Episode 212: The Pros and Cons of Training Elite Level Professional Athletes: An Interview with Dr. Andy Galpin

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[00:00:00] Dr Mike T Nelson:

[00:00:00] Welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Mike T. Nelson, and on this podcast we talk about all things to increase muscle performance and improve body composition. All done in a flexible manner today on the podcast. I’ve got my good buddy, Dr. Andy Galpin. I think you could maybe search for some really old podcasts.

[00:00:28] The last one I did with him was at his house, man, many years ago. And today we’re talking about what it really takes to train elite, high level athletes. And this is a really great conversation. Andy’s done this work for a long time. Interest of full disclosure. I do work with Andy and Dan and Doug and Andrews and all the wonderful people over at Rapid Health.

[00:00:57] I help them with some of the visible side stressors, some nutritional work, aura, monitoring of sleep, and some other items. So it is great. I do get to work with Andy and all the wonderful people there with some high level athletes and everyone that comes through there. I’ve also done some that work myself on my own.

[00:01:15] It was great to compare notes and to get a kind of a peak behind the scenes of what are the pros and the cons of working with high level athletes. I think when you’re new, at least as a trainer or coach in fitness, working with high level athletes is always viewed as the higher kind of upper echelon.

[00:01:36] And there are a lot of pros that come with that, and there’s a lot of cons that come with it too. And I really enjoyed this. Very open and honest conversation about what some of those pros and what some of those cons are. So make sure to check out Andy on Instagram. He’s got lots of great stuff there.

[00:01:55] You can check out all the offerings at Rapid Health and then for my stuff, go to the website, which is mike t nelson.com and you can hop onto the newsletter, which is where about 90 plus percent of my content goes out currently. So go over to the newsletter@miketnelson.com. They’ll hop onto the newsletter and say hi, and I’ll send you a cool free gift.

[00:02:19] Just tell me you heard me on the podcast here. So enjoy this podcast here with Dr. Andy Galpin. Last thing, if you are going to the International Society of Sports Nutrition coming up this weekend, as of airing of this podcast. I will be there. I’ll be doing a talk on a primer on psychedelics and our psychedelic supplements.

[00:02:43] Next, I’ll be viewing the mechanism and some of the latest research on psychedelics there. My talk is on Saturday, so if you are there at the I S N Conference, please come up and say hi. I would love to chat with you there. I hope to see some of you there and enjoy this conversation with Dr. Andy Galpin.

[00:03:05] [00:03:07] Dr Mike T Nelson: Welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast, and we’re back here with Dr. Andy Galpin. How’s it going sir? Fantastic, man. It’s always good to chat. Yeah. Yeah. I think last time we had you on the podcast, I was recording this in your house in the spare bedroom.

[00:03:25] I think that’s, that was a while ago. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:03:31] I think your dog was taking a nap on the bed and got up and looked at us very curiously once in a while.

[00:03:36] Dr Andy Galpin: So I think he’s actually probably sleeping the exact

[00:03:38] Dr Mike T Nelson: same spot. He’s probably in the same place. Yeah. The second. Yeah. Yeah. I’ll make sure not to leave my shoes out so he doesn’t have something to chew on.

[00:03:46] Dr Andy Galpin: Yeah. Still looking for that

[00:03:47] Dr Mike T Nelson: one. I bad. Oh, it’s all right. No worries. Yeah, I mean our topic today is the pros and cons of working with high level athletes because I think from the outside kind of looking in, I would say most people in fitness, that seems to be the holy grail that people are shooting for.

[00:04:04] And I think what you’ve done, a lot of this is. There’s some definite pros and there’s some definite cons, and there’s also probably a different skillset that you might need to learn. What would you say is some of the pros of working with higher level athletes to start off?

[00:04:21] Dr Andy Galpin: Yeah, sure. I think it’s actually easiest to have this conversation by describing or rather differentiating between high level pro athletes and high profile athletes.

[00:04:32] Yes, good point. So when I hear this a lot, people are like, oh, I work with high level athletes. They’re like Olympians is oh, really? Oh yeah. I like with work with Olympic skateboarders. Oh, cool. Not that they’re any lower level of athletes. Yeah. But that’s a very different game than working with the highest paid quarterback in the nfl.

[00:04:52] Yeah. That’s a very different game than the starting quarterback in the F nfl. And you could say even a lower level athletes, it doesn’t matter. The point is high. Highest in their area is different than high profiles. So when you really start working with these very high profile people, this is a hundred million dollar athletes or equivalent, right.

[00:05:11] May not even necessarily be monetarily. So they may not be super highly paid, but they’re high, much higher profiles. So getting recognized constantly at the mall can’t, can’t trust their accountants. Like that sort of stuff is where these things really gets ing. And even if they aren’t paid yet or they’re lowly paid there’s a lot of examples of those individuals.

[00:05:32] So whether they’re really highly famous on social media or not, but they’re just, you can actually look and funny enough, you can see extremely high profile individuals and they have a hundred thousand followers on Instagram. It’s like they just don’t use it. So let’s, those aren’t always necessarily markers, but if they would go to the local, again, gas station, like they would always be recognized.

[00:05:51] Whichever one of those you wanna start with we could dive into, but that’s a very different thing.

[00:05:56] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. I would start with the high profile athlete because that has its own interesting things that come with

[00:06:02] Dr Andy Galpin: it. Yeah. So look, that’s What about backup maybe Little book when I was a kid?

[00:06:08] Of course this is, and in school, this is where everyone wanted land, right? Like you said. Yeah. And I was fortunate when I first graduated from my undergrad I got a spot interning with Mark Verstegen

[00:06:22] Dr Mike T Nelson: in a Arizona Oh yeah. Athlete’s Performance at that

[00:06:24] Dr Andy Galpin: time. Correct. Yeah. And this is, 2004, 2005 ish back then.

[00:06:29] This is the only facility in the world like it. Yeah. So I walk in the building, there’s 300 professional athletes there, and this is N F L and NBA or some, the Boston Celtics were there but mostly as N F L and Major League Baseball guys. I think that year we had something like 15 guys. In the first round of the NFL draft?

[00:06:48] No. We had Hall of Famers, Kurt Shilling baseball players. We had number one prospect in all minor league baseball. Like there was high folks there. And I got about five months into that. It was just, I, rallies, I got about five days in. I was just like, f this.

[00:07:08] From that perspective I wanted to walk away from high profile

[00:07:12] Dr Mike T Nelson: folks quickly. Yeah. And why is that for people on the outside looking in? They’re like, what do you got the dream job, you’re at the dream place.

[00:07:20] Dr Andy Galpin: Yeah. In that case, the issue specifically was because I was so young and because they didn’t come there to work with me.

[00:07:28] And I was, wanted an intern. I wasn’t even their primary coach. It was all the things you could imagine. Didn’t, like some were super nice. So Nice. Yeah. Many of ’em were, it’s just you weren’t coaching at that point. And I also feel like, what effect am I really having? We’re not training that hard.

[00:07:48] Like we’re just going through the motions most of the time. Cause we’re actually just trying to not get hurt. These guys don’t have the, so from something from my soulless, it’s I’m not like what am I doing here? It’s, this is like a lowly paid service. It’s just a service exchange.

[00:08:02] I’m getting paid nothing. It just wasn’t like I knew, I’m like, man, this is not a very fun job. In addition, some of them were very challenging to deal with. Yeah. Like just they, they could, and this is actually what happened. They would blow up and scream at a coach and just, and this coach could just do nothing.

[00:08:20] Yeah. Because it’s whoa. This guy’s paying a thousand dollars a week to be here. Go apologize to him. You’re like, what? And that’s as soon as I saw that, I was just like, no way. Absolutely not. Now, some of our coaches didn’t take that at all. Like some of our coaches went on and coached the NFL for, 15 years or per still there actually.

[00:08:40] And those guys were just like, no bump, get your ass back in there. Get the hell outta my thing. So they were able to pull some, but for the most part you were just in a really tough dynamic.

[00:08:49] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, very low leverage too, right?

[00:08:51] Dr Andy Galpin: Yeah, man, you got no leverage. Yeah. You got no control of the situation and you don’t actually like having any leverage to do anything fun, right?

[00:09:00] So most of the coaches are in the same spot. So I just didn’t think that was a great fit. Circling back, eight years after that or something. When I first started working with high profile folks again, now it’s different, right? Because now they’re coming to want to work with me and now they want the whole thing.

[00:09:15] And now. You get to push and walk away and I’m in a position of I don’t need any, I can get outta here anytime. And so that changed everything. Of course. Power dynamics. Yeah. Reel. And now what we have, and we currently work with, we got books, hall of Famers, we got all stars.

[00:09:34] We have all pros. Like I said, we got the highest paid player and their position in multiple sports and all the big sports. Like all the things that the number one players in the world, the major champions that, and it’s totally different. And those haven’t always been good experiences, but they’re now I can just walk away anytime for no reason.

[00:09:53] Dr Mike T Nelson: So that doesn’t matter. Do you think the takeaway there is that depends on what type of coach you want or what type of experience I think you want, because I think a lot of people would look and go. I just want the experience to say I worked with high level athletes. It’s okay, yeah, you can go intern.

[00:10:12] There’s lots of places I’ve worked with, high level athletes. But things like you said, if you want to be in a better place of leverage and feel like you’re actually doing something and it’s having an impact, then you may have to go away and do some other education and do some other experience to get to the level where people are gonna be seeking you out instead of you trying to find a place where they congregate and train to say that, Ooh I worked with high level athletes,

[00:10:41] Dr Andy Galpin: a hundred percent, man.

[00:10:42] I think you really have to set not your expectations going on. I think you have to set your actual goals and be real honest with yourself. Is this a money grab? Is this a prestige grab? Is this I’m actually want to be a part of something here Is this, whatever, because the backend can kill you. Like the worst experiences I’ve had professionally.

[00:11:05] By far are with the support staff of these high-profile athletes. Like not even close it’s agents, it’s their assistant coach, it’s their other strength coach, or it’s their nutrition coach or whatever, right? Depending on how the situation’s set up it’s their skill coach, it’s their wife, like who’s meddling and stuff or husband or whatever the case is.

[00:11:29] And so you gotta be real clear with your role. So my number one advice on these situations is make sure it is crystal clear to the athlete and everyone else involved exactly what your role is and what it’s not. And you need that clarity because you have to then at the same time, be able to put your foot down really quickly and be like, absolutely not.

[00:11:51] This is my job. You all get out. But you have to be able to know what your job is specifically because you can’t pull that car if you don’t. And that is absolutely of stake I made with some other ones. It’s like the athletes would kind be like, look, I hire you all y’all figured out and come back and tell me.

[00:12:06] It’s oh, okay, great. And then if you all don’t agree, come back’s. I don’t have a Trump card, I don’t have anything I can stand on. And now it is a non-stop fight. And it’s been nasty and a bunch of scenarios where you’re like, here’s all your money back. I don’t care. I’m outta here.

[00:12:22] This is so brutally hard. So having real clarity on expectations and what do I have the Trump card on? What does that coach have the Trump card on? What does that person have a Trump card on? When can I tell this person to get out? Do I have the green light to tell your accountant to get that outta these meetings?

[00:12:39] Or do I need to be nice to this person? Like honest, like real answers from that person. And if they don’t give you that clarity and say, yeah, see, like you guys are giving me too much trust, y’all go figure it out. Then you, again, that’s an expectation you gotta set with yourself of that person just decided that they’re not willing to captain their own ship.

[00:12:57] So either you need to leave or you let the less than perfect results happen saying, look, I tried, but I’m also not gonna ruin my whole life cause I couldn’t get this thing done because you wouldn’t put your foot down if who can do what. And that is a incredibly important step. I say that because when I work with athletes I don’t always have the same role, right?

[00:13:18] So I’m not just their strength coach. So some of that I am, like I, I program strength finishing programs right now for elite profile athletes, right? Others, they have incredibly good strength coaches. And I don’t touch that part of the program. I write them meal plans, the supplement plans for them and others like, oh, they gotta, so it really, the plans, some of ’em, it’s yo, just high level consulting kind of steer this ship.

[00:13:41] And so it doesn’t matter my role, but you gotta know what exactly that athlete thinks. That you’re doing is that exactly what they want? And then you have to have the professional maturity to treat this like a world champion. So the way that I always say this to my students is, if you wanna coach world champions that have real big money on the line, right?

[00:14:04] This is hundreds of millions of dollars on the line, then you’ve gotta be able to act like a hundred million coach, which means if you’re the defensive coordinator for the Seattle Seahawks and Pete Carroll, the head coach, choose you out at halftime because you did something bad, then like you, you will not cry and whine about that.

[00:14:25] You’ll be like a hundred percent coach that was on me. Boom. How do we fix it? You’d be stunned, like just stunned how few people have that accountability and professionalism, even at these levels. It’s just crazy how you will never see those conversations and people just will not go.

[00:14:40] Yeah. Yep. I screwed that one up. I’m on this over here. So you have got to be able to own that and be like, boom. Yep, I got shoot out, right? I’m on gonna get fixed. Boom. Because you’re gonna make mistakes like of course, like it’s, no one does, and generally athletes aren’t gonna fire you for a mistake, but they’re gonna fire you for things like this, right?

[00:14:58] Or you’re gonna wanna like fire them and quit and get outta there. If you don’t have a hundred million dollar skillset and you don’t have a hundred million dollar professionalism, then you have no business coaching a hundred million athletes. You like, you need to stay out of there. It’s the old if you can’t stand the heat, get outta the kitchen thing you work with that one, that kind of pressures on the line.

[00:15:15] You’ve gotta be able to handle it when they come back and yell at you. Just like I would, chew out my, not to assume, but but an employee or whatever. It’s Hey, you didn’t meet expectations right now. You gotta be able to sit through that heat. Okay, got it.

[00:15:27] Whatever. And like I said, man, you’d be stunned. Like you’d be stunned how many people at these levels who can’t do that, and you’re just like, wow, you’re a child. Like you’re just a child. You got yelled out. It’s not a big deal. Stop crying. Like literally stop crying. We’ve got to execute and decide who made the mistake.

[00:15:45] See, here’s what happens. Something bad happened so it didn’t recover from injury faster enough or whatever. And then you’re trying to figure out what happened and no one will do anything. But that’s been their own job. Great Guys, we’re not getting closer to a solution. I can tell you right now in the middle N F NFL game, you keep getting beat on the same coverage.

[00:16:05] You’re all gonna get pulled to the sideline in that game and they’re gonna look at your directly face, who blew the coverage, what happened? And you can’t be like, hi. There’s Bob over here. I don’t really know. We’ll have to watch tape afterwards. If we watch tape afterwards, they’re gonna score a hundred points, right?

[00:16:18] So if you cannot admit your fault in the next five seconds, the whole team’s gonna hurt. So you, those players will stand up and be like, boom, that was me, coach. I blew that thing. You covered it, but I blew it. The coach is not gonna yell at you right then. Yeah, they don’t care. It’s awesome. We need to figure out the problem though.

[00:16:36] And so the problem identification piece is critical, right? So I want to know what the problem is, not so I can yell at you. I don’t care about them. But we have got to know what the problem is cuz we don’t know if that was a problem because we knew the correct answer and we weren’t executing it. Or if we don’t know what’s going on, we’re confused.

[00:16:52] They’ve schemed us up. That’s what the, like the NFL language, they schemed us up. We don’t know what’s going on. They broke our rules. Or if it’s nope, they didn’t break the rules, someone just pped up directly. Fine. Like just. You fix that problem, great. So you’ll just, you, your head will run in spinning in circles trying to solve problems because someone won’t just go I screwed that one up until, won’t happen.

[00:17:13] And so that, that would be my biggest thing is to recap, be really crystal clear with expectations that the athlete has a few of the rest of the team, everybody knows who is accountable for what. And then when those things don’t happen, just being super fast to be like, yep, on me quick, that was the issue.

[00:17:32] Here’s what I’m gonna do next. And all that stuff is probably not what you expected to get into when you thought about wanting to coach professional athletes. It’s not the skillset, as you mentioned Mike, like that’s not the skillset you thought you needed to have. Like you thought you were there cuz you were really good at macros or coaching or stretching or whatever.

[00:17:49] But that’s you gotta have that stuff for sure. And I would say lastly here is. This is not like a soft skills art of communication stuff. Like you have to have all that stuff too. But this is a do you have real leadership skills? Do you have real accountability skills? Do you have real professionalism?

[00:18:07] Do you have real maturity? Can you really handle very high pressure situations? Cuz that, that’s what happens, right? It’s yo, this happened, I tore Mike Groin off the bone. We have a playoff game in two weeks, they’re gonna give me a 15 million bonus if I can play in two weeks. All of us in the room disagree with what to do.

[00:18:27] Somebody make a decision, come back to me. You can’t not make that decision and that decision has to be right and no one knows the answer. Cause it’s never happened before, right? Yeah, like that’s what it’s like to be in real professional athletes. Like the, these are real examples in the last year, right?

[00:18:41] It’s I have a high ankle spring, I have to play in six days. Are we doing injections where we with all these options, hundred other people at your level have different opinions and you have to be able to get yours out there if think you’re right and your answer has to be right and really damn hard.

[00:19:01] That, and that’s maybe that’s the sort of speaking out loud. That’s the other thing that people don’t realize is you sure you wanna coach elite athletes? Are you sure? Because it’s a different level of pressure. It’s a lot like, I can’t tell you how many like absolutely sleepless nights I’ve had.

[00:19:18] I don’t mean like a hard night of sleep. I’m up little whole night on the phone on the thing or literally laying there all night, like panicking, being like, I hope to God, I hope to God. It just, cuz you’re almost always gonna be dealing with situations that there is no playbook for. Yeah. Like there this is what it’s really like to troubleshoot and be in this chaos stuff with real pros.

[00:19:38] In addition to a thousand other things that happened, right? Like real lawsuits, real family things, real media coverage where it’s this is a problem right here. Like you can’t tell me to go meditate right now. That’s, this is not gonna be your solution. You, you better have a next level solution here.

[00:19:54] Real, like I just got a ma my fourth concussion in the last month. Like now all of a sudden I, my, my foot stop working today. I don’t wanna tell the team should I play holy shit. These are really like life-changing things and you’re not certainly practicing outside your scope. But like still, like these are hard calls and that’s a lot of pressure in those situations. So that that’s the part I don’t think people think about. It’s just you just wanna write your workouts and show ’em how to do bicep curls. Think you’re gonna get credit for, it’s like that.

[00:20:23] That’s

[00:20:23] Dr Mike T Nelson: not what you’re doing. Yeah. And I think people forget in all sports, you’re gonna get an answer, right? That player is either gonna play in the next game and do well, or they’re not gonna play and they’re not gonna do well. It’s not like you can, you can’t hide anywhere, you’re gonna get found out whether good or bad or indifferent, like you’re gonna have an answer and someone’s gonna be responsible for that.

[00:20:48] Dr Andy Galpin: And that athlete will probably not hesitate to put your name on that when it does go. Oh yeah. And they should because that’s how they’re Yeah. Yeah.

[00:20:57] It’s not even like a a personal thing for them. It’s yo, if you do poorly in a post-game press conference, like you are gonna get named, your coach is gonna name you, your other teammates are gonna name you. The media’s gonna name you. So they treat their people the same. Yeah why aren’t you got dehydrated and cramped the game.

[00:21:13] It’s yeah. Like the plan they put together didn’t work. Oh, so it’s not personal, but like that’s just the, again, that’s the responsibility, the ownership that they’re used to. So if you’re not ready for that type of thing, it

[00:21:26] Dr Mike T Nelson: can be rough. Yeah. And even just all the other people that are involved in how all that either comes together or doesn’t come together.

[00:21:36] I remember years ago on a much lower level, I worked with a very top level athlete in California for endurance. And I said, okay, yeah, I’ll help you with your nutrition. He was working with, one of the top endurance coaches, I won’t say his name. And I’m like, oh, this’ll be great. And I looked at the guy’s, stuff, he’s clearly undereating, whatever.

[00:21:54] Long story short, we go through the whole thing. And he had it in his head that he had to hit this one body weight for whatever reason. We tried to talk him out of it and eventually I’m like, why is this guy not recovering? What is he doing? He’s eating all the food, he’s doing all this stuff. And I looked at his training plan, I was like, Holy shit.

[00:22:12] This is insane. And I told him, I said, I think your volume is crazy. Can you talk to your coach about it? He’s oh no. My coach is the best. Like he knows exactly what he is doing. And long story short, he did his big race. He ended up pring the race and then he fired me. Cause he is I didn’t do as good as I should have done, and this is your fault, because I couldn’t recover enough to do his training.

[00:22:34] Yeah. I was like, oh shit. That was an eye opener, I’m like, oh, okay. But you prd your race, right? You did better than you’ve ever done before. He’s I know, but I could have done better. So you’re out like, oh, okay.

[00:22:47] Dr Andy Galpin: That’s another thing too is man, if you’re not professional enough to get fired, Yeah.

[00:22:55] And those might be subtle fires, just just stop returning texts or whatever. Yeah. And those might be not subtle fires. I’m super fortunate I’ve had to deal with that really much, but yeah, it happens. It’s gonna happen, right? Like you’re also gonna do it to them like you’re at a fire playing athlete, so you know, I’m outta here.

[00:23:13] I’m not doing this one anymore. Yeah that’s another part of it too, is sometimes you forget that when they have real money, it’s yeah, they paid you all this money, and you’re like, why aren’t they doing the program? Why aren’t they listening? They might not ever. Yeah.

[00:23:28] Dr Mike T Nelson: But that was an eye opener for me too, and I felt a little better again, talking to a guy who did strength and conditioning for an b a team and he was telling me, and this is back five years ago, I’ve heard it’s better now, back five, seven years ago it was even worse.

[00:23:41] He’s oh yeah, we’ve have p players that come in like day one of when they’re supposed to do their strength and conditioning training and be like, yeah, I know you’re gonna find me this amount per day. Here’s all my money for like the whole season. I’m just not training and then just walk out of the facility.

[00:23:55] Hundred percent. I’m like, holy shit.

[00:23:58] Dr Andy Galpin: Oh we’ve done it. We’ve done the whole program for somebody. They paid the whole thing, right? Came back and said, Hey, this is incredible. It’s so awesome. You guys are totally worth it. Just say, no, I’m not doing any of it. And we were like, what? This is an mvp, like v MVP guy for sure.

[00:24:15] Be Hall, hall of famer when he retires. And we were so perplexed. We’re like, what do you mean? He’s this is really impressive. This is next level stuff or whatever. I’ve never seen like this. Like I totally get it. You guys are all incredible. I’m not gonna do any of it. I just appreciate it. It’s just paid and full and I still he’s still, I still communicate with him every once in a while, whatever, and he’s just I just text not random stuff or whatever.

[00:24:35] Just so it’s like he doesn’t have a bad thought about us in the world. Yeah. It’s just decided I’m not gonna do that. So it’s like, all i, if you keep me up at night, or I could just be like I’m not worried about that, dude. I’m just

[00:24:45] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah.

[00:24:47] Dr Andy Galpin: So yeah, those are situations you’re gonna you’re gonna encounter.

[00:24:51] I’d say the other thing to think about is two things. Number one, professional athletes typically are young individuals, right? Yep. You’re dealing with 20 to 27 year olds mostly. Okay. There’s occasional 30 year old stuff. You’re also dealing with folks who some of them, they come from all walks of life, right?

[00:25:12] So it’s unfair to stereotypic, to stereotype them. As though, they’re always poor or don’t cover money. Like it’s not true. Plenty have great parents and all that stuff but they’re still young. Yeah. And no matter who you are, it’s just really hard to be handed a bag of money.

[00:25:30] Dr Mike T Nelson: And especially at that age, no matter who you are, it’s that’s what I’m saying, Hey, here’s a couple million, you’re 22 years old.

[00:25:35] It’s what do you think’s gonna happen to most of them?

[00:25:39] Dr Andy Galpin: And they, because they are who they are, they expect a different level of care. So remember, they’re playing a u special travel stuff at 14. They’re getting recruited by Oregon and Alabama. They’re 17 and 16, and they’re on Sports Illustrated covers.

[00:25:55] And then they went to, Clemson and they had, they got flown out and they had their own lock. So there’s just like a, even if they’re the most respectful, best mannered person they’re just so used to a certain level of treatment. And you’re probably not used to that with your other clients.

[00:26:14] So it’s I. You gotta get used to that. Like they’re just expecting a different level of why wasn’t this ready? Why wasn’t this stick? At Texas they always had this done. You’re like you have to work through that stuff, not a lot as well, which is again, like not something you are probably ever thinking you would have to deal with. But you’re gonna have to for sure again and again, like it’s not a disrespect thing cause they’re like oftentimes super, super respectful and kind and caring and professional and all that.

[00:26:43] They just love that. They also they don’t necessarily have leadership skills. And what I mean by that is some of them hate confrontation, right? And it’s just God, this is not what I just like they would rather do the wrong thing than say something to one of their coaches. Because they’ve been in a coaching programs like that.

[00:27:03] They also look at coaches with esteem. Yeah. So they won’t, that’s kinda how they got to where they’re at. Yeah. Yeah. So they sometimes they don’t wanna disappoint, so it’s like they don’t even tell you the truth. They’re like, man just being an adult here. But nah, they won’t because they’re just like, this, my coach, like whatever.

[00:27:24] So you, you have to be it’s the same thing with any coach, with these folks. You have to have your EQ has to just be very high and your you have to be paying attention to, to everything that is about them. Or it’s gonna be very hard to form any meaningful connection. All the same stuff is true.

[00:27:43] Nobody cares No. Until they know how you care. Like all that’s true with anybody. But for these folks you have to really try to understand what else is going on. Like communication wise in their life and what else is ways are being pressed and told. And so you obviously, you generally tend to over-interpret things with professional athletes.

[00:28:03] You make a bigger deal outta something that’s not, didn’t respond back for three or four days. I wonder if she’s super mad at me. Oh, also maybe in the middle of arbitration it’s just you know what I mean? Did not care about Yeah. In fact they feel so secure with you that they know they don’t have to respond to a readable thing.

[00:28:20] And that actually is making you feel less secure. You’re like, God, I text, I wonder if they like that. They’re just actually like the opposite. This is think it like this. You don’t tell your wife you love her every single time you walk outta the room. Cause you don’t have to, if you’re married for 20 years, you’re just like, yeah, I know.

[00:28:37] You know that You tell her occasionally. That’s kinda the same thing. Like a lot of these athletes I’ve worked with, when they get really hyper professional, they become like hyper loyal. Because they don’t once they got their team, they don’t want to deviate from their team. Cause there’s just, there’s too many people, right?

[00:28:53] So they almost get worse about some things because in their mind it’s over, this is the team. And so you use you’ll get signals like, holy shit, I, I think I’m losing favor with soAnd. But it’s the opposite. It’s like they’re done. This is it, this is their team and they get tremendously loyal.

[00:29:09] So you have to breathe out and you’re like, oh my God. So and so’s not responding. Ah God. I’m like, they’re like, I don’t wanna lose this person. But in their mind they’re like yeah, that, that thing can wait to get back to Andy on this cuz like whatever. Just like you would not be super worried about, oh, I forgot to return your tech honey.

[00:29:25] Yeah. He was no big deal. I was trying to get this new deal. That is the thing that actually is very hard for young people. They first break into real high profile folks. They’re probably not thinking about you all the time. Yeah. Even though you’re thinking about that all the time be able to play cool, I guess is why you’d be like, yeah, sure, no worries.

[00:29:44] I’m here. With your other clients it’s not necessarily

[00:29:48] Dr Mike T Nelson: the case. Yeah. The other thing I’ve noticed too with generally tends to be the older players who have been in the game for quite a while, a lot of ’em are almost the other end of the spectrum. They’re like hyper neurotic, right? They’ve got their team of revolving 13 people that follow them around doing, I always do massage after this, I do this, I do, they have, almost like on the spectrum type, as something goes off on that.

[00:30:16] And if you know that, that’s helpful too. Last season I got called up for quarterback in the N F L, got a concussion. What do we do with ketones and all this other stuff? Is there anything we can do? The guy’s gotta play, he’s got a big game coming up on Sunday. He’s going through concussion protocol.

[00:30:29] Can we do anything to accelerate it? Obviously he’s gonna get checked out by a neuro doc, make sure he’s good. And so I, rolled back to him, okay, here’s the thing to consider. Here’s what to look for, and then here’s a laundry list of shit not to do because I know you’re neurotic and you’ll think one is good, 12 must be better.

[00:30:45] It’s not. And so the list of exclusions I had was almost longer than like the list of here’s some things to consider because you, that their thought process is like, okay, if I can do this, then this and this have to be better. And it, obviously part of it’s a liability too, but you want to be clear that this is good, that’s better.

[00:31:05] No, seven of them is not gonna be better than two. Just try to think ahead and put yourself in their mind space of what they’re doing. And just because for a lot of other stuff that does work, oh, I got, a massage after this and that helped and. At some point adding more things do help until it doesn’t.

[00:31:22] Dr Andy Galpin: Yeah. Yeah. I have a, one of the guys I’m coaching right now, N f l guys was like basically saying, Hey look, I don’t want to be positioned like one of his teammates where he is like, he had 18 coaches and he was literally like, he had a position coach. And he had a speed coach and he had an agility coach and then he had a vertical jump.

[00:31:41] He was like, it was like that. And it was like, alright, so do you wanna be that? Do you wanna be that 12th coach? Yeah. No, you don’t wanna be that person. Another thing that kinda made me think about is, I think one of the major mistakes people make when they think about high prestige or high profile athletes is you’re not going to get famous coaching them.

[00:32:08] No. I wanna you will not get famous doing that. And here’s my case in point. You probably know this answer, but you listening at home, do you know who LeBron James’ strength coach is?

[00:32:18] Dr Mike T Nelson: I don’t even know, to be honest.

[00:32:20] Dr Andy Galpin: Crickets, right? Yeah. What do you think it’s like to be LeBron’s full-time private strength coach?

[00:32:26] Doesn’t matter. You’re not getting famous. Yeah, you could have the most whole high profile athlete in the world. You’re unlikely. A few people know Tom Brady’s guy because they came out with a thing and all that stuff. But the overwhelming majority of time, I could tell you so many guys and girls who coach the world’s best, you’ve never heard of them and you never would.

[00:32:49] Cuz they’re not all over social media cuz they ain’t got time for that shit. Yeah. And they’re not everywhere. So if you think that’s how you’re gonna get famous and you’re gonna, whether your goal is to be like interviewed on espn or your goal is to have a million followers, that ain’t gonna be the why.

[00:33:07] That is not gonna be the way you’re gonna have to do some other stuff. It’s gonna help your credibility of course. But when people go to your website and they see that person’s picture on there and all that, yes, that’s gonna help occasionally, but that alone is not gonna be the ticket. It’s, I think I feel like a huge portion of people I know that wanna work with pro athletes that actually just secretly want to be famous and important.

[00:33:31] And that’s really what’s driving them. And I’m gonna tell you right now, like you’re gonna get there. Who’s the strength coach for the Ally Lakers right now? Yeah, that’s my point. Yeah, the strength coach for the Yankees. You don’t even know who these people are, so just think about the people you think is gonna make you famous.

[00:33:46] And look, you don’t even know who those current people are right now, and that’s, it’s not gonna get you famous. It’s also not gonna get you super rich, right? Depending on what sport you’re in, you might be okay. There’s a few guys from taking care of pretty well. You’re head strength coach in the nfl, you’re taking care of pretty well.

[00:34:02] Yeah. You’re a power five football strength coach, you’re taking care of pretty well. But consult with an athlete on this. There’s just not enough money there to get life changing money in you. It the money is not what you think it is.

[00:34:17] For most people. Now, it can certainly be extremely lucrative, don’t get me wrong. But it’s not the way to get famous. You’re gonna have to get famous elsewhere.

[00:34:27] Dr Mike T Nelson: For sure. Yeah. The only person I think of is an exception to that would be Michael Jordan’s coach. But Michael Jordan, you could argue, is probably one of the most famous athletes in the entire world.

[00:34:39] Dr Andy Galpin: Yeah. If you’re in the strength conditioning industry, you know who Mike is? Yeah. LeBron, you know who Tim was? Like there’s a few people who get through. Yeah, but you take one step down from those like absolutely most famous athletes in the world and you get into who’s the strength coach for, SGE Tani?

[00:35:01] He’s about to be the richest athlete, the whole world. Nobody has, so what I mean it doesn’t, that list does not go very long before you’re all of a sudden you’re just like, I don’t know, maybe the most famous out that, Mike Trout, who’s the strength coach, my body guys who’s his private dietician?

[00:35:13] Yeah. Nope. Like nobody. You dunno who you are who’s his physical therapist at s of both sides. Nobody knows. Yeah, like I said, just walk down after that, like absolute top list of five most famous people in the world. And then after that, unless you’re really in this field, you don’t know, so you’re not gonna get famous those

[00:35:28] Dr Mike T Nelson: ways at all.

[00:35:30] Yeah. And the guys and gals I know who do work with legitimate, like high level athletes, most of ’em, like you, you probably know Sean Ishka a good buddy of mine. He does a lot of movement stuff with top athletes. Lauren Landell obviously was with Denver Broncos for many years. He’s done a lot of stuff too.

[00:35:45] But even guys like that who are very good. If you said, top two movement coaches that I would pick for those positions, those would be my two. I would put up on the board. Most people have no idea who they are, and most of the time they’re so busy. Like they’re not gonna write, 800 page articles to put out on social media because they’re actually coaching people, especially during the season.

[00:36:05] So you’re, you, by definition, if you are that good and you are in demand, you just don’t have a lot of time to do all this other stuff. Do people even know who you were? So it’s, yeah.

[00:36:17] Dr Andy Galpin: Yeah. Lauren’s a good example, right? Yeah. Lauren had taken, I think four or five guys from middle school to the N F L.

[00:36:26] Yeah, and then got hired. Yes. As the Denver Bronco strength machine coach, he had spoken at N S C A like hundreds of times. Multiple times. Yeah. Like he had done all these things. He had run multiple successful fitness facilities and then got that job look at Eric. E Eric wrote hundreds of Team Nation articles had assess and Correct.

[00:36:50] Come out. He had all kinds of things, built his gym and then got hired to run the performance for the Yankees

[00:36:56] Dr Mike T Nelson: Or whatever. Yeah. You’re talking about Eric Kres, right? Yeah. Yes. Yeah, just the people are listening. No. Yeah.

[00:37:01] Dr Andy Galpin: You could name I could go down the, listen, Any of these people. The difference is they did not get famous because of those athletes.

[00:37:09] They did all of the other stuff, high quality products, super productive, very successful. And that’s why they got those jobs, not the other way around. Not the other way around. Again, Lauren had already put, I think four or five people from middle school into the N F L Yeah. Before he got that sort of thing that, that’s

[00:37:28] Dr Mike T Nelson: so typical.

[00:37:29] That’s crazy. Yeah. And just think of the time difference too. And Lauren’s been around for a long time too. Like the amount of time it takes to see them work through those different levels, that’s, that’s not a couple of years. That’s a long

[00:37:40] Dr Andy Galpin: time. And by the way, I think Eric’s still had a bunch too.

[00:37:42] I think Eric’s taking a bunch of kids from kids to in major league baseball that’s how you get those sort of jobs, like you gotta produce. It’s not because they just happen to have the right guy walk through the gym one time and then they got their break and they had the right guy walk through the gym 50 times and then eventually got up to those spots.

[00:38:01] Yeah, it’s, you’re gonna, you’re gonna have to do high quality work and it’s gonna have to work before you can get your shot.

[00:38:06] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Cool. What about the other end of the spectrum? Are you looking at high? High level or elite athletes, but they may not be high profile. For example, I know you’ve worked with a lot of mixed martial artists before USC was even really a thing.

[00:38:23] Olympic weightlifters. Even now, if you said you went to most people on the street and said, Hey, who’s the top US Olympic weightlifter? Yeah. I betcha People in fitness don’t even really know. They probably couldn’t even name a single person.

[00:38:36] Dr Andy Galpin: No. Yeah. It’s a really interesting question because when I actually first started like that, I was actually like, that’s all I want to do.

[00:38:45] I had been the trout that I didn’t wanna go to the back pro athlete, and I wanted to work in these areas because it, to me felt like the perfect blend. It is still the best in the world, right? We’re still going after something and I don’t have to deal with all those other things. And so I did that for a long time and like absolutely loved it.

[00:39:02] And it’s still a part of. It’s like, all right, I’ll take on one or two of those. Just because it’s so incredibly fun. It’s much more rewarding of course. And there’s a, how do you not get hyped up for somebody who’s gonna give their entire life at this point? Almost not give their life away, but this is all they focus on for years at a time to take a shot at something nobody is ever gonna really care about.

[00:39:27] Yeah. And there’s a and not to say like the probably profile athletes don’t have the same level of dedication, cuz some of them do. Yeah. Yeah. Some of the stuff that, and I think people tend to think hi, profile pro athletes are just like all a bunch of like famous babies and man, that is not the truth.

[00:39:42] Some of them that are up there that you be lorded lord of the hours they put in and what they actually do. To stay

[00:39:51] Dr Mike T Nelson: that level. Yeah. Especially as I’ve noticed as they’re aging, right? Because now they’re a little bit more mature now they realize the writing on the wall. Now they realize, oh wow, if I do this nutrition thing, I do this next level thing.

[00:40:03] They can see that they’re gonna get more years out of it. And Totally. And most of the ones I’ve ever met, they just love playing the game. It’s yeah, they get paid a lot of money, but most of ’em just, they just want to go play. That’s what they love doing. Yeah. And I think that gets lost too.

[00:40:18] Dr Andy Galpin: Yeah, definitely. The downside, of course, with the low profile one is everything is hard.

[00:40:23] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Everything. Yeah.

[00:40:25] Dr Andy Galpin: Here’s the reality. There’s a bunch of people I coach right now but I just have a black limit card, right? In other words, I can buy whatever I want. I can do whatever I want.

[00:40:36] And I don’t even have to ask them. I just I just put it, I just buy it. Just send it through, right? So just like whatever it takes. Whatever it takes. This doesn’t matter, right? It’s really fast and nice when we could just throw stuff in there. When you go to your weightlifter or your power lifter, your your downhill skier.

[00:40:53] Your gymnast, and it’s like, God, you know what let’s get to protein powder this month. Let’s

[00:40:59] Dr Mike T Nelson: listen. Yeah, I know, that’s what I was just thinking too. It’s like gas to get to the event or protein powder

[00:41:06] Dr Andy Galpin: And that’s what it is. And it’s like, all right, you know what I know. Let me call this company, see if they’ll sponsor you.

[00:41:09] And then I’m on the phone for an hour Hey, could we get this thing out there to, what do you think? Would you send him some amino acids? Like it’s and I’ve been on those phone calls like plenty of times, like trying to get grocery stores to respond to them so they can eat better food, trying to get meal prep services and just Hey, I’ll post about you if you give this to this girl for free.

[00:41:25] I’ve done that stuff so many times for people. And that stuff just wears on you too. It’s man, the things we could do. The things we could do if you just had a little bit more money and it’s just hey, on the cards or whatever. Whether this is testing stuff we wanted to get or, just basic things like that.

[00:41:43] God wish he’d get you massage. Hank gets access to that stuff. So that becomes for me, that actually likes for her to grind on me a lot. It was just like, man, this is really hard to put everything I have in. And then to just God, we can’t get it. Cause it’s just the money’s just not there for this.

[00:42:00] The money’s, it’s just you feel like you’re just constantly getting beat down to, to nose. So that was really challenging.

[00:42:06] Dr Mike T Nelson: And just the stress level on the athletes too, so much. Just to be, a lot of ’em are, they’re not professional, so they’re still working another job.

[00:42:13] A lot of their extra time goes to this. They can only work so many hours. A lot of times their profession is even limited by the sport that they’re trying to do, whether it’s hours, travel, whatever. So a lot of times there isn’t a lot of workarounds left that they can do.

[00:42:27] Dr Andy Galpin: Really. No, that’s, so that’s actually a really good point that I forgot about.

[00:42:30] One of the things that was really hard is when you’re in the N F L I love, I know right now I can look and I know exactly where these athletes are gonna be the next nine months. When you’re going to talk about the Olympics, like every year, what do I have to do to qualify, what do I have to do to be an Olympic?

[00:42:48] Yeah. I don’t know yet. Wait, the IOC hasn’t determined the selection for criteria yet. Oh. And then it changes and then your month out and we decide now here’s a new qualifier. Now here’s a new so you don’t even know, and this happened to us, was like, okay, we’re on the team, we’re on the team, we’re on the team.

[00:43:05] Right Before we had a new qualifier. What do you mean you had a new qualifier? You can’t do that. Yeah. Didn’t have time prepared. Gone. Lost the spot. And so you’re just like, holy shit. So that level of stress is massive depending on the

[00:43:19] Dr Mike T Nelson: sport. Yeah. And you’re talking every four years. It’s not like you, you have next year, you have the next four years, it’s over of

[00:43:26] Dr Andy Galpin: one. Yeah. Which probably means now you’re 32. Or whatever. It’s it’s over. Yeah. I’ve seen multiple athletes retire because of that. It’s I don’t have four more years left in me. Yeah. Even at the u ffc level, it’s better now, but it’s still the same thing of like when he get to the fight again.

[00:43:41] I don’t know. I dunno. Yeah. Gotta fight in two weeks. What? No, this is it. Come chairman change the opponent, change the weight class, change the, the, so many things. And so you’re just like, Hey, I’d love to go through this developmental phase or whatever. I know with the major baseball guys, I know right now when spring training is gonna start next year.

[00:43:58] Yeah, I know when the season’s gonna be over and like we can plan way ahead like we always do with the other ones. It’s just God, I’d love to develop you, get, take, go after this neck pain thing or whatever. But we can’t cuz you haven’t gotten paid cause you haven’t fought and you don’t have any money.

[00:44:14] And now it’s this isn’t, so that part is really hard. Where I just, I don’t have to worry about that with the, that’s a PGA golfer. Yeah. It’s like I know where you’re gonna be at. So yeah, those are the other challenges. And then like from your perspective, you’re gonna do that and in your salary, is for sure extremely limited.

[00:44:33] And you also know like best case scenario is what you give more clients like that. Yeah. Easy to make your soul operate on that hard to make your paycheck operate on that. So you’re gonna go out of business and this is why you’re gonna have to have a kids’s class. So you’re gonna have to have a card kickboxing class and your you’re gonna have to do something else to keep the lights on.

[00:44:56] Cuz it’s like those kind of athletes just can’t unless you’re just gonna be a, single living in your band, best of your like, but you can’t like have a career in a family on those athletes. This, it is just too challenging.

[00:45:07] Dr Mike T Nelson: But that in gyms, right? Gyms pop up all the time of we’re only training professional athletes.

[00:45:12] It’s okay, how many gyms could you name? Even in the US that train only professional athletes. I remember talking to Pete Dupre, Cresty performance a couple years ago and they probably trained more baseball players than almost anywhere else. And he is yeah, he is eh, best case scenario we’re at like, 50%, and this is probably one of the top, training places for baseball players.

[00:45:36] And then there’s still, 50, maybe 60%. It might be a little bit higher now. Yeah. So even in that case, they’re still taking a lot of general population people to keep the lights on, to have a facility, to have everything else. And that’s the best case

[00:45:48] Dr Andy Galpin: scenario. Hundred percent. Yeah that I would say if it’s 50, but that’s very high number.

[00:45:53] Dr Mike T Nelson: Oh, it’s extremely high. Yeah.

[00:45:56] Dr Andy Galpin: In fact, relative is, which you’ll see I don’t know what Eric does specifically, but like what you’ll see is a lot of the teams don’t charge the

[00:46:02] Dr Mike T Nelson: pros. Yes. That happens too.

[00:46:04] Dr Andy Galpin: Yep. It’s like we have to have you in, cuz that’s what keeps all the other people in here.

[00:46:09] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah.

[00:46:09] I’ve had a few of those circumstances in the past where especially when I was doing my PhD, a couple pretty high level athletes that we got all the way. I said, yeah, I’ll help you with this will be great. And we got to the talking about money and they’re like, were you gonna do this for free?

[00:46:23] I’m like ho hold on. You’re not that famous, and I’m thinking I’m a Voor college student. Like I’m still got my house payment and everything else. Like I, I can’t afford to do it for free. Then they got mad at me and they’re like that, I’ll go get someone else that’ll do it for free then.

[00:46:37] And I was like, oh. So that’s how, and I started looking around that, part of the industry and I was like, oh, you mean all those other, and so I called a couple of other people I knew and I’m like do you charge this person? They’re like, no, you don’t. Oh shit. So that was kinda a rude awakening for me,

[00:46:53] Dr Andy Galpin: which we were in the conversation when I said you gotta be real clear with yourself on what you’re doing this for.

[00:46:58] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. If you are, my ego said yes. My pocketbook was like, you can’t do this. What are you doing, man?

[00:47:04] Dr Andy Galpin: If you’re saying, Hey, look, the primary thing here is to get experience with professional athletes. Yeah. Then don’t charge. If your primary thing is to use it for exposure and whatever, you’re getting your money.

[00:47:16] Right that way you can’t ask for your cake and have it too, right? It’s just did you really wanna charge ’em a premium price if you’re really just doing this to use their name later on? Then when they got mad about you asking for money, they were right cuz you’re using that. Yeah. And I promise you their endorsement is a lot more expensive than whatever you were charging, right?

[00:47:35] Oh yeah. Once you get to that point though when you truly say no, then it’s an easy conversation. It’s oh no, hey, no. I understand most people don’t charge, but that’s not how I operate. So this is a b, like that’s, that is what it is, right? But you just have to expect a big percentage of them walk away.

[00:47:55] At some point you’ll get to a point in your career though, where they just assume they’re paying. And I haven’t had anybody like be surprised about me. Sending over the invoice or telling ’em whatever. And in many years, but certainly happened plenty. And we were like, oh, yeah, I’m just wondering can we do this for a post or whatever?

[00:48:12] I’ll tag you and yeah. Okay. Now, so my advice on that would be generally the way I handled this earlier in my career was it’s either free or full. Yeah. Yeah. Don’t,

[00:48:23] Dr Mike T Nelson: Don’t do anything in the middle. I made that mistake too. That was a freaking disaster. Free or full,

[00:48:30] Dr Andy Galpin: right? If it’s free and then clear expectations, great.

[00:48:33] I’ll do it for free. But then I expect, and if you wanna use it for the post order, fine. I never did that once in my life. Never ever did a deal with ask somebody like, promote me or whatever. But if you wanna do that, fine. There’s nothing wrong with it, but just be clear. Okay, cool. I’ll do this for free in exchange for I expect you to, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:48:50] Great. But be hyper clear with the expectations. Nobody get upset then. You got the deal you agreed to it. When people get upset is I didn’t charge you, but I was hoping like you, you would help me grow my social media, but you like you never did. So that’s kind of bullshit.

[00:49:02] No, like it’s not bullshit. You didn’t say that. Ha that’s what I mean. Be professional. Have that conversation right out the gates. Hey, look, here’s the deal. I know this is huge for me and I know this is, I’d love to work with you. So here’s the deal I’m proposing, I don’t even charge you.

[00:49:15] So I’m gonna do, I’ll be willing to do this for free, but in exchange, would you wear my shirt one time at a ProCon? Whatever the thing is you want. Yeah. And you can say no and say, okay fine. I’m still willing to do it cuz then I wanna be able to talk about you and mention you and I won’t use your whatever.

[00:49:31] Just be honest and direct with what you want to be able to do. They will appreciate that more than just being like, okay, fine. All of a sudden their pictures up on your website and a quote testimony, they’re like, what the fuck? I never, yeah. Like I never, that’s not okay. Like I don’t really like that.

[00:49:45] With professional, again just be clear cool if I use just tell people I work there all time. Nah. Rather not. Oh, okay. Fine. And I’ve had plenty of those and I’ve had plenty like, yeah, do whatever you want. A quote, you want a video, like what do you want? And some be like I’d rather you just like, and some being very direct.

[00:49:59] Here’s an nda, don’t ever talk about work with me. I don’t care.

[00:50:03] Dr Mike T Nelson: Whatever you want. Yeah. And that happens more often than people realize, right? Because I know some very high level coaches who, a few of the people that they talk about, they have full permission. They’re like, oh yeah, he is my best buddy.

[00:50:16] Everything’s cool. And then they’ve got like 17 other people they can’t mention by name. And hundred percent I get it. If you’re in a highly competitive field, if you found something that was a competitive advantage, you don’t really wanna go out and advertise it to everyone else either. So I get it.

[00:50:29] But again, that goes back to being sure that you’re clear on that and that’s part

[00:50:34] Dr Andy Galpin: of the deal. Yeah. I always offer at the beginning. Okay. Do you want to, if you team has an indie or whatever, sign over or if not, don’t worry about it. If they talk about me first, then I’m like, all right, fair game. Whatever which has happened.

[00:50:47] So yeah, yeah, just communication, professionalism.

[00:50:51] Dr Mike T Nelson: I agree. Anything else you can think of that would be relevant to add? I think that’s a good discussion about kind of the pros and the cons of both

[00:50:59] Dr Andy Galpin: scenarios. Yeah. I guess maybe a few other things to think about is you, when I maybe 2010 I remember having a conversation with a guy named Brian Parsons.

[00:51:14] Ryan’s one of the original kind of m a guy. This was tagged in with the original team Quest, so Randy Couture and Dan Henderson and stuff way back in the day. I went to college with Dana Henderson. Oh, wow. Yeah, so I’ve been around a long time. Managed fighters, coached fighters, all these things.

[00:51:32] And many years ago, I remember he said, Hey, look, the only way that you end a career as a coach with an athlete is them hating you. I was like, what? It only ends one way. Just like and I always banked that, and it’s not really been like an actual thing, but it is important for me, I always remember Hey, look like, just like any marriage or any relationships, sometimes you’re just gonna drift apart.

[00:51:59] Sometimes people, other people change. It’s not necessarily your fault. Sometimes your interest changes or whatever. Sometimes you were not really qualified for the job, thought you could do it, and you couldn’t get it done. And that’s okay. Like again, the N F L example is good. N F L coaches fire their friends constantly.

[00:52:18] God, I really wish you could be the guy for the job. You weren’t, you’re not ready. Maybe you weren’t in three years. You’re awesome. Still love you, still really talented. You’re not here though at this level, so that’s okay. So you have to approach that of yo, are we friends? Fine. But then we also have this professional relationship, and if you can’t keep those things separate, work with pro athletes will murder you.

[00:52:40] It will murder you. So just be able to have that bifurcation in your brain just saying yep, this was a professional thing and this person has one shot, one shot to do something that’s going be with them the rest of their life to make life-changing money, to do whatever. And they gotta make real hard calls all the time.

[00:53:00] And sometimes you’re gonna be in the short end of that sort of stick. The other thing I would say, piece of advice is just like marriage. Just like signing a business, contracts. Ah, we don’t need a contract. We’re friends. We’ll never sue each other. Sure. Until seven years, nine years, 17 years, 27 years, whatever, down the road.

[00:53:22] So I would approach everything from the front as if this could get used against you. Potentially not to be like overly voice summer or whatever, but yeah. Yeah. Maybe that joke you would say in person. Don’t type it in the text. Don’t put it down there. Ju just just really think again.

[00:53:40] If this person’s here’s, here’s a tangible example. It might not even be that person. It might be that person’s agent. Yeah. It might be that person’s wife. It might be that person’s ex strength coach or something. And like all of a sudden it’s fuck, I would never do what they did to that.

[00:53:59] It’s somebody else who got mad at that person. Wanted to hurt them as they would hurt you. And that, that’s actually been a closer thing where I’m like, what? Yeah. Like just wanted to come after me. And so they knew that since we were so tight, went after you. Got it. Okay. This is crazy, right?

[00:54:18] So that this is just part of it, like this, it’s back to, similar to the, guessing the heat allocation thing, but just know, if you’re working with those kind of people, they’re targets. They’re targets for a lot of people, which means you’re gonna be a target potentially, like directly.

[00:54:33] So keep your ship tight, keep your ship tight around your legal stuff and your other things. Your best friends could still have had trauma, have a mental illness thing and come after you just never know. So when you’re working with your local, middle school, Indian gymnastics team is fine.

[00:54:54] When you work with somebody that has access to 50 million lawyers. Yeah. More money, more problems, friends. So you wanna play on that level. Like you gotta be

[00:55:03] Dr Mike T Nelson: ready for it. Yeah. The phrase I like, I don’t know if it was an old Russian phrase, but it’s called trust but verify. Yeah. It’s I trust you, but I’m in a check.

[00:55:12] I’m gonna do my due diligence. Cuz that’s just how it is.

[00:55:17] Dr Andy Galpin: Yeah. Yeah. A absolutely. That, that would be the thing, not to scare anybody away. Yeah. And I’ve had almost exclusively phenomenal relationships and interactions with professional athletes and that’s how it will be. But the ones that keep you up at night are the few ones like that we just yo just let you know, my ex-wife got hold of my phone screenshotted these and it’s oh god, outta context, that’s gonna look really

[00:55:38] Dr Mike T Nelson: bad.

[00:55:39] Yeah. And that’s the thing you don’t know, like even if it’s that person you don’t know. Who else goes a little bit crazy in their group and, wants to get revenge after ’em and who knows what’ll happen at that point? You get a few loose cannons in there. Or they get hacked. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz they’re targets, like people are looking to make examples and all sorts of stuff.

[00:56:01] Dr Andy Galpin: I’ve been a, I know I’ve been a part of blackmails or shoes. Oh not me, but yeah. And being blackmailed by somebody and being like, oh my God, they have all the texts they have and that didn’t end up coming out from Yeah. Like I don’t ever say anything. You kidding me? Just like the wrong words. The wrong thing.

[00:56:16] Totally screenshot it. That can happen over the course of the years and years of text messages or whatever. So I’ve seen, I’ve been on the backside, just watched people just get drained because of stuff like that. That’s just stuff to think about. It’s not necessarily that it’s the person black know and that’s gonna happen.

[00:56:34] If they’re rich enough in things enough, they’re gonna get sued. Yeah, for sure. And if that gets sued and that goes to court and that goes to discovery, your stuff’s out there now. Yep. Always think about that.

[00:56:45] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Cool. Thank you so much. I think that’s that’s extremely helpful. Now I’m, I’ll have a podcast when people ask me about this.

[00:56:52] I’m here. Listen to Annie. Just listen to this whole podcast.

[00:56:55] Dr Andy Galpin: It sounds like all negative. Maybe we should have spent more time talking about positives. Cause there’s just so many. Obviously I do it a ton now as you do. So there’s quite a bit of benefit. It’s really fun. Like as cool as it is to work with the non-high profile elite athletes.

[00:57:16] Working with the high profile ones is really fun. It’s very fun. Being able to watch somebody on TV every single day, like knowing you’re contributing a big portion of that. It’s very fun to see a. People sign record breaking contracts and, you had a huge contribution so that, it’s fun seeing people set the all time sports records and wars and stuff like that.

[00:57:39] It, it’s not all Tim oom, it’s mostly not, it’s mostly really rad. Like almost entirely fun and rad and rewarding all those things. So probably just, I got a little sardonic there. I dunno why’s Alright. I didn’t Steve, but it

[00:57:53] Dr Mike T Nelson: takes a lot. I think you think similar to me it’s like the ultimate problem solving and most of the time you’re not resource limited, which to me is cool, right?

[00:58:03] Because now, like you said with, athletes who, hey do I put gas in my car or do I buy a way of protein shake? Like you, it’s good on some hand because you have to be created because your resources are so limited. And then on the other end it’s almost fun to think of, oh, what about this?

[00:58:19] Or what about that? Or, That you have other options, and sometimes you almost have too many options. You have to scale stuff back down. But you’re, they’re almost like polar opposites of each other.

[00:58:31] Dr Andy Galpin: A hundred percent man. Like that actually is exactly right. May maybe next time in three years when we do this again, we could talk about that, but Yeah.

[00:58:38] Yeah. That, when I actually tell people about coaching professional, I think that’s what it is. The art of deciding what you’re not gonna do. Yeah. Because it’s, that’s the challenge. You got so many things you could pick. How do you decide on the ones and not make that program so overwhelming.

[00:58:54] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And you’re not resource limited.

[00:58:56] So normally with, a lower athlete who doesn’t have the money, you’re like, oh, we can’t afford any of this stuff, so we’ve only got this. Now it’s you want a P M F device that’s 50 grand, great. We can call a company and get it in your house tomorrow. Is that the best use of your time though?

[00:59:09] Yeah. I don’t know. Maybe not.

[00:59:11] Dr Andy Galpin: That’s the other thing too, is not only are you not resource limited, You get to pull cards big time. In other words, you can go, you know how that thing’s sold out. Is it really? Hey, yeah. I’m calling because this is what it’s for. Sure. So it’s not a resource, it’s an access.

[00:59:24] You can get into anything. Yeah. Oh, waiting list for that. Is it really? Yeah. But this is for Mike T. Nelson. Can we, oh shit. Yes, of course. We’ll get that out tomorrow. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, you’re like you don’t really get him any nos. So yeah, all fun

[00:59:39] Dr Mike T Nelson: stuff. Yeah. Awesome. Where can people find out more about you?

[00:59:44] I know you’re on like every podcast known demand now, so they can go listen to all of those, but resources, Instagram, you’ve got lots of great information there

[00:59:51] Dr Andy Galpin: as always. Yeah, of course. Twitter and Instagram are the most active. It’s pretty much exclusively science education. I don’t really, I’m not Dan Garner.

[01:00:00] I don’t post top pics or anything like that. Mostly cuz I don’t have see, looks like his, but so science, communication, those are the things. YouTube is a great place. To see more proper education. So that’s, my, my university lectures where all my courses are basically up on YouTube all for free.

[01:00:18] Yeah, you can certainly check out the guest series I did with Andrew Huberman on his platform. And then, you wanna check us out at at Rapid Health Optimization if you want that kind of executive pro athlete treatment. Or actually we have plenty of pro athletes in there or some other ones.

[01:00:35] Or absolute rest. Our sleep company for the world’s most advanced sleep system, bar none. You can check all those places out. I think you can also access all of those things just on Andy

[01:00:45] Dr Mike T Nelson: g.com. Nice. And are you taking on any grad students or looking for any grad students coming up or are you pretty

[01:00:52] Dr Andy Galpin: full?

[01:00:52] We are entirely full this year and the application window is closed. Okay. This is of May, 2023, depending on you. Listen this. Yeah. But having said that We have plenty of slots open for next year. Great.

[01:01:08] Dr Mike T Nelson: Awesome. Thank you so much. I would encourage everyone to check out all those things, all your videos, everything is really good and it’s, you did a great job of explaining like actual science from a real scientist, but in terms most people can understand because a lot of times it’s either too technical or it’s so for lack of bored or simplified that it’s it, oops, it’s not correct now.

[01:01:29] Yeah. So you did a good job of walking that, that balance. So yeah. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Always good to catch up my man. Yeah, always good.

[01:01:40] [01:01:43] Dr Mike T Nelson: Thank you so much for listening to the Flex Diet podcast. Really appreciate it. Huge thanks to Andy for coming on the podcast here. Really appreciate this open dialogue about the pros and the cons of working with high level athletes. If you enjoyed this podcast please share it around tag us so we can say thank you.

[01:02:02] Make sure to check out Andy’s stuff on Instagram. Always got a lot of great stuff there. You can find Andy and Dan and every, all of us over at Rapid Health. Also, we’ll link to that last part. If you want to look at what advanced athletes do for recovery, make sure to check out my podcast, which will link below here with Coach Cab that we did, where we talked about what he does.

[01:02:25] He works with a lot of high level Olympic caliber athletes professionals and what we do for recovery on that. So make sure to check out that episode if you missed it. Again, huge thanks to Andy for coming on the podcast. Always great to chat with him. As I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, if you are gonna be at the International Society of Sports Nutrition coming up this weekend, February, oh, I’m sorry, June, ah, what month of it?

[01:02:52] I’m losing track. June 15th through the 17th, 2023 Fort Lauderdale, Florida. My brain is still losing it from Costa Rica since I’m. Literally flying from Costa Rica Thursday night to the conference. I’ll be presenting there on Saturday afternoon. I’ll be doing a talk on a primer on psychedelics. What does some of the research say about different treatments?

[01:03:16] How do they work? And then our psychedelic supplements gonna be next on the list. If you’re there, please come up and say hi. I would love to chat with you. Or if nothing else, just come say hi. Highly recommend the meeting. It’ll be super fun. Thank you once again for listening to this podcast. Always really appreciate it.

[01:03:36] If you know someone who may enjoy this podcast, please forward it to them. And if you have time, if you could leave us, whatever stars you feel is appropriate and even a very short review goes a long way to help us with the old algorithms so we can get great people like Andy on the show, other people, and get this distributed to more people.

[01:03:55] Thank you so much, greatly appreciate it. Talk to you all next week.

[01:03:59] [01:04:02] PODCAST outtakes

[01:04:02] Podcast outtakes.

[01:04:05] Dr Mike T Nelson: Okay. Dusting? Yep.

[01:04:08] Dr Andy Galpin: I feel like such a giant

[01:04:10] Dr Mike T Nelson: dork with this. Looks like you’re gonna control some airplanes that are gonna fly and buzz by your house.

[01:04:16] Dr Andy Galpin: Seriously. So bad. How’s the audio?

[01:04:21] Dr Mike T Nelson: Not too bad. I think you probably moved the mic away a little bit. It’s just picking up a little bit of the static.