התמלול המלא של Ep15: Josh Bray on Athleticism and Archetyping

all started. So three years ago I started my first block of training for marathon. And what was cool is my mother, she's a marathoner, she she's been running marathons since she was in her twenties, so going on 35 years of doing that. So I had a good base of support in that regard. And but the biggest thing was like it's a whole other ball game. Like marathon running endurance like athletics is it's a whole other ballgame. Like we think we have capacity because we can, you know, run a eighteen minute five K, but it's nothing compared to trying to do that over and over again for forty two kilometers. Now, granted, the first kind of inception of the idea was like, let's just complete a marathon to say we've done a marathon. And after a couple months of training, being diligent with that, I was like, Oof, like, okay, we have an opportunity to Maybe you strive for something that's a little bit more aggressive, like 315 or below. Maybe we go for the elusive sub-three. anyways, first marathon went well, ran a 312, and then caught the bug from there. And then over the course of the next three seasons, ran everything between five to full marathons, but focused on trying to get the sub three, and after my third attempt, got the the elusive sub three. Then that opens the can of worms. It's like, okay, now I've done something that's kind of like an endurance sport. what do you call it? Like a gold standard, if you will, like that kind of that that yeah, nice milestone. Dan Grimaudo: Mm-hmm. Josh Bray: I'm like, what what's next? That naturally I want to qualify for bossing at some point. But that's kind of on the back burner right now. I kind of transitioned into, as you said, triathlon. So it's like, what's the next big thing that I can. sign up for and I wasn't quite dense enough to go straight for the full Iron Man, which is not actually like par for me. You know, typically I would go for that. But anyways, I didn't know how to swim. So I went with a half Iron Man. and then over the course of this year trained pr quite diligently across six months. Ended up doing two half Ironmans with my sights set on a full next year. But it this whole process in the last three years has been massively influential in how I see things. And I'm not someone who lets my personal training like influence what I do with my athletes because I'm just strictly about meeting the needs and demands of my athletes. But it has identified that there's a great deal of volume that we can expose ourselves to that we can still recover from, that we can still maintain those main qualities of strength, speed, and power. so to answer your question like how have things shifted? I think all like ultimately the volume is obviously the number one thing that's gone up. Like now now I'm training for three disciplines and trying to lift. So going from lifting six days a week by an hour, hour and a half, we're looking at six to eight hours of work to now twelve to twenty hours at peak of three different disciplines and trying to lift two to three times. Like that's quite a different stimulus, right? It's exhausting. It requires a high degree of specificity with the fueling and Onus on like recovery. but on the back end of that, like as a strength coach, it was pretty insightful to see that like once you reach a certain standard of strength, you're able to just maintain those qualities with the minimum effective dose stuff. And that was cool for me. My my thing was like as long as I can power clean 225 throughout this whole block, I'm good, you know. Sure, the jumping went down at times, exhausted most of the time, sore, couldn't hit. high numbers, but if I could get in and touch a weight that was like within eighty to ninety percent of my max for at least a rep or something of the sort, or velocities pretty close within twenty percent of what I was doing before, I'm happy. I felt like the the quality was preserved. So I'll just wrap up with saying that lifting des definitely diminished with the triathlon prep. to maybe two or three times a week, took maybe a bit more of that classic like injury mitigation, unilateral biased work with a touch of strength. And then it was just pounding miles in volume as much as I could. Dan Grimaudo: I like the point that you made about you know, you don't let your training personally and what you do for your own interests and training influence how you you train your athletes. Like you're not all of a sudden like, I'm an endurance athlete now, so I have to totally shift my practice with how I'm guiding these different teams and everyone has to start hammering conditions or conditioning. But I know you see it because you you're in the thick of it, it is how much value we can gain by seeing the other side of the coin and and touching on things that are outside of our just like natural scope of the way we view fitness. Like I know for me, you know, I got into cycling in my early twenties when I was working at a ski shop, one of the managers was a big cyclist. So I got into it then, fell out of it. And then like with you, running was kind of my my gateway back into it. My wife's a big runner and when we moved to Nashville, we used to run two miles every morning. And it just like kind of like got me thinking like, I don't really love running, but I really want to Start riding the bike again and it got me back into the endurance side of thing. And that actually helped me as a whole with all of my training. Like it helped me become a better athlete at the time when I was officiating hockey. It it gave me insight into a side of training that I just totally neglected because I didn't think that it would have as much value as it actually did. And so I I I like that, you know, dipping your toes into murky waters of different I mean, for simple terms, just different areas of Performance and and being able to, you know, pick and choose pieces that add value to the athletes that you're working with at the same time.

Like being the guinea pig, so when you hand the information or the pr or the prescription to your athletes, you know, like, hey, this is the value it's gonna add, and this is why, because I did it. I didn't just read it in a textbook, I didn't just see an Instagram post. Like I felt this and experienced this and saw these performance games. So If you do this even just a little bit, like you don't have to do it to the extent that like 20 hours a week of triathlon training is crazy. Like no team sport athlete's gonna do that. But you know as well as I do, like that when you're training those 20 hours, like that's the that's the fringe, like that is like eking out every last bit of performance you can. The the bulk of that, it's like the Preto principle, right? The the 80-20 rule, where you're gonna get 80% of the benefit from you know the 20% of the work. So if we can just bump this little bit of conditioning here in this way and you know, hey, look at all these running and cycling prescriptions I learned by doing this. I can inject that into my team support program. Josh Bray: Absolutely. And there's a lot to be learned from that. Like I've been fortunate to have a very diverse background of things because I get interested in them and I go full bore into them. So, you know, powerlifting, CrossFit, different sports, different forms of preparation, bodybuilding, you know. And as long as you take each lesson learned from each one as a tool and opportunity to to then have something that you can help your athletes with, then you then you're being successful, right? You're and this is gonna transcend through all the topics we talk about of just trying simply having a tool to meet the the needs and the demands of whoever's in front of you, right? And I just think it's nice because, you know, a CrossFit background, like there's so many different modalities and methodologies that are inherent within CrossFit that are from so many other influences. And I still use a lot of those in my own programming. We have certain days that are maybe just purely Metcons or other days that might have an emom back squats or just something, right? So it's influenced from somewhere, but it just becomes a a a tool in a larger toolbox and yeah, that's what's been kinda nice for me. Dan Grimaudo: Yeah, CrossFit gets a lot of slack for getting people injured. But I think like if you zoom out and just look at the principles of what CrossFit is accomplishing, I mean, first and foremost, community. Like I think that's where CrossFit hits the nail on the head is is with the community aspect. But they blend conditioning, they blend strength, they blend power, they blend capacity in all of those. you know, CrossFit is like I don't wanna say uneducated, but maybe a a poorly organized way to do high level GPP. And I think, you know, people people get injured probably because the the coach to athlete ratio is so I guess low, right? There's there's a a class Josh Bray: Mm-hmm. Dan Grimaudo: could be one coach to twenty people and You're teaching complex Olympic lifting movements. Like that's where probably most people are getting hurt. I don't think many people are getting hurt flipping a tire, jumping in and out of the tire, then flipping it again. Like that that's that's probably not the lifts or the exercises that are doing it. But I think CrossFit does a good job of just like touching everything to a level that you can kind of plug and play this person into a variety of different tasks and they'll be somewhat competent in it. Josh Bray: Yeah, and there's a bit of a like a perpetuated necessity for competition in the sport. You know, like there's a huge, huge like all the pros are put on this pedestal and obviously they're the ones that drive the brand of CrossFit. So it's like, look at Matt Fraser, and it's like, Well, the guy's five six and the overhead squats four hundred pounds. Like that's setting a bad precedence for most people, whereas the practice of CrossFit is more beneficial, like you said, from a general physical preparedness standpoint. Where it's like, yeah, you can learn fundamental gymnastics, you can learn fundamentals of strength, power, and speed, and it's all underlaid by the the conditioning aspect. That's excellent. Like I love I love all that. But then when you start like taking genpot people and pushing them towards like the open and doing all these sort of time constrained exercises where you have to do a hundred overhead walking lunges and fifty Handstand push ups, you're probably gonna run into some acute injuries, right? And the just general lack of restoration between sessions. Like the people that are going four or five times a week, these are all high output days. Like they don't have a high low model necessarily in in CrossFit, right? So the management of fatigue's pretty weak as well. That's kind of why I Dan Grimaudo: Yeah, that that's definitely a big part of it too. which I think, you know, it it attracts that type A type of person too, where it's like they th they think they need to crush themselves in the gym. We all have those friends, right, who are like, like if I'm going to the gym, like I gotta work hard. It's my first time back in three months. And it's like, well, like I'm let's maybe back it off a little bit and just like see Josh Bray: PR. Dan Grimaudo: what you're capable of that day. Maybe, you know, do one working set and two warm up sets, even though it says do three sets of six to eight kind of thing and and and build your way back into it. And it's really I mean it's a preservation tactic, right? It's you know, especially for people like us who aren't professional athletes, like being in the game longer is the game versus Josh Bray: Mm-hmm. Dan Grimaudo: being a professional athlete, like performance performance now is the goal First is, you know, for me, like, you know, I'm in my mid thirties, like my goal is performance in my forties and fifties. Like I love golf,

I love cycling, I love tennis. Like I want to be elite at those later. So I don't I don't need to make those potential sacrifices now that could lead to, you know, burnout or injury risk when I can just worry about, hey, How can I extend the runway of progression with these so I can, you know, stay in the game? Because I'm not getting paid to do this, right? I I I still have to pay a fee every month to go play tennis at the squirts I used to do. Yeah. And this that CrossFit conversation and the the point you made about Matt Frazier being, you know, kind of anthropometrically the way he is, kind of leads nicely into the next question I wanted to ask you about, which you're very well known for For organizing your programming around, and that's archetyping. Josh Bray: Yeah. Dan Grimaudo: I think I think anyone who who's been following you a while knows that you take the stance that building general athleticism is never gonna hurt an athlete, but there are probably some some good ways to mix that GPP model with the archetyping model. Josh Bray: You Dan Grimaudo: I'm curious about your process, about kind of how you organize your training. for certain archetypes, but still keeping that that general athleticism idea in mind. Because I know when you think about GPP or when a lot of people think about GPP, they think about like, hey, everyone's just getting the same thing. We are we are using these exercises to build general athletic qualities as a whole, but you seem to be really good at organizing a way to to get these general athletic qualities a little bit more specifically. Josh Bray: Hmm. Well, I'll I'll set up with a pretty broad statement that, like, as far as I'm concerned, like I feel that all training is general physical preparedness. It's just like there are some applications of the means and methodologies that are more transferable to a specific need and demand of a sport, right? So, and especially when we start looking at the archetyping model and the athletes themselves, they have particular needs. And those considerations of what they need. Which the transverse of that is going to be a strength that they have, is gonna be the dominating consideration for me in my system as to like where I'm gonna put what exercises. Right. But at the end of the day, like even if we're looking at a single leg calf ISO, it's a very localized adaptation, but it's still a general adaptation. It's not gonna be specific to any particular person or sport, it's just a general need that might be associated with a a prerequisite. weakness, something like that. But for me, like when I have all my athletes, like my system is like, I'll look at it in broad strokes. When everyone comes in, everyone falls within a a a blanket, even if I've had them for a couple of years, of a GPP program. Like I get them in the general physical preparedness pathway where everyone's doing the same thing. And this just allows for me to get my first eyes on people. If they're new athletes

or even because I work with predominantly high school athletes I just had a kid leave me in June. They're gonna be completely different when they get back in September. They've had a whole new set of stimulus from possibly another coach. They've reduced their stress overall. They've gone through a a growth spurt, all these sort of things. So their movement strategies, how they interact with force when they left me in June could be completely different. Or it's more reinforced. So I go through a nice GPP process, keep things pretty fundamental, set up the base. of support for the the following phases. get a good eye on where people might follow into a bucket. This is all a lot of visual stuff. Obviously we're gonna have like assessments, force plate data, some sprint data. it's a good opportunity to get on the ice with the hockey players or on the field with rugby players, on the court with the basketball players and just see okay how do they move and interact when they're in their game themselves. And this just is foddering a lot of information. That I can then use in the next subsequent phase. And then from there, as we start to add some form of specificity, my my first process is adding them into the bigger buckets, which I would refer to as just elastic hybrid and muscular. And there's a ton of different nuance involved there in terms of what we can visually see subjectively and objectively to define them as muscular, elastic, or hybrid. And but I like to put them in those three silos. the the broad strokes. And this is just our first layer of specificity. And obviously it comes with education, and it's an opportunity to showcase them with a little bit of individualization. It's like, all right, this is the kind of athlete that you're presenting as. Here are the general needs that you have and the general strengths that you have. Your or your kryptonite and your superpowers. Here are your superpowers, here your here are your kryptonite, your weaknesses. And from there I start layering layering in specificity from a weakness side of things. Earlier in the season, preseason, I I personally view in my demographic as an opportunity to extend our our off season, preseason and really overload them with weaknesses. Allows me to see how they might interact with things that they're not anthropometrically or movement strategy-wise predisposed to being good at. And then as the season goes on, then we're flipping the script and getting closer and closer to their superpowers so we can, you know, just maintain freshness, avoid any interference of of fatigue, and just really push those those big rocks that they're they're really successful at. So I mean, I can go a little bit further into my decision making in terms of programming if you want. but in general, I I'm going super general to specific and I'm adding specificity as we go along to complement them as an athlete and their archetype as I gather more information to who they are. Dan Grimaudo: When you

archetype these athletes, are you using the force plates? Are you doing like an ISA measurement? Is it just watching them? does the process change? Because like you said, you're working at a high school, right? So you every year you get a new freshman class with athletes that you haven't seen before, and then you have juniors and seniors that you've worked with, you've you've been familiarized with their predispositions, how they like to move, you've possibly seen them reach peak height velocity or you know have started to go through it depending on their age and when puberty sets in. Does your process change for for bucketing for any of that? Or is it, hey, I'm always kind of be consistent with how I'm organizing my my three main buckets. That way I can kind of keep a thread of similarity with you know how I progress them through programs? Josh Bray: Yeah, absolutely. And this is where actually a lot of I think a lot of coaches that see some of my content go astray because there are some consistencies in terms of my process for archetyping, but that's that consistency, as you mentioned, is for the c sake of consistency to make sure that we have repeatability and variability or not variability, what's the word? l validity in in our testing process. I'm alone, I need to be able to consolidate and kind of get the best process possible to get the closest to an ideal outcome. Now I'm dealing with adolescence in particular. So these things, as I've mentioned, change all the time. Do I always get it right? No. But I am also of a strong believer that going back to GPP, I could give an elastic athlete or someone who's presenting as an elastic athlete a muscular program and they're still gonna progress. It just might not in this conceptual model be absolutely perfect. So that's important to say. But Yes, I get them in. I those two weeks of GPP, I try to just watch in the first week and get a a good generalized idea of how they move. Then the next step is when we're allowed to get into the gym and start training. The first thing is testing. I I'm doing a CMJ, SJ, squat jump and counter movement jump for elastic properties, muscular base properties. I'm doing an isometric mid thigh pull. and those will be the main force characteristics that I'm looking at, and then a 10 fly. 'Cause that's gonna be the main thing that we're gonna track across the season. and from that, I mean I I pull the main metrics of peak relative propulsive power, RSI mod, counter movement depth, and peak peak propulsive power. So I'm looking at all those in conjunction with what their force curves look like. jotting down notes, use the quadrant system on Vault, and then from there I'm able to kind of pull out some pretty obvious Pretty obvious people in each group, and then those fringe guys or gals. I'm just making an educated decision on on where they should fall. Obviously, then it goes into intervention, applying an intervention. We're retesting on the force plates, we do jumps every two weeks, and we do sprint every two weeks. So we alternate. Week A we got jumps, week B we have sprint, we're going back and forth. And longitudinally, when we see some progress on the quadrant reports, they may just fall into a new new bucket or new group and in the subsequent program we're gonna apply that switch, the new intervention. We'll see how they interact with that. And then, you know, that process repeats itself. Dan Grimaudo: Do you ever use any of those tools as as readiness as well, like when you're when you're testing them? So it's like, hey, like your jump is twenty percent lower than it was two weeks ago. Like we should definitely drop some intensity in your programming here. Josh Bray: Yeah. so I I set generally three thresholds. anything around five percent is just probably daily fluctuation. fifteen percent is gonna I'm gonna orange flag it and just see how things go the f subsequent week. And if there's a twenty percent or more decrease, it's gonna be immediate red flag and that that's intervention. So maybe we cut a couple sets or We have have a word with the coach and just see how they do on the ice, depending if they're going on the ice for the court or or vice versa. That's another thing is like I have a lot of athletes, like I one group is always gonna be coming off of their their practice and then having their testing protocol. We always test on Wednesday, middle of the week. it's just the consistency and what allows for us based on our schedule. but I'm always gonna have athletes that are jumping after exertion, right? And then there have other athletes who are fresh. So that in itself kind of self regulates because it's consistent. but in general, yes. Using force plates as a means of readiness, I I not associate, but I assign those thresholds and and from there it just infers if I'm gonna have a conversation with them, with the coach, or you know, yeah. Dan Grimaudo: Like communication aspect is huge and just like knowing one, what the athlete is going through, right? Like allostatic load of their life, right? Like, hey, do you have any, you know, increased school stress right now? Do you have stress at home? Are you something going on with your girlfriend? Like that plays a role in how these athletes are gonna perform on these tests. And it you make a good point that these these tests are A lot of times for you, they're not just, you failed this test. We need to make an intervention right now. It's like, hey, let's dig for more inner information. Like let's ask the athlete how they're doing. Let's talk to the coach. Cause like you said, right, like they could have had a bag skate right before they come and they do their testing. And th they're everyone's numbers are gonna be in the gutter. and the the big one for me is you know, being a guy who doesn't have access to any of these tools that honestly would be so fun to have access to, is is visually is is how is the athlete performing? Because you know that

having these these numbers be way down doesn't necessarily mean like performance in the sport is way down. And ultimately, you know, our job as coaches is to to make the athletes better at the sport, not better in the weight room. And so this This you know, this flagging of poor testing metrics is is a great way to s to to I don't want to say flag again, but just to raise attention to, hey, let's let's dig for more information. Like, is the performance of the athlete actually dropping where it matters, or is this just, you know, a blip? Is there something else going on that's interfering with the athlete's ability to perform during this test because, you know, to the athlete this test might not be the number one priority. But you know, game day on Saturday is. So maybe they're saving some energy on Wednesday mentally to be able to show up on Saturday and and fully lock in. Yeah. Josh Bray: Mm-hmm. well, absolutely. But it takes repeated flagging really to cause any form of intervention. Like the variability in in most of these metrics is so high. And you know, we'll see someone who's really good at talking about this stuff is Ryan Aguire. Should look into Fusion Sports. fantastic. Dan Grimaudo: All I can do. Josh Bray: Yeah, definitely look into the stuff he does. But you know, one thing he was posting the other day is just just micro invariabilities in in testing metrics. So A foot shifting while they're jumping, readjusting, foot coming off during the descent of a counter movement jump. Like all these little things cause like these small variabilities and ultimately that reduces the validity of of a test. But when you have twenty five kids that are trying to run a primer session on a Wednesday, you have one coach who's trying to get all the force blade data stuff, it's not it's not necessarily that you have to concede necessarily to a lack of validity or a lack of quality of results, but you're just trying to get a picture, a broad stroke picture. And if you take everything too literally, the force curve has gone from unimodal to bimodal, what's going on? They must be completely not ready. It's like, well, the kid hopped on the plates. He rushed some things. He jumped because he wanted to get back to his set. Is it ideal? No. and I could ramble on and on about the the even having having technology altogether, but it's simply a tool to get broad stroke images, right? And it allows me to see, okay, this guy, hey, you're you're down twenty percent. Give me one more. Like, give me the real deal. And gives me one good jump. It's like, okay, now I have a good idea. Before I go to the coach and be like, hey, you know, Joe Blow over here is 40% down. You know, what happened? he looked great on the ice. It's like, well, it's not matching up. What is happening? And you know, so all to say that we have to have repeatability and and a lack of performance before intervention takes place. but conversations always happen before that. Even occurrence. Dan Grimaudo: I think that is something that probably a lot of coaches face where it's like they're always striving for optimization. And so whenever they see any number that might be slightly off, it's we need to adjust the program. We need to change something now. And, you know, I think it leads a lot of coaches to to roadblocks with programming and you know, myself included, can it can lead to overcomplication of programming. curious where you're you are able to kind of compartmentalize all this information and and be able to to maintain the thread of the program without trying to add these complicated exercises and and really just keeping things simple and and the the needle moving forward just from a zoomed out perspective and not not just getting too bogged down by all this data in the moment. Josh Bray: Hm. Like how I simplify things more or less. Dan Grimaudo: Yeah, how how you're able to take this information, right? I I don't think it's bad to have too much information, but knowing how to sift through that information and pick out the right data at the right time and knowing how to to zoom out and see the bigger picture to to lead to better programming decisions with, you know, exercise selection or qualities and that we're gonna train at what times and intensities and how we're gonna fluctuate those throughout the week. Josh Bray: Yeah, for sure. Well, a lot of it boils down to necessity for me. Like a lot of my process and a lot of the simplicity that I've been able to apply to complex, you know, problems comes from the necessity to solve these problems. And and a lot of that was bred out of out of COVID. this was a huge transformative time for me because I had fifty kids. They were the only kids on campus that were allowed to train, but they all had to wear masks. we all had we had to all be in the the basketball gym opened up to full space, you know, X amount of meters apart, mass on this this whole time. I had cones, I had space, a couple lines on the the court, and a couple like jimmy-rigged hurdles. Right. So now I'm trying to allocate some sort of specific stimulus to a larger group of people that need different demands and needs with hardly anything. So instead of like just bludgeoning my head against the wall or just adopting a full kind of like CrossFit style of programming boot camp stuff. Like I started just being very introspective and be like, okay, why do we do things and how can I justify a tag game or chasing a ball game as something that's gonna benefit the kinetics and kinematics of of of athletic development? Like how? So I started justifying maybe it it started a little bit from a place of like justifying why I'm doing these kind of crazy fringe things on Instagram. But then it opened up a whole floodgate of like, now I'm getting a much better understanding of how the whole body works in conjunction with these applied stimulus. Even if it is just go touch that cone and come back, right? So that introspection or

reflection on what I'm doing ultimately opened up an avenue to To do some deep research to start gathering my tools, right? I think where a lot of coaches fall short is is they they overcomplicate things because they're limited in their resources. They come out of the the CSCS or they come out of college and they they know a lot about a little and they're trying to apply all those things, but then you're met with problems that you have to solve, which you don't have the tools for. So by taking a step back. checking the ego, realizing, and I mentioned this before when we were kind of doing the preamble. There's this moment you wake up as a young man and realize that you didn't really know anything before. Now you have a much better understanding. And that process has to take place as a coach as well, of recognizing that you don't know everything, be welcoming of the things you don't know, and then do your due diligence as a practitioner to to find those solutions. So that's a roundabout way of saying, like as you As you adopt a process that is centered on deconstruction of a problem, you're then able to look at all of the pieces of the puzzle and then allocate the best possible in this situation means to solve that problem. So then when it comes to, you know, we can extrapolate this across the archetyping. And I think this is where a lot of people like my my archetyping model or the things I talk about is how you can amplify resource management and session flow. By simply allocating exercises based on the needs of that athlete in conjunction with the season phase. So we have a season phase where we're gonna be working on max strength. We know one athlete doesn't particularly do well with compressive forces, one does. We can give an exercise that's more compressive force bias versus one that isn't, but they both work on bilateral lower body knee dominant strength. Let's just say that, right? So That's where the process of being able to allocate tools to the specific person comes from. So deconstructive model allows for a vision of all possible outcomes. Then we can eradicate what doesn't need to be used and use just what will most likely be effective. That's kinda my roundabout way of going about it. Dan Grimaudo: Yeah, it seems like you've put a lot of thought and effort into this process, which is good because it's you know, it's like you were given roadblocks and constraints with, you know, COVID and whatever equipment your weight room has at the time and what that turns into in your current weight room. And you you're able to take skills that you've learned from, you know, this very limited situation and and apply those to, hey, now I have all these tools, but I don't necessarily need to use all these tools. There's a right time and place to Take the tools that I have and apply it to the right athlete without trying to, you know, give every athlete a little bit of everything because look, I have all these tools and we can make everything so complicated. So one thing Josh Bray: Right. Absolutely. Dan Grimaudo: I I I like that you mentioned about what you had to start doing in COVID is the gamification. Josh Bray: Hm. Dan Grimaudo: And and it seems like based on, you know, just a lot of your content, is that that thread has stayed consistent no matter the archetype, no matter the phase of training. It seems like there's always some level of gamification in every single session that you're posting. And I'm I'm curious more about where you're getting these ideas for these games, how you know, how effective you're seeing them being in training is there there times when you use certain games and not others based on qualities you're trying to train in the session. just just a broad view of gamification. I mean largely it seems like the warm-up, but even if you use it in the sessions too, how you how you mix it in there. Josh Bray: Yeah, for sure. I mean, look, we're dealing with athletes and they like to play. That as simple as that. So when it all boils down to it, like when are we getting their best outputs? It's when they're in some sort of gamified situation. Whether they're in practice, they're doing short sighted drills or they're in the game itself, like they're they're maximizing their output. Now we can go down a kind of a slippery slope of if they're exposing themselves to that high of a stimulus in games in practice, do we also want to do that in in training as well, you know, maybe not. So that's where we kind of have to apply some form of a technical model to it. Where it came from, once again, from from COVID, where's the necessity of trying to get these kids to to work on change of direction, to work on conditioning, to work on speed development without coming in contact with each other, without standing in a long line together, but get good stimulus at the same time. So I was like, okay, we can chase each other. we can race each other. We're kind of checking two boxes at the same time. Then as we got back to the weight room, I just started to recognize that there's a there's a strong justification for the the skill acquisition component to it. Like weekend, microdose across a week, multiple little exposures to things that they're not getting in in any capacity anywhere else, unless they were still being children on the playground, right? So applying the human force, the rolling, the crawling, the the combatives. hanging, like throwing balls, trying to balance, coordinate movement, just challenge general movement literacy. I was like when I started to do that sort of stuff, like emotion and mood was was way better. Everyone was having fun, they're laughing. You get those fringe kids who are like typically like not interested in training, all of a sudden they're having fun and competing. so it became a means primarily to drive engagement and buy-in. And then as I started to apply that same, I guess, methodology to to our speed sessions, using a lot of the chasing once again,

a lot of the pursuit, evasion, fragility, reactive based drilling, I recognized just the intent was soaring through the roof. Like beforehand, we would do the conventional, like cone based stuff, some closed skill refinement. And kids would be like, is that it for today? But then fast forward to doing like 1v1 cone race drills and and open evasion red rover, you know, these kids were like dripping and it's like, that was so much fun. And they were clearly having a high degree of benefit from it all. So then, I mean, I can give some advice on on general gamification. Where do the ideas come from? I mean, that's the beauty of our job is is it all comes from here. Like you don't have to overcomplicate it. I mean, I've been a sport coach for for a decade now, so it's easier for me to take some form of like skill, skill or drill from from say rugby and apply it to a hockey player. They're getting something that they've never done. You gotta have some sort of motor learning pattern that movement pattern that they haven't done before, like teaching a hockey guy who uses an external implement to now throw a rugby ball properly. Like, you know, they're gonna be learning a new skill. but then as things progress, like as as for anything, like I've applied, you know, a bit more of a systematic approach to things. Like I do divide my games now into tactical, technical, coordinative and fundamental skills. So I try to associate a a type of game with this session theme or even the practice theme. You know, if I know that they're doing Battle drills on the ice, I might have them do some sort of one on one small sided combative, right? So just prep and prime their body for that. if we're gonna have a pretty low day on the on the field or on the court, I might get them to do a little more grippy stuff or have them do some more drills that might influence a decelerative demand, stuff like that. so there is a loose, loose planning there. where I try to derive some sort of similar complementary stimulus across the games to the session theme. But at the end of the day, like priority number one is have fun, get warmed up, warm the brain and, you know, try something new. Dan Grimaudo: Yeah, I I understand the the struggle with with coming up with a lot of games. I I have a four year old and we're just I we have a gym in the basement, right? And so whenever my wife and I are working out, he loves to be down there and he loves to be playing around and I I often find myself just watching him move or watching him just try and figure out whatever he's doing in the gym and I try and and give him an external task associated with it. Like he'll climb on the squat rack and then like up the spotter arm onto the barbell, he'll grab the pull-up bar and like shuffle across and I'll like I'll take the the the bar end clips and I'll just like put them in different slots on the rack and I'm like, hey, like go get that. Like go go get that and then hop onto the sandbag. And it's it's a

challenge for me, 'cause I think as a kid I just I intuitively loved to play and I'd love to make games and I never really thought about the process behind it. And so now having a kid and wanting to, you know, encourage his development athletically, like I'm not I'm certainly not delusion to thinking my four year old's gonna be a pro athlete, but I I definitely see the value of, you know, movement quality and capacity and just, you know, technical problem solving ability in stressful situations, you know, coupled with motor learning and fine motor skills of like having to, you know, grab something precise while in a stressful situation, while hanging from something. And having to create these games is it's an interesting challenge when it's not something you've you've thought about, right? And and learning to use your external environment or just other influences. Like I love how you have such a broad influence of sports from your childhood with basketball, rugby, soccer, all these things to pull from to be able to say, like, like we did these drills this way. In this sport, we did something similar in this other sport. I can combine these two to make a game for my athletes in hockey and be able to train similar qualities. I find myself at the playground a lot, just like sitting down and I'm I'm usually listening to a podcast and I'm just watching the kids play and like how they climb and crawl and like what things they're they're kind of gravitating towards at the playground and thinking like, how can I gamify this? And you know, some coaches are much better at it than other coaches, but it's it's it's a fun challenge for myself mentally to to just be sitting down and and trying to create these games that You know, as a kid, I feel like came naturally to me. I never had to think about it. It was like, hey, like, let's take this rock and we have to kick it off this wall before we kick it into that sewer grate for three points. But if you kick it off somebody else's shoe and into the sewer grate, it's minus two. Like the the creativity level for these games to one, create engagement, but to couple that with, you know, movement qualities that I'm intentionally trying to touch is you know, it's an art. It it's it's fun to see you post all these variety of games and see how they they kind of lean into the qualities that you're trying to touch on without the kids knowing like, hey, Josh Bray: Yeah. Dan Grimaudo: like I'm also having you do this for agility Josh Bray: Yeah. Dan Grimaudo: because we're about to test your five ten five. Josh Bray: Yeah. And and that's been a huge plus. and and just to kind of go back and add, like this is this is a good bit of advice for coaches that team work with larger teams, but like you I use it as an advantage to give myself space and time as well. And this is one of the first things I teach my interns is like like as much as we want to apply some sort of justified stimulus with our games, a lot of times all it does is give you the opportunity to have a bit of space and time to breathe and get them to accomplish the task of a warm-up. while you get to set up the weight room, for example. So like a l a lot of that necessity was like crap. Like just like the the kicking the rock in the sewer grade. I'm looking around I'm like, okay, I've s like 20 cones. I'm like, all right, just throw them around. Pick those cones up and you know, like do it in this order and do it four times. And then they're all working together, teamwork, communication, all that stuff. And we can justify that. But it also gave me the opportunity to just have space to get things going. And like that kind of falls into the category of like you don't have to have a reason for things if the reason is just to help you kind of thing. but yeah like as far as like designing stuff goes, you know, I I like that you're like sitting there kind of like thinking about how you can gamify stuff. And honestly like as long as you have a task to complete and a potential outcome that one or more people can be successful or unsuccessful in, you've got a game. Right? So I don't know. For most people, my advice is just be creative and don't do not fear. I do games all the time where the kids like, What the like, what is this? And I'm like, Okay, well, we're not doing that again. You know what I mean? Like, or the next group gets it and they love it, you know? So yeah. Dan Grimaudo: Yeah, well, that one's done. We're like, where why why do these kids like that? This one, these kids don't Josh Bray: Yeah, right. Dan Grimaudo: like that. It's it kind of leads nicely into something that I think is not talked about enough in training. And that's the psychological side of training and You know, working with teams, obviously it you know, most people probably just immediately think like creating buy-in and getting people to to wanna you know drive outputs when necessary. But I think the psychological side of training also has an introspective side of it. And maybe not every athlete falls into this bucket, and I kinda think this way because it's the bucket I fall into, but it's like the nuance of foot pressure when I'm completing a a task or like, my rib cage position versus just solely on the outputs. When I think when I think about training for myself, if I'm just like broadly breaking it down in my mental model, I'm thinking of like outputs and inputs. And I find myself leaning a lot lately on the input side of things. And it's probably limiting my performance. But How do you balance athletes that have different desires to train? Some prefer to, you know, get really granular about each exercise and think about actually performing the exercise in a certain way versus others who are just like, plates on bar, bar goes up. Yeah. Josh Bray: Yeah, yeah. I mean it takes a lot of interpersonal skills and you develop that over time. Like I was resistant to a certain type of athlete earlier in my career, and I'll I'll

speak a bit more on that because that was the heaviest influence on on how I've adopted this into the archetyping or bucketing and just my general programming sense. but it you have to work the room, like My first guiding star and my northern star when it comes to training is just recognizing that yeah, we can say like you're working with people ultimately, we know that, but everyone's different and they don't particularly, even if they like the gym, ninety-nine percent of the people, especially adolescents, aren't in love with the gym, especially when you're working with athletes there for a particular sport. So just understanding that in the first place, everyone has kind of like this base, Not negative association, but this base kind of like disinterest in the gym. Some are good Dan Grimaudo: Mm. Josh Bray: at recognizing that it's a means to an end, otherwise, otherwise they don't really care for it. So understanding that right. So how do you connect with a teenager? Dan Grimaudo: A typical teenager like, I don't want to do this kind of thing. Josh Bray: Like know your audience, right? Like so I I work the room a lot. I I get to know people. I I particularly have a cute sense of what people's kind of hierarchy are in the group. You know, you start to pick up on the in interpersonal. connections and relationships within the actual athletes in the group. You know, who's in I work at a at a boarding school, so who's in which house, who's whose roommate, who's in which grade with someone else's girlfriend. Like all these little things matter a lot because that's going to influence how they show up every day. and then the next layer of that is is getting to know them obviously from an anthropometric archetype style approach because those predispositions influence a lot of what they are going to be good at and what they're not going to be good at. And so that further down the line, as we enter more specific bucketing systems, we start to see like, yeah, like this super elastic skilled guy that doesn't want to work out. Well, he doesn't want to work out because like his his relationship association with high compressive squatting is not good. Right? Like his back hurts. He's not as strong as everybody else. He's a high skilled player, one of the best on teams. So what ends up happening is he got paired with the big defenseman because he's also a good player. And now we have two completely different athletes working out together with different superpowers. So obviously when you're getting left behind and crushed by the big defenseman who loves back squatting heavy, you're gonna you're gonna adopt a a negative association with that, right? So going back to my comment about like I had a particular group of athletes and these guys went on to be, I guess collectively, the best cohort of hockey players I've ever worked with. All D1, a couple of them drafted into the NHL. And at that time I was a young coach and still trying to force my methodologies, if you will, or what I thought was right for them onto them. You know, and now when I look at them just from an eye test, it's like, well, three of these guys are are beanpoles. Who are highly offensive skilled players, super elastic in nature, super skinny, crazy bounce. And it's like I had them trying to do Astagrass tempo squats. You know, I was trying to get them under a heavy load. And I mean, heavy loads with far exceeding their capacity in anthropometric pre-isposition positions, I should say, because we were still lifting fairly heavy, but This led me to then reverse and do that whole deconstructing process where I was like, why why did X, Y, and Z not do well in my program? Why was A, B, and C so defensive when I said you gotta do this? Why were they so resistant to the methods? And it's like, okay, now I understand. From a psychological standpoint, if we think like Pavlov's dog, there they've been rehearsed and conditioned into not liking something. You know, instead of every time they ring the bell, you get a treat. Every time they ring the bell, you got a slap in the face. So now they're afraid of the bell rather than salivating at the bell, right? So instead of every time, you know, we're gonna go work out, it's gonna be something that makes me feel springy and explosive, something I'm good at, I'm getting dosed with something that makes me feel sore, slow, and you know, reduce my performance. So You know, that was kind of my process of recognizing the psychological association with training. And then from that, it now influences my considerations. Not always cut cut and dry, but my at least my considerations that now a couple months into the process, knowing this kid right here and knowing what I've dosed him with, is he going to respond to that appropriately? Now the last caveat I will mention is that inevitably at certain times of the year, we do need to dose athletes with things they're not good at. simply so we can reinforce and improve their capacity across all ranges of motions. So that is a an educational talking point where it's like, hey, Dan, you know, you struggle with deep range of motion in in the squat. I'm gonna load you at this time of the year just because it's something that you need, but the other, you know, three quarters of the year, we are gonna be dosing you with things that you're gonna enjoy a little bit more and be able to push the needle a little bit further. Dan Grimaudo: Do you ever find that you have an athlete who loves their weakness? Like, or is that something do you think that kinda happens as athletes mature over time? Because like you said, you work primarily with high school athletes at your main job. Obviously, you have your remote coaching business and work with some people in person at your dope ass home gym that you just built, by the way. do you ever find that, yeah, people like myself, I give I can give is the best example. I'm not very strong, but I like lifting heavy. Like I enjoy squat

bench deadlift, but I would never write home about my squat bench deadlift numbers. do you ever find that you know, you might have an elastic athlete who loves lifting heavy in your situation, or is that something you think maybe just happens later in life when the training isn't necessarily you know, a means to an end for them. It can become an end to a mean. Josh Bray: That's a that's a great question. I mean there's so much gray area to all of this, right? and when it comes to like these classifications, I must say from the mountaintops, like there's a lot of gray area, and there's a lot of people who present in a certain way that aren't that thing fundamentally, right? So I I immediately think of a couple of our goalies who present at least anthropometrically as very elastic, movement strategy or output-wise very elastic, but then movement strategy, kinda, you know, how they move in in heavier bilateral movements or just the the general compound movements, it's like, whoa, like you move more like a wide ISA or something like that. So there's different iterations or combinations of each type of athlete. But to answer your your question outright, absolutely, like there's a couple athletes that they just love grinding. They they, you know, they'll push themselves through anything. And I'll be like, I don't know. Like, I think maybe we'll opt for this variation because you'll get a better mean output. And they're like, no, I gotta do this. I gotta grind this out. Now, is there deeper conversations that need to be had there? Yes and no, but it's up to us to maybe manipulate the the variables or constraints within that exercise to help them mitigate any potential issue. Maybe it's just it will elevate the heel so that the The stress on the lower back is reduced and we can get deeper range of motion instead of them forcing them through some wall. but as they get older, you know, I've gone through this myself where I used to be like, I have to back squat, you know, 500 pounds and I gotta bench this and I gotta overhead press this. And then I kept running into these, you know, low back, abductor, ankle and knee issues, hip and knee issues, and I'm like, why is this? Do my own research on myself. like I'm fundamentally not. really set up for these sort of things. so yeah, my my perspective personally has changed on what I would dose myself with, but still gotta get in there and show it up once in a while. Dan Grimaudo: Yeah, absolutely. You can't you you gotta show out for the kids every now and then. They gotta know coach still has it. I think about that too, like with me and my training, like obviously I said squat bench dead, but I also I really like hang cleans and power cleans. I also have ridiculously long arms. And so hang but that's probably why I like deadlifting so much. But hang cleans and power cleans, like to get into a full rack position, it's comical if you watch me try to do it. But I'll still throw them in my program because I enjoy them. And it's like you said, like, if I know I start dosing this the wrong way, my low back will flare up, I'll start to get some like SC joint irritation or something based off of old injuries and just, you know, my capacity to handle a front rack position. So it's like, hey, I'm gonna enjoy this by keeping this in my program and maybe just have it be eighty-five percent skill work. And then Josh Bray: Mm. Dan Grimaudo: every now and then I'm gonna dip my feet into outputs here. But I enjoy this. I can get nuanced at the the technical side of things, and then you know, every now and then I'll make a video that I say I'm gonna post online and then I look at the colors of the plates on the bar and I go, I'm not posting that online. But no, that's fair, that's fair. Josh Bray: Yeah, you can't r strain yourself to that. If it looks if it looks clean, it looks good. like there's nothing better than a clean, clean, you know, like oof. Dan Grimaudo: Just hey, no pun intended. Josh Bray: Yeah, yeah. Dan Grimaudo: Th that actually segues nicely into the last question here before I let you go. is your process on content creation and finding your voice online. I know I mean I found you just through Instagram. I think social media is such a it's such a great tool if you use it appropriately. Like obviously it's set up to have us sucked into Doom Scrolling and the algorithm is, you know trying to show the same middle-aged male the same thing over and over again that w will remain unsaid. But Josh Bray: Yeah. Dan Grimaudo: I I think I mean it gets a lot of slack from time to time, but I think if you use it appropriately, it can be a great tool for education and and just sparking ideas for topics that you want to dive deeper into. And you know, I find myself leaving your posts with more questions than answers. And I mean that in a good way, as in like the the Josh Bray: Yeah. Dan Grimaudo: way you're writing and presenting information is making me more curious about the topics that you're you're going into. I'm I'm curious about your process into content creation and how you decide what you're going to talk about. Do you do you have threads of topics that you wanna dive into, or do you just have an idea one day and you're like, I'm gonna make some content about this today? Josh Bray: Probably probably more of the latter. I've made a couple, you know, strategic attempts at creating a plan. Like I I I am seemingly systematic with all of my decision making when it comes to programming. So why wouldn't I be in my my social media in? but it really comes in phases like directly correlated with how busy I am with sport. Like during the year, it's strictly like, you know, my kids are doing this and I don't really see anyone talk about this or like how do I microdose the mini injury mitigation? Like I know a lot of people like sort of that stuff and it's something I I started doing this year. And I'm like, okay, I think that's important. No one ever taught me how you

could microdose certain movements to, you know, f facilitate some sort of injury mitigation or just, you know, stu stuff like that. So I'm like, okay, let me throw a post together for that. Like that's that's today's theme. That's what I'm passionate about right now. Sometimes I'll just see something real quick in the gym and I'll be like, that's cool. I'll put that up. Or I'll have a topic come up and you know, I I just blast that up on there. I've tried to be a little bit more concentrated on on having some sort of like strictly value based post where it's like okay here's the topic, here's tangible evidence or tangible things that you can put into place. I like to put up at least something that involves describing my process or my thoughts on something, especially things that are maybe a bit more niche or context dependent. And then I try. N I'm not always good as at it, even though it produces the best engagement. I'm trying to put something that's a little more fun and loosey goosey because ultimately like I you talk about having a voice. Like I don't feel I found my voice. I think I've been able to convey things that I I know a lot of people agree with or like you said, forces people to question how they view things. That's like goal number one, education and and pushing the envelope. But as far as being at like a coach in person, if you were to talk to my athletes, like the main thing that they would take away is like how much I care and how much fun we have and and how much of a like a type A coach I am with them, but I don't convey that very well online. So trying to put out more like funny things that are in line with who I am as a person. but yeah. that's kind of my process, I guess. Dan Grimaudo: Yeah, that circles back to something that we talked about before we got on air, and that was your voice in person matching your voice in writing or in content and how difficult that can actually be to to get those two to align. And like that like you and I both have a photography background and are very kind of image and visually driven, and so Getting good at storytelling is a is a skill that goes a long way in in creating impactful content that helps coaches ask more questions about topics. But it's it's almost just like a totally separate skill from from coaching, right? Like there's plenty of coaches on Instagram who might not be the best coach, but they're really, really good at making you ask more questions. And it's almost like they're they're better teachers than coaches. Not trying to throw shade on their coaching ability, but you know, they they have the skill of aligning their, you know, their real life voice with their digital voice and creating curiosity for other coaches where, you know, someone like you or I would Would struggle. It's like, hmm, how do I take my thoughts in my head and turn them into, you know, words out loud and then turn those words into a caption, and then have that caption also have a story visually that somebody can look at and all of these things align in a certain way that creates either curiosity around a topic or you know, a definitive disposition. Josh Bray: Yeah. And and to sound confident and have a a level of conviction that's like conveys your your competency, right? Like see th I think my I'll use the word jealousy. I'll I'll watch videos of particular coaches and the ma maybe they have it on a teleprompter, maybe they have it written down. Maybe that is a a means that I have to take moving forward 'cause I can write things immediately that have a high degree of intricacy, but then it comes time to speaking and I'm thinking of ten other things. Maybe that's the solution. But the reality is is there are a lot of coaches out there who can very accurately convey with a high degree of conviction, just ad lib. And I I I'm in I'm impressed by that. You know, that's something that I strive to be able to do. But it's also funny because I can do that with interns and I can do that with my players. But that's like I'm I'm hyper aware that I'm in a room talking to a camera right now. That that's my ultimate issue a as a coach. working online at the moment. But yeah, I don't know. Dan Grimaudo: Yeah, that communication side is is big. I always think back to like if I'm building like my perfect coach, like you always see these these people are like, we're gonna build our perfect athlete for tennis. And it's like, I want Federer's serve, Nadal's forehand, Djokovic's defensive skills. And I like I think about that with coaches a lot. And like if I was gonna build my perfect coach and who I'd wanna be, whenever I get to the communication quality, I always go Kelly Starrett. Like Josh Bray: Hm. Dan Grimaudo: I always think like he is the guy who He's just so well spoken, but I feel like he's knowledgeable, well spoken, and has the ability to just like talk to the level of the person or talk to level of his audience, right? He he doesn't ever make you feel like he knows more than you. He's very good at making you f like taking you along for the ride. Like, hey, we're gonna get to the end and I'm gonna get you there because like I'm gonna say words like dude and rad and dope and sick because this is what people connect to and Josh Bray: Yeah, yeah. Right. Dan Grimaudo: I just always fall back on him. And then on the other hand, like you said, like scripting things, there's definitely some coaches online who do that. And I think they it's it's kind of obvious that they're doing that, but I think it works really well for them. And I think their content is actually better because of it, and they're they're able to convey the message they want because of that. And I I don't I don't disagree with it. I think You know, like there's many different types of athletes and many different types of coaches and communication styles. I think if that's something that someone would need to do to be able to I don't know, just have their voice portrayed the way they want it to be. you know, I I don't see anything wrong with it. It's like it's like reading a bedtime story. Josh Bray: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Just can you throw accents in there or not, you know? Yeah. Dan Grimaudo: Yeah. Periodization by Tudor Bompa is my bedtime story tonight. Josh Bray: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fluid read right there. Dan Grimaudo: It's it's dry, it'll put it puts me to sleep real quick. Josh Bray: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dan Grimaudo: Well, Josh Man, I don't want to take any more of your time. I appreciate you coming on and and talking to me about your process and sharing your insights. if you have anything coming up, we'll do the podcast thing where you can let people know where to find you, let people know what's coming up in the near future for you. If you have any products coming out. Josh Bray: Yeah, no no products. I mean, I offer some online mentorship for coaches where we kind of go through a process of creating a system, understanding psychology as a as a coach and the psychology of athletes as well. Introduction to archetyping systems and just how you can apply that to varying different contexts, teams, individuals, etc. and then you know, I offer some online programming as well, one to one. And you can find majority of my information on on Instagram at J Bra the Coach. Always putting stuff up there. Try to keep the folks interested and updated. And yeah. Thanks for having me on. Really appreciate it. Dan Grimaudo: yeah of course man. Yeah, you're doing great. I I I hope your content stays the way it is 'cause it's it inspires a lot of people. That's that's how we got connected in the first place. And so I kinda always f fall back to like, man, he's just so good at creating curiosity in coaches. It's I hope I hope that stays there for a while. Yeah. Josh Bray: Yeah, good. I'll try, I'll try. Dan Grimaudo: Yeah, it's good talking to you. Thanks Josh Bray: You is one of my friends. Dan Grimaudo: for tuning in, guys. Yeah, we'll talk to you next week.