Kurt Hester on The Power of Training and Connecting with Athletes on the Human Level

Today’s show is with performance coach, Kurt Hester. Kurt is currently the Head of Football Preparation at the University of Tulane, and was previously the head strength coach at Lousiana Tech University from 2013 to 2021. He has decades of experience coaching in both the collegiate, and private sectors, and is the author of the book: ”Rants of a Strength and Conditioning Madman”. When it comes to the results we get out of a training program (or the experience an athlete has in a sport organization), we usually think on the level of sets, reps and exercises. What we typically don’t consider as much, is how an athlete perceives the training from an emotional and sub-conscious, perspective, and how important building the right relationship is to the holistic success of the program. Kurt Hester is the kind of strength coach I wish I had when I was a young athlete. When we talk about what it means to be a coach, and to be a servant-leader, Kurt is one of the first individuals that comes to mind. He not only has been studying and living the art of physical training for almost half a century, but he also has a focused sense of how to train individuals on both the athlete, and human levels. On the show today, Kurt talks about how he connects with his athletes on the “human” level, to help improve their total experience as an athlete, gain trust, and improve the quality of training sessions. He’ll talk about how he uses games and fun activities to improve, not only the emotional content of the training sessions, but also the total effort level of the athletes. Finally, Kurt digs into some details around the sports performance industry itself, what he considers “mental toughness” to truly be, and gives his advice on developmental practices in leadership and communication. Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster and Lost Empire Herbs. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points: 5:31 – How Kurt started to survey his athletes to learn more about them, and how this helped him to connect with athletes on a stronger level 10:14 – How to command a room in a coaching setting, while still getting to know athletes on a more personal level 13:27 – How players at Kurt’s former university rated the importance of the “strength coach” so high, in regards to why they attended the school 17:432 – Why Kurt uses games as a critical portion of his physical preparation program, as well as the injury prevention benefits of using game-based agility training 29:17 – Kurt’s learnings in his training with elite track and field athletes in the 1980’s and how many “modern” training methods have been around for a long time 32:14 – How strength coaches should have good all-around GPP, and be able to play games, do dynamic warmups, and demonstrate sprinting 40:15 – What Kurt would re-brand the field of sports performance 48:53 – What Kurt considers “mental strength” and “toughness” to truly be, in light of sports performance training 58:32 – Kurt’s advice on helping coaches to be able to understand athletes and lead them on a better level “You can’t serve who you don’t know” “The athletes who trusted me, and I had the best relationship with, those were the ones who excelled the most… the closer I had a relationship with them that was not about (sports) where they trusted me at a very high level, they developed at a faster rate than an athlete I wasn’t close to” “A lot of strength and football coaches think that, if you have fun, that you are not working hard or at a proficient, high level, and I never wanted to be in this field, to not have fun” “Most athletes don’t like to train, and that’s what most strength coaches don’t get… 99% of strength coaches do not understand that fact, they are not you! So that’s always in the back of my mind, how can I make it fun” “(In games) you are never going to get that out of a regular drill; that speed, that force into the ground in moving” “Most people would rather play (ghetto-ball) than their true sport” “(In a game) they will run harder than they will ever run on a timed sprint, or a tempo run” “Tag games was (track coach Brent MacFarlane’s) GPP” “From the 60’s to the 90’s, it was heavy, heavy on the lifting aspect, 70% was lifting, and 30% was running dudes to the ground, on the glycolytic level” “We’re still stuck in “lifting is more”; we have destroyed our DB’s and wide receivers over the years, and made them non-reactive because of so many years of them spending time in the weightroom; once you get to a certain level of strength, it’s not going to help you at all” “You are not going to beat an athlete into the ground, and make him a tougher person” “What will happen is (the bottom 10% of athletes who fold or quit in conditioning work) they’ll be a better conditioned 10%, but they are not mentally tough” “We changed their entire life, but we weren’t beating it out of them, it was from talking to them from a human aspect, and not an athlete aspect” “If you have that high trust level with your athletes, I’ve seen more guys make it, versus those athletes that I didn’t spend the time and get to know them on that human level” “Instead of buying new books, go back and read the books you already bought” “If you are still fighting over, “should we front squat or back squat”, then we will not progress as a field” About Kurt Hester Kurt Hester is Currently the Director of Strength and Conditioning for University of Tulane Football, and was previously the head strength coach at Lousiana Tech University from 2013 to 2022. He is the author of the book: ”Rants of a Strength and Conditioning Madman”. Kurt served as a National Director of Training for the D1 Sports Training Center in Nashville, Tenn. since 2008, and worked with training several professional athletes in many different sports. Concurrent to his tenure at D1 Sports Training, Hester also worked as the Director of Training at the Manning Passing Academy as he designed a training program for over 1,300 high school athletes and delivered a specific training seminar for high school and college coaches. From 1997-2008, Hester was the owner and Director of Performance at HS2 Athletic Performance in Mandeville. He developed and mentored area coaches for college and professional coaching careers with several going on to BCS-level schools and NFL teams. Over 500 athletes he worked with received collegiate scholarships during that time as he oversaw the development of over 400 junior and senior high students per day. Hester was an assistant strength coach at LSU from 1995-98, working with the speed development program for then-football coach Gerry Dinardo and worked primarily with the LSU baseball team as it won two national championships under legendary coach Skip Bertman. Hester also worked with the men's basketball, women's soccer and women's golf programs as well as with the varsity cheerleaders. Kurt graduated from Tulane University in 1995 with a Bachelors of Science degree in exercise physiology. He also served as a graduate strength coach at Tulane for two years.