How is Jon Torine passing on the wisdom of his legendary coaching mentors?
Coaching, much like parenting, has a deep influence on young people. Many of us learn how to coach from those who coached us. Unfortunately, not everyone has ideal coaching role models. Coaching lessons that are passed down generationally can have significant influence - positive or negative - on young athletes. It is critical to educate coaches on effective practices in order to curb the troubling youth sport dropout rate.
My guest, Jon Torine, is a former NFL strength and conditioning coach and currently an Area Developer for i9 Sports.
In Episode 36, Jon discusses how he has adopted the lessons from legendary coaches, such as Marv Levy and Tony Dungy. Jon shares how he is using those lessons in his current role as a franchise operator at i9 Sports, whose mission is helping kids succeed in life through sports.
So, what was your biggest takeaway from my conversation with Jon Torine?
For me, it’s that it’s not okay to stay quiet as it relates to sharing best practices for coaching youth sports. The best coaches coach people, not games. About 70 percent of young people drop out of youth sports by the age of 13 presumably because they are not having fun. Coaches play a big role in that equation. Youth sport coaching MUST be better in order to quell this troubling trend.
My suggestion to youth sports parents is think about the life lessons you would like your children to learn when helping them choose what teams to play on. Winning and competing is important to young athletes, but should it be the MOST important factor in choosing a team?
I want to thank Jon for his kind generosity and the wisdom he shared with The Freshman Foundation Community.
To learn more about the nature of the coach-athlete relationship, visit: https://michaelvhuber.com/what-can-a-tv-character-teach-us-about-the-coach-athlete-relationship/
To learn more about how mental performance coaching can help your mind work FOR you rather than AGAINST you, visit https://michaelvhuber.com.
Thank you for listening. We’ll see you back in two weeks ready to get better!
[00:00:00] Mike: Hey Jon, how are you, man?
[00:00:00] Jon Torine: Mike, what's happened?
[00:00:04] Mike: Not much. Good to see you here.
[00:00:06] Jon Torine: You too, buddy. You too.
[00:00:07] Mike: I always love catching up with you. But now we're doing it with the record button on.
[00:00:11] Jon Torine: We're doing it with the record button, and we are in the half way.
[00:00:14] Mike: Just like we had it function here.
[00:00:19] Jon Torine: We're about 100 steps from each other.
[00:00:21] Mike: Yeah, exactly. It's the world we live in. We default to technology rather than an in person that probably needs to change. But I guess to start off, I mean, can you talk about what led to you getting in to coaching at the NFL level as a Strength and Conditioning Coach?
[00:00:38] Jon Torine: Yeah. Well, you know, when I was in high school, you know, I had this, you know, probably like most New Jersey kids that are playing football, if around 9th grade or 10th grade, the reality the painful reality sets in that I'm probably not going to play for the Giants. Like if you look in the mirror, and you and you're like I was 5‘9” nothing, not fast, strong or athletic, you go home. You're probably not going to play for the Giants. But what I did fall very in love with was an obsessed with was this idea around, what can I do with the gifts, or curses that I have from the neck down? I didn't understand the neck up at that time to farm your land. But how could I take whatever it is I have? Because all I want to do is play college football, that's all I want to do. It's all I cared about a little too much. And what can I do physically? How can I train? How can I eat? How can I, whatever, it is? Fortunately, I saw some really ugly things on the illegal drug side in my life from others that scared the hell out of me, thank God. And I never went that route, because that in of itself is a scary route and a whole different conversation. So because I wasn't interested in my heart exploding at the age of 16, or 15, what could I do? And so I began to dive into this idea of you know, how do you train? How do you maximize your gift, that's the idea? Here's the genetics, what can I control? Can't fix the height, can't fix the hair color? You know, but what can we do? And that led me on that this journey of really going wow, this is so interesting to me and it helped me quite a bit. And I was like, well, this could probably help other people, as well, that are unsure and uncertain and not blessed or gifted and not to act like a victim. Well, this is all I have. What can I do? And so to the idea, I didn't even know that was a thing, like a job. And so you know, you're talking about the late 80s, early 90s. You know, late 80s, really at that time. And the Giants had a strength coach named Johnny Parker at the time.
[00:03:22] Mike: I remember Johnny Parker, as Giants fan growing up.
[00:03:25] Jon Torine: There you go. So Johnny, who was one of the classiest, most incredible guys you'll ever come across. I had called him because I wanted to I found out there's this job called strengthing auditioning coach, and it really intrigued me and I can go to college and I could maybe play in Division Three, I wound up going to Springfield cause small school mass, which at that time was Division Two, which was a little above my level. And I got wiped and hurt and all these kinds of things. But my high school coach and I'll swing back to Johnny in a minute, high school defensive coordinator who had gone to Springfield, when he asked me what I wanted to do. I said I'm really intrigued by the strengthing auditioning thing and he used to teach us how to lift weights in his office with a bar and then we would go across the street to the YMCA and that's how we learned to do cleans and all this coordinator in his office what's the bar was it was like playing a pool table.
[00:04:20] Mike: It was probably touching the wall something.
[00:04:23] Jon Torine: Yeah, the game of pool. And so coach part is to teach us that he goes look Jon, you need to go to Springfield College that's in mass. I never heard of it. Because actually you need to be.
[00:04:35] Mike: Great strength, great sports science strength and conditioning now sports psychology programs.
[00:04:41] Jon Torine: You got it. Some of the most amazing people and I'll make that come to life in a minute and prove the point about these people up there that are just world class human beings aside from good at their work. And so I talked to, I call Johnny, I was 16 years old, Coach Parker. And I said, you know, I want to learn about the strengthing conditioning thing. I couldn't believe he answered the phone. You know, and they were a training camp at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison at the time. And I said, hey, I had some questions for him. He spent 45 minutes on the phone with me. 45 minutes, I was a 16 year old kid. That is, obviously I've never forgotten I'm old man now. And he taught, he goes, you know, hey, you're just gonna take these classes, these kinds of things, and do this and I said, Hey, can I come pick up towels? Can I come learn? You know, it wasn't that I was so stars truck by Lawrence Taylor or Phil Simms, even though of course, you're as a kid. But I wanted to see what this thing is. You know, I just thought I knew what it was, but don't see what we weren't Bill Parcells didn't allow any outsiders in even at 6PM.
[00:06:00] Mike: I could just imagine.
[00:06:03] Jon Torine: That's the short version of the story. So that day, in that time Johnny spent with me, of which I remind him almost every time I see him, when we played on competing teams throughout our careers and other things, he gets tired of me thanking him and all that. But that was my first exposure to this kind of thing. And Johnny being so classy, and so informative, and given us his time in the middle of training camp, and I can assure you won't have that kind of time and train.
[00:06:34] Mike: I believe you.
[00:06:35] Jon Torine: You don't. I believe that and to give it to a 16 year old kid was just I still get goosebumps over that man. And so I go to Springfield, I'm like, Okay, I want to be a strength coach, you know, again to the NFL is like thinking you're going to be a star in a Hollywood movie they happen. But I knew the string. So like, hey, guy can do this. And I worked for a coach, Marv Levy, with the Buffalo Bills. And Marv, you always talk about he hated hate, it's probably not the right word. But he never liked when people would ask him, how do I get to coach in the NFL? And Marv would always say, look, I love your question. I don't like the ending asked me, how do you become a great coach? The level will be what the level is. It's not to discourage you from the NFL. But if you're only in love with the NFL idea, you're gonna miss the whole boat. And so you may or may not get to the NFL. And by the way to second mark, I've seen better high school coaches in some cases in the NFL, and vice versa, though. High School, College NFL, isn't this good better, best, it's a bunch of coaching.
[00:07:47] Mike: Well, some of it's gotta be locked to, you're right place at right time who you know, that's there's so much that goes into any profession about getting to a certain level. There's only so much you can control.
[00:08:00] Jon Torine: Yeah, that's exactly right. And to reaffirm your point, and I'm always, frankly, a little embarrassed of how I got there. Because the way the stars aligned is ice when I the times that I discuss it. It still blows my mind. So when I was a sophomore, I was in a nutrition course at Springfield, a one on one nutrition course taught by the baseball coach. Many of the coaches at Springfield I also teach it's a small teaching institution. So MCA School. And Coach Roy's who just got inducted into the Western Mass Hall of Fame for baseball, so I didn't know him. He didn't know me. I wound up without getting into the long intricacies of how this happened. But I wound up knowing an answer to a question that he asks. And the reason I knew the answer to the question and he asked Mike is because as I told you before, I fell in love with this idea of how do you get better, and that became a big hobby of mine. So I'm reading at a young age strengthing auditioning journals. That's what I actually found. You'll appreciate this. Gilbert, who was a sports psych professor at Montclair State. What's his first name now? Oh man, the book was called “Gilbert on Greatness” was one of the first sports psych books I read. I was probably seven. And I was like, this is really cool. And that kind of opened my eyes. Wait a minute, you know, I've got my own plenty of my own anxieties and doubts and all these other things and I got hurt. And I was in a real Tailspin around my identity and what the hell's going on and you know, all the things that you espouse and help people with the level that you are which I can't respect any more. And so Coach Roy's were in the class, and as I told you, I just read on the side I happen to the night before be I was reading about it was an article. And within this one article was, there was no Internet, at least that I knew about was B Vitamins. And there was like [inaudible 00:10:14]. And Coach Roy’s asked a question if you got the answer right, he would give you like an A in the course or the next exam. And he was like this old school farm TOF Western Mass. I think he had a dip in his mouth during college, you know, ready to go, cap on, shoes on, you know, spikes, he's ready to go. Baseball, he's the greatest, the absolute greatest. And he's always ready to go. The nutrition course was just something he did to pass time. He loved it, and he was great at. And I knew the answer to the question, embarrassingly enough, because I had read it the night before. So the one thing I will tell you as much as I talked about stars aligning, friends of mine had brought this out to me and kind of made me go stop saying you didn't do anything. I don't say this to be self-serving. But because I was studying because I was reading, because I was talking to people, I was learning.
[00:11:16] Mike: Yeah, you're right. And listen, I'll take it back to the phone call to Johnny Parker, a 16 year old kid who's gonna pick up the phone and call an NFL Coach. Like, it just doesn't happen now. So you are taking your fate into your own hands to move the ball forward. And I think that that's a lesson that should not be overlooked. Because I talk to young people about it all the time. If you don't like where you're at, and you want something to be different, or better, you got to have to do something about it. It's not going to come to you. And I think that that's a really important lesson to shine a light on.
[00:11:55] Jon Torine: Now, I appreciate that. I think you know, to me, it can't really came from my grandparents, my parents would say not as eloquently as you just did, but similar things like, Hey, if you want it go, like go get it, like whatever get it means, exactly long as it's legal. Go, go do it. Well, whatever it means, and who cares. You're gonna get hung up on so what? You know, I've been hung up on so many times. I can't even tell you, Johnny didn't you know.
[00:12:30] Mike: There you go.
[00:12:32] Jon Torine: But I appreciate that. So I had answered the question correctly. And I was scared to death even raise my hand. We were filling them out on post it notes and he was collecting him. And when he got to my row I was I'll never forget four rows over four seats back. And he was mad like that, I don't know why I waste my time. And you damn kids. You don't know why, you know? And then he gets to mine. He's like, whose is this? Who said B6? Who knew this? And I'm like, got my head down on my desk. I'm gonna go, Oh God. No, I was like, forget it. Let the kid I was like, you tell them it's yours. Like I didn't want I was scared to death of them. So scared to death. And so I like raised my hand real awkwardly, you know? And he's like, whatever your name is back there, you see me after class. So now I got 55 minutes it just absolute hell. Whatever he taught that day, I couldn't tell you. I was too in my head go and this guy is mad for no reason. So anyway, calls me at the class. I go see him and he starts talking to me. Yeah, where are you from kind of stuff. And he goes, what are you doing here in Springfield? Why are you here? And I go, well, to be honest, I wanted to go down to Florida and I thought I'd be written jet skis in the Bahamas when I was done with college. You know, my damn D coordinator sent me here. Why? What do you want to do? I want to be a strength coach. Don't be a strength coach. How come you knew that answer? As a coach, I was reading a thing last night in the NSCA journal. It happened to be in there. I wouldn't have known the answer two days ago. He goes, I appreciate that. So he goes, Okay, take a walk with me. And I'm like, put my hand on my pocket like on my Swiss army knife. Like, I don't know what this guy is going to do. I'm going self-defense. I'm like, Okay. I'm thinking back to my training a little bit big time. He just squashed me anyway. No matter what I did. It eats nice. So we take this 10, 15 minute stroll back to his office, he sits down and he's talking to me the whole time. You know, kind of interviewing but you know, whatever he was doing is a well-seasoned coach who's worked with a million kids. Now, as I mentioned, is in the Western Mass Hall of Fame for baseball, knows what he's doing. And so we go back. He picks up the phone, he calls Rusty Jones. I followed who all these strength coaches in the NFL were. Once I got that phone call with Johnny, I was hooked man. Rusty Jones was a strength coach at the Buffalo Bills at the time. This is this is early 90s Bill's heyday when they were going to Super Bowls, and I hear him talking. I could hear rusty on the other end of the line. I don't know, Rusty, but I know the name. And you could tell they were. It was Sharon, like, How's your wife doing like each other? And turns out Rusty had played for coach at Springfield, and all that. And so he says to rusty, you know, they get through to small talk. I'm sitting there on his couch. I don't know. I'm sweating. I'm about to throw up. I don't know what's going on. And he goes, Hey Rusty, because I got a kid here named Jon. I take up a great intern for you wants to be a strength coach. I was like, did I hear you? And he goes, and I can hear the conversation because rusty, you're not who I'm very funny. And he's like a second father to me, mentor everything. He's got a very loud voice.
[00:16:10] Mike: He's a strength coach.
[00:16:12] Jon Torine: Strength coach. He's got a lot. He's a New Englander. So he's got this out.
[00:16:18] Mike: I know the time.
[00:16:20] Jon Torine: He's from Maine. Sounds like he never left. And so he's one of the greatest human beings in the world. So anyway, so I hear him go, let me talk to him. So he hands me the phone on the cord and I'm shaking. You know, I'm shaking. So I geo, Hello. Then he starts asking me a couple of things. And he says to me, what year are you? And I said, I'm a sophomore coach. He goes a sophomore? He goes, geez, he said, Look, you got three years to your senior, whatever you got. He said, I could be fired three times by then. I don't know where I'm going to be in three years. Now rusty happened to be by all counts. Yes, I'm biased, but unbiased. I can tell you. I'm not sure there's a more qualified better strength coach that has lived but yeah, he's in the top five for sure. So he said he wouldn't go anywhere too fast. But he said, Look, if Coach Roy’s likes you, I like you just stay in. Okay, that's all I can tell. You just stay in touch with. Okay, give me back and coach. They say the president trees, they hang up Coach Roy’s. I mean, what do you think of that? I said, Coach, I'm not. I don't have the words. I don't even know what to say I'm, I'm sweating like, I don't know. It's still stuck around it. And he goes, we'll do it. He said, you understand me, don't screw it up. I'm not an old school baseball coach again, here and anything. Do whatever he said. And he goes, next thing you can do is you can take that conditioning manual behind you to Buffalo Bills manual from 1987, and you're going to study it. Take it out of my library, and you're going to bring it back to me in about a week. I don't want that thing. Get out of here. There's no internet. So I take and I'm like, how am I gonna get this thing back to him in a week. I can't remember all this stuff. So I go down to the local Cumberland Farms with about a million nickels. And I start copying this manual about 150 pages took me about two hours with the Cumberland Farms. And I bring this on now I got my own copy. I had that thing memorized, memorized, didn't know what the hell any of that meant but I had it memorized. And I stayed in touch with Rusty. And the long and long was I wound up there going up there as an intern. A couple years later. I wound up being there, and then I was getting ready to leave. And I was looking to be either GA grad assistant strength coach somewhere get a job. I had enough a college to be honest with you at that time. I had enough.
[00:19:06] Mike: You're right. I recall the feeling.
[00:19:09] Jon Torine: But I knew Hey, if you're gonna do this, you probably gotta be a grad. So I'm making phone calls all over the place, and what I had to do, and Rusty kept telling me Look, he's like, how's the phone calls going? Because he knew I was calling. He gave me permission to call around and stuff. And everywhere college high schools, pros, everything I got and not too good, Rusty. There's people hanging up on me and just not nice. Some guys are nice, but there's nothing available this like he goes, well who was nice. I tell him. He was who hung up on me. So I tell him and he goes, do me a favor. Not at a spider out of being angry or anything. It's just remember who hung up on? He goes someday. They're your Sunday they're going to be calling you. And I was like, well, I think. A few weeks later, they tell me we want to keep you here to be a full time assistant strength coach. There was no as soon as a few assistants in a league at the time, and I happen to be in a right place. And the apologies I don't make is that I busted my ass.
[00:20:16] Mike: Well, but I want to go back to that, because I think it's important. Again, all the things that you did, that were in your control led to the breaks that you got, if you didn't read the article to answer the question to show that you were prepared for the work, you wouldn't have got the introduction by your professor, by a teacher. You get there. If you don't follow up with rusty, you probably don't get the internship. You go there, you show up, you bust your ass, they offer your job, right. It doesn't happen by hand. It's not happenstance. It's like the accumulation of all the little things that you do that you don't get, you know, patted on the back for over those years that put you in that position.
[00:21:01] Jon Torine: Now, yeah, fully agree. It's the do what you can control, and it's easier said than done. That's for damn sure. But you know…
[00:21:9] Mike: Of course, you know, because I'm sure there were some pretty rough days there, you know, where it's like, where's this going or you know, I'm making next to nothing. How am I going to survive? Because I'm sure you weren't getting paid a king's ransom. Your take everybody wants those jobs. So you take the take, and you gotta sacrifice?
[00:21:26] Jon Torine: Yeah, there's no doubt. So yeah, no doubt about me. That's why I was on my way, I had to leave. I begged to stay longer, because I wanted to learn, but I was maxed out on credit cards. I was living with, Rusty was put me up at his house. Wow, you know, and all those financial stressors that you have, and all these other things, but look, you know, at what point is it worth it to you or not? And so that's where that was, but you know, those things do line up, and hopefully, you're ready if and when they do whatever the heck it is.
[00:22:09] Mike: Right. So I'm curious, like, can you talk about as an intern or as a strength and conditioning assistant? Like, I'm just curious about what that looks like, what your day to day is, what kinds of things you're doing, what the experience is like, because I think it's just interesting.
[00:22:35] Jon Torine: Here's what I because I was like, I can't believe I'm sitting here. I was driving to the rich Stadium at the time is the bills. Every day, I'm pulling in with this bill stating, this is the era of Jim Kelly, Bruce Smith, Thurman Thomas, Andre and Elise Bennett. Phil Hans.
[00:22:54] Mike: Some of the greatest football players ever
[00:22:56] Jon Torine: Ken Hall, God rest his soul. All of these guys. Pete Metallurg, who I coach with later, Frank Reich had just left. I worked with Frank in Indy. I mean, and PBS was excellent. The first guys I met because I had to throw them out of the weight room because he was not under contract with that guy. He was nice, because he could squash me too. But to your question, like, what I knew is this, I gotta learn everything as much as I can. Because I have this guy, this Rusty Jones all day every day. And I had him at home, and the only person I know at that time that love to talk strength coach was me to him.
[00:23:39] Mike: Match rated heaven.
[00:23:41] Jon Torine: Yeah, and he's a mentor, a teacher, brilliant guy. And he gives me projects that I'm working on him at home, I'm staying up in his bedroom that they call Jon's room. And he's got me working on nutrition numbers and all these things at night. So I'm saying nothing else to do a single what am I doing? And but what it looks like is I said I'm gonna get there before him. I'm going to learn as much as I can. I'm going to soak it up. I'm gonna do whatever the hell needs to be done. And not in a kiss ass fashion, I didn't grow up that way. But you know, whatever it was and what you know, hey, the cooler needs ice, the cooler needs ice like the treadmills need wiping? I’ll show you this real quickly, or anybody else. The glamour wears off in about 36 hours. After that, it's a job, and it's a hard job. There's many hard jobs, this is one too. And so I did that where I made a mistake, one of a million mistakes. And I think so many and maybe you have to like so many young will. I would say early 20s, you probably do this a lot people do this. I actually wound up I'm like, okay, Rusty is this unattainable human being. But boy that, like Johnny Parker saying, so I'm like, I am so far from that. But how cool would that be to be like that? What I didn't process was, I actually turned into rusty. I'll be using the same jokes he's uses. I took on his personality in addition to all of the genius things that he knew as a profession as a professional, on top of, he's married to a great lady, a great sons and a family man, what I espouse to be and all these things are guys the perfect human being. And once I realized I didn't have to be him, it was okay to be me but learn the stuff, be mentored and this is what a great apprenticeship or mentor will do for you and with you. And you know, to the time in 2006, I'm with the Nina Indiana, Indianapolis Colts. I had left Buffalo in 1998 when Indianapolis as the head Strength Coach. 2006, Rusty is now with the Chicago Bears. We play each other in a Super Bowl.
[00:26:21] Mike: I remember, obviously.
[00:26:23] Jon Torine: We win the Super Bowl. I'm feeling terrible, because he hadn't won one yet and been doing it forever. The four Wood Buffalo now five for Chicago is happier for me as a mentor.
[00:26:37] Mike: It's such an amazing thing.
[00:26:38] Jon Torine: You know, and it was a weird thing. But once I learned I didn't have to be him. But I could learn this stuff. And I think so many of us do that. I think you would know him probably better than I. But don't you know, it's kind of a natural progression, maybe, you know,
[00:26:56] Mike: It is. I think it's just a comfort level in yourself that you can kind of be yourself. But I think that's in any sort of apprenticeship or, you know, teacher student relationship. Like, you follow your role model and you try to mimic it, because you like what they're doing. But eventually you find you adopt the principles, but you find your own personality, when you get comfortable enough to sort of use your voice.
[00:27:22] Jon Torine: You do Mike, you do. You know, success leaves trails, but you got to separate what successful versus because now you're just a bad carbon copy of somebody.
[00:27:33] Mike: Right, exactly. And listen, it's a fine line to write. It's a fine line of taking the lessons and taking the wisdom and information you're getting and making it your own. Not everybody can do that. Not everybody is secure enough to stick their neck out on the line and be that and I think it's so it leaves me a question. So I was looking at Rusty’s bio, we're talking to you still in the league up until last year, it looks like.
[00:28:03] Jon Torine: It looks so nice. He’s still there.
[00:28:05] Mike: He's still there at the Colts? So he's still in the league. When you go off and go on your own, and you become the head strength coach in Indianapolis. At that point, he's still in Buffalo. Like, what was that experience that transition? Like for you to take now? It's my shop like now I'm running things like how did that go?
[00:28:24] Jon Torine: Well, first of all, I was scared to death.
[00:28:26] Mike: I'm sure.
[00:28:28] Jon Torine: So put you guys I'm going to assist him in Buffalo with all those old vets that are wearing yellow jackets now and Hall of Fame, among other guys that. So you're talking about being young coaching guys older than you. You know, you never played in or coached him. You talk about going, you know, all of the things that you and guys in your field, Mike Gervais and all these other great ones espoused we talk about I'm sorry, Oh My God imposter syndrome and all these things are. And so I didn't want to leave buffalo. Bill Polian became the president of the Colts in 1998. Bill had been with the bills through the big years and the Super Bowls. Bill's in the Hall of Fame as an executive now, I wasn't with Bill and Buffalo. Bill wanted to bring the same strength conditioning program to Buffalo, excuse me the ND had in Buffalo. The only other person that kind of knew it, because I was Rusty’s first assistant ever and he had been in Buffalo 10 or 12 years at the time. So there was nobody that spent every day with him for three years. Again, Rusty's like, well, you should take Jon bill. And I'm like what? I'm like, No, there's no way I can do.
[00:29:58] Mike: I'll just stay here. Thanks.
[00:29:59] Jon Torine: No, I like a security blanket. It's very comfortable. It's very safe. It's very nice. I can't screw up too bad because you got me. Do your mindset. It was a strength coach. He said, you know, Jon, it's a lot easier to make suggestions and decisions.
[00:30:15] Mike: It’s a great line, I love that.
[00:30:17] Jon Torine: It's a great line. The difference in being an assistant versus ahead. Is that one, that's the line?
[00:30:26] Mike: Yeah. 100%.
[00:30:28] Jon Torine: And so I'm like, Rusty, no. He's like, you're ready. You gotta you gotta go. I'm like, and I'm arguing with him. No, are you crazy?
[00:30:36] Mike: How old were you at that point?
[00:30:37] Jon Torine: I'm freaking 25, Mike.
[00:30:40] Mike: Come on, really?
[00:30:41] Jon Torine: Yes.
[00:30:42] Mike: Wow. No wonder why you're scared shitless, I would have been.
[00:30:46] Jon Torine: No, I'm like, I'm like Rusty, I shouldn't even be here anyway. There's 10 million more people qualified to meet to be here, let alone go to Indian duties with Bill Polian, the best executive in the league. Jim Moore was the head coach at the time of the New Orleans Saints. Former Marine, I’m like what, I'm like, no. And now it's 98. The culture three and 13, they're going to drive you to Peyton Manning or Ryan leaf at that time. So I go he's like, rush like now you're ready. You gotta go. Bills, what Bill need you it's going to be fine. And I talked to all the coaches in Buffalo Wade Phillips, just taken over for Mark Lee and he is the head coach. He was the D coordinator at the time. And Wade had a long conversation with me a lot of advice because he had been not only his dad coach he could, they've been around. Now one thing I listen to is the old guys. And which, you know, there's buffalo coaching staff was all 50 year old and above. And it was great because I got to listen to those guys all day.
[00:31:56] Mike: Sitting under the Learning Tree as they say.
[00:31:58] Jon Torine: Yeah, and call it listen you and it was it also it always started with listen, you young punk. And then they had the lace. So I knew when I heard listen, you young punk, it was good stuff coming. They did it right, and got everywhere. It was amazing. So I go interview at the combine. I go over as a Buffalo Bills coach. I'm interviewing Bill Polian, Jim Moore and a bunch of other people in the room, he grabbed me at the combine in February 1998. And go through this whole interview, and they want to and I leave the interview, they come down and they grab, I go back down to the one of the testing rooms where we were working. And one of the staffers came down and said, Hey, Jon, Coach Moore, and Bill want to talk to you I just left because now I know we're about to offer you a job. I'm like, no, like, no. And behold, they wind up hire me. And I go over there. And I mean, the mistakes and the, you know, I was like first I get it. Okay, there's a new sheriff in town. This is how it's gonna go. Right. Right. And that doesn't work. And then you learn all you get through, okay. But I had the credibility going over that I came from a good place. They knew Bill is the guy that hired me. Everybody's scared of the president and so, and Bill, God bless him random place like the Irish mafia. That's how we liked it. You know, and I don't say that negatively.
[00:33:33] Mike: No. I mean, I've seen Bill Polian, more than a few times on television, and I doesn't surprise me one bit.
[00:33:41] Jon Torine: Those bills. Again, no words, just amazing, brilliant guy, super well-read smart, just detail, just listener, one of the great listeners of all time. It's one of the greatest.
[00:33:54] Mike: It's such an important skill to have. That's what makes a leader is to really sit back and not talk, but listen when you need to.
[00:34:01] Jon Torine: He was a great listener. Oh my God. And that's where I learned on like, what you say and he'll remember you know.
[00:34:12] Mike: Well, that's true, too. You got to choose your words carefully.
[00:34:15] Jon Torine: And don't get don't bullshit and don't be wrong you know. And so anyway, so we had some players come over that also when you have players that you knew and that respect to you write that spreads in a locker. Hey, Jon does credibility. You know, Jon can help you Jon's got you back. You can trust Jon.
[00:34:38] Mike: Definitely, goes such a long way.
[00:34:40] Jon Torine: And that was really the thing that got me over the top and we had a rough first year. I almost actually left and went back to Buffalo. It was really tough.
[00:34:49] Mike: What was it about the first year that was so tough that led you to think about leaving?
[00:34:53] Jon Torine: I was working with a guy that was on his way out and Bill needed some time to kind of make that happen, not because I demanded it. It's a long backstory, but I was paired with somebody that, you know, the Hatfields and McCoys, it ain't gonna work that a player's never knew. I was fine. It was I was, I couldn't do what they brought me there to do. And I was I was almost getting sick over it. And, you know, Rusty said, Look, Jon, it ain't worth it. Man, you can come back. Don't worry about it. Like, we'll just make a third position. And GM was, Jon, come back, whatever you want to do. So I got it out. I stayed. And, you know, 14 years later, a man named Reggie Wayne all you know, that was Clark, Jeff Saturday, all these young man and man, that's all the kids do want to talk about anymore. But everybody loves paddle yet.
[00:35:51] Mike: Is he as much of a character as he comes?
[00:35:55] Jon Torine: He's a super guy. He's all hard. He's charitable. And he is…
[00:36:00] Mike: Go ahead.
[00:36:01] Jon Torine: He was really young when we add him route.
[00:36:03] Mike: As much as I hate to admit it here publicly, but I am a wrestling fan. And I love him his energy, what a dude.
[00:36:14] Jon Torine: Yeah, he's absolutely fantastic. It's absolutely fantastic. And anyhow, so you know, get 14 years later to super bowls long one, but I, you know, I tell people all the time. You know, you could ask any former coach, any former player, any former military person, even though the two things have nothing to do with each other. But when you say, what do you miss? The answer is a locker room. Nobody missed the room.
[00:36:38] Mike: The people, the relationships 100%. I've been thinking about that the whole time. Like, these are all people that I just know their names. And I know you, and so when I listened to it, I have a sense of where they're coming from, because you have a relationship with them. But I think most people who listened like wow, like the name. But at the end of the day, they're just people. Like, they have a job to do. And they're good at what they do, obviously, but they're people and you have a relationship with them. And they live their lives in a normal way. And you know, I've gotten to know some people who've played at the professional level as on a personal level friends, that regular people, they're just regular people who happen to be really good at what they do.
[00:37:21] Jon Torine: That's right. You know, like, in most cases next door, anything else, Mike. They really are and you know, it's so interesting, and people don't see and I get it, you know, people see the tailgate in the stadium, I get it, and we all get it and all these other things. But you know, one of the guys just to Dallas just texted me the other day. He just did an Ironman Triathlon. And he sent me the picture of him finishing, he goes, hey, check this out. And I'm like, oh, you know, this was two days ago. But let me put it to you. So we had a 10 year Super bowl reunion a few years back. And we all got together and end and it was amazing. Yeah, I'm not sure, Mike, I can tell you this for a fact. Any conversation I was in with anybody there. I'm pretty sure I'm almost certain that not one conversation. I don't even know if the guys notice score to Super bowl doesn't mean they don't care. Don't get me wrong. But no game came up. What comes up is the nonsense, the story, the plane rides, how's your family? How's little resource? How's that? How's your wife? How's your this? How's your that? How did you hear about him or her whatever. And games do not come up. It's they don't even come up. And so we're all worried about, you know, some Saturday afternoon on a field in the middle of nowhere in New Jersey with a bunch of six year olds. And I'm here to tell you, the Super Bowl doesn't even come up.
[00:38:58] Mike: Right. But it's a really important lesson. Like, it's about the connections and the relationships you develop with people. The lessons that sports teach us about life, you know, and as it's probably a good segue, you talk about coaching young people, right? And there's so much emphasis on what goes on in professional sports of the media, who's even at the high school level, who's going where and announcing my commitment and all this other crap? And it's like, Nah, it's about what you get out of it. And how you become a better person?
[00:39:36] Jon Torine: 100%.
[00:39:39] Mike: Yeah. So I mean, you were there for 14 years you said?
[00:39:42] Jon Torine: I was Indy 14 and Buffalo three year.
[00:39:45] Mike: So when you left, what led to you, we've talked about this in some but what led you to leaving Indianapolis like and that was your last job in professional football, correct?
[00:39:55] Jon Torine: As a full time guy that you know, I've done consulting in NBA and MLB and MLB and…
[00:40:02] Mike: Rise a full time staff and combat?
[00:40:04] Jon Torine: Yeah. First and foremost, and I don't say this with judgment or criticism by any means a couple of things one in 2005 when Coach Dungy son took his life and had a really profound effect on myself and then and if the Dalai Lama, Tony Dungy, if he has a son with trouble, that means anybody can, Andy Reed say. And I remember, we were flying down to his funeral. And me and my, they took all the families down. And I said to my wife, I don't know if this is worth it. And what I meant was, you know, as I as I grew up in that in this league I grew up in and I was around all these old coaches who said, Listen to me, You young punk. I saw an inordinate amount, and I talked to a lot of their kids. Hey, well, how did you like moving? Moving every three years? And how did that affect you? And I was really, and, and a lot of divorce and things like that. And it's not a judgment.
[00:41:11] Mike: No, it's there's a life choices that you make that have consequences.
[00:41:14] Jon Torine: And so I was like, okay, and I grew up. I was born in the house, I left for college and NFL, like coaching, so foreign to me. Moving on. And so but now a lot of excuses him, Oh, Jon, it was great experience, I got to live here, and they're there. And I got all these friends all over the country. And there's a lot of awesome experiences, really, but I have made the decision. I'm like, Look, the way we need to do this. And I work for Coach Dungy, who made you go to your wife's ultrasound appointments at any time in the year you talk about a family man. And that's a cool way before football and, and it was amazing. And Coach Cole loves him call the same way to coach Dundee. And after Indy was over, we had some bunch of different job offers, but I wanted to be around my kids, I wanted to raise them the way I wanted to raise them, which was to be present as much as I could possibly present. The jobs that I was offered, was actually going to flip it even less time. And we're going to be in a city that we wouldn't wind up leaving and I didn't want to them back in New Jersey where we're from around their family and I wanted to be with them. And there's a couple jobs we had where my kids were like that, what do you like let's go like they wanted to go you know, and I'm like, I won't get to be around you they're like so what your problem not mine you know but that was the reason that we did that and come back here and right to Fair Haven New Jersey a year and have zero regrets. You know, what do I miss about the NFL? We talked about it. You missed the relationships and the guy. What led me to this youth sports thing? Looks like yourself, Mike. In one word discussed. But when typically when you discuss it, whether it's your weight, your finances or anything else is when you decide to make a change.
[00:43:23] Mike: Right. When you get to the bottom you say right now it's time.
[00:43:28] Jon Torine: It’s disgusting. And so I was sitting it was my younger son. I have two boys that are ones 19 ones at. And ironically, my 19 year old is at Indiana University was born in Indiana. So it's really cool. But my younger boy, second grade, we're in Indiana, I go see his travel, excuse me his baseball game. His baseball game second grade baseball. I hadn't been around us for 10 years, Mike. And real quickly. I walked on that field and what I saw horrified me, and I'm talking about the behavior of everybody except the children. And but I didn't know and I sat next to a friend of mine. I was like, what’s going on here, man? And he's like, nothing, Jon, don't worry about it. You're not here much. I get it, this is normal. And I'm like normal. I'm like, what of this behavior is good for the kid. Look what's going on here? Are parents banging on the backstop, screaming, get coaches and umpires cussing each other out to get kids crying everywhere. This is Indiana where you if there's nicer people than in the state of Indiana. I haven't met him yet. You know, the Midwest people are the best. They're the best not like us church.
[00:44:36] Mike: I lived in the Midwest for seven years, and I couldn't agree with you.
[00:44:39] Jon Torine: They’re greatest, they did great. We're a bunch of jerks around here. So we had to adjust to that. And it was great. But anyway, so my friend said to me, Jon, stop worrying about it. This is normal. Don't worry about it. And that minute, and this is to doubt this is I'm still in Indy, and I sat there and I said, okay, because he didn't want to talk about it anymore. And I said, Jesus, is this normal? And I gotta find out if he's right. And I went on this mission as I like to do. And you mentioned it with yourself before I dug in. I was like, I gotta go learn about you sports. I don't know what's going on. I know what my experiences were, which were I you know, if I had 10, coaches 5, or the reason I was able to coach in the NFL, and five of the reason that I ended up in a psychiatrist. So you know, what, is he right? So, because I was around a long time and access to some great, great folks all over the world, and I call them and tell me about what's going on in new sports. And can I come visit you and yeah, and then we wound up, you know, you wind up speaking, they want you to speak and so I put together all these workshops around youth coaches, and coaching and sport parents and kids of what I learned, you know, Tony Dungy, like, like Marv said, it's coaching, it's not the NFL. Well, Tony Dungy his coaching can go not only any level of any sport, but by the way, he and many others have made me a better parent, a better father, a better husband, a better person, a better everything. And I was always intrigued by “Personal Development”, whatever the latest word for that is now I don't know. But growth, whatever, we get it always super, super, every day, every day. So I go on his journey and his mission. And then Mike, when I found out that 70% of our kids are quitting youth sports by the age of 13, that's when I stopped in my tracks. And I said, okay, my friend was right, this is normal that this is nuts. What he wasn't right about for me was telling me not to worry about. And that day, I said, I am going to worry about because 7 out of 10 kids are leaving at the age of 13. And what's left for them to do is become anxiety ridden depression, suicidal tendencies, opioid use and abuse, I can go on about the physical problems easily emotional and mental that you can speak to better than I is it and it's not just because they're not playing a sport. It's that they've lost the people in the mentors, these caring adults in the community that they have those of them that are doing it the quote right way and we don't have.
[00:47:37] Mike: I think you put your finger on to something really important, because I see this in my work. And as a parent, God bless him, you're a parent, I'm a parent. Being a parent is not enough, being just having good parents is not enough. Because the natural human tendency is for kids, my kids to not listen to me, because I'm dad, right. They want to do it their own way. And so I want my own children to have a voice around them. That sounds like mine that I know they'll listen to. And that's really hard to find. The voices that my kids are hearing are not the ones I want them to hear. But in some respects, I have a choice. But I don't have much of a choice if I want them to play sports. Because there's not really that many good options for having a coach who's going to espouse the same principles and values that I do when I'm coaching young people.
[00:48:33] Jon Torine: There's no doubt, you know, many of us have a friend who will take our call at 3am. If you're lucky. If you're lucky, you have one. I have a few. You’re lucky you have one. I consider myself very lucky seeing guys. That will take my call at 3AM if I needed anything anywhere, anytime, with no questions asked. Yeah, and I say that to say this, I used to ask my kids, and I still do all the time. Tell me an adult, who you would call a three. And that's not a relative doesn't have our last name, or a relative at all. That you would feel comfortable telling anything or that you trust implicitly. And I wouldn't even have to know me and your mother would even have to know you talk to them. Who is that? And they would tell Mrs. this Mr. this sometimes it was teachers sometimes. Sometimes it's friend's parents. And I would want them to recognize who those people were. Because I want you to understand two things. There's people out there that you can tell because I know you're not going to tell your parents everything. I'd be naive to think you. And I know this, we would like to but let's be real. That's and so not have I wanted them to become super aware that they have adults in their life. And we've had the same conversation about friends. But at teenagers, it's a little complex. But here's those adults that now you're super aware of because I've asked you the question that you can go to it's not me that I don't even have to know. And for them to know, just because I say something or your mother says something, we're human, we're not right. And so exactly are those people and go see them. And I want you to listen to them. And I don't care if it's, sometimes they might contradict something I say, I control what they're talking about. But if you trust them, you will also know and they're great people, they also know that they're wrong off into.
[00:50:25] Mike: What you're teaching your child in that instance, is critical thinking. You take some good from one place, you take some good from another place, you leave some of it behind, then you start to formulate your own judgments and that's what I want for any kid that I work with, whether it's my kids, or my clients, like you need to be able to think on your own and make choices on your own and do things on your own. And if we don't give them the room to make those decisions, which we don't a lot of times in youth sport, because we only order our kids around. And we only tell them what to do. Because we want to win a game that doesn't mean shit in the grand scheme of things. But we're conditioning them for perfectionism. Because it's not okay to make a mistake is we have to win this game because it's really important even though it means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of their lives, that's messed up.
[00:51:13] Jon Torine: It is messed up. It’s you know, we've got this, you know, there's you've hit a lot of meat on the bone there. We've got this, you know,
[00:51:24] Mike: You've got me going, Jon.
[00:51:25] Jon Torine: Oh, I love it. I love it. Absolutely love it. We've got this where'd all cost mentality out there? And here's where it gets fun. Because it's easy for me and you talk about it. But when you talk about well, wait a minute, you don't want to like you don't want to win. You don't want to compete like this is not kumbaya participation trophy that stuff. And we've learned both academically and anecdotally, and in real life, the participation trophy, although well intended, missed it. It missed it, does it backfire?
[00:52:00] Mike: But I think what I've learned, what I think I figured out and I may be wrong about this is there's a difference between wanting to as a coach as an adult, wanting to win a game, because you want your kids to experience the reward and the feeling of winning versus wanting to win the game because I want to win to show that I'm a good coach, or brag to my friends. Those are two different things. I get into it, too. I want to win games. Now when I coach kids, because I know they want to win, they want their hard work to pay off. It matters to them. So I want it to matter to me too. But if we win or lose, I don't give a shit. It doesn't matter. It doesn't change my life. Like, it's got to be for them. And I think a lot of people want to coach and when as adults, because it makes them look good or it makes my kid look good or, you know, who cares?
[00:52:48] Jon Torine: Perception, right. It does that you bring up such a great point. And we talk to our parents all the time, with our sports with our youth program. Yeah, like, look, this is, you’re done. This is their time. We're gonna give the sports back to the children. And I'm gonna show you how we're going to do this. It doesn't mean you have to put a duct tape over your mouth. But we're gonna give this sport back to children and you bring up a great point before so a couple of other amazing mentors that I had have Joe Ermine and Jody Redman of the Inside Out initiative. And I would encourage anybody to, to read Joe's book and follow Joe's and Jodi's work from the inside out initiative and look at Joe's TED Talks. And Joe changed my life, among many others way back. Coach Dungy used to bring Joe in and work with players and coaches on coaching. And Joe and Jodi talk about the goal of sports, right is to play practice and prepare to compete to win. Joe has the most beautiful definition of competition, because that becomes an interesting thing. And the definition of competition that Joe talks about is a mutual quest for excellence. And that kind of puts things in, oh, that makes sense. It doesn't mean I stand over you slash my throat and put it on TikTok.
[00:54:14] Mike: We're equals with a shared goal.
[00:54:18] Jon Torine: Yeah. And so when you put it that way, so now the goal, of course is to play practice prepared to compete and win, but it's not the purpose. And the purpose is, why it exists and why we're here and you've alluded to so much of that already. The so once we define the difference in the PERT the larger purpose, you know, they used to ask John Wooden, the great legendary basketball coach, you know, how's your team going to be this year? He was, I don't know, ask me in 20 years, because in 20 years, I'll see what kind of people they become, and what kind of professions they're in and how they're serving the community and then I'll answer the question to paraphrase. And so when you look at that, and when you put it, you know, you talk about the impact that you have as a coach, because all of us, another mentor and friend of mine, John O'Sullivan does a great lesson. He calls it the sticky note exercise. And if you can think back to your favorite most impactful coach you've ever had, or teacher in your life, you could probably come up with that person in about three seconds. If you think back to the one that you would cross the street right now, if you saw them, you can think of that person in about three seconds. And so Jon, does this exercise. And he says, tell me why that person is your face. And we've done this all over the world now. Why? How come that person comes to mind? What is it that they did? Tell me five things that they did? They come up and invariably 80% at minimum of those five answers if you following me here. It can be, might not be super clear. So you're gonna five reasons that person comes to my word or smart short phrase, 80%. I've been in rooms where it's 100%, five out of five. And I've done this exercise as well, with credit to Jon, of course. But see, I've been lucky, Mike. I've never had to have an original thought my whole life, because I've just found people that I go, Oh, that's great.
[00:56:25] Mike: But do any of us really?
[00:56:27] Jon Torine: Well, fair point. Some of us think we do, but I don't. But anyway, so invariably, almost every time 80% above will have words to do with connection. They believed in me, they trusted me, they had my back whatever those things were, very few ever have to do with knowledge or competency. However, don't let that be mis represented as knowledge or competency about the sport or skill or activity doesn't matter. Of course it does. Of course, there's conferences all over this country in the world about how to run a two three zone better. But everybody's complaining about this kid or that kid or this coach I work with or this ad or this administrator and in work if we all think back when you come home at night and whoever you're complaining to or if it's the wall that you're complaining to. Is it ever about the actual work in unbalanced that pain in the ass do down the hall? I hate him. I can't deal with him. Well, what if we were to be able to teach this type of connection and how we understand that? Beautiful, sacred fields? There's a great sociologist Mike, just to bring home this point. I'm sorry to drag on you.
[00:57:38] Mike: No worries, keep going. [Inaudible 00:57:41] sure, I know. I've read his work. So I've read his articles. I know who he is. I had to read his textbook in grad school.
[00:57:48] Jon Torine: Okay, so you should say this better than me, because I'm not as well read on Jay. But I don't know. I say Jay like I know. So keep me in balance here. Jay took Cokely talks about the great sports myth. And please follow up here and add your better context.
[00:58:07] Mike: You're teaching me here.
[00:58:09] Jon Torine: Jay, and you can find his word. Jay has the most beautiful fundamental question. It's not meant to be a trick question. And I hate trick questions anyway. The question is, is are sports fundamentally good. And he lets it hang out there. I just asked this at our coach training two weeks ago with 50 coaches in our room, both our staff, coaches, and parent volunteers. And the answer to the question is sports are neutral. Sports is a benign thing. Tell me who's in front of these children, these people, these adults. As Joe Harmon says if we take caring adults in a community that model, nurture, teach, develop and grow character, performance, alongside and in unison with skill, performance and fundamental skills and competition, then we have something and character is a skill and if it's a skill, then it can be taught. This is Joe ermine, back to Jay Coker. There, tell me who's in front of your children on that field, where you say go play sports, because if you just play you're going to realize all the beautiful things about sport, the teamwork and the dedication and the discipline and the health and the fit and all these things. That's BS, it’s BS because what one of the reasons I got into this youth sports world is. How dare you take the sacred fields courts, tracks pools and ice and disgrace them, your discouraging horrendous behavior. And I don't blame you because you just don't know.
[00:59:48] Mike: You don't know the difference
[00:59:49] Jon Torine: You don't know and you've been given. Thank you very much because you have the time and at least you volunteered, at least you stepped up and thank you. But there's leaders in the company have you like yourself, Mike, who can say, Look, we appreciate you stepping up. And here's a really great way for these kids when they're 30, 40, 50, 60, 80 years old, when they get asked, Tell me about your most impactful favorite coach that you ever had, that you would give your life for almost. And your name comes up? How great would that feel? Because would you like it to come up? When you say, who's the guy you wouldn't put out if they were on fire? And that's you because of the way you treated that kid. You want to be that guy or gal? I don't you know, so that's where we talk about this difference. And you know, please, if I've discredited Jay in any way.
[01:00:47] Mike: No, you're on point. I was funny, I was pulling up an article because I read his work and it's been a while. But one of the titles of his articles. And this is I think in line with what you're talking about is burnout among adolescent athletes, a personal failure, or a social problem, , question mark. Is it the person, or is society? And I think you know, the answer to anything is, is it's a combination, it depends. But to me, it's more societal. We're not creating the conditions for sustained motivation and sport, because we're rewarding the wrong things. So without understanding the long term consequences of it, like, hey, it's gonna affect your health, hey, it's gonna affect your mental health, it's gonna affect your well-being, it's gonna affect all these other things that happen in your life. Because you dropped out at 13, because we're not doing right by you. And that's concerning. It's disgusting. But it's also to your point. It's because people are just ignorant and not in a pejorative way. They just don't know the difference. Now, the problem becomes, and I know, you know, this better than I do, is when someone does know the difference, and they're trying to help that person understand the difference, so they can be better, and the kids can be happier. And they don't listen. That is where the frustration comes, like, I know better. I'm trained to know better. I've been in that position. I'm not saying I know everything, but I know a little bit more than you. And so rather than telling me I'm wrong, you know, because your ego is too big, open your ears and listen, and maybe take something from it so that we can make this situation better for everybody going down the road. So now you got me on my soapbox. Because there's a lot of people that we think they're expert based upon the fact that they played little league baseball four years ago. Like, give me a fucking break, sorry audience
[01:02:46] Jon Torine: No, I love you with that. I love you know, but it's right. I heard a coach say one time, either you don't know, or you don't care, I'm gonna first assume you don't know. Once you once I know, you know, and now you just don't care. You know, we talk to our parent volunteers about look, we have a way that we like to do this. And we're going to give you books and training and all these things. And Mike, I could do your taxes for you right now. If you'd like I can step up and volunteer and do your taxes. And I would probably have you audited and in jail in about two seconds.
[01:03:18] Mike: That’s a great analogy, not the right guy to be doing the taxes.
[01:03:22] Jon Torine: I'm willing to do it. If you're willing to let me, you know, I don't think it's a great idea. But doesn't look like anybody else is stepping up to do your taxes for free. So, but the end result is not going to be good. Well, hey, Jon, why don't we get you some accounting courses? Knowledge Base there, about how to do this? Oh, that might help both of us. And so you know, we ask our volunteers look, if you if you're not interested in this, just many you know, then please sit in the stands and enjoy your child that way. But we don't use the phrase just a volunteer that just a volunteer, you need a buck. Now you're not a volunteer, but we don't use that phrase, because I think it demeans what you're out there trying to do, which is if there's more important work than standing in front of a child and impacting their lives. I'm not other than saving the child's life. I'm not sure what else there is, you know past other than life and death things. I think that's next. And so but that's really where things need to head and the responsibility and the privilege and the honor. So when I first you know, one of the first things I learned when I went to coach a Pop Warner Football team, and I didn't learn until Joe urban started working with us. I was in college and I was done and I me and my friend decided that we'd go help a Pop Warner Football. And I was there and I'm personate these kids and throwing my hat down,
[01:05:03] Mike: The way that you were taught?
[01:05:05] Jon Torine: And I was like, that's how you do it because the coach I had, that's what he did. And one year Mike, we were undefeated unscored upon what we scored on us. That's how good we are as these little kids playing football. So of course, that's how you do it. Of course, that's how you do. But I couldn't figure out why years later. That was that until I understood from Jones. I know you coach the way you were coached. And you Jon thought that was right now, on those fields that year, I don't know how many kids’ lives I may have negatively affected in that. Hell at him until I learned and I wanted to go into coaching, and I love it.
[01:05:50] Mike: Still you're great. You're undefeated, unscored upon what a great coach, are you. I'm ready for the next level.
[01:05:56] Jon Torine: Yeah, and I played a year in college football. I mean, I'm here, thank God, the world can stop. I've arrived. And so, you know, that's what happens and until you awareness about it, and about yourself, you know, as Joe talks about, you know, in order to become a better coach, you got to become a better you, that's Joe. And that's really what it is, man. And that's the thing, and we're lucky, we have some amazing coaches, that you know, and what happens is everybody gets scared of their lack of knowledge. You know we've got you I don't know anything about volleyball, Jon, but I'm willing to help, but I'm scared to death because I don't even know a surf from a dig. Okay, well, we can learn technical, especially now, like, can you type YouTube like? And what's really hard to learn is how you affect you know, why don't why aren't we out there? Folks like yourself talking about the self that not to an illness out the self-determination theory. Okay, let's understand about autonomy, competence, and relatedness and what that means. And then knowing how to serve, I could probably find a volleyball coach to teach you that in about 30 seconds.
[01:07:10] Mike: Exactly. So I was just funny, I was just thinking about that because I coach, a coach rec baseball. I've coached baseball since my kid was old enough to play. And if you have a coach that knows how to create the conditions for kids to have a good time, and to develop their skills, you've basically hit the holy grail in the at the youth sport, youth sport level. But if you have a coach that creates the conditions to have fun, and they don't learn a damn thing, they're still coming back next year. It's not fun, but you became a better baseball player, you know what happens? They quit. My son just did it with travel baseball. He went there it was like, you know, he was learning I was happy he was getting better. But he was bored at practices because all they did was drills and they didn't get to hit and he wasn't with his friends because it was a club team and all that stuff. And he said I don't want to do it anymore. I want to go play rack with my friends. Well no shit because it's fun and if I learned if I happen to learn something new and I'm having fun oh holy shit and I'm really want it then I want to get more into it because this guy made it fun for me to learn Holy Cow, what a novel concept.
[01:08:20] Jon Torine: You're so spot on so you know you talk about it soon if we can have them fall in love with the sport not fall in love with baseball because we love baseball. Sporting right to fall in love with sport physical activity connection once they fall in love with it. And the only way to fall in love with something really is that it's fun and fun doesn't mean grab ass recess, findings, I want to be challenged and learn, positively coached and influenced doesn't mean swag and all these other things you know. And so, when your child is saying to you, can you come outside with me in catch? Can you come outside with me and you know, or you hear the volleyball and the basketball, being dribbled through the house and you're screaming at them knock it off, you know, then they love it.
[01:09:15] Mike: That's how you know, you got them.
[01:09:18] Jon Torine: You got them as opposed to them, you go and come on. We're going to batting cages and you know, and then you're bribing them with ice cream sundaes. And so, you know, if they fall in love with it first, however that happens. They'll be pulling you to play and they'll want to go do it. And it's so counterintuitive because we know best, we’re the parents. But they'll be doing that. And you know, I'm not a religious guy and you talked about the conditions but it's really the seed in the soil man. And you need both, you need the right environment, the safe space that we are Basketball coach does this, we do this great thing. And we all do. He's especially into it. At the end of the basketball sessions, the kids sit in a circle. And the first thing he says is, who made mistakes today? And he goes, I better see everybody's hands up. And he's not coming at it for machine thing. He's teaching right now on how we learn and all that. And the kids don't we tell me the mistakes and the kids are shouting over each other. I double dribble and I did amazing is that.
[01:10:28] Mike: Because you're normalizing that it's okay to make mistakes, because everybody makes mistakes, and that's how we learned. The only crime and making a mistake is you don't learn from it. And the problem is that the adults, they demonize you making a mistake, and when you're 12, 10, 13, 15 year old kid, and someone scold you for making a mistake, then you're not going to want to make another one because you don't like the way it feels when someone tells you that you made a mistake. Rather than saying, hey, you made a mistake, it's okay. Like, here's what you could have done better. But I appreciate the effort. All of a sudden, you've created the old proverbial feedback sandwich.
[01:11:04] Jon Torine: That's right.
[01:11:05] Mike: Great effort. Hey, this is what you could have did better. Keep doing what you're doing. Oh, okay, thanks coach. And then they do it. And then when you when they do it, you go, Hey, you see, you did what I just told you to do. And it looked better, good job, where to listen. Like, it's not rocket science instead of but everybody just wants to point fingers, you know, and that's again, I think it's just a lack of awareness. And it's okay to not have that awareness. But at the same time, once you know, then it's on you especially as a grown up.
[01:11:36] Jon Torine: Totally. To that end, I challenge. Anybody that's sitting in gymnasiums of the elementary schools and middle schools, throughout your from wreck on through whatever travel stuff is going on. And look at all of these kids that aren't robots making lefty layups, but when they're doing layups on there, most kids are right handed party on their opposite hand, if you will. And either don't shoot him with the left hand on the left side, if they're righties, but the ball goes in. So we've got this community growing up, and I'm not making out lefty layups to be life and death. It's a great example, though. And so you've got this, why are all of these kids not making lefty layups, but actually, they're on the left side, shooting the ball up with their right hand, I'm not a basketball expert but I know that that's you don't do that. And the ball goes in, and we clap. But it wasn't done. So we fell in love, but because now the outcome is, oh, that ball better go in, regardless of what I do.
[01:12:45] Mike: I just gotta get it in the hoop regardless of how it gets there, even though it's not the right way to do it.
[01:12:50] Jon Torine: Climb up the ladder and put it through as long as that thing goes through. Thank God,
[01:12:55] Mike: Because I don't want to hear from the sideline, that I made a mistake. So I just got to get it in, and I gotta be perfect, and everyone's gonna clap for me.
[01:13:03] Jon Torine: As opposed to, I went up on my right foot, left hand, and I missed, but you know, through repetition, and not boring of the process, that eventually the outcome will happen, if we fall in love with the process. And so you know, when I was coaching, rec basketball, I would actually tell our kids, if you go down, we would work, I'd say, Look, I don't care where the ball goes. If you get the ball in with your right hand on the left side, you're coming out. If you put the ball up with your left hand and doesn't go in, it's no problem. I promise you, if you have a fast break by yourself, and you're heading down the left side, and you go over to your right side, ball inner, ball out, you're coming out. And so and I don't care until we started doing it in practice, but when we're doing lefty laps, I'm like, I don't care where the ball goes, I can just do it. I'm not even looking. If it goes in, I'm just looking at your left hand. And so when it became okay, and we started laughing about oh, look at that one went all the way across the gym, you know, and then all of a sudden they come and then the first kid it's when it happens, man, and first kids going down at court, and they go to make this lefty layup and they couldn't even a few weeks ago in practice, it was hitting him in the head. And it goes in and the place goes bananas, the bench goes bananas, the parent’s goes what the hell's going on here. But the kids are all going nuts. Because they know that's the deal. A lot of them went in, and so get off of you know, let's crockpot this thing, let's don't microwave the beef. Let's crock pot it.
[01:14:41] Mike: I like that, that's a great analogy. That's a really good analogy.
[01:14:43] Jon Torine: You tell me which one you want to eat you know? So we did that and I pulled kids, I'm like, nope, nope. And because you have to make it mean something they're like but it went in. No, I know it went in. I am concerned the whole world knows the ball went in, we all know if the ball went in or it didn’t you know. So it's just one thing I would challenge anybody sitting there, to because this is learning.
[01:15:13] Mike: Yeah. Well, I think we probably only have a couple more minutes here. So I'm going to ask you the question, I asked everybody at the end of this podcast, but I'm going to frame it very specifically for you. Because of the world you're in and you sports and you're doing the work you're doing with iron, and really trying to get the message out about the right way. You know, if you want to call it that, or a better way to participate in new sports, what's the one piece of advice you'd give to a sports parent? It could be anything like, what was the one thing you'd tell them that they need to know?
[01:15:45] Jon Torine: It's great, because we talk to our parents often. Verbally live in our bulletins and newsletters, and things, all in this effort. And one of the things that we tell them, and I think I learned this from John O'Sullivan is well, when they're done at the end of the game, we tell them a lot of things might, but ask them request behaviors. At the end of the game, and it's going to feel really corny and weird. First of all, the kids are already done thinking about the game by the time it's over, you're not there. It is their time, we're gonna give sports back to the kids. And when they're done, all I want you to say is five words. And those five words are “I love watching you play”. And if you'll do that in the car, or right after when you're looking in that rearview mirror, when all you want to do is say, boy, if you would have just done this way you would have caught if you would have ran over, they know and they have a coach, by the way. I don't care if you are Peyton Manning and your son's a quarterback, they have a coach. And so we say watch their face light up in that rear view mirror when you say I love watching you play. And if you note here, anything else we ever say, please do that, and come back and you can tell me what happened. And the first kid that doesn't like it, please call me, because that'll be the first because I want to meet this kid. And tell me what it does to your relationship. Because I'm never going to tell you how to parent, I will discuss in great depth, how to experience an unbelievable relationship with your child around sports. If you'll stop worrying about the perception of visual that your child either got a homerun, rock out. And if you're making it a bad outcome, it's going to really affect them as opposed to being there and enjoying their presence. Because as you criticize, and it doesn't mean again everything is oh, you know, the worst thing you could do is constantly tell you know, and they prove this many ways to. You're great. You're smart, that's not what we said. It's true. It's specific and truthful praise. But not because if you're told your says you will know, Mike, if you're told you're smart all the time the minute you get a ‘B’ on a test now you're a moron and you're scared to test. Well, that's the talk you get. Well sports is the same way. Knock it off with all the stuff. You're a great three point shooter next thing you know the banging off the rim every night. You can't figure out what happened. Well, the expert what you just said means my whole life sucks because I can't make a three pointer now. Enjoy watching them play and dance when they know that you're there as this non-judgmental person unconditional love. That they'll then ask you, hey, what did you think about that play I made? Oh, do you really want to know? What if you got that glove down just a little lower, it would not have gone through your legs. Got it, thanks dad.
[01:19:02] Mike: And the same principles applies as a coach. If they trust you, they will come to you and ask for advice. And they will listen to your advice because they trust that you have their best interests at heart and that you care. But until you have that buy in, then you're just another voice. There's just Charlie Brown's teacher going on. And that's the secret sauce and it is build a respectful relationship with them. And then all of a sudden, you've got a blank canvas because now they trust you and they want you to know they want to know what you have to offer.
[01:19:35] Jon Torine: Same goes into pros, until they trust, they trust.
[01:19:39] Mike: Of course, same goes into my work. If they don't trust me, if someone doesn't trust that I have their best interests at heart and I care about them first as a person, and all I care about is their performance, guess where it's gonna go, it's the freakin toilet.
[01:19:49] Jon Torine: And really like, you are Mike, they really know it not you know, I read in the manual you're supposed to trust me first. So here's all the things I'm gonna say like it's a cold things to call.
[01:19:59] Mike: Well, that's the benefit of life experience. I have that benefit, if I was 20 years younger I probably would. Alright, well, listen, Jon, I know we could talk all day and we usually try to. So I'm going to cut it off there. I gotta move on to my next gig on the schedule. But it was awesome. This is I think the longest podcast I've ever recorded. No, not surprisingly. No, it's awesome. I'm really excited. I love how things went, because I think we got across what we've talked about probably 10 times and private has come across on you know, this podcast and now we get to put it out and maybe someone will listen and take something from it. So I'm excited about that.
[01:20:39] Jon Torine: Now, I always appreciate talk with you, Mike. Always learn something from you. So thank you, man.
[01:20:42] Mike: Thanks, Jon. Take care man.