The idea of having a “growth mindset” is a topic that is often discussed in the coaching world. I think that this discussion is great, and has coaches being pushed in the right direction. The world we live in now is ever changing, it is no longer acceptable to have a coaching philosophy based on the motto of “we have always done it this way”. There are people that constantly post great, original content that make us think deeper about how we go about our business. This was always the intention of these leaders, but I feel like there is something negatively happening with the number of “experts” there are. I often see people (myself included) looking for advice from the experts in our field and taking their word as truth immediately. It has created a culture as to where you only see content from the same people repeatedly. I would like to think of myself as having a “growth mindset” but I am going to give you an example of myself having a “fixed mindset”. I will talk about my transformation of having a “fixed mindset” when it comes to the topic of fitness for myself and my players.

My journey with fitness has been a long, winding road. As a child, I was overweight- and it wasn’t until high school where I realized that the weight room could change my life. The summer before my sophomore year of high school, I busted my butt in the weight room. It was then that I saw an immediate impact on the field. This led me to fall in love with working out. Fast forward to college- I was asked to lose weight before my freshman year, and it was the worst thing I could have done to my baseball career. I struggled pretty badly and it put me in a tough place. I knew I needed to add weight back, so I worked hard again and put the weight back on. I saw the results again and felt like I was trending in the right direction. I took this too far and by the end of my senior year I was overweight again. I was later told that one reason that I wasn’t being scouted by more teams, was because of my weight. I then lost weight again and had a great year playing independent professional baseball. You can see this addition and subtraction was tough physically and mentally. It led me to having a workout regimen that I built around success in baseball. Once baseball was taken away, I was lost once again. I’ve gained weight since the end of my career. It’s been tough to find a workout routine that fits my goals now as an adult coach. I’ve been shaping my workouts around being a baseball player. I try to consume as much information about how to make my players the best they can be, that I have forgotten to take care of myself. I look to Eric Cressey for guidance in shaping workouts for my team. He has posted two tweets recently that explain perfectly my struggles with working out. 

The first tweet shows why I have a “fixed mindset” when it comes to my own workouts. Long distance running has become so vilified in the baseball community that I never saw it as an option for myself. It was during quarantine that I decided to go for a run just to see how it would go. Truth bomb, it was awful. I felt like an overweight strength coach who struggled to complete a mile. Things had to change. I started running and something weird happened, I started to think clearer. I then started researching the benefits of steady-state cardio and saw all the benefits of mental clarity. This correlates with the second tweet from Eric, I had no filter in how I should be working out. It was only then realized I needed to change my workout routine to be the best coach that I can be. This was the first realization.

The second realization I had, was that I needed to get my heart stronger. My family has a history of heart problems. I want to be on this earth as long as possible because I have a lot to live for. I love my job, and I get to come home to my best friend everyday. I want this to last as long as possible, so I needed to start taking better care of my heart. Now, I have been running consistently for over a month and I’m already seeing and feeling the results. My resting heart rate has gone from an average of 59 BPM to 55 BPM. I also have improved my heart rate variability tremendously. This is another indicator of having a healthy lifestyle. I get all of this information from WHOOP. This is one of the best fitness trackers on the market. The WHOOP gives you a recovery score based on percentage each morning. Here is my report from the past week. 

Now that I’m finding that running helps me think more clearly and feel better, I’m starting to rethink my stance on how I train my athletes. The physical component of training is huge- but the mental side of it is just as important. My main goal as a coach for Maryville College baseball is to set my players up to have the best possible life after college, and have fun while doing it. If this is my goal, then how can I eliminate a workout that has brought me so much mental clarity? Ian Kadish summed it up best with a recent thread of his on twitter. 

College was one of the most challenging times of my life and I constantly had a tough time getting a hold of my thoughts. I think that we can sacrifice a perfect  development plan to help our players in life. Is running for everyone? No. Could have I missed an opportunity to help some athletes by eliminating running from our programs? Yes. One way to figure out how to program this correctly is to get or encourage your student athletes to use a fitness tracker. University of Tennessee was the first college athletic program to buy every student athlete a WHOOP band. This is a great start to helping our athletes look at their daily habits for performance AND health. It is my hope that I can open some eyes with how to go about working with athletes in a team setting. This is not the job of a private instructor. They are getting paid to help the athlete perform better. In a team setting, we are with these athletes for more than our family sometimes. We need to do better and start caring about them as people and not just players. This will not only help the culture of the team, but you will build lifelong friendships in the process.