BTG 118 - How NOT to spoil your athletes

[Music] hello and welcome to the breaking the guard podcast on today's episode I'm going to talk about how to ruin a prize pupil in your gym okay so we're going to go from catering to the student which I usually work on with athletes and talking about from the coaching perspective although if you are a student this will be instructive as well because you will learn why a good gym will do things in a certain way now I can talk from personal experience I've run an academy now since 2000 more or less 2001 when we officially opened Freestyle Fighting Academy in uh in Miami Florida so 24 years or so give or take a year right uh and during that time I've had a lot of Fighters come in to the gym uh nowadays some of the big name Fighters like George masf doall was his first MMA gym was my brother and I uh teaching him and we brought up his career to you know I think it was like 11 And1 or something like that uh so we've had a hand in dealing with some big stars and big personalities um at the gym and we've learned from trial and era how you can ruin these relationships and they're surprisingly very simple to do if you are a very generous person right and I'll explain to you what I mean because most of us that get into the martial arts were looking to give back right I at least that's been my experience I got into the martial arts and I got so much out of it that when it wasn't like oh I want to make a whole lot of money let me do this business that I am somewhat good at that's not the mindset that most people start the martial arts with it's more like I really love this how can I make a living out of doing this and help other people at the same time that's more or less the mindset and my brother and I were 181 19 when we opened up our gym so another aspect of this was also I need to keep training and our instructor had moved so we need to open up a gym as well and we need to train people so that they can be our training partners that was another aspect to it also okay and I'm sure there's other motivations but I would say those are probably cover most of your Martial Art Academy owners it's a hobby that got out of control right now when you come come into it from that mindset you are really excited to be able to work with people who are equally excited to become an athlete so when you encounter somebody who's willing to put in the time uh they have some natural gifts and they are dedicated and willing to do whatever you tell them to do as a coach you feel like okay this is now my opportunity to really help someone shine and I'm trying to guide them through that path the best way I can as happens to be the case more often than not most young men and I'm going to say that because with very rare acception just about all the people that come into fighting are young men right uh and I'll remark on that because I think for the most part people who are looking to get into martialart arts training and in sports as well but I think martial arts definitely seems to have a even more slanted is that you are looking for a male role model and you have something to prove right because if you have a very strong Father Figure in your house you're usually just going to get good leadership from them and you won't really need to seek a mentor right because you have somebody that's already done that for you in your own household who is the ultimate authority figure he's your dad I would say the the vast majority of the fighters that we've trained do not have father figures they're either you know they passed away they've never met them they're in prison right or they're just not a you know available uh the only ones I I think I can only think of two myself because my father was around and he was a good man and um one other fighter that I've worked with at our gym the rest of them did not have a father figure right that's an important element in how this relationship is going to play because whether you like it or not when you're the coach you are the dad especially to somebody who doesn't really have a dad in their life cuz you're are a male well again I'm talking as a male right so if you're a female coach maybe that Dynamic is a little different I couldn't comment but as a man you're coaching another man they're looking up to you like that right and it will happen whether or not they're conscious of it this is important because we might not see it like that as a coach we might just think I'm a coach you're the athlete but that's not how it's actually experienced and I think even from the coach's end you do take somewhat of a father figure role yourself in trying to help somebody like they're they're your own children right they're like they're your son they're your daughter so there is a little bit of that but even without that aspect definitely from the other end it's going to happen it's just natural you're being coached by somebody and you're looking up to them they're telling you how to do things they're looking out for you every which way that's what a father does right uh so with that in mind what can happen which also happens in normal parental relationships is that you will start to spoil that athlete and there are a lot of ways you can do that right for example because of the nature of fighting it's a poverty sport the fighter might have some money coming in they start training with you and as they get more serious in training you realize they're short un funds so you see the young talent and the potential and you're like you know what I'll take you under my wing we'll scholarship you right you won't have to pay anything um and we'll just focus on your training and you'll make it up to us on the back end right that happens a lot right and it's kind of the the opposite scenario where normally the people you spend the most time with are the ones that you charge the most but in the fight world and the martial arts world is usually the opposite the people who you spend the most time on you're usually making the least money out of right so it's kind of a weird thing but that happens with children right you spend all your time for your children and you're not making money off your kids right so that's where this type of dynamic can get kind of screwy because if your kids are getting all of your time they're getting a lot of uh coaching from you and you're not giving them any errands you're not giving them any chores no responsibilities they just do what you tell them to do as far as athletic responsibilities you're spoiling them they're getting something for nothing the human mind does not comprehend that concept right no one gets something for nothing what happens when you first allow an athlete to come and train for free they will Express gratitude almost immediately they'll be oh thank you so much I'll never forget this uh you know I I'll make it up to you blah blah blah blah blah blah whatever and that feels fine right over time they're going to start rationalizing what happened there right initially there's gratitude that will eventually turn into deserving right they're going to start thinking well you know I deserved this opportunity right because I was so talented and I was dedicated and uh you know at the same time coach is getting something out of this also because he's getting the exposure from you know my fighting and it's elevating the gym and bringing people in because they see my fights you know so it's a good deal for the both of us that's believe it or not I've had people I've had amateur Fighters you know say crazy stuff like that who nobody knows who they were right it's no discredit to them it's just the reality of the situation right um so you would have people saying stuff like that and that's them rationalizing oh I don't owe this guy anything he didn't give me something for free it was an exchange of services you know he gave me all this coaching advice in exchange for the exposure that I'm giving him right or for the opportunity to work with somebody as talented as me that's some of the mental gymnastics that will go on because you gave them something for nothing and they don't believe it that's true so there's got to be something for it and they will fetch far out ideas to fill that up when that happens the relationship is starting to turn not in a good way at a certain point that's going to go from gratitude to deserving ultimately to wanting more they're going to feel especially if their career is going very well at a certain point they're going to be like man I am giving up so much exposure and I'm making you know all these big fights happen I should be getting more out of this relationship than I am and when a fighter thinks that way he's on the way out the door because now the next thing that's going to happen is they're going to start shopping around and of course if their career is going well they're going to have everybody Whispering their ear oh you know they you should go to this place you should go to that place or you should be getting this you know so like things are going to go really bad there and if you've gotten to that point it's pretty much over right it I would I would make it the equivalent of a husband that goes to a private eye a private detective to Snoop on his wife to see if she's cheating on them it's like it's already over if you had to do that it's done you know the trust is already dead uh so and you'll be surprised by some of the times that this has happened over the years at least just from my own experience I've had people who thought that we weren't doing enough for them because we didn't buy them a car to drive around or we didn't kick out people they didn't like in the gym so that they could just be there by themselves with us you know all sorts of very far out requests that you would get from a diva right and this happens when you don't raise the Fighter's right right and I say that because since it is in my opinion a parental relationship you have to treat it like you're going to raise your own kids how are you going to prepare this and for the most part you're dealing with men right so you got to raise them right how do you do that one you don't give anything for free they have to pay if they can't pay with money they're going to pay with time right and we had I think one maybe two generations of Fighters that we did wrong but consequent Generations uh we did right and all those guys are are still with us and they're all thriving so I'm very proud of that and of course I'm grateful for my brother because he was a a big part of it um of that realization as well so everybody has to work for something you it doesn't matter who they are it doesn't matter how special they are they have to pay time or money something as an exchange of services has to be done so if somebody's dead broke then okay you're going to work as a janitor for x amount of hours per week or you going to teach x amount of classes you know or whatever the thing is as a bonus again all credit to my brother in this he positioned our guys who are like scholarship guys to doing jobs that could actually translate to a career after the fight game so some people got into marketing web design sales right uh Firearms instruction all sorts of things that even if the fight career didn't take off the way you wanted it to you learned a valuable skill that would translate into other areas of life so if you even grew out of the fight game you would be ready for another career and uh quite a few of those guys did do that and did very well for themselves so once again uh of course not everybody has the resources on the knowledge to do that but at the very least you want them to work for something right don't give training for free and just remind yourself right that the fighters are not the ones that are paying the bills right you have maybe if you had a big gym you have 20 Fighters right that's a that's a lot of fighters in your gym that's not going to cover your bills right if you're doing well in your gym you have hundreds of students those people are paying the bills so it's only fair if the the fighters are going to take up more of your time which they are they should be compensating you more right so and relying on fighters to fight you know to pay you you know a percentage of the POR of their their purse it could be a recipe for disaster if you don't have the right guidelines in place like some people they say oh I want to join the fight team but then they fight once a year and if you're fighting as a a low-level pro circuit you're making like a hundred bucks a fight you know the coach is not getting anything right um so that's why I'm not big on collecting purses i' rather have you know either stable uh income coming from them or a stable amount of work being done by them that offsets that just make sure you're being compensated right and it's not just for you it's for them because if they don't have to exchange time or money they're not going to Value it right they're going to think it's not that valuable and I can give an example uh I remember we had a fighter come in once and he was paying for a while a discount rate at a certain point he like went out of town came back and then just kind of snuck in and stopped paying and but he was still training when we approached him about it he's said oh yeah I kind of you know I can't afford to pay we're like okay well you can work x amount of hours uh a week and then he says oh I can't do that we're like well guess you have a decision to make whether uh you you want to continue you know training with us or not and he goes okay I'll have to think about it and he left and he was actually talking to my brother my brother relayed me the story I was out front and at the time I had got one of those like viam Five Finger shoes which was new right he was like oh Cutting Edge Tech and he saw it and he was very impressed with like oh these are very cool shoes like you know where' you get them from I'm like oh I got them from this store he's said oh how much they cost I I think that price was like 90 bucks because that was the discount rate actually that my brother just pitched him he's like oh okay cool so he leaves comes in a couple days later tells me whether he can't afford to do the the training he doesn't want to do the janitor work so he's going to quit and he walked in and out of the building with the shoes that I had what does that tell you well he didn't value the training he valued getting shoes over being able to train when you spoil people or when you don't manage the relationship properly and undervalue yourself you're going to put yourself in a position where you're not going to be able to effectively communicate and have a a good relationship with that fighter so don't underprice yourself full price if anything more than full price because they're going to take up a lot of your time Fighters have lots of unique dramas that they deal with and they have the weight cuts and you know all sorts of things depending on how involved you are on their career if you're not just training them but you're also managing uh their you know getting them sponsors and booking their fights and you're essentially functioning as your agent also that's a whole other can of worms right um so I stress that a lot because this is where most people fail right most coaches are going to make that mistake and I'm sure if you're a coach and you're watching this you've already done it right you're like you're looking watching the video not in your head right because every coach I've ever talked to has the same sof story right and uh it's happened to everybody it's kind of like uh your first uh girlfriend or boyfriend you know you get your heartbroken it's like everybody's gone through that story before just about every coach has gone through it now not every coach learns from it so hopefully me sharing some of these little anecdotes here will be useful for you so that you don't repeat the mistakes and if you're just if you're planning on being a coach someday hopefully you never do it right so always make them pay for the training again in either cash money or in exchange of services as long as they had to earn it they're going to appreciate it right it's just like your kids if you just let your kids have run of the house and they never have to do any chores you're going to spoil them rotten and they're not going to appreciate anything because they never had to work for anything they never had to do you know their chores they had to make the bed or do do the dishes like you need the exchange of services to create value and appreciation that's one okay now once you've set that up that is a probably the biggest hurdle right because once you could get that going the next big thing and this is now going to be more on the coach than it is the athlete is that you have to be dedicated to the craft right and that means that you're studying constantly you're watching fights you're reviewing tape you're going to seminars learning new techniques as the coach especially if you're the head coach you are supposed to be the Fountain of information that the athlete can come to and quench their thirst if you're not able to constantly Supply that athlete with new information they might feel at a certain point that they have learned everything they can from you if that happens you will have also lost their confidence and even if you know they've been paying for the training and you got that part of the relationship where they're not spoiled in that fashion you will have failed them by not being studious right so this means that as the the coach you you're not taking days off right you're always studying you can't just say oh you know what I'm a black Bell I've been training 15 years I'm good now I can just sit on my Laurels and um disperse the knowledge that I know if you're a good coach you're going to disperse what you know quicker and they're going to learn faster than you did if you're doing your job well which also means they're going to get better than you fairly quickly and that's a good thing but it's not a good thing if you're not studying because you have to constantly be getting better as well now you're obviously not going to if you're an older guy you're not going to be able to compete with the fighter at a certain point in spire and you might be losing to them just because of you know the tendency of time but you should still be able to coach somebody in good strategies and by studying tape you know and especially when you're reviewing how the their training is supposed to work because most athletes not all of them but most of them prefer just being told what to do right the especially if you have rigorous training standards the training is going to be very difficult in itself and if the athlete has a job that they have to support themselves with also they're going to be tired from that so they don't want to have to exert a lot of mental energy in like doing research like how to diet properly how to do their weight cut you know uh what parts of the game they should be working on for this next fight that is the coach's job it requires a lot of attention it requires a lot of notes and studying as I mentioned so if you're going to slack off there just be careful because you might be able to build people to a certain point of their career but because you're not being studious you'll start losing them and usually you're going to start losing them when they're getting to the best part of their career right um so always be a student of the game now some people they will perceive threats to their Authority position of authority as a coach if that athlete starts looking towards other coaches for guidance right it's important that I believe your fighter should be training in your gym 99% of the time I don't think it's a great idea to have athletes going from gym to gym and you know I I think that's not that helpful and it also does muddy the waters a of who's the the authority figure here who's who's this guy's coach especially if he's going without you and he's just going to another gym without you watching or guiding how are you going to guide your athlete if you're not there to watch him right so typically we would always want people coming to our gym now you can always fly people into your gym you could always bring people invite people into your gym right so and it's happened many times throughout our years in business where I needed new looks I needed Southpaw Partners or someone in particular size my brother would you know put out a word would bring in you know two or three guys so I can work with them I didn't have to go anywhere they came to us right and you know you could do the same thing with coaches which we've also done where we wanted to get a particular uh technique or position and learn better from we will fly in people so that they can do sem minars or they could even run you know a couple weeks of training and go over their systems right so even if you lack all the expertise Yourself by being the organizer head coach you still remain the authority figure right because you're the guy who's recognizes the areas so kind of like if you look at someone like the president of a country right he doesn't know everything but he's the final decision maker and he's the one responsible for bringing talent in that knows how to deal with a particular issue and then getting an informed opinion and being able to make a smart decision right just like a CEO or any executive leader would right the leader is not the most intelligent person not not the most knowledgeable person that exist is but he knows how to put people in the right places so as the coach if you find that you're going to be defici ient in certain areas and we all are right it's wise for you rather than your athlete recognizing that you don't have that Talent OR that knowledge and you're not willing to get it to have them look for it on their own that I will recognize it beforehand and go oh okay maybe my weight cutting skills are not as high level as I need them to be and this particular athlete needs a lot of help I need to bring someone in here so that he can benefit from it and at the same time I'm going to be taking notes learning from it so then from the future I will be armed and ready to go there right so there's nothing stopping a coach who has some lack of knowledge in certain areas from bringing in athletes or bringing in other coaches so that they can supplement their their knowledge right and of course this applies to you know instructional courses or books seminar it's like you should be soaking up all these things one of the coaches that I've seen that does a phenomenal job of this is John Daner he studies the game relentlessly and most and he's a guy who has lots of knowledge right and uh especially well strictly in those martial arts areas he's watching tape all the time he's studying he's you know workshopping things with uh his top students so he's always staying sharp but even him he recognizes areas where he's not an expert at like he uh if I remember correctly he told me he doesn't do anything about nutrition because he's seen all sorts of strategies work he's not going to try to figure it out same thing with uh conditioning you seen people like Gordon who do like bodybuilder style lifting where and then there's other people like Nicki Rod that are doing like more explosives you know hypertrophy Style things or you know power and that works there so it's like I'm not going to try to be an expert there either which is smart right you can only specialize in certain amounts of uh you know knowledge sets so pick the ones you're going to be really good at and the other ones you can delegate it to other coaches right and just making sure that you're keeping command of everything going on so this is uh a second important area right which you have to be a student and be able to continuously provide information to your athletes right which means one that you're studying the game right so you're not being you know passive and just resting on your laurels and just going to give people what you learned and not learning anything else new you're going to seminars you're studying videos you're watching fights you know you're reviewing tape all these things are very important and on top of that when you know there's deficits in in your game you'll bring in Talent whether it's athletes or whether it's coaches you'll bring them inh housee so that people uh your your athletes can benefit from that and at the same time you'll be able to bolster your skill set so you will now have that new skill set under your your belt right so that's important if you lose that Authority position with your athletes they're not going to respect you right they and it kind of it's going to work in the very similar fashion as the spoiled child in the first part of this which is if they might have initially saw your skill say wow this guy knows a lot and then as they start learning more and more when they start feeling that they've tapped you out of knowledge they're like oh man you know coach was good you know but it's I've kind of Hit the limit right it's like I finished the book on coach you don't want anybody finishing your book right your book should be endless and not just for their sake for your sake right like why are you stopping your personal development right we should always be growing so uh you have to be humble there you don't know everything there is to know and you never will but you're not going to stop learning because of that right in fact that's going to be your illness pursuit of perfection is to continuously learn so just like you would want your athlete to continuously learn and get better you should expect the same for yourself and lead by example all right so that's area number two which is going to be continuously improve upon your skill set right so that you are constantly growing third thing is also a big issue which is setting the expectations of what being part of your fight program looks like if you just invite people to become Fighters anybody who wants to say oh I want to fight for you like okay sure come on in you're going to have a lot of liil l and a lot of wannabes that just want to say that they trained with a fight team and not really do any of the work or you'll have people that will sit around and just jerk you around saying that they want to fight but there's always an excuse like oh you know I got something coming up oh I got work oh you know that whatever the case is so you end up training somebody as a fighter for like 6 months and they never fight and at a certain point you have to realize this guy's not is a joker and there's nothing wrong with that but he's not cut out for this there has to be written guidelines and expectations of what it means to be a professional or even an amateur but in your fight training program right for us there is a write of passage was you have to make it through um a trial right where we put people through a rigorous try out a lot of conditioning a lot of sparring it's pretty rough and it's designed to weed out the people who would be the liil lose right who who just want to see what it's like and maybe just fantasize about being a fighter but not actually do it if somebody's able to go through this rigorous training and uh survive and perform up to what you believe is a standard that you would want then you can invite them from that point to be in the program granted that they fulfill certain obligations right now one besides what we talked about before as far as compensation whether it's Financial or Services that's one part of it the second part of it would be uh obviously if you're negotiating purse as well you know you might have to you want to be up front have that there uh for training compensation or whatnot the other part of it is how dedicated they're going to be the the training right you might say if you're going to be in the fight team you have to be training at least five times a a week right and you might have certain you might have a class or uh a training session that's just dedicated to the pro Fighters so then you might say they they're required to attend these types of sessions or they might just go into regular classes and they have to attend a certain amount of classes as well uh for skill building right so there should be a training expectation because the last thing you want is someone who says he wants to be a fighter but only trains once a week it's like what type of fighter you going to be you're going to be a clown no no good right and you as a coach you don't want to train clowns right because they're going to reflect poorly on you so I only want to be working with people who are deadly serious because I'm deadly serious about what I'm doing so if you're not going to be as dedicated as I am kick rocks all right so again having a training expectation is very important then there also has to be a fight commitment you might tell somebody if you're in the fight team that means that you need to have a fight booked within X period of time if you're not ready to do that you can't be in the fight team right because that means you still have work to do which there's nothing wrong with that but you'll have to try again later once you're ready to commit that's also going to take care of the the lul lose quite a bit right anybody who just wants to tease or just train with the fighters but not actually be the fighter you'll get them out of the way right there right because there's going to be a commitment to fight now uh obviously this going to be more lenient once you have people who are proven commodity right but I think if you're going to have people who are trying out and you don't know what they're about for real you need to see what they're made of right and nothing is going to get that out of the way faster than getting them to book a fight if you have a guy who wants to be in the fight team and train for two years before he books his first fight it's like no you should just be in the regular program then cuz you're not ready to fight right uh the other thing I think it's also important is a commitment to skill building a lot of times I see Fighters they are really committed to the fight camps but fight camps are not generally about skill building they're about working on a game plan where we have a particular opponent you know like I said if you're a good coach you're watching that their tape you're reviewing what your athletes like and then you're going to see where you can win the fight right like okay this guy's may be really weak on the ground but he's pretty sharp in his feet we got to work on our clinch game putting him on the fence getting him on the ground so that my athlete will then have the upper hand and be able to dominate there and we might be weary of particular strikes or techniques that they might have at their disposal so like we're working on lots of particular skills specific to that fight Camp right usually though you're not building your overall skill set and I you could see it clearly just in the UFC how many black belts are fighting in the UFC not a lot you have lots of people that are like purple BS and blue BS I don't I'm not even sure Jon Jones is the black belt yet right so it's like that doesn't mean their skills are not up to power but it it's just something to think about right and for us like we don't allow people to join the fight team unless they're a blue belt by us right and our system of fighting Freestyle Fighting considers all elements of mixed martial arts so we we break it down to three core Parts striking wrestling grappling right you have to know skills from each set in order to advance so for my view it's much harder to get belts from us than anywhere else because you have to know everything right in the fight game it's not just grappling nevertheless I feel there's should be an expectation of a minimum skill set that you have to have before you'll be accepted into the team and also uh a path to continuing to build your skill set as you are a fighter obviously when you have fight camps your skill progression is probably going to be a little bit more limited but off fight camps you should be building skill more right and you shouldn't be like what you don't want to see and this is also a good test of a fighter is is if after they fight they just go and party around for like a couple months and kind of you know just goof off that's not a good sign because that's a guy that's a joker right uh you want somebody that the moment there are well they are already training again that's somebody who's serious about the career and that is willing to build up so these are also things that you have to look out for and once again this is just goes back to raising a kid right if you're going to put time into them you got to create responsibilities and you also have to be fair and give proper expectations if I expected all these things in my head but I never communicated to the athlete it's unfair they didn't know I had all these uh things and priorities that had that were important they just thought that they could show up whenever they want do whatever they want and you know get away with with it but if I would have told them up front right from the GetGo everything that I want to see from my athlete they will then know whether they're they're cut out for this or not they might say man this is serious I I I'm not about this life or they might see all this stuff and they go hell yeah this is what I'm about and thank you for laying this out for me because now I know what I need to do and once again I told you they don't want to think as much most of the time they want to execute and they want to be able to rely on you being being the brain right so that they could be the Braun and that's your main job as a coach ideally is that you can play The Fighter like a video game and you've armed them with all the tools to be able to execute effectively right so you're the Strategic Mastermind you're the the Fountain of Knowledge you're supposed to be able to disperse all that to that athlete but if you're not setting the expectations for what it is to be part of your fight team you're going to set yourself up for a fall right and you're going to set them up for a fall which is a double failure right so remember ultimately we want to try to help these people achieve their goals and Achieve as much success as possible right now not every fighter is going to be a world champion but there's very measures of success and victory and even the guys who don't become a world champion can still become something greater than they were before which is a still a w in my book so we'll end it there those three are pretty deep right and uh I think that's a very good starting point if you had those three down packed chances are your amount of uh situations you're going to have with your Fighters is going to diminish greatly right so if we recap one always make them pay for training whether it's time or money or Services two be the founded on knowledge study constantly recruit uh coaches and athletes to help up your game and uh always keep that Authority level figure with your athlete so that not only are you able to help them but you're also deserving of that relationship of being the mentor because you're leading by example and then three set proper expectations and guidelines of what it means to be in your fight team right whe the minimum requirements of being in there doing a write a passage to be able to earn the uh the amount of time that they should be training every week setting a fight commitment for them you know uh these are all things that are going to be very important to fostering a good relationship with your athletes right and when the more things that are communicated up front right from the get-go the better the relationship is going to work out all right so that's all I have for you for today again if you enjoyed this let me know because of course I can drop a lot of coaching knowledge uh as far as being a better Coach right not just as far as coaching athletes the athlete from the athletes perspective but this is from the coach's perspective anyhow um I wish you all uh Happy New Year Merry Christmas in case this comes out a little later right and uh I'll see you next time