Captains & Coaches Podcast

You don’t need a crowd in your corner. You need a few good ones. Luke Summers returns as the podcast’s first four-time guest. Tex travels to Crown Point, Indiana, for a conversation 15 years in the making about why friendships forged through sport and shared mission never really end. Tex breaks down the banter → candor → conflict model behind his Captain’s Workshops and why 100 touch points earn y...

Why do clients quit at three months? It’s not your program. It’s biology, and how you coach through it. In this episode, Tex McQuilkin takes you inside a live coaching seminar on the first 90 days of a client’s journey. He connects the physiology of training to what your athletes actually experience week by week. Know what’s coming, and you can coach them through it. You’ll learn: Why new lifters...

Is the 'C' a reward or a burden? Mike Boyle says too many teams get it wrong. Legendary strength coach Mike Boyle joins Tex McQuilkin to talk culture, consequence, and captaincy. Mike co-founded Mike Boyle Strength and Conditioning, spent 25 years with Boston University men’s hockey, and trained the Boston Bruins, the 2013 World Champion Red Sox, and two US Women’s Olympic Hockey teams. In this ep...

A Purdue scientist wanted more eggs. Starting in 1982, William Muir bred only his most productive hens for six generations. By 1996, the average flock was healthy and laying more than ever. The superchickens were down to three survivors, picked bare of feathers and laying poorly. They hadn’t been producing more because they were better layers. They had been producing more by suppressing every hen...

Gratitude was Gerry Byrne's first message when he took over Harvard Lacrosse in 2019. Grit carried his team through two lost COVID seasons. Generations is how he thinks about leadership: every player touches seven classes, and those bonds last a lifetime. Gerry has done just about everything in this game. Long Island kid. All-New England defenseman at UMass. NLL champion. Sixteen seasons at Notre...

Most coaches talk too much. The best ones cue. In this episode, recorded for the Soldiers to Sidelines Sports Performance Seminar, Tex breaks down the science and art of coaching cues. Where brain, body, and behavior connect. What to coach, when to coach it, and how to say it so it sticks. You'll learn the DMSR teaching framework: Define, Model, Shape, Reinforce. You'll learn how to time feedback...

Most captains get the "C" for the wrong reasons. Best player. Most popular. Loudest voice. Then complacency creeps in and the culture cracks. Pick up the book - Captain: The Athlete's Guide to Being an Exceptional Team Leader - https://amzn.to/4ionoFJ John O'Sullivan is the founder of the Changing the Game Project and co-host of the Way of Champions Podcast. He is a former Fordham captain, pro soc...

Every team ends. The great ones change shape instead. Tex just ran three Captain's Workshops in four days, starting at his alma mater, Marymount University, and finishing in Boston. Then he stayed a few extra days with his senior-year co-captain. They hadn't seen each other in seven years, and within a minute the banter picked right back up. This episode digs into the fifth stage of Tuckman's mode...

Half the roster was new. The season was months away. George Greene had to build a team out of strangers. Then the Minutemen shock the CFB world on Week 1. George is the head strength and conditioning coach for UMass Football. He started there as a paid intern in 2008. Now he leads the program, with his first mentor's picture hanging on his office door. In this episode, we get into how George and h...

Your kid just joined their first team. The coach is a volunteer with a job, a family, and a full calendar. They raised their hand anyway. That takes heart. But heart isn't a practice plan. In Part One of our new series, Dad on the Sidelines, Tex is joined by Luke Summers and Patrick Ford, DPT. Together they built curriculum in the child development space, coached thousands of kids, and trained hun...

Live from the NSCA Tactical Conference, Tex sits down with Bert Sorin, CEO of Sorinex Exercise Equipment. Using the seven stages of Predictable Success as a roadmap, Bert shares how Sorinex grew from his dad's trail in the woods to a five-lane highway. He talks about chasing his own athletic goals while the business stalled, building a culture where everyone has a hand on the wheel, and the last c...

Jeff Fisher shared a story at the 2026 Soldiers to Sidelines Summit about a cornerback who cost his Titans a football game. The player heard his assignment, said "I gotcha, coach," and got it completely wrong. That gap, between hearing and listening, is the subject of this episode.   Tex breaks down what actually separates the two, why "got it" from a captain is a reflex and not proof of anyt...

Are captains born, or are they made? And why do so many coaches get the pick wrong? Tex sits down with Martin Rooney [ @themartinrooney ] bestselling author of Coach to Coach and High Ten , founder of Training for Warriors, and a coach who's worked with everyone from Army Rangers to UFC champions to high school track teams. Martin makes the case that captains aren't selected, they emerge, and that...

In this episode of CJ & Vinny's Secret Podcast, Tex sits down with CJ Appenzeller (Active Personal Training, ATS Systems) and Vinny Maltz (author and host of the Evolving Athletes podcast) to tackle one of the hardest skills a captain ever has to learn: how to inspire and motivate a team without it coming off fake.  The boys dig into why "fake hype" gets sniffed out instantly by anyone wh...

What happens when a team stops playing to win and starts playing not to lose? Dr. Ben Freakley, Certified Mental Performance Consultant and founder of Ready Set Resilient, knows that shift firsthand. Over two decades, Ben has worked inside some of the highest-pressure locker rooms in sport and the military, serving as a college soccer head coach, Head of Mental Performance for the Toronto Blue Jay...

Every locker room has small dragons. Left alone, they grow. Handled early, they're just Tuesday. In this episode, we break down the five conflict styles every captain will run into on a roster: Competing, Avoiding, Compromising, Accommodating, and Collaborating. For each one, you get a specific tool to manage it, so you can catch tension before it splits your team apart. This isn't about eliminati...

In this episode, Tex sits down with Tim Fletcher [ @timfletcherco ], founder of RE/ACT and the LIFT program, to talk about the hidden driver behind so much of sports culture: shame. Tim breaks down what shame actually is. Not the emotion most people think of, but the belief underneath it. He explains the difference between big T trauma and little t trauma, the kind that comes not from what happene...

Coach blows up over something innocent. Wrong route. Empty water bottle. Kids laughing in the back of the huddle. So we hand out up-downs, bear crawls, and sprints and call it discipline. But what is that actually teaching? In this solo episode, Tex breaks down why punishment-based conditioning teaches compliance, not character, and why it quietly trains athletes to resent the very movement we nee...

Shawn Lyght [ @slyght_90 ] made history as the first defenseman ever to win the Tewaaraton Award (the Heisman Trophy of lacrosse). A national champion at Notre Dame, he's back for his senior season carrying the weight of a program built to win it all again. In this episode, Shawn breaks down what separates a high school captain from a college captain, how to call out a friend without losing him, w...

Tex McQuilkin takes the stage at the 2026 Soldiers to Sidelines Summit with a talk built for coaches at every level: 10 blind spots you are overlooking at practice, and the one practice plan that fixes them.   He breaks down the athlete development Venn diagram, Bloom's Taxonomy applied to the practice field, the four-stage competency model, transformational leadership behaviors, and why fair...

Cory Castro [ @strength_coach_castro ] is the Football Strength and Conditioning Coach at the University of Texas, working directly with the quarterback room and specialists. His path started as a walk-on running back at John Carroll University. It ran through internships at Kent State and Texas, a graduate assistantship at Louisiana Monroe, and a head strength coach role at 24 years old. From the...

Every incoming freshman was the best player on their high school team. Then they show up on campus and find out everyone else was too. This episode breaks down 5 real tools for freshman athletes entering their first college season. Redefining your role before day one. Building a support system before you need it. Mastering the schedule nobody warns you about. Managing your body like it's your job....

Bo Sandoval has spent three decades coaching everyone from Olympic wrestlers to UFC champions, and he says the secret was never chasing peak performance. It was staying within striking distance. In this episode of Captains & Coaches, Bo traces his path from a moldy weight room at a small Mississippi college to the U.S. Olympic Training Center to nearly a decade inside the UFC Performance Insti...

Live from the 2nd Annual Soldiers to Sidelines Coaching Summit: the Ask the Coach panel, unscripted and unfiltered. Moderator Johanna Zabal hands the mic to the room, and Tex, Nate Palin, and Kat Oswald field whatever comes, from youth lifting age and PVC-pipe progressions to burnout, creative play, and how the military trains athletes with no off-season. Real questions from real coaches, answered...

Erica Lowery is a strength and conditioning coach at South Alabama working with volleyball and soccer. She's also a former Division I libero, a two-time Apex Games competitor, and a USA Bobsled camp invitee. This episode covers all of it. Erica walks through her transfer from Texas A&M to Liberty University and the confidence she rebuilt there. She talks about her first year as a college stren...