E30 | Anthony Donskov: Thinking Deeper: Can You Teach It? - Art Of Coaching™

Posted August 27, 2019

TRANSCRIPT

Brett Bartholomew

What really separates good coaches from great coaches? Tell me if any of these coaching struggles sound familiar to you, you have athletes who are influenced by social media fads and inevitably want to do things that look cool, even though they have little to no efficacy behind them. Your sport coaches with little to no background in training, who demand you do things the way they’ve always done it within an organization and outside just because maybe they had success with it in the past. And so they cut your wings out from under you, as a coach, the parents of the athletes, you coach always want to interject and tell you exactly what they think you should be doing. Because this worked for Nolan Ryan, or Walter Payton or somebody else, you have athletes just going through the motions and giving up when things get tough. They kind of plod through on autopilot, they do the bare minimum. And you know, they always kind of complain that something isn’t sports specific enough, or just as an engaging enough.

Now, let me be clear, every single coach runs into problems like this. And if you haven’t yet, you will inevitably and this isn’t just coach to civic, this may be a manager. This is I mean, it transcends field, because at the end of the day, we have people that have egos and agendas of their own. But the way that we respond to these situations, or the way we stopped them from happening in the first place is ultimately part of what separates good coaches from great coaches. In other words, it’s not just the communication side, it’s also negotiation, it’s also the ability to listen, it’s also the ability to do adapt and create and find this middle ground. Right, you can have the highest level of athletes, you can have the most perfect programming in the world or plan however you want to term it, and you can have the best facility. But all of this is only worth something if your athletes really buy into you and your vision. Now I’ve talked about this in the past in the podcast, guys buy in means trust plus commitment. That’s all that means I make that clear. In my book, I make that clear. There’s a lot of people that want to vilify the term buy in bottom line is trust plus commitment, it’s not selling, right, like buying, you’re trying to get people who are truly committed to something not just compliant. Now, if this has kind of been elusive to you in the past, or maybe you’ve read the book, and you don’t really understand it’s still and there’s elements that you want to dive deeper, maybe it was too simple. I created a sequel to the book. And that sequel is called Bought In. Now Bought In is a course that I spent a year and a half on. And as a huge part of that foundation of some of my doctoral research. And a lot of the projects I’ve done since then. But there’s a lot of people that have listened to the podcast, follow along on Instagram, read the book, and they don’t even know about it.

Bought In guys is a self paced five week course, again, you have complete access to it. It’s videos, PDFs, handouts, archetype cheat sheets, for those of you that have read the book coaching evaluations, it CEU approved, it’s got all these different elements to it that really drive and focus on making you accountable as a coach, because what we find right now is we have this clinic culture, where coaches go to conferences, they read books, but it’s all just forms of consumption. Right? They’re not really being held accountable. They don’t have to take an exam on something, they don’t have to enact it. It’s a lot of what I mean my field guide went to, but the point is guys is like, as a coach, it’s not just your knowledge of a subject, it’s your ability to do enact that knowledge in an adaptable and self aware format. That is really what performance is about is adaptability. And this course Bougth In the sequel to my book conscious coaching is now live today, August 27. And it’s live at a discount of $100. Right, like literally, like this bonus price of $100 is for anybody who joins a course before this Thursday night, August 29 2019. At 11:59 eastern standard time again, a lot of times people will say hey, I don’t have time right now. Okay, like the course you have lifetime access to it. So if you don’t want to do this course until 2023, not an issue, right? If you fall behind, there’s no such thing as falling behind. A lot of times people will say, Hey, I’m not a coach, does this apply to me? Yes. Yeah, guys. There’s more than 400 coaches, personal trainers, physical therapists and educators who are already taking the course. But we also have accountants, we have firefighters, we have other people because it’s ultimately do you deal with people? Do you deal with people? If you do, all you got to do is swap out the term coach and athlete it could be manager and it could be coworker, it could be any of these things. So and it’s also not just for athletes or people you lead. It’s for your colleagues. So listen, at the end of the day, this is all about the psychology of understanding people, what motivates them, how to really push them to get through certain obstacles, how to enhance your communication as a coach, again, Bought in the sequel to conscious coaching is now open. It’s August 27 $100 off between now and Thursday. Make sure you check it out. Until then, I hope you enjoy this episode. Anthony Donskov is a stud and he’s about to throw some incredible incredible tips and things to challenge you on this episode. Thanks as always for the support guys, I appreciate you. Let’s roll

Welcome to the Art of coaching podcast, a show aimed at getting to the core of what it takes to change attitudes, behaviors and outcomes in the weight room, boardroom classroom and everywhere in between. I’m your host, Brett Bartholomew. I’m a performance coach, keynote speaker, and the author of the book conscious coaching. But most importantly, I’m a lifelong student interested in all aspects of human behavior, and communication. I want to thank you for joining me. And now let’s dive into today’s episode.

Anthony, what’s going on, man?

Anthony Donskov

Hey, thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to speak with you today, my friend.

Brett Bartholomew

No, my pleasure. And thanks for accommodating guys, everybody. Today, my guest is Anthony Donskov. Anthony is a little bit of a polymath. Many of you may know him from his book, physical preparation for ice hockey, biological principles and practical solutions. Also the owner of Donskov, or Donskov’s strengthing conditioning rather sorry about that. And Anthony, when did we first meet? You remember, was it back at Mike Robertson’s conference?

Anthony Donskov

It was indeed it was I think that was 2014 or 2015. I believe, I believe.

Brett Bartholomew

I think you’re right about that. And one thing that drew me to you in particular was a fellow training nerd was true, which some folks on the podcast may not know because by the time I started the podcast, it’s you know, we focus a lot more on psychology, leadership, communication, all those kinds of things. But fellow training nerd very, very eloquent. doesn’t mince words will kind of tell it like it is. And so this being kind of the people’s podcast, I had to get you on, man. So tell us a little bit about what’s going on anybody that’s not familiar with you. If you want to give us a brief like kind of rundown of how you got here and what your predominant focus is,

Anthony Donskov

yeah, I’ll try to keep it short and sweet. I was born and raised in Canada. So I’m, a dual citizen. My mother’s American I was born in Canada, raised there until approximately the age of 13. And moved to Columbus, Ohio. So at a young age, as you can imagine, Brett hockey was a huge game that we played and I was passionate about. There were at the time in Columbus was hockey was non existent. So I had to move back and forth during my high school years went to five different high schools, in pursuit of higher level hockey, and specifically college hockey. I was lucky enough to play college hockey at Miami, Ohio, believe it or not, my major at the time was business,

Yeah, I still do. I still do. But believe it or not my business, my major rather was in business, which is something I’m very proud of still, I think if I were to go back and do it again, I still undergrad in business. I was fortunate enough to play two years of minor professional hockey after and I realized at that time, my passion was really the preparation process. So I moved back to Columbus started a small business out of the backseat of my car went back to pursue my master’s degree in Exercise Science. The business slowly grew and evolved. Right now we’re in about a 3000 square foot footprint in Worthington, Ohio. And I’m pursuing right now my PhD at a school in Canada, London, Ontario, University of Western Ontario. So it keeps me busy. And I’m certainly passionate about it. But that’s my background in a nutshell.

Brett Bartholomew

What inspired the doctoral route,

Anthony Donskov

confronting weaknesses, I am passionately curious person, I think I can be a better scientist, I can be a better rational and critical thinker. And there were kinks in my chain, so to speak, so confronting weakness and directly attempting to be a better thinker.

Brett Bartholomew

They’re talking about that for a minute. Because again, you and I are both, we’re pretty big training nerds. It’s interesting, because a lot of times people are really pushed towards the doctoral route. And I think, you know, you say you’re confronting weakness. But what I find on the opposite end is there’s just as many people that go that route that have to confront their weakness of the social skills, right? That’s like a predominant part of this course. And I think, and I mean, not this core, sorry, this podcast and you can disagree with me here. I encourage it. But one thing I feel like I’ve noticed over the past five, maybe even seven years is there’s been this confluence within strength and conditioning, where it just continues people continue to try to overcomplicate it, we see new terminology come out all the time. I mean, now it’s you know, you can’t even call things the phosphagen energy system glycolytic you know, oxidative now it’s all gotta be a lactic this and that, you know, and then there’s, there’s all these eccentric quasi isometrics all nomenclature that is good to be aware of, but why do you think where does it end?

Anthony Donskov

Wow, fantastic question. I think we have a we like making things overly complex. Really, uh, you know, I said this once before, and I mean, I think I posted it on social media, but unfortunately now 89% of the information in our business pertains to 1% of the client population and you know, 99% of the articles, the Instagram posts, and I’m guilty of it as well. You know, a lot of the posts that we post are professional players, but the reality is, most of the information is geared toward a very, very small demographic of elite athletes, when in fact, if you really paint the broad brushstroke, most Gen pop athletes or youth athletes, progressive overload, linear periodization, and you’re in good hands. So I think it’s, almost like we want to overcomplicate things. And trust me, when I say this, I point the thumb, as opposed to the finger. Sometimes I always try to investigate the why and dig a little deeper. But the reality is, it’s a simple process for young athletes,

Brett Bartholomew

what do you think about the I personally, you know, having grown up and read a lot of the classics and the things that you hear, right science and practice, that’s your ski, you know, sift, verkhoshansky, you know, all the things that people tell you should read, I almost feel like the more we tend to overcomplicate or the deeper, we go down this, we’re actually getting further away from some of the principles they espouse. I think a lot of people are taking a lot of liberties with what these individuals wrote, at a time where, you know, if they were around, I think people underestimate the fact that they would have likely evolved, they would have likely said some of these things, you know, the majority of them depend on context. Whereas now, it’s crazy. I mean, you’re even getting people taking, you know, the tri phasic methods and stuff like that, that Cal Dietz has done. And now that’s in every permutation. And it just seems, I think, sometimes people think and this pertains to the doctoral question I asked you, sometimes going deeper down the rabbit hole can take you in the wrong direction. If you don’t keep a succinct, clear focus and consider context,

Anthony Donskov

I completely agree and a book that I would strongly recommend the listeners to read as the Neil generalist. There’s a fantastic analogy in that book, Brett that I think pertains to exactly what we’re talking about right now. I’ve always found the most interesting coaches and scientists to be serial specialists. And when we look at the landscape of performance, I think and you know, you do this with higher level education, you dig deeper holes, right. And before you know it, you specialize so much that you can’t look up and see the trees, you can’t look up and see the the sun and you can’t see the landscape. Yet, if you’re a serial specialist, you dig several small, little holes. So you have a good solid, basic foundational understanding. But you don’t lose sight of the landscape and what we do, that’s the performance landscape, but you could argue it could be, you know, whatever profession it is that you’re aspiring to, and they use the contrast that the specialist sees with more binocular vision, whereas the Neo generalist is a serial specialist who sees with Dragon Fly vision. And I can tell you right now, the books that I read very, very, very few right now, regarding programming, or about leadership, communication, philosophy has been a huge inspiration to me specifically the works of Karl Popper in the way I think. So these I would agree with you, I think their success leaves clues. And I think being a NEO generalist in my opinion is really important to enrich your education and grow as a coach.

Brett Bartholomew

All great points in this some then leads to the next question I had for you is a coach reached out recently and said, Hey, what do you use for evaluation? And I remember I’d said, hey, you know, that’s changed over the years, I’ve used the FMS, we’ve modified some things kind of done our own stuff. You know, some of its objective, some of it objective, because obviously, we need consistency across the board, right? We everybody’s been through the era systems, obviously, the more consistent and objective you can keep things the better. But we also know that movement movement signature varies, right? There’s not going to be just one way everybody squats, not going to be one way there’s commonalities for sure. But I even feel like the assessment side of things has gotten cloudy. And I always loved what Dan path and Stu McMillan say, you know, listen, like the warmup is a great chance to assess these guys. And just from what I know about human behavior, and you as well, I know that the more you can kind of bleed aspects of your assessment into times where athletes think you’re not watching, the better it is right, like doing a Knee Hug lunge, if all of a sudden they don’t know that you’re looking at them out of the periphery, you’re gonna see a lot there that maybe wouldn’t be there and come some kind of split squat assessment. But I’d be interested in what do you do and how do you look at assessment screens, any of those things that fit within it? You know, I specifically talked about movement screen, but even just looking at jump profiling or anything like that,

Anthony Donskov

yeah, well, I’ll dig into that a little deeper with our more advanced level athletes. The reality is with our really young athletes, we just build those those quote unquote correctives into their program. So for our advanced level athletes, they come in for an orthopedic and a structural assessment, and it’s a combination but of both subjective and objective information. I think another thing that I’ve picked up from people such as yourself is, and the leadership books that I read is like, I heard this once from a friend and colleague of mine, Nelson Ayotte said coaching is a lot like parenting at a young age, a directive approach may be warranted at an older age, there’s got to be a cooperative approach. So I want our advanced athletes having DNA on their program. The first question I’ll ask anyone that comes in before I even get out any type of assessment tools is what’s worked for you in the past? What do you enjoy doing? And how do you like to be coached? If I’ve never coached before? How do you like to be coached? You know, do you like to be directed? I mean, I can pick the pepper on the fly, you know what you know, or I can, lay off and give you casual cues here and there. But that’s important to me, because I want buy in from day one. After that, we’ll go through and I think for assessments, it’s important, I think you have to understand, in my opinion, when you’re giving assessments, what are the bio motor qualities of the sport, right? Like, what are the muscles that are used to create locomotion in hockey, you know, there’s a propulsive and a glide phase, the hips are in a constant state of flexion, there’s the hip flexors are constantly facilitated. So I want to look at the pelvis and the orientation of the pelvis. And then we’re just going to have some basic movements like the FMS, and we started this year getting into the why balance as well, because it’s such a specific position. Do you like how have you felt about that we just started so it’s too early for me to give you some I’ve done a lot of research on it. The star excursion balance test, which now because of the shared variance between the two tests kind of got pushed to the white balance we just started. What I do like about it, though, in my short usage with it, is it’s a little bit more objective. That gives you a number right now how good that is, I don’t know. But at least a player can see tangible improvements or detriments, as opposed to the FMS, where it’s a little bit more subjective, but for me, the FMS is nothing more than an assessment of risk. And you can get that, like you said, any way you want, you can get it from your dynamic warmup. But I always use the analogy, if I’m going to build a mansion, I’m not going to do it in quicksand. Like I want to know I got some structure before I start throwing a load on it. So that’s why I will do the FMS and the white balance, we’ll do some PRI based tests, the ad duction drop test, which really assesses the position the pelvis will do a ankle mobility test. Hockey players are locked in skate boots for the duration of the hockey season, which can affect their, ankle mobility. And then from there, our KPIs are built into our program. So we don’t physically test these guys after an 82 game or a 60 plus game schedule, because most of them are coming in. Not in good shape, meaning you know, there are things there’s bruised. The last thing I want to do is start throwing load and seeing you know, how much you can bench or how much you can squat on day one.

Brett Bartholomew

It’s men differ in their virtues, but are very much alike. in their vices, right? And so when you say that when you talk about, and, I’m looking back at a post right now, because your posts, you could read a book at your postman November 5 2018. For anybody listening to this, if you want, you did a great post on just quantifying kinematics in high level sport, right. And this one, he talks about three dimensional kinematics and lower limb and the sport of ice hockey and how you guys, you know, look at that. And this, I think was based off research by up John turncoat. Sorry, if I’m mispronouncing that, Persol lo 2008. And it just talks about some of the population based questions that you’ve got to look at, you know, and, and all the aspects of your sport. And that’s where I feel like maybe we’ve gotten off track with assessments and screens and all these things, people think what can I do rather than what should I do? Right? They hear about the latest technology they hear about, I mean, think about how different companies have commoditized screening and assessment now, all under the veil of Oh, make sure you got the best data on your athletes make sure you got this. Well. Here’s the thing. numbers do lie if they’re out of context. People say numbers don’t lie. I say, well, they may not lie, but they’re not going to tell the whole story. And so have there been experiences in the past where you really, really tied, you know, you anchor down on one thing you thought this was the end all be all assessment or just one piece, and then maybe even six months a year, maybe it was four or five years later, you’re like, Wow, that really did not tell us the whole story in regards to our athletes.

Anthony Donskov

Yeah, I won’t mention the technology because I the reason why is because I don’t think I used it long enough to see trends, but I just couldn’t and it was probably my fault. Looking back at it. It was a communication gap between myself and the athletes. It was a readiness technology. And I know a lot of colleagues that use it, and it’s fantastic. But I found that based on the small time windows that we work with our athletes 12 16 weeks, it just wasn’t enough time to amalgamate data and make good decisions as a coach. And I found Believe it or not, it’s just a subjective RP How you feeling today was able to steer our program a little bit more effectively. And again, that I would blame on myself because I just felt that the communication wasn’t there between you know, myself and the athlete but to steer this conversation in a little different direction, Brett, this I think is even more systemic. I think that this is a problem with our profession at times and trust me when I say this anytime there’s a problem, I want to point my thumb because I’m not speaking down on anybody. We’ve talked about this before you and I, and I know I’m passionate you are as well. But we have to evolve as critical thinkers. Science starts and ends with problems. You don’t just buy technology, because you want to keep up with the Joneses. You don’t

Brett Bartholomew

A lot of people do,

Anthony Donskov

of course, and I’ve been guilty of it, too. And like, but there’s gotta be some problem to solve. And the way we think, too, was, you know, well, you know, I saw Brett do it on Instagram with his guys, so I gotta get that. Well, it’s a Whoa, whoa, whoa, do you know what He’s measuring? Do you know who he is? Do you know the population he works with? I call that it populace thinking meaning because coach X is doing it, or someone else is doing it, then I have to do it, I think we would better ourselves being a little bit more critical in nature and deductively thinking, and then assessing those problems with the understanding that let’s solve a problem first, not just collect things and see where, you know, see which way the coin flips. Does that make sense?

Brett Bartholomew

Yeah, 100%. And that’s why, you know, I’ve also really enjoyed the posts that you do, where you’re like gear up and up and coming strength coach, although It’s funny, I would almost like to switch gears on that, in the essence that you notice that we all and I do want to say I don’t think this is, this isn’t a fault. I just it’s worth discussing. A lot of the information out there is for young up and coming trained coaches, when in reality, there’s still a lot of older strength coaches that have an equally kind of naive mindset. There’s people that got in, right, like early on, and there’s people that just got in through being well connected. I think a lot of times, all of us aim these things. And we’re like, ah, common mistake young coaches make or whatever, when in reality, there’s just as many coaches if not more on the other end of that spectrum that are doing the same thing. And I find that it’s really tough to get them to listen, for example, we’ll do some of these clinics and workshops, related around communication. And we’ll purposely pair like an experienced coach and say he’s an NBA, he’s won an NBA championship, he’s been a strength and conditioning coach, you know, 10 years or whatever. And let’s say there’s a personal trainer in the seminar. Now we’ll pair them well, because we try to mix and match. And so they get evaluated on different forms of communication and conflict resolution, right? Think of it as an improv exercise will present a scenario, everybody will have to go around. And there’s kind of a peer evaluation, there’s a self evaluation. And we had one coach, it was just like, hey, no offense, but this is some personal trainer at a health club that’s only been in the field three years, I got over a decade of my name working, you know, in the NBA, and he’s like, I say this with all humility, and I go, well, here’s the deal, man, I go, regardless of what you think of him and what he’s done and his perspective, what do you think the athletes perspective is? What do you think people that you interact with on a daily basis, whether it’s a woman on the other end of the airline counter and, your flights delayed? Or it’s an athlete that has no knowledge of any of this stuff, other than what they see on social media, or what have you. So you’re really willing to throw away the pure evaluation of somebody that you perceive to be not as knowledgeable and out of context, when in reality, your athletes are receiving messages from somebody that usually doesn’t understand full context with them or their perspective in totality. But you see that you see this defensiveness even in the older guard, people that are like, I’ve done this a long time, what are you going to tell me about coaching? It’s like, Listen, man, like, so how do you think you addressed that end of the spectrum to being somebody where you sit in this middle, right? Like, you, you are definitely somebody who’s been you have a long truth in the game, you put skin in the game, but you still, you know, like, you’re a relatively young guy. And I think you have that mindset for sure. Where do you find this balance between holding the old guard accountable? And also the younger coaches?

Anthony Donskov

Well, that’s a

Brett Bartholomew

that’s a mouthful. I know. I’m sorry.

Anthony Donskov

That’s a fantastic question. And I wish I could provide a a concrete solution. Let me address the first thing first, I think that it starts with mindset, in my opinion. And there you and I have spoken about this too before to me. And this might surprise people when I say it, experience is overrated. And here’s what I mean by that. You can have 15 years of experience or one year of experience 15 times they’re very, they’re very different. They’re very different. Now, don’t get me wrong. There are coaches with many decades of experience that have traveled more runway and made more mistakes that have unbelievable information to share and learn from. Really, what I do is I share and you know what I opened it up to be criticized to when you share you open up to be criticized. I share what we do with our athletes, and the reasons why do we do it? Because I hope that it can help both young and old coaches. But anytime you share something, people will comment whether negative or positive. So to combat that, you know? That’s a great question. I don’t know if I can answer it.

Brett Bartholomew

You don’t need to answer just share your thoughts on it. Yeah.

Anthony Donskov

I just think sharing and realizing too, that you’re never going to please everybody. I remember when I first wrote my book. I mean, my book wasn’t written to reinvent the new name of the game, but I got some interesting reviews worst book I’ve ever read this and that it’s like man, wow, okay, no problem I can stomach that no big deal. But help me understand why. And then what’s your solution to it? Here’s my big thing with criticism. And I think if you know me well enough, I’m passionate about criticism, I think that’s fertilizer to me. I think being criticized is very important. And if you look at some of the works of some some of the best scientists, that to me is how you gain knowledge, newfound knowledge comes from pre existing knowledge, the issue, I think, lies in the foundation of criticism in our industry. It’s very emotive, it’s very personal. And what you get is people not offering better solutions, but just personal attacking. So you don’t want so no one wants to share, right? You’re dealing with a big conundrum of that, which is negative. Because the reality is, that’s where growth comes when people look at your stuff and say, Hey, Brett, I saw that video helped me understand about this, did you read this? And don’t get me wrong, there are times where you don’t have time to respond to that. I get it. But if it’s coming from the right place, and it’s a learning experience, everyone can benefit.

Brett Bartholomew

Yeah, I mean, we’ve talked about this a little bit on the podcast before but you know, I just think it’s a simple rule. I think anybody, of course, anybody has the right to whatever that means to criticize. I just think that for me, I never really wanted to criticize anything until I had something out there as well. So if I said, Hey, dude, shitty book, if I haven’t written a book, what right? Do I have to say shitty book, right? If I’m like, your program, there’s programming stupid. But no matter where you turn, you can’t find any examples in my program out there for the public. Like what? You know what? So a critic is just that they’re a critic, they’re not a contributor. Right? And that’s the key thing. I think that’s good check for anybody and even myself, because right, we get emotional with this stuff, too. But anybody listening, I think, before you respond anything, you should think, am I being a critic, or am I being a contributor? Now somebody would say, well, by criticizing, I’m contributing, because I’m, you know, expanding the discussion, and there’s a lot of people that hide behind that bullshit too do like, well, you know, I just think it’s good discourse and dialogue. It’s like, Nah, dude, you’re kind of being a know it all dickhead. Right? Like, what share your stuff or write a book.

Anthony Donskov

I would agree. And if you’re going to criticize, please provide a better explanation. We’re all we’re all waiting to hear that. And I say that sincerely. Like, that’s the learning that I talked about earlier. It is a learning opportunity to be criticized, I get criticized by my PhD professor on a daily basis, I welcome it, it’s awesome for me, I get to learn, but I’m provided with a better explanation. You can’t just get online and say this is shit or this is bad or this is good. Put, put, I mean, provide that explanation and and allow everyone else to learn from your hypothesis, because that’s all it is. We’re educated. You know, there’s a temporary theory as far as I’m concerned, my programs are open books, I share a lot of them some I don’t, some of them are are confidential and it’s for our athletes but like I said, provide a better explanation and it would do our coaching credo a lot better. Also, what I’ll say too, as we’re not built, as humans, I don’t think to accept criticism. While we want to get a modem, we got the fight or flight response, we got to stop, you know, it’s an evolutionary thing, but the best of the best that I know are welcome, they embrace it, but they embrace it when it’s coming from a good place for someone that has taken the time to criticize effectively for a learning opportunity not not as an opportunity to bash somebody. Does that make sense?

Brett Bartholomew

Yeah . 100% I’ll give you a brief example the other day is kind of a social experiment. I take I’m showing you this on screen I write down a lot of my notes on yellow legal paper, you know, in regards to before I write a program in Excel or Google Sheets, it goes on legal paper, and I just churn through this stuff right? And I was showing the other day I posted without any context I posted it on my Instagram Stories. Now I’ll read you off the exercise just because folks you know they like this stuff and they’re interested and it was a total body routine for an athlete that was coming in early early offseason right so good combination of isometric II centric work basic you know, traditional contractions what have you so first you know we’re working on we did some altitude drops just working on good landing principles and technique we did two by five. After that we focused on a non counter movement, jump to a box again mitigating impact that just came off a very long in season program. Then we started going into some single leg hops non counter movement counter movement you know different planes of motion what have you within the primary block strength block we did RDLs Essentrics so five by five second eccentric alternating Dumbbell Bench three second eccentric five each arm and paired that with a lateral bridge 30 seconds CHS athlete has a lot of issues just with basic trunk right and it’s it’s funny like some people will be like all lateral bridge that’s not going to move the needle for a pro athlete does with this guys have three back surgeries, right? There’s some things you’ve always got to keep prime. Then we went into in the auxilary stuff we did split squat ISO holds three position 10 bottom 10 mid 10 top back down. Eccentric pull ups, big boy so really, really, really bad at pull ups, and we’ve got to get that going. And then a rotational med ball slam. So we had some frontal plane work, transverse, you know, sagittal, the whole deal. And then he had it had a stress fracture that was kind of bugging him where, you know, he was able to do the split squats and everything medically cleared for that because it was fairly minor, but couldn’t do a lot of running or anything like that. So we did ropes, right, we did 15 on 30, off by six and some med ball work. Now I posted that online just to like, almost kind of as bait, right just to see what people would say. And immediately about 3030 Oh, what’s this that exercises done? Not one person asked who’s the athlete for not what or who’s the program for what time of year is it? Somebody said, that’s not a proper eccentric loading protocol. And I’m like, let me get this straight five reps, five second eccentric one sec, you know, what’s wrong about that? And the guy goes, well, there’s no literature to support this and that I go, buddy, you’re lost. But nobody asked a question except one person. And this was great. This person goes, Hey, I’m going to ask you something really stupid. And by this point, I had seen it all. But the guy asked a great question. And he goes, I noticed a lot of talk about you centric training. And I’ve tried doing a lot of research on my own. He goes, I understand what an eccentric contraction is. He goes, but I can’t seem to find for the life of me how long something needs to be in regards to a training protocol for it to really be considered II centric. And I go well, how do you mean it goes? Well, again, I noticed I obviously, I know when we descend into a squat, or we just send into an RDA or you know, a hinge. He’s like, I understand that as an E centric muscle muscle contraction. But what is the minimal effective dose in regards to E centric timeline loading? And I thought about that I go, You know what, that’s not a dumb question at all. I go now, for me, I don’t do anything less than three seconds. And, you know, I see some people out there doing like eight second Essentrics. That’s not my bag, unless it’s like an arm hang, right. And it’s like this yielding isometric or that really becomes an E centric. I go, You know what, man, I usually go anywhere from three to six seconds, depending on the movement. If an athlete can’t squat really well, you know, that’s going to play a roll of some other things go on. But that was an honest question. He sought to understand. And I didn’t even know the answer to that.

Anthony Donskov

Yeah. That’s, that’s a learning opportunity. and here’s what I mean by that, like, I again, stopped me and call my bluff when I say this, because I’m really intrigued by philosophy like that is what Socrates would call the Linkous, the art of cross examination. That’s that person simply asking you why he’s not. This is bad. That’s bad. That’s not a learning experience for anybody. Hey, could you help me understand, Brett? Here’s my understanding right now. And you know, could you help me understand where you’re coming from? And popper would call that critical rationalism. You and I are locked in a room? Brett? I think I’m right, you think you’re right. But by communication, we can get close to the truth. It’s just asking questions as cross examining, but from a good place.

Brett Bartholomew

Yeah. And he’s sought context. And like, we ended up having a really good discussion. We were like, You know what, that’s funny. Yeah. I don’t think anybody really knows. Like, let’s say somebody did do a two second, you know, tempo when they’re doing their tempo? They did do a two second eccentric. I don’t know, does that count? I’m like, Listen, man, I usually do three to six. That’s that. He’s like, I love it. He goes, I’ve just never seen anything in the research at what really defines when you’re using that tempo, what’s minimal effect, not one other person asked one question. They all lead with a response. And so it’s funny sometimes do that. I’d encourage any listeners to do this too. Because we get some great listeners, people that you know, are tired of the bullshit like you and I are, post something like literally, but you’ll see who, really shouldn’t be a part of your tribe. Right? And I’m always trying to tell people now Hey, don’t follow me. If you know, like, literally at a time where everybody’s interested in more followers, I’m interested in less and higher quality. I go Don’t follow me. If you want magic drills. Don’t follow me. If you want selfies, don’t follow me. If you want easy answers, just follow if you want to have good discussion, and you realize that we’re all unfinished products. So like, I’m just like, don’t fight. It’s interesting, like do that. Do a follower purge. Just get some of these people out of there.

Anthony Donskov

And it is an interesting to our mindset, once again, many times is you’ve got these people defending their programs, and defending exercises, when in actuality you should be trying to poke holes in your own program and your own exercises. It’s like it’s nothing more than a temporary theory. And that’s what I always think I’m going to share it it’s nothing more than an amalgamation of my pragmatic experience and what I’ve read someone if someone has a question, a genuine question, and I’m not able to answer it’s a learning opportunity for me or perhaps that person knows something I don’t know. And I can gain but never Is it personal in nature and never is it an attack and never is it Why are you doing this? But unfortunately, much of the Talk or the criticism is negative and you get you know, I heard a young coach on your podcast Brett super bright guy and his name is escaping me was an early one. He said You know, I don’t share a lot of this stuff because I guess I still Gonna put it up and get criticized. And I thought, you know, that’s a learning opportunity I’m missing out on because I don’t know what you’re doing, it’d be kind of cool to see what you’re doing, because I can learn from you.

Brett Bartholomew

And that’s one of the reasons I wanted to do this podcast is, you know, it’s very easy to hear from all the big names in the field, you hear from them anyway. Right? But like, where are the underdogs at? Where are the people that are still trying to figure it out? Where are the people that are filled with self doubt not to say that, you know, those others folks aren’t. But that’s why it was evident, we needed a podcast for the rest of us. And you know, just people that it’s like, I remember, as a graduate assistant, I had reached out to Anthony Rendon, and I’m like, Hey, can I get on your show? And I was an idiot? You know, but I was just like, I would just like to see if there’s other graduate assistants that are struggling with this or have these kinds of questions or what have you. And I think it’s valuable. I think people underestimate how much they have to kind of just contribute to the conversation. You know, I think that’s a huge thing. And you can’t be scared of that. That’s what does intrigue you? What does interests you the most right now. And I know you said you’re reading a lot more on leadership and communication, we’ll go there. But from a training standpoint, what is always something that is just always tugging at your curiosity,

Anthony Donskov

like just trying to find ways to push the needle and better the program. For me, I mean, we serve a large demographic at our facility, from Gen pop to youth athletes to advanced level professional players. My heart lives in that professional advanced, I love it. So I’m constantly trying to push the needle in that group to find different methods and means and, and to better quantify when one of the things that you know, we’re in a private facility, a public facility in our budgets, not nearly that of a college or professional strengthing auditioning facility, but we’re trying to find KPIs that we can track and manage that we’re not spending 10 $20,000 on technology wise, so that we can better quantify what we’re doing. You know, I heard Stuart Mill and speak about this before Breton, it kind of hit me in the head a while back and change the way we program is that you got to have an error elimination, you got to have a filter, how do you know what you’re doing is working, it’s different for everybody and every different situation, because context is different. So my passion now was trying to find ways to better error, eliminate and poke holes in our program. We do that right now with some KPIs that we’re tracking nothing overly crazy stuff. it’s pretty basic, but it allows us to steer our program. And if it’s not working, which I want to know, perhaps it’s like anything else, right? It’s an experiment, perhaps we go a different way with a different athlete, because they’re not responding. Does that make sense?

Brett Bartholomew

100%. And that leads into what I was gonna ask you next. Let’s say somebody walked into your facility, right? Donskov’s strength and conditioning. They’re there for the next two to three days just shadowing fly on the wall. Now, what is something that and I’m not going to do the young or old? What is something that a coach who expects there to be some secret is going to be really disappointed to see that somebody who’s been in this field a very long time and knows it’s about, you know, just savage commitment to the fundamentals is going to be absolutely just happy and delighted to see and what you guys do or how you do it.

Anthony Donskov

Culture. One, one thing I would have said if I if you asked me as a young strength coach, say, Oh, we have the best hockey specific programs, this culture, we coach with passion, purpose and pulse. We are committed with a thermostat and we get in our gym. And I don’t want to be out coach and I don’t want any of our coaches to be out coached. I want every athlete leaving. They’re saying I could not get this service anywhere. I don’t care anywhere in America. Anthony Donskov and his staff, DSC, all the other coaches, they dot i’s, they cross T’s they’re professional, they say what they mean? They mean what they say and they don’t facilitate the coach. They coach, if it’s a dynamic warmup, they’re coaching it. So those little things to me are the massive, massive drivers of success. Yes, I’m proud of our programs. Yes. But the reality is if most strength coaches came in, sorry, youth athletes, there’s nothing new. There’s nothing new under the sun that they’re gonna see. You know, we hinge we squat, we push we pull, we build the athlete not, you know, we’re not on Hockey. We’re not on BOSU balls with hockey, skates juggling. You know, we’re building basic athletes. Now, when the advanced level guys start training, we start toying around with more advanced level methods, we get more specific to the sport. I do think there’s subtle nuances that, make a hockey program, a hockey program, but just what, you know what I think the first thing is, is played on ice, right? So anytime a game or a team sport is played on ice, you’ve got one thing that you’re dealing with, you’re almost in a frictionless environment, you got a couple of things with friction, right? It acts parallel to the plane of force. So when I run it, push down and move forward. You do that on the ice, you fall flat on your face. So the muscles for locomotion are different in skating than they are running. So that’s the first thing I’d say. Now, you might say, well, Anthony, big deal. How does that change my program? It does at the early in the onset, we do a tissue remodeling block where we facilitate muscles that aren’t used on the ice and we inhibit muscles that are

Brett Bartholomew

you talked about a little bit more how you do that? Just yeah, it’s great to get really tactical for the audience like everybody likes to explore an experiment you gotta mind like the brainiac of DC Comics.

Anthony Donskov

I got this idea in full transparency from a good friend of mine and colleague, Jim Schneider, who had written about it extensively. And again, he made me critically think I went and asked him, I thought, wow, what’s next? What’s he doing? Like, what’s he doing here. And then I dug a little bit into it, I listened to him present, Jada males clinic and I was like, this makes a little bit of this makes sense to me. So I started experimenting. So I added a twist to it and different exercises. But the reality just is, we use long lever isometric holds. And we use a lot of long or slowly Centrix to reset length tension relationships in the body, right,

Brett Bartholomew

How slow will you get,

Anthony Donskov

we will hold our goal with some of these holds these ISO holds is for total sets of 30 seconds for so two minutes of total time under tension.

Brett Bartholomew

Yep.

Anthony Donskov

And we’ll do again, I’ll give you an example of some of the muscles. So I call it a short long approach. So we’re going to work the muscles the hamstrings, for example, in a shortened position because they’re not used in the sport of hockey for propulsion, the mono articular glutes are the quads are and the hamstring and hockey is really in the ad, Dr. Magnus. So we’re going to work the hamstrings that aren’t used in sport in a shortened position at the same time through Reciprocal inhibition and holding these patterns. We’re going to hibbott the inhibit the overused hip flexors, right. So we’ll hold long lever, like, I’ll post them on social media and some are already post but like a hanging, bilateral hamstring holds from the rack. So picture an athlete hanging like they’re doing a chin up, their knees are bent 90 degrees, and there’s a band put around their ankles, and I’m holding for 30 seconds, right? We’ll do what I call Atlas holds. So to six inch boxes, an athlete will get deep in the push up position and hold that position. 30 seconds on 30 seconds off. Yeah, the goal is for fascial changes in the upper chain here at the pec major pec minor, while facilitating the rhomboids and the traps. And to me, that’s just that first block again, to me, it’s looking at the chronic position of sport, which each sports different, and saying, How can we get the players out of that position, because they’ve lived in it the last seven months. So that’s a small thing that I would say is a nuance to hockey programs.

Brett Bartholomew

Why, like, sorry, to burst, in I’m like I’m a big fan of the Versaclimber for non impact conditioning. But anytime hockey came, I was always cautious of using too much of that, you know, because as much as great as it is to tax, just everything to tax your soul, there’s still so much that it’s still getting into that shortened position by the nature, even if you go long strides, you know what I mean? I just feel like hockey players tend to be so quad dominant already that if you kind of over saturate them with that they’re one they’re really good at it already, you know, because it’s just as grind. They never fatigue out from that. But I looked at that one time, and I’m like, we’re using that a little bit too much at some periods, it kind of might just be feeding into some form of dysfunction in terms of what they’re getting a lot of.

Anthony Donskov

That’s a good point. And it’s a very, very good pickup. I mean, we you know, we’ll do a lot of running in the offseason, Sprint’s tempo runs, etc. And the goal obviously, is to get to that chronic posture and open them up, as you know, obviously, exactly so, but those are big differences. It’s played on the ice, the mechanisms of propulsion are different. I think it’s important to realize too, that players live in the transverse plane. So early and often for us, we want to own the sagittal plane. Again, a subtle nuance, if you looked at a hockey program that are out for an elite athlete, it’s not like you’d say, Wow, this is a hockey program. But I would make the argument that it is designed based on the unique nature of their demands placed in their body during their sport. So some people may say I don’t believe in this sport specific I get it. I’m not suggesting that I live somewhere in between, I do believe in the more specific approach. As long as you understand the what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Copying and pasting someone’s program is not critical thinking, you got to start with the problem. And you’ve got to build your hypothesis from there. And that’s kind of how I’ve done it over the years, learning from people such as yourself, Jim, coaches that I have high admiration for, and then absorb modifying, applying it into our situation and our athletes.

Brett Bartholomew

Thorough as it gets on that one. Switching gears here a little bit. So you talked about how you really are focusing on the leadership communication side, how have you been really evaluating that testing that even looking at KPIs there what to you as a successful interaction?

Anthony Donskov

Well, it’s a fantastic question and I’m going to start by giving you a huge compliment you spoke to our staff and got my brain thinking as well. So we have a, process. A quantitative process objective might be a better word for our coaches. We call it the peer process, and is a document that we go over weekly we have weekly staff meetings. And two things we do in our staff meetings. I think, one you reinforced that we were already doing one, you push me and I changed. The first thing that you reinforced that we’re already doing is we set up situational awarenesses. And those are literally roleplays. You know, whether it’s teach me how to do this, or a client comes in 15 minutes late to a workout role, play it, tell me how you’re gonna handle that. That has been a huge probably one of the most important things we do as a staff, I call it a heat meter. You got to know the rules before you break them and you got to be emotionally intelligent. The other thing we do is we have a peer review process. So peer is presentation. Did you present? Good morning, Brett, how are you? How’s your day going? Right? The second thing is E. Energy. Did you bring energy? You are the thermostat. And I say this to the guys all the time. I don’t want parents I realized I’m a passionate person. One thing I’m not Britain, you know me well enough. I’m not a charlatan, I’m not a dogmatic person. But if you don’t know me, and you hear me speaking right now, you’d say that guy’s a passionate person. He’s into himself. I’m not my heart’s in the right place. But I expect a lot from our guys, you better bring energy. And that energy is going to be yours to own. It’s not mine. I don’t want you to be my parent. I want you to bring it on your own, but they got to know that you’re bringing an injury. The third one I stole from chip Morton, I’ll never forget this bread. He gave a presentation four or five years ago on love. You heard me right. His head strength and conditioning coach Cincinnati Bengals, one of the best presentations I’ve ever received on love. And it’s loving your athletes is doing small things that matter.

So the third letter, which is an E is encourage. And here’s what Chip said to me. I’ll never forget the specific will you encourage. It’s not Brett, good job to an advanced level athletes Brett. That was absolutely fantastic. Here’s a couple things I noticed with that lift, vertical arms light right in line with your feet chest through the wall. That’s one of the best lifts. I’ve seen you lift all week. Brett, congratulations, I want you to know that you’re being watched my friend hell of a job. That’s different to me that. Awesome. Great. Keep it up. Right? So encourage be specific was one, right? Respectfully correct would be the fourth letter, respectfully correct clients want. If you see something wrong, correct it respectfully. I want to know if I’m doing something wrong, because I want to, know that I’m watched. Number one, I want to know that I’m being coached. But I also want to know that, that there’s not a passive observer coaching. If I’m doing something wrong, I’m going to fix it, but I’m going to do so in a really respectful way. And the last one is be remembered and be remembered humbly did that person that left the gym have a conscious feeling of I conquered something today? We have in our gym, that hashtag one day better from my brother Misha who’s an inspiration to me, he’s a coach, he’s been a coach all his life at that, to me is important. Did that personally feeling one day better? And I can tell you this right now that peer review, we go over every week and every coach goes over it. I don’t care if you’re a black belt in jujitsu that’s on the floor being coach or if you’re a 12 year old kid was not running down your nose. We want a peer review with every person that walks in the door. It’s important for us

Brett Bartholomew

I think that’s a tremendous recap and just for everybody listening I’m gonna go through those again when he said peer review presents or how do you prove you said presentation but you write presentation energy, encourage and then respectfully Correct. I love the acronym. Am I right on those that I hit no spot on? ones be remembered humbly.

Anthony Donskov

Yeah, respectfully correct. The last So it’s P E E R R

Brett Bartholomew

Ah, there it is. All right, perfect. Yeah, I think in the end, that’s just giving people a framework to evaluate because the majority of people when I asked them, I say, hey, how do you evaluate your coaching? We evaluate training, how are we evaluating coaching? Now a lot of folks wouldn’t really they’re just like, oh, I you know, I guess I don’t and you gotta love acronyms. Right. I know, some people always kind of scoff at them. But even with art of coaching, I look at you know, you got to adapt, observe and communicate and we put together I’m glad that improv activity was helpful because that’s that’s what where we’re running now with our to coaching apprenticeships, we’re getting coaches from all over. Now. Most of them just like with, you know, Mike does a great job with this right with Boyle, you go through a CFSC online, you’ve got to pass that and obviously show that like you understand the foundational material before you go to those workshops. We do the same thing. People have to go through bought in they have to understand the psychosocial underpinnings. We have a lot of coaching evaluation things in there that people can do for self evaluation. But they’ve got to go through that and pass within 80% before they can go to these art of coaching apprenticeships. And within that we do a lot of the same thing. peer evaluation, one on one evaluation, we do video feedback and all these pieces and less than a million other people listening to this could go copy that format, right like that. But like this, having the science behind it and then having coaches or attracting the right kind of coaches who embrace the interaction, embrace the criticism. It’s not one of these things where it’s like everybody comes and gets a pat on the back and you’re great. Like we’re all eventually told we suck at something. Now myself too, like, there’s days where I have bad coaching sessions, or you know, and that’s where I love the part where you said some people, the charlatan piece, I think there can’t be that fear, right? If I ran these workshops, and I’m walking around like, you’re an idiot, you’re an idiot, I’m the authority on coaching. Have I made this my life kind of goal and passion, at least at this point? For sure. Am I researching it? Am I getting my doctorate in related fields, but I still mess up, you know, but that’s the thing you’ve got to jump in, right? Like think of improv even think of comedy just to depersonalize them a little bit. When you go watch people at Second City when you go my wife and I go to a place here in Atlanta called the basement, and we watch some world class improv actors screw up all the time. And they don’t freak out about it, they don’t lose it on stage. They don’t say somebody else sucks. They got a bad night and they adapt, right? They observe, they adapt, they communicate, they keep going. And so I love the fact that you guys have that. And the tricky thing is this right is finding out the good scoring system. The tricky thing is really because you can’t 100% objectively evaluate the subjective,

Anthony Donskov

it’s a very good point, we share one thing that we did to to try to be more objective, and we’re going to use this we’ve just started it and I’ve just started doing this with our guys, I just had a meeting with our staff this past week, all on the standard, we call it the standard being a coach the standards that are being held, etc. But we invested a little while ago and the reason we invested in it was literally for security and, our insurance, but we invested in a nest camera, and the facility. And what we’re going to use that for us to cut video as well, like a coach would with anybody else. And our coaches know that hey, guys, I want to let you know, once a week, we’re gonna have some coaching sit downs, we’re gonna go over some great things and things to work on whether it’s a positioning issue, whether we thought there could have been more energy. So we are trying to objectify it. And I think tape is a great way to do that if you’re able to,

Brett Bartholomew

yeah, 100% when we do these workshops, and we beta tested them a lot because they’re evolving, right? That’s the first thing we do, we’ll spend part of the day in breakouts, we videotape. And then we come back and we put it up there, and everybody gets to watch the small group interactions. And it’s like that every coach has to go and be like I did these things well, and I did the same shitty just break the ice. The I think the tough thing for me was And if anybody’s interested in kind of these activities that you can use it Anthony and I are discussing, I have this all on a free manual that’s been available for download for like a year and a half, just go to getfieldguide.com. And there’s I think there’s 10. And then there’s another 10 With my course bought in, but we just go through this, and then they’re used all the time, we have another one called 10 Strangers where it’s like, literally, you’ve got to, don’t worry about the outcome of a certain kind of interaction. Just try to keep it going, you know, and learning how to ask different questions because, you know, people just don’t know how to listen, we do this time traveler thing where it’s like, imagine you had to explain a microwave to somebody from 500 years ago, and I’ll say go and these people will break up and immediately they’re like, Alright, so there’s this thing, and it transmits heat waves and the person is like water, heat waves, you know, and eventually some frustrated coaches, I could just, it’s magic, okay, it’s magic. And I stop them and I go, Hey, how many of you actually lead with a question? And almost nobody raises their hand where it’s evident if you’ve got to explain something. Let’s use that microwave. I’d say Hey, Anthony, you eat food. But let’s play right now. Do you eat food? Yes, I do. Yeah. Do you cook your food before you eat it?

Anthony Donskov

I suppose. No, I don’t. Yeah,

Brett Bartholomew

well, why don’t you cook your food before you eat it?

Anthony Donskov

Well, I most of my food I eat raw. I just haven’t found a good way to heat it up.

Brett Bartholomew

If you were gonna heat it up. What would you use?

Anthony Donskov

Probably I’d boil water. Maybe?

Brett Bartholomew

Yeah. Do you like is fire a thing? Like, do you understand? You know?

Anthony Donskov

Oh, yes.

Brett Bartholomew

So if you wanted to control that fire, right? How would you do that? how would you heat something up with fire during your time period?

Anthony Donskov

I would I would rub sticks together and get the sticks in the and we talking to old school now. Right?

Brett Bartholomew

Yeah, but your 500 years ago homie, that’s

Anthony Donskov

that’s how I do it. Yeah. Together, get my you know my wood in there and get go to work.

Brett Bartholomew

Right? And so you start seeing where this goes. And it’s like, okay, so like, we know we want to heat something directly. Well imagine if you had something that could heat it faster than fire. Now, inevitably, the person’s like faster than fire. What’s faster than five? But like the point is, is it makes you as a coach have to really find an external way of explaining things. And there’s some people that are just curmudgeons and Zoji sizes do too. Okay, well, fortune 500 companies the world overdo stuff like this, you You’re too good to do that. Right? And like the majority of people 90% of people laugh they have a lot of fun and they realize Holy shit. This is really hard. Because then I say guys, when you tell an athlete how to do a clean grip, split snatch, that is essential. akin to some of this stuff, you know, is that a bit dramatic? Sure. But the concepts is saying, you’ve got to get out of your frame of reference and lead with questions. And so I just think that’s valuable to do. And I know it’s shown me a lot of areas where I’m weak at it, but it’s just intriguing.

Anthony Donskov

It’s fantastic. It’s, it’s done the same to myself and my coaching and my communication style is something that I think the hardest job I have right now is managing people. I mean, it’s and I say that I mean, it’s, something I try to continue to, work on a daily basis, being implemented.

Brett Bartholomew

How many do you make this?

Anthony Donskov

So myself and my brother, our business partners, and we have one, two, we have four coaches right now.

Brett Bartholomew

And when you started, it wasn’t just you and your brother.

Anthony Donskov

Just me. Yeah, it was just me.

Brett Bartholomew

Just you? Then you recruited your brother?

Anthony Donskov

Yeah. He was a medical sales guy and living in Jacksonville, Florida. So I had to recruit him. Yeah.

Brett Bartholomew

So this kind of leads into some of the final questions I’ve had for you. Because I know we’ve been going for a while, but it led organically to this place. In a time where coaches tend to Job hop, right? They’re always looking for the next job whether an NHL team opens up an NBA team opens up a college team opens up, how have you been able to one identify the right type of strength coach to hire right in terms of their commitment level, their accountability, knowing that they’re not just going to Job hop for the next opening? And, you know, what advice would you have for people that are seeking jobs in general? What, you know, how can they approach these things, so they stick out to people like you?

Anthony Donskov

Well, the first one is made plenty of mistakes early. And often. I think at times, what I found is that just a standard interview, or one touch point doesn’t really tell you a lot about a person. I’ve been impressed before. And I’ve been quickly unimpressed, for lack of a better word. So what we started doing was that in order to work at our facility, you had to go through the internship program first. So we had a lot of touch points with that individual over the course of the summer, etc, we were able to educate that individual, on some of our processes, etc, we were able to see that personality communicate, were they on time did they dot the i’s and cross the T’s did they take a passionate approach to cleaning, I wouldn’t ask anyone to do something, I didn’t do Brett, I get on my knees and clean the bathroom, you better do the same thing if you’re interning and you better take pride in it. And I don’t say that to be again, all you know puffed up my chest, but we want to see that because that’s our culture. So so we were able to see individuals go through our internship process. And to me it was a matter of, I think Mike Boyle says to before it is the quality of person that you are, it’s the quality of care that you have, you know, nobody wants to come into a gym with a you know, what a not nice person. So to me, it was about having a heat meter being a good communicator and genuinely caring. For young coaches looking to get in the in the business, I think being professional, I mean, I can’t tell you how many emails that I’ve received with, with my last name spelled incorrectly. Or, for that matter, just poor spelling period, or, you know, looking for an internship a month before the internship starts. It’s like, I don’t know how many I mean, this is a process. Showing up for your internship, I have a you know, for me, I’d rather be overdressed than underdressed. I tell our young coaches that coach at our facility, if you ever present one day, you’ll be the guy up there with the whole the profession and high standards. So just little things. It’s a tough profession. And I have, a lot of encouragement for the young coaches out there trying to get their feet wet. And it just encouraged you to do it the right way be a pro dot the i’s cross the T’s. If you’re really passionate about a position, stay on that person. it’s a difficult climate for the private sector. It’s saturated, it’s overpopulated. It’s hard getting jobs and higher level sport, but you know, stay with it and do this things that take no talent, really well know how to spell someone’s last name, put together a comprehensive email, look over your resume and make sure there’s no time gaps or spelling errors, and present yourself positive. When you do get that experience. It’ll go a long way.

Brett Bartholomew

I think that’s all great advice. And they got to do their research that goes into spelling your name, right? Well, I still get people that I have an entire course now Valued on professionalism, professional development, networking, resume writing, and also a lot of people that’ll be like, Hey, man, can you give me some tips? And I’m like, Dude, there’s a two day course right here. And they’ll just be like, Yeah, but I was hoping you could just kind of summarize it for me. And you know what I learned? You know what I learned though, that made me a lot happier as a person in the past, it would drive me nuts. And I can I mean, nobody’s watching me shaking his head because you know, right. Oh, it’s the same thing. When people reach out in they’re like, Hey, man, you got a podcast. And I’m like, Dude, you literally just could have looked up podcasts. But what I learned and I heard somebody say this, and I might have said this on the podcast once, but it’s worth repeating. Regardless. One guy goes, Man, you’ve got to realize you’re not in the rescue business. And I go, Well, what do you mean? And he said, You spent a lot of time just kind of spoon feeding people. I go Nah, man, it’s just the chip on my shoulder when I was younger, I didn’t get a lot of people that responded to me or took the time, even though I would do my due diligence, and I’d make sure and read their book and what have you. And I just want to make sure everybody knows that, you know, they’re appreciated, and I took the time he goes, I get that he goes, but there are some people that really don’t want to help themselves. And if they don’t help themselves first, you won’t be able to help them. And I thought about that, and I go, That’s great advice. And you know, you can be in the rescue business, what you need to be as in the business of finding people who want to get better, and helping them become great. He’s like, but all these people that reach out for job advice, when you have a full on course for that people that want to know how to build buy in when you have a book, in course, about that. And people that just want you to spoon feed it, he’s like, these people want aren’t gonna go do those things anyway. And they’re never gonna, like, they’re never just, they’re gonna go through life doing the same thing again and again. And again. There was right. I mean, have you ever experienced that? Like, have you ever caught yourself just trying to rescue and do those things?

Anthony Donskov

Yeah, I have it probably not near the extent that you do my friend, I was all the great content you put out and the resources both free and, your book and courses. I’m sure you get way more than I but I do. Like I’ll put something up a research. Where do I get that article? So Have you been I’ve even gotten on Google? And I’ll say this too. It’s also and I know, I don’t want to I want to respect your time as well.

Brett Bartholomew

Oh, no, I have all, you’re the guest man.

Anthony Donskov

It’s also a way to not build critical thinkers. Right? I might make the argument to that. A true mentor doesn’t spoon feed like you can’t spoon feed people that you’re erasing parents. Go find the answer. Show me that you’ve looked for the answer first. Even if you come back with the wrong answer, I’ll steer you after you show me that you put an effort. But I’ll get that stuff like, Where’d you get that article? How can I get that book? Hey, you know, and this one gets me to and this is an I have a tough time with this Brett. I’ll tell you as my friend and the other hey, I need 10 minutes of your time. I want to talk about this. And it’s like, my gosh, man, like I’m running a small business. I’m in the middle of a PhD. It’s like, no, that’s just not how it works.

Brett Bartholomew

Yeah. It takes weeks, and we did an episode on that with Tim Karen and Brianna battles. I mean, we talked about it, here’s the thing we don’t really have and Stuart McMillen, we’re getting him on the show, too. But he agrees we don’t really have a profession right now. Now, granted, we do have people that are paid for what they do, which you could say that’s a professional by definition. And I’d agree to a degree. But you also have to have a group of individuals that act professional. And we just don’t have that yet. Because that expectation hasn’t been cleared. You know, I would love to go to my dentist and be like, Can I have a 20 minute cleaning for free? It doesn’t work that way. I’d love to go to my lawyer what you know running a business, whether you’re doing trademarks, whether you’re doing NDAs, whether you’re doing simple contracts, and hey, you know, could you do this one for free. And maybe some people will throw you a bone and what have you periodically, but you just can’t do those things. But that goes hand in hand with what you said. It’s just professionalism. And we’ve gotten a lot of strong reactions from some coaches that have said, Hey, I don’t agree, I think these things should be free. And I’m like, that’s fine. That’s, your prerogative, but then go tell your superior because most of the people that said this are getting paid hundreds of 1000s of dollars, go tell your superior then that they don’t need to pay you, and that you’ll do your job for free. And then let’s see you give advice to all these other people and put your programs out there all for free. Let’s see that happen. That just doesn’t happen. And anybody that can’t afford to do that, you know, like they’re usually you’re making their money somewhere else. But you just got to be professional, you got to be in it for so given that, where do you see the future? Like the next? What’s the next step for strength and conditioning? What do we have to do to take the next step forward in the evolution of our field? That’s a big one. I know it’s a big and I’m totally putting you on the spot. That’s any consolation. last question. I promise.

Anthony Donskov

That’s a, great question. And I don’t want to get too philosophical. But I think that we need to, as a community enrich our critical thinking skills. And when I say critical thinking, our platform for communication, it’s got to be less void of ego. And, Venom and more of a support structure and probing and cross examining like you talked about, look, I think, when we look at Logic and Critical Thinking Critical Thinking starts with problems and tries to solve problems. If you look at inductive logic and both report and inductive is more like heuristics, they start with something very specific and they have broad brush generalizations right? I think our profession would do a better job if we thought more critical about things before just cutting and pasting and commenting etc. Have the courage to fail yourself. Like experiment there’s your failed as much as I love you. You’re fallible, right? So am I I’m a fallible person, like experiment Yes. Like, yeah, I just mean, like, have the courage to think for yourself. Understand that spoon fed is not the way you’re gonna Get and enrich your educational journey. Don’t get me wrong, there’s unbelievable resources out there. And you should invest in, but have the wherewithal to think critically for yourself, start with a problem to solve and do your due diligence to try to solve it, and have the courage to share it with people and get critique on it. And it will grow our profession in leaps and bounds like it will, as opposed to just hopping on and commenting and being emotive. So I think the thought process behind evolving is just thinking a little bit differently reframing things. Again, both inductive and deductive logic, I think are really important. But I think we’d all be in a better better place if we thought a little bit more at times deductively. And I think it would help grow our profession and streamline some communication. I don’t know if that makes any sense.

Brett Bartholomew

I do want to say this. So just so people can get is there a muse that you have or that you can think of in terms of a community and industry, a business, whatever term you want to use that is doing that? Well. And I’ll give you a little bit of lead. So like I A while back, and a while back, I had said to me strengthing conditioning is kind of like comedy. Every you know, in comedy, every other comedian thinks every other comedian sucks. And it’s kind of like low pay odd hours. You know, it’s very scarce resources. But the funny thing about comedy, and we were watching a Netflix piece the other day, and one of the comedians said, you know how much comedy has evolved in the last five years, in that so many more comics have gotten supportive of the community as a whole. And it’s allowed a lot more people to rise up because before they had to compete for like Johnny Carson’s couch, who got on Johnny Carson’s couch. And if somebody got on Carson’s couch, man, like that person that was their ticket to the next stage. And then it was, well, what about HBO, and Showtime and Comedy Central. But now with Netflix, and Hulu, all these comedians have so many more avenues to get noticed, you know, and sure people like Kevin Hart, realize, like, I need to own my own content so that these big companies don’t own everything I do. Because at some point, he knew people were gonna get really, really tired of hearing Kevin Hart. But the point is that, to me, that’s a muse. Right? That’s something that started off very combative, very niche, very scarce resources, very low pay, but now you look and it’s no longer bad. People wouldn’t use the term sellout as much, which is funny, because if you tell your athletes like, going all out and selling out, or really more, that’s kind of a synonym, where we kind of use this term sell out as anytime somebody gets a following or public appeal. Oh, they’re not one of us anymore. Well, yeah, who the hell would want to do the exact same job the exact same way for 20 25 30 years? Right? Like who, really wants to get into a field and be like, You know what, I want to coach eight to 10 groups a day? Well, from the age of 19, to 65. Like, who doesn’t want to do that? Like, yeah, like you look at it and look at Dr. Dre, Dr. Dre started as a DJ than he was a rapper than he was a producer than he was a business owner, you look at Jay Z, he did the same thing. A lot of other musicians, rock, soul, jazz, whatever, I’ve all done the same thing. So for me to evolve, just add my two cents and hopefully give you a little bit more like cushion to to understand where I was going with that is, you know, we’ve got to look at these other fields, like the music industry, like the comedy, you know, Entertainment has done a good job, and they, there’s poor examples of all that shit. But you’ve got to evolve, you’ve got to evolve. Even financial advising went from, you know, you had to have a broker. Now there’s robo advisors just in some way, s&c has got to evolve. And that’s why I’m interested in kind of hearing what you think that will be?

Anthony Donskov

that’s a fantastic question. And you gave some some great. I see it evolving. Well, hopefully, you know, a couple of ways. In terms of measures, I think the tough part is, is there’s just limited jobs available

Brett Bartholomew

for sure. For you’re gonna have to create, maybe it’s in the entrepreneurial role.

Anthony Donskov

Exactly. And that’s happening. There’s more and more small private sector gyms as well. I think you’re going to see some more high level coaches entertain the idea of academia and perhaps in hopes of giving back there knowledge in the classroom. I think one thing I’m finding with my PhD program that I think would be awesome, is a supervisor or supervisors that have have both the pragmatic experience and the book that’s a unique that’s a unique find when you’re in that like so. I think that might be were things head as well, hopefully the the, and again, when I say hopefully, I don’t know how this will, evolve. I think the communication will certainly help evolve it but hopefully combat pay, gaps excuse me decrease as well. I’m so happy when I hear of these strength coaches making great money in some of these big football programs. I think it’s fantastic. I think communicating that and sharing that hopefully will enrich other sports is Well, I can tell you there’s a tremendously big difference between what a university hockey strengthing and conditioning coach may make. And a college football coach may make. So hopefully that that changes as well. But I think, you know, teaching higher level education, perhaps being entrepreneurs doing things like you’re doing creating resources that individuals can learn from, where I call it fast forward learning where you’re learning from somebody else’s mistakes that’s been there and done that. And again, every situation is different. But I think coaching and that’s another conduit for some growth in the community as well.

Brett Bartholomew

Yeah, great answer. Man. I appreciate you rolling with the punches there. Because all this stuff has been, you didn’t get any of these questions in advance. I know you’re a philosophical guy, though. And that’s what’s great. you’re at your best when you’re just allowed to ruminate. And everything that comes your off. Well, listen, I appreciate you so much. Can you give people insight in terms of where is best that they fall along with you, you put out a ton of stuff, especially all my training nerds out there. I mean, you could spend the next two years of your life rolling through this man’s can everybody that says social media sucks, you suck. Like because, like Anthony, like use it so masterfully, to share content and information. If you don’t roll it all into a book someday, Anthony, like I’ll do it and I’ll make you pay me a fee. But you have an idea where they can keep up with you and keep learning from you, man.

Anthony Donskov

Sure. Twitter is just @donskovsc. And then Instagram is @donskovsc as well. Those are the two are bigger social media platforms, more Instagram and Twitter. Those are the best places to reach me.

Brett Bartholomew

Perfect. And for those of you wondering, hey, where can I buy his book?

Anthony Donskov

Okay, at amazon.com

Brett Bartholomew

or just Google? Anthony Donskov.

Anthony Donskov

Yeah.

Brett Bartholomew

And all these things are in my show notes as well guys. So make sure you look at the show notes. And please, please, please, if you can leave a podcast review or just tell two to three friends about it. Otherwise, this stuff just kind of sits in the airwaves doesn’t really help many people. And it’s all an algorithm game with iTunes and all that nonsense. So whether you hate the show, whether you love this show, whether you’re lukewarm about it, just rate it, you know, and tell us what you think. Tell us what you want more of and spread this stuff because guys like Anthony are giving up a tremendous amount of their time and time away from their athletes to share this information. So please, please help us spread it help us share it big dawg, I appreciate you for getting me on for part two.

Anthony Donskov

All right, thanks for your time my friend

Brett Bartholomew

Alright be good

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