NSCA’s Coaching Podcast, Episode 43: Greg Haff

Greg Haff, former President of the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA), current course coordinator for post graduate studies in strength and conditioning at Edith Cowan University, and Senior Associate Editor for the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, talks to the NSCA’s Head Strength and Conditioning Coach, Scott Caulfield, about his journey through strength and conditioning and his efforts to progress the field during his time as president of the NSCA. Topics under discussion include: his years being NSCA Board of Director President, the future of the profession, how he got involved in the NSCA, key traits of icons in the field, traits for potential incoming students, and how to get into sports science.

“To be great sport scientists, we have be great sport coaches.” 3:28

“Accreditation of schools, I think, is a game changer for the profession.” 4:25

“Blending the feeling, the coaching, the science, is what this change is designed to do.” 6:45

“That challenge will make them better.” 6:56

“Do good work and everything else falls in line.” 13:29

“I think of sports science as a relationship with coaches.” 14:06

“I’m not looking for the smartest guy or gal in the room, I’m looking for passion and work ethic.” 17:29

“For me, the weight room has always been the microcosm of life. It really reveals character.” 17:54

“Coaching is communication.” 22:18

“Choose mentors who you truly want to be the people to guide you.” 23:45

“That’s the amazing thing about the NSCA and the professionals here is that they’re so approachable.” 24:36

“We’ve got to keep evolving the training of strength coaches.” 26:38

“It’s a lot tougher now with all the noise from social media to really know which information is correct.” 27:05

Reporting Errors: To report errors in a podcast episode requiring correction or clarification, email the editor at publications@nsca.com or write to NSCA, attn: Publications Dept., 1885 Bob Johnson Dr., Colorado Springs, CO 80906. Your letter should be clearly marked as a letter of complaint. Please (a) identify in writing the precise factual errors in the published podcast episode (every false, factual assertion allegedly contained therein), (b) explain with specificity what the true facts are, and (c) include your full name and contact information.

This is the NSCA's Coaching Podcast, Episode 43.

To be great sport scientists, we've got to be great coaches.

This is the NSCA's Coaching Podcast, where we talk to strength and conditioning coaches about what you really need to know but probably didn't learn in school. There's strength and conditioning, and then there's everything else.

Welcome to NSCA Coaching Podcast, I'm Scott Caulfield. Today with me, Dr. Greg Haff, Associate Professor of Strength and Conditioning at Edith Cowan University, and by about 10 hours, past president of the NSCA Board of Directors. Greg, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me, Scott. It's a real pleasure to be on the podcast. It's one of the great initiatives of the NSCA for coaches and just learning about what we do.

Appreciate it. And you got to sleep in technically today, but you were out here bright and early still with your workout gear on.

Oh yeah. I mean, for me, I mean, I grew up-- my father is a marine, so 4:30 in the morning's normal. 5:00 is sleeping in. [LAUGHS]

Yep, yep. That's great. And I'd like to kind of set up a few little icebreaker questions just to kind of make it a little more fun for everybody listening too. We're trying to change it up and keep everything fresh, but how about-- let me start off and tell us what's your favorite kind of music to listen to when you're training?

I like stuff that's pretty hard. Linkin Park, Slipknot, Korn. Stuff that's really loud, hard beat. For me, training is kind of cathartic in the sense that it's a place for me to go just be and think and focus on myself and doing what I need to do.

That's great. How about-- let's go-- let's take it way back. What was the first car that you ever drove?

Ah, I had a Ford Mustang. I was a street racer, actually, when I was in high school. Did a lot of that. Not the smartest thing to do, don't recommend it for people. But it was a fun car to zip around a little bit.

Nice. OK, how about a favorite movie? What's your favorite movie you've ever seen?

Oh man, that's a tough one. I'm kind of a big movie guy, so I watch a lot of movies. Probably because I'm stuck on airplanes flying from Australia all the time.

Right. I've seen more than most of us have.

I kind of like military movies. I really liked the Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, 13 Hours. That was a really good one. I just like that team approach of people working together for a greater good, and that kind of resonates with me. The Miracle is another one that I just-- you want to see me get emotional watching that? I was alive when that happened and saw it live on television, but teams for me are a big thing.

Yeah, cool. Well, speaking of emotional, last night you know you passed the gavel to Dr. Triplett and Dr. Fry getting the award. Super-- I was getting emotional back there listening to everybody's speeches. So let's talk a little bit about your past few years as being president. NSCA has made leaps and bounds in this time frame. What are you most proud of these years as your presidency went on?

Well I think-- when you start to look at the presidency, it's kind of an interesting journey. It's a self-exploration journey. For me, one of the things that really guided me was that working with Mike Stone when I was a grad student and Meg Stone as a strength coach under her, he really pushed us that, to be great sport scientists, we've got to be great coaches.

So my roots are really in coaching. And I like being in the weight room. In fact, I never really wanted to be a sports scientist, I wanted to be a Division I strength coach and work with football, and I got excited about the science. And over the last three years, I just wanted to return to who we are. That was my message to the board. Remember who we-- are our strength and conditioning coaches who want to know some science to do the best for our athletes. And if we could set ourselves on the mission statement of translating science to practical application, that's our unifying guiding principle that takes us where we want to go.

And that was our starting point. And I think getting the board to remember that starting point I think was a really, really important thing. And that set the framework for everything else that we did. And as we looked at where the profession is going and where we as an organization want to take the profession for coaches, it really made us make some really interesting decisions. I mean, we announced the accreditation of schools, which I think is a game-changer for the profession.

I mean, several years ago, Thomas Myslinski from the Jacksonville Jaguars is a good friend of mine and someone I really respect, and I had a long conversation about how this is necessary. And Tom's a pretty convincing guy. You get to good conversation, he gets emotional and he's a true strength coach, and that resonated with me.

And so I posed it to the board-- what if we explore this? Is this something that we want to do? And after three years, we're like, yep, this is where we want to go. We had a lot of focus groups and a lot of work. So if I'm going to mark anything, that's going to be the one that-- that's the game-changer, that's the big focus on strength coaches.

Yeah. And talk a little bit more about that. So this accreditation process is super cool, it's going to be new and it's going to really legitimize the profession more, but I guess tell for the listeners that may be confused-- or may not quite understand, talk a little bit more about what exactly that process means to them in the future.

So for anybody who's got a CSCS now, it's not going to change anything, really. You've got your certification, but what you have to remember is do your research, because once you lose it--

Don't let it lapse.

Yeah, don't let it lapse, because you're going to be in trouble after 2030. So in 2030, the idea is that to sit for the CSCS exam, from that point forward, you're going to have to graduate from an accredited program at a university. And that program has to be a strength and conditioning-related field.

So it's very similar to what NATA does with athletic trainers, but it's for strength coaches so that we can raise the standards of how strength coaches are prepared. One of the things that we often get criticized for is that our hands-on skills aren't really there. And I would argue that that's not true, but we want to make those hands-on skills better, because if you look globally around the world, the soft skills of actually coaching, actually knowing how to do exercises is fading because of the online environments and the things where we're not actually in the weight room under the bar.

One of the things for me that's critical-- and all my grad students lift, they've got to lift. You've got to be in the weight room, you've got to feel the bar, you've got to learn how it feels. And I learned that from Mike Stone. We had to train with him. And once you feel super compensation or excessive fatigue or even overtraining, you know how it feels and you know what to look for.

So blending the feeling, the coaching, and the science is really what this is designed to do. And it's going to make it a challenge for people to become successful strength coaches, but that challenge is going to make them better.

Right, right, right. No, that's huge, because-- well, part of the accreditation of these programs typically is probably going to involve some sort of internship hours and stuff like that that will be standardized, right?

Correct.

Everybody-- everyone, if they want a program to be accredited, that's what they're going to have to follow.

Yep. They're going to have standard hours, it's going to have standard requirements. And I think that's the one that's going to really make the difference. And if you think about it from an NCAA college environment, they need help in the weight room. They need interns. So these interns are going to be there in a learning environment and it creates them a pathway in order to get the experience that they need, and the head strength coaches and the strength staff can actually train the next generation in their methodology.

So I think it's a win for them as well, they just have to figure out how to implement it. And we've got 10, 12 years now in order to get it finalized and get it working the way we want it.

Right. Yeah, and I think that was the difference from when I first heard it, because people asked, they said, well I thought-- didn't you have to have an exercise science degree before? And the answer was yes, but the difference is, all these programs are now going to be held to the same standard-- they're all going to have to meet that criteria.

Well also around the world, too, because we've actually met with all of our affiliates. Japan, Shanghai, Italy, Spain, Korea, they're going to have to raise to the standards, too. So international people will be able to get the same qualification and we'll be able to be assured that they're the same. And that's a game-changer.

That's huge. It's so exciting, so congrats on that. Again, you're just getting done being the president. You've been involved at every different level that you could have possibly been involved in the NSCA. How did you get involved? I think that that's always something interesting and people love hearing about the different paths, because there are so many easy ways and different ways to be involved the NSCA as volunteer and then getting to become president is the ultimate honor. But talk about getting involved and how you kind of you got involved with it.

I think I gotta go back a little bit further than how I actually got involved in NSCA, because for me, I was 11 years old and my father was-- he's a Marine, and he wanted me to be a Marine-- that was the goal for me from probably the day I came out of the womb is, I was going to be a Marine. And I wasn't able to do that because I have a slight hearing impairment, so I can't be in the armed forces.

But he was training me with weights at 11. And so I lifted pretty much five days a week since I was 11. And when I was 18, I came home one night and I saw the 1987 Women's Weightlifting Championship. I'm like, hmm, that's pretty interesting stuff. Well maybe I'd want to give that a try. So I started to try to teach myself how to Olympic weightlift. And I was a football player and a track athlete, and I went to East Stroudsburg University, which is a classic physical education school.

And I went there and I met a guy named Rich Fields who was one of the track coaches, and he was like, you should give this weightlifting thing a try. And so I started to do a little bit weightlifting and I was blessed. I went to my first weightlifting competition in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and I met Andy Fry by complete accident. We were sitting next to each other, and a famous weightlifter from the United States came out, Arin Kutsky, and I'm like, what am I doing here? Because he was like massive and just amazing, an Olympian.

 And Andy Fry tapped me on the shoulder and we struck up a conversation and we became pretty good friends. And he just happened to be a grad student with Bill Kramer at Penn State at the time. And so he'd come over to East Stroudsburg to do some research with a guy named Frank Pullo, who was a professor there, who happened to be the advisor for the powerlifting team and also an academic in the physical education program.

And so Andy introduced me to him. The next thing I know, I'm sitting in a strange thing auditioning class and he hands me Jasser, hands me Husker Power, and he hands me an application for the NSCA. And so I joined the NSCA, and I started reading the journal, and I got really interested in being a strength coach, and that's really what I wanted to do.

And Andy kind of-- a lot of people-- I get pretty emotional about Andy because I wouldn't have been president if it wasn't for Andy Fry. So he introduced me to Bill Kramer. He introduced me to Mike Stone, Cal Pierce, John Garhammer-- the icons of science in our field. Because I was a weightlifter too, I happened to be in a lot of the junior stuff that they were doing in weightlifting.

So the next thing I know, I ended up at Appalachian State with Mike Stone and the rest is kind of history. I just kind of started doing some stuff and he made us go to conferences and I used to go, but doc, I don't have much money. I'm pretty broke. And he's like, doesn't matter. Use your credit card, and I'm like, doc, man, that's debt. Who wants debt? And he's like, it's an investment in your future. You'll pay it off later. You gotta go network and you gotta go meet people.

And one thing that Mike Stone does exceptionally well with his grad students is he introduces you to everybody and anybody. And he's proud of us. And his students are so important to him, and that's a lesson that I've learned and my students are getting the same benefit.

So I started to do that and go to conferences. I went to the Phoenix conference in the '90s and was just blown away. I read Zatsiorsky's book, that 1994 one in one sitting in the venue waiting around. And it was an awesome experience. And I got my PhD at the University of Kansas, and then Dan Wathen nominated me for the research committee. And then I just started to serve in the organization doing reviews, writing articles, and just giving back to an organization that gave to me.

That's awesome, yeah. What do you think are some of the key traits? You've been around so many of these people that volunteer and that are really legends in the NSCA. What are the key traits of those types of people?

Well it's interesting. They all have similarities. They're all passionate, they all work hard. I mean, like really hard. But the one thing I noticed about the true icons is that it's not about a claim, it's not about awards, it's about giving back and doing good work and being altruistic. And most of the icons, they don't have Twitter, they don't have Instagram-- they don't care about likes, they care about doing good work.

And the one thing that I learned from Mike Stone and also from Bill Kramer and Andy Fry and John Garhammer and Cal Pierce is, do good work and everything else falls in line. You work hard, work smart, and treat people well. And if you do that, I think things come together, and that's the important part.

That's cool. No, it's very similar to what I would say about the people that I've been involved with in the organization as well. How about we talk about sports science, you guys have been doing sports science forever. It seems to be kind of a hot topic now all of a sudden.

Well it is. And the thing that's interesting is, my approach to sports science a little bit different. I think of it as a relationship with coaches. So one of the things that I struggle with a little bit about being in Australia is I'm not able to go over to the collegiate strength coaches and hang out in the football weight room and ask them, what do you need? What is the questions you guys have? What are your problems? And then when I have that opportunity, I go back to my office and I can think about the science that, OK, what can we do to help them?

And that's the kind of way I like to do sports science, is my job is to solve problems. And when I was at West Virginia University, I had a great opportunity to work with women's volleyball, which was a great experience for me, especially since my wife was an All-American volleyball player, and their strength coach at time was Corey Twine. And he said, we're having trouble, we're not getting where we want to be performance-wise, so what can we do?

So we developed a performance-monitoring battery where we tested them on their strength measures, and then we gave them a report and said, OK, here's the things you really need to work on. And so he would go back and he'd modify their training program, do things they need to do. And when we did that, they went-- I think it was 9-0 for the first time ever in their division. And he was sold on sport science then, because we were giving him information to make decisions, we weren't telling them what to do. I hate when sport scientists do that.

I don't have a right to march in and tell Coach Ken what to do or Tom Myslinski or Loren Landow. Those guys are icons, they know what they're doing. What my job is to do is give them information so that they can make decisions.

Right, right. What kind of recommendations or suggestions would you have to somebody-- so whether it was a coach who's wanting to get help from a sports scientist or-- and maybe on the other side, too-- from someone who's in more of a research or scientific position trying to work with the coaches? What kind of-- two-way street-- do you have advice for those people?

That's a great question. I think coaches don't think the sports scientists try to tell you how to do your job. I think there are some out there that cross that line and they're not successful. The really good ones don't do that. And so you've got to strike up a conversation of mutual respect. And one of the things that I've done across my career no matter what country I've been in is, I try to let them know I'm a coach, too. And I still coach 20 hours a week every night, I still coach weightlifting, and I'm in the gym. And they need to know that.

They also need to know I train. So oftentimes, my first step when I'm trying to get to know strength coaches, it's like, hey, you guys mind if I come train with you? And we get our lift on together, and then they start to say, wow, this guy, he can lift, and he knows some stuff. And then we start to talk and we talk about what can we do to help you, what can you do to help us, and what do you need our students to know? Because a lot of times, over in sports science or in physical education, we're in our little ivory tower bubble.

And so if we start preparing students better, we start having a conversation-- and it's a slow process, I can't just march my butt in there and go, I'm your sports scientists now. I've got to earn their trust and they've got to earn my trust as well. And when we do that, it can really work quite well.

That's cool. And you guys have-- you're taking students through your programs and the programs you've been in. What are some of the key things-- obviously people have to apply, they don't just get in. What are you looking for in students that you're going to potentially mentor to be the next generation of strength coaches and sports scientists?

Well, this is going to sound funny. I'm not looking for the smartest guy or gal in the room. I'm looking for people with passion and work ethic. But I tell you, I've been doing this almost 20 years now, and you know when I know what I've got? When they come in the weight room with me and they work out with me for a little bit. About a week, I can pretty much tell what kind of person they are. Because when you fail in the weight room, how do you respond? Do you just quit and walk away? Do you dust yourself off and get up again?

For me, the weight room has always been a microcosm of life, and it really reveals character. And it also builds character but it reveals it. And so the grad students I've had the most success with are the ones that-- they don't quit. Like I had-- one of my best grad students, a guy named Lauren Sights , he's a French kid, and he used to work out with me at 6:00 AM. Didn't even-- it wasn't even a question. He was like, I'll be there at 6:00.

We're squatting and doing stuff. And one day, all of a sudden, blood's shooting out of his nose. I'm like, dude, you want to stop? He's like, no. I'm going to keep going. And he just wouldn't quit. And he ended up publishing 12 papers in PAP and he's an expert in PAP and he's got his doctorate and he's highly successful. But he had that work ethic and that never say die, never quit attitude. But it showed in the weight room, but it also showed in academics.

Nice. Great. OK, so lifting has been a common theme here, and actually, I remember that when you took over as president, you would give Virginia a little bit of a hard time saying, hey, we need time for the board of directors to get in here and train. So yeah, talk about-- you've been involved in lifting so long, but why is that so important? And still, as the NSCA board of director president, you are making sure to make time to train still, especially even at these kind of events.

Well yeah, I think-- my dad has been really influential on me, and he had this mentality-- I'll share a story with you and you'll see where I get it from.

So he had cancer, bone marrow cancer from his service in the Marine Corps, and he was in the VA hospital and doing not-so-great, and he's yelling at the doctor, I need to get to the weight room, I need to lift. And he was a stubborn dude who-- lifting was a big part of his life. And it was something that we did together when we were younger, and he and I enjoyed that.

So it's been something I've done since I was 11, but for me, I find it fun, I find it challenging, I find it to be a place where I'm the most comfortable. It's kind of interesting. I'm actually a really shy guy, and I'm kind of quiet and introspective. But you get me in a weight room and I just come alive.

And everything that's good in my life has come out of being around weights. I mean, I met my wife on the lifting team that I was on. She's been my spotter ever since, looks after me. Mike Stone, who's been one of the most influential people in my life, he coached me as an Olympic weightlifter for many years. Met Leo Totten through weightlifting. Andy Fry-- all my friends came from the sport of weightlifting and strength training and the iron game.

So for me, it's something I've always done and something I always do. I still do it now. I mean, you guys always laugh-- I come into the national office, I've just been on a 27-hour flight, the first thing I want to do is get in the weight room and do some squats and stuff. So I think it's something I just enjoy. But I also think as a sports scientist, if coaches know I'd do that and I can do it and I can teach it, that gives me a little bit more credibility.

And one of the things I used to love doing when I was in the United States a little bit more than Australia-- I don't have as much opportunity-- is, I could say, hey, I'm coming to the strength facility, do you mind if I do a little coaching today? And most of the strength coaches are like, we have the relationship there, yeah, no worries, come on over. Hang out with us, let's do some stuff.

And so I always try to keep my coaching skills up. So that's kind of an interesting thing for me. It's just more about enjoyment, I think. And something that-- it's what's driven me, it's what got me to where I am.

Right, part of you. Be doing it no matter what, too, yeah. No, I like what you said, though, about it being a great way to kind of start a conversation with somebody. If you didn't have that relationship, at least they know you train and that you coach. And you mentioned your wife a few times and she is a strength and conditioning coach. And you talked about that a lot. How's that help you?

Oh. One of the things as scientists is that we often get stuck in the science. And she's like my rock in the sense that I'll show her something we're doing in the lab and she'll just start laughing. I'm like, what's wrong, coach? And she's like, yeah, great in the lab, ain't gonna work in the real world.

And so she's often given me a lot of pointers about what happens, and she's one amazing strength coach. She's just got a gift for communication, and that's the big thing. Coaching is communication. And she's able to get people to understand things, and I've learned so much from her. In fact, a lot of my training theories have changed just from our conversations. When we go on walks or we're at the beach down in Australia, because we live on the Indian Ocean, so we go out to the beach and we're walking on the beach. And most people are talking about other things, we're talking about how to train people.

Yeah.

How's the best way to get someone strong and effective? And we really bounce ideas off each other. That's been a cool thing for me, and she's a great woman who really understands strength and conditioning and gets it, but it's really interesting. She has a degree in French literature. She's not trained in sport science in any way, but she just was an amazing athlete who had amazing coaches that taught her how to do the things right.

That's cool. That's very cool. How about people who are interested in getting into sport science now? Is there is there a specific path that you would say or these three things that you must do? What would you point people in? Because it could be experienced coaches who really are looking for the next step, or maybe someone young that just knows that's what they want to get into.

Well I think if you're young, the biggest thing is getting a good program. And one of the things in the United States is there isn't a lot of great purely sports science programs, they're mostly exercise science. And you're going to have to do an undergrad degree in something-- physical education, exercise science, or sport science, but really where it starts to really happen is at the master's level.

And one of the things I recommend people is choose mentors that are going to be the people are going to guide you. And you heard it last night at the banquet, every one of the icons talked about their mentors. And it was quite emotional, because the love that a mentor and a student have for each other is quite special. And from that perspective, it's choosing the right fit, because the mentor relationship is everything. I was lucky I had an amazing mentor.

So he really impacted me and guided me. And the nice thing is, he's a crazy weightlifter, too. I mean, it was funny, the other day, he's out here in the exhibition hall and he's squatting, and he's giving me a hard time because I'm not working out with him.

Right, right. I saw them both in here lifting both mornings, yeah.

So I mean, that's the key, is finding the right mentor. And students ask, well how do I do that? Go up and talk to them. I haven't seen one of the icons in our industry at NSCA turn a student away. And that's the amazing thing about the NSCA and the professionals here, is they're so approachable. If you're a student, walk up to them, say hello.

Yeah, and that's been my experience in the NSCA as well, is the people just were super approachable, made me feel welcome, told me to come back again, remembered your name, and I was just blown away because that's been my experience is the differentiator in what makes up the people of this organization.

You heard Andy Fry do an amazing talk when he accepted a speech last night talking about "it's an us thing." And he's an amazing guy that-- he'll talk shop with you all day. Mike Stone will do the same, Bill Kramer. I mean, sometimes you're trying to escape these guys because they don't want to stop talking to you.

But for students, go up and say hello. The other thing is read research and find out what you're interested in, what you want to study. Now for experienced strength coaches, there's other options. Like for us at Edith Cowan University, we partner with a lot of strength coaches that, for example, are at a school as a coach and you want to do a research degree with us, we can actually-- you can be in your job and we can design research projects for a master's degree or a PhD that's around your job. And so that you start to learn science and how to implement it in your job, and I think that's really kind of a special thing. And that's an Australian thing. That's a really cool thing that we do.

That's really a game-changer, too, for people that obviously-- at some point in your career, you're not going to be able to just stop going to school-- or working and go to school, that's huge. Where do you kind of see this profession going? I mean, we definitely are taking a step forward with this accreditation stuff, but what do you see in the next 10 years of some exciting things happening?

Well, the accreditation thing is the first thing. I do think there's going to be more integration of sports science. We've done some job task analysis in Australia and actually-- most of the sports scientists in Australia are actually strength and conditioning coaches. Something like 98%. So sport science, strength and conditioning to me are the same.

And then we've got to just continue to evolve the training of strength coaches. Not just the coaching side of things, which I think is the most important side-- I'm not going to ever say that's not, but also how we train strength coaches to not only read literature, but understand research. And almost-- as a strength coach, I'm doing research on a daily basis, because I'm trying to find answers to getting athletes better.

But the problem that we run into right now is, with social media, there's a lot of noise out there. People don't know what's legitimate and what's not. I mean, if you've got a blog, you can say pretty much anything you want. And so one of the important things in the profession I think is the training. So if I learn about how to read science, how to interpret science, I can differentiate between noise and reality.

Because everybody's trying to change the game and come up with something novel that they can promote and sell, and it gets confusing. It's a lot harder now than it was when I was younger. When I was younger, you went and you worked with a master. And they taught you what to do, and you learned from them, and you asked questions, and then you developed your philosophy under them. And then you went off on your own and evolved into your own person.

Now it's, I want to find something out, go on Google, read about it, and then there's a thousand different opinions. And how do I know what actually works in the weight room?

Right, right. No, that's definitely a good point, that nothing is going to-- no matter how technologically advanced we get, nothing is going to take the part of that human interaction and that relationship stuff. What's next?

For me?

You're done, president, you're a young guy, what else you've got to go? I know you've got goals and you--

That's a great question. There's 14 of us have gone through this-- we were talking about this yesterday in the past presidents meeting when I wasn't past president. And it's a really weird experience to go from leading from the front and being on this team of people that are saying, let's move the profession forward, to being somewhat on the sidelines.

But the nice thing about the NSCA and something that I started to do as president is that I felt, why waste 13 individuals' collective knowledge from the industry? And so I actually used to meet with them on a regular basis to kind of-- to help guide. And I think Dr. Triplett's going to do the same. And I'm going to be hanging out with those guys, which, to be honest, I'm the youngest guy in the room, and the knowledge in the room is ridiculous, so I'm going to learn a lot by hanging out with them.

But I've got a new project, I'm working on a new periodization book. And not being president is going to give me a lot of time to do that. I'm ramping up my research again, I've got an amazing young sports science scholar named Chrissy Kendall who's just joined my research group at Edith Cowan, and she's amazing, and I think she's going to do some really cool stuff with me.

So we're going to be recruiting doctoral students, raising our research up again, because I made a conscious decision to sacrifice some of my own personal research and academic goals to serve the NSCA. I wanted to put 100% of my effort into being NCAA president because I felt that was really important to give the members what they were looking for.

That's awesome.

Writing books, going to still coach, going to still lift. I've been toying with trying to get back in shape and going to the Masters World Championships. We'll see how that rolls.

Well I know before we know it, it'll be the time to update the Essentials text again. It sneaks up on us the way time flies.

Oh, H.K. is already talking about that. They're smart enough to-- they know they want me to finish the periodization book first.

Awesome. Well, we're looking forward to that. How can people reach out to you and find you if they don't already follow you on social or contact you?

Well, I mean I'm on Twitter with @Doc_Haff as my Twitter handle. I'm going to be cranking up Instagram soon. The NSCA social media director is giving me a hard time because I don't have Instagram. But you can get me at Edith Cowan University, which is g.haff@ecu.edu for now. We're probably going to start up something more separate from my academic role.

Cool. Well we'll put all that in the show notes, but again, congrats on your presidency, it's been a pleasure working with you through your time on the board of directors, and I look forward to your future endeavors for sure-- thanks for being on the show.

Thank you. It's been a pleasure, and Scott, it's been great working with you as well.

Thanks.

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