Episode 029 - Tony Holler on Mastering Speed, Power, and Recovery with the 'Feed the Cats' System

In this episode of the Athletic Performance Podcast, I s it down with Tony Holler, creator of the renowned "Feed the Cats" system and one of the most influential voices in sprint training. Tony shares his unconventional approach to athletic performance, focusing on speed, recovery, and optimized training for athletes at all levels.

Key Highlights:

• The origins and philosophy of the "Feed the Cats" program.
• How Tony Holler's methods contributed to Saquon Barkley's standout season.
• Why traditional "grind" training falls short of optimizing athletic performance.
• Insights into speed development, multi-directional training, and the role of recovery in maximizing output.
• The significance of the "Truck Stick" metric for assessing momentum in big athletes.
• Lessons from sprint training applied to team sports like football, lacrosse, and soccer.

Tony and I dive into actionable strategies for coaches, parents, and athletes to adopt a performance-based model. Discover how small tweaks in training philosophy can yield big results on the field and beyond.

Connect with Tony Holler:

• Twitter: @pntrack

Join the Conversation:

• Have questions or feedback? Email us at athleticperformancepod@gmail.com.
• Love this episode? Leave a 5-star review to help us reach more coaches like you.

Tune in and rethink what it takes to unleash elite athletic performance!

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Transcript

M-2-peakfast: 0:05

Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm.

0:21

Welcome back to another episode of the Athletic Performance Podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Patrick. Today's guest is Tony Holler. He is the track coach at Plainfield North in Illinois and the creator of the Feed the Cats program. And if you're familiar at all with anything related to sprint training, You've probably come across Tony's message and Tony's system at some point now I've consumed a lot of Tony's material. I follow him on social media and his message is very clear and consistent And so what I wanted to do today was actually bring him on to talk about some different aspects and different angles Related to the feed the cat system. Tony reminds me so much of a few of my mentors and industry Um, colleagues that I just look up to my earliest mentor, Jim Laird is one of the most unconsciously competent individuals that I've ever seen. He understands how to manage fatigue. He's always just known what it took for clients and athletes to be in optimal positions to execute things with a very high level of efficacy. Lee Taft is another one like Tony. He kind of stumbled on his system all by himself. This wasn't, um, Created by consuming the content from other people. This is watching hours and hours of footage of how athletes move and naming different things like the plyo or the redirectional step and coming up with a system that the rest of the industry is using. Tony is exactly like these guys in the same way. And so that's why I was so excited to bring him on because he's just someone who has watched, observed, and understood what it really took to get athletes faster. Not based on any research, not based on what others were doing, but he arrived at these conclusions. All by himself, and I just find that to be very impressive, and he has a level of insight that we're not gonna, that you're not gonna find in a lot of other industry professionals who grew up in this industry or have some kind of pedigree learning from other mentors. And so what I wanted to do today was talk about a couple of tangential things to feed the cats. Like when it comes to multi directional training, you know, this, this was born as a sprint system. So what happens when we start to ask athletes who need to change direction? How, how they manage that inside of the feed to cat system. Because research suggests that this is a distinct skill, and a lot of times improvements in linear speed don't really translate to change of direction. And so we riff on that a little bit. We also talk about his impact on Saquon Barkley. If you're not familiar, uh, the year, this is I'm recording. This is 2024. Saquon is, um, on pace to potentially break the rushing record. He's going to clear 2000 yards, probably pretty easily. Uh, he's having some amazing all time performances this season. And he called Tony in the past off season too, because he felt like he lost a step. He felt like he wasn't performing the way that he used to. And he's in his later twenties now. So he's not a spring chicken when it comes to the NFL and especially when it comes to the running back position. This is a hard position to, um, have longevity in. And so Tony talks about some of the stuff that they discussed and what helped Saquon really step his game up the next level. But, you know, overall, one of the things that I find most interesting throughout this conversation. It goes back to some of the other reading I'm doing, which is to understand what the goal of the workout is. And for many coaches, the way that we perceive this is that the goal is to get tired. And even though we won't outright say that we, you know, we'll, we'll claim that we want to improve performance. We have a really hard time using a lower volume approach like feed the cats. And really optimizing for performance and allowing our athletes to recover because it just feels like we're not doing enough. And so I talk with Tony about how to unpack this. When it actually comes time for us to, to sign the line and to put our name behind it and reduce the volume of our athletes. How do we actually do this and have confidence that our athletes are going to recover? Um, adhere to this, that they're going to be okay with it, that they don't want to just grind and smash themselves into the ground. And so, um, I thought that was a really interesting piece of the conversation. So, uh, I'll let Tony do a lot more of the explaining through this conversation, but it's a very exciting conversation. I had a really enjoyable time talking with Tony and learned a lot and I hope you will too. So if you have any questions, as always, you can reach out to me. At athletic performance pod at gmail. com and please rate and review this podcast with five stars only so that we can continue to get this information out to hungry coaches like you who want to help their athletes optimize their performance. Thanks for listening.

Ryan Patrick: 4:50

I think everybody's heard about feed the cats, but I guess, you know, as an intro to the podcast, why don't you just tell the listeners a little bit about yourself?

Tony Holler: 4:59

Um, 65 year old immature coach, you know, that, um, um, my dad was a coach 47 years, 44 as a head basketball coach, high school and college. I was his oldest son. So I was his wingman. Like many coaches, kids are, especially the oldest, you know, he just took me everywhere. And, uh, I was, I think I attended my first basketball clinic at the age of 12, probably, and saw a couple NBA coaches speak and things. So I think in the fifth grade, I was reading Vince Lombardi books and, and stuff like that, you know, so I was a weird kid and it's just kind always been my life. And, uh, when I was 40, I I decided that, uh, that the way I was coaching, uh, was not great for kids, which is a weird thing to say. And I just flipped things and went to more of a performance based model of, of training and practicing instead of a hard work based model. And. I started getting really good results and about 12 years ago, um, I started talking about it and Twitter gave me a free reach and I was asked to write an article and that turned into about 300 of them. And now with the podcasts and things like that, I'm just, my message has come at kind of the right time.

Ryan Patrick: 6:29

That's awesome. You remind me so much of one of my early mentors. Uh, when I was going through college, he was a guy who, uh, I guess. Not exactly, but he was into powerlifting. He had this model of training that was so intense that, I mean, he literally wrecked himself to a point where his body almost failed. And since then he kind of reinvented himself to, you know, understanding about, of rest and recovery and what a priority that plays. Um, have you ever, have you ever heard the story of Cliff Young, the runner? So when I, sometimes when I hear you talk, so Cliff was, um, I guess he ran Cross country thing in Australia. It was from like Sydney to Melbourne. And this guy was a farmer. He showed up in overalls and boots and he broke the record by like days on this race because everyone would run really fast and then they would sleep and he just. kind of plodded along for five days straight until it won this race. And so sometimes when I hear you talk about speed, it's almost like you come into a field where we have this history and this pedigree of like it's been handed down from football. It's really hard nose. You've got, you know, Boyd Epley and the Nebraska Cornhusters. Everything's bigger, faster, stronger. And then. You kind of do it in a completely different way. And there's a lot of people kind of scratching their chin going. I never really thought about doing it

Tony Holler: 7:54

like that. Yes. Um, I'm reading a book right now called tribal. Uh, that is, uh, that came out maybe two months ago and, uh, and it's really interesting because they say that the humans are dominating. The earth because of their ability basically to copy successful things, you know, so, so we are, uh, from, from very, you know, two or three years old, constantly imitating constantly copying. And, and that is a fantastic thing because we, We basically learn everything that older people know. The problem comes is that we copy bad things too. And, and football was built on a military model, and it still suffers from that today. And I think sports in general are, are built from a top down, tyrannical system of, of just beating yourself up every day and somehow that translates to performance.

Ryan Patrick: 10:37

Yeah, I want to touch on this in a second, but, um, you know, first I want to lead in with this idea of, uh, rumor has it, Saquon called you in the off season. Here we are week 14 He is having a standout season. He's putting up career numbers. I've heard rumors of him potentially breaking the all time rushing record. So. You know, what was, is it true that you worked with him and I guess what made him so, so successful this off season and why is it feed the cats, but jokes aside, one of the things, especially as a guy who came from a, a strength training background. Um, what intrigues me the most is I've seen Saquon's name thrown around so many times for look at how strong he is. Look at him. Power clean, 405 squat, 495 for seven reps. Everyone needs to get stronger. He was a literal post or child for strength. So I guess I would just love to hear you kind of talk about some of the challenges he was having and then how you guys kind of went to work and what changed for him this off season.

Tony Holler: 11:41

Yeah, it's actually, it wasn't just strength. Yeah. Uh, but also he was fed the, the, uh, the mission of we can never work hard enough than the kind of mamba mentality that, as you know, break so many people. You mentioned that, uh, but, uh, there are people that survive any amount of training and that they seem to be the people who get to write their story. The, you know, the survivors get to write their story, the losers, you know, they just fade away. So, so he was. Obviously, um, uh, really strong and all that kind of stuff. And we're all aware of, I mean, how many times have we seen video of him? Squatting before. And so it's like ubiquitous is everywhere. And, um, because of my reach now, because of my. Instagram, YouTube, Twitter. The only thing I do personally is my Twitter. My son, Troy is my content manager for, um, the other things, but anyway, I get some, some athletes reaching out and, and so, uh, Saquon reached out, uh, my son gave him my cell and, and he gave me a warning, like, dad, I think Saquon Barkley is going to call you, you know, and, and, uh, I'm just like a retired chemistry teacher and high school track coach. So I want to let everybody know. That when Saquon calls me, it's like, yeah, Saquon gave me a call, you know, no, it was, it was pretty much the highlight of my life, but anyway, he called me and, and, and it was, I'll never forget the conversation. He probably won't either. He says, coach, I like your stuff. What do you think I can add to my workouts? And I said, you're going to hate my answer because you need to like, subtract a bunch of stuff. And he said, really, like, instead of doing like 20 hundreds, maybe do five. And I said, no, do no hundreds. And there was like this really long pause and he goes, coach, I feel like I've been, been brainwashed. And I'm like, we all have, we all have. So, so that was our, our, our conversation. And then, uh, I'm really good friends with Brian Kula and Brian is a terrific sprint coach and he's worked with several NFL guys, um, uh, including he's famous for Christian McCaffrey, but you know, DJ Moore and several others. But, um, so, so through me. They got hooked up and, and they, they worked out and, and I just think he had a different focus and one of the problems that, that, one of the reasons why Saquon reached out is he, he said that he felt like he was a step slow and he's getting hurt all the time. And one of the weird things about speed training is that it gives us a, a really crazy, uh, uh, health benefit. Uh, people that sprint when, when I talked to a Kyle Bolton, who was the speed coach at TCU, he, he spoke for us at, uh, at a consortium. And, uh, Kyle Bolton said that, uh, I asked Kyle, I said, how come at TCU, you were sprinting three times a week? And I thought I knew the answer. It was like, we want to be the best athletes we can possibly be by the end of the year when we're playing for a national championship, blah, blah, blah. Instead, he said one word answer. He said, health. He's at health. So, so with Saquon, to me, I, I've texted him this a couple times after games. I said, younger, leaner, faster. Just three words. And, and, and I think he is. I, I, I think he's faster. leaner and younger seeming than he was as a senior at Penn State. And I, I really believe that, um, that speed and weight is the fountain of youth. And I realized that 27 is not like old, but 27 is old for a running back. Running backs at 27 are not as fast as they were in college. None of them, I think Saquon is, and, and he's had a great year and I'm proud of him and, and excited to say, yeah, that guy called me one time.

Ryan Patrick: 15:55

Yeah, I think I would be giddy. I'd probably fangirl on the phone. So I totally, I totally appreciate that. Um, and I know I said we would circle back to this. So obviously, um, you know, the football culture, it's hard nose, it's militaristic, it's top down, it's gritty. Um, there's the pedestal, right? Of mental toughness. We didn't win the game. We need to get mentally tough. And how are we going to get mentally tough? We're going to get really, really tired. And so I know so many coaches out there probably have the same experience, right? They hear feed the cats, they hear what you say. They love the slow volume approach. They love this performance based approach. We're all sitting here, nodding our head. Like, yes, this makes sense. But when it comes time for you to program your athletes, a lot of us get a little chicken shit because we feel afraid that we're not doing enough. Or our athletes are going to somehow be underprepared. And so, you know, you already mentioned some of these, uh, beliefs that you had to overcome with Saquon, who he was actually up against, you know, having some potential injuries, feeling a step slow. Uh, you just almost feel like your career is slipping. Between your fingers when you've relied on your body this entire time. So like what really got through to him? How are you able to, to break through? Because this was probably, uh, counterintuitive to everything he's been fed from peewee football up until, you know, this time in his NFL career.

Tony Holler: 17:19

Yeah. It goes back to that thing about tribal where we're such copycats. That's how we know things. We know things because that's what the people around us say. That's the same politically, religiously. I mean, like 90 percent of all people are the religion of their parents. I mean, it's not because they chose it. It's because they copied it and it's the same politically and all that kind of stuff. So I think that, uh, the thing that happens when we're able to explain what a What a performance based, speed based approach is, I think what happens is it makes sense. It, it, people lean in and say, you know, it, it, why were we just getting so tired we couldn't walk every day? You know, Lombardi said that fatigue makes cowards of us all. Truer words have never been spoken. But the interpretation of that, you know, how that translates. To practice is where we got messed up. Coaches took that and said, we need to get our guys exhausted. Every damn day so that they, uh, are accustomed to that in the fourth quarter of a football game. And I'm like, that's like a weird interpretation of that. Uh, that, that what we need instead is to practice fresh, is to, Perform in practice and let the games be the hardest thing we do. A good friend of mine, that's a Garrett Mueller, 28 straight wins. Um, second straight state championship in Minnesota, uh, high school level. They, they put on tight, uh, Titan sensors this year. And of course, you know, uh, uh, uh, feed the cats football team tries to do. Less. It's the discipline pursuit of less, not a frivolous pursuit of less. It's just like a, you know, like you're doing everything that it takes to win football games, but you're trying not to burn the stake. You're not, you're trying not to ruin the next day. You know, today should never ruin tomorrow. What they found with their practices is that their four weekday practices. The total sum of their work added up to the sum of their work in one game. So not only were practice, not only did they work, they not burn the state. Not only did they not practice double game stuff. My dad used to say, we're going to make practice so hard that games are easy. Not only were they not doing that, but on average, each practice was. a fraction of the game volume, which allowed them to go into the game the best possible performer they could be. And of course, even people that were practiced wrong throughout the week, they had a terrible process. Uh, kids would still get excited for games. And bouncing around in the locker room and banging their heads on lockers and coaches mistook that from being ready to play. And really it was all show. Because if we would have timed them on Sunday in a sprint and on Friday before the game, they would have been far slower. It just goes downhill. And you want the fastest team possible because speed is the best barometer of health. You cannot be slower than miles an hour slow and ca You're not, if you are fa And, and you have, you're, you're, you're mentally excited. Those two things I think is health, mental and physical health and the healthiest team with the best athletes wins games.

Ryan Patrick: 21:19

Yeah. One of the things that dawned on me in, in hearing you talk is so many coaches are worried about their team having enough capacity to get through the games. And I'm like, well, if you're faster, the other team is just. they're struggling to keep up with you. You know, it's, it's above their threshold that they're used to operating at.

Tony Holler: 21:38

Yes. So I did. If you, I say the average, the traditional football team practices in third gear all week and that's why coaches are in love. I think coach's favorite word is effort.

Ryan Patrick: 21:51

And the

Tony Holler: 21:51

reason why it's their favorite word is because that's all their kids can give them. They can't give them performance because they're too damn tired. Or even if it's the first hour of a three hour practice, you have to coast. In order, because you know, you got three hours of work to do. So what happens is they're in third gear all week. And so they're not preparing to play in games. Of course, not of course, but that's why teams cramp up in game one and game two. It's not because of pickle juice or bananas or Gatorade. It's because they've been practicing in third gear and then they try to play in the fifth and their muscle nerve reflexes get all screwed up and. Yeah, it's a mess. So what, what you talk about football, 99 percent of football is played between 12 and 17 miles an hour. But that doesn't mean that if you can only run 17 miles an hour, you're, you're good. Absolutely not. Because if you can run 23 miles an hour, you can run 17 all day. Whereas if you go in as a slow player, let's say, you can only run 18 miles an hour. Those game speeds will wear you out. And then you combine that with the bad approach and practice where, where you are just absolutely destroying your kids. And, um, and that is, I mean, it's, it's, it's sad, but there's a lot of teams that win like that. Because I say, because dumb is done to beat against dumber. If everybody's doing the same dumb crap, then, then yeah, the team with the better athletes will beat the team with the lesser athletes, even though that team with the better athletes is still dumb, you know, so the point about sprint based football is it's a competitive advantage, especially right now, because even though it feels like the entire nation coast to coast is now feeding the cats, because that's who people. That's who reach out to me, right? I would say we're still outnumbered 9010 and, and I've had coaches actually say that, that they are desperate for a head football job because they want to get in and, and do this sprint based football thing before everybody's doing it and everybody will be doing it. In the next 5 to 10 years. Um, but right now it's just such a huge, uh, competitive advantage to enter games with teams that are so much faster, so much healthier, nobody's hurt, everybody's available, and. One of the cool things you mentioned, like the fourth quarter, the fear, um, teams that are really fast are really fast in the fourth quarter too, in no situations do 23 mile an hour athletes get beat by 17 mile an hour athletes because the 17 mile an hour athletes work 20 hours of practice that week and the cat, the 23 mile an hour guy only worked five. No, it's it. And of course, coaches constantly blame losses on, on being out of shape or, or attitude or they want it more and all that just B. S. Defaults. And really what Loses games as fumbles and interceptions and lack of execution and pre snap penalties and all those things. Just tackles all those things.

Ryan Patrick: 25:16

I feel like I'm a salmon swimming upstream. Cause I look, uh, just in my competitive marketplace. All right. So for those of you listening, who don't really know, I work with a lot of, you know, high school age athletes. That's my primary, uh, demographic, but there are several other competing businesses in my area that champion. The, the grit, the grind, who can outgrind who, um, it's always iron sharpens iron, which I like, but to an extent they use this as, um, an invitation to, you know, it's a slaughterhouse more or less. And the third gear comment resonates so well with me because. Uh, I feel like my team sport athletes are just more comfortable going 90 percent over and over and over. And a number of kids that come in, when I say sprints to them, they're like, uh, they think it's this dumb thing you're going to do at the end of practice that gets you really tired. And I have such a hard time getting them like, you need to tap into this extra 5 to 10 percent like Don't worry, I got you. You're going to have plenty of rest. I'm going to give you time. We're not going to do a ton of this, but I, I need that extra bit of like CNS activation. And so I guess for the younger athletes that you've worked with or you've seen, how do you, how do you kind of get them to get that extra edge? Is it just, they're already too fatigued and they can't do it or is this something they have to learn?

Tony Holler: 26:43

Yeah, well, first of all, you feeling like a salmon swimming upstream, that's a good thing. That means you're alive because only dead fish swim with the So, so I'm impressed that you use that metaphor. Um, for me being a sport coach, I have it much easier than you do. Because for me, parents are not there watching, they're not paying me and they're not watching my practice. If I was in the, in your position, I would have to really work to educate parents because parents do not like to spend money To watch kids doing a lot of recovery.

Ryan Patrick: 27:21

Mm-hmm

Tony Holler: 27:22

They want their kids dead tired at the end. They want to see constant motion. It's no different than a football coach who, you know, in football there are a lot of parents dads that come out and watch practice and they really wanna see constant motion. Even though football, if, if you really crunch the numbers, have a 30 to one loitering to work ratio, 30 to one, you, you are standing around for 30 minutes for every one minute you, you actually play football. But yet practice doesn't reflect that because we're trying to impress people or something. Um, in the private sector, I think you can still do things right. And I think the best argument to parents, you know, who see this standing around too much is data. Uh, when, when you show that a kid is getting faster, when, when a parent understands that one mile an hour faster. Totally change as an athlete, one mile an hour faster when, when you can show improvement. And that's really the performance based approach. And so much of Feed the Cats is what I call record, rank, and publish. Mm-hmm I call it the Food of Cats. If, if that does not motivate athletes. That athlete probably needs to go play in the band or something because he's not competitive. We, you know, nothing bad about band. I mean, I think band kids have more fun than athletes, but the point being is that cats are really competitive. I mean, they may sleep 20 hours a day, but for those four hours that a cat is awake, They are capable of being an assassin at any second because they are performance based. They're rested. Uh, they don't jog, but don't ever take a cat on a jog that the cat will actually have to be drug. You know, like, I mean, you'll lay down and just I ain't don't. And a lot of coaches really see that as laziness. And, and what I say is that those are the kids are catching touchdown passes for you. Those are the kids that can dunk in basketball. Those are the kids that really win games for you. So as they try hard coach, and most of us are like guys that were not the freak athletes of the world. We, we are guys that had to do everything else in order to compete. With really talented athletes. So it's hard for us to, I think, coach kids that are really talented because innately they understand the need of recovery, just like a cat sleeps. Well, a guy that is a, is a, you know, a sprinter that's going to set records oftentimes will appear lazy. To those conventional coaches.

Ryan Patrick: 30:16

One of the, one of the things that really resonates with me that you mentioned was, uh, this idea of one mile an hour faster. So one of my favorite things to do, especially, uh, during combine time is to watch, um, when they like pan multiple races and you see like the, the ghost images of the other guys running and. Some of the really tight races that they show, so they'll compare, you know, this year's running class to maybe, you know, Xavier Worthy, who ran the best time last year, even Saquon. Hey, how does he rank compared to some of the best backs in the league right now? And over 40 yards, if you see a couple hundredths of a second difference, It's, I mean, it's quite a bit of space between two athletes and that's over 40 yards. We're talking, you know, five hundredths of a second or less, so a whole mile an hour faster. I can't even imagine the difference of how much that that athlete would dust. Their

Tony Holler: 31:09

former self. Absolutely. And I'd say this speed grows slow, which is kind of a play on words. Also, I'd say he grows like a tree that if you really want to be in a business that, that you see incredible growth, uh, weight room, great place. I mean, strength numbers can grow really fast. Um, uh, distance running, you know, like in endurance events, you're, those things come fast. Whereas with, with speed, I think you have to be really patient and really consistent, and you can't work three hours on speed. I mean, you can't. You know, once if you're working out by yourself, my atomic speed workout takes 15 minutes and we do 60 seconds of work that that is very counterintuitive to the Mamba mentality. Um, and, and of course, you stay healthy that way. And today never rains tomorrow. Uh, and, and those things are just critical for being, um, uh, to gaining athleticism. But that one mile an hour thing, uh, I think kids feel different. Uh, they look different and it's now I was going to say this too, that I get a lot of pushback that in football or lacrosse or any of the sports I consult with is that coach, we don't run in a straight line in our underwear. You know, we, we don't, we, we, it's different direction, change of directions, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the important thing is this, the most extreme human movement. is sprinting with spikes on in a straight line and getting time. It is the most extreme thing. You know, people brag about cleans, you know, where the bar might move one or two meters a second. Well, when you're sprinting, you're moving about 10 meters a second. There's nothing in the weight room that can come close to sprinting at max velocity. And when you train the extreme, you train the range. Um, all movement. comes with that increase of speed. So, so people should not discount straight line speed because it's basically an exercise that will get you better at the sport. Just like no football coach would ever say, we never lay on our back and push weight up to the sky. You're right. You're right. We never do that. So I guess we should not do any lifts in the weight room, right? Uh, no, because the four, my four traits of athleticism is sprint fast, lift heavy, jump high, jump far, and bounce. And if you're talking to a golfer about the need to do that, to improve their golf game, they're going to look at you like none of these things matter. We don't do these things in golf. What they don't realize is that if you get two miles an hour faster, your club speed will improve by 15 miles an hour. Because when you train the extreme, you train the range and it becomes the tide that lifts all boats.

Ryan Patrick: 34:25

Yeah, it's, it's just as simple as like, I sometimes tell people just, just be an athlete, you know, just, just do it. Like, it's not complicated. It doesn't have to, you know, be this elaborate thing, but this, this really, uh, starts to segue into, uh, another question that I had for you. About using feed the cats with team sports, because right away, I think some of the pushback would be, hey, you know, my athletes have to cut and change direction. And these are kind of unique and different skills. And, um, while I appreciate that, I still think there's opportunity to train these. 1 of the things that I am curious about is just. Um, how's the integration been with that model specifically? Because when I think about heavy deceleration, change of direction, it's just physically demanding. There's a lot of eccentric stress on the muscles. Uh, there's a lot of residual fatigue compared to just running in a straight line. So I'm just, Curious how that's been and how some coaches maybe, you know, or some of the feedback you've gotten about how this has been adopted to, um, a multidirectional model.

Tony Holler: 35:25

Yeah. My favorite sports to work with, um, uh, these days is lacrosse and, uh, and soccer, which is really weird because I don't watch them. I, you know, I, I don't, I'm not interested to tell you the truth. Right. Uh, I, I, I've never played them. Uh, but yet here I am working with like, uh, teams are in the NCAA final four and across last year at this time, I was in France working with the soccer federation next September, I'm going to Brazil to work with soccer. And the reason why I work with these people is because I stay in my lane. Uh, my pyramid of, of success or whatever you call it, uh, the base is rest, recovery, sleep, nutrition, hydration. If you don't do that, you don't give yourself a chance to get to the next level. So I think that's the base. I think a lot of coaches forget that. And then the next part is athleticism, which is not unique to any sport. Athletes are better at every sport they play. Regardless of the sport. So, so I talk about lift, sprint, jump, bounce. When I'm talking to lacrosse people or soccer people, and the people who push back will say things like, yeah, but coach, uh, we have to, you know, like, change directions and things like that. Um, then I say, okay, describe. Your best player, no matter who it is, they'll always say the first two words is fast explosive. I'm like, okay, so what are you doing to get them faster? And they go, well, I guess we recruit them. I said, that's right. That's all you do is you pick the fastest people because you know that fast, explosive athletes are better than the others. But what if I told you, you could get guys faster and more explosive. All of them, even the good ones that really changes things. So after building athletes and building athletes is no different if it's volleyball, golf, lacrosse, soccer, track. That's what I'm doing right now. I have a workout in a couple hours and and we are working on nothing but speed and explosion. Not one single aerobic workout. Ever in the off season. We never run a lap before practice. We never run a lap after practice. All we do is like five second explosive. We are just totally prioritizing athleticism. That's all we're doing. So they go, well, when do we start cutting? And they're okay. That's when we reverse engineer the game, too many sports, reverse engineer the game all the way to the bottom of the pyramid and they're not creating athletes. And they are not healthy athletes because there's not that rest, recovery, sleep thing. So, so what we do after we prioritize athleticism, which is mainly speed, then we do sports specific fundamentals and movements. And if your sport is not teaching the movements of that sport in practice, I'm like, what in the hell is yours doing in practice? I'm like your practice, let's soccer train soccer, but away from soccer, let's train athletes. Let lacrosse train lacrosse. And then outside of the sport, let's get them faster and more explosive. By the way, there's no such thing as being, um, you, you could not be slow and explosive. You have to be strong and fast to be explosive. So speed is still the tide. I, what I find, I think is a lot of practices just copy what they've always done. There's worthless drills. There's too much conditioning. I'm a believer in doing no conditioning at all. Once again, let's get in shape by doing things your sport does. Let's gamify practice, which means make your practice more like the game itself. And then also, let's compete and keep score in practice sometimes. Let's, let's do the things that make kids want to play our sport. Too often, like, practice hardly resembles the game. It's just, Effort. It's just, you know, slogging through third gear crap and the coach cussing the guy at people and yelling at him and everything for more effort and it's because their practice is misguided.

Ryan Patrick: 40:03

Yeah. I. I took the blue pill a long time ago, right? Coming from, uh, the strength world. It was strength is never a weakness, right? So I'm like, we need to get kids stronger. And I'll never forget. We had this athlete, um, he kind of fell in love with the weight room too. And he was, he was pretty strong. So, you know, he took to it and he got really strong. And then one day we watched him jump over a hurdle and I thought he had, you know, Concrete in his shoes because there was, there was no bounce there. And I remember looking at my other coach and going, Oh shit. Like we, we trained the athleticism out of this kid. He's insanely strong. He looks competent and confident with a barbell, but in a uniform on a field. Uh, no. And so we had to, we had, I mean, it was, it was kind of this like distinct moment in time. Like this direction only works up to a certain point

Tony Holler: 41:00

at the risk of, uh, causing every S and C person listening to this right now, like turning off the podcast. I just think it's there. The name of the profession is so messed up, you

Ryan Patrick: 41:13

know, that,

Tony Holler: 41:14

that you can, you can. Strength train the cat out of an athlete, the athleticism of an athlete. You can also condition, uh, the cat out of an athlete. I mean, those two things, and I would much rather it be called speed and power. Uh, I think that would be better. And one of the things that, that I'm really into recently, um, I've developed a relationship with a, with a really strange thinker. Um, you have to filter out a lot of the things David Wex does, but, but David Weck has, I call him the Nikola Tesla of speed training. Um, Nikola Tesla may have been the smartest guy that's ever lived, but he was also, you know, like three fourths crazy. And, and, you know, and I would say that to, uh, David, to his faith, to face, he knows it, he knows he's three fourths crazy, but he also knows he has great ideas. One of the things is the spinal engine, that as we sprint, our shoulders twist one way and our lower spine. twist the other. And there's this twist counter twist thing. And with every time we pick up our foot, we, we hike our hip on that side and we contract our glute med on the other side. And, and so there's this crazy 3d stuff going on with sprinters and ends up with their head being over their foot to produce more force into the ground. This is what happens if you lift too much. The spine becomes immobile and you become less athletic. I mean, if you're, that's why we don't do planks. We don't do any ab stuff at all. The greatest core work you could ever do is actually sprinting. Uh, because it's a 3d type of core work. Uh, it's, it's, and you don't have to do a lot of it. You can't do a lot of sprinting. You have to do it in very small doses consistently. I really believe that that mobile spine is, is really, really important. I just got done. With our track football consortium and, uh, Brian Kula and Les Bellman were both there and they both talked about the 3d stuff with the spine that, that we need to constantly, we're in, and really it's, it's a type of work that doesn't make you sore the next day or anything, but it's really important. And I just see probably like you have, especially in football, where, where guys fall in love with the weight room and that's all they do for their athletic training. Right. And it doesn't work out. Well,

Ryan Patrick: 43:57

yeah, you know, I get it to some degree, right? You're in a collision based sport. It's like, when I hit somebody, I want to have a certain level of rigidity, but, you know, this is pure anecdote. So, when I kind of blew myself up powerlifting, um, there were some no consequences of that hip rotation was essentially gone. Shoulder rotation was gone. Spy. I mean, I, I moved like a Lego man, right? There was no rotation. It was just like, Arms and legs and that kind of waddle. And one of the things that really helped unlock me was actually. Shifting over to jujitsu. So now I'm on the ground, I'm rolling around and moving my spine in different ways that really accelerated the process of me actually feeling better. But on another note, one of the things that I like to do sometimes is okay. If I take. You know, a magnifying glass to strength training, and I take it all the way to the extreme, something that's strongest guys in the world. What do we know about them? Well, they lift a lot of weight. And in order to lift a lot of weight, the best thing you can do is not move under it to be as stable and as stiff as possible. And how do those guys move? As stable and as stiff as you can be. And so it's like, I think sometimes we get enamored with this. Some is good, more is better. And there's just, there's just some secondary consequences to that, that I don't think we always evaluate as practitioners.

Tony Holler: 45:19

And we've always seen those people. The. I coached football for 25 years and one of the funny sayings of football coaches is that yeah, it looks like Tarzan and plays like Jane and, and, uh, you know, that, that kind of like sums up the, you know, we've all seen those kids that in the weight room, we were thought they're going to be, you know, an all conference football player and on the field, they weren't good enough to start. Because, because they became immobile and stuff. And one of the things that used to kind of solve that was multi sport participation. Um, if a football player played basketball or wrestled either one, there was all kinds of three. planar type of stuff going on. And, and then, and then, you know, they, they would do track or play baseball. Baseball is highly rotational. Um, and, and, and then track, of course, if you're throwing it is, uh, if you're sprinting, that's wonderfully good for your spine and all that kind of stuff. And in this era of specialization, there's a couple of big problems. One is that reverse engineering all the way down to the bottom of the pyramid where I'm sorry, but basketball players in America now are not as good of athletes as they were 50 years ago, because they only play basketball. They never sprint at full speed. Uh, some of them don't. don't lift. Uh, they are qualities. Instead, they and they can get good at will never be as good as And, and I just think tha got to do those things. A Never being lift only that sprinting along with lifting, especially if you do sprinting before lifting, not after, but sprint before you lift and and do it in small doses and time and get faster and then do what I call X factor drills as well. Exercises that improve speed. You get those things that you need and then you go to the weight room. You move weights even better. Because your CNS is all fired up. And I think that, uh, I've had some big, strong kids. Some of them failed because they were weight room only too much of the year. And then the ones that continued to sprint and jump and do athletic things, they were fine. Yeah.

Ryan Patrick: 47:52

With this kind of, um, I don't know, ubiquitous one dimensional athletes that we have these days. I see a lot of my professional peers who. Are afraid to sprint guys right out of the gate because they're not conditioned for it, but I know you're in favor of day one, we're going to sprint. And so this is a very unconventional thought because most of us are thinking we need to, you know, periodize and progress for a couple of weeks and get these guys ready to spread. But you're on, I'm under the impression that you're in favor of these guys are athletes. We need to do this right of the way. So, you know, what kind of brought you to this, this I'll say contrarian view, but I mean, what do we need to consider, uh, from, from a programming standpoint as a whole, so that we can just have confidence to do this with our athletes right out of the gate.

Tony Holler: 48:43

Yeah, uh, first of all, 25 years as I've fed the cat since 1999, um, for 25 years, we sprinted on day one. We had no ramp up into anything and we never had anybody hurt doing a speed drill. We never had anybody hurt on day one or day to, um, It just, I've just found that it's okay. I'm just fearless. Uh, now when I spoke with, uh, Zach Dakin from TCU, who is absolutely a brilliant, brilliant man. Um, he works with a slightly different population, college baseball players, uh, college baseball players are really heavy on not sprinting and lifting a lot when they're away from him. I mean, a lot of college baseball players are kind of addicted to bodybuilding. They, they just want to get big and strong and masculine and all those things. Boys will be boys. Yeah, they will be, they will be. It's and, and, and maybe it's because they're college age, maybe there's more plasticity with, you know, more flexibility with high school athletes. Um, but he does ramp in. He, he, he wants, he's very like you, he's very interested in how in the hell can I sprint on day one? And. And I qualify it with maybe I'm working with a different population, but all I know is that this is what we do and and other people that feed the cats do the same thing for sure. What we don't do is we don't spend all summer in football doing conditioning and aerobic work. I'm thinking that that somehow will translate to performance. Um, we do no aerobic work, none. No, I think we get aerobically fit, but it's, it's probably a backdoor way. We get aerobically fit by stacking anaerobic work. Uh, people wonder how in the hell you can be in shape when you don't ever do anything for more than five seconds. But if you are consistent with those five second high intensity, high speed things, and you do 50. Just 64, four times a week. Um, you develop, I mean, your heart rate stays relatively high and maybe you're not ready to go out and run a sub four minute mile, uh, but that's different, that's different, you know, we're not trying to run a sub. I don't think any of our sports, I don't, I even reject soccer as being an endurance sport, because when I ask soccer coaches, describe your best player, nobody says, well, slow, but she can run forever. No, that doesn't win games. It just doesn't. And so I think that we need to, to really focus on those athletic qualities instead. Yeah.

Ryan Patrick: 51:27

Baseball's had an interesting trajectory, right? We go from the era of Wade Boggs, where guys were just crushing brewskis on cross country flights to being afraid and being afraid to weightlift or train to the steroid era where now everybody's. You know, getting huge and lifting and seeing the consequences of that to, you know, where Zach is. And I feel like he's found some, some really happy middle ground with just more of a holistic development of these athletes.

Tony Holler: 51:53

Yeah. They sprint train consistently as soon as they ramp up and get into it. Then it's, I see if I can remember is four F's fast, frequent, fun. Gosh, I'm missing one. Um, fast, frequent, fun. I guess that's enough. Three F's at least. Um, but, but no, he, he is very, uh, uh, very much like that. And, you know, for baseball, I have this weird theory. Um, you know, I know that speed's the tie that lifts all boats and that as, as we get faster, we get better at other things. Um, and I just wonder, you know, when I think of a 35 year old baseball player, They're pretty much washed up and it's not because they're weak physically. They've they're stronger than they've ever been. It's not because they're crushing beers till three in the morning. No, they're, they're like grown men. They have families. They probably have a nutritionist. I mean, they are healthy, strong men, but their bat speed slows down. And I just wonder, you know, like, I wonder how much. Guys in their thirties in Major League Baseball sprint. I bet they don't, I bet they run a lot conditioning, you know, they work hard. Um, they're doing everything, but they're probably not sprinting. And I just wonder if they would sprint in small doses, two or three times a week. If possibly they would maintain their bat speed later into their career.

Ryan Patrick: 53:18

I would think so, because, you know, what, what decays faster than anything from a fitness standpoint, power, speed and power, right? We know you're going to lose muscle with age. You're going to lose bone with age, but absolutely speed power. And, you know, with it being primarily a skill based sport, right? Hitting a ball with a tiny stick, you know, you have to have some kind of hand eye coordination. That is just. In the crazy amount of standard deviations above the norm, you probably got away without training for a really long time. And now you've got these young guys coming in who haven't had, you know, 10 years of traveling and, and not optimal training and suboptimal nutrition. I bet it makes a huge impact that these guys. were to incorporate that into their

Tony Holler: 54:00

routine. Yeah, I think it goes right back to what we said about Saquon is that, you know, you know, the weight and speed are the two fountains of youth. And, and I, I think that, um, I, I would definitely, um, advise older athletes that that's important to, uh, understand. For

Ryan Patrick: 54:20

sure. So, uh, 1 thing I do want to talk about is, uh, the truck stick. Cause I, I love this concept for the big guys. Um, and so when you're, when you're testing their max velocity, are you doing it over like a fly zone? So they're running a 40 or time in the last 10 and then you're tracking that speed as what their, their peak miles per hour is.

Tony Holler: 54:41

Correct. And the truck stick is really nothing different. I mean, physics, it's just called momentum. It's just, it's just weight, time, speed, you know, mass, time, speed, and mass times velocity, I guess is the correct terms. Um, yes. So what, what we do, uh, now there's people out there that says, yeah, well, offensive linemen never get to top speed. So we do a, we, we, we do a 10 instead of a. Instead of a max speed, but I think max speed is the holy grail. So, so basically what a fly is, is basically like a 40 yard dash. Where are you timed the final 10, you know, and, and some people need a little bit more run in if they're super fast. No, I've had one phenom that ran like 24. 3 miles an hour. that he needed, he needed, he's a world record holder at the age of 14 though. So, I mean, he's a phenom, um, but he needed more than 30 yards to get to top his top speed. Um, I would probably need 10 yards to get to my top speed because my, my outputs aren't as high. So, so like a 30 into a 10, basically a 40 yard dash where you time the final 10. Actually, I love timing the 40 and the final 10, which with technology you can do that. So we're going to get a max speed. And what we have found is that, um, um, uh, Garrett Mueller at Stewartville, he's the one that named it truck stick. And, and what he found, um, is that if you're a, if you're not very big, a truck stick of 600 is pretty good. Um, if, if you're a medium sized guy, a truck stick of 700 is pretty good. Pretty damn good. You're probably going to be like an all conference type guy. But what I love is the big cats. Um, if you are a big cat, if you are one of those offensive linemen, defensive linemen, and your truck stick in high school is over 800, you're probably going to be a key player on your team. Maybe all conference, maybe all state, maybe, you know, go to, uh, go to a big college. Because The combination, you know, we all know that if, if you are fast, that does not guarantee you a spot on a football team. Everybody wants to fight with me. Like yeah. You're saying that if you run a 4 2 40, you're gonna be in the NFL? No, I don't. I think you probably need to catch the ball too, you know? Yeah, it is. Obviously there's other things that go along with it, but I would always choose the faster version. of two similar players. So, what a truck stick will do is, is there are hardly any false positives at all. If you are big and fast in football, you will find a place. It is, it is unlike just being fast. Big and fast just has a great, great, uh, uh, gives you great potential to be really, really good. So, what we've done is you change. The weight of an athlete into kilograms. You change the speed in a 10 yard fly. I changed it to miles per hour, just because I always do, and then miles per hour to meters per second. And it's the kilograms times the meters per second gives you Newton seconds or some physics thing, a unit. And, and that's what we're talking about. 600, 700, 800. Uh, the, one of my favorite things to do is to, uh, reverse engineer kind of the, uh, a 40 yard time. Like Tristan Wurf's best offensive tackle in football plays for the Buccaneers play at Iowa, um, just an amazing athlete, how in the hell he wouldn't pick number one in the draft. I'll never know, uh, because I would have picked him number one, but. For him at the weight of like three 30 to run like a four, eight, five 40 means that he, he can get up to 20. 4 miles an hour. I can kind of, it's terrifying. Right now. Now that's, that's in spikes on a track without 12 pounds of pads, fresh, uh, blue sky day, whatever. But that's, that's how you do speed. You know, you don't do speed when you're tired. So, If he can run 20. 4 miles per hour and he weighs 330, uh, his truck sticks about 1330. So as a high school guy, you're a total stud at 800. There's a difference between you and the best offensive tackle in football. And I'm sure technique is part of the difference between you and him. But I think this is a, such a good cautionary tale. There's a guy named Nate Herbig, um, that ran, that came out of Stanford as a big. He was, you know, wait 335, um, agents don't tell you to come out unless you're going to be a first rounder. He came out early and he went to the combine around 5, 4, 5, 4, 1 to be exact. And so he wasn't a first rounder. He was undrafted. He went from because they don't want big, slow guys. They have short careers. They get tired earlier. Uh, it's weird that slow gets tired. It's weird. More than fastest. In other words, good athletes have a tendency to be able to play at a high level longer. Yeah. So it's almost like by sprinting and getting faster, you gain endurance in a different way than coaches have always thought you had to do, which is just run you till you drop. And, uh, and so, uh, Nate Herbeck. truck stick would not have been nearly as good as, I mean, Herbig probably runs 17 miles an hour, which is better than 90 percent of all high school offensive tackles, uh, who are not speed trained by the way. Uh, but, but there's a reason why those big guys, and you could go through all the offensive tackles that are good. Trent Williams, uh, Lane Johnson ran 4. 71. 4. 71. He's the second fastest offense, offensive tackle ever. Uh, the, the fastest good offensive tackles are always picked in the first round. If you run a five, four, you got to go as a free agent and try to make a team. Start, start feeding the cat. Hey man, they're big cat. Yeah. And then you only get one chance if for those combine guys, you know, you got one chance, so hopefully you go to a school that values speed instead of just weight room.

Ryan Patrick: 1:01:20

Yeah. I mean, a human that large, first of all, they shouldn't be able to move that fast. The fact that they can is, like I said, terrifying, but I, I mean, other humans are honestly just going to ricochet off of them as they run by. I mean, they're just, they are just literally trucking everybody. Now, I have a question for a younger athlete who's trying to develop, right? So they're looking at these, you know, tackle in, uh, these line positions, right? 300 plus pounds. What's, what's your thought process on how they can maximize and optimize speed while they're trying or their coaches are urging them to add a bunch of weight? Because that's, that's tough.

Tony Holler: 1:01:57

It is. It is, and I think that, uh, the answer is pretty simple. Is that you gotta sprint at least two times a week, you know, and, and, you know, you can do x factor workouts a couple times a week, and, and the prioritizing that speed does not mean that Is the majority of your work priority and majority are two totally different things and you cannot make speed training the majority of anything because it has to be micro dosed. I think 1 of the reasons why coaches discount speed training is because no matter how hard they worked, the harder they work, the slower they got. And that's true. If you work on speed 8 hours a day. You're going to be slow as hell. Um, so it's so counterintuitive. So I think they have to do that. Now, once again, a caution is that so many of the freaks that we watch play at the highest levels, their bodies were destined to be big. If, if they would have taken me, I think I was six to one 60 as a sophomore. If they would have tried to turn me into an offensive tackle that weighed two 50. That would not have worked. Well, my body, my bones were not meant to carry 250 pounds, whereas Tristan worse or Lane Johnson, they had huge frames and huge bones, you know, they, they probably came out, you know, at birth, you know, looking like that's a future NFL dude right there, you know, um, yeah, I mean. You know, Bo Jackson, Herschel Walker, you know, they weren't like shrinking violets as 10 year olds, that they were like strong kids. So I think that this really upsets weight room people that we have to understand that natural strength is preferable to artificial strength. That natural size is preferable to artificial size. And it hurts us because that's what we do in the weight room. We're trying to take skinny kids and make them bigger and stronger. And. I think we should just focus on getting stronger, just getting stronger. Uh, the worst thing you could possibly do is, is gain weight, live in a weight room and not sprint, not move. That's the worst thing you can do. I can attest to that.

Ryan Patrick: 1:04:18

All right. Uh, Tony, I appreciate your time, man. We've been going almost an hour now, so I'm just going to throw a few more questions. So, uh, in preparation for this, I listened to a lot of podcasts that you've been on, which is. It's getting up there now, but, uh, I heard you talking about a book. Where are we at with it?

Tony Holler: 1:04:34

Um, it's, I, I sent it off to two readers, uh, two weeks ago. So you can say I'm done, but it's weird. I've been like 99 percent done for three months. And I started thinking I could probably take the next three years and keep tweaking sentences and words, blah, blah, blah. But, you know, the thing that got me. You know, going on and I knew I needed to write a book, but the twin thieves, a great book by Steve Jones, a good friend of mine, the twin thieves or the fear of failure and the fear of judgment, no matter how confident I'm a rather confident person, you know, I'm not afraid of things. There's something that's scary as hell about putting a book out there. You know, that will be out there forever, but I got an advance, which, you know, that helped me because I'm not going to send the money back. You know, I'm, I'm going to get the damn thing done. So I got it done. It's being read by two people. Um, actually about half an hour ago, uh, my publisher agreed to let one of my two readers Somebody I really trust, somebody that knows my work, uh, somebody that's written several books himself, a guy named George Beinhorn. So, um, so it's being edited now and, um, I think it will be published maybe in five or six months, you know, hardback paperback, audible and Kindle. Uh, supposedly it will not be at bookstores. We'll just be on Amazon, but you know, it's hard to even find a bookstore these days. Yeah, I think all the ones that

Ryan Patrick: 1:06:15

were in my town are like grocery stores now or something else. So, uh, it's been a few months since the, since the summer Olympics. So I want to ask, I, I heard it was very brief, but Kung Fu Kenny Benerick, he was a

Tony Holler: 1:06:29

feed the cats

Ryan Patrick: 1:06:29

guy.

Tony Holler: 1:06:30

Amen. Yes. He, uh, you know, and then that, that happens sometimes too, you know, you can imagine the trolls that come at me and stuff, um, because I'm counterintuitive, you know, and I'm willing to put my opinion. On Twitter and take the, you know, the, the fire that comes back. And so, you know, once in a while somebody will come out and say, well, I'll, I'll start looking in to feed the cats when you coach your first Olympian. You know? And I'm like, yeah, I got, I would probably have a better chance of getting struck by lightning five times, having an Olympian live in my neighborhood and go to my high school. I mean. Rare. I mean, I, I did have, you know, Marcellus Moore, you know, world record holder, 14 state record holder at 15, uh, ran at Texas last year, set the 60 meter record was 15 in the Olympic trials last year at the age of 21. So Marcellus was a phenom, but you know, I can't say he's an Olympian. Um, but yeah, Kenny ran for a Feed the Cats coach, Tim Tebow, um, or not Tim Tebow, Matt Tebow, um, at, uh, Rice Lake, Wisconsin. And, and he had a great, great high school career, um, as good as any Wisconsin athlete of all times. Um, and, and, uh, and so, yeah, he was a Feed the Cats, you know, not a pro, you know, we don't create guys like Kenny. We, we feed them, we nurture them. We don't screw them up, you know? And so I don't want to ever say that feed the cats created Kenny Ben Benark. They, he did the right things for him. And then Joseph Fombley, who is another fantastic sprinter, a university of Florida ran the Olympics. He ran a Hopkins, Minnesota, and they were a feed the cats program. And another professional athlete, um, um, ran at, In my town, actually. And, and that's, uh, uh, Kamari Montgomery. He was, uh, uh, he was an NCAA 400 meter champ and a national, uh, 400 meter champ. All three of those guys ran for coaches that ran a feed the cast program, which means you never run a lap. The furthest you ever run in practice is 200 meters. Um, you value performance and health above all things. And you let the meats be hard.

Ryan Patrick: 1:08:49

I feel like you should get a lot of thank you letters this time of the year from all the athletes who don't have to run. Thanks coach for making us run all this.

Tony Holler: 1:09:00

I don't know about you, but I think every Feed the Cats coach can tell you stories about the way they were trained. And we accepted everything, right? I mean, we, yeah, that's just the way we did things. I think we were proud of it. Like we were proud that we worked harder than we'd ever worked in our life. And we had no idea they were making a slower.

Ryan Patrick: 1:09:20

Yeah. It's true. It's true. It's terrible. It's terrifying. Um, It's unfortunate, honestly, because I wonder, like, uh, I don't think I got faster until after high school. And I was like, I'm actually going to run some full out sprints. Cause again, it was just, it was this thing at the end of practice and it was awful and I hated it. And it was tiring, you know, in basketball, we run seven lines in like 30 seconds. And if you didn't make it, you had to keep running it, which is not the point.

Tony Holler: 1:09:49

Which is, which is a really important thing to say as we end this thing is that, you know, the, the traditional way of coaching was that my practices aren't designed for your enjoyment, you know, that, that was, you know, it came, that's a quote from Hoosiers, um, Norman Dale, the coach, and that's what he said to his team and everybody loves that, especially coaches, you know, like, yeah, yeah, these, these players need to go through some hell to get to play in the game. And what I have found is that we're never going to be great at something if practice sucks every day. I mean, if we could make practice the best part of a kid's day, uh, we could get a lot more out of them. Uh, I think love is tough. You know, that's another, you know, thing that people say about Feed the Cats. Oh, they're soft. They think the trophy for every kid. That cannot be further from the truth. We are a, a fast Feed the Cats football team is violent. Because speed amplifies collisions. Uh, people who love things are tougher because of that love that love. I mean, if people will, will kill for love, I mean, they'll, they'll fight to the death because they love somebody or love something. And I think that that that's a, a thing that's maybe underrepresented with the feed the cats approach. Yep. Strength,

Ryan Patrick: 1:11:12

fear, speed, Tony. I appreciate your, your generosity. Appreciate your contributions to the field. I love reading your work and, uh, just thank you for your generosity today coming on the show. So if somebody does want to find out more about you and feed the cats. Where can I direct them?

Tony Holler: 1:11:29

Um, so overexposed, to tell you the truth, it's so easy. I mean, coach Tony holler at, at YouTube or Instagram, and I think maybe I'm on thread, some blue sky too. Um, uh, Twitter, it's at PN track and I'm probably one of the few people who if you typed in Tony Hollers cell phone, my cell phone comes up. So I'm just really, I didn't believe it. I

Ryan Patrick: 1:11:55

wasn't about to call it.

Tony Holler: 1:11:57

I'm really easy to get ahold of. Um, so, so yeah. And, and, uh, and I'm speaking, I think seven times in the next 10 weeks, different places, uh, all over the country, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, down by mobile Nashville. Uh, I'm speaking in Missouri next week. I'm speaking in Tacoma, Washington. I'm speaking to Melbourne. Uh, Florida. So I'm speaking, which is really getting hard as I enter my 44th year of coaching uh, track is I have all these weekend trips. Um, but because we have a four day work week, um, I'm able to fly somewhere and speak on a Friday, Saturday and get back. And then when our meets start, then, you know, my speaking is over.

Ryan Patrick: 1:12:43

All right. Well, I'll make sure we put some of those links in the show notes and I'll stop recording now so we can just hang on. Thanks again for your time. Thank you, Ryan.