Today’s episode features coach Paul Cater, speaking on his holistic approach to athlete training sessions. Paul has pioneered a way of training that makes the session a heightened experience on multiple levels, versus a scripted “to-do” list.
Paul is the owner of the Alpha Project, a gym in Salinas, California. He has worked with a wide variety of athletes, from those at the highest professional level in pro Rugby (London Wasps) and pro Baseball (Baltimore Orioles), to local youth sport athletes, as well as those in the general population in a wide variety of age ranges. Paul has lived and trained athletes internationally and has a wide swath of cultural experience. He has been a “partial episode” guest of the podcast on episode #197, where he discussed the art of story-telling in the training session, as well as a return to the importance of sprinting as a cornerstone movement in his years of coaching. Paul has also written a number of impactful articles on Just Fly Sports over the years on the level of taking the “robotic” elements out of sport preparation and bringing in a holistic, thoughtful, aware, and “human” form of coaching.
Of all the individuals who have had an impact on my coaching and training, I don’t think I can say anyone has had more of an impact on how I run my training sessions than Paul Cater. Paul has taught me the art of bringing life and energy into a training session, and as well as using a combination of training methods and environment to be completely in the moment of the training itself. Through my own observation of, and training with Paul, I have gained insight that can make a training session really come to life in the same manner that sport, or a powerful life experience, does.
On the show today, Paul will talk about his philosophy on the flow of a training session, and how his unique model presents athletes the opportunity to grow on multiple levels (awareness, vulnerability, rhythm, variable work modes, etc.). He’ll get into the “nuts and bolts” of awareness practices, music selection, rhythmic development, and much more. This is a unique and essential episode, and one that has the potential to really transform one’s coaching practice in a positive way.
Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.
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Timestamps and Main Points
5:35 How life-threatening situations can create unique mind-body physical stimuli 11:05 Looking at the rhythm and flow of a training session, and how all pieces must work together to create a more optimal session 24:20 How Paul invokes awareness with his athletes at the beginning of a session, and how he helps them turn on a switch to enter the training state 32:05 Vulnerability in a training session and how it contributes to the total development of an athlete 38:40 Rhythm development, and the creative usage of music and dance elements in a training session 58:55 Other key elements Paul works to incorporate in his training session 1:02:05 How the workout changes and filters into the primary strength training element of the training day“These kids, it’s like they are adrenaline junkies, they have to have this massive hype, or musical element (to train)… creating an experience of a deep introspective state, all the way to the collective experience of competition, there is a whole spectrum there”
“You have to create a natural awareness of rhythm, and melody, tuning, so to speak, at the beginning of a session”
“Are the kids going through quiet time, before the hype time. It’s hard to sell rest time”
“That’s what’s going to limit injuries going forward is knowing athletes beyond a data point or a typical analytic. It’s a courageous path, I think, to really have a comprehensive program at any level”
“I try to impart on everyone who walks through the door that they are not just a number, I want to give them identity”
“If I could give objective feedback to individual awareness, I’d do it”
“I’m adamant that the music selection has to be on point from the start of the session. There has to be a safe feel, I don’t think there should be fight or flight when you walk in the building. These kids are already on high alert”
“That’s the beauty, teaching athletes to react, and to be calm and collected before and after that”
“The greatest expression of breathing, and elasticity in the hip and torso and shoulder is just sprinting, for a sustained period of time”
“Teaching the athletes to match and mirror and work within rhythm, and dance, is maybe the training outcome in general, and then we just put increasing stress around those rhythms of that day, in the weight training”
“I really think a coach needs to meditate and link in to the point of the whole session”
“(Regarding music in training) I really try to eliminate words in the first 15 minutes… I find melody that works on a 4 count that people can match and mirror in an easy way so they can link into a simple dance step”
“Any barrier that you have to get up and over (is good for working rhythmically and with music), a mini-tramp, a line on the floor, are all great tools”
“Grip strength is a massive hole in a lot of these kid’s development”
“To put it simply, there is 5 minutes in every session with the strength adaptation you are looking for. Everything from the grip, to the hamstring to the postural alignment, to the rhythmic alignments, the tempo and tuning, leads into that 5 minutes”
“The one time athletes can be mostly in total control of their bodies, because you don’t have a coach whose gonna bench you, or you have a pitch that you swing and miss at, there is so much failure in sport. If we can have the training environment be a highly empowering redemptive experience, athletes are going to be happier and healthier and move rhythmically better, and in harmony elastically”
“I think there is a hell of a lot of anxiety coming into the weight room”
“That’s my mission statement, to teach young people to be advocates for themselves”
Example of Paul’s rhythm-based warmup for athletes.
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About Paul Cater
Founder of The Alpha Project
Salinas High School, Varsity Baseball, Football 1995
UC Davis: Studied pre-law while playing UC Davis Varsity Football 2000
NSCA, Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist 2001
Poliquin Certified Level, 2
Internships include UCLA, San Jose State, San Francisco 49ers
Graduate Degree Exercise Science, Human Performance, Brunel University, London 2010
MSC Strength & Conditioning from Middlesex University, London 2011
Over 18 years of experience as an International strength and conditioning coach working with London Wasps Premier Rugby, Baltimore Orioles, USA Rugby and consulting numerous other High School, College & Professional Athletes
Late Stage Rehab Specialist
Phd Candidate focusing on Eccentric Overload through Rotary Inertial Flywheel Training, Recovery and Performance
Transcripts
Joel Smith: Welcome to another episode of the podcast. It’s awesome to have you guys here, and I know I’m excited for every show, but this show is definitely a special one. This is the first full-length episode that I’ve done with my friend Paul Cater. Paul was actually on a small round table segment for episode 197, where we talked for about 25 minutes. And ever since then, I’ve just been thinking about that show… that full-length show we’ll do when he comes back on. And so the time was finally right. Paul and I were able to sit down and just have a really great conversation on the fine details of his total training session. Last show, we talked for 25 minutes just about creating a story around training and as well as his return to sprinting as, as a prime or pinnacle portion of his coaching process.
Joel Smith: But this one, we get into some other elements. And so just to give a quick background, those of you who are not familiar with Paul. Paul is the owner of The Alpha Project in Salinas, California, which is Monterey Bay area. For those of you who may not be familiar with that locale, Paul has spent time training athletes on just about every level from the pro ranks the London Wasps in rugby, Baltimore Orioles to training athletes of all ages and abilities. From local youth to collegiate athletes, to Olympians, to even grandmothers and grandfathers at his gym. And so a man of diverse experience cultural experience, Paul is a guy who he’ll be in the gym training and then painting a painting in between sets. He’s an outside the box thinker, and we can all learn so much from him. I absolutely have. Paul has changed my just vision as a coach to what I believe a good training session is.
Joel Smith: And it’s like, if you could see every year of my coaching process as a full-time strength coach, you could see Paul’s impact on that every year. The more I learned from him and my athletes I’ve certainly was able to serve them better for that. So we’re going to get into it today. The nuts and bolts to Paul’s system. Then he’s going to talk about rhythm and flow in a training session. He’s going to talk about awareness, vulnerability, and all these elements that he’s trying to cultivate and create an environment around that really lead up to that, that crescendo, that, that weightlifting experience. And I don’t want to, I don’t want to spoil the story at all. I don’t want to try to steal any thunder. So we’re just going to get right into that. This was an awesome show with my friend, Paul, and I know you guys are really gonna enjoy this one, so let’s get onto the show. All right. So I know I’m going to re-ask you this, Paul, cause you just mentioned a few minutes ago, but I think it’s definitely worthy of telling again, but, we were just talking about running in adverse elements or being know weather and stuff like that and how that impacts the workout. But I know you had, you had a little story about running down from a mountain and being in a little bit of fight and flight or fight or flight what was, what was going on there?
Paul Cater: We were on a hike in Colorado at one of the 14,000 foot peaks. There was an old mine up there, an old I don’t know, silver mine or something. And there’s a, there’s a few iron tools and remanence of the, the mine. And I thought, I have a history degree first and foremost, my undergraduate days. And I appreciate history and I want to take some of this home so well, the thunderstorm came in around, about four o’clock and lightning was striking everywhere. And I think one of my greatest training memories ever was running down probably three miles, just downhill down shale and rocks and nooks and crannies down this trail in a purely exposed mountain top and I think, man that was one of the moments in my life. I was super dialed in. I was fully engaged with my body, mind and spirit. And praying I wouldn’t get struck by lightning, but yeah, so I kinda, I enjoy those natural elements when I train, for the fight or flight mechanisms, whether it’s pretending you’re getting chased by a saber tooth tiger or getting struck or actually going to get struck by lightning. I think there’s something to that creating that experience you’re training that we can learn from.
Joel Smith: Yeah, that’s what I was. That’s what I was going to ask you. That’s where I was going to go with that because I think that the best training sessions I’ve been in, and not just training, but also just experiences in team sport, it’s like you lose the self a little bit and it’s just about the moment. And I mean, what better way to be in the moment than to being kind of a situation where your life is in a little bit of danger, you’re afraid of being struck by lightning. You got to run. I’ve been in not too many of those, but I’ve been in one in particular in my memory. And I remember thinking, man, if, if all training was had some of this or not all, but even once in a while, your outputs are just like so much higher and it brings a really different element in. So I do think you said, yeah. Do you find yourself thinking about that sometimes where you have a training session or does that, or just that general idea, does it cross your mind and for the environment you’re trying to create? I mean, you can’t lie.
Paul Cater: Sure. I think every day I think I have to ask myself, did you create an experience in both maximal awareness and within the scope of what the goal, adaptive goal is that day, did I create that and supports that? And without, without just having it be a maximal adrenaline situation. Cause I think, like I said, I was saying earlier that these kids especially get these it’s like they’re adrenaline junkies. They, they have to have this massive hyper music musical element, which I didn’t use is very important, but everything’s balls to the wall all the time. So I think creating an experience of both the deep introspective meditative state, all the way to the collective experience of competition. And there’s a whole spectrum there, but yeah, you have to decide where in the day you’re going to work on that spectrum or within the session or yeah. So that’s a huge consideration every day. So how do you creating experience and where do you want to go to do that?
Joel Smith: You can’t like actually put people’s lives in danger, right? But like, well, a funny thing, I remember watching this it was a swim coach in Australia, I want to say. And he had his summers take off to one side of the pool, like for like a 25 or 50, however long the pool was, I’m not, I don’t remember, but after they were like 10 meters in he threw like a little, it was like a, it wasn’t a full grown up, but like a little alligator and they’re just swimming and just like, Oh, that was pretty funny. I should put that in the show notes, but I think about, so that would be the literal, like let’s put you in some sort of state by adding a life or death, like element, but I mean, how do you, how, how do you create that?
Joel Smith: And I think a lot of strength coaches talk about, or coaches in general, like have a sense of urgency, have a sense of urgency. I think that’s kinda what they’re chipping at. Right. But I don’t think it’s something that you can just tell someone to do per se. I mean, you can, try to conjure up pasted on and that’s good. I mean, I, I don’t disagree with coaches to sing that at all. I think that’s a good thing, but how do you…What are some ways that you create that element or what are some tools in the toolbox to start creating that, that sense of urgency flow, state, something greater than yourself in a training session?
Paul Cater: Well, that’s where that’s work backwards. Let’s work backwards. You can’t always have a football team situation where you have 50 guys around you when you’re trying to bench press or, PR your clean. So, and many athletes I work with aren’t in that state, the individual sport athletes, or know female, young females, things like that, but it’s not like a good fit for that whole thing. So you have to create I think, a natural awareness of rhythm and melody and, tuning, so to speak at the beginning of the session and which and a heightened awareness of self. Right, right from the get go. And that, that will allow a rhythm like you you’ve kind of mentioned earlier, like almost like, dare I say a church service, where there’s a flow or like a dinner, or there’s a beginning, middle and end.
Paul Cater: And so the athletes can, I think tune into a rhythm of a session and appropriate timings of even when the maximum loading is going to happen or things like that. So I think that’s setting the table for a lead in like an apex in like a cooldown, all that sort of, there’s gotta be a rhythm of the session. And, and once the athletes understand that, then you can learn, I think when to, to bring a little bit more energy and hype, or even competitive element. And some days that changes, you pull out the old card that you get fired up right away, or you add a game or you at a whatever it is to peak that. But I don’t know if that answers the question there, but I think tapping into the rhythmic cycles of the session, but also just the body itself is super important. And the first 15 minutes, anytime they walk in the door and that has a lot to do with musicals selection, I think. Has a lot to do with setting the environment and cultivating the vibe and initiating it, assuring that vibe in, and that, and that’s an art form, it takes practice.
Joel Smith: Yeah. So let’s yeah, we’ll unpack that. And I want to get it cause one of the first things that comes to my mind as you talk about that is I think when it’s time to work out, the typical attitude is all right, let’s just flip on Metallica or something angry or some, whatever rap is popular now. And just something that has kind of that same, the same general vibe to it. I always think about you either, you either put on music that represents like a dark side of yourself that you don’t want to go or something that you want to subconsciously be. I want to listen to, like my, my old tennis team wanting to listen to like gangster rappers, like, or I’m going to put on, metal…
Paul Cater: Alterego, you have an empowering feel that usually is associated with… I mean, every music has a message. And to say that, Oh, I don’t listen to the words. I mean, words are very powerful whether you hear them subconsciously or not. So I think creating a positive, a challenging environment, but there’s different. Like downbeats melodic tuning of the body that, I think as a coach, you have to be really aware of, to peak an athlete’s awareness so that they can then respond to challenges and have that fight or flight at the right times, whether you can support that fight or flight maximum adrenaline phase for an entire session, or whether it’s five minutes during the point of the lifting, that’s where the coach needs to orchestrate that somewhat like a DJ? Yeah.
Joel Smith: Yeah. Like you had mentioned that the church service analogy, like you have the, the announcements, the music, the main, the main sermon or talk, you have the benediction, this fellowship, like there’s different elements to that. And I think that, like you said, to your point, like you turn on adrenaline phase and you roll with the adrenaline phase for 60, 70, 80, like that doesn’t… You can’t sustain that. It doesn’t work to building the apex, that crescendo. And as I know, we’re going to get into is how you build that up and build that session up.
Paul Cater: I think coaches hide behind it a little bit. I think you’re try to create a culture of empowerment and awareness, but it’s less like coaches, I don’t think approach the introspection and then they’ll have to say, okay, go take a yoga class or meditate. Every session should be somewhat formulaic in that regard, I know church service is whatever denomination or your religion really have that formula of into self and then community experience. So I think that the training sessions to have that same kind of same kind of formula as well, but yeah, you can hide behind music for so long. You can hide behind team competitions for so long before just movement patterns and the development really isn’t happening. Okay. And parents, at the youth side of things, parents will pay for that for quite a while and mask the fact that kids aren’t really getting better for the longterm. It’s kind of that glass ceiling situation, but they’re having fun. If you can, in the corner, get your money’s worth, you’re getting a free tee shirt and they’re creating the memory aspect, which is important. I’m not going to say it’s not. Kids will remember the competitive element. I think that’s half the battle, whether that creates a robust athlete later in their career, I’m not convinced. I think it doesn’t.
Joel Smith: I do think that athletes on some level… I mean, those bad memories, like I’ve talked with Dr. Tommy John about this, like sometimes the bad coaches are just as important as the good coaches in some respects because you learn the extremes, you learn the polarity for one thing. But I do think that those teammates you’ve had… You can be like, Oh, I’ll remember that workout. It was so and so, and it was terrible and blah, and maybe it was a bad workout. Maybe it was overkill, maybe the adaptation wasn’t great. But, and again, I’m not, I don’t model my own practice after regularly throwing down those workouts at athletes and saying I did a good job because I obviously people who listen to this podcast know it’s not my vibe, but not that I think it’s good to work hard from time to time. But I had a funny thought too, almost like private sector training. Like throwing up in the corner. That’s worth 30 bucks, like, that got our money’s worth out of that, or whatever…
Paul Cater: What are the key, what are the KPIs? So to speak for a parental value.
Joel Smith: Yeah. What do we value? What do we put a dollar value on now for training?
Paul Cater: Yeah. Does the kid to come home with an experience? Okay. That is important. It’s only half of it, and again, are kids really learning their own bodies? Are they going through the quiet time before the hype time? And yes. I don’t know. I don’t know, it’s hard to sell rest time and it’s hard to sell. It’s hard to sell variable… Like if parents don’t see the immediate theme and how it’s relative to little Johnny getting faster, then that’s hard to sell. It’s hard to sell a whole system where you might have these variable approaches to warm up, to tuning the body, to all these things. So it’s a little bit of an art to sell to the parents. I speak to those who are training youth, but also those who are training elite athletes. I think there’s the same thing is applicable. You’re always serving somebody, whether there’s someone paying, whether it’s a GM or an owner of a team or a parent. So like, you’re always… The thought that you going to build your own weight room and be totally autonomous is false. I think that’s something that I was duped into thinking like, Oh, I’ll get out of professional sport, so I can do my own thing. You’re always partnered with somebody. If no one else, the government.
Joel Smith: I think that even in a university sector, like you’re still have to sell a head sport coach on what you’re doing. If you’re going to do something other than the typical. Like to come in and just do breathing exercises for 10 minutes. Your head coach has to be on board with that stuff. And most are honestly. I think that it’s almost like, and a coach is different than a parent, like a high level coach gets it. Whereas the parent might be like, they might really have no idea. And so it’s a little bit different sell. I mean I’ve always, it’s been encouraging actually or encouraged doing the breathing and those types of things. Cause I think we, those of us who, who live this, we know it. And I’m breathing. It’s just one example,
Paul Cater: The advent of performance directors and super specialization for these within a professional organization, from the meditation coach to the mental coach, the strength coach, the speed coach, the obviously the hitting coach or whatever… All these people that are fighting for time with the athlete, right? You, have more and more performance directors orchestrating that, which is good. Cause it gives place and relevance to you to every, let’s say every sector. But what I’m seeing too is that it gets formulaic. Sometimes these performance coaches are out of touch with the experience of the athlete. And it’s just as detrimental as the adrenaline junkie, hype, rhabdo coach,
Joel Smith: That’s a good tee shirt with that,
Paul Cater: Like mitigation of, of I wouldn’t say risk, but being vulnerable enough to form the relationships because with athletes and now it’s, we’re hiding behind tech and data, but what’s never gonna go out of style is depth of understanding and relationship with an athlete and knowing what they need. So that vulnerability aspect, which you talk about the collective training or experiences really needs to be adhered to and honored, I think. So that’s what’s going to limit injuries going forward, I think. Is really knowing athletes beyond a data point or a predictive analytics or any other tools they’re using at the high end, but also the, at the low end with the youth organizations, just running until they puke or something like that. It’s a courageous path, I think, to really have a comprehensive program.
Joel Smith: Yeah. It’s a, I think the trend is simple systems trying to make complex solutions. I remember Marc Bubbs has been on this podcast, and in his book PEAK, he had an example of that, where you can’t solve a complex system with a linear, just A+B=C style solution. There’s a different form of thinking that’s involved in that. And I mean, we as human beings, and this is I think the fun of what we do… Is we are the most complex system on this planet. Well maybe that’s a little egotistical to say, I mean, I think all of nature is awesome. But I mean, there’s beauty in nature and it’s amazing to see what the human body is capable of, as well as how the different inputs have an impact on it.
Joel Smith: Not just data-based inputs or mechanical inputs, but emotional inputs and environmental inputs. And I have a lightning rod in my backpack inputs and I’ve got to run down from a mountain. And I want to get into, so I know I’ve been blessed by the ability to have both sat through watching, observing your sessions of you coaching athletes, as well as having been coached by you, and then also collaborating on workouts alongside you. And that’s changed me as a coach. And so my goal is I really want to give a kind of recreate the experience of what it’s like to train with you, if you will. And we were all this stuff gets put together. And so you talked about awareness, and I love what you said by the way of, because I do think it’s so easy to outsource awareness.
Joel Smith: Yeah, go do some yoga. Good. And that’s not bad. I’m not saying it’s bad. At least the person realizes that coach or whoever, is realizing that, yes, this is important. Yes, let’s put this in the system, but I think that, and maybe those coaches are also invoking awareness in their own program. Hopefully they are, but how do you…Basically long story short is how do you invoke awareness from the time the athlete comes in the door and what switch needs to be had that they can enter the training state?
Paul Cater: Right. Well, just first, real quick. I think what you were talking about is scalability and our yearn as humans to scale any operation provides, they gotta do to, to carry more volume. I don’t care whether you’re developing agriculture to support a city, or scaling a systems to have more athletes to pay for the overhead of your building. But we got our own yearning to scale it kind of not in check, but just, we need to be aware of the pitfalls of that. And I try to impart on whoever walks in the door that they’re not just a part of a scaled model and a number. So giving them identity and first and foremost, I want to see where athletes are with their own identity. If I had an objective scale if I could objectify and give feedback to individual awareness, I do it. You give a point score on your posture, walking in their vision, who they communicate with, where do they put their water bottle and keys, how they interact with others, what do they do from the outset? Do they say hello to other, things like that? Like if I could have a scale, like, okay, we’ve checked the self-awareness box, which is relative to the confidence in it.
Paul Cater: And are you aware of other people? Are you aware of yourself and your own procedures? Are you aware of other people? I think you gotta address that right away. And that’s, our job is I think managing the strength, conditioning environment, the whole head on a swivel. Are you relationally aware it with people too? So that’s first and foremost. I’m adamant like my interns and assistants, the music selection has to be on point from the start of the session. There has to be a safe feel. I don’t think the fight or flight needs to happen right then. When you walk into a building. You see these parents drive from place to place to place. The kids are already on high alert. There’s already like a fear that they’re going to be late, a fear that they’re going to be missing out.
Paul Cater: There’s this huge, like FOMO scenario that just drives these people around town all day. So I want to eliminate that first and foremost. Are you comfortable when you walk in the door, is the musical selection matching that? Is there gameplay? Is it relevant to the end game? I have a basketball court in my gym. Are guys playing hoops? Are they playing ping pong? What are they doing to engage with the environment? It’s half the battle right there, right then and there. And everyone’s going to be on different levels. With that, age, ability, awareness, the athletic ability and all that kind of deals, personalities, things like that. So first and foremost is the athlete self and relationally aware around them.
Paul Cater: And then it becomes more or less a hour, an hour and a half building up a communal experience to the point where there’s a moment of vulnerability for everybody that’s engaged with. It’s fun to have multiple sports, multiple genders, and multiple ages in the same room. Is there a shared experience with that vulnerable state? And then is there like a building up and an encouraging crescendo and resolution to the session? We might have five minutes of weightlifting. It could be a lot of buildup to that. So I do like to have consistency with athletes. I’m trying to get out of like a lesson rate type model where you have the freedom throughout the whole week to build that theme and establish that. So ask me any questions on the back on the back of that. Joel has to know,
Joel Smith: Unpack that that’s my specialty is unpacking. That’s good.
Paul Cater: So yeah. Anyway,
Joel Smith: All right. Let me ask a question for you. Okay. So as you were saying that too, I think, and I’ve used this example with you before, but the idea of like everyone who plays, who wants to dunk and jump higher knows that pickup basketball is the best warmup you can possibly do to dunk better. It’s on all levels, body temperature, awareness, using even the vision, visual inputs and nervous systems and reacting and multi-directional joint warmups and everything you can imagine, and be a peer groups, peer appears being around. And so you have everything, right? But then you go after you play a few games and you do maybe like three or four dunks, maybe more, but those three or four dunks count a lot more than if I was to just do, canned robot warmup by myself or in a group, and then do 20 dunk attempts that weren’t as good. You know what I’m saying?
Paul Cater: Within that there’s a creative element that I didn’t mention. Within those dunks, right? I’m not telling you how to dunk, there’s not a formula to that. You’re trying to work your way up to the rim or something like that. So, sorry, sorry to interrupt.
Joel Smith: No, it’s all good. I know. I think anyone who’s worked with athletes… And I think athletics since, and maybe this is a different topic for down the show, but just hit me today very powerfully, but like athletes are training physically is really a celebration of life in so many ways. And so I think that’s something, I think your working bodies very well. And so we so often see these athletes roll in and oftentimes they’re in their own little peer groups. Right? Or they’re by themselves. And they’re kind of like a part of the group, or they’re worried to be there, or, or they may be a really excited. But trying to, and I know you’ve done things like, say, hey, go, go meet someone you don’t know. What are some things that you do to help? And I know you had talked about that in your last answer, but you said ways to cultivate vulnerability. So maybe could you address that first on a little more specific level.
Paul Cater: For sure. Like, okay. Maybe it’s a, we played ballet and music and we force even the boys in the group to do ballet moves. Maybe it’s having Latin appreciation day in the MLB weight room. So forcing guys to not fight over musical choices or have earphones in or whatever. And so it’s creating, like, there’s gotta be some humorous elements, I think. Maybe it’s, Oh, I we’ve a game of horse and the loser has to go by the homeless guy across the street a Starbucks. Something like that. So it’s just getting out of the comfort zone and with some sort of creative element. And when you break down the hard core shoe commercial ads where, you’re having to conquer the world, running up the stairs by yourself and prove who your identity is by how hard you work.
Paul Cater: I think that’s like a, such a pitfall that I think that is a kind of a half-truth. It’s training and the body itself is a celebration of kind of, what’s already been done, not necessarily something you have to prove consistently all the time. That’s a huge burden that will drive many kids from sport, if they don’t have immediate success. So I think breaking down those barriers and, again, I use the ballet example, so we put it on Tchaikovsky during Christmas time, we do the Nutcracker and we have maybe there was a ballet girl who did do trained as a ballet turned a ballet as a, you I’ll say, okay, empowering her to lead. Or having these athletes be put in these different situations. So maybe it’s having dance contest, creating footwork ladder matching musical beats that basically forces kids to dance.
Paul Cater: That’s kind of been my vein recently is engaging with dance and rhythm and music. If I had a music theory teacher, I’d add that as a performance director, I would add a mandatory music theory class for every athlete in my organization. How do you match, and mirror, and mimic different beat counts and things like that? So anyway, music was a huge part in that, I think. Yeah. So not just for amping you up for a maximum deadlift, where everyone sits around you and screens at you, so I do that.
Joel Smith: Yeah, I think that’s a good thing. It’s just, it shouldn’t be the only thing.
Paul Cater: 1% maybe.
Joel Smith: It’s like a music or it’s like, techno, when does the beat drop? But I mean, it, you can’t just keep dropping the beat every like three seconds. It has to, everything builds up.
Paul Cater: Opposite ends of the spectrum. I think anticipation, if I could sum it up, is teaching athletes to anticipate those moments of high reactivity, of subconscious involuntary muscle contraction, maximum rates of force development. That’s the beauty… Is when teaching athletes to react and be calm and collected before and after that. Look at some of these Chinese weightlifters or guys at the plate, they’re super calm and it’s not a massive hype show before and after the event, even though they’re creating an incredible display of force and velocity with these people, right? And I don’t know if that’s being taught a lot. It’s like the calmness before and after. It’s all become showing up, hurrying to this event, checking the box, memorizing your warm routine, pat yourself on the back, because you’re training and then leaving to the next thing. It’s become this devoid of any real, I think, deeper thought. And maybe this, you could say the spiritual element of it, I don’t mind saying that.
Joel Smith: Yeah. It’s all, I think I love how everything connects in that celebration of life that we call the training session, and yeah, I, I do think it’s a special time when athletes can come together and get rowdy, but it’s also important to have that precedent. I know back when I took like Douglas Heel’s Be Activated and now there’s RPR as well now. And both systems put a huge… a huge priority is on breathing. Team breathing before and mindful warmups before games and being in a teaching football players to be in a more parasympathetic oriented state is really underrated.
Paul Cater: I agree with you, Joel. I think it’s the lost…These new industries or specialties around breathing, around meditation are because we’ve just lost what people have been doing for thousands of years. Or even the whole like, experience of eating together. Praying before a meal. Having morning, like quiet time in the morning. Running. Let’s just talk about running. The greatest expression of breathing. And the elasticity in the hip and torso and shoulder is just sprinting for a sustained period of time. Survival. Maybe it’s the fight or flight down the mountain. If we just did those things that humans have been doing forever, but it’s great that we’re adding it back in some sort of forced formulaic way, but I would love people to experience those organically as we’ve done together. Finding the body’s natural tune and rhythm.
Joel Smith: Yeah. Let’s, let’s talk about rhythm.
Joel Smith: I know the rhythm, you mentioned it, and it’s something that’s where you’ve been really been doing. You’ve had some really cool …you’ve had some social media posts regarding that, and I know that’s been, if I could say what’s the experience that will always stick with me from even our just one-on-one training sessions where it’s just me and you. And, and the thing I loved about that too, is like, even just doing various sprint drill or sprint drill variations to music and where you’re basically leading it. Okay. Here’s, here’s this iteration do this to the beat, and I would try to do it to the beat. And that was such an awesome track. I would call it the warmup, but it was just the training, and I remember the next time I saw it, I was like, Hey, can we do that again? And you’re like, I can’t recreate that. It’s like, it’s only something that can be created in the moment. And that’s, what’s awesome about it too.
Paul Cater: There’s a performance to it and that’s okay. And I don’t even remember it, but as long as you have in mind what you need to teach and the learning outcomes, it becomes this, I don’t want to say performance, cause it’s not about me, but the teaching is this highly engaged, artistic outpouring from the coach that’s received by the athlete and empowering the athlete. And yeah, again, teaching the athletes to match and mirror and work within rhythm, dance, is maybe the training outcome in general. And then we just put stress, increasing progressive stress around those rhythms of that day in the weight training. So the training really is in the warmup. Let’s say it, it is in the relational and self-awareness, whereas a lot of times the warm up is just this list of things to check off. And then you get to the weight training.
Paul Cater: That’s maybe my new thing I want to, well, I think I really want to start researching and putting more time into, but your question was how does that come together? I think the coach, I don’t want to overstate… I don’t wanna like say this off the cuff, but I really do think a coach needs to meditate into really link into the to the point of the whole session and how it empowers and how it is a redemptive reconciliating event in an athlete’s individual life or collectively where it is celebrating life in this day and age. The best thing I’ve ever seen that bring cultures, people of different races, backgrounds, religions, creeds is a training session. It’s just this bonding experience where people have to be vulnerable enough and get outside their own thinking and pretenses, and they have this collective experience.
Paul Cater: It’s extremely powerful. I think the coach needs to work from that and that, and that’s where personally I get insight illumination is kind of a strong word, and what to do in that moment, there’s gotta be that coaching freedom. And definitely coaches are not learning this in school, or from a certification course. They’re learning it from a deep experience from their own training, but also from a mindset of how do I breathe life and encourage these athletes in this experience. And it has everything to do with the physiology and the hard science for sure. We talk about weather, we talk about external circumstances and reading those and then orchestrating the session around that. That’s hard to scale, I think. But it’s really a pure joy for me. It’s an, it’s my artistic expression. Just as much as I’m trying to paint or whatever, but there’s sessions that we finish and it’s like, I didn’t film it. I didn’t put it on YouTube. I didn’t put it on Instagram. I don’t even know what we did. I have some doubt around it, but how do I, how do I reproduce that? What even happened anyway? I know that’s so abstract.
Joel Smith: Let’s bring it into maybe just a little bit of black and white in the sense that some music was, I mean, the whole podcast, I could just be like, well, tell me about Organica, what’s that? How does that help the vibe? Tell me about like the basic…What are you looking for musical music-wise in that warmup, like selling its rhythmic beat, right? Like not just, it’s not Metallica and necessarily, or it’s not like…,
Paul Cater: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I, look, I look for a few things. If I was going to put some, some, let’s bring this home a little bit with some real, some real things people can do. I really try to eliminate words and the first 15 minutes, I think again, words have power, but I think there’s like a different, I mean, when you’re studying a Mozart and there’s no words or, or something that’s purely rhythm based and I’m not really, I’m not an expert on musical theory. And so I’m sure that there’s people who, who are schooled in music and help me understand the vocabulary that when you’re listening to other external messages from these artists, yeah. They can be empowering. But I think when you’re, when you’re tuning into your body’s movement patterns that’s, I think that’s important. That’s why certain music themes are better for max, PR back squatting versus footwork drill or something like that. But yeah, I typically find no words. I typically find a melody that works on a four count that people can match and mirror base, like in a, in an easy way. So they can begin to a simple dance step. Those are my two things often there’s different channels on Spotify or whatever that I can find that.
Paul Cater: And there’s one channel that I always kinda my go to and I have a playlist that kind of does that. It’s a little bit out there, a little bit like yoga meets chill out lounge vibe that, gets you, gets you moving. So
Joel Smith: Yeah, I think you mentioned there was occasionally as a revolt though, the music.
Paul Cater: Yeah. I mean, people love the latest top 40 hits once something that they know you got to know your audience and you really, that comes down to who’s in your building, paying your overhead, to be honest with it, you have to kind of educate and convince people like this is why I’m doing this to get us to this point of you. Like, I wouldn’t say uniformity, but there’s like creative creativity within space that works in blends. If you look at like a crazy intersection with cars that aren’t colliding into each other, why is that? If you look at a basketball game, it’s bodies, no one’s fighting into each other. There’s like a body’s natural awareness in tight spaces. Now they’re living stream to the kids playing soccer in the streets. And then in these tight, tiny little spaces and their ball handling skills, and they have a different awareness level there, then kids growing up on massive fields just blasting the ball down downfield. And, they have three, a bag full of balls. And if you, you don’t have to even go chase your own balls, Hey, I’ll just use another one. So awareness in tight spaces, there’s definitely a musical element to that in a dance and a dancing rhythm to it. So you can say match pitcher or there’s a, there’s a chaotic harmony there too, but yeah.
Joel Smith: What do you, so what are some of your favorite tools for that, for using that? I know you’ve posted the Steed ladder. That’s, that’s a really simple one to, to get the idea if people are just looking for, Hey well, okay. So he puts on music with no words. There’s a four count. Okay. Now what, what I’m saying? So what can you give me a few examples? And I mean, I’ll start with, maybe I’ll just really quickly throw one of my favorite things that you did was it was like a lot even just into a lunge position and just manipulating, like straighten out your back leg to the beat, do internal and extra rotations with your front back leg at the same time to the beat. Just simple as that. And I’m like, and that’s a lot more fun than, I don’t know here do these 10 thoracic open books, so you can lift weights. You know what I’m saying?
Paul Cater: Like a tramp mini trampoline, awesome, 50 bucks on Amazon, you can use that trampoline to, to, to raise your body heat, body temperature, but also try to match the counts and whatnot. It is a line, any, any barrier that you have to get up over and over and over, cross whatever the zoom zoom experience last five months has been pretty interesting with, from my garage using whatever really. But yeah, so like a mini trap, a line off floor I, you holding these static positions and finding kind of this, this trampoline within your own body, finding these elastic points were all, all, all great tools. You, a lot of partner games, maybe I need to, I love the I do love the old gunslinger slap game where you’re trying to, your partner’s holds his hands out in front of him.
Paul Cater: And you just trying to draw your hand out of your pocket and slap your hands, stuff like that. But I think humorous, you want to know you, some humor use some, use something that’s gets people out of their comfort zone. That’s always very effective. So if you can integrate that with some, some, some bouncing and matching of beats, then that’s, that’s doubly effective, I believe. And then the end of the game plays always great. Seriously. Okay. Ping pong and basketball are two great tools. Pink. One’s a little safer for the random ankle rolls, but yeah, something that you can get into a, a metric, a rhythm of, of moving dribbling a ball. I think that’s why basketball is powerful. It’s like the dribbling effect something you can get out of your own conscious initiate initiatives in contractions and get into some involuntary contracting rhythm. This is cool. The vibe, the vibration plate side alternating vibration plate. I love, I love it. It’s one of my favorite tools that I use to initiate these things.
Joel Smith: What do you just, the reason why too. So if someone asks to said, Hey, Paul, why, why rhythm? Like what, show me some data. Like, I didn’t know. Because I know there is some stuff out there that would indicate that you’re playing at Duke. So tell me, or just tell me why. Yeah. Just from a general perspective too.
Paul Cater: Okay. Yeah. I mean if you’re not using the tendon correctly or if you’re not using your own body’s plasticity, I don’t care how strong you are. And I see it all the time in baseball too, is these guys are well trained, finely tuned athletes. Yeah. There’s a lot of wear and tear that we probably it’s hard to measure, but there’s some ratio or plasticity is off, the stretch shortening cycle. There’s either the strength, the strength portion is off or the amortization phase of some someplace along, the eccentric capacities are off, whatever. So I think you take care of, so, so much of that in the stars, the data backing that up, I think we’re always trying to see our athletes, tendons and ligaments be used optimally and not under too much stress that dictates what pathways, our strength training and what type of strength, strength, and resistance training we need to do.
Paul Cater: And so if you can read that with the naked eye and have it collaborated with the force plate, let’s say, Hey, we’re checking that box of protecting the athlete, but more so you do that every day. If we get, just get our athlete into, and if they come in stressed, no sleep if they come in tight for whatever reason, then we want to realign the humerus and the femur and the joint. We want to reestablish posture. We want to reestablish breathing and these stretch responses, everything from, ribcage to our hamstrings, everything. So a lot of that can be tuned in the warm up musically if, if athletes engage with the process. So it’s a safety mechanism.
Joel Smith: I know in my experience using music as well, and the more years I trained with you, the more I started putting that in my warmups. And you would just see it and I’ve seen elite coaches use it as well to very high effect based off like what the warmup or what the workout is of the day and the themes and the rhythm of the day and things like that. But I feel like in addition to tuning the body and I do believe there’s a strong tuning effect that I’ll just say to a very, I did a workout and this last week it was as a training partner. And we did, we started we did, we start with like 20 minutes, like a little break dance circuit where I had four or five different break dance moves.
Joel Smith: And we did a little bit, each time had some music on the Bluetooth speaker and, and we did that. And then we did about 20 minutes of hurdles, like you said, over barriers to the music though. And he had never really hurdled. So I’m teaching him and I’m like, all right, well, here’s just some movements. And just try to match these movements over the hurdles to the beat. Doesn’t have to be perfect. I care about the rhythm more than I care about whatever perfect is. And so we did that for about 20 minutes. Then we did like some kind of fun, two hundreds and some bear crawls and stuff to finish them. Later that afternoon, I had a session with another client I’m doing just some junk training stuff. And I just kinda wanted to see what I had. And man, I like just shot off the ground.
Joel Smith: It was like, everything was tuned up, man. I jumped about three inches higher than I had last time I tried it. And you can just tell, you can feel it like your body. It sounds a little esoteric, but your body does need that tuning. And I think about even those studies that are like tendon health with the metronome doing like time stuff with a metronome. So, so reps is better than just doing slow reps too. I don’t know, like, I guess maybe someone counting, are you counting in your head? Like you need something that’s rhythmic to like, let the body work subconsciously and react and, and take you also, I’m sorry. The send to be long and to be in the, in the zone to take you into that, like that zone, state, trance, state flow state, where you’re suddenly forgetting about that test, you have to take, tomorrow or, relationship stuff or, or whatever.
Paul Cater: About the breakup and the Backstreet? We have a golf swing. Any sport you play is about timing. It’s about rhythm. Sometimes I’ll have football players training with baseball players or whatever, and you have to create this, this consistent theme of, Hey, I don’t care if you’re tightening up perfect tackle or, or a running back, make making a move cutting back against getting aggressive over pursuing tackler or person golfing or, or, baseball or softball player. There’s the there’s usual rhythms and timings that with all these things, the stress responses and the storing and release and releasing event of energy. So the most of the injuries happen when, when what, when that’s off for whatever reason [inaudible] work really becomes relative. And that’s where the, like the velocity based training conversations and, and the flywheel trainings and the eccentric overloading really comes in into, into focus I think is, is, is, we can look at these things in this look at the muscle health or tendon health in its kind of micro microcosm or, acute view of these things.
Paul Cater: But in reality, looking at the global elastic diversity and awareness, anticipatory melodic, mirroring, and matching of an app that athlete can do. That’s why small humans can produce a lot of power if they just type things up. Right? And then the strength work becomes really simple. It doesn’t, it’s not this massive black box. You say, I gotta be X amount of, I don’t need to get stronger or I do need to get stronger. Or where do we put our time and effort in these training plans, if we’re not taking care of body’s natural rhythms, it’s all just kind of not guesswork, but you feel like you’re chasing it a bit, you’re wasting time and that’s why athletes are training better and still getting hurt. I don’t know, I don’t know the injury rates, but I know I used to know them at the baseball that they’re the same. And I knew what youth did, all this it’s relatively the same way. These athletes just don’t know how to dance..
Joel Smith: I was running today. I was doing today was an interesting day. I do a lot of exploitation in my work, but today it was like raining. And I was like, let’s just do let’s just do like a hard, like the system, like some, two hundreds fast and Sean Short rest and the boring, the boring tempo workout. But the rain kind of made it like this. This is a hard, let’s have this, a heartbeat, hard workout, and let’s do this. And, and I just couldn’t feel, but it’s fun because you can feel the results of all the exploration of rhythm you’ve done. Like, I was so acutely aware of the role of my upper body and my trunk coordinating the ground strike, like in the air. You know what I’m saying? Like where, where there’s rhythm and timing in the air to create a better ground strike. And because I’ve been doing a ton of it,
Paul Cater: I was talking about with using gravity in their running. That’s been a huge, huge factor in my Renaissance of sprinting. Again, is understanding the role of soaking up energy instead of just fighting it all the time, trying to create these massive collisions into the ground, more ground force reaction, or, I need to increase my force, but then, at 42, I don’t want to do that, but maybe most people don’t need to do that. Is he to work with gravity running downhill from a lightning strike?
Joel Smith: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There’s so much. Yeah, no, it’s all good. I mean, there’s an immense amount of free energy return inherent in the body. And it’s just fun to once you, you’ve been through the process enough, I would have never noticed this when I was 21, but to at 36 to literally feel my body shifting and timing itself in space to prepare for the next step. And you feel the rhythm of how that’s there. It’s like, I’m not going to get hurt running like this. I know for a fact I will not get hurt running like this. Now I’m not probably running fast enough to get hurt. It’s running these 200 said temp, more tempo style, but it’s, it’s just, it’s cool to feel that I, you mentioned we, I shoot a sprinting would be another conversation.
Joel Smith: Cause I know we’ve talked about that too, but I, so, I mean, let’s touch that for just a minute, cause I want to get to the weightlifting piece, as well. Because I know we’ve talked about the awareness, the rhythm. I know there’s a lot of other elements that we haven’t really talked about, like grip or like how you knew you tend to do a lot of mobility opening up and things like that. And you’ve killed your love for sprinting. Maybe let’s just touch on those real quick, because I do want to get to the weightlifting piece, but tell me a little bit about so people come in there’s awareness, there’s stuff to rhythm. What are some other key elements that you’re usually trying to get to like, sprinting, grip, opening creativity, what’s some other stuff that, yeah.
Paul Cater: Yeah. If you can, if we can, I think I’ve had a passion for the hamstring. Just probably cause my hamstrings we’ve been under assault from trying to run super high and have these front side sprint mechanics that are like picture perfect, whatever that is. So how do I have a healthy hamstring and hip and knee and back and posture? How do I get enough? Eccentric loading on those. If I’m not sprinting all the time is a COVID has helped me get outside and sprint daily and not try to piece it together with a tool like the yoyo hamstring, which I love. I’ve kind of championed the last mistake. I don’t need to try to replicate these high centric velocities on my, on my posterior chain. I’m simply just sprinting daily. my body has never been healthier and then adding, adding some different technical changes that I’ve kind of learned from, you and your buddy bar about knee placement, shouldn’t, changing shingles, especially in acceleration phases and, and things like that.
Paul Cater: Learning associated breathing the stress response in that front, front sling, so to speak. So I would say the grip strength, initiating grip strength with these young athletes is just kind of a massive hole in the lot of these kids development is how can they hold their shoulders in the right spot? How can they understand what shin angles and changing shin angles mean? And how do they consistently spray? That’s kind of like my mission statement is like getting an adult or a kid just to run, run better, and horizontally move better. It has a huge association to pitching as well. And all these other sports where you’re having to displace the hips forward all the time and then initiate your body’s elastic, less density and optimal efficiency rates and things like that. Who’ve met economy. That’s my passion right now is like Coke. It’s kind of brought that on a little bit more preventative focus because I have to go to the tracks. I have to run outside and I’m not chained to a, I’m not chained to a, a large overhead in being inside of the gym where as soon as I step outside the gym, I’m not making money for the gym. That’s, that’s been a very liberating experience these last five months.
Joel Smith: Yeah. Tell me Paul, just to finish out here. So the crescendo, right? We’re working up, you have a goal of the day and I think probably typically there is some sort of strength outcome in that day that we would like to achieve. And tell me, tell me how things change. How does the music change? How does that transition to how long is the strength theft typically after all these warm up activities and, and how does that shake out?
Paul Cater: First of all, there’s a garbage trucks outside my garage right now. So hopefully you can still hear me, but if it put it simply there’s five minutes in an interview session that strength adaptation, you’re looking for everything from the grip to the hamstring, to the posture, alignment, to the rhythmic alignments and tempos and tuning, which leads into that five minutes and that five minutes of strength backs up the goal of in the movement goal of the day, or really where along the force velocity curve, you want to be working as well. Yeah. And then that’ll, that’s when you put on the Metallica maybe for a song or you change the, you change the mood and, and again, lyrics are one thing, but I think there’s heavy guitar chords. And again, I’m not a music expert, but I know there’s a change that happens.
Paul Cater: This is an aggression. Do we want to live in that aggressive state for 90 minutes? Or do we want to live it in for five minutes? Being wise and tempering your, your, your team or your athletes to, don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes. So to speak, like save those bullets for when it really matters, but there’s a whole lead up process to that, to that maximum fight or flight state. And that’s the map. Then the discussion becomes how much do you live in that during the week? And then that’s when you have whoop bands and a million other feedback, technical, technical devices that are taken, trying to take the place of coaches to really do that know, eliminate the human element in making those assessments. But yeah, that’s, that’s, I would sum it up. I mean, the crescendo happens and then you need to have a processing moment and the, and the encouraging moment where you deactivate the sympathetic nervous system, get into the rest of that, just mode, zebras, I read a good book in my anatomy class, something I think the title is why zebras don’t get ulcers, they’re maximum fight or flight mode, or they’re rolling around on the Serengeti, eating and hanging out.
Paul Cater: There’s always in awareness. I think, animals don’t have these health issues because they don’t fudge the lines. There it’s either like I’m going to get a, or I’m going to rest. And that’s the biggest thing I’m trying to help students understand is like, it doesn’t have to be this high anxiety moment all the time of getting to the weight room at 5:00 AM to go through a warm up list and then max out and then go to class or whatever, or rush afterschool the weight room where you’re going to be, be rated by your coach. You’ll be running laps, exercise. Isn’t, isn’t a punishment, and it’s a joy, it’s a celebration of life in your own body. And it’s actually the one time that athletes can be in total, like mostly totally control total control of their bodies because it doesn’t, you don’t have to have a coach who’s going to bench you, or there’s a pitch that you swing and miss out. There’s so much failure. Or if we can have the training environment be a highly empowering redemptive experience, athletes are going to be happier and healthier and move rhythmically better in, in these elastic, in harmony elastically. And that’s gotta be the majority of the injuries. Yeah. There’s certain strength deficits. You’re going to see people getting a lot stronger and not being able to handle and anticipate changes in games and blow out. Nonetheless,
Joel Smith: That’s a great summary. I think maybe that’s a, maybe that’s a good, a title exercises, a celebration, not a punishment. If you were to, Oh man, there we go. Don’t say,
Paul Cater: Were you surprised that you worked in college sport where I think, it’s different than the, the youth beginning youth stages I’m seeing now, maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but I think there’s a hell of a lot of anxiety coming into a weight room. It’s I have to keep up with the other kids so I can get a scholarship. My pair is making you this appears or making me do this. I love my lot of aspects of my gym. We don’t have free t-shirts we don’t have a lot of hype. There’s no sign on the door. We it’s it’s the onus is completely on the, on the athlete himself. There’s a lot of just ownership in the whole experience. It’s mixed genders, mixed races economic States, and the kids are come out of the experience, like fully aware human beings. That can be great members of society, whether or not they make the pros or not. And that’s my mission statement is to equip young people, to really be advocates for themselves, love other people, celebrate the body and not look at it as like a, a source of massive anxiety.
Joel Smith: I love that, man. Well, Hey, that’s, that’s an awesome closing, closing statement. I could, there’s nothing I can add to that. So I, dude, Paul, thanks so much, man. That was an awesome talk. And every time I talked to you, I just, I, it makes me a better coach and a better human being. So I appreciate it.
Paul Cater: Well, would I let my one plug is to anybody who’s ever in town come experience, come, come share.
Joel Smith: In Monterey, Salinas.
Paul Cater: Yeah, come have a collective experience. And cause that’s when you start to share these things, you start to breathe life and I don’t want to be too sappy, but you really start to heal and you come to common ground with other people because there’s no, not two people are going to have exactly the same viewpoints, but if you can train together, you can share that experience and be vulnerable together. Boom, it’s pretty, it’s pretty cool. And we can learn from each other. So I really enjoy when people stop by and say, what’s up and I have a good day. It’s awesome. It only costs you, it only costs your mind,
Joel Smith: Like cross your mind, hopefully in a good way, right?
Paul Cater: Yeah. The ability to just be a little bit more honorable and random. That’s what, that’s what the beauty of coaching is. Isn’t it that’s shared coaching experience? And that’s what we crave is just to go through this collective coaching experience together. Probably why your podcast is so popular, people being vulnerable about what they’re doing and sharing that experience. So I’m glad to be just a tiny, tiny, tiny link part of that. Yeah.
Joel Smith: Yeah. Well, hey…It was great having you Paul. Thanks again, man.
Paul Cater: Okay. I’ll see you soon. Talk to you later.
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