> ## 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. # #075 - Hiring the Right Leader in Collegiate Sport Performance: Lessons Learned - URL: https://adamringler.com/podcast/075/ - Published: 2025-07-10T01:41:56.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-20T00:47:41.000Z - Description: Whether you’re an athletic director, coach, or practitioner, this episode will challenge you to rethink how you evaluate talent for these critical roles—and why social media clout isn’t a substitute for real-world experience. - Author: Adam Ringler - Tags: Decoding Excellence, #podcast, Coaching and Leadership In this episode of **The Decoding Excellence Show**, I’m pulling back the curtain on what it really takes to hire the right person to lead a collegiate performance and holistic-oriented department. After nearly a decade at the University of Colorado,contributing to a sport science and high performance model while working with Women’s Basketball and Volleyball,I’ve seen firsthand what works, what fails, and why so many NCAA programs miss the mark. This isn’t about titles, certifications, or flashy tech. It’s about leadership. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f6/16/f6164f1b-bb1b-4d5c-af28-2fe8b5a96265/content/images/2025/07/dark-blue-polygon-abstract-backdrop-vector-3437138884.jpg) ## The kind of leadership that: - **Understands the demands of the weight room and the locker room.** - **Earns trust across sports medicine, nutrition, psychology, and coaching staffs.** - **Inspires a culture where athletes thrive and practitioners grow.** Whether you’re an **athletic director**, **coach**, or **practitioner**, this episode will challenge you to rethink how you evaluate talent for these critical roles,and why social media clout isn’t a substitute for real-world experience. ### **🎧 What You'll Learn From the Show:** - The three non-negotiables every Director of Sport Performance should have. - Why NCAA programs fail when they chase trends over substance. - How to spot a true leader versus a résumé or Instagram-built persona. - Lessons from building Colorado’s sport science program over 9 years. --- > **If your program is serious about athlete health, performance, and staff longevity, this conversation is a must-listen.** --- Whether you’re on your own walk, stuck in traffic, or setting up the gym,this is your behind-the-scenes peek into how I think, plan, and process high performance. 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 **FIVE STAR** ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review. --- If you haven't already, 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. [NewsletterThe newsletter is something I absolutely LOVE If you haven’t signed up yet for my newsletter, you’re missing out. I often describe my newsletter to friends as the “BirchBox of Newsletters”. It’s a simple bullet point list of all the fascinating, and curious things I’ve explored each month.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f6/16/f6164f1b-bb1b-4d5c-af28-2fe8b5a96265/content/images/icon/yellowcircle-20.png)Adam RinglerAdam Ringler![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/f6/16/f6164f1b-bb1b-4d5c-af28-2fe8b5a96265/content/images/thumbnail/Adam-1.jpg)](https://adamringler.com/newsletter/) 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) --- ## Key Takeaways - Hiring a performance director is about leadership, not titles, certifications, or flashy tech: look for someone who understands both the weight room and the locker room. - The right leader earns trust across sports medicine, nutrition, psychology, and coaching staffs, and builds a culture where athletes thrive and practitioners grow. - Programs fail when they chase trends over substance: evaluate what a candidate has actually built, not their resume or Instagram persona. - Social media clout is not a substitute for real-world experience: nine years of building Colorado's sport science program showed what works, what fails, and why many NCAA programs miss the mark. ## 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 and conditioning, high performance coaching, welcome to the Decoding Excellence Show. Hey everybody, this is Adam Ringler and welcome to the Cardio Talks. This is where, as always, I'm doing my zone 2 Ruck. I'm walking through the neighborhood. It's about 35 minutes. Cardio session for me, it's a four neighborhood walk for, for me on this 4th July. This is the day of the recording here and I thought I would bring to life an article that I wrote. \[00:00:54\] So in this show, we get into the weeds discussing the article I wrote at AdamRingler.com. It is hiring the right leader for sports performance. Don't miss the forest for the trees. So further ado, let's get into this article. Hey everybody, this is Adam Ringler and again thanks for tuning into this Cardio Talk. Here I am doing my zone 2 and I want to bring to life right the article I wrote. I understand there's a lot of different mediums for publication. There's my YouTube channel at Adam Ringler. You \[00:01:32\] Can find that at YouTube. There's obviously this website at AdamRingler.com where I write more evergreen long-form content there. These decoding excellence show podcasts, right? The original idea was to take the greatest ideas, interviews of high-performance sport science and strength conditioning and bring these interviews to you. Now, over the years, what's kind of transformed is that they've become a little bit of an area of monologue for me. That's simply just by scheduling difficult teas and challenges with recording and just the logistics. So now they've turned into a place to store my \[00:02:16\] Spoken monologues and share some ideas on the top of my heads. Now, the Cardio Talks, this series, it's a series where I publicize, I share, I record my thoughts while I'm doing zone 2\. So if I'm out of breath, check. That's because my heart rates up to 120 beats per minute right now, having a conversational, you know, has Peter Atio we're talking about your zone 2 is you could hold a conversation, but maybe you're breathing behind each word. So I'm very much checkmarking that box off. Secondly, with these recordings, there's cards in the background walking against \[00:02:56\] Traffic right now on the sidewalk and maybe dogs barking. All of these things present some challenges here. So as much as I try to filter out all the ambient distracting noise, some of it will get through the recordings are not the clearest studio quality recordings on my studio mic. Now, I want to bring to life this article that I ended up writing, it's caught hiring the right leader for sports performance, and this comes off of a post that I read from Mr. The one and only Bob Lato, and he ended up talking about the high performance model and collegiate athletics, \[00:03:32\] And how so often we ended up sort of injecting wrong people in those positions, right? People that might not have the skin in the game that you would once expect that are maybe PhDs, no disrespect to that, right? Academic expertise is important. But people that maybe don't understand the logistical challenges of operating at the tip of the spear of elite athletics, time demands, challenges. So I ended up sitting down taking that idea, fleshing out an article that all the size to Adam Ringler.com. You can head over there and read that. But I wanted to kind of \[00:04:15\] Talk through some of these things, right? Because over my almost 20 years in collegiate strength envisioning the one athletics, I've seen this play out time and time and time again, right? And speaking just from my own experience, the experience where at various institutions trying to build out sports science systems and high performance models and integrative athletic departments that take the best approaches and best practices from all the various sort of allied health disciplines, whether it's applied to psychology, sports nutrition, athletic medicine, strength conditioning, \[00:04:56\] Data analytics, and apply it in a very comprehensive and integrative fashion. I've recognized that, well, when it comes to the brass tax, sometimes all of those things, you could have the greatest systems in place. But if you don't have the right people in place, it's off or no. So that's this podcast, right? That's this cardio talk today. So I wanted to talk about it. The biggest breakthrough in all of these systems and the integrativeness and the departmental sharing and the systems that you developed wasn't a technology, it wasn't fault performance, it wasn't \[00:05:39\] Hawkins, it wasn't, you know, force plates, it wasn't wearable monitoring. It was realizing that there's no system, no model survives, at least not for very long, without the right people guiding that machine. That is the lesson. That is the article. That is what I took away from Bob's hosting, I'm linked in. It's that leadership, quiet, consistent, aligned leadership, is what builds staying power in these athletic department machines. So this is what I think athletic departments need to understand. I think this, if you're hiring for, let's say a director position \[00:06:26\] Of performance, a director position of health and performance, a director of sports science, whatever it might be, a high performance manager, whatever title we might assign to this type of role. This is what I think athletic departments need to know because the context, experience, the culture building, the placement of the right leadership matters way more than the systems and technologies that you have in place. So let's get into the first thing. Do not, do not, do not just plug in some alphabet soup titled soup. What I mean by that is that you can have \[00:07:09\] Postdocs, you can have people that have defended their dissertations, that have all the academic expertise. But if you don't have somebody that's been in this situation, that's been in the fire, that's had their feet held to the fire, that hasn't had to juggle the demands of six or seven or ten different coaches and programs and administrators that haven't flown from west coast to east coast down to the south and traveled red eyes, loading luggages on the bus while programming for five or six different teams while doing expense \[00:07:55\] Reports while doing rehabilitation exercises and creating, like if you haven't had a candidate, have those types of demands and to process all of those challenges amidst everything else, they haven't had to sit in that tension and still like still have the leadership required in those moments. I just don't think they're the right person. See, when I started to layer in some sports science models, right, their rudimentary sports science principles into our practice, now there wasn't a clear roadmap back then, right, I'm talking for me it's 19 years of trying to \[00:08:42\] Build an applied sports science model across various institutions across America, right, there wasn't a blueprint to follow it, for you were at least within college athletics, you know, this was very new at the time, but I did so with challenges, I did so with you know, having my systems tested against the fire, I did so with coaches not being fully bought in, athletes not being fully bought in, and over time it was built, sort of brick by brick, to gain trust in these systems and these models and these departments and these performance realm. \[00:09:27\] It wasn't solved with athletic department policy, it wasn't solved or fixed by branding, it was solved by presence by sitting one on one, one on a few, one by team, one by an athletic department, educating, sharing, listening, taking a bat, changing, iterating, working problems out, shoulder by shoulder with the people that these systems are meant to serve. So I just think leadership can't be fake, it can't be injected in because you have a title or because you have expertise or academic expertise, you either show up consistently, day after day, week after week, month after month, \[00:10:17\] For the people that you serve, or you don't. And when you bring in people, live this, live and breathe this work, not just people that are operating for 10,000 feet away, those are the people that gained real traction, the people in the metaphoric trenches. And you don't have to look too far across America, before and athletic departments, to see the programs that are doing this really successful, are all have people that have leaders in place that have walked the walk in these systems and these models. No, the second thing I wanted to talk \[00:11:02\] About is that real work leaves evidence. Real work leaves evidence. So what I mean by that is that it's not about somebody's linked in profile, it's not about what they share in social media, it's not about even this, even what I'm saying right now in a podcast, right? I would say remain skeptical to everything, right? But you do need to follow the breadcrumbs of successful programs, right? Did the performance staff that worked there? Did they grow? Did they get better? Did they get better job placements? Are the systems still in place, even well after \[00:11:39\] They've left that organization as the system or the model still thriving? If not, you've got a figure head. You don't have a program builder. You see building successful programs, they don't need figure heads, they don't need spokesperson, they need people who are willing to roll up their sleeves and do the dirty work. And quite frankly, across America, there's not a lot of people that do that. That's that's willing to work the longer hours, that's willing to show up on the holidays, that's willing to just do the work and not offload it to other people. See, when we started \[00:12:26\] To integrate some of these technologies and data analytics into some of our programs, it was messy. It wasn't perfect. But over time, our work left a mark. And it wasn't, you know, like our warm-ups and our game day routines and our game schema three days, two days, one day out from game day, all of that stuff, right? It wasn't because I had a script or a blueprint to follow. It was again, because I listened, I made mistakes, I course corrected, and then ultimately I stuck around long enough and was willing to do the work to make things better. That is the hallmark \[00:13:09\] Of real progress. Like you need to talk to the people that these systems touch, whether it's athletic trainers, team docs, your orthos, your psychologists, your dietitians, your administrators, your sports provider, your coaches, your strength and conditioning professionals, all of those things. That's where you'll hear the real truth about programs. See, longevity in this field, it doesn't come from just charisma and, you know, spotlight our new, brand our new. It comes from just steady-eddy behind the scenes work day after day. So my recommendations for those that are hiring \[00:13:52\] In this role, whatever it might be, is that the trail of those people or candidates that you're willing to bring in? Because I tell you more than any other keynote speech that they give or lecture at a national conference, when you vet whether or not their program successful well after they've left, that's the hallmark of real success in program building. Now, I've already alluded to this first point and that is choosing real leadership, not just letters after a name. Let's not sugarcoat anything. There's no obsession within strength conditioning, within sports performance, \[00:14:34\] With credentials. Everybody wants the most certifications, the most letters after the name, the alphabet soup after their last name. And that's fine, right? Education is great. I'm not not discounting that whatsoever, but beneficiary of having a well education system won't mean until I am. However, there is not a single textbook, not a single textbook that will teach you how to perform under pressure. There's not a single certification out there that's going to \[00:15:14\] Walk you through the challenges of coaches, the challenges of systems, the pressure, news clippings about bringing an injured athlete back to their playing surface. So you have sat in meetings with people who are so intelligent, so intelligent with PhDs and certifications, advanced certifications of all types, but they've lacked people's skills. They've lacked an ability to authentically connect to the athlete. They could not effectively communicate what their expertise in academia have taught them into meaningful behavior change. \[00:15:57\] So from there, all the book smarts throughout the window. Now, I think leadership in this context needs to look like knowing when to back off, when to push forward, being able to resolve internal and external conflict without creating silos like bus departments, understanding how to hold a standard, a universal standard of operation while still supporting some level of autonomy, and creating space for younger coaches that staff to grow without feeling threatened for their ideas. A football leadership means that showing up, like if you're a leader, you have to show up, \[00:16:40\] You can't do it from an office suite. You can't do it from a beautiful panoramic view with your windowed office. You have to show up where people are at. Hard work. That takes sacrifice. And that means showing up on a Saturday morning or a holiday or a Sunday night when it's supposed game and it's now 9.45 in the afternoon and the evening. And we still have to do recovery sessions until 10.30 at night. That is true leadership. And if people can't manage other people, they simply won't manage progress \[00:17:20\] Of a program and growing a program. Now, I'm going to wrap up with this, right. The program deserves steward. And not just a figurehead. Now, I've already kind of alluded to this, and this is personal. This is very personal, right. Again, I didn't have a roadmap or a blueprint to building these programs and systems at various organizations and institutions I've worked at. But the through line through all of it is that we had leaders, we had coaches, we had administrators, we had support staff who all were willing to put their ego aside for the sake of athlete well-being. \[00:18:02\] That's what every single program deserves. So leadership and performance isn't about big ideas, about being humble, it's humble action. It's about keeping the vision intact, even when things aren't convened for you. Let me tell you. And you know this, if you're listening to the show, rarely are things convenient for sports staff. It's when two staff members maybe go heads, when data doesn't match outcomes or when a kid's body starts to maybe break down after the weight of a long season. How do you handle that? Well, you need to hire someone who treats \[00:18:40\] Their role like a craft and not a career move. The most successful programs have people that are stewards of the program. They're not just there to resume build. It means something to them. It's personal to them. It's their passion project. It's their baby. It's what they're trying to cultivate and grow and mature into a successful young man or woman or program. So athletes tend to thrive when their environment is consistent, when it's clear and it's full of care. And that only ever really happens, when you have somebody who is truly looking out for the whole system, \[00:19:23\] And not just their slice or their corner or their brand or their logo. You need to find that person, whoever that is, if you're hiring for that role, find them, give them support. And then as Steve Jobs would have said back in a day, get the hell out of their way and let them do their job. Now, here's my final thought. It's just to kind of put a bow tie on this cardio top, coming towards the end of this thing. It started to be recorded about halfway through my walk. Skip the gimmicks, right? Pick the people that know how to build from the ground up, \[00:19:58\] Right? Bet the people that have done it before, time and time again. And if you're lucky enough to find that leader, whoever they may be, let them do what they do best, right? Quietly, conveniently, man with purpose. I appreciate y'all for listening. As always, you can find more information on my website, AdamRingler.com. You can also head over to my Instagram and YouTube page at AdamRingler. I'd love for you to be part of what we're building, cultivating, and growing, and champion ideas. As always, you shit you. Thank you so much. \[00:20:43\] Hey, everybody, that's going to be it for this podcast. As always, if you missed any of the episodes here in the Decoding Excellence Show, you can go and explore the back catalog. I host all of our episodes not only on every sort of podcast hosting site, whether it's Spotify or whether it's YouTube or anywhere else, but you can go to my website. It is AdamRingler.com forward slash podcast. From there, you can listen to all of the interviews, whether it's other sport professionals, whether it's the monologues, whether it's the basketball discussions, or the sport science and \[00:21:18\] Tech. Go to the website, check it out, listen to the podcast. I'm telling you, you will take something away from the back catalog of the Decoding Excellence Show. Now, one of the ways that you can support this show. Now, there's two, really. You could go to AdamRingler.com forward slash newsletter. You can sign up for my newsletter. And in this, you're going to get access to everything, the cool things that I discover from a monthly basis, new books I'm reading, things I'm discovering, articles that I found related to sport science. That's really cool and coaching. So pop in your email there. \[00:21:59\] And that is just an easy way of supporting the show. And you'll get free behind the scenes access to all the cool things I'm discovering. If you took anything away from this episode, I would encourage you, no, I would beg you to share it with any of your friends, your co-workers, your family members, share it with somebody that could get a little bit of value from hearing what we've discussed today. And as always, I appreciate you. I thank you. Until next time, stay strong, stay healthy, keep pushing on.