SOBRE ESTE EPISÓDIO
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You're listening to the Oracle MAVEN podcast where we bring people together from the veteran affiliated community to highlight employees, partners, organized sessions and those who are continuing the mission to serve. Welcome to the MAVEN podcast. I'm your host, Chris Spencer. And in this episode of our EXOS series, I'm joined by our guest, Stefan Underwood, senior vice president of Methodology at EXOS.
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Picking up where we left off from our first EXOS episode with Anthony Hopgood, who shared the foundation of EXOS and a summary of the EXOS mission. Stefan breaks down three pillars of the EXOS methodology psychological drivers, performance capacity and functional state, while setting us up with how he came to be in his current position, Stefan laid out the framework for us to know how the role he earned brings people together who specialize in the variety of expertise necessary to tailor the treatments to the individuals and meet them where they are so they can get them ready from individuals, athletes to businesses or military.
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Be ready as we continue the mission to serve. Stefan's contact details are in the podcast Description, and you can always find me on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed this episode and please remember to check in on your buddies and family. Stefan How are you doing today? Yeah, I'm doing well. Chris Thanks. Thanks for having me on and doing really well and playing.
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Been on the road the last couple of weeks, so it's my first day back in office and it's good to be home. Yeah, well, traveling is nice, I bet, huh? You know, it's it's it's good. It's one of those things. Goldilocks grateful, right? Like too much of it starts to grate, but I also start to lose my mind at home.
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Non stop the right amount. The right amount does the trick. I find. So yeah, I had a couple a couple weeks of travel to spend some time in Phenix with teammates, which was fantastic. And then I just got back from New York to work and again with the company and doing a doing a little bit of a course for one of our clients.
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So back home now and ready to focus. But it's great to be talking to you today. Yeah, likewise. And I'm excited and thanks for for taking the time to do your schedule. I mean, that's just an example, I'm sure, how busy you are. So very grateful for your your time and affording us the opportunity to get in some details and pick up a little bit from where we left off with with Anthony on on the first episode.
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And so for everybody listening, you know, EXOS is one of the leading organized nations in performance management. Today we have Stefan Underwood, who's a senior vice president of Methodology, that will specifically talk about the next pillar or the component of what makes us or gives us an opportunity to think about how we can be better in not only just in the things that we do from a physical component, but also the mindset and nutrition and all all those things coming together.
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So, Stefan, if you wouldn't mind just and you can start from wherever you wish, you know, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to be where you are. Yeah, I appreciate it. So I guess we can start with that title you do there. Senior Vice President Methodology People look at me and say, What does that mean?
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You know, it's not a common title. And I think that fits with my whole career. I keep trying to figure out what I'm going to be when I grow up, and 20 years later, I'm still sometimes trying to figure it out. But is senior vice President methodology what that means? We have this methodology team at Excel, so we have we are a group of subject matter experts, which basically means I get to hang out with people a lot smarter than myself.
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I've got a team with quite a few PhDs and we built the team in this intentional manner where we want to have a set number of individuals with a truly deep subject matter expertise. We've got a Ph.D. in applied neuroscience on the team who's an expert in flow state. We've got a clinical psychologist on the team, an executive coach.
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We've got a Ph.D. in rehabilitative sciences and dietetics. We've got physio, physical therapists, we've got strength conditioning coaches. So we've got these people who have a deep domain expertise. I think what I bring to the team and what I've been fortunate enough to lead this team is if we call them vertical thinkers. I've always been a little bit of a horizontal thinker, so that ability to tie concepts together to create this holistic approach to how we view any problem of human performance.
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So whether that's working in our work setting and saying, listen, burnout in the workplace, it's a real thing. How do we holistically view solving the problem of burnout in the workplace or whether we're looking at our NFL combine program and saying, Hey, you need to run faster? We're like, What does it take to physically, mentally in nutrition, nutrition, aspect to recovery?
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Like how does it work? Does it take to have an individual run a faster 40? And then the same is true with the work we do in the tactical space, which is actually where I came into the company 12 years ago, was to work specifically in the tactical environment down in Gulf Breeze, Florida with Anthony. We worked together in the same facility for years.
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I love the guy. He's fantastic and we have a variety of programs down there working with the tactical population and helping them get back to hopefully an individuals getting back to a place where they can deploy or at least they can separate on their terms if they're not able to get back to a place where they can deploy.
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So that's called our accelerated return to duty. That's through a benevolent fund called the Eagle Fund. So in all those different aspects of our company, we want to say, you know, what's the holistic approach to support the human in front of us? Like there's a person standing in front of us, they've got something that's meaningful to them and how do we support them?
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And that takes everything from psychology to nutrition to movement to all the different things I mentioned. So that's what our methodology team is meant to be as that sort of central team of subject matter experts in our company. Got it. Nice tone of questions coming up. I can already feel it circulate in my head. What got you interested in this field when you first came in before Access kind of lead us up to that that passion or was it purpose or accident?
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A little bit about a little bit of everything? It's a good question. So I feel like I was a kid growing up. Sports was my life. I felt most at home when I was moving. I came from a really highly academic family and my father's a really bright man with multiple degrees and my brother's got four degrees with a Ph.D. in quantum physics.
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And I was at like, I almost all like the black sheep either. But I think what was cool about that was, you know, I credit my father a lot with not putting a pressure on me to be something I'm not and saying, listen and like it's that's it feels your fire. You have this passion for movement, sports, exercise, whatever get go pursue that like who cares what it leads to.
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You don't have to think about what your job is going to be right now, but, you know, go pursue that. So I got into kinesiology with no idea what I would do with it. I did not have a career in mind and I'm not I've never been one of the people with a five year plan, ten year plan, and I'm not about that.
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I'm the worst person for interns to talk to because I feel like I just wouldn't do the best work I could finding something I enjoyed doing. And when a door would open, I'd say, Yeah, that sounds good, I'll do that. I was the person who said yes to everything. And so as I as I walked through my career, starting off almost accidentally as a strength and conditioning coach, which was my background, starting 20 years ago, I started working with youth athletes like a lot do, moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, and got a great opportunity with a group, their constituents in sport performance, where they started getting exposed to some pro athletes and the first pro athlete
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I worked with I remember was an IndyCar driver and like I know nothing on NPR, I've never driven IndyCar. I thought it was comical that they needed a strength and conditioning coach. I'm like, You're driving a car, buddy. Like the gas is on the right, brakes on the left, and I don't even know where your clutch is, but it made me step back and view human performance as a puzzle.
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I said, What are the pieces to this puzzle? And I have always been a real curious and inquisitive person, so I stepped back and started investigating what an Indiana driver needed and what I learned, even though I had never driven any car, was, you know, through a heart rate monitor on them for for a race and learned it for two and a half hours.
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His heart rate was humming around like 167 and understanding that he's pulling 4 to 6 g's for about 5 seconds at a time, every 18 seconds on repeat for like 2 hours. And so just to understand what are the physical and mental demands associated with with that sport, and I supported it. And I think that's one of the areas where I've maybe managed to carve out a little bit of a spot for myself in this industry.
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Is, you know, the ability to step back and look at the puzzle and not necessarily being the person who has had to be in those shoes. I wasn't a football player that worked with football athletes. You know, my sport background is mostly rugby was the sport I played at the highest level and I've only worked with a few rugby players, you know, But so next up was Skeleton Athlete.
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I worked with an Olympic skeleton athlete. Skeleton is for those that don't know, it's not a sport, it is an Olympic sport. The Winter Olympics skeleton is like luge. You're going down the bobsleigh track with your on your stomach going face first with no brakes. And again, I just started looking at what are the physical demands. You've got to start.
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You've got to be able to sprint from these positions. You've got this long to accelerate a certain amount. Then you got to load onto your sled and then you're pulling G-forces. And how do you see you're in control? And again, just try and break the code, break a puzzle. So I was 15 years ago, I had an opportunity.
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I was working in hockey at the time. I got an opportunity to head out to Colorado Springs, to the National Strength and Conditioning Association, to be the manager of their international facility, their governing body, for an industry of strengthening conditioning. And the two biggest contracts that they had that I would be servicing. One was in hockey and that's what got my foot in the door.
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It was with a one of the top D-1 college hockey teams in the nation coming out of college. And then the other one was the Special Forces out of Colorado Springs. And I guess I said enough of the right things in the in the interview process. But I had no experience working with the tactical population at that point in time.
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And I had not walked in their shoes, nor did I pretend to. But I had a big respect for the population and felt a calling to really dive in more with that population. And I was really motivated and inspired to be able to, you know, meet these individuals and work with them and feel that I was supporting them in a completely by accident and changed the trajectory of my career.
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And I, you know, I remember making about to work with them for a bit of a in 14 years ago, 13 years ago, maybe when together I made an intentional decision, said I don't need to work with athletes anymore. I'd like to support this this tactical population. And and this was way back when, you know, civilian support or strength and conditioning was just starting to take off within the so called community that was called the T program.
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I was part of helping with that and running that conference when I was at the NSA. Two or three programs to the Army were just kicking off. But every everything was there wasn't there wasn't even one centralized approach yet for support. And so I had a couple education courses that were sort of like a train, the trainer or individuals to come in and learn about holistic strength and conditioning and how to take care of themselves and how to carry that when they're deployed, how to continue to put that together.
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And I managed to get a job that's when I joined EEXOS. It was company called Athletes Performance at the time, and I joined to head up our tactical education and very intentionally wanted to hear that population. And so, so all that is to say, I think I've got a lot of different opportunities in my career because I just always said yes and didn't know what door would open.
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But when I found a door that I was passionate, poured myself into it. And what it led me to was this feeling of being a jack of all trades. And the negative side of that is the master of none, right? And I felt like I could sort of in a lot of circles, but it felt like a jack of all trades.
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And I was speaking with an individual friend of mine that I've known for a long time, was a great coach and this was several years ago now. So when you got to stop using the term jack of all trades, that because that devalues what you bring to a team because people think in master of none and he said what you have is broad spectrum competency and that is absolutely an asset that you can bring to any organization or any team.
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You have the ability to tie things together so you can see where this is going on most days. Years ago, I was asked by EEXOS to step into more of a leadership role. I don't actively coach anymore, but to lead this team of domain experts and you know, that can be intimidating. I'm like, man, I'm just I'm sitting here with the higher education managing a team of these, but I'm able to do and because of realizing this broad spectrum competency and how to build frameworks and how to tie type concepts together and tie threads together, all paired with a career of looking at a human in front of me and saying, whatever it is you
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want to do, whoever you are, you know, relative to you, what's important to you and how do we get you ready for that? Let me understand. Physically mental, emotionally, what you're going through. And then let's just understand human bodies, the human body. So let's draw from that broad spectrum competency and say these are the things that we think it all about the most.
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And what led to what we're seeing our methodology team and where I am today within the company. Sorry, a long answer. No, that that's perfect and that that latter part that does it I can see where you're going with it and it comes together from a natural, innate ability where some of us don't recognize and I think it's kind of cool that your dad had recognized that and encouraged it.
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And of course, we didn't talk in detail about how all that went down. But just a simple recognition of how you were applying, what you wanted to do, how it evolved. And you certainly got you contributed significantly to where you are today because of that curiosity being allowed to just generate on your own curiosity and then identify things and then totally associate with the master of none concept.
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And I really like that broad spectrum competency phrase. It sounds a lot better, doesn't it? I mean, I'm still in it for sure because it does. Yeah, right. Is it a thing like is that a term that because now you boxed it in and now we can call it a name? I think so. I mean, like I said, I got I got it from I got from a coach and I know that we're to the US national soccer team worked with some pro teams in your other and I don't I don't even know where he got it from but the same thing him, I had the same response.
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I said, I'm feeling that yeah I means now how I describe myself because the psychology of it, it's it's more accurate and because of how, you know, people will use it. And this is what the episode's about and phrases and things. But, you know, when, when we have a way of thinking, I think it is attributed to a way of thinking of the past and how we just automatically, we intuitively resort to a phrase or a way of thinking based off of how we've been brought up to consistently use that phrase.
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And now without even thinking, we just refer to it as it's something where it does become cliche. And a lot of people, when you're talking about it, that could be the thing that could now. And you talked about with ten group saying the right things at the right time that could prevent you from being brought into based off of your skill set into an element that you can leverage that skill set to improve not only the people around you but yourself, because how we refer to things because it does undervalue what you've learned along the way, right?
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And so, yeah, I believe in that. And again, it's not about the phrase, it's about the element. And in the other part of it too is the horizontal thinker, the visual that that painted. When you said that immediately had me understanding exactly what it meant, because there are those types, there's ones that understand things in a way that they're very specialized in their thinking and they wrap that into the things that they do.
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And then there's some of us who don't have that skill set develop that way, and we can see the field, if you will see the play develop with the players along the way and knowing how to and this is like team building stuff, right, which is that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think when it's done, you go back to reference, you know, you're right.
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We didn't go deep into what I think what my what I want my dad afforded me and I appreciate I am of that but like it's been a hard time. I remember so many of my friends it's like I'm in this point in life. I've got to figure out the next steps. I got to. I got to get married.
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Like I got to meet a girl, I got to get married, I got to buy a house and I got out my career. Guess that's what we got to do, right? Like in whatever order is going to happen and Dad was really good about, like, man, like, sometimes you can let life come to you. I think you don't have to rush everything.
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And and so here we are like, look, I always had a big chip on my shoulder. I was, you know, I'm surrounded by individuals with higher education. I said I came from an academic family, like if nothing more than just to stick it to my brother, who's got all these degrees in this Ph.D. in quantum physics. I always felt like I should do more and immediately see, I would have I would have been doing it for the wrong reasons, not because I would have just done a master's or in in exercise science.
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And honestly, what would that have done for me? It would have done things for sure, without doubt, but it would have just driven me deeper into one area of expertise, which I don't think lends itself well to who I am realizing I am as a horizontal thinker. And and so now here I am in my forties, and I actually have now gone back to school and am pursuing a master's now.
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But it's an organizational psychology. I let life come to me. I found a passion that next passion, organizational psychology. I'm continuing to build the breadth of knowledge that applies to different situations. And if I would have in my twenties and thirties done a master's, there's no way it would have been work for psych. But here I am now pursuing a master's in organizational psychology to understand organizations and teams better to layer on top of my unique experience and strength and conditioning and human performance that allows me to understand the individual better and to be able to come out of problems in large organizations from both ends, from the top down organizationally with the bottom model,
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how are you supporting the people that make up that organization? And so I appreciate it. I didn't feel the need to rush in. So here I am with two kids and I need a career and traveling and peace and in a master's on the side. But it's something that I'm finding really engaging now. I got it. And then it's a philosophical approach that manifest itself in the relationships that develop as a result of what you do in your field, in your line of work.
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Does it translate to your clients? Because when when you have that in performance where there's no immediate gratification as a result of lifting a weight one time and all of a sudden you're there, that's relations has to develop, so let it come to you. So talk a little bit about that philosophical idea of the lessons you've learned and how you're able to sincerely deliver that as a component to help others be successful in what they're trying to get to.
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Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so Carol Dweck, many know the name in the Book of Mindset has written about mindset and coined the term, you know, time, a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. And I've always said like if you're going to work in strength and conditioning, you had better have a growth mindset because the pure fundamental belief that with effort in time you get better and then we can tie in.
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Angela Duckworth, where she was the person who coined the term grit or came up with the concept of grit, right. This idea that persistence in the absence of immediate reward, if you don't have those two things and strength and conditioning is wrong for you because you just called it out, I don't squat once and be like, Well, damn, I'm stronger.
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We have to put in an effort to seek an adaptation, to seek a change. And so I think that has been a core lesson. That has been one of the themes since I started my careers, you know, 20, 20 years ago. It because inherently when you're working with humans, you've got to recognize there's not always this instant gratification and so you've got to give it time.
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And so that's one of the key things that I think has shaped things for me. And then the other when it comes to what we are going to talk about today and how people can get ready for a goal or the next chapter or whatever it is and how it's individualized to them is everyone is an and everyone everyone is their own person with their own background, their own goals, their own, their own everything.
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And so the larger the tool belt that you can draw, the better the chance you can understand them and support them. And I think that that's been the strength of this unconventional path I've taken through my career and being this horizontal thinker and being a person who is curious. But seeks breadth of knowledge. Right. As well as depth and didn't just pursue one avenue really, because when you when you really think about what is supporting people, there's a there's a book that's called Where Good Ideas come From and it talks about the the adjacent possible.
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And so it's this idea of if you look at where many good ideas have come from, let's take developing the an incubator for premature baby. One of the biggest developments in pediatric medicine, you know, has hugely changed the survival rate of premature babies breast as a species, right. That came from a doctor visiting a farm and seeing what had been done for ages before it.
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Little chicks under a heat lamp right. So the adjacent possible is this taking a field that is adjacent to your field or an area of study or an area of thought that is adjacent to where you are and learning from them? And that's where the best ideas come from, the best innovation. And so there's this analogy of if you're building a house, right, like I can have one room call that room strength and conditioning and just keep putting more furniture in the room.
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But that's just like, that's a blue couch and to paying out for those couches or I can study you learn from engage in adjacent fields and I can add another room to my house, right. And grill my house that way. And I think that that's what I've done through my career. And so now when we're in this position where we want to help someone get ready for whatever is in front of them, having that breadth of knowledge spanning from multiple aspects of human performance above the shoulders, below the shoulders, getting into psychology, neuroscience, all these different things and have a breadth of it, it helps you create a tailor approach versus being the guy who
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shows up. Where there's the old expression of all you have is a hammer. You know, everything looks like a nail if you've only got one tool. And then that tool just I mean, it becomes snake oil, right? Chris, Let me tell you about. I got a fix for you. Yeah, it's the same thing that I recommended to those ten people before you.
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But like, I've got the solution for you and it just becomes snake oil versus being able to meet people where they're at, seeing them as an individual, going back to the problem solving, understanding problem of human performance. They're trying to uniquely sell it and saying, listen, we've got to have a construct, if you will, in Texas. We've actually my team has built a model of human performance that explains a human in the world doing anything like doing something in the world.
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And the categories we need to look through of how to support them. You start being able to create an individualized approach like set it and have one meet the person in front of you and then say, All right, let's let's help you achieve that goal. And I get to talking to a friend earlier, and we were making a distinction between attachment and commitment.
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And I can't help as you're talking about this, an attachment to an approach, how it how it was, how you feel it should be. And you're talking about adjacent ideas or possible possibilities, which I we're going to get into this is the segway into that is is developing a bunch of people that not developing a team with a bunch of people that when an individual comes in yesterday could be different than what they come in today with is like, oh, something's Pynchon me here.
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Oh well, that wasn't in our plan. Go to the other room that you're referring to in the analogy, go to the other room, let's fix that first and then we'll come back to the already scheduled program, which is the commitment instead of the attachment into an original plan. Because a plan is just a plan. You're committed to the philosophical approach of meeting people where they are, which is, I love that.
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So let's get into it. So let's talk about the methodology. Yeah, absolutely. So I referenced that we created this model of human performance. We said, I mean, as a company, again, we we work with a lot of different populations in a lot of different areas, but we said we've got to find a Reddit thread between that person who's sitting in a corner.
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We're in room versus that person who's a roughneck on an oil rig versus that person who's a nurse in a hospital environment versus that person who's in a tactical environment versus that athlete who earns their money from spot on and on and on and on Right. And the one thing that unites all those examples is that they're human. And so if we can say, let's let's say, what are all the things that we know, like poring through the literature, we know about humans, right?
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And by no means do we claim to have it all solved. But if we can start honing a bit of a checklist together, coming up with what our key buckets are to look at, in any situation, it can create a consistent way of thinking that does not lead to cookie cutter approach for people. So this is what I love about methodology.
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Some people hear methodology and I think of it as cookie cutter. Okay, so methodology. So this is the way you work out. If I come to excel, you do these things and no matter who I am, you do the same things. That's cookie cutter. I don't like that. Absolutely not. Methodology does not mean cookie cutter methodology is the the structure, the construct, the approach we take to meeting everybody on an individual level as a man of one.
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And so we start by saying they're human. We ought to look at the elements that they're putting in front of us, and there's a lot we will go to all of them on this episode, purely because it would take too much time or probably more people. Not everything that's exciting to me is exciting to everybody else. I've learned that my wife reminds me all the time, but what I would say that really matters.
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There's three things that jump out to me when a person is standing in front of us, physically or figuratively. The first is understanding what we call their psychological drivers. It's their why write it and sort of break down that more psychological drivers. We really talk about understanding over time their values, their goals and their motivations. Now, I say over time, because if we don't have a relationship, it we just matter about what you deeply value the most.
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Like that isn't necessarily the best approach to getting that conversation. But I can start a goals. What are you trying to achieve? And I don't need to know why that's important to you just yet. Now, in the long run, coaching you. If I can build a meaningful relationship and trust and in time understand why that is important to you, then that's an even more successful coaching environment.
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But upfront, I just need to know what your goal is. In fact, this has this this slogan, if you will get you ready. And we did not want it to just be a tagline or a slogan like we wanted it to have a meaning. And this construct, this framework provides the meaning behind that. But the very next question after someone says, like, If X gets you ready, the very next logical question has to be will get ready for what?
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I need to know your goal. Even if the goal is to run a marathon, there's a difference between I'm trying to run my first marathon, I'm trying to qualify for Boston. I'm trying to win an Olympic gold in the marathon. All three of those things are different, even though the goal is still running a marathon. So I need to specifically understand the goals and then in time understand your motivations and your values as we build a relationship.
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So we call all that your psychological drivers. The goal is what gives context to everything else, right? It's where it tells us what you need to be able to achieve, what skills and abilities you have to have to be able to achieve that goal. That brings us to the next category in our I'm always told to put the science away, but like we've labeled and I'm told I'm not a good marketer, but we label it performance capacity.
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But it's a fancy way for saying like, what are your skills and your abilities? And we categorize those skills and abilities, skills and abilities being things that are measurable and movable so we can measure them and we can influence them through training, through programs, and we look at performance capacity of a person across the domains of the movement, including mindset, nutrition movement and recovery.
00;30;45;09 - 00;31;09;21
So what skills and abilities do you have within recovery? Like sleep is a skill, you know, there's skill around how you sleep. It is something that with effort you can get better at. You know, I've worked with operators that came into us that opened up and shared like they would get one or maybe two sleep cycles in a night broken talk in 75 minutes to 3 hours of sleep a night for years.
00;31;09;24 - 00;31;34;29
And after a few months it showed that they were sleeping for 8 hours a night. And you want to talk about changing someone's life or helping them change their own life. They give someone their sleep back. Holy crap, it has an impact. It's feedback. Yeah, it's huge. So sleep is a skill. But then within movement, you know, you talk about things like how strong someone is, how someone is, how powerful someone is, right?
00;31;35;02 - 00;32;02;03
Within nutrition, we talk about things like their body composition or their gut microbiome, and then within mindset, we talk about things like their self-awareness. How self-aware are you? That is a skill, that is a muscle that can be flexed and you can get better at that. We can improve our inner awareness, right? Regulation. Self regulation. Again, that is something that can be practiced and you can get better at that.
00;32;02;06 - 00;32;20;29
That's been a big one for me as I get into leadership roles. I was always like year in, year out. My review was you wear your heart on your sleeve and we know when you're pissed off, you know when you're happy, you can't hide it. If you are annoyed with something that someone says on a call. But I identified early on, get ready.
00;32;21;03 - 00;32;36;27
Get ready for what? I didn't want to be an emotional leader. When I was given a leadership opportunity. I wanted to be a steady leader. I didn't want to be emotional and I didn't want to have you know, I didn't want to wear my heart on my sleeve at all times. Not saying I'm hiding who I am, but I wanted to be steady and awful in my approach.
00;32;36;29 - 00;32;59;18
Yeah, you don't you want to be a robot, you know, you got to connect, right? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. But I realize I need to be better about regulation. I needed to learn how to take that and breathe for a minute and. And then come with a more measured response. And so. So I'm working on my dog a lot, on my inner awareness and my self-regulation over the last five years.
00;32;59;20 - 00;33;23;05
Eight years, I see a big difference. So so we look at all the skills and abilities that a person has. And I said that a goal breeds or gives context to what's important. If I'm working with someone who's trying to run 40 yards as fast as they can, I put more of an emphasis on how strong they are, how powerful they are, Maybe their body composition.
00;33;23;08 - 00;33;47;17
Whereas if I'm working with someone in a executive boardroom, you know, it doesn't necessarily I, I had to make sure that you're more powerful or stronger or fitter and you improve your VO2 max. And I might talk about self-awareness and reflection. And then even when you talk about one skill or ability, that goal gives context to why it's important, which can help it stick as a behavior.
00;33;47;17 - 00;34;10;06
So gut health is a great example. Okay, We hear a lot, right? People talk about the gut microbiome. If I'm worried, I just suck in my stomach. When you said that, yes, enough size of a guy that's going to be is that you talk about like the good bacteria inside our gut, right? The good bacteria inside our gut.
00;34;10;09 - 00;34;40;11
If I'm working with an athlete, they go, so why should I care? Well, I'll talk about something in the line of listen, people say you are what you eat. That's what you are, what you absorb in the inner lining of your guts, going to determine what you absorb from like a micro nutrient like vitamins and minerals standpoint. So when you start talking about wanting to get the most out of your training, out on the field or in the weight room, you talk about wanting to be injury resistant to injury and and making sure that you've got the right micronutrients in your body So operate the best.
00;34;40;13 - 00;35;05;03
That's why you should care about what you eat and eating in a way that supports and fuels and nourishes that gut microbiome. They go, okay, yeah, because it's contextualized to their role. But when I'm working with someone on the emotional regulation, I say, Listen, lots of people heard of serotonin. Serotonin is a neurochemical transmitter, right? Serotonin exists in our brain and it helps us with mood.
00;35;05;05 - 00;35;34;14
It's good. It helps us feel good right? And people have heard of it often because of us, our eyes. When you talk about and if an individual is depressed, that's a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor. Right? So people are often aware of I've heard of this thing serotonin, and I understand it helps my mood and helps me regulate. What people don't often know is 95% of the serotonin that you have inside you is manufactured in your gut.
00;35;34;16 - 00;36;11;06
So you can do all this stuff on regulation and mood and meditation and all this stuff over here. And if you're eating like crap and assaulting your gut microbiome, then you sort of start to make sense. And so you take the same quality or capacity on gut health and you contextualize it because you understood their goal, if that makes sense, does immediately applicable to things I'm thinking about and the correlation of that adjacent understanding, then you can contextualize more skills and abilities to their goals.
00;36;11;09 - 00;36;35;23
If you have the horizontal thought approach is you need to know a little bit about neurochemical transmitters and you need to know a little bit about micronutrients and physical performance to be able to have that conversation. Your pain. Well, one half jokes, you're carrying a lot of responsibility with your role by being that person of of being able to connect the dots.
00;36;35;23 - 00;36;57;26
I'm not saying that the ones that you're dealing with, working with and teaming up with are capable of doing it. But to specifically be designated as the one that's in large part orchestrating all of these folks to come together and be able to bring this information to the top to build that consistency across the board of how it jumps over from thing to thing.
00;36;57;29 - 00;37;20;14
That's it's a lot of it's a lot to, I guess, to consider in what you're doing. Yeah. Thanks. I appreciate it. I think the way I, I think the way that I take that idea the way I know it is easy. You're absolutely right. And it does feel like a lot sometimes. But the way I help it and I get to me is twofold.
00;37;20;14 - 00;37;40;14
One, to have a really positive relationship with failure, I'm good at it. That's another one. I'll call back to my dad. I grew up in a household. I'm realizing now how I'm how abnormal of a household I grew up in. And I mean that in a positive way. And I'm just I feel fortunate for it. But I grew up in a household.
00;37;40;14 - 00;38;01;16
My dad, who's a mountain climber, always had like, there's no such thing as failure. There's always success and opportunity to learn. And so that's one that helps with that because I'm not going to get it right. And then the second is that allows me to I don't know where it comes from or the vulnerability. Say, I don't know.
00;38;01;18 - 00;38;14;28
And I think this is one of the things that help me do well with the technical population is I never had to fake that, but I was always willing to say like, I don't know. And and that was just me being me. But what I learned really quickly is I got the best B.S. detector on the face of the planet, and they're going to sniff it out real fast.
00;38;14;28 - 00;38;29;06
If I'm all my ski tips and it's going to hurt a relationship and you're not going to get another chance at that relationship. And so speaking with some confidence when I at least think I know something and again, I say that it's there in times where you start something ten years later, you learn more and you go, Oh crap, I was wrong.
00;38;29;06 - 00;38;49;22
Two years ago. But but to speak with confidence when you should speak with confidence, but to also be able to say, I don't know the answer to that and be okay with that because I don't think there's any human in the world that expects someone to know everything. And so even if it's something, you know, that seems so obvious to you and I don't know, that doesn't diminish me because there are things I probably know that you don't like.
00;38;49;22 - 00;39;16;10
We just have our different backgrounds and I've always been comfortable with that and okay with that. So when you talk about all together for that big company, I think it's a comfortable it's me being comfortable, willing to fail and willing to say I don't know at all and be able to say, I don't know. Yeah, and I think so to go back to kind of connect the dots between conversations that we're having between so far, Anthony and you, we talked about with Anthony Hope, right?
00;39;16;10 - 00;39;46;10
So there's this emotional component of now having the faith to go to a place where we hope that you can help me. What you just said is key for the trust that's established for us. Continue that relationship building process where the hope is you can fix me and I will I will disagree slightly in the saying there are people out there that think that you stuff and know everything and you should be able to fix me because of my perception of value on how I think.
00;39;46;11 - 00;40;17;10
I think you should be able to do what you what I think you do and to the ability to have the humility to say, no, I don't know. But but you've developed the team around you that say, I don't know, but I'm going to pull in so and so I'll get an answer. I'll get an answer that's huge in the things that we're talking about at the moment, because you talk about vulnerability, you being vulnerable and being able to say those things is accepting that humility and the modesty to have the comfortable being comfortable to say that.
00;40;17;10 - 00;40;44;03
But then also recognizing that the ones you're working with are more vulnerable because they're in that state of asking for help, which is not easy. Yeah, I know. Absolutely. Spot on. And and look, it's I think it's so much into it at the end of the day, it's relationship building and it's knowing your strengths, inner awareness, knowing your strengths, you know, when to lean on your strengths and highlight them when not to like it.
00;40;44;06 - 00;41;06;04
It's all I know. We're we're recording this on audio. People can't see me, but I do not look like a straight coach. I'm like the skinniest train coach I've ever seen. Like Anthony is at least one of Anthony's legs is like the size of my torso. And so when we would work with that population or I coached NFL combine with Anthony as well I was the movement coach.
00;41;06;04 - 00;41;33;02
He was the strength coach. And people get in the room and they look and he looks like what a strength coach should look like. So there's an immediate perception. I don't. So I need to know how to build a relationship very quickly and bring build confidence and build their confidence in me that I am competent, but I'm also not blessing them and I need to do that very quickly.
00;41;33;09 - 00;42;01;28
Then say, okay, fine. So so you to 65 and then play football in the SCC. That doesn't mean that you don't know something that can help me with my goals, you know, and that's where self-awareness is, I think, important. But yeah, you're you're spot on that. And so I think that's why I overindex into that because that is my muscle reflex, so to speak, to build that relationship quickly is I don't that anyone teaching it and teach a class.
00;42;01;28 - 00;42;24;27
I had an operator be like man inside his review as he goes inside the first 30 minutes, my thought was, you got to be kidding me. This dude is the one that is teaching this class. I was like, Where does this go on? This is the this is not good feedback. And it was him saying that you showed us very quickly in that first half hour why that was a good thing.
00;42;24;29 - 00;42;40;04
And this is a two week class. And at the end, the two weeks is when he sings and he says this is the best course I've ever taken in my career. And I hung on to that not as an insult in any way. I took it as a huge compliment, huge respect, but as a reminder, saying he was the one that was going to voice everything to others of thought it.
00;42;40;05 - 00;42;58;04
I don't look the role. What is the first impression I need to make and how do I make it? Because visually the first impression is not, Wow, this is the guy that has all the answers to my strength and conditioning needs. Know, but I've got to convince them that I don't have all the answers, but I got enough to make it worth their time in the relationship with me.
00;42;58;06 - 00;43;26;16
You got a team? Yeah, I got a team. Other people to lift heavy crap. That's right. Right. So we had psychological drivers performance capacity. Yeah, There's third. So the third. And this is possibly the most important one. I think the one I enjoy talking about the most. Now that is the most applicable, I feel like in today's world across multiple groups, but it's what we call functional status.
00;43;26;19 - 00;43;49;15
And that's a largely fancy way of saying how recovered are you to think of your skills and your abilities? It doesn't mean that you can tap into them any time, any place. A lot of people think you same bill you know what it what's the world record 9.589.592 months at 400 meters. A lot of people think therefore he's going to run like a nine point something every single time he would sprint and he does.
00;43;49;15 - 00;44;09;09
And there are times he's sprinting as fast as he can. But based on his functional state at a time where he is in his training cycle, how well he's resting, he might run a 1001 1002 We said all the time with these young kids coming out of college that, you know, in their mind they once they've run a44 40 and they are shocked when they run a46 because in their mind they can do it every time.
00;44;09;11 - 00;44;35;03
Let's go away from a sports example. I am physically capable of emotional regulation, but I haven't slept well in four days. I got a bunch of added stressors at home. I just had an argument with my with my wife. All these things happened and then my kid knocks over like a glass and spills some grape juice on the carpet and I lose my crap.
00;44;35;05 - 00;45;08;00
And I'm not capable of emotional regulation in that moment. My functional state wasn't where it needed to be for me to tap into my full level of skill and ability. So we're talking physically or emotionally. We're building tools to use them. But if you don't give yourself the right hands to be recovered, we don't prioritize some of these things like sleep and like energy management, breath work, focus, all these things that help us regulate, like we don't manage our functional state.
00;45;08;02 - 00;45;26;03
We're not going to tap into our full set of skills and abilities that we've worked so hard to build. And so it's I like to say like if you're performance capacity is what you're capable of, your functional state is what you're actually capable of. Right now, performance capacity takes time to change. We've got to be patient. That's the growth mindset you talked about at the beginning.
00;45;26;06 - 00;45;50;18
I know Squat wants to get stronger. It takes me weeks, two months to build my capacity. I've got to focus on something consistently to adapt to grow it. Functional state exchanges second by second, minute by minute at most, day by day. It's a much shorter time horizon and so if we think like I'll often tell people say, you know what, we're talking about your functional status change.
00;45;50;18 - 00;46;14;07
If you heard a loud gunshot outside your door right now, your functional state would immediately change if you were on a work call and someone challenged you in a way you didn't like or said something that really kicked you off your functional state would immediately change. And so a functional state is the shorter time horizon, and it's what lets us actually realize the skills and abilities we've built.
00;46;14;10 - 00;46;34;22
Sometimes it's actually bigger place to focus when you're pursuing a goal to be adequately recovered. For that goal, you can always make it more of an impact that way. And the key is you can't do one or the other. My whole point here is saying to get ready for something when you've got a goal to be ready, what that means is building your capacity, improving your skills and abilities.
00;46;34;22 - 00;47;02;26
Relative the goal, but then recovering ideally so that you are optimized and be able to show up in the moment matters and you can do just one or the other. If we think of it as almost word plus rest or rest equals success. If you do all work and nothing but work, you're in the weight or you're you're you're training as hard as you can or you're you're working on your emotional regulation, your inner awareness, whatever your goal is, you're working on your.
00;47;02;26 - 00;47;19;29
Got it. It's all work. Work, work. But then no rest and recovery. Good luck. But at the same token, if you've got a goal, you can't just go make sure you're optimally recovered in chief. The like. I'd tell the combined guys, right, Like you can't just get to sleep and be recovered if you want to run off for three four day.
00;47;19;29 - 00;47;42;22
We got to put a bigger engine in you as well. So it's the combination of the two, improve what you're capable of and optimize your functional state, your recovery, all relative to the goal. That's what getting ready means. And we've got this framework where whatever a person's goal is, we can say, okay, what are the skills and abilities across mindset, nutrition and recovery that we think matter most to your door?
00;47;42;24 - 00;48;00;09
Like what are your gaps? What's holding you back? And let's come up with a sum of a few evidence based No. One strategies that you commit to consistently to try and improve skills and abilities in that area to reach your goal. But then how are you showing up each day? What are we doing to optimize your focus day?
00;48;00;09 - 00;48;25;01
Where are you doing to take care of yourself? To be recover? Let's identify gaps there to so when the moment matters, you can tap into those skills and abilities we're working so hard to build. And then that's how you get ready for something. Yeah, a couple, a couple immediate scenarios in my head. In everyday life, regardless of your status, position, profession, it's the day to day interactions of what you had already described.
00;48;25;01 - 00;48;55;01
Just, I mean, leaving the house, going to the store, somebody says something and you see something. It it you have a and capable of regulating. But the constant the constant of that and you'd mentioned about somebody over several years no more than 3 hours of sleep where that becomes the norm where you believe that you can function because you're not aware of anything different.
00;48;55;04 - 00;49;16;08
I mean, you probably were in the beginning, like the first couple of times that you had that you're like, Oh, I'm smoked, I'm tired. Yeah. Then after a month, two months, six months, a year, you don't recognize that as being tired anymore. It's just the norm. And so you accept it and you adapt to it and then you don't recognize all of these other variables that come into play of how you're affected by it.
00;49;16;08 - 00;49;42;13
So simple office setting, let's say long day. You feel exhausted when you are talking to folks about what their goals are. Do you get to the level of of things like that on a regular occurrence? Can you walk us through an example of, you know, how you're identifying the norms of what they're saying versus what you're now hearing them not say, if you know what I mean?
00;49;42;15 - 00;50;09;19
Yeah, absolutely Again, it's always building context to them. And I will say before I give an example, I want to say I always feel when I talk with individuals, always in a completely non-judgmental way, there is no judgment whatsoever behind any of it, and it's just presenting them with information and letting them make a decision for them in their life.
00;50;09;22 - 00;50;27;12
That's all we can do. I can't control someone, right? But I can present them with information and see if that influences their behavior And influence behavior over time leads to different outcomes. You know, you said that, and I don't mean to interrupt for just for a short second, because I think that's a lot of the fear that interrupts.
00;50;27;12 - 00;50;48;29
Our ability to want to trust, right, is because they don't want to share a detail. So they I'm sure doctors go through this all the time. They don't want to get looked at or judged or feel judged because of something. Yeah. And now the story starts to shape itself from what they want. You to hear versus what's actually happening, which is kind of the premise of the question.
