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.

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.

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