How Coach Sean Brosnan Took Newbury HS Track Team from Obscurity to Breaking Records: MindBodySpace Method for Building Resilience

Once you say you can't do it, you use all that negative energy there. I think that's a big part of our success. We never had that at Newberry Park. We just wouldn't allow it. And it wasn't in our vocabulary. It was like, okay, when are we going to break the record and how are we going to do it? Not, oh, I hope we can do it. I always hated using the word hope. I was like, no, no, no, don't hope. When are we going to do it? It's a different mentality. I think that's been a big reason why those guys were so successful.

High achieving kids are so amazing, but they're also uniquely vulnerable. As a parent, how do we protect our driven children children from anxiety, perfectionism, or even burnout? But more importantly, how can we give them that extra edge that helps them to push harder when they need it, but also gives them the self-awareness that they need so that they can care for themselves for lifelong success and resilience? Today's guest, Sean Brosnan, took a high school team from obscurity to national record performances, D1 scholarships, with one alumnus Nico Young qualifying for the Paris Olympics in 2024. He says the secret to their record-breaking success wasn't talent or relentless training. It was something deeper. So we're gonna dive in and today we're gonna share exactly how he built this extraordinary belief, the powerful daily habits, and an intentional environment that allowed these teenagers to thrive, not just as athletes, but as resilient, confident young adults. Stick around to the end because Coach Brosnan reveals one simple practice you can start immediately to shift your child's mindset and improve performance. Whether your child's an athlete, a scholar, or an artist trying to perform at their best, what you learn today will be applicable in their daily lives. Hi, I'm Dr. Juna Bobby MD, a mom, board-certified physician specializing in lifestyle medicine, Harvard-trained educator, and the creator of resiliency courses for the Juilliard School. On our Mind Body Space podcast, we always look at high performance through the lens of neuroscience and whole child wellness. Hi Sean, how are you?

I'm doing well.

Great to meet you. Thank you so much for being here. And I wanna thank Joanna Pinsker of Simon Schuster for reaching out. And this is like, I think, a perfect fit for our podcast and our listeners. We're not runners. A lot of the people who listen to our podcast are parents of high-achieving kids, whether they're athletes or musicians or scholars. But your coaching methods have a lot of relevance to what we talk about on this podcast. And I've created the resilience program at the Juilliard School.

Wow.

For high-performing kids. I use a lot of athletic training books for, you know, mental training. And yeah, there's a lot of papers written on psychological training for athletes, not so much for classical musicians. So I borrow from that a lot. So I'm really excited for this conversation we're gonna have today.

Yeah.

And I would love if you could tell us about how you got to Newberry Park, and then get to that story of what you did once you were there.

Yeah, well, I was always a runner most of my life. You know, I ran in high school, I ran in college. I went to a smaller school in Colorado called Adams State University in Alamosa, Colorado, South Colorado. It was a Division II program, great program, really good history. And to be honest, it's probably one of the most winningest programs in US history. I'm probably getting this number wrong, but I think they've won over 60 national titles. So I feel like being there and being around that, I was around a family of runners growing up that it was always a big part of my life. And then after college, I kind of veered off and did a few different things. You know, I got into sales for a while. I was always very successful at that. Then when I started making my path back to running, I just had a different perspective, I think. And I went in running and coaching, maybe not almost say sales, but I just, I had this weird thing where I just didn't want to set the boundaries and I wanted to set the bar really high. I think I was a failed professional runner. I was trying to run professionally on my own and I couldn't make a living at it, but it was something I was very interested in and I kind of tested the waters on myself with different training methods. And when I ended up in Newbury Park, it was kind of by accident really. I made my way into coaching, you know, and I talk about it in my book. I basically saved up some money and I made my way around the country and just kind of begged my way to hang around with some of the best coaches in the country. And I knew who they were. And they let me, they kind of let me hang out, take some of the knowledge in. And I was like, if I'm going to learn, I was a visual learner. And I was like, I don't want to read in a book how to train. I want to watch the best people do it. And everyone thought I was crazy. They thought I was crazy. And I packed up my car and, you know, went to Oregon, was in North Carolina, Colorado. I spent time with all these different people. On my journey, I met a coach by the name of Scott Simmons at this Division II school in Queens University in Charlotte. I was a volunteer coach there and I just kind of learned from him and he was one of my bigger mentors when I first started. And then I moved on and went to Oregon with these professional Nike groups and hung around the coaches there. When the opportunity came to start looking for actual paying coaching jobs with universities and different opportunities that were coming my way, My wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, was finishing school. She was getting a master's in hydrogeology, and she got a really good job in Southern California as a hydrogeologist, an engineering geologist. And it was an opportunity she didn't want to pass up. So I was like, well, let's move to this area in Newbury Park, Thousand Oaks. I was like, I don't think high school's for me, but let me just see if I can help out a high school team and see what we can do. It happened quickly. I emailed about 12 different coaches in the area. Nobody got back to me except Newberry Park High School. And the head coach was like, hey, I'm retiring, like, within, like, a couple years. We need a new head coach. Let's meet for lunch. And literally that day, they pretty much hired me at Newberry Park. And it started from there. And I made a pact to myself and said, listen, I'm either going to make the best team that ever was, or I'm probably going to get fired for doing all these crazy things. And We did, you know, I promised the team in 3 years we would win. I said in 4 years we'll win a state title if you do what I say. And we won a state title in 3 years and we won a national title in 4 and then went on to being the most winning team in history after that. And it's kind of how I ended up. I tried to take the untraditional path and I just came in with a mindset like, hey, I'm going to take what I learned from some of the best pros and gear it towards high school kids and stop these limitations that we all put ourselves in everything in life and everything that I look at and try to study myself, it's like we have these boundaries that we set on ourselves and I just didn't wanna do that.

So, amazing. It sounds like you're a lifelong curious learner.

Yeah.

And somebody who would just run around following people that are the best at what they do. I really admire that. I try to do that myself. I love this idea of kind of had a map of people that you wanted to figure out or learn from them what they were doing. How long did that take you? Like a year?

Yeah, it took—

you're totally frozen, by the way, but it's okay. I can still hear you.

Okay, hopefully. Yeah, it went blank on my side.

Yeah, I can hear you.

Yeah, so I— that wasn't good. I mean, that journey was, you know, 4 or 5 years, honestly. Time with numerous coaches. There was another coach I spent time with. He held the American record in the mile for 25 years. He was also a successful coach at a collegiate level. I spent about a year with him and around his program. I just had a different way of going about it. I I think I was like, I'm not— I don't want to be a grad assistant and learn and then move up with one coach, and then eventually I'm coaching there and get a head coaching job or an assistant job. I wanted to do it from my way. And I said, you know, ever since I've been a child, I learned— like, it sounds silly, but visually. And like, I don't think that's silly at all. To me, the coaching world and like dealing with people, even in sales, it's like the interactions you have face to face and the delivery and I talk about this all the time and it's like, you know, the cues that you get from watching people and knowing what to do in that moment is something I learned by being around them only that I couldn't read in a book. And that's why I wanted to do it that way. And I just felt like that was the most important thing for me to do before I got to my own coaching when I was the head coaching successful athletes and stuff.

So did you have in mind that you wanted to be a coach? Was that the end goal or you were just learning for the sake of learning?

You know, it's funny you ask that because I think I had started that journey and I was in Charlotte, North Carolina with Coach Scott Simmons. I was on a run myself, still training as a semi-pro. I remember on the run, all I thought about was the kids we were coaching and the athletes. I remember stopping my run after I was done going, yeah, I'm a coach now, not an athlete. I remember the switch happened where I cared more about the outcome of them than my own personal athletic journey. So I knew then that I was gonna coach. I just, I tried not to put an exact, like, I'm gonna be in college by this year. I wanted it to happen organically. There was no set plan. That might be scary for some people, but I just felt like I wanted to learn as much as I could. When the time came that I was the only coach in charge of the athletes, I wanted to make sure I was ready and comfortable with it. So it was a little different than most.

I know, I love it. You called it dumbing down, but honestly, I agree with you. So I know medicine as a physician, and I've learned about resilience from a scientific background, but I'm also trying to simplify it so that I could give it to younger and younger kids, just like you're saying. And it's not necessarily dumbing down, but it's making it more accessible to a wider age range.

Right. I think these kids now are running like in the sport of track and field and cross-country. They're running so fast. The famous story in running is Roger Bannister in 1954 broke the 4-minute mile. And within that next year, multiple people did it. And I think that's what I saw happening even at Newbury Park. It was like we were breaking national records by a lot. Like I was just telling someone earlier today, for example, the team average of 15 minutes flat was the national record for the 5K. We averaged 14:14. I mean, 45 seconds, that's a huge amount. And like, because we just came in with a different mindset, I remember telling the guys, we can average under 14:20. When you first tell people that, they think you're crazy, but once they start actually believing it and act like it's happened, things just— and I know people get on me and they think I can be kind of full of myself for saying that, but it's like, once you say you can't do it, you just All that negative energy's there. I think that's a big part of our success. We never had that at Newbury Park. We just wouldn't allow it. And it wasn't in our vocabulary. It was like, okay, when are we gonna break the record and how are we gonna do it? Not, oh, I hope we can do it. I always hated using the word hope. I was like, no, no, no, don't hope. When are we gonna do it? It's a different mentality. I think that's been a big reason why those guys were so successful.

Yeah. And also having those action steps, right? To make it hope from hope to reality.

Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. So when you got there, you said, I'm gonna either make or break this. Yeah. And was it kind of like the Bad News Bears kind of thing?

Yeah. Well, it's funny. Yeah. In a way it was. So they hadn't won like a, a league championship in 21 years. I don't think a team had ever gone to the state championship with this one school. So even just going to the state meet, qualifying for the state championship was a goal all in itself for them., but I wanted more. So it was a process. I knew I couldn't get these guys to be national champs within a year, although we did it in 4, which was pretty amazing. They had a different mindset, like running wasn't serious to them. They didn't want to put the work in. I think when you, when you create that culture that everyone understands, like what the goals are too, it's like people, it became cool at Newberry Park to put the work in. Like if you weren't showing up at 6:00 AM practice, in the morning, which was optional, you weren't part of the cool crowd. Like, instead of like other teams are like, I don't want to get up at 6, I don't want to do that. It's creating that atmosphere. And I think that's the connection that I talk about that I learned from some of the best coaches in the world. It was like, you know, it's not the workouts. We all can figure out workouts, but at the end of the day, how can you get this athlete to believe in it? And how do they trust you that they want to do it? And I think that's where like I don't know if I can give an exact science of it, but I know that it works. And when your athletes start believing in it, it makes a big difference. When athletes tell me that like, oh, I have a goal of running this time, it's like, okay, but what are we going to do to get to that time? I'd rather have the goal of like day in, day out. I want to know the hard work. And like, that's what we changed. And yeah, it went from like being this team that no one talked about The first year, you know, we got to the state meet and that was like our Olympic moment, making it to the state meet. But we were 9th and I was disappointed that they were excited about being 9th and I wanted them to celebrate and have fun. But there had to be some mindset change after that. And, you know, with the young group of kids coming in that I felt were talented, it's like, you know, within a couple of years we were at the national level and that's where I think it changed for us. Wow.

So let's recap. So you get there and you start to change their mindset around what's cool and what is the in culture as far as like hard work. And I guess you made the training fun, right? You made it different in some way to encourage them, motivate them.

Yeah. I mean, I think coming in with the knowledge I had and being around a lot of post-collegiates, I think they automatically kind of respected, you know, from my background and who I've been around, but I don't know. I, I don't even know how to put a finger on it. I think it's cool to win and you want to be the best at what you do, but there was just a lot of positive atmosphere around the team all the time. And that wasn't just a given. That was hard to create because there's also some pushback, you know, some parents who are like, well, why don't you practice in the morning? Why do you guys want to go to— I mean, we went up to altitude in the summer for a month straight. So that was— wow. No, no other high school teams are doing that now. Now there's other high school teams that do it because we— Newbury Park was famous for doing that. Yeah, there's red blood cell enhancement. That's why you want to go there and stuff. But it was the team atmosphere that we created there that said, hey, if you guys are willing to leave your summer for 4 weeks to come up to altitude and train with your teammates, that's a big deal. We had JV guys that weren't making the top traveling team, but they wanted to be good and they showed up every day and worked just as hard as my top guys. And I think it was just a positive atmosphere. And there's always some, you know, the black sheep in the group and things you have to change and people that didn't fit in maybe and had to choose another sport. But at the end of the day, I realized they were just high school kids, but it's like Why not create an atmosphere for them that's like so amazing, something that they never thought they could reach? And that's a great thing when you see an athlete like, man, when they get to the pinnacle of the high school running national level and it's like they never thought they can be. It's a cool thing as a coach to see.

So is that where you guys were jumping off rocks 20 to 30 feet high?

Yeah, that's our famous— like, yeah, that was part of a little bit of our tradition there where everyone would jump off the rocks in Big Bear Lake, California. And so we would go up there, it's roughly 7,000 feet, like 6,900 feet, 7,000 feet. So it's a great place to train where you can get short-term benefits. Like you go up there for about, they say 28 to 35 days is like the perfect to get the red blood cells you need to benefit you for months in advance. But we would go up there and we had a lot of fun too. Like we'd go out on boats, we would jump off the rocks and yeah, we were training hard and doing a lot of other stuff. There's still kids. I mean, even when you're adults, you still gotta have fun in life and still do these other things. It's not just serious running in school every day. That's so interesting to me.

Because when I think about running, I don't necessarily think of it as a team sport, but I guess it is.

Cross country is a little more, I think, because it's like a team— there's team scoring, you know, you have 7 guys that run, 5 score. If you get 1st place, you get 1 point. If you get 20th place, you get 20 points. So like the team with the lowest score wins. And that's where we broke, I mean, a lot of different records in like, you know, with our low scores and close to perfect scores at the national championship for one team. We went 1, 2, 3, 6. We had 4 at a national championship where everyone in the country is there. My individuals and my team finished 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 6th place, which is— I mean, 3 of those guys broke the individual national record in the same race, you know?

Wow.

So it's, wow. It, it's stuff like that. But I think we definitely came in with these goals. Like when people would interview me the year before that, I was like, hey, we want to rewrite the history books and we want to change the way people look at fast times in high school. And Some people didn't take that the good way and some people did. I knew what they were capable of because I was seeing it every day. So I was saying that with confidence and I am a big thing with my coaching. I never tell an athlete they can do something they can't. And so when I tell them they can do something, I actually do truly believe they can do it. Otherwise it's— you're in some muddy waters telling someone they can do something that they can't, and I don't want to do that. And but I would tell someone, I was like, you're not ready to do that. But if you do this, this, and this, you will be. And let's get there. And it's like they know I'm honest with them. And I think that's a good thing too. Yeah, no, that's so important.

To have that trust because you don't want to just exaggerate things, right? Because then it doesn't come true and the confidence falls.

Right. And if you have— exactly, that's exactly it. Because if once you start telling people they can do something and they do it, then now the belief's even more in you as a coach. Like, they're like, okay, I can do this. Like, he wouldn't tell me this otherwise. But if you don't— I mean, if you start telling your team they can do stuff and they never can, they never accomplish those goals. Like, I just think as a program and a coach, you're in trouble. So you got it. Definitely can't be like that, I think.

So do you think that it's like some of it was chicken and the egg, like what came first? So when you started having this elite mindset, do you think that more talented kids joined the track team?

A little bit.

Or either way, like you could do this with any team?

Well, that's funny you ask that, 'cause I actually, I did this clinic once and there was like some high school kids and coaches and they were asking questions like a Q&A and, and Somebody asked me, this one girl asked me, she's like, if you were at so-and-so high school, do you think you would win a national title? And I said, yes, I would. And she was like, wow, you didn't even hesitate. I was like, well, listen, if to me, if you have 1,500 kids in a school, like an average size high school in California, because they're fairly big high schools in California, the talent is there. Math.

You're just doing the probability of the talent there.

Right. I think everybody can be good. I think it's easy to be good. It's hard to be great. But you don't even— to win, I don't even think you need to be great sometimes. Everyone needs to be good. We were lucky that we had everyone be great and we did a lot to gear towards that. But to win a state title, it was no doubt in my mind we would win one in 4 years. And I didn't even know the talent then. I just walked into this room and was like, we're going to win it in 4 years if you do what I say. And some people, I guess a bold statement for a team that's never made it to the state meet. I'm like, we have 2,000 kids in this school. There's no way we don't have talent. That can do this. And just being around, like, I know what high school running is, and I just think high school kids weren't running fast because I don't think they were doing— I didn't believe they had the right mindset or they were doing the right things to run fast. And we're seeing it now. And I'm not saying it's 100% because of Newbury Park. I don't want them to take the claim for that. But even since Newbury Park, the times have just taken off. Like, what kids are running now in high school, because I think people are seeing it's possible and they know it's possible now.

Phenomenon. Like, you see somebody do it, like you were talking about the 4.0 mile, right?

Yeah.

Once you break that, everybody else feels like it's possible. You can do that. Yeah.

Right. I mean, even one of my athletes, Lex Young, he broke the national record for the 5K and 3 weeks before he broke it, someone else broke it and he broke it from like, so this guy, the record hadn't been broken in like 15, 20 years. This one guy breaks it and then Lex breaks it 3 weeks later. Then a year later someone else broke it. It's like, that's wow.

What's the fastest time?

Lex ran 13:34 for a 5K. In high school, and it got broken in the 13:20s. Now I think it's 13:25. I mean, those are top collegiate— at one point, those were top professional times. And I think a high school kid is not as developed as a full adult, so it's a little different. But there's a famous saying by a pro runner, his name is Ryan Hall, and he once said, the human body is capable of a lot more than we think. And that always stuck with me. I think physically it's capable of a lot more than athletes or coaches give it credit for. And I don't mean you have to kill yourself to do this. I just mean we're capable of more on that day in that race. If you can get in that right frame of mind, I think you'd be shocked what we can do.

That's a great segue because next I want to go into the body part. My company is Mind Body Space. Yeah. And I feel like you embodied all of these things in your training and your coaching to get these kids to where they are. So we are dealing with mindset. Just to recap, you made them believe that they could do it. You set a culture, you had them bond with each other, and it was kind of fun and exciting, right? Yeah, exactly. And then you all, you probably had, over all the time you spent with the elite coaches, you probably came up with new training methods that weren't tried in high school before, like you were saying. So with the body part, did you look into diet or anything, or was it, or sleep or recovery, or was it the fact that we're running faster and faster now? Maybe it has something to do with science and the advances in understanding our human physiology better. I don't know.

No, I think that all those things, you know, for instance, when I was in high school, I felt like it was so basic. Like, I mean, I'm dating myself and gonna, you know, say like Doritos. Yeah.

In the '90s.

Right. But even the warmup or you, you talk about recovery, that's actually, I used to tell my athletes, I'm like, listen, unfortunately there's professional athletes out there that cheat. They do illegal things in sports. In order to recover. Because if you want to get faster, recovery is key. Because if you could work out hard every day, that would be amazing, but you can't because your body can't physically recover. And that's why you even take a sport like swimming and running. Swimming, there's no pounding on the body, so you could actually work harder more often than you could with running where there's more pounding. So recovery was a huge thing with me, and these little things sound so silly, but like hydration. You know, it's, I read all these studies from MMA fighting and how hydration is so important. And it started triggering in my mind, like you spoke about earlier, like when I go into my rabbit holes and start doing research and studies and I look at this stuff and I can't take it as 100% sometimes, but it's like hydration was a huge thing with DuBray Park. Recovery was a huge thing. I mean, we used to talk about sleep and hydrating and it sounds so basic, but so many people don't do it. There's so many high school kids getting 5, 6 hours sleep. That's just not efficient if you want to be the best in the country and you want to do something that nobody else has done. I used to always tell my athletes, before you showed up for afternoon practice, like, you know, from the time you wake up to the time you show at our 2:30, 3:30 practice in high school, take your body weight and then cut it in half and then drink that in ounces. So if you're 120 pounds, you're drinking 60 ounces of water before practice. And I used to— they were honest with me, and I wanted to know because it's like Well, how serious are you about this recovery process or hydrating process, you know? And those are ways to get faster without actually running harder. And that's the truth. And everyone knows that. It's like we talk about sleep all the time, but it's still neglected even on pros. And I don't understand. And it's like, if you can do those things you can control without having the talent, without having the hard work ethic, it just— if you can just control those things, it's not going to make you a national champ, but it's going to make you better.

You know, amazing. What about recovery as in stretching or like yoga or Pilates? There's this one technique that I swear by. It's called active isolated stretching. I don't know if you've ever heard of it.

Well, it's, it's a very crazy— say that, that's— we do rope stretching and the guys— that's it.

AIS rope stretching. Yeah.

Well, well, Jim Wharton and Phil Wharton. Yes. I learned that directly from those guys and we use that with all my programs and all my athletes.

He did my PT for me.

That's so funny.

I went to him. Was it Phil? It was Phil, the dad.

Yeah.

Well, son was a long-distance runner.

Yeah, exactly.

Phil was an architect.

Right.

And then he switched into PT because he wanted to help his son who has scoliosis and he was running like 100 miles a week.

Right.

He fixed him.

Those guys are the reason we rope stretch. I mean, they—

Oh my gosh. I can't believe that you know what I'm talking about. Oh yeah.

No, we— there's a camp that I go to every year. I'm going in about 3 more weeks back in New York. It's, it's called the Running School in Upstate New York. What? And it has like 550 high school kids. They don't go anymore, but for years they would go and they would teach this rope stretching stuff to all the kids. And I'll be honest, this was like 20 years ago and I was like, you don't need to do all that. And then as I was going through everything, I said, you know, there's something to this. And then I spent more time with them and I— we do it religiously with, with all my athletes. And to me, some of the top collegiate coaches went out He actually, like, who I consider a friend, Mike Smith, who was one of the top collegiate coaches at Northern Arizona University, where some of my athletes from nearby Park went, who's now coaching professionally. He does the same thing. And it's like, we had that in common. I'm like, oh, the Whartons. He's like, yes. And I think it's so important. And I tell everyone and any, any athlete that like, you know, that stuff is a huge part. Obviously we do it throughout the day, but we have routines. And when you, you do rope stretching, you do your short warmup. Then you come back and do dynamic drills. But it's all part of our routine. And those things are so important. And if you ever get into deep conversations with Jim or Phil, it's like they know what they're talking about. And these guys have pretty much like, I don't know, it's funny. I think if you call it stretching, they might get mad at it. They call it the active isolation, you know? Yeah, exactly. So anyway, that's a big part of our program at Newbury Park. And, you know, people would always ask like, what's with those ropes? You see, I see other teams do it, but a lot of them aren't doing it correctly. They just kind of get ropes and swing their legs. But if you do it correctly, it's a huge benefit. It's all again, and that helps with recovery too, but it also helps for proper warmup, which was a huge thing that I'm into too. And like I've learned from our full warmup that we do at Newberry Park that I've always taught my athletes comes from a lot of different coaches and part of it is rope stretching. It's kind of crazy.

Amazing. This is so cool because nobody ever knows what I'm talking about. I use this with a lot of my students also, cuz I work with athletes, fencers, tennis players. You know, and I've taught it to them and I also cured some of my patients because they had back problems. I learned it from one of my patients. She was a dancer. Wow. She's a pretty famous Broadway dancer, teacher, or coach. And she fell 3 floors during a construction phase of Roundstone and she broke her back. And that's how she ended up with the Whartons and she swore by it. And that's how I found out about it. She used to have DVDs showing the method.

Yeah. It's funny. I think the Whartons have stuff out there.

They have, they have actual DVDs, like, yeah. You have to put it in a slot. Yes.

And it makes it harder.

One guy who has Vimeo videos that I recommend to all my students, and he recently went offline. He was like very old. I don't know. They're very old videos, but they worked.

I have Lex and Leo. We have on a YouTube thing, but it's a private link. Oh, I just never made it public.

That you should share it with me.

Yeah, exactly. 'Cause a lot of my athletes I'll send it to and I'll say, hey, this. And then when we start working together, at least they have an idea. Of what we, you know, cuz it's a good way to tell people, or even when I do clinics or talk at a camp and kids ask me, and if I'm not at the running school, I, you know, I'm like, hey, like here's a simple form of what we do at Newbury Park. 'Cause I'll explain.

Wow.

And then just have them go through it and, you know, I love this. Yeah, that's fun.

I've dug into the science of it also. It's basically getting blood flow rushing into that area. There's like a few papers that I have that I'll send you if you're interested.

Yeah, that's pretty crazy.

I mean, I love this.

When you talk to the Whartons, it's like, why isn't everybody doing this? You know, it's like, it makes sense. It's crazy.

One of the people I cured is my husband. He had a horrible disc and I gave him the stretches and it cured him.

That's what I'm saying.

Amazing. So what else would you recommend? What else did you do as far as body when you were at Newberry?

Recovery was a bit, again, sleep recovery.

That was tough. What about food?

You know, it's hard. It gets a little touchy sometimes. You know, even when I was coaching in the NCAA, like what you could recommend and not recommend. I always tell this story when I was at— I actually got in trouble for telling an athlete not to drink Gatorade all day because of the sugar. They don't want you to tell an athlete not to have any certain type of product. And I thought, okay, you gotta be really careful. I just mentioned—

why is that?

I don't know. I just think they worry about the athlete will have a complex and not do, you know, and not— oh, I, I just was recommending just don't drink sugar all day.

And also it has dye in it. And exactly.

Or some schools I know, they would give them like little gummy candies as we're— I'm like, how is this in the gym? But again, like me and my wife, we eat very clean and like we don't have a— I mean, everything from like we don't even do seed oils or dairy and a lot of different stuff.

Do you believe in the vegan recovery?

And we've never done that. I mean, everyone—

I just wondered.

Yeah, no, we do nothing like that. But it's like I've always tried to walk a fine line of like with diet with athletes and kids and like what we recommend. One thing we did though is we really focused on your iron level and make sure your ferritin levels are high. It was a hard thing to do in high school. Like, obviously I'm not taking these kids to get blood tested, but I would talk to their parents. I would share the knowledge that I had and how important it was, you know, because I think a lot of times for an athlete, you know, if you get your levels taken and if people know anything about that who are listening, it's like, you know, a 15 or 20, they might be like, oh, I'm fine. But an athlete, Needs that I would say needs to have a higher level. And I know it differs from women and men and different things like that, but mm-hmm. That's something that we always did and we were really into like just if the parents were okay with it, making sure they got a full panel blood test and making sure all the levels were correct and good because that's gonna help you recover. You know, you're gonna have a hard time recovering with low iron levels and like especially when we went to altitude. Mm-hmm. So these little things do add up to big things. That was what I learned from Scott Simmons, who was at Queen's University. His athletes would get tested once a month, and I would, as a semi-pro or trying to run as a pro, I would make sure my levels were good. And, you know, I felt like— I thought I had mono at one point and my iron was just super low, and just getting it back up was unbelievable how I felt. So I take all those things into consideration. We always talk—

and what did you eat, a lot of spinach or like meat or—

well, I mean, I supplemented. I took iron supplements and I just took it with B12, vitamin C, and made sure I didn't take it with any dairy. Dairy so that it would help raise it quicker. But that's how we mainly did. And then obviously iron, as much as you can. I mean, that would be the best way, but sometimes it's really hard to get it in actual food form all the time. But you're just putting your body through so much as a top athlete. Even these top high school athletes, I mean, some of the workouts that they're able to do, it beats up on you. So you have to figure that out. And that's what a lot of complaints come in where they think, oh, training these high school kids too hard. I never thought we were. I just thought we were training smarter, you know. Everyone still got one day a week off, and we usually didn't run Sundays. Some kids jogged easy on Sunday, but yeah, we just made sure we do all the little things to add up to the big things. And I think that was a big difference too. And the mind is a big portion of stuff too. Recovery, the number one thing I don't think people emphasize enough in high school, for sure, you know.

But then when you're pushing your body, you want to push past the limit.

Right.

And do different, like mix up the workouts. I mean, we're going to go on to the space soon because I know you do care about the environment that your athletes are in. But I just had that one more question about the body. Like, do you push past your limits and then you mix up the workouts or what is the latest thing?

Yeah, well, I mean, I've been known for it. Like, I feel like my coaching style is like I always say, go to the well. Like, I think it's— I think you got to pick your battles wisely and you got to figure out those days. Because it's all about like callusing the system and like the body gets used to it. You know, there's a big trend nowadays where people are taking the lactate test and their lactate levels are doing little blood, you know, samples as they're running to make sure their, their millimoles are 3 or 4 or whatever they're looking for. But at the end of the day, it's like, you know, a great— one of the most winning coaches of all time once told me, he's like, Sean— and this guy's coached Olympic gold medalists, tons of medals— he's like, Sean, at the end of the day, I got to teach this athlete how to run the last 400 at this pace. I don't even care sometimes what the levels are. Like, yes, they're a measure, but they can't be the 100% of how you train. Because I'm big into callousing the system, I guess it would be like a simplistic way of saying it. And like, I want my athletes— I like to develop my athletes in training more than I do racing. I know a lot of coaches think that I didn't race my athletes enough, but I was like, well, we pick our battles wisely. When we race, we race. I think you can learn more in training than you can racing at the national level of high school. Like, in the beginning stages, when you're a freshman or sophomore, and you need to race more and get the feel of things. I get that. But when my top guys were breaking national records, we just didn't race a lot. But when we raced, it meant something. And I think for training, I just think, you know, you gotta eat. It's like, you know, kind of like a, like a balloon in a way. Like you gotta blow it up sometimes and you gotta callus the system and you gotta teach your body to run with that acidity and run with that lactic acid and all that. And then eventually it becomes easier. To me, that's a simple way of explaining it, but it's like, as a coach, you got to find those fine lines of when you're training somebody too hard, too little, or just right. And that's where I think coaching comes in, where if you read from a book like, okay, follow this program, it's hard because I like to watch my athletes. Like, we would warm up and I'd be like, all right, we're not going to do this, we're going to do that. And I would change it and they would trust me just from watching them because I could tell. I was like, this isn't going to be good. Oh, we mess up as coaches. There's times that I've had to stop workouts and I've been like, guys, I got too excited like this. We got to pull back on this workout. But they trusted me enough to be like, okay, you're right. Like, they're not going to question it because when you get an elite athlete, they're like, no, I want to finish a workout. I want to do this, I want to do that. And sometimes it takes a bigger athlete or more courage to say, hey, I'm going to stop. I don't need to do that much. And that's where you have to find that fine line, you know? And I'm not saying we didn't train hard because we trained hard, but you just have to find those fine lines.

I love that because everybody's so individual and even that moment is individual. But I just want, I just remember watching the documentary with Usain Bolt and he's training until he throws up.

Well, it's right. I mean, and you have some of those days, you know, we don't have those often. You can't do those too often. Like physiologically, your body doesn't have enough of those. But you know, every once in a while I think it's like you gotta train harder than racing. And I think that's important. Like, If you want to break 4 minutes in the mile, you have to average 60 seconds per quarter mile, right? So you got to train faster than that. And some people don't have that philosophy, you know, and it's a combination of everything. You got to train your aerobic system. You got to train the speed developmental stuff. You know, as far as like training stuff, like we did speed year round and a lot of people don't do that. They do a base phase in the summer. They're not doing much speed. Well, we did fast, fast stuff year round in Newberry Park. And a lot of programs do that too. It's just something that I think, you know, they benefit from because it's all progressive. It's about the body getting used to doing certain stuff. You know, if our season ended in December, the beginning of December was our end of our cross-country season and it starts in September. It's all progressive. Your hardest month of training is October, November, and then you get ready to race your fastest in December.

Mm-hmm. Interesting. Okay, so now space. I saw that story where you went and bought a tent.

The national, yeah, the national championship. So When we went to races at Newberry Park, as we were getting really big, and like, this was in the high school world, there'd be kids lined up for pictures, signing stuff. We went to races in New York City at the Armory, which is a famous indoor track, and they would have to get us, like, I don't want to say security, but they would have to put us in a room away from everybody else because there'd be too many kids asking for pictures and different things from our athletes and so forth. But when we went to the Running Lane, the cross-country championship in Alabama in 2021, it was something I probably did for the past 2 years before that, where like I would make sure our compound or our area where we had our team, we had huge tents and we had walls and zip-up walls and made sure that we had our own place to just kind of get away and just all that distraction. And because to me, it's just, that was our focus time, you know, we came there for business. And when we showed up and we wanted to, and that was a race where we, you know, annihilated the national record and did all great, great things. And that was kind of— that put us on the map as like being the greatest high school team ever in cross-country, at least in cross-country, if not other sports. And I think, yeah, creating that space for them was really important. And it may sound like something simple, but it was a big deal. And the day before, I was kind of freaking out. I was like, man, I got to figure this out because they don't have a setup for us where some races have your own little tents. They didn't. And I was like, we need to figure this out and we need to make sure they have their own place to set up and think and focus before the race. The other aspect of it was when we'd go to certain races in high school, there's this race called the Arcadia Invite. It's like one of the biggest track meets in the country every year for distance runners. And like, I would take 2 days to set up the tents there because I wanted to create such an atmosphere where we had multiple tents that was in this big area. And then we had a little like a courtyard in the middle of them. And I mean, people would walk by and be like, oh my gosh, this is nuts. But I wanted to create a place for that. And we put rugs down, we had lights. And like, it was a big deal to set up. We had to have parent volunteers help. And like I said, I'd go days early to help set it up. And everyone's like, well, why do you do this? We're only here for 5 or 6 hours a couple days and that's it. And it's like, you know, I just want this. If you're comfortable and you feel good, it's such a— it's creating an atmosphere that no other team did. And that everyone, they felt so proud to be part of Newbury Park or to have this really cool area to relax before the race. That even parents can sit and hang out. I mean, it was nuts. We had music and I think we even had a battery-powered thing with a blender one year where parents are making smoothies. It's like, we just wanted, we wanted that atmosphere. And I think we were probably a little bit over the top, but that was the point. If we're willing to do this for you guys, they understand the importance of what they're trying to do.

And now, are these things that you just thought up of on the fly, or was this something planned from being with those coaches?

Yeah, well, no, that was kind of on the— I don't want to say on the fly, but like when I first got to Newberry Park, you know, I talk about this in my book too. It's like my first year at Newberry, we didn't even have a Team 10. We would just like throw a tarp on the ground. None of our uniforms, like, like our warm-up, uh, warm-up uniforms, our actual uniforms matched, but like our, our— none of our warm-ups matched. They just didn't look good. Like we would show up and we'd be wearing like non-school colors. I'm like, the kids would be wearing like sandals. They wouldn't even have their running shoes on yet. I'm like, this is a mess. Like this is a— we're not in the right mindset coming in. So I think I took it to the extreme and I was like, you know what? Not only are we going to get rid of this tarp, I'm going to make the best tent. I'm going to have the best atmosphere that any other school had. I mean, we had a tradition at New Ray Park at the state championship. We would wake up at 4 o'clock in the morning. We'd go to the meet with the parents and all the coaches and we would set up a Christmas tree because Thanksgiving weekend was our state championship. We would set up a Christmas tree and garland around our tent and we would hang stockings with all the kids' names on it. So, and again, it sounds kind of corny, but they would show up and everybody, all the other teams would think it's the coolest thing. I wanted them to be proud of what we had, you know? And if we had to wake up at 4 in the morning, who cares? But like some people like, ah, I don't want to do that. It's like, we just didn't care. I was like, No, we're gonna do it. We're gonna make this the coolest team intent that you've ever seen. So that was like another reason we did it just for that, that environment.

This is amazing. I think you hit all the spots, the mind, the body, and the space, and you supported them to another level. And I can understand why you had so much success, to be honest. Your attention to detail, all of that is just so validating, you know, with the results that you got.

Yeah, I mean, I always told them, I said, listen, there's going to be no other coach that's going to work harder than me. I always thought if I worked harder than any other coach that I ever thought of or saw, that there's no way we had any choice but to be one of the best teams. And that's what I did. When we went to altitude camp for a month up in Big Bear, California, you know, I'm away from my family. It's hard for me too. But like, you know, I remember one year because all the kids had rooms and beds and I have to stay in the house and obviously make sure they're fine. Like I slept in a closet because it was the only place for me. And everyone's like, that's crazy. I'm like, I don't think it's that crazy. Like that's the least I can do to have— like if they're going to show me the focus and dedication to giving up their summers so they could train with their friends and becoming the best team in history, then sleeping on the floor in a closet is not a big deal. Like it's not the end of the world, you know? And that's how I looked at it.

Wow. You're giving me a lot of mom vibes. I mean, dad, dad vibes. Yeah. Do you have kids?

I don't. I have cats.

So, yeah, like a natural parent. Amazing. And you don't have to have kids to be an amazing parent. I mean, you're a coach, so. And I always say you can coach your own brain too, right? A lot of us didn't have great parents. We can end up coaching ourselves.

Well, yeah. I mean, it's like even everything that I created for my team at Newberry Park, I was like, it was what I wish I had in high school. Not that I had a bad experience, but it was just, you know, basic team. We had a really Actually, I went to high school in Long Island, New York. Wantagh High School. Yeah. And you know, most people know it, Jones Beach in that area. But like the girls were state champs. The guys, we weren't a very good team. I was an individual qualifier. I was like the one who would qualify, but the rest of the team wouldn't for the boys. But so we still had a good program, but I always like was jealous of that team that had everything, you know? And that's what I wanted to create in Newbury. I wanted it that plus. I wanted everything like like 10 times better. And like, you know, someone— I'd rather someone try to pull me down and say, okay, enough's enough, than to be like wishing I would do more for them. And that's, that's kind of the way I looked at it.

I love it. If you're gonna leave parents with something that they could start doing right now, whether they're an athlete or a performer or they're just trying to raise a resilient child, what would you tell them?

Honestly, if I had to say anything, it's like to stop setting limitations on stuff. It's like, I think when a kid comes to me and they see that you have that belief in them, it may sound like— I always say this all the time and I overuse the line, but it sounds so cheesy, but it's so true. It's like, I loved as a kid or as a college athlete or even a semi-pro, when you talk to someone and there's that positive reinforcement, as simple as that is, that's what you give these kids. And that's the only advice I could probably give. I mean, I'm not technically a parent, but You want to, you want to have them be able to have them go to you to get positive reinforcement or like encourage them to do something out of the norm. Like it's okay, you don't have to be like everybody else. Like why not be great? I always say my big thing is why not? I was doing a talk at a camp last week and I was telling these guys, why not? Why can't you be a state record holder? Why can't you go to the state championship? Why can't you go to the national championship? Why can't you get faster? Just start asking yourself why not? And it's like, that's, it's just, I just really think if people had that to go to, or if you could give that advice to someone coming to you, I think it can make a huge difference. You might not think it, but I think sometimes you just need to trigger that one thing and that can change the way they look at things.

So the support and the encouragement and maybe the tools.

100%. Yeah.

That's what I think. Okay. Tell us about your book now. So I got this awesome copy from Simon Schuster. So thank you. It's great. So tell us when you are launching the book or where people can find you or find more about you.

Yeah, the book is called Beyond Fast. Presales are open now, so you can get it anywhere books are sold. It's available anywhere online, which is great. This is one of these things where I always joked, I'm like, oh, I'm gonna write a book one day, but I don't want it to be a running book. I don't want it to be a training book, although there is training in the book. To me, I think to sum it up, it really is like, I want, I want people to read this book and I guess I'll back up. When I watch a movie about something that isn't running, because running is my thing in coaching and inspires me to be a better coach, like I was like, okay, that was a great movie. So this book, I want people to read it that run, that don't run, and I want it to inspire them like, hey, there shouldn't be any limitations. You should be able to do what you want. It's just a mindset type thing. And I think that's what it is. And it's my journey. It starts in high school from when, why, and how I started coaching. My influences all the way from my earliest days to my grandfather, who was one of my first track coaches along with my dad. And then, you know, I went on past that into college and how I landed at Newberry Park and took this team from nothing to one of the best teams that we ever saw in the US ever. And if not, I don't know when these records will be broken, but probably a long time, if ever. And it's just my journey on that path. And I hopefully people give it a read and realize that maybe it'll motivate them to do something else in their life too.

Well, congratulations on the book and everything you've accomplished. And speaking of movies, have you been watching Stick on Apple?

No, I should. What is that? Something along those lines or what is it?

It's about this ex-golf pro who's coaching this young kid. Like a golf prodigy.

Nice.

It's called Stick.

Oh, cool.

It's got Owen Wilson.

I could be wrong on this, but I think he's one of the fastest celebrity runners, meaning he ran in high school and he was like a pretty good runner when he was—

Oh, wow.

Yeah. I remember there's like a list of like 5 celebrities that ran in high school and he was one of the better ones. So I was pretty impressed.

Okay. So for an old person like me, can I start running?

Yes. Everyone could run at any age. Absolutely. You know, ironically, a lot of people pick it up later in life from the recreational side and they might even do marathons and stuff. A little bit different from like, you know, when I was coaching. But yeah, I think that there's a lot that, you know, people can get into running at any point of their life, really. I don't think there's any age on that.

I was looking into that, that running style where you like lean forward a little bit. Is it the Posner running?

Maybe a chi running? I don't know. Yeah.

Yeah. Chi running. Yeah. This was an amazing conversation. Like, I think you're an amazing coach just from the details that you talk about are something that's extraordinary.

Yeah, well, I'm super passionate about it, so I really appreciate you saying that.

Yeah, I mean it. Understanding the body and physiology and mind-body connection. Yeah, I can see that you hit all the bases.

Yeah, I mean, I, I said it earlier too, I think it just happens organically. And it's like when you do something you enjoy so much, if someone's like, hey, you got to go drive 5 hours and come back the same day because of this, okay, let's do it, I don't care. I talked about that in the book too, my grandfather driving me hours away so I could do a workout because I was from Long Island, New York, and it was snow when I came home for like, so he would drive me down south to just do a workout and drive me back. And I was like, well, if he's gonna do that, like, why can't I do that with my athletes? You know, we would drive 5 hours to do certain workouts on certain courses. Why not? You know? And everyone's like, that's crazy. I'm like, I don't know, I don't think it's crazy. Why not? You know, you just do it.

So, okay, so everybody buy this book. And if they want to train with you, where do they reach you?

Um, well, I currently, I don't train individuals or anything like that. I have a— I'm in the process of hopefully making an announcement pretty soon. I'm going to be coaching a professional with all professionals coming up. So I'm excited about that and that's to come. But otherwise, anyone who has any questions, they always reach out to me on Instagram or anything like that. I'm actually pretty good about getting back to people that have real questions and stuff. Yeah, my Instagram is @realseanbrosnan. It's always cool to hear from people who are either like fans or ordered the book, and hopefully when they read the book, when it comes out September 2nd, they have some good things to say or anything they want to know.

Okay, so Instagram is the best way to reach you.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much for your time. This was amazing. I really learned so much. Thank you.

Yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Thank you so much for joining me today on the Mind Body Space podcast. When we strive to achieve at our highest levels, we can be prone to anxiety and perfectionism. That's part of it, actually. It gives us that push, but we can give ourselves the extra edge with the Mind Body Space method, which integrates the whole child. Ready to get started? Visit mindbodyspace.com to grab your free guide on brain-based parenting to help your child build emotional and physical resilience for confidence, focus, and lifelong thriving. For deeper support, you can check out our digital courses designed specifically to nurture resilient, focused, and emotionally strong kids. And our students often find themselves gaining admissions to top Ivy League schools. Not that that's the ultimate goal for life, but it is a wonderful side effect of being self-aware and understanding how to manage your nervous system. We even have courses that are specific to high performers who are under a lot of pressure. If you're not sure which course is for you, you can always email us at info@mindbodyspace.com. Thank you so much for joining me today on the Mind Body Space podcast. Together we're learning powerful insights on how to raise resilient, high-achieving kids who thrive from the inside out. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast so you never miss out on brain-based parenting strategies. We're also on Instagram at @mindbodyspacepodcast. Check out the website because we are going to be having a lot of information coming there, as well as an AI version of me to answer questions in the coming months. Stay tuned.