There’s a podcast in the background as I’m in the kitchen.
I hear a voice that’s familiar, not quite Elliote Freidman level familiar but this dude is for sure mainstream…
I can’t make out who it is, but I keep listening…
One starts talking again…
“Little guys are more injury prone and you need big, tall, defensemen to win the NHL. Not so sure about guys like Lane Hutson.” One idiot says to the other…
“I don’t know if I agree, some guys big or small are just more injury prone than others, and you’ll never really know why.”
I’m now beside myself, I need to know which podcast it is.
He walks into the kitchen and I ask him which one he’s listening to. Sure enough, it’s mainstream guys that everyone listens to…
And that same shit they are saying gets regurgitated over and over and over.
Fun fact about me…
I can’t listen to 32 Thoughts or Chiclets (not even sure I spelled it right) or this other popular podcast he was listening to…
Why?
Here’s the elephant in the room that nobody sees:
Read that again… And again… Program yourself with this. Put it deep into your subconscious.
Okay, for reference, this guy on his podcast has 278k Twitter followers. That’s an influential amount. And status influences us… To become a copy. To spout off valueless takes that some asshole with a platform has already said…. Even to wear brands we don’t know why we wear:
Who is saying it is winning over what is being said. What is being fed to you, you’re eating.
Don’t fall for this trap.
If you have, push your chair away from the table and stop eating this.
For the full illustration of how to think for yourself, here are the questions you could ask a player and potential interventions you could make to help them become less injury prone.
Instead of listening to BS programming that “some players are just more injury prone than others.”:
What percentage of your injuries are soft tissue vs. bone breaks? Find out the nature of previous injury
If they are soft tissue, do you consume any of the following? Collagen? Are you eating tendons or just muscle meat? How much protein are you getting every day?
Do you do RPR?
What does your post-workout recovery look like?
What are you doing after practice for the rest of the day? Are you in a seated posture playing video games for 5+ hours?
Are you doing too much volume in the gym? Not enough volume in the gym? What do your workouts look like? How often?
Based on your leg/torso ratio are you doing the wrong lifts in the gym for your body? Placing unneeded shearing forces, etc on body…
Have you played other competitive organized sports growing up? If they were a baseball catcher, that might clue you in on how to make adjustments to what they do
Have you ever worn braces or had an expander in your mouth? IYKYK
Did you or do you still breathe through your mouth?
If bone breaks, what are you eating every single day? Dietary audit to bring awareness to levels of certain nutrients
Did you play outside a lot as a kid? Climbing trees and jumping off of them, basketball with repetitive jumping and landing that would have aided in bone strength due to repeated landing forces.
Has your training in the last few years included sprinting, and plyometrics? Where you’d be adapting to these vibrational forces.
Why did I do so many examples? To prove a point.
This is why you have to clue into people based on what is being said.
Someone with 500 Twitter followers has way more value to bring you than this dude that everyone is listening to…
Find better people. Period.
Levels of thinking not level of status.
Watch your inputs. Think. Don’t become an off-brand regurgitation of an actual idiot.
Disclaimer... I love the Chiclets podcast, but I agree with what you're saying and yeah, everyone needs to ingest and digest information with a more critical mind. Now that's funny because I think we've seen everyone in the past 10 years, related to politics and culture, convince themselves that they view everything critically and that they think for themselves. Well, okay... I was one of them, probably still am some days, but, we endeavor to get better.
Its funny I just texted with a coaching peer / mentor and we were talking about a mix of podcast, how everyone said the East was so good this year and the West was just ho hum... 'Playoffs. Ya don't know what ya don't know. But also, I mean I'm as dumb as they come but I also think maybe everyone else is stupider.'
Now that sounds pretty mean, I don't dislike 'everyone' as mean as that may sound. Its more of a reminder to myself to do what you advise and 'Don't Get Dumber'.