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

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.

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