009 - Zach Stetler - BYU Strength and Conditioning Coach

All right, today I have Zach Stetler with me. He's a strength and conditioning coach for the Brigham Young University Cougars. I'm super excited. He said that he works with the baseball team, the softball team, the diving team, and the sprinters for track. So it's going to be super fun to listen to him. So any baseball, softball, any athletes, listen up. Um, welcome, Zach.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Super excited to be on with you.

Yeah, this will be awesome. Um, I'm really excited to to talk to you about all this. You've, you work with some pretty high, high-level athletes out over there.

It's, it's been awesome. Um, we've had some incredible athletes come through. Um, you know, it's been a privilege of mine to be able to just work with some of these athletes that were already so high level coming in, right? It's not like, you know, I had to do a whole lot for some of these athletes. Um, but yeah, people who have come through the program here at BYU and ended up, you know, winning national titles and going on to world championships, Olympics, and, and things like that, it's It's been an awesome ride. I've loved it.

Yeah, there is some insane— I mean, obviously any Division I athlete has to be pretty gifted and pretty— they've had to have worked super hard, but there's some— there's been some amazing athletes to come through BYU. So it's pretty cool that you get to be a part of that and see them progress and help them along that journey. That's awesome.

For sure. Absolutely.

So you ran track and field for BYU. Yeah. You did shot put and what was the other one?

Yeah, so shot put and discus and yeah, it was, it was a fun ride. It was a good time. I figured out, you know, a little bit later on in my career that shot put was a little more my, my style, a little more my thing. And so I ended up kind of focusing on that. But it was, like I said, it was a great ride. Really fun time.

That's awesome. So like we, we discussed this a little bit, but in what exact moment, cuz you were the athlete and now you've become the coach, but in what exact moment did you decide you wanted to train athletes?

Yeah, so, um, I remember I was getting ready to do a set of power cleans in the football weight room. Um, our strength coach at the time was one of the football strength and conditioning coaches as well, and, uh, I had looked up at him right before I was about ready to, to hit this set, and I just thought to myself, man, this guy has— he's got the, he's got the dream job, you know. That's something that I could definitely see myself doing. Um, and so after that lift, I actually approached him, um, and just asked if I could, you know, get hooked up with an internship if he was interested, if they they were looking for interns. Thankfully, he was happy to have me on. I worked with football and baseball and then, you know, that was my whole senior year that led into getting hired after that.

Very cool. And obviously we kind of discussed this already, but you've worked with some amazing athletes, but does any, does any one specific athlete stick out to you as far as them seeing massive results from strength and conditioning?

Yeah, so I've actually got two people that come to mind, or rather one person, one individual athlete, and one team kind of as a whole. Okay, sweet. So one, I was actually teammates with him, so I personally didn't do a whole lot with him in terms of his transformation, in terms of strength and conditioning, nutrition, all of those things, but it was one of the crazier transformations I think I've ever seen. He was a javelin thrower and he weighed 145 pounds coming into BYU.

How tall is he?

He's about 6'1", 6'2".

Oh wow. Yeah. That's— he's skinny boy then.

He's a skinny boy. Yep, exactly. Yep. And so he came in and, you know, you can imagine hanging around a bunch of discus and shot put throwers and things like that. The way that he told me the story was that he went into our same strength coach that I just mentioned, and he just basically said, hey, I just feel like I am by far the skinniest on the team, like the scrawniest on the team. What do I need to do to put some muscle mass on and, you know, make some gains in the weight room? And like the most straightforward, simple advice, maybe a little overboard if I'm being honest, but he, you know, he had the opportunity or the, I guess, the ability to be a bit brash at times. And he looked at Tyler and was just like, eat 2 pounds of hamburger a day and keep doing what you're doing. And so Tyler did it. Like he followed that advice to a T and he put on 45 pounds of muscle mass and, you know, still had abs and looked good. But it was just one of the craziest transformations I think I've ever seen. So not that I would necessarily recommend that to anybody, but— Yeah, of course. But wow, like what a fantastic, you know, transformation that I was able to see there. And it was obviously he was able to improve his performance and just become a better athlete all around from getting stronger and bigger and, and those things. So that was really cool. Um, I would say as a team, when I first took over the track and field sprinters, I was so frustrated because, um, the amount of hamstring injury—

oh, interesting—

was absolutely insane. And so, like I said, I was really frustrated and I was, I was getting, you know, pretty annoyed by it. Um, and so I just started doing a lot of research and, you know, kind of came across consistently, hey, you know, this is the exercise, uh, Nordic hamstring curls, right? Um, that's going to be your best shot at preventing hamstring injury. And so we kind of dove into, you know, consistently throwing those into the program. Um, and, uh, just saw some major success with it. And so, you know, one thing that I would say, um, that I've seen in terms of like a massive gain or a massive transformation in the weight room was that, you know, we went from maybe one 1 or 2 kids out of the group being able to do that movement at the very beginning when we implemented it, to now we have the entire team essentially doing this movement, and hamstring injury has just gone so far down. And it's something that I've just been so, so, so happy with. But, um, that group as a whole, I mean, that's just one example, um, but as a whole they have just been incredible. I think, you know, year 1 when I took them the highest power clean on the team was probably hanging around like 265 or something like that. And now we have like 4 kids that are over 300 pounds. And I mean, like, the whole team has just bought into everything that we are doing, um, from Nordics to power cleans to heavy squats to whatever it is. And I just think that it's, it's making that team, uh, do some pretty impressive things. I mean, I think it definitely contributes to some of the things that we're seeing on the track, which is fun.

Oh, for sure. Nordic hamstring curls are beasts. Like, they look a lot easier than they are too. Like, people, people see them and they're like, oh, that won't be too bad. I'm like, no, you, you try that and you break your nose if you can't get it.

Like, yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's actually pretty funny because, you know, I kind of conveyed to, you know, some of these athletes on that team, I said, hey, this is the expectation. I'm setting the bar here. Um, I'm hoping to get every single one of you you know, performing Nordics for, you know, for the sole reason of hamstring injury prevention or reduction, I should say, right? Um, and some of the athletes looked at me with big eyes and were like, I don't know if we're going to be able to do that. And others were like, I can do that. And it was like nobody could do it, you know what I mean? So, so hard. It is a tough exercise for sure.

That— well, yeah, I should say, definitely have to train it. You can't just show up after doing RDLs or deadlifts and expect to perform 'em super well. It doesn't, doesn't work that way.

Exactly.

Exactly. Have you, I'm kind of curious, have you seen, I, I'm not sure how, how prevalent ACL tears are as well, but have you seen, um, a reduction in ACL tears as far as those athletes go?

So I'm trying to think back and luckily, you know, knock on wood, um, I have not had to deal with any ACLs, so I'm, I'm really, really happy with that. And I'm hoping, like I said, knock on wood that I don't have to.

Yeah, I, I remember because I studied exercise physiology as well, and I, I just remember learning that and just saying like basically hamstrings can be an extra ACL for you in a way of— yes, and protects and strengthens those.

So yeah, and that's actually one thing that, um, you know, our athletic trainers have mentioned too is like, hey, you know, make sure that we get those hamstrings as strong as possible, um, for that reason.

So Yeah, actually, like, this kind of jumps me into the next question is what's the best things athletes can, like, in high school or in college, um, can do to prevent injuries?

Yeah, I think, um, one of the biggest things— I guess I've been a little bit surprised here at BYU. Even when I was working with football, there were a decent amount of young athletes, incoming freshmen, that had never touched a weight before.. And I just, I was shocked. I'm like, uh, we're over on the football side and I had just expected all these big strong looking guys that, you know, they had lifted weights for, you know, all through high school. And, uh, it turns out that, you know, both of the years that I was there, um, our classes of incoming freshmen, there were, you know, there was a decent group out of, you know, both of those classes of incoming freshmen that hadn't touched a weight before. They were just naturally big and strong and good at football. Um, and so I think that the same thing applies over, um, with some of the teams that I'm working with. Um, we see a lot of athletes that haven't really put a big emphasis on the weight room through high school, and I just think that it is such a benefit to injury reduction that I would highly recommend it for all high school athletes, um, to get into it and obviously, you know, take the time to learn proper technique and proper ways to go about attacking a program and things. But I do, I just think that it is so beneficial for these athletes in terms of injury reduction. In fact, we were reading a study, me and my coworker, just a couple weeks ago that covered a— I think it was a meta-analysis and it just basically said, hey, out of this many athletes and it was thousands, we've seen that weightlifting has decreased injury by about 70%. And I just thought that that was such a large number. I'm just like, man, we just can't do without it, honestly.

Yeah. When people hear weightlifting, especially, I mean, there's a lot of different types of weightlifting as we know. There's Olympic lifting, there's hypertrophy lifting, there's, there's a lot of, there's powerlifting. But like with, if you're a 16-year-old boy and you hear weightlifting, You might think bicep curls, you might think like just those kind of bro in the gym lifting weights at Vasa type stuff.

Yeah, absolutely.

Can you be more specific as far as like what movements, like what 3 movements should high schoolers make sure that they have in their program?

Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. So I would say there's a few and I would say amongst the college strength and conditioning realm and strength and conditioning coaches in general, I think there are 5 specific movements that is just common. It's kind of across the board, everybody kind of believes in them. And so one would be— and maybe I should say 6, I'm going to come back to that— but, um, some sort of explosive work, right? And this isn't necessarily weight room related, but I would just say make sure you're sprinting, make sure you're jumping, make sure you're doing something explosive to train yourself that way. And then getting into you know, more the weight room side of it, let's make sure that we're doing some sort of squat variation. And I would say I'm really big on covering all of my bases when it comes to these lifts. So I like my single leg exercises and I like my double leg exercises when it comes to a squat variation. I try to try— I try to hit them all, honestly. And then, you know, posterior chain, super beneficial, low back, glutes and hamstrings, making sure that we're kind of covering all of our bases as far as those muscle groups go. Also upper body presses. And you can kind of divide these into 3 areas, I would say, where, you know, hey, we're hitting a horizontal bench, bench press or dumbbell bench press, or maybe we're setting the bench up to an incline and hitting an incline press or even going overhead. And then I would say an upper body pull movement is also very beneficial. And we could work on vertical pulls, whether that's a pull-up variation or a horizontal pull of some sort. And then I would also say some sort of core movement is also really beneficial. Now, it's kind of like up for debate a little bit in the strength and conditioning world. Some strength and conditioning coaches, you'll hear they're very, very much so set on the idea that, hey, my heavy squats is my core, right? Or my heavy Olympic lifts is my core. For me, I kind of like to isolate the core a little bit more than that. And while I'll agree with them, it takes a tremendous amount of core stability to do those exercises, right? Um, but I, I'm also a believer in working the abs directly. Um, and, and maybe even some other movements as well. So as I mentioned before, just covering all of my bases, right? So stability, anti-rotation, actual dynamic work, um, I think is all good. And then I guess if I were to add anything onto that, it would just be any special consideration for the sport that that athlete is playing. So for example, for my track and field sprinters, one thing that I learned early on with them is I think in year 1 or 2 that I was with them, we actually had a kid tear his rectus femoris. Oh. And if you don't know what that is, it's just the— obviously you know what it is, but for the people tuning in—

Speak to the high schoolers right now.

Absolutely. Yeah. For the people tuning in, you guys are listening, it's a muscle that just runs directly down the center of your leg, one of the quad muscles, right? Kelsey Higginson: Kill. Essentially, yeah, just a terrible injury honestly. Upon doing a little bit more research, I found that when we do squat and squat variations, that rectus femoris isn't so involved as we think it is. Interesting. I really came to grips with the idea that, hey, maybe I need to train the rectus femoris outside of squatting and actually give them a specific movement that trains that muscle specifically. And so I started doing that, you know, thankfully we haven't— I'm not going to say that, you know, it's made a difference or not, but, you know, thankfully since then we haven't had any issues. And knock on wood, hopefully we don't. But, um, yeah, things like, as simple as it is, a weighted sit-up is one of my favorite things for the rectus femoris. People don't really think about it too much, but anything that's like hip flexion, right, raising your knee up or bringing your core to your knee that's going to hit that muscle. And so that's honestly as simple as it is, one of my favorite exercises for the rectus femoris.

Yeah, I love it.

Oh, keep going.

Yeah, keep going with it. I love this.

Oh goodness. All right. Well, I'll just keep talking your ear off a little bit then, if that's all right.

Do it.

Okay. So I guess like another— obviously I mentioned working with the baseball team, right? When I think of pitchers, right? So that's, that's a very like special consideration for a strength and conditioning program where I think You know, you could just throw the basic exercises at them, but obviously it's going to be important to try to work the musculature and the joint in the shoulder. Maybe try to work some forearm and grip things for the elbow health. But the first things that kind of come to mind is just making sure, hey, is the shoulder joint healthy? Is it moving like it should? Do we have the scapula moving along the rib cage like it should in order to essentially, you know, give the ability to the shoulder to move like it should. And so, you know, some of the muscle groups that I might consider for them are just working anterior serratus, anything that raises the arms up, that muscle that runs along the rib cage. It's big in scapular movement and shoulder health. Anything that, you know, is external rotation. Every time a baseball player or a pitcher throws, it's an internal rotation at the arm. So sometimes I don't know if necessarily we get enough external rotation work to balance the shoulder out and to balance some of those muscles out in the shoulder. And then, you know, just working some of the other muscle groups, whether that be like low, mid, upper traps, deltoids, things like that. So anyways, those are just kind of some examples of like special considerations that I would, you know, take into high consideration for a program.

So if I were like a 16 or 17-year-old boy who plays basketball and is trying to get bigger, stronger, faster. Yeah. And I mean, some people have the blessing of having a gym or some facility that they can train at, but if I didn't and I was kind of on my own for lifting, what resources would you point them to?

That's a great question. So I would say there are— man, if it's basketball specifically, there's a strength coach that has gotten pretty big over social media over, you know, the past few years, and he works with the University of Houston basketball team. And I'm sure you know who that is, but Alan Bishop, um, really, really smart guy, and he posts a lot of stuff on his social media specifically for his basketball team at the University of Houston. And, you know, if you're a high school basketball player, I'm sure you're well aware that, you know, Houston is an incredible program. They've been very good over the past couple years. He's working with some those top athletes. Um, so yeah, you know, maybe look into some of these strength coaches that are working with high-level basketball players, right? Um, and then I honestly would just kind of come back to, you know, making sure that you are hitting those big core movements, some squat variation, posterior chain, upper body press, upper body pull, some sort of core exercise, and something explosive, right? Um, And then just off of the top of my head, I would say, you know, hey, you know, there's a lot of jumping involved, right? Um, maybe it's good that we take a look at the patellar tendon, um, and maybe working that a little more, um, in our program and just making sure that we're staying healthy in the knees, um, and things like that. So whether that be, you know, just a quick example of that might be just like some isometric holds. It could be as simple as a wall sit, um, and an isometric contraction, for those of you who don't know, is basically just like the muscle staying the same length. So that's why I, I basically say, hey, a wall sit is a, is a great example. Something that's just gonna work that tendon kind of over time and strengthen it.

Love it. I even want to simplify this even more for the kids who just don't even know where to start. We named like, yes, posterior chain, upper body press, this and that. Can you just give literally an example of each one? Like of one movement.

Yeah, definitely.

That they could like write down and say, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna YouTube this and I'm gonna start here.

Yes, I love that. Because at the end of the day, I could say all these things, but like, yeah, like if you're not familiar with weightlifting at all, it's not really going to make a whole lot of sense, right? So, so thank you for that. Of course. Let's go, let's go just regular back squat. Um, let's go. And I'm huge on the Nordic hamstring. I really am. Um, I love it. And I think it's one of the best hamstring exercises out there. So I'm going to say that, but I'm also going to throw in a glute bridge for glutes. I think that that's obviously a great exercise. So 2 posterior chain there. And then let's go bench press. Let's go chin-up and let's go a weighted sit-up.

So most of those you could literally do outside of a weight room as well. If kids don't have weights, like, I think people use that as an excuse as well. I'm like, You can practice the squat. Yeah. You can, you can have someone hold your feet for the Nordic. Like all of those things you can literally do minus bench press, but do a pushup instead. Right?

Like you can, I was just gonna say do a pushup and, and, and you know, I watched a video like a while ago, a couple years ago maybe, of just saying like, hey, like, you know, so some people might think a pushup is very, very basic, but there are ways to progress that to make 'em difficult and you can get really good work out of it. For sure. And for example, just throwing a plate on your back or, you know, if you're, if I'm in that pushup position, squeezing my hands while they're on the floor together to activate the chest a little bit more. Um, yeah, you're, you're absolutely right. I mean, we can do, you know, nearly everything that we need to outside of the weight room if you don't have that resource.

Yeah, I love it. I, I love that you guys, it sounds like you guys stick to pretty simp— simplicity. Is like, yeah, totally. And I think a lot of people think it has to be these crazy different lifts and things. I'm like, literally the simple things are the things that are gonna bring the biggest results for most people.

Oh, absolutely. And I would say that that's one thing that, um, you know, my sprinters would probably agree with as time has gone on. You know, I've had some, some seniors right now that I've had the privilege of working with since they were freshmen. Um, and as they have just gotten stronger and stronger, they're seeing their times drop on the track. And obviously, you know, a lot of the track and field practice specifically goes into that, but I think they do realize that, uh, big or small, the weight room is playing a factor into some of their success. Um, and I think it just makes sense, right? The stronger that we are, the more force we're able to put down into the track and propel ourselves forward. Um, and so So yeah, it's, it's been awesome.

That's so cool. So if you, so we talked about the specific movements and the specific lifts and everything like that, but outside of the weight room, if you had to pick 3 things, yeah. I mean, let's say, let's say one of 'em is hitting the weight room. So if you had to pick 2 things, okay. For an athlete to do every day to increase their performance, what would the other 2 things be?

Oh man. I'm gonna say nutrition number 1. Nutrition. Yeah, I love that. Okay.

So that— like, thank you.

I am going to say nutrition number 1. Do not take your nutrition lightly. And I've just seen, yeah, I mean, like time and time again, I have athletes that dial in their nutrition and athletes that do not. And the athletes that do dial it in, they're seeing such rapid progression in the weight room, out at practice, in their competition. It's just incredible. And I can't speak highly enough about it, honestly. Um, I'm trying to think of a couple examples specifically, but, um, so outside of my NCAA Division I teams, I actually work with a couple club sports here on campus.

Oh, nice.

Yeah. And, um, one of them is the rugby team. And so really, really fun group, a lot of meatheads. They like to come in and push some heavyweight and, you know, it's a good time. Um, now obviously during the off season, that's a time for me to kind of put the weight room a little bit more priority than it is during season. Right. Um, and obviously that makes sense in just terms of, hey, we want to make sure that they're not feeling beat up in season. So overall, I just want to make sure that they're feeling good on the track, court, field, whatever it is, their field of competition. Um, and I, I dialed the weight room back quite a bit to make sure that they are feeling good during season. Um, so that being said, um, one of the examples that I think of is, you know, we had a kid on the rugby team who was really strong. He weighed 205 pounds, he had a 385 bench press, and, um, his goal was to hit a 405. That was one of his main, his main goals in the weight room. Everybody likes to see the 4 plates on the bar for a bench press, right? Um, so he was, he was really geeking out on it and And he was like, man, like, how am I going to do it? And I was like, well, what's your nutrition like right now? And he was just like, I don't even think about it, to be honest with you. And I was like, oh, all right, well, let's, let's dial that in a little bit. So we had a little chat in my office and I just gave him some recommendations, some easy recommendations that he could follow. And essentially only like the main point that I gave him was, what's your protein intake? Right. And so, um, we kind of upped his protein intake more to an appropriate level, in my opinion. And, um, although the program isn't anything crazy in season, he saw that 20-pound increase and was able to hit that 405 bench press. And I attribute it, you know, probably like 90% to his nutrition and the fact that he was locking it in. Because like I said, the weights program in season is not that crazy. Um, I really wasn't expecting a huge bump in strength out of these kids during that time of the year. But because he locked in his nutrition, he was able to see that.

20 pounds is wild, actually, especially like you said, for not, for not pushing it. That, that's crazy.

That's really cool. So, I mean, it, it's awesome. I mean, I think a lot of strength coaches say like, hey, we get into like a, a strength maintenance phase during the season because again, we, we want the sport to be their priority at that time of the year. And so I don't know if I necessarily believe in that. I, I would like to see in-season PRs. PRs and PBs and things like that, but I don't expect them to be as big as they are in the offseason.

So yeah, that makes sense. And that, that's one thing that I love that you attribute that to as well, is like obviously for maintenance you gotta hit the lifts, you gotta, you gotta show up and do it, and it's going to be different than out of season. But at the same time is like to maintain that strength, nutrition can play a huge role as well. And, and like even beyond the strength part of things and outside of the weight room, just The conversions that nutrition has, like on the field or on the, the track or the court is insane with the amount of energy that they get, right?

Oh, it is. Absolutely. Yeah. You're absolutely right. I, I think that all too often, um, athletes are not paying attention to their nutrition. So I would definitely put that as one of my number one things, you know, um, that athletes could be doing every day to improve their performance.

I was gonna ask, so obviously you're around a lot of different athletes and you, I mean, even though you don't work with the football team and the basketball team and stuff, like how many, what percentage of athletes are utilizing the nutritionists and those resources versus not?

Not enough. I don't know how many of them, like, I don't know if I could give you an exact number, but not enough. Like I could definitely say that. So for example, we have a nutritionist here on campus who works with the football team and he is awesome. He spends pretty much every morning smoking pounds and pounds and pounds of meat and stocks the fridge and the locker room fridge with smoked meat and rice every single day.

That's amazing.

And on top of that, Our athletes also have the privilege of having a couple swipes on campus for food. And so they can go to the nutrition center, they can get, you know, a decent amount of calories there and a high amount of protein, I would say, too. And then they can go somewhere else on campus. And there's a couple places on campus where if you use your swipe there, it's all you can eat. And so our athletes are very well fed if they choose to be, and they have some incredible resources. But I am still surprised at the amount of athletes that, for example, are not talking to our nutritionists. It just blows my mind. I've had a couple of athletes that have talked to me about, hey Zach, I wanna make this change, or I wanna make that change and be better here. And one of my first questions is typically, what's your nutrition like? And so, you know, at times I'll just go straight to our nutritionist and I'll just be like, hey, has so-and-so talked to you? And the amount of times that they say no is just unreal. So it kind of sometimes that just frustrates me. I'm like, guys, like, if you're really being serious about this, go talk to these people. And obviously we do have plenty of athletes on campus who are doing that and they are dialing that in. And I just, I see a difference with those kids. I really do.

What do you think is the reason for why the athletes aren't? Because if you're, if you're at BYU or if you're at any high-level Division I school, you're a pretty dedicated athlete. Like you, you've, you've really put some time into getting there. And so I have a hard time thinking like it's a lack of discipline or a lack of, I don't know.

Yeah. Right.

Of love for the game. I, what do you think is the holdback from it?

I really don't know if I can give you an answer. And obviously, yeah, like I can't think of anything because like you said, they are high-level athletes and they're very motivated to be good at their sport. Um, but for whatever reason, I just— like, like I said, there are plenty of athletes. I'm not trying to throw everybody under the bus by any means. There are plenty of athletes that are meeting with these nutritionists. Um, I just, in my personal opinion, I'm just like, when you have the, you know, people on campus that we do, why, why is everybody not using them? And maybe that's a better way to put it, is that I almost feel like, you know, every single kid on the team, if they're not on just a weight maintenance program, you know, if they're, if they're happy with where they're at and they're like, I'm performing well and I don't necessarily want to go up or down in weight or whatever, you know, maybe I can, I can get with that a little bit more. But when they do have goals and they're not meeting with the nutritionist, I'm just like, I don't understand what's holding you guys back. I really don't. And so, like, I guess if you were to take all of those people plenty of them are meeting with a nutritionist, but I just think if it's not all of them, it's, it's not enough.

Yeah, I agree. I think I actually had a conversation with, her name's Mercedes Staples. She played for San Diego State University. She was a basketball player. Awesome. She said it was up until, up until her senior year, she didn't take nutrition very seriously. And then her senior year she finally like kind of caught the bug for it in a way. Yeah, and I asked her kind of that same question. I said, what made the difference? Like, because she said that there were nutritionists coming in all the time saying, let us work with you guys, you know, like kind of giving them small trainings, this and that. And she said, um, when she finally realized like what it would do and how it would specifically translate into the game, she did it. And so if you think about it, like, hi, or people love the weight room, one, because they like getting muscle, they like getting big and such. But, and so it's pretty— they know what that work is going to give them. But I think sometimes, maybe this is just kind of an educated guess, but maybe it's just that they're lacking the knowledge of what it actually does for them. Like protein, that might be it. Like athletes know, and I think that protein's increasing, the intake is increasing. Like they know protein is going to equal equal more muscle gain. But do they know that carbs is going to equal pushing through the wall, you know? Or— yeah, no, exactly— equal good hormone health, which can also help with increased performance and this and that, you know? Like, I, I wonder if it's the lack of knowledge of what it actually translates to. I don't know. What do you think about that?

I actually think that that's a really good point. I do. Um, maybe, maybe there is just a lack of understanding, honestly. Because yeah, I think I'm thinking back to when I was an athlete and if I'm being completely honest with you, I probably didn't take it as serious as I, as I could have.

Yeah.

And I think that the second that somebody comes in and maybe talks to them and is like, this is why this is important, I think that it probably would make a big difference. I think that they probably just do need a little bit of understanding. I mean, I think coming back to this point, they are highly motivated to be good at their sport. I think if they just knew why, they probably would.

And I, and I almost wonder too, if it might be a, I don't know, there, there might be some stigma around nutrition and, oh, I'm gonna have to eat broccoli and carrots all day long and I can't enjoy the food that I like.

Yeah, exactly.

It might be that, that they don't wanna like fully commit to it. I'm not sure what, what athletes, I mean, I, I would I would say that that's why most normal people don't— like, everyone would love a six-pack. They just don't want— love the road to getting a six-pack, right?

Like, yeah, exactly.

It's just, I guess in my, my thought process is, you know, maybe they think that it has to be this extreme, super rigid plan when I think that people forget that you can see some big gains from, from some small changes as far as nutrition goes.

Oh, honestly, especially from where they're sitting at right now and what they're doing right now for their nutrition, right? There's probably some very easy changes that you could make. Um, so yeah, and, and I'm, it's, this is actually kind of funny because I'm just coming back to, um, another example of just boosting performance, um, through nutrition. But we had one of our baseball players, um, so we just had a, a series against Kansas. and, um, their pitching was kind of insane. They had some very, very good pitchers. And there was a kid that came in, and I want to say that he was sitting around 97, 98 miles an hour. And, um, I had been told that that same kid, I think he has touched either 99 or 100 this year as his top velocity. But one of our players was talking to me about it, and he said, hey Zach, I reached out to this kid, and, uh, I just said like, hey, Hey, you know, how fast were you throwing last year? How fast have you thrown in years past? And what kind of got you to this point, do you think? And, um, he said sleep and nutrition. He said that those two things— he said that he went from 91, 92, somewhere in that range just last year to 97, 98, 99. And he attributes it solely to sleep and nutrition, um, which I thought was incredible.

Shout out from the rooftops. That's so cool. Yeah, absolutely. I, it's, it's the, I just kind of drill this home with the athletes I work with too. I'm like, it is the boring things that are going to give you like the most exciting results.

Like it is absolutely.

Literally just showing up and doing these little small changes is going to give you, like, it's gonna set you apart that much more.

Yes. 1000%. Completely agree.

I love it. So. Um, would that be your number 3 then? So we have training, nutrition, sleep.

And sleep. Yep. I would, I would put sleep up there as well.

Um, I think the big 3 for all of, all, all coaches usually.

Pretty common. Pretty common. Yep, exactly. And you know, I think that, um, I have done it in the past where, you know, on our little workout sheet, um, I'll have a little survey at the bottom and I think that's pretty common, you know, just say like, Hey, what's your level of energy today? Scale of 1 to 10. Hey, you know, how many hours of sleep did you get last night? 1 to 10. And you'd be surprised at the amount of times I'm happy that I actually scaled it back to 1. So I'm just, I'm just sitting here and I'm just like, guys, like we can, we can do better here. We can do better here. So, yeah, just looking at some of those, if I really, you know, I'm pushing them to fill that out. I'm just, I'm shocked at some of the low numbers that I'm seeing for sleep. And, and, you know, we all know it's no secret that that's going to play a factor in our performance as well.

Yeah. A lot of obviously those, there is those big 3, but what do you think? How do I word this? So mindset plays a huge role even in the weight room, right? Yes, definitely. The mind is a powerful thing. Yes, we need those 3 things, but if your mind's not on board or if you don't believe that you can perform well or do that, like like, then it's not going to translate over near as well as we want it to, right? So what do you guys preach as far as mindset in the weight room?

Cool. Um, so I think that just having a positive belief system is really, really good. Um, I've told so many of my athletes this, and, and sorry, I'm gonna geek out for a second. I am I'm a huge fight nerd. I love all things boxing, kickboxing, wrestling, MMA. And so I love probably more than any other type of athlete or any other sport. I love the mindset of these fighters because they just, they believe that they are going to win. They believe that they are going to be successful and they are vocal about it. I think that they just believe it to the point that they're going to say it to anybody. I saw a sports psychologist's video and he was breaking down kind of his thoughts of like Conor McGregor and Conor McGregor's mindset. And, you know, at the end of the video, he kind of summed it up by saying, guys, like, this guy believes that he is going to go out and execute his plan like 2 2 4. Like, it is, it's almost like common sense to him that things are the plan that he came up with to fight so-and-so. It's gonna be executed. He's going to do it. And I just thought that that was one of the coolest things ever. So there's that, um, positive mindset. And then, um, I've got a couple more. One other thing that from Conor McGregor that he says is he had a big long quote, and he ended it by saying, I'm not talented, I'm obsessed. Hmm. And I disagree with that. He's obviously talented, but he is also obsessed. Right. And so I think that his, his mentality in being obsessed with being the best, especially like a younger Conor McGregor when he was really on that grind to try to reach the top. Right. That mindset just allowed him to, in my opinion, probably be doing everything that he needed to be doing to be successful, right? So I kind of think of that. And then I think of Jordan Burroughs. I was just watching the NCAA wrestling tournament and Jordan Burroughs is a world champion, Olympic champion in wrestling. And he was announcing and just basically saying you know, the, the actual championship matches were going on. And so he was talking about how there's going to be 10 NCAA champions crowned tonight and how do you stand out as the best wrestler amongst that group? And it's just, I like hearing, you know, the insight to some of the way that these guys think, because I'm just like, wow, like how many athletes would just be happy with the fact that they were a national champion?

Oh yeah.

But in this guy's mind, he's like, no, that's not enough. I want to be the most dominant national champion out of the group of these 10 national champions. Like, I want everybody to look at the group of national champions and I want them to say Jordan Burroughs was by far best, best, maybe pound for pound most dominant. He was like, I wanted to be that guy. And so I'm just like, it just kind of never ends. Like the journey to be the absolute best. Best, you know, pound for pound, if you will. So I think that some of those mindsets are cool. And then we work with a sports psychologist here on campus who is incredible. His name is Craig Manning, and I'm sure you're familiar with him.

I love Craig Manning. I'm reading his book right now.

So Craig is fantastic, and I actually had the opportunity of working with him while I was here at BYU as an athlete. But a couple things that really, really stood out to me when I was working with him, and I know that he's still um, very much so preaching these things is, uh, the fact that he says we need to be task-oriented rather than ego-oriented. And I think that that is one of the biggest pieces of advice that an athlete can receive when it comes to just, you know, mental, um, mindset for competition and for training. And Basically all he means by that is we are ego-oriented when we think of the outcome of the event. And so he basically says, you know, hey, for a football team to go out and just say, we're going to beat these guys, or for a baseball team, we're going to go win this game. He said that is so ego-oriented. And if you really think about it, how is that going to help you actually win the game?

Right.

And so, um, he says rather than being ego-oriented, we need to be task-oriented. And so now it's, hey, rather than going out and winning this game, it's all right. I have found that, you know, when I practice, uh, blocking in this way, I'm actually like technically better and, you know, more efficient in doing so. So I'm gonna be focused on, you know, hitting my cues and my technique, and I'm gonna be focused on this and that. And, you know, those are the things that are gonna help you actually get the task done, which is going to lead to the outcome. And so, um, I think that that is probably one of the best pieces of, pieces of advice that I've heard when it comes to sports psychology, being task-oriented, thinking about how you're going to get there rather than just the outcome in itself.

I would agree 1,000%. I love, I, I'm a big Craig Manning fan and the task versus ego, my like orientation and stuff. I was, I, when I read that, I was like, how did I not know that in high school? And the difference it would have made for me. I was, I was so ego-oriented. I played basketball and, um, it was just like, oh, I've got to perform well for this scout, or I've, I've got to get X amount of points and assists and this and that, or else I, my coach is going to pull me, or, you know, like all of these things were, they were so ego-oriented., and I was so focused on that, things that I couldn't control, that I ended up playing worse. When in reality, absolutely. If like, if we had task-oriented, if I'm gonna hit these screens really well, I'm gonna make sure that I'm keeping my hips closed on D or whatever it may be. I like your, you let your, your mind, the one that you've done so much repetition with and muscle memory, it gets to focus on doing what it does, you know? Absolutely hooping out. And so I, I wish I would've had that in high school. I think athletes should really lean into that cuz it, it makes such a difference.

I, I could not agree more. It's, it's a beautiful piece of advice that I would highly recommend to, you know, everybody.

Well, sweet. I have one more question for you if that's okay. I appreciate your time so much today. So we've talked about so many things and obviously your your wheelhouse is the, the, the strength side of things. So what do you think is the ultimate recipe for success for athletes to get to the next level? If they're in high school right now wanting to go play Division I, what, what's that recipe look like?

Yeah, so I'm going to come back to mindset, honestly. Um, and the reason that I'm going to say that is because you can be a little bit more ego-oriented, right? And I think that I see this a lot, um, kind of amongst high school athletes right now who are wanting to go to college for a sport. Um, they're very focused on, okay, how do I get exposure? How do I get in contact with this coach? Should I go to this camp to get recruited? Should I do this? Should I do that? And it's like, okay, we need to back up And we need to realize you gotta be really, really good at your sport. And then that's all gonna take care of itself. Right. So I think that a lot of times they're thinking about the outcome of getting recruited when maybe we're not focusing so much on the tasks that we need to be doing and the performances that we need to be hitting, things like that in order to get to that next level, if that makes sense.

No. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense of I mean, I agree with you. I think kids are so focused on, oh my gosh, am I getting recruited? Am I getting recruited? Am I winning enough to get recruited or this or that? And then they're not even performing at their highest level.

Yeah.

When that opportunity comes too, right?

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I kind of take like, you know, some of the athletes that I went to high school with and even myself getting recruited in high school, it was in my own experience, it was, You know, I never, I was never worried about getting recruited per se. It was more like, hey, I need to be drilling these things so that I can improve my distances, improve my performances. And I would go into the garage and turn on some music and drill for 2 hours after I did my homework or, you know, whatever it, whatever it was. And, and I can say the same for this, you know, the kids from my high school that got recruited to. um, go play at the next level. It was, they were always putting in the extra work and always focusing on the little things and focusing on the basics. And it was just incredible. I mean, like the amount of extra time and extra work and, and details that they were putting into everything, it was just like, like the, I, I feel like they made it happen because of that amount of work that they were putting in for it.

Yeah. You gotta control the controllables. That, that seems to be a common—

Absolutely.

Yeah, I, if I had another podcast name, it'd probably be that, 'cause it seems to be that that comes up every single podcast is, you know, only control what you can control. And that brings a lot more success than not.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So I would just say mindset, being task-oriented rather than ego-oriented. Um, and at the same time, I, I maybe I'm completely wrong in this. I do think that maybe just a touch of ego-oriented is probably good. Um, but because it just keeps you motivated, right? Um, I mean, at the end of the day, we're all athletes and we're all very competitive in nature. And I think that maybe just a touch of, of ego-oriented, I'm gonna win this, or I'm gonna do that, having kind of an end goal is good. Um, so I, I think that a little bit of that is probably helpful as well.

Love it. Well, Zach, thanks so much for your time today. This has been awesome. I, if I was a high schooler listening to this, I, I would definitely have a plan of action of what to do next. And if I didn't know what to do as far as strength or nutrition or anything goes. So thank you so much for sharing that knowledge with us.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate it.