#107 - Durability Over Dominance - Redefining Athlete Development with Matthew McKay, Part 1

Welcome to The Factor Podcast, where we talk about the stuff they didn't teach you in school, how to grow your practice, refine your clinical skills, and get better results for your patients. We're here to help you navigate the real-world challenges of being a healthcare provider, from delivering top-notch patient care to running a business that doesn't run you into the ground. Whether you're fresh out of school or scaling your practice, we're diving into effective cutting-edge treatments to get patients better faster. We'll also talk about business strategies and tactics to help you work smarter and not harder, and the mindset shifts required to thrive as a top performer in your field so you can build a career you love without burning out. If you're ready to learn what works and what doesn't from leading experts, industry innovators, and respected clinicians across a wide range of specialties, you're in the right place, my friend. Let's dive in. They say dominance is flashy, but durability, durability is what wins championships. In this first episode of our new 3-part series, I'm joined by strength and conditioning coach turned chiropractic student, Matthew McKay. With over a decade of experience training athletes across high school, collegiate, and even tactical military settings, Matthew brings a fresh but grounded perspective to what it really takes to help athletes last. We're talking about more than just sets and reps here. This is about mindset. It's about stress, structure, and the culture that we can create as coaches and as clinicians. So if you work with student athletes, weekend warriors, or just people trying to stay in the game, this conversation will challenge you to rethink your programming, your priorities, and your role in shaping the next generation of resilient athletes. Let's dive in.

All right, thank you so much, first of all, for having me on here. This is truly an honor. I've been in a lot of spaces to speak and present and do things, but this is my first time on this type of platform, and I truly, truly do value it. So thank you for having me. I am originally born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, so truly, truly Southern-bred guy. We want to jump into this series, turn it into a 3-part series. So I struggled in the beginning to figure out how do we fit Theory and a little bit of philosophy into an hour. Also with programming models for why you're in in-season phase or preseason phase of actual strength training, and also trying to squeeze in conditioning as well. And I had to come to the exception that it's no way to do it. So what I did realize and understand is that I could do a 3-part series. So today it won't be any necessarily programming models that we'll cover, but But I do have those. That'll be part 2, would be our strength training models. That'll be the same 1-hour presentation, and it'll be solely on different ways to approach different points of the season that you're in with your athletes per sport. And then part 3 would be on the conditioning phases, right? So how we utilize the different things we hear all the time. You hear people talk about Tabata a lot and a lot of different training methods for different sports, whether it be soccer or baseball or football or tennis or whatever it is. So Today will not be a lot of programming models, but I want to talk about how we build our own model. So I struggled with the title in the beginning to figure out what I really wanted to cover, but it kind of boiled it down to exactly what I thought would be perfect for the message I was trying to bring, which would be truly durability over dominance, the secret to long-term success. Every athlete's different, and I think a lot of the time we focus on the one more rep kind of deal, and I understand that that's important. When it's important, right? And that leads me into my next slide. Spoiler alert, durability is dominance. And I, again, I am from the South, so I do have a draw when I talk a little bit. So if you need me to say something else or repeat it, just jumping into it, I'm going to be my authentic self. Everything on here is lived, live experience, no pulling from other places I haven't experienced myself. I believe the authenticity in that is going to show you and share with you that This is real stuff. Okay. So as only have colleges listed on the side, I work with high school sports and that's my main target audience, high school athletes and younger, but primarily high school and middle school athletes. But also if you're working with people in a clinic who have never really participated in sports, but maybe they're rehabbing or maybe they're trying to get into sports, maybe they didn't play a lot of sports. So they're trying to get into pickleball and have some ideas or questions that they want you to answer or Hey, Doc, can you write me a program just to get started and whatnot? Right? So all those things are here. So I put the colleges on this slide because I worked at all these spaces. Okay? And it's not a flaunt or anything in that matter. I'm using that to show that I have seen the transition from high school athletes, or from middle school athletes to high school athletes and to college. And so I just want to spend this time talking about the things that I know have worked. And the things that have failed. And I kind of, over the last 13 years, I spent 13 years in strength conditioning before coming here to chiropractic program here at TCC, Texas Chiropractic College. So I'm talking about the way I've seen the things work well and the way I've seen the things fail. And now I understand the why as to why those programming models may not have worked. So spoiler alert, durability is dominance. Sometimes we see in very Americanized sports such as football, we see the Alabamas and the Clemson and LSUs. We see the snippets online on YouTube and things like that of the heavy day in the weight room and all the jumping and screaming and whatnot. Again, you see the 4 colleges I've been at, I've been a part of that too, as far as being a coach who's programming those days. But that's just a glimpse of it. We don't always show the ramping up and the building up to those days that we advertise for media and promotion of games and things. So Couple of things as we get rolling. I'm really excited, so I'll probably smile a lot. And if you see me get really rolling here, I will probably talk a little bit faster. So I'll be tuning into that with myself and make sure I'm not going too fast. But jumping into it, I'm not the end-all be-all. There are other coaches out here who have used different methods and different strategies and different programs that work as well. So I want to start by saying that I am not the end-all be-all. I have worked with middle school sports, high school sports, College sports, pro sports, as well as worked with military tactical setting, most recently at Fort Bliss out in El Paso, Texas, 1501 Combat Aviation Brigade. So from technical to middle school, I've seen it all. Very different. But one thing I've seen was the really good programs had a really good structure and the ones who didn't, didn't have any structure. So again, my target audience is those younger athletes and also just newer novice athletes. So why am I so passionate about this particular age range? Because I've realized over the years that if you're working with this age group, you have a hand in it. You have a hand in their development, and we'll talk about how that plays into what you know and what they know later on. But you have a serious hand in their development as an athlete. Okay, so one thing I want to point out is that the transition to college is not always easy, and I know we know that on paper, but what about in person? It's not always easy. So I want to talk about load and not necessarily load management, load management from a space of taking games off, or you shouldn't have them lift weights 4 days a week. No, not, not from that space. Okay, that's all subjective. What I want to talk about, the objective piece, is you're going to have 2 phases or 2 components of load, and it's going to be external stressors and internal stressors. So some of their external stressors with family, Being at the school, taking college-level classes, all these things that are external load that we can't control. They have to do them. And then internal stressors, we'll talk about that in a space where are they dealing with self-confidence issues? Do they have body dysmorphia, right? Things that we won't just know looking at them. That's still a form of stress. And our stress is often— and our load and stress can have a really, really close relationship. So we have to kind of recognize the importance of it. For a high school athlete. So when I think about load management, the L, I think about the 4 components that can make the transition to college tough. So number 1, the L, they're a long distance from home. Most of these college students and whatnot, they come from high school, like I said, go to college and go to pros. They're a long distance from home. So that could be a huge variable of stress. Even if you're working in a clinical setting, if there's someone who moves abroad for a job and they hurt themselves and now they're in rehab, Well, if this is the first time they've lived in Japan and they've never been out of the country before, now they've moved here, that's a long distance from home. So one piece of the load management component. So overwhelmed with the new environment secretly, right? So a lot of times college athletes will push, I'm fine, I'm good, I'm fine. But really it's different if you're working with a student athlete who is in a space where they come from big city and now they go to a school that's kind of For lack of better terms, in the middle of nowhere. That's a huge transition. Or if you take the student who comes from a very rural environment and now they go down to the University of Miami or University of Southern California where you're in the middle of a huge city, that can be a secret overwhelming piece. The A is they're adapting to new culture. So when I talk about culture, I don't just mean the weight room culture. I'm talking about like the race, the religion, the different values. And I know those things are Sometimes very political, so we're not going to get into all that. But we have to be aware that when your high school athlete transitions or your middle school athlete goes to a high school in a new area or a new state, they're going to have to be around these things that create a team culture. You're going to have people that don't look like you, different races, people who may serve a different God than you, people who may not believe in God at all, and that's fine. But they're going to have to be dealing with these things and learn how to exist in those cultures and That's where their values are really going to show up, not just in the weight room, but as people too. And then the D is going to be just dealing with the unknown. Like I talked about earlier, are they having trouble at home? Did they lose a grandparent before they came to college, or did they lose their best friend, or whatever the situation may be? So when we think about load management, not just talking about 2 days on, 2 days off— no, that's your programming. I'm talking about just taking a second to think about The L-O-A-D, the distance, or the long distance, the overwhelming features and things that happen sometimes in young athletes, adaptation to new environment for culture, as well as dealing with just the unknown and they may not share with you. So, and I learned that that all goes into our athletes' availability because they're there to first of all get an education, and how they do that is going to be through playing sports to help pay for the class. We're going to be real on here, all right? If you're getting a scholarship to play ball, it's because you're in a space where your play is paying for your education. So they have to be available. And as many sport people have said before, your best ability is your availability. So now we're going to talk about our learning outcomes and our plan of attack. So this is just an obligatory thing we have to do. So as far as my learning outcomes, I want to talk about just addressing learning outcomes and philosophies and Evidence that supports— I have a slide at the end where you can look at some articles. The next piece, I want to highlight the key takeaways from these learning outcomes. And the last piece, provide action-based, ready strategic plans that you can throw into your program or your practice now, no matter what level of sports you're working at, or rehab if you're working with a novice athlete. So we'll jump into it. So our first really big piece is number 1, developing your own Athletic performance model. That's the first piece of building a durable athlete. Again, programs that we see, what we call dynasties, the only reason they're a dynasty is because they're durable. They're able to do what they've done over and over and over and over again. So we often look at the dominance and we don't talk about the durability to be dominant. So the piece I want to highlight here is you have to develop your own model. So The question, just use a college model. Why reinvent the wheel? So when I first started strength and conditioning, I was in college myself, just finished my certified personal trainer qualifications and whatnot, credentials. And keep the long story short, because I want to respect you all's time, I was in a space where I was coaching at a high school for linebackers and D-line, and I went into the weight room and the head coach at the time had them doing 4x8 at 90% on their squats. And I said, Coach, I know I'm new here, but I'm not sure if that's how it's supposed to go. And he asked a couple questions. Aren't you certified? Aren't you in school for strength and conditioning and exercise science? And I answered yes and yes. And he comes back in with a huge manila folder and puts it on my chest and says, hey, well, you're now the strength coach. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. He said, well, you're the only person that's certified to do anything with them technically in this weight room. So in that moment, In that moment in 2010, it took off. So I had to learn really fast, really quick, and I didn't have a lot of help. So I have learned— one of my colleagues on staff said, well, just use a college model. You're there at Jacksonville State University, just use theirs. And no, we— no, no, no, no, we're not reinventing the wheel. Number one, we're gonna get into 3 bullet points. When you create your own program model, you avoid coaching or practicing from a limited purview. So if I'm just doing what I've seen done before, I am not saying in any way that if something works, that it doesn't work here. Yes, if the car drives down the street today at 2 o'clock and nothing's wrong, it's going to drive down the street tomorrow at 2 o'clock. However, is that the right kind of car? Do I need to be driving a NASCAR sport car to Walmart? Probably not, right? But I do need to drive it on the track. So again, when we look at the models that we use, we want to look at avoid coaching. From a limited purview. The second piece I want to look at is that, of that, you only know what you know. Okay, so I want to highlight that next piece. Exposure leads to expansion. So you may come in very well-versed, huge background in this stuff. That's great. Utilize it, do it. But you have to understand that you can't just keep doing the same thing over and over and over without reevaluating. Does this work for this group of athletes? So exposure always leads to expansion. The second piece is that your model becomes your culture. And I am big on this because we often hear the word culture, culture, culture, culture, especially in sports, especially in sports media, ESPN, all these different places. Again, I've been in a huge college from Jacksonville State to Clemson to UNCG and even a community college at El Paso Community College. And that's one word you hear no matter where you go is culture. And sometimes we don't understand that the culture of the program a lot of times dictated by the head coach, but we control the culture of the weight room and rehab and what that looks like. So things to consider, big piece here, your model is your message. Okay, your model is your message, and your message becomes a culture. So we talk about breaking that down. Coaches always ask, what's your model in your interviews? What's your message? And you're kind of just going through this thing hoping to say something they want to hear so you can get the second round interview and then the on-campus interview and then You get the job. But how many of us have had people take time to sit down and really show us how to create a culture? And it's not a lot. Okay, so things to consider for creating your own culture. Number 1, clarity dictates culture. Clarity dictates culture. So the way I break that down, when I was head strength coach guy to assistant strength coach guy to intern to a volunteer, back to unpaid intern, back to full-time staff working with pro sports, it's simple. One voice. Okay? Simple. One voice, one clear understanding, and that creates a culture. Okay?

If you're a rehab clinician still piecing together CEUs and hoping they'll somehow lead to better outcomes, it's time to stop guessing and start thinking in systems. CHPP, Certified Human Performance Practitioner, isn't another seminar. It's a complete operating system for integrating rehab and performance. We built it backward from the end goal— return to sport, full capacity, and durable results— then reverse-engineered every phase of the process, from load progression and clinical audits to strength integration and real-world decision trees. Because your patients don't show up with clean diagnoses and textbook timelines; they show up mid-season, under-recovered and overcoached. You need a model that works in that chaos. If you're ready to challenge outdated rehab logic and build a system that actually holds up under pressure, Enrollment for the Clinical Human Performance Program is open now. Head to online.sportsseminars.com to enroll or simply click the link in the show notes. CHPP. Train with logic. Treat with precision. Perform with purpose.

So again, you're going to have one voice. So all coaches need to be saying the same thing regarding nomenclature as well as our expectations. Okay. So one, that's the second part, one clear Unwavering expectation. Okay, so we got one voice, meaning we all sound the same. Number 2, we have one clear, unwavering set of expectations, and that then turns into one culture. So let that unified space between your staff become the culture. You don't have to create some really, really catchy phrase or go on YouTube or Google and try to find some phrase. No. Create your clarity within your staff, and that in itself will create your culture. The last piece, so your model that you build will always sharpen your professional identity. And that is very important, especially for high school strength coaches, because your professional identity, whether you like it or not, will display your value to the organization you work for. And so why that's really, really, really important for us You look at a space where you work with not just— and I'll speak on this again in a minute— you're not just working with athletes, you're working with parents and superintendents and everyone else. So your space where you're creating for your professional identity will always determine your value to the organization because the parents will push your brand. Okay. Because they're going to— you're a productive athlete that you put out, not just on the field, but as people. These are people's children working with. So how are we developing them? Some of these children may be in a single-parent household, so you become inherently that other voice in their head. So again, in this space, we're not just talking about weights today. We're talking about how we start to develop a few things to develop our own model to build durable athletes. So long story short, your brand always becomes your reputation, and that becomes your model. So quick piece on that before we move on. None of us— well, let me not say that. A lot of us may not have met The CEO for Nike or the GM for the Lakers, but we have an expectation, right? Because they push out a brand, right? If we all buy a brand new phone, regardless of what company it's for, when we take it out the box, we expect that it's going to work. And that's based on their brand. So what are we doing again to develop our own programming model? I am not saying that something has worked before to trash it, but Are we reevaluating it? So the next slide, I'm trying to give some tangible tools we can throw right in, in this space to start to play around within our practice now. So tools that you can use for what you believe in. So number 1, so perform initial movement screenings, not just max tests. And I'll leave this on the slide so y'all can kind of read that. So I don't want to read to you, want to talk to you. So many times I've been a lot of places in different high schools where they just want to do a max test. So they'll do a week of conditioning, which is sprints on the field. Up-downs until someone is losing their lunch or until someone passes out. And now the superintendent's there fussing at you. And then the very next week, no rest in between, they're doing a 1 rep max squat, 1 rep max deadlift, bench, and all these things because we're taught that your model has to be based off their maxes. Well, potentially. One thing I like to say is you can build your first block off of a 5-rep max test, a 3-rep max test, not even just the one test because that is the max, right? And if we're pushing that at week 1 and we haven't even seen these athletes, right? So that gets into our FMS, FSMA, or you can create your own set of hybrid tests that you use together to be in a space where you can create a movement screen and assessment because you really want to take that time to look at their joint mobility and stability. Sequencing, right? Everything from the ankles up to the suboccipital joint just rotates responsibility from mobility to stability. The ankles immobilize a mobilizing joint that needs a stable joint. Just keep going, right, as far as we foot flop back and forth. So have we even assessed that? If we haven't, we need to assess that, okay? We can also look at progression of strength symmetrically, not just linearly. Again, we're not just looking at where that bench press went from 225 to 235 in 3 weeks. Well, that doesn't necessarily mean that they have gotten stronger or fixed any ailments. Maybe they just had a couple of energy drinks, but when they left the cab and they're really, really, really, as young people say, on one, and they're ready to rock and roll and they do this thing, but can they do it again? All right. And if I haven't assessed them and I'm not using a systematic method To progress their linear growth. Again, you have these athletes, if you're a high school, unless they transfer or you leave or they quit, one of those 3 things, for 4 years. I don't need the freshman to go from a 225 squat to a 585 squat by the time they graduate. I just need them to get better. Okay. And the last piece is submit to excellence, not just Excel spreadsheets. Again, the spreadsheets are important. We need that to track what we talked about a minute ago. The linear progression, but just because I put it on the sheet that in the week they should be doing this and now I'm forcing it. Ah, that's not the best thing for our athletes. Last, the big piece I want to put on those two pieces: the weight on the barbell should be dictated by the movement quality. If they're and you you have your days where you have your one rep max, right? When we work up to that point, hopefully, and they will shake a little bit because we're trying to see can we ring. The towel dry, absolutely. But if that's their movement pattern for most things they're doing, we're in a bad space. If they're very unstable and don't have really good movement fluidity at 185 pounds on the barbell, then listen, that goes number 2. Regression isn't failure. I always— any athlete I've coached, any school I've been at, I've always said the same thing. Sometimes we have to regress to progress. If 185 is challenging you way too much and I'm putting you in a room or space for potential injury, Well, let's back it off to 165 or whatever the number is, because my goal is not to see you press 1,000 pounds. I'll speak on this later. It's not the athlete's job to get me my next job. It's my job to coach and develop these young athletes. So again, that last one, submit to excellence, not to Excel spreadsheets. Again, the sheet helps dictate the part of the season we're in. But remember that regressing is not failure. It is intentional. Programming. You will have your outliers. You will have your athletes who can come in unstretched, haven't eaten all day, or when you get to college, they'll come in, roll out the bed at 4:15 for a 5 AM lift, and they'll come in there and put 405 on the squat bar. And I mean, they're in there taking it for a ride for 8 to 10 reps. I've seen it. But those are anomalies, and we have to understand that even if they can do that, Have they had an initial movement assessment? I've seen a lot of athletes who can squat in the 400s. If you give them 2 kettlebells, ask them to do a Peterson step down or a single leg squat, shaking everywhere. So we have gross strength versus functional strength, and that's even something I have to work on now. I'm 35, so I have to continue to work on my functional strength because functional strength feeds gross strength. There may be some literature out there that says different, but I'm telling you what I've experienced. So going on to the next slide, number 2 in building durable athletes is practitioner commitment to long-term development of an athlete. Okay, you have to be committed to long-term development, which is LTD, of an athlete. So here's why this is so important to me, because I've seen it a lot. Don't put a glass ceiling on your own athletes. Okay, I cannot stress this enough. So those 2 points, we're going to go through these kind of fast. Number one, continue your own education because the more you learn, the more your athletes grow. It sounds very rudimentary and it is because some things just work. We, no matter what you're doing, we don't fall most of the time because we tie our shoes. Not because in the morning we put on some special set of shoes that make us fly around the world and we don't even have to drive the car ourselves. No, you most of the time don't fall because your shoes are tied. So it's that rudimentary. When we're talking about developing our own culture to build dominant athletes through durability. Educate yourself. Number 2, emphasize fundamentals. Fundamentals are never mastered. I like to say this all the time. They are just maintained. You can look at some athletes who have played in the NBA for 20-plus years, Serena and Venus Williams. I mean, you look at plenty of athletes who have been there for a long time, and they're not Remastering fundamentals. It's just maintaining them. You have some athletes who have played basketball their entire life and they have been a 75% above free throw shooter since they were in high school. They just maintain the fundamentals. So we don't have to get crazy in regard to trying to keep recreating things. Just emphasize the fundamentals. And the last piece is commit to individual development of the athlete.

Okay.

Individual development is very personal. One person may have a peak season really quick with you. Another person may struggle in the next season. That very person may turn around and outdo everybody for their sophomore, junior, and senior year. You work— we're talking about high school, a young athlete. Growth spurts happen at different times. Strength development happens at different times. So again, we have to work in a group setting, but the subsidiary to that is Individual. So how you group people at the racks, if you have 2 athletes who are the same height, we're on a lower body day, everyone's going to squat, right? But their corrective exercise might look different. While one person may have to do a lot more for their knee instability, they may do corrective exercise as their 1, because you have 1A, 1B, 1C. So their 1A and 1B may be the same, but their 1C The way I program it for a corrective exercise, person A might be doing some knee stability corrective exercise, and the same person at their rack might also be doing something for more ankle mobility. So we're still utilizing a set where we're working in the group, but we're also tackling the individual needs of each person. And again, I'll go through that in the actual programming model that I have set up for our next presentation. Things I want to highlight on this slide, again, invest into your education. So the biggest piece that is destroy your comfort zone, get rid of it. I'm not saying that it's not relevant. I'm not saying that it doesn't have a place, but get rid of your comfort zone. One of my old coaches would say that your comfort zone will eventually kill you. Okay, so we want to get in a space where we do we know what we do and we do what we do very well at a high level. But if I only exist in that box, then I'm putting again that glass ceiling on my athletes because they're only going to know.

What I know.

My professor, Dr. Riddle, the greatest ever, always says if you really believed in what you were doing and you thought or knew that it could help people, you publish it. So I said to say this: read, apply, and if you have the resources— I've been in some schools that don't have the resources as well— do the research and publish it. Read. You may not have a million-dollar budget, but if you can use bands in a different way to enhance strength, if you can use bands to enhance corrective exercise or therapy. It just gives you a different way to approach it. But we have to read, not only on Instagram, and not a shot at anyone who has Instagram. I have Instagram myself. I'm not saying if it's on Instagram that it doesn't work. I'm not saying that. What I am saying is look at the data, look at the research, let that drive what you're building. And number 3 is very important to me: seek mentorship. People who know more than you Even if it's people that you may, y'all may know the same amount of material, but they do it different. They've mastered it in some ways different. They've transitioned to a different space where they can utilize that information. Same, same information, very different than you. So, Terry Thompson, who was at University of Southern California, Larry Lombard, who's with the Philadelphia 76ers. I can go on and on and on and on. Dr. Riddle, who is a doctor for USA Gymnastics, Dr. Tom Teeter. Someone who's mentoring me from Spain and everything he's done with his clinical human performance practitioner course. Find people that can pour into you and tell you that's a really good idea, or hey, no, you need to go back and change that. Okay, so find people that's going to be brutally honest with you from a place of care, because that's what's going to sharpen you and you sharpen your athletes. The next piece is establish a relationship between functional development. We talked about this earlier. Just prioritize movement literacy. Again, if we're struggling to do the movement, that's fine. If we're straining, it's an issue. Struggling means this might be a new movement pattern. Maybe they're not used to it, or maybe it's something that's challenging them in the way that it should. If we have weak anterior cervical flexors and we're using band therapy to do some chin regression and retraction, well, yeah, we're going to struggle because it's a weak area. But if that person is straining, about to hurt themselves, change it. And how many times— I can't count how many times I've seen Young strength coaches have young athletes straining to do work because, well, this is what we did, or my brother's a strength coach at X college and this is what they're doing and I'm getting ready for college. You're not. You're putting them in position to get hurt now and potentially not ever be able to play college ball. So again, going back to the first slide, cookie cutter does not work. If something has worked well for you last season and you can see that it's going to work well this season, Absolutely do it, but we cannot chase that. Reinforce reps of quality over heavy reps. Okay, quality all the time. And the biggest piece here for young strength coaches, you have to be okay with the boring. And sometimes athletes are going to be in that space, especially when they're younger. Oh, we did this last week. Yep. And we're going to do it again because they don't understand that we might be in a triphasic model. We might be in a model where we're preparing for 40-yard dash or max speed, max velocity, whatever we're doing. They may not understand it. So you have to be okay with the boring, but in that you have to promote, I'm helping you with your movement literacy and make it fun. Okay. They're young. I hate to call them children sometimes because it makes it sound like they're 5 and 6, but in reality, they're children. Okay. So they've been in class all day. Their attention span may be elsewhere. And even if you're working with a novice adult who's doing rehab or just starting strength and conditioning, they've been at work all day, maybe having to take the kids the last 2 days of practice after work. And They're being— they're adulting themselves. So it may be boring at times, but don't get away from it just because they're bored. That's okay, because sometimes dominance can be boring. I've heard people say all the time, I'm tired of seeing Alabama win the national championship. I want to see somebody else win. It's pretty boring for some people to watch, but they were doggone durable. So be okay with the boring. The last piece is commit to your commitment. Okay, track their development over a 4-year span, not just over a A 4-phase span. So if you're going through 4 different phases of training, or if you're using triphasic, don't just track it there and be satisfied. Track it over the 4 years. So you want to look at monitoring athlete stress. You want to look at monitoring their readiness as they're starting to come into the gym. You want to look at their confidence as well. Okay. If athlete comes in every day and just able to lift a million pounds because they're that strong, but nothing's changing about their preparedness, nothing's changing. They're still coming in 1 minute late to the weight room. They're still showing up late, 5 minutes to their appointment. If you're on the rehab side, they're able to do the work, but nothing's changing about their preparation, a.k.a. their readiness. How can we help build them in that and help them understand? When you go to college, you can possibly get sent home, lose your scholarship for being late 2 days in a row. And it's a real thing. So again, developing young athletes is not just about numbers on an Excel sheet or rings on your finger. We're developing them again because we know we're working with that population. I've worked in college sports. I've worked in pro sports. That's a business. But when we have the opportunity to benefit young athletes, we have to look at, again, their strength for sure, but their readiness and their confidence too. Someone may not change their strength max for 8 months, but does their confidence grow? Is their confidence plummeting in comparison to the rest of the team because they are not in a space where they're seeing their numbers jump like everyone else? That's our job. That's a part of our commitment to our commitment. We have to commit.

That's it for part 1 of our 3-part series with Matthew McKay. Today, we explored the foundational mindset behind athlete development. Next time, we'll move from philosophy to programming. In part 2, we'll walk through practical assessment tools and strength training models, including how to build programming that adjusts to an athlete's readiness, not just your spreadsheet. Then in part 3, we'll round things out with conditioning strategies that support long-term durability, using real-world examples from sports to clinical rehab. If today's episode sparked something for you, be sure to subscribe so you don't miss what's next. And share this episode with a coach, clinician, or trainer who's committed to developing athletes that last. Because durability isn't just a strategy, it's your responsibility. Be sure to tune in for part 2 when it drops in 2 weeks. You won't want to miss it. We'll see you next time. Hey guys, if you like what you heard today, I encourage you to visit our website at factor-store.com. That's spelled F-A-K-T-R hyphen store dot com to find out more information about all that we have to offer. We have a variety of online offerings as well as our hands-on Factor Rehab System course scheduled in cities around the globe. Be sure to also check out our event calendar and bookmark any of these upcoming live webinar dates coming up in the near future so you can join us live. And of course, the biggest compliment we can receive is for you to help us spread the word to your friends, colleagues and classmates. You'll find all the important links as well as info about our sponsors in the show notes, so be sure to check those out.