Athlete Builder

Jim Beebe
  • 5.0 (37)
  • Fitness
  • Weekly

Talent gets athletes noticed. The other five blocks get them on the roster. The Athlete Builder Podcast is for the people building athletes — coaches, gym owners, and the parents raising them. Host Jim Beebe spent 13 years running a strength facility (50+ athletes on to college rosters) and wrote the blueprint on whole-athlete development: mindset, knowledge, teammates, training, nutrition, recovery. Every week, one conversation that makes you better at building them — with guests like Ohio State's strength chief, Army West Point's head S&C, Olympic team coaches, and a Blue Angels pilot. Start here: score your athlete across all six blocks with the free Athlete Builder Scorecard — athlete-builder.com/assessmenttest — 15 minutes, and you'll know exactly what to attack first. Win the Day. Stay Relentless.

  1. 5d ago

    #161 | Thomas Roe & Erin Sarles — "That's Not My Problem." Maybe It Should Be.

    Thomas Roe was coaching at an Orangetheory in Colorado when a mom with two high school athletes walked in. Two years later, they're the co-founders of Blueprint to Bluechip. Erin Sarles spent fifteen years running multi-unit operations for Starbucks, Athleta and Orangetheory, and built the CADI framework: character over clout, accountability over excuses, discipline over motivation, integrity over image. Thomas had his college career cut short by two neck surgeries, then spent years racing a ghost: marathons, Ironman, and Route 66 by bike, a hundred miles a day for twenty-five days, raising money for mental health awareness in his sister's name. In this one: the question Erin asked that Thomas answered "that's not my problem," why the best thing a parent can do at a game is clap, what Thomas tells the kid padding his stats on a losing team, the first question he asks every parent (is this your dream, or your kid's?), what gyms and programs get wrong about keeping people, and what breaks between the score and the behavior. IN THIS EPISODE 0:00  Who are Thomas Roe and Erin Sarles? 6:16  "That's not my problem." "Maybe it should be." 8:55  How they met at an Orangetheory in Colorado 9:52  Erin's parent self-audit: learn to just clap 12:55 Route 66 by bike and racing a ghost 17:39 Opening a flagship: no store opening ever goes right 20:39 Fear of failure and the imposter syndrome 23:03 When the playing stops: your dream or your kid's? 25:53 The sibling who isn't the athlete 29:41 "You just lost": the kid padding his stats 31:52 What gyms get wrong about keeping people 35:35 Selling to athletic departments: the check-engine light 39:09 Faith, divorce and no shortcuts 42:28 What breaks between the score and the behavior 48:04 Rapid fire ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ FREE ATHLETE ASSESSMENT All six blocks — mindset, knowledge, teammates, training, nutrition, recovery. Knowledge counts double. See the gaps. Track the trend. → athlete-builder.com/assessmenttest THE TWO MINUTE DRILL One short read every Thursday, pulled from 150+ episodes and what we're learning building champions. → athlete-builder.com/newsletter GYM OWNERS Training is one block of six. You've already mastered that one. Find Jim Beebe on LinkedIn, tell him the sport you coach, and he'll walk you through what the other five look like built around it. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Thomas Roe & Erin Sarles — Co-founders, Blueprint to Bluechip blueprintbluechip.com Instagram: @troefitness · @erinsarles · @blueprint.to.bluechip Athlete Builder with Jim Beebe Win the day. Stay relentless.

  2. Oct 19

    #160 | Nate Harvey — Watch Me: A 1,000-lb Squatter Opens His Gym

    Nate Harvey spent ten years as a Division I strength coach at the University at Buffalo, wrote Conjugate U, and squatted over a thousand pounds. On October 9th he opened his own gym, 716 Elite Prep in Hamburg, New York: a converted car garage where he and his son built the subfloor themselves. We get into how he found the conjugate method by watching Mike Alstott, the text that said "Dave's going to call you in an hour," why 99% of what your kid needs looks too simple, what he tells parents who ask for sport-specific training, and what he did when his monthly costs came in a thousand dollars over budget. Free athlete assessment → athlete-builder.com/assessmenttest The Two Minute Drill → athlete-builder.com/newsletter 716 Elite Prep: @716eliteprep 0:00 Intro 0:00 Mike Alstott and the conjugate method 1:58 Finding conjugate 6:10 "Dave's going to call you in an hour" 8:25 D1 culture shock 11:10 The 1,000-lb squat 14:20 The seed one coach planted 18:28 Identity after sport 23:05 The broken hand 27:24 The look on a kid's face 29:28 Conjugate U and the ones pushed aside 35:02 Too many variables 37:31 Sport-specific training for kids 39:13 Delayed gratification in a DoorDash world 42:07 Trust and buy-in 43:58 The system or the athletes? 49:32 Beyond the weight room 51:52 $1,000 over budget 53:55 The subfloor 56:06 The wow factor 60:42 "I'm not a good salesman" 64:15 What he wants people to say 66:12 Rapid fire Win the Day. Stay Relentless.

  3. Oct 12

    #159 | Steven Shackelford — Walk-Ons, Captains & a First-Rounder

    He trains seventeen kids a year. No advertising. Referral only. And he interviews the parents before he says yes. Steven "Shaq" Shackelford spent 26 years with Capital Group / American Funds, managing just over 400 relationships across the country. Today he's Vice President of Qualified Retirement Plans at Invst. On the other side of his life, he coaches football: athletes in five states, the Thieneman brothers from walk-ons to captains at Purdue, and Chris Evans from his 7-on-7 team in Indy to Michigan to the Cincinnati Bengals. In this one: the two rules his father gave him at twelve, why he'll turn down a great athlete who isn't doing the work in the classroom, act as if (and the three D's that come after it), the forty-year plan versus the four-year plan, and the college athlete whose jersey number cost him six figures, and several million once you run the math. In This Episode 0:00  Who is Steven "Shaq" Shackelford? 4:15  The Tidewater Sharks: two seasons of semi-pro ball 5:52  Watching his athletes play on Saturdays 8:13  The Thienemans: walk-ons, captains, and confidence from reps 10:05 Chris Evans: from a 7-on-7 team to Michigan and the Bengals 13:40 His father's two rules and the Shackelford brand 17:17 Louisville to Irvine, and the grandfather who never took the trip 21:45 Why he only trains 17 kids a year 24:40 Delayed gratification in a DoorDash world 28:17 Leaving American Funds after 26 years 31:29 Act as if: dedicate, desire, dominate 36:05 What good parental influence looks like: "present" 39:14 The forty-year plan vs. the four-year plan 43:51 The $10 million question and the six-figure jersey number 49:11 Rapid fire ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ FREE ATHLETE ASSESSMENT All six blocks — mindset, knowledge, teammates, training, nutrition, recovery. Knowledge counts double. See the gaps. Track the trend. → athlete-builder.com/assessmenttest THE TWO MINUTE DRILL One short read every Thursday, pulled from 150+ episodes and what we're learning building champions. → athlete-builder.com/newsletter GYM OWNERS Training is one block of six. You've already mastered that one. Find Jim Beebe on LinkedIn, tell him the sport you coach, and he'll walk you through what the other five look like built around it. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Steven Shackelford — VP, Qualified Retirement Plans, Invst Instagram: @stevenshackelford1 Athlete Builder with Jim Beebe Win the day. Stay relentless.

  4. Oct 5

    #158 | Clif Marshall — The Two Things He Can't Fix

    He was a first-team All-American who never got invited to the NFL Combine. Clif Marshall has spent 25 years as a performance coach — more than 500 pro athletes, and by his own count, nearly $2 billion in contracts. He walked on at Kentucky as a fullback, failed the one test that was supposed to make him a player, and became a coach instead. Louisville. The Bengals at 24. Ten years building a pro-athlete gym in Cincinnati with clients on all 32 NFL rosters. Eight seasons in the weight room at Indiana basketball. Today he runs pro athlete training at D1 Sports headquarters in Nashville — 180 facilities, 750 coaches. In this one he explains how he put an actual number on grit, what a love-language survey did to a Big Ten basketball team, why deceleration training has to come before acceleration training, and the two things he tells every athlete he cannot fix no matter how hard they work. IN THIS EPISODE 0:00  Cowboy boots at Purdue: "the strength coach wears high heels" 5:15  Teaching iShow Speed to run a 40, next to Brady and Durant 10:25 Luke Kuechly's 60-inch box jump — his only KPI 13:02 The walk-on who failed his own forty, and became a coach 15:02 Ignition: ten years, clients on all 32 NFL rosters 18:43 D1 Sports HQ — 180 facilities, 750 coaches 20:07 NIL, the transfer portal, and the four T's 24:40 How he put an actual number on grit 32:15 The broken freshman: specialization and AAU volume 34:58 The love-language survey that changed his coaching 43:54 Deceleration before acceleration 48:44 "I can make you stronger, but I can't make you longer" 52:57 Landon Robinson — the All-American the NFL never invited 57:03 "One of us goes to the other's funeral" 58:15 Rapid fire ──────────────────────────── FREE ATHLETE ASSESSMENT All six blocks — mindset, knowledge, teammates, training, nutrition, recovery. Knowledge counts double. See the gaps. Track the trend. → athlete-builder.com/assessmenttest THE TWO MINUTE DRILL One short read every Thursday, pulled from 150+ episodes and what we're learning building champions. → athlete-builder.com/newsletter GYM OWNERS Training is one block of six. You've already mastered that one. Find Jim Beebe on LinkedIn, tell him the sport you coach, and he'll walk you through what the other five look like built around it. ──────────────────────────── Clif Marshall — Director of Athletic Performance, D1 Sports Instagram: @clifmarshall (one F) Athlete Builder with Jim Beebe Win the day. Stay relentless.

  5. Sep 28

    #157 | Four Sports, Two Continents, One Big Story. Now What? — Gelen Robinson

    Gelen Robinson was a two-time state champion wrestler, a state champion in discus, and a three-sport athlete at Purdue. He played pro football in the CFL, the AAF and the XFL. Then COVID ended football, so he picked up rugby — and found the sport he loved most. He played hooker and prop, toured Uruguay, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Argentina, and won a championship in LA. He was two weeks from rugby camp and an MLR contract that would have kept him close to his daughters. On New Year's Eve, driving home from work, a drunk driver hit him behind the driver's side door. Severe concussion. No team will sign you with a concussion, his agent told him. Be realistic. He'd never told that story publicly. No retirement post — he says he couldn't bring himself to write one. What he did instead is the episode. A text from an old Purdue teammate, an introduction to a throws coach named Marley Bird, and a new career making other people's kids great. Plus the 40 percent rule, why the mind always breaks before the body, and his half-second rule for getting off the ground. CHAPTERS 0:00 Cold open 1:28 Four sports, one Boilermaker family 5:22 The welcome-to-the-Big-Ten moment 6:41 First career sack, as a freshman, at Notre Dame 8:06 Why rugby was harder than everything else 10:04 Hooker, prop, and what a scrum actually feels like 12:14 The mind breaks before the body 13:32 The half-second rule for getting off the ground 15:12 Seven cities, six countries, five years 20:24 Big Ten venues, and the children's hospital at Iowa 23:04 The car accident he's never talked about publicly 28:43 Recognizing the low, and the text that changed it 31:57 The 40 percent rule 35:09 Coaching kids in an Amazon world 37:14 Why a scholarship is easier than parents think 45:56 Non-negotiables: no complaining, bring the juice 55:04 Socrates, true strength, and what he wants athletes to see Free Athlete Builder Scorecard — six blocks, about ten minutes, a real assessment: athlete-builder.com/assessmenttest The Two Minute Drill: athlete-builder.com/newsletter Find Gelen: @gelen_robinson · coaching at IFAST in Indianapolis and assistant throws coach at HSE Thanks to Jake and Brennan Thieneman for the introduction. Win the Day. Stay Relentless.

  6. Sep 21

    #156 How to Run a Westside Program in a Barn Gym — Steven Thompson, Voodoo Power

    Steven Thompson rides bareback broncos, ropes, and runs the electrical maintenance shop at a coal-fired power plant in Adrian, Missouri. In 2018 he started training in his own barn because he'd realized he was coming home from work, sitting on the couch, and letting life go by without him. A few kids came out to join him. He thought he had workout partners. Then one of them was standing at the rack on his phone, and Steven asked who he was talking to. Oregon State. That was the moment it stopped being a workout and became a program. This one is for coaches who actually program. Steven breaks down how he adapted Westside for high school athletes who can't squat well yet, why a 10x2 dynamic effort day is worthless for a kid who isn't moving right, what he's known for in his own town, and the training he now looks back on and shakes his head at — rolling round bales for time after a hard session, jumping on whatever would hold their weight. He also gets into the harder parts. What you do when a kid with real potential quits on himself. Whether the injury was your programming. How you keep your own ego out of a room full of teenagers. And why he's never once sat back and thought he'd made it — because he's already worried about who's coming next. CHAPTERS 0:00 Cold open 1:24 Westerns, horses, and Lonesome Dove 3:24 What Voodoo Power looks like — and whether it still smells like horses 9:19 Now what: how the barn gym actually started 10:45 The phone call that changed everything 13:35 When a kid quits on himself 16:41 You can't want it more than they do 19:25 Adapting Westside for teenagers who can't squat yet 25:23 The pillars he's known for 29:36 Keeping ego out of the room 33:24 "If a little is good, a lot's better" — what he'd undo 40:12 Trust built in the offseason, spent at the national meet 48:50 What he steals from his own podcast guests 56:33 Modifying for the athlete in front of you 1:00:01 Faith, and why this was never a business 1:12:30 When your friend's kid walks into your barn 1:15:10 Rapid fire: Major League, The Replacements, and the Joker problem CTA BLOCK Where is your athlete actually losing ground? Free Athlete Builder Scorecard — six blocks, about ten minutes, a real assessment: athlete-builder.com/assessmenttest The Two Minute Drill: athlete-builder.com/newsletter Find Steven: @voodoo4power on Instagram. His podcast is Voodoo Power — and I'm a guest on it in the coming weeks. Be on the lookout. Mentioned: Matt Wenning · Shane Sweatt and Laura Phelps-Sweatt · Zach Even-Esh · Tom Dorrance, True Unity: Willing Communication Between Horse and Human

  7. Sep 14

    #155 Playing Not to Lose — 2× Olympian Shawnee Harle on the Emotional Storm

    Shawnee Harle rode the bench at the number one program in the country. Then she got cut — and the coach who cut her is the one who pushed her into coaching. Twenty years a university head coach and two Olympic Games with Canada followed. But the moment that made her a mental toughness coach was a quarterfinal in Rio, against a team they'd already beaten twice in eighteen months, where she felt her team go from playing to win to playing not to lose. Her words: that's not a strategy shift. That's fear, and you can feel it. This one gets practical fast. Her toolkit in three words — chill, change, choose. The voice of fear and how to tell it to shut up. Why we only fear the things we believe we can't handle. Good anger versus bad anger. And the two-step nobody teaches: face the fear, then ask whether you'd actually survive it. CHAPTERS 0:00 Cold open 1:21 What riding the bench teaches you that starters never learn 3:10 You are what the scoreboard says you are 5:23 Atlanta 1996 — coaching through a bombing 8:27 Rio 2016 — higher expectations, higher agony 9:44 The moment it turned from playing to win to playing not to lose 12:59 Getting cut, and the ego that almost stopped her 16:49 You don't change behavior by addressing behavior 19:14 We only fear what we believe we can't handle 21:25 Bill Buckner and speaking it into existence 23:11 The voice of fear steals the microphone 25:45 Chill. Change. Choose. 30:14 Good anger and bad anger 35:18 The yips, the F words, and what sport teaches you to fake 43:16 The 14-year-old, the parents, and how they measure success 46:22 The limiting factor is always fear 50:27 "Shawnee taught me how to save myself" Free Athlete Builder Scorecard — about ten minutes, six blocks, a real assessment: athlete-builder.com/assessmenttest The Two Minute Drill: athlete-builder.com/newsletter Find Shawnee: @shawneeharle · shawneeharle.com Win the Day. Stay Relentless.

  8. Sep 7

    #154 Building Bodies vs. Building Men — Jesse Dale Returns, IFBB Pro

    Jesse Dale was on episode three of this show. This is episode 154. In between he earned his IFBB pro card — and then used it, which most people never do. Two pro shows in about sixty days. He won Masters Bodybuilding and Classic Physique 45+ in Chicago, won Classic Physique 45+ in Tampa, took second in bodybuilding, and cracked the top five in an Olympia qualifying class. He's in his late forties, stepping on stage in the upper 180s against men carrying 220 and 240. But the trophies aren't why he came back. His coaching business used to be about building better bodies. It isn't anymore. Jesse walks through what changed: releasing pride and finally hiring a coach after thirty years of doing it alone, letting go of the clients who take and never give, giving up pieces of a business he built himself, and going back to one-on-one training in a garage studio — which looks like a step backward and isn't. Plus: how he reads a gym's culture in forty-five seconds, why he thinks men have the guilt of training backwards, and what nineteen hundred and eighty-six consecutive days of public logging actually does to a coaching group. CHAPTERS 0:00 Cold open 1:39 A hundred and fifty episodes later: what actually changed 3:59 Two pro shows in sixty days — the real numbers 8:03 Setting a standard, then raising it 11:24 Upper 180s against 240 — where the insecurity comes from 13:26 The price nobody wants to pay in the off-season 15:54 Backstage: spray tans, rice cakes, and zero dignity 18:04 From building bodies to building men 22:08 Setbacks as weight on the bar 25:07 Good, why is this good, and now what 30:34 Choosing what's next without just chasing more 32:45 What separates a real coach from a certification 33:32 Why men feel guilty training — and why they have it backwards 36:20 Reading a gym's culture in forty-five seconds 44:54 Mastering the mundane: day 1,986 of public logs 54:12 The eulogy question 59:21 Rapid fire: the Derby, Derek Lunsford, and the squat song Where is your athlete actually losing ground? Free Athlete Builder Scorecard — six blocks, six minutes: athlete-builder.com/assessmenttest The Two Minute Drill — one short read every Thursday: athlete-builder.com/newsletter Find Jesse: @jessethesharkdale on Instagram Questions for the show: info@athlete-builder.com

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5
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About

Talent gets athletes noticed. The other five blocks get them on the roster. The Athlete Builder Podcast is for the people building athletes — coaches, gym owners, and the parents raising them. Host Jim Beebe spent 13 years running a strength facility (50+ athletes on to college rosters) and wrote the blueprint on whole-athlete development: mindset, knowledge, teammates, training, nutrition, recovery. Every week, one conversation that makes you better at building them — with guests like Ohio State's strength chief, Army West Point's head S&C, Olympic team coaches, and a Blue Angels pilot. Start here: score your athlete across all six blocks with the free Athlete Builder Scorecard — athlete-builder.com/assessmenttest — 15 minutes, and you'll know exactly what to attack first. Win the Day. Stay Relentless.

Information

  • Creator
    Jim Beebe
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    170
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2023
  • Show Website
    Athlete Builder