#108 - Durability Over Dominance - Redefining Athlete Development with Matthew McKay, Part 2

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. Welcome back to The Factor Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Riddle, and today we're diving into part 2 of our 3-part series, With performance coach and chiropractic student Matthew McKay. If you missed part 1, hit pause, go back to episode 107, because in this segment we go a little bit deeper in our discussion on athletic development. This episode is all about moving from philosophy to practice, how to develop your own performance model, why max lifts aren't always the metric that matters, and what it really means to commit to the long-term development of your athletes. Matthew breaks down movement assessments, progression strategies, and how your program design directly reflects your values. You'll also hear a powerful perspective on working with young and novice athletes, how to reinforce culture through clarity, and why boring training may be the secret weapon of truly dominant athletes. Grab a notepad. This is one that's full of takeaways you can implement today. Let's get started.

The last piece of it, the last piece. So we talked about part 1 being develop your own athletic model. Part 2, we talked about practitioner commitment to long-term development of an athlete. And part 3 of building durable athletes who become dominant. So we want to focus on durability over dominance is Honest communication with sport coaches. I cannot stress this enough. Hard conversations are necessary. Hard conversations are very necessary. So just these quick bullet points: learn how to have hard conversations because it's not the athlete's job to get us promoted, it's our job. I say that because I've also been a defensive coordinator, an offensive coordinator. I've been on all sides of this sports thing. And I know how it is to work with staff who feels like, well, if we win 2 more championships, I'll get the call to go coach at X, Y, and Z big college. And so sometimes a sport coach will run them in the ground because in their mind they feel as if, well, I can get 2 more championships, I can get to the NFL. And that's when, if you're in the strength coach role, you have to say, well, no, they're not, they're not going to play. Athletic trainers and medical staff and myself do not see that Fit for them to play. I'm not gonna let you hurt that athlete in hopes to win a game. Okay, we have a roster of a high school, 56 people. If we can't get it done with 56, with 55, we gotta go back to the drawing board anyway. Okay, so also thinking about from a patient aspect too, some patients, and I'm getting patients now, so I'm learning more, I'll say that. I've heard a lot about patients where you have to protect them from themselves. You'll tell them, hey, I know your back's feeling better today, but don't play golf this weekend. I know your back feels 10 times better than it did before you came in here an hour ago, but that's a developing response. But do not go play golf this weekend, right? So you're protecting them from themselves too. So the next piece, respect the limitations of each athlete. Again, help sport coaches understand that every athlete contributes differently. Okay, this person, he might be 6'4, 300 pounds, like The other O-lineman who is same height, same weight, and has the full scholarship to UCLA, USC, the big school. And he's thinking, well, y'all the same size, the same height, man, why you can't do what he do? Both of y'all big. And it might be different for him. The development curve is very different. You may have 2 athletes who play volleyball. They may both be the same height and both play at the net. And the middle hitter, she may develop a little bit different, a little bit later. So protect them. Have those hard conversations to say, hey, Stop running her for this one bad play because you're going to cause her to get hurt again. Yes, they're the same height. Yes, they're both huge high school athletes. Yes, in theory they should be able to dominate other teams. However, just because one is taking a little bit more time to develop the skill of the sport, we can't punish them through exercise all the time. Because of their limitations. Because in 2 years, this one might go to Penn State and play and be the player of the year in college, and this one may get cut, right? So the roles can shift. But again, we have to have honest communication and hard conversations and have to help sport coaches understand our recovery model, why we do recovery the way we do. You have a lot of coaches I've experienced, it don't take 15 minutes to warm a whole team up, just stretch a little bit for 5 minutes. And we can go practice. So we're going to practice for 2 and a half hours after stretching for 5 minutes in football, which is a— almost when it comes to velocity, an accident, a car accident every play. Yeah, no, Coach, we're going to take at least 15, 20 minutes. It's a dynamic warm-up, so they'll be moving the entire time. We're starting on the goal line, we're using a 20-yard warm-up radius, and I will not let these athletes get hurt due to me trying to rush because their preparation, their weightlifting, their conditioning, it all flows into my recovery model. So again, this goes back into those hard conversations that are very necessary. And that's not a knock against sport coaches because again, I've been one. I have the rings and ribbons to prove it if need be. I've been on both sides and I know when you get that close to a championship, you're just thinking win, win, win, win. And And it's easy to forget, man, this kid lost his granddad 2 months ago. He seems fine, but I wonder how he really is. Or yeah, his grades are still up, but I know he was talking about lacking self-confidence. We get so fixated on the championship part that we forget that championships are won in the kitchen and in the weight room. So we have to sometimes reel those coaches back in. Again, I'm not knocking them. I was on both sides of it. To remember that these are athletes that we're developing at this age. This isn't the NFL. So to pull a quick talking point from those 3 quick, easy points, constructive confrontation is a form of commitment. If you wouldn't have that tough conversation, even with your patient, hey, I know you want to go play the golf tournament this weekend, but you're really going to hurt yourself, so I'm not going to medically clear you for whatever reason, or however you have to word it depending on what country you're in and what state you're in and all those different laws, right? But again, that's going to be a constructive Confrontational conversation, but it shows the patient, I'm committed to you being better. So bringing that back to sports, having it with the coach who may not understand it all yet, hey, I'm protecting them because I'm committed to that person's long-term development. We'll have them for 4 years of their life, and I pray that they live way past graduation at 18 years old. So I am a part of that because what they learn from me about rehab and strength and conditioning and everything else, those are things that they're going to carry for them with the rest. of their life. I can't tell you how many college athletes I've seen come in the weight room that were small and freakishly strong. And you talk to them, well, what did y'all do in high school? And there was someone there who had a great background in corrective exercise and functional strength. I'm talking about some guys who are 5'9, 185, bench pressing in the 300s like it's 225. But you look, when you talk to them, what they were doing before, they were exposed To proper recovery. They were exposed to proper corrective exercise. So I'm telling you from experience, not just something I read. Proper conditioning and exercise and recovery and all those things, they carry that for the rest of their lives. We have open gym time in college. They can come in just sometimes and do weightlifting on their own a little bit. And I've seen some of the best athletes On paper and in the weight room, coming in doing recovery and corrective exercise that we hadn't even shown them yet. So they carry it with them. Number 2, have hard conversations with your athletes in mind. So avoid conversations that doesn't protect your athletes and let them know, like, if you're avoiding conversations that don't protect your athletes, you're weakening them. Okay. If I know someone may have a shoulder injury and they're teeter-tottering to what I think may be a supraspinatus tear here really soon, I'm not making them stronger by making sure they play one more Friday night to get 100 extra receiving yards. No, I'm really trying to help you because if you do get hurt, it weakens everything you've just built to tear it back down. And so last piece, you are there to serve and not squander. Okay, we're there to serve athletes, not squander away their future. So help your coaches understand that your recovery model best serves the athletes, not the staff. Okay? And again, I am extremely competitive. I love to win, but not at the expense of an athlete who's trusting me with a parent that's trusting me and a superintendent and everyone who goes into that Friday nights. We see the athletes pull up or Tuesday nights if they're playing basketball or baseball or whatever the season is for them. And they've got mom and granddad and brother and sister and whoever else they are supporting them. They believe, they trust that everyone on that staff has done everything with the intention to have their greatest future or their best intentions at heart. So we have to be able to do that. So again, all sport coaches are not going to be combative with you against this, but there are some who are fixated on the winning, and I understand that wholeheartedly. So we have to have those tough conversations. So let's keep it under 45 minutes. I want to keep it there. There's a slide here with some literature on here. Some of it's old, some of it's relatively newer. So I kind of wanted to show, one, you all to look at the literature, and then also, two, some stuff that works, it works. People, like I said before, people have been tying their shoes since way before I was born in 1990, and guess what? It's been working and it works. So just to show that there's literature that supports this, also some resources to help you start to develop your own model that's going to be catered to the long-term durability of an athlete. Again, if a team or organization wins 8 championships in a row, we're just going to talk about the 8 championships. No one's going to talk about the durability over and over and over again. There is somebody there doing something that has worked for this class, this class, this class, and this group and that group. So we have to start to, as a Strength and conditioning coaches, future chiropractors, current chiropractors, current doctors, wherever you're at, emphasize the importance of promoting and taking part in the development of their durability and not just them being dominant. Because if you can outlast everybody, you will become the one that's dominant.

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So one of the questions that was submitted through our Instagram channels was talking a little bit about how you're currently enrolled in chiropractic school. How do you feel like your background in strength and conditioning and your education when it comes to athletics, human performance, and obviously exercise science— how has that helped or benefited you in chiropractic school?

So it shows up heavily in your hands-on courses. Your first year basic science courses, you may not see it as much, right? Because it's the biochemistries, the microbiologies, and different chiropractic principle classes that certainly have value that you need to an extent, but they do have value for sure because we need it. But when you get into your second year, when you're getting into palpation and adjust— CMT or chiropractic manipulative therapy, or so adjusting, right? You get into orthopedics and all these things where you're putting your hands on people every single day, it shows up because the professors will definitely push the parts that they want you to know and that you need to know for boards for sure. But you're also going to go back to a place where I know we're talking about knee pain or anterior knee pain. Well, I can remember that from my old rehab classes and what different progressions and regressions. So I'll say this, coming from strength and conditioning, whenever I'm in ortho, Whether it's Ortho 1 or Ortho 2, I'm always thinking about progressions and regressions. If a patient comes in with anterolateral shoulder pain and we go through all those things for class, but I'm automatically thinking about progressions and regressions based on what the ortho tests tell me. So all of my background shows up big time when it comes to the hands-on courses. Also administratively, my second master's degree from Clemson is in human performance and Athletic leadership. So we were able to learn the finances side, the politics side, and all those different bells and whistles that goes into NIL, which we know is name, image, likeness, and also things like the NLI, your National Letter of Intent. So things I didn't know: if you sign your NLI as a high school student, you're locked into a contract. I did not know that.

If—

and I don't have children— but if I had a son who signed with University of Whatever, to play football. If he signs that contract, the only way he can get out of it is if that coach signs to let him out, because they treat that— because that's scholarship money. Once you sign it, they've assigned you scholarship money and they can't give it to anybody else. So just learn different things that we don't always know as parents and high school coaches when we're coaching athletes. So things that we can definitely let parents know at the high school level, hey, they can verbally commit, cool, but unless they want to go there for at least one year, You will need to make sure that they don't sign their letter of intent until they know for sure this is where I want to go, because if not, then it's up to the coaching staff and the school to let you out of that contract. And it's a— yes, it's a scholarship, but since it's money involved, that is a— it's a binding contract for at least 1 year. So it shows up from the business side of the classes to the hands-on. Again, Biochems and all of that stuff, you won't see it as much, but on the other side of it, oh yeah.

So the next question had to do with kind of how you're planning to— now you're moving from the strength and conditioning side into the healthcare side. But previous to that, obviously you've worked on the strength and conditioning side, and I'm sure you've had some collaborative relationships with healthcare providers in the past when it comes to athletes who are injured Or those who need to have an improvement when it comes to their recovery strategy. I'd love to hear a little bit more about how you were able to navigate that successfully on the strength and conditioning side, working with healthcare providers. And then as a second follow-up to that question, thoughts on now that you're going to be sitting on the other side of the table from that other perspective, how you feel like moving forward What should our healthcare providers know when it comes to approaching those conversations with strength and conditioning coaches when it comes to managing the health and the success of their athlete?

Man, that's a, that's a really good question. And I'm not just saying that. I mean, it is a really good question because you have to tie in everything you've done, good and bad. I don't mean bad in the way where you purposely or maliciously hurt an athlete, but you're learning and growing yourself. Again, like I said, when I got started, it was a manila folder. On my chest, literally, is yours. Like, what's mine? Strength and conditioning. I said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm here to coach. Nope. And so you're going to do that. And so you get thrown in the fire sometimes. So from those lived experiences, what I've learned for the first part of the question, what helps you really work well with those relationships with healthcare providers, whether it be athletic trainers, physical therapists, occupational therapists? Orthopedic surgeons, chiropractors, dermatologists. Okay, you don't have to know everything, but man, you have to put time into this, man. If you don't, you won't be able to speak the language and you will sound like— I'm not being rude when I say this— you will sound like just a strength coach. Because unfortunately, when we say that, sometimes that's what clinicians hear. I just strength coach and just teach them how to lift weights. They don't understand we have to know a whole lot about physiology. We have to know a whole lot about dermatology when we come in and we see athletes with certain maybe rash patterns and whatnot. We have to understand a whole lot about pathology even before you know pathology. The athlete comes in and says, I'm kind of getting this weird pain in my low back. And you go through all of your parameters to see if it's musculoskeletal and you realize that might not be musculoskeletal. I know it's not musculoskeletal, but I don't know what it is. So you have to start getting to the right people. So those 2 big things. Number one, be knowledgeable. And 2, you have to speak their language. You don't have to master it, but you have to speak it. So when y'all do talk, one, that builds rapport and respect between them and you. And then 2, you can accurately help the athlete explain what's going on. So a lot of time in a sports aspect, you will have that. For high school, you're going to have an athletic trainer, paper staff, and larger high schools who are well, well, well-funded. We'll have a team surgeon that they refer out to. I've been to some pretty big high schools and I've thought to myself, this is a high school? Jesus Christ. Like, they have had team surgeons and everything else. When you get to college, they have all that. Massage therapists, chiros, orthopedic specialists, orthopedic surgeons, all that in-house. So y'all are always working together in that space to look at the rehab plan. But when it comes to strength and conditioning coaches, when you're working with the rehab specialists and OTs and things like that, you have to be able to help them understand sometimes the value in strength and conditioning because on the surgical side sometimes, and it varies, I'm not putting a blanket on everybody, I'm just blanketing it. A lot of them are very big on, well, your season's done and you can't lift weights. And it's like, no, research doesn't support that. Literature doesn't support that. We have to monitor how we get you back in game shape, but obviously not pushing them to try to play a week after ACL injury, right? But A lot of the protocol— there we go, man— a lot of the protocol is different for return to play. And there are return to play protocols that we have to abide by, which would be the middle piece. But how we get there as strength coaches versus how other practitioners get there may be different till we get to that peak. So we have to be in communication with that. To answer the second piece of that question, I think it'll be more pressure. Working on the healthcare side now because one of my mentors who's big-time college ball asked me a question similar to this yesterday. We're on FaceTime and he said, you removed the middleman. And that brought me back to what my professor here said. Same thing. You have become— well, when you graduate, you'll be in a space where you can be the strength coach and you can be the doctor at the same time. So Thinking about that, the responsibility shifts because now it goes from, I know this works for strength, to does this work for physiology? If they had a benign tumor removed, what all does that come with when it comes to working out again? Because it's not just lift weights and go home. No, you're sweating, you're running around. It's a whole lot that goes into it. So it's a little bit more pressure now in my mind. I'm not in that seat yet, but I can definitely see that it can be more pressure because now there is no one to fall on. And that's not to say that we were looking for anybody to fall on in the beginning. It's just more so you had a safety net. When you become the doctor, the chiropractic sport physician, that last word, you become the physician, you're responsible for all of that. So the responsibility picks up, but it shouldn't make it where you're nervous about it because you've been doing it for a long time.

That's a wrap on part 2 of our Durability Over Dominance series with Matthew McKay. In this episode, we explored what it means to build a model that serves not just the scoreboard, but the whole athlete. From movement quality and mental readiness to programming with purpose, Matthew reminded us that our commitment to long-term development is a reflection of the care you provide, not just the credentials behind your name. Don't forget, part 3 of this series is coming soon, where we'll shift gears into conditioning phases, communication strategies, and the realities of integrating recovery into team culture. In the meantime, you can rewatch this episode or submit any questions for us at faktorpodcast.com. That's F-A-K-T-R podcast.com, and be sure to subscribe so you don't miss the next installment. As always, if you enjoyed today's episode, please be sure to like, follow, and share it with a friend. 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-store.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.