Champion Conversations Podcast The Champion's Mind Podcast

Jesse K. Wright, founder of the Balance The Bar initiative, is a high performance consultant, Amazon bestselling author of The Intent is to Grow, coach, and public speaker. His career has spanned over two decades in the team sport culture, including working with organizations in the NBA, NFL, NCAA, and in private sports training. His passion lies in helping young professionals grow and advance in their careers and lives.

Jesse most recently spent 14 years with the Philadelphia 76ers of the NBA, first as the Head Strength & Conditioning Coach and then as the Director of Performance Science. During his time in professional basketball, he was named the NBA’s Strength & Conditioning Coach of the Year in 2013, an award voted on by his contemporaries in the league. He also served as President of the National Basketball Strength & Conditioning Association from 2013-2015. In addition, he served as chair of the committee that oversees and coordinates the anthropometric and performance testing for the NBA Pre-Draft Combine for 6 years.

In this episode, Jesse shares:
· Why continual learning is essential to growing as a leader
· How seeking out mentors will help you thrive in new challenges
· What he learned about leadership from NBA players like Aaron McKie and Andre Iguodala
· Why asking “How can I help you?” creates empathy and compassion within a team
· How being fully present helps people feel valued

Learn more about Jesse at https://www.balancethebar.com, check out his book The Intent is to Grow, and follow him on Instagram @jessekwright.

With over 30 years of coaching experience, Sean Waxman is one of the most highly regarded weightlifting coaches around. Since opening Waxman’s Gym in 2010, Sean has developed two World Championship team members, a Pan Am Championship silver medalist, three national champions, six national medalists, more than two dozen national-level weightlifters, and he has coached top CrossFit Regionals and Games athletes.

When not developing competitive weightlifters and CrossFit athletes, Sean works with athletes of all skill levels from a wide range of sports to help them develop strength and power. Sean also has a great passion for helping other coaches learn to teach/coach weightlifting. His training methodologies and ability to make complex movement skills seem simple make him one of the most sought after coaches and lecturers in the country.

In this episode, Sean shares:
· What sports psychologist Ken Ravizza showed him about how to handle mistakes
· Why establishing a daily habit of success sets you up to perform like a champion
· Which self-talk techniques his friend Dr. Michael Gervais shared with him
· How learning at the feet of legendary coach Bob Takano taught him the art of the coaching craft
· Why looking at life with a childlike mind creates a lifelong love of learning
· What real toughness means in the gym and in life

Learn more about Sean at https://waxmansgym.com and follow him on Instagram.

By the time they’re 13, over two thirds of youth sports athletes have dropped out. Why? The pressures of a results-obsessed system, profits being prioritized over development, and sports parents and coaches failing to get on the same page. Another problem is that while only a handful of participants will make it to the pros, the entire youth sports model is fixated on “elite” performance.

Matt Young and his partners at FSQ Sport have made it their mission to shake up youth sports. They partner with clubs, governing bodies, and associations to put the focus back on kids and establish development benchmarks and systems. This helps set high standards while giving children space to learn the soft skills that will set them up to become responsible and confident adults. Matt also incorporates best practices from other countries that emphasize sustainable, long-term development of well-rounded young people over box scores, win-loss records, and other stats.

In this episode, Matt shares:
· How to create shared values + expectations for young athletes, parents, and coaches
· Why development is the best benchmark of ongoing success
· Which 12 words can focus youth sports teams on the right priorities
· Why every sports parent should focus on supporting their children first
· How culture, character, + confidence are 80% of youth development

Learn more from Matt via his Twitter feed, @mattyoung101 , and check out the FSQ Sport website, fsqsport.com.

When he was a college wrestler at the University of Virginia, Jim Harshaw Jr set the lofty goal of becoming an All-American. He fell short in his first three seasons but finally broke through in his senior year, hitting the target as he beat a higher-ranked opponent at nationals. Jim used this personal case study in failure as he became the youngest D1 wrestling coach in the country.

Realizing that he needed to devote more time to his family and seeking a new challenge, Jim walked away from coaching after a decade of success and started a business. He later sold the venture and founded his second company, but this one failed to meet his targets. So he took a job fundraising for a major college athletic program and built up his executive/performance coaching business as a side hustle until it grew enough for him to focus on it full time. Today, he works with Fortune 500 companies, teams, and highly motivated individuals to help them reach and exceed their goals.

In this episode, Jim reveals how:
· Facing down fears, doubts, and failures made him an All-American college wrestler
· Using a productive pause leads to clarity and peace of mind
· Believing in yourself and becoming unafraid to fail are key to succeeding
· Seeking mentors helped him thrive as the youngest D1 coach in the country
· Setting balanced goals requires focusing on relationships, health, self, and wealth

Keep up with Jim on his website, https://jimharshawjr.com, listen to his podcast – Success Through Failure - and follow him on Twitter.

A lot of athletes get into their game at a young age, but when Jenn Salling’s father took her to watch her first softball game at two weeks old, she might’ve become the team’s youngest fan. Her dad’s talent as a fastpitch catcher, his camaraderie with his teammates, and her mom’s exemplary toughness gave Jenn all the ingredients she needed to excel on the field in both soccer and softball, but it was the defensive challenge that the bat and ball presented that eventually led her to focus on the latter.

Jenn’s stellar play in British Columbia got the attention of the University of Oregon, where she played her first college softball season. But after she got a taste of big city life when representing Team Canada at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Jenn decided to transfer to the University of Washington. It soon became clear that she’d made a wise choice, as the Huskies won their first national championship. A decorated stint in the pros followed and at the Tokyo Games last year, Jenn capped an incredible career by helping Canada go one better than their 4th place finish in Beijing, as the team captured the bronze medal. She’s now an assistant coach with the Canadian national team.

In this episode, Jenn shares:
· What she learned about the game and life from Huskies coach Heather Tarr
· How her Huskies teammates were champions off the field as well as on it
· Why she embraced the saying “Without struggle there is no progress”
· How her mental game helped her stay at the top for so long
· What she and her team did differently to win bronze at the Tokyo Olympics

Follow Jenn’s journey on her Instagram feed, @jenn_salling.

Most basketball fans know Ernie Grunfeld through his GM roles for the New York Knicks, Milwaukee Bucks, and Washington Wizards, his NBA playing career, or being half of the “Ernie and Bernie Show” with Bernard King as the two tore up the SEC. But what they might not understand about Grunfeld’s backstory is that he is the person in major league sports history whose parents survived the Holocaust.

Ernie’s son Dan follows his father’s story, his own college and pro basketball career, and the legacy of his grandmother, Anyu, from the ghetto of Budapest to the blacktop in New York City to Stanford University in his compelling book By the Grace of the Game.

In this episode, Dan shares:
· How his grandparents survived the Holocaust, escaped Communism, and emigrated to NYC
· Why basketball provided his father with an outlet after losing his brother to leukemia
· What Dan did to tackle a nervous tic and tame his anxiety
· Why being a good person is even more important than chasing greatness
· How his father and grandmother imparted life lessons about perseverance, hard work, and hope

Keep up with Dan’s writing on his website, dangrunfeld.com and on Twitter @Dan_Grunfeld.