Inside Performance Science With The Lakers’ S&C Coach Dr. Brandon Pentheny - Episode #277

 Join us on episode #277 featuring Dr. Brandon Pentheny as we unpack how to turn messy sports data into clear coaching decisions, why outliers can’t be your standard, and how to separate capacity from utilization so training actually transfers. We also dig into lifting before practice, tendon loading, youth overuse, and building buy-in with simple, consistent methods.

• bridging biomechanics, neuromuscular performance, and real coaching choices
• tailoring data to athletes and coaches with plain language
• discrete vs open skills across baseball and basketball
• tech overload vs low-tech, high-intent training
• capacity vs utilization as the core diagnostic
• load management shaped by travel and schedule density
• culture shift toward lifting and tendon health
• priming lifts and isometrics around practice and games
• offseason structure, MLB dead period, and youth rest
• choosing metrics that matter and avoiding outlier traps
• when literature conflicts with what wins on the field
• career advice for young coaches in a noisy landscape

Transcript

Setting The Stage: Outliers

SPEAKER_01 0:00

If you look at any data points for any athletes, like he's the outlier. Like you can't that's it. I have to tell people this in when you pull up statistics of any any athletes, like we can't pick, like you know, you can't relate that guy to the rest of this group in terms of like that doesn't fit the generalizable trend.

Meet Dr. Brandon Penthany

Bridging Science And Coaching

SPEAKER_00 0:23

You're the most decorated racquetball player in U.S. history, world's strongest man, from childhood passion to professional athlete, eight-time Iron Man 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. Today on the Athletes Podcast, we're joined by Dr. Brandon Penthany, a performance scientist and strength and conditioning coach whose work bridges elite professional sport and applied research. He holds a PhD along with some of the highest credentials in the field, most recently a doctorate, no big deal, including RSCC and CSCS and CPSS, work with athletes across professional baseball and basketball environments, no big deal. Your work sits at the intersection of biomechanics, neuromuscular performance, and real-world coaching decisions, force plate analytics and workload management to how data actually gets translated into better performance on the court and field. And today we're diving into what the data really tells us how coaches should think about technology and motor learning, where performance science is headed next, what's in your morning stack to get the day going and downregulate after a long workday. And obviously, when we bring on the strength and conditioning coach for the Los Angeles Lakers, the first question everyone asks is how are you going to be a better basketball player? We're not even going to reference some of those players that play on that team because you know it's no big deal. But the best athlete, arguably, I would say on this team right now might be on the coaching staff. Guy won a state championship. No big deal. You also tried to make the Olympics. Did you not win a state championship? You got a little confused there, no?

SPEAKER_01 2:11

No, no, no. No, I did. I just that was from the the archives. Hey, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Yo, we do our research here on the pod, man. Come on. You got a state title for weightlifting, man. You also were a practice player for basketball at the University of Oregon. So now you transfer your skill sets into the coaching world. Tell us what it's like, man. Give us the insights. It's good.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

You know, be being a, I guess, former athlete, it helps connect with the guys a little bit easier. So you know like the the day-to-day of what they're going through, how the you respond to travel demands or stresses of both life or the game, um, and and being able to parse that apart for them makes my job and my life easier. And trying to be on the science side and and the performance side makes it a little bit easier to try to drive some actual scientific principles that are evidence-based, but not just you know, bro science or or so far towards the science realm that you're like, God, this can't be applicable in this situation. It's not generalizable. Like it works in theory, but it for this given population it might not work. So having a foot in both and and being in relative depth in both helps a lot.

Translating Data For Coaches And Players

SPEAKER_00 3:26

And then having the Washington Nationals S C job prior to the Lakers, also you get a bit of that cross-sport. People recognize the fact that you're able to transition and you're working with athletes at the end of the day. So how do you tailor data communication for athletes versus head coaches? Because I think I feel like that's probably got to be your number one difficult thing to deal with on a daily basis, is like, hey, I'm interpreting this, but I got a player who wants one thing and a coach who wants another.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

I think it's it's multifactorial of both like knowing the sport really well, and whether that's baseball, there's layers to the sport, whether you're hitching or hitting or or fielding. Um, and then in basketball, being able to like know the different demands of each position, um, and how the style of play that a given team's trying to play. Those things are really important. And then it's an old adage, I guess, but everyone says, Oh, yeah, I'll know the athlete, know the coaching staff. Like, can you just like be a normal person and like see what can kicks with this type of person on coaching staff and how they communicate well and listen to shit they actually say during like their downtime and practice of what would resonate with them? Ask questions, like just be a genuinely curious person, I find helps because I'm curious about stuff that's not particularly basketball or science, and that I find seems to help me make connections better in terms of what whether that's science towards this area or just in life in general. I mean, that helps me try to communicate certain scientific principles to a given coach or person because each one's can be wildly different, even if you just take like within the confines of baseball, ever like multiple hitting coaches at every level of development, they all kind of communicate in different manners and they're different people. So trying to figure out how to be with each one of them or or connect information across levels is is the art of it.

SPEAKER_00 5:29

You got any specific examples? Because I can imagine basketball versus baseball on its own, the athletes are just different in general, right?

Baseball Vs Basketball: Discrete Vs Open Skills

SPEAKER_01 5:38

Yeah. From a coaching perspective or from athlete perspective? From baseball based, like baseball very technical based, so like hitting being a discrete task where it's a it's relatively close source, where basketball, if you're thinking, is relatively open source information in terms of how it flows, but you're still getting to a discrete task of shooting. Um you're f fiddling it down to a discrete task, but baseball kind of understands that a little bit more of it being discrete tasks, where basketball is more you have to like get through the motion or get through the the weeds to get the coach there of understanding it's it can get to those portions. So it's being more deliberate with how you parse it apart how you're describing how this player is getting to his shooting motion within a free-flowing offense.

SPEAKER_00 6:34

Whereas your force production metrics with a highly skill-dependent outcome like hitting is very different.

SPEAKER_01 6:39

Yeah. It's very like the one-to-one translatable. Like they understand that. But trying to convey it three, four steps down the line in in basketball gets a little bit more complex. But you can compare with certain metrics that you might show, whether that's force plates or force output on like a 1080 or something like that. You can if you can paint a better picture to the the coach, they start to understand it.

Tech Overload And Low-Tech Coaching

SPEAKER_00 7:06

Yeah, because I feel like at this point that you can almost become overloaded with data. There can be so much information thrown at you as a coach, you're like, yo, let me do my thing. As a proud assistant coach for Earl Marriott Junior Boys basketball team here, I sit there with very little, if any data, other than what I've accumulated from getting some boys to do some physical activities. You know, I'm handcuffed. I don't have a 1080p at my disposal, amongst other things. How do you suggest coaches support athletes from a physical training S and C perspective when they don't have all of this technology readily available at their disposal?

Capacity Versus Utilization

SPEAKER_01 7:44

I mean, it depends on what level you're working with. A lot of the the well, every level just there need basic foundational buckets being taken care of. So just movement competencies that fall into the general ones that everyone's um chasing, um, because those are needed to be done repeatedly for basically your entire life. Yeah. So that's the big sport one. I think two of the fundamental truths are training with consistency being a one and training with intent, whether or practicing with intent on any given task, or whether that's skill-based or in the weight room, um, if you put out high intent consistently, you're you're headed in the right direction. I think those are the two biggest things you need to chase. And then if you do have a way to kind of tangibly track some stuff, being able to, the big thing is being able to understand and convey to coaching staff and to understand yourself capacity versus like utilization. So a big thing that gets talked about in every sport of oh, the coach sees him and he looks like he he sucks. Oh, he can't move laterally. Well, okay, is that a capacity-based thing or is that a utilization? Like, does he physically or her, depending on what level your population working, do they physically have the capacity to do the task you're asking, or is it a utilization thing of and the utilization being more so a skill? Are they good at their sport? Like the reason they're not moving laterally or what you think is delayed laterally is because they can't contextually absorb the information from a skill game perspective and then utilize and then use it. Like the strength and speed and dynamic stability is there physically. It meets all the metrics of where everyone else stands in the league, but they're they're slow because they're making a they're delayed on their read or they're indecisive. It's a utilization problem. So that being a huge one that you have to kind of like figure out helps a lot of coaches. And then being able to convey that exact parameters because that is a conversation you will have no matter what sport you work in.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

Well, it's like I because I I mean I was in Toronto for the Kawhi Leonard, you know, load management whole process, saga, whatever you want to call that. And it's like, so how early in the season are you trying to build capacity versus simply manage fatigue? Like, let's be real, what what does this offseason look like? Like I I should ask you, you're the expert.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

Well, that uh for like a Kawhi example, it's a little more dicey because now you're introducing injury history preference of the type of athlete because it's a very unique case, the the camp or outside external people that they might have, um, and agents involved, and the fact that they also make a lot of money, right? Somebody that's a two-way or a G-League player or minor league player on the baseball side, like there's a large investment. So the heightened let's protect our asset is is a lot more complex. There's a lot more cooks in the kitchen on decision making than just just one person.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

How much of that is driven by like schedule density versus like movement demands?

SPEAKER_01 11:05

Both. I don't can't directly speak for like Toronto, but they're the only team in the NBA that has to play 41 of their games in another country. Yeah. So that adds to travel demands. So schedule density, travel demands add add to it. What games on national television and who their opponent is is also a factor. You can look at historical data of teams that play on ESPN or something against a team that's a big market team, they generally have more availability of players.

Buy-In And Training Culture Shift

SPEAKER_00 11:48

Yeah, fair enough. The uh have you do you do you find like you see better buy-in when athletes understand the why, or when they simply feel better when they're performing after introducing some of these strategies, whether it's load management, whether it's you know, different forms of resistance training recovery that you're introducing from an SNC standpoint?

SPEAKER_01 12:07

I mean I mean, relative to like 15, 20 years ago, even or even 10 years ago, the buy-in's for the most part there in terms of they under this new this current generation of players understands the the weight room and training and tendon loading is a part of like what can actually make them them good. The mid early 2000s era in baseball and the NBA, where half of them did not believe in any form of physical loading, is kind of bygone for the most part.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

So when you say for the most part, what is that?

SPEAKER_01 12:44

I feel like there's a little bit of a in any in any group there might be some some outliers that aren't that are physically gifted enough that they can get by. Yeah, but it's it's not like the the days of old. It seems there's more of a buy-in to understanding that this is a portion.

Lifting Before Practice And Games

SPEAKER_00 13:03

I had uh Zach Zilner on the podcast a few months ago, obviously familiar with in the basketball space. I talked about lifting prior to training, obviously getting some additional benefits there. Is that something that you are exposing your athletes to as well?

SPEAKER_01 13:18

I mean, like lifting prior to like on court sessions.

SPEAKER_00 13:21

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

Yeah, yeah, that's that's pretty cool par for the course, especially I mean, really in in both baseball and and in basketball, I would assume it's the same in the NFL just because of the way their schedule is constructed. But definitely in in the MBA and MLB, like the MLB, you're playing almost every day, so your training is done the day before. You get a little creative with scheduling for pitchers just because they you know when some of them are down, especially for starting pitchers, they might not pitch that day, so it's easier to schedule for them. Starting pitcher is probably the easiest group in to program for just because they're follow a one-day start and then five days off. Right. And then in basketball training prior to practice, pre-game like type of lift activation, and then post-game you'll also do lifts, just depends on the schedule density and and what demands of tissue loading that you need to be exposed to. Do you think that's a required or would benefit athletes at a high school level? Oh, definitely. You just gotta at the high school level, you just have to play with the load exposure and how they respond to the the stress and recovery of it.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 14:39

If you get a little bit more adapted athlete, they they can handle that pretty well. They'll definitely start to feel better. And it starts to shift their frame of thought of what training is, their underlying goals.

Tendon Loading And Isometrics

SPEAKER_00 14:55

I only ask because there's coaches within our institution that still would not necessarily think that lifting prior to training session would be good, i.e. going on the court. And I need the experts to say it again so that I can send this to a couple other individuals and make sure they know that there's benefit to this.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

I think part of the the issue for some of those coaches is their frame of reference, especially at the high school level. I mean, you get it in at the pro level too. Um their frame of reference, especially at their stage of life, what lifting is to them is should be vastly different than what is lifting is for for an athlete. For some reason, when I mean, even us, we could get stuck in it, like, oh, we're not playing, so like this is how I approach stuff. Lifting for athletes isn't necessarily, oh, I'm trying to get like a beach body and I'm trying to look big and like lose weight, whereas a lot of the coaching staffs tend to shift that way.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

So they think bodybuilding, power lifting, yeah, like yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

Sorry, but we're not doing sets to failure, and we're not doing like tricep dips and side bends and all this stuff like you see at 24-hour fitness. Like the frame, what what you're trying to accomplish is a little different. So you have my professional backing on that one.

SPEAKER_00 16:16

Perfect, perfect. Give me an example. What would that look like? A couple sets of squats, just a couple at like your what is it, three, three rep, like where you're trying to get it.

Season Structure And Offseason Dead Periods

SPEAKER_01 16:26

It depends. Like, so someday if you're trying to get like a CNS like type of priming lift, you might have them do some overcoming ISOs into like a trap bar into a rack or something for X amount of time holding, and then something extremely ballistic, whether that's a box double box jump or a med ball vertical toss or something of that nature. You could also have settings where it's like overloaded, just short volume, but fast, concentric, overloaded, eccentric, really quickly. Okay in terms of volume. And that that could be a squat or a row or something.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

It's all I needed. This is great. This is perfect. I appreciate it. We could end there. No, I'm kidding.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

Post, I mean, you could do this before too, because I definitely do it before, but post definitely do a lot of like tenon loading or isometrics. Um in both the baseball population and and in basketball population. Anywhere that you have a tenant and gets a lot of use can be effective.

SPEAKER_00 17:34

You'll uh you'll see my the iso fit that I have to my right over my right shoulder there. I don't know if you guys are working yet with Brad Thorpe. He'd kill me if I didn't at least show off after you're bringing off isometrics, you know. I saw them at uh at Summer League, but we had one in Philly.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

But we don't I don't think we have one here.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

He'll be all over that. He'll be clipping this, he'll be clipping he'll be grabbing it. No, uh, you'll also see the PXG sticks there on the side. I've been getting my golf game in in better shape here. We'll see. Well, it's not perfect again. PNW. It's January. We still got golf though. It's all right. How's your game looking?

SPEAKER_01 18:08

It was it was a lot better when I was working in baseball because I could be outside a lot and I worked on my rotational capacity a lot. I threw a lot with the pitchers, so you know I had a good hip swing and and groin contraction. That's exactly a little bit of that Scotty Scheffler kickback now. It's nowhere near Scotty Scheffler, but the little bit of the motion.

Youth Sport, Overscheduling, And Injuries

SPEAKER_00 18:32

I love it. I'm clipping that. Dr. Brandon Penthany says he is Scotty Scheffler. I love it. That's sick.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

The arrest portion.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

No, well, hey, uh, he also I gotta we gotta give a shout out to Scotty. I think he just had his 140th consecutive week being number one golfer on the ranking top list. And yeah, and he's halfway towards Tigers record, which is like people thought would be untouchable.

SPEAKER_01 19:00

I mean, that 140 weeks is crazy.

SPEAKER_00 19:03

Yeah, you're a guy who can appreciate that kind of timeline too, right? Like you guys, what do you how do you break down your your seasons, like you know, regular season versus postseason, your physical prep, like what does that look like for you guys? The load management that's got to factor into things.

Multi-Sport Backgrounds And Transfer

SPEAKER_01 19:19

It depends on, I mean, I hate saying it depends, but it depends on how you finish in the playoffs, what type of group you have. Usually, I mean, for for baseball per se, generally when the season ends, most most guys scatter. So the or 16 orgs are in Florida, or 14 and 16 in Florida and Arizona. So either some some guys own houses there, but most most time guys kind of scatter, um, and then they end up training either the somewhere random. So you touch base with them, you send them your program that they're gonna try to do all over the offseason. And then the MOB actually has a a dead period built into its schedule, so roughly around Thanksgiving to New Year, and there's really a you can't really contact most players for anything unless it's like a benign, you know, interaction of like you just being normal people regarding baseball or business, um, which is kind of nice because it it downregulates a little bit of the schedule, and hopefully the guys aren't like going too nuts during that time and just training normally. Being a human being. I think I think if I'm not wrong, MOB also instituted a rule that there could also be no scouting during that time, which is huge for the youth development side, because you see in baseball right now, especially the last I don't know, 15 years or so, a lot of athletes are going basically balls to the wall, especially pitchers balls to the wall year round, and they're chasing Velo in November, and that's not a thing you should really be chasing in November. Um, so that rule of no scouting hopefully dies, keeps that keeps those athletes in check at the high school level and lets them have a down period because we see a large uptick in Tommy John over the last 15 to 20 years, and that is a factor in it.

SPEAKER_00 21:18

Yeah, can we double tap on that? Because like I I see it more so in hockey up here in Canada. Like you got athletes who'll just rip hockey 15 straight years, and it's like that's all they do, and like you're gonna have some cumulative injuries when you do that for every single day for whatever time period. But I mean, for youth athletes like you are probably the perfect example of someone who literally has played every sport, it sounds like, based on you know my research. Yeah. Legitimately, like if you could name them, you're probably looking at at least a dozen, almost at a semi professional, arguably like Olympic level.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

I mean I'm not sure if you could have told me if I if I could have played ping pong, I would have tried to try to play ping pong in the Olympics. Yeah, yeah. You want a chance at that?

Working Around Superstars And Outliers

SPEAKER_00 22:01

Yeah. That's uh I mean you talk about the fact that you become like you get recruited from bobsled after you can't you don't make it in your main sport. Or I think that was the quote you had in uh PA chalk up on episode number 22. But whatever the case may be, it's like you bring that drive from one sport to another. Obviously, you had weightlifting at the beginning, you transition with basketball, and then you're like, oh bobsled, you got like how do you you've got probably the best ability to compete in any other sports. You know, I look at a guy like Mitchell Hooper, world's strongest man, he's also run a marathon, he's also done a bodybuilding competition. Like some people have the capacity to do it all. Clearly, you're one of them.

Common Data Communication Mistakes

SPEAKER_01 22:42

I mean, I don't know, I don't know about all that. But I like, I mean, movement competency and and trying to compete at the end of the day and and finding a sport that's that's challenging and you still can compete in it and see how far it can take you. A lot of those were, you know, in high school you try to play as much as you can and just be active. So that led to a lot of doing those sports and then trying to make make an Olympic team and diving as far as I could, taking it. I mean, it could have been whatever sport, but one that fit my athletic profile and anthropometrics, and some of the sports being like Bobsled, you're either it's similar to track and field, like you're fast or you're not, there's not a lot of commonity to it. Yeah, unless you're like the driver, obviously there's technical ability, but it comes down to the pure output, which is like similar in in track and field versus like basketball. You can you know there's multiple other prongs that make you a good basketball player, just besides uh athleticism. I mean similar in baseball, where baseball is extremely skill-driven uh and and less pure athleticism.

SPEAKER_00 24:00

I guess since we're no no no no no that would that it's like this is why we bring you on. Like you've got, I'm gonna have to re-listen to this and be like, okay, when we do our follow-up in LA, I got a bunch of questions based on some of the words that I didn't understand that you used, but we're gonna get through everything at the end of this one. Uh for me, I'm like, I'm I'm fascinated because you you look at it through a bunch of different lenses. And I think similar to you, I played a bunch of sports, didn't win any state championships, I'll be honest there, but it's like that's what it's allowed me to have 275 plus conversations on this show. It's like I can chop it up. I've played a lot of different things, I've seen what it takes, and know some of the requirements, the commitments, the drive that come with it. And like, I don't know, from your perspective, I feel like we've waited made people wait long enough. You've probably had to answer this, you know, 746 times since you started working for the Lakers, but like what's it like working with a guy like LeBron?

Picking The Right Metrics That Matter

SPEAKER_01 24:53

I mean, he's got his own people, but it's you know the mystique of of being around him and is is cool because he was you know was playing when I was in in middle school. That's crazy because he's not that much older than I am.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

That was kind of where like the consistency piece that I was more so curious on. You've talked about it. It's like that's you don't see that.

SPEAKER_01 25:17

Yeah, I mean, that's why it's an anomaly. Um if you look at any data points for any athletes, like he's the outlier, like you can't that's it. I have to tell people this in when you pull up statistics of any any athletes, like we can't pick, like you know, you can't relate that guy to the rest of this group in terms of like that. Doesn't fit the generalizable trend. Is there are there anyaton and apply him to this group, and we can't apply Tom Brady's longevity to this, the the these athletes, or the miserable, you know, Ken Griffey's an outlier type players like you can't apply that to the rest of our guests that's unfair to the the rest of the development group for any sport.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

Well, and that was kind of where I was curious, like how where what mistakes do coaches make when presenting data to athletes?

When Literature Fights Practice

SPEAKER_01 26:12

Because you can go and be like, this guy did this, so why aren't you like where are some of those mistakes maybe like I think in terms of like sports science practitioners making the mistake is like they don't convey adequate information with the ability that it's information and then not purely decision, so it's driving the decision, but it goes back to like can you have normal conversations with this person about things that don't relate to work? Um, if you can do that and like actually give a shit about your conversations that don't relate to work is a huge one.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

Yeah.

Advice For Young Coaches

SPEAKER_01 26:53

Like some coaches might care about their jump metrics on a force plate, but for the most part, none of them actually give like know what you're talking about. So if I'm in a meeting and I have to tell you about this player's concentric impulse relative to the rest of the league, like I have to make it tangible of how that that specific metric might relate to like this performance outcome on the court physically because it's not it goes back to the capacity versus like utilization. Uh so being able to translate like, oh this this type of player we know is really springy, and he he's gonna make his money based on being that type of springy player. So we need to look at like his P1 versus P2 contact trick impulse ratio, and that can show us this. And if we can keep him in this range from our training standpoint, physically, like we might be in a good spot, it gives him a good chance to like develop his greatest accelerating factor, and that's how we'll track this specific metric. And it's a standalone metric, but it will help us uh paint a better picture and ask better questions. I think that's one of the bigger mistakes, too, within sports science, or or or just not understanding, is like collecting these metrics or data points and and being able to paint a better picture allows us to ask better questions and like actual solve better problems where some practitioners might not fully understand that like we're trying to do some didactive reasoning to make this athlete better. Like, what are their greatest limiting factors? What are their greatest accelerating factors? Let's identify those, convey that with like adequate visual appealing or visual appeal, and can somebody contextualize that and verbalize that correctly? Um then can we actually make the tangible changes in the in the weight room, on the court, skill development, stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 28:52

Your your approach reminds No, dude, your approach reminds me so much of uh Jordan Shallow, who talks a lot about like the impact where it's like you gotta play the man before you're you know doing work afterwards on the person, right? You gotta make sure you're working with that individual. And I I look at like you bring up metrics, it's like okay, what's it if you're just collecting data for any reason now you're adding additional questions that you're gonna have to answer. So, like, what's an example of a metric that looks strong in literature but struggles in practice?

Closing Reflections And Takeaways

SPEAKER_01 29:25

I mean, I we kind of struggle with like thinking everyone has to be super bouncy. Okay, I think that might be I mean, that's not necessarily a literature one, but like not everyone has to have a modified reactive strength index of 0.8. Like sometimes guys are more skill-driven, like that's what got them to the league, or that's what got them to be really well in in baseball. Like it's nice, I can chase that. Like it might be a byproduct of doing something else, but that's not where I'm gonna throw all my attention at and trying to develop. Like if I if we try to chase that, we might screw them up.

SPEAKER_00 30:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:12

Another one, I guess another one in the literature, especially in in baseball, like arm slot is is a big concern. So some literature, like if a certain position says it's more healthier for that arm slot to exist in a different position, but you move that player to that arm slot, like can and make their pitching delivery a little different, that might completely change who they were as a pitcher, and that might not make them any money. They might be out the the league and and cut. So it's a fine line that you dan they that athlete, you dance with like ethics, and like this athlete kind of knows that like this isn't the most healthy arm slot, but that's the only thing that makes them them. So like you might fly close to the sun and you might slingshot around that sun or you might you might burn. But that's like one that that's common. I mean, some organizations definitely flirt with that more than others in terms of how their approach is organizationally across the league.

SPEAKER_00 31:21

Yeah, and at the well, and at the end of the day, it's like you if you look at it from a bounce perspective, you your original one, it's like, hey, that's now that person's not relying on that bounce to be in the NBA. They're relying on the skill that they had to get there. Whereas, you know, five years from now, that bounce not might not be there, which will allow for a quicker descent, I guess. Yeah, uh again, I want to thank you for your time, dude. This has been amazing. I'm excited more than anything to get down there, see if I can get to that point eight uh result as well. I I don't know if we can test that at your studio, but when it comes to if you could give one piece of advice to young coaches trying to navigate the growing intersection of science, technology, and coaching intuition, what would it be? Not to throw anything too hot at you at 6.04 p.m. here on Monday evening.

SPEAKER_01 32:17

It's kind of hard. I think it'd be a lot it's a lot harder now with like the amount of Instagram influencing because there's so much stuff that sounds correct in theory, or it sounds enough good good enough, and it's on like a nice track and then it deep diverts at the last second. So try to read as much as possible. So when you know that like some of that stuff arises in a podcast or a clip on Instagram, that like, oh, this is where it could go wrong. It might not be wrong, but it might not be applicable in every situation. Those that's probably a huge one. I think another another thing that is is big in terms of advice is like try to be the person that you you wanted growing up or coming up and not not be too big no matter who you work with or who writes your paychecks. That's that's a huge one for that I think I people should do better.

SPEAKER_00 33:17

I I have one quote, it's uh try and make that your well how I'm gonna screw it up now. Try and make your eight-year-old self proud when you're 80, or vice versa. And I know the other quote that you brought up here that I wanted to highlight that you reminded me of. Thank you for that. Is I can't stand it to think my life is going so fast and I'm not really living it. Nice little Ernest Hemingway from this on all surprises. That's a that's a that's a great one.

SPEAKER_01 33:44

I'm glad you brought some Hemingway in here.

SPEAKER_00 33:46

Dude, I I had I had to. No, uh yo, this has been a blast. It's honestly it's sick to be able to just chop it up. And I think like more of this kind of conversation needs to be taken so that athletes can learn that, hey, at a younger age, I can start applying some of these data points and get better over time so that I'm not relying solely on my balance, but I can adapt my skill over time as well. Uh, maybe we'll get a little part two here where we'll get some more insights from you when we're down in LA where the sun's shine and we got more vitamin D in the system. You got anything else you want to leave these uh listeners of the athletes podcast with here to say? Not at not at the moment.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

Try to, I mean, you already said it. Like try to be the impressure sixth grade self. We're all 15 minutes away from being irrelevant, so try to be a good person.

SPEAKER_00 34:38

So true. So true. So that's uh that's a deep way to end that, dude. I I I love it, I love it. It wouldn't have wouldn't have fit any other way. I appreciate you sincerely, Dr. Penthony. Been a pleasure having you on the podcast. Here's to many more episodes uh where we get to dive into people's wise brains like yourself. Until next time. That's it. That's the pod.