E10 | Kurt Hester: Coaches or Clowns: Motivational Theatrics, Ethics & Standing Up for Your Values - Art Of Coaching™

Posted January 16, 2019

TRANSCRIPT

Brett Bartholomew

What’s going on everybody? Welcome back to another episode of The Art of coaching Podcast. I’m excited about today’s episode. And I probably need to quit saying that because I’m excited about most of the episodes otherwise I wouldn’t have these people on. But good friend of mine and somebody that pulls no punches, which I think is becoming a rare commodity in the field of strength and conditioning not from the standpoint that we don’t have people that will tell like it is but this guy in particular is action oriented and actually wants to do something about it. So I’d like to welcome my good friend Kurt Hester on the show, Kurt What’s up, man?

Kurt Hester

I’m just done getting ready for the last game and trying to get ready for hunting season. I’m tired of all this strength and training stuff

Brett Bartholomew

Yeah. How’d you get into hunting? Walk me through that a little bit before we dive in?

Kurt Hester

Yeah, born and raised in South Louisiana. It’s all I’ve ever done my whole life. So when I was five years old. Yeah, deer hunt duck and rabbit Hunter have always had hunting dogs always. Yeah, that’s just what you did. You play sports you hunt It’s all you did.

Brett Bartholomew

Like do you have a lot of athletes down there that you work with then hunt as well?

Kurt Hester

Yeah, I mean even when I was you know doing with like what you did end up in the professional field a lot of the guys that would come down to the to South Louisiana get ready for the draft. A lot of them would you know they were hunters you know, they you know the guys from like Nebraska guys from Minnesota from Illinois, Indiana. You know, guys from Alabama, Texas. So, you know, I always set up Huntress where you could go Duck Hunt, or go deer hunting, you know, get ready for the draft.

Brett Bartholomew

From a coaching and leadership standpoint, it’s always nice to have kind of a natural organic way to start kind of connecting with them to on that right. Like that’s an easy conversation starter. Just getting to know a kid.

Kurt Hester

Oh, super easy. Do you guys who have never been exposed to it before? Who are like, you know, from the inner city of Detroit or Chicago, they’re going hey, I’ll go I’ve never been before. But you know, it’s not like having a six a 320 pound lineman and a duck line with really, you know, fits two small guys. Yeah, he’s on top of you. So that’s a whole different experience.

Brett Bartholomew

No doubt, man. Well, why don’t you give everybody a brief overview of kind of who you are what you do, just because we have people from a variety of fields that listen to this, kind of give them the gist of what’s going on.

Kurt Hester

Let me just go quickly grew up training, I started training when I was 12 years old, I bought my first weightlifting set at 12 grew up in South Louisiana, where my brothers were welders and shipyards and build equipment from 12 years old on had a whole backyard full of equipment. You know, at 13 14 15 years old, I buy six hundred pounds worth of weights, didn’t know what I was doing it’s mid 70s I never really Muscle and Fitness magazine wasn’t really mainstream at that time. So it was just me looking at the original workout that came with it with a set. Then from there, you know, playing football in college, I didn’t want to be a football coach, I was not interested in Exynos. But I was more interested in how you got to develop the mind to play the game. I probably would have been really good crossfitter because I love pain does pain doesn’t bother me, but my IQ is quite low, too high to be a crossfitter. You know, it’s, you know, from there, went to Tulane and graduated in physiology had with the best physiology departments in the country at the time, worked with Tom Shaw, you know, who was down with the Raiders now, when I was at Tulane and then he went on to saints and then went on to LSU. And, you know, just a career. I started early enough to where if you just had half a brain and a lot of work ethic, you can move up really fast where it’s now it’s really hard to move on to this field, but I had it relatively easy.

Brett Bartholomew

Yeah, well, and you have it you have a unique circumstance because you’ve been on the team side private side all those kinds of things. What were some early kind of just management lessons that you learned from having to navigate both of those or even more so like personality traits that you learned that may have been good and one side of those things, what kind of held you back and others you know, what were some things that you learned about yourself during the process and navigating all ends of that,

Kurt Hester

you know, in the outside of, you know, college athletics or professional athletics, you’re out there, you eat what you kill, you know, you have to be motivated, to go out and drive success a lot of things I did and you know, I trained over 500 athletes a day, I had one at the at the time was probably me. And maybe Mike Boyle was the only two, you know, in the in the early 90s, training facilities. And so again, I had it really easy I had no competition. The only my worst enemy was myself, you know, me screwing things up. But having your name on that on the business, that you you have to go to work every day, you can’t get sick you do. You don’t take days off. I went to probably one of the things that I did well was, even when I trained 12 and 13 year olds, I went to their games, I went to rec games, I was at junior high games, I was at high school games, I would hit four high school games that night, because I’ve trained so many kids from so many different high schools, I actually had 2 5 8 teams that they ended up every year, they played the last game of the season against each other, and they were always under defeated playing each other. So at half, I was at one sidelines, the other half was on the other side last, like train the entire team so that you know, just being, you know, kind of enveloped in their lives. I think that’s what I did really well. And that’s what drove the success of my facility. And the fact that I treated them almost, you know, I had the same mentality as a college trained coach. I didn’t let them get away with anything. I had standards, you lived up to the standards, parents looked at me as almost their second dad. And if they had a problem with their kid, they would come sit in my office with their kid and they were like, okay, Kurt, here’s our problem. And I was a therapist, too. So, you know, I kind of just put myself in, their family with them. And I think that’s probably why in my thesis programming, and you know, I’m the best programmer, I have all the knowledge in the world. I’m the guru of, I had almost a CrossFit type culture before there was a CrossFit as far as their allegiance to what we did in that program.

Brett Bartholomew

Yeah, and I think that balancing on both ends of the spectrum kind of brings a new definition to, you know, the sense of professionalism, you have to balance because there’s so many aspects, right, like, you can’t just be a coach, like you have to be an educator even have to understand marketing to a degree. And I think a lot of people get the essence of marketing wrong. I know I did. I used to think that I used to have a bad taste anytime the word marketing or sales came to mind because I thought, like, Oh, you’re tricking somebody, and then you realize no, like, really, anytime you’re trying to communicate an idea and make that spread. You know, that’s some form of marketing, right? Like, we just tend to and strengthen conditioning. Think of it as a bad idea, because we’re so used to slimy scammy kind of people out there. Like you said, Oh, I got the best programmer five weeks to a faster 40 It’s like Nah, man, like, that’s not really the essence of it, like just trying to educate a kid and do these things. And that’s one of the reasons I brought you on is you are one of the most passionate people I know about the evolution of our field and especially when it comes to the professionalism standpoint, how we’re depicted how we conduct ourselves how we evaluate ourselves, and I’m gonna let you go here like you know, get everything you want off your chest but what bothers you about the way we’ve conducted ourselves previously or currently as performance professionals

Kurt Hester

Well, first I want to say that I have done everything wrong in this field that any human can do wrong I’m no angel. I’ve done it all the guys now that come out, you know, sleeveless this you know, jumping on the fields take our shirts off,

Brett Bartholomew

you’ve done it.

Kurt Hester

I’ve done worse I’ve done but you know what, I was lucky again, there was there was no social media at the time. So there was no you didn’t take pictures you didn’t post anything.

Brett Bartholomew

I got some pictures people sent me some stuff on the low of you.

Kurt Hester

I’ll tell you that shouldn’t be wrapped pictures and I’m like don’t ever put those out but I’ve done going out and doing you know let’s you know all the rah rah stuff but you the field especially at the collegiate level, you have to have fire you have to have energy you have They’re young, guys with a ton of testosterone and you have to keep them motivated you know and that’s what I love about the field but at the same time, you know, you have to everything has to be well thought out you know, I think when guys like I brought in an eight foot three on pound alligator on squat day I went out and swapped caught it live taped his mouth out, drag him into the weight room. You know

Brett Bartholomew

what, go through this again, slow. Rewind that one. I didn’t hear that. I need to know I think our listeners need to hear a little bit more about and again, like I’ll preface this for you. This is a guy that like he’s not running from it he’s saying he’s done dumb stuff because we all have and I think like I want to commend you for it because that’s what makes like that’s the goal of the podcast right? So be like, Hey, we ain’t perfect, but we’re gonna try to do some so tell us about this.

Kurt Hester

We’re like I said there’s no one has done more. Because I’m really aggressive and, I’m very active at the same time. You know, and I’ve done Unlike some people think that all these younger coaches thinking like they’re novel that like they’re just coming up they’re thinking oh man, we’ve run out of this cup of sleeves off you know I’ll take my shirt off and sure I mean because it’s cold look that’s all been done before it’s just never been seen because we didn’t have social media at the top you know it kind of started out where you know I would do things to get guys fired up like once I had really long hair beard I’m somewhat like you know Clay Matthews hair and like really long hair. I dressed up one time because the Ultimate Warrior came in picked up players body slamming them to get them fired up, you know for a squat workout or a max effort clean workout. And then you know, then my coaches would kind of egged me on each year kind of got a little more aggressive. I took an oak tree and tottered a fist post through it it was 150 pound log made it into a sledgehammer like the original Conan the Barbarian and came in painted like Conan breaking benches a box I threw it through the wall. I threw it through the wall of the facility. Yeah. You know, then coming in with a salt shotguns that the SWAT team gave me with with blanks, you know, as a hood rat shooting up the weight room. You know, then it was like, you know, they got to a point like, look, we’re just going to train. These guys got to learn to get fired up on their own. it’s got to be intrinsic, it can’t be just be all

Brett Bartholomew

doing that stuff isn’t gonna help them long term

Kurt Hester

So I’m up coach Black. So the only thing I had done was like wrestle a bear. So I’m, not IPS. Ya know, like, you know, you grew up in the swamp, you know, you want to catch an alligator. So I went set some lions caught an eight foot alligator. I just pulled him up, taped his mouth up through my boat, brought him back to the weight room. And you know, painted it all camo shirt off bandana knife on my shoulder, threw him in the weight room live, he’s walking around, but that was mouth taped out, they didn’t know. And I just put a knife through his head stuck him into the platform and we squat. You know. So, I mean, I’ve done all the crazy stuff that you can do in, this era, this point in time, in our field, where everybody’s looking eyes are on us, you know, because of what’s happened at that kid stay what’s happened at Maryland because of, you know, the things that are going on. And you know, sports scientists look at us like, we’re a bunch of idiots. We’re just watching me have a thought, you know, the training staffs look at us like we’re a bunch of idiots,

Brett Bartholomew

which listen, you just did say that you stuck a knife through and alligators head, which breaks about 20 Different ethics codes. Maybe there’s a reason they’ve thought this stuff for a while.

Kurt Hester

But you know, but at the same time, I never did nothing was ever posted. I mean, actually told that the athletes, this is like Vegas, it stays in this room. And for two years, no one ever spoke about for two years, it stayed. locked down, you know. So, you know, I’ve done all the dumb things that it can hurt this feel. And so I’m not looking at it sitting I’m not looking down on others say, Well, you’re wrong. You know, I’ve done it all I know, I was wrong. I know, I did think I was, you know, totally out of control. You know, and, the way things are now where everybody I mean, we get we get no respect, we don’t get a whole lot of spectrum coaches, especially outside of football with no respect with Track and Field coaches, you know, especially, you know, and it’s because of what we’re putting out there. And we have some great coaches, but we also have a lot of idiots, you know, and, because we were such a tight close field where everybody knows everybody, nobody wants to say anything, no one’s gonna say do you’re wrong, you don’t need to, you know, you’re wrong. And in doing this, no one wants to say that, you know, a coach is not very good. Yeah, you’re not very good. You know, and this feels never because of our arrogance. I think we’re very, you know, I think especially at the college level, everybody thinks that their brand like this, Black tech, is my brand, you know, it’s a branded entity. That’s who I am. No, it’s not who I am. And they have this over it, especially the power five level There is misleading to what they think that they are actually because No, if you coach on a Power Five team, that doesn’t make you a better coach, you’re just there at a Power Five level doesn’t make you better than an FCS coach. And just that fact that arrogance of you know, because I’m hearing we’re winning, that makes me better than everybody else.

Brett Bartholomew

Yeah. Well, because they’ll latch on to whatever they can to say, Hey, I’ve got value, right? Like, there’s a couple of things coaches do and stop me if you think I’m incorrect in this and we’ve all been guilty. So, but the whole it’s interesting, you know, the self image drives so much of behavior. People like to talk about Daniel Kahneman biases and all these things, but so much of it is self image and it’s kind of like the same way coaches run around me Like it’s not about the money. It’s not about the. Well, it’s like, I don’t think anybody’s confused thinking that we get paid like doctors, lawyers or surgeons, right? Like nobody. I don’t think anybody says somebody come into strength coach, and there’s genuine confusion thinking, we’re doing that for the money, even saying that is a form of us marketing, like, No, we’re what I’m what we’re really saying, there’s like, I’m more committed than somebody else, or I’m in it for the right reasons. But it’s so weird, because even though that is drastically different than say, bringing in an alligator and stabbing it in the head, which I’m probably you know, I’m sure I’m gonna get a lot of animal rights stuff. So I did not do this, do this. And Curtis thing is a mistake. But like, it’s the same kind of idiocy to a degree, right? Like, we are putting ourselves in a position where we’re telling people like, I’ll work as long as you want me to work, I’ll do whatever it takes, I’ll sacrifice my values. I’ll be your pawn. And by the way, you don’t have to pay me. And then we’re sitting there wondering why we’re in bad position, sometimes at the negotiation table, am I right?

Kurt Hester

Yeah and that allegiance, to sport coaches, you know, and it’s, you know, that, you know, that they are going to put any athlete in jeopardy, and not open their mouths and say, Hey, no, this is not right, this is wrong. You know, and I’ve had as a young coach, yeah, you’re impressionable, and you have these guys that you’ve, looked up to, as for coaches that you’ve known and seen in the media

Brett Bartholomew

telling you to do this stuff,

Kurt Hester

now you do this stuff. And, you know, and you’re worried about paying bills. And, you know, I got to a point, that’s kind of why I went into private practice was because I got tired of coaches trying to tell me how to program athletes and what I should do and how I should do it. And they didn’t have a clue of sports sciences at all, you know, and, that’s kind of why I moved, left LSU and went into, into private practice, I’ve stayed in it for so long. And then going through private practice of building, you know, my own facility, and then building D one into a corporation and not being with the athletes and not developing humans, which is, that’s what I’m very good at. And that’s why I came back. And but when I came back, I came back with certain stipulations with the head football coach was that I was going to do it my way, you know that I would explain why I was going to do it my way. If you didn’t agree with it, I was still going to do it my way. And he’s, I’m good with that. Because I don’t expect you to call plays, I will tell you how to build our culture and train our athletes. So I can only be with certain coaches, because I’m not going to bow down. I’ve fought against our APs with the other sport coaches where he’s come in and said, our sport coaches aren’t happy with you. So you’re not doing your job. Well, like, our athletes are safe and healthy. I am doing my job. They want me to do some dumb things and put the athlete in jeopardy, I refuse to do it. You can fire us about it, or you can find me one or the other. So I’m good with either one. I said, and he was like, oh, you know, well, I’ll fight so why don’t care fire me. And he didn’t you know, but I think we won’t stand up for what’s right. We stay muted as a field. But then we had that arrogance that because I’m at this school, I’m a bad motherfucker. You know that I’m the baddest dude on the planet. All have all this bravado. But no one wants to stand up to sport coaches or athletic directors.

Brett Bartholomew

I think that’s gold, like kisor is an arrogance about our field, right? Like we always add, we throw around the word humility, like it’s, you know, just the new whatever. But like we do get arrogant, like there’s like, I remember even when I was a graduate assistant, if a program was going super well, I remember one time we were running the derivation of 531. And we had the baseball team in the weight room at Southern Illinois. And these guys just had a chip on their shoulder, their coach died of cancer. They didn’t get a new football stadium like the football, team did the basketball stadium or basketball team got a new arena. And baseball was just kind of felt, you know, squatted on. And I remember like, they were just lifting hard, different kinds of motivation. They didn’t get a new deal with Under Armour, like the other people did, too. And anyway, we’re smashing this program. And I remember there’s this like godlike feeling that came over me and comes over all of us. I don’t care what anybody says, When your athletes are crushing it. And the music’s loud and they’re lifting weights and everything’s going well, you just feel like an orchestrator or a conductor, you know, sitting there in front of, you know, orchestrations, what we do, but a conductor, like just in there’s a symphony, right, and it’s hard not to feel good about it. But you know, the thing sometimes we let that feeling doesn’t really dissipate. And so we’ll sit there and we’ll say we’re humble. And I’m not saying that like not having a great session and celebrating that isn’t being humble but sometimes we just kind of get or we talked about all the hype man and all that hype issues in the field, but sometimes we fall victim to that, but then we want to step up for the big thing since like, Come on, man, like you’re gonna own the weight room. You’re gonna walk around talking about me Mr. Mrs. countability, leadership, whatever, and you won’t sit there and negotiate at the table, you know, Bob Laiho talks about he’s like, and it would be a good to get him on here and debate a little bit debate in a healthy way. But like saying, like, he’s like, we need somebody at the Big Boy table. And I’d say, Bob, and we’re friends, Bobby, Bob, if we sat at the Big Boy table, we don’t even know how to pull up a chair yet, you know, and to your point, like this fallacy of motivation, and you nailed it, like, we’re so subservient to sport coaches. And, you know, that’s not the reason I left the team setting at the time that I did. And I’d go back, same thing, if it was the right situation, I’ve talked about that. But like, one of the reasons I’m doing my own thing is because I’ve been in situations where I’ve been asked to compromise my ethics, you know, but in the team setting, you know, there’s this fundamental lack of understanding Well, in general of what is motivation, I think this applies to business and, everything as well. But, you know, motivation is the Reason or Reason somebody has for behaving in a particular way. But the sport coaches that probably asked you to do this stuff, they don’t get the difference between there’s intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, right? Like, extrinsic is like, what they had you do, it’s motivation driven by external stimuli, alligators, theatrics, you know, these people running around without shirts and stuff on money food, or, you know, it can even be negative stuff like punishments. And then there’s intrinsic, right, that’s the athletes internal desire to do well, or the coach’s internal desire, that satisfaction for accomplishing goals. And, that lack of it makes them just feel like no, no, this is what we got to do. This is how you’re going to do it, you’re under our thumb, and you don’t want to do it will fire you like what can coaches do to safeguard against that? What would you say? If you were back in that situation? And you knew what you knew now? Like, how would you safeguard against that?

Kurt Hester

Well, I mean, I’ve had coaches come to me in the last couple of years, where after we played, and we’ve won, and they’ll come out, you know, we’re talking for the game. This is after the locker room speeches on staff where that company has to, you know, what, my head coaches blame our loss, let me and I was like, well, you talked about, he said, we didn’t have enough juice on the sidelines. And that’s why we lost. And that’s, you know, this is FBS level college football. And it’s like, that’s, you know, that because, you know, in which sport coaches, they’re typically there, if something happens there, they want to point the finger and one of the games why it’s gotta be, it can’t be my play calling. They can’t be it’s got to be, you know, the sidelines weren’t juice enough? Yeah. No, if I’ve been here six years, and we were god awful when we got here, we’ve, built this program up, and our culture is it’s all stems back to culture. And at first it was we had to do a lot of intrinsic stuff, you know, extras and stuff to get guys motivated, we were down were four and eight, we were held, we almost made it a bowl game would have been the worst Bowl team in the history of bowl games, if we’d have made it, we’re that terrible. And, you know, a lot of the motivation came from being bad, you know, being a poor team, you know, for them for the next team. But we just built this culture of, here’s our standard. And everything we do, we want to do to this standard, and it doesn’t have to be rah, rah just just needs to get done. We just need to go to work, this blue collar ethic. And even today, we’re six years later. The guys, they don’t look to get fired up. It’s like, you know, they know what they need to do themselves to be ready for the game. And on the sidelines, my staff, we’re not doing jumping jacks, we’re not jumping up and down waving towels. We’re into the game where we’re talking to players as they come off the field, because our coaches have headsets on they’re talking about the next play the next series what they need to do adjustments. So we talk about the play on the field, about either forgetting, a bad play, or just beginning of good play and get getting ready for the next play. And we’re in tune of helping our trainers with any athletes or they’re going to come off the field with some kind of Nic or injury. Well, we’re helping out with them. So we’re not, we’re in tune to the game, but not on a level of where we our job is to sit here and be a runner up to be a cheerleader. I’m not paid to be a cheerleader, I’m paid to be a professional coach, and I keep our athletes in the game. We do a lot of martial arts in our program for a lot of hand fighting skills. I have a martial arts background. So even with our offensive and defensive line, when they come off, they’re like, Okay, this is not working. What do I need to go to what can I do to use against this player? He’s doing this, how do I counter this. And so we’re more into the game of helping the athletes perform on the field, then to be a rah, rah cheerleader, you know, and what we do is we take all the walk ons, all the non travel guys who don’t dress out, we put them on a bench behind us and give them towels. Y’all can jump up and down and yell and holler, do whatever you want. We don’t care just don’t leave this fish and stay out of the way. So they’re the rah rah guys, we just say, you know, we just do our job.

Brett Bartholomew

And that’s interesting in and of itself, and I gotta give a shout out to Greg Adamson, a friend of mine coach at university In Tennessee who talks about this, he’s like, he hit me up one time because people on Twitter were going nuts about the rah rah guys and for anybody listening who doesn’t know what we’re talking about, because again, it’s not just coaches that listen to this. What you’ll see in what Coach Hester is talking about is a lot on the sideline theatrics. And a lot of it is perpetuated by the Sport Coach where strength coaches, embarrassingly enough, are often told to kind of just get guys hyped up. They’re also the people that you can typically see holding back the code or the shirt of the head, football coach, or Sport Coach, when they’re coming onto the field. I use football as an example here, just because it’s, typically is one of the most televised. But, you know, Greg, reached out to me because everybody on Twitter was going nuts saying, like, why are these guys doing this is so ridiculous, like, we look like a joke. And Greg had said, you know, what, like, do you think the athletic directors and people like that care? Like, do you think that you think it’s just us getting mad about it? Because it’s embarrassing? Or do you think that like, the athletic directors are actually like, yeah, if the whatever it takes to get the kids hyped, or whatever, and it goes, you know, that’s an interesting point. You know, either way, I don’t think coaches should be put in that situation. You know,

Kurt Hester

I think athletic directors all think that I think

Brett Bartholomew

they think about that

Kurt Hester

to think about an hour to work. When you look at other sports scientists, or track and field coaches, I mean, you know, I’ve worked with Dan path gone over when he was at Florida, he was LSU, prior to me being at LSU, and developed a really good relationship with Dan. And when he was, at Florida, I went work with him for a week. And he’s like Kurt, I just don’t get it, you know, all the yellow, you know, whether it’s in training, whether it’s on the field, because you know, track is just it’s so technical, and it’s, you know, dole out information, receiver information, and move on. It’s very technical, it’s very cerebral. And football is so chaotic, and, you know, so warlike, in nature, so, it’s a whole different thing. So you do have to, have that energy and fire. But at the same time, you know, is it really helping winning the game? Really? Does it really affect the game? I really don’t know, us putting our guys behind us. You know, they jump out our players don’t, you know, they’re worried about the next play, they’re in tune what’s going on on the field, they don’t really even see it. You know, I think the only people that see it, or the cameras when they when they zoom in, you know, on game day, I think, fans, I think but you know, for the most part, if you’re dialed into the game itself, all that’s you know, your narrow, you have a narrow scope of focus, you’ve seen none of that.

Brett Bartholomew

Yeah. It all goes into kind of like the idea that and you and I, we’ve talked about this before that coaching is, without a doubt, a technical process, but also social one, where this is where it kind of this concept in terms of micro political literacy comes in knowing that you’re in these situations where you’re vulnerable and susceptible to different kinds of social pressures, constraints, you know, when I say micropolitics, it’s because we have all these people in charge of our job in charge of our, you know, longevity, essentially, that kind of want to put us in these situations. And it requires kind of this complex multivariate problem solving of like, how do we stand up against it? You know, for you, it might have been, like you said, Hey, this is this kind of how I do things, we need to have an agreement right now, you know, what about for coaches that maybe just took a job there one to two years in, they don’t really have kind of The Voice in the background that you do. And they’re being asked to do things that they think are unethical, or maybe even just like, questionable? What advice would you give them even broaching that concept in a way that you know, like, obviously, these people that are in charge of it, they’re gonna have egos too, right? And they don’t want to feel like they’re contesting them. But these people also don’t want to go to work feeling like they’re going to be the next person getting laughed at or or, you know, chided or more importantly, screw social media just being labeled in general as one of these people like, what how can they broach that? How can they make sure they they navigate that situation? Do you have any advice there?

Kurt Hester

I mean, you have, I think for any situation, you have to have an action plan. So you’re gonna go in front of a coach and confront any coach or administrator, you have to have an action plan to solve the problem. You can’t just be here, here’s the problem. It’s got to you have to have it has to be you know, well set to where you go. Okay, this is what we’re doing. here’s an option. And I think because of this option, it works better because we can get a b c d done whereas we’re not getting it done doing it this way. And I think that’s one of the bigger the bigger plan you know, the bigger probably the better way to do it. You know, it’s hard I look at myself is I’ve been in the field for a long time. I kind of like that old guy and old folks home that’s grabbing chicks you know, all the talking dirty to him who knows he’s gonna die soon. He doesn’t care. You know? So, you know, I’m at end at towards the end of my career. So, you know, I truly am one of those coaches that just don’t give a shit. It’s like, Oh, if you don’t like what, I’m gonna do it this way, I’ll ask for forgiveness later or alone, you know, but I’m gonna get it done. Because it’s the way it needs to be done. And I’m at a school where they, knew I’m pretty good at what I do. And they, know that they don’t want to lose me. So I have that kind of a little bit of a power, I’ll have a little bit of power with me. But at the same time, I’ll push it too far, I’m gonna get fired like anybody else. So I had that different mentality that I know that if I do get fired out, I’m gonna get another job. So, you know, I tend to stand up more, probably to probably sometimes too much. I don’t yell or to fight the big battles, and not all the little ones, you know, something I don’t do well at, you know, and it’s one of my I think communication and fighting every battle is probably hurt me more than anything in my careers. this worry about the big battles. The minutiae, let, it slide. And just, you have to sit down with the coach and get to sit down with him alone, not with an entire staff, and then go with each position coach on staff explain why you want to do things that way, so that it’s communicated back to the head coach, so that you have a little bit more ammunition than just you yourself. And that’s, I think, when I really need to get something done, I go to each individual position, coach, talk them through it, then I go to the head coach, talk him through it. Then when we meet as a team, I’ll bring it up. And then certain coaches, I’ll put in their ideas, and they go, Okay, that sounds like a good plan. And that’s kind of helped more than anything that’s probably helped me out the most.

Brett Bartholomew

Yeah, no, that’s how I remember an article that I read once, and I’ll talk about it in a future podcast, but they just talked about how coaches need to be able to really develop this kind of political skill. And we don’t like the word politics, just like we don’t like manipulate and influence, because we tend to think of certain things when that comes in, right? It’s this kind of like,

focal primacy effect, where it’s like you say, politics, and all of a sudden people think of like, you know, government or whatever. But what they say in this research is that political skill from a coaching standpoint, really is it comes down to a social effectiveness, that is really defined by your ability to kind of influence others to act in a way that enhances kind of the organizational objectives. So one thing I always talk about, because I have a couple of talks on this is like, you’re gonna hear words like influence and manipulate, like, don’t, react to the word right. Like, if you look up these words, you’ll find that they’re contextual. Like I manipulate the dial on my thermostat every night before I go to bed, right to get it down to a certain temperature, I have to influence athletes, thoughts and beliefs about the weight room, because you may have a guy and I’ve worked with one in the past. And I know you’ve worked with countless, that they don’t think that the weight room is a positive place, maybe they’ve gotten hurt training. So now we’ve got to influence that perception. But it is necessary to understand how to influence people to carry out a certain request or to support a proposal and to implement decisions. And it’s frustrating for me as a coach, because like in one of the courses I put out, like Bought In, we talked about all these different influence tactics that help coaches navigate this stuff. And it’s research done in the organizational behavior space, but then day in and day out. And I like you see, people want to debate about back squat and front squat, as opposed to dealing with these issues, which as you well know, and you’ve described, they make those other arguments completely, you know, just non essential, because half the time, you’re not even given the choice to do what you want to do. Because somebody’s telling you what they want, right? I’ve talked about the past podcast, like, I remember being in charge of men’s and women’s golf, and the guys like, I don’t want them lifted like football players. I’m like, What do you mean, you don’t want golfers to be explosive, strong and fit, you know, and, but I knew that I had to influence that person. And so I’m like, Hey, Coach, here’s the research, but that wasn’t an effective influence tactic. So we’re gonna move on from this, but I want you know, if anybody wants to learn more about that, that resource is out there. And I’d really encourage you to get a better understanding of archetypes and influence, because you’re hearing Kurt say it the same way. Like, if you don’t learn this stuff, you’re at the mercy of these people. And you can’t, nobody’s gonna feel sorry for you. So one other thing I want to touch on coaches, you and I have kind of just talked about evaluation. So we can sit here and bitch about what’s wrong with the field and the perception all we want, you know, but eventually we’ve got to find some way to have an evaluation. I think you and I both agree that it can’t be purely objective. That’s just not the nature of coaching, since it’s interpersonal, but just kind of walk us through, like, what do you think would work from an evaluation standpoint? And, you know, feel free to just kind of shoot ideas out there, whether you have them locked in now, like what your process is or what you’d like to do, even if it’s not maybe necessarily possible or you don’t have an answer for it?

Kurt Hester

No, I think that each staff needs to be evaluated like on a quarterly, you know, basically quarterly throughout the year, I think the strength coach these evaluate his own staff I have wrote, I’ve written some stuff, you know, I think I sent you copies of some of the stuff I’ve written up. And, you know, I think it needs to be not just from the head strength coaches point of view, I think if you get one of the exercise science professors to come over, and because I’ve had, you know, I’m very open with our exercise science departments, a lot of coaches aren’t, I’ve had one of our professors actually work with us the entire summer, every group, because he had no summer classes. And to evaluate what we did and how we did the structure of how we did things, have them come over and spend a couple hours in a week and evaluate the staff from their point of view. Even if you had got one of the that even though the trainers don’t get it to a certain extent, just to have them come over and evaluate just it makes, you know, to get their input. And it helps out from that communication standpoint. And where you can effectively show them why you’re doing things the way you’re doing things. So it’s twofold. You can show them that you’re doing things right, this is why and then you’re getting their point of view, which is that what you’re talking about being kind of politically, you know, that political, you know, and so the information, it’s not just coming from one person, yeah, it’s more of that 360 model. And then I think you need an outside entity, you know, I think you need someone needs to come in and evaluate your staff spend two or three days and have a quantifiable number and say, you know, oh, you’re a two star staff or you’re a five star staff. So that you have that kind of information when especially when it goes when it comes down to if there are any problems with sport coaches, that you have to go to an athletic director said look, the problem is not with my staff it’s with the perceptions that the sports coach has of our staff. We’re a five star staff. Here’s all our evaluations here’s what we’ve done you know, to have that kind of ammunition because athletic directors cannot evaluate us sport coaches can’t evaluate because sport coaches evaluation is just doesn’t make me happy. Fine, great. Because

Brett Bartholomew

they’re gonna ask are you getting people hyped and shooting shotguns?

Kurt Hester

Well, that the other thing is, you know, they’re gonna look at injuries. Yeah, well, we healthy or not healthy, or their height. But that’s about all that’s that’s just that’s just to,

Brett Bartholomew

yes, weighs a little perception matters. But objectively that’s not their space.

Kurt Hester

No, it’s others at all. So until but I think most coaches don’t have the balls to do that. They don’t have the balls to let someone come in and say, Look, you’re doing it you know that you might be wrong, because they’re Eric, they’re arrogant. They have this false sense of how great they are. I know I’m not I mean, I know I’m a work in progress. I like I said, I’ve screwed up more than anybody. I am 55 years old. I’m not even close to being as good as I’m not even close to my prime yet. I’m still getting. You know, I am when I’m probably 65 10 years from now, I might be hitting rock rock.

Brett Bartholomew

No, I think it’s gonna be when you’re kind of just like mumbling incoherently at 85 I think that’s where you’re gonna be. You’re gonna be sitting there scribbling cave drawing somewhere, we’re gonna be like you, you got it?

Kurt Hester

Because I’m not living that log God. peace it out on 70. I’m going hard. 70 I’m out of here, man. I don’t want to be here for that long. There’s no way. No way. It’ll be okay. We’ll be fighting a bear to the death man and Kodiak Island. That’s, that’s how I’m going.

Brett Bartholomew

So just to recap what you said there. And you had some excellent points, you said, you weigh them quarterly, you know, involve the exercise science department involved, you know, the training staff involve other people, because it’s just good. Even from a devil’s advocate standpoint, even if they’re not looking at things that you think matter, at least that discourse is gonna give you an idea of oh, there might be room for that, you know, like, Yeah, we could add that in or, like you said, Well, you know, Yeah, Coach, like we can impact wins and losses to a degree but like, you can see, we’re following the correct medical protocol we had a heat event, you know, one year and you can see that we responded to an X amount of time we locked it in, it was well documented. We have all these things buttoned up. Here’s my question to you, though. How do we start? Well, first of all, is that correct? Did I summarize those kinds of things? Like you talked about cool. When it comes to quote, unquote, I hate when people talk about this, this soft side, but just communication, right? I have my own idea of how you can evaluate the art of coaching and more objectively than most people think. But what’s yours? You know, if somebody’s coming in and they see Okay, Coach, you got them stronger. You’ve got great program, you got technical demonstration that’s locked in, you got the medical policies and procedures locked in. But, you know, how are you rating, you know, the the art of coaching side?

Kurt Hester

That where I think we build a rubric. That’s the hardest part. And that is, you know, to what’s the standard what are the objectives what It minutiae in between that, you know, it’s, going to take it’s going to take more than me and you it’s going to take a lot of guys getting involved and say and you know, it sort of takes from the psychology field it’s going to take from administrator I mean it’s gonna take more than just two guys talking together

Brett Bartholomew

but it’s worth taught and this is

Kurt Hester

and this field is going to evolve this field is going to to become what it should be what the problem is people think we’re where we’re supposed to be people think that we’re so arrogant that we have all the answers we’re when you’re still debating whether to front squat, back squat to bilateral unilateral, should I power clean or deadlift? That’s all bullshit. It’s like, you know, to me, it’s if you’re debating that stuff, but you’re not debating the truth, things are gonna affect the field,

Brett Bartholomew

whether we saw people trying to sell pants that have bungees in them, because they swear that will make you faster. I had athletes come to me last year saying what about these pants that I hear about that they’re resistance base pants, and I’m like, Oh my gosh, we got a long ways to go,

Kurt Hester

right? Me, but we’re still debating things that are. To me, it’s not even worth your breath. Not even worth the breath on social media.

Brett Bartholomew

It should be covered early in your career. But if you’re 10 years in the field, and you’re still asking a question, like, what is the best exercise for speed? Right? As if it comes down to one exercise? You know, like, well, sprinting, that’s about the most direct answer I can give you. But there is no one exercise, you know, but like, we know we have professors that their careers based on you know, tenure where they’re gonna know and squat know it. Well, this person is dead lifted, dude. Like, it’s bigger than one exercise here.

Kurt Hester

Well, I mean, we’re still over conditioning athletes, especially football players, there’s we’re still over conditioned him to wear. I mean, how, much conditioning Do you really need, I mean, we’re still over conditioning, that we’re still, when you’re still hurting athletes and conditioning, you’re not doing there’s, something wrong, there’s something wrong with you, period, you know, you’ll have those kinds, you don’t have the I wear the intellectual capacity to program your conditioning workouts out, you know, in a training block to have the eyes to see that something’s wrong. You know, it’s like, what’s happened at Maryland, to me is unconscionable. It’s like it, should never have happened, period. I don’t care who anybody wants to blame. That’s bullshit. A kid died. And people are talking about, well, you know, he may lose his job, and he made a fucking kid died. No one’s talking about the kid who died, you’re talking about? Well, should we bring the football coach back? Should we fire the training staff to fire strikes that everybody had a role in it? You know, and it should never happen. That’s a death that should have never happened, period. We’re still at that. That’s to me that we’re still at the infancy stage of our field, you know, and that’s where people don’t want to talk about that. Well, because I know this guy, this strength coach on this staff, and I don’t want anybody’s feelings to get hurt. And that’s all bullshit, you know? So when are we gonna stand up and do something that I know Bob wants? Well, we need an ad, you know, it starts at the grassroot it starts with it starts. I said this, I think to him, remember who’s asked the question on Twitter, and I said, it starts one coach at a time. So it starts it starts with us one coach at a time. And until we start evaluate our own staffs. And so we let someone come in and evaluate our staff and have enough self confidence to go, you know what, he’s right, I need to be better at this, I need to be better at this, to build the staff up to over document things, just like the medical field does, for losses were there, whether it be having everything you have for conditioning, how you treated your sickle cell guys, to your guys with exercise induced asthma, how you condition them versus every other athlete, you know, to where you there’s checks and balances and everything that you did, so that when it comes to a court of law, you throw that paperwork down, and you’re, not absolved. But you have enough information to say, we did things right. You know, when it comes with getting fired from an athletic director, where he gets fired from a sports coach, to where, you know, the last thing that I in my mind, I will never, I’m not gonna be that guy on on 60 minutes are on some are on, you know, ESPN, my name is Steph Emery brought

Brett Bartholomew

hold up there now. And this is something that I primed you on. I told you, I was going to ask you this question. So I’m going to interject just because I think you’re you’re on a really good roll. But I want people to feel like alright, well then what’s the deal Kurt? Like? Tell me what? So when it comes to that when you say you’re never going to be on there? When it comes to safety and emergency response protocol, those situations? Why are you not going to be on there in terms of like, what do you think you and your staff do exceptionally well that somebody listening to this can be like, Oh my god, like You know what I mean? Like, give them some tactics here.

Kurt Hester

I mean, I first thought and conditioning. Like I said, I think we over conditioning, I think especially for football, because that’s typically that’s where you see that the injury rates, you know, everything is geared by position, the yard used, they’re going to run during a game, the intervals they’re going to run during the game. That first and foremost, I’m not running guys at 300 meters. I’m not running guys at 110. So I’m running, you know, I’m developing, I go along the short so we start conditioning for football players, our linemen our loan is 40 yards. Our short is 10. Yeah, so we go along the short we start long, our mids are long, our longest 60 our small guys, our long is 80. And then we bring it down, it’s closer closer to the season.

Brett Bartholomew

And why long to short.

Kurt Hester

I start out with a lot a lot of guys like when you go short the long and they go well, you know, you develop you’ll develop your hamstrings, but that’s more for acceleration speed work. When I go long to short, our rest circles and our times are not very, tough throughout very, you know until they built up one stamina today their hamstrings get stronger in a longer stride pattern. So I’m not they’re not going at 100% either, or they’re going about 75% Max, as we shorten then we start increasing our intensity. A lot of things with our linemen are directed towards pushing sleds at five to 10 yards loaded, because that’s what they’re doing all game long. You know, we’ve kind of almost gotten away from conditioning tests completely, you know, because it’s like,

Brett Bartholomew

heresy to people.

Kurt Hester

You don’t know, that’s what? Well, if your back in the day when guys went home, it didn’t do anything for them you had to come back, you had to have a conditioning test. But guys are here year round, if you can get an athlete ready for football three weeks here.

Brett Bartholomew

And this is where this the talking about these things is great and having you on here in particular. And we want this because there’s half the people listening to this be like it gets it. And then there’s a percentage of them that like screw that and they want to debate but listen, like you’re hearing. That’s the nature of it, like you’re hearing, you gotta justify what you’re doing. And, you know, I’d say that you you have strong justifications, and also what works for you. You’re not sitting here saying it’s gonna work for everybody, you’re talking about this, your guys, your you know, all these things.

Kurt Hester

I’m just saying what I’ve seen in my career, and what I’ve seen with these teams, there’s like, I’ll backtrack a second, someone will always say, Kurt, let me send or coach, let me send you my program. And I’m like, No, I don’t know your athletes. I don’t know what they want. I don’t know what you’re doing from one block to the next. I can’t tell you if it’s good or not. Because I don’t know. So I don’t evaluate what anybody else does ever. You know, I know what my athletes respond to. I know, that from experience. And the way the game is played now, especially with the spread offense is I know how I’m gonna get my team ready for all these spread offices that are conference. And it’s worked our guys are, we’ve never had a problem with conditioning. I really I don’t condition. I hate mat drills, I hate all that bullshit, it takes away from time for me getting athlete ready for spring ball. You know, and I do not condition until almost July one, I worry about getting my base rate up, I worry about skill, I worry about speed. And then I’ll condition hard the last three weeks and they’re ready to play the game. Whatever condition test coach Holtz wants, you can throw it at me, They’ll crush it, it doesn’t matter. And if he wants to do it, typically he just says, Hey, look, we’re good. Okay, let’s go on and let’s play, you know, and you know, these suits like with our sickle cell, guys, we identified them in conditioning, we identify the guys who exercise induced asthma, anybody who’s had any prior cardiac problem, we put them on one side of the field, and we tag where they where they have a band or a shirt or and we put the trainers on that side of the field. We constantly have eyes on them. My coaches still have them station I want eyes on every athlete if the athletes struggling let me know it’s not worth killing a kid you know, to have it you know, to push the kid to limit that he doesn’t need to be in mental toughness is a choice. The guys that are trained are always going to train hard they’re always going to kill it. The guys who aren’t going to kill the condition they’re not going to ever kill it because they’re mentally weak. You’re never going to make those guys any tougher. You’re really not in my experience there it’s never going to happen

Brett Bartholomew

workouts don’t make somebody mentally tough.

Kurt Hester

No, it’s never gonna happen either you want to do it or you don’t and that’s what we try to convey to the athlete is look man. This comes from you, not from me and you, and we’re not telling Guys look, in the fourth quarter when I went, This is how I think how they looked at it and how I got more out of them and conditioning. In the fourth quarter NFL scouts are looking at how you’re moving. Are you still moving as fast as you were moving in the first quarter? Or can you go sideline to sideline? Can you come off every play explosive? That’s on you, that’s not on me. And, they see me when I when I explain it to him, he can see their eyes, they can see him actually thinking like, their eyes kind of roll back in their head going, Oh, he’s got a point, I need to start working harder, I needed to take responsibility for my conditioning, so that I play better on film, right?

Brett Bartholomew

Because there’s perfect programming done poorly, right, you can lay out whatever you want. And this was a whole reason I wanted to start art of coaching. And you’ve been awesome, like contributing, you know, thoughts and ideas of that. So I want to thank you again, you know, just in general, but like, people have to realize that like, what you write on paper like that doesn’t make it come to life like these kids have an account of it. So when we talk about influence in politics, that’s the point of why we’ve got to get in their heads and help them understand the value of things. Otherwise, anybody can go out and do any of our programs. And that’s supposed to be the magic bullet right screw that when it comes down to engagement and commitment. Then when people want to say, Well, what’s you know, what, how does that buy in? Well, if somebody’s doing what you’ve asked them to do, and they feel good about it from a relation and task standpoint, that they’re going to commit full effort and engagement, that’s by him. That’s somebody doing the program, not just checking the damn box, but going through that, and that takes so like, even to that point, like how was how do you communicate that to them? I mean, is it just straightforward? Like you said, you let them know, like, Hey, this is on you. Like, it’s a direct kind of this is the way it is kind of way?

Kurt Hester

Well, yeah, it’s I mean, that it’s communicating. You know, kids are not dumb, they’ve been explained, our kids have gone to to all through high school, they’ve had personal trainers, they’ve been exposed to a lot of training compared to what I grew up. So it’s just communicating the science to a certain extent, behind what we, this is why we’re doing this, this is rep for rep. The rest of the world. I mean, I explained everything over communicate the workout, before we start, I talked to him after

Brett Bartholomew

professional debrief,

Kurt Hester

debrief me about like, this is, this is what I saw, this is what an NFL scout was gonna see, this is what your position coach is gonna see from you personally. And I call each player out and say, Look, this is what I saw this where you get better, and it’s not me, you know, I’m an athlete, I’m, it’s just, you know, I have to I do, but I don’t think I’m to a point and what the culture is they they get it, like, they’ll get mad at me when I start explained as coach. We don’t need to know, we know it’s good. Let’s just do it. You know. And when you get to that point where they almost argue to you or, look, let’s just go, we’re right, we believe that we’re saying we’re with you. Yeah. And, they say to me all the time, like coach just roll over that time. Let’s go. So, you know, obviously, you know, like, I’ve had an athletic director asked me, How do you get so much out of your athletes? And I was like, to me, it was really hard to understand, because I didn’t think about it’s like, I just, I’m just me, I’m me. I mean, every day, I’m the best on me times 10 sometimes, because I’m bipolar. Sometimes I’m me negative 10. And I do I tell my athletes look, y’all know, I’m up and down, you know, I’m all over the place. Tell me like if I’m not bringing what I need to bring, let me know, just like I let you know, you let me know, sometimes I’ll be in my own head. And it’s in my head. And I’m not really there. And they’ll they’ll call me out and get me back. Refocus in a heartbeat, you know, because I know, that’s one of my limitations. I know, communication is I get in my head. Even with my own assistance, I know what needs to be done, especially when you’re in the private field, when you have to do everything, typically yourself. You tend in my head, fuck it, I’ll just do it myself, you know, instead of delegating things to athletes or to coaches, again, way too much in my own head. And I need to communicate more and more often. And I don’t think you can you can overcome it. I really don’t think you don’t communicate.

Brett Bartholomew

No, I agree. Listen, we’ve had a lot and we’re definitely doing a part two on this. I mean, everything from quarterly evaluations, the mistakes you’ve made, why you think we kind of, you know how we can kind of broach this whole kind of perception of our field. I love the part about tagging and identifying sickle cell and special medical I mean, that’s, again, I don’t think anybody listening to this will. Nobody needs to think like that’s a genius. But the point is, is you have a plan, you’ve locked that in and the implementation of a plan is, where people go wrong. Typically, you know, mental toughness being a choice, you’ve hit a lot of things. I do want to wrap this up with one question. And again, we’re having you as part two, but based on the wide range of topics we talked about, what you could argue, could be everything from branding, to conflict resolution to interpersonal communication to training, what have you, if you could only attend one Con Ed event this year, and it doesn’t have to be a real event, right? Like I’m talking about something that’s a theme any of those themes, what would it be and it can be used for strength and conditioning related by all, but like, what, would you go seek out this year, if you could theme wise,

Kurt Hester

we had Valdosta is exercise science department, they had to do a project and I don’t know what the hell they picked me. I don’t know how they found from Valdosta, Georgia, they picked me as their exercise science project. And she asked me, they asked me about like, fields, what should you, you know, how should I go about getting in the field and what, from an educational standpoint, and, you know, I looked at how I came through, and I think you almost need a psych degree to be in this field, I really think that you need to, you know, that you have to have an exercise science background with me, you’re really programming all that stuff. That’s, to me, that’s the easy stuff. It’s actually getting into delving into the human mind, how it takes how to get more out of a human, how to get more out of yourself, I think from a psychological stamp, you know, that standpoint, is, it would be more? I don’t know if there’s even a conference out there that’s dealing towards athletes as far as from a psychological standpoint. But I think that if you’re gonna get this feel that you should either have a psych background, and a master’s in nutrition. Yeah. So I don’t know, as far as how

Brett Bartholomew

that’s good. That’s good. I mean, you don’t have to know I mean, I think you just touched on it something that, you know, touches on the the psychosocial aspect of these things. I mean, like what you asked, like, this is the end, this is the first time I’ve announced that I decided to pursue my doctorate in many of the topics, in a degree that we’ve talked about. So the micropolitics influence in elite settings, all those things. So I’m, kind of, you know, I’m pursuing my doctoral candidate journey, and in this strategic interpersonal communication and psychosocial space, because I agree, I think that this is where a lot of things kind of coincide and are rate limiting factors,

Kurt Hester

if you really want to be great, if you really want to, you know, I’ve read every book known demand when it comes to training, you know, and I don’t sleep a whole lot. And so I stay up and read all night, you know, so I’ve read, you know, everything there is and has, it made me a better coach, it makes me think more, you know, it just makes me think, you know, in a wider spectrum, but the one thing that I’ve done with my athletes is I came up with a performer where I bring each athlete in and ask them a series of questions, just to get to know them better as a human Outside of athletics. And, you know, just having that information to where when they walk in, and they’re and I can tell that they’re not right, they’re not, they’re not their normal self, where I can pull them aside. And alright What’s wrong? you’re not you today. And just getting into that militant aspect of, you know, football is only and training is only a certain part of their life. And, they have so many issues outside, so many different backgrounds, so many psychosocial problems, and, you know, it’s if you can effectively get in tune with that athlete. Training is so simple. You know, getting everything you want. out of it is very, very simple that we were in argue about, should you clean or should you deadlift, you know,

Brett Bartholomew

that’s what we base our legitimacy off of people don’t want to hear that I listen, I had up strength coaches go at me one time saying like, I think the art of coaching is easy. it’s much more simple than the training side of my gorilla, dude. Like, that’s the route you want to say that people are easier to figure out. Like it. He’s a nice guy I love to death, you know, but he was trying to get at the point he later clarified about it’s just it’s tough integrating, you know, it’s tough integrating in somebody and I go Yes, that’s right, man. But like, that still comes down to communication dealing with sports science train, it’s still psychosocial in nature.

Kurt Hester

I mean, me we at Louisiana Tech, I have two interns, two paid interns. That’s it, you know, so, you know, I said this was spoken summer strong, and people hit me up man was a really good quote. And I didn’t even realize I said it. But I don’t feel I ever do enough for my athletes. I don’t feel like I do a nine on in LA and that’s not coming from, a physical standpoint, I’m 12 from getting to really know them and getting into their personal life to be able to help them traverse life when they’re at their most vulnerable,. When a lot of them don’t believe in, you know, they’re here played they don’t believe in education, because it didn’t come from family values. It doesn’t wasn’t important to were, you know, loving the guy next to you it wasn’t a value in their home. You know, just do more for their output for them. so that they can be good in society later in life because it’s to me, there’s the worst thing as a coach. The worst thing as a coach is when I see an athlete, four to five years down the road, who’s not doing well in life that just destroyed me

Brett Bartholomew

Yeah, no that’s huge. Listen if people want to I appreciate your time I know this isn’t easy to do we had to find a lot of different times but man it’s been incredible how can people get a hold of you if they want to fight you? Are you with you say thank you any of the above really do want to give your home address out to the you know just the world right now?

Kurt Hester

Yes at 1000 Sunset Boulevard for me I like to fight that.

Brett Bartholomew

No, no, but if people want to reach out to you just

Kurt Hester

emails just khester@lawtech.edu You know, I’m on social and people just DM me all the time questions more than anything they do, though. You hit me up on Twitter or hit me up on Facebook. It doesn’t matter. I try to get back to everybody who’s, who asked for advice. I’d rather a phone call literally because it’s just easier to explain to the same way Yeah, type things out just drives me nuts. So 985-807-7979 You can call me just you know, DM me first

Brett Bartholomew

next level commitment there.

Kurt Hester

Yeah, I mean, yeah, dude, I don’t care. I know it saves me from them. Email me to do it. DM me just call me.

Brett Bartholomew

Why not make sure I’ll put all this in the show notes. So we’ll make sure we have in there. Coach. I can’t thank you enough. This is the first of many more conversations that come my friend. Thank you for your time.

Kurt Hester

No problem, brother.

Brett Bartholomew

Alright bro be good

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