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
Fueling Young Athletes The Right Way with Clark Hardman
Clark Hardman, CEO of Thread Performance, joins us to rethink how young athletes fuel growth, focus, and safe strength. We dig into trust, bioavailability, multi-sport benefits, and why snack bars and kids’ menus need a hard reset.
• mission to build youth-specific supplements
• why processed food hurts focus and recovery
• trust gap in teen supplements and how to fix it
• bioavailability and iron deficiency in young athletes
• connective tissue support with eggshell membrane
• adaptogens for stress and attention in school and sport
• multi-sport development vs early specialization
• spike in non-contact injuries and prevention
• integrating training, nutrition, sleep, and mindset
• creatine use for developing athletes and safety
• lessons from Clark’s baseball path and coaching influence
• changing snack bars and daily touchpoints for performance
• where to learn more and how parents can lead
Use the code AP10 at checkout to save 10% on Thread Performance supplements
Use the code AP15 at checkout to save 15% at perfectsports.com
Check out our Website | Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram | Tiktok | Spotify | Apple | Google | Youtube l Save 15% on Perfect Sports Supplements
Hey, welcome back to the 273rd episode of the Athletes Podcast. Today we're featuring Clark Hardman, the CEO of Thread Performance. It's a company that's carving out a really important space in the nutrition supplement space, that being specifically for young children, youth, young athletes who want to perform their best and who are looking to build their bodies to the best of their abilities, putting the best supplements and nutrients into their bodies. That's what Thread was built for. It's about doing it safely with products built specifically for those developing bodies. He's giving young competitors across the world access to clean, trustworthy, performance-improving supplements without all the garbage. I'm excited to dig into the mission, the vision, the science, and the impact around thread performance and the impact they're having on the next generation of athletes. And I actually went above and beyond, got a little code for you guys. If you use the code AP10 at checkout, you can save 10% on thread performance supplements, so you can try them yourselves. But we also have a sponsor of this show. It's called Perfect Sports Supplements. They're what I used, I've been using consistently for three, four, five years now. Diesel, you guys know, the best in the business. They even gave us a little Christmas gift here. So we're gonna open this because, as you folks know. Oh! We got the code AP15 at checkout. Peppermint, bark, diesel, protein, powder. The best in the business. Use the code AP15 at checkout to save 15%. Creatine, glutamine, protein, everything you need. I've been crushing the Mag Z3 capsules at night. Unbelievable for my magnesium and zinc needs. For you folks who need those extra supplements, use the code AP15 at checkout. Check out perfectsports.com. This is the 273rd episode of the Athletes Podcast today, featuring Clark Hardman. Here we go. Find out everything we need to know about Clark Hardman, the ins, the outs, what it's like being drafted by the Chicago Cubs, what it's like to create a nutrition brand with an NFL star in Jordan Palmer. And then also, you know, what it's like to raise some kids, be a dad, a husband, you know, maybe the most important thing that you do in your life. Clark, welcome to the show. Thank you for coming on the Athletes Podcast. Really appreciate your time here today. Excited for you to share a bit more about thread performance, what it's like being the CEO, how you've built this insane brand. Welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. Excited to talk about this.
SPEAKER_01:It's an important topic. We don't talk about it enough growing up. I was listening to other podcasts doing my research on you, recognizing that conversations at the dinner table just have not been the same over the past 20, 30 years because what you were taught, what your parents were taught, is different than what I was taught and what your kids are taught now from a nutritional standpoint. Would love to maybe have you start there by unpacking what that's been like over the past couple decades, building not just thread performance, but your own nutritional protocol that you're passing along to your kids and your Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Starting with the conversation at the dinner table, that's really the mission, right? Like how can we get parents and kids to start recognizing what they put into their body and the impacts that they're having on the field or off the field, right? In the classroom, how they show up every day, how they feel. Oftentimes they don't make that correlation between the food that they're eating and oh, I'm like, I'm on this big high and I feel this, I feel a sugar rush, or I'm I'm lethargic and I can't get into this next year and perform at my highest level. I go back to this, and Jordan and I have have a very similar story. We both had incredible upbringings. Our parents were fantastic. So this is by no means anything that they did to hinder our performance, but they were very busy and they worked really hard to provide a great lifestyle for us. And so we ended up being frozen, frozen food dinners every single night, or fast food, driving through anything that was convenient to get food and substance in our body. That's what our parents did. Right. And so I grew up on fast food and I grew up on more soda than I care to admit, more sugar than I and any child should have for that matter. And you look back and you wonder how that changed my performance or changed Jordan's performance or the longevity of the career, right? And honestly, it wasn't talked about. It just wasn't, it wasn't a thing at the table. Like you talked about the diets, the fad diets are very different back then than they are now. And the understanding of nutrition and the impact that it has on our kids is wildly different now just because of the knowledge that we have, right? Our kids show up with a lot of times they're written off as character traits or issues or challenges with focus, or they're tired, or maybe they have sudden outbursts. And a lot of these can be overcome with just proper nutrition. And the reality is, is these kids' diets, 70% of it is made up of highly processed foods, right? And so you're putting highly processed foods in these kids' diets. Unfortunately, they're just not there, it's like putting bad fuel into a into a Ferrari, right? Like you wouldn't do an a regular unleaded into a Ferrari. You're gonna put racing fuel into that, right? And and allow it to perform at its highest level. And so this knowledge that we have right now set us off on this journey to to try and make an impact with this younger audience, and where sports are probably more important and more talked about than ever. We have NIL out there. There's more opportunities for kids to make money at a very young age, which is a separate bucket we can talk about. But there's more emphasis on us parents really trying to educate our kids and set them up for success and change that behavior within the household.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and it's such an important topic because everyone needs to eat, right? Everyone's got to consume, everyone's got to ultimately perform, whether you're trying to be on the national stage in front of hundreds of thousands of people watching, or you're just performing within your house with your family, right? I even remember listening to something recently about talking about like Derek Rose, where he had a terrible diet and he was arguably the best basketball player in the world for a couple of years there, and has really diminished after that because in in large part he said his nutrition wasn't good, you know, he was eating a ton of candy crap, and obviously that's not something that you're gonna be performing your best on after it's good for energy in the moment, like you said on other podcasts, but you know, maybe from a full-time fuel standpoint, not the best. Why focus and serve young athletes? Like, what's the the mission there? Was that obviously between you and Jordan talking about it? Like, oh, we didn't have this growing up. I talk about it too. I've brought it up. My parents, again, I really appreciate everything that they did for me growing up, but they didn't know the same information that we know now. So, again, that's maybe intrinsically why I started this podcast six years ago was to try and educate, entertain, and inspire that next gen so that they didn't necessarily make the same mistakes that I did.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's a great question. They so it this started because Jordan was receiving the same questions over and over again through his camps, through the quarterbacks that he trained, and really there wasn't a good answer for it. I won't forget the call that I got from Jordan where he said, Hey, I'm I'm I'm receiving the same question, and I took a dive into this. I'd love for you to take a look at this and tell me what you think. But the question is, what should I be giving my kids to separate themselves on and off the field? Because there's a very crowded world of supplements out there. It's a very crowded space. In fact, we're pretty crazy for getting involved in it, right? But the reality is that when you look at it, we feel like there's a true gap in white space where supplements today are not crafted with a developing body and mind. They're made for you and I, for somebody that wants to get back to a moment in time in which they felt physically, mentally, or emotionally. And so supplements today are marketed and tailored towards that audience. And the reality is that these kids are their bodies are growing, they're changing, they're going through puberty, they have more social pressures than ever with social media and everything that's going on with school. That we're asking more of them from a sports specialization movement. And you couple that with their busy lifestyles and poor diets, and they need the most supplementation. And so we we felt like it's just a very underserved market and with a lack of education as well. So we did an early focus group survey, and we found that 87% of teenage athletes are taking a supplement on a daily basis. A lot of them, right? Yeah. But only 29% of them trust what they're putting in their body, right?
SPEAKER_01:So that was the biggest thing because I I I coach uh junior basketball here locally, and I was in the process of you know talking about these kids about how they can get bigger, faster, stronger. And one of the things I said is, you know, make sure you're consuming high-quality foods. Whole foods, obviously, like you and I can both agree that's the the gold standard, but if not supplementation, but then you've got parents who are skeptical about supplements and even kids. So, okay, sorry, I cut you off there. But it it is so only 29% actually believe in what they're taking.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, you're right. And and you hit on a really crucial point that we believe in. If every kid could eat a perfect, wholesome diet, then thread, there'd be no reason for thread to exist, right? You eat the perfect, but the perfect diet doesn't exist out there. Our food quality is really poor. Their access to it is really poor. And so we have to supplement by nature. Also, we're not supplementing a lot of things, we're introducing new minerals, new ingredients to them that they're not finding in their everyday diet, which is really the game changer, right? Like eggshell membrane. Egg shell membrane has three different types of collagen that it's focused on collagen one, five, and ten, which specifically are targeting your tendon and ligament strength, like your joint health. And so we're fortifying the body while we're building muscle strength. Because if you do one without the other, you create vulnerability in the body, right? And you're not gonna go and find that in your everyday diet, okay? And so ashwagand is another super herb that you have in there that we feel like is a really powerful ingredient for this audience. So there's certain things in here that we feel like you can't find from your wholesome diet. And so we we want to provide that, but the reality is like we want to create the behavior and the understanding that maybe you can mix in a healthy portion of something next to your Chick-fil-A, right? I I never draw a hard line in the sand with our kids because I I think I want them to be kids. I want them to understand that a sugar every once in a while is okay, fast food every once in a while is okay. Go have fun, go eat the birthday cake, go do all the things. But when you want to perform at the highest level, like this is what that's gonna take. And let's talk about how that works for you and how you can show up differently on the field and achieve your goals, not mine. I already did, I already I already played this game, right? You tell me what your goals are. And if that's to be the best athlete, if that if that's to be a pianist, if that's to be a professor, well, let me help you get there. Let's figure that out. But the reality is nutrition is gonna play a really important part of that journey, and here's what it's gonna take to be successful in that role.
SPEAKER_01:For a parent listening who's got a young athlete at home, why should they choose your products over other supplements out there? Obviously, you just talked about some of those intricacies, but like let's maybe dive into the testing around it. You've got a team behind this, you Jordan, that are feeding it to your kids, too, frankly. Aaron Factor, who's the diesel sports individual that I work with, perfect sports, and he feeds his you know protein powder to his kids. They believe in it. You're obviously you know reaping what you sow, giving your kids those products as well. How much do you think that would have impacted you growing up as well if you were able to take those supplements?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So the first part of your question of why thread, we partnered. I'm not a formulator by trade. This is not a space where I come out here. I don't claim to be a scientist. I know enough to speak to it, and that's about it. So we partnered with best in class formulators behind some of the people minds behind Garden of Life Nutrition, Ancient Nutrition, some great brands out there that we we think very highly of. And so we partnered with them to specifically craft formulas that are going to impact developing bodies. Okay. And so, first and foremost, that's why you would choose us. Or are we have high quality ingredients, highly bioavailability in all the ingredients, are bioavailable for all the ingredients. And so the this game of absorption comes into play. Okay. So you can go and you can just take an iron supplement. You can go out there and put all the iron that you want in your body. But if your body is not optimized to absorb that iron, you're just going to discard it. Okay. It's not going to be retained. And so there are very specific ingredients that work synergistically to help increase the bioavailability and the absorption of iron in your body. Iron deficiency is very prominent within this age group. 51% of female teenage athletes suffer from iron or ferritin deficiencies. 17% of male athletes. And that greatly impacts your performance. You show up and you're lethargic, right? You just can't hit that next gear, that next level. And so we focus on very pure, very natural ingredients that are going to impact the body and allow it to function at its highest level. Okay. As far as how it would have impacted me and what you know, my journey and all of this, it would have changed, it would have flipped my world upside down. Right. Of just understanding, I wish I knew now. I wish I knew today what I or I wish I knew back then what I knew today. I, like I said, grew up on the fast food diet. My body broke down. I had two back surgeries that ended my career. I had a shoulder shoulder surgery, I had a knee surgery. I was, I it just seemed like I was battling my own body for my entire career. That's what it felt like, right? And I still performed at a very high level. I was, I was fortunate enough to be able to play a game that I love for a very long time. But the what ifs crept in for sure. The aftermath of all this, you go back and you say, like, what if I just trained differently, show up, showed up differently, had a different diet, had it had a different level of intentionality into my practice. What could have been, right? But I I don't have any regrets. My my mission and I believe my purpose here is to impact this generation differently and set my kids up for success, set my family up for success with the knowledge that I have today. And so I'm excited about being able to offer now my knowledge and this brand to those parents that you're talking about that are seeking out solutions. I think that's really important for them. We all want to do the what's best for our kids.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I I listened to one of your other podcasts, and one of the things that you said is the you could get into the statistics talking to your kids about the fact that like when I was growing up, one in 10,000 goalies made the NHL. So that was like the stat that everyone, oh, I gotta be the best at a one in 10,000. And you're like, man, like why the heck would you force your kid to know that statistic when in reality all you gotta do is give them the best support they possibly can receive, and if they want to achieve that, then let them go try and pursue that. Sure, it's an absolutely egregious thing to try and achieve, but hey, someone's got to do it. And you've learned these lessons over the past 10, 20, 30 years, you've gone through the trials and tribulations. So maybe this is the best thing for you to be able to set your kids up for success or that next generation, right? Like I look at it, people are like, oh man, do you wish you played golf or played hockey and worked harder, whatever? I'm like, Yeah, for sure, obviously, of course. But I'm actually gonna be able to impact so many more people doing this podcast right now on a weekly basis than I would ever do if I was a good hockey goalie playing over in Europe or playing in the NHL, whatever the case may be. So it just made me think about the fact that like you right there, multiple surgeries, years of going up and down, figuring that out. It's like this everything ends up happening for a reason, and you're probably actually in a better position now, thanks to the things that occurred to you over those past couple of decades, right?
SPEAKER_00:Right. You know, you're absolutely right. I I just don't subscribe to this idea that we we need to point our kids in a certain direction. Like my dream is not their dream, their dream is is fully attainable, and I'm not gonna be the one to tell them they can't do that. And so you're right, the are the odds stacked against them? A hundred percent, right? They've got a long journey, a long road for for achieving their goals. But I don't believe that I'm unique in this, in in that every parent wants what's best for their kids and what and help them achieve their dream is is really what fuels me on a daily basis. My I I'm blessed enough to have two amazing kiddos. They they love sports, they have great character and they're great teammates on the field. It's fun to watch them do that. And I am on the sidelines and I love all of them, but we are we have some crazy parents on the sidelines, right? Like we're we were at an 8U soccer game in Atlanta the other day, and we're yelling at the refs, and we're we're screaming at our kids and telling them what to do. Like we've played soccer before and have the best understanding of this. And we just get so we're so passionate about their dreams and their goals. And like I mentioned earlier, now you couple that with some money that's behind it with NIL, and we're seeking solutions, and we're excited to be able to provide some of those and a trusted source for those where we can make a little bit of impact on these kids' journeys and then be a small piece of that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, uh the AU Atlanta brings up an interesting point. It's like, okay, how has this journey impacted you as a parent? Coming from someone here who does not have kids. I'm selfishly asking questions from individuals like yourself as to like you know how to parent. I'm an intense individual. As a coach, it's tough for me to not jump out there yell at the rest, whatever. Like as a parent, I can only imagine what it'll be like. How have you been able to maybe uh adapt as a parent and maybe see what others are doing and introduce methods to your madness?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, great question. I we live in a very interesting world with the sports specialization movement, and I'm gonna imagine that you you experienced very close to what I experienced, which was play all the sports, be an athlete at a very young age. And it's just not taught right now, right? That right now we are we are teaching it from a very young age. You need to commit to this sport so that you have the best opportunity to be the next Messi or Ronaldo or Mike Trout or you know, insert name here, celebrity here, you have to commit at a very young age. And it's hard. It's it for me, I I don't love it. And it's tough to not conform to that because you by opting out of certain sports and pushing my kid into baseball and pulling him out of soccer for one season as an example, he may not be on the top team. They may not want somebody that's not committed for the entire the entire year. Hopefully he's good enough or has the opportunity to prove that he can still go play baseball for six months and then show up and be an excellent soccer player as well, and vice versa. But that's for the coach to decide. And they want a level of commitment that they it's looked at differently today. So I would say that I have I I am a little bit challenging the norm today in today's soccer world or baseball world, sports world, and trying to teach my kids to be athletes and to love what they're doing and the rest will work itself out. Because when it comes down to it, is my son made the finals this last week in in Atlanta. He lost in the finals, right? He's not gonna remember that loss. He's gonna be okay. The what was fun is we had a great time. We had a great time with some amazing parents, amazing kids on the field. We watched them do something that they love, and then we're playing baseball in the backyard, right? Like we've moved on, and he's moved on, and he's excited about the next step in that journey. And so, like, I I preach character first and foremost, be an athlete and have a great time. And the rest of it's gonna figure itself out.
SPEAKER_01:There's a reason you're On the athletes podcast, Clark. You know, I have been preaching this for six plus years. I I was exposed to it growing up. I played it hockey, golf, basketball, cricket, football, you name it. I played it at some point, you know, and I think a lot of some of the best athletes in the world have that same experience where they played a ton growing up. Obviously, there's exceptions to every rule, and if you want to become the best, you've got to put a lot of time and effort in. But man, the diversity in skills that you can achieve if you play multiple sports, hand-eye coordination is not developed strictly by playing soccer. You know, there's gotta be wide variety of things that you're exposed to as an athlete so you can develop those skills. I could not agree with you more. I hope we can clip this piece right here. It goes viral so that parents around the world learn that there's a lot of value, not just from a sport physical standpoint, but I look at like, you know, you talk about injuries. I've got hockey players who start like five years old and they've hit a slap shot with their right hand, right shoulder lower for 15 years in a row, and it's like, wow, you've got some serious development issues just from a physical standpoint alone, let alone the fact that all you know is hockey and you know the blue line, red line, goal line finish like it's crazy because okay, when you finish your hockey career at 18 years old, what else do you know if you have a career-ending injury, or how are you going to be able to handle yourself in this real world when it's not just on the ice with the boys in the D room, right? It's something I wish more people listened to. This is why we do this on a weekly basis, bring people like yourself on to hopefully pound it into people's heads, the importance of it.
SPEAKER_00:I also think that the sports specialization movement, you don't you don't develop those small twitch muscles that exist in certain sports, right? So, like when I grew up, it was we we went to baseball practice, we came home, we played basketball in the front yard, or we were running routes, and we you know, you're doing all sorts of different sports. I played, I played street hockey, like that was a blast. And you don't realize those little muscles that are working in the side, where just like you talked about, if if you spend your whole life developing a slap shot, you're not preparing your body for the other, you know, the other sports, other than golf. You hockey players are fantastic golfers, and I'm jealous of it. But it's you just have to let them be athletes and go have fun and encourage that. And I think that the impact on on the body, we're seeing it show up as injuries are through the roof, non-contact injuries, right? Some there was statistic, it was 400% increase, I believe, in the la over the last decade in non in non-contact injuries, right? An increase in 400%. It's crazy. Now that that's nutrition, that's fuel conditions, but it's also sport specialization, right? It's the it's a combination of the three of those things. But it's a it's it's not setting these kids up for success, that's for sure.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, Brad's the word isofit. I don't know if you're familiar, if you've seen any of that. He's making a big push right now. He's been all around, and he's talking about the fact that again, tendons, ligaments, we have so many more of those than we do muscles in our body. And it's like people aren't focusing on strengthening those as well. Isometric workouts, physical benefits. When you look at nutrition so heavily, do you find people almost forget about the physical or the training, or does that go hand in hand? And how do you make sure that people pair the nutrition with the physical training? Because you can eat all the protein in the world that you want, but you know, if you're not training or working hard, it's not gonna really develop those muscles the way that it should.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I I believe it's a flywheel that the every every part is important on the journey. I think it's also very easy to overcomplicate this, and you can dive into the science and you become you can become a savant in this that is going to drive you crazy because of the access that we have and certain quality of food and everything we're just talking about here. But I I believe that every part is important, which is what honestly, that's what the name thread comes from, right? Is like the we're the thread that's gonna tie it all together. We're one piece of this, but you still need to do the mental side, you still have to show up and practice and have the speed coach and the training, and you have to eat properly and go to school and all like we're just gonna tie it all together for you. Like, we're the missing piece of all of that, but you still have to put in all the work.
SPEAKER_01:Love that. I love that. Okay. Have you worked with any young athletes you see some real greatness in right now? Someone you just know is gonna have a career in the pros. I know you've got time on the field, you get to see people behind the scenes. Give me some give me some knowledge, feel back that curtain.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So we one of the greatest joys of this entire thing is actually I we we've started this new this new initiative where we reach out to some of our athletes that we have that have been working with Thread for a while. They've been ordering from us for a while. We want to understand their story. We've seen some of the testimonials that they've written in. And so Thad and Chase are two that we've done a feature on, and they're so committed to their trade. Like they they're 10, 10, and 12 years old, I believe, and they're just very committed to what they're doing at a young age and and very talented. I I I can't sit here and say that every, you know, they're gonna be superstars. The one that comes to mind right now is Mac Whitam. Mac Wittham is the was the youngest ever female professional soccer player, plays for Gotham City.
SPEAKER_01:USL.
SPEAKER_00:Yep, that's right. She just won the championship, the team just won the championship over there. They are superstars. And she is such a good person, Dave. Like, what an incredible person of character. And shout out to Joni and Josh, her parents, that have just done a great job in raising this girl that has she's 14 and thrown into to you know this fame. I can't imagine moved her family out to New Jersey. Like, I can't imagine the pressure that she's feeling in all of that, and the way that she approaches life and relationships. She's just a great person, but she's a superstar. The way that she approaches her trade, the discipline, the grit, the determination to be successful, she shows up differently. She carries herself differently in conversation. She shows up differently on person or in person. And my daughter is 11. She'll be 12 this next year. There's a three and a half to four year age gap between her and Mac. And I'm looking at him like, we've got a long way to go, babe, from from just the way that you carry yourself, right?
SPEAKER_01:What an amazing person to be able to point your daughter towards to say, hey, this is someone that you can realistically relate with. You know, there's only two, three years age difference, and she's on the world stage. Yep. Yeah. You know, I always look at that like growing up in Canada here, not necessarily the same amount of you know, homegrown stories of athletes or of entrepreneurs that have done amazing things. So it's like, oh, you kind of want to make it for yourself. But if you have someone you can see what they've done, how their life trajectory has gone, again, mistakes that they've made or adjustments you can make personally, like that's such a head start. And for you to be able to work with that athlete, you can say, Hey, Mac, you mind talking with my daughter for a second, telling her like that's crazy to be able to have that access, right? And for you now, you're like, oh wow, my daughter now has someone to look up to. And that's I'm sure a huge responsibility off your plate to be able to point them and because they're gonna listen probably to their friends a little bit more than their parents. I'm not a parent yet, but I'm 100%.
SPEAKER_00:You're spot on. It is great. And we are, yeah, we're very fortunate to have to have access to some of these very high-level athletes because it's a different mindset and it's a different approach to life. And I think that it can be taken away at any minute. And so the the important part is that you're really learning how athletics can fuel success in the business career as well. Because I believe that they go hand in hand. I think some of the best athletes want to be the best businessmen and and vice versa. And Jordan does a rant on this, he loves to talk about this, but it's so true. It's just I think we all want a little bit of what each other has in this. As an ex-athlete, we're always searching for what is that feeling? Where how can I get that feeling again of like stepping into a batter's box on the bottom of the ninth, and I gotta score, you know, I gotta get hit here. And they're wondering, like, hey, how can we run a company over here? Like, what do I do after after sports? And how do I set set all this up? So I do think that mindset fuels success in a lot of different areas of life. And I didn't realize that until I hit college. That was really when I under, when I I I think I shifted from just being an athlete to really understanding what the the foundation of this journey can look like, right? The the how do I find this next gear and the next level of success? And I would I would attribute this to my coach George Horton and and Ken Revisa, who is our sports psychologist at Cal State Fullerton. They were just instrumental in not only baseball. We were great. We'd we won the College World Series that year when he was when he was there, but they laid a foundation that I utilize today, right? It was it's presence, it's the way that you have this confidence in your process. It's owning your process, it's the dedication to that trade, it's working with a team, it's knowing that everything that doesn't need to go right in order for you to be successful, right? He used to say that all the time is like, are you that bad that you need everything to go your way? That was one of the things Ken Revisa said to us. And when you think about it, it's like, no, I don't need every call. I don't need to, I don't, I don't need to have everything in my favor because I'm talented and I'm committed and I can overcome that adversity. And it it changed the the way that I thought about sports and the way that I think about raising a family and the way I think about investing into my kids and running my business. And so I'm I'm super grateful for the opportunity to go through this sports journey because I now can impact others with those learnings and those teachings, especially those two, Ken Revisa and Coach Horton. Just amazing people that that really had a profound impact on my life.
SPEAKER_01:We always got to show out those coaches. I uh I just spent some time with Allie Schroeder's coaches. I don't know if you're familiar with her. I just drove 12 hours to get to Nelson, British Columbia to watch that women's professional baseball league draft where Ali went fifth overall. First Canadian. She's a Cook Stark management athlete. We represent female athletes, female athlete agency. And one of the things that she talked about was the dedication. Like it's again two decades. Her coaches, I got some testimonials from them talking about the fact that you know her dad was out there every single day throwing balls to her. He wasn't even a baseball guy, he didn't know what he was doing, he was just out there because that's what she wanted to do, right? And it's like that's the dedication that you need, not only from your child, but also from the parents and the people involved. Because if those two coaches weren't out there with her, she doesn't get that WPBL draft call, right? And that's that's the kind of stories that I love to be able to share here. Because without these uh opportunities for players to play at the larger scales now with the women's pro baseball at the National Women's Soccer League for Mac, like we wouldn't be hearing those stories, and people would just be going on with their lives, and the lessons that are learned wouldn't be passed on. I think that's such a miss right now in the sports space because to your point, we're all competitive, everyone's trying to get a little bit of what everyone else has, but no one wants to share the insights, and I feel like that's probably something you've learned over the past year, 15 months with Thread. You got to be willing to share the knowledge so that others can get better too. Is that right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I I think that the your own journey is going to be unique to your own, to your own opportunities or where you're living or the sport you're playing, right? But I think a lot of those foundational lessons still hold true. And so, yes, surrounding yourself with the parents or the other players or hearing the stories on your podcast of of being able to understand their journey and the level of dedication and commitment that I mean, the ultimate is Kobe, right? Like you see the Kobe videos of all time and and watching him just outwork everybody and his story about training and and being able to train multiple times a day and how that adds up over a couple of years, right? They're just never gonna catch up, right? No, that's a different mentality, and it's a that's why he was so great. But I think that the dedication from the parents' perspective is huge. And having a parent that's committed to that, some of our best friends drive an hour each way to practice because it's the top team in Tennessee and they're setting their kids up for success. And like they're such an amazing family that's committed to to their girls being successful and chasing their dream. And do you you know the strain on those parents? Like you've heard the stories. They work all day, they work all day, and then at the end of the day, they're driving four days a week to a practice, an hour each way.
SPEAKER_01:I don't know how my parents do it. I don't know how show them to all the parents out there that do it continuously because you're the reason. Obviously.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it we you're right. We the kids wouldn't have the opportunities without without that. Now they have to perform, but it's a commitment from it's a whole family commitment to to reach that level of success.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you look back years from now, what kind of impact do you hope that thread performance has? What are your goals over the next three, five years? Break down kind of where that's at for me.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So we get asked this question, we've been asked this question a lot when we first started. It was like, what what do you want the legacy to be? What do you want the impact to be? Right. And I go back to this story that it solidified this time where I was like, all right, we're doing this. Okay, we're gonna we're gonna go into thread. I my nephews had a baseball game, and my kid and my other nephew who wasn't playing, came up and said, like, hey, I'm hungry, can we go to the snack bar and get something? Right. And we went over to the snack bar, my choices were candy bars, popcorn, hot dog, pizza, cotton candy, you know, like, and uh icy just in case you still needed some more sugar. And there's just like nothing there that's gonna fuel their bodies, right? Nothing. And this idea as parents that we still are okay with all of those being the only options that we have, okay, is a problem. That's a problem. And the kids' menus at every restaurant, it's the same thing. It's buttered noodles, it's chicken fingers, it's pizza, and a cheeseburger, maybe, right? And so my what I would like to do, and if looking back on impact and success, can we have hell a healthy option, some healthy options in a snack bar, ideally those being thread products? Okay. How can we provide something where we are recognized as the go-to prand for youth athletes? And we provide that solution in that snack bar, at every snack bar across the country and the world for that matter. That would be amazing. The next thing is understanding that we are the go-to brand. How many different touch points of products can we have with that youth athlete during the day that are gonna impact their performance on and off the field? So from the moment you wake up to the moment that you go to sleep, what does your body need on a micro and macro level to help you to help set you up for success and optimize your body for performance? We're gonna do that. That's something directly within our control. We're gonna do that. So that will be the impact and the legacy that threat is gonna leave. But if we can change the behaviors externally because of the education and the products that we're creating, that would be the ultimate goal for us.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, creatine, controversial subject. Kids.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Thoughts?
SPEAKER_00:So creatine is the most highly studied ingredient in the entire supplement space.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks for bodybuilders out there.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Again, I'm not a scientist, so I'm not gonna pretend to talk about how it engages with the body, but I know enough to say that creatine, when utilized properly and sourced properly, is an incredible ingredient, right? You get it naturally from a lot of your your diets that you're gonna be eating. You can't eat enough red meat to get enough creatine to impact your body. So I think it's a superpower. I think when utilized correctly and sourced correctly, it's something that should be utilized. And it stacks really well with our daily strength formula. So daily strength is a an all-natural botanical extract blend. And what it does is it stimulates ATP in the body, so you're absorbing protein at a higher rate and you're fighting off protein degradation in your body. And so coupling that with a high protein diet and creatine in there, and you're gonna start to see gains. Like next time I look at you, you're you know, it's it's gonna be it's gonna be great.
SPEAKER_01:But it's gonna rip the sweater off.
SPEAKER_00:That's right. So I I think it's great. I I think there will always be some parents out there that are hesitant to give it to their kids. We recommend ages 10 and up for our daily fuel, daily strength, daily edge products, eight plus for our hydration products. I wouldn't hesitate to give my 11-year-old creatine. And it's definitely something we're looking into right now. Just have an opportunity, a clean form of that that we can give them.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I wanted to ask you that. I I had heard uh the age of 15 was good, but I like I have my grandparents taking creatine, I have my cousins, I have my mom, my parents, like everyone. It as much as I look at it almost the same as going to the gym now. It's like I used to be taking the creatine for the physical benefits because I knew that it was gonna give me 10, 15% strength increase, maybe some more endurance. Now it's the mental just as much. And it's the same for at the gym. Like honestly, I was talking to my buddy, I'm like, I feel better now going to the gym from a physical standpoint. That I like I don't even care about whether I look good afterwards now. It's like this is literally just that I feel good in between the years, and so that I can have conversations like this and go to work and impact and have good relationships. So, Clark, man, this is sick. I I really appreciate your time. I feel like we could rift for hours here. I I do have a couple more questions, uh, but I I I want to maybe touch on your career as a baseball player. You slid in casually the fact that you won a collegiate world series, no big deal. You know, it's all good. We'll just we'll just hide that back there. But let's let's talk about like you grew up playing a bunch of different sports. What stories do you have from there? I end off every episode by asking our guests like their biggest piece of advice for the next generation of athletes. So just to cue that up in the background, there for you. It's like what what are some of those lessons that you learn playing other sports? Baseball, obviously, at the highest level possible. Drafted by the Cubs, pretty historic organization, Wrigley Field, all that fun stuff. Like, give me the rundown. What was Clark Hardman's career in a nutshell if you were to narrow it down to 60, 120 seconds?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I I don't know that I was this standout athlete at a very early age. I was a good athlete, right? You know, the the younger age, I could play any sport and I could play it at a high level. But I don't know that I would look back and say, like, ooh, like that guy is going to be your superstar, the Mac Whitam that that you're talking about. I think I did everything really well. And I got to, I could run fast, I could, I could throw, and I could play really good defense in the in the field. And I loved any and all sports. Forever grateful for a high school football coach pulling me off the baseball field. He came, he came to one of the games, my junior year. I'm sorry, my sophomore year. And he came to one of the games and he said, I'm you're gonna play on my team next year. And I was like, I haven't played football since I was 12, but I would love to. All my friends played football. I love football. And he said, No, you're gonna come out there. And I said, Okay, baseball's my sport, so I know that. Do me a favor. If I, if you don't see this as being a thing for me and I'm just gonna be on the team and it's gonna take away from time for me developing my baseball trade, then will you just let me know and we can part high five and part ways and I'll go back to focusing on baseball? Cause I didn't know how I was gonna hold up on a high school football environment, right?
SPEAKER_01:There's a salesman in high school already. Hey, look at you, Joe.
SPEAKER_00:I had no idea. And Jordan was our quarterback too. So like I oh no shit.
SPEAKER_01:Wow.
SPEAKER_00:We had we had a good team. We had guys that were going places, and I'll I'll never forget like I very first practice, I line up on the slot against our starting corner, and I didn't know what a press coverage was. I never experienced it. So I come off the line and he flattened me just because I didn't know you could do that. I thought it was illegal. So anyway, flattens me. I ended up starting for that team in my junior year. And so I came out there, I started. We went 28-0 over the next two years. We won CIF both years. We had a blast. It was so much fun. And you know what it did? It just fueled me more in my baseball career. So I it made me miss the game that I grew up loving because I spent six months focusing on football, and then vice versa. Like I got done with baseball the next year and I was like, let's go to football. I can't wait, right? And I just had this new energy about me with my sports that fueled me all the way into college. And college was the time of my life. I played with some incredible baseball players, Justin Turner, Kurt Suzuki, Ricky Romero, Dustin Miller, Danny Dorn, like guys that played in the league. I'm for sorry for all the guys that I forgot. There's a long list in there that made it and I didn't. And they, it was such a fun group of guys. And if I can go back to that locker room environment, I'd pay a lot of money to do that. Right. The the team, the chemistry, the relationships you develop, that's what this is all about. I still keep in touch with a lot of them. And it was a fun ride. I'll tell you that achieving the my goal, which was being drafted, right? I didn't get achieved the ultimate goal of playing professionally, playing professional in the in the big leagues. But being drafted was an incredible feeling, and I would still choose college over minor league baseball every single day of the week. It just different.
SPEAKER_01:I uh I interned for the Corvallis Knights in the West Coast League for one summer there. I guess that was five, six years ago now. Holy dyno! Yeah, college ball, something else. You can't beat that. But honestly, the minor leagues are insane. Like I've heard some absolutely crazy stories. Guys just the amount you gotta go through. I'm sure you've heard 10x, whatever I've heard. What'd you think of that World Series? Give me it, give me your I as a Canadian. I we generated a couple million views here just on the pod with all this Blue Jays content that was going on. But what do you think of it as an American?
SPEAKER_00:Has to be the best World Series of all time, right? It it was, if not the best, one of the top three for sure best World Series I've ever seen. The back and forth, nobody gave the Jays a chance in all of it, and really they should have won. And it came down to some clutch hits. Bobachette was amazing, Guerrero was great, but the Dodgers are so stacked and they're so fun to watch. And there's just we're we're in a time in sports where we're watching some of the best to ever do it, and it's pretty cool. It's pretty fun. Like Otani is just you could. I think I'm convinced you could put him on any sport and he'd be a superstar.
SPEAKER_01:There's some people that just have that athletic ability, and it's like, yo, you it you could put a tennis racket in that guy's hand. He's probably taking on Raphael Nadell at the fourth minutes, you know.
SPEAKER_00:Like, yeah, without a doubt.
SPEAKER_01:Uh were there athletes growing up that you admired that you looked at that you were trying to emulate?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I was a big King Griffey Jr. fan. I I was a lefty, he just has the the silkiest swing you've ever seen. He could run around in the outfield, he was fun to watch. So I I would say he was the guy that I that I followed, followed the most out of there. Okay, okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Hey, where can people get thread before we get your biggest piece of advice? Where can people find it, source out your products, learn more about what they're doing, find out what they should be taking.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so uh threadperformance.com. We have intentionally set it up to where there's a performance portal for all of the education. We want to solve that gap. 29% of you only trusting what's put what you're putting in your body is a problem. So go to that, learn things that don't involve thread, but a lot of deep dives on what is included in thread, all the ingredients, the why behind what we're doing. You can find us on on threadperformance.com.
SPEAKER_01:Amazing. I'm uh I'm gonna have to get some of the what was the muscle builder one that I'm pairing with my creatine now?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, daily strength. We're gonna we'll get some it's coming away.
SPEAKER_01:What is it, 2.5% increase?
SPEAKER_00:2.5x, the strength is being 2.6x upper body strength, 2.4, 2.3x, lower body strength, and 2.5 times increase in muscle muscle resistance under or muscle endurance under resistance. Yeah, let's go. It's pretty it's a pretty wild ingredient. You talk about going into the gym, you're gonna feel the impact of that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I need that right now. Um it's winter season. I gotta come back strong here, 2026.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. Summer's right around the corner. It's time to prepare.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly, exactly. Clark, this is sick. I uh sincerely really appreciate your time. Biggest piece of advice for the next gen before we wrap up.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I should have had a better prepared answer for this, so I'll just riff on it for a second. I I want to encourage all the the next generation of athletes to go out there and be athletes and have a great time. More importantly, like and not in that order. Just have fun, right? Be committed to your trade because there will be a time where it becomes work and it becomes a job for you. And you're gonna learn how to do that at a at the highest level, and you're gonna find so much joy in that journey. But it starts now. Like you're developing this love and passion for the game. And go out there and have fun and don't let all this pressure change or take away from any of that joy. I think that that right now is the number one thing I'm preaching to my kids is like go have fun and just be an athlete. Don't worry about everything else.
SPEAKER_01:Probably the most timely piece of information kids right now could use. You know, just enjoy the have fun. Amazing. Clark, can't thank you enough again. I appreciate your time. Threadperformance.com is where you can source out all these products, and maybe we'll figure out a little AP 10 discount code or something. We'll figure out a way to get our our our listeners hooked up. Again, we'll get you on again, maybe with Jordan. We'll we'll show the thread the two point six increase in gains, and we'll have some fun there. I appreciate your time. This is awesome.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks, Jim. It was great. I really appreciate you having me on.
