Athlete Builder

Jim Beebe
  • 5.0 (37)
  • Fitness
  • Updated 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

    #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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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

  4. 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.

  5. 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

  6. Aug 31

    #153 They Wouldn't Let Him Take Off — Cdr. Frank Weisser, Blue Angels

    Frank Weisser went to the Naval Academy to become a Navy SEAL. He didn't get it. The Navy handed him aviation instead, and he arrived at flight school having spent four years skydiving and rock climbing while everyone around him had spent theirs flying. He was so far behind that instructors wouldn't clear him to take off — he couldn't taxi the airplane properly. Twenty-one years later: three combat deployments, two tours as a Blue Angels demonstration pilot, and a seat in the cockpit as one of the pilots who flew the canyon runs in Top Gun: Maverick. This is a strength and conditioning conversation wearing a flight suit. Frank explains why Blue Angels pilots deadlift and squat heavy, what an hour under G actually costs a body, the centrifuge session where they took the whole team to the point of blacking out on purpose, and the debrief where every pilot names every mistake they made that day out loud — including the ones nobody else saw. EP 153 — CHAPTERS (16) 0:00 Cold open 1:03 Flying the Top Gun: Maverick canyon runs 5:05 Eighteen inches apart at 400 mph 15:03 The centrifuge: taken to blackout on purpose 17:38 The shoulder that ended his football career 24:54 What to say to the kid whose injury took their identity 30:28 The emptiness nobody warned him about after retirement 34:36 "I couldn't taxi the airplane" 38:50 Preparing to the point of diminishing returns 44:01 Push it to failure to find the envelope 54:04 What actually builds trust in a leader 1:00:12 Why the Blue Angels fly without G-suits 1:03:30 The squat rack before the call home 1:09:15 The debrief: every pilot names every failure out loud 1:16:17 LIMFACs — how naval aviation finds limiting factors 1:21:39 Rapid fire: movies, lifts, and Lead Solo Where is your athlete actually losing ground? Take the free Athlete Builder Scorecard — six blocks, six minutes, one honest answer: athlete-builder.com/assessmenttest The Two Minute Drill — one short read every Thursday for coaches and parents who want athletes built right: athlete-builder.com/newsletter Guest: Cdr. Frank Weisser — frankweisser.net. His book Lead Solo: Learning Life's Vectors from an F/A-18 Blue Angels Aviator is available on Amazon and through Naval Institute Press. All proceeds go to the Wingman Foundation. Questions for the show: info@athlete-builder.com

  7. Aug 27

    AB Champion Builder Series #10: Score Your Team — The Finale

    Ten episodes. One system. Turn opinions into a plan. A coach scores his 12-kid roster on Tuesday and rearranges practice by Thursday — because almost nothing was where he thought. The "lazy" kid was under-recovered; the "choker" was under-informed. In the finale of Build Champion Athletes, Jim Beebe runs the full system on a whole team: the mechanics, the four rules for reading results, one inch per kid per quarter, the clipboard method that turns a habit into an identity, and the operating rhythm — score, prescribe, win the days, re-score, forever. Coaches: run your roster this week. Parents: run your kid tonight. ▶️ The scoring tool (free, ~10 min per athlete): https://athlete-builder.com/assessmenttest 🎬 New listener? Start at Episode 1 and run the series in order. 📬 Newsletter: https://athlete-builder.com/newsletter · 📘 Book: https://athlete-builder.com/booka Ten episodes. One system. Keep stacking wins. Win the day. Stay relentless.

  8. Aug 24

    #152 From Walk-On Quarterback to Olympic Bobsled Push Athlete — Brian Harper

    Brian Harper walked on at Weber State as a quarterback and worked his way to number two on the depth chart. Then, two weeks before the season opener, they moved him to tight end. He weighed 215. The next lightest tight end on the roster was 235. He didn't quit and he didn't pout. He said it felt like being back in seventh grade — the game was brand new again. That instinct is the whole episode. Brian is a decathlete, a former D1 football player, a CrossFit coach who made the online semifinals this year, an ocean lifeguard in San Diego, a soon-to-be firefighter, and a bobsled push athlete chasing the next Olympic quad. We get into what a position change actually does to an athlete, how you coach someone who isn't wired to compete, why he thinks the hardest rep anybody does is walking through the door, and how he's structuring four years across a career and two sports without going broke or burning out. IN THIS EPISODE 01:24 — Coaching CrossFit: from an internship credit to running classes 01:51 — Making the online semifinals, and the goal for next year 02:43 — First bobsled run: "get in, hold on" — pure adrenaline and chaos 03:58 — Green Wall: nearly drowning during lifeguard academy, and the four weeks that fixed it 06:31 — Jim's Statue of Liberty swim and the buoy that ripped on impact 15:29 — Narpocalypse: Brian's new show on life after sports 16:20 — Ten events, one nemesis — the decathlon event that humbles him 17:53 — Walk-on to number two: the spring that changed everything 19:20 — The meeting: "Creighton had a better day, we're moving you to tight end" 20:18 — 215 to 225 in two weeks, and why it felt like seventh grade again 21:58 — Head and body: running Brian's story through the six blocks 23:29 — Getting fired from a job you've held your whole life 25:24 — The offer he turned down out of high school, and what he'd tell himself now 26:19 — Too many irons in the fire: how do you plan a four-year quad 29:05 — Olympic champion or CrossFit champion? 31:24 — Coaching competitors and coaching everybody else in the same hour 33:54 — Why trust gets built off the field, and what one selfish player does to a room 35:45 — "If I'm not competing, I don't know what I'm doing" 39:48 — Finding the spark in an athlete who doesn't think they're competitive 43:01 — The hardest rep is walking through the door 45:03 — What a week actually looks like, and why sleep is non-negotiable 49:12 — How Brian finds the limiting factor in a new athlete 52:11 — What he wants people to say about him in thirty years 54:24 — Bobsled metrics: the body weight and squat numbers on the World Cup team 55:59 — Jim on adding size the right way, and why you retest instead of guess 58:11 — Lightning round: Warrior, Brett Favre, Isabel, and a Lombardi quote worth keeping Where's your athlete actually losing ground? Take the free Athlete Builder Scorecard — six blocks, six minutes, one honest answer: athlete-builder.com/assessmenttest The Two Minute Drill — one short read every Thursday for coaches and parents who want athletes built right: athlete-builder.com/newsletter Find Brian: @_brianharper on Instagram · his show @narpocalypsepod Connector credit: Sydney Milani, @syd_milani — founder of Peerless, supporting Olympic hopefuls.

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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
    167
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2023
  • Show Website
    Athlete Builder

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