The Intentional Disc Golfer
Unleash your disc golf potential with The Intentional Disc Golfer podcast! Join us as we dive deep into the physical and mental aspects of this incredible sport, helping you become the player you've always dreamed of being. We're here to elevate your game, share expert insights, and inspire intentional growth on and off the course. Support our mission by becoming a part of our avid listener community. Together, let's take your disc golf journey to new heights! Email us at theintentionaldiscgolfer@gmail.com to support or be featured on our show. Let's tee off towards greatness!
The Intentional Disc Golfer
Embracing the Disc Golf Athlete: A Conversation with Seth Munsey
Ready to level up your disc golf game? We're thrilled to bring you an episode jam-packed with insights, stories, and tips that will transform the way you approach this incredible sport. From updates on the eagerly anticipated Evergreen Women’s Series, to engaging discussions on the art of disc golf, we've got it all.
You won't want to miss our conversation with Seth Munsey, disc golf training aficionado and founder of Disc Golf Strong. His journey from a Frisbee-loving kid to a leading figure in the world of disc golf is truly inspiring. Seth discusses why it's crucial to transition from being a casual player to an active disc golf athlete, and how this shift can significantly enhance your performance on and off the course. This conversation is a goldmine for anyone looking to become a more well-rounded disc golf athlete.
The insights don't stop there. We also delve into the world of mindset and performance with a dynamo guest who's been a strength coach for none other than the Anaheim Ducks. He offers some invaluable tips on how to elevate your mental skills and performance on the course. Plus, we discuss an often-overlooked aspect of disc golf performance. More specifically, how your response to events can dramatically influence your outcome. It’s all about maintaining a focused mindset in the face of adversity. So come join us, and let's embark on this disc golf journey together!
Disc Golf Changes Lives <3
To support this podcast or arrange for an interview please contact us at theintentionaldiscgolfer@gmail.com
Mom, Dad's making a disc golf podcast.
Speaker 3:Music. Thank you for tuning in to the Intentional Disc Golf for Podcast. We're excited to have you join us on our disc golf journey. This podcast explores the physical, mental and technical aspects of disc golf performance. We will also be discussing tools and techniques to improve your disc golf game as we work on improving hours Now. Here are your hosts, brandon and Jenny Soprinski.
Speaker 1:Music and thank you once again for listening to the Intentional Disc Golf for Podcast. I am one of your hosts. My name is Brandon.
Speaker 3:And my name is Jenny and Brandon. What did you recently celebrate?
Speaker 1:I am the ripe old age of getting my second ace.
Speaker 3:No, you celebrated your 40th birthday, my 40th birthday. Congratulations and the second ace.
Speaker 1:I got a birthday ace, yes you did. Wasn't quite birthday, but close enough. Yes congratulations, All right. Well, if you enjoy this fine broadcast, appreciate us, love us, can't stop listening to us. Go ahead and support us on Facebook and Instagram at Czuprynski Disc Golf that is, CZ UPRY NSKI Disc Golf, and @TheIDGPodcast our Twitter page . That is at the IDG podcast, and I want to remind you that this fine broadcast I keep saying that it's a fine broadcast.
Speaker 3:It's a decent broadcast Decent.
Speaker 1:Yeah that's right. We'd like to remind you that this program is supported by listeners like you, and we are in a new sponsorship season, jenny, so if you would like to become a sponsor on the show, have us out for a live event, or if you would like some Stickers. Stickers that's right. What color are they this time? They are still neon green. Neon green stickers. Just give us an email at theintentionaldiscgolfer@gmail. com
Speaker 3:That is you can reach out to us on Instagram or Facebook and I would be happy to send you a sticker or two. You can also order from us Tree Octopus Octopus Treasures at Etsy and you'll get a free sticker with your order.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we have a bunch of dyed discs up there and some special editions that you can't find anywhere else, and all custom dyed, so check us out. Trey Octopus, treasures on Etsy. All right, jenny, you have some important events coming up. We are in the off season, but important stuff is still happening.
Speaker 3:So we have published the tentative Evergreen Women's Series Big news. This year it is presented by MVP Disc Sports, so MVP is the overall sponsor for the Evergreen Women's Series this year.
Speaker 1:And would it be correct to say that this is the first time that the Evergreen Women's Series has had a big sponsor for the whole series? Yes, yes.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, and a lot of things are in the works. We are working on streamlining a lot of things, making it consistent through each of the different activities. What are they called?
Speaker 1:Why am I blinking?
Speaker 3:Yes, so trying to make it consistent through the different tournaments, and this year we will also be over in Eastern Washington. We will have our first event in Eastern Washington, so it's looking like February is going to be at Kayak Point, march at Tall Furs, april at Fort Stelecum. May is the Women's Global Event, which happens every two years. That's going to be at NAD. I will be hosting Shelton Springs Sirens of the Springs it's already up on Disc Golf Scene at the lovely Shelton Springs where the Silver Series was. That reminds me of a tongue twister from childhood. Ladies of the Lakes going to be in July at Lakewood. Evergreen Fling in August at the Evergreen College. And then our new event will be over at Columbia Park in Kennewick in September with our Queens of the Jungle Finale at Fairgrounds in October.
Speaker 1:Kitsap Fairgrounds.
Speaker 3:Kids at Fairgrounds Yes, Kitsap Fairgrounds. So very excited for the 2024 season of the Evergreen Women's Series.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I can't blow it up enough. Please come out to the Sirens of the Springs at Shelton Springs. That is Jenny's tournament that she puts together every year and it or not every year. She started last year but that's Jenny's tournament that she's putting together and let's blow it up and get a bunch of people there and make it totally awesome, as well as the rest of the Women's Series.
Speaker 3:Yeah, if you have any ideas of what you think would be a fun mermaid game during a Disc Golf Tournament, let me know, because I'm looking for some ideas for some mermaid games.
Speaker 1:Or if you want to donate something for, like, the raffles, or for the prizes or anything.
Speaker 3:Oh man, the raffles are going to be legit this year. Mvp has donated a lot of stuff to all of the events, so there's going to be, I think, baskets, discs, all sorts of other things are going to be given away this year. Thank you, mvp.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and guys out there, come out there and support your wives and your girlfriends and your significant others, your daughters also we can't say this enough that grow women's Disc Golf. It's a big deal and it's really nice to see these ladies out and having a good time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you didn't say it, but I mean this in the non-rude as way possible. Support your mom, like your mom might be out there disc golfing. Because Support your mom, that's what I said.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 3:Yes, that's not a mom joke, no, no. This sport is for everyone. It is not just for the young ins. There's lots of older women out there and I've seen a lot of ladies out there recently supporting their men at their tournaments, and I'd love to see you guys get out there for one of the tournaments this year. It's going to be a really good year, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the women's series is going to be off the hook this year. I'm excited for it. That's how awesome it's going to be.
Speaker 3:It doesn't take much to excite you when disc golf is involved. Also, talking about events, recently we had Paul Gowder from powwowscom over at Chief Kitsip Academy and he started powwowscom years ago and he was one of the main sponsors for the Paul McBeth Foundation with our disc golf course that is at Chief Kitsip Academy and he was. It was lovely to have him and his wife out playing some disc golf. My husband was able to take them to do a round. One of our teachers, baron Old Coyote, who's been on our podcast. He was able to go out there and play around too and they have a nice interview that's going to be coming out. So check out powwowscom if you want to hear that interview about disc golf.
Speaker 1:Well, and the other thing that was extra awesome besides getting the ace, was that you guys were doing ocean to table during that time too. So not only did he get to go around and play disc golf, but got to participate a little bit in the ocean table and witness that.
Speaker 3:Yep, it was my first year running ocean to table, which is a project that Chief Kitsip and the Soquamish Tribe proudly put on for their students, where we get to go fishing with our students, go through the process of processing the fish down at Soquamish Seafoods and then we smoke and hang the fish at our smokehouse on campus and then go down and work with some more of the community members and can and store the fish. So it's a huge, huge project. Looking forward to watching it grow more and more as the years go on, but it was super exciting to have them there during that time. It was also exciting to hear that my husband got an ace. However, I told him I didn't see it, so it didn't count. I did go back and see that it did get caught on camera, so I guess it did happen.
Speaker 1:And powwowscom. They also are a sponsor on the Pro Tour, aren't they?
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:Or what it was, leah Leah, I can't say her last name.
Speaker 3:Neither can I, and I don't want to butcher it yeah.
Speaker 1:But Leah, I guess she's a Navajo descendant player on the Pro Tour, so that's really exciting.
Speaker 3:And I believe we met her at Shelton Springs. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure we met her.
Speaker 1:I think so.
Speaker 3:I think I have her signature on my disc. I still can't find who's-is-who's.
Speaker 1:But that's super cool to get to know those guys and play with those guys and hopefully they'll come on the show eventually and talk about powwows. That would be really cool to have them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're looking forward to having them on our podcast soon as well.
Speaker 1:All right. So this episode, jenny, you know how we keep saying don't listen to us, we're not experts, talk to your doctor or whatever. Well, we went out and found an expert. In fact, we went out and found the expert and he's going to be a guest on our show right after a word from our sponsors.
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Speaker 1:Discrafter is made from tough materials for durability, but its microfiber and soft scrubbing insides are gentle on your discs. Discrafter is also a US owned and operated company. I've spoken to the owner, colin, personally and this is an entrepreneur that you can trust. Get yours today at discraptorcom. That's D-I-S-C-R-A-P-T-O-Rcom. Discrafter is a proud sponsor of the Intentional Disculfur podcast. Hi, this is Paul Wright with the Paul Macbeth Foundation. Support the Builders Club and support the Intentional Disculfur. And we're back. Thank you for listening to the Intentional Disculfur On this episode. We have an excellent, super special guest. I am way excited for him, for us to have him on our podcast. The whole premise of this and Jenny, you said it kind of last episode was making the transition from a disc golf player to a disc golf athlete and this man is on the forefront of trying to change that paradigm and that culture within disc golf. Sir, if you would mind introducing yourself, yes, hello everyone.
Speaker 2:I am so excited to be here. Thank you, brandon and Jenny, for having me. My name is Seth Munsey. I am the founder and owner of Disc Golf Strong and I'm also the director of health, safety and sports performance for the Disc Golf Pro Tour and I also work on the medical committee for the PDGA chair of that and I'm just really excited to be here and talk with all of you about health and sports performance and being an athlete and all the good things that comes with. You know our great sport of disc golf, so thank you again.
Speaker 3:Yeah, super excited to have you on. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you very much, Seth. So I guess let's start right at the beginning. Here is how and when did you get into disc golf? I mean, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. You know, when I think back to when I first started throwing a Frisbee, I wish that YouTube was around or the internet was around at that time, so that I would have been exposed to disc golf a lot earlier. I'm 42 now. I started throwing a Frisbee probably when I was eight years old. My uncle, I used to play with him a lot, and then I grew up on the beaches of Southern California and my brother and I my friends, we would throw Frisbees every single day, outside the house, at the park, the beach.
Speaker 2:We were playing object golf at that time in the 90s, without knowing what disc golf was, and I just fell in love with flying discs and did it all the time. And I still remember one year, someone telling me that there was a sport called disc golf and that it was about 40 minutes north of us in a place called Huntington Beach, california, and I really didn't know much about it and I asked my parents if they would take me up there and they said, no, we can't take you up there, that's too far right now for us to take you. And so I never went up there and I never got exposed to disc golf in the 90s, and I really, you know, in Huntington Beach, is famous for being Paul McBeth's course, and I talked to him about that and told him that story and I remember throwing a disc a golf disc in probably like 95 with my brother and it just faded so hard, it dumped so hard and I'm like what is this? I have no intention of ever throwing this thing ever again. I can't catch this behind my back or underneath my leg as I'm jumping through the air, so I kept with Frisbee, played a little bit of Ultimate Frisbee at college later on and years later.
Speaker 2:But when I got to disc golf was when I moved from Southern California to Northern California and I owned a gym and it was called Iron Republic and it was all about lifting and being strong and functional movements and all the things that are around this human movement, optimizing human movement, and they had disc golf courses up there, and so when we moved up there I wanted to find some things to do and so I got on Facebook, typed in you know different clubs, and it was a disc golf club the Monterey Stinging Jellies and I thought, wow, you know, I remember hearing about disc golf a long time ago, and so this was at 2011 2012.
Speaker 2:So I went out to the disc golf course, met some people, started throwing and just fell in love right away and, you know, never looked back and I was playing all the time out there on the course and it's been something, you know, that has gone from being just a passion of mine to a career of mine, and still a passion of mine while it's a career of mine, and I'm just very fortunate to be here, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I look back over my journey. You know, when I was, when I got out of high school, I joined the military, joined the Coast Guard and I was up in San Francisco and I lived up there and looking back now, there was disc golf courses around, like here here where I was staying at in in Northern California, and all those years I could have been playing these awesome courses. And you know that that's, that's in the past. I can't, can't dwell on that, but I would have had probably 25, 30 years of playing disc golf right now under my belt. But yeah, that's where that's. That was my journey into disc golf and it's been a great one.
Speaker 3:I have a. I have a very similar story. I grew up near I played disc golf with my dad or not disc golf, frisbee with my dad and I was always near disc golf courses and I had friends that would play disc golf and I did everything I could to stay away from it and we didn't get into it until COVID and we have the five kids between us. So we needed something to do and just fell in love with it and now it's kind of our, our big passion, our obsession, yeah.
Speaker 2:I love it.
Speaker 1:So, seth, can you elaborate a little bit on your time at Cal State, fullerton Summa? Come loud, that's a pretty big deal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know it's, it's. It's funny that, like when I went to college, I had no idea what to expect when I started, because when I was in high school I was not a great student. I barely passed high school. I think I had the lowest GPA you could get when you were to get to graduate. And so I went off to the military and they don't allow you to just be 18. They really teach you how to you know, be reliable, be responsible, a lot of the different things that I wasn't a bad kid. I just didn't do a lot of homework and I didn't study and didn't really enjoy school and really didn't think that I I didn't have a growth mindset. I had a real fixed mindset at that time in high school and so the military kind of made me grow.
Speaker 2:My, my job was search and rescue and law enforcement, and so I had to be actively engaged and and push my boundaries on what I could do and what I think, what I thought I could do, and so when I got out I went to the fire academy, thought I was going to do that, didn't work on an ambulance for a couple years doing 911 stuff, and then I went off to to uh Halsey, florida, and said use the VA or the GI bill, excuse me to, to do that. And so I fell in love with training. I fell in love with training while I was working on the ambulance. I started exercising, trying to just improve my life and my health, and so I found something that I could tap into, a passion of mine. And so when I went to college I thought you know well, I was not a good student. I barely graduated high school. I wonder how I'm going to do in college. And I had such an amazing time. I had great professors. My degree was kinesiology and Cal State Fullerton is one of the top kinesiology programs in the United States. So I was very fortunate to be in an environment of success and higher learning and really pushing the boundaries of kinesiology and exercise science and health and nutrition and all that. And because it was captain of my passion, yeah, I graduated top of my class, timmukumlaad, for like 400 students or something, and it just really kept pushing me forward and I, you know, eventually took that into disc golf.
Speaker 2:But at that time, while I was at Cal State Fullerton, I happened to. I was attending a fitness conference in Long Beach, california, one time and I went and I was waiting for the conference to start. I got there the day early, and so I met up with a friend that I met online, who was a strength conditioning coach as well, and so we met for a beer and I sat down at the. We sat down at the bar and I there was this gentleman to my right, my friend was to my left and we were talking and I was talking to him about you know, different programs I was doing and he was doing the same and I mentioned that I was doing. I went down to San Diego to do this kettlebell program and be like a they call them victims like you could show up for a free kettlebell lesson. Yeah, it was a Russian kettlebell.
Speaker 3:That's strangely fitting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, and so you could get a free lesson if you show up on Sundays, because the people that were going through the kettlebell certification they were going to coach you, and so they had to pass. There's one of the things that passed the certifications was they had to coach fresh people that were just showing up for a lesson, and so I drove down to San Diego to do this, and so I was telling the my friend this, and the gentleman to my right sitting there enjoying a beer he stopped me and said hey, are you? You went down to San Diego for this kettlebell lesson. I said yeah, it was a great time. He said I got certified at that kettlebell course and I thought, wow, that's, that's great. Yeah, I had a great time. How'd you enjoy it?
Speaker 2:You know, we got to talking and he said he said my name's Sean Skane and I'm the strength coach for Anaheim Ducks, and I was like, wow, coach Skane, it was a pleasure to meet you. I've listened to your podcasts and everything, and that kind of turned into that day. He offered me a position to work at the Anaheim Ducks with him as an intern assistant strength coach, and so that was a really big turning point in my career to where I went for a beer with a friend and ended up as an intern assistant strength coach with the Anaheim Ducks and I got to learn a whole lot there during my time and learned what it took to train and work with the elite athletes and kind of a lot of misconceptions around training athletes at the highest level that some might think and there's really shaped what I did in disc, what I do in disc golf with my, with my athletes now, and so I really value that experience. And yeah, there's a whole lot I could say about, you know, cal State Fullerton and the kinesiology program and you know, and everything I learned there. But I'll, you know I'll wrap it up there for Cal State Fullerton. But I left there.
Speaker 2:I had a job opportunity to stay with the Ducks and decided that I didn't really want to travel that much for work and be gone that often because Sean, who ended up moving off to the Minnesota Wild as the strength coach there, he was gone all the time he was gone, you know, missed a lot of anniversaries and birthday parties for his kids and all that. So I thought you know, I'm not going to, I'm not going to continue that route and so declined his offer to stay and went and opened up my own gym instead. I earned a public for those four years before I moved into Disc Golf Strong, and it's kind of ironic that my job now with the Disc Golf Tour has me on the road for nine months of my life working in professional sports but, um, but yeah, that's kind of a little snapshot of my journey up to starting Disc Golf Strong.
Speaker 2:And then I started Disc Golf Strong in 2016. I officially I kind of started working on it in 2015, started it very beginning of 2016. And it just, you know, there was no one really talking about this topics, about performance and being an athlete or anything at that time. And you know, I felt like, with my background and my love for Disc Golf and seeing my fellow Disc Golfers out in the course not performing the way they wanted to during their rounds and and having injuries and challenges that they were facing, I thought, you know, hey, I've got a background in rotational sports and in strength conditioning. I was what I do for work. This is my passion. Disc Golf is my passion. Let me start putting content out there. And so I started doing that and started, you know, traveling around for Disc Golf and in 20, I started partnering with the Pro Tour early on. And then in 2021, um, they asked me to if I would just come on and work full time for the tour. And so I've been working full time for them since 2021 up until present.
Speaker 3:That's a very impressive. That's quite the journey that is quite the journey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's, it feels it's. It's interesting because you know we, you know I'm four, I'm still young, I'm 42 and I spend most of my time around 18, 19, 20 year olds and you know they're like, they're like, uh, you know they're like, so what would you do before this? And I, I just kind of give them a little snapshot and they're like what?
Speaker 2:And I'm like you, know you don't you know our journeys, we don't it? Just it feels it goes by quick. You know it is. It feels like it was just yesterday all of this, um, you know, up to this point, but uh, but I'm, I'm very grateful for, for the journey that I've had.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So, uh, as a teacher myself, I heard you talking about um yourself as a student and that you didn't have the the. You had the fixed mindset and now you're more of a growth mindset, and I know that when we spoke with Eric, he was uh talking very highly about um, your ideas on mindset and how that applies to the course. Um, do you have any tips that you you know, things you'd like to share with people about mindset out on the course?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, and Eric's Eric's great. I'm so glad you got to, you know, spend some time talking to Eric. I've been working with Eric since, probably 2017. Um, him and Tina, when Tina was working, uh, full time as a disc golf athlete, and so it's been great to see his journey, uh, as as well as other athletes journey through not only their physical performance, um, but their mental performance and as well, and so there's so much to, you know, tap into on on mental skills and and all that. But the first thing I would say is, uh, for everyone is, I identify as an athlete and I know, you know, janet, we kind of talked a little bit about that, about, like you know, being an athlete and being a disc golf athlete, and that was the first thing.
Speaker 2:My very first video, I'm pretty sure, uh, that I put out, um in 16, 2016, was I said, hey, disc golf athletes. Uh, because I wanted to make it clear right away, uh, from the start, that we are athletes, whether we're pro, whether we're amateur, we're athletes. We're doing an athletic movement, even if we don't think we are. The demands on our body, um, are our high stress, high tension. There's there's so many demands that we could talk about. But but you know, really, to sum it up, we're an athlete and so if we think of this as a hobby, we're going to treat it like a hobby, and not that that's bad, but that can increase our risk of uh injuries and and not performing at our best and not, uh, mentally performing at our best. But if we think of ourselves as an athlete, prepping ourselves makes sense, training makes sense. Thinking about your mental, improving your mental game makes sense. Uh, you know, because that's what athletes do. So that's the first thing is really identifying, identifying as an athlete. Um, no matter, no matter how long you've been playing, no matter what your rating is, or even if you have a rating, uh, you're still an athlete.
Speaker 2:Um, and then, on the mental side, there's mental, you know. There's mental health, mental skills, mental performance, you know. And, and the first thing I say is I'm a huge believer in mental health Uh, you gotta, you gotta, work on your mental health, because I've I've worked with people that were mental. They were trying to work on their mental skills and, you know, their mental skills got better. They were able to easily or easily tap into mental skills training when they worked on their mental health as far as like meditation and you know getting enough sleep and you know having a growth mindset, because you know mental skills training and mental performance on the course, it's not easily as easily accessible, uh, and can feel not attainable when you have poor sleep, you know, and your uh brain is just thinking about all these different things that are going on in your life and you're really stressed out. And so people are like, why is my breathing drill on the course not working? Well, it's like, well, you're, you know you're so tense and everything, because you've got a lot of good stuff going on in your life that you're, you know you need, you need to kind of put some focus into. So, first is focus on your mental health meditation, mindfulness, read, you know, work on a growth mindset, all those things for mental health side, uh, and then mental skills training.
Speaker 2:There's a lot that can be said about mental skills training, um, and you know, depends on how deep you want to go into it, um, but I'll say I'll say, uh, two things. I'll just cover two things on mental skills training. First, before I say those two things, I'll say there's a lot of great books out there. Um, there's so many good books and I've read a lot of them. I've done a lot of different mental skills stuff. Um, I was not a professional athlete but I was a professional under pressure when I was on the ambulance and in the military doing, doing my job there. So I had to be able to show up, do my job under pressure when it counted and and uh, and then recover from that afterwards and to be able to do it again. And so I lean heavily into my, my mental training from the military and the ambulance, into how I coach my athletes through mental skills and performance training. And so the first thing I'll say is, with the books is I talked to a lot of people who say, oh, I've read this book, I've read that book and I'm not, I haven't seen any benefits from it and I love, like I said, I love books.
Speaker 2:But I'll ask them say, what are once one to two things you got from that book that you are actively, uh, you know, doing in your routine off the course, on the course, what are you implementing? And a lot of times the responses you know it was a really great book. I said I agree, you know that's what that is, I'm sure. No doubt that's a great book, but you got to take away some things and actively work on it. So we work on our putting, we work on our driving, we work on backhand form and forehand form and all that Mental skills is something we need to work on, just like we work on putting, just like we work on all those other skills. It needs to be addressed off the course so that it can be put into practice and used on the course when it counts. So, um, one thing that we think about is, um, not trying to control the, the uncontrollables. I talked about with Eric about this. I talked with all my athletes about this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he spoke about that on podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, great Cause you, if you, if you try to control the uncontrollables, it's never going to go the way you want it to go. Um, because we just can't, we can't, we can only control what we, what we can do. Right now, my uh sports psychology professor in college, dr Kenra Vizza the late Dr Kenra Vizza, he was amazing. He was one of the foremost experts in the world on in in sports psychology and, uh, I was very fortunate to to be around him and take his class, which one was one of the most stressful classes I've ever taken, uh, which was funny because we would. We would open up with meditation and close with meditation every day, but he was so old school he wouldn't use a book, he just talked. He didn't even use slides, and then his graduate assistants would give us the test based on whatever they think they had written down.
Speaker 2:And so we would be we would have to take these tests and I mean, we'd be so stressed out. You try to use these mental skills techniques while we're trying to take a test in mental skills and performance class, sports psychology class, and we're like, did he even talk about this? And you know, it's like, you know it's like maybe the graduate assistant just decided to put this question in there, you know. But anyways, dr Kenra Vizza, he worked with blue angels pilots. He worked with uh neurosurgeons. He worked with professional athletes all over. He worked with all sorts of high level performers and he worked with the blue. He worked with the angels baseball, which was down there nearest, and he would tell us, uh, that, uh, during spring training, he'd be working with pitchers and the pitcher. He would see that the pitcher on the mound would be getting frustrated, they'd be out of the strike zone and you know, um, it was just building up. So what he would do is he would walk out with a ball and he, the pitcher, would already have one ball in his hand and he'd hand them the second ball and say, okay, the rest of the time today, I want you to throw both of these balls at the same time. And it'd say what, coach? How am I supposed to, how am I supposed to be successful, throwing two balls at the same time? And he said well, you're already throwing two balls at the same time. You're throwing one mentally that you just threw and you're trying to throw this one that's in your hand. You can't control what happened before. You can't control what your next pitch will be. You can only control what's going to happen with the ball in your hand and you can't even control it once it releases. All you can control is what you can control. So if you're going to try to throw two balls mentally, you might as well throw two balls physically, like at the same time. Right, we can't control that.
Speaker 2:When I was in, when I was doing search and rescue, like I, there was a lot of things that I couldn't control. If someone was injured and I showed up on that ambulance, all I could control was what I was doing in the moment. I couldn't control what was going to happen to that person or anything. And the same thing on the disc. Golf course, once that disc releases out of your hand, if the wind takes it and it hits a tree and it rolls, ob, there's nothing you can do about that, like, you know, like, does it suck? Yes, it sucks, but there's nothing that you can do to control it back in bounds. So you just have to walk up, say I'm a professional or I'm an amateur and I'm ready to go and you know, this isn't just for professionals but I'm, I'm ready to go, and all I can do now is throw my next shot. I can't throw two discs at the same time the one that I, the one that hit the tree and rant rolled OB, and the one I'm about to throw right, or I'm going for the winning putt or the winning drive, or I, you know, I'm two strokes back and I could. You know, if I birdie this, I could win. Whatever, you can't control what's going to happen next, and that's what a lot of people lose things is, they're trying to think about already like, oh man, if I do this and this, I might win. Or if this and this happens, you can only control the disc in your hand, right. And so that's the. That's the first thing.
Speaker 2:Another one is you know, event plus response equals outcome. E plus R equals O. There's an event. We get to choose how we respond to that event, and that equals the outcome. E plus R equals O. So that's kind of what the control, the uncontrollable is. If, if I, if I, you know that this comes out of my hand it hits a tree, wind blows it, you know, whatever I have to choose the response in the moment. If I walk up and I'm frustrated and all that, their chances of success are lower. Could, could success happen with me all fired up because of what happened? Yeah, sure, like there is a chance, but there's a better chance of having a more positive outcome. I can't guarantee the outcome, but there's a better chance of that outcome If I walk up and my response is I'm throwing what I'm throwing right.
Speaker 2:And when we think about like, like, people will say set, but you know like I'm like why? Why can't I get fired up? Fire can cook your food or it can burn your house down right I've seen players where right I've seen players where it's like. I've seen players on tour where fire cooks their food. You know they get like two, two bogeys in a row and they get fired up. You're like, oh gosh, they're about to be the next date.
Speaker 2:Like you're just because it's not that they're, they're not kicking their bag, they're channeling it to like okay, I'm locking in, like I'm fired up with what's happening. So I'm locking in and I'm, you know, going to focus on what you know, keep my focus forward and all that. Or there's people that they burn their house down. You know they're, they're frustrated, they're kicking their bag, or throwing whatever.
Speaker 1:Jenny is looking at me.
Speaker 2:You got a chance I'm guilty of this All right, and you know what? I tell people that they're like, they're like I, but I just can't get over it. And so I say don't get over it, just give yourself permission to not getting over it. After the last putt, like give yourself permission. There Say I'm going to be so upset about this, like I am so mad that the wind did this or I'm so mad that the OB line did that, and after this round is over, I'm going to do something very mad wise.
Speaker 2:Right, I'm going to, I'm going to kick something or I'm going to, you know, punch my fist into my other hand or whatever. I'm going to give myself permission to release all that afterwards, and then it's not like you have to just let it go. If you're like that's not, it's just not me, it's not me. It's not who I am. I get fired up. Okay, get fired Like. Cook your food now, burn your house down.
Speaker 1:Is that kind of like a you know I'll forgive myself, but I'm not going to forget.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there you go, like right, that's and that's fine, right, and so, like you have to, and if you look at other sports, like they have to, like you know you can have baseball pitchers and or baseball players, and they're, you know, it's the world series and they're one, one strike away from winning. And you look at them and they're not high five in each other, yet they're just, they're like, they're like we have to wait, like we're just here, like you know you got to wait until the, until it's all over, and then, and then you know, burn your house down, or you know, or get all ecstatic and jump around and high five people, you know like, try to channel the energy that you need for, for what you need, and then afterwards, you know, let it all out later.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that's one of the attractive points of disc golf or golf type sports is that it is kind of this perfect mesh of both the mental and the physical.
Speaker 3:And.
Speaker 2:I was going.
Speaker 3:I was going to say one of the selling points for chief kids app getting the disc golf course was. I was explaining that you know we have some kids with behavioral issues and so what I can do is I can take one of those kids out there and be like, hey, you want to go through a couple of holes, and it's usually by the time we just finish the first one that they're starting to regulate and things like that, or just going for a walk through the course and so it it's it really does.
Speaker 3:part of it, I think, is the healing energies of being outside, in nature too. So I think that contributes to our mental health out there on the course too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Oh, so I really appreciate that you call them mental skills, because that really shifts kind of my thinking into. You know, this is a skill, just like throwing the disc or putting that you have to develop, you have to practice it. And you're absolutely right, when you're out there in it, it's if you don't rehearse these things in your mind you cannot draw up. You know, draw up those inspirations and those feelings when you're, you know, in it sometimes, especially if you're having a tough round, I remember when I was playing hockey, I used to visualize, you know, the different saves and different things that I'd make all the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. You know the more that you can do that and tap into that before, the better you're going to be able to access it. You know when you need it In all levels, like going back to, like the Coast Guard or the ambulance, like we, we would practice things ahead of time, we would drill things, we would go through things so that we could stay focused and stay in the moment and and you know, be comfortable being uncomfortable. You know when we needed to. If we didn't do that, we would be in a much worse position when you know when those tones go off and we got to show up and make things happen. But it's so if, if mentally we're not preparing ourselves for the level of stress that we're going to get on the course, you know it can really set us back in certain ways. And really one challenge that we have about disc golf is that there's not really any adversity in disc golf until the, you know, until you tee off on one.
Speaker 2:You know off or a turn of the ground Like there's not much adversity, right, like in high school. Well, let's get. I was going to say baseball, let's go, let's go hockey. Right, you played hockey so random Tuesday night practice. If you're just out there, just you know kicking around, not putting any effort in, you know not really making sure that you want to make the plays, what happens, like is the coach like oh, brandon, like great job today, just kind of you know skating around and you know making snow angels, you know, or ice angels, like what was going to happen to you.
Speaker 1:I'm probably going to get a puck fired at my head.
Speaker 2:You are wake up. Yeah, coach is going to be like Brandon on the bench. This guy wants it more Right, like, so there's adversity. You've got to show up and you've got to perform on a random Tuesday night practice, right when in disc golf we don't have any of that adversity, you know not. People can have stress that oh gosh, there's a tournament coming up, but actual tournament play we don't.
Speaker 2:I had a athlete one time on tour and a couple years ago, and he's like Ah Seth, you know, like I, just I'm so frustrated because I have really good practice rounds and they feel just, I feel so on during practice. I feel so good and loose during practice, but I just can't translate it into my tournament rounds. What do you think is the problem? And I told him. I said you know, I've watched you practice and and the thing I'll say is this your practice rounds are usually you and six other dudes out there, laughing, making jokes, having fun, talking about what's going on, about floating down the river.
Speaker 2:On Monday, you know, you're throwing five discs on a February T pad, even though three of those are discs you never would even think to throw on that hole. You're just, you know, putting reps in for reps sake, you're not paying attention, you're not being intentional, You're not staying focused, and then it's all carefree. You know, on Thursday and Friday, when you know the money in the contracts and you know everything's on the line, now it's like oh gosh, this is a different game from yesterday. It was throwing discs, friends, today is throwing discs for for my livelihood, and so that's a total different stress all together.
Speaker 2:And so now you can't just 100% replicate that, but there are ways to replicate that. But really the first thing is being very intentional about your practice rounds, being very intentional about your skill. Like you, look at Ricky, I used to tell people now now I can list a whole lot more names, but back in like 2016, if I don't say any names doesn't mean that they're not great golfers or anything, but I would tell people, you know, everyone wants to do what Paul Ricky Neagle do, but very few people want to do what Paul Ricky Neagle do, you know that's a very, very, very good.
Speaker 2:They want to. They want to, they want to hold the trophy over their head, you know, but they don't want to show up on Thursday and Wednesday and Thursday and play practice rounds by themselves with one other person, take notes in a notebook, you know. You know work on meditation and breath, work and make sure they're getting enough sleep, and you know so. There's a lot of adversity on the course for everyone, and even as AMs, you know, we want to perform well, but we don't have that adversity during our practice rounds and that we do during the tournament rounds, and we wonder why, you know, we get frustrated and why everything was about great yesterday and not great today.
Speaker 1:You ever tried golfing with five kids? Yeah, that's adversity. Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we uh that's partially why we we named our podcast the intentional disc golfer is we were trying to come up with you know what? What do we need to do to really take this game to the next level? And I think that you said it very well, talking about going out and doing what Eagle and Ricky and Paul do on a regular basis, and so that's. We're kind of going through those steps, making those changes ourselves and sharing that with our listeners too.
Speaker 2:I love it.
Speaker 1:So, um, before we get too far detached, uh, I know it's like half hour later, but I've been wanting to say, uh, thank you for your service, sir. It's guys like you out there doing what you do that make it possible for us to do what we do, and that is not going unnoticed, at least not here, and to all of our service members and veterans out there, thank you.
Speaker 2:Well, I appreciate that. Thank you very much. It was, it was definitely, it was an honor. I'll pledge her for four amazing years in my life that you know I always look back fondly on and that you know it has been over 20 years. Uh, I would have been retired by now, um, from the military if I would have stayed in. But, um, the people that I worked with, uh, they, you know, some of my closest friends, brothers and sisters, for life, and I just, I appreciate that. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. So you kind of got into talking about having the uh, getting the mental game all set up for success. Uh, you talked a little bit about getting your environmental conditions set up for success. So, setting up your environment. How do I go about doing that? Where do I start? Can you point us in the right direction?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, setting your environment up for success is so critical. If you want to achieve Most things that we want to achieve in life, we got to have, you know, an environment that that allows us to thrive, the conditions that that allow us to keep moving forward. And setting your environment for success is, like it's one of the first things I talk about with people that want to make any any sort of change. You know, usually, usually positive I don't really have anyone wanting to do a negative change, but a positive change in their life.
Speaker 1:Like you need to come down a peg or two here like come on.
Speaker 2:You get realistic. The thing is like I'll say this, like there's gonna be so much to say, that first thing I'll say is like I love ice cream, my, my, I have great fond memories of my grandmother. She would always make his chocolate shakes and we, you know, lie on the couch, my head on her on her lap, runner fingers through my hair as I'm drinking a chocolate shake. My uncle would always say ice cream is the cure for everything. I love ice cream. If I have a pint of ice cream, if I have a gallon of ice cream in the house, I'm gonna eat it every night. If I don't, there's a much greater chance that I don't eat it every night. I'm setting myself up for success.
Speaker 1:All right, what's your go to?
Speaker 2:sitting my environment up, oh God.
Speaker 3:I.
Speaker 2:I love chocolate chip cookie dough, you know. But the thing is there's a lot more places now that you're like, no, this is vanilla, with like three or four pieces of cookie dough in there. So you know, my oldest daughter, she that was her go to, but she found the same thing that you know. There's only a few places that really actually have the cookie dough in there, but chocolate, peanut butter, mint, shit. I mean there's so many I think I'm gonna reward myself with ice cream after this podcast.
Speaker 2:No, but you gotta set your environment up for success. You got it. You know, most of the time, the things that keep us from our goals is Not that we don't want to reach our goals, that we don't think that we're gonna find value out of out of Attaining them or moving closer to them, it's that there's there's a little roadblock in between. You know what we, where we are at, and what we, where we want to be. And so Removing that roadblock and realizing that it's not a roadblock, it's probably just a speed bump, and that we can get over speed bumps, and Setting your environment for success is just a speed bump. If I am working with someone and they're like you know, I I'm just having a really hard time doing any sort of physical movement. And I talked to them and they're like you know, I've got no space to train in my house. Like, well, let's, how about you?
Speaker 2:you know, just clear out a little area and he designate, like that's where I do my planks and my you know dead bugs and my thigh planks and stuff, right. Like you know that, I'm gonna keep a Resistance band by my bed and when I wake up in the morning I'm gonna do some shoulder exercises real quick before I brush my teeth or after brush my teeth.
Speaker 2:Like there's, there's all different ways that you can think about setting your environment up for success, both physically, nutritionally. Like if I want to read a book on, you know to say, mental skills and the performance, mental health, whatever having it by my bed is going to be much easier for me to do than if that book is out in my garage, and so I Need to think about how can I and everyone else is listening is think about what are little things that you can do To set your environment up, because you're gonna find it much more easily Accessible and attainable If you do that so, in a nutshell, it's it's Make it, make success easier and more accessible and make the failures or the the obstacles more difficult.
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:Yep, yep, absolutely. Remove the room. Remove as much Static and interference between you and where you in what you want to do. Um, remove as much as you can, you know, and you're gonna find it easier, an easier path. Not an easy path, but an easier path.
Speaker 1:Well, somebody really wise once said to me once that there's a difference between easy and simple. Setting up your environment might be, you know, simple to do and put the resistance band next to the bed or, like Jenny, keeps a little peddler thing underneath her desk at school so she can stand there and work out at school. But doing that is not necessarily always easy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I can tell you that I have not used the pedal thing at my desk at all this year. However, we do have a large campus, so I'm always out walking and making sure that I get my steps in. But yeah it's there, yeah, but I Haven't used it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, there you go. You're getting the walking in, that's good. But like so how do we, you know, when we have something and we're just not using it, go what? What is my Relationship with how I think about I'm supposed to use that, right? So One thing we talked about here just go strong is a concept of good better best. You know, one minute is better than zero minutes. You know it all adds up.
Speaker 2:Consistency is the magic pill you must swallow. So many phrases I can start spreading out, but that that's it. Like you know, a lot of people that would work with say that we're former you know High-level athletes.
Speaker 2:They'd be like oh man, you know, I staff, I want to, I want to make improvements in my life and I want to start working out. But you know it's finding it really hard to To train for an hour like I used to, back in high school or college, you know, and back to deadlifts and Olympic lifts, all the different cleans and jerks and this and that, and I'm like Can you put on your shoes and go for a five-minute walk with your family or something? You know like, yeah, I can do that. I'm like that's a great start. Hey, it counts, it adds up. You know, can I put the, use the peddler for a minute? And you know when a minute is easy, then it's like well, I've already been doing this for a minute like.
Speaker 2:I told an athlete this the other day while talking about off-season training stuff, and I told him I said Give yourself, if you, if you commit to five minutes of this, one thing we were talking about five minutes and if you get five minutes, check done, right, but you most you might find that you get five minutes. You know like, and I'm really enjoying this right now and so you keep going, but if not in five minutes, is it, you know? Good, that's good, it's not, there's no, there's no bad, there's no wrong. It all adds up, and so just little bits at a time. Bite-size is a way to success, is, you know, a Great way to think about it? Because a lot of people like say that want to get better for disc golf or for there's you know, with their performance or their skills or anything like, hey, it all, it's all good. Any progress is progress, and so if you can do a minute of something, that is that's good.
Speaker 2:Because when we talk about motivation, action precedes motivation. Right, like, everyone's waiting to Be motivated to do something. But if we think that we get motivation, is Is built by seeing the results of action, even if it's a small action, and we go, that's so good to do that for just a few minutes. I think I'll do that again the next time tomorrow. But if I don't, I don't, I have no judgment. I tell my athletes like there's no judgment. If they come in and like, seth, I'm a workout for like a week, I'm like, hey, that's okay, you probably had other pressing things, let's get back to it this week. How can we help do that, you know? And so if we start judging ourselves like I man, I wanted to do it for many each day and I just didn't, you know that can that can be a roadblock versus if we think about just things as speed bumps, like I said earlier, speed bumps we can get over, yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm glad you touched on the motivation, because that's actually what I was gonna ask you next. Now, I did want to make a anecdote, though, is that I was listening to Joe Rogan talking to an MMA fighter, and he said the secret to training is Not going in and killing yourself three days a week, and in doing that you know three sets of ten, and that thing. The trick to training is do a little bit every day and then by the end of the week, that person that's not sore and not killing themselves every day is going to have more volume and more training reps, or whatever it is. Then the person that's just doing the heavy lifting three times a day, Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Friend, a mentor of mine. He's a World-class strength and conditioning coach. He's been doing it for like 40 years now and he's worked with high-level Olympians and NFL and all these other sports. But he's worked with a lot in the special operations field and so he jokes about it all the time. How you know, he's like you know, everyone thinks about Navy SEALs and Delta Force training in this net he goes.
Speaker 2:So you know you got people that think that they need to train like a Navy SEAL Just to go out and get the mail. You know, without pain, and it's like you know. One, you don't need to train like that. And two, like he trains special forces, like he trains operators, if, if they train the way that people think that they train now, where there's some people that just go hard, yes, but in general they're moving away from that. They train hard but they train smart and there's times when you can train like you know, if, if, if you get the call that you got to be out in 24 hours, you got to be in another country, you're like, yeah, but I just did legs yesterday and my knees are so sore or I don't think I'll be able to get out of the helicopter.
Speaker 2:It's like no, you got to be prepared to go, like you know, and I I happen I had the great honor of Working with, I went to and I got my Years ago wilderness first responder certification.
Speaker 1:So that's awesome, it was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I loved it and it totally different from my time on the ambulance. And you know, and you're lances like are you going to the hospital? Yes, lo go. You know, wilderness first responder. Wilderness first responder is like okay, well, we're like three days hike out of here, or you know they won't be out here for another like eight hours.
Speaker 2:You know, should we call in a helicopter or you just, you know, kind of having some stress? So that it was great and I got partnered up with this gentleman who Found out who's a Navy SEAL and I thought, you know that's great, like we connected Just from military stuff and he didn't really say what he did in Navy SEALs. But you know he was doing some some executive program coaching and stuff and outdoor retreat. So I looked up his name just to kind of learn more about it.
Speaker 1:Can I take a guess at this?
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:David Goggins. Yeah, no, no.
Speaker 2:David Goggins. It was actually like the opposite of David Goggins and because this Navy SEAL turned out to be, he was the former commander of SEAL team six.
Speaker 3:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:Yes, and he also developed and ran the presidential protection program for the president of Iraq Back when they first, you know, when everything kind of changed in Iraq and so I talked to him. I was talking to him about just different concepts. And we start talking about breathing and stuff and he's like, oh, that's, that's like one of the most important things I do as a SEAL. Like I breathe, you know, focus on, you know staying relaxed and breathing. And this now because you know, when he's out there under perform, you know, under pressure it's not that he just did, you know, pr on his, you know, hang clean, that's gonna make him the best Performer. It's gonna be that he could stay under control and he was strong enough and then he could tap into, you know, using that strength the way he needed to use that strength. And so breath, work and stuff.
Speaker 2:Everyone thinks that you got to train crazy. When I, when I worked with the, when I first went to train with the NIMDUX, I thought, man, these are elite athletes, I'm gonna see the craziest stuff, I'm gonna see all this complexity and everything. And they were we. I walk in First. It was like my coach didn't even introduce me to everyone. He's just like all right Team's about to come in, work out on the board. Coach, I'm like like Tamew Solani, you know, like Cory, cory Perry, like Everyone just walks in. I'm like, oh hello, everyone I'm coached at. You know, right here I am, and so that was very stressful for me, but you know, that's probably what he wanted.
Speaker 2:But what was on the board was like glue bridges, side planks, half kneeling Kettlebell press, not PR, just half kneeling Kettlebell press, and Turkish get ups, things like. And I was like what? Like why are we not doing the stuff that I see on Instagram and there's? And he said, you know to me, when we were just talking about training and stuff, you talk about risk versus reward. You know the show is not.
Speaker 2:The show is not in the weight room, the shows on the ice, right, and so he had to be very it filter everything down and To what was gonna make the most sense and what was gonna be the most intentional for those athletes and help them Be the best athlete they can be, not be like the coolest looking athlete on Instagram, and so that you'll see that in a lot of my programming and stuff. You know, I don't, I'm working with these players that are going for whatever contract size there you know that that might be, you know, push across the table to them and if I'm Sitting there and I'm doing some crazy complex exercise that you know they should have no business doing, that they didn't earn through prior training, then I blow out their knee. And, you know, doing a crazy single-leg box jump onto a bogey ball or something like that's just not beneficial, like you know, and so I Kind of know how I got off on this tangent down this road but we're here.
Speaker 2:You know, like it's it's, it's how you train should be very intentional and it should be. You know risk versus reward and do the foundational stuff. So yes, let's. Where should we go from here?
Speaker 1:well, and I like what you said and I heard it on another interview that you did Earlier when we were doing our show research is that you have to earn the right to have certain exercises in your repertoire. So maybe let's start from the top. Let's talk about like how do you, these elite athletes, and even like amateur athletes, how do you warm up for something like this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. So first of touch on this earned concept.
Speaker 2:So the thing is my players or anyone, any athlete that I'm working with whether they're pro, amateur or I just want to be active in my life and play with my kids like I. They have to, and this is a good thing. They have to earn complexity, they have to earn Intensity, they have to earn load, they have to earn variety. They have to earn all that and it's not like the military type earn. It's just like, you know, my, my child should learn how to Walk before I just lift them up and say, now run. You know, I don't just hold on to put them up their feet and be like run. No, they've got to go through all the steps to get to running. And the same thing is with training or whatever we're doing we're trying to be successful at. If we earn it, we're going to Find so much more success and so much less chance of Injury risk and results that we didn't want Nonproductive results. So I do that with all my athletes and everyone. So you know there's a skill age, like a lot of people look at professional athletes and like, say, professional disc golfers, and they'll say you know, that person should train like an alpha. Someone said that one time to a video that I had a showing. I think it was Ricky doing some sort of exercise and Like there's a skill age and then there's like a training slash, experience age, right, and so if you are Performing really well in the course but you've never done a deadlift or a hip hinge movement or a squat or you don't do any core stuff, you shouldn't just be going to the most, the most advanced things. We should all start out with the foundational stuff when it comes to training for disc golf or for any sport. But let's talk about disc golf, let's say folks on this, golf is there's a lot of ways that people want to improve on by just their skill and skill development and and I, skill development is important. You know we should work on on skill and technique acquisition, but that's like the top of the pyramid and that's where we should eventually reach. But a lot of us, we don't focus on the fundamentals and the foundational base first, and so we're.
Speaker 2:What we're doing is, as we're trying to get better as disc golf athletes, we are Trying to apply technique solutions to what many times our movement problems, and so, if so, it needs example. Here is somebody's trying to Do some technique skill practice where they've watched online someone that is, you know, trying to show them how to get more, get a more reach in there in their backhand. So they're, they're doing all these drills and there's not getting the success they want. Well, maybe their upper back just doesn't have the adequate mobility To be able to rotate through the thoracic spine, the upper back, and so we're trying to do a skill, we're trying to apply a skill Solution, technique solution to something that is very much a movement problem. So we get you more upper back mobility and now you can get more reach back in your, in your technique. So To your question about warming up. That was your question, right, warming up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Now I'm talking about, yeah, kind of how to how to warm up effectively. How long should I warm up? Yeah what should kind of my time? How do I know what I'm warmed up? I mean, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:So if we look at warm-up so so I guess I went on that whole down that whole path to now with the warm-ups of Warm-ups are focused on the warm-ups that I do on tour, the warm-ups I show. The first thing I put out With disc golf wrong was a warm-up, a pre-on warm-up, because you know it. I'm glad you're touching on it because it is. It's so foundational. Every other athlete in other sports they warm up and so if we want to have Something we can do right away that can impact our performance on the course, lower injury risk, get us prepared to, to you know, optimize our potential, is warming up now.
Speaker 3:I think that also helps us to think about that. We're an athlete too, because I know when I would just go out and play, it wasn't the same as now that I've started warming up, like it gets me into that athletic mindset, to the mental shift, yeah, yeah okay, that's a good point.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely. And in warm-ups were always like when I I remember like there was a tournament, a home home tournament Back in like this was 2016. I think it. When it's happened and you know, I was talking to my friend that was running the tournament I was like, hey, you know what about I just show a warm-up and so I've been putting stuff out online and I was already kind of working with Madison Walker and Sarah Hoke and stuff, and so I was like how about I just like do a little pre-round warm-up for people if they want? And he's like, yeah, that's a great idea. So we're all kind of hanging out and I yell out there's a lot of people there. I'm like, yeah, Yo, there's a lot of people there.
Speaker 2:I'm like hey, if anyone wants to do a pre-round warm-up, come on over here, and you know it's gonna take a couple minutes. Please go right through it. Not even like my best friends came over, like my wife was there, you know, and she was like, uh, I was like everyone knows that, like I, this is what I do, and everyone.
Speaker 1:But you get in that side because of this you get in the side eye for the wife like you're embarrassing me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she's, like you know like whoa, what is going on here? I like nobody wanted to be like it, just warming up was not Popular, it was just one. It's not the culture of our sport, right? I? I taught a clinic with Eric and Tina Oakley back in. We were in Sweden, we talked in a couple different countries, but we were in Sweden when this story happened and there was like 50 or 60 people there and I was doing my portion of it, and so I said how many of you play some sort of sport other than disc golf that you grew up playing, like you know, football or hockey or something? And everyone raised their hand. And I said how many of you, before you practice or play that sport, warm up? And everyone raised their hand. I said how many of you warm up for disc golf? And no one raised their hand and everyone's laughing and stuff. I said so if this all magically went from a disc golf clinic to an ice hockey or a soccer or football clinic, you guys would all and I said warm up. You'd all be, like you know, touching fingers, like okay, let's give each other space, like we got to do our warm ups, right. And so you know, obviously they were there to hear what I had to say. So they were kind of vested in, but still they, it just wasn't cool. So it's great to see the first many years of of disc golf.
Speaker 2:Wrong was just trying to get not only people thinking about themselves as athletes but also like thinking about like changing the culture around warming up. And so we, we keep it simple. So with the, with the, with what I do on the tour is I keep it simple, I keep it actionable, I keep it relevant to what we're doing and I keep it routine. And so there's a lot of things when we think about warm ups. We look at soccer warm ups or we look at baseball warm ups. We look at. You know, warm ups are evolving. There'd be something other than just like A, something to just get people moving, athletes moving, and B like a time killer for the coach.
Speaker 2:You know when he wants to like, you know hey we got warm ups, go, go run for 10 minutes and come back and then we're going to do some high knees and some A skips and stuff. It's like it wasn't really thought out, it was kind of just like you know. Okay, we got an hour, two hour session, you know, let's, let's try to just wait, use up some of that time warming up.
Speaker 1:Well, like junior high football, that would be when my football coach would stand on the sidelines and smoke a cigarette.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly that's exactly what I'm saying, Like it was in a well thought. So people go back and like man, I got to think about what I did junior high like probably wasn't the warm up you should be doing.
Speaker 1:You know, like that was the thought out warm up.
Speaker 2:That wasn't a thought out warm up. That was just time to make you sweat, to make it feel like you were, you know, doing something hard and, like you said, for the coach to smoke a cigarette you know that was his warm up, yeah right, that was his meditation.
Speaker 2:There you go, exactly, exactly. So we want to keep it simple, like I don't need so. If I on tour, like I've got an athlete showing up and they're about to tee off in like 30 minutes to an hour, the last thing I need to do is teach them some super complex movement that you know is going to take them 15 to 20 minutes to learn and they've got to really think hard about it and get the nuances of the technique. Like that's not what warm ups are for. Warm ups before we throw warm ups, before we play, keep it simple, right. Complexity for complexity's sake is not beneficial, it's just complexity, and so keep it simple. Are we moving? Are we getting blood flow? Are we warming things up the tissues? Are we kind of, you know, stimulating the nervous system to get everything firing? Yes, like there's more to a warm up. You know benefits of a warm up in that, but we'll you know the people can Google those lists. You know there's lots of stuff to warming up, lots of benefits. So keeping it simple, that's one. Keeping it foundational.
Speaker 2:What are the things that we need as disc golf athletes? We need upper back mobility. We need to be able to rotate through our thoracic spine. We need to be able to rotate through our hips. We need to be able to express some power from our lower body. We need to have good range of motion in our shoulders, kind of just get the shoulder joints moving. So if you look at the warm up I do and it's the same warm up on my website like it's attacking or it's attacking the right word, it's working the foundational patterns that we need. We need mobility, we need dynamic mobility and we need stability for our joints. And then all the other good stuff happens the warming up the tissues and the blood flow and all that stuff. And then routine. I don't want my athletes to show up and they're like gosh. I can't go over and see Seth because he's going to teach me like 15 new things every single tournament. You know, like they don't got time for that.
Speaker 1:All that complex stuff does wonders for your ego, but maybe not practical for your physicality.
Speaker 2:Exactly right. Like I said earlier, the show is not in the gym, the show is not over at the performance zone, the show is on the course, right, and so I want them to be able to walk over and they can do the same thing. And when I'm not there, if I'm off and I've been called away, do something else, or they're out doing their field work. They can do the same thing that they did before. Because the brain, when it comes to lifting, yeah, you have to kind of go with some different principles of puritization, but when it comes to just warming up, you do an upper back rotation, you do some hip circle, some leg swings and stuff. Your body's not like, well, you've done that before, like I'm not going to make that effective for you. That's not the goal.
Speaker 2:We don't need linear puritization for just progressively up for a warmup. So I want a routine. I want the players to just be able to just mindlessly go through it, get all the good stuff that happened with it and then go do what they're getting paid to do. And so same thing with the amateurs. We want to just say we've been put out the same thing, we don't really change it, and people are like, yeah, it's the same warmup, does it need to change? Because their brain's not like man? I've been waiting for a warmup forever for this thing. So I'm going to make you feel less optimized after, because you did the same halos, did the same hip circles, as you did the last three weeks.
Speaker 2:So when we think about it like that, the warmup then just doesn't seem as it's not a non-starter for us, because it's not like man. I need to think of new things all the time, or I need to impress my friends that they're all about to do with this disc or this band. So that's how I think about the warmup is those principles and it doesn't need to be long. And one thing I'll see is I'll have players. I've had players come over that they played soccer, they played ultimate or something, and they're like they see my warmup and they do it and they're like, yeah, that was good, but where's the high knees and the A-skips?
Speaker 2:and the ladder drills and stuff I'm like do you really?
Speaker 2:want to be counting your heartbeat in your head before you go. Do a few more practice putts and head over to a whole one. We don't need that. This is not a soccer match. So I've had players that have tried it. They're like, yeah, I'm going to do my warmup as well. That I used to do back in soccer. And then they do it. And then they're like man, that was just way too intense for what I needed to do for disc golf. I was breathing 20 repetitions a minute and that's way too high for what you should be doing when you're about to tee off at hole one or putt at the basket, and so we don't need to keep it super intense. We don't need to jump around and stuff. That's just not our sport.
Speaker 3:That's something I've noticed with myself just in playing in general, like there's one course we play is NAD in Bremerton and there's this hill between hole eight and nine that I always know like I can tell by my heart rate that I need to just take a few breaths and let it come down before I even throw, Because if my heart rate's too, high, I tend to overthrow or throw the wrong way, and so I've learned that about myself too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I don't want any player to sit there and be like, hey, why'd you miss that putt on hole one? And it's like what were you thinking about? Like well, I was counting my respiratory rate and my heart beats in my head. You know, I could hear them pounding in my head because you had me do jumping jacks and high knees and ace skits before you had me tee off.
Speaker 1:It was funny. We were at Ladies of the Lake with Jenny here and she was on fire with her putting game this one day and one of our friends came over who was kind of struggling with her puttering. She's like so how do you have her working on her putting Like she's gotten really good all of a sudden and I looked over and I said, well, every time she misses a putt, I make her get down and do push-ups.
Speaker 3:Just so, not true.
Speaker 1:Definitely not true.
Speaker 2:But there you go.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:So earlier you made mention of having technique solutions to movement problems and the thing that bounced into my head instantly was talking about compensated muscle movements and the push and pull of your musculature on your skeletal system, and just, I have a little bit of a background in personal training, so I know a little bit about this stuff. I'm by no means an expert, but I did actually go through with passing the ACE test, so, yeah, so I know a little bit about it, but you're well and above, like my knowledge.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, talking about movement compensation, the body is going to always choose the path of loose resistance in most cases, and it's going to allow us to keep doing what we need to do to function as humans, because we are, we're great compensators. If I am walking through the woods and I spray my ankle and I'm like, oh, I can barely walk on it, man, I don't know if I'm going to make it back to camp. All of a sudden, a bear pops out of the woods.
Speaker 3:My brain's like do you even have an?
Speaker 2:ankle I'm running. It's fractured right, so it's going to compensate. It's going to do everything it needs to do to keep me survival mode, so our body will compensate, and all of us have compensations. We do less human stuff than we used to. Our ancestors would never imagine moving as little and having as little variety in movements and solving movement puzzles with our patterns than we do now.
Speaker 2:So we have movement dysfunction and movement compensations. We accomplish the same goal, just not the way that's probably optimal, and so it puts more stress in places that probably aren't designed to handle those kind of stresses. And so things, a lot of things, that a lot of movement compensation results in chronic over usage in certain things, like I said, stress points are getting stressed that shouldn't be stress points because of the compensations, and then we get injuries, and usually there are chronic injuries that are below the level of our awareness at the time our conscious awareness and then they become acute because for some reason our brain decided to tap into what was going on in that join or that tendon or whatever, or we did something in the moment that all of a sudden it was like nope, you're done, like I chronically compensated long enough, now you are officially injured, or you at least know you're injured. So we want to try to correct these movement compensations as much as we can, and so the first step is knowing that the body compensates, and so I'm glad you brought up more talk about it.
Speaker 2:If I have, a lot of people just want to work on an engine, they want to build an engine, be a better performer by building an engine. So if I'm sitting there and I'm working with an athlete and we're like, all right, we're going to do this drill on the ground that's going to work on a little hip stability, get the stabilizer muscles around the hip firing. Now they've worked with me long enough. Or they hear me my little education talks about certain topics like this with them that they're not going to brush it off. But a lot of people say the look online and they'll be like where's the heavy deadlifts? Why are you doing this half kneeling drill for hip stability?
Speaker 2:Well, if you have a race car and you go to get in your race car and I say, brandon or Jenny, I want you to get in this race car, I want you to drive around the track as fast as you can and the engine's great, it's got a high horsepower engine, you're going to just crush it. You're going to go so fast you can't believe. And you're like, ok, let's do this, let's go. And then, right before you take off, I'm like, oh, just so you know, I think the steering linkage might be a little loose. The front left tires definitely down a few PSI and I think the brakes haven't been checked in a while Go.
Speaker 1:Right, jenny's had that car.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've had that car.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, so you're like I don't know about this anymore. So not only are you going to not be able to optimize and maximize your performance right, Because now you're thinking about all these little things that might be wrong and the engine's fine, right, but it's these little things, it's these little things that impact performance. Now, if you're driving and the front left tire is a little more deflated and there's other small little things that have happened on the car, not only are you not going to feel as confident so our brain does the same thing, because it feels confident, because it detects those movement imbalances, lack of stability and joy or mobility issues or something but also you're going to find more wear and tear in certain areas. And so, while we can build the engine, we got to really make sure that all the other small stuff. We got to make sure the tires are good to go, we got to make sure the brakes are good to go, we got to make sure the bearings are good.
Speaker 2:Like those things because those are the things that are really going to put us out of the race is those little movement compensations, and so that's really what I've always been focused on in disc golf is helping people fix those things. It's like, ok, let's work on your people. Like I want to throw farther. Ok, let's check your upper back mobility, your hip mobility, your hip stability, your ankle mobility, things like that. Yeah, but I want to throw farther.
Speaker 2:Ok, I got it Cool, let's check your upper back mobility, check your hip mobility, let's check your hip stability, because if we are compensating through those areas, we're not going to be able to tap into the performance that we have. We have amazing amounts of strength and power and untapped potential. We've all heard the stories about the little lady that goes and picks the car up off her grandkid, and those things have happened. They've tapped into things they never knew they had. So we all have untapped potential. But if the brain senses these movement compensations and all these other energy leaks, stuff like that, it's not going to allow us to tap into the power and performance potential already inside of us.
Speaker 1:Now that's really interesting with the compensated muscle movements and stuff. I see a lot of the people that we play with on a regular basis and we're kind of getting up into the older divisions and they are limping or got their bent over the percussion guns or whatnot out and complain about this injury or that injury. And it's like, well, have you seen your form, have you watched how you move and how you throw? And I'm not throwing anybody under the bus, but it's like when you have this baseline knowledge of kinesiology, you kind of understand why things are happening the way they're happening and why they're having the ailments they're having. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And the answer to a lot of these and I don't know if I can really say that it's the answer, but a path to a potential solution, let's go with that for a lot of these is doing stuff like working on those compensations. So someone will send me a video and they'll be like, hey, what do you think of my technique on this? I'm trying to get more distance and what do you see, what drill should I do? I'm like, well, I see that your plant leg hip looks a little unstable. I'm like, yeah, but how do I get more distance? Let's work on your plant leg hip, because that's an energy leak right there.
Speaker 2:The brain's thinking, whoa, I don't feel that hip, I don't feel the stability and control in that hip joint that I need, and so you're not going to be able to access that power of potential. But it's probably going to change your technique. So working on tying up the four knots, the two shoulders and hips and then getting the core engaged and stuff, can go a long way for that. But that's that thing with the technique is a challenge that we have. There's a couple of challenges that we have at disc golf. One is I've been saying this since probably day one. That's. The best thing about disc golf is you can play every day, and the worst thing about disc golf is we can play every day. And because how many other sports can they just go and for free play it and just put it at a high volume, high stress, high loading, high, everything on our bodies?
Speaker 2:And we can go well, a 45-year-old amateur is not going to throw as hard as Simon Lazat. But Simon Lazat throwing at 100% power and in amateur throwing a hundred percent power, it's still a hundred percent power. On their frame right they're still putting all that they have into it he can just handle a hundred percent power. Even though he doesn't throw a hundred percent power, he can handle that more than somebody that that doesn't have the you know kind of the capacity in the framework and everything that Simon or Eagle or anyone else does. And so, finding our ways, go ahead, dany.
Speaker 3:I was just going to say that that's something. So, since we started actually focusing on doing exercises specifically for improving our disc golf game, that's something that I've had. Happen is, I've found I don't have to try as hard to throw further than I did before. So being able to have that strength it makes a huge difference and you don't have to try as hard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And then you know you can. Not only do you have to not try as hard, but you're it's not even it's trying, not trying as hard and just internally the things that we didn't even think about. Like we've created, you've created a buffer zone between you and injury and you know, and move yourself closer to optimizing that performance. So the body just is putting less stress, even though it's still a lot of stress on things on joints and tendons and all that. It's putting less stress, so you can handle more and the body is going to reward you, you know.
Speaker 2:And one other thing that is a challenge about our sport is we can get, we can get relatively good, relatively underlined, bold, relatively good pretty quickly, you know, and then do it high volume, high intensity, high loads, all that right. And about our sport, like when I look at like coaching on the technique side, the skills and stuff, one thing that I see, one of the things I see as challenging is, you know, we're using models of technique and attainment performance results that really you don't see a lot in other other sports for amateurs, right. So like if I picked up a baseball and started throwing up my kids and they're like yeah, you're good at throwing a baseball. I'm not jumped on the internet and being like how to throw a hundred miles an hour, like I made really close right, like that's just not going to happen, like it's going to their technique, everything. Their results are different than the other.
Speaker 2:So my results are different than what I can or should even attempt to attain in the moment where I'm at right, and so a lot of the stuff that we see is based off of, like you know, let's look at Eagle McMahon and let's look at what his form is, and then I just started disc golf six months ago and so I'm going to work really hard to look like Eagle McMahon.
Speaker 2:You know, when I throw, eagle McMans has been doing it for a long time and there's a lot of changes and lever arms and all sorts of stuff that's happened for him to get to where he's at. A lot of reps, a lot of you know that path, that journey, and we're trying to get to that point like in a incredible speed. So we're at point A, I'm at point A, ego's at point Z. I'm just scouring the internet and try to get to point Z before my next tournament in six weeks, where I should be working on getting to point B and then point C and then you just kind of arrive at point Z at some point, if you do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and well, and one great thing about disc golf is that there's so much open source training out there and information on YouTube and the internet and articles and all sorts of things. I would say almost more so than any other sport, but it's kind of, like you said, it's the double-edged sword. There's so much information out there about disc golf and it seems like everybody and their brother are you know, have the. You know, add 30 feet to your shot, you know if they are how to putt or whatever, and you know there's. So there's a lot of not necessarily I wouldn't call it like misinformation out there, because I don't think they're doing it intentionally, but people that are just putting out information say hey, you know, try this, see if it works.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and, like you said, it's not, it's good intentioned information and so you know.
Speaker 2:But again, I go to that point of, like you know, in baseball or in hockey or in any other sport, when you're working with your coach in high school or junior high or anything, they're not like in the back of their head.
Speaker 2:They're, you know, based off their experience of when they played in the NHL or they played in college or whatever, but they're working with you on who you are now. You know your body, your limitations, your skill level, the way you think about you know, being on the ice and all that, and they're not trying to model you against the top model. You know, and that is a challenge in our sport is like, on the skill level is we're looking at what the best players in the world are doing and then we're trying to go out there and add 30 feet by doing that. And I told I was talking with Brian Earhart about this recently, where we were just talking about Brian's a great coach and, you know, amazing and in history of the game and or is a great orator about the game and philosopher about the game and all that we were just talking about just like the youth and what is going to be the explosion of the youth for our sport.
Speaker 2:And I said, you know, one of my things that I see as a challenge for our sport, that I want to make sure doesn't happen, is that, like a major, a little league baseball coach is not working with a 12 year old on trying to get that 12 year old in mechanics of a major league closer, or a major league starter right starting pitcher. They're trying to work with them on where they are at in the developmental sequence of life for a 12 year old body and what they can do and not do and stuff. But you know we're trying to push limits. That you know that. You know we're. You know that we need to kind of make sure that we're doing it, you know, in a safe and sound way. And one to hit on. One thing you said about gain. You know, gain 30 yards or gain 30 feet, right, I had an athlete one time and he younger athlete, he worked, he plays on the tour and this couple of years ago and he sent me a video of his form and he's like. He's like what.
Speaker 1:I need to.
Speaker 2:I want to. He's like I want to hit 500 feet. Like what do I have to do right now to hit 500 feet? I said, well, there's a couple of things. One you can just play around with it. You know different disc weights and stabilities and stuff, and you know that and angles to try to hit 500 feet. I'm like but do you really want to hit 500 feet or do you want to earn 500 feet? Because hitting 500 feet is like something you could potentially do every now and then if the wind is right and the stability is, you know, in your favor and stuff. But if you earn 500 feet through training, through all the other stuff, you're going to have that 500 feet whenever you want it, versus like just something that you hope happens when the stars align at the tournament.
Speaker 1:And so you know it's kind of the difference between owning something and borrowing something. You know if you, if you you get the wind right and whatever, well you're, you know you're borrowing that 500 foot shot. But, like you said, if you go out there and you put in the work, you put in the time, put in the reps to really dial that in, you own that and you're. You don't ever have to give it away if you don't want to.
Speaker 2:Exactly, exactly. So you know we want to earn that distance and sometimes just a you know a quick trick over over. You know a YouTube video and I said this is not. You said it's all good intentioned and so it's not putting you down, it's just you know we're on the sport. It's like everyone's looking for the quick, the quick fix, the quick thing to this, the quick thing to that, and so if we think about earning it more and gaining the experience along the way, we're like you said, we're going to own it and not borrow it for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like you said earlier in the podcast. It's like everybody wants to be the next Paul McBeth, but then everybody wants to be the next Paul McBeth, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Like they, they want to do it, paul. You know what Paul does. You know, hold trophies up in the air. But you know not. You know, put the intentional practice and the focus and the you know, training his body and the mental work and everything he's done.
Speaker 2:You know, I just want the trophy you know and understandably, like that's what people want in sports. You know they want to, they want to see that shining moment at the end. But there's a path to get there. You know and you choose your path. You know and one path is owning it and you know having success for a long time. Or you know for a for a certain number of years before you know you move on to someone else or in your kicks out or something. But you know there's others that have sometimes a shorter path and maybe a shorter path of success, but it may be also a shorter path.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we've said it before on the podcast. There's a great quote out there by I believe it's Michael Angelo, when he was doing the Sistine Chapel and he said if you knew what it take, if you knew what it took to become a master, you would hardly think it was wonderful at all.
Speaker 2:Yeah right, so true, yeah, so true. I can definitely agree with that quote.
Speaker 1:So earlier you talked about the compensated most movements and you're talking about power leaks and difference differences in form and I have a working theory that I'm kind of developing that I wouldn't mind bouncing off. You is when we talk about our arm speed in the X step and how those two things affect each other. In watching the X step, I've kind of developed this theory that it's more about power conservation rather than power generation, because we have this gal that we play with all the time at tournaments. Her name is Danielle and she's a very small individual and I'm a big dude. I'm like 250 pounds, pretty muscular, and she can out drive me and I'm scratching my head like, well, what's going on? I know that my flyweight is way higher than hers. Is what's happening?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you do have power conservation. For sure you have to have power generation. I know I saw a video recently where a skills coach said you don't really need to worry about generating power. I think he was kind of saying you know pushing off the back leg or anything. And I would say that you know, you look at baseball, you look at other sports. They would have something you know different to say about that. Like you know, we need to be able to create power. We need to be able to have a go through what we call the kinetic chain from the lower body to the, you know, from the lower body through a stiff and stable core, up into the upper body and out into the disc right, and so we need to generate power. We need to conserve power as well. We don't want the energy leaks. So I don't know what her background history is. You know what she had athlete before in another sport, you know.
Speaker 1:Oh she's, she's FPO, she plays. She did the cascade challenge out here in Shelton when you guys were here.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So besides, besides disc golf, you know, she did any other sort of other athletic.
Speaker 3:I'm not exactly sure. Yeah, I want to say I don't think she was, but who knows? Yeah, we only met her through disc golf, so we only know her as disc golf Gotcha.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so like you know, emerson Keith, like he's a lot of power in a smaller package and and Emerson is can create so much power. But he was a high level hockey player. You know he went through the developmental sequencing of being on the ice and stability and you know, and control and body awareness and all that and so that you know he can out drive someone who is taller and bigger and, you know, got more punch. You know, but didn't have all that control and that movement capacity that that was built up through other other sports and other methods before. But also I mean there there is, while we do look, say by looking on tour, and we see that people with long lever arms and in tall frames are definitely throwing hard. They're not, they're not like out and driving. You know smaller frames by that much and sometimes not at all.
Speaker 2:So one thing I would say is, like my mentor that I referred to earlier, same as Dan John, he, he would hear the joke where he's like you know, how do you say hello to a basketball? You know an NBA player, you know you, you look up and you reach up and shake your hand, shake their hand. You know, say, how do you say hello to an Olympic and weightlifter? You know you look down and shake their hand. You know like there, you know there's.
Speaker 2:There's definitely something to say about smaller frames are able just to do lever arms and you know, and they're just just be able to create more compactness and to to everything they're doing, that they can generate a lot of power and they don't have as much, they don't have to have it go through as long of a of a lever arm or the body to to be able to transfer that force right. Trying to, you don't really see a lot of like six foot four. You know ice skaters that are doing the. You know all the pirouettes, whatever they do in ice skating you know the oh, you're talking about figure skating.
Speaker 1:There you go, thank you.
Speaker 2:Figure skating. That's what it's like. Yeah, it wasn't coming to me right. Like you know, you do see some of them. You don't see a lot of them, and I'm just saying that because you know, when you're longer, it's a lot harder to create stability, for the joints to create stability, and there's a lot more chance for you know energy dispersion before it gets to the disc.
Speaker 2:Yeah so while I agree with you that you know there's definitely energy conversation at conservation, I think we definitely have to create power for sure, and that's something that we just again going back to, you know our years like a baseball player, like you don't ever talk to anyone in the major league baseball and you're like, hey, when did you start playing baseball? And they're like, oh really, like freshman year of college, I kind of just fell into it. You know, like they've been training and doing power development and coaching and being able to learn how to transfer energy from their lower body into a baseball since they were little kids. And you know we don't have as much of that yet in our sport. We will, and so I think that we'll see that in the future, where you know you got people coming up that have had a lot of that coaching and training and stuff that know how to generate power from the lower body. I just don't think we have as many people that have that experience yet to really know.
Speaker 1:Okay For my, for my own curiosity here, kind of off topic. What is with tennis players? They come in and these in, they just can chuck it a mile and it's. It's something I've run into a ton of tennis players that it's just like oh, I started playing like a month ago and I'm already playing MA one and it's like and you can throw 500 feet, what's going on here?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well that you know. I'm only going to assume that those tennis players did not start playing tennis like recreationally a year before they started playing disc golf, right? So I'm going to only assume that they probably, like a lot of really good tennis players, started in their youth and so their bodies, their brains, were learning how to make that connection of plant brace, transfer, energy release Right, and so they took so a disc golf, like putting a disc in their hand, like it's, like learning, like, oh, this isn't a racket, this is a disc. But men's like behind, like underneath the skin, everything, everything has been primed over many, many, many years of. You know, here's what we want to accomplish. Here's the. You know run, run the motor program, you know. Flip the switch, push the button, boom. Plant brace the hip, generate. You know, transfer that power through up into the disc, boom. Everyone. You know high fives Like that is like that's probably that's why tennis and other rotational sports like that, you know. You see people that have success that do that.
Speaker 3:I have a lot of female friends that I've made that they used to play softball and that seems to transition well to disc golf too.
Speaker 2:Yep Exactly.
Speaker 1:All right. So, um, what kind of started this conversation of doing the nutrition and exercise for the last two episodes is? You know what we're doing to get ready for next season and our off season, so could you talk to a little bit about different habits and routines off season versus on season?
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure. So off season is the time definitely to you know, start to work on the other sides of disc golf performance. And so, with one side of disc golf, performance is, you know, throwing for, you know putt for birdies. The other side is all this off course stuff. And so it's a really good time to find ways to make improvements.
Speaker 2:And I say that I say that way to find ways to make improvements is because, going back to what we were talking about earlier, is a lot of people don't start with off season anything because they think that they've got to do it all Right. And so, like, well, gosh, off season training is me going, and you know, training an hour and a half and an hour three to four times a week. I don't even do it for five minutes right now, but now I've got to find time in my busy schedule with my kids or my work or whatever, to go do some sort of off season training. Like, no, you know, start with five minutes, start with 20 minutes, start with whatever is realistically, you know, doable for you, but do something. And so take that time to work on some mobility, work on some stability for your joints, things like that. So there's the physical side, then there's the nutritional side. You know how am I going to, you know, make us 10% improvement in my nutrition right now. You know I don't need to make a 100% nutrition change if that's not going to be realistically doable for me. But how can I do 10%? And then, when that becomes easy, I do, you know, 10% more. But that's where the off season is really good time to do that.
Speaker 2:In season definitely is more challenging because you're stacking up a bunch of stacking up a bunch of reps, and so in season for my athletes is more about recovery and restoration and trying to, you know, make sure you can get to. The next one is is that? That's the focus? There? It's kind of taken what we did in the off season and now let's just manage and make it work and get you to do the through the through the whole year. What kind of areas, say, for off season training do you have? You know? Should I explore in my topics in my conversation?
Speaker 1:You started getting to talking about the recovery and the active rest during the season. How, how important and how can we incorporate the recovery and the active, the active rest?
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure. So, you know, and and starting to build some of the, some of the active, that some of their recovery, you know, now during the off season, makes it easier to kind of just flow into it during the season. So a couple things with with recovery is I get a lot of, have a lot of conversations with people and they're like you know, hey, you know I, I really want to, you know, get more recovery and and restoration. For I guess they don't use that word, I'll use it when I talk to them, but they'll be like I want to recover better for for my rounds and stuff. And they're like you know, should I do crowd therapy? Should I do red light therapy, should I do IV treatment?
Speaker 2:It's like you know all these different things that I'm like well, you know, let's start with. You know how much sleep do you think you average on a night? And you know like, well, you know, especially on tour, you got people like, oh, I'm on Instagram till, you know, late at night, and so I'm not really getting a lot of sleep, or I'm doing something about people. I'm like, well, let's start there, let's start with getting good quality sleep and and try to keep it as regular as possible. So that's what I tell everyone when I first like if your body, you know we can go for all the, all the you know kind of trendy things out there for recovery.
Speaker 2:But if we're not doing the foundational stuff like making sure we're hydrated, making sure we're, you know, trying to improve our sleep hygiene, making sure that you know we're trying to get some, you know, good nutrients in our body, kind of, everything else is kind of, you know, isn't going to probably have as good effects as possible. It's like my Dan John, my mentor Dan, used to say you know he'd like someone walks in and he's, you know, talks to his doctor. He's, you know, smoking a cigarette and got a you know bottle of whiskey in his hand. He says, doctor, do you try to improve my health? Do you think I should put some chia seeds on my oatmeal?
Speaker 2:And you know he's like well, let's let's first, let's, let's first maybe talk about, you know, getting a cigarette and whiskey out of the hand. You know, at the doctor's office, like, let's, you know, let's go for the big rocks first and make sure that we're doing that, and then all that other stuff can kind of, you know, explore later. So sleep, are you getting the sleep? Are you getting the nutrition? Are you getting the hydration?
Speaker 3:And then outside.
Speaker 2:Of that, you know, foam roll soft, some soft tissue work, kind of just, you know it, just it just feels good for the body to do some soft tissue work, roll around on foam, foam roll roll around on the cross ball things like that find some tender spots and, kind of, you know, do some little release or whatever we, you know, want to call it.
Speaker 2:Now, on the movement, you know, kind of sphere on whatever it's doing in the muscle. It just feels good and people will Loosen up some tension because of it. Um, and then just trying to a big thing is trying to think about your pitch count, your throw count. I've been talking to my players about this since the very beginning. Is I use baseball analogy so much I'm I'm using more hockey analogies now because I know you played some hockey.
Speaker 1:But I'm usually just like all baseball analogy.
Speaker 2:So this is the most hockey analogies I pulled out of that, out of the tool we appreciate that.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, go wild, by the way, oh.
Speaker 2:Okay, I like that. So the pitch count, like the. Going back to that quote of the, the best thing about this golf is you can play every day. And the worst thing my disc office you can play every day. We're throwing so much, we're throwing a, putting so much volume on our, on our body. And so the first thing I tell a lot of people when they want to improve the recovery, I'm like let's, let's talk about how many, how many throws you're doing a week and how can we, you know, lessen that a little bit?
Speaker 2:and now I know, like at an amateur level, you know, people will be like well, I don't do any field work, I'm just going out and Throwing, I'm playing rounds with friends and that's. That's one of the most amazing things about the sport. But it's also a challenge with about our sport, because we're putting more volume Than a picture, whatever thinking about putting on it. You know, in a month we're putting that volume on in a week as a you know, and we're throwing. That we're throwing, and Doesn't matter if we're throwing a disc or we're throwing a baseball. We're putting volume on the elbow, the shoulder, the, the body Right, and so Cutting down some of those reps Can be beneficial and that will help kind of in that restoration recovery period because we don't have to try to recover from such a deficit every time. I Could talk a lot about a lot of those things. Anything you want me to kind of hit on more?
Speaker 1:well, I Want to throw one out there for our friend Kayla. She asked us at a tournament once, before tournaments I think everybody's dealt with this to some extent that how do you, how do you deal with getting sufficient sleep the night before a tournament? Because you know we are living in the age of anxiety and you know trauma, reinforcement and all sorts of mental health issues, and you know going into a tournament is stressful, even in an amateur level. So how so? What are some tricks and tips that you have for getting sufficient rest the day or night before a tournament?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question and I'm glad you, you know, brought up that. Like I'm, I've been very open, vocal. People can find Podcasts online with me talking, not on disc golf podcast but other podcast about these topics of mental health. Because you know, from military, from ambulance, from all that I got PTSD and you know in that PTSD at one point turned in out of the out of the blue into, you know, panic attacks and anxiety and all that and fortunately I, you know, through a lot of mental health and a lot of coaching, a lot of therapy and all that I'm. You know that a lot of that, most all that is, you know, was a stage in my life. That isn't that I'm not in right now, but I had to put in the work and I had to, you know, make I Couldn't.
Speaker 2:If I, if, let's say, I knew something was gonna be super stressful, I needed to kind of do the work in the days, in the weeks leading up to that To help me prepare. So I knew it was coming right. So if we're, we're more confident and and prepared to move into something Even though it can be everything is gonna be stressful like that, like a tournament, no matter what, it's gonna be stressful, but if I have a, if I've worked, develop a routine Before the night before my tournament, then I can just call on that routine Right, and they'll talk about that. In mental health and stuff, it's like you know it, if someone's experiencing anxiety, that practice that you've done of your breath, work in this net beforehand, you can tap into that more readily than if you've never done it before. You only pull it out of the bag when you need it. You know so.
Speaker 2:So saying, hey, I, you know, I know I need to improve my sleep and so I'm actually going to start, because I don't want sleep challenges to to affect me as much the day before or the day of the tournament, and so backing it up a week, two weeks, whatever, or just, you know, in general I'm trying to improve my sleep and Then the three days before or whatever, it works for each person. You know I start to reduce some social media. You know I'm starting to, you know, do some more meditation and start to Focus more on. Okay, you know, the week, the week that this thing is going on, I'm going to intentionally back off on how much social media, media usage I'm doing in the evening. So I'm going to maybe not watch anything that could be distressing and affect my sleep.
Speaker 2:I'm going to Do some meditation tonight. Listen to some positive affirmations on our YouTube. You know video I'm going to, you know, make sure that I'm hydrating myself. Well, so it's usually not the night before thing, it's a this is what I'm working on and then it just I'm continuing to do that.
Speaker 3:So the night before Seth, I'm really starting to notice a trend on a lot of the advice that you're giving that we just have to start doing it at some point intentionally and give it the time that it needs in order for it to grow into that habit, into that routine, and then we will see the increased benefits from that little bitty step of starting.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. You know, I, that's that's the key, right there and and going back and adding to that, like you said, start. We just need to start doing it and that's why I hammer so much kind of focus, so much on that, even if it's a little bit, because most people don't start, because they think I got to do it all, like, oh, I got to improve my sleep, so that means I got to go cold turkey on all social media, I got a. You know, getting bed at this time at this, like, but I got kids, that I got a. You know we got to do stuff for an evening. So how do I change those schedules Like, so it's, it's little things.
Speaker 2:You don't need to do it all right away. Just start and and then just build that. So it's not a. I'm just trying to pull something out right now that I've never practiced or even thought about and I want it to. I want to see changes now, I want to see benefits now. It's like no, it's you know, it comes from doing stuff before. There's a really good book. It's a very thin book, is a easy read, it's.
Speaker 1:I like thin books.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there you go. And I mean now, and it's also got a name I can't remember. No, it's, I think, I'm pretty sure, pretty confident.
Speaker 1:It's carry water, chop wood or chop wood water that I think I've heard of that, something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah it's. It's basically like the guy wanted to go and, you know, do this big thing in life. Then he goes and meets with the master. The master has them start, just chop wood and carry, walk.
Speaker 1:He's like well you know, it's the whole like you know. Wax on, wax off like wax on, wax off, right.
Speaker 2:It's like those little things that we started doing. Now they have benefits that we don't even know, like it just so seems so simple now that like how could it even Come close to working? Because it's just so simple? But it's, it's making a change, whether we know it or not. And then now it builds up and now we can do things later on that we've never thought we could do now for sure.
Speaker 1:All right, seth. Well, we're gonna go ahead and ask you some wrap up questions here. We do definitely appreciate all of your wisdom and time and expertise. You know sharing all this knowledge with us. It is phenomenal like and it's absolutely of great value to our listeners as well. So, seth, what's your favorite disc?
Speaker 2:Yes, great question. I Just now. Okay, so I'll say my favorite disc and then I'll just just kind of touch on something, a funny thing about my choosing my favorite disc and why it's so hard. Is my favorite disc right now is the hex by and good choice. I'm loving it. Yes, I love it. I just love the hand feel. I started with kind of like the you know true back in the day went like verdicts and you know, buzz and all that.
Speaker 2:They're all great, but the hex is just feeling so good I I'm very calm, I feel very confident, comfortable, I throw it now why I kind of joke about it is you know, One of the best things about working in disc golf is you're around disc golf all the time and one of the most challenging things is you Never get to play disc golf Because you're working in disc golf all the time and well, andy, you have to survive.
Speaker 1:Bill Randolph's dad jokes.
Speaker 2:You know, one of the funniest things about Bill when he says, when he, when he says goodbye to people, sometimes It'll be like alright, hey, see you later, drive fast and take chances.
Speaker 3:I.
Speaker 2:Said that before to the deal because it just it throws people off. You know, drive fast, take chances Like what are these you're supposed to tell me to drive safe and drive home alive?
Speaker 1:Oh, but Bill's a great guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was great. So the funny thing is like choosing a disc is like I'm just now kind of starting. Now I'm settled down after the season and starting to play more, because I really didn't get to play much. I don't get to play as much as I want to because I'm always just working at the disc golf quarter store around disc golf. And then another thing is when you're on tour full-time, I'm there for literally every single special limited edition drop and Every single type of plastic is always out at the courses or so I'm, you know, I'm like got to bring a second suitcase just to fill it up with discs. I'm into that, you know, and so I have so many different types that it's like you know, I'm looking at, I'm like what am I gonna? I gotta rebuild my bag. Like I've got a lot of options like all different types, and so I'm kind of going through what I want to. My bag goes like now and the hex is definitely I've got like three of those in there.
Speaker 1:Are you partial to any brand or anything?
Speaker 2:I'm not, I'm not. I like, I like. You know them all. There's some that I just have more of than others, but no, I'm not.
Speaker 1:All right, all right, jenny, did you have something?
Speaker 3:Oh, I was gonna say that I have a recently put the Sister disc, the paradox, back in my bag and we're both fans of the paradox.
Speaker 2:My, yeah, I threw that like four times yesterday out of here, of course, here I love that. That's a great option.
Speaker 1:Rollers yeah.
Speaker 2:Exactly right, and I don't you know, I'm pretty good at taking what should be like a 30 second answer and turning it to about 30 minutes, so you know please excuse me, you're doing fine.
Speaker 2:You're doing fine so yeah, I don't, I don't. I don't really throw a lot of forehand unless I'm training for it, unless I'm doing, you know, a lot of forehand specific work, you know, and really increasing the Buffer zone between you know the threshold of what my tendons and my elbow and all that can handle I. So if I'm not doing a lot of forehand Work, intentional work, outside of throwing forehand, then I don't really throw forehand. So I haven't been playing a lot of disc golf recently because of tour life, and so the paradox is amazing for me when I'm not having any forehand and I know I can Trust, I will throw like a little approach shop forehand with like a burger, you know something, but I won't really push it. And so the the paradox is one of those discs where I know that you know I can get those any lines Whenever I feel like them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm still learning Forehand from my 12 year old son and he's always sitting there like we were out to eat one night and a baseball game was on. He's like mom, you got to watch how he's throwing, that's how you got to throw your disc, and so he's still trying to get me to understand it and it's just not connecting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, and you know, like I've talked to players from the past, that you know they were just like we didn't have the forehand option and we were Just fine. And you know, and you can see players on tour like you know, james, that that's just fine without it. So yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:All right. So Next question is how has disc golfed Helped you develop, changed your life or influenced your, influenced your life, you know, getting into it and then moving on to it like. What kind of life lessons have you brought with you?
Speaker 2:From disc golf. Yeah, you know so, so many. It's funny I to go back from where I was, you know, kind of one night, just mopping the floors of my gym was side of 35 hundred square foot gym. So it took a little bit to mop and and it was like 10 o'clock at night, I'd gotten there like five in the morning and I had to be there at five in the morning the next day and you know, thinking about, you know how can I make actual, I want to make an impact in disc golf and Going home and telling my wife, you know, hey, I think I'm gonna actually start putting content out for disc golf and it's a closing my gym and to now, this is what we do full-time and in our lives. My wife works for, you know, works in disc golf strong as well, and so it's just been an amazing journey and and and it's taught me so much that you know, I will probably Start to understand in 10, 15 years.
Speaker 2:As you know, I continue to reflect on things, but I Would say one, one thing about this sport is and we all know this, this is, you know, it's definitely something that draws us all in is the community and how you can have just something that brings so many people from all over together and and speak a common language and have a common love for something and a passion for something. I shared a photo, a DDO this past year, which Jane, which Jeremy Rusko, the founder of Dynamic discs, told me I needed to do 20 push-ups that USDGC this year because I called it DDO and that dynamic discs open. So, jerry, hear this. I guess I'll do these 20 push-ups after I get off podcast.
Speaker 2:They're trying to move it away from DDO to dynamic discs open. So it was him in the new CEO and he's like dropping in between I'm like what you just call it DDO. I was like, oh so I shared a, I shared a photo from dynamic discs open, where it was me and 20, about 20 of my Estonian friends, and I said, you know, never in my life when I I first started throwing a Frisbee did I think that I would love going to some small little town in nowhere, kansas, to hang out with 20 of my friends from Estonia. You know, it's just really cool to think about that and how it's drawn people together in this way.
Speaker 1:That's, that's awesome. So Do you have any future plans or goals with this golf? I mean, you're at the spearhead. Where are you taking this thing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's. You know it's been pretty interesting to have to, like you know, with with the growth of disc golf. It is, I definitely am aware that you know I've been at this the tip of the spear and just trying to evolve and Make things you know better and improve things the way wherever I can and how, however, I can best help, I just I just officially today Became the head coach of the Boise State University disc golf team.
Speaker 3:So Thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's you know. So now I'm here. We just settled here in the Boise, the Treasure Valley area in Idaho Back in June and so, yeah, I taught a clinic for them last week and they were like, hey, would you mind being the head coach here? We need a coach. And I was absolutely. So now I'm now I'm that's another thing I'm doing, you know, as it's kind of Getting into collegiate disc golf and how I can best help you know the future of our sport from the college level as well and then continuing to, you know, share programs and share advice and share things that I think will be. You know, people might find some, some benefits from In in helping them in their journey in this sport and helping them be as resilient, be a resilient disc golf athlete. You know that's so important. So, yeah, we'll see where it takes me. We'll keep go, keep going and move forward.
Speaker 1:Well, speaking where, where it takes you. That's a nice way to talk about disc golf strong. Now, what is disc golf strong for our listeners that don't know how can we get involved I? I saw that there's some programs on there. You can sign up for classes to talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so just golf strong is online athletic performance organization company for for the sport and when we share, you know, as much information as we can without being all too consuming and overwhelming. And so we've got, you know, our social media. We've got our disc all strong performance academy, which it started out. It's an online academy. It started out as a six-week Academy that people could go through and there was about ten weeks of access To that and it came with, you know, there's coaching videos and program, a program to follow, like a six-week program to follow.
Speaker 2:That's really evolved a lot and so we're actually in like the next two weeks we're going to be launching an all brand new Disc golf from performance Academy which is going to be like a year. People have a year access to it. It's gonna there's different modules. There's like the prime disc golf athlete, the mobile disc golf athlete, the stable disc golf athlete, powerful disc golf athlete, the prepared disc golf athlete and then recovered disc golf athlete, and so there's different modules and then there's different Focuses of training and and stuff that people can do at home. We really want to meet people where they're at with disc golf training. You know we're not here to stand on. You know, stand on a balance ball on one leg and juggle to try to get better at this golf.
Speaker 2:We want to really try to focus on what are what are the things that we need as disc golfers, what are the? What's the mobility, what's the stability, all the things that we talked about over this. You know last, you know, I'm here on the podcast and we just try to put that out there in a package form for people that they can access at their home. We do have, you know, other like mini courses and things we're putting together, you know, unlike shoulder and elbow health and Knee, and I'm putting you like a kettlebell course for disc golf. So just things that are going to be coming out in the future and that's all through our website very cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was. I was fishing around your website and very exciting stuff and you know love that someone like you is putting something like that out there and saying, hey, you know, let's get the record straight about disc golf health, disc golf training and you know, coming from somebody that you know, would it be safe to say that you're an expert?
Speaker 2:I Think that other people you know would say that for sure. I think I think in our own heads, you know, we always just you know see things that we could always do better and and learn more about, and you know, and so I'm I probably could be pinned down to say that you know, but yeah, and.
Speaker 2:I really wanted to make sure from the very beginning that I saw that, hey, I'm, you know, right now, no one talking about it.
Speaker 2:At that time, in the beginning, of where I was like, okay, I have, I have two paths that could go.
Speaker 2:I could go the path of what's gonna get the most you know views and the most Instagram likes and you know, and if we're developing this in the sport of disc golf, could I go the route of people just being loud and never really doing the stuff that I'm putting out there, because it involves a lot of complexity and stuff?
Speaker 2:Or I have a really, you know, great opportunity to make sure that we're growing the sport of training and disc golf from the start with sound principles of you know that that you, that you got in your ace, you know certification and that they talked about in the colleges and the nsca and all these you know different things, like the sound Principles of training and where you should start for athletes. So that's where I would have kind of made sure I held strong to is focused on that, and then we're excited about the future works out. You know, the last couple years I've been on the road full-time and I also do that. You know a whole other side of the sport which is the health and safety For the tour and weather and severe action, severe weather and the emergency action plans and stuff, and so I've been focusing on that for a lot, building those things on the tour side.
Speaker 2:But right now I'm where we, so it's kind of not been putting out a lot of content for disc golf strong recently Because there's so much focus that I have to do for that kind of stuff for the tour as well. But we've just been just been crushing away at just putting new things, getting new things in the works To start putting out for disc golf strong in the near future. We're excited about it.
Speaker 1:Awesome. All right, well, seth, we're gonna get it wrapped up here so.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Thank you so much, bren and Jenny. It's been a true honor. Pleasure to be on the show with you and talk disc golf and everything we're all passionate about and all that. So I really appreciate the the opportunity to talk and share.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you for coming on. You were very inspirational. I took a lot of notes.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Well, no, I appreciate that. That's awesome, thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to this episode of the intentional disc golfer. This has been a great episode with our very special guest, seth Muncie, and at the intentional disc golfer podcast. We really truly believe that disc golf saves lives, so go out there and grow the sport.
