 Hey everybody, it's Eric Johnson from Airtight Throws Nation. Today we're gonna go through another episode of Love the Grind where we sat down with Joe and Ashley Kovacs a few months back. It was an absolutely fantastic interview. I could have sat there and spoken to him for easily two more hours, but in this episode we're gonna talk is, Joe talks a little about the equation for speed. They talk about training plans. They talk about a whole bunch of different dynamics and you kind of go through some of Joe's history and kind of his transition from high school to, you know, world champion and training with his various coaches. Lots of good stuff. Tons of cool little pearls that will help you understand your throw and train better. So hopefully you dig it, check it out. Joe, your mom was obviously your first coach and she was a thrower and apparently quite a good thrower, right? Like clearly she just dominated everybody for like three years. Did your mom offer to coach her or did you have to like convince her to coach you? So it all really started. So I started tracked as a way to stay in shape for football. I really went out to work with the sprinters and the jumpers. I went to a small Catholic school. So literally the sprinters, the jumpers and throwers are all just one because there's not that many kids. And then during one of our workouts, the kind of one of the guys I looked up to on the offensive line, because that's what I was playing at the time, he went over to start throwing the shot put. I was just like, well, I mean, like at that point he was like, one of my heroes, I wanted to be that guy. So I went over to start throwing it. The school I went to, we didn't have a shot put ring or a track. So we just threw off of the parking lot and my mom came to pick me up from school and she like saw me throwing it like a baseball pretty much. I mean, everything that you don't wanna do, of course that's what I was doing. So like she got out of the car and she like came over to both of us because he didn't know what he was doing either. And like just gave us like the quick tutorial, like put it in your neck, put the thumb down and like she almost pretty much started coaching us just because she was like at least had knowledge of what was going on at that point. And that's really how it started. And then of course when our head coach saw her come over and start helping us, he somehow recruited her like, okay, you're gonna be the throws coach. Which I think she like really didn't at first want to do it but I think she was kind of excited that, you know, be a part of something and help me out. And like at that point, like all my friends were just excited that like my mom knew something and all of a sudden like within that day, we were all throwing at farther than we were. Which I'm sure it wasn't very far. And like, you know, it's very like we didn't have a circle. You know, we didn't have a ring. Eventually I used chalk and made a circle and then I spray painted a ring which they weren't too happy about after I did that. But I mean, that's where I practiced all throughout high school. So she was my coach the whole time through which was awesome. I really doesn't get set enough but I did work with Glenn Thompson who was out of Harrisburg area who worked with Ryan Whiting. Almost every Sunday and this goes back to my mom. My mom would drive me because I couldn't didn't have my license at that time. We'd drive to Central Dolphin High School which was where actually Ryan Whiting went to school. He was already at Arizona State at that time and where you'd work with Glenn and like Glenn knew the rotation. Like my mom knew the basics of throwing the glide but the spin was so at that time you didn't really, there wasn't the internet. You didn't have these resources that you kind of do now. So we were just going to find it and Glenn taught me the spin and like my mom would take all this knowledge and then during the week she not only helped me but then helped the rest of our team. And then the next week it was like, okay, we learned part B, part C and kind of kept growing more and more. And ultimately that's where I really started enjoying growing because all those little details of putting that puzzle together that's where I really started loving it. And you basically have basically two engineering degrees? So I was, it's called energy business and finance was a business degree and I was studying petroleum and natural gas engineering. And one of the things people don't realize so you have this big history of winning and you won four straight science fairs as a kid. I did, yeah. So that, so before you ever won a shot put title you were a science fair champion. How old were you when you did that? My freshman year I won like that it was because like the Pennsylvania I won every state championship in Pennsylvania for the science fair. The big one was my junior year was a national engineering fair. But yeah, I mean that was actually my, I'm kind of a nerd and more so than I like projects more than even the numbers behind it. So yeah, I love that. So that was my go to. So not a lot of people know that, but that's for sure. Science fair slides and putting projects together and flying remote control airplanes with parachutes that was my first job. That's awesome. So do you think like because of your passion for science and how much you enjoyed it do you think that really kind of helped you and made you have a fast passion for throwing? Because it's so scientific? Yeah, I think it helped me because that's the only way I understand things. This is where I think it's, I mean, I think the kids at our house they're lucky because I mean the way Ashley coaches them but the way I talk to them are kind of different which I think is good to hear from perspective because like I won't do anything unless I know where it came from. So like for me the throw it comes down to a very simple projectile equation that you learn in high school physics. You can use the algebra one, you can use the calculus one if you can do the math but really comes down to angle release velocity and the height of the release. And if those factors and like there's actually a point if Art listens to this he'll be mad. Everybody at the training center knew there is a point where we're watching we had the track man unit out there. And Art was talking about well this one was faster, this was this and then I was just like well there's a equation for that. So I did the worst thing possible. I sent Art an email that night. And then I sent him an email that was like I wrote it how you would write it. I said it can be set. So that's already I started it with like the worst possible sentence. But pretty much if you're talking about the shop put which is about like a 19 to 21 meter throw like for every height of release that you throw it higher one centimeter higher you only get about 1.1 centimeters of distance. Now obviously that changes but like in the range of a shop put that's about all you get. Which I mean is huge if you're Ryan who's releasing it you know probably 12 centimeters more than me he's getting 1.1 times that in distance. But that's not the end of the world for me. An angle of release that one has a lot of variance but you get about 22 degrees or 22 centimeters for every positive degree over 35 and it diminishing returns after you go over 42 and a half. So like really quickly when I see the track man or I'm throwing like yeah that's important but that's that's more style. But when you get 0.1 meters per second that's about 45 to 55 centimeters for every 0.1 meters per second. So very quickly you realize it's all about speed. It's all about velocity. It's all about you need the power to have that speed. Like I tell her kids all the time like you can go find it to Catholic. You can go find anybody and put them in the perfect positions. But they don't have the power to develop the speed. Well then it's a pretty throw they're nice right but the power is all that. So for me it comes back to kind of like a science equation for everything we do. Sometimes like I pull out a whiteboard at practice and Ashley will just shake her head and I'll like the force of like a 16-butt ball this way it's zero this way. What plane do you want to push the ball at? I think it's awesome but then I also remember the NCAA rules for how much practice we could have in a day and I'm just like oh my gosh I know this is gonna take. Yeah I mean I don't know how long this is gonna take. Well her athletes that are like engineering athletes and I think they appreciate it but everybody's like all right just drawing again so. But yeah now truly for me that I think that helps a lot because like I won't do something to like my fullest capacity until I know where it's coming from and why I'm doing it. That's pretty cool. Which again I think anybody who's watching this if we got some throwers and coaches you need to know a thing or two it probably helps you out. I think you probably just blew a few people's minds right there but that's really cool. And at the end of the day with our program and stuff that's kind of what our whole system's been about is simplification of complex stuff and the more you understand it obviously the more efficiently you can train the better and the faster you're gonna get. So that being said we have a lot of our online members and parents and they're in high schools and they don't have throws coaches and they don't have a ring and you pointed out that you spray painted a ring just somewhere because you guys didn't have a ring. So it can be obviously sometimes situations it can be frustrating but one of the things we always talk about is you basically need shot shoes and a surface. At the end of the day if you have that you can really get it done and you develop the knowledge base. So when you guys are coming up with training plans and stuff how much does that obviously the knowledge is what's allowing you to come up with a plan and how did your plans change from like high school to college to art to now? For me in high school it was a lot of discovery and then of course once we started working with Glenn Thompson it was like I would go to him for like an hour and a half like they're shot and discus back to back and it was like absorb as much as you can and then I luckily I think I had that car ride home that I was able to kind of like take everything I heard and try to re-figure it back out. When I went to college I think I definitely wasn't as focused as I should have been on throwing first. I kind of was just throwing to throw and I think anybody can have, you can take anybody and give them a shot put it in a wall and just keep saying throw to throw and they'll get better but there's a point where they're gonna be putting a wall in that sector where they're not gonna throw farther than. And that's what I did I was showing up to practice I was trying to get strong but I didn't have and like the stuff I'm telling you I need to know where the reason why and I didn't have the reasons why then and I didn't have like my little checklist of like why I wanted to do something and I'm kind of an extreme person so if I knew dropping your knee was good well then I tried to make sure it was scraping on the ground every time. I was always trying to go to the extreme because I knew I was a shorter guy I looked up to a guy like Adam Nelson who was obviously a unique technique an extreme one so like that's what I was always kind of going after was the maximal range I could get in college. When I went to art I went to him from college like I threw pretty well in college but really not great until the end and I tell people this all the time like when I was at Penn Relays my outdoor PR was 1989 which is solid but and it was good for that time. Now it's not but it was solid but literally by Olympic trials which is like a month in change away I threw 21 meters at the Olympic trial so that's a heck of a jump. And I had many fouls and people will talk about my warm-ups at Big 10s or over 22 meters at Don Babbitt saw me throw over 22 meters pie a bunch of times at regionals but I was just my fifth year TJ Crater left to go to Washington so I didn't have a coach my fifth year and I was just going like crazy I was really lucky because I was training with Ryan Whiting and my buddy Blake who ended up being a 65 player too but it was a great training environment but when I came to a meet especially going there there was nobody watching me just you know say hey you should kind of cut it I remember going to the regionals and Don Babbitt was there and I just knew his name as you know on this pedestal coach he coached Reece and Adam and so when he was there it was the day before the regional meet I just kept throwing because he was watching you know I cared more about just seeing him be happy and I was just trying to bomb these throws I cared more about that than the actual meet which I think kind of bit me in the ass a little bit going into the NCAAs I was just like kind of tired from putting on this show for all these coaches I was just excited to hopefully impress but then when I went like after that year not having a coach I made like people don't know this like how I ended up with art I made a list of who I thought like the top 10 coaches the NCAA were and I reached out to all of them and like it was actually weird that a lot of them went to UCLA and I didn't really understand that they all came from the same coach and I actually talked to Don Babbitt on the phone and he was just like hey Joe I have a lot going on right here I don't know if Adam's gonna keep on training at that time was 2012 you should give my coach a call and that's the first time I was like your coach like I had no idea I had no idea about the UCLA Throws history I was really naive to everything but I gave this guy a call on the phone and if anybody knows art and his personality within like three minutes he convinced me to you know point the line and I bought a plane ticket out of the state college and somehow ended up in Chula Vista and was able to meet with him and that's how I ended up going out to California to train at the center was just a phone call with art and him telling me that yeah he'll help me training center is a good place to be obviously coming out of college I wasn't on scholarship the people don't always know I really wasn't on that big of a scholarship I was on one third of tuition for the first four years and then obviously I was covered up my fifth year but I left Penn State with a lot of debt so going to the training center I think I had $92,000 of student loans which was crazy for an in-state tuition but Penn State's pretty expensive so I was able to kind of chip those away and get done with those fairly quickly while I was out there so it was awesome for me because I was able to justify not going to a real job because I had those lined up especially because I didn't throw 21 meters early in the season in college I threw at the Olympic trials so going out to Chula Vista was kind of like this last minute thing like I'm gonna go train and I was kind of against it because I had some pretty good jobs lined up so the second I got out there and I got in that environment I think I knew it was the right place for me That's awesome Now Ashley as a collegiate coach you know how do you approach and how far in advance do you like start constructing your training program and I know as a coach and you've been coaching several years now you have a I'm sure a general template you know what you're gonna do but you start tweaking it and how critical are those tweaks in that plan for your overall success So I'll quote Judd Logan I think this is like one of the best things I've heard about training and I didn't really get it until I got later along in my career but he said 90% of what I do is set in stone but I spend 90% of my time trying to figure out the last 10% and I thought that that was really awesome because I do think that as you go along there are some staples to the things that you believe and how you think they need to be done especially in the college system and I think that's one of the things that like Joe seeing the way that we do things with the collegiants like you know there are restrictions with the collegiants like there are time restrictions with the collegiants there are certain time you can be in the weight room there's you know other teams that are training in the weight room just things like that logistical things that you kind of have to work around as a collegiate coach I try to plan my workouts like I would say I'd write the entire fall like before we start in the summer at least and then but the thing is I always say this is the skeleton of what we're gonna do so basically like in the first four weeks I try to do like a mini needs analysis of the group because you know depending on who you have in the group like some of the things that I've had planned we have an older group there's no way I could do it with the younger group and so I think that it's one of those things like I think that if you stay really rigid in what you think you're gonna do that doesn't allow you any room for innovation or to really give the group what they need so I think that like part of being a good coach is being able to kind of audible see where the group is, see where they're at and I mean that's something where I can go down to practice and think okay this is what we're gonna do today and you know within the first six throws be like okay we're taking this a different direction if I see something that's like hey everybody in this group really needs to work on this it's being able to notice those things and take a call in that moment like hey we gotta do this drill that's gonna be the focus of the day so I definitely think that you know as I've gotten farther along I feel really good about the skeleton that I have but every year the group is different than the year before so I think that you just have to have some room for flexibility and be able to audible. Right, yeah that's one of the things I always talk about because it's funny obviously if you guys I'm probably have seen our stuff right we have our throwing chain reaction six pillars and everybody thinks it's like this factory apply like we're trying to do one size fits on that's actually the complete opposite it's actually here's the structure of the throw learn that and then the pillar is obviously every kid is basically gonna have their own prescription based on what they need, their size, their strength their weaknesses, everything from structural to just technical understanding or bad habits that gotta be changed and that kind of stuff so again tweaking I think that's a good thing for people like you said I've often call it when I coach when I have assistant coaches I teach them we have a plan but sometimes you have to look do we have to vacate the plan because you look at what's going on and that's not gonna work we gotta go this direction and this was one of things you mentioned like Joe you're 5'11", right? Or are you six foot? To be honest I'm like 5'10", 3 quarter okay because I've obviously met you a few times and I'm like yeah but you have very long arms you do not have a 5'11 wing span not a pretty good wing span I don't know exactly how long it is but it's pretty good yeah height wise 5'11 is a little bit of a lie I'm married out so I don't have to sound impressive I'll tell you the story let's say 5'11 but if we were at a combine yeah I don't even know if it'd be that that's fine okay so here's the thing actually you're a power 5 conference coach you have had some like big horses that you have coached I was I had one of my girls that I wanted I was talking to you about she's a six foot tall girl I'm thinking this is power 5 kind of thing Joe being 5'10", what did you weigh in high school Joe? I was like 2'35", 2'45", okay so would you, actually seeing Joe six you know 5'10", 2'45", would you have recruited Joe to a high state? We talk about this sometimes it's funny I mean here's the thing Not a chance to know Okay, here's the thing I'll say so it goes back to what Joe said earlier about the power you know I mean here's the thing I know it can be done being smaller like I'm 5'7", in high school I weighed I don't know I don't know 180 something 190 I was bigger in high school than I was pretty big but I mean I wasn't 200 pounds you know and so I know it can be done but I know it's harder to do it when you're smaller you know so you have to sell out for something so it's like I tell my kids all the time it's like okay I use this analogy with Shade all the time Shade physically to me is a 10 meaning like there's nothing that she doesn't have that I think you need to be super elite now Shade's technique in high school I'd say was like a 5 out of 10 if that so okay bodies a 10, techniques a 5, Shade's a 15 so say my body was like a 7 okay say my technique was a 9 well I beat Shade and I beat Shade you know I threw farther in the shot than Shade did now what happens when Shade goes to college and when I go to college is she can max out her controllables that I've already maxed out so it's like with somebody like Joe it's like okay wow you see a guy like that and you're like okay he's super explosive but if I have a scholarship and my job's on the line for that scholarship and I had to pick between 5-11 Joe that maybe hopefully could and a boy that maybe could go be playing Mac football at Kent State or come to Ohio State and he can stand through a 62 feet like I have to go with the power because I'm gambling you know what I'm saying now what I wanted to Joe if Joe came here if I could have given Joe some money and got him here like I definitely would have liked to coach him but like that's the thing as a college coach you have to be able to make some sense to your staff that you're making a calculated decision and they want to see you bring people in that look like people that they see at a regular basis at NCW. So it's like I'm not like a big person but like if I can get bigger people to come here and I feel like that's more of a sure bet and I'm not gonna have to put my job on the line for taking a chance on an undersized person that's gonna take more time to develop you know I mean that's just kind of what you have to do doesn't mean I don't believe in smaller people I mean I'd be like you know I'm a smaller people I guess for this but you would have passed on the future two-time world champion. No I promise to be honest. You would have passed but I'll tell you this coming from the smaller side of the scale like and this is anybody out there who's on the under six foot and below pretty much under six to and below I'll talk to you is like you're different than Ryan you know like if I threw like Ryan I would be a 1850 shop putter and if Ryan threw like me he would never stay in the ring. I mean there's definitely a huge difference. I think he probably respects what I do but there's a big difference for what we do but being with like the size I am I have to beat him and most other people in the weight room when it comes down to the power and the speed and if you're gonna be my height I'm gonna you know when it comes down to the release height and angle and speed and velocity I have to make up for that factor somehow and that's not just saying you more weight that's saying like what I always tell her kids is like if you're short be smaller like get lower get in the hole farther like you need to make your range more maximal so it's not just more weight it's more depth it's more movement it's more mobility. For me the more mobile I am the more I can turn myself into a rag doll the more I can keep doing this as a crew. Right. The second I lose that it's a hobby and I'm done.