How do you approach training? What is the right mindset to take into workouts? How do we change our thoughts and mental state in front of a challenge? Lets evolve our understanding of the mental side in sports performance. Scale your workouts but still push your athletes to perform. Two words we refer back to in this podcast are robust, and fragile. We want to create robustness and a general resilience to all challenges in our athletes. This challenge happens in the weight room and not, but robustness is an ability to withstand and prevail in any circumstance. Fragility is the opposite. You are exposed to breaking under any challenge and we have various self-defense mechanisms to cover up our fragility. As coaches and athletes we need to find ways to promote robustness and reduce fragility. 

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Alex: IG @strong_a.f  email: [email protected]

Austin: IG  @warriorsportswellness  email: [email protected]

Quick hitter this week. How do you maintain high effort? Everyone says they train hard, everyone works hard, but how do you know you are truly giving peak effort? WE break it down into being present and being motivated to hit the target. Many athletes come in with a goal to just “go hard” that intent is not good enough and it leads to burn out. You simply cannot maintain the go to go as hard as possible every session. You can however give 100% to a targeted goal every session. We dig into what comprises good effort in our everyday training. Let us know what you think of this shorter format! 

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Message Building a Fighter directly at [email protected]

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Alex: IG @strong_a.f  email: [email protected]

Austin: IG  @warriorsportswellness  email: [email protected]

Hello, and welcome to our interview with Darren Treasure. Darren is a mental performance coach who works with multiple world level and professional athletes. We talk a lot about mental skills and what a mental performance coach can offer for athletes. As strength coaches and healthcare practitioners we can always employ a better battery of mental skills. This is a great entry level talk on what mental performance is and how it can help you as a performer! Darren is an excellent mind and articulates his profession and services very effectively. Thank you so much for joining us Darren, we look forward to having you on again! 

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Message Building a Fighter directly at [email protected]

@buildingafighter on Instagram

Alex: IG @strong_a.f  email: [email protected]

Austin: IG  @warriorsportswellness  email: [email protected]

Having trouble transitioning from wrestling to jiu jitsu? Or just starting jiu jitsu? We can empathize. As we continue our journey as sports performance professionals for MMA we detail our own transition into BJJ. Austin and I have been having a blast learning Jiu Jitsu and grappling. We talk about learning progressions, drilling, and etiquette when doing BJJ. It holds so much value to know the sport that you are coaching in S&C. Jiu Jitsu is so accessible to everyone, it is literally called the “gentle” martial art. You should have some experience in some martial discipline if you are associated with MMA. Its not a must, but definitely a should. 

buildingafighter.com

Message Building a Fighter directly at [email protected]

@buildingafighter on Instagram

Alex: IG @strong_a.f  email: [email protected]

Austin: IG  @warriorsportswellness  email: [email protected]

Jordan Rudolph! Jordan has been a great mentor and friend to Alex since 2016 in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Jordan is the owner and operator of Unity Fitness. Unity is a fantastic gym where the commUNITY shines and people are able to move better, feel better, and look better. He talks a lot about starting a business, being genuinely yourself in coaching and owning a business. We talk about coaching models, coaching through COVID, and how to continue growing and innovating as a coach. 

 

If you need to contact Jordan, He is available on IG @unity_fitness_la_crosse  or @jordan22r Unity’s website is here https://www.unityfitnesspro.com/  and be on the lookout for Jordan’s new podcast the UFFDA podcast anywhere you listen!  Thanks and we’ll see you next time. 

 

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Message Building a Fighter directly at [email protected]

 

@buildingafighter on Instagram

 

Alex: IG @strong_a.f  email: [email protected]

 

Austin: IG  @warriorsportswellness  email: [email protected]

How can you add value to a performance team? Is this your show or do you play a role in culminating a holistic service? There are times and places for both. You must know your role and be able to nail it on repeat.  At the same time part of nailing it is knowing where you fit in the team and how to effectively communicate with everyone else on the team. Ultimately serving the athlete is the main goal, other motivations are valid. You should want to progress your career, you should want to launch your initiatives, and you should be ambitious, but there are more finessed ways to do it than being your own one man show. Be a team player and be an all-star at the same time. That's our daily challenge to you. 

buildingafighter.com

Message Building a Fighter directly at [email protected]

@buildingafighter on Instagram

Alex: IG @strong_a.f  email: [email protected]

Austin: IG  @warriorsportswellness  email: [email protected]

Lessons from the field. Within this new series we deep dive into our own process in adapting our wrestling skills to mma coaching. With the inclusion of striking, submissions, cage wrestling, and the general mma ruleset. Outlining our journey in coaching helps us to see where our thoughts lie and how we can progress into a more mma dominant mindset. We really focus on the adaptations that wrestlers can make into mma and how we can coach transitioning wrestlers as well. Share with us your thoughts on this series and whether you would like to hear more of it! 

buildingafighter.com

Message Building a Fighter directly at [email protected]

@buildingafighter on Instagram

Alex: IG @strong_a.f  email: [email protected]

Austin: IG  @warriorsportswellness  email: [email protected]

We welcome Dr. Brian Gearity of The University of Denver. He is the director of the Masters of the Arts in coaching and sports education. “Dr. G” was Alex’s Graduate advisor and has published multiple works in sports sociology and the study of coaching. Formerly a strength coach Dr. G, has been around sport his entire life and now studies how coaching is developed and works. He shares a plethora of knowledge in this podcast about the study of sporting culture, coaching philosophy, and ethics. We want to extend our gratitude to Dr. Gearity for joining us and we hope you enjoy the listen. 

@drgearity

buildingafighter.com

Message Building a Fighter directly at [email protected]

@buildingafighter on Instagram

Alex: IG @strong_a.f  email: [email protected]

Austin: IG  @warriorsportswellness  email: [email protected]

Book Club installment number two! Relentless by Tim Grover. This book is very popular as Tim Grover (the author) was the strength coach to many greats in the NBA, including Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and Dwayne Wade. Tim outlines his thoughts on mental performance and the right mentality that takes you to the top. He classifies athletes into Coolers, Closers, and Cleaners. Enjoy our conversation about the book and let us know what you think! We hope you guys enjoy this book club idea, and please let us know books we should add to our list or read too!  We do, and will mention many spoilers in these podcasts!!

buildingafighter.com

Message Building a Fighter directly at [email protected]

@buildingafighter on Instagram

Alex: IG @strong_a.f  email: [email protected]

Austin: IG  @warriorsportswellness  email: [email protected]

Our Zone #2! Austin goes off in the realm of Sports Performance Heatlthcare and return to performance. How do we modify practice, S&C, or movement to completely enable each and every athlete despite any injury/irritation. We talk about how healthcare practitioners can create better relationships and be involved in the training process not just the rehabilitation process. Concussions and other typical MMA injuries are also a huge topic that we cover in this podcast. Austin runs through typical avenues of injury in MMA how to analyze and treat/handle each. As always we should be diligent in our scope and aware enough of our professional limitations. Austin knocks this out of the park by specifically addressing what an optimal return to performance protocol can look like with a skilled healthcare practitioner. WE hope you have enjoyed BaF through 100 episodes! WE are excited for this milestone and can’t wait to see what the next 100 Pods look like, Thanks for keeping up with us on this journey. 

buildingafighter.com

Message Building a Fighter directly at [email protected]

@buildingafighter on Instagram

Alex: IG @strong_a.f  email: [email protected]

Austin: IG  @warriorsportswellness  email: [email protected]