> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://adamringler.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # #059 - Pratik Patel: Man on Fire - URL: https://adamringler.com/podcast/059/ - Published: 2020-12-21T14:46:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-20T01:44:28.000Z - Description: In this episode of the Decoding Excellence Show, I'm speaking with former NFL New York Giants Director of Performance Nutrition and Assistant Strength & Conditioning Coach, my friend, Pratik Patel. - Author: Adam Ringler - Tags: Decoding Excellence, #podcast, Nutrition In this episode of the Decoding Excellence Show, I'm speaking with former NFL New York Giants Director of Performance Nutrition and Assistant Strength & Conditioning Coach, my friend, [**Pratik Patel**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/pratikxpatel?ref=adamringler.com)**.** Patel was closing in on a four year stint as the New York Giants’ Director of Performance Nutrition/Assistant Strength and Conditioning Coach prior to making a personal decision to leave the role. We discuss this in the show. Prior to his time in the NFL, he served as University of Oregon's (PAC 12) Director of Sports Nutrition. Patel also shared similar roles at Michigan State University (Go Green!) and Kansas State University. **I had a blast recording the show with Tik and I know you'll take away some GREAT gems from it!** You can catch up with Pratik on Twitter and Instagram at [**@PratikxPatel**](https://twitter.com/pratikxpatel?ref=adamringler.com). My guy also has an **AMAZING** podcast located on Spotify called [**The Man of Fire Podcast**](https://open.spotify.com/show/65N1Y9MzoKe1DAA3DF2lKX?ref=adamringler.com). As always, thank you for supporting **The Decoding Excellence Show**! In addition to those social mediums, you can head over to [**AdamRingler.com/Newsletter**](http://www.adamringler.com/newsletter?ref=adamringler.com) and sign-up for my weekly newsletter. This is a newsletter for the curious. It's chalked full of interesting articles I've read through the week, things I'm exploring and finding fascinating through my week, and a collections of thought experiences and resources I've cultivated. It's essentially a Birchbox for performance-related articles and musings. If you are looking to help grow and support the Decoding Excellence show, navigate over to [**Buy Me a Coffee**](https://www.buymeacoffee.com/AdamRingler?ref=adamringler.com). Buy Me A Coffee is a an easy & fun way to support the show. For the price of a Grande Latte ☕ you can support the show and help us maintain the quality of the content. One hundred percent of the contributions go directly to supporting the hosting fees associated with operating this podcast. If any of the material resonates with you, I'd love for you engage with me at [**@AdamRingler**](https://www.twitter.com/adamringler?ref=adamringler.com) Thanks again for listening to the Decoding Excellence Show! I appreciate all the support growing this Sport Science, Strength & Conditioning, and High-Performance Coaching resource. If you have taken anything away from the show, please login to iTunes and navigate to [**Decoding Excellence**](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/decoding-excellence/id1205636566?mt=2&ref=adamringler.com) page and leave us a review. --- ## Key Takeaways - Patel was closing in on a four-year stint as the New York Giants' Director of Performance Nutrition and Assistant Strength and Conditioning Coach before making a personal decision to leave the role, which the show discusses. - His path ran through the University of Oregon as Director of Sports Nutrition, plus roles at Michigan State University and Kansas State University. ## About the Guest Pratik Patel is the former Director of Performance Nutrition and Assistant Strength and Conditioning Coach for the NFL's New York Giants, where he spent nearly four years. Prior to the NFL, he served as the University of Oregon's Director of Sports Nutrition and held similar roles at Michigan State University and Kansas State University. He hosts The Man of Fire Podcast on Spotify and can be found on Twitter and Instagram at PratikxPatel. ## Listen and Subscribe Find this episode of the Decoding Excellence Show on [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decoding-excellence/id1205636566?ref=adamringler.com) and [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/093GVrPwd9l832q3EWhVKc?ref=adamringler.com), or use the player above. --- ## Go Further in This Episode Enjoyed this conversation? Here is how to get more from it: - **Read the transcript below** to revisit key ideas at your own pace. - **Share this episode** with a coach or colleague who would benefit. - **Subscribe to the Decoding Excellence Show** on [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/decoding-excellence/id1205636566?ref=adamringler.com), [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/093GVrPwd9l832q3EWhVKc?ref=adamringler.com), or your favorite app. - **Join the newsletter** at [adamringler.com/newsletter](https://adamringler.com/newsletter/) for weekly insights on human performance. --- ## 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, I'm going to pause the show real quick and announce something brand new to the Decoding Excellence Show. We've created an online community that has an exclusive content that you will not be able to get just by navigating to the site alone. \[00:00:37\] If you subscribe today, you will have access to our private podcasts, online video lecture series, brand new digital content that we are creating to help support you as a strength conditioning coach, a new practitioner in the high performance field. You do not want to miss this material, it's going to help you in every facet of your career. To addemringlow.com and join the insiders today. \[00:01:02\] Hey everybody, we have a great Decoding Excellence Show on it. Today I'm talking with the former director of performance nutrition and assistant strength conditioning coach for the New York Giants, Prateek Patel, who is formerly the director of sports nutrition at University of Oregon, spent some time at my alma mater, Michigan State University, and we get into talking about his stint there in MSU athletics and the department of radiology, and then also his time at Kansas State University. \[00:01:32\] We talk a lot in this show about the demands of professional sport, legia sport, his job, his role, his podcast, the man on fire podcast, and the reason behind his departure from the New York Giants. You do not want to miss this show. I had a lot of fun with it. Check it out. \[00:01:51\] Teak, welcome to the Decoding Excellence Show. I know it's an early morning for us today, but I wanted to welcome you on the show. How are you doing? I'm doing well and early as early as you wanted to be. It's better than waking up at 4 a.m. And grinding throughout the season, so I'm not complaining. Yeah, I suppose we could be waking up at 4 a.m. Getting the gym clothes on, hitting the \[00:02:13\] Weight room, and then spending 16 hour days on the floor at this moment. It's not too bad to be behind a laptop and a microphone, and chatting it up a little bit. For anybody that doesn't know who you are, which is hard to believe, because a million views or so are linked in and social media article, but a self-published podcast, all this. But for anybody that doesn't know who you are, can you give a brief introduction of who \[00:02:44\] You are and where you come from and sort of how you found yourself at this intersection? Yeah, so I'm a registered dietitian in Australian conditioning coach, been doing it since 2009 with stops at Kansas State, Michigan State University, Oregon. And most recently, with the New York Giants, where I was with the team for about three and a half years, but then ended up deciding to leave to pursue other things in my life at the end of training camp this season currently. \[00:03:13\] I'm originally from Shawnee, Kansas, went to Kansas State for undergrad in grad school. And yeah, currently just residing in Houston, between Houston and Kansas City, just kind of making up with lost time with friends and family and looking forward to spending the rest of 2020 with my mom, dad, sister, and nephews, something I haven't really been able to do because of the time dedication to sport, so that's currently where I'm at. For anybody that hasn't at least been familiar with you, I would probably say pause the show \[00:03:44\] Number one. And head over to the Man and Fire podcast and listen to the first episode, if nothing else listen to the first one right away. And then resume listening to this because I think this will give a great sort of, like you do such a great service at a given the background information and that's one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show, it's because you've been rose to the highest level of what \[00:04:11\] Most of us in performance training think is the upper echelon of sports performance and elite athletics and you have a very interesting viewpoint and I think a very human viewpoint about the successes and the challenges at that level and that's one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show and to talk a little bit about this journey that you've been on. So, I guess we'll start at square one because I think so much of it is about the genesis \[00:04:41\] Of things. So, tell me a little bit about your start, I know you talked about your journey, but tell me a little bit about your start of how you got into coaching, maybe why you got into the coaching industry, and maybe the seed that was planted that pushed you in that direction to become an RD and to get it into strength conditioning. Yeah, so like pretty much everybody else, active as a kid, played soccer, basketball, in \[00:05:12\] Great school, heading into middle school, but like a lot of present day kids, I shied away from sports and got more into video games and became a lot more sedentary heading in the high school. So, as you know with that, coupled with horrible eating and nutrition habits and physical and activity, I became pretty heavy. And as an Indian American kid in high school in Kansas, who wasn't popular, who was kind \[00:05:40\] Of one of those gifted students based on the courses that I was taking and put in, not a lot of popularity. So, that time in your life where everything is very, so to speak, influential and everything is life or death, if you're not popular or whatnot, it wasn't a great time for me. And I wanted to feel more normal. And I think part of that was, I fixated a lot on how I looked and how I was perceived \[00:06:15\] By my peers. And I think my way of feeling normal was, all right, I have to go back and play sports, I have to get in shape. Otherwise, I'm just going to continue to be miserable with no friends. I started learning about nutrition and grabbed the first magazine that I could find from the local pharmacy. \[00:06:34\] It just happened to be like a muscle and fitness and flex magazine. So, my four-way into learning about nutrition was the worst possible educational source ever. But, you know, for what it's worth, it just opened my mind to just taking better care of myself. So, I started just changing the way I was eating. \[00:06:51\] I started to just run on a track, you know, look at the track at the high school. Just didn't necessarily know anything about training, I just started to go. So, over the course of about a year and a half, you know, I dropped a lot of weight. I was able to increase, you know, strength, stamina, things like that because I started getting into the weight room. And it just, it changed myself and my outlook and how others perceived me. \[00:07:13\] And I thought that that was the coolest thing ever, how I was completely under my control because nobody was telling me what to do. Nobody was showing me what to do. But I ended up being able to, you know, join the track team, play football last year's high school. And I think a lot of it with that, I enjoyed the training aspect more than the actual \[00:07:32\] Competition. Because there wasn't very good, let's be honest, I was never going to play in college. I just enjoyed the camaraderie of being a part of the team, you know, the best friends that I now had made were, you know, some of the more popular kids, so I found a group to fit in with. And that's what really sparked my interest in nutrition and exercise. \[00:07:52\] So I ended up, you know, going to Kansas State as an undergrad, I started out in mechanical engineering because that's what all, you know, Indian parents went their kids to do. And I was really good at math and science. But at that level, because I really had not no interest in it and all the other kids were just so much smarter than me or asked smarter, if not smarter, I didn't do very well my first year, just because I didn't resonate with the coursework. \[00:08:18\] And so a friend of mine said, hey, you know, I'm in this nutrition and exercise science dual major. You love this stuff, too. Why don't you check it out? So I talked to the advisors, I guess it was like a hundred fifty five credit hour program because it was the dual major. \[00:08:31\] And none of my classes really transferred over from engineering because you would imagine. You know, I thought, man, you know, I've already got a year banked in school. If I leave engineering, I'm going to lose my, you know, $500 or $1,000 engineering scholarship I was getting. And I don't know if I can be in school for five more years. So talk to the advisors, they said, well, you don't have to do both, just choose one \[00:08:52\] Path. You can do nutrition. You can do X-Fiz, which is K-State's kinesiology and I said, oh, this is great. So I ended up choosing the dietetics path and you really enjoyed it a lot. You know, I did really well in the courses. I was having a lot of fun learning the ins and outs about, you know, everything nutrition, \[00:09:14\] You know, macros, macros, nutrition, metabolism, we'll have you. And ended up graduating, did my internship at the Mayo Clinic and came back to Kansas, did some intern work with, you know, the chiefs, royals, Texans, the artis that were working there. KU, just learning more about how nutrition works with athletes and how, you know, somebody could work in that type of setting as a sports dietitian, how do they collaborate with \[00:09:42\] The strength coaches. What does this look like? And at that time, I was definitely not ready to jump into anything like that and need more experience. And there weren't any jobs available. So a lot of people had mentioned that, you know, if you can't market yourself as just \[00:09:55\] A sports dietitian, because a lot of places just weren't hiring, in fact, then this is like 2008, 2009, you can get your foot in the door as a strength coach. So went back to K state, fortunate enough to go there as a graduate teacher, you know, doing research and, you know, taking the classes in kinesiology. And that's where I started to actually really enjoy coaching. So they had a functional intensity training lab that was started by Katie Heinrich who \[00:10:19\] Came from the university Hawaii where she was doing research on just a variety of different populations. And that's where I started learning a lot more about weightlifting, training, teaching group fitness classes. So I think it was after one of them, a class that I took that I was just giving some instruction to handful of people that were still around, you know, after class, everybody \[00:10:41\] Still collaborating and communicating and having fun. And one of the coaches came up to me and said, you know what, you'd make a really good coach just based on how I was talking and instructing and I thought, oh, and that would be cool. And I guess that's where my love for coaching started to exacerbate itself because it's very similar to working with somebody in nutrition capacity. It's you have this information, you want them to get better, but you have to find the \[00:11:05\] Way to communicate it to them to where they understand and want to do what you're telling them to do. So it's very similar in that regard, just in different, you know, you talk about anatomy and physiology, structure function, bioenergetics instead of, you know, macros and microbes and timing. So, you know, it's fortunate enough to reach out to the men's basketball team there. \[00:11:25\] So I told them who I was and I was like, hey, do you have anybody working with your athletes in terms of nutrition? They said, no, I'm like, you know, I'd be happy to just work with you guys, do whatever you guys need. And so I was, you know, able to work with them for almost two years until the coaching staff left for South Carolina. \[00:11:41\] And then I ended up leaving after graduating and, you know, interviewed at a few different places. It was still very unknown, very raw in the game, but it was fortunate enough to get the job at Michigan State as just a sports dietitian. And from there, you know, that was 2012, so it had stops at, you know, University of Oregon and then the Giants after that. \[00:12:04\] Yeah. And what, you know, and we'll kind of go through this timeline a little bit. I want to hope on your case state early years, just because I want to know, it certainly resonates with me because I've shared this sort of story on the show as well. You know, I went into Michigan State University as an undergrad in business. And I'm taking, you know, accounting and these, you know, finance classes and recognizing \[00:12:31\] That, you know, I am struggling in these courses. And I did this because that's my presumption was, you know, this is what my parents want me to do. And then I'm seeking refuge from the textbooks by going and, you know, logging on to online training forums, right, or like going to the gym or learning about strength and conditioning or fitness. \[00:12:57\] And this course goes for, you know, two more years. I get, I'm literally finishing up my sophomore year. And I go in because I'm trying to apply for the business school. And the advisor says, Hey, what Adam, we're not going to accept you number one. But even if we did accept you, you'd be the very worst business school student, you'd be like the 1% tile, even if you were. \[00:13:25\] So we highly advise you maybe to try to find a different major. And I just remember this like come to Jesus moment where I'm sitting with my father. And I'm like, dude, like honestly, like, this is what I thought you wanted me to do. And it was a very pivotal moment in my career and life, I suppose. And he's like, it was very freeing because he was like, Adam, like, I just want you to be happy and do what you, you know, what you think you're good at and what you want \[00:13:53\] To do. And I was like, well, you know, the whole idea that the reason I pursued business was because I wanted to open up a performance training business afterwards. And then that gave me the start to go into like kinesiology. And so I enrolled in kinesiology and I went straight from the end of that sophomore year through the summers to catch up a lot of those gen ed courses transferred. \[00:14:19\] But like, you know, for I would presume, you know, going from engineering to kinesiology at K state, like, was there any moment, like particular, strong resonating moment where you're like, I got to make a change. I got to do something different or was it just more natural for you? I think I always knew that I didn't really belong just when you're on the initial courses, the intro to mechanical engineering courses and you're talking to all the other peers in \[00:14:46\] The major. I mean, it's easy to see who belongs and who doesn't. And I can only imagine how all the other people that I was in class with in different groups with, you know, taking on different projects viewed me because I was the one who would be hit or miss with if I would go to class or not, how much I was contributing to these different projects that were put together, because they just seem to have that so much \[00:15:11\] More knowledge about the subjects that we were covering, probably because they just liked it. And they resonated with them. And I was kind of just scraping by getting, you know, A's, B's and C's and classes. And you know, I'd only gotten a C once before my entire life and then I got a C. I scraped a C plus an engineering physics class that allowed you to, you know, they had I think five \[00:15:36\] Total exams, but only four counted for the entire semester. And one of them, I just decided to not even go to because I was so ill prepared and I decided to go, you know, to a party instead. So I think for me, it was not just one thing, it was I just kind of knew and it was the first time in my life, you know, taking classes where I'm like, you know, I'm not ahead, I'm not getting the grades, I need to do something otherwise, I'm in trouble. \[00:16:05\] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I felt like it was particularly for me, like, you know, those classes was just toward a show up too. And then once I enrolled in kinesiology, it was much of a, this is exciting to go to class, at least initially. \[00:16:21\] You write like it's just like every class spoke to me in a different sort of way. And that was a moment where I knew that like this was going to be something that I wanted to pursue. So from that, right, like you talked about Katie, you know, from Hawaii a little bit, like as you went through those, you know, K state days, you're getting involved in sort of the dietetics program, you're working with men's basketball. \[00:16:48\] You know, was there anybody in those sort of early pivotal years that you could sort of point to that you whether it's, you know, at K state or Michigan state or any other your various stops that you're like, this person really helps set me up or like gave you a beacon of inspiration or was a positive influence or a mentor or something that really draw out like that you're like, man, like this is, this is the reason why I'm going to continue to pursue because, you know, this person has helped me in this journey or provided some \[00:17:23\] Inspiration or motivation or influence to help you obviously, you know, get to where you continue to go to. Yeah, I'd say at K state during my master's degree, it was, it was Katie and so Dr. Heinrich, she was ended up becoming my major professor for my thesis study. So I ended up doing a legit eight week exercise and intervention study, which was an adventure in and of itself, given I thought I was going to do the coursework option, finish it up \[00:17:54\] And then apply for as many different, you know, SNCRD positions that I could, but being able to work under her, she, I learned a lot more than I ever thought I would just because she is a really good professor, but she also conducts research. She knows how to connect with students and the students that she mentors, not only the ones that she teaches. So I learned a lot in terms of the academic sense from her, which I think is kind of invaluable \[00:18:21\] For a lot of us that, you know, go through these programs thinking, all right, I'm going to get my bachelor's and do my internship, I'm going to get my master's and then I'm going to start to try to teach and to start to try to coach and start being integrated with the athletes. So the whole academic side of it sometimes becomes thrown down to the side and you don't get to learn a lot of different things that you could potentially cross over to working \[00:18:42\] With athletes, working in an athletic department. So, you know, at that time, I was quote unquote, developing range and she, like we had a great relationship, you know, do workouts together, this and that's been, you know, had a nice little circle of friends within the Kinesiology department, within this, you know, little appable, Manhattan community, but she was also kept me accountable too. And I think sometimes, you know, when you work closely with somebody and you think you've \[00:19:09\] Got this kind of friendship relationship, you try to not take advantage of them, but get a little bit too comfortable in terms of what your responsibilities are. So I was helping her with a couple of research projects while putting together my master's thesis. So there were times where I needed to be in the lab and, you know, maybe I was a little bit late over the course of a few days or a course of a few different weeks and she, \[00:19:31\] You know, she didn't hesitate to say, hey, you know, I don't know what's going on, but this is the expectation view. I need you to do this, you know, no excuses. This is your responsibility and this is your job. So I appreciated her doing that and once you did that, I'm like, all right, well, I can't, you know, take these liberties because even though I think I'm special or she thinks there's \[00:19:49\] Something in me that potentially could be really great, I think that was really important. And when I got to Michigan State, it was two different people. It was Ken Manny, who, you know, is well, very well and then Joey Eisenman. So I was the sports dietitian designated to work with all of the different sports, you know, 20 to 30 hours a week on top of assisting, you know, Joey in this department in radiology, doing research, assisting with teaching classes, but also he created this program \[00:20:21\] Called Spartan Performance, which was holistic youth training and development for the mid-Michigan community of youth athletes. So the person that he was working with was kind of like my initial supervisor, just a person that I didn't really resonate well with. And it was difficult to work with and a lot of other grad students under him and a lot of other staff members and workers felt the exact same. \[00:20:45\] So I kind of lean on Joey just because of like, you know, he's a really fiery guy's motivated. He's very experienced and has been very successful in his academic career, published hundreds of papers and developed departments from the ground up. So I learned a lot from him in terms of time management leadership, how to work well with others, how to stay motivated and then, you know, working under coach Mani or alongside him in his staff. \[00:21:13\] It was kind of the boot camp, so to speak, that I needed where, you know, his mantras, you got to earn the jersey, iron, sharpen's iron, you know, nothing's going to be given to you. You have to earn it. And at that time, that was something I needed to go through because I had so many ideas in my head. \[00:21:29\] I wanted to do so much. You know, I thought nutrition was going to save the world. It's life and death and it needed to be integrated and implemented by every team. The leadership there from the ADs didn't necessarily want to invest in that area in particular. So that was difficult to go through, but, you know, what I learned from coach Mani was just all those different little things about life, you know, how to approach every day, day to day, how to \[00:21:58\] Overcome different adversity and how you need to act in certain situations, how to be professional, how to talk to a lot of different people. I mean, all those different things that good leaders show you and tell you, you know, there was no sugarcoding. There were good days. There were bad days. \[00:22:15\] And I think that's what I liked about his leadership style was it wasn't just, oh, happy go lucky, smile, smile, smile. It's like, no, there's an accountability piece. There's a hard work piece. There's a consistency piece. I think, you know, for the most part, up until I met Aaron at the Giants, I mean, I \[00:22:31\] Would say those three people have been the most influential for me. And again, it wasn't just a direct, mentor, mentee relationship. I didn't have anybody from the diatetic side to showing me like, hey, this is how you communicate with athletes is how you create a program. This is how you adapt situations. I had to learn all that myself. \[00:22:49\] So a lot of mistakes were made, but it was more, I'm trying something this way. It doesn't work. Okay. I have to try something different. I tried something it works. Okay. \[00:22:58\] Let me continue to do that. With Dr. Hindrich, it's like the best mentors or influencers or advisors are the ones that continue to hold you to a standard, right? To continue to challenge you to be better than yourself, right? And I felt that way. Certainly, like I was on the Olympic side of Michigan State University. \[00:23:21\] So, you know, red, you know, Tim Wakeham certainly did that. There were good days and bad days and you knew about your bad days and that was just being held accountable. You'd go over to the Duffy Complex and, you know, Ken Manny would be there, larger than life figure and he would hold you accountable because it's ultimately fell under his program. The umbrella of the strength conditioning is the head strength coach. \[00:23:47\] And then, you know, like Joe, like I met Joey through red and then, you know, the impressive sort of Spartan performance center that he built, which was, you know, an amazing sort of high performance, like even before high performance was really a buzz word. I think a really like from diagnostics to intervention, to protocol, to testing, to training, was really some cutting edge stuff that, you know, I looked across a collegiate landscape and I was like, you know, there's a lot of strength and district programs that aren't offering \[00:24:19\] Even, you know, a tenth of the services that they're providing from that program. So there's a lot of people in that, you know, from Mike Forkepitch to Tommy to all those guys. And Aaron, as well, I do want to poke on this a little bit. Is that, you know, you go and my order might be slightly backwards, chronologically, perhaps. You go from the big 12 to big 10 to Michigan State, maybe K-State back to the big 12, certainly \[00:24:53\] To Oregon through the pack 12\. And then you find yourself in a position where you get to, you get to be behind the shield, right? And you get to the NFL. You know, can you draw any sort of parallels between collegiate to professional? And you talk about, you know, the demands or, you know, the structure of those of the NFL \[00:25:20\] Or your responsibilities, your duties, at least initially, when you first got there. The excitement, the, I'm giving you a pretty long leash here, but just, you know, because I think so many people, as an aside, so many people want to aspire to get to pro sport. Man, I want to get to the upper echelon of professional sport, whatever that might be. It could be NBA, it could be NFL, it could be NHL, MLS, whatever it might be, Premier League. And it's like, you don't know what you're signing up for. \[00:25:50\] The good, the bad, the, the, the demands of things. But can you at least set the scene initially for what that looked like your early days of getting to the league and talking about sort of those demands? Yeah, yeah, so I'll, I'll kind of just start a little bit more with my transition for why I ended up leaving my previous places. You know, Michigan State was great because I learned a lot, was able to integrate \[00:26:17\] The department, the sports nutrition department, but I wasn't in charge of an actual sports nutrition department within the athletic department. And that's what I was hoping to do. And I was hoping the administration would see it that way, but they said, well, you know, maybe in three to five years. And in my head, I'm like, well, you know, I'm ready now. \[00:26:33\] I'm ready to take the next step. I don't want to just wait three to five years to see if then they're ready to move forward with doing that because other programs were starting to flourish. And I felt like I had hit a plateau with my learning and my ability to provide value to the department. So that's when I started looking to see if there were other opportunities where I can \[00:26:54\] Actually be in charge and, you know, have those administrative roles mold the department under what I feel could potentially benefit the student athletes and all the other staff members and coaches. That's when there was an opening at Oregon to do just that. So that was very fortunate and the timing was just right. I don't think there's anything involved in it. \[00:27:12\] It's just being patient and waiting for opportunities. So that was a great learning experience. And that was in charge of a full department budget, staffing, creating all the protocols, integrating with all the sports, you know, working with a self-op food service in a more high performance environment where, you know, you have a whole sports science and performance department. \[00:27:32\] You have coordinators. You have a head of performance, something I'd never experienced before. So I had to, you know, step my game up, learn what they were doing, integrate myself with them. So we had out a few good years, but then, as you know, it's hard to stay on top. So the football team did pretty poorly, which affected the revenue and the budgets for \[00:27:56\] The entire athletic department. And that's why, you know, football is kind of the key because it helps fund pretty much everything. And when football didn't have a 9, 10, 11, 12 win season, it was a big hit. So there was a hiring freeze. There was a change in coaching staff and leadership and, you know, what came in just changed \[00:28:19\] The dynamic a little bit. It didn't feel very comfortable. It wasn't exactly what I wanted to continue doing. I also felt that there were parts of the performance staff that were underperforming. And it was just known by everybody else, even the players too, to where they were asking me, like, hey, can you help out with this? \[00:28:36\] We just need something different. We need something better. It's just one of those things where you kind of know who's holding up their end of the bargain. And there was an area that wasn't. And, you know, I think that resounded with me because, all right, well, you know, I'm \[00:28:50\] Charging nutrition, but I also have this background and strength and I've always loved coaching. And then this piece, where it needs to be, is there something that I can do to help out because it's such a seeing Coach Manie and his program and Reds and Vorks, how important it is and how integrated they were and how much of a difference they can make. And then go into Oregon and not being able to see the cohesiveness and there's a lot \[00:29:13\] Of miscommunication like, wow, if you had a program like they had at Michigan State in terms of effectiveness and buying and accountability, maybe, you know, this football team had been to a national championship twice, could have gotten over the hump if there was some resemblance of that. Maybe not, you know, you never know. Maybe they wouldn't have been able to go to those national championship games if there \[00:29:32\] Was another training program in place. But that's what prompted me to go back and see, like, all right, well, is there an opportunity for me to be able to do both because I was, you know, in the Spartan performance, I was coaching the youth athletes, but I wasn't doing it with the Michigan State athletes just because I wasn't a strength coach at Michigan State, but I was doing it under Joey. So that's something that I always love to do and the opportunity as I was looking for \[00:29:58\] The next step, as you said, the shield is so attractive because on the outside, you think about being able to use your knowledge and experiences to improve the best athletes in the world and, you know, the most popular sport in America and the most successful professional league. I tried to do that. So that's where I was like, is there an opportunity at the NFL that I could use my skills, \[00:30:23\] Unique skills to help out a team? And it wasn't like I just didn't want to get hired by a team and get thrown into a sports dietitian role. It's probably similar to what I was doing at Michigan State, where I wasn't able to do what I potentially could do and bring to the table what I was doing, especially when coming from place like Oregon, which, you know, when I was there in 14, 15, 16, and \[00:30:46\] Then I'd leave it in 17, how we integrated that program is probably still better than what most colleges are doing right now, but better than most professional teams are doing right now. And I didn't want to just take a step back even though, you know, we go to the professional level and work with the professional team, but if I'm doing something remedial, I mean, how is that satisfying? \[00:31:06\] So it's fortunate enough to hear about the giants, you know, they didn't want to just work with a contracted dietitian, they wanted a dietitian and strength coach with a strength background. And it's, like I said, timing was everything. And that was the time that I was looking to, you know, potentially move forward and seek other jobs, whether, you know, be NBA, professional soccer, NFL, and that's when I heard, that's \[00:31:29\] What Aaron was looking for. So I reached out to him and it just seemed to be a good fit. And so there's not a lot of differences in terms of programming, you know, what the athletes are like from college football to professional football. It's just you just have a lot less time with them. And now their priorities are completely different. \[00:31:51\] So college kids, you know, a lot of them, they want to go to the league, a lot of them want playing time, a lot of them, you know, they just, they just want to feel like they belong because they come from a lot of different backgrounds. And now these guys in the NFL, now they're fighting for a roster spot. They care about money now. That's what's fixating on their mind. \[00:32:09\] Maybe they don't really care about wins and losses, but they're just, they're all fending for themselves. So now your communication style, the way you interact with them has to be completely different. So now you're not talking to 17 18 year old kids, you're talking to people that are as old as you, if not older, that have families that have bank accounts with millions of dollars in it, that have had a lot of success without you. \[00:32:32\] So understanding how much of a business it is and everybody talks about it and you hear about it from the outside. But when you get into it, you really start understanding, like this is, this is a business. And now it's also a team, but, you know, players can make business decisions for themselves. How much they want to invest in what you're saying, how much buy and they give, or, you know, you could just be somebody that they interact on the daily basis and get all their information \[00:32:56\] From the outside because they're agent, they're whoever, family members, connecting them with somebody. Now, there's a trust built up over there, you know, they do X, Y and Z in the all season and when they come back to us, we have to evaluate them and see like, did you even lift away? Did you even run a sprint? \[00:33:12\] Did you even manage your calories? So the difficulty with that is there's so much time you're not with them and they're doing X, Y and Z, they're training programs and their nutrition, their recovery might not coincide with what you imagine they should be doing. And I think that's the biggest difference from college to the pros. I think there's a lot of different, certainly differences between the motivations and the \[00:33:38\] Reasons that they're there and the construct of the business aspect of professional sport to amateur sport. What about, you know, as you went there, what were some of the things that perfectly fit within your expectations of what it was going to be like when you first arrived and first got to, you know, professional sport or the shield and then maybe to contrast that, what were some things that you expected to happen or maybe not necessarily organizationally \[00:34:13\] But expected that really surprised you about the differences between the two. I think the ability to be able to provide resources, you know, I don't want to say in the limited budget, but you have teams that are very open and willing to try new things to spend the money they need to spend on the services and the resources that they feel are going to benefit the team. And there's a big difference team to team and you know when you talk to coaches that \[00:34:40\] Have been around, players that have been around, they say, oh man, here it's awesome. You guys have this, this and this, you guys do this, this and this and then you're asking like, hey, what was your experience with another team? You know, what do they provide you because I don't want to compare. I just want to see what your level of expectation is and can we meet the needs of what you need to be successful and it's a mixed grab with, you know, what they provide them in terms of \[00:35:03\] Pre-havory, hyper-covery from an athletic medicine perspective, how much they invest in training and monitoring, and I'm not talking about doing science experiments and monitoring everything. I'm just like the basic things in the weight room, do you have enough pieces of equipment to meet the demands of what the players are going to see on the field and, you know, these guys are banged up, you know, no matter how fresh they think they are, can you \[00:35:27\] Make your adjustments and correctives based on, you know, the somebody need an alternative, you know, major movement. And then do you have, you know, do you care enough to monitor, you know, health status, biomarkers, investing in just proper food service, recovery stuff, there's a mix of bags. So that's what I expected to be able to not just have an unlimited budget, but, you know, \[00:35:49\] Not to be put under this microscope where, hey, we're counting dimes here, you know, the bean picker, bean counters are going to get mad at you if you spend too much money on, you know, these recovery items, these supplements, the next one Z. But what surprised me was that the NFL is still really behind in terms of integrated progressive performance, just in terms of like a cohesive performance department model where you see a lot, a lot of that more at the college level and not saying that it's \[00:36:21\] Where it needs to be, but, I mean, you just have, I think even now in 2020 going on the 2021, but a handful of teams have like their own full time dietitian and you look at all the power five schools and you have not one, two, you've got multiple, I mean, for a variety of reasons because of the number of sports you have, but at some of these power five schools, you have multiple people assisting with football, you know, because it is such a large sport. \[00:36:54\] You've got 110 athletes in college and then you have 63 now, I don't even know what the numbers are because of the CBA and COVID, you've got, you know, 75 plus the injured guys. So it's a lot of people to take care of. I expected just a lot more in terms of the quality of department heads and how good they are because just like with any field, any professional league, you have people that have been there for a very long time, they get, you know, inundated into the family of the business and the \[00:37:28\] Owners. So people just stick around, whether they're good or bad, who knows, that's not for me to decide, but it's like that with a lot of places where, you know, the lifers get in, you know, people like them, they started as like a ticket intern and now, you know, they're a VP of operations. It's like, well, shoot. \[00:37:48\] How does that happen? Have you ever been to another team? Have you ever, you know, seen how other places do it to bring in new ideas? I think there's a lot of just that stagnation within professional sports. So that surprised me quite a bit. Like two weeks ago, I'm like, wow, this is nowhere near as streamlined and, you know, there's \[00:38:08\] A lot more silos than I thought there would be. So that's what surprised me. I think too, like to maybe Harilo, some of the observations you made at your previous stops, right? Like when you're looking, you know, across the horizon at different departments and different people and you're starting to recognize that there might be some people that's not pulling \[00:38:27\] Their weight or not, you know, at least performing in a way that you would expect. And that can be discouraging in some respects, you know, like lifers that somehow found their way within the organization and now, you know, you're over there, bust in your tail trying to deliver, you know, amazing results and you're looking at other people and departments and you're like, man, you know, like why, you know, it would be great if you guys could, you know, match our efforts or match our returns. \[00:39:00\] But I wanted to come back, I made a note here because you talked about your time at Oregon and to go through the highs and then to have this sort of budget freeze and hiring freeze and then, you know, you're starting to see the construction of the finances and then you get to that league and now you got this unlimited budget and roughly unlimited, right? Like you can do and implement what you want, right? And that could be very liberating, right? \[00:39:31\] Because, you know, you have this playing field where, you know, you can do what you want and you do have the budget to do those things and you are pretty liberated and freeing. And one of the things I've seen too, that's a very huge demotivator is you have that and then that's taken away or you have a bunch of responsibility and it's exciting and you have your hands and a lot of different pots and you can shake things up and make impact here and make impact there and people are very open to new ideas and challenging them \[00:40:06\] To get better and then that's taken away and I don't want to speak for you on that but you know, I earn your show, Man on Fire podcast, you talked a little bit about the construction of some responsibilities from going into this maybe potentially your last year there with some of the changing of the coaching staff. Can you talk a little bit about sort of how that, at least maybe what you're wrestling with in your mind and for those people that don't know what I'm talking about, you got to \[00:40:39\] Check out Man on Fire podcast, listen to at least the first two, subscribe, sign up. I think you're going to get a lot of value out of it anyways but can you talk a little bit about sort of what that felt like and what you're wrestling with from, you know, the first couple of years that you were with the giants and maybe the last potential year that you were going into before your departure. Yeah, and it was something that I thought about after, right after the 2019 season. \[00:41:06\] So my first season, you know, there's a lot of expectations with the team because of the previous year, the team made it to the wild card game, ended up losing a green bay. Eli played really well. It's just the receivers, you know, there's some drop passes, drop touchdowns and the defense is on the field for quite a while. You know, green bay put up a lot of points, but the defense was excellent that year. \[00:41:29\] They often struggle a little bit. So everybody's mind is like, oh, we need to improve the offense. And then the team will be set. You have all the pieces. So that's where free agents in the draft came and there was a lot of who blah, like all the giants probably going to make the Super Bowl. \[00:41:41\] And I mean, you know how that is. That's just a curse, especially in the NFL when you, there's expectations on the team. And more often than not, they don't match them. So 10 games in or whatever was 12 games in head coach and GM get fired. Well, I think we're all gone. But luckily we get retained new GM, new head coach. \[00:42:01\] So the first year, you know, there, it didn't go as well as we wanted to, but there was a lot of excitement because the second half of the year, the team just performed a lot better. So there, there was a lot of excitement going into 2019\. And then again, the team doesn't perform. So you're, you're thinking, all right, you know, we spend all this time working and putting together everything that we do, adapting it, adjusting it as needed. \[00:42:22\] You know, we're kept around because the organization recognizes that we are an asset. We're going to what we do. The players are going to be your biggest sounding board because they're going to be asked by all the new regimes coming in. You know, are these people any good? And they're going to ask around to your peers and whatnot. \[00:42:39\] So I'm like, all right, we'll, we put together these really good plans. The programming is great. The integration, the accountability, even in the three worst years in the history of the organization, players were still showing up and, you know, they're getting their work done. We were trying to do as much as we could for just keeping them as healthy as possible. But it was all for not in terms of wins and losses. \[00:43:00\] And we know that we don't contribute to wins and losses. We just assist with doing what we can with what we can control. But there is a level of frustration where you know that what you're doing is good. The players buy in, you know, hear from them about what it's like on other teams. But those other teams that don't seem to be up to part, they're having success. And it all comes down to the quality of coaches, the quality of the players, you know, \[00:43:26\] What you're doing with them. And if that's not good, the buy-ins not good, then they're just going to look out for themselves. And that was very evident in my first year in the league. So thinking about it, you know, what we were doing from performance staff was, I was learning a lot because you're putting a situation where I was never put in before, you know, I'm a certain coach, I'm a dietitian, I'm in charge of, you know, recovery sleep and biomarkers, \[00:43:50\] Things that you're not taught in school, things that most people aren't doing within their full-time jobs. So there was a lot of learning and a lot of growth, especially working with a guy like Aaron who is so knowledgeable, you know, he's, he's had so many years of coaching, but he's not like an old school coach. He's very progressive and that's why organizations is like him. That's why the players like him. \[00:44:12\] So he, he's experienced a lot. He has a thirst for knowledge. He learns a lot. And when I got hired, I felt that I needed to emulate that. So it wasn't like eating him directly, telling me, it's just the conversations we had questions. He asked me, of course, I asked him how we interacted on a daily basis. \[00:44:29\] What I did to learn and grow to be able to have these conversations with him was invaluable. I wouldn't have been able to do that at any other team, you know, especially if I was just the dietitian. So I think for me, that was worth more than, you know, being able to go to the playoffs. Because again, what I took pride in was making a difference for the athletes, teaching them things that they hadn't been taught before, helping them, whether coming back from injury, teaching them things that nobody was able to get through to them and doing things for them \[00:45:01\] That nobody thought of because I was put in this role. So that was worth more than a Super Bowl. Because again, Super Bowl is a, that's a coach, it's a player thing. It has really nothing to do with us. But I started, you know, you evaluate things like if the team's not doing well for a variety of reasons, you know, does it seem like it's, it's going on the right direction. \[00:45:19\] There's this organization support me in the way that I could help them out. And so there's a lot of questions there where there's never a formal evaluation done by the organization on me and my department and what I was doing, you know, Aaron did it for us. Obviously we met every year, but there was nothing from the top on down. So I'm like, I don't even know what the organization thinks of me. The people that are decision-makers, the people that keep giving me these contract extensions \[00:45:45\] And a bump in salary, it's like, all right, well, is this your way of saying, hey, we like you. So here's, you know, another contract for next year. So we're just going to keep you around. There was nothing like, hey, let's evaluate you, what's good, what's bad, what the players say, you know, how you can improve. It's more of me evaluating myself, which I'm always going to be more harsh as critic \[00:46:05\] And just going off of that. So there's, you know, you have to question some of that leadership from the top on down. And then when you have another staff come in back in January, you know, I had questions about, you know, what is my future hold? Because I don't know what the new coaching staff wants of me. So this conversations that we had and then the staff was brought in, we were retained. \[00:46:29\] And then, you know, what's good for the organization and what they need, my not necessarily be good for individual staff members. And that was kind of the situation that I was put in where Aaron ended up leaving for Indiana and a great opportunity. So that was one of the biggest things in my mind was how does my role with the team now continue on, now that Aaron's not here, who I was hired by, you know, and Coach Mac approved by Ronnie. \[00:46:55\] Then I still, you know, in this dual role where I'm still doing a lot of different things, which is good, or, you know, am I going to get demoted in the eyes of what the new staff wants. So that's kind of what ended up happening was they wanted me to have a singular focus instead of being able to be in the way we're coaching up groups, where I would just be kind of just stuck dealing with the food in the cafeteria, worrying about all that stuff, just spending my day doing assessments, and I'm like, all right, \[00:47:23\] Well, I've done that before. I know how it works. And, you know, they don't necessarily know what I've done because they've only seen people operate in roles that they've worked with. So the previous stops, the previous places that they've been, they've only seen what a dietician can do in these specified roles, which is good, but it's not as integrated as I was able to be with the team doing what I was doing in that role. So when a new head strength was came in, and I went to, you know, the VPs and the ownership \[00:47:57\] And said, hey, this is my idea. I'm just trying to figure out where I fit in all this. And I, you know, gave them some proposals, this, this, and that. And they're like, all right, well, let's just make the hire and then we'll go from there. And then the hire was done. No conversations about it. And then we got thrown into the pandemic. So I'm sitting at home by myself trying to meet the demands of what the new staff want, doing everything virtually. Still, with no re-evaluation of the past season, we never sat down as a performance team \[00:48:25\] Devalued any of that, which was, I think, is a missed opportunity because it was just the medical staff and then us. And then Aaron leaves. So it's still the medical staff, the strength staff, and then I'm just kind of in this limbo by myself. So I'm like, am I specifically just nutrition involved in this department or do I still report as a strength coach under the new strength coach? I mean, there are no discussions of any of that. And there was more than enough time to do that. I mean, we're all sitting at home. So the training staff was putting together the protocols, \[00:48:56\] Trying to figure out what was going to happen when the team was going to return back for training camp. So there was a lot of discussion amongst them. I was, you know, doing my own thing, working with the players, guys that were reaching out to me, you know, since I was now the longest-tenured coach on the whole coaching staff because of all the different changes and then Aaron leaving. So they relied on me. They're, you know, the players want to know like, hey, what's going on? How's this going to go? What kind of training are we going through? What are practices going to be like? \[00:49:22\] And I'm like, you know what? I really have no idea. But from what I've heard, this is the expectation you guys need to make sure you're ready. Because what the team had been doing the past three, four years wasn't good enough. So yeah, it's going to suck. But this is what needs to happen for the team to progress, to actually get some wins on Sunday or whenever the game, you know, Monday, Thursday. So we get to training camp and we end up doing that at the stadium and instead of the facility to match the COVID rules, which changed everything. So now you have less people assisting day-to-day \[00:49:56\] Because the NFL put a list of people on tears. So you only have X number of people that could be around the players. And now my responsibility is increased because we have less help. But none of this was discussed among performance staff. So now I'm doing, you know, the day-to-day stuff that I would normally have interns do. And I have them doing the past where my days are just monopolized by doing just these remedial tasks to be able to get through training camp and spending, you know, six to eight hours just doing wanes and wayouts and hydration assessments. And it's like, look, \[00:50:28\] This isn't exactly what I signed up for, you know, I had always questioned, is this exactly the path I want to go through because, you know, you spend so much time away from family, you know, it's been 10 years since I had been with my family regularly. And is that, is that tradeoff worth it? So working under Aaron, doing what I was doing in that dual role was because I was growing, I was learning, I was, I was doing things that I had never experienced before and feeling very integrated and helping the team out. Well now, with this, it's quote unquote, demotion, I'm still working, you \[00:51:04\] Know, these long hours, but I will feel like I'm really contributing anything to the team because I'm just doing all these remedial tasks. It's, it's not very fulfilling. You know, it's kind of a kick in the nuts because it's, it's not what I wanted it and signed up for. You know, obviously, yeah, the money is good, the titles are good and this and that, but is this exactly what I want to do? And in my head, I'm thinking in the, the time commitment and the choice to do it isn't worth it anymore because I just, you know, it just didn't resign well with me. So now, the time away from \[00:51:39\] Family started becoming more and more prevalent in my mind, you know, my dad turned 70 during training camp when I wasn't able to be there with them and being able to see, you know, the videos and pictures. It's like great, you know, another birthday, another family event that I'm not a part of and what's the reason why? Well, I'm fucking doing USGs and Wands for eight hours a day, you know, sitting in the cafeteria and it's like, this is a joke. Like this isn't how I envision my life going, you know, I'm single, I don't have any kids. Am I going to do this for another 10 years where, \[00:52:12\] You know, I'm 45 and close to 50 and I'm still living by myself, still working, you know, 12 to 16 hours a day. Now, not feeling like I'm making an impact because of what the duties and responsibilities were now and I just came to that decision to say, this isn't what I wanted anymore. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention this, right? Like there is so many people, there's a lot to chew on. So, you know, I'm going to apologize to both you and the listeners here as well, but there's a lot of people that I respect that I have found in very similar situations lately, right? That have, you know, for one reason or \[00:52:52\] Another personal family commitments, life have walked away from from this, right? And they made that decision for themselves. It's notable because I don't necessarily know if a lot of people know what they're signing up for, right? When they when they get into this like of of any profession, and I get it like I I understand to be successful, you have to put in the time, you have put in the work and it's it's going to be demanding, but I think outside looking in, if you were, you know, the armchair quarterback watching, you know, football on Sunday morning from, you know, wherever \[00:53:31\] That you just don't understand the time commitment that a lot of these coaches will put in. And there's been people I've known personally here and elsewhere that's, you know, that's literally made that same decision that was at that the highest level NFL and NBA that's just said, you know, I'm done. I'm going to I want to have a life outside of this 17, 16 hours that I put in. I want to see my kids, I want to see my family. I say this to you because I respect you and I respect that decision. If I were to pivot this in some way, what are some advice that you hear \[00:54:09\] That are industry sports, you know, sports performance, strength conditioning, whether it's nutrition, whether it's dietetics, and hopefully it's not necessarily so exes and knows, but what is advice that you've heard being touted, social media or elsewhere, which is somewhat of a vapid toxic place anyways, that you hear, read, and you're like, man, you know what, I disagree with that. And maybe there isn't anything, but, you know, I read a lot of things online and I'm like, I think that is bad advice to tell coaches or young professionals getting into the field and \[00:54:44\] I disagree with that. Probably all of it, but now that's a good question because you have a lot of good advice out there on social media, but you also have a lot of bad advice and it kind of just depends on where it's coming from, whether it's like a sport coach or, you know, an RD or a strength conditioning coach, you don't really see a lot from trainers, but some of it I do agree with a lot of it where a lot of these more experienced coaches are now being able to share what they've learned and trying to tell the younger coaches are, you know, if I were to tweet \[00:55:20\] Something to my younger self, I think one of the biggest things is don't make the job your life because it can be taken away from you at any moment, whether you get fired, whether we've had some strength coaches pass away this year, which has been awful good men, some I've worked with incredible people where everybody says, oh, you got to grind, you got to do anything you can do to get your foot in the door. I think the biggest thing is making connections because, you know how it is in this industry, whether a head coach or somebody knows somebody that they'd work with in the past \[00:55:58\] Or they're going to ask, you know, some of the more well-experienced and well-known coaches about, you know, do you have a guide? And this happens in diatetics too, which is terrible, but it's just how it goes right now. It's not all about getting certain, having all these alphabets behind your name, alphabet soup, but being able to show what you can do, like being different, I think being different is huge where other people just say, this is what you need to do, this is the path you need to take. Well, if somebody tried to emulate my path, I'd say 100% would not end up doing the \[00:56:31\] Exact same thing because it's the individual person. My desire to want to succeed and the commitment that I made to just wanting to be the best, that's how I got to where I am. And part of that was, you know, neglecting time from family and friends because you really don't have a choice, sending with any sport coach, position coach. I mean, you have to put in the time to get your name out there so people can vouch for you. That's the biggest thing. You know, I know there's more search coming out in this and that, and like really, like if you look at somebody's resume or \[00:57:08\] Cover letter, I mean, none of that matters. Like, I'm kind of looking at some for this, you know, part time gig I'm doing just resumes of practitioners and they all look the same. So it's like Jesus, you know, how do you differentiate yourself? So I think what I would say is instead of trying to disprove or talk about things that don't agree with all, talk about things that I think that are really important. The first is understanding your niche and who you are. What are you really good at? You know, that's what's going to help separate you or get your name out there, especially if \[00:57:40\] Nobody knows who you are, like get out there on social media, you know, connect, not network, just connect with people in your area, people that you might have some affiliation with, show how you're different and why you're different. That's going to help you stand out. The second is you know, in the event that, you know, we know what 2020 is brought, a lot of furloughs, a lot of layoffs, like you have to have multiple streams of income, start learning from a lot of different people about, you know, sitting up a brand. I know that's taboo in SNC and sometimes, you know, \[00:58:14\] In dietetics too, but I think that's so important because if you do end up losing your job and you have nothing like your screw. So if you have nothing set up, like, you know, whatever an LLC or web page or a landing or just create some ebooks and sell them for five bucks, 10 bucks, whatever, start doing something like that. And that's the stuff that I'm doing right now in entrepreneurship. You know, it doesn't matter how good you think you are or how much experience I have. Like if you don't have a market that you can target and talk to and understand their pain points and struggles \[00:58:43\] And what, you know, they hope to achieve, then it doesn't matter how much experience you have or how many accolades you have or how many search you have. I think that's a big piece. And the next is, and this is one of the biggest thing is stop reading exercise fizz and lifting books. I mean, the principles have not changed for decades. I mean, it's all going to be the same there. I mean, there's a million ways you can squat, a million ways you can do, you know, eccentric hamstring movements, whatever. Like what's kept me in my job is the fact that the guys were able to speak \[00:59:20\] On working with me, what I was able to do to them and how much EQ and SQD you have. Can you communicate and work well with others? Can you adapt what you're doing on the fly and realize, like, yeah, programming is great. But the second shit goes out the window, you start losing games and guys just are fending for themselves and, you know, it's hard enough to get them in the way when you got to start throwing that out of the window or injuries happen. You have to start adjusting what you do or the coach starts changing the time frame of practice and with the lift \[00:59:49\] Schedule looks like, yeah, you got to adapt all that. So you're not going to learn any of that in the textbook. You're going to have to learn how to do that by being comfortable with yourself. So that's some of the advice I, you know, I've tried to put some of that stuff out there on Twitter and social media. Again, usually when there is bad advice, I don't think a ton of S&C coaches, especially the ones that are well liked and followed or putting that out there, I say I agree with more with what they're trying to share and educate and teach. Sometimes it's like it comes from \[01:00:22\] Sport coaches. I remember there was a, a assistant or a head basketball coach at a small college talking about you need to be available 24-7 for your athletes. That's part of your job and like I quote, quote of the tweet, so this is the worst advice I've ever heard. Like the reason a lot of these athletes from high school to college honor failing, especially when they get to the pro level is people are doing way too much for them. So they don't develop any initiative. There's no accountability. There's no autonomy and it's rampant to where when they get to us, I mean back when \[01:00:55\] I wasn't in the NFL and the pros, you have to re-teach them stuff from the ground up because people have done too much for them and made excuses for them and held their hand for too long. And it's like God, we need to teach them about just basic fundamentals in the weight room with recovery with nutrition, even though somebody has been in their ear teaching them and providing them the same resources for the past four or five years. Ken Manney would often talk about trying to prepare the athlete for the path and not necessarily the path for the athlete or the child, right? And that \[01:01:28\] Is that is a travesty that we are somewhat failing on as an industry by our persistent 24-7 365 availability is that we're making that path so easy that when adversity does come around and it will come around, that they're not necessarily prepared for it. And you talked a bunch of different things in there, not necessarily always about the worst advice and you gave some great advice in it, right, from creating a brand and developing and identifying your niche and what your brilliant at, what your strengths are. As we've seen, as many of us with COVID-19 and \[01:02:10\] Universities and professional sports, right, like which is an entertainment industry, right? Like furloughs are a real thing and you know, having an LLC or multiple incomes or ways of developing and generating passive income or residual income is allows you to at least alleviate some stress and you know, you mentioned ebooks and materials, but you know like things as far as like I think it was Kevin Kelly's 1000 true fans, right? Article that he wrote, like it doesn't take much if you have a thousand, a thousand fans in some respects or loyal followers in some respects, it doesn't necessarily \[01:02:55\] Means Instagram or elsewhere, but like a thousand people that will buy or purchase some type of material from you. Let's say it's $30, like that's an income right there that can help offset your furlough or pay your rent or provide food on the table for your family or for your kids or yourself. So that entrepreneurial spirit I think in our coaching, which sometimes is frowned upon every other industry. If you're a lawyer and you were you know, or a plumber or a like trainers like or whatever if you're a teacher and you're like, I'm going to do this master class or I'm going to jump on \[01:03:33\] Think a fire or think a ethic and create a course, they champion you, they applaud you, but for our industry, you know, like that's frowned upon to try to generate some additional income because you're selling out in some way. And that's a huge disservice to us, especially in somewhat crushing for an entrepreneurial spirit of people that just want to try to do good and share their experiences and reach a larger audience and share what's work for them and help alleviate stress for the younger coaches getting into it or younger practitioners while still trying to, you know, pay rent and keep \[01:04:13\] The electricity on. So, hey, I want to take on want to be respectful of your time and listen, like all of us, there's a lot that you can take away from this, right? And you know, the lessons, the journey, the catalyst of your journey, some of the pitfalls of professional sport and and it's not just, um, not just professional sport, it's it's any industry, right, with responsibilities and duties and changing of guards and uncertainty and then you add in isolation and COVID, that could be crazy and we're all struggling, we're all wrestling with it. And I just wanted to say \[01:04:55\] That I took a lot away from this conversation alone, just some of the lessons and things and made me sort of a think about and resonate on some things within my own life. And if that's happening with me, I have to imagine anybody listening to this show will also feel the same way. So, I want to, hey, thank you for coming on the show. Be, um, again, I guess say, thanks for being you know, as vulnerable and as open and transparent as you have, see sharing all of this, but also de-recommend to anybody that's listening to, to again, check out your resources, head over to \[01:05:37\] The Man On Fire podcast, subscribe there. Is there any way that the listening audience can find, you know, your materials or a website or your social media's? How, how is the best way for them to get involved or to contact you if they got questions or just want to learn more? Yeah, I've had a Twitter LinkedIn and an Instagram account for a while. Everything is at Priteek.exe Patel. It's P-R-A-T-I-K-X, P-A-T-L. And over the past few months, just doing a lot of learning about how these mediums like Twitter and Instagram can be valuable and, you know, \[01:06:14\] How can you monetize it? How can you, you know, put your brand out there? There's a lot of amazing resources and people are doing amazing things on Twitter, building their audience and making people's lives better and being able to use it as a stream of income, which I think is incredible. So, I've been kind of learning about that, learning what I need to do, revamping it because as you know, when you work for an organization or a university, sometimes you're not allowed to put out certain things or it has to be educational, like stuff like that was told to me, or you know, \[01:06:44\] These posts are that post a little too controversial, watch yourself. So, you know, when you're putting out that educational information, usually it's only stuff that S and C and RDs want to look at, but really, you know, there's so much more that can be done now. You know, I'm learning about the ins and outs of it and how to grow the audience and build the brand, you know, I'm becoming more and more active as I'm developing how to transition that, but yeah, you can definitely reach out to me on any of those channels. The website's coming soon, and again, learning all of these \[01:07:18\] Different things about entrepreneurship, not just throwing out a website, but making something useful, you know, there's a lot of people that have transitioned to owning their own business or have done it for a really long time that you can learn from, and I've been doing that for the past couple of months. So, the website would just be the same. It'll be under critiquexpetail.com. Hopefully launching soon, if not in 2021, but that's where people can get ahold of me. Awesome. Well, I'll make sure to include all your social media handles and places that they can \[01:07:47\] Reach out to you and direct any questions. And as always, man, I appreciate you coming on the show and being as open as you have. Thanks, man. No, thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Hey, everybody. That is going to be it for this episode of The Decoding Excellence Show. Hopefully you took something away from my conversation with Teak, his experience and wisdom and time and just lessons learned being behind the shield in the NFL, working with the New York Giants from the director of performance nutrition and assistant strength, \[01:08:18\] Conditioning role, his time at University of Oregon and Michigan State University and Kansas State. There's a lot of wisdom in this show. And I think if you listen and took some notes, you will take a lot away from the work-life balance, the lessons working with mentors and different people within the industry, how to balance your time, and just a lot of good gems in this. As always, there's a number of different ways that you can support The Decoding Excellence Show. The newest way you can support is by heading over to AdamRingler.com and joining the high \[01:08:50\] Performance insiders. This is an exclusive community that allows you access to the private articles, the private podcast feed, and digital lecture series that's being hosted behind this community wall. Check it out by heading over to AdamRingler.com and subscribing today. The second way you could support the show is simply by signing up for the newsletter. This is something I take a lot of pride in. I try to go out on the internet, dig up research articles that are fascinating. I try to find the newest technologies, articles I'm reading, research publications, and just \[01:09:28\] Really cool things that I discover that sort of exists between performance science, biology, and technology. I think you'll get a lot of value simply by signing up for the newsletter. I promise you I will never spam you. I will never sell your information or give this out. 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