S02|E204 Developing Team Culture in a High School Setting with David Neill | Samson Strength Coach Collective
In the latest episode of the Samson Strength Coach Collective, Connor Agnew sits down with David Neill, Director of Sports Performance at Liberty Christian School in Argyle, Texas, to explore the art of building team culture in a high school setting.
David shares his journey from college football player to high school strength coach, highlighting what it takes to align with a head coach’s vision and develop true leaders on and off the field. This episode dives deep into the role of culture, how fatigue reveals character, and the critical moments that define strong coaching relationships.
Key Takeaways:
Culture must be defined, practiced, and protected.
Alignment between staff is essential for athlete development.
Leadership is built through consistent standards and tough conversations.
Trust grows in moments of vulnerability—especially when athletes are pushed past comfort.
Coaching extends beyond training—it’s a gateway to building character.
“When you take a guy and you push him hard… all of a sudden you can touch some things you can’t touch at the beginning of a workout.” – David Neill
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Connor Agnew:
What’s going on Samson Strength Coach Collective listeners on today’s episode, we have David Neill. David is the director of sports performance for Liberty Christian School in Argyle, Texas. David, thank you so much for coming on, dude, I’m super excited. were for those who listen. Okay. David is super jacked. I just want everybody to be aware. So if you hear the testosterone coming through his voice, you got to be aware of that right now. If you watch on YouTube, you can see it immediately. but I got recommended your name.
David Neill:
Thanks for having me.
Connor Agnew:
I said, this guy looks like an amazing strength coach just from presence alone. So I’m excited to dive in and get to know you a little bit better.
David Neill:
Appreciate that. That’s all that really matters, right? You you walk in our room, that’s your resume.
Connor Agnew:
Absolutely, right? Never trust a skinny chef. Well, let’s get right into it. Can you just take me through your background and then what’s brought you to Liberty Christian?
David Neill:
No.
David Neill:
Yeah, so I was a football guy played at Texas Tech for four years went five got done playing and NFL was definitely not in the cards for me and I didn’t want to be that guy who showed up every off season trying to go to pro day for no reason. So but I love the weight room. I was really good in the weight room. So my my strength coach hired me on. Actually, I didn’t have to go through the GA or nothing. He hired me on as a full time guy right off the bat. So I did a year at Texas Tech in 2012 and then.
Coach Tuberville went to Cincinnati and he brought me and a couple of the other strength guys with him where I was an assistant strength coach with football and then a number of other sports. I got to work with. my word. I got to work with sorry my my my computers popping. Popping noise on there. I know if you can hear that on the podcast, but so I got to work with football, but I was also with swim and dive and track and field and women’s basketball at one point and golf at one point. So I got.
Connor Agnew:
All good, all good.
David Neill:
I got the experience to work with other sports that weren’t football at Cincinnati for three years and then three years in family started getting bigger. Had my first son and really needed a, you know, to be at a bigger school that I could provide better at. And God blessed me with an opportunity at the University of Texas. So I was there for two years on Charlie Strong staff with Coach Pat Moore is our head strength coach. And then after that kind of ran its course and you know they say there’s two types of coaches. Those have been fired and those are going to be fired.
You know, so that that kind of ran its course at Texas. My high school head coach gave me a call and he said, hey, we’ve got a opening here at Liberty Christian and Argyle and I. I really didn’t have much interest in the high school world. I was a college strength coach. My dream was to be a head college strength coaching, but God brought me here and kind of put me in a position where he just showed me this where I need my family to be. And I’ve been here for eight years now and we’ve tried to build the premier strength conditioning program in the state at this level and.
Every single athlete in our school participates. It’s really cool. we have athletic periods throughout the day that all of our athletes go through, so I think 95 % of the males in our school in the upper school train at least twice a week. I like to tell the families that kind of come through and look at the school like we’ve probably got the strongest average student in the state. We got an average 315 squad across all boys in the school, which to me is awesome, but been building that ever since and had a blast with it and.
Connor Agnew:
Wow.
David Neill:
Now I got a family of six. I got three little boys and a girl. And the three little boys all go to school here. So they get to come in the weight room before school and get their little training in. And it’s just a really cool spot to be in.
Connor Agnew:
That’s awesome and such a great story. Now, one thing, you went Chris Beard on us. You went from Texas Tech to Texas. I mean, that’s a no-no.
David Neill:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I definitely caught some flack from my buddies. My college teammates were not excited for me when I did that. Probably the dirtiest I’ve ever felt as a Red Raider. So, you know, we’re playing in Lubbock and it’s a really tight back and forth game. Patrick Mahomes is playing at Tech at the time and we squeak out a win and, you know.
Connor Agnew:
I’m sure.
Connor Agnew:
Ahahaha
David Neill:
You got in trouble at Texas if you didn’t hold up the horns after the game like people would notice you had to sit there. I’m sitting there my burn orange and I can hear my college fight song going on in the background and I’m sitting here with my horns up. I don’t want to get in trouble with the 80s and stuff, but it just I’ve never felt more like a traitor in my life in that night.
Connor Agnew:
my goodness, I can only imagine being in that scenario. Because I remember obviously working on women’s basketball side when the coach left for Texas from Texas Tech to go to Texas. I kind of knew it was a rivalry. I just didn’t know how bad that was. Everybody was like, you could have gone anywhere else, but you had to go to Texas. And I mean, obviously, like you said, some things are predetermined and you’re meant to be in other places at specific times. But I’m sure you caught some flack for that.
David Neill:
yeah, the text threads were interesting that week, I’ll tell you that.
Connor Agnew:
And I hope nobody took a picture of you because Texas Tech is live on social media now. They will, I’m sure took a picture of you said former Red Raider wearing burnt orange now.
David Neill:
There are pictures of me and burn orange, but none at Texas Tech during that game. So hopefully that hopefully that stays out of social media.
Connor Agnew:
Good. Good.
Good. Well, you described a unique situation earlier, I mean, in almost completely jumping something that a lot of people have to go through, not getting hired on as a GA, but being hired on as a full-time assistant. What do you attribute that to?
David Neill:
Well, I was in a good position academically and I already got my masters and I interned for a couple of months right after I got done playing. So January, you know, I was actually really pumped because as a player, like it’s a grind for four or five years. And I was looking so forward to that spring being on scholarship and kind of sleeping in and not having a response putting the world. And right before off season starts, my strength coach calls me up and he goes, Hey, you know, I know you kind of have an interest in being a strength coach. So we’ve got a spot for you as an intern.
Tomorrow morning, 430, be in the weight room. And I was just like, I hugged my head. I knew I had to do it, but I was so looking forward to chilling a little bit. So I interned for that semester. I got my CSCCA certification. And then a spot opened up that summer that was kind of out of nowhere. It wasn’t a predetermined spot. And he was like, well, you got your certification. You got your master’s degree. I see no reason to make you a GA. You’ve already been working hard for us this spring. So spot’s yours. You’ll learn as you go.
It was a really good opportunity for me.
Connor Agnew:
That’s awesome. mean, it reflects on you as well as an intern being able to rise up immediately to do that. Those things are very exciting, but it does prove a little bit of a lesson too where you have to be ready for anything at any time and every day is an interview.
David Neill:
Absolutely our head coach here at Liberty. always says you can’t control when the opportunities come, but when they do come, you better jump on them. You know, that’s all you can do in life.
Connor Agnew:
Perfect. Oh, that’s the perfect, I’m going to steal that quote 100%. That’s going to be the start of our lift tomorrow. Well, I again want to emphasize that Texas high school sports are a little bit different from everywhere else in the country. We have some international listeners. Can you just describe the vibe of Texas high school sports and Texas high school strength and conditioning so they can get a better understanding of it?
David Neill:
Yes, Texas high school sports is about as close to D1 as you can get without actually getting into D1. We’re a private school, so we don’t have as big of an in-game atmosphere as far as fan base goes. I mean, our stadium has a Jumbotron. We’ve got, know, speakers are blaring on game day. We’ve got this huge walkout where everybody lines the sidewalk leading down into the stadium. We’ve got a probably 15,000 square foot weight room.
Two of them actually, we’ve got a boys weight room and girls weight room, so we have a total of 30 something racks on campus and you know, it’s it’s you know, we try our best appropriately, you know, because you don’t want to. You don’t want to train high school kids like you’re training college kids. They’re in a developmental training age, but as far as the resources we give them and the dedication and the intensity which we try to make it as high level as possible and try to mirror what they’re going be doing at the next level if they make it.
Connor Agnew:
Yeah, I think you’ve got more racks than we do at AppState.
David Neill:
Overall, overall maybe I’ve only got 12 in my main weight room. It’s kind of a it’s an oddly shaped weight room. It’s a big weight room. It’s beautiful. It’s got huge windows and I worked in Dungeons my whole college career, so it’s I like having the sunlight in there, but it’s not a square so I can’t fit any more racks in there. It’s only got 12 so, but it’s got lots of space and we utilize the space efficiently.
Connor Agnew:
Yeah.
Connor Agnew:
The windows are the most underrated part of every way I swear.
David Neill:
they I never believed in that winter depression that happens when you’re up north and in Cincinnati we were too. We were like the second basement was the weight room and you know you’re running seven groups a day so I’d get there at 54 35 AM and not leave till 7 and the sun’s already down. I wouldn’t see the sun for but two hours a week on Sunday. That was about it.
Connor Agnew:
yeah. Was USA built when you were at Lubbock? Texas Tech? Yeah. So you know, with USA, obviously that sinks down into the ground a little bit. And then the weight room for basketball was, mean, which everything is black and red because it’s Texas Tech obviously, but you have completely black walls already. So it’s already dark in there and then you’re in the dungeon and then you’d have to walk up essentially two flights of stairs and you go out into like a hundred degree heat out of nowhere. And it just completely blasted you.
David Neill:
Yeah, USA was built,
David Neill:
Yeah. Yeah, no, I I definitely remember that from that’s exactly the setup we had in Cincinnati for sure.
Connor Agnew:
yeah, but again, I’m now blessed with some big windows and I got beautiful mountain views so I can’t complain too much. Well, one of the things we talked about pre-show was what is truly your passion within coaching. You mentioned the X’s and O’s are really exciting for you, but at the same time, the most exciting thing is culture development with your teams. Can you just break down for me? I know it’s a large topic and we can certainly spend a lot of time going into it, but what does culture development mean to you and what are your keys for culture development?
David Neill:
So culture development to me means the intangibles that allow you to have success as a team. I want to know because here’s the reality about strength conditioning. The best program in the world executed well with great effort might improve an athletes performance 5 to 10%. Right? It is a small piece of the pie when it comes to their actual performance on the field. It’s an important piece and 5 to 10 % is is I want that 5 to 10%. But the reality is if we can do something intangible with a team.
where we build the characteristics that allowed them to compete at a high level and allowed them to buy in better to what they’re doing on the sports side of things and to give them advantages on the field. That can be more powerful than any improvement in strength, speed and explosiveness that we’re looking for. So to me, the number one priority I have with our training sessions and our program overall is, am I supporting my head coach’s cultural vision for our team? Is his team
becoming the developing the characteristics we’re looking for as far as discipline, as far as toughness, as far as buy-in, as far as work ethic, leadership, grit, all those things that coaches speak about. To me, the weight room’s the place where you forge those things before season gets here and you develop those qualities, because they’re not qualities you can develop both as a group and individually overnight. It takes a long time to develop somebody’s character.
And so I think that the first thing, and honestly, I think this is the biggest mistake coaches make, strength coaches make. I think the first thing you have to do is you have to be on the same page as your sports coach. And a lot of times that’s hard because we’re very prideful in what we do and we see things needing to be done a certain way. And I’ve seen a lot of coaches who’ve been in this a long time who are bitter towards strength, towards their sport coaches because they feel they know better and they.
honestly look down upon some of the things their sport coaches are preaching when it comes to toughness or discipline or all these different things and they kind of poopoo on it. When in reality if you would, if you would get together and align what you’re doing with that sport coach, you’re going to get his buy in or her buy in. You’re going to get better buy in from your athletes and then the performance metrics you want to develop are going to develop better because all those those cultural qualities we’re looking for in a team.
David Neill:
All they do is support the actionable qualities that we’re looking for, right? Yeah, I said this the other day. I said the number one quality I see in athletes who are going to truly transform themselves in the weight room or they love it. You know the you just know that the guy who loves the weight room and loves training, he’s going to change his body and the guy who doesn’t and just begrudgingly shows up and does it. Because he has to. It’s inevitable and they don’t change nearly as much because.
those intangible qualities support the actionable qualities that we’re looking for. So I think the number one thing we have to do is is our culture and our culture is a subset. It’s different in the weight room than the football field or the basketball court. Like like there has to be its own identity and culture when you’re in that room. But does it support and align with what your sport coach is trying to develop? And if not, you’re going to have battles with that person. You’re going have battles with your team. And I’ve tried to build a culture that my coach didn’t want to build before, and it doesn’t work.
And what happens is the guys come into your room and they either buy into what you’re doing and not what the coach is doing, or they buy into what your sport coach is doing and not what you’re doing. And all of a sudden you’re not having success in any arena or any facet of what you’re trying to develop. Whereas if you can align really, really strongly with what your sport coach is doing, you could build something really special and you’re to be better rewarded both with the outputs you’re seeing, but also with just the day to day buy in of your athletes. They’re going to be all in on what you’re doing every day.
I think the second thing is culture needs to be well defined and you can’t let it get big too big or too small. I see some coaches who have 20 different. Items on their culture list, right? And the problem when you have 20 different items of the culture list is nobody knows any of it, right? You’re trying to attack everything and you’re getting great at nothing vice versa. If you’re only attacking one or two things, there’s things you’re leaving off the table that could help help your athletes and your teams develop.
into what they need to put on the field in the fall and the spring, right? So I like to really hone in on three or four things, three or four items that are going to be foundational cultural values of ours, right? And then we’re going to make sure athletes know those. My athletes need to be able to repeat back to me and be able to to both the, you know, clever quotes and the cliches. I actually love cliches. I think it’s great because if you know a cliche, then you know what I’m preaching. And even if you make fun of it every once in a while, I know that’s ingrained. If you could quote back to me.
David Neill:
what we say all the time in our program. That means the culture is buying in to a certain level. Now, I also believe culture is sacred. And what I mean by that is when you start to mock something, especially leadership, nobody wants to lead, right? When you start to make fun of something, it loses its value because it becomes uncool, right? And I think one of the biggest cancers you can see in a team is when you start to see your guys make fun of leadership qualities, no one’s going to step up and adopt those qualities because nobody wants to be made fun of.
So there’s certain things you’ve got to put a nail in as far as, hey, we’re not allowed to make fun of this, right? You can make fun of that guy’s hair. You can make fun of the way that guy dresses. You can make fun of the way I talk, whatever you want to, but we’re not gonna make fun of the leadership qualities we’re trying to develop in here. We’re not gonna mock mockingly lead our team because it’s a cancer and we can’t allow that. And I think the third thing is once you’ve established very clearly,
Concisely our cultural values that we’re going to we’re going to adopt in our program and then the sport program as a whole. I think what you have to do is you have to intentionally give opportunities daily for your athletes to experience and display those qualities, right? So if I’ve got a sport coach who really believes in having a tough team, right? He really wants a team that can push through adversity, push through pain, push through the physical.
strain of whatever sport they’re they’re participating in. Well, I’ve got to give my athletes an opportunity to develop that toughness in the weight room. We can’t preach toughness and not do anything hard. OK, and I know that’s a sensitive topic in the strength and conditioning world right now because so many coaches have taken that idea and hurt kids with it. And you have to be wise. You have to be smart. But this this.
If toughness is something you want to build, you have to give kids the opportunity to tough. If discipline is something you want to build, you have to give them opportunities to be disciplined and hold them accountable for that. If you want a team that is vocal and has leaders on it, you have to give your athletes an opportunity to lead. It always can’t be you, right? Like you have to identify, hey, here’s our cultural values. And then you have to give them opportunities to participate in those. And then you have to make them integrated into what you’re doing every day.
David Neill:
You know, I’ll come in and my drive to work. I’ll actually turn off the radio in the morning and I’ll say, hey, today I think our team really needs to hear about. Leadership, I think our team really needs to hear about what it means to be a leader in the weight room and putting your teammates in front of your own personal needs. And I’ll go over what I’m going to say before ever getting there. So that message is ready to go for our athletes. So I think it’s it’s about integrating that well into what you’re doing and using that as a jumping off point to.
build into your training and make your training even better. I think the final thing is you got to practice what you preach. Too many coaches preach discipline, preach toughness, preach self-control, preach poise, and then they’re unpoised. They’re undisciplined. They’re not very tough when things get hard. They lose their cool. If you’re telling your athletes it’s important to be on time every day and you’re late to a workout, you just lost all credibility with those guys, right?
Like you have to hold yourself higher than the standards that you’re expecting out of your athletes. And so that’s hard. It’s hard to be a man of high character and integrity and to practice what you preach. But at end of the day, if you can’t do those things, then you don’t need to be preaching it to your guys. If there’s a value that you can’t uphold yourself, then just take it out of your program because guys aren’t going to follow it anyways.
Connor Agnew:
Wow, what a great explanation. I love we might just end the podcast right here. I think you did a great job breaking it down for us. And I do want to go through each section that you mentioned as well. One of the things that I love that you mentioned was the alignment with the head coach, because one of my biggest pet peeves within strength and conditioning is the strength coach thinking that they’re the main character and they’re the ones who drive everything. If your vision doesn’t align with the head coaches. And honestly, in my opinion, the strength coach’s job is to execute what the head coach’s vision is.
David Neill:
Yeah, for sure.
Connor Agnew:
If you don’t align with your head coach, like you said, it can cause a lot of problems. It can cause a lot of things that ultimately it’s just a divided team. What are some signs that you said you mentioned that you previously experienced this or some signs that maybe your vision didn’t align with the head coach? And then how did you figure out that it was important to get on the same page?
David Neill:
Absolutely.
David Neill:
you know, thinking back the, the, and this actually happened through a coaching change, but you know, I had a very clear vision of what I expected from a strength program, right? And that included certain accountability aspects with the team. you know, as far as attendance and being on time and things like that. And, know, I had a head coach who didn’t hold those things in as high as high value, right? And so I felt myself battling.
to achieve certain things in our program and his alignment wasn’t there and his support wasn’t there. And it really just drove a wedge between me and his relationship. But along with that, the team, you know, they checked out of what I was preaching because they’re ultimately they’re loyal to their sport before they’re loyal to the weight room. Right. And so I was trying to accomplish something with that head coach and his team.
And a vision for what that team looked like that he didn’t really believe in. And you know, I realized after the fact that it would have been better for me to just say, hey coach, here’s your vision. I’m going to be the best steward of that vision that I can in implementing it and just understand like if these things aren’t happening right now, I based on what you’re telling me and what you’re doing like like those.
those don’t align with your vision. So I’m not going to push those things. I just want you to understand when they’re not happening, like when guys are finding a lot of reasons not to be in the weight room in the summer, like I’m allowing that because I see that from you, right? And that would have been a much better conversation. And it would have either led to a, man, I’m fine with that. Like those guys need to have fun and relax in the summer. You know, they need to go on their vacations and stuff versus me being frustrated that we’re not looking like the team I want to.
Right, because it’s not my team, it’s his team.
Connor Agnew:
Yeah, I think again, the communication piece is so important to that too. It doesn’t mean that you have to be, you know, a hundred percent of yes, man. And those relationships actually just suck at the end of the day. One of the reasons I love working for my head coach is because I can come to him and I can say, Hey, I really don’t agree with this or what we’re thinking about doing with this week. You know, can we talk through it? Right. And usually we find a compromise. And then every once in a while he’s like, you know what? I just want to do it my way, you know? And since it’s not that way a hundred percent of the time, I’ve got no problem with it. And I understand it because
Sometimes I want to do things just my way as well too. But when you communicate, it becomes a lot more beneficial for everybody, yourself, the head coach and the athletes.
David Neill:
Yeah, and I think the other thing we get hung up on is we get so in love with the right way to do something right? Like, know, real like I’ve always I’ve always been in programs that pull from the floor and do do full cleans. You know, like that’s kind of our clean and then I had a head. I had a head coach come through and you know he really loved the hang clean and you know I wasn’t he didn’t push me on it. We never fought about it, but you know he just mentioned it a couple of times and you know I.
Connor Agnew:
Mmm.
David Neill:
I resisted that for a long time, but when I implemented the hang clear, actually saw a lot of benefit of it with our full cleans because our guys guys were getting more opportunities to practice triple extension right with different variations and you know, look looking back on it. That one in like our developments not changing much at all from the hang versus the power clean, right? Like it’s it’s it’s such a minute detail and I’m very quick now to if my.
like a certain variation of something, a certain drill, a certain exercise, unless it’s dangerous or unless it really, I feel contradicts a training quality we’re trying to accomplish. I’m very quick to say, you know what, coach? You love front squat instead of back squat. We’re going to front squat. I’m all about it. Let’s do it. You love this change of direction drill. That change of direction drill is a priority for us now because like I said earlier, like,
It’s 5 to 10 % of the pie. What we’re doing, and that’s at best like it might be less than that, you know. So if I’m giving up 5 % of 5 % of the pie to bring in alignment with a head coach and get him bought into what we’re doing like I’m all about that. Let’s do it. Because I at the end of the day I want to be going in the same direction as you and I want to go win a championship with you. And so if we’re going to do that together and you’re the captain of the ship and you know I’m the first mate. The first mate’s job is to make sure that your vision gets implemented.
and I want to be a part of it.
Connor Agnew:
Yeah, to me it’s to me it’s 1 % one exercise or something that’s 1 % change for 100 % buy-in from the head coach Yeah, and and and I think again it opens the door for more opportunities right to discuss things and why it’s important like another example I can think of is our head coach saw guys walking out of the weight room without shoes on one day, right? And he was like I need guys to have shoes on it’s like alright coach No worries, right? And then in the offseason we talked about I said hey at least on our recovery days Can we go barefoot right and he’s like well, you know, it’s still a little hesitant
David Neill:
for sure. Signing. Yeah. For sure.
Connor Agnew:
But because we were willing to make that change easily in the beginning, the conversation is a lot more open and a lot more transparent at that time frame when we had it. And then you’re able to make the small changes that you want to make through your program much easier than just saying no or right up front. Well, another piece that you mentioned is defining the culture. so your process for defining the culture, I’m sure obviously is set standards and mentioning them to your team, but how do you actually go about doing that? Is that a first day? And then obviously it’s an everyday aspect of it as well too.
What does that process look like when you have newcomers to the team and how do you define the culture for them?
David Neill:
Yeah, so we we are with the start of every offseason and every summer and then every fall we’re going to have a big team meeting where we talk about our culture and identify our core values and we go through those in a pretty extensive meeting with the guys. But I think the biggest thing is we are consistently having sessions that are culturally focused. You know, it’s going to be every week or every other week. We’re going have a 10 minute meeting.
Coach is going to put a video up on the board that’s going to inspire the guys. And then we’re going to bring that in to one of our values and what we’re trying to accomplish. have, especially in season, weekly devotionals with our coaches where they get to bring in those topics and talk about them. Right now we’re kind of doing our, we call them B1 drills, but we’re bringing the guys in and doing kind of our, mat drill type circuit where we’re kind of, you know, team building type stuff. And every
middle of that we stopped the whole practice and bring all the guys up and we talk about one of our cultural values. So we’re going to make sure that there are threads of our culture intentionally implemented both through lessons, but also the workouts themselves that we’re bringing those in. And what I’ve found with young people is, hey Connor, can you hear me? Okay, good. You’re a little fuzzy on my screen. Just wanna make sure that’s good. But what I’ve found is this.
Connor Agnew:
Yes. Yep. Yep.
David Neill:
especially with young people, they don’t listen real time. They don’t listen real well when they’re fresh. But when you take a guy and you push him hard and you get him fatigued, all of a their ears open up. And there’s a lot of opportunities when you’ve just had a really, really intense session to dig in to the character of a young man or a young lady right when they’re fatigued, right when they’ve let their guard down. And all of a sudden you can touch some things you can’t touch maybe at the beginning of a workout or in a classroom.
setting right like like their guard goes down when they’ve just pushed themselves to the wall and you can all of a sudden reach that place that the teenagers especially hold so tightly and are too cool to let you into at other times.
Connor Agnew:
You bring up a really interesting point, and I guess when I reflect on it with my own teams, the best speeches are always at the end of the toughest workouts. Do you think it’s because they just have to be so laser focused on what they’re doing right now to get through the tough workout, whatever it may be?
David Neill:
for sure.
David Neill:
Man, I think it’s really hard to hold onto your ego when you’re drenched in sweat and feel like you’re going to pass out. I think, I think ego is the, it is the biggest obstacle to implementing character and culture values into a team because you have to let go of yourself and your own pride and your own wants. If you’re going to buy into a team value,
Connor Agnew:
Fair enough.
David Neill:
that’s supposed to be bigger than you personally, right? Like, like that’s just the nature of if we’re talking about things like discipline and toughness, we’re talking about leadership, we’re talking about selflessness, we’re talking about, you know, all these cultural values. Even so simple as bringing energy and juice to a workout, right? The hardest groups to bring, to have them come in and bring buy-in and energy and enthusiasm to a workout, the guys who just think they’re too cool to do it. Right. So,
Pride gets in the way of all that. And when you go out and you’re pushing sleds or you’ve been, you know, squat until you can’t walk no more, or, you know, had a Matt drill day or whatever it is, you know, and you’re just, you’re drenched in sweat. All you want to do is go lay down. You just, you’ve emptied yourself. All of a that pride’s out the window and you’re receptive to what you’re trying to accomplish. Right? So I think that’s the perfect time. If you, if you want to reach kids is, Hey, we just did
the hardest workout of the week. Let’s bring this thing up and talk about things that really matter. You know, that’s the time to do it.
Connor Agnew:
It’s funny because I think of my own jujitsu practice, right? I think about the beginning of a session. I might not be as receptive to what somebody’s saying to me, but after they whoop me a couple of times in a row, I’m a lot more receptive. I feel a lot more tired and a lot more open-eared. You mentioned opportunities as well to kind of exemplify the culture or solidify it. What are some of your favorite opportunities that you use?
David Neill:
Yeah, no doubt.
David Neill:
I think there’s gotta be a, let me, let me steer this in a different direction for a second, because I think identifying your leaders leads to the biggest opportunities when it comes to developing your culture. And one thing I’ve realized the last couple of years is this, you know, I hate the term, you know, guys are always called themselves alphas and sigmas. Now I don’t know if they’re doing that college or they do it in high school all the time. So I don’t like that term, but as coaches.
You know, it’s an easy way to say this is a coach. You know the Alphas on your team. You know the guys in the locker room that have dominant personalities. They’re loud, they’re boisterous guys are attracted to them, and those types of personalities are going to lead your team whether you like it or not. And for a long time. I have tried. To take the guys who embodied the character I wanted and bought into the culture the best and then teach them how to lead right?
And I think that’s you absolutely should do that. But if you’re expecting the quiet guy who only leads by example and doesn’t want to talk in front of the team, but he does everything right to all of a sudden come out of his shell and start leading a bunch of guys out of nowhere and develop that quality, it’s not going to happen. And if he tries to the guys who are already the dominant personalities in the room, they’re going to fight against that. You’re going to have some battles that you got to work through. I think the better strategies to identify which guys.
Which athletes are the leaders in your team with the dominant personalities or the alphas if you want to call it that and then pour into them the character qualities you want and that involves a lot of one on one meetings that involves bringing them in and making them feel like you’re trying to help them accomplish their personal goals. You know when you’ve got a really talented athlete who really has dreams and aspirations to make it to the next level or accomplish something on the field or the court this year.
You know that that’s a catalyst you can use to get buy in from your program, right? So if I have a young man who is an ox in the weight room and he’s a great running back and I bring him in, I’m like, man, I know you want to go play college football, right? Like what do you think you need to do to accomplish that? He says, coach, I just feel like I gotta be way more explosive and I bring him to the side of the next workout and say, hey, I’ve got a special power circuit just for you that I want you to do during a DC or today, right? I want you to.
David Neill:
I want you to combo a heavy deadlift with a band jump, go to a vertical and do a plow jump right after it’s a little mini French contrast. I just want you personally doing because you’re, you’re ready for this right here. All of a sudden I’ve, I’ve gotten into alignment with him and he sees me as a partner in his goals. The next time I asked him to come in and have better body language of the workout. Well, Hey, I’m coming. I’m coming at that from the perspective.
of a partner in his journey versus a coach who he’s resisting against, right? So getting in there one on one and learning how to create buy in from individuals on your team who are already in leadership positions, maybe not leadership positions that they’re leading in the right way and maybe not leadership from the standpoint of I want that young man to be a captain. But the reality is when he walks in the room, the temperature changes for good or worse, right? I’ve got to take that young man and I’ve got to build him into the leader. want him to be.
Because it’s a lot easier to do that than to take the young man who never wants to speak up and teach him how to be an alpha because it just ain’t going to happen.
Connor Agnew:
Yeah, I think people sometimes face leadership as trying to shove a square peg into a round hole, right? Like the people who you think are good people, you almost want to make leaders, right? And the ones who, like I think about our best students that we have, right? Or the guys who always do things right in the weight room, but they’re just not vocal leaders. So they’re not leading the way much past, you know, leading by example. What are the qualities that you look for for the leaders that you’re trying to build up?
David Neill:
Well, and that’s that’s definitely changed because the qualities I used to look for were things like buy in things like toughness, things like dedication, discipline. I wanted the guys who did everything right all the time and left it out on the field every time they worked. And it’s not that those aren’t qualities I look for in a leader anymore, but those qualities without a natural presence, they’re not going to be able to lead with those qualities. Now I identify those athletes.
And I put them up on a pedestal and I call them out and use them as an example for other athletes to mirror and to follow. But the reality is your leaders are very easy to self identify with their presence in the room. I believe you can walk into any team and you can within five minutes know who the leaders on the team are. And I’m again, I’m not speaking on leadership in terms of.
This is the captain I want for my team. I’m I’m speaking of leadership purely from the sense of this is somebody who people will follow. And when that guy comes into the room and he’s making fun of the workout and he’s making fun of the guys who are holding everybody accountable, he’s making fun of the guys who are trying to lead. You’ve got cancer on your hands, right? And that doesn’t make him not a leader. He’s just leading your team in a direction you don’t want them to go. So you know.
I think you can very quickly if you wrote your team’s roster on the board, identify the guys that the other teammates are going to follow and you have to identify those guys and bring them into the fold and build up the qualities you want in your leadership. Because I’m not so sure that it’s possible to change the actual leadership in your team very easily. It’s a long process. If you got three or four years, you can do it, but I’m not sure in one offseason you can take a guy who’s standing at the back of the line.
and bring him to the front of the line. I’m not sure you can take the silent hard worker and make him vocal very easily. There are situations where you can do that, but usually what unfolds is you just create a battle between different personalities that ends up causing more harm than good.
Connor Agnew:
think, like you say, how you define leadership, neither in a positive or negative way, but somebody who would follow them. The high school kids, call that aura. Is that right?
David Neill:
They would call that aura. That’s what I’m talking to. It’s kind of nice being in the high school world because I am fully up to date on all of the lingo with Gen Z, right? And so they can’t sneak stuff past me. I always know what they’re talking about.
Connor Agnew:
Yeah, we’ve got a player on our team who they call Oraman because he’s always well known on campus. He stayed with us for five years, so everybody loves him. But he’s a good person for us, and he’s been on the positive side of that leadership. When you have somebody on the possibly negative side, or as you’ve said previously, kind of a cancer, how do you approach those conversations with them? How do you get them to buy in and kind of get rid of the coolness factor?
David Neill:
Yeah, I think the old school way and I think it worked old school. think 15 years ago, probably when I played, I’m not sure your age, but probably when you played as well, you know, I had no expectation for a close personal relationship with my coaches. I had no expectation to get in coaches office in college and talk about life like that just didn’t happen. And when my coach said jump, I said how high and when he punished us, there was no fight back against that. And if he called you out, you took that as.
You took that not positively, but you responded the right way to that. think today athletes are much more likely to resist against, you know, a coach calling them out aggressively in front of the team. It doesn’t mean there’s not times to do that. There’s times I do that. Absolutely. You know, there’s a time you got to call somebody out and, you know, check them in front of everybody. But I think really, really brutally honest conversations with zero emotion.
Is the best way to approach those types of young men because the pride is up through the roof and as soon as you come in you start going on the attack. It is just over with. They’re not listening to you. They’re they’re they’re going to be resistant to everything you say at the best. They walk out of there just pissed off at the worst. You’ve got a real fight in your hands. Sometimes a real fight in your hands, not in high school. Those guys wouldn’t do it, but I remember I remember college or a couple of times that you know it almost came to blows and so.
I think what you have to do is you have to be very, factual with, hey, your body language today when you walked in workouts, was it good or bad? Well, coach, it wasn’t very good. Okay. When you stand in the corner while everybody’s coming up into the group and they’re clapping to break us out or they’re running around and you’re walking around, what does that tell your teammates? It tells them I don’t really care. So you make them kind of acknowledge these things you’re seeing, right? And you don’t come at it.
from this aggressive standpoint, but just a very factual raw. When you do this, this is how it affects your team. When you act like this, this is how it affects your team. And honestly, when you perform like this, this is how it affects you in your future and you’re hurting your own goals. So I need you to be different. And then the next time they’re doing that, you remind them of that conversation gently a couple of times. And if you got to scale it up to a 10, sometimes you got to do that.
David Neill:
But you try to find other ways to do that before you need it to be some battle that hashes out front of the whole team. You know what I mean?
Connor Agnew:
Yeah, those conversations are really delicate because what happens immediately, especially within college, when everybody’s hanging around in the locker room, that’s kind of the central hub. You have those conversations, like you said, if you try to bow up immediately and you try to come in aggressive and that player leaves upset, he’s going to go straight into the locker room and tell everybody how terrible of a coach you are and how annoying it is and make fun of you immediately. And then it becomes a much bigger problem. And so I think the way you’re approaching it is fantastic just to be realistic with them, be factual.
remove the emotions from it and then gently remind them of those things. Those reminders can come a long way. And then it’s really fun when you get to see those people be successful as leaders too. Yeah, they don’t have a choice sometimes. Sometimes people just follow them and they want to, you know, be aware and they want the attention. And sometimes if you can turn that into a positive thing, can turn a team’s season around. turns a team’s culture around as a whole. Yeah.
David Neill:
Yeah, absolutely.
Connor Agnew:
Well, one thing you mentioned previously before the show too, that I thought was really interesting is that you also sell some weight room equipment as well too. Can you kind of dive into that for me a little bit?
David Neill:
Yeah, so I’ve always I’m a big fan of matching your pushes to pulls and I’ve always felt like there’s not a great option for a pull that matches our presses in the weight room. We had a chest supported row machine at the University of Texas that I love, but you only have one of them in there and they had a big footprint. So you know, a couple of years ago I saw some guys putting two by 12s across racks and doing seal row or chest supported row and I loved it. We started implementing became one of our favorite lifts.
but it just felt unsafe. You know what I mean? Like, like I was always worried about a board slipping off or, you know, I had a 360 pound guy on one and that thing was bowing like crazy. So I actually developed and had patented a bench that lays across the safety arms of our power racks. And we use it all the time now. And I completely match my pushes with my pulls as far as percentages and programming so that we’re balanced front to back.
The company is called Rackrow and we sell them to high schools and colleges across the weight room. VCU has a few of them, BYU has a few of them. So if anybody’s interested in that, just go to www.rackrow.com and check it out or message me on social media and I can tell you more about it and how to get some for your weight room.
Connor Agnew:
Well, I remember Daniel Ruse actually posting a couple of things about Rack Rose. He was over at VCU as well. He was very excited about it. so that’s what originally introduced me to your company. And then also getting to introduce myself to you. What was that patent process like? Cause I mean, that’s a pretty arduous task, I’m sure.
David Neill:
You know, this has been the you don’t really know what you’re getting into when you start a small business and I had no intention of this ever replacing my my coaching career. Like I love coaching too much to me. It was just like, I got a great idea. It’d be it’d be stupid not to at least check this out and see if there’s a market for it and see if people are interested. Because we love this in our weight room. Let’s see if other coaches are interested too. So I started going through the process of making an LLC and.
doing the patent process and you gotta find somebody to create the drawings for you and you gotta get prototypes made and then you gotta look through manufacturers and all this stuff. So it’s been exciting. It’s been fun. It’s been a lot of, you know, put the kids to bed and up late at night researching stuff. But a lot of that, that part of the work’s kind of over with now. And now it’s just really getting in contact with coaches and helping them get the product in the weight room. know what mean?
Connor Agnew:
No, absolutely. As a LLC owner myself, I know that process is not very fun. actually, just a couple of weeks ago, paid off all my taxes. I’ve been an idiot. I haven’t done quarterly taxes for like the past three years. so, yeah, I know, I know. So I got slammed and then like two days later, I got an email from North Carolina that was like, okay, it’s time to renew your license as well. And I just, I about had it at that point.
David Neill:
yeah.
David Neill:
Yeah. Yeah, they know you you get on social media and you have all these guru entrepreneurs and they make it sound so stinking easy and nothing about it is easy. It’s just there’s so much you have to learn if you’re to get into it. You know, but it’s it’s fun. It’s an experience. I feel like I think I’ve grown a lot as a just coach in person learning how to do that on top of what I’m doing with my family and my coaching career as well.
Connor Agnew:
Yeah, it’s been extremely beneficial for me too. Well, I can’t thank you enough for coming on the show. It’s been fantastic to speak with you and I really appreciate you giving me your time. Can you just shout out your social media if anybody wants to follow along with you?
David Neill:
Yeah, on Twitter is probably the main one I use. It’s at D Neill any I ll62. I’ve got a Instagram as well that I use a little bit. I think that one’s coach Neil SC and then you know. This probably the two main ones you can get in contact.
Connor Agnew:
Awesome. Well, thank you so much, David. I really appreciate you.
David Neill:
Thanks, Connor.
