Way Of Champions Podcast

Seth Pepper (@sethpepper) is a 23x All-American and 2x National Champion swimmer from the University of Arizona who won Gold Medals at the World University Games and the Pan Pacific Championships.And he only started swimming at age 14. Though he fell inches short of fulfilling his dream to be an Olympian, he has used his athletic journey as a model and inspiration for countless athletes on the PGA Tour, NBA, WTA, MLB and at the collegiate level. Now working as a mental performance coach, Seth brings a unique perspective and understanding of high performance environments that have helped his clients excel at the highest levels of sport. In our conversation today, Jerry and John unpack Seth's journey, discuss whether obsession is a healthy or unhealthy thing, and explore Seth's unique ability to see failure and adversity as positive developments that lead to growth. You can connect with Seth at www.sethpepper.com or on social media @sethpepper.  This week’s podcast is brought to you by our friends at Sprocket S

Adam Kuhn is the director of a nonprofit startup, Satori Soccer (www.satorisoccer.org), a youth soccer coach, and has a business background in data analytics in the field of improving customer experiences. In a youth sports world that is increasingly using analytics to improve performance on the field, the importance of player experience can sometimes get overlooked. To bring this essential component--arguably the most essential component in youth sport--to the forefront, Satori is using enterprise-grade analytics techniques to measure and improve youth soccer experiences. In measuring things like retention, player enjoyment, and parent satisfaction, clubs & associations are more quickly improving their programming for the benefit of their players. Satori Soccer is currently engaged with many large youth sport organizations and is actively surveying membership and using the data to guide better coaching and programming decisions for the clubs.  In our conversation today, Adam explains many of the key find

John Kessel (@JohnKesselUSAV) is the recently retired Director of Sport Development for USA Volleyball and one of the most sought after coach educators and sport developers in the world. John has been coaching since 1971 at the collegiate level or above, including Women’s U.S. Open titles in 1986 & 1987, Disabled Programs, USA Deaf Olympic Teams, Starlings USA, National Parks and Recreation Assoc., the YMCA and over 30 other Affiliated Organizations working with USAV. He was Secretary of the NORCECA Technical and Coaches Commission, and Director of Development for World ParaVolley. He was Team Leader for the 2000 USA Olympic Beach Volleyball Teams in Sydney, which brought home one gold medal, and for the 2004 USA Paralympic Women’s Sitting Volleyball Team in Athens, which came home with the bronze medal. In 1995, Volleyball Magazine’s special Centennial issue named him one of the 50 most important people in the sport in the past 100 years. In 2013 the American Volleyball Coaches Association inducted him a

Dave Aranda is the Head Coach of Baylor Football, the 2021 Big 12 Champions and winners of the 2022 Sugar Bowl. A 2020 National Champion Asst. Coach at LSU and a 26-year coaching veteran, Dave Aranda was named the 28th head coach in Baylor Football history on Jan. 16, 2020. In 2021, Aranda's Bears tied for the best turnaround in college football, boasting a ten-win improvement from the previous year, including a school-record five wins against ranked opponents. Aranda came to Waco after four seasons as associate head coach and defensive coordinator at LSU, including a 2020 National Championship and a 2019 SEC Championship. Widely considered one of the top defensive minds in football, Aranda has a track record of producing NFL-ready players. In this conversation with John and Jerry, originally recorded for the 2022 Way of Champions Virtual Conference, Dave talks about his coaching journey, his first introduction to the Way of Champions through Jerry's book Thinking Body, Dancing Mind, and their long friendship

Steve Gomez is the 3x NCAA Champion women's basketball coach at Lubbock Christian University. He graduated from LCU in 1988 with a Bachelor’s of Science Degree in Mathematics, and played on the mens basketball team where he is still in the top of many categories in the record books. He then taught math and coached at Lubbock Monterey High School where he served as an assistant coach in the men’s basketball program from 1988 to 1995.  In 1996, Gomez accepted the men’s basketball head coaching position at Lubbock Cooper High School, where he remained until returning to Lubbock Christian University to take over the reins of the Lady Chaps in 2003. He led the Lady Chaps to 10 straight NAIA tournament appearances and oversaw their transition to NCAA Division II. Since then, the Lady Chaps have won the NCAA II National Championship in 2016, 2019 and 2021, He also served with USA Basketball as an assistant coach for the U16 and U17 girls National Team, winning the FIBA America’s Cup in 2017 and the FIBA World Cup in

Last week, the Belgium Red Flames Women's Soccer Team qualified for the knockout stages of the 2022 Women's European Soccer Championships, the first time the team has advanced that far in a major tournament. Our friend and popular podcast guest Kris Van Der Haegen is the assistant coach of that team, as well as Director of Coach Education for the Belgium FA, and we thought it would be good to share some of his best things we have learned from him. In our search we came across episode 80 from 2018, clips from three amazing podcasts in our first two seasons that changed the way John has coached his teams. Upon listening, we had to share it again. This episode contains lessons from Kris www.icoachkidseu.com, @KrisVDHaegen), Mark Upton (founder of www.MyFastestMile.com, @uppy01) and Mark Bennett (www.PDSCoach.com, @PDSCoach), long clips and then John's explanation on how these clips influenced his coaching, and how he implemented them. Our hope with the podcast is not just to disseminate information, but bring ab

As CEO and Founder of Work On Your Game Inc., Dre Baldwin has given 4 TEDxTalks on Discipline, Confidence, Mental Toughness & Personal Initiative and has authored 31 books. He has appeared in national campaigns with Nike, Finish Line, Wendy's, Gatorade, Buick, Wilson Sports, STASH Investments and DIME magazine. Dre has published over 8,000 videos to 140,000+ subscribers, his content being viewed over 73 million times. Dre's daily Work On Your Game Podcast has over 2,200 episodes and more than 4.5 million downloads. In just 5 years, Dre went from the end of his high school team's bench to a 9-year professional basketball career. He played in 8 countries including Lithuania, Germany, Montenegro, Slovakia and Germany. Dre invented his Work On Your Game framework as a "roadmap in reverse" to help professionals with mindset, strategy, accountability and execution. You can connect with Dre @drebaldwin on Instagram and @dreallday on Twitter. His new book is available for free at www.ThirdDayBook.com This week’s

Wayne Goldsmith has been at the forefront of sports innovation, education and development for over 25 years. His unique “whole of sport” background – having worked across every level and aspect of sport around the world gives him the insights to see the real problems in your sport and help you develop effective and efficient solutions. From USA Swimming to the Wallabies Australian Rugby Union team, from the Triathlon Australia World Championships and Olympic Games team to the North Melbourne Kangaroos AFL team, Wayne’s worked with professional football, professional tennis and a wide range of Olympic sports across Australia and around the world. In our talk today we discuss the myriad of issues with coach education, talent ID and development, and so much more. Learn more at www.wgcoaching.com This week’s podcast is brought to you by our friends at Sprocket Sports.  Sprocket Sports is a new software platform for youth sports clubs.  Yeah, there are a lot of these systems out there, but Sprocket provides the fu

Keagen Hadley (@theacltherapist) is an occupational therapy doctor specializing in using psychological treatments such as acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) with his patients. As a patient and therapist, he has a deep understanding of the interventions and knows how emotional stress can interfere with rehabilitation, daily activities, and overall quality of life. As an athlete, he tore both ACLs playing college and semi-professional football. This experience made him acutely aware of the struggles associated psychologically post-ACL injury and how to overcome them with positive results. In our conversation today we discuss how psychological recovery is just as important as physically recovery, why we should throw out current timelines for recovery from major injury, and how injuries an add gasoline to other psychological/emotional issues that pre-exist the injury. This is a topic we have never devoted a full episode to before and its a very important one. Visit https://keagenhadley.com for more infor

Martin St. Louis is currently the Head Coach of the Montreal Canadians of the National Hockey League. During his career, he played over 1,000 games and scored 1,000 points in an NHL career that began with the Calgary Flames in 1998 and ended with the New York Rangers in 2015. St. Louis is best remembered for having played with the Tampa Bay Lightning from 2000 until being traded to the Rangers in 2014.  He was a member of the Tampa Bay Lightning Stanley Cup championship team in 2004, and during his time there was named NHL MVP and Lady Bing Award Winner. St. Louis was elected into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2018; his first year of eligibility. This episode first aired in 2020. Highlights from the Podcast: What drove Martin to work hard and get into the NHL? How did playing with 16 year olds as a 12 year old help when Martin got older? How to help your child improve as a parent What are some ways to install the passion of playing a sport in kids? What was it like to go to a new system (Tampa) and struggle at

J.P. Nerbun (@jpnerbun) is a coach, sports consultant, and the founder of TOC Culture Consulting, a global sports-consulting business. He has over a decade of basketball experience, coaching men and women in Ireland, Lithuania, and the United States, at the professional, collegiate, and high-school levels. His mission is to help leaders and their teams grow through mentorship, coaching, and community. His team has offered support and insight to dozens of different leaders in sports, business, medicine, and education. In 2019, he published his first book, Calling Up: Discovering Your Journey to Transformational Leadership and in 2022 he published The Culture System. Today on the podcast we discuss his new book and lay out JP's proven method for helping coaches create an extraordinary team culture.  Connect with JP at: www.TOCCulture.com www.myculturesystem.com This week’s podcast is brought to you by our friends at Sprocket Sports.  Sprocket Sports is a new software platform for youth sports clubs.  Yeah, ther

Dr. Joe Parent is a highly regarded expert in Performance Psychology and Applied Mindfulness, working with athletes, actors, artists, and executives. He is a well known psychology consultant, as well as a media commentator, business executive coach, and author of the classic Zen Golf and numerous other books. Dr. Parent developed his Values-Based Mindfulness consulting practice through a unique blend of modern western psychology and venerable eastern wisdom training. His books have sold more than one million copies in print, audio, and digital formats world-wide in ten different languages. In the field of athletic performance, he has the singular distinction of coaching both a man (Vijay Singh) and a woman (Cristie Kerr) to #1 in the World Golf Ranking. Golf Digest magazine honored Dr. Parent in their list of “Top Mental Game Experts” in the world. You can learn more about Joe at www.drjoeparent.com or www.zengolf.com. You can also attend one of his free mindfulness workshops at drjoeparent.com/practicing-mi

Dr. Jean Côté (@JeanCote46) is professor and Director in the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies at Queen’s University at Kingston (Canada).  His research interests are in the areas of children in sport, coaching, positive youth development, and sport expertise.  Dr. Côté has published more than 130 papers on a variety of sport psychology and coaching topics and 50 book chapters. His work is among the most widely cited in academic papers in this area. He has delivered over 50 keynote addresses at major national and international conferences, well over 100 invited presentations, and nearly 300 conference presentations.  Dr. Côté, in collaboration with Dr. Ronnie Lidor, completed the first comprehensive book on talent development in children’s sport which was published in 2013 by Fitness Information Technology. In this replay of a conversation Dr Cote and John had in 2018, immediately after they had worked together at the Inside Game Conference in Geneva, they discuss transformational coaching, the the pre

Jennifer Fraser, best-selling author and award-winning educator, has a PhD in  Comparative Literature from the University of Toronto. Her online courses and  workshops provide dynamic lessons in the impact neuroscience has on  personal development and culture change.   Her previous book, Teaching Bullies: Zero Tolerance on the Court or in the  Classroom (Motion Press, Aug. 8, 2015), explores what happens when the bully  is a teacher or coach. Her new book, The Bullied Brain: Heal Your Scars and  Restore Your Health (Prometheus Books, April 1, 2022), delves into how bullying affects the brain and how the brain can heal.  In our conversation this week Jennifer recounts her personal story around bullying with her own son, and gives us some great steps to take to both stop the cycle, and heal ourselves and those we love.  Learn more at bulliedbrain.com.   THE 2022 WAY OF CHAMPIONS VIRTUAL CONFERENCE IS JUNE 25-26: Yes, we are going virtual again in 2022, and we have already amassed an incredible lineup of guests

Dr Jerry Lynch, our esteemed co-host of this podcast, has just released his fifteenth book Everyday Champion Wisdom: Mindful Lessons in Mastery for Coaching, Competing, and Cohesive Teams. In this week's episode, John and Jerry discuss the book, which is a collection of Jerry's greatest hits over fifty years of working within elite collegiate, Olympic and professional sports. His teams have won 115 conference, regional and national championships, and his new books shares 142 short, poignant lessons from each of those teams. It includes wisdom from his consultancies with 12 Hall of Fame coaches, his daily blogs, his Way of Champions podcasts, the hundreds of JEREmail letters written to teams that reinforced his teaching and set the tone for competitive events, and his many keynote talks at coach and athletic conferences, as well as selected gems of wisdom from several of his published works. It is a great tool that coaches can share with their athletes on a daily basis to help improve focus, belonging, and com

Dan Abrahams is a sport psychologist who works alongside individuals, teams, coaches and organizations globally. He is known for his passion to de-mystify sport psychology and for creating simple to use performance techniques. A former professional golfer and PGA qualified, Dan has a First Class Honors degree in Psychology and a Masters degree in Sport Psychology. Dan is the author of several sport psychology books as well as the host of The Sports Psych Podcast, one of our personal favorites .Dan is a returning guest to the show (see episode #003) and it was again an incredible conversation. We discuss ways an athlete can establish a mental framework for success, how much of our performance we control, and we have a debate on whether attitude, energy and effort are in the control of the athlete. Highlights from the Discussion: Dan talks about the different strategies he uses to help athletes perform at their best What do stomping “ANTS” and focusing on “Controllables” have to do with performance? How much o

Jonah Oliver (@jonah_oliver1) is one of Australia’s leading performance psychologists. Combining his training in sport psychology and neuroscience, Jonah brings a unique, simple and effective approach to facilitating peak performance. Over the past two decades he has worked with a wide variety of clients: ranging from professional golfers (caddying on the PGA tour), Olympic athletes, professional soccer teams, AFL clubs (Gold Coast Suns Football Club, Essendon Football Club), car racing teams (Porsche – Le Mans World Champion) elite tennis players and coaches, indigenous performing artists, and endurance tri-athletes to name just a few. He specializes in the identification, development and mentorship of leaders within the business world, integrating his experience in both sport and business. Jonah is renowned for his ability to present complex psychological theory in readily accessible ways, with his energetic and engaging presenting style. You will see that in our conversation today, as we cover a range of t

Daniel Coyle (@DanileCoyle) is the New York Times bestselling author of The Culture Code, The Talent Code, The Little Book of Talent, The Secret Race, Lance Armstrong’s War, and Hardball: A Season in the Projects. Coyle works as an advisor to the Cleveland Guardians of MLB, as well as numerous teams in sports, business and the military throughout the globe. We had Dan on the podcast back in May 2018 when he released his book The Culture Code, and we are excited to have him back on this week to discuss his newest book The Culture Playbook, a practical guide for learning and implementing the principles that drive great teams.  In our chat today, we discuss the three components of a great culture, how to start changing your culture in your teams, the four most important words a leader can say, and so much more. You can learn more about Dan at www.DanielCoyle.com or grab his book anywhere books are sold.  ATTENTION: ONE DAY WAY OF CHAMPIONS LIVE EVENT JUNE 4, 2022: Dr Jerry Lynch and John O'Sullivan will be holdi

Mirelle van Rijbroek has been US Soccer's Director of Talent Identification for the Girls Program since 2017. van Rijbroek is a UEFA A Licensed coach, and began her coaching career in her native Netherlands working for clubs and the KNVB, as well as the head of Talent Identification, Talent Development, and Elite Performance for the Youth National Teams. Her role with US Soccer consists of identifying and monitoring the development of potential US Youth National Team Players, scouting, scout education, and developing coaching education content for coaching courses and clubs. She manages three Talent ID Managers and over 90 youth national team scouts across the country. In our talk today, we discuss the six components of talent that US Soccer seeks to identify and develop, and well as explore the following ideas: Talent and Talent Identification Performance /Potential Player Development and developmental Psychology – Player wellbeing. Game Evolution – Future Player/Future Game Soccer Landscape: Player Pathway

Dr. Lee Hancock (@DrLeeHancock) is a professor, performance psychology coach, and program creator who works with students, athletes, coaches, educators, parents, organizations, and other high-level performers. Dr. Hancock earned his Master’s and Ph.D. from Arizona State University and is a tenured professor in kinesiology at California State University Dominguez Hills. He has had a private practice for more than 20 years, where he has worked with athletes from youth to professional and with classroom teachers, students, and parents of awesome kids. Dr. Hancock is also an internationally recognized speaker and author. Most importantly, he is a dad of three high-energy, competitive, caring boys. Each time he engages with a person or a group, his goal is always the same: to help them be more prepared to perform their best—when it counts! He lives in Los Angeles, California. In today's episode Lee and John discuss his new book Talent Zones: 10 Tools to Help Kids Develop Their Talents. It is a great read, and outl