#055 - Vehicle Version: Personal Improvement During this Challenging Era

In this episode of the Decoding Excellence Show, we're returning to our Monday Minute and Vehicle Version (explains the audio difference) and are discussing some of my thoughts surrounding continuing education, the many online Zoom & Google Hangout conferences and clinics, and things you can do to continue along your own personal development initiatives.

As a reminder, our Monday Minutes shows are a quick 10-15 minute episode where I discuss current industry trends, research reads, current events, and occasionally offer my insights into the training process that we're undertaking each week. I believe with conviction, you'll take away something interesting from this show and I hope it delivers you a little bit of value in your day.

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Key Takeaways

• During the challenging era of lockdowns, continuing education became a personal development priority.
• The many online Zoom and Google Hangout conferences and clinics offered coaches new ways to keep learning and growing.

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• Read the transcript below to revisit key ideas at your own pace.
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Episode Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated. While we strive for accuracy, some words or phrases may be misheard.

[00:00:00] Sport science, strength conditioning, high performance coaching, welcome to the Decoding Excellence show. Hey everybody, it is Adam, I want to remind you of one thing, rather than spamming this show with herbal tea advertisements or performance technology companies coming on and trying to sell their latest gizmos, I have opted not to have an advertisement over the last, uh, probably 20 shows or so, uh, 20, 25 shows. And the reason I do this is because rather than

[00:00:47] Trying to sell you something, all I would like for you to do, if you support the show, if you're a fan of the decoding excellence show, maybe some of the interviews that we've had in the past, some of the monologues that we're having, some of the Monday minute episodes, please head over to AdamRingler.com, forward slash newsletter. About once a month, I'll send you an email, and it will be jack full of really interesting things, research articles, fascinating things I found online, book some reading, podcasts that I've enjoyed, articles that I'm writing,

[00:01:14] Things and people that I'm interviewing and exploring, I think you're gonna get a lot out of it. I promise I won't spam you, and it will be something that would deliver a lot of value to your day. Check it out at AdamRingler.com, forward slash newsletter.

[00:01:31] Hey everybody, I am your host AdamRingler and welcome to the decoding excellence show. This is a Monday minutes type of show, it is a vehicle version of the show, the decoding excellence show, where we typically interview high performance practitioners from across the globe to distill their intangibles, right? The tactics, the tools, the techniques that go into road class performance, but today I am doing a vehicle version of the show where I'm just sharing some of my thoughts about the industry, about sports science, about strength conditioning,

[00:02:06] And the world of athletics. So stay tuned, I think you'll get a lot out of this episode, and as always, if you are a repeated listener, thank you so much for supporting the decoding excellence show. And if this is the first time, then welcome to the decoding excellence show. I hope you continue to support the show and continue to listen, I think you will get a lot out of it. Now, without further ado, here is my Monday minutes on the vehicle version of the decoding excellence show. Thank you. Hey everybody, this is AdamRingler and welcome to the vehicle version of the decoding excellence

[00:02:46] Show. Once again, I'm behind the wheel, eyes are on the road, phone is secure, and I thought we would just have another vehicle conversation via the decoding excellence show and talk about some of the latest, I guess, events coming out of this COVID-19 coronavirus post era. And one of the things I think that we should, I guess center around is what if tremendous, I guess bringing together the camaraderie within our industry, right, the coaches that are obviously working and affected by this thing, but what a tremendous opportunity that we have to connect and to network and to

[00:03:34] Bring together educational and professional development opportunities to the forefront of everybody's minds. Because let's face it, outside of working out in your home gym, which I'm jealous of for most of you guys, what else do we have to do, right? So without the, I guess, the longer hours, and maybe some of the remote programming, and I touched upon this in one of our decoding excellence vehicle versions of the show, that we really don't have much else to do. So I've seen a number of different vendors post webinars, and I've jumped on many of them. I had many of my great friends and

[00:04:14] Practitioners in the industry post Instagram lives and video teleconferences and big Zoom educational sort of show your work type of sessions where they're going over, you know, how they utilize VBT or how they utilize force plates or how they utilize wearable technologies. And I think it's, you know, it's making the best out of a really poor situation, a tragic situation. And I'm just ultimately really surprised at our industries, resourcefulness to not only come together and share, you know, in this, you know, whether it's, you know, coaches versus COVID,

[00:04:57] Just share in the camaraderie and the response of how we've handled this as an industry, but also to recognize the truth that for many of us that are working, you know, long hours, that professional development sometimes takes a vaccine. It takes a, I'll get to that, you know, at the national conference or I'll get to that when the NSCA coaches conference comes around, or the CSCCA, national conference comes around. But really at this point in time, we have no excuse not to get better, right? And I've seen these, these little diatrives on Instagram and Twitter

[00:05:39] And elsewhere where they've essentially fall against the idea that you need to improve, right, during this. So like, hey, it's a pandemic. You don't have to always be trying to improve. And I get that. There's some of us, some of you guys out there that this is a lot more real, right? This might affect the fabric of your community, your loved ones, your friends, right? At some point in time, as we enter into some of the most, you know, tragic and deadliest weeks of this pandemic, that it will probably start to affect our lives and people that we really know

[00:06:15] Much more so their way. But, you know, so I totally relate and fundamentally understand that can grasp and wrestle with the idea that, look, it's a pandemic and, you know, it's okay to be lost and it's okay to not know and not, you know, put forth all the efforts and self-improvement or fitness plans or workout plans or how am I getting the leg up on my competition. But I think it's natural for us in athletics, right? Like, you know, maybe that was gin cops, civilians, what out, you know, I would probably almost argue it was. But for those of us that live

[00:06:53] At the tip of the spear and love elite athletics and strive every single day for a 1% chance or a 1% improvement over our opposition, it is hard not to look at areas of self-improvement during this time. And I'm not just talking about books you read, but like, I look at this as what a phenomenal opportunity we have to really have some deep work, some quiet time, you know, we talk about how great it is to go to our conference and spend two days with the gym and talk shop with other strength coaches. Well, last I looked, we are at 26 days of being sort of quarantined and locked down.

[00:07:40] If that is 26 days of being able to get better for self-improvement, for honing and perfecting your craft, for learning a new technology or your resource or new modality of training, we owe it. I think to our athletes, they look, if we can't be on the weight room floor and affecting their lives daily in the capacities and the ways that we do, we owe it to them to try to find ways of improving them, improving our practice, improving what we do, whether it's our systems or training philosophies or methodologies or whatnot,

[00:08:16] We owe it to try to get better. And there is no shortage of resources right now in the industry, across all of the various vendors, you know, equipment manufacturers that are hosting webinars, technology companies that are hosting Zoom webinars and teleconferences or even just picking up the phone and calling a friend or calling another coach within the same athletic conference that you're in or reaching across the athletic department to another department or silo that you might not always get to interact with. These are all ways that we can continue to get better and sharpen

[00:08:55] Our crafting and for ultimately serve for some self-improvement. And if we're going to be, I guess, exiled away from our student athletes' lives, then I just think, personally, we owe it to the athletes and the coaches and the logo that you represent. So I'm going to challenge you very similar to how I did last time. I'm going to challenge you find a new way of trying to get better, find a way for some self-improvement, find a way jump into a Zoom car and connect with a coach that you always wanted to connect with. Try to learn, pick up a new book that you haven't

[00:09:33] Had time to read. Try to play around with maybe some new bodyweight exercises that you saw on Instagram from a number of the coaches that love to share it. Find a way of just challenging yourself. A mentality, modality, a philosophy, or just something new, but ultimately at the end of this. If you have your health and you have your family's health, and you're not really affected by this, I think you owe it to try to find a way to get better.

[00:10:07] Hey everybody, that's going to be it for this vehicle version of the Decoding Excellence show. I hope you took something away from this small little sort of Monday minutes off the cuff, off my top of my head recorded straight into the iPhone version of the Decoding Excellence show. I certainly know that it made me reflect, pause, and think about some of the things within our own strengthening collegiate athletics industry. And as always, there's a number of different ways that you can support the show. The first thing is I have a monthly newsletter that goes out.

[00:10:45] It is located at AdamRingler.com forward slash newsletter. And like I said in the intro, it is chocked full of great articles, research papers, sort of daily notes things I'm finding fascinating and experimenting with, and being a human guinea pig with to try to change my own behaviors, my own habits, but ultimately to really try to improve my life and get something a little bit more meaningful out of it. So head over to AdamRingler.com forward slash newsletter. Pop in your email and I promise you, you'll get the welcome email and you'll start receiving those

[00:11:20] Monthly updates and you won't regret it. I'm not going to send you a bunch of spam messages or anything like that. I really think that you'll get a lot out of it and check it out. I get questions every single time we publish either an article or the latest update to the decoding excellence show. And the question I often receive is how do I support this show? Well, we have a new way that the audience and the crowd and everybody else here can support the decoding excellence show. Head over to buymeacoffee.com forward slash AdamRingler.

[00:11:57] It's actually not buying me a coffee. I know the name sounds sort of confusing or misleading if you will. But what it is is it's a platform, sort of a crowdsourcing way of donating to the show. And the idea is that you would donate a coffee, right? $5, $4 or whatever to the decoding excellence show. And what we do with this is we turn the proceeds directly over to supporting the hosting of the decoding excellence show on whether it's on Spotify or on SimpleCast or iTunes and elsewhere. And it supports the hosting fees for our website and the decoding excellence decoding excellence show.

[00:12:36] So if you want to support the show, you can buy me a coffee. You can buy seven coffees. You buy yourself a coffee. Otherwise, please head over, check it out. It is buymeacoffee.com forward slash AdamRingler. I'll include it in the show notes. And as always, thank you for supporting the decoding excellence show.