So let's say I've got a bag of marbles. There's blue ones in there and there's red ones. And if I reach in blindfolded and I pull out a red one, that means you're going to get injured. Now, my job is to basically try to reduce the amount of red marbles in there as much as possible. And so there are things that we try to do. One, do you have sufficient strength, not just on a barbell, but can you put enough force into the ground? Do you have Enough power output. What are your asymmetries like? All of these things play a role in minimizing the likelihood that we're going to reach into this bag and pull out a red marble. There are certain factors we can't control. Your footwear and equipment, the field you're playing on. There was a local field that high school, thank God they just got it replaced with turf. But their former field was a grass field, but it was an ACL pit you would go to cut and it was like the grass would just come up and make chunks every single time. And it was just, it was terrifying to be on and you felt slow. And you know, when your foot's on the ground, you're trying to twist and turn and maneuver, it just puts you at risk, especially when you've got a cleat on. Those are things that are in some cases unavoidable, unfortunately. I've seen athletes do everything right and still get injured. And I've seen some athletes seemingly do everything wrong or nothing and somehow not get injured. And so I'm really transparent about that conversation. We're going to do everything we can to minimize the risk. We do have things that we track, we do have things we want to manage, but it's hard. And so I think one of the big things that we try to keep track of is, you know, what are these level of asymmetries? What are the movement capabilities that you have available to you? Because it just seems like when kids can't get sufficient range of motion, and I'm not saying it has to be perfect because there's certainly cases where having just a little bit less than full range can be optimal. But when they, when they start to lose access and things are not similar side to side, they seem to just kind of set themselves up for a lot of the onset of these injuries. At least some of the traumatic and overused ones, the acute ones, man, it's, it's unfortunate, but it is, it is a reality is for.

It's tough. I mean, it's almost like your success is inevitable, but so is your, so is injury almost, right?

In many cases. Yeah. It's like if you do this long enough, you're there, there's going to be consequences. And so you can look at. Well, you know, soccer has, you know, three injuries per thousand hours. Well, when you've got kids who are, are playing club year round and travel tournaments and constantly training like those thousand hours add up pretty quick. And so just by mere exposure and volume, the likelihood is slightly increased. But you know, one other thing I think that is really important and tough for us to track, especially in the private sector, is just their acute and chronic workload. So for us, you know, we know week one of tryouts in July for our fall sport athletes is basically how we, the coaches are going to run them. They're going to see who's, you know, quote, mentally tough. They're going to see who's been training in the off season. Whereas as professionals, we know like, well, week one should not be your hardest workout. Right. We want to have some gentle discovery. We want to get in. And sport is almost the opposite. And so these kids get a massive spike in volume and intensity at the same time. And it's year after year we just see a lot of them drop like flies. Not saying a lot of our kids because we try to prepare them for that, but it is so drastic. And then that just kind of begets what the rest of the season looks like. Coach, you know, the amount of sprinting you're doing is based on how well you execute in the previous game, which if you don't execute, you should be working on that, not sprinting. You know, kind of the think about what you've done while you're, you know, running, running to exhaustion. But that, that is certainly a big one. And it can be really tough to track and figure out. You know, on top of that, we got kids who they are training after school and then they have practice and then they have a lot of homework and they're like, well, it was up till, you know, 12:30 or one o', clock, so now their sleep's impacted. And so a lot of these things just really, really compound without us realizing it. It's like, I can, I can get by with this for a night or two nights, but when I'm doing this, week after week really starts to take a toll on our kids bodies.

Yeah, it's true. So I'm, you know, speaking of taking a toll, you had mentioned earlier that you really work with almost three buckets.

Right.

The kid who wants to go to college, the underdog and then the injury. Right, the, your injury bucket. So I'm curious about the underdog bucket because when we are speaking about performance in sports and college and then pro level, like, you just start to see that the, the, we start dealing with the top 1% of the 1%. And we start to see talent and skill and strength. Like it just needs to be a smaller and smaller bucket with a smaller and smaller pool of opportunities. So how do you manage the Underdog bucket. In terms of the mental and physical experience for the underdog, coupled with, you know, sports parents or dance parents, is what comes to my mind. How do you manage that?

Can you clarify what you mean by how do I manage that? How do I approach these kids?

Yeah, how do you approach it? How do you navigate it? How do you also protect your own mental heart from, like, oh, my gosh, I. I can't like, my spirit watching this kid who wants to do it so bad. And you just know in your heart that, like, they're not gonna. They won't be able to get. To get there.

Yeah. Well, number one, I think it's, don't take these kids for fools. They're not stupid. And I think sometimes people promise too much in hopes that it will appeal to them. And I certainly speak to their potential. My default stance for everyone is that you have not even come close to tapping into your potential. So I come from that place. But I'm also really transparent about what it's gonna. What is gonna be required to get to that level. And so I'll share a story with you. We had a kid who came in. He was a freshman in college, and he went to a local county high school that, you know, he. He did okay. But physically, he was a very large kid. He wanted to play football in college. He probably could have. There were some things that came up in his life that kind of prevented him from doing that. But our initial conversation, you know, he's like, I. I want to play football. I want to do this, like, something I really think I can do. And, you know, I was. I asked him, do you think it's possible? Yeah. Okay. So I was like, are you prepared to work harder than you've ever worked? He's like, yes, yes, of course. I'm like, okay. Are you prepared to work harder than you've ever worked and not be successful making the cut for this team? He really had to pause and think about this, and he ended up saying yes. And the kid trained his butt off. He made some incredible progress. And after he said yes a second time, I said, good, because even if you don't make this team, I said, you're going to learn more about what you're capable of and what you can accomplish if you put your mind to it, than will ever be as valuable as just making this team. And so I think he, you know, that I think really inspired him to believe in himself, to understand that, hey, my failure or my lack of ability to make this team is not an indication of what I can or cannot do. But it also, it kind of prepped him for the reality because I don't want to paint a false hope and then kids be super disappointed. I want them to know that, you know, even if you're not successful in this initial endeavor, there's still abundant opportunity for you. And we have another kid who was really trying to make this freshman baseball team. He's working hard, and I was worried. I knew, like, he was a very talented athlete, but physically he was a little bit underwhelming initially, and he ended up making the team, and it was awesome. And, you know, I still speak this potential and just what he's got. So it's, I think, just again, I don't want to take these kids for fools. I don't want to promise them the world. I want them to understand, like, are you willing to put in the work that's required for this? And that seems to really help start the relationship that I have with them from the right place. Because the ones who aren't may choose to do something else. And I'm totally cool with that. Find something you love, find something you're passionate about, and invest your time and energy and effort into that. But if it's not this, then that's totally cool. We can fist bump part ways as friends, and you can go find something that's, you know, worth your. Worth your time and energy and heart.

So I have to ask, did he make the team? The football.

So he, like I said, he ended up having some life stuff come up with his mom and taking care of some stuff with her. Yeah. So it was. It was really unfortunate, but we still have a really good relationship to this day. And he's. He's an awesome, awesome individual. So, you know, it's super rewarding. And I think for him, the win was just seeing. Seeing his body transform, seeing his strength transform. I think he. He kind of achieved something that I'm not sure he thought he was going to long before he even made the decision not to move forward with this. So ultimately, it was the best thing.

You know, it's interesting because I once, back in the day when I was acting because I went to musical theater, I got my master's in musical theater, and we had a.

We. We have to chat more about that because I have one son that just graduated.

Oh, really?

MT and another one who just started college doing mt.

Oh, my gosh, that's amazing. Okay, so we'll definitely talk about that. But one of the things that I carried with me that I had learned from. I mean, I've learned so many skills. Just for the record, like, it's a skill. I would not. I would not go back and change it. Even though I am not actively singing on Broadway. I would not change. I learned a lot. But one of the things that I had an acting teacher say to me once, she said, and it's actually part of the reason why I. I left the industry was she said, you have to love the process more than the outcome, because you're going to spend the majority of your time in the process than you are executing the outcome. And then once you get there, it's just gonna be another goal that's gonna require another, you know, pro, you know, journey of process. And so that was really powerful to me because it really helped me move through. Because musical theater and performing, that's exact. That's very similar to, you know, limit roll scarcity. Everyone wants to do it, but you have, you know, every. You're gonna get to a point where everybody sings well, everybody dances well, and everybody acts well, so there's still only one part, so what are you gonna do? You know? But, I mean, that shift for me was huge, and it really helped me empathize and kind of shift my perspective around the concept of underdog. Because the process itself is rewarding.

Absolutely. Yeah. And it is tough. And some. When you. When you frame it like that, you quickly find out, like, is the juice worth the squeeze for me? And it's okay. Like, I tell every kid, it's okay if it's not. Like, I. I am not here to tell you what should be important to you or not. I'm just telling you, if you want to work with us, this is where I need you to be. Because I don't want. I don't want you one to have a negative association with what we're doing here. Because physical activity should be a part of your life forever and ever. And if you feel like it's punitive and you don't enjoy this and it's, you know, your mom's pulling your teeth to get you in here, then you're gonna resent this later. And it might be 10, 15 years down the road to. You're like, oh, shoot, like, I should probably take care of my body, you know? So to me, I. I have to think about the, you know, the big picture of this, because the reality is most of us and most of the athletes I work with are not going to have a career in professional sports. They're going to go on to do Other things. But I also want them to retain healthy habits, to enjoy coming into the gym. And if this process of trying to make this team or feeling like a failure is not one for them, then let's not, let's not ruin this because physical activity is fantastic and you can find a number of things to do. So that's so true.

So true. It also, you know, I, I love that approach too, because it's just sometimes people walk a fine line between opinion and professional opinion. Right? So I don't like people. I don't want ever, you know, someone's professional expertise to be spoken into my kids as like, oh, you're never, you're not gonna be able to do this. This isn't for you. Because how do you know that maybe things can change? So I like that. I like that. Okay.

Yeah.

Ryan, this is amazing. Go, keep going.

Oh, I was gonna say we have, you know, a number of. So I don't work with athletes younger than like 12ish. I think most of there, there are places that do that. We actually refer to a local competitor who works with them and I think does a good job. But many parents, you know, they can, they have the elite 11 year old and the reality is you don't know what they're going to be capable of in, in seven years. They might completely burn out. On the flip side, we've got, we've got some of these underdogs, especially some of the guys. They're going to continue to develop physically into college, and I don't, I don't know what their upside is. I've seen some kids who I never thought would be super athletic put out some numbers where I'm like, oh my God, like what? That is amazing. You know, so it's, you just have to nurture, nurture the kids who, who want it.

It's so funny because I think back to my high school days, which are, are long gone, but I always laugh and I said to my husband, I said, if my English teacher and my PE teacher knew what I did for a living, they would not believe it. They would be like, no, there's no way. Not that girl.

So true.

Oh, my gosh. Okay, Ryan, so this has been amazing and I want to be very respectful of your time. So thank you so much for pouring into me and in to us. So for those of you who want to learn more about what you do and to go deeper with you and to connect with you, then we're the best places that I can send them.

I am spending a majority of my social media time on instagram. It's @coachryanpatrick. I do not get on too many other social networks. My athletes are on TikTok. I cannot do it. So I. I'm on Instagram. I have a Facebook account that is almost old enough, actually.

Yes, it's called Facebook.

I was on the Facebook. I. So I went to the University of Kentucky and when you had.

When you could only be on when you were in college.

Oh, we thought we were cool because the University of Louisville did not have it yet. That's how my Facebook profile is probably old enough to order an alcoholic beverage. That's. That's how long I've been on.

I'm laughing because back in the day. Back in the day, you couldn't even have Facebook. You couldn't sign up unless you had a college education. Like, email address. It had to be like your student email address.

I know. It's so crazy.

Okay, we'll definitely make sure that we link that all up in the show or we'll link that up in the show notes. So thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Thanks. This was a pleasure.

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