CVASPS The Podcast

Chuck Hulwadell on Wasting Technology, Owning Mistakes, and Coaching the Athlete in Front of YouI sat down with Kansas's Chuck Hulwadell for a conversation about the battle against Big S&C. Chuck walks through his path from Colorado to KU, his first job as the only strength coach for over 600 athletes at Benedictine College, and what that taught him. Then he gets candid about the year he let technology do his coaching and what he would do differently. I add my own story of building an OmegaWave-based decision tree that taught me a similar lesson.Key takeaways• Chuck started out on the PT route at the University of Kansas, did a couple of PT clinic internships, and realized it wasn't for him. Research was next, including time with Dr. Andy Fry, but lab work wasn't the right setting either. A sports performance internship at a private facility is where he fell in love with strength and conditioning.• His first job offer came out of an internship at Benedictine College, a small NAIA school. He became the first director of athletic performance there and says he had no idea what he was doing.• He was the only strength coach for over 600 athletes at Benedictine. The volume of reps let him try a lot of things and figure out fast what would not work.• Early at KU, right after earning his CSCS, he had 80 football players and 10 racks in less space than recommended, and then women's lacrosse arrived. Out of that he learned to project his voice, communicate differently across sports and athletes, manage 20 head coaches, program across seasons, and coach the same movement in different ways. He also learned to take failure on the chin, and he wouldn't trade the experience.• Force plates can be useful, but if all you use them for is jump height, you may be wasting money. A metric has to help you understand the athlete and enhance performance.• Chuck has made every decision based on technology, and he says it made him a worse, lazier coach because he let it do the coaching. He admits he flooded his work with technology and feels bad that he may have wasted a year of athletes' careers.• A force-plate score down 25% might mean the athlete stayed up until 3 a.m. and didn't try, not that training is the problem. Some athletes don't try hard, others keep adapting, and constant changes or backing off may be unnecessary.• Chuck says not to overrule experienced head coaches over tiny percentage changes. He works with a coach who uses GPS history to check whether practice is approaching the load needed for a coming 20-hour week, instead of reacting to an insignificant fraction. The goal is preparing athletes for sport and influencing wins and losses.• People chase the what and how, copying programs and social posts, and neglect the why. Chuck adapts principles from Louie Simmons and Westside to team sports rather than copying methods wholesale, especially for a 7-foot-2 center. He passed along Dr. Ramsey Nijem's warning against lazy thinking: chasing a new tool without understanding why can harm athletes and a coach's career.• Chuck urges coaches to audit their coaching, programming, and interactions to find weak points, not for false humility or self-promotion. For some athletes, college sports may be the best experience they get, and strength coaches are there to serve them. For a future guest, Chuck recommends his coworker Stuart Young, whom he calls brilliant and underrated. He also named Joe Pedulla and Ramsey Nijem.

Emracing Failure, Positivity, and Valuing a Player's Past with Texas Tech's Andrew WrightJay DeMayo sits down with Texas Tech's Andrew Wright to talk about the positives of the new normal in college basketball. Andrew shares how a Discovery Channel show and a first day as an intern at North Texas set his career path. He explains why positivity is contagious in the weight room and why the right people around you make failure safe. He also talks about respecting the experience transfer athletes bring from previous strength coaches, and what he learned from a summer of slow-cooked training and a group that matched his energy.Timestamps00:16 - Welcome and the positives of the new normal01:23 - Who is Andrew, and how did he get to Lubbock?02:35 - The American Muscle moment and researching internships04:00 - First day as an intern at North Texas05:36 - Scaffolding and why positivity is contagious08:05 - Building a love of the room with a new group09:37 - Lessons from his dad on choosing a positive outlook11:05 - A head coach who lets you fail and rebound12:20 - Jay on setting roots and being allowed to make mistakes13:45 - Learning as a faucet: keeping it at a steady flow15:39 - Learning from strength coaches in other sports, PTs, and ATs16:09 - "Don't devalue someone's prior experience"18:19 - Respecting past strength coaches with transfers22:02 - Why the new landscape has more good than bad24:33 - Did we slow cook too much? Lessons from the summer26:24 - Pushing the boundaries of trust too early27:21 - Safe progress and more wins instead of one big win27:54 - Taking a deep breath, pivoting, and attacking29:32 - A group that matched his energy31:53 - Passion you can feel, and why players know when you're not wired right32:50 - Who should come on the podcast next33:49 - Closing thoughts and goodbyeKey takeaways• Positivity is contagious. You get people smiling with positivity, not with back squats.• A TV show about Mike Barwis led Andrew to research internship pages and piece together a path into strength and conditioning.• Scaffolding, an idea from his PE degree, means a challenge should be neither too hard nor too easy.• With the right people around you, you can reach, and even overreach, and failure becomes a way to get better.• His head coach has let him fail and rebound across eight years together, from North Texas to Lubbock.• Think of learning as a faucet: keep it flowing steadily, and reset when it slows to a drip.• Talk to coaches outside your sport, and to PTs and ATs, because you never know what someone's experience can teach you.• An NBA strength coach told Andrew not to devalue someone's prior experience by forcing your own method on them.• Respecting a transfer's previous strength coach shows you believe in where they've been, and it builds trust faster.• Andrew slow-cooked the summer's main lifts, and pushing too hard too early risks the athletes' trust. He prefers more small wins over one big win.• Teams that can take a deep breath, pivot, and attack handle adversity best.• Passion is something players can feel, and they notice when it's missing.

Marshall Repp on Player Profiling, Lessons from the SEAL Teams, and Building Toughness Together Jay DeMayo welcomes Marshall Repp, who recently joined the Maryland men's basketball program, for a conversation about how he profiles athletes and why he builds his programming around how each one is built. Marshall traces his path from Velocity Sports Performance to Eastern Michigan, Michigan State, and the East Coast SEAL teams, and explains how that last stop reshaped his approach to testing, training, and team culture. We discuss how Marshall turns test data into a simple two-axis profile, why that profile guides his training without limiting athletes, and how he uses force-plate jumps to manage fatigue during the season. Marshall also explains why he still mixes in carefully chosen, deliberately unfair high-intensity sessions to build trust and toughness within a team. Key takeaways·       Marshall's time with the SEAL teams led him to study what makes elite performers different and sparked his deep dive into athlete profiling.·       Profiling starts with testing a wide range of qualities, converting each result to a sten score (a standardized 1-to-10 score), and plotting the scores on a radar graph to show where an athlete is above or below average.·       His main profile plots athletic expression (RSI mod from the counter-movement jump) against aerobic ability (a three-mile run for the SEALs and a three-minute max aerobic speed test for basketball).·       That profile sorts athletes into hybrids, racehorses, workhorses, and athletes who are weak in both areas.·       Workhorses tend to respond best to higher volume and longer, steadier conditioning, while racehorses tend to prefer heavier, lower-rep lifting and shorter, harder intervals.·       The profile guides how he trains each athlete, but the goal is still to move everyone toward being a hybrid.·       Marshall went from a high-intensity, machine-based background to a sports-science approach, and he still keeps doses of high intensity in his programs.·       He sometimes makes sets unfair on purpose, a habit he took from the SEALs, because sport and life are not always fair and the shared struggle brings teammates together.·       Surprise last sets and a partner-based turf grinder that ends in a 100-yard buddy carry show him who will push through for a teammate.·       At Michigan State he got Coach Izzo to move lifting before practice, using short daily sessions that he called "microdosing" and that he adjusted day to day with force-plate data.·       He tracks time to takeoff and jump height against each athlete's own average to decide when to pull back and when to push.·       Marshall closes by recommending Ken Mannie as a future guest, calling him a mentor and a former Michigan State strength coach.

Matt Gildersleeve on trust, authenticity, and rebuilding onboarding for a faster college football worldJay DeMayo welcomes back Matt Gildersleeve for a wide-ranging conversation about coaching philosophy, staff development, family life, and the increasingly demanding reality of college football roster management. Matt shares how his program rebuilt its onboarding process to gather better injury, leadership, and learning-style information before athletes ever hit the weight room.We also discuss why trust is built through character, competence, and connection, why coaches should be their real selves instead of copying someone else’s style, and why young coaches need an extra skill beyond hard work if they want to stand out.Key topics In this episode, Matt makes the case that coaches can live full lives outside the weight room and still be excellent coaches. He emphasizes that family, marriage, and travel are not distractions from coaching, but part of a healthy and sustainable coaching life. Matt and Jay revisit the idea that trust is not something you ask for, but something you build through repeated actions over time. Matt breaks trust development into three parts:  Character Competence Connection He argues that coaches should not copy another coach’s personality or style, but should lead with their own authentic voice. Matt explains how his program audited a full year of training and realized they were wasting the first four weeks with transfer athletes. The transfer-portal era forced his program to become much more aggressive and detailed in pre-training evaluation. His onboarding now includes:  Full injury history review Weight-room modification history Additional movement screening Leadership and personality questions Learning-style questions Direct contact with previous strength staffs Matt says the goal is to know every athlete before the first whistle, so training starts with context instead of guesswork. He and his staff also learned that many athletes are kinesthetic learners, which changed how they approach teaching and film work. Matt explains why he prefers face-to-face conversations over mass questionnaires for building real connection. A major theme is that hard work is expected, but young coaches also need an “and” - something beyond effort that makes them valuable. He believes coaches should be able to explain their unique value, not just say they are early, energetic, and hardworking. Matt closes by stressing three responsibilities for anyone in the profession:  Take care of the athletes Take care of the team Take care of the industry

Programming for a younger roster, intent-driven training, and building resilience with Jason MartinezJason Martinez joins Jay DeMayo to break down how he approaches programming for a new roster at West Virginia Men’s Basketball, especially when turnover is high and last year’s results can’t be copied over. The conversation focuses on evaluating what this team needs now, not punishing them for what previous teams did, and how to build conditioning, movement quality, and buy-in through intentional daily exposures.Jason also shares a broader coaching philosophy around intent, movement variability, and using training as an assessment tool. This episode is especially useful for strength coaches, performance staff, and anyone working with athletes in constantly changing environments.Key topics Jason shares how he approaches each new roster as a clean slate, rather than letting last year’s team dictate this year’s programming. In this episode, he explains why high roster turnover forces coaches to re-evaluate everything from training stress to meal compliance to daily structure. Jason discusses removing the traditional hard Friday “bury them” session and replacing it with smaller, more frequent exposures across the week. We discuss how a younger team often needs broader movement exposure, not just more intensity. Jason breaks down his idea of a “well-rounded training program” through categories like single-leg work, rotation, anti-rotation, flexion, and anti-flexion. He explains how spreading conditioning across the week made the work more digestible, improved outputs, and created better enthusiasm. The conversation digs into intent as a coaching principle, not just bar speed or load, but also range of motion, control, rest, and recovery. Jason shares how different athletes can show intent in different ways and why that matters more than chasing one universal standard. We discuss eccentric control and movement variability as the two biggest limiting factors he prioritized in the summer. Jason explains how small changes like tempo, balance, and implement choice can create major adaptations without constantly changing the entire program. He describes how training now doubles as an assessment tool, helping staff see which athletes are progressing well and which may need a different stimulus. The episode closes on the importance of asking questions instead of questioning athletes, and understanding that pain or improvement can come from many different causes outside the weight room.