The Athletes Podcast
The Athletes Podcast is a leading source of information, inspiration, and education for anyone interested in optimizing physical performance, maintaining good health, and living an active lifestyle. Join David Stark as he interviews some of the world's biggest athletes and fitness professionals, The Athletes Podcast provides practical advice, expert insights, and real-world strategies to help listeners achieve their health and fitness goals.The goal is to entertain, educate & inspire the next generation of athletes!
The Athletes Podcast
Zack Zillner - University of Texas Sports Performance Coach - Episode #235
What if you could transform your training regimen to mimic real game scenarios and elevate your performance? Join us as we sit down with Zack Zillner, the dynamic sports performance coach for the University of Texas women's basketball team. Learn from Zack's inspiring journey, from overcoming an Achilles injury to running marathons, and his extensive experience with NCAA champions. Hear firsthand how making training game-like, leading by example, and maintaining peak performance are crucial elements in an athlete's success.
The powerful influence of his parents' work ethic and perseverance powers Zack as he shares personal stories from his upbringing. Zack also brings to light the importance of skill development over physical attributes in high school basketball and offers a glimpse into his transition from playing football and rugby to coaching elite basketball players, underscoring the role of both mental and physical training.
Lastly, we delve into the crucial aspects of maintaining good habits and routines for optimal athletic performance. Zack emphasizes the importance of sleep, nutrition, and hydration, and how these factors directly impact practice outcomes. The discussion extends to innovative recovery methods, the value of adaptability in coaching, and fostering a culture of excellence. Zack’s insights into career development, mentorship, and continuous learning provide a treasure trove of practical advice for coaches and athletes alike.
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Yeah, basically we're trying to make it so you can take more game-like shots, Like when you're in the gym shooting. I need them to be game-like shots. I don't need it to be a casual throwing it up, Because in the game, like, you're not going to be casually shooting it. So, like, let's make it as game-like as possible.
Speaker 2:What's up party people? This is the 235th episode of the Athlete's Podcast Today featuring Zach Zillner, the sports performance coach at the University of Texas for the women's basketball team, someone who I just had a ton of fun chopping it up with for the past 55 minutes. We didn't talk about the fact that he ran a marathon 14 months after he ruptured his Achilles. We were chopping it up after we recorded this episode and we were reminiscing about the fact that I just finished a half marathon a week ago. I will be participating in the toronto full marathon in october, so for those of you who want to run that out in ontario, hit me up, shoot me a message. Let's have some fun. Let's get after it, but before we do that're going to enjoy this episode of the Athletes Podcast where we chop it up with Zach. He has a crazy amount of experience between the University of Texas, kansas University, the University of Illinois, where he's worked with NCAA champions. He's a National Strength and Conditioning Association certified strength and conditioning specialist. National Strength and Conditioning Association certified strength and conditioning specialist. He is also a level one and level two certificate Titleist Performance Institute coach and he's bringing championships to the University of Texas left, right and center, achieving greatness results impacting people's lives positively. I can't think of a better human being to highlight and feature on the show.
Speaker 2:I'm excited for you folks to listen, but before you do that, we got to make sure that you're subscribed to this, because less than 5% of you who are watching right now are actually subscribed, which is just mind boggling, because if 10, 15, 20% of you subscribed, we'd be doing so much more We'd be traveling around to all these places, because ultimately, this is our way of making sure we bring the best content to you on a weekly basis. We want to know who you want to hear from, what parts of the episode you like, whether whether whether you like the canadian maple flavor of diesel sports, perfect sports protein, or whether you like the vanilla, or maybe the double chocolate, or maybe the mocha cappuccino I don't know what flavor you like most, but we want to hear from you. I love hearing from you folks who are listening, not just sitting behind in your stereo listening to it on your drive to work or during your high day on the cardio machine, whatever it is that you continue to do on a weekly basis when you're listening to the Athletes Podcast. I appreciate it, but I wanna make sure that we're doing more for you. We're delivering the best content.
Speaker 2:Zach earned his bachelor's degree in sports science, with an emphasis in exercise science from the University of Kansas in 2011. And during his undergrad days, he served as a student intern in strength and conditioning at KU. You'll hear all about his stories here during this episode. Without further ado, let's get to this episode where we top it up with Zach Zillner from the University of Texas. Here we go. You're the most decorated racquetball player in US history, world's strongest man, from childhood passion to professional athlete, eight-time Ironman champion. So what was it like making your debut in the NHL? What is your biggest piece of advice for the next generation of athletes, from underdogs to national champions? This is the Athletes Podcast, where high-performance individuals share their triumphs, defeats and life lessons To educate, entertain and inspire the next generation of athletes. Here we go, zach Zillner. Welcome to the Athletes Podcast. Thank you for coming on the show. The most recent Big 12 tournament champ for women's basketball at Austin, texas Coaching for this is your seventh year now with the.
Speaker 1:University of Austin, starting my eighth or ninth, I forget.
Speaker 2:Eighth or ninth man they got to update their website. Here I am doing my research.
Speaker 1:I know man they're just trying to use my old pictures and everything. So at least I have a bald picture now, before I had my hair for like way past it was due.
Speaker 2:Dude, you've been just adding size though over the past couple of years. I was looking at those photos You've been. I was looking at those photos You've been getting that Z training.
Speaker 1:Eh, just trying to keep up with these young kids, man, it's tough as you get older. I used to be able to keep up with them all the time, and now I just got to train my butt off just to not lose.
Speaker 2:What's that dynamic like? Cause you got to be able to make sure that they follow what you're doing and what you're preaching, so you got to make sure you're in good shape.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the biggest thing is like you're constantly under a microscope and like these athletes watch everything. So I always joke, like whenever we have team dinners or meals, or any time we eat breakfast every day in the morning, and they're always looking at, like what I have on my plate, what I'm drinking, um, if I'm working out how I'm training like all these different habits, and then I think it's just kind of one of those things like if you know someone's telling you something you know you should work out, you should eat right, like live this, you know high performance lifestyle, and if they're not doing it, it's kind of like okay, if it's so good, like why don't you abide by the same rules and code that you give us? So I think it's kind of one of those things where you can use it as like a teaching point and also I feel like you got to walk it, like you talk it.
Speaker 2:You got to reap what you sow right.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:That's a lost art these days and I think that's one of the things I appreciate listening to your Coach Em Up podcast, having heard you talk with guys like Jordan Chow on RX Radio, who we've had on the past, one of the things that I figured maybe we kick off this conversation because it's centered around coaching. You've been working with guys like Corey for decades now. It seems like you've impacted hundreds, if not thousands, of athletes. Can you talk about the beginning of your strength and conditioning coaching experience, where you had arguably the best S&C coach in basketball? Tell you to buzz off during your freshman year, I guess before you even started at KU?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's kind of like what you preach with everything.
Speaker 1:It's like.
Speaker 1:You know, I always tell my athletes like it's your career, so like whatever decisions you make, that's fine because, at the end of the day, like it's your career, so whatever decisions you make, that's fine because at the end of the day, it's your career.
Speaker 1:And so when I was a high schooler and went up and shadowed one day and Hootie told me to come back when I was a senior, I knew in my heart I wanted to be a strength coach and I was willing to do whatever as long as she'd let me in the door. So if that meant cleaning, running errands, like doing little tasks that weren't even related, you know, necessarily to coaching, like if that's what it took for me to get in the door, like I don't care, like if you're really passionate about something, like you're not going to take no as an answer and you're going to try to find a workaround to put yourself in you know, the best possible position to succeed. Yeah, both of my parents, like my mom started her own business out of our basement when I was like two and my sister was like six months old what?
Speaker 2:was the business.
Speaker 1:It was an advertising agency. So a woman, like in the early 90s, like that's a tough thing to start your own business, especially when you're pregnant with two kids. Like you know, women's rights and opportunities have obviously gone up every year. But she talks to me all the time like how many people would tell her no for loans or wouldn't want to invest in the company because she was a mom or pregnant. And I just saw like that perseverance the whole time when we were kids of like trying to prove everybody wrong or trying to prove herself right.
Speaker 1:My dad is one of the hardest workers I know. Like he's a guy that wakes up at five, does so many random things throughout the day. He was in construction and did marketing as well, but like constantly working, trying to, you know, provide and make my life for me and my sister like the best it could be. So like they all came from big families where hard work was, you know, the foremost value they had and so just kind of instilling that on us at like a young age, like I joke that my mom and dad made like hard work um, you know, make it look cool. So it was like cool if you were helping out around the house and contributing and doing all those things, or in practice and in games.
Speaker 1:My parents never cared how many points I scored or anything like that. They just wanted to know, like, did you give your all? Did you give all your effort when you were out there? And that's what I got praised on. Was effort not necessarily like, oh, you had 15 points this game, like they didn't care. There was more of like did you play hard on defense? Did you hustle? Were you a good teammate? And I think those things kind of bled into who I am today and you know the career I chose.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting, like for a couple of different reasons, I think, the first being you obviously took some of your mom's advertising efforts and scaled that into building a substantial Instagram platform.
Speaker 1:Trying trying.
Speaker 2:You're crushing it Over 50,000 followers. You're impacting the next gen. My kind of selfish reason for also getting you on the show was the fact that I'm helping coach a high school basketball team. I do it in an assistant role and also trying to incorporate a little bit of strength and conditioning there, and I thought you would be the perfect person to just pick your brain on what these high school students should be doing. Obviously subscribing to Z-Train first and foremost, but outside of that, you know, as a young adult, one of the things that strength and conditioning has been preaching for athletes is to just get bigger, faster, stronger. For basketball specifically, there might be a benefit to actually not adding as much size and making sure that you are able to go through all of the same motions, have that range of mobility. Can you maybe speak to what those high school students should be focusing on during those formative years before they get to the University of Texas and start working with a guy like yourself?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think skill development. It seems like such common sense to me. But if you aren't good enough at the sport, it doesn't matter how high you're vertical, how much you bench press, how many pull-ups you can do, if you're not skill-wise on par with these other players that are going high, major D1 or D2 or D3, you're not going to be there. You might be physically gifted, but like, if you don't have the necessary skills to be a good basketball player, like the strength and conditioning stuff is just kind of icing on the cake. Um, we have plenty of time to get you know, quote unquote bigger, faster, stronger, but like if you can't put the ball in the hoop, like, uh, it doesn't matter, you're just going to be, you know, a really strong kid that looks good in the tank top Jersey, um, but that might not translate into into playing minutes.
Speaker 2:So, as a football rugby wrestler growing up to now impacting the best basketball players in the world I'm looking through a camera here, but I know you're not 6'6", 250. What's the mindset of being able to coach, impact these athletes without having actually been the professional basketball player? There's an interesting dynamic there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, basketball is probably my first love for sport-wise In Kansas. Yeah, I mean, basketball is probably my first love for sport wise, like in Kansas, like everybody has a basketball hoop, like we used to play basketball all the time. But eventually, you know, being a short white guy, like your time kind of runs out. I figured I was better at sports where I could hit people. So with basketball being only 5'10", like skill wise, I wasn't quite there to you there to make the leap to the next level. I was fortunate enough that through my internships and coaching I was always with basketball and being with Coach Hootie I saw first of all what the best basketball athletes had physically and mentally and then how they trained them, them. And so I can firsthand show these athletes of like hey, you know, I was fortunate enough at Kansas to be alongside you know all these. You know championship teams, final four teams, players to go to the WNBA.
Speaker 1:Nba like this is kind of the blueprint of what it should look like and with that, like athletes want results and the sooner I can get them results and feeling better they're going to play better and the sooner I have those kinds of results like the buy-ins there, like I joke now that you know, once these kids have gone through, you know, a year with me, I consider them like my assistant coaches, so like it's their job to help coach their teammates. They hear me, hear me cue things enough that they're just going to, you know, give those athletes the cues or things they need to pick up on. So I joke that I have anywhere from 10 to 12 assistants in the weight room with us. So you know, if you have those upperclassmen that are All-Americans Conference Players of the Year, they're telling you like, hey, this is how the lift needs to be done, this is the kind of effort you need to put in to get those results.
Speaker 2:Like there's your buy-in right there to put in to get those results, like there's your buy-in right there. Yeah, I mean you've coached 21 first team, all American honorees, 11 big 12 champs, worked with 2012 Olympic gold medalist Diamond Dixon, like the list goes on. You've got an extensive background. Are there ever people who question your methodologies or your work?
Speaker 1:Uh, I think there's always going to be people who question things and I think I like that because I want people to challenge me with my assistants, young coaches like I tell them, like, pick holes in the program and let's discuss it. Or what do you think you know why I program this or didn't program that? And I think it sparks good conversation. I tell young coaches all the time you're bombarded with so much information now with YouTube, instagram, podcasts, all these things, and if you don't fully understand it, to explain it to you. Know a fourth grader like, why, why is it in your program? And so I think over the years you know you come more comfortable with what you do. You realize everything is very context dependent.
Speaker 1:So when I was a young strength coach, like my bucket of knowledge was a tiny little, you know sandbucket, and I used to think anything outside of that sandbucket was dumb, stupid, wrong.
Speaker 1:And you know the smarter I guess, not smarter, I guess the more experience I've gained, you know that buckets become bigger and you look at things through like a contextual lens of like why might this coach think this is important or not important?
Speaker 1:And I think so many times in the comment section, you know you'll get somebody who doesn't have a screen name picture and everything that's like this is stupid, blah, blah, blah. But you have to kind of look at it as like maybe their bucket. You know it's only a thimble sized bucket full of information. They know about what I do. So if you only know a little bit of information, anything new is going to seem dumb or wrong or whatever. So I think it's one of those things like if people see your program enough and you put yourself out there by putting it on the internet, you're going to have, you know, a bunch of people that tell you a great job and other people tell you you're the worst strength coach in the world. Um, I think you know, as long as you go back and can justify everything you do and you know you're doing right by your athletes, like it's, it's par for the course.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and to your point, the results speak for themselves. Right, and I think that's one of the the aspects that I've appreciated from what you've done. You've the aspects that I've appreciated from what you've done. You've said yourself like you need to stay sharp. One of the things that you have to do as a strength and conditioning coach is make sure the results are there. At an institution like UT, if you're not top 10, your head's on the chopping block, so you need to be basically putting up results every single year. One of the things I know that you do is you do pre-game or pre-practice lifts, and that's different than most coaches or I guess previous thought processes around not loading before an exercise. But I've heard you say 20, 25, 30 minutes. You get that lift in when you're feeling your best. That's when you go and start your practice. Can you explain kind of the thought process when that moment happened that you're like, oh, we should just start doing this.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So it's kind of a two part thing. So, being under Hootie, they always lifted before practice and it was like a standard hour strength conditioning type lift and then they would go to practice and this would be like two or three times a week. Whole idea of if you want to be bigger, faster, stronger work on speed week. Whole idea of if you want to be bigger, faster, stronger work on speed power. You can't do it in a fatigue state. So if I just busted my butt for two and a half, maybe three hours on the court, the energy reserve I have for after practice is probably zero. So you're not going to be able to lift as much. You know, move things as fast, so like the quality of your movement session or weightlifting sessions basically down the toilet. And so you know, everyone thinks like, oh, if I lift before practice I'm going to be too tired for practice. I mean, that would be the case if you, you know, planned it where your weights and volumes were through the roof and it was an hour long knock down, drag out. I'm sure you will be tired, but you have to be smart with the main goals practice.
Speaker 1:What are things in this lift we can do to help enhance practice, and where the kind of 20 to 30 minutes came from is Hootie. We're lucky enough where the exercise science department at Kansas would come and basically validate our workouts if they were doing the things we wanted them to do. And it was like unbelievable. I thought it was like that everywhere, but it's not. And so I can literally be like dude. This is stuff is in research studies, like there is a whole exercise science department that is taking data on everything we do and see if it translates to the court. And so we had some athletes that like didn't want to lift, you know, for an hour and hard and all that stuff before practice. So Hudi was like screw it, let's go every day for 20 minutes, we'll study it, we'll bring it back, we'll show these athletes like you can't get the work we need done in 20 or 30 minutes. And so this is why we're going back to the hour and basically shut up and do it. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:And after like three months of doing that, we noticed all our numbers got better and we're like how can this be? And it's like, okay, well, they're more dialed in because they know I just have 20 minutes. It's usually one, you know, quote unquote challenging exercise for the day, whether it's a squat for the day, a clean for the day, a bench press, whatever and they warm up, concentrate, do the best they can at that particular lift and then go to practice. So these guys were more engaged. They knew it was only 20 minutes, they could pour more effort into that and it was less of like a watered down session, just to make it an hour. And we were thinking like why do we make an hour like the gold standard for how long a workout needs to be, like I don't know where that came from, but like if you ask anyone on the street like it has to be an hour, you know what I mean. Or more, because more is better. And so when we did all that testing and everything, we're like shoot, there's some validity in this and that's kind of where we've taken it and ran it and every school. It's a very nuanced idea 10 to 15 years ago. So it was one of those things.
Speaker 1:When I took a job I had to explain here's why we want to do it every day. The athletes won't be sore, they'll actually practice better. And then you educate the coaches, they hopefully let you do it and then you educate the athlete like, hey, I know this is new. Before you used to always lift after practice. You hated it because you're tired and then you're going to have to lift these heavy weights. So we're going to do it before. I know there might be a weak break-in period, but you'll be fine and you're going to feel better, you're going to play better and we'll let the results speak for themselves. So the athletes now, like they almost get annoyed if there's a schedule change and they have to practice and then lift. Um. So a lot of these athletes, even if we have an early like 6 30 AM practice, they'll come in at five 30 to get their lift in, to have enough time to shoot and everything before practice. So they see the value in it. Um, once again they feel results. So they're going to buy in immediately.
Speaker 2:And I feel like it's when you have the results. They speak for themselves. But when you're also at a place like U of T, when you've got alumni I've heard you talk about showing up every single day, putting in 10, 12 hour days that also creates that buy-in and you're like man I, you know, I see Kevin Durant spending six hours in the gym. I should be here too, right? All of these things culminate and compound where you've got this high-performance institute, essentially, and you've got a group of individuals, not only on the ball team but athletics in general, that are all striving for greatness. Right?
Speaker 1:Correct. You're a product of your environment. If everyone around you is, I joke. You go to the cafeteria and you see a gold medalist, the player of the year, a first round draft pick, and you're like, all right, like this is a competitive place, Like do you want to be one of the cool kids that's excelling or do you want to be the team at the bottom, kind of holding everyone back?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that that answer is obvious for anyone who's listening. But the interesting part there is that you had such an amazing experience at KU to begin your career. You then you're coaching Illinois men's golf team to a Big Ten championship, university of Southern Mississippi women's basketball team WNIT quarterfinals best postseason run in program history and then you're working with track and field as well. I guess how do you go from such an amazing first experience to then having to almost sell the next institutions on what you're capable of doing? But it's going to require a lot of work, a lot of buy-in. Does that happen? How would you suggest other strength and conditioning coaches maybe approach those roles where they don't have everything at their disposal?
Speaker 1:with their time, as they should be Like. They have one career and I think if you explain it to them and then kind of make it an open environment where they can give you feedback and you can also give them feedback and these athletes aren't dumb If you can explain it in a way of like how this is going to enhance your game, and then they do it and feel the results like that's all it takes. Right there, and knowing you know, do you develop that trust that you have their best interests at heart and I think they're willing to run through a brick wall for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's something innate about being able to work with someone, see their progress and then have them believe in what you're doing. Have you noticed anything in particular I mentioned previously, like the crazy amount of individuals you've worked with, their progress and then have them believe in what you're doing? Have you noticed anything in particular I mentioned previously, like the crazy amount of individuals you've worked with? Is there something that stands out about each of them? What makes them different? What makes them tick? What where you see those results coming from?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think they just have to be hyper competitive. Like there's someone that's competitive and whatever we do it could be practice games, weight room, like we could be playing Uno on the bus and they want to win and do anything they can to be the best. So I think it's that like hyper ability to just be competitive all the time. And obviously you know it's a blessing and a curse. You know you might be like a sore loser or whatever people want to call you, but like I want people that like bring it every day and know that like every day is important to your development. So any day that you come and bring less than your best, like you're not going to get everything out of it, like you have to be here, you might as well pour in. And I think the sooner athletes you know jump headfirst in the deep end and just you know, embrace the process like the easier. You know embrace the process. Like the easier life becomes, the easier the game becomes.
Speaker 2:And it sounds easy to do that when you say it in such a relaxed fashion, zach Zillner, but, like, not always the most easy, it's easier said than done, I should say, and I think one of the things that I would be curious from your perspective, having gone through it, having seen thousands of athletes transition from high school to university, professional level now we'd see NIL being intermixed and all these extra funds given to these young adults twist into things. But, like, are there paradigm shifting moments that you've experienced, or items, mode, training modalities, recovery methods that you've seen that have really allowed athletes to go from good to great?
Speaker 1:yeah, I think the biggest thing is like everyone has goals, like everyone does the cliche thing where it's like what's your goal for this season, or what's your goal with your career? And everyone's like I want to go to the pros. It's like what's your goal for this season, or what's your goal with your career, and everyone's like I want to go to the pros and it's like, okay, I've been lucky enough where I've coached numerous amount of pros, so like I have the blueprint for that. And pros want to be coached on every single rep, held to the highest standard, every single day, no matter what. So if you want to be a pro, I'm going to do those things for and you know the second you aren't willing to put in the extra time. Be coached hard, have intent with everything you do. Then let's change your goal. You don't want to be a pro. Maybe you just want to be an all-conference player, which is cool. Like I'll turn down the heat on you, like you probably don't need to come in as many times as you thought before. You can have a few days where you have off days and let's say you know you're still not doing that and it's like fine, you can be a role player on our team and you know, come 80% effort all the time and you'll have a great career, like you're talented enough where you'll have a great career just doing that. But if you're okay with that, cool, I'm fine with that. Like, if that's your biggest aspirations for yourself or being a role player, fine. But if you really want to be that pro or that All-American, you're going to have to put in extra time.
Speaker 1:Most of these athletes especially when we were coming up everyone idolized Kobe Bryant and you can't find one Kobe Bryant story where he showed up 10 minutes before practice. He didn't have his right shoes and then he gave half-ass effort during practice and the second practice was over. He was gone trying to get ready for Friday night to go out with his friends. There's no Kobe Bryant story like that. He was the first one in at a crazy time, early in the morning. He worked out multiple times per day. He challenged his teammates, he was the ultimate competitor on the court and just emulate that. There's great people all around you and you know the answers. You know what you should be doing and you know what you shouldn't be doing. So if your goal really is to be the best possible player you can be. It's going to be uncomfortable. You're going to have to sacrifice some fun nights with your friends or sleeping in, but I promise you the end goal is going to be worth it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I could not agree more there. Just give it some snaps, little retweet. But I've also heard you say on other podcasts that recovery and that after work is just as, if not more, important nowadays. So how do you tell that 16, 15, 18 year old kid that, hey, you're going to have to put in the work, You're gonna have to grind, you're gonna have to get in those early hours, but now you're also, on the flip side, gonna have to recover harder. What's that conversation look like?
Speaker 1:I think the biggest thing, what I try to do is educate them on everyone knows like they need to sleep, eat, hydrate, you know, stretch, whatever. Like they need to sleep, eat, hydrate, you know, stretch, whatever. And my thing is like I want to try to correlate different things. So like, if they show up and I notice like they had an unusually bad practice, we'll just start working backwards and it's like okay, we practice it to. Did you get a chance to grab lunch at noon? And like no, I didn't have a chance. Like I was rushing and all I could get was a Nutri-Gain bar. Okay, let's go back. Did you eat breakfast? Well, no, because I overslept, because I stayed up too late the night before. Facetiming, yeah, girlfriend issues, whatever.
Speaker 1:And it's like okay, so your lack of sleep and your lack of nutrition and probably hydration lead to this bad practice. Do you want to keep having these suboptimal practices? And they're like no, that sucked, I was tired. Coach got mad at me. I didn't feel like I got better. It's like okay, so let's work backwards. Like get your butt to bed, plan out your day ahead. No, like, if there's any friction points, like you have only 30 minutes from this class to practice. What time during the day can I grab my lunch? Or can I take something from the facility the night before to eat for breakfast? And drawing these little correlations to hey, you had an unbelievable practice. What'd you do? It's like oh, I got to bed early, I ate breakfast, I got a good lunch, I got here early to get shots up. It's like cool, let's repeat that over and over and over and you're going to have more of these good practices.
Speaker 2:Do you have your players reflect? Do you have your coaching staff reflect? Is that part of the process? Because I imagine this kind of collaborative effort only works if you have the coach on the same page as you making sure that he's not having them. Do you know 60 minutes of wind sprints after you've taken them through a heavy volume? Day right.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So the biggest thing is, like, you have to be super adaptable. In my position, like, at the end of the day, we all have to remember, like, practice is the most important part. So let's say the idea was, practice is going to be, you know, a light day, we're going to be out of there in an hour and a half, and then you know the athletes don't come correct and they're screwing up drills. No good effort. So that hour and a half practice turns into a two and a half hour knockdown, drag out fight and you know that's probably well-deserved Like, if you're not executing like you should, it shouldn't just be. Well, we had 90 minutes on the calendar. You guys did a bad job. See you tomorrow. Like, no, like, let's redo those drills, like we need to.
Speaker 1:But on the back end I know like, hey, we just went for two and a half hours. Coach, can I take him for 30 minutes after practice and we can go through some recovery modalities? I can go with them to dinner to make sure they're eating, and then the next day I'll know hey, we just went super hard. Coach, what do you think about trying to do that 90 minute practice again today? Or hey, now we need to come and prove another point again.
Speaker 1:Then you know I need to do different things on my end as far as maybe lowering the volume in the weight room or, you know, maybe canceling the lift and just doing recovery after, so kind of just being on the same page of what are we trying to accomplish today. What are the different things we're putting into place to get that said goal done and then getting the athletes on the same page of like, okay, one bad practice, I get it, it happens, let's not turn it into two or three. And so the biggest thing is like catch things before they become an issue, and I like to come at them at the point of hey, I know you didn't intentionally mean to have a bad practice, but why do you think that happened? Like, why do you think you weren't focused? What's going on and how can we fix that?
Speaker 2:Is there a favorite thing kind of athlete? I'm I'm curious because there's obviously over a decade of experience that you've got under your belt, having coached golf, track and field, basketball, volleyball, you know. You've got football experience, rugby, like is there a favorite kind of athlete that you get to work with? And then, further to that, there's got to be overlaps that you've experienced over the years where you're like, oh, this golfing drill actually works really well for basketball players.
Speaker 1:Vice versa, any kind of unique aspects that you've learned over the years that you're like, oh, this is really good for ball players or vice versa yeah, I think, like your first question, with like the best athlete to work with, like for me, if you can get your it, like she or he brings it every day, More often than not it's usually your worst players, your best worker. Just because you know that's how they got on the team originally. You know like I would be that guy. Yeah, it's like freaking Zach's winning these sprints.
Speaker 1:I'm like dude Zach sucks who cares? So like that's the ideal situation. But like I feel like once you get to this level or at least we've, coach has done such a great job recruiting that, like we are very up front with these athletes of like, if you come here, hard work and everything is expected every day. So if, like you aren't someone that's willing to give your all every day like go to a different school. You have one career it'll be a way better experience for you. It'll be a way better experience for you. It'll be a way better experience for me. It won't be like you know we're pulling teeth every day. So if you really want to get challenged and you know, push yourself to the limits that you don't even know are there. Like come join the squad. Like this is a great spot. But if you're not about that, you don't. You'd rather do you know the bare minimum than, like, go somewhere else.
Speaker 1:As far as training players, like sports that are so different, working with golf really opened my eyes to kind of keeping basketball players healthy. So a golfer is, you know, a rotational sport. Like every sport is rotational, but like golf is probably the most rotational sport around Like you're swinging a club rotary style all the fricking time. And so to be a good golfer, like you need to be super mobile and strong. Um, a lot of these basketball players are super stiff and reactive so they're really bad at rotating. So that's great for performance, but as far as health, like you need to be able to rotate if you're you want to feel you know any any form of health. And so, like in season, like our basketball programs, the further we get in season, when we're in that like health phase right before a tournament, like it resembles a lot like how I would train a golfer. So a lot of rotation, full mobility, you know compliance of movement, all these different things.
Speaker 1:So I think you know the ability to train a bunch of different sports, kind of you look at everything through a different lens of jumping higher, throwing something farther, yeah, and you can directly see they know exactly what they're doing at practice. We know exactly what we're doing in the weight room so we can see like, okay, times went down. I think you know something we were doing in the weight room are correct, or at least closer to being correct than not, or the other way, like their, their times get slower and what are we doing at practice and what are we doing in the weight room and which ones you know causing this to happen? Team sports it's really tough because so many different variables come into if somebody is good at their sport or not. Sometimes the ball just doesn't go in the hoop.
Speaker 2:So you know, having this background with so many different sports, you can kind of borrow from different buckets, from different sports, to kind of enhance whoever you're working with do you guys ever like bring in all the athletes from texas and just be like yo, let's have a combine like I've pitched this idea in the past where it's like let's get everyone together? I've heard you talk about previously like a guy can play four years of college ball and then try out for the nfl make. It doesn't happen the other way around. I'm always curious, like if we brought all the best 20, 22 year olds together, had a combine like who's coming out on top?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it'd be fun. Like we did this a couple of years ago. Volleyball would train in our facility on Friday mornings and Donnie the strength conditioning coach with volleyball, I was like, hey, let's do a workout where, like Donnie the strength and conditioning coach with volleyball, I was like, hey, let's do a workout where women's basketball and volleyball they work out together. And the great part about Kansas is we had one weight room for everybody. Football had their own, but we had one weight room for everybody.
Speaker 1:So teams would come in and see what other teams were doing and be like, oh, women's golf works just as hard as women's basketball, as volleyball, as track, and kind of had this camaraderie of like, hey, we're all doing the same stuff, we're all doing a good job.
Speaker 1:And if you're any sort of competitor, like if you're on the women's basketball team, you don't want anyone from the volleyball team to show you up and vice versa. And I think the women's basketball team, like, we're a good team, we finish, you know, top five, top 10 every year. But volleyball here either wins the national championship or gets second. And so what I wanted our women to see is like, what are the different qualities that a national championship team has versus a top 10 team and kind of the takeaways of how seriously they take everything, how well they work together, how much effort they give, and I think it gives a little nuance of being close Like you're really good. I feel like good is the enemy of great and what are the different things like a good team does versus a great team? And I think the only way you really see that is to actually see that great team working.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's something to be said about, you know, having a legacy and having that expectation of greatness year over year and the pressure that puts on. You know, pressure creates diamonds, as they say, and you know, when you've got year over year, you're winning championships. That needs to come in and, to your point, when you're onboarding, you need to get the best of the best. Um, I've also seen you in the gym training barefoot, incorporating isometrics, plyometrics, like are there key pillars that you would be pointing young athletes towards? I know you said skill development, but is there maybe one specific? I've heard the hex bar deadlift as a good base lift for everyone, as like a standard method to train, but any other kind of in gym in season modalities that you would be using to make sure you're set up for success as a basketball player, as an athlete as a whole.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll do different things. So I look at like kind of footwear as a different training stimulus. So if you're barefooted it kind of exposes more like how your foot's moving in space. And a lot of basketball players have horrible like big toe mobility. So if you have shoes you know your big toe doesn't have to quite move as much on like a split squat or something like that. But if I get you out of your shoes, like chances are, like if you have a toe issue, like it's going to show up right away. So we'll do barefoot stuff for different sort of warmups, like low level plyometrics, anything like that, just because you have less support.
Speaker 1:Now for our big high output stuff, like we're putting shoes on. I kind of have a rule like the second dumbbells, plates, barbells come out like we're putting shoes on. That's more for me of like we all know if I drop a 50 pound dumbbell on my foot with a shoe on, it's still going to break my foot whether I have a shoe or not. But that's a tougher thing to sell to coach of well, why wouldn't she have her shoes on? And you're like, well, good point. So for me it's like the second anything comes out like we're putting our shoes on, but I do think it has its place for warmups, recovery, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:High schoolers all the time I get asked like what can I do to you know, be best fit for college? And I would say, just become a good mover like mobile, strong for your body weight, so like be able to do, you know, pushups and pull ups and walking, lunges and everything like that where you you can control your body weight and then your college strength coach like they'll be able to take it from there. But there's so many athletes we get that are, like you know, number two player in the nation and she can't do a pull-up or a push-up or can't do a isometric split squat and you're like, oh my gosh, like you're so good skill-wise, like you've gotten by without you know these physical limitations. So instead of starting from ground zero, it'd be great to get some kids who can already do pull ups, already have good form, doing everything like younger athletes Like I get it I was in high school once like being the strongest guy in your class or girl like it's fun class or girl like it's fun, but at the end of the day, like if the movement quality is bad.
Speaker 1:You're just reinforcing bad habits and the exercise that you thought you were doing you're actually just doing a different variation of it because you're butchering it so bad. So I'd say, like, take your time. Like lifting and lifting is a skill and people don't look at it as like that, like how are you so good at lifting? It's like I've been doing this for 30 years, like I've been squatting for 30 years, like I practiced the pattern so many times. And these athletes like, especially in high school, like if you squat once a week, you may be squatted like 50 times in your career. Like you shouldn't probably be very good at it and so you know if you can dial in and have perfect form. And by the time and then when you get to college, it's like you already have four years of a great foundation and then it's easy to add weight. You just progressively overload over time and you look like the best strength coach on the planet.
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Speaker 2:Creatine's back in stock Get it all. Order now. Perfectsports hands right now by using the code AP20. Creatine's back in stock Get it all. Order now, perfect sportscom. Let's get back to the episode. Yeah, vivo Barefoot just sent me a pair of these, so I've been rocking them trying to get my uh, my foot health in order. But it does benefit the rest of your body too, right, and you're getting your primal movements back, and I saw you change for me, like I used to think barefoot stuff was kind of dumb or like they play in shoes.
Speaker 1:Why wouldn't we train in shoes? Like what are we talking about? And then I ruptured my Achilles like a year and a half ago, and so I I didn't go to any PT, I kind of did it myself. I just want to be a guinea pig of like the eight weeks where I couldn't do anything, of like the eight weeks where I couldn't do anything. I reached out to all the different coaches that are unbelievable at this stuff, read all these articles, watched all these videos and then I wanted to put it in place and the barefoot stuff for my rehab I think lended to a speedier recovery than what I would have done otherwise.
Speaker 1:So I think being open and having nuances to training and exploring different areas you aren't as good at is a valuable tool. So I always say it's like the gift of injury for me. Now my new passion is foot, lower leg health and for basketball players, if your foot is broken you can't play. If your finger or hand is broken, you can play, and so it's like how important are are the you know lower leg structures for basketball players. So it's kind of been. You know the gift of injury for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just injured my shoulder and I'm similar. I'm just like, okay, I'm going to figure out how the heck to fix this myself. And you know beauty of the internet, we are able to ask people like yourself, who are industry experts, how to fix these things. And I saw you using those squat wedgies as well to obviously hit the quads more during your recovery, did you incorporate, like cold exposure, heat exposure for that, like anything else, where you pumping in peptides, like what was going on for you to to expedite that recovery?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So my biggest thing is like the eight weeks where I couldn't do anything. I wanted to find all these different workarounds that I could do to not put on 20 pounds and then to keep my sanity. So I put together like a, basically a program of like if I'm lifting by myself, what's the most intelligent way I can load things without dying trying to put weight on a bar or anything like that, and then what things cardio wise I can do. And so I relied heavily on the infrared sauna. So if you sit in the sauna if everyone's, anyone's ever done it it gets super hot.
Speaker 1:I was like I put on a heart rate monitor and it would be between like 135 and 150, just depending on how hot the sauna was, and I'm like, okay, that's basically zone two cardio.
Speaker 1:I would sit there and then eventually, when I was able to bike, when I was finally in my tennis shoe, I would just slow bike and that would jack my heart rate up to 165, 170.
Speaker 1:And I was thinking, okay, for injured athletes that have ankle sprains and everything we want to keep them still in shape, maybe we can use this infrared sauna as like a training stimulus, since your ankles hurt, you're not going to be able to push through the pedal as hard.
Speaker 1:So maybe if we can, you know, jack up their core body temp, like your heart rate gets up, you're still getting a good stimulus. So I think, just being creative and, you know, finding different ways, you know to get back to ground zero, I thought balance training was kind of dumb. I was like if you can play sports, like you can clearly balance and my biggest thing would help me with rehab, like my first day in my tennis shoe, I went barefoot and I was just like, okay, let's see how long I can balance for. And I think it was like 15 seconds and my foot was on fire, my lower leg was on fire and I'm like, okay, I think there's maybe some validity in that and so we would do balance training now, which I would never dream I would be doing 10, 15 years ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're using water bags too.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So Corey kind of brought that in for us and once again I was like dude water bags, what are we doing? And once again I was like dude water bags, like what are we doing, man? And because I'm like it's too light, who cares? And then doing it more, I'm like, okay, this can kind of help with our balance. You know, intrinsic muscles of the foot, all these little things. It's a great way where we can deload athletes and still have a challenge.
Speaker 1:So, all these different nuances, I think being more open, and you know, asking these coaches, when you see a drill, like when we got the water bags, I was like Corey, come on, man, Like this is stupid, Like what are we doing? He's like here's my reasoning, Try it, Let me know what you think. And I was like okay. And then I didn't want to like it at all and I was like, okay, this does have a place. Now is it like some people would see the video and be like, oh, all they do is water bag training? It's like, no, we did it for this day, as a warmup, to add some variability. Um, but no, it's, it's cool. And you know, I think you know reaching out to these coaches and figuring out. You know why they do certain things?
Speaker 2:Um, then you can make the decision like does it hold a place in your program or is it something you know you may just use for rehab, prehab or whatever? Well, and to your point, you're doing strength training to ultimately increase your capacity as a basketball player, and I think that was one of the best ways I've heard anyone articulate it. You've done it. On a previous pod it was like you don't look awkward shooting a basketball because you've done it from a young age. I still do, I'm working on it, but the strength training that you did for the past decade two decades has allowed you to go from a hundred shots a week to 120 shots a week and 140, which ultimately allows you to become a better shooter, right.
Speaker 1:Correct Increased.
Speaker 2:correct increased capacity yeah, and that's when I just like. For me, when people question why you've got athletes working out in the gym when it's not when they could be practicing their sport more, it's to increase that capacity. I just wanted to confirm that make sure those young kids, when they listen at earl marriott secondary school, that all of this gets absorbed into their brains, because basically I try to make it so you can take more game like shots, like when you're in the gym shooting.
Speaker 1:I need them to be game like shots. I don't need it to be a casual throwing it up because in the game like you're not going to be casually shooting it. So like let's make it as game like as possible when we're actually working on shooting, like if we're working on fundamentals. It's totally different answer to that, but it gives you the ability to increase capacity to take more of these game-like shots and compounding interests. Like I'm not a finance bro by any means, but like compounding interest is good and so you know the more reps we can get. Basketball is a rep sport and most sports are like if I get more reps in a day versus you and I compound that over a four-year career, like I'm probably going to be better than you at the end of that four years it's like doing these podcasts on a weekly basis, right, I appreciate your time zach.
Speaker 2:You've been. You've been carving out time. Uh, you've been creating content impacting the next gen. I appreciate that sincerely. We've also had coaches who you are acquainted with work with, like jordan shallow, megan young, amongst others. You mentioned cory. I have two questions left. The first is can you speak to how amazing that coaching network is and how you're able to work with others and ultimately up level the SNC community as a whole?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I was so. I mean just thankful and blessed that, like the situation I was put in. Like I think about all the time like what if my internship experience for some of these horror stories were like the coach never talked to you and all you did was clean plates and then at the end of your year, like that was it, and the fact that these coaches at Kansas were able to pour into me? I was there for six years. Give me the time of day to answer questions. Let me work with their teams. Put me in situations to lead and become a coach. Cootie would randomly knock on our intern door and be like Zach, you got warm-up today and you're like, all right, let's go. And then you lead. You lead the warm up and then you have one of the best strength coaches in the world telling you this is what you did, good, this is what I would improve on. Here's how, how, how I would handle that situation and there's not many places like that, and so I try to pay it forward to our assistants to not allow them to take ownership of our program. And then, later in my career, like the fact that I got to reunite with Hootie and coach with her, where we're both, you know, full-time assistants doing our job, and for her to give me feedback and be like, hey, I watched one of your sessions, like have you thought about doing this? Or I liked how you did that, and the fact Corey Schlesinger came here as well and it was the same kind of thing like learning from someone who thinks differently but we still have, you know, the same core principles and kind of allow you to bounce ideas off in a different think tank environment. I think too many times we get our full-time job and then you're on a silo and you don't really have anyone critiquing your program or giving you feedback or learning new things. And you know how fortunate I was to be. You know deep into my career and have two really good basketball minds you know able to bounce ideas off of.
Speaker 1:At Illinois I had Adam Fletcher. He was on the men's side. He's, you know, one of the best strength coaches in the NCAA and, same deal with him, I could bounce ideas off of them of how to handle you know difficult player or coach or training methodology. How are things we can do to? You know, directly impact the court and the fact that I had these three to six different strength coaches that helped me through my career like that's awesome and I think I would encourage people even if you're in your 10th year, 20th year, whatever go out and sink other good strength coaches. We have so many good strength coaches at Texas that I've been able to watch Clint Martin when he was here with track and field, or Donnie Mabe or Anna Craig or Mel Schmidt to sit down and see how they run things and it can give you new ideas and just bounce ideas off of other really good coaches you respect. I think it's an unbelievable environment.
Speaker 2:And then you get new training modalities like bringing in water bags to the practice.
Speaker 1:And that's how it happens.
Speaker 2:I guess to that point if you were to rub on your genie bottle here and see you didn't't expect yourself five, 10, 15 years ago to be using water bags. What do you see coming in the future? Is there one thing that you'd be like that's what I see that come in, or there's, there's? You know, force plates now are a big thing for you to test prior to a practice, for instance, but like what's coming on the horizon that you see that you might be able to share a little bit insight to.
Speaker 1:Um, um, I think, with all the data and everything we have now, of like really get some markers on. We always talk about like best abilities, availability, and so it's like what metrics matter and different tests we can do to kind of flag different things of you know, these are the metrics you really need to dive in on for player availability, these numbers, you know, don't really matter. I think in the strength and conditioning world, everyone talks about outputs, like how much we back squat, or how much you power clean, or how fast and how high I can jump, and at the end of the day, like the most important metric is availability. And so it's like what are different things that we can make, not only the most high performing athletes performing athletes, but, you know, the athletes that are the healthiest and can stay on the court the longest love that ben sporer wrote a book output.
Speaker 2:It's been great, but uh, at the end of the day, if you're not there to put in the inputs, it doesn't matter. Yeah, zach, I appreciate your time tremendously, man. This has been awesome. We wrap up every episode by asking our guests their biggest piece of advice. I didn't ask you about if there was any books that you'd recommend for athletes, so I'm opening the floor for you now to give any and all last insights that you have for that next gen of athletes Zach Zillner, one of the best minds in the strength and conditioning world. What do you got for him?
Speaker 1:I think you just need to bet on yourself and then, if you really want to do something, like, put together the steps and processes in order to do that. And you know we preach all the time to our athletes like, work harder, show up early, do all this stuff. And it's like you need to look in the mirror and be like am I a coach that exemplifies all these things? Do I walk it like, I talk it? And I think it's so easy to preach and everything like that. But you kind of have to do some self-reflection of like am I being the best strength coaches for these athletes?
Speaker 1:These athletes are trusting you with their career and, ultimately, the most formative years of their athletic development, and if you aren't constantly searching for that 1% to try to get them better, you're ruining their experience and everything. If you're just relying on stuff you did five, 10 years ago, you're robbing these athletes of their full potential. So bet on yourself, reach out to those around you and then be confident in what you do and don't be so rigid. You know things change over time and you know that's not saying you have to get rid of the principles that you have laid down, but like, be open to things and you know, work hard and be you know that great example to. You.
Speaker 2:Know what those athletes aspire to be be willing to move that hour-long practice to 20 minutes, right?
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:Dude, I'm gassed up. That last minute there got me fired up. I'm ready to run through a wall and I know the kids listening will be too. So yo can't thank you enough, zach. I will make sure that every athlete who needs to hear this will hear this, and I look forward to having you on in the future, getting down to Texas training, getting some athletes with you. Yeah, let's get after it. I see all those videos. I appreciate your time, man. Big shout out to zach for coming on the show.
Speaker 2:Shout out to you for listening to this episode of the athletes podcast. We've made 234 of these. Now, if you've been here from the beginning, let us know down below. Drop me a comment. I I see hundreds, if not thousands, of you every single week tuning in, but I don't hear from all of you. So do me a favor, let me know wherever you want to reach out, whether it's on social media, send me a text, instagram, dm, whatever works. But let's keep chatting, let's feature those folks who you want to hear on this show and let's keep making a ton of fun content on a weekly basis and hopefully ultimately getting a little stronger living, healthier, more active lifestyles, because that's what the athletes podcast is all about. Thank you, folks for tuning in. We'll see you next week for another new episode. Bye.
