NSCA’s Coaching Podcast, Episode 70: Stuart Hart

Stuart Hart, Head Strength and Conditioning Coach for women’s basketball at the University of Nebraska, talks to the former NSCA Head Strength and Conditioning Coach, Scott Caulfield, about his journey from high school athlete to personal trainer to volunteer coach to full-time college strength and conditioning coach. Topics under discussion include a day in the life at the University of Nebraska, building relationships throughout the entire athletic staff, and the value of going to conferences for both educational and networking reasons.

Find Stuart on Twitter: @No_DaysOff06 or Instagram: @strength_byhart

“I would much rather work with that population college athletes because there's a motivation behind them. They want to get better, they want to compete, they want to be successful on their field or the court or whatever.” 6:18

“So he was impressed with the fact that I was going across campus trying to figure out some creative ways to not only benefit the student population, but benefit the athletes as well.” 11:52

“So again, you're building a relationship early on in your career and that's someone that you can call back a few years later.” 14:04

“I'm very much a proponent of figuring out what the needs are, figuring out what the personality is you've got to deal with, and then manipulating what it is you need to get done to work with it in that environment.” 17:55

“So showing up and just being willing to go up and just build-- have a conversation with someone regardless of the logo on their shirt. For me, the relationships that I've built over the last 12 years of being in this business, like you never know when that relationship is going to foster something.” 25:33

“For Instagram, you find me at strength_byhart, and then on Twitter it's no_daysoff06.” 29:32

[00:00:00.00] Welcome to NSCA's Coaching Podcast, episode 70.

[00:00:04.69] It's very much a proponent of figuring out what the needs are, figuring out what the personality is you've got to deal with, and then manipulating what it is you need to get done to work with in that environment.

[00:00:18.00] 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.

[00:00:28.71] Welcome to the NSCA Coaching Podcast. I am Scott Caulfield. With me today, my good friend Stuart Hart, strength and conditioning coach for women's basketball at the University of Nebraska.

[00:00:39.21] Yes, go Big Red.

[00:00:40.23] Coach, welcome. Welcome to the show, man.

[00:00:41.86] Appreciate it. Appreciate it. Thank you for having me.

[00:00:42.55] Husker Power. Good to see you, man.

[00:00:44.57] Yeah.

[00:00:45.48] Exciting to have you on again. We've known each other for a long time now, probably close to a decade, really through events like this, right?

[00:00:55.26] Yeah.

[00:00:55.63] Because we met at a conference back in the day and then just have continued to see each other here and there at different times. And hang out, and have a meal. So I think that's kind of the coolest part of some of this stuff is meeting people that you end up being friends with over a period of time.

[00:01:11.53] Yeah, building relationships, for sure.

[00:01:12.77] Yeah. And our other connection too is you started out at a little school down near Tampa, Florida called St. Leo College where you played hoop. But I went there for one year back in my-- people who listen to the podcast will probably remember hear me talk about my not-so-great adventures in my first couple of years of college. So that was my second year of college, after which I ended up joining the Navy because I ended up going to the pool in the weight room the majority of the time I spent at St. Leo.

[00:01:46.68] Definitely. Definitely. Especially if you're from the up north and you come down to Florida and get spoiled. Me being from Canada, I understand what you're talking about.

[00:01:53.67] Yeah. But yeah, maybe tell us how you ended up going to St. Leo and that first step because it's a pretty neat story.

[00:02:04.00] Yeah. So I played high school basketball in Pickering, Ontario, Canada. So full-blooded kinnock, "We the North." We're celebrating our NBA champions now with the Raptors. So I got an opportunity to come down and play basketball for St. Leo University. And then when I got the scholarship, my whole family moved with me. So I was in Florida full time. And I got a partial scholarship and earned my way to a full scholarship by my, basically, the spring semester of my freshman year.

[00:02:33.39] Nice.

[00:02:34.77] And been living in Florida living ever since.

[00:02:37.84] Yeah, that's cool. But you played there. Other cool thing-- we're going to talk about this before we talk about strength and conditioning. But other cool fact that you should know if you're a basketball fan is that because of the catholic school connection, St. Leo always played Georgetown annually.

[00:02:58.39] Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

[00:02:59.76] Did you guys-- were you up 2-0 at some point? Was there any time?

[00:03:04.02] Very early on. Very early on. So when I was there, Allen Iverson was on the team. So yeah, I got a chance to see him live.

[00:03:11.08] That's amazing.

[00:03:12.12] Quicker in person than you think.

[00:03:14.15] Than you can even imagine, yeah. Yeah, when I was there Alonzo Mourning and Mutumbo were there. So yeah, pretty cool, man. And ironically enough, or coincidentally, however you want to look at it, we're going to get Mike Kill on the podcast who is the strength coach for Georgetown men's basketball later today. But back to strength and conditioning, you didn't go to school or you didn't even realize when you're at St. Leo that being a strength and conditioning coach was a career path, right?

[00:03:43.20] No. So my experience as a college athlete, I didn't have a strength and conditioning coach. We had D2 very limited resources. Small private Catholic school in the middle of rural Pascal County. So we had an athletic trainer. And he had limited hours. He'd usually show up in the afternoon. So it's not like you had someone there to do treatments early in the morning like most college athletes probably experience now.

[00:04:07.02] So no, my experience in the weight room started off in high school. So coach Finnbarr, who was a volunteer assistant coach who had played college basketball at Western in Ontario. He gave me my first workout. And I brought that with me to St. Leo. So I actually used it in high school and gained about 10 pounds. And then I showed up as a college freshman about 6'5," 185 pounds.

[00:04:32.44] But by my sophomore year, I was 6'6," 225, so I spent a lot of time in the dining hall and a lot of time in the weight room. So that's where my passion for lifting and training and strength and conditioning as we know it now started. But no, I didn't. I was a business major. So I didn't go to school for it either.

[00:04:52.62] Yeah. And so you got out of school, you were personal training.

[00:04:56.30] Yeah.

[00:04:58.02] And then you were obviously passionate about that. You realized lifting was cool. You liked lifting, you competing. Then you ended up training somebody that kind of led to your first gig, right?

[00:05:09.01] Yes. So I'm doing general population, a lot of female clients, personal training. My brother was doing mixed martial arts and had a career down in Florida. So I was training him as well and a couple of his buddies that were in his camp. And then I got an opportunity to meet Coach Terralyn Oles who was the women's basketball coach at St. Leo at the time and was personal training over the summer. And helped to lose some weight, and she actually asked me had I ever thought about being a strength and conditioning coach at the college level, and I didn't even know that that was a career.

[00:05:41.29] So home, did my research, strength and conditioning in college, and names like Boyd Epley and Scott Cochrane and some of the salaries that these guys were making. And boy, being kind one of the first paid strength coaches in the college level. And for me, it was what I was looking for because being a college athlete and my experience in the weight room and how going through four years of college and never getting injured.

[00:06:10.03] And just knowing how my body changed and how it gave me confidence and feeling good on the court. I would much rather work with that population college athletes because there's a motivation behind them. They want to get better, they want to compete, they want to be successful on their field or the court or whatever.

[00:06:28.03] So was there an actual position at St. Leo at that time?

[00:06:32.11] No, there wasn't. She invited me to volunteer, basically. So I came on as a volunteer strength and conditioning coach. I showed up to my first staff meeting. And the athletic directors look at me like who is this guy at our staff meeting. So I was explaining to him that I was going to be the volunteer strength coach. And he was fine with it. He was actually the soccer coach while I was in school. So he had risen through the ranks at St. Leo.

[00:06:58.69] So there was that relationship and understanding that I was an alum and I was just coming back to kind of help out with women's basketball. So I volunteered for strength and conditioning for women's basketball. And then she ended up asking me to volunteer as a basketball coach on her staff. So my first three years at St. Leo, I was both doing strength and conditioning and helping her, as far as running the program. So doing the recruiting, and going on the road, and home visits, and that sort of stuff.

[00:07:23.41] Yeah. Everything and anything, yeah. But that's great, though, because I think that is a key underlying factor of this whole-- a lot of things that we do to get that experience. So if you weren't doing all those other things and volunteering, you wouldn't have gotten the strength and conditioning experience. And now they decide, you know what? We actually need to hire this guy full time, right?

[00:07:48.43] So how that played out was I was working with women's basketball and then my approach to it was there wasn't basically a position. So she kind of selled them all with the idea of what it could look. Like so organizing the weight room, making set hours, building relationships with the athletes, anybody who wanted to train I was there. I was like, look, if you want to come in and do anything, I'd be more than happy to help you. Building relationships with the assistant coaches, trying to get an understanding of what their different sports were looking for.

[00:08:22.25] It's just showing them what having strength and conditioning coach on staff could look like and how it could be a benefit to their individual team. So after women's basketball, I picked up men's basketball, then I ended up working with one of the volleyball players. She went back and talked to the coaching staff and told how much she was improving and getting stronger. So volleyball came on board.

[00:08:44.57] So before you knew it within the first two years, I had about seven sports that I was working with. Either half their athletes or the whole team. But by my third year, they basically offered me a full time position as the head strength coach.

[00:08:58.90] So it was a gradual slow roll.

[00:09:01.94] Slow roll, slow roll. Yeah. I went from volunteer for a year and a half to about $8 an hour because I was running the weight room. And then it went fruit from $8 an hour to a paid position.

[00:09:13.21] Yeah. And you were in charge of the-- because there was only one weight room. So were you just training the athletes but your students could use the gym too?

[00:09:26.74] Students could use the gym, yeah.

[00:09:27.25] So you were kind of in charge of the weight room and everybody? Yeah.

[00:09:31.30] So for me, it was going across on campus and building a relationship with the director of student life and asking him what are the students looking for? Or what are their complaints that they were having in regards to how the weight room was running? And one of their major complaints was there were no consistent hours because the weight room was housed over in athletics, but athletics didn't have anybody that was actively running the facility. So it was whenever they could find somebody.

[00:09:56.11] And it was down in the basement, right?

[00:09:57.27] And it was down in the basement, right. So out of sight, out of mind.

[00:09:59.77] Yeah.

[00:10:01.54] So the big thing for me was just make sure there were set hours, make sure there were students to work it. So started a work study program and hiring a staff that could work the hours that we're going to be able to open. And then, again, trying to do personal training and build a group exercise program for your students on campus. There's a little bit of everything. It was a mixed bag approach at that level.

[00:10:22.20] Yeah. And because you're Division Two at that time, what else were some of the challenges and creative solutions that you are coming up with to make your life easier?

[00:10:34.32] Well, you can only imagine, especially in a facility that wasn't actively used, the equipment wasn't the best.

[00:10:41.76] It was probably the same stuff I lifted on in 1991.

[00:10:44.47] Yeah. That is a fact. So even for me back in '94, '94 through '98, a lot of the stuff was still the same there. So building a list of what athletes are going to need to train and what the regular student population were looking for, as far as their experience when they came down to the weight room. Comprising that list and then taking it to my athletic director and trying to figure out what the budget was that he was working with in regards to making a presentation to the president of the institution.

[00:11:15.54] And then figuring out what the coaches were looking for. Baseball and softball and swimming and diving. And yeah, we had all that stuff there. But those were some of the challenges. And the other creative piece was just-- because student life was involved in making sure that their students on campus had a great experience, that was also another resource for me in regards to a budget.

[00:11:40.56] OK.

[00:11:40.89] So being able to go back to my athletic director and explain to him, OK, you're only giving me X number of dollars, but by me going over the student life, they're able to pony up a couple more dollars here as well. So he was impressed with the fact that I was going across campus trying to figure out some creative ways to not only benefit the student population, but benefit the athletes as well.

[00:12:00.06] And then were you able to kind of come up with some interns or get some people to help you out a little bit?

[00:12:06.30] So year four is when I started my internship program. Year three, year four, starting my internship program. And for me, again, not necessarily coming in through your normal internship assistant position, or GA to an assistant position. The big thing for me was going to NSCA conferences and building relationships with people that I was meeting at those conferences. Like I went to Valdosta State, and Coach Dasher.

[00:12:31.59] Oh nice, yeah.

[00:12:32.98] And him being a Division Two school, understanding what the limitations are at that level and how do you build a program and how do you build an internship program. Mark Watts, who was at Denison back then. And then Ron McKeefer, he was at USF. So you go down to him and explain to him. Because he had a clinic as well that I got a chance to go to. So the big thing for me was just going to clinics and conferences and trying to network and using the internet at that time and going online and seeing what different weight rooms were looking like, and the brands, and that sort of stuff.

[00:13:04.03] Was the school supportive of your continue education stuff too? Were you able to get tap into that?

[00:13:10.32] My idea was very supported. Right from the start at the beginning, he was like, look, whatever you need as far as education, just let me know what it is and I'll put it in the budget to be able to send you to him. So even back at St. Leo, I was going about two or three conferences a year. And I maintained that expectation of myself to be able to to continue to go to conferences, two or three a year if possible.

[00:13:30.57] And now that you're at Nebraska, your summers are a little bit more busy.

[00:13:35.91] Sure.

[00:13:36.87] But May is usually a dead month for us, so I try to get a lot of my continuing education through that month.

[00:13:42.03] Yeah. That's great. And then so Ron was at USF, because you went to USF from St. Leo. So you were able to move up to from a Division Two small school, small budget to a bigger kind of mid-major. Was he there? Did he hire you?

[00:13:59.85] He was not there. But he was one of the people I called when I was in the running for the position. So again, you're building a relationship early on in your career and that's someone that you can call back a few years later. Tell me what the administration is there is like, tell me what these coaches are like. What are they looking for? What is it like working at the institution? So no, it was nice to be able to call him.

[00:14:18.57] And I got an opportunity to work women's basketball at USF. Coach Jose Fernandez is the coach there. And I worked also men's and women's golf.

[00:14:28.26] OK, nice. And did you know people there before that?

[00:14:34.92] No. So because I was working women's basketball at St. Leo, so Coach Oles had a relationship with Jose. So we would go down and watch their practices. So he had met me early on when I was at St. Leo. And then when my name crosses that, when that position opened up, he ended up calling Coach Oles to find out, tell me a little bit more about this guy.

[00:14:57.99] But another thing that worked to my advantage is everything that I did while I was at St. Leo, I was posting on social media. So he was able to go on to the YouTube channel for our strength and conditioning department, if you want to call it that, at St. Leo and basically see my interaction and my programming with all of the different sports that I was working with and get a sense of my personality.

[00:15:20.25] That's cool.

[00:15:20.82] Yeah.

[00:15:21.36] Yeah. So would you recommend people do that? Is that something you really think helped you?

[00:15:26.98] I definitely think you should be using social media. So I'm a huge proponent for-- and it depends on your department and what your school's policies are in regards to that. St. Leo, it was so new back then that St. Leo didn't really have one. So we were pretty much filming everything that we were doing using the student workers that I had, editing your video down to a minute, a minute and a half, three minutes, whatever it was, making highlight reels.

[00:15:51.63] And for me, the big thing wasn't necessarily promotion, I didn't look at it necessarily as promotion for myself, but it was more to get buy-in from the athletes in regards to them. Hey, this is the work that you're putting into the weight room, here's you. You can send these links to your parents, you could post them on Facebook for your family to be able to see what your college experience is like. And it sells the institution too.

[00:16:10.53] That's great. And how long were at USF?

[00:16:13.38] I was there for three years. So the first two years I was there, women's basketball, men's and women's golf, and then my third season we had a change with the strength and conditioning coach over men's basketball. And that presented an opportunity to me to get over on the men's side. So I did one year on the men's side at USF.

[00:16:30.33] And how big of a change was it going from St. Leo to USF?

[00:16:36.03] More resources. More resources. So I went from, basically, a weight room that was for everyone, student body and athletes to my own weight room where I only had men's and women's basketball.

[00:16:51.05] Right.

[00:16:51.39] So it was in the basketball facilities. So both practice courts were right outside of our weight room. Athletic training room was right there. And the only athletes or the only people I'd ever see were basically the basketball players on either team or the sports that I was training, which were men's and women's golf. And then they would come over to the facility to train.

[00:17:09.47] OK. That's cool. So you were there for three years?

[00:17:14.37] Three years.

[00:17:14.71] Yeah. I kind of remember too when the Nebraska opportunity popped up. Obviously, that was a big opportunity. Did you feel like you needed to do anything different or special to prepare for that? Or you've done enough.

[00:17:30.63] I had done enough. I had worked for both male and female athletes at St. Leo and I worked men's basketball while I was at St. Leo as well, so it wasn't foreign to me. Plus, I played the sport. So I understood it. And for me, it was just more of building a relationship with the coaching staff, getting an understanding of what they were looking for, what were the changes they were looking for going from the old guy to the new guy, and just building relationships with the athletes.

[00:17:55.20] I'm very much a proponent of figuring out what the needs are, figuring out what the personality is you've got to deal with, and then manipulating what it is you need to get done to work with it in that environment.

[00:18:07.67] Yeah. Well, I think that's a huge point. Your flexibility as a strength coach to adapt to them, not just this is the way I do it. and now you're going to do it like that.

[00:18:18.05] Yeah, it never works.

[00:18:18.74] It never works.

[00:18:19.75] It never works.

[00:18:20.78] Yeah. So yeah, maybe talk about first time going on even like your interview at Nebraska. Because I imagine that's kind of like oh wow.

[00:18:30.66] That was a surreal moment. Boyd Epley calling me. I was in my office and I saw the 402 area code come up on my phone. And I walked out of my office and walked out onto the basketball practice court. And Boyd Epley is on the other line. And I'm like, yeah, you applied. I'd met him back in 2013 at the coaches conference in Nashville.

[00:18:54.72] Yup, yup.

[00:18:55.17] And at that time, I walked up to introduce myself. And he's a legend in our field. And I wanted to take a picture with him. And I told him, he was very cordial. And said one day I'm going to give you a chance to work for you. I didn't know it would really actually happen. So when he called, I reminded him of that kind of conversation. And he runs into so many people, so I don't know if he necessarily remembered. But it was a cool moment to get that phone call.

[00:19:18.56] And so he had called me to set up the phone interview with him and the coaching staff, or one of the assistant coaches. And I did a phone interview about a couple of days later. And then they invited me on campus for an interview.

[00:19:30.48] Nice.

[00:19:30.95] Yeah.

[00:19:32.35] So going to that level now with Division One, is your program any different from-- I mean, obviously you've grown as a coach. You know more, you change, adapt, but are you really doing that many different things?

[00:19:51.45] Programming hasn't changed much, but I would say to you the resources that I have available to fine tune my programming really change the way I can not just track what it is that I'm doing, but see whether or not there is an improvement. So with Nebraska, we have our performance lab, NAPL. And being able to do VO2 max testing and force plate and movement screens and slow motion capture video.

[00:20:25.34] I mean, to be able to test prior to and post and get some real data with someone who can analyze it and really explain to you whether or not your programming is working has definitely changed the way I look at how I'm doing what it is. that I'm doing.

[00:20:41.01] Yeah. And so now you're just women's basketball.

[00:20:44.42] Yeah.

[00:20:46.67] How much has it been of a kind of shift to just be with one team?

[00:20:53.39] It's been a huge shift. I'm very blessed in that regards, but I tell people even though I only have one team, for me now I'm very much doing individualized programming. So when you're at a D2 or mid major and you've got 13 kids and you may not necessarily have to help as far as interns and that sort of thing, or you don't have the ability to be able to test the way that we can at Nebraska, you're creating cookie cutter programs.

[00:21:19.58] But then if you've got a freshman and you're doing a movement screen testing and you're seeing, OK, they don't move to the left as easily or as well as they move to the right, you can change your programming a little bit for that one particular kid. And then I do a lot of one-on-one trainings and small group trainings. There's not necessarily 13 or 14 athletes coming in at the same time. So in that regard, I would say it's been a blessing.

[00:21:42.71] Nice. So maybe give us a snapshot too of what's a daily routine, daily look at in season and an out of season day as a women's basketball strength coach at Nebraska?

[00:21:59.96] So I'm a early bird, so I'm usually up at 5:00, 5:30 in the morning. I usually show up to work at 6:30. My athletes know that I'm a text message away. I only live about-- Lincoln is a small town. So I'm only about 50 minutes away and there's no traffic. So I can usually get to work at any time. But they know I'm on all call. So if they want to come in and they want to get an early workout on their time, they can do so.

[00:22:21.89] But we usually train off season three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, Fridays. And we're usually going at about to 1:00 in the afternoon. And then we'll usually do practices after workouts, so like 2:30 in the afternoon, 3:30 in the afternoon based on class schedules. But during the day, a lot of it, we have elite forums I'm usually doing individual programming for that particular day in the morning.

[00:22:55.82] We also have meetings. So you're very much involved with the coaching staff.

[00:23:00.99] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:23:01.60] So coaching staff will meet on mornings, 10:30, 11:00 whenever they get in. And we'll go over what's going on for that particular week.

[00:23:10.71] Yeah.

[00:23:11.36] Or they'll usually go over that particular week or what's going on. Like we have a trip coming up to go to Europe this year. And right now, we're kind of trying to put together a plan for what games, how we're going to prepare for a European trip. Dealing with jet lag, and how can we prepare our kids now, and time difference, and that sort of thing.

[00:23:32.88] No, that's cool.

[00:23:35.50] So that's off season. In season would be a little bit different in that you're going from eight hours to 20 hours. So more practice on floor time. Like right now, we're only practicing for about an hour three days a week. Once the season starts, you're going for about two and 1/2 hours.

[00:23:54.85] And you're going to all the practices?

[00:23:56.21] I'm at every practice, I'm at every game, I travel on the road as well.

[00:23:59.66] Travel to all the games.

[00:24:00.32] Yeah.

[00:24:00.47] Yeah. What do you do at games?

[00:24:03.89] So game day we do pre-game. So I shoot around, stretch routines, getting them ready for shoot around and before a game, getting them ready for the game. And then post-game, just helping out our dobo in regards to making sure that the food's gotten there and collecting your polar heart rate straps and all that stuff.

[00:24:29.72] All that stuff. Good. What do you think, given that you've made this great progression at personal training, first strength and conditioning coach, no resources, mid-major, now big time power five, is there anything that you would recommend to people that are trying to move up the ranks? Or if they're a D2 school or a D3 school and they're like, man, I really wish I could move up to D1. Are there anything you think, things that you did maybe that are critical or recommendations you'd have for people that are looking to improve their station?

[00:25:13.58] Yeah. The big thing for me is honestly education. So making sure you're going to the conferences and the clinics. And then while you're at conferences and clinics, I purposely don't like wearing whatever logo that I'm wearing at a particular institution wherever I'm working. So showing up and just being willing to go up and just build-- have a conversation with someone regardless of the logo on their shirt.

[00:25:41.60] For me, the relationships that I've built over the last 12 years of being in this business, like you never know when that relationship is going to foster something. And it's not necessarily that's the reason why, but like you said, you build friendships over time and you get to know people and you see the grow through their career. And you show up at these conferences and the clinics and you go have a coffee and go I have something to eat. And you're talking shop.

[00:26:08.78] For me, in the beginning it was learning, which was the reason why I was going to the conference and the clinics because of how I got into the field. But what I didn't realize then was that the friendships and the relationships and how that would build five, six, 10 years later. So going to clinics and conferences and definitely just walking up to people and having a conversation and not being intimidated.

[00:26:33.33] Yeah. Well, and I think knowing you now that I know you too, I think that would go either way, right? You're building this network and at some point ends up helping you. But at the same time, you equally as much if someone else had reached out that you know and you had a position open or you were able to help them out, then that's something that you would do as well.

[00:26:57.05] Yeah, it literally happened yesterday. I was sitting, waiting for a friend of mine to go out to eat and someone who I'd known had applied to a position in the conference that I was in, the American. And I knew the strength coach who was there. And just sent a text message. So being willing and able to do that for someone else is just as important.

[00:27:17.45] Right. Yeah. I think that's a big one too. We may not talk about it as much, but when you're going for a position and you have someone reaching out on your behalf, so it's like having references. But beyond that too, right? If I'm applying for a job at Nebraska and then I have-- obviously, they're going to check my references. But three or four, however many other people shoot a note to Boyd or message him. And then he's like, wow, this guy or gal must really be good if this happens.

[00:27:56.72] One thing I'd like to add to that as well is sometimes it's not even the strength and conditioning coaches. Because for myself, when I got the opportunity to go to USF, the head coach for women's basketball, Jose, he called it the SID.

[00:28:10.88] Oh wow, yeah.

[00:28:11.73] And what I didn't know at the time was the SID who was that saying St. Leo had worked at USF. OK so when he called the SID, he asked him, tell me about this Stuart Hart guy. And good morning, good evening, good afternoon, never really had a long conversation with him. And his response to Jose was, look, I don't really deal with him very often, but we just had our annual banquet and every athlete wanted to take a picture with him.

[00:28:34.72] There you go.

[00:28:35.69] And that showed Jose that this guy is a decent guy or whatever it is. So it's not necessarily strength and conditioning coaches, it's anybody that could be in the athletic department.

[00:28:46.10] That's a great example.

[00:28:46.97] So the big thing is building relationships with everybody within your department.

[00:28:49.89] Yeah, that's a great point too. Same thing when I was working with with Norbert rugby, and the first team that I worked with in college when I went down to the Dartmouth area, I asked the rugby coach, hey do you know the guys at Dartmouth because I'm going to be there? And he was like, oh yeah. He totally put me in touch with him. And then I was the strength coach for Dartmouth rugby before I knew it the next day.

[00:29:11.48] Yeah, that's such a great example.

[00:29:14.78] Cool, man. This has been super helpful. I think a lot of people are going to be interested in reaching out to you, especially with the progression. And if anyone is interested in basketball strength and conditioning, as well as building a program, how can people reach out to you? Obviously, you've got social media.

[00:29:31.06] I'm big on social media. For Instagram, you find me a strength_byhart, and then on Twitter it's no _ daysoff06.

[00:29:47.80] I like it. Cool. And we'll see you around the conference, for sure. I appreciate the time and the friendship man, it's been great.

[00:29:53.00] No doubt. No doubt. I appreciate this opportunity as well, man. It's been great.

[00:29:55.68] Cool. Thanks. And a big thanks to our sponsor, Sorinex exercise equipment, we appreciate their support. And to all of you listening, we appreciate your support. Again, if you like the podcast, make sure that you subscribe wherever you download your podcasts from, write us a review, and keep listening in. I look forward to talking with you all soon, thanks.

[00:30:16.37] And as you know we at the NSCA love research, and especially applying that research. If you're not a member yet, join us and get access to the best strength and conditioning journals available. Just go to NSCA.com/membership.

[00:30:28.22] This was the NSCA's Coaching Podcast. The National Strength and Conditioning Association was founded in 1978 by strength and conditioning coaches to share information, resources, and help advance the profession. Serving coaches for over 40 years, the NSCA is the trusted source for strength and conditioning professionals. Be sure and join us next time.

[00:30:47.00] [MUSIC PLAYING]

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.