All [Music] [Applause] [Music] right, we're back here with another episode on the Desert Shift.

 I believe this is episode five.

 Uh today's guest we have high performance intern Nick Nick Pearson.

 Nick Pearson, thank you very much for coming on.

 Appreciate you.

 How you been? How's everything been going since you went went back to Michigan State, right? Yep.

 How How's everything been? Pretty great.

 Good to be honest.

 Uh here, you know, a lot better than Michigan.

 A lot better weather.

 Yeah.

 Yeah, that'll do it.

 Is it hot? I've never been to Michigan.

 Is it like typically pretty hot there? Is it like a humid thing or is it cold? What you got? Can't imagine it's cold right now.

 Yeah.

 Well, I'm here in the summer and then Okay.

 So, really hot Arizona summer.

 Yeah.

 And then I go back to Michigan fall winter and like early fall really nice.

 Really nice, right? Yeah.

 Like really autumny, like changes colors, all that good stuff.

 Yeah.

 Yeah.

 But honestly, like 70 75 humid feels hotter than like 110 here.

 Really? It's that humid? Oh, hell no.

 See, like I can't do that.

 Like every year my mom for her birthday typically uh like in years past when I was younger, we would go to Mexico, some half Mexican, we'd we'd go somewhere, right? And my mom's like, she loves the humidity.

 And it's August 1st is her birthday.

 And oh my god, dude.

 I remember going to like Puerto Pasco, like all these places.

 And I'm like, dude, it's 95 degrees, mom, and it's 80% humidity.

 I'm like, I am just like, you walk out and like you'll have glasses on and the whole thing just like fogs up.

 Walk out like this.

 So brutal.

 And then you get into like the winter which you know it's been mild lately but it's I don't know early November to February, March, like somewhere around March and then you know you get May pretty decent weather.

 Still gets down to like the 50s sometimes.

 That's not too bad.

 And then it gets humid again.

 Oh my god.

 See, I don't know.

 I don't know if I could do humidity but nonetheless uh it's good to have you back.

 Um, I know that you last time we worked together, it was really cool to see all the things that you pushed forward.

 Um, remind me what was the what was the big thing cuz I remember you did something with I believe it was hitting correct.

 Um, so I think yeah, give me a little bit of details of like what you went into and like kind of like this is something that a lot of the interns um when you first or when you're first interning or even like um pretty much everyone interns really because it's like just getting used to the systems to be fair.

 like it's it's a really difficult thing to just like walk in and just like know as you know like our internal our internal stuff is just like a lot so you kind of have to get it underneath you a little bit but yeah what did you what did you work on with the hidden guys last time yeah so what like two months in probably once I got pretty situated with everything okay um brought up the idea of neural priming for hitting uh drive line has an old EEG study that's really cool primarily involving like neural clutter decreases as a hitter sees more pitches throughout a Okay.

 Okay.

 Um saw a neural clutter decrease.

 So I had the idea um with my neuroscience major that maybe we can do some sort of intervention prior to hitting.

 Okay.

 That kind of facilitates that neural clutter to be released earlier or to just get rid of it altogether.

 Gotcha.

 So like would the idea be like okay like picking up pitches is easier because you're like more focused I guess put it in like layman's terms because like I'm a ding-dong right like you're a neuro you know you're neuroscience guy so like but it's like what would be the goal of it so then I can grasp it and ask you a better question.

 So, so in a way picking up pitchers could be easier.

 Most of it is swing decision.

 That's a that's swing decision is probably the largest part of it, which is why smash factor kind of cycles in there so well.

 Um, so you look at previous literature revolving neural priming.

 A lot of guys already, regardless of where they are, do juggling.

 Juggling is a great one.

 Yes.

 Juggling.

 Okay.

 Uh, prior studies.

 I wish I could just name authors off the top of my head.

 For real.

 Um, but you have visual cortex activation, you have motor cortex activation.

 So, kind of kind of like vestibular priming.

 The whole idea is to prime that in the beginning before activity.

 For sure.

 So, it doesn't have to kind of ramp up while you're doing it.

 It's almost like they're like you're you're deleting the wasted reps of like, okay, I'm not in a position.

 Um, it's like instead of like just going under the bar and squatting for example, like you're probably like, "Hey, I'm going to do a couple of things to like warm my hips up, warm my hamstrings up.

" You do your movement prep.

 Yeah, exactly.

 You get all your movement prep down.

 You make sure whatever it is, whether whether you're doing rolls, whether you're just making sure you can keep your spine stable throughout multiple uh hip positions.

 You're kind of priming it early and then you get into the big brunt of it.

 That's really cool.

 That's really cool.

 I feel like the the side like the brain side of the world in baseball is one of the more neglected areas and I I think it's kind of for sport in general just because like everybody looks at like the physical capabilities primarily.

 Um and I do think there's a lot to be said for like mentally training yourself.

 It was it was a conversation I had earlier with with an athlete and and Gargus and it was just like wow like how powerful our minds are for us to be in a position of like okay if you're if you're beating yourself up constantly.

 I know in our last podcast, me and Gargas kind of talked about um like the psychology of it is just like if you're just constantly reinforcing yourself like I'm terrible, I can't do this.

 I'm not very good.

 I like I can't throw a strike.

 Like you're never going to throw a strike.

 You're never going to give yourself the opportunity to succeed.

 And so it's like we don't I feel like a lot of times like MLB orgs or just anybody in general um like we typically just like ignore that.

 It's like ah you either have it or you don't.

 Like yeah, it's really cool that you took a step forward and like we're like hey this is this is something we can train potentially.

 Uh what were the results of that? Did we find anything cool with that? inconclusive.

 Need more data.

 Yeah.

 So, typically difficult.

 So, so last summer uh it got basically uh put down to a pilot study because we had trajectory.

 That's super cool.

 Yeah.

 Whole different paradigm.

 Uh instead of bat to ball, we're doing bat speed days because that's straight baseball.

 I pitch back attack.

 Yeah.

 um pretty much just keeps it as least variable as possible because that's a big thing for like data data collection is like you want to know all the variables and you want to be able to manipulate a couple on your own but you want to limit all the I believe they're uncontrolled variables correct of like things that are like confounding.

 Yeah, exactly.

 Um okay, selfishly I have to ask like is there anything that I that we can do on the throwing side that would be cool with this because that seems really cool to me.

 I don't my brain goes to like okay instead of having an athlete have to like with pitching like pitch design or like hitting a specific spot is there anything that I can clear his mind or just get him in a better mindset or like you said declutter him to where then that task at hand is like truly the one thing he's working on rather than like those 15 25 throws are kind of wasted.

 Is there anything on the throwing side we can do? I mean of course um it's hypothetical.

 Sure.

 Um but in a neural aspect you have juggling does all those things plus it releases BDNF which is brain derived neurotrophic factor okay which is the prime substance for I don't want to say like hippocample growth um like memory retention memory consolidation learning.

 Sure.

 Yeah.

 Yeah.

 Yeah.

 Yeah.

 So in a way you do all your movement prep stuff.

 Make sure that's just down to the tea.

 Um, you know, you don't really want to have movement prep stuff that doesn't help.

 Yeah.

 When it comes to the field, which there there's a lot of that out there.

 Oh, I'm sure.

 I can only imagine.

 There's a lot of [ __ ] Like I I had somebody text me the other day about uh like I think it was like water bags or something like that.

 And I'm like I'm sure they have a Didn't we have the conversation yesterday too? It was like gez.

 Like I'm sure there's things that are great about it, but like you don't want that to be like your meat and potatoes.

 Like it could be a little thing.

 It could be an appetizer.

 It's the chips and salsa, but it's not the fajitas.

 Like, you have to keep the main thing the main thing that's going to get you better.

 Yeah.

 So, hypothetically, pitching side, you have guys juggle beforehand.

 You have all those studies backing it up.

 Maybe when you're trying to learn um a new pattern, when you're doing your drop steps, anything like that.

 Maybe it just clicks faster.

 Okay.

 You have that learning increase, that learning speed increase.

 Could work there.

 Um Okay.

 Is there any other thing other than juggling? cuz I think about myself and I'm like I'm not the greatest uh I'm really good with hand eye coordination.

 Like I'm a gamer.

 I love it.

 I can I can do this all day.

 I'm pretty I'm pretty decent at like manipulating a baseball.

 Probably a little bit of skill behind that as well.

 But like I can't juggle the [ __ ] Like if I put I could do two, but if as soon as I add that third one, I'm just I'm a zoo.

 It's just it's going to hit the ground.

 But learning it is what facilitates that.

 Okay.

 That would be the thing.

 Okay.

 And uh one of the things we're looking for in the hitting one is with the new paradigm, we have the baseline weeks where they're not doing it.

 We have the intervention weeks where they are doing it.

 And then we have kind of a wash out week where they stop doing it and then see what happens when they don't do it compared to when they did do it.

 And we're we're going to try and see if that motor coordination continues if they fall back to baseline or if they you know maybe drop a little bit, but that's still there.

 Um that is really fascinating.

 Wow.

 And in terms of like other things besides juggling, the the brain's insane because there's so many different pathways.

 Yeah.

 Um yeah, there's there's different things you can have.

 Uh vestibular, which is kind of getting touched on here now.

 Okay.

 Um a lot of vestibular priming.

 You could I don't know, maybe hop on an assault bike, just get your blood flowing.

 Exercise is one of the greatest studied things in terms of that BDNF release.

 Okay.

 So, just like overall getting the body temperature up, just moving around.

 I think that's like I don't I think you asked this today when I was having guys roll and I feel like you probably have a lot better just based off your background and just like the way you speak, I can tell is like you probably have a lot better understanding of like why something works.

 But like to me, cuz I'm just like kind of cavemananish in this sense is like you're like you're like, "Hey, why you having that guy roll on a on a mat, right? Pop quiz.

" Yeah.

 And I was just like, "I don't know if I organize it like [ __ ] I don't know.

" You know what I mean? Like I think that's where it's really cool.

 like it brings together skill coaches, right, of like a pitching trainer, a hitting trainer, it's like we are very very uh I would like to say here at Driveline, we're experts at that.

 We're very good at being able to dissect that and get you better in that sense.

 And I love being able to have somebody like you or somebody um Clayton Thompson's another great guy that I I take a lot of reading from that he posts some stuff and writes some stuff.

 Bryce CR is another strength chair that we have um that they really like push me and you guys like push me to think about like okay, it's not just like this outcome that's really cool.

 It's like why did you do that? And why did that thing work? I think that's almost what matters more than the outcome.

 No, it really does.

 Then knowing why lets you apply it to more guys.

 Exactly.

 And then then you can start to manipulate little things for this guy because not every athlete is going to be exactly the same.

 And you're going to have to learn how to manipulate different constraints, different movement patterns, different whatever to achieve that next goal.

 So, was I on the right track? Is it kind of the same thing with the rolling? Like having those guys roll like just like it Yeah.

 kind of declutters them a little bit and like gets them just gets them primed a little bit and going.

 All right.

 Cool.

 And you touched on organization, which in in my opinion, a warm-up, any movement prep should be about organizing the body through range.

 Yeah.

 Um and any position you're in, you should be able to organize the body.

 I I love the term.

 I learned it freshman year from I took a IH class, like a writing class basically.

 Okay.

 Um the professor loved the term kinesthetic experience.

 Kinesthetic experience.

 Okay.

 So it's it's the aesthetics with kinesiology of course.

 So, um, I basically took it and I said, "Okay, as you're moving throughout space, you need to have that experience, that aesthetic experience through all your senses to be able to organize yourself.

" And I think that might be what kind of uh distances like the programs I write from other guys here.

 Okay.

 Um, is I I really focus on that organization.

 I like that.

 Um, of course, time and place for it.

 For sure.

 It's a time and place for it for sure.

 But like that early guy comes in, that freshman in high school, that sophomore in high school, you're going to see see those big gains.

 But the thing I want to touch on first is being able to organize your body, you know, motor learning.

 Just straight off the bat, organize it and then pound everything you can.

 Well, dude, it's crazy you say that because it's it's it's so noticeable in throwing of like when you have a younger athlete or an athlete that's like maybe when I say coordinated, I think people get messed up with this in terms of like they think it's unathletic or they're like tripping or clumsy.

 It's like no, no, no, you're not uncoordinated in that sense.

 You just don't know how to dynamically move without within ranges of motion that you're that you can move into, right? you see them throw and you're like, "God," like there is an aesthetic piece to the throw that like makes it look pretty and you're like that you can tell it it's efficient.

 Um, and like you'll see a younger guy throw and it's like that as a coach, you just have to have some patience.

 Like you don't need to like beat them into the ground and like tell them like, "Hey, it needs to look better.

" Like I'm sure they probably want it to look better, but like you said, like you can accomplish that in the weight room side of things.

 And I think that's a really really great point for you to make right now is just like being able you can do it all the time.

 Like and it's as simple as just like uh we tal when we talked about getting outside yesterday of like we want to have a group in Arizona that is going down from like you know 10 to 12 or something like that.

 We want a 2-hour group.

 Um and having like sprints and having a team environment and getting out into the grass and being able to organize and like you don't want to be the one guy that's always last like as the unathletic fellow.

 I was always the one doing karaoke and like hold on let me like make sure I don't trip over myself.

 by default.

 I remember like training with like a couple dudes that are now in the big leagues that I grew up with and like they were so good at it at like age 14 and I was awful at it.

 Yeah.

 And and one of the things that's scary that is why I try try and touch on it as early as possible in development um which is why I think like youth guys younger guys should be rolling playing around doing everything they can is because after a certain age especially as you age I believe it's somewhere around 23 uh the plasticity so the the ability for your brain to change greatly diminishes really so so hitting it before then you have this 24 year old which he still might have some plasticity of course there's There's still ways to elicit that plasticity.

 Um, but it's not necessarily just like natural anymore.

 Yeah.

 It might take where it might take a 12year-old, let's just say for some arbitrary numbers like a month, right? It might take that 26-y old like 6 months.

 Is that a fair assumption of like it's just going to take him a lot longer.

 It's almost like training age in a way.

 Yeah.

 And then you have to apply those interventions too, which in these younger kids who brains changing crazy crazy BDNF in there.

 Yeah.

 Um, it just happens.

 Wow.

 Yeah, that is really, really cool.

 And I'm a psychology major and I knew just based off the conversation that we had yesterday and the way that like you love to just like I'll say something of like how I'm thinking about something.

 It be like, why? Like, come on, man.

 Like, [ __ ] off.

 Like, can I just have my moment real quick? But you don't let me have it.

 And that's a good thing.

 Like, it can't just be like an ego- driven thing.

 Like, I love that there's like this environment that we create here is not like you can't just talk out of your ass.

 You can't just talk out of your neck and like just say, "Oh, this works.

" You're like, there are people like you.

 There are people like Pasani that I'm hopefully I'm going to have on the show at some point, which would be awesome.

 Um, to just talk about those things because you guys are constantly like, why? How? What's your idea? Does it make sense? Do you know about that? And I'm like, no.

 But now I'm going to go I know when this podcast is done, I'm going to go look up I'm probably going to ask you again what the hell that acronym is and I'm going to be like, I what can I do to increase that? because it's so big um for just like motor learning in general.

 Exactly.

 Which by the way, if you didn't know, on Slack, there is a book club that is being held on Thursdays.

 I read the read the initial one.

 You should hop in that.

 I think you'd have some really good takes in it.

 It's ran by Clayton.

 Um he just like wants to like read the literature more and that's something that I'm really really into.

 Um, and we're gonna meet on tomorrow for it.

 And I'm really stoked to have that because I think that's, you know, we talk about being general in the weight room of like train the right characteristics in there.

 It's kind of the same thing in just like motor learning in general, right? Is like you just need to be an overall like quote unquote athlete.

 You have to be athletic.

 Um, and there's so many different ways you can facilitate that.

 So, you should hop in that.

 I I want you to read that and give me your takes.

 Yeah.

 And about like the why thing, I ask Pasani all the time about it because, you know, newer, you got to challenge them.

 Sure.

 Um which I I was challenged so much last year.

 I'm sure.

 Um and you know it's it's almost aggravating like you you have this idea and someone's like explain it.

 Yeah.

 And in a way sure it might be aggravating but it also lets you organize it in your own brain where you know sure I have this kinesthetic idea and you ask me to explain it and I of course I have the idea up in my head and I know how it works.

 I need to be able to verbalize it to athletes.

 Yeah.

 Right there.

 That's how you do it.

 Yeah.

 Yeah.

 Yeah.

 And I think uh that's what's been getting me on like I know you said you wanted to ask me about like kind of the the newer stuff that I've been kind of doing with some of our throwers and it's I love being able to talk.

 I have a good friend of mine um that's in pitching right now.

 Uh he's a director of pitching at another facility and he really like changes when I talk to him.

 I always feel like I walk away thinking about throwing just a little bit differently.

 Um the two guys that are there are awesome.

 I really really enjoy talking with them and it just like being able to have those conversations.

 Isn't it like uh I know it's a psychological thing.

 It's like when you're able to learning something and writing right like reading it is one thing.

 Reading it and then writing it down with your hand is a whole another step which is another really good layer like the next layer in my opinion would be like teaching it to somebody else.

 So then it's just ingrained in your brain even more and even more and you're be you're being able to just like make those pathways in your brain of like oh yeah at some point if you talk about it enough you're like I know exactly what this is.

 Yeah.

 It's like you're studying for a test.

 The best way to honestly learn it is to explain it to your friend who knows nothing about it.

 Yeah.

 And like get them to somewhat take away the the idea or the concept.

 Exactly.

 For sure.

 I think that's a that's a really really cool thing.

 So, um Yeah.

 So, let's talk about like that the training stuff of what what so what questions you have about like the why, the what, the how, all that stuff.

 Yeah.

 So, last year you were very I guess solo ingrained in pitching.

 You know, pitching was was you were on that side.

 Yeah.

 Other side of the facil facility that was you.

 Yeah.

 you know, you come over here sometimes to do a couple every once in a while.

 Yeah.

 Uh this year it seems you've taken like that autonomy that you now have as a guy who's kind of built his repertoire um and you're almost delving more into I don't want to say the strength side, but kind of that movement capacity, movement prep side of things.

 Yeah.

 Yeah.

 So, I I went to go talk with one of my friends uh and he just like really challenged me to like, hey, like you know, why why do you do the things that you do? and like I really didn't have any good answers for him and I was like damn like I I really wish I had a better answer for him in that moment.

 Um that and it's it's really hard because I I think that I'm kind of getting I've seen a lot of throwing over the years like I think this is year I don't know I'm 27 now.

 Uh I probably started coaching in like when I was 22 I think 23.

 So like year four or year five now.

 Um, and I think that like there's it's one thing to be like absurdly strong, right? And there's a reason like you don't see bodybuilders throw 100 miles an hour.

 It's like they just don't have like the capacity to do it.

 They don't have the mobility.

 They don't have like the positions to hit it, right? And so it really made me wonder like, okay, after this conversation with my friend, I was like, okay, if I'm looking at a guy and like I I see this thing in his throw and I'm like, whoa, that doesn't look very good.

 Aesthetically, I can tell.

 You look at in a biomechanics lab and you're like, wow, that's the marker and that's the metric that we're using and I can tell that it's it's poor.

 Mhm.

 I want to be able to hammer that thing before he throws.

 So when he gets to throwing, and I guess this kind of comes back to the the neurological stuff that you were talking about, is like I don't want the first time that guy to hit counter rotation is in his throw.

 Like yes, our guys on the HP staff, you guys do a phenomenal job of giving them a good warm-up.

 Um, but I do think that there's something for just like getting into some deep ranges of motion, breathing through them, feeling a little bit more comfortable, and also like just like slightly giving them a little bit more room to like work within those like ranges, if that makes sense.

 I'm not the greatest at explaining it yet.

 U, but that's just kind of like my thought process on it is like like the counter rotation thing.

 Like I like for one of the athletes right now, like he really struggles like being able to like basically hold this counter rotation, right? His idea was like he just like gets into extension like a ton.

 Um, which is a fine thing, but it's like if I can just get him to get you, he doesn't know what this feels like at all.

 If I can get him to feel that before he throws, I feel like he's going to have a better understanding of how to accomplish that when he goes to throw a baseball.

 And he will.

 And he will.

 Okay.

 So, I'm on the right track then.

 So, that makes that's that's comforting.

 That makes me feel And it's it's great that you're doing that cuz we can see things on the strength side, of course.

 Yeah.

 But you're with those guys throughout every session they have over on the pitching side.

 You see things we don't you have the eye for it.

 Yeah.

 And of course you might be able to convey that to us a little bit.

 But there's there's no better I guess evidence than just firsthand.

 You see it, you know exactly kind of what has to happen.

 Yeah.

 And you have the modalities to kind of make that happen.

 Yeah.

 And I think the autonomy like I don't know if it's a confidence thing, but I also like just shout out to Toby Nagel.

 Like did you meet Toby? Yeah.

 Yeah, Toby was like the man with that.

 Gargus is awesome with this is like, dude, like you have really good ideas.

 Like you need to go and do them and like talk about them and educate people with them.

 And I think it just like really again that environment that we create here is like it's going to give coaches the autonomy to like go do it.

 As long as you have the best interest of your athletes, you have a really solid idea behind.

 It's not like I'm just like, you know, throwing [ __ ] at a wall and just hoping it sticks.

 like there is a general idea that I have that I believe is going to work that has some science behind it.

 Um, and ultimately like just being able to have the confidence in myself as a coach to be like, you know what, I'm going to go do this.

 And I can say this, I said this to an athlete yesterday in a remote meeting like he was like, hey, like why why haven't I been doing this stuff for the last like four months? It's like, well, four months ago, I wasn't this good of a coach.

 I really didn't know any of this stuff.

 Like, and that's hard because I feel like a lot of people don't want to admit that they at one point they weren't good or maybe good is arbitrary.

 It's like, you know, you're always trying to progress yourself.

 You'll never be an expert.

 Exactly.

 Yeah.

 Like you're always growing, right? Like you and if you're not, like that's probably a problem in and of its own.

 Yeah.

 So, I think that like I just really wanted to go out there and send it a little bit and and I was kind of tired of just seeing guys like seeing stuff on the this on the skill side of things and throwing.

 Um and then in the weight room, like they're they're getting strong, but I just really wanted to push them more and see like, okay, what more can we do? Because there's guys in here that like just get after it.

 You like I mean, Juan Verdusco just animal.

 Uh Kobe Roy who's in here right now, just Animal Payton Denny, just dudes that are like, "Give me anything.

" They want to work on it 24 hours a day.

 Like they would eat, sleep, [ __ ] they do all of it.

 They're like, "I just want to get better at the game of baseball.

" So I think that's the that's the coolest part when you find athletes that can that can do that and really have confidence in you.

 So and I I think the coolest part about Driveline in general is especially as an intern, you still have that autonomy.

 For sure.

 Oh yeah.

 I could go out and say, "I want to try this.

" I talked to Ka about it.

 He's like, "Sounds like a pretty good idea.

" Yeah.

 Go do it.

 Yeah.

 Yeah.

 You have to like You're never going to My My buddy used to tell me this with when I was training to throw.

 He's like, "All right, you're standing on the edge of the cliff.

" And I tell I tell my girlfriend this.

 I've told a lot of my friends this one, and this one always like kind of messes people up because the immediate answer is kind of like scary.

 So, you're standing on a cliff and there's a massive like it's 2, three, 400 feet, right? You're going to live, but there's 50% rocks.

 Yep.

 There's 50% water.

 You can't see where the rocks are at.

 They're scattered throughout.

 That's kind of like training really, really hard because you don't know what's going to happen.

 And it's also kind of like coaching.

 You don't know how what's going to happen until you just try it.

 So, are you going to be the guy that like looks over the cliff and goes, "Fuck, that's really far.

 I'm kind of scared.

 I'm just going to turn around.

" That person will never know what it's like to jump off that cliff and hopefully hit rocks.

 You will fail eventually.

 Those are the rocks, by the way, for those people that didn't get that analogy.

 Um, but the times that you hit the water and you swim, oh my god, it's like the best feeling in the world when you're like, my athlete bought into it.

 I had a really great idea.

 I felt like, a lot of people helped me out with it and so it had a good team collaboration to it.

 It's like one of the most fulfilling parts of the job, I feel like.

 Yeah.

 Just finding a philosophy that works.

 One of the ones I love is just the common sense philosophy.

 What's that? You see something, you think of some sort of implementation to maybe fix it.

 Okay? You implement it, see if it fixes it.

 And if it doesn't, it's like nice.

 If it doesn't, clearly didn't work.

 If it doesn't, you think of something else.

 Simple.

 It's that simple.

 It's not really it doesn't work and oh no, you're done.

 Like do anything about it.

 There's something that's going to work.

 Go back to the drawing board, shove it back out.

 Yeah.

 And an analogy I really like which I think influences a lot of my philosophy um especially with Juan um um I read a book by Peter Adia called Outlive and in okay the first couple pages he he was a med student he dropped out of med school um because of a reason of he didn't really like how the medical field kind of addressed problems.

 They address symptoms and not the baseline, not the underlying stuff that's causing that problem.

 Yeah.

 And in the first couple pages of his book, he talks about how he had this reoccurring dream during med school of he was at the bottom of this building and this guy, he had a basket in his hands.

 Okay.

 Um maybe a hat, something like that.

 Sure.

 And this guy on top of the building kept throwing eggs off.

 And he in his in his dream, his goal was to catch all the eggs.

 Okay.

 Before they hit the ground.

 Sure.

 And he'd eventually just not be able to catch all of them and they'd just start splattering.

 Yeah.

 like at some point your basket's full.

 Like where do I put him? And he he said he he was in his dream one day and he kind of it might not have been in his dream, but he he had this realization of what if he just went to the top of the building and stopped the guy from throwing.

 Stop throwing the [ __ ] eggs.

 Yes.

 So So with with Juan, the things Juan's going through, of course, you could just keep pushing everything on.

 Yeah.

 Um, and you might have these breakdowns farther down the road or you can address the problem right now and not have to worry about any of that.

 Very true.

 I I when you said that about what he's going through and like in in the in the shoe thing, I was like, damn, it's literally just a band-aid that is not actually addressing like okay again with your the way that your freaking brain works is like why would I do that when I could actually get to the root of the problem and fix that so then that thing doesn't even exist anymore.

 Yeah, I I totally agree.

 That's a really cool analogy of like Yeah, like at some point you're going to run out of time of like you're just going to like run out of things to do.

 Like you have to understand the underlying cause of why those things are happening.

 Like if my bicep is hurting, it's like dude, you probably should address that at some point.

 Like if you're throwing non-stop, it's like clearly, okay, something in my throw mechanically or my capacity to work in terms of like my strength or mobility is not allowing my bicep to accept that force of throwing instead of just like taking time off crushing IB ibuprins, IB IB plans, ibuprofins, um or redotting it.

 It's just like, dude, figure it out.

 Is it a workload issue? Get with a high performance guy.

 Be like, is it a is it a strength issue? Like that's the way to go about it.

 Like right there, maybe your bicep just can't accept the deceleration that it needs right there.

 try and fix it.

 See if it happens.

 If it doesn't work, figure something else.

 Figure something else.

 Yeah.

 Yeah.

 Dude, I also want to touch on that with with Juan is like I think guys really enjoy respect and like, you know, the best program is one that you believe in and you buy into, right? I feel like when you when you're willing to go out of the box and try [ __ ] that you're like, "Hey, man.

" And especially when you're honest with an athlete, like I I said this to Pton Denny um when he first started training.

 He he was an academy athlete actually and then graduated and came to me and I was like look man like you've been throwing plow balls for a long time since you were like 13 13 years old.

 It's been a while.

 You're now 18.

 That's five years of throwing these things like you you've made some really really great progress for sure.

 Absolutely did the right stuff but still needed a little bit of extra stuff and needed to get more into the nuance and nitty-gritty.

 I straight up told him and his dad who is awesome.

 I was like Payton I don't know if this is going to work for sure but I I can guarantee you this.

 I'm trying my absolute ass off.

 and he like athletes really appreciate that and I think it just like they buy in even more and they're like man that guy really cares about me like I I'm not only going to show up for myself today but I kind of want to show it for my coach because that guy is like time, effort, energy.

 Like I know when I go home I'm looking at video sometimes and I'm looking on my, you know, my biomech viewer or whatever it is because it it it bothers me that I can't I want every guy that I work with to just throw a hundred.

 I want it to be perfect.

 So, I know that it just means a lot to those guys to be able to like take the extra time to make like a custom program, I guess, which I guess everybody gets here.

 But when you really sit down with them and like talk with them, it like makes a big difference for them.

 And one of the things I've seen with coaches at college level anywhere, um, is that lack of interpersonal connection.

 If you don't have some sort of depth with the athlete, um, one, you're not going to be able to describe things like their program to them.

 You can't really Maybe you're sitting there describing, hey, we're putting this in.

 This is a really goofy exercise.

 It's going to feel weird.

 Yeah.

 But it's going to do exactly this.

 Yeah.

 And if it doesn't, of course, back to the drawing.

 But if you don't have that relationship with an athlete, you say that and they're just like face value.

 Yeah.

 Okay.

 I'll I'll do it.

 I'll try it.

 I'll I'll maybe buy in a little bit.

 If it doesn't work in the first week, you know, maybe if it dude, sometimes it's like four throws.

 If they're like, you know, you tell a guy, you're like, "Hey, just like try this out.

" And you don't give them any explanation.

 I've definitely done this in the past.

 He's like, "Try this out.

" Like, "How'd you like that?" I'm like, "It's all right.

" You know, and then three throws later, I'm like, "They're stopped doing it.

" And I'm like, "Why'd you stop?" He's like, "Just didn't like it.

" You know? And I thought one of the problems I'd have since I'm 21 would be kind of having that I guess ethos, that feeling of authority around athletes.

 Um, but I found that it being younger really helps me connect with them for Oh, absolutely.

 They're able to tell me way more.

 Um, and in turn they still trust me even though I'm not, you know, 30 years old.

 I was going to say they're going to relate to you, man.

 They're like, you're my same age.

 you obviously took a different path than I am, but like it's still your passion.

 And they're like they probably feel like, you know, at 21 years old, I know I was going through a lot different problems than I now am at 27.

 So, I feel like it is a it can be a blessing and a curse in in a way because I know that there's like uh that was like when I interviewed my first time um in Indie Ball, I was the pitching coach and the GM or the owner slashGM um was like, "Hey, you're 26.

" I was 26 at the time.

 He goes, "You realize this is like the Atlantic League is a very it's a very good league.

 It's like AAA, a lot of AAA big league guys.

" Um, and he's like, "I got to ask you a question.

 Like, I killed the rest of it.

" He goes, "I got to ask you, you're 26.

 Like, how do you like how do you get any of these guys to listen to you?" Like, that guy's a There was multiple guys that had been in the big leagues for like 5 years that were 33, 34.

 And there definitely were guys that just like didn't give a [ __ ] But there were also plenty of guys that they were like, "That's [ __ ] cool.

 that guy obviously has dedicated a lot of time and it shows that like at 26 or 21 that you you have put in a lot of work to get where you don't accidentally get to become or you don't accidentally become a two-time two-time intern.

 I don't accidentally become a you know a pitching coach in the Atlantic League, right? Like those things happen for a reason because of I say luck a lot, but I get told it's like we work hard.

 You work hard and you deserve those things.

 So, um, yeah, I think our age is like it definitely can be looked at a barrier, but I think it's a much better way of looking at is like it's a great way for you to connect with your athletes.

 Exactly.

 Yeah.

 Um, you mentioned something regarding Yeah.

 You you have this this cool thing and at some point it's kind of athlete side, you know? You have you have those athletes who just like maybe they were on this program in high school and college and they're just like that's what they want.

 They want that exact thing the whole time.

 And so you throw new things at them and they're just not really they're not opening the door for it.

 Yeah.

 Um so so at one point it's it's a little athlete sided.

 But for sure you know coaches by building that relationship maybe you can unlock that door.

 Even if you get 5%.

 You do 5% you get a little bit more you get a little bit more you get a little bit more.

 You can do that over You might break down a guy for six months and he might finally trust you at month six, but it's better than him never trusting you because you're never going to get anywhere without him.

 Exactly.

 Yeah.

 Um I don't think it was you uh yesterday.

 No, it was Pasani.

 Me and Pasani like I I've started to take this approach in our and I'm sure we'll do a meeting because college summer's coming up and we're going to get the the amount of people are signing up is like if you haven't signed up by the way, call and sign up because it's going to get bananas in here.

 is already if you've looked at all of the internal like all of the messages like holy hell I'm excited but man that's a lot of folk.

 Um, but I think that I've taken a little bit different approach and I'm sure uh I would encourage anybody to do this like you know for anybody that's listening any coaches or whatever is just like be okay with setting some time like in our meeting the other day I set some time apart for like yes this biomechanic stuff all the HP stuff phenomenal information I wanted to educate that athlete.

 So I pulled up a a picture of like a spine and I'm like this is what your spine looks like.

 This is what it does.

 This is what I want it to do.

 Then I showed him like pictures of Araldus Chapman doing it.

 Then I showed him a picture of like uh a couple other guys throwing and he's I was like, "Do you see the difference?" And I felt like today when he went through his drills finally, I was like, "Wow, he really understood what I was saying.

" And like athletes will care.

 They they they I think they'll appreciate it even more if you break it down and educate them even more.

 Yeah.

 Um do you think there's do you think there's any like educational value in terms of like HP stuff of like in those meetings or or anything you would like tell a coach right now? just be like, "Hey, like this is something that you can very simply get buy in from just like educating an athlete as to why something works.

" I think the best way for an athlete to complete a program to the standard that you want them to complete it to, okay, is by educating them about everything in the program, everything.

 Just like this exercise, you don't have to go through every single thing.

 This is the brunt of what we want out of it.

 Okay? Um, you know, I program some weird exercises sometimes.

 So, it's like this one's weird.

 This is kind of what you want to do during it.

 You want to brace here.

 You want to Yeah.

 Okay.

 You want to, you know, make sure you're feeling this.

 By understanding that instead of just like showing them a video, which the videos help for sure.

 Um, but by explaining them through it, they get a deeper ability to understand what they're actually going for with that exercise, and they're going to complete it better.

 So, okay.

 I think that I think one of the best things you can do as a coach is to either sit down or on the floor just explain what you want out of that athlete and explain the weirder exercises they might not have seen before, what they want to do during it, everything like that.

 Which which queuing works and in a way some exercises you want to let an athlete figure it out.

 Yeah.

 Kind of avoid that just to kind of like let them get the freedom to figure that.

 Yep.

 Yeah.

 And but if you're kind of striving for a movement pattern or something very specific that makes the exercise work the way it does, make sure to cue that in.

 Yeah.

 Okay.

 Yeah.

 I think that's like something uh that like in in mine or actually it's one of the ones that's in our warm-up.

 It's like the the breathing stuff like anything breathing wise.

 I feel like breathing stuff just gets like it's really easy to just go Yep.

 And you don't even get anything out of it.

 Like I think when you walk a guy through of like, hey, this like a checkpoint almost.

 So I always think of like hit your checkpoints or hit your check box like check your boxes before you like actually start your sets of like step one make sure that I'm like, you know, my back's up against the wall.

 Step two is like making sure that I'm like slightly externally rotated.

 Step three is like I'm breathing into my upper back and like I'll have my hand on somebody's back and be like fill up my hand.

 And it's such a difference of like like today I did that and like I was like here just go breathe.

 And I had somebody I had my hand on I didn't have my hand on his chest at first and then I said, "Okay, now and I could tell like he was just like belly breathing.

" I was like, "This isn't going to do anything for his rib cage.

 I want to get some expansion in there.

" I was like, "Hey, breathe through my hand immediately.

" Just like all this happens.

 I was like, "Oh, it's as simple as that.

" And it's just like taking the extra two minutes as a coach out of your day of just being like, "Bang.

 I'm just going to show you how it's done and I'm going to walk you through it.

" And I think a guy and an athlete will like hold on to that not just like for that one session.

 Ultimately, it's up to them to like do it the best of their ability and be pay attention to detail like that.

 Um, but being able to do that like the next day and the next day and the next day, I feel like it does it does make a big difference for those guys.

 Yeah.

 The the best athletes I've met, the best movers, the best guys in the weight room un have enough of an understanding about what they're doing to be able to accomplish it to a standard.

 Yeah.

 Um, the guys who just kind of, you know, roll in.

 Yeah.

 The guys who just roll in, they're like, "Oh, this is my program for the day.

" Yeah.

 let's do it.

 And they have no understanding about it at all.

 You know, they'll get through it, but they might not check all those boxes you're kind of looking for.

 As those little details, I feel like that's really important for those guys that like especially when you get to like the elite elite movers or elite elite strength.

 It's like you're no longer building I always say it's like you're no longer building with like the the pyramid of Giza, like those big ass blocks.

 Like that's like going from like 75 to 80.

 Like that's relatively easy.

 You should be able to do that.

 Like granted there's a couple nuances in there, but for the most part like 75 to 80 is a is a big blocks.

 Soon as you go from like 95 to 97, that's an infinitely.

 It's only 2 miles an hour compared to let's say 75 to 85 is easier than 95 to 97 because it's so nuanced and those little details that are so small that are so like often overlooked and athletes like when they really understand that stuff like you said, I really feel like they they can execute it to a tea.

 And that's where like if you do that over the course of a month, six months, a year, two years, three years, that's where like year-over-year compounding effects, you're just going to get better and better and better.

 And that's really really awesome to see.

 And you have, let's say you have a graph, you have difficulty on the Y.

 And you have I guess what you have to change to do that.

 It's just logarithmic.

 Yeah.

 It just straight up at some point.

 It's that much of a change.

 Yeah.

 Super hard to do.

 But it's still a change, right? Yeah, you can still get there.

 You can still get there for sure.

 So, uh Damn.

 Yeah, that was a really good We we cut into a really good chunk right there.

 I told you it's like this is a very organic setting.

 I don't like it to be, you know, prepped out.

 Like did I don't think we spoke about anything before we hopped in here.

 I mean, we did a tiny bit, but like we did like this is kind of what I want to touch on.

 Yeah.

 But like I feel like those are the best.

 What did I say? I was like we'll probably end up hitting something and it'll just go from there.

 Yeah.

 Um, I feel like those are the best conversations and honestly like I really wish we would have if it was like what was the conversation? Me, you, Grayson, Gargus, Pasani, Maddox.

 I think we were all just like sitting in the throwing area and like we were just like bullishing.

 It was probably an hour, right? We just had like a little hour pow-wow and it was like I love those moments cuz I love being able to work with all you guys and I think team collaboration is so huge because I know for me personally like I like to have people like I like people like you.

 You ask me why because then you piss me off and then it pisses me off to the point to where I want to know.

 Yeah.

 Not because I want to Well, okay.

 In the short term, I'm like, "Fuck Nick.

 I'm gonna [ __ ] tell I'm going to be like I'm gonna tell Nick exactly how it works now because I bet he doesn't even know.

" No, but like then it just makes me Sometimes I don't.

 I know.

 You're just like you're just saying why you're a dick.

 That's so funny.

 I'm gonna start doing that to you like why.

 You're like why the At one point or another I'm gonna hit you with that.

 But yeah, I feel like it's just like you guys are able to push me and I feel like that that's so big for coaches.

 Like you have to be surrounded by like-minded individuals.

 If you're just like the only guy, it's really hard.

 I I was telling uh I think I was telling my girlfriend about this the other day.

 I was like, if you want to go somewhere fast, what is the old adage like you want to go somewhere fast, you go alone.

 You can go to the top of the mountain really fast.

 You ain't got to wait for anybody.

 You can go there, you can put, you know, 10 hours of work in a day, do it on your own.

 If you want to go far, you better go with a clan or a tribe or a team or a group.

 You know what I mean? Like, you have to have other people that are going because I know there are days where I just roll in here and I'm like, man, I'm stressed.

 I have something else going on in my life.

 I have either like, you know, some family stuff.

 I have some uh relationship stuff.

 I have something else going on that's kicking my ass.

 And then I get in here and then Gargus, you know, has this [ __ ] cup of coffee and I'm just so like, damn it, I work in a damn good place with some good people.

 I I really should bring it today.

 Um, that's really really valuable.

 So, yeah, I always appreciate your insight with all that stuff.

 So, keep keep doing that to me even though I might get frustrated in the short term.

 And I think I want to touch on, you said like-minded individuals.

 I agree, but I also agree that you need individuals with different philosophies.

 So, like-minded in the way of the grind.

 Yes.

 Different philosophies.

 Yeah.

 Exactly.

 So, like Ka has a different philosophy than who has the me.

 And one of the things I learned back at Michigan State, uh, when I was interning there, one of the first things I was kind of told was that they pick coaches so that they can create a melting pot of philosophy.

 That's great.

 No one No one coaches the same.

 But being able to like see a part of someone else and be like, I really like that.

 Yeah, I'm going to add that into mine.

 Take take.

 And of course, if you add it in, because in my opinion, any coaching field is philosophy.

 There's some science.

 Um, but you kind of have to build off the science to create your philosophy and then push the field farther.

 Yeah.

 Um, of course you pick up that philosophy, maybe you kind of try and add it in.

 Um, like I said, try and work with it.

 It doesn't work.

 Got to try and find another one.

 Throw it out.

 Um, it's just like that.

 Yeah.

 I think I think we do a really good job of that.

 Like the way I program for certain guys is totally different.

 like one of the things that I thought Maddox did a good job with over the I think it was last college offse um I didn't really understand it why in the moment I was like ah that's that's just different like and everybody's near jerk reaction when you do something different is like why you know I hate to interrupt your show oh man here's some lunch for you I brought some lunch is this from my my friend oh what is chicken wraps my guy did he Sir.

 Ah, I have to give him a hug.

 All right, I'll see him tomorrow.

 Thank you, Coach Gargas.

 Wow, what a drop in.

 You didn't even say hi to the people.

 Do you want to You want to hop in here? At least say hi to the people.

 Get down here, Coach Gargas, baby.

 Let's go.

 Free lunch.

 Thank you.

 You're good.

 You're good.

 Thank you.

 Thank you.

 How nice.

 That was unexpected.

 Yeah.

 Yeah.

 Completely.

 Um, no.

 So, where were we were we? We were going off of uh like-minded individuals philosophy.

 Melting pots.

 Oh yeah.

 Maddox.

 Maddox was only doing one VO day a week.

 And I was kind of like, h I've never done that before.

 I was like, I don't know if I like it.

 I don't know if I don't know if I love it.

 I don't know if I hate it.

 I I was really impartial really.

 I was just like, cool.

 He had a different idea.

 I'm never going to knock anybody for trying something new.

 He had a good idea behind it.

 I asked him.

 He was basically the TLDDR, which means like too long, didn't read, by the way.

 uh is like a lot of the college guys that he or a couple of the college guys that he had doing it were not going to he felt like we're not going to recover enough.

 Their HP numbers were very very low.

 Um and he was like I wanted them to sell out for the weight room.

 Even though we were going to do velocity, it was not the thing that like their mechanics were, you know, average or slightly above average or whatever, but their strength was really lacking.

 He was like, I wanted to make sure that they were recovered for those lifting days.

 And I was like, "God damn, that's actually a really good idea.

" Because I actually had that with an athlete uh about a month ago that he was just like, "Man, I gave him an Aday on Monday and a day on Friday, which is an 80 to 90% day with some compression throws.

" Um, and this dude was just blown up.

 He like ended up not lifting on Friday cuz he's like, "I'm just so tired.

" And like, yeah, sometimes, yeah, I get it.

 But like, you know, sometimes you're like, I got to power through it.

 Other times it's like, dude, I am just like that tired.

 Um, I thought that was a very interesting way of going about that.

 And it's just like that's a totally different philosophy.

 It's not like there's not science behind it because there's science to prove three days a week.

 I'm sure maybe not.

 Maybe two one two which is very traditional.

 Uh there used you know way back in the day it was two two you know it was Monday Friday Monday Friday.

 Um that obviously evolved and that's a good thing but it just comes from like different philosophy and like having different opinions and like as long as you have like I've said before like as long as you have the best interest of the athletes at heart that's really all that matters.

 Yeah.

 And one of the great things about here is when I sat next to Logan this um I love that guy.

 I don't I don't fully agree with what he said, but he said it's better to ask for forgi forgiveness than permission.

 But and obviously might not be the best quote, but I hear him though.

 It flies pretty well here.

 Like you have an idea, you try it out.

 Maybe it doesn't work.

 Just don't do it again.

 Yeah, for sure.

 Like don't beat it into the ground and be like it has to work.

 It's like no it doesn't.

 And I think um even within those failures, you're going to learn about like why did it's going to probably irritate you or at least should if you care about it.

 It's like why didn't it work and what can I backchain to see if I can make it work? Yeah.

 No one's going to yell at you.

 You might have to explain yourself a little bit.

 Yeah.

 Depending on the agreed like how egregious it was.

 Yeah.

 But no, no one's going to yell at you.

 They're gonna be like, "Okay, now we know that doesn't work.

" Yeah.

 Let's not do it again.

 Yeah.

 Probably not.

 But but again like that initial thought like uh you know the old just because you what is it is it Michael Jordan? He's like I never lost any games.

 I just learned how to not win.

 You know that's it's kind of that that sense of like you know what I never am actually truly losing.

 I'm just figuring out ways so I don't fail again.

 Uh and it's the same thing in coaching like get out of your comfort zone if you're a coach listening to this.

 Like get out of your comfort zone.

 Go see what you know what have a general idea, a really good concept, something that you really believe in and just go try it out.

 Yeah.

 Go try it out and see what happens because the worst case scenario is like you'll never know and that has to eat at you as a person.

 Yeah.

 Yeah.

 One of the biggest things I've noticed growing as a coach is of course there's all the science behind it and you you can follow the science to a tea.

 You could the science is going to grow but at the pace that whatever sport you're in is also growing, you're going to be a little behind.

 at some point you have to use your philosophy that you've kind of accumulated and try things out like some of the things I do have a little bit of science behind them and I'm like this still might work really well let's try it out.

 Yeah.

 Well, I mean that's like plow balls.

 I mean that's how drive line came to be.

 It was like uh you know general idea that should work.

 Uh people really laughed at Kyle and and when he started throwing plow balls and doing all the biomechanics and all that [ __ ] Um, and we were kind of like in 20 when I trained here, it was like 2015, 2016.

 It was kind of like I I laughed because we were like the th the land of the lost, like the land of the thrown away dolls that nobody wanted.

 It was like we were just willing to like try anything and everything to get better.

 Um, and now I look at it and I'm like, wow, it has evolved into just so much more than that.

 And there's so much science behind it now.

 And it's so it's so we're so good at it.

 I mean, it's crazy how good we are at it.

 But it's like it all started with like one guy, our our Kyle, our he of just like asking a question of like, I want to figure this [ __ ] out and uh I think this is going to work.

 Imagine if he like wouldn't have taken that leap of faith and tried.

 Like maybe this place maybe baseball and like now plow balls are accepted pretty much everywhere for the most part.

 Imagine if he never would have done that.

 Yeah.

 And failing sucks.

 Like for sure like like it hurts.

 I'm a little afraid of failing sometimes, but it's it's the idea that Sure.

 I ran that study last summer.

 Yeah.

 completely inconclusive.

 I maybe saw some trends.

 Yeah.

 But I found out why it didn't work.

 I'm going to apply it to make it work this time.

 It's like, yeah, I it was a failure.

 Yeah.

 My intern project failed.

 It was inconclusive.

 But there's growth off of that.

 There's things you can pull from it, apply it, make it work the next time.

 If it doesn't work this time, there's nothing I can do at that point.

 like I've applied everything I can to attempt to make it work, to attempt to make the variability as the least amount as possible.

 If it doesn't work, throw on another project.

 Try something else.

 Keep going.

 Keep going.

 Uh and that's probably the biggest reason why uh you were probably hired is just like, wow, this guy has like this burning desire to like figure this [ __ ] out.

 And there it's it's it is hard.

 It like you said, it sucks to fail.

 Um, but it's ultimately way more important than the fact that you're like, I'm gonna figure out why.

 Because there's a lot of people that would just like get like, you know, fail and just like, ah, I'm calling a day.

 I ain't gonna touch that again.

 I suck.

 Um, but you you took it to heart and you were like, no, it Yeah, it hurt for like, I don't know, probably 10 minutes and then you were like, I know you it probably hurt for like five minutes and you were like, "All right, let's [ __ ] it.

 Let's let's find another thing.

 Let's let's try another one.

" You know, and that's that's huge for like growth, development, and ultimately like one of the bigger reasons I really enjoy working with you.

 Um, really, really cool.

 Yeah, it kind of sucked.

 I worked on this this analysis code for how long? Like six months.

 And then I ran it through and I was like, you know, there's no significance, but you can kind of see it, but you can also see where like the days I knew weren't going to work didn't work.

 So, let's go ahead.

 That's so funny.

 I remember you like just being like head head down like I just remember looking at your screen and being like, "What the hell is that guy looking?" It was just like scripts on scripts on scripts and I was like, "Geez.

" Because you know who also was next to me was Whitey.

 Do you remember Whitey? He was doing the jump app.

 And I would just ask him and like you know Whitey's now our director, Connor White, really smart guy, great person.

 Um up in Washington now, but like I sat next to him when he was making that jump app thing and like it came from like a really like rudimentary idea uh of like there was some other thing that they used for the jump.

 I don't know.

 There was some other like AI it was used for.

 It it was impulse momentum based off force plates.

 Can we do that with computer vision? pretty much basically what it was.

 Yeah.

 And so I was like, damn.

 Like that that's a really cool idea.

 But like keep in mind, Whitey doesn't have a background in software engineering, coding, anything like that.

 He did it all on his own.

 What the hell? That's insane.

 And I looked over and I just remember him like asking Kyle for help with coding because he's very good at that.

 Uh Jared Skolniki who who works here, he's awesome.

 He's really good with coding.

 Um and just like other people that are like obviously better at it, but he didn't even like ask for them uh to like do it for him.

 I'm sure he could have and I'm sure it would have been like easier for him and way less of a headache, but he was like, "Hey, can you just like help me out like a little bit? Just like show me like what I'm missing here.

" And then would go like, "Okay, thank you.

" And then like walk away and like go do it again by himself.

 Like that is like huge self initiative and ultimately probably the biggest reason why he's our director of just like that dude is going to push us in the right direction.

 Damn right.

 Being able to take something on and learn it even though you know nothing.

 Like when I started research at MSU um my first semester there I was just an analyzing uh data points that were already done previous semester um you know they're like download mat lab and have at it.

 Wow you said that yeah absolutely no kind of like here's a mat lab background anything like that.

 Of course, I could always um like Microsoft Teams message my uh PI or the grad student I was working with and you know ask a little bit but they never gave me a full code.

 It was like hey this really isn't working and she'd send me like this for loop to you know pull the files out next week and I'd be like okay thanks and then I just go at it again.

 That's impressive man.

 I probably spent the whole semester just like in my little dorm room on my futon just like right here.

 my my buddy that I met um best friend now, he was a computer science major at his old college.

 Okay.

 So, he had like some Python in there, a little bit of HTML.

 Uh he he moved over to mechanical engineering and he was kind of done with code and so he'd look at it and he knew nothing about mat lab either, but we were just kind of sitting there.

 I'd be like, "Dude, this really isn't working.

" And he was like, "You might be missing this.

" Yeah.

 I'm like, "Okay, let's try it.

" Yeah, just try it.

 Damn, that's really cool, man.

 It's super impressive to like just like saying these things out loud and then realizing I'm like damn like I was there when Whitey started the whole jump app thing.

 That's a really cool idea.

 Yeah.

 And I think learning something like that like code is a perfect example of like you're going to fail so many times at trying to write something.

 Wow.

 Just keep going with it.

 I know.

 Yeah.

 And then you apply that to every other aspect of your life of your journey.

 It's like you're going to fail.

 You're going to learn something from it though.

 And you probably won't do that same.

 Yeah, you probably won't do the same thing again.

 So you keep failing.

 You're gonna end up doing something similar.

 Logan's probably listening to this right now or or maybe he will, maybe he won't.

 This is a test, Logan.

 Text me if you if you end up watching this and you get to this part.

 Um he's been urging me to do coding.

 Yeah, I've been getting into the stuff that we already talked about, but man, like it's so daunting.

 It's so scary.

 I'm like, I don't know if I want to do it, but it is going to take a lot of time to do.

 Yeah, I think it is a little bit of like do I I'm nervous to like because I know the whoomhole and the rabbit hole you can go down with it and I think it's it's nerve-wracking to know like I could end up spending eight hours and it's like not you know I say worthless but it's like it could amount to nothing.

 Yeah.

 And there's a reason I do all my stuff here on mat lab even though like we mainly use Python and R which I kind of know R.

 Yeah.

 But I'm very familiar with Mat Lab.

 If I sat down and learned Python, I'm sure I could.

 Yeah.

 But like it's not really necessary and you know that it's such a headache to learn, but that that's almost the fun part, I guess.

 So, of like tackling a task and proving it to yourself and like kind of like getting beat up a little bit, coming back, beating, you know, winning and then and then eventually evolving into something that's really really cool and actionable.

 Um, all right.

 Well, we're at like 55 minutes.

 Typically, we're All right.

 I got one more question for you because I've asked everybody that comes on here.

 You have no idea of this question.

 I did not tell you.

 I've learned because I gave somebody else the last time to prepare for this [ __ ] and I was not.

 Their answer was crazy.

 Okay.

 You walk into the baseball like where do you go to Tigers games at all? Not frequently.

 Okay.

 You go to baseball games every You went to a game last night.

 Yeah.

 Yeah, I went.

 Okay.

 Louie, you saw Louie? I miss that guy.

 Okay.

 Kyle.

 Oh, yeah.

 I call Kyle Louie.

 I don't know why.

 Anyway.

 Okay, you go to the you go to the park, you sit down, you're like, it's the third inning, you get hungry, you have to put you're you have to get something to eat there.

 Okay.

 What are you getting at the ballpark? They have everything.

 They have They have everything you could imagine.

 I'm not giving you any hints.

 You have to pick something.

 Feel like you got to get a hot dog.

 Okay.

 Yeah.

 What toppings do you put on that thing? I'm boring.

 I just like ketchup.

 Oh, thank God.

 I'm boring.

 Grayson said nothing.

 Nothing.

 Just plain old hot dog.

 And I was like, are we kidding, damn? Like I mean, it ended up being a hilarious clip at the end of the day.

 Anyway, but I mean at that ASU game, they had Chick-fil-A, but dude, it was so expensive.

 Really? I just didn't fork that out.

 I talked that about uh Arizona like the Diamondbacks.

 Me and Grayson talked about when I said this question, like, dude, they have like a value menu there.

 Um, and I know that there's some places that have something similar that's like five bucks for a hot dog.

 I I went to LSU like a couple weeks back.

 Um, and like I could go spend 20 bucks there and get like a burger probably like some chips, a drink, and uh if if I'm of age so I had a cooler light with it.

 They have a really cool they have a cool light and it has an LSU Tiger on it and it's a purple and it's all striped.

 I'm like wow out of respect for this I have to have one.

 I probably spent like 20 bucks 25 bucks respectable.

 So, just was that boy like 12.

 Either way, that was like it's like water there.

 It was so humid.

 Um, so yeah.

 Okay, catch up.

 Thank god.

 Uh, I I was at I'll leave us with this.

 I was at playing I was playing golf with my dad, Cause and Gargas, and we went we went to the turn and I'm like there and the lady goes he's my dad's like, "Hey, you want a hot dog?" I was like, "Yes, please.

 I'm starving.

" We just went at like 6:00 a.

m.

 It was so early to kind of beat the heat.

 Um, and so we were, she goes, "Okay.

" My dad looks and he goes, "We're Polish, by the way.

" And so my dad goes, "Yeah, I'll take relish, mustard.

" And she's like, "What do you want, honey?" I go, "What do you guys have?" And she goes, "We have pretty much everything.

" Oh, also, I have sauerkraut back here.

 I go, "Give me the sauerkraut.

" I made the most dis monstrosity of a hot dog and was phenomenal.

 I put hot mustard on it.

 I put uh she had like chopped onions on it.

 I put sauerkraut on it.

 and just a tad bit of relish and it was just great.

 So try that.

 Try sauerkraut.

 You like sauerkraut? Sauerkraut's fine.

 Yeah.

 All right.

 Good.

 Apparently it's good for me.

 So I'm in on that.

 I could do onions, too.

 I've never actually like an onion dog.

 Yeah.

 Gives a little bit of like bitterness, I guess, to it.

 So all right, man.

 Well, it was an absolute pleasure.

 I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation.

 This was a really, really good one.

 So um if you made it this far, we really appreciate you.

 Thank you for for watching, supporting, commenting, liking the videos.

 Um, you know, I I know I've had friends, family that have reached out to me and just like DM'd me on Instagram, on Twitter, texted me.

 Um, I just want to say like my most heartfelt thank you to all you guys that watch and and support us cuz like honestly, this is a lot of fun.

 I I I'm sure I can almost guarantee that you will be back on here.

 Whether you like it or not, I will bribe you or I will sit you into that chair and and just you have to stay and converse with me because it was such a good conversation.

 So, thank you to all you guys watching.

 If you have anything, Nick, do you have any closing thoughts? You have anything you like to say to the folks back home? No.

 No.

 I'll just say to give it up for Dalton.

 Give it up for me.

 You're nuts.

 Doing all these.

 Doing all these.

 You're crazy.

 You're crazy.

 These are great.

 I love it.

 They're a lot of fun.

 So anyway, thank you.

 You're the man.

 Thank you for a great conversation and we'll see you guys next time.

 Thanks for watching.