E49 | Sam Contorno: Making Sport Science Simple

[00:00:00] Donnie: Welcome to the team behind the team podcast. I am your host, Donnie Maib. This is the monthly show focused on building conversations around the team based model approach to athletic performance, strength and conditioning, sports medicine, sports science, mental health and wellness, and sports nutrition.

Hello and welcome back to the team behind the team podcast. I’m your host, Donnie Maib, and we have got a fire. Episode for you this month. It is September and coach Joe Krawczyk, our trusty co host is in the studio. Again, coach Joe, what’s happening? What’s going on coach? Coach. You excited about this fall.

I’m excited

[00:00:45] Joe: about this fall. It’s Bama week. I’m excited to play Bama. We’re unfortunately not home again. We’re on the road. So I won’t be at the game. Um, it was pretty hype here last year, but I’m thinking this time we get some

[00:00:58] Donnie: payback coach. I like it. I’m uh, I like your mojo. You know, what a better, uh, attitude and spirit to have than to have our guests today.

I want to introduce our guests briefly for Bama week. None other than our own Sam Contorno, uh, Associate Director of Applied Sports Science. Welcome, Sam.

[00:01:17] Sam: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate you guys.

[00:01:20] Donnie: Coach, we are so excited to have you on the show. Thank you for making time. Um, you ready for Bama?

Oh, I’m always ready. Always ready going to Tuscaloosa. Hopefully it’ll be, uh, hopefully be a really good game like it was last year. Hopefully we come out on the top end this

[00:01:35] Sam: time. Oh, absolutely. I’m so excited for the

[00:01:38] Donnie: SEC atmosphere. I know. I’m excited. I played in SEC growing up, so I’m excited. Um, as we kick off the show, Sam, you’re coming out of the summer.

Right. Football season is here. Uh, what have you been up to? You know, you came from Maryland. I think you’re six months now. Here at the University of Texas. Uh, big transition coming from University of Maryland with Ryan Davis and their football program. Talk about your summer prep. Kind of what you guys have been up to there.

And what’s a day in the life for Sam? Like, give us a little insight. Yeah,

[00:02:09] Sam: that’s a great question. Um, I think, you know, It’s been funny, because I was at Stanford for so long, for five years, and the last two years I’ve switched jobs two years in a row, so those first six months, like, you were just trying to figure out the lay of the land, you’re trying to figure out how all the processes work, where all the new catapult units are, what tech you have, what sports science has worked for a team in the past, so the first six months have been crazy, but it’s awesome to see, like, what, how has Texas football been utilizing sports science, how can I come in, how can I improve some of the processes, and like, where can we grow from there?

Um, So, you know, a day in the life of my summer, um, I’d say that I spend a lot of time planning all the logistics of the testing that we’re going to do for the day, so there’s been a lot of like planning that goes into every single day. I still have to act like a strength coach in some ways. I have to, you know, see what the run or the practice This is gonna be for the day.

I have to make sure I’m on the same page with strength and conditioning about what we’re doing, what the adaptation is, make sure I’m on the same page about what testing I wanna do for the day. I’m constantly in Donald, our head athletic trainer’s office, driving him insane about who’s in, who’s out for the day, what can they do?

I have to be like on my P’s and Q’s with all parts of the department, whether it’s athletic training, strength and conditioning, football coaching, to make sure that we’re putting our guys in the most successful position every day. So I feel like I’m just man managing the. The chaos, which I

[00:03:31] Donnie: love coach Joe.

The thing I love about Sam, um, you know, just briefly matter. If you look at her and she’s gonna get into some of her resume here as we go, but just has a ton of like practical experience obviously coming out of the performance industry, athletic performance or strength conditioning. And you’ve worked with all these different, you know, Individuals and support groups that surround an athlete so you know and understand kind of what they’re dealing with the pressures, the actual work, the frustrations, the highs and lows.

And so I think that, in my opinion, Coach Joe, it gives her an edge over a lot of practitioners. So she has a lot of practical advice or experience. So cool.

[00:04:08] Sam: Yeah, they say you have to speak a lot of languages to be in sport science, and I think there was a paper that came out where it talks about having like two different backgrounds to be in sport science, and I also did nutrition for a little bit at Stanford, which that was unexpected, but super valuable.

So I can, you know, sit down with our dietician and kind of speak to him about what he needs on a little bit more of a personal level. Same thing with strength and conditioning, and I think that makes for a good like people know I’m on their I’m in their

[00:04:33] Donnie: corner. Such a just one thing I remember. 2011, 12, I was touring the country just looking at different weight rooms and this one specific university, pretty big university, I don’t want to say their name just to be confidential, but they had, they were pioneering this sports science kind of like staff and laboratory and it’s put all this money into it.

Well, about a year, year and a half later, I came back and they had pretty much bought all this technology, had this built this huge room and lab, they had shut it down because The sport coaches wouldn’t work with this individual, and I think they were from overseas or something, and to your point, Sam, they didn’t speak the language of the sport coach in America, and I think, again, you know, uh, I know Brett Bartholomew always talks about athlete buy in, I believe, in our profession, you’ve got to get head coach buy in first, which is what I hear you saying, would that be

[00:05:28] Sam: accurate?

Yeah, I think, I think there’s two ways to look at it too, like if you get the, It’s all about creating a language. You’re exactly right. Like, if you can get the whole department to speak the same language, that’s how you’re going to be the best in sports science. Because everybody understands the same thing.

And I think it works a little bit both ways, right? If you can get the athletes to buy in, and they talk about it, it’s going to make your football coaches have to listen, because they’re going to hear the kids talking about it. So I think, like, if you get athlete buy in, and then if you can speak to football coaches, like, you have to understand that they’re busy.

They just want the cliff notes. They want what they need to know to execute. Like, they’ve said their football coaches first. And so if I can give them something concise, and I can get their buy in, then that’s when you can start to give them more things. And same thing with the athletes. Like, when you get that dual buy in, then, then you’re money.

Then…

[00:06:16] Donnie: I’ve always, uh, one of my favorite quotes, uh, Coach Joe and Sam is, um, it’s kind of a metaphor, right? It’s like, there’s two types of change. In any organization, right? There’s revolutionary change, which is the example I used at this big university. They try to just change everything, but then there’s evolutionary change.

And if you think about an iceberg, if you’ve ever, I’ve watched some of those, you know, shows where they like. Measure how much an iceberg moves in a year. And it’s very minuscule. And, you know, I think to your point, Sam and Joe, you’ve seen this, you’re better off doing small minuscule evolutionary changes over time versus making this flip the apple cart upside down.

Everybody’s mad and nobody’s knows the language we’re speaking. And we’re, we don’t know what our objectives are and, you know, and everybody’s pushing back and skepticism and distrust, uh, and to your point, man, it takes time to, to get that, to build trust and make sure everybody’s hearing the same language.

So that’s huge.

[00:07:15] Joe: Yeah, I think it’s, it’s like a patient communication. I don’t think many people in this industry have too many issues communicating because everyone’s very enthusiastic. It’s kind of a very extroverted type of job and in all fields of it, you know, but like, um, something when I, when I first got on here, everyone was like, Hey, just, just take it slow, take it easy, like talk to everybody, get to know them first and then start kind of like you were saying, um, a little bit by a little bit, start kind of, you know, letting your ideas out and things like that.

Cause I think. You know, and if you just come on too strong, people just shut down, you know, and it’s not a good start. So yeah, I think you just gotta be a little patient with it.

[00:07:52] Sam: You’re gonna laugh at this one, but I think my first day, Tori told me, don’t be a grenade. And I was like, you’re right. Because I have the, I definitely have the personality to come in and be like, let’s blow everything up and start over.

And he’s like, don’t be a grenade, Sam. Don’t you like this? And I love that.

[00:08:06] Donnie: Clear cut, candid, concise communication, just to the point, like don’t,

[00:08:10] Sam: don’t blow stuff up. I love it. He knew me. He knew me when he hired me. And he’s like, all right, we’re going to take this well. I’m like, you’re right,

[00:08:15] Donnie: you’re right, you’re right.

That’s great awareness. Um, well, Sam, you’re at Texas now, so let’s just take a moment, take us back to the beginning. Why did you get into sports science? That’s a

[00:08:25] Sam: great question. Um, You know, I definitely have an untraditional strength and conditioning path as it is. I got into this field in 2017 I was 26 years old when I did my first internship So I think one thing I was probably you know Mature in the sense that I had to make that decision to quit my job move from Connecticut to California and like do an unpaid Internship so I think going into this I I knew that I wanted to be successful in this industry and that I was gonna do Whatever that took I did my first internship at UCLA Olympic, so I wasn’t even in football yet, and I actually had a friend at the time who got UCLA’s, like, first sports science GA position, and I remember, like, he told me about the interview and what he did, and I was like, that sounds so lame.

Like, what’s sports science? Like, you loser. And so, and so this was in like 2017, so I had, I had no exposure to any of this tech. And then I got into strength and conditioning, I got into football strength and conditioning in 2017, I started at Stanford. And I, we didn’t have any tech, um, you know, we had lasers and a scale and that was about it.

But everything was very well thought out and planned and, you know, you can old school add yardage. and reps up and that was our sport science. Um, but there have been like a few, like, kind of defining moments like across my career that have made me realize the need for sport science. I think, um, the first one I was doing the nutrition in 2019.

Um, I have my master’s in nutrition. And our dietician had quit, and so it was like, we were kind of stuck going into the 2020, er, uh, 2019 off season. So Shannon Turley was like, Sam, you have your background in this, like, you create our curriculum for nutrition. And I was like, okay. And so that was like the first time I really got to put together my own program.

I got to like, you know, present things to the team. So I had, I had like my own baby that I was presenting. And it was so much fun. But, you know, I had noticed that… You know, how are we tracking the body weight data? I was like, could I do a better job tracking the body weight data and looking at week to week changes and looking at changes over the weekend and something super basic like that.

Like, I think I always say, like, body weights are sports science data, and we might as an industry not know how to, like, even just store those appropriately. And the amount of insight you can find from that, that’s sports science. So I remember, you know, doing that and being like, oh, this analytics thing’s like kind of cool.

And it just so happened that in 2019, in season, um, we started a wellness survey and we got AthoShorts, which I know, I think Texas had the AthoShorts, which isn’t even a company anymore. Um, and so they’re like, Hey, Sam, like you’re kind of nerdy, you’re, you’ve been making cool Excel sheets. Like, why don’t you take this stuff?

And I was like, okay, I will. And I think it was the best transition to sports science for me because it went horribly. It was terrible. The way we rolled out the wellness survey was terrible. The way we had the athletes fill it out. I spent all of my day just like texting guys to make them fill it out and chasing them around and you know making these like stupid pivot table reports and I realized that we had got this It’s called piece of tech or data source without like understanding what the problem actually was that we were trying to solve.

We just did it because we thought that’s what we were supposed to do. Same thing with the Athos shorts. We had these shorts, but we didn’t know what the point of them was. It wasn’t a GPS unit. We wanted, we really wanted GPS units, but instead we ended up with EMG shorts and a wellness survey. And so me, for me, it was amazing to see like, okay, like this did not work the way we wanted it.

This is the organizational problem we have. What is the tech that we need to like solve that organizational problem? It’s actually probably catapult. So then in 2020, we went out and got Catapult. And again, they were like, Sam, you’re a nerd. Like, you take Catapult. Like, you do that. And I’ll say, across my whole career, I’ve been very lucky with my bosses who have let me just roll with things when I come up with ideas.

All of them. I have to appreciate all of them for that. Probably, like, unchecked sometimes. But they’re like, you know what, Sam? Like, we trust that you’re gonna, we trust that you’re gonna research this. So we’re gonna stay out of your way. Um, And so 2020, we really built like for year one, like I remember calling Catapult, they’re like, what are you guys doing with Catapult data year one?

I’m like, Oh, no, I found made this cool graph. How does this look? They’re like, What did you even make this on? I’m like, So it started spiraled from there. And it wasn’t until starting 2021. I had gotten some other offers from some other schools as like a strength coach, sport scientist. And I was like, you know, it’ll take the perfect opportunity for me to leave because I was getting to that point where I was sick of coaching bench press.

Honestly, I was like, I have, I have better things I could be doing with my time than watching you guys bench press. Like, I need to go do something at the computer. And that’s when I think after five years of being a football strength and conditioning coach, you’re like, I can move on from this. Like, you could, like, I could feel myself not, like, being, like, pulled towards my office to go do something else.

Um, and that’s when Maryland came along. I was not looking for a job. I had actually just signed a lease in California. I bought a couch. I was like, we’re going to stay here another year. I’ll pay this overpriced rent for another, for a year and we’ll be good. And I just happened to talk to someone who was like, Hey, you know, Ryan Davis and Maryland have this job open, like you two should talk.

And like we had one phone conversation and I was like, okay, this might be the next best step for me. Because it was a program that had a lot of tech, and was really interested in having someone come in and use all that tech. And they were super open to like, what I wanted to do with it. And it just felt like the next step from like, alright, how do I go from strength and conditioning to sports science?

This seems like the perfect transition. And so it was an awesome year there. I mean, I’ll say like, RD, same thing, like, let me do what I wanted, like. Had to reel me back in a few times, which he was good at doing, um, because I can be a grenade from time to time. Um, but it was really cool because I finally got to build my own program.

I had to build my own AMS. We didn’t have SmarterBase, so I built it all in Power BI. I got to learn a lot of like those like, you know, just hardships of doing that year one, built an internship program. And then, you know, again, wasn’t planning on leaving. And Torrey Becton calls me and he’s like, hey, do you want to come to Texas?

And I was like, yes. Yes, I do. That’s incredible. Yeah. That’s incredible. It’s been, it’s been fun. I’m really excited to not move next year and to be in year two of somewhere and not ship my couch. I’m throwing it out. Next time I move, , I’m over it. I don’t blame

[00:14:58] Joe: you. So, well, you, you kind of alluded to some of the tech you’ve dealt with along the way and some of the struggles you went through.

I think a lot of it, um, even today’s use for like recruiting purposes or things like that. So, uh, one of my biggest questions for you is, You know, what’s what’s some good tech out there? What’s the bad? Like, what do you think is useful? What do you think is not useful? I mean, kind of, you know, don’t don’t get PC on me.

I want to hear that. I want to know what’s garbage and what’s not. Yeah.

[00:15:28] Sam: So I hate every single piece of technology I have. Um, I think that’s like if a sports scientist tells me they don’t hate all of their tech, like I don’t believe them because I hate it all. I think Bluetooth is the worst invention in the entire world because it makes my day.

a headache, like more than like 95% of the time. Um, so I think really, like, I always joke if I had to go start a sport science department, I had nothing. I would buy lasers and I’d buy a scale. And I think you could do, like, 90% of what you need to do with lasers and a scale, like, if you want to get really fancy, get a jump mat, like, and you could run a fully functioning sports science department, like, yes, do I think that this tech helps us ask better questions and find better information?

Absolutely. Do me and the 1080 have an absolute love hate relationship? Absolutely. Absolutely. Some days I’m like, this is the coolest product I’ve ever seen. Some days I’m like, I’m going to throw it off of my car going down the highway. But I think that’s like on the practitioner to be able to figure out.

Okay, like what are your, what are your program needs? Like, everyone hates catapult. We all hate catapult. It drives us crazy. But do I need to know how much volume my wide receivers are running? I do. So like I need it. Could I periodize practice without catapult and just use time and, mm-hmm. practice periods?

I ca I could, but will I have those individual differences? Probably not. So I do need it. Um, force plates, again, love, hate the force plates. I’ve tried every single test on the force plates. Travis is gonna kill me if I do one more different test on the force plate. But that’s fine. Um, that’s how you like, I think that’s how you, you can’t get good at using tech or understanding what tech you need, unless you play with it and you break it because every tech is going to have some issue to it.

There’s going to be some, you know, standard error. That’s a little bit different for a 1080. Top speed versus a catapult top speed for a laser top speed, and so you have to be an expert at whatever tech you do decide to use so you know its limitations, but then you also know how to most effectively use it for your program.

So I hate all of it. But, what do I, I use Catapult all the time. I use Force Plates all the time. Nord Board and I have a love hate relationship where I’ve, you know, it’s a hamstring test that you can’t do if your knee hurts. So, there’s limitations to it, so I’ve stopped doing the Nordic and I do the Isoprone for that reason.

Um, you know, I had 1080s at Maryland. My goal is to get one again here. I loved it for, you know, some of the cool sprint stuff you could use for it, but, you know, is… Some of the fancy tech that we’re using for sprinting like even too much for a football team when like Really, we just need to make sure you’re doing other, you know, you’re getting certain adaptations Like I think we we get tech we dive way too far into it And then we almost can’t get ourselves out because we’ve become like dependent on these Results or these tests when like really it’s like it all comes down to the question of what you actually need

[00:18:26] Donnie: Yeah, I do hear there’s one thing in there kind of The layers I would like to dig into a little deeper there.

So think about, because I’m obviously a strength condition coach, um, I’ve been for years, and I’ve worked enough with sports science with Travis and his team, with yourself, um, to know that it can get really cumbersome. And so… To your point earlier in this conversation, when you’re dealing with athletes, and I’ve seen this up close, Joe, you’ve seen as well in the weight room, compliance versus non compliance.

So my question to you, what are some hacks that you’ve kind of learned, simple things that make those athletes to be a little more compliant or coaches even, I think, and it may be as simple as like, Making things more seamless. Anyway, speak into that

[00:19:13] Sam: for a second. Yeah, I think that’s been, that’s probably my favorite part of sports science.

And that, when you come into a new program, you have to build buy in really, really quickly. Especially because you’re the person yelling at them about wearing the catapult vests. So they have to trust me. So, every… Tech we introduced to these guys or like when I first got there. I did a five minute talk with the team on every single piece of tech Like the first day like one of the freshmen’s like what’s what’s in this vest anyway?

I’m like, oh you guys don’t know what catapult is. So I did like a five minute presentation and it’s super basic I had like one slide with like two big pictures on it. I’m like it does this and it does this They’re like, okay So now if you’re educating the athletes they’re starting to understand what the purpose of the tech is The other thing is we post everything So, everything they do, speeds, jumps, Nord board scores, Kind of gamify it maybe?

Eighteen year old boys want to compete with everything. It’s gamifying it, right? I love it. Absolutely. Like, they will fight over their Nord board scores. But that’s just because they want to compete in literally anything. You can have them do anything and they’ll compete with each other for it. And, you know, they want to be at the top of the leaderboard.

So, for force plates, for instance, if we jump every Monday, I always post the previous Monday scores. on that Monday. So as they jump, they’re literally like, what did you get last week? Like

[00:20:29] Donnie: you have to do last week. Yeah, that’s really good actually. It’s the

[00:20:33] Sam: easiest thing again for, that’s all, that’s all football players want to do.

And you can make them get into anything, like, even, I, I understand that I ask a lot from them by wearing a catapult vest, jumping on the force plate. I, I ask a lot from them. I can’t say I don’t. So. We had heart rate monitors this year. Last year at Maryland I had like 80 rolling like day one. I had to explain what these were, how to put them on.

They’re like, you really have to wear these things? Here, I waited like two weeks to start to put them on. And I started by only putting them on, like, high risk guys. And so they see other kids getting heart rate monitors and they’re like, I want a heart rate monitor. And next thing you know, they’re like, why don’t I get the heart rate monitor?

Why can’t I run that test? And it’s like, well, this is why, like, and if you’re not compliant, I won’t let you run it. It’s like, uh,

[00:21:20] Joe: it’s like jealous siblings or something. A thousand percent. It’s like Christmas Day. Trying to run the household except it’s 80. Oversized human males. Yes.

[00:21:30] Donnie: Kind of like what Sam’s saying, right, coach?

It’s like, that stuff is not cheap, I’m sure. Right. And if somebody’s getting it, like, you know, it’s like fear of being left out too a little bit, you know. Yeah. And you also, like, that shows that you’re important, you know, they’re putting resources in you. Um, I had another question here, um, what’s the ideal balance for sports science?

I think there’s just so much data available and resources. Uh, so I love this question. How do you balance? Or prioritize data that you present to coaching staff and then your performance staff. So how do you kind of delineate who gets what? Mm hmm.

[00:22:05] Sam: Yeah, so my performance staff. Like me, it’s like we’re a four headed monster, right?

It’s me, it’s Tori Becton, uh, Donald, and Brad, our new dietician. And so the four of us are best friends. We’re in communication all the time. And so I trust them with more information because they ask the questions and they need more information. Like, they care how many explosive efforts a guy is getting because that means something to our training or how we’re gonna progress them the next day.

And I’m lucky to have… an amazing athletic training staff that understands this language already. And so I came into a program where like, we have good understanding of what these metrics are. So they get way more detailed reports. They’re going to get all the force plate reports, the Nord board reports, all the reports.

The football coaches only get catapult data. Their report is super color coded. Um, one of my favorite metrics that I use has been percentage of game load. So like, I’ll be like, hey, today was 85% of what a football game typically is. And that’s the easiest metric of all time. Or just using time as a metric.

Like, my football coach reports have almost like more football coach metrics than they have catapult metrics. It has practice periods, it has team periods, it has time on feet. And then it will have player load, so they get so much less information because all I need them to know is who took more reps today, who sprinted more, who might need to be backed off tomorrow.

If a coach asks a question and wants to know more details, or like maybe how they did at practice in other ways, or like what their other tests are showing, like I have that information if a coach wants it or needs it, but I don’t give that to them up front because they’ll, like that doesn’t matter to them.

It only matters if it matters. And, and so I think part of my job, too, is like balancing my ego, like I run all these cool tests, I want to give everyone the report, but if they’re not at a stage where they’re ready for it, or they need to know it, they almost, it’s going to waste your time giving it to them.

And so like, that’s, that’s hard for me sometimes to be like, I want to send everyone this cool fourth plate report. It’s like, not everybody needs it.

[00:24:12] Donnie: I have a random question. You just, you just. Made me think question a little deeper on this one. So how would you contextually, uh, present a question or I, I’d say like, uh, maybe you got an athlete that from the data that shows that they’re just not fit or in shape or they’re lagging behind in their performance, but it’s not just, you know, it’s not just that they’re not strong enough, whatever they just, they’re not in great shape.

So how do you. You know, form that conversation and that data and that report and talk to the athlete about they need to do more. How would you

[00:24:49] Sam: do that? Yeah. So, you know, I probably show the athletes more of the reports than I actually show the coaches. Like, like there are times or say there’s a return of play case where a kid is like, hey, I still don’t feel like I’m ready.

I’ll like literally sit him down and show him one of my dashboards and be like, hey, look at where your jump was in January and look at where your jump is now. And like, look at how you’ve trended up, or like, whatever the metric might be. Or if they de trained a little bit, right? Yeah, or, or if you have a kid, the same situation, or if you have a kid who has, who everything has been decreasing, you know, they’re more intimate with the technology, they use it every day, I probably talk to them more about it than I talk to their coaches.

And like, if I run a Nord board test with a kid, like, I’ll sit there for two minutes and I’ll explain to him, like, where he’s sitting. Like, my goal as a sports scientist is for them to be like, oh, I’m at That’s good. I’m under 10. Like, I don’t even want to have to tell them that. I want them to know that they’ll be like, Oh, like I’m, I’m here today.

This is better than last time. Or, Oh man, that’s worse than last time. And that to me can be like a great way to open up some conversation and be like, Hey, look, your, your scores are going down. Your strength is good. You’re. Powers get on the force plate. It might be a conditioning thing. How have you been recovering or what have you been doing on the weekends?

Like I think that’s what opens up conversation with athletes is and they I think are better at the tech than the coaches because they’re Around it all the time and they understand it. They wear it They you know, they hear me talk about it more than their football coaches do if that makes

[00:26:18] Donnie: sense Yeah I think I think the one thing I hear too that I like is that you’ve got to empower these athletes And not just always be you know doing everything for them You know, at some point, you’ve got to put the ball in their court, so to speak, but here’s where you’re at.

Here’s what’s been going on. Here’s what I see happening. Here’s what I need you, you need to start doing if you want to get better or whatever, be healthier, whatever that conversation is, you’ve got at some point, you’ve got to put it back in their corner, make them look in the mirror, right? And you got, cause here at Texas, right?

Or wherever you’ve got the resources and staff, but then you’ve got to get your, your butt out there and work some too, you know? Yeah. And

[00:26:54] Sam: that’s, I think. That’s something I want to, I’ve always been able to want to do with the team, is like Wooper Aura, one of these like, you know, tracking, sleep tracking, that’s data that I almost never have to see, and I think sometimes it’s like Sports scientists were like, if we are not in control of all the data, the data doesn’t matter.

Like, I’d rather just teach the kids how to use an Oura Ring or Wootband and, you know, show them some interventions. And then, like, you take it. I don’t have to see your data, necessarily. Like, I want to empower them to know how to use some of these techs. Like, I don’t think it just has to feed to my Smarterbase report for it to be affecting the team, if that makes sense.

Like, I want… Empowering them to do the things they have to do is just as important in sports science as it is for me to track their body weight every day. I

[00:27:39] Joe: think this is interesting because we always seem to talk about the challenges moving forward as an industry. It’s like right now we’re almost talking about the advantages of, like, you know, society and how, you know, where the generations are at right now.

Like, I feel like sports science is… Gaining a huge advantage. I mean, there’s an app for everything. Yeah, all these kids have cell phones They know how to use all these apps and everything. So it’s like well, what’s another tool? It’s just another app Yeah, you know and I’m not trying to plug whoop or anything, but you’re you’re right I mean it is as easy like I have one and it’s either you’re red yellow or green green or good red You probably need to take a nap, you know, and it’s like You know, it shouldn’t be something that you babysit them on it would be it would be really cool if they could You know stay on it.

I

[00:28:23] Sam: agree. And I don’t know. I just think sometimes we get too caught up with what data stream am I getting? It’s like if I teach you how to use I don’t know even look at your Apple watch and look at your sleep stuff if you sleep in it Like if I can teach you how to use that effectively, I don’t care if I see the data I want to I

[00:28:37] Donnie: want to poke the bear here a little bit.

Oh, I love it. Go for it She, I follow you on social media and you know, I like poking bears. I know you posted something that really just resonated with me I think it was last week about You know, if all we do is just track data, then we kind of we kind of lose that coaching ability There’s a book called unplugged and it goes Galpin Yes.

Yeah. I read the book. The book was I was, I was reading the book coach Joe, just to, and Sam, just to learn more about technology. But what I got from the book was don’t rely so much on technology because then you start to lose a feel for your own body and how you can kind of push the boundaries in performance.

Speak into that. Is it, there’s a too much collection, like get into that a little bit. Yeah. I

[00:29:20] Sam: guess my, the, the reason I posted that, cause again, I just love, I just love poking. Yeah, absolutely. Um, and And I was thinking about this the other day. There’s so many like companies now that like automate sport science and there are so many like if I’m just like watching a force plate test for the day or You never know when like a test is, is poorly, uh, like poorly executed by your athletes, right?

Like a, a computer software might not necessarily like, even like get rid of that. So I’ll tell you a quick story. Um, so like three weeks ago, I’m flying back from New York and my flights get canceled. It’s a total disaster. I have to fly in on Tuesday. So I miss our morning PRPs. And my interns send me the data.

and all the tagged catapult data, and I’m like, cool, I’ll write my reports on the airplane coming back. So they’re done by the time I get to the afternoon run. So my interns tagged one of the periods as special teams. And this PRP happened to be like two hours long. And so I send an email to our head football coach that said we did special teams.

And I’m talking to one of the football players, and you know, it made sense, they ran a lot of high speed yards, like, I’m like, okay, yeah, that made sense, okay, we had some cover units out there. I’m talking to one of the running backs, I’m like, you guys did special teams today? He’s like, we would never do special teams in 7 on.

And I’m like, my robot ass just typed this report out to our head coach, just purely based on what the data said, and I said we did special teams. Like, I’m going to be embarrassed about this for like the next 10 years of my life. I’m going to like wake up in the middle of the night and be like, Sam, do you remember when you just blindly typed special teams?

And and so like, it’s stuff like that where like, take the extra time to like, watch the practice or like go through the data. If you are so like. You know, distant from it that you can’t you’re not watching the athletes jump or do their Nord board tests or you know, you’re not watching practice. You might like report on something that’s not true because you weren’t there.

But it doesn’t seem like based on the data doesn’t seem out of left field that that might have happened. And I think you miss so much human error. Because, like, again, like, the jumps or the Nord board, like a kid might, um, the kid, the kid’s hamstring might cramp on the test and he might lean to one side.

He’s totally fine. Just, okay, maybe we’ll just retest you another day. If you’re not paying attention to stuff like that, you’re going to absolutely miss it. You’re going to say, hey, this kid is deficient in this or, or, hey, the team did special teams today. And then I’m literally, I’m going to be embarrassed about this for the rest of my life.

And so my intern, my interns heard that story. I’ll never let them forget it either.

[00:32:11] Donnie: Gotta have a good, you gotta have a good coach’s eye, like you said, and you gotta be present and know kind of how to read the situation, besides just looking at a report, so. Yeah,

[00:32:19] Sam: yeah, I don’t know, and the more we automate, I think the more we lose that connection to our jobs.

Yeah, so

[00:32:27] Donnie: good.

[00:32:27] Joe: Yeah, I feel like that affects, You know, even coaches, too. There was, um, when I was interning with baseball, um, I was sitting there with the head strength guy at the time, uh, Steven, and he was like, oh, there’s a job with, I won’t say the team, there’s a job with this team in their minor league system.

And one of the pros, it was December, so one of the pros were back working out with us, and one of the pros walked in and he was like, Joe, don’t do it. And I was like, whoa, why not? And he goes, They’re all in like this system where like all the workouts are uploaded by someone at the top, you can’t adjust it and like every six months we get a new strength coach because he was with that club at the time and he’s like, he’s like, they come in, they hate their life, although their role is basically just come in and turn the lights on and stay with this, this automated system and, and it’s like, yeah.

You know, call me old fashioned, but hiring somebody every six months is probably not good practice, but But yeah, I feel like we just can almost get like not too reliant It’s almost like a crutch, you know, like technology can almost be like a crutch sometimes We’re like, oh we can just press a button and we’re good, you know We’re just interesting

[00:33:33] Donnie: One thing it’s like what you and Sam are both saying which I hear and I love is just the art of coaching Like if you take that out, like why am I doing this?

Right? Because then I’m just a, I’m just crunching numbers and looking at spreadsheets, but at the end of the day, I think what lights all of us up, anybody in this industry, whatever role you’re in, it’s the human element. Sam, like, I mean, that’s so good. You’ve got to have the human element, the contact, the, the relationship.

And what I heard you say, you, a big part of your, there’s a book by Dan Pink called, um, To Sell is Human. That’s the name of it. And it’s. He said we’re all in sales today, basically, right? So you’ve got to know whatever that technology is. You got to know it front, backwards, upside down, all around. So you can poke holes in it, know the good, the bad, but also you, you may talk to, and I’ve seen this happen, you may have five athletes you talk to that like this one piece, but man, this one piece, all of a sudden, this is the one thing, for whatever reason, That this athlete likes and it gets the best out of him and knowing you would know that but you wouldn’t know that if you didn’t work closely with him to get that one percent out of him.

So I really like what both you guys were saying there. It’s good.

[00:34:41] Joe: Yeah, and I have a question. So, um, I’ve listened to some previous podcasts you’ve done and I think you kind of started more in the medical field, right? But that’s what kind of what you’re leaning towards. So there’s a question, um, our last guest posed and I kind of I’m stealing it from him because I think it’d be kind of cool to get your take on it.

So what he asked during that podcast is, are we sport coaches that are working performance or are we performance coaches working more towards a medical model? So where do you think we are now and where do you think

[00:35:10] Sam: we’re going? Yeah, I actually love this question. Um, I think earlier in my career, I’m absolutely with you that I was in the medical model.

And just trying to improve performance that way. Um, at Stanford we got all of our buy in from Return to Play. So we had a really crazy built out Return to Play system. It was really easy to quantify and say, Hey, this is what this guy is doing on like day one of his linear progression. Pass, fail, based on like years of data that we collected.

And so, I worked very closely with Return to Play, and that’s where we got all of our initial buy in. And to your point, I also, I’ve come from the, the PT and strength and conditioning backgrounds, and so that’s, I think, if you asked me this two years ago, I’ve, I’m, I’m there. I’m in the medical model. Now, I think the really cool thing about sports science is that the practitioners are taking it in the directions that they’re interested in.

And so, like, All of us, if there’s, you know, I have a lot of good friends who’ve all kind of come up as these, like, applied sports scientists. We all run our programs completely differently, and they’re based off of skill set and interest. And so if you ask me now, I’m a sport coach that wants to get better at performance, where, like, when I look at things now, I’m like, okay.

You know, so many things in strength and conditioning can get us to where we need to be as long as we’re smart about our progression. Um, if you have an amazing athletic training staff, there’s just less that I have to worry about in that world. That doesn’t mean I’m not always working towards making better return to play protocols.

But now, with like, the athletes we have at Texas too, it’s like, what are the defining physical characteristics? of what makes these kids the best football players in the country. And how can I help us become better at our sport through physiology? That is way more of what I’m interested in now. I want to know what my, what makes my wide receivers run the best routes.

I want to know what makes my D linemen… Get off the ball faster than other D linemen. Like, that’s the stuff that I find more interesting now. And so I think there’s such a huge bridge between, um, sport analytics and performance analytics that we, like, haven’t really figured out yet. Um, and the best part about Texas is I think we have really high level people in a lot of these departments.

So I can go sit with player personnel and be like, how do you rank your guys in terms of technical football skill? And how does that match up with my, with my physical skill? Because, you know, physical is one quarter of what makes these kids. Good football player. So how can I not only diagnose the physical part?

What about the technical part? What about the tactical part? What about the psychological part? And so that’s really like if you had to ask me like what my ultimate department looks like one day like I want to go In that direction more so than I want to like dive into specific return to play So I think that’s been a shift over the years for me.

That’s an awesome question Yeah, I think you guys should steal that and ask that to everybody. No,

[00:38:10] Joe: and I was, I was glad you were coming on like a sport, sport scientist because it’d almost be cheating with an athletic trainer. I think, I think they’d probably lean more towards a medical model, uh, answer there.

But with, with strength coaches, even like I think about some of the folks on our staff downstairs, it’s like some of them spent a lot of time at practice. And then some of them spent a lot of time doing recovery, you know, almost in that gray area with athletic trainers and stuff, you know, and return to play, you know, so it’s, it’s, I think you’re right.

It’s interesting.

[00:38:37] Donnie: No, that’s good stuff, Sam and Jill. I think the one thought I was, you know, as you were talking, Sam, it’s like the, in my simple mind, I’m always like, you know, sports med or the medical model is always like risk averse. Like, how can we keep from, right? It’s kind of like, how can we keep the car from driving off the bridge?

Yeah. You know, at 120 miles an hour, whereas performance models a little bit more like, let’s push the boundaries, right? And find the edges. But I do think, you know, I don’t, I think this is how I view life, like the extremes, right? I think extreme performance, where people are at risk and getting injured and hurt or near death, that’s bad.

But also, wrap them in bubble wrap and not training them hard and getting them to adapt to a high level performing. You know, environment, you’re going to get them hurt too. So at both positions, I think the medical model extreme, you put them in a bad spot too, but also performance. So I do think there’s going to have to be some collaboration and integration.

They’re kind of what you were saying. I liked kind of that, that visual, I’m a visual person too, of how you kind of explain that was good stuff. So that was from coach

[00:39:43] Joe: Eric McMahon. So I got to give him credit. Yeah, I got to give him love. I don’t want to steal his work.

[00:39:48] Donnie: Well, hey, to kind of change gears a little bit, you know, just obviously following you and talking to you today, you’re very driven.

And for a thinking person, what are some long term projects you’re working on and where do you hope, uh, or see those going over the next couple of years for Sam? Yeah, that’s

[00:40:06] Sam: a, that’s a good question. Um, I’m trying to be like slightly more where my feet are, which is good for me right now. Which does not mean I don’t have 7, 000 projects on my brain at all times.

I hear you so far. I’ve been, I’ve been trying to do a good job this year, just being like, Hey, I need you to like, do a good job at like, camp this year. So like, last year during fall camp, or I guess in season, I, I wrote out a 300 page like, intern curriculum manual. Like, that was my like, 2022 project. Um, and so, like my 20, I’m excited to get into camp, because then for whatever reason, that gives me a little bit more free time.

to kind of like work into some of these like next projects. So I think like the next big one that I kind of want to check off is like I want to build out, I’m always trying to refine my baseline testing and I want to kind of refine my baseline testing and build out more tests that are a little bit more position specific.

So, like, are there different, and not necessarily, like, when I say position specific, still general in the sense, but like, you know, everybody runs, you know, ten yard starts, ten yard flies with the lasers, um, are there different things we can add? Can we do some, like, curve running tests? Can we do some angle cutting tests?

Like, are, I want to build out my, like, field testing protocols to see if, like, maybe some of those traits are the ones that actually carry over to football playing a little bit more. So, I do think You know, over the next few years, you know, I’m interested in companies like Breakaway Data because they do some more like really position specific biomechanical analysis, because that is not my forte at all.

I could turn the DARI on, that’s like the extent of me being a biomechanist, um, and I’m not even good at turning that thing on some days, so, um, I’ve been looking into more companies that can help me with like video analysis. Because I think, I think that’s a hole in my game, um, you know, because you can have the catapult or have these timing gates and see how athletes move, but can I do a better job of breaking down, decel, change of direction, like specific, you know, angles that a receiver is going to cut or a receiver’s, or a running back or even a linebacker.

Um, so I’ve been diving into some more of the position specifics. So that was a good follow up question to your question. Um, so those are some long term things, um, you know. Athletic training, we’re always working on like, we have really good lower body return to play protocols. So we’re working on some upper body stuff because I don’t know if there’s a ton of upper body testing.

In straining conditioning just in general. That’s a good point. Um, so those are like, I guess those are actually very much Both ends of those spectrums, but those are those are big like 2023 offseason or call it whatever in season Projects to hopefully roll out in 2024 offseason

[00:42:49] Donnie: now, Joe. I did see she did apply for a PhD I did.

[00:42:53] Sam: Yeah, so you’re crazy. I am. Yeah, there’s awesome. There’s that Yeah, it might start in like three weeks. So No biggie. No, no biggie. So I, you know, if I’m going to be stressed for the next four years, I might as well start in No,

[00:43:08] Donnie: I saw that was very, uh, I’m not only huge, but just, you know, inspiring. So

[00:43:13] Sam: I’m excited Um, I’m probably gonna do something on like practice periodization or like GPS data Because that’s kind of my probably biggest interest is like I love the whole thought of periodizing football practice And how we can make it more effective but but yeah, I

[00:43:32] Donnie: Yeah, I remember I was having a conversation with coach Brian Mann who’s now he’s went from Miami.

He’s at Texas A& M I don’t know if you guys know that but he’s he’s Aggie now, so we won’t hold that against him too much but um, he was telling me about his PhD when he basically sat for his doctorate and had to What does he have to defend your? Dissertation. Dissertation. He thought that his life was going to end.

[00:43:57] Sam: That’s what I, everyone tells me it’s like the most miserable four years of their

[00:44:00] Donnie: lives. So anyway, I’m, I’m, I’m excited for you and, uh, as you continue to go down that, that journey and path. So I know you’ll get

[00:44:08] Sam: it done. I’m excited. I think. The weakness, you know, I come from the applied side. So I think that makes the weakness in my game research and doing research, like effectively doing research like an academic standard.

And so I think that’s something that I need to work on, and I need to fill some of those gaps.

[00:44:25] Donnie: Um, I mean, that’s, that’s the new, I mean, we’re just like we’re in this kind of era of data collection technology. That’s the new. I mean, I think we’ve, we’ve got more people getting more education and, you know, they’re getting really specialized in what they’re doing and, and I know, uh, what was, uh, does John Waggle?

Does he have his PhD? Yes, he does. Yes. I mean, you’re seeing more of these roles that they’ve got to be able to speak again. You’re not really. Let’s just say, I don’t know if I’m saying it accurately, you’re not really a purist, right? Or a specialist. You’re not just speaking just to one thing exactly, but in these bigger roles, like in sports science, you’ve got to, you’ve got to understand a lot about a bunch of different areas, you know?

And so you can have your specialist area, maybe, you know, but then you’ve got to be able to speak to those areas too, to be

[00:45:16] Sam: effective. Yeah. And I think the partnership with academics is huge. And I think, I do think the PhD will end up being the certification in sports science one day. I think that’ll be like the track that people go down because I do think like, again, I don’t think I’m a super well rounded sports scientist because I don’t think I have that research background.

Like my master’s, I didn’t publish. So I need to go through that process of like learning how to publish research and understanding like the standards of doing academic research. So, I mean, it gives you more

[00:45:44] Donnie: lanes too. Yeah. And again, Coach Joe, real quick, just to dive. Digress for a second. I keep hearing this in you, Sam, today, which I really like.

You just have this ability in you to kind of keep reinventing yourself. And I’ve kind of seen that through your story today. And I think that’s so important. And especially, and there’s a, there’s a book I read last year. It was talking about what you’re seeing in careers, not just in sports, is that you’re seeing a change.

And how you progress in your your job or career. So basically, instead of it being a career ladder, the picture is a career lattice. I mean, you may go over here and take a role here that’s up, come across, go down, take a role here that maybe is different, but you’re building up these different experiences and getting expertise in different areas.

And so at some point, you end up getting this crazy big job. But they want you because not because of your degrees, but because you’ve experienced and knowledge in so many different areas to help them face the challenges and solve solution or problems that have solutions to what they need. And you’re seeing this change in industry now and not just sports, but in corporate too.

It’s kind of cool. Yeah,

[00:46:56] Sam: it’s funny. I’ve talked about this story before, and I just think it’s such a good assignment, but we did it at UCLA at our internship program, and it was, we had to write like our, our life philosophy, our training philosophy and our coaching philosophy. And I mean, it’s when you go read, read it back.

It’s like embarrassing what you thought your training and coaching philosophies were. But like, my life philosophy has always been to like push the edges of human performance. Like, if someone asked me, like, what I want to do, like, that’s what I want to do. I had no idea sports science was gonna fall into that.

I had no idea, you know, I was gonna end up being the nutritionist for the football team. It just, those roles kind of fell into… What my goal has always been so, you know, I can’t say that this I’m gonna be a sports scientist in 10 years from now I don’t know what that path is gonna look like or what that title is gonna look like But I know what I want like my daily efforts to be towards So I think that’s like coach Lynn.

He was the best internship coordinator and I think that was the best assignment UCLA Yeah,

[00:47:52] Donnie: I’ve heard such good things about coach. Yeah, I’ve never met in person. Yeah, that’s good stuff So

[00:47:58] Joe: yeah, I kind of wanted to expand a little bit on this too, because you mentioned, you know, a few projects you want to work on.

You’re getting your PhD. I mean, as one person can only be somewhere, you know, only so much. And I mean, it’s not like you can get an army of 20 interns. It’s pretty hard to do. But in Europe and Australia, they’re building out these massive sports science staffs and I think rugby is a great example. I mean, you look at, I’ve seen like a, a photo of like their staff.

It’s like, I mean, it’s bigger than some of our coaching staffs here. I mean, do you, do you see that model eventually kind of coming over as technology grows and then there’s, there’s things you as the head sports scientist wants to work on, you’re like, I need like a tech engineer cause I’m. I’m not, I’m not an engineer.

Like, that’s just not what I do. I need a data person because I need more time to oversee this and communicate with people and communicate with the coaches and all that. Like, what do you think about that?

[00:48:51] Sam: Yeah, I think, um, if you think about where nutrition was like five years ago, where you had maybe a dietitian for every team, now every team has, You know, a dietitian, they have two fellows that like Gatorade pays for.

Um, and so the staffs are just so much bigger now because we see the need for it and everyone has it. I think sports science is like five years behind that. We’re like right now, five years ago, teams, a handful of teams had sports scientists. Texas was probably one of the only departments. And now how many, how many teams have sports scientists?

We have six. Like it’s wild. And so I do think that, you know, if I had it. Like, my way perfectly, I’d have one assistant that’s an applied sports scientist who, you know, can coach on the floor, can run tests for me, I’d have another assistant who’s, you know, data science, and I think that’s going to start to split in this field too, where you’re going to see people who are more into the applied side, who might go into the, you know, the applied sports science route, you might see the data scientists who are going to go computer science slash PhD routes, and you’re going to have people who come out specialized in both.

Because, like, I had to be a generalist, and, like, where you’re trying to talk to the coach, you’re trying to plug in the catapult unit, like, you’re doing all of it because you have no help. And now, like, I have interns, we have a whole department here where, like, I ask, I don’t know if you guys know Alex, like, I go ask Alex in the Applied Sports Heads department if I need anything, like, super nerdy, he’s a wizard at coding.

Um, and I can’t do that. That’s I don’t have the time to be as good. Yeah. So I think departments are going to grow just like nutrition departments grew just like sports science or excuse me. Strength and conditioning departments grew. We’re like, you’re gonna have, you’re gonna have to have a fit of each from tech from applied sports science.

That would be, that would be amazing.

[00:50:37] Donnie: There’s a phenomenal chapter, Joe, to your question in the book, the checklist manifesto by tool. And the chapter is so fascinating, but to your point, Sam, it’s called, uh, The Day of the Master Builder is Dead. And I completely agree. You’re getting, you know, so use that metaphor, right?

You go back to building out homes. You used to have one contractor, he did, he, you know, he A framed it, he put up the drywall, electrician, he did everything, right? Poured the concrete, you know, painted, but now everything’s becoming so complex, right? Uh, things used to be complicated, but now it’s so complex, meaning they’re so specific in those different areas that you’ve got to have this like, almost like a team of people that come in, they’re the best at what they do, but again, you’re going to see there’s going to be…

Let’s shift, and we’re already seeing it, away from this top down leadership model to more of a team of teams approach where we’re all these, like, high powered, you know, soldiers that are, that are great at what we do, but we don’t have ego. We just want to win, right? We want to be the best we can be, and we don’t, we’re not, we’re not worried about who gets the spotlight, who gets the credit.

We just want to be the best at what we do, and so I do, I think that that’s, that’s intriguing you bring that up, that we are definitely headed in that direction, to your point, too, Joe. Yeah,

[00:51:57] Joe: and another question I have, um, You know, we kind of already talked about the communication piece and the buy in and, you know, I think buying is great and being consistent.

I love how you use competition to stay consistent with that. Um, I think my overall question, though, is have you ever had to have a hard, really hard conversation with an athlete that, I don’t know, just maybe was upset with the data, upset with something and you have to, you know, they just kind of have to face reality.

I mean, what’s probably the hardest conversation you’ve had with either a coach or an athlete?

[00:52:27] Sam: That’s a good question. You know, I think. I’ll say this, I think having a female on football staffs sometimes, like, and not even necessarily being a female, but like, I have obviously a slightly different personality or a slightly different, like, you know, I didn’t play football, there was no ego with me in football because I didn’t play football, so like, a football player is never gonna um, You know, see me in that light, right?

So I’ve always been able to connect pretty well with the guys in a different way. So a lot of times when the guys are emotional, they’ll come to me for stuff like that. So I can’t say I’ve had like a hard conversation where I’ve had to like explain the data. I will say I have gotten into some fights.

With guys on like I need you to wear your vest and they’re like I’m not gonna wear my vest and I’m like no No, like we’re not gonna play this game Like you’re gonna put your catapult vest on and this is why and I am like not Opposed to like explain them exactly why like listen if you don’t have your catapult data on if you don’t have your catapult on and You, you know, you don’t wear it today, and you have a few really hard camp practices.

I don’t know. And maybe you need to be pulled out next week, but I’ll never know because you didn’t wear your data. So not only are you like potentially screwing yourself over on your own averages, you could be screwing the team over because maybe everybody’s average is really high. Maybe we have to have some type of intervention and we don’t have it because you don’t have your catapult vest on.

So I have no problem like diving into that if I need to. And I think that’s the strength coach in me, that I have no problem sitting a guy down, I’m not there to be their friend, you know, when it comes to stuff like that, like, there’s a reason I have you put this on, and it’s important for you, it’s important for your health, and like, I need you to do this.

So, I’ve definitely had those, um, and I think, Those actually build up buy in for when they do come to you. And they’re like, Hey, when they want to talk about their data, they’re in a great mood, whether it’s good or bad. They’re looking at numbers. They’re happy then. Um, and I will say, like, I think anytime you you meet a new coaching staff, there’s definitely always going to be hard conversations, right?

Like They’re gonna test you anytime you come in anywhere and you meet football coaches and there’s like, they’re like, who’s this 5’1 girl walking around our weight room? Like, what do you mean she’s telling me about what we did at practice today? Like there’s always a test period where they’re like gonna ask me some more in depth questions and make sure like I know You know my shit.

That’ll be my one curse for the day. That’s all

[00:54:51] Donnie: right. I mean to your point um Definitely. But again, what I love about what you’re saying. It’s so refreshing. You don’t, you didn’t play football, but you have a perspective that’s fresh and that these guys don’t understand. But here’s the thing, Joe, she ain’t back and down, you know, and it tells me that you love your job and you care about the people you’re taking care of.

And at the end of the day, you may not like what you’re saying, but it’s hard to deny that, you know, as a young, as a young athlete today. So it’s good stuff.

[00:55:22] Joe: I like that angle too. No one wants to be the guy that screws the team. Yeah. Yeah. Put it back on them.

[00:55:28] Donnie: You got to, right?

[00:55:29] Joe: Put it in that perspective and they’re like, Ooh, if I’m that guy next week, that could

[00:55:33] Sam: be really bad.

Yeah. It’s like, you can not test, but then when you’re in pain in two weeks and you’re like, Sam, can you help me? I’m like, nah. Well, the best

[00:55:39] Donnie: teams, um, yeah, you guys know this, right? The best teams have a culture of accountability, right? You’re just going to let it slide, right? You either are creating it or you’re allowing it, right?

And so, It’s that simple when you look at culture and I mean, I’ve been a part of cultures where there’s a high level accountability to your point, Sam, and it’s great. It’s not always fun. It’s always, you know, bubble gum and cotton candy and fun conversations. But if you want to be a great team culture and you want to win, there’s got to be accountability and to your point, uh, this is just the new landscape when you’ve got to look at stress on these athletes.

If not, we could, we could mess up the team. So, um, it’s good stuff. Uh, kind of getting close to the end here. So bring us in, give some handles here at the end. Coach Sam, not everybody here has great resources, and we’re kind of circling back to your first part of your story today. They don’t have budgets, they don’t have maybe the, all the technology, the access to that or the staffing.

Right. To your point, what would you recommend to those out there who don’t have that, the, the resources time, the budget, the money and support to start a sports time. So where would they start to ball on a budget? Yeah. Where would we

[00:56:51] Sam: go? I love this question. Um, go buy a body weight scale. I don’t care if you use Excel or whatever you use to, you know, put your data in, go buy a scale, go buy some lasers, and go buy some old school tendos.

And I think that’s really all you need. Like, if you can effectively track body weight, you can effectively track sprint times, you can effectively track bar velocity, you’re hittin auto regulation, you’re hittin body weight hydration changes, long term body count changes, and you’re hittin you know, all of the fancy speed testing we wanna do in, in three easy steps.

Um, so I think the, you know, you invest in A good person to handle all that stuff and then as you find me, then they

[00:57:31] Donnie: could do it themselves or they can do it themselves. And how often would you body

[00:57:34] Sam: weight? I mean, it again totally depends on your goals, right? So sometimes we do three days a week. We’re getting in a camp.

We’re going to do twice a day and we’re going to get, I mean, think about all the things you’re getting from twice a day in camp. You’re going to get, you know, changes from pre practice to post practice. Then if you test the next morning, you’re going to get the changes from. Post practice to pre practice.

Are you putting back the weight that you lost and you’re getting another checkpoint in so you can like There’s so much free data in body weight Like there’s so much free sport science and that’s probably the one thing that we like man back in the day We delete columns to get the Excel PDF to work.

Can you believe that? It’s like I’ll just delete that column so I can fit my next row on this on this PDF

[00:58:17] Donnie: I still, I think, to simplify that, I love that answer. It goes right back to what she said earlier, Joe, about what problem are you trying to solve, right? You’ve got to know that. I remember during COVID, we did all these Zooms and I ended up getting on a call with Hitoshi.

I think I’m saying his name right. He’s the strength coach for the USTA, the Tennis Association Orlando. Here’s how you work, he said. You’ve got to figure out what your measuring stick is. Everybody’s measuring sticks different. Like once you figure that out and it takes a while to kind of figure that out, then you can start to put your collection and process in place and start to make adjustments and changes that actually enhance performance.

So again, what’s your problem, then figure out your measuring stick and then start tracking from there. So coach, I think we’re about to end here. Uh, anything else you got for Sam?

[00:59:05] Joe: No, this was great. Um, really quick too. Um, if our listeners wanted to follow you, where could they find

[00:59:11] Sam: you? Awesome. Um, if you want to watch me drop barbells on my head, you can go to my Instagram.

Seriously? You that’s usually just bad lifting videos and then the occasional, I guess, pot stirring quote. So, uh, that’s Sam Contorno. Uh, and then I think my Twitter is like Sam underscore Contorno. So, really exciting stuff going on on those two platforms.

[00:59:33] Donnie: Fun last question though, Jill. We got to do this.

So, uh, we’ll put those in the show notes, by the way. Okay, great. Um, she’s officially an arsenite. Where you got your what’s your favorite food spot? You got a spot again? You’re not getting paid

[00:59:45] Sam: for this. Yeah. Yeah. What you got for us? Uh, pokey pokey.

[00:59:49] Donnie: That’s not bad. Coach you been there? It’s not bad.

[00:59:51] Joe: I have,

[00:59:52] Sam: I order it like probably like once a week like it’s disgusting how much money I’ve spent on on that place.

What’s your favorite go to there? Uh, I like I get three of them because it’s super excessive I get this but it’s like Big Jim’s like the spicy one That has like the jalapenos. I get one of the ones with salmon And then the wasabi. Those three. I eat, like, you shouldn’t eat that much raw fish at once, I don’t think.

Say it again, poke poke? Poke poke, yeah. Alright. There’s like two locations, I think. Joe, you

[01:00:15] Donnie: been? I been. It’s solid? It’s solid.

[01:00:19] Sam: It’s like super basic. It’s like, they literally give you just like a tub of fish.

[01:00:23] Joe: I’ve been spoiled by my past. I used to get pokey in Hawaii. Oh, yeah. You just ruined my answer.

Yeah, I’m being a little, That’s cheating. I’m being a little, uh, snobby right now. No, it’s, it’s, it’s good. It’s good. My wife and I used to go there a bunch. Well,

[01:00:36] Donnie: good stuff. All

[01:00:36] Sam: the food in Austin is amazing. That’s my

[01:00:38] Donnie: real answer. I put on a little weight over the summer, so I need to get myself back in shape.

That’s

[01:00:44] Sam: what the

[01:00:45] Donnie: fall camp for us. Right. That’s right. Um, well, Coach Sam, thank you so much, Joe. Thank you been real. Uh, I can totally see, uh, you know, I’d Seeing you on social media and finally get to meet you in person and do this interview. You were awesome. You got it. Definitely got an edge to you. I appreciate that.

The thing I love about you, Coach Sam, there’s just this piece of you that you stay curious. And I think we’ve lost some of that in the profession today. And I think you keep that. And I know I was definitely inspired today to keep growing and learning. So thank you for what you’re doing in Texas. Thank you for what you’re doing in our profession and making all of us better.

So that’s all I got. Joe, anything else? Good

[01:01:25] Joe: luck this season. Beat Bama. Get us to the playoffs. Right.

[01:01:31] Donnie: Beat OU. One game at a time, coach. Run the table. Anyway, that’s it from the team behind the team here in Austin, Texas. You guys have a great fall and we’ll see you on the flip side. Hook em. Hook em. Hook em.

Thanks so much for tuning in and listening to this episode of the Team Behind the Team podcast. For future episodes, go to iTunes, Spotify, Google podcast. We definitely want to keep having great guests on the show and great content. So if you have a moment, please go to iTunes, leave a rating and review, and let us know how we’re doing.

I’m Donnie Maib and thanks so much for tuning in.