Check out Mike on socials! @GBGHoops @mrdoitmoving

Use code "coachemup10" for 10% off at https://eleiko.com/coachemup

Head over to https://ovrperformance.com/coachemup and get $25 off

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Coach Mike G (Mike Guevara) joins Tim Riley on the Coach Em Up Podcast to break down 11 years of dues-paying before landing consistent pro athlete clients, what it actually takes to train NBA players, and why your rigid linear program is killing your basketball athletes. GBG Hoops founder and elite basketball performance coach, Mike G covers Victoria Azarenka, Jrue Holiday, Reggie Bush, Fred Vanvleet, the New Orleans Pelicans, Achilles injury prevention, and a whole lot more.

Coach Mike G grew up the son of a 20-year Army veteran, and that military upbringing built the foundation for everything he does on the floor. He played slot receiver, nearly pursued PT, and landed in strength and conditioning the way most great coaches do: by coaching teammates before anyone paid him to do it.

He started as an unpaid intern. Eleven years later, he had a consistent working relationship with professional athletes and a passport full of stamps from traveling the WTA tour with Victoria Azarenka. That first break came because she watched him coach a youth group and liked his energy.

From there: training with Reggie Bush, Jrue Holiday hiring him full-time in North Carolina, and a consulting role with the New Orleans Pelicans working alongside Anthony Davis and Rajon Rondo.

On the training side, Mike G gets into basketball performance training in real depth: why maximal strength testing is not worth the risk with NBA athletes, how he uses toe extension and floating heel isometrics for foot and ankle development, why post-game lifting is severely underrated, and how acute-to-chronic workload spikes and the absence of real top-end sprint work are driving the surge in Achilles tendon ruptures across basketball.

For young coaches, he keeps it simple: test every movement on yourself, never bring a bad day to the floor, and keep learning every single day.

Produced by

Q6 Media

https://q6.media

00:00:00 - Introduction

00:02:28 - Who Is Mike G?

00:05:46 - Football Career, Jumpsoles, and College Days

00:17:28 - Athlete to Performance Coach

00:20:31 - Paying Dues and Career Longevity

00:26:20 - Training Victoria Azarenka

00:34:41 - Training Reggie Bush

00:37:11 - Breaking Into the NBA with Jrue Holiday

00:46:16 - Ego, Mistakes, and Leadership Evolution

00:52:22 - What Separates NBA Players from Everyone Else

01:00:42 - Achilles Ruptures in Basketball

01:04:34 - Daily Non-Negotiables

01:07:23 - Three Formative Coaching Lessons

01:13:14 - Maximal Strength and Foot/Ankle Training for Hoopers

01:17:24 - KPIs for Movement Quality

01:21:44 - Three Things for Up-and-Coming Coaches

01:25:01 - Rant and Rave

01:29:54 - Alternative Career and Overrated vs. Underrated

01:35:21 - Unsolicited Advice

#CoachEmUpPodcast #CoachMikeG #GBGHoops #BasketballPerformance #NBAStrengthCoach #BasketballTraining #StrengthAndConditioning #AchillesInjuryPrevention #JrueHoliday #Podcast

Check out Les on socials! @LesSpellman @les7spellman

Use code "coachemup10" for 10% off at https://eleiko.com/coachemup

Head over to https://ovrperformance.com/coachemup and get $25 off

Check out Train Heroic at https://trainheroic.com

Grab a Subscriber tee at https://www.dripthatdelivers.com

Speed coach and USR founder LES SPELLMAN joins Tim Riley to break down 40 yard dash mechanics, why concentric-only lifting kills your top end speed, overspeed training controversies, and how he survived a 120 mph car crash to walk onto a D1 track team.

Les Spellman went from a fractured femur, opioid withdrawal, and a wheelchair to coaching NFL Combine athletes and building a global Speed Lab network with over 250 locations. This episode covers all of it, plus the actual coaching methodology that got him there.

On the training side: Les explains why speed training built around heavy concentric lifting produces good accelerators who fall apart in transition and at top end speed. He breaks down how to improve top end speed using overloaded eccentrics, reflexive eccentrics, heavy isometrics, overspeed work, and harder running surfaces. He gives a full mechanical blueprint for how to run a faster 40 yard dash, covering launch angle, hip extension through the first four steps, thigh pull, and relaxing through the finish.

On athlete profiling: Les calls out the overrated practice of labeling athletes when the coaching staff never actually changes the program based on those labels. Data without application is just noise.

On NFL combine speed training and the USR: Les tracked over 1.2 million youth and high school sprint tests to build age-based benchmarks, standardizing speed into miles per hour so coaches could finally compare apples to apples across populations.

On coaching development: Les outlines a three-tier pyramid (general population, youth, pros) and makes a case that group fitness instructors have better cueing and room management skills than most sports performance coaches. He also gets into constraints-led approaches, periodizing your coaching voice, and why giving your knowledge away freely online built his career faster than gatekeeping ever could.

Produced by

Q6 Media

https://q6.media

00:00:00 - Introduction

00:02:40 - Les's running habits

00:12:45 - Near-fatal car crash that changed Les' life

00:23:40 - Janitorial grind, interning, and learning to coach

00:32:42 - Ego-free coaching and giving away knowledge

00:42:00 - Scaling Speed Labs, USR, and COVID pivots

01:03:09 - The coaching pyramid

01:08:00 - Force vs. strength and eccentric training for speed

01:21:12 - Constraints-led coaching, periodizing your voice, and the Apex Fast 40 blueprint

01:36:00 - Breaking max velocity plateaus, overspeed tools, and elite dose-response tracking

01:44:06 - Three things every coach needs to do

01:51:13 - Rant & Rave

01:57:25 - Athlete profiling and GPP

02:06:06 - Unsolicited urinal advice

#LesSpellman #SpeedTraining #40YardDash #CoachEmUpPodcast #SprintMechanics #NFLCombine #UniversalSpeedRating #OvespeedTraining #StrengthAndConditioning #PerformanceCoaching

Check out Tawna on socials! @TawnaEubanksMcCoy

Use code "coachemup10" for 10% off at https://eleiko.com/coachemup

Head over to https://ovrperformance.com/coachemup and get $25 off

Check out Train Heroic at https://trainheroic.com

Grab a Subscriber tee at https://www.dripthatdelivers.com

Tawna Mccoy joins the Coach Em Up Podcast with host Tim Riley to talk about her experience growing up in a small to town to becoming an IFBB pro bikini bodybuilder and gym owner. She speaks on the subjectivity and toxicity surrounding the sport of bodybuilding, opening multiple gyms with her spouse, advice for aspiring business owners, youth and D1 sports, why GLP-1s are becoming too popular, why fitness classes are a great way to get people into the gym, and much much more! Plus, you can't miss the story about her gym catching on fire...

Subscribe if you enjoyed the episode! It helps us bring on more awesome guests like Tawna, and it keeps the show completely free!

00:00:00 Intro

00:04:35 Who is Tawna Mccoy?

00:05:36 Growing Up In Waco

00:09:50 Escaping The Small Town Life

00:11:36 Performance/Sports Upbringing

00:16:56 Navigating Big Life Changes At School

00:19:41 Meeting Husband after a Bikini Comp

00:24:06 Getting into Bodybuilding

00:26:58 Olympias and Bodybuilding

00:27:57 The Problem with Perfectionism

00:30:25 Navigating the Toxicity of Bodybuilding

00:37:23 Main Subjective Criteria for the Old Bikini Division

00:41:13 Retiring from Bodybuilding

00:43:57 Opening Gyms with Your Spouse

00:48:23 The Gym Catches on Fire

00:50:47 What parts of being an athlete help with being a business owner

00:52:22 Hold on to good people and Nurture them

00:57:15 Advice For Opening Your First Gym

00:58:07 Taking Over Existing Gym Spaces

01:01:53 The Reasons Gyms Fail

01:03:41 Advice for Someone Opening a Gym

01:07:31 More Gym Chat

01:09:24 3 Things to be a High Achiever

01:12:46 GLP-1 rant

01:14:57 Was the Shake Weight Cool?

01:15:32 Fitness Classes are the Gateway

01:17:59 Unsolicited Solicited Advice