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
Building Elite Athletes at Kinetic Haus with Dante Martella - #245
High-performance athletic training is not all equal as we learn from our guest Dante Martella, the visionary behind Kinetic House in Toronto. Discover how Dante turned his dream into a reality, creating a state-of-the-art performance center and sports therapy clinic that has significantly impacted athletes, including Indiana Pacers' Andrew Nembhard. Learn how we prepared for the Toronto Waterfront Marathon with the help of osteopath Tina, whose comprehensive assessments ensure athletes reach their peak performance while minimizing injury risks.
Join a fascinating discussion on osteopathy's subtle yet profound impact on sports therapy, where body alignment and gentle adjustments are pivotal in enhancing athletic performance. As we delve into body mechanics, we reveal how athletes can improve efficiency and prevent long-term injuries through small, incremental changes. Through personal stories of a journey from volleyball to combat sports, we underscore the importance of understanding biomechanics for developing well-balanced athletes.
Explore the broader themes of athletic development and personal growth as we uncover strategies to apply fitness principles to life's challenges. From core stability exercises to learning from the unique demands of underrated sports like badminton, tennis, and soccer, our conversation reveals the mental and physical rigour required at elite levels. We also discuss the synergy between sports communication and psychology, offering insights into the link between physical training and mental acuity, drawing inspiration from figures like poker legend Phil Ivey. Join us for an episode filled with stories of passion, growth, and the power of human connection in the world of sports.
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For me. I've always wanted to open a gym and now I'm fortunate, with my incredible business partners, to have this performance center and sports therapy clinic here in Toronto, and one of the things I always knew I wanted to do was like make it more than a gym.
Speaker 2:Dante has been instrumental in preparing me for the court. My mind and body feel ready for the grind of a season after training with Dante because he takes such a specific approach to his training. That was Andrew Nembhard of the Indiana Pacers talking about Dante Martella, and this is the 245th episode of the Athletes Podcast today featuring Dante Martella of Kinetic House, the owner of a performance center and sports therapy clinic in Toronto, where we were able to visit, prior to my marathon, get a little work done from Tina, an amazing osteopath, and get a little bit of resistance training with Dante, after chatting about his upbringing, the pre-skip team, what he's doing at Kinetic House and so much more. Some of the athletes that he's worked with, like Josh Hosang, amongst others, I was able to chat with, and every single person talks about how incredible it is to work with Dante. And every single person talks about how incredible it is to work with Dante. I'm very grateful to have spent a couple hours with the team in Toronto and I can't wait for you folks to listen to this episode, the 245th of the Athletes Podcast.
Speaker 2:But I have to let you know I may or may not have a new protein powder favorite flavor, that being Perfect Sports Banana. I don't know if you guys have tried it. I know you might be skeptical. Fruit flavor is sometimes questionable, I'm not kidding. This is literally like taking a banana, opening it up and eating it yourself. I make a smoothie every morning for my mom and I. A little protein Start your day the right way, and I've been throwing banana-flavored protein powder diesel. That is the only way to be with our blueberry shake. It's so so, so, so, so, so good, and if you use the code AP20 at checkout, you, too, get to save 20%. It's the thrill of the shill. It's why you guys are here. The athlete agreement, amongst other things, keeps you coming back, but make sure to get your protein in while you're listening to this episode, because we know the benefits of it.
Speaker 2:This is the 245th episode of the Athlete's Podcast featuring Dante Martella. 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, the 245th episode of the Athletes Podcast here today at Kinetic House, where I'm going to get the full athlete treatment we are going through. I'm 10 days out from the Toronto Waterfront Marathon. Tina is going to give me an assessment here. Dante is going to go through a full workout. This is the full athlete experience here on the Athletes Podcast here today at the Kinetic House. Tina, thanks for coming on.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having us.
Speaker 2:I'm excited here today because, as a non-athletic regular person, I get to get the best treatment in Toronto here at Kinetic House. What else can I expect from the next session?
Speaker 3:So we're going to take you through a few things. We're going to take a look at what your training history has been. We're going to take a look at what your past injuries have been. We're going to form a clinical picture and we're going to do a few tests to figure out what we can do to help you towards your goals. Okay, so start off with. What has your training regimen been like for the last, say, two, three months?
Speaker 2:Basically been running and strength training every other day, so resistance training on a Monday, Tuesday run back and forth For the most part, maybe one rest day mixed in there per week. A run back and forth For the most part, maybe one rest day mixed in there per week, varying from a short, medium to long run and then resistance training.
Speaker 3:Just getting all of my essentials taken care of. Have you ever noticed any areas where you have pain when you're running, like at the beginning, middle or end? Or has there been a change in your gait pattern while you're running?
Speaker 2:It's been about six months worth of running consistently. Now I don't know necessarily whether I've noticed a huge change in my gait pattern. I think I've gotten better over time progressed hopefully that's the goal and I've noticed that my body has started just to perform better in general in all aspects, not able to quite lift quite as heavy, but that's what happens when you're doing endurance training.
Speaker 3:I guess have you noticed any blisters forming? No Perfect. Have you noticed any changes in your shoe pattern, shoe wear pattern, so one side being worn more unevenly than the other?
Speaker 2:No, not necessarily. Maybe running a bit more on the outsides of my feet. New Balance sent me some new shoes that I've been wearing and I also just train in my Bevo barefoot.
Speaker 3:Perfect. Barefoot running is great. Have you noticed any pain in your knees, your hips or your back? No, great, okay, so let's start off with a general assessment. I'm going to have you stand up, I'm going to take a quick look at you and you can stay right there Taking a look at your hips, your shoulders, seeing if there's any asymmetries that I can see. I can see there's a slight dip on your right side. Are you a right-handed dominant person?
Speaker 3:Yep, and I'm also looking at the head to see if there's any tilt or turning, and I can see that your head is slightly in an extended position, but your body is relatively aligned. Your ankles, your knees and your hips are stacked upon each other, as well as your shoulders and your knees and your head alignment is probably because your ears are trying to get over top your shoulders so that they're in balance, which makes sense. I just want to check to see what the alignment is of your back, see if everything is together, if there's any spots where I can see any kinks, or any spots where it seems to be deep or shallow, depending on where I see the shallowness and the kinks. It might be, because there's a place where it's taking a little bit too much weight or not enough weight, and yours looks pretty good. So what I will also do sometimes is feel to see if the skin wants to move in certain areas, or if there's any areas which might be something I want to look at later. That seems pretty good, and now I'm going to have you face the wall, the last wall, yep, and sometimes you'll see asymmetries happen in different ways. You might have a turn that you don't know of, and so this way, by looking at all four sides, you're getting a full look at the body.
Speaker 3:What I want you to do, I'm going to put my hands on your hips and I'm going to take a look at what your hips are doing. To take a look at what your hips are doing. So I'm going to find a point on the hips and I'm going to have you bend forward for me as much as you can, and what I see is there's something going on in his right side. So what I see is, when you go down the right hip, the, the iliac, is following your body when it goes down, and so it's not separating like it should. The left side is, the right side isn't, and I'm going to see whether that's a problem of your pelvis or if that's a problem with your tailbone.
Speaker 3:So this is something we see commonly in a lot of athletes. They might not know it, but they're putting pressure on more on one side of the body than the other, and so it just causes an imbalance that they aren't aware of until they do something extreme, like running a 26-kilometer run, when they're used to running only 10 or 5 or whatever Right. And that can also affect you in the weight room, where you're putting more emphasis on the one side versus the other, when you're really supposed to be working on both sides of the body and then so how would you mitigate something like that for an athlete or someone who is pursuing these endurance goals?
Speaker 3:so oftentimes it's. It's something that they're not aware of and what we try and make them do is make them aware of it. We do do small little fixes, incremental fixes, especially if they're running up to an event. We know we won't make lasting changes in that event. But it's after the race where we'll make a huge difference, in that hopefully, by the time that they run the race, they won't notice any differences after the race than before, and it's just those small incremental changes that can actually make a huge difference no doubt.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's so interesting because this doesn't feel like much is being done, but it's these subtle adjustments, kind of like. As a coach, you make little tweaks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, as a coach, you make little tweaks. Yeah, osteopathy is a different piece altogether. You know, like massage, you can definitely feel pressure. They ask for different grades of pressure. Even athletic therapy there's like implements being used, tape. You know. There's definitely, you know, more of like a sensory experience, this type of work with osteopathy. You often notice it when you're off the table, once you're done. There's obviously a lot that goes through while you're on the table as well, but it's just. You know, it's a very delicate craft.
Speaker 3:Basically, we're feeling for changes in your body and we're trying to make your body run more efficiently, more smoothly, based on your own mechanics. We're not trying to change, make huge changes. Uh, we're trying to make the subtle changes, the ones that your body won't necessarily notice, but you'll feel it in the in the end because you won't be feeling it right. Yeah, and sometimes we do deal with people that have huge injuries, but sometimes we have people that have smaller, smaller things, but just a bunch of smaller things can make a huge difference what got?
Speaker 2:what's your origin story in the world of sport?
Speaker 3:originally I wanted to work with volleyball, but then when I started doing athletic therapy, I discovered I did not like the injuries and I just didn't have the knowledge to to help them the way that I would have wanted to. I actually found my my niche in that I cover a lot of combat sports. I work with Taekwondo Canada, work with Karate Canada, I've worked with Wrestling Canada in the past, and all these experiences have shown me that I really like the type of injuries that combat sports have, and so I've kind of gravitated towards those sports and after working at the college level for 14 years, I decided to just help out here at Kinetic House and do my own thing.
Speaker 2:So when you say the injuries, do you mean being able to help people recover from those injuries or prevent?
Speaker 3:Help people recover from those injuries. Most of the injuries that I used to see in volleyball they're the chronic, long-term thing things that it's because of biomechanics, because of overuse, it's, uh, because people aren't training as effectively as they should or could and things weren't adding up um with. With combat sports it's more you know how they got it, you know they're going to try and get up, and if they're not getting up, it's because there's something seriously wrong. And so those injuries were more interesting to me at the time. And now, as an osteo, I find that I have techniques that I didn't think I could deal with.
Speaker 3:Something as simple as a bruise, something as simple as you, simple as somebody pulled a muscle, but they're extremely flexible. How are they pulling muscles? Well, it's because there's something biomechanically that's not working exactly right, that we can make minor tweaks to it and see huge differences. It's not necessarily your muscles, it's not necessarily your muscles, it's not necessarily your joints. It's a combination of things that have happened to the traumas in your body which is causing it, that's causing the restriction, and so we'll we'll try and deal with those restrictions by working on everything that we find in the body.
Speaker 3:So, so, even in your case, as a former goalie, I would probably look at where have you gotten hit in the past, how many headshots have you received, or how many games did you play in net where you did the butterfly, and what type of butterfly did you do? That all makes a huge difference in the type of trauma that your body receives and what type of restrictions you might have in your body. So, based on what I've seen, you've probably gotten hit in the face a few times. Your head's gone back, which is why your head is in slight extension, and so I would look definitely at your head, your neck, your upper chest right and see where the restrictions are coming from, see if I can fix that. That also might be why your hips are tight, because there's something up above that's causing the restriction below.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, so things that I can do on my own and I'm not on the table.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and I'll show you those in a little bit. They might involve you learning how to breathe a little bit better. It might involve you working on you know something as simple as trying some meditation or relaxation stuff and working on your general mobility of your back. Okay, so we're going to take a quick look at your chest and I'm actually going to have you lying on your back, okay, yep, just leave this right here. So what I'm going to have to do is put my hands on either side of your chest and I'm going to have you breathe in for me and out Good. In and out Good. Same thing breathe in and out, breathe in, okay. So what I'm seeing right now is that your lower left chest doesn't expand and contract as easily as your right side does, so we're going to do a little bit of work on the left side, and one thing that I want you to do is.
Speaker 3:We're going to work on giving you some breathing exercises to focus on expanding that left side, if you can, okay. What I'm going to do is I'm going to put one hand underneath and one hand over top, okay, and what I want you to do is breathe in deeply Good, and again and again Out Good, again, good. Slow down the breathing Again and out Good, one more Good. Last time, good. So quick recheck Feel a little bit of a difference. Mm-hmm, yeah, better, and I'm going to have you sit up.
Speaker 3:One thing I want you to focus on when you're breathing is to open up your chest. Keep your upper body upright and you're gonna focus on thinking about the chest. You want to try and expand that area. So when you breathe in, try and focus on opening up that area by doing a little bit of a side bend towards the right to get that side to open up and take a deep breath in and out Slowly, slowly release the breath. You're rushing your breathing in and you're rushing the breathing out.
Speaker 3:I want you to slowly focus on letting that area expand as much as you can by taking a long, deep breath, hold it for five seconds if you can, and then slowly letting it out and getting it fully out. Do that about five, ten times over the course of this week so you can get that chest to expand and contract as maximally as possible, because there seems to be some kind of restriction in your left side and I think that just a simple breathing exercise can help it. Okay for your hips. What I want you to try and do is open, open the door and close the door exercises focusing especially on that right side to try to get that hip to open up, and when you're working on this, you're gonna bring your hips in maximally and bring your hips out maximally, okay okay, good, thank you so much, gina appreciate all your help.
Speaker 3:Good luck this week, thank you, was it two weeks?
Speaker 2:10 days 10 days. 10 days from now we're on, we're on and we're better off now, thanks to kineticos. Yep, thanks so much. We'll see you soon. We'll be back in here.
Speaker 1:So one of the things that Tina said was opening up the left side of the rib cage there, particularly closer to the lower ribs, which is going to have an implication on the right low back, and we can try to get some movement through here, some movement back here, and that'll help how your hips move. So the first one this little wedge, this could be anything like a little pillow, and you're going to lie down on your right side facing the wall. So put that right under your right rib cage and just lie down on your side Perfect. Bring the knees up like this Perfect and just kind of cradle your head Perfect. This guy's going to come in like that. Reach this hand forward. So see how that already opens this up here, yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, the wedge here is just opens this up here. Yeah, okay, the wedge here is just pushing this up to the sky, right. So even if you were flat, you would still get something out of this, but this just kind of props this up and helps open up some of this, right. So now I want you to just breathe in and push my hand up to the sky and now keep some of that height that you just gained and when you exhale, feel the work down here to the ribs. Exhale, hold, inhale and push, slow down and get a little longer on the inhale Long, more Perfect.
Speaker 1:So now we've got the same position that you're in. You can stand up. I'll show you this next one. So we're going to use almost that exact same position that we go up against the wall here like this.
Speaker 1:Feet are up on the wall, just like that. So now your left side left side is up like this. Right side is down, just like you did. Feet are going to be about six to ten inches apart and you're going to rock one forward like that. Top leg is going to drive forward, bottom knee is going to come up. Touch the top knee, come back down. So you got ten reps.
Speaker 2:Lie down on your left side and tell the athletes podcast listeners a bit of your back story.
Speaker 1:Slide back a little bit towards me. Perfect, I'll go to the back. Sorry, good.
Speaker 3:So now without that?
Speaker 1:thing you're going to try and recreate the same position that you had. Good, this foot's going to be a little higher. Toes against the wall Good, drive this knee forward and now hold it there and drive this knee up to this knee. Good. So my back's 30%? Yeah, good. So as far as athletics getting into the world of athletics, there's something that you know we'll talk a little bit more when we sit down with the podcast, but not something I necessarily targeted. Uh, it was something that kind of came up organically, based on my interest in the world of sport. Um, I was originally kind of targeting my way through the nutrition world and, uh, you know, before you know it, I was in a position to work with athletes and it's just something I fell in love with. Nice, keep this heel against the wall One more Harder than it looks. Eh, yeah, good. And now just stand up and move around a bit. One last little bit, just kind of move your hips. How's that, joe? Good, it's a nice work. Open up already, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then last one.
Speaker 1:We kind of tie everything together. It's a little more dynamic. Before we get into some of the heavier lifting On your side here, reach your top arm and your top leg, look over your shoulder and then bridge up Just like that On your side. Okay, Good Knees together, Perfect.
Speaker 2:On your left forearm.
Speaker 1:Perfect. Drive your right arm forward and then lift your left arm. Perfect, on your left forearm. Perfect, drive your right arm forward and now drive your right leg back. Good, get as long as you can from here and now bridge up and drive your hips forward. Freeze, I want to pull you back here. I want you to drive the hips forward, okay, good. And now you go reach, reach, reach, stretch over here, look over your left shoulder here, and then come up and push the hips forward Good. So it's kind of like a nice little active stretch here, moving through a lot of the stuff that we just worked on Opening up the hips, opening up the rib cage Perfect.
Speaker 1:Two more Good. And then drive up, bend into it a little bit, boom. Last one oh, that feels good, that's nice. Eh, yeah, that's so good. This one's kind of worth the price of admission. It's probably one of the most frequently prescribed drills that I had. It just kind of connects everything together upper body, lower body, same thing on the other side, right here. Just that, yeah, yeah. So you're going to do a little bit. It just kind of connects everything together up and down.
Speaker 3:Same thing on the other side.
Speaker 2:Right here stack.
Speaker 1:Yeah, top arm reaches, top leg reaches back towards me. Touch the floor back here. Look over your right shoulder now and then drive up Perfect, drive the hips forward, perfect.
Speaker 2:Couple more.
Speaker 1:Oh that's crazy. So simple, right? Last one. Good, now just stand up, move it around and put some weights. Easy peasy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's actually crazy the difference though.
Speaker 1:So test that little thing that you did with Tina, where you bent over, touch your toes Different, eh yeah, so that's like some of her work already taking shape, and then we just support that with some of the work in here. That's it. Thank you, cool. Change it? Alright, let's lift. Thank you, sir. Alright, so I'll do it. Yep, so the one arm dumbbell row is obviously a horizontal rowing pattern. Now we're going to kind of support that with a pressing pattern, but it's much the same kind of concept here.
Speaker 1:Heavy on that front foot light on the back leg and we're trying to keep that ribcage stacked over top the pelvis Reaching hold for a second down slow. So there's a degree of preventing rotation down below but encouraging it up top. So anti-rotation at the bottom, yeah. And rotation to that kind of midsection. Almost a similar kind of position, very similar position, yeah.
Speaker 2:Heavy on that left side, very good.
Speaker 1:And then I like to use the opposite arm here. So reach your left arm forward and notice how that pulls you. Good, and now just elbow to hip. Good, nice down, slow Freeze on the next one at the hip. Good, nice down, slow Freeze on the next one at the top Freeze. Watch. Here we're going to try to bring the ribs down, see that. Now reach a little bit more Boom. There you go. Now you're encouraging some of the movement through that shoulder blade and getting more out of this work for your shoulder as well.
Speaker 1:Down, slow, eyes up, a little bit. Press, good, see if you can press from your abs, press from the belly. There you go, working the whole time. Good, keep going, couple more. So a lot of times it's like separate, quote, unquote, core stability work or whatever you want to call it. Addom will work and all that definitely has a part to play. But the more we can integrate that with some of these more challenging movements, the more we get at it. Good. Last one Eyes up, eyes up, eyes up. Good, now bring it down. So you'll notice that while you're going through that, it's very thought heavy. Right, there's a lot going through your head. I gotta engage this. Hold that, push here, pull that, reach, blah, blah, blah. Where's my head, where's my eyes?
Speaker 1:The better you get at some of the fundamental concepts, which is just managing the pressure down here, the more relaxed you can be with something like this. So what we don't want is, you know there's a time and place as we load this up and it gets very heavy where I almost don't give a shit anymore.
Speaker 1:I'm just like fuck, I'm just getting the thing up overhead, right. But especially with these warm-up sets, I think there's no opportunity to work on better quality movement, which involves a degree of being able to relax while you're working, and that's very characteristic of athleticism as a whole.
Speaker 2:Right, it's not just how fast, powerful, how strong some of these athletes are, but it's like when and how well they relax and your ability to get into that flow state for sure and still maintain that degree of awareness for sure, and that speaks to, like you know, the overlap of, like, the physiological and the psychological right for sure.
Speaker 1:so let's go a little other side there, straight here.
Speaker 2:This is basically any athlete's gonna benefit from this training.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean left, right, left forward a bit.
Speaker 2:Everyone needs rotation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, the spine is designed to both produce and resist rotation. I think too often people get locked into one camp or another, but the answer is generally both. How much one person needs to depend on the individual, their goals, their previous training history Good, nice, good. Lock that right foot in, don't let it move. Push from the belly Up, good, good, good. And now on the next three reps, just notice your breathing once you're trying to calm it down. Inhale on the way down, exhale on the way up Good. Last one Good. So that's another thing. Now, that's a finer point even still. There's the technical execution of your limbs and then there's the cadence of your breathing, which can help support how efficient.
Speaker 1:You are with movement and in and of itself is something that can progress objectively over time. You'll notice, if we were mic'd up there for a couple of reps, it was these short three or four breaths per rep, almost like three reps on the way down, you know. But because again you're thinking you're trying to manage a lot. But tuning into the breathing is probably one of the quickest ways that we can get the whole system to either relax or excite, depending on how we breathe. Cool, yeah, alright, let's load it up and go again.
Speaker 2:And then would you stack this and do focus on the one exercise at a time, or would you kind of do one A, one B?
Speaker 1:I think it depends on the population. Like the vast majority of times, just from an efficiency perspective, I like to do two, three, maybe four exercises back to back and run through them. That kind of speaks to a little bit of like the breathing economy. We're talking about how efficient you are with your breathing. Yes, like the muscles are resting from this, but the whole system is still fatigued. But I'm still asking you to do more. Can you relax when you need to relax, in other words, the short rest time between here and there, and then can you fire it up quick enough to get a heavier row or press or whatever?
Speaker 1:Okay, so some of the drills that we did there. You know, one of the criticisms of things like that is that we're not loading the body. So we're not just doing those drills and not loading the body, we're still lifting heavy. So we're going to use a one-arm dumbbell row now to support some of the work that we did there breath work, getting some of the finer point movements through the pelvis, opening up the rib cage. We can now translate that to something heavy like a one-arm dumbbell row.
Speaker 1:So technically, I want the execution to be like this you can still go heavy, like even if you grab a 100-pound dumbbell here. As long as you can keep what we don't want to move Static and what we do want to move dynamic, we're good. So one hand is a point of reference. Same side leg is going to be down on the ground. Back foot kind of becomes our little anchor, but most of the weight is on this front foot.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm gonna try and keep this steady, keeping my back steady, and reach across with the dumbbell. So you'll see that that's opening up some of the ribcage stuff that we were working on and keeping the pelvis steady. So, from here, pull the elbow to the back hip, just like that. Cool, yeah, give me six to eight reps and maybe start with something a little lighter. Just like that, cool, yeah, give me six to eight reps, and then we start with something a little lighter and then we can work our way up. So a slight twist, reaching across to the big toe Okay, six to eight reps, you want to slide your chest in.
Speaker 2:So you're going to start.
Speaker 1:We want you to row with your left hand so that we open all this up Right. So we want left toes back behind you. Right foot forward. Bring this right foot a little further forward. A nice cue here is back toe in line with the front heels.
Speaker 2:Perfect Back toe front. Heel Heavy on this leg.
Speaker 1:Shoot the hips back a little bit. So now this has to stay locked in by using these guys, and when you reach across, I want you to feel how this opens up. Okay, there you go. Grab the dumbbell heavy with that right hand Good, and give me like a three second count on the way down. Three, two, one, good.
Speaker 3:Now I want you to keep the head still too.
Speaker 1:Yes, there you go. So now we're isolating rotation through that thoracic spine. Okay, there's a degree of preventing rotation, but we're also opening up some of the tissues that's associated with the lateral side of the ribcage there, the lat, these types of things, which is coinciding with some of the work that we've done on the floor there. Let's go. Two more, reach across One more. Nice, there you go. How does that feel relative to like a different one on down the road you've done before?
Speaker 2:Have you intent around that keeping everything steady too, right, I think you can feel. Think that is in place, exactly, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I think a lot of that comes from. It's an underrated aspect of like lifting in general. But even for an upper body exercise like this, full pressure, right, like it's not just about the upper body, it's how we use the lower body to integrate with the upper body. So full pressure with a row. You want to be heavy on that one side, very light back here, and then kind of rip it through. See the other side. There you go. Heavy on the left foot, reach, stay low, pull back to the hip and then reach across. There you go. What are common?
Speaker 2:mistakes with this exercise? Then Just the lack of. There you go. What are common mistakes with this exercise?
Speaker 1:then Just the lack of Probably the set up more often than not. So, like right now, you can see how your right heel kind of went to the floor. Yeah, get right up on those toes. That's going to push you forward more. So on that opposite foot, perfect.
Speaker 1:So I would say like foot pressure is one thing, getting set up the arm path is another big one. So people will often try and aim for higher height with the elbow, when we're actually, you know, trying to move along this more horizontal trajectory with the elbow in back to the hip, as opposed to vertical up to the sky. There you go, awesome, nice Beauty, thanks.
Speaker 2:Beauty. It's interesting you say I have an ability to stay in the moment because I find one of my maybe struggles or things that I'm working on is staying present and not being too excited about the future or maybe discouraged at the difficulty that is associated with trying to do something like this yeah, I think, uh, like, we'll probably explore that a little bit today.
Speaker 1:I think there's people struggle with applying, or there's a powerful kind of aha moment for people when you just show them that you may already be adopting this beneficial strategy somewhere else in your life with some other endeavor, and maybe it's because there's a degree of comfort that you have with that thing that you're just automatically or at least more automatically adopt this ability to, in this case, be present, relax, slow down and then when there's something either new, uncomfortable, challenging or a different type of challenge, you just struggle to apply that. You know it's not as simple as that, but very often people just struggle to apply. You know that same style of thinking and I think it becomes this powerful moment I see this a ton in rehab where you're like listen, you're already doing this, like you're already applying this kind of process-oriented, chip-away, brick-by-brick approach. Just apply that to what this new endeavor is, this new scary situation that you find yourself in, and inevitably that alone is kind of like oh shit, a cool realization for people.
Speaker 2:When was that first moment for you?
Speaker 1:Oh fuck. I think the first moment for you oh fuck, um, I think the first moment was, at least as it pertains to this industry training, health, nutrition was what we alluded to before when you and I were lifting was like the decision to get in the gym yourself. You know where athletes to me at that point in my life, just it felt like it was such a world away. You know, we talked a little bit before about you know, your background in this industry, your background in athletics, and for me it was nonexistent. Like there was a time in my life when I was really young, like probably you know, before I was 15 years old, where sports were, you know, something I was, you know, involved with, interested in this type of thing.
Speaker 1:And then there was, you know, through a number of different experiences in my life, through my mid-teens right through to my late teens, where there was a lot of other life stuff that I was dealing with and that, you know, sort of faded into the background for me and I didn't have this ability to realize that that was like that lost a passion, right, like it was.
Speaker 1:Just it just happened by nature but I didn't realize like this was something I'm incredibly passionate about, and it's maybe reinforced this idea that athletes are so far away from like what I'm interested in. And then I think, as I started to realize, like nutrition, training is something I'm passionate about, and then getting into the gym and having this realization that every little thing that you do in the gym can contribute to moving forward at a pretty, pretty decent clip, especially when you're new to the game, right, and that was like a powerful moment for me, maybe more in retrospect than it was at that exact moment of you know, like you know, if I, if I chip away, then now you can get to where you want to go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the gym provides that with the newbie gains. We talked about that more than anything initially, but then you can start to see changes in your body over time, relatively fast. Like you said, if you're dialed in with your nutrition, you can see tremendous change, both physical and mental, and then people end up staying with their journey, not because of the physical but because of the mental and the other aspects that it impacts To your point. In business, you can apply progressive overload, progressive stimulus, as Jordan Chalo would say. There's ways that you can integrate these performance methods into everyday life and see success. And then you're like oh man, it's's a game. Everyone's playing the game. Some people are playing it better than others. When you break down we talked about how education has been formative for you, but now, even as we were working out, you're like sometimes you got to rip it, sometimes you got to think about it. How do you do that in business and in life?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's a good question. I think probably the most powerful learning moments are by experience themselves. So you know, the idea of like going into that question with this idea that I have to have an answer before I try is already putting yourself behind the eight ball as far as.
Speaker 1:I'm concerned Because you're going to learn a great degree by actually putting yourself out there first. So a lot of people put the cart before the horse where it's like, oh I need to know if this is going to be something that's fruitful or not before I attempt it. You're going to find out if it's fruitful or not by fucking attempting right, or the degree to which it's applicable to your journey or whatever right, um, and so I think that's you know. Send it, rip it. However we want to say it.
Speaker 1:I think that's just always the strategy. I think that, at least generally you know, I try not to use absolutes, but for the most part, I think there has to be a degree of like willingness to to, you know, get your hands dirty and send it, because then you're going to find out much more efficiently, effectively and inform further decisions in a way that has a greater depth and more power than someone telling you like you should only send it to a 7 out of 10. Well, it's like fuck it, let's try an 8 or nine or ten and fucking see what a seven actually means you know.
Speaker 2:So how do you, if you were to apply that to, uh, a status celebrity athlete that you are now responsible for, if you're training here at kinetic house, which is an incredible facility, if you haven't been yet in toronto, uh, you've got to also be aware of the fact that you don't want that person injured. So, hey, andrew, I want you to rip it, but I need you to rip it to the best of your abilities and not break anything. How do you describe that for a young coach listening?
Speaker 1:yeah, great question. So I think that you know this will help shape you know my previous answer a little better, or give it some context. That like, by nature of being willing to send it, doesn't mean that you're being reckless or careless. Right, there's. There should be a degree of thought, um, of forecasting the degree of like, being able to potentially buffer what consequences are at play without sacrificing that main intent of like I'm still to fucking send it here and send it is. You know, it's very vague in this context, but let's just take it to that example of working with an NBA player like Andrew.
Speaker 1:I take on a much greater responsibility there, where you know, if you're in the industry, you might look at it and say, well, why isn't he pushing it harder? Why aren't you doing more challenging movements? Why aren't you squatting heavier? Why aren't you deadlifting heavier? Well, if you work with athletes, one of the things that is a constant is this nature of a timeline crunch. They come to you. Andrew, in particular, this off-season is a great example. Deep playoff run gets named to the Canadian Olympic team is a great example. Deep playoff run gets named to the Canadian Olympic team here for two weeks, then in Paris, then here for three weeks, then back to the season Pretty short off season.
Speaker 2:Yeah, five weeks total training.
Speaker 1:Basically All right Five to seven and we're in contact while he's there and we support him throughout the season. But if I were to take someone like that it's always going to be context dependent or individual specific I'd take someone like that who's already incurred a great deal of fatigue, who's coming off of not just the Olympics but you know the fallout from the Olympics. And then there's, you know, rest week and you know athletes do what they do on rest weeks and then you come back and and just even having a break during the summer, right, like, think about from a human being.
Speaker 2:I know you know people during a nine to five yeah, you know, take a couple weeks vacay throughout their year as an athlete, people just assume well deserved, right, well deserved as they should.
Speaker 1:Um, and so you come back and there's a nature of like having to understand both the person and the fundamentals of you know, physiological needs, biomechanical needs, these types of things.
Speaker 1:So when you marry both your relationship with the person with a biomechanical, a deep understanding of biomechanics and physiology, that cap, that constraint, has already been set for you. Right, I don't choose that. He needs to send it to this level when his body is telling me this is the max we can go. So you look for different things. You look for there's a certain style of questioning that we ask. There's a certain way that they carry their body language, there's a certain way that they move that's going to help you indicate and you'll learn this through experience as a coach indicate what that person's threshold is today, this week, this month. And by nature of sending it with a certain constraint, we choose exercises that, by themselves, when you're pushing this exercise as hard as you can, it's naturally going to constrain how much you can load it, because we know that the body is already slightly compromised, because it's under recovered. So that's kind of how you go about it.
Speaker 2:I'm always curious because you know we talked about Tina just did some work on me. I'm 10 days out from Toronto Marathon. I'm like I understand a low CNS day, being a little drained, maybe not nutrition at where it should be, and it's like okay, as a coach, you get an athlete for an hour or two per day. You don't know what they've done, whether they're being honest with you. That takes a certain individual that has the ability to draw that out. One of the things I admire about you listening to a pod. Also talk about the psychological aspect that you almost put more emphasis on that. How do you acquire that knowledge? Where's that come from? How'd you do it?
Speaker 1:I think it starts with, you know, going back to that willingness to be curious, you know, like daring to be curious enough to honor the thing that's always kind of crossing your mind in some way shape or form. So, growing up in the restaurant industry, my parents had a restaurant in the city of Toronto for three plus decades. Myself and my three siblings grew up working in the industry, working in the restaurant specifically, and in Italian there's a word it was an Italian restaurant. We're of an Italian background. There's a word, casa bottega, which means like house and store, or business and home right, and it's kind of one word that evokes this imagery of like, both of those kind of being the same thing, because very often in Italy and European towns you'll see businesses, you know, on the storefront level, and then the house just above it or the apartment just above it, and that's how we live. We grew up above the restaurant, and so it was very much kind of synonymous where house and home were. You know, house and business were all together.
Speaker 2:Work-life balance. Ever heard of it? Yeah, no, that doesn't exist.
Speaker 1:You know, you wake up in the kitchen. There's a Sebastian Maniscalco joke, one of my favorite comedians Italian-American guy, of course, respect, uh, where he talks about he's like I met my father for the first time at 14 years of age and he came around the corner. He's like hey, go start a business. You know like, to a certain degree that was very much true. It was like this responsibility that was almost like inherently, like bred into you as you grew up. Yeah, you know, it's like I'm gonna be asked to either like be involved in this business or there's just an expectation that you work there.
Speaker 1:And I'm grateful for it, because I learned a ton there and one of the things I learned was that it wasn't just a restaurant. It was much more than a restaurant. They offered Italian language classes, they offered cooking lessons, it was a space that was rented out for ceremonies, for different presentations, for speaker series, they had a number of politicians from around the world, there was concerts. It was all kinds of things that were run through the restaurant, although very much on the front of it it was a restaurant. So for me, I've always wanted to open a gym and now I'm fortunate, with my incredible business partners to have this performance center and sports therapy clinic here in Toronto, and one of the things I always knew I wanted to do was make it more than a gym On the face. When you come in, there's dumbbells, barbells, whatever, but when you come in it's more than that. And what is it? There's always a qualitative like can't quite put your finger on it, but for me it's a very intentful, I'm putting my finger on it.
Speaker 1:It's relationships, it's the ability to connect with people, and how do you do that? It's something I grew up learning from my father and my mom in the restaurant industry that you have to be willing to go and create the conversation yourself. Um, and it was something that, as a kid working in the restaurant, it was, you know, thrust upon you, you know like I turned the corner, my dad was like hey, come say hi to so-and-so and you.
Speaker 1:You're a 12, 14-year-old kid, very illegally, working behind the bar pouring alcoholic drinks. But you look up and it's someone of prominence, whoever it is, an athlete, a politician and you just know in that moment there's a presence here. I have to act a certain way and you adopt a behavior.
Speaker 3:Why is?
Speaker 1:that Well, it's certain subconscious psychological elements at play there and I kind of started exploring that slowly and slowly, and eventually it led to, you know, a passion for communication and psychology it's almost the athlete to coach relationship too.
Speaker 2:Right, there's an inherited respect that's there and that you should provide as an athlete to your coach. We just actually at Kelowna Hockey Fest in Kelowna. We were listening to the Oilers head chef was shallow there and he was talking about the fact that nutrition brings so much more than just the food. It's the camaraderie within the team, it's the excitement around what meals coming next, how you can bond together over that food and you know, when you talk about communication, that goes hand in hand with what you're eating during your day-to-day and afterwards and how the team feels the next day, the next week.
Speaker 2:There's a story that he shared air canada decided to throw some treats on the plane after the oilers made the stanley cup finals and mcdavid jumped on that plane. He's like immediately sent a text to the coach or the head chef. He's like what the blank is this stuff doing on here? They are that detailed that everything that goes everywhere, just the amount of thought that goes into that I'm always shocked. You see it, obviously, when you're working with players individually, are there specific players that you love working with in particular, I say players, athletes. Is it gen pop? Are there specific sports that athletes pursue that you find are kind of unique or that have a sixth gear that you love working with, in particular when you see those intangibles that they apply well, it's funny.
Speaker 1:You bring up connor like I've had the good fortune of having worked with him in the past. Briefly, I'm not his coach. He's amazing coaches with gary roberts program, adrian and sylvie who work with him very frequently friends of mine, they work with him every off-season, I should say. And you know, in those short experiences that I had with him, that mentality was like rang true very quickly. It was very apparent, very obvious that there's a presence here. Much like you know me introducing myself to these people of prominence in my youth, you know it was very obvious that there was like a this guy brings something to the table and it's like my responsibility to match that or to respect that and to give that space. Yeah, uh, and that I think that inherent.
Speaker 1:You know, I get often asked like what's the best advice for young coaches? And I always say the same thing leave the room better than you found it. And I think the reason why I love that advice is what it takes like two things. It takes two approaches kind of, you know, well melded together one, being able to appraise what makes this room successful already when you walk into it. So there's a degree of humility that you have to sensitively tune into what's already happening. That's good here, and there's kind of like a challenge to you of like how, what can I do to contribute and make this better right? So it's both an awareness and kind of an impetus to to act on that and do something about it.
Speaker 1:And so with connor particularly, you know like it's giving that respect, it's giving him the space to do his thing, and but you notice the humility and the work ethic kind of meld together very quickly. He's not brash or arrogant by any means, but he's very detail-oriented. If you're going to ask him to do something, he's going to want to know what the exact tempo is. He's going to want to know what the reps are. He's not just going to go into an exercise haphazardly without an intent, and I think that's one of the things that you see prominently with athletes. So I I like to work with everyone who has that right.
Speaker 1:And I like to the people who don't or don't come to it by nature, that I have the good fortune of working with. I like to try and discover that with them right. Like, or what can I do to help them discover that that kind of approach, Cause I think it's, it's powerful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the weight room can instill that like that dog in you. For sure that some people don't have. But then when you, you know, have a couple hundred pounds on your back or over top of your head, you, you got to get that up yeah, sink or swim, for sure are there moments that you taper that in or expose your athletes to when you know it's the right time for?
Speaker 1:sure and I think it comes back to reading body language right like there's going to be times, rehab or not. You take on different approaches, different energies, different psychological energies, you know, go at different stages of the training process. So let's take, you know, an athlete in the early stages of a rehab. They got injured in season, their season's over, you know. Now they have to bring in this long, arduous rehab process and and there's a no matter who it is, there's, you know, generally a degree of anxiety that that's present with it. Whether they let that on or not, you know, overtly it's there. And I think, being able to get to the point where you have to tell them listen, relax, the season's done, there's nothing we can do about that. Let's control what we can, which is, you know, know, get better today and maybe you have some success with that over time.
Speaker 1:But there comes a tipping point where, at some point in the rehab process, even if the season's not next week, you notice that this person has fallen into a bit of what we call like a rehab mindset, where they don't want to push themselves anymore. They start to think more about what hurts than what doesn't. They start to think more about what's limiting them than what opportunities they have, and it's present in their body language and the language that they use. Now's the time to flip the script. Now's the time to tell them like hey, listen, I know we've been through this rehab together. You've worked hard, I get it Acknowledgement off the hop right, but I think you have more in you, right, positive language. I'm encouraging them to bring more. I'm not just, you know, cracking the whip and saying fuck you, suck, do more you know, that doesn't work very rarely.
Speaker 1:So I think some level of positive encouragement with you know, a very kind of I know your standards here, whether you're injured or not, let's you know. Let's pick up the pace here a little bit.
Speaker 2:And then yeah very quickly.
Speaker 1:You very often see this kind of like flip switch and then they're on it, so I think that's always a cool moment for me uh, I can imagine a non-cool moment is when mike camilleri calls you out for not not sending him and andy chiodo the stretches you did the night before yeah, good times, man learned a lot, you know, I think, again, going back to the whole willingness to send it like I stepped into that training environment with no training experience whatsoever and you know I'm grateful for the opportunity to have worked with, you know, incredible athletes in the NHL, um, you know, in a pretty cool, like grungy training environment and one of the things I learned routinely was you're going to fuck up, just like they're going to fuck up, their coach is going to tell them they fucked up.
Speaker 1:Uh, you know, but if you, if you can find a way to like level with them on a human level or humanize the process and the relationship a little bit and not be afraid to kind of acknowledge when you, when you've done something wrong and be very quick to then write it you, when you've done something wrong and be very quick to then write it, you'll put yourself in a good spot. And you know that was a fun moment where Kami called me out for something. I, you know, I promised him to send him this list of stretches that he wanted to do and then I forgot and you know the day went as it went and he just fucking laid into me the next day. But you know it was a powerful moment, I could tell you. I was very, you know, positively on edge after that where you're.
Speaker 1:Just that speaks to like the sensitivity to the environment. Every time I walked into that room or saw him I was like what does cammy need right now?
Speaker 1:hyper aware like is his drink filled up? Is it fucking this, that? And then eventually that dissipates and there's this kind of like he recognizes what you're doing and then you can kind of get back to like joking and being being cool with it. But if I, if I didn't have that approach, I don't think you know you re-establish that relationship uh, what sports did you play growing up?
Speaker 2:because you said you were playing everything up till 15.
Speaker 1:Then you discovered the gym like hockey, a little bit of hockey. I actually liked like maybe quote-unquote non-traditional sports. In canada, badminton was something that I like gravitated towards in my like really early youth. Yeah, I just liked like the speed of the of the sport itself it's incredible to watch crazy at the highest level.
Speaker 1:It's one of those sports where just like from the hips down, like delete what's going on. And the fact that it's called a shuttlecock, like just throw that out the window and just appraise from like a movement, like the agility is, is unparalleled there's a reason.
Speaker 2:On social media people are like this guy's prepping for badminton or this gal's prepping for badminton, like it's legit yeah, it's crazy people for sure, what are some other underrated sports in your opinion?
Speaker 1:tennis, again like another racket sport which are amazing for mental acuity.
Speaker 1:Like yeah, the results yeah, like kind of hand-eye coordination. Tennis is one of those interesting ones because there's the necessity to be able to produce power, there's the necessity to be able to produce power repeatedly, in other words, power endurance. Then there's aerobic fitness. Some of these matches are three, four hours in length. There's agility. So you look at a sport like hockey, which is a very traditional Lacrosse, another one like a very traditional Canadian sport, you would very quickly say speed, strength, power endurance, power endurance. Those are very obvious. But you wouldn't look at a sport like tennis and apply the same. But it's that and more Because of the nature of that kind of conditioning level that's required. It's infinite respect to tennis players at any level, having been fortunate to work with a couple of them. Another sport was soccer, classic Italian background right.
Speaker 1:Like played goalie, a little bit growing up and I think Same tendies. Yeah, love it, man, Like even shallow right. Shout out to shallow for helping us get this organized.
Speaker 2:I think there's something to be said about goalies.
Speaker 1:Don't do it.
Speaker 2:Don't say it.
Speaker 3:It's not that we're crazy man A little fucked up right.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think there's more of a there's thought going on, yeah. Whether people call that crazy, yeah, I think there's. You know, people are going through a bit more of a process. You're able to witness the entire game being played, whereas athletes who are on the ice as a centerman or defenseman only have three-quarters of the ice or half the ice. Your goalie. You see everything, and I think there's something to be said for those athletes that see everything. They absorb more if they have their eyes open.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think it speaks to again the challenge of different sports, different positions.
Speaker 1:We talked earlier when we were working out like it's not just like when you're on, but how well athletes can like, quote, unquote turn it off psychologically and physiologically, this kind of like rest, this static and dynamic kind of nature or interplay.
Speaker 1:And I think you know you look at a goalie in the NHL, like there can be minutes, definitely seconds, but sometimes minutes at a time where there's nothing going on for them, and then all of a sudden they're hemmed in, the puck gets dumped in and now it's shift over, shift over them and it's overtime and you know, all of a sudden they went from like watching for two minutes to like doing the splits and like throwing their body all over the place and like being dialed in and doing that very methodically and with care, care, um, and so I think to me, I think, gravitating towards not just sports that had, you know, a very unique element, but like a genuine passion, for you know, the athletes that I looked up to, growing up, were all there was like the singularity to them. There was this very like, unique, you know, kind of, you know to the self element, to what they did goaltenders and specifically, I loved, you know, gianluigi buffon, the italian national yeah, yeah football legend Curtis Joseph, obviously growing up in.
Speaker 1:Toronto, and so I relished that, I looked forward to that. I enjoyed the responsibility of that kind of like being the last line of defense type thing. But it also manifested itself in different ways for me and like the hobbies that I selected as well.
Speaker 1:Poker, like no limit, texas hold'em poker was something I was like extremely fond of growing up and it's like when you get down to heads up and it's you versus the other person, it's psychological warfare and it's a really, really interesting, you know, play on communication, on psychology. You know, one of my favorite poker players is Phil Ivey and I took a lot from going back to your question about how did I learn some of these things about communication and psychology. Phil Ivey taught me a lot not directly, indirectly, very much about reading people, about being aware of your surroundings, about tells, and so I think that goes a long way in communication and it just was a theme that was present in some of the sports that I gravitated towards what are some of the other themes that make Dante Martella unique and like the hammer is the that's what I'm going to point.
Speaker 3:it yeah.
Speaker 1:Uh.
Speaker 2:I think I always like to ask this question because there's specific attributes that people bring to the table that makes them unique, that allows them to succeed in whatever they pursue. Clearly you've got some of those, maybe identified, and if you don't, you're being humble yeah, um yeah, unique is an interesting word.
Speaker 1:I I don't know if they're unique, but I know I know what makes me me like. I don't know if they're. I guess you know everyone's unique to their own degree, but I think it's like in the amount, like I'd use this analogy a lot with my athletes or like just like dials on a switchboard or for a dj right like because oftentimes they're like oh we're not doing enough conditioning or they.
Speaker 1:There's apprehension around. When am I going to lift heavier? I'm like, listen, all the qualities are just going to be present all the time. Sometimes this dial is going to go up, this dial comes down a little, but it's never going to go down to zero. For the most part it's there, it's present.
Speaker 1:So I guess for me, like you know, if I say something like, I like to like, bring, like a thoughtful approach to training, I like to quote, unquote focus on the individual, both from an injury perspective, from a movement perspective, but also from this kind of psychological element we've alluded to. So I don't know if that me unique, but it's definitely one of the dials on my switchboard that I find is high, it's a very high priority for me. What else I think? A willingness to constantly take risks as a person, as a business owner, to send it, um, as a person, as a business owner, to send it, uh, to send it, as it were, but to to have guardrails in place as well. You know to be humble enough to like ask for help, um, or you know, at least you know, be aware of the insecurities and kind of limitations that I have as a person, um, and do my best to to you know, acknowledge them and make those part of the process as well. Lean on other people this kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Who are those? Some of the people that you looked towards or look up to as you were going through this process. Yeah, business and strength conditioning, like as you're talking about that, you're leaning on individuals, but you also probably you know when you were going through over the past decade, but you also probably you know when you were going through over the past decade aspiring to own your own gym who are those people that you looked up to, that you could kind of see that vision come into fruition.
Speaker 1:I mean, you know the guys are pretty scripty. I don't have to look too much farther than that, of course, my business partners, my family, my wife, my two dogs, like they're it's it's crazy how you know impactful um, these people have been in my life, but I look to what Shallow and Junta and Killian have built at Prescript and the ethos that they model. This isn't just who you see on social media, it's very much who they are. I remember when I started my business prior to Kinetic House, my independent business, you know it was one of the first things I did was reach out to Shell and we didn't really have a relationship yet, but I saw what they were doing with Prescript and I was already like eight, nine years in the game.
Speaker 1:I felt like I was a pretty good coach. I'd had some experiences with some of the aforementioned athletes. But when I left my previous place of employment and took the leap to start my own business, I think you just naturally gravitate towards people who are doing that and you see the people who are maybe a little ahead of you and where you want to go, and more than that. Again, I prioritize the relationship. So I looked at what they were and.
Speaker 1:I took L1 because I wanted to get to know them more. Yes, I wanted to see what the course was about and check my knowledge level, where my perceived abilities were relative to where they actually are. I took a lot out of that course. There were some fundamentals, for sure, that I felt comfortable with, but I also took some learning lessons home. But the most fruitful thing was reaching out to Shallow and saying hey, man, thanks for what you do with Prescript. It was one of the reasons why I took the leap and did my own thing. I saw what you guys were doing. I felt like now was the right time. Let me know if you have any feedback for me. That's the message I sent to him. Pretty quickly he responded and, you know, said like keep doing your thing. Words of encouragement, and then we just kept in touch and and the relationship formed as it has.
Speaker 2:Yeah, now you're running l3 down in tampa with them l2 courses. You've got foot uh ankle nutrition. You're ripping everything hey is there anything?
Speaker 1:you can't do or anything you avoid doing, like yeah, I think my wife has a pretty long list so things I can't do, she'll be happy we'll get her on for the next episode, the bloopers um, but yeah, I think, yeah, we've got the, we're l2 is coming up and we're teaching a couple of weeks, uh, of lectures on the foot, in the hand, specifically, and that came by way of the. You know, again, this goes back to like there's not like one linear path for the way you go about things.
Speaker 1:I went from like not being involved in athletics for several years of my life to training some of the best athletes in the world very quickly. Um, I went from not taking l2 to like teaching l3 you know.
Speaker 1:so all of that came by way of like putting myself out there type thing, and so, when communication and psychology was something I knew this has a relationship with mental health, which I'm very passionate about and this is something that I want to explore and bring to my craft and place an emphasis on I reached out to Shal and said, hey, man, this is what I'm thinking of doing.
Speaker 1:Is there an opportunity to do this? With Prescript, they were trying to scale down on some of the courses they were offering, but they were launching L3. And it was like perfect timing for me and what felt like for Prescript as well, what I brought as far as like a unique element with a focus on communication and how that impacts a coach's journey and getting back to working with some of these elite athletes was very powerful for me. So, as much as like yes, I felt like I brought something to them. It was incredibly rewarding for me to get back to a level where, you know, I had built my business for a couple years. I had worked with some elite athletes, but you know, I hadn't had that experience of being in a room with like 20, 30 of the you know tops of the tops for a few years, and so they afforded me that opportunity, which I'm super grateful for, and then L2 came after that.
Speaker 2:Now you got Kinetic House. You're going to be filling out. Dude, I sincerely appreciate you having me out here, getting me on the table with Tina, putting me through the ringer here with a couple of lifts. First of many conversations, where can people find you on social? Is it something that they can be reaching out? One of the things I always do is leave space here for people to share their biggest piece of advice. You've dropped like an hour plus worth of bombs here, but where can people find you? Where should they be sourcing out your content if they want to learn more about what you got going on?
Speaker 1:And then drop that last wisdom gold nugget if you got me Okay, so you can find us at Kinetic House H-A-U-S on Instagram. Follow us there, because we'll be launching some of the services that we have on our website coming soon. I'm specifically at Malleus Performance M-A-L-L-E-U-S performance on Instagram Happy to chat about any of these concepts if you want to, and then come check us out. Come by the gym if you want to check us out. We're kind of uptown Toronto here on Orifice Road 107. Orifice Road by Yorkdale Mall, come check us out. And Gold Nugget Wisdoms. So I said that I love Leave the Room better than you found it. That's probably my favorite one.
Speaker 2:Shiloh didn't love the way I positioned this question, so maybe I push something in particular here.
Speaker 2:You've worked with TV personalities like Kate Burness. You've got Olympic athletes under your belt. You've got burness yeah, you've got olympic athletes under your belt. You've got the podcast that you've hosted. You possess a plethora of skills as you continue to add layers to your tool belt. What are some things, as you focus on staying present, but also look to the future that you want to achieve, that you can put out there that people can maybe associate with or align with, and maybe even get.
Speaker 1:Um. So you mentioned kate. She actually gave me a great piece of advice. So when I hosted her on my podcast uh, so kate is, is kate, she's incredible, right, she does so many things so well.
Speaker 1:Uh, and speaking specifically to her broadcast career not that I want to limit her to that in any capacity I was curious.
Speaker 1:Like I'm hosting her on a podcast, we've been friends for a long time.
Speaker 1:I train her, but you know, we've been friends for a long time and I was curious because, going into that, there was still a moment, despite like knowing this person really well, there was still a moment where I was like, oh fuck, I like I gotta be dialed in here for sure, this is kate burness, yeah, and I asked her at the end a very similar question like what, what advice do you have for me?
Speaker 1:And she was, like you know, ditch the script. So I think ditching the script in a certain way is incredibly powerful. You got to learn the rules of the book, but you also got to know when to throw the rule book out, because being able to kind of stay in the moment, be organic with it, tuned to the person, and the relationship that to me is, has been a powerful lesson that I'll never tire of learning and you know Kate was was the one that kind of had maybe the most powerful reminder for me, because she said if you can ditch the script and, just you know, play off of the person, especially in an much like you've done, it's uh, it just makes for a way more organic and powerful interaction as the title of the pre-script episode that you're on, 490, I think it is.
Speaker 1:Uh, play the man there you go, yeah, full circle appreciate it, brother.
Speaker 2:yeah, dude, we'll do it again. Hey, thanks for tuning in to the athletes podcast, the 245, 245th episode. Big shout out goes to Dante and Tina for coming on the show helping me out in preparation for my marathon that we finished in under four hours. Can you believe it? Can you really believe it? That was pretty crazy. Hey, I just want to also say thank you to you for being along right until the very end of this episode, and if you listen to every single episode, I sincerely appreciate it more than you know.
Speaker 2:I can't thank you enough for tuning in on a weekly basis, supporting us purchasing perfect sports products using the code AP20 at checkout, so that we can keep doing this on a weekly basis. I hope you enjoyed the show. I can't wait for next week's episode for you to tune in. Oh and, by the way, I listened to a Mel Robbins podcast that talks about the fact we need to hear that people love us more, and I want to remind you if you're listening to this I love you. I appreciate you. I hope you have a great day. Bye.
