State of the Union 2025

"Hey, are you still doing training sessions?" - a text message received a few weeks ago from a long time friend once former athlete I was blessed to be able to train way back when.

I thought at first "Of course I am, that is an odd question". But then I allowed for a few moments to pass before responding (mainly because I was cutting grass at the time). While finishing the final crooked strips of my grass I thought more about the question and came to realize that this was actually a valid question. After responding yes she had said that she had not seen me post anything on the socials in a while. I went to my Instagram page and saw that yes in fact this was true. My last post from the time of this text exchange was from 5 months ago, and before that one there were at least 1-2 month gaps in between each preceding post. As someone who once formerly posted to Instagram daily (sometimes even twice a day) I can see how this would appear "odd" to someone like her who has been staying up to date on myself and the page for 5+ years. Then I got to thinking even further: I wonder if there are other people out there wondering the same thing?

It's quite unfortunate that we now use activity on social media as the determinant of what you are doing in your life. What once started out as a joke "If you don't post it to social media did it really happen" has seemed to shaped into our actual reality. We all know FOMO (fear of missing out", but I believe society also suffers from FOPONKWYAD (fear of people online not knowing what you are doing). Not quite as easy to pronounce. Long are the days people can go throughout their day and not have a itch to gravitate to an online world to check in on what other people are doing, or on the flipside informing everyone of whatever thing you did today to self-serve our instinctual need to be seen, heard, and now "for likes". And I am certainly not above this...it's something I use to do and have done, a lot, even within the past year. The more self-reflection, praying, reading, and time spent without internet distraction you begin to develop a sort of distaste in your soul for what social media is. As much as I enjoyed clipping training videos and posting content that is actually USEFUL to my Instagram page, this angst toward the idea of social media far outweighs anything positive that may come from it. Maybe it is the fact that my generation is what is now being called the "anxious generation" as we were the guinea pigs of what happens to adolescents that were introduced to unfettered access to the internet and social media in the palm of your hands that gives me this almost vengeance-like attitude toward the whole thing as I, as I am sure many others like me may feel (Jonathan Haidt wrote "The Anxious Generation" and is an absolute must read for anyone who is a parent). This disdain toward social media has only amplified the day I became a father and with each year that goes by as these little rascals get older. And it is seemingly impossible to ignore the disadvantageous, and actual harmful, effects that social media has not only on kids (most importantly kids as their brains are not nearly developed enough to handle what social media injects into it) but adults as well. The research is all out there...and it's damn good research too. Impossible to ignore, unless you are willfully doing so (talking to you corporations that want to keep the gravy train rolling at the cost of the mental health of society). This ties into the idea of the Narrative of Perpetual Progress (NPP). The NPP states that because we are moving forward in time, we are innovating more, technology advancing, that all of this means we are making progress, despite any objections that may arise because this life is better than how they had it 100s of years ago because we have cell phones and have access to food at any point in the day we want to eat. Yes, we should all be grateful we live in a time period that if you get a cut on your foot and it gets infected you don't die. We have also eradicated several diseases that have nearly ended civilized colonies in the past (smallpox for example). So that is pretty great, but are we not seeing the forest through the trees? Is it really "progress" if the rates of chronic disease, obesity, depression/anxiety, and loneliness have continued to rise in a linear fashion over the past two decades? Or that we spend the most money as a country on healthcare yet rank near the bottom of the barrel in health? Or kids are unhealthier than ever both mentally and physically? Or as according to a latest New York Times article Gen Z is now signing up for "Adulting Classes" because come to find out the system of public school ultimately made everyone really good at passing tests but not knowing how to file for taxes or even simply be able to do a load of laundry. Is this all really progress?

A broken record I may sound like but I do not think any of this can be overstated. I also feel partly responsible if I do not speak the truths we all should know. Being involved in the coaching of youth athletes for the past decade and some change I can not help but notice the glaringly obvious damaging effects the "progress" of our society has had on them, and all of us for that matter, but kids being the most vulnerable. I suppose now that having kids of my own is now the source of the amplification of these feelings that I now have because things are always a lot different when you have skin in the game. The average youth athlete that I have trained in the past 3-5 years struggles to complete 10 full rep push ups (chest to floor with elbows locked out at the top), can not complete 1 full range of motion pull up, would be a liability if I were to make them run more than 1 mile, checks their phone on average 5-7 times a one hour session, struggles to make complete eye contact, and hold an honest conversation. This is an average. There are outliers on both ends of the spectrum. On one end I have had athletes that I will purchase and gift books to that I have read and hold discussions with them about things we learned from it, and on the other end I have an athlete who during a warm up sprint drill is running and has a phone fall out of their pocket (and promptly picks it up only to return it back to the pocket but not before texting someone back). With the rapid, and continued, expansion of the youth sports industry you would think kids are as active and "in shape" as ever. However, when you account for the lack of proper youth athletic development that occurs within this industry, over-specialization at earlier and earlier ages, high volume of closed-loop skill acquisition, and lack of free play due to parents over-scheduling their kids, you get the result of an eight grade boy not being able to bench press a 20lb bar on day one (yes, this is a real and recent occurrence).

Some of this may come across as I am sitting on an ivory tower critiquing the flaws of people below, but this could not be further from the truth. As a young adolescent and teenager I was not disciplined. I was not engaging in healthy habits. I could not be further from the person I am today. Despite graduating with near perfect grades from college and having a Doctorate degree I was "educated" but not "knowledgeable". As Dr. Casey Means talks about in her book Good Energy, we are living in a world that is conducive to feeding our bodies with bad energy habits which has wreaked havoc on the metabolic processes or our body affecting our physical and mental health. I was the poster child for bad energy. But with discipline, guidance, and the right resources you can right the ship and turn your life into one that is being fueled by 'good energy'. And this is where my passion and frustration both come from. Passion: to empower and help our next generation build confidence, strength, fitness, and discipline, all things that have radically changed the course of my life and things that I would have loved to developed in my adolescence. Frustration: because I feel as though myself and others fighting the good fight are in a war of attrition.

So, the beat goes on and on. But to me, it sounds a little different. Once was a time I was only concerned with performance outcomes of sport. Training programs I designed were aimed at improving an athlete's "sport performance" to showcase an improvement in objective metrics in sport. When an athlete was more successful in sport, I viewed the training as a success. Beyond the flawed logic of improvement in weight room metrics to sporting success I can not help but think how foolishly narrow-minded my thinking was. I went as far as discouraging athletes to avoid long distance running out of fear it would make them slower because going for a long Sunday run in the park is not "sport specific" enough. Sigh. Now a days if an athlete was to willingly decide to go for a run on their own time I would find it near impossible not to celebrate. The reality is, sports may consume the majority of an adolescents life, but sports ARE NOT life. I have trained athletes for 11 years and have only known one to make money at a professional level doing that sport. I have trained hundreds of collegiate athletes, the majority of whom do not last 4 years of playing their sport in college (this for a variety of reasons: burn out, not being what they thought it was going to be, too much of a time commitment, minimal playing time). One of the worst things I have seen over the years is everyone around the youth athlete applying the pressure of performing in sport and the pressure to play at a high level only to quit the sport as they head to college and feel lost. As the outside world/society has shifted, we too have to shift as well. Will improving your strength, speed, and fitness improve your ability to compete in a physical sport? Absolutely. But that is far from my main concern. If we can improve the strength, fitness, and health of our youth we can make a significant impact in their confidence, mental health, quality of life, and general-sense of well-being, something so desperately needed. And that is my plan and will continue to be for as long as I'm here. Pushing physical fitness, discipline, truth, hard work, and effort. Encouraging "good energy" habits and the detrimental effects of the "bad energy" ones that so often infiltrate our lives, knowingly and unknowingly. Finally, to be the figure-head and one to perpetuate all of this in the lives of those that bless me with the opportunity and trust to do so.

Troy