Joe Nyce - A Master Class in Defying the Odds

Joe Nyce's journey is the stuff of legends; from battling with leg braces to dominating on wrestling mats and football fields, he's the embodiment of resilience. As a beacon for every young athlete facing an uphill battle, Joe shares his hard-earned wisdom with us, narrating how he transformed "I can't" into "I can" with every fiber of his being. His story isn't just one for the sports annals—it's a masterclass in defying odds, pushing limits, and rewriting your destiny, no matter where you start.

This heart-to-heart with Joe isn't just about reveling in past glories; it's about forging future champions, both on and off the field. We uncover the DNA of mental fortitude and leadership that separates the great from the good. As a police officer, coach, and mentor, Joe spills his secrets on building goal-oriented, disciplined athletes who excel with integrity. It's an insider's guide to nurturing self-respect and a team spirit that transcends the scoreboard, making every listener feel like part of a grand, winning tradition.

Wrapping up, our conversation takes a deep dive into the essence of mentorship and the role of sports as a catalyst for lifelong skills. Joe's transition from motivator to "life catalyst" exemplifies how sports can be the vehicle for profound personal growth and community impact. For those ready to run that extra mile towards excellence, Joe's insights are the coach's whistle that kicks off your journey to greatness. Tune in, and let's celebrate the power of sports to uplift and unite, because every champion's journey starts with a single play—and this could be yours.

website https://www.joenyce.com
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/joe_nyce/

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Transcript

Athletic Success Against All Odds

Coach Riley 0:33

Welcome to the 6am Practice Podcast. I'm your host, coach Jace Riley. On each podcast we talk with a different leading expert in the world of sports to explore different strategies, insights and tips to help youth athletes excel on and off the field. We also discuss critical issues that the parents of today need to know about to help their child navigate the difficult issues that confront them today. Today's guest is Joe Nice. So I want you to imagine a young boy couldn't walk without leg braces, totally ends up defying all odds and become an athletic power house later in life. Joe's journey from being one of the smallest kids in class to excel in collegiate wrestling and semi-pro football is a tell. Nothing but pure determination. And I tell you guys, dude is yoked. This guy talks the talk, he walks the walk. He is the real freaking deal. But it doesn't stop at sports. Today he's a motivational speaker. He talks to students across the country. He inspires them to embrace the eye-can mentality that has led him to success. Joe, welcome to the show.

Joe Nyce 1:33

What's up, Coach? How are you?

Coach Riley 1:35

I'm doing well. I'm doing well. Every time I talk to you and I think it's like maybe the third or fourth time, I guess. So, Jack, before the call, I get excited. I'm like, man, we're going to talk about some good stuff. You always, like I said, you walk the walk, man, when you want to talk about somebody who's doing it, and you're not just saying it, you're helping people and you're such a great inspiration. I've followed you on Instagram for a long time, been on your show. A couple of times You've interviewed me, which I was so honored to do that. But I just want to ask you a few things. The leg braces when you were young to who you are today, that is underdog stuff all over. How did you that's like Rocky, the story of the underdog and getting it done, but you're a real life Rocky. Give us a little background on that and tell us a story, yeah.

Joe Nyce 2:32

So first of all, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. I love being able to have conversations with like-minded individuals. We're on the same path, right. We're trying to inspire the next generation of athletes to become the best possible versions of themselves. So anytime you could chop it up with somebody who's on the same mission as you, it's awesome, and I think I'm going to hire you for all my intros from that one, because that's pretty cool. I got excited about myself.

Coach Riley 2:57

Well, for a second, when I wrote it in my mind, I was running through a brick wall, bro. I was like let's go baby.

Joe Nyce 3:06

So that's funny. It's funny because I never really talk about my whole story. When I like map it out from like birth until now, sometimes you know it's like wow, man, you really did. You know you really did overcome a lot of things. And you know a lot of people don't know that I was born like really early.

Joe Nyce 3:24

I went in. My mom went into distress in labor because the cord was actually wrapped around my neck. So when I, when she went into premature labor, when I came out I was blue in the face. So you know, they basically had to bring life back to me. So I almost didn't make it Right and then, so so I it was a blessing that I'm even here and then early on my mom realized when it was come time for me to sort of walk, I was having some difficulties and she took me to the doctor and I had some issues with my knees.

Joe Nyce 3:56

So I actually learned how to walk with metal braces from my ankles to my knees, very similar to force gum. Okay, right, you know, and it's funny because the positioning of the braces is it almost forced me to walk on my toes growing up. So I was able to finally get rid of the braces. Oddly enough, my mom would like make fun of me Like when I would do something wrong. My mom would like make fun of me and say okay, you little ballerina, because I would be walking on my toes.

Coach Riley 4:27

Mom, what?

Joe Nyce 4:28

Oh, yeah, so my mom was kind of was kind of rubbing it in a little bit, but a couple of things happened right. So number one you know, first and foremost my legs were straightened out and I was able to kind of just function right and be normal. But it put me up on my toes. So I think it has something to do with the fact that I was a toe walker. I have ginormous calves.

Coach Riley 4:51

Yeah, I was going to say, bro, your calves are freaking hams.

Joe Nyce 4:55

Right, I have big calves. Part of that genetics, but I also think it's partly because I spent some time on my toes, absolutely. But also the negative is it created me to have like bred out webbed feet. Okay, so I have like quadruple E wide feet so I can't wear dress shoes. Yeah, I can't find in cleats or sneakers that fit me. I'm not going to have callus and blisters on my feet. Oh man, it's horrible Into this day, like I played flag football with my son and the turkey ball on Thanksgiving and I had like all these blood blisters on both sides of my feet because my cleats are too small and so it's a disaster. But anyway, so, yeah, so you know. So, so braces helped me learn how to walk. And then you know, the next hurdle or obstacle I had to overcome is that. You know, my parents, for whatever reason, bounced us around a lot growing up as a kid, so I went to four different school districts by the time I was in seventh grade.

Coach Riley 5:57

Right, well, that's, and that's tough because you got to make new friends every time. Oh yeah, so I'm starting over, starting over.

Joe Nyce 6:03

And you know, and then you know we'd move and we wouldn't just like move to a different house, like we'd move to like a different school and I'd have to start all over again. And what what I think made it easier for me than my sisters was that I was an athletic. I was an athlete Right. So I would just go to a new school and you know, and it would force me to come kind of come out of my shell and I would sit with the kids who look like athletes, or I'd meet them on the playground and we'd be playing ball or football and I was really fast and you know, and they're kind of like, just naturally, organically, I made friends, right. That's where you fit in right.

Coach Riley 6:37

That's where I sit, and athletes always find each other, I mean because they're looking for a game right. So at least I mean that's one of the that is one of the positive things about sports is, if you do move a lot when you, you got instant friends almost because you joined the team.

Joe Nyce 6:52

Right and that's right. I encourage that to all parents. Put your kids in organized sports because it puts your child in an otherwise situation or culture that they would normally not be in and it can literally change a kid's life. Like I had a conversation today with one of the parents at my high school because he's overweight and he came to me and he wants me to help him, you know, lose some weight. And I said, all right, I like to talk to your parent first. So he put me in touch with dad and I said, dad, listen, like you know, getting him on the football team, because he's like six foot two, 250 pounds, he's 15 years old. I'm like, if you put this kid on the football team, it will literally change his life 100%. You put him around a good, positive culture and good kids and he's going to break out of a shell and he's going to have instant friends. He's going to have a 30 friends right off the bat that he normally wouldn't have if he was just over in a corner by himself. You know feeling. You know feeling some sort of way about himself. So so sports did that for me.

Joe Nyce 7:51

And then the next hurdle was I was literally the smallest kid. Everywhere I went I wrestled at high school. My freshman year I was about four foot nine, 91 pounds, and I graduated my senior year of high school 126 pounds. I was literally the smallest kid on the football field. Every game that we played.

Underdog Mentality Leads to Success

Joe Nyce 8:14

So it created that. It created that underdog mentality for me, and and and it was something that made me want to work harder to prove everybody wrong because I was often overlooked. So I knew I had. I wasn't the biggest, I wasn't the fastest or the strongest, so I took the mantra of I was going to work the hardest. So by the time I became a senior, I went from somebody who played organized tackle football from seventh grade to my senior year and really didn't get that much playing time. And which was ironic for me, because every time we went out in school backyard I was probably number one in number two pick Because I was really fast, I was super shifty, I had great hands and nobody could tackle me. But when that doesn't necessarily always translate to tackle football with pads on, because obviously you're playing against bigger and stronger and faster kids, right, right.

Coach Riley 9:04

And that's I mean. How did you so, how did you kind of deal with that? Right, you know, at one end, you know you're, you know you got these skills, and on the other end, you know you're not getting the playing time.

Joe Nyce 9:14

Right, it was frustrating, but I was fortunate enough that I had, you know. You know, my parents, or my dad specifically, was never one of those parents that was like blaming coaches or you know. It was just like, hey, just just keep working, right. So I just kept working, I just kept working harder. I was always that kid who was trying to be the first in sprints, so it was always that kid was right around the coach and by my junior year, like I would literally follow the head coach up and down the sideline. So if he needed somebody he was going to have to literally look over my head to pick somebody before, you know, before me.

Joe Nyce 9:53

So I remember the last game of the year. We were in a playoff game, a bowl game, and the wide receiver got hurt and I was a split end. At the time I was a wide receiver and I was before he could even overlook me. I was running on the field and it's funny because that particular play that I went in, my first play I ever played offense on varsity football they call the pass play and I caught it and I broke like three tackles, which is crazy to me. I still remember it like it was yesterday and I think I would have scored a touchdown. But it was at the end of the half and one of my teammates literally threw me out of bounds to stop the clock. Oh right, because if you just would have blocked the last guy, I probably would have scored.

Coach Riley 10:40

Man, but what are the odds? What are the odds? Man, you go with him straight.

Joe Nyce 10:44

First play caught a pass ducked down. I was so little, the cornerback one flying right over my right, over my back, and I was like holy crap. And I turned around and I started running and the safety came over and I was a hundred and I did 19 pounds. He bounced off. I don't know how he bounced off for me and I just kept running and I was like, oh my God, I think I'm going to score. And the next thing, I know the fullback just took me and like threw me out of bounds to stop the clock. I was like what happened? Oh man, so that was my first ever play.

Joe Nyce 11:14

And then you know, obviously going into your senior year, you know high school football, at least in the 90s coach, was really designed for unless you were like really, really good, it was really designed for like your senior year, right? So, like a lot of the players you know, you waited for that moment, like your senior year. And I remember going into camp. I was named a captain because that was my third year on varsity, because my sophomore year our JV football program got canceled because we didn't have enough kids. Okay, so they gave us the option you could either play varsity football, or you could wait until next year, and I was like I'm not missing a year of football. So I put varsity football at 105 pounds.

Coach Riley 11:51

Right, but you're on, you're getting into the practices, you're getting around the team, you're learning the stuff, right?

Joe Nyce 11:56

I was on the team. All I wanted to do growing up was play varsity football. So I was like I'm going to be able to play varsity football. Sign me up by the end of the year. I tore my meniscus. I didn't know that I tore my meniscus because I didn't have health benefits growing up, so I just thought I hurt my knee and I thought I had like tight IT bands because my knee would always click Right. It wasn't until it wasn't until I was in my early twenties that I finally had benefits and went to the doctor and they're like you have a really bad torn meniscus. So I literally played on a torn meniscus for 10 years.

Coach Riley 12:35

Yeah, I just kept going.

Joe Nyce 12:37

Yeah, because I didn't, I didn't know any better. Right, Right, right. So I did everything. My leg would lock and I'd be in pain for a few days and then it would like subside and so, anyway, I didn't play, I didn't finish my sophomore year, my junior year, I made the catch, my last game of the season, and then my senior year, going into the year like I was named captain. I was a three year varsity player. It was one of six kids who played for three years and I remember one of the first days at camp the news, the local newspaper coming to the field to interview the coach and to talk about the upcoming players and players to watch, right, and my name wasn't given, and I remember being like devastated. Yeah, I was senior year, I was captain, right, and you know I moved positions from running back to wide receiver because our running back that we had was the number one running back in the state and I just wasn't going to beat him out and I didn't want to sit the bench Right. So I transitioned to full time wide receiver and they didn't interview me, they didn't take my photo, and I remember, instead of getting like really sad and feeling sorry for myself, remember saying to myself. I'm going to prove them wrong, man.

Joe Nyce 13:50

My senior year for Harrison you know, high school I set a high school, a single season high school record for most receptions in a season. I scored a touchdown against our big rival which in New York the Harrison Rye high school rivalry is probably the number one rivalry in the state. I scored my first ever touchdown 51 yard touchdown in that game on the last game of the year to to nice to give us the lead. And your touchdown gave you the lead. Yeah, so they had scored on us and then I took the kickoff return back to, like I think, the 49 yard line.

Joe Nyce 14:25

On the next kickoff and the first play they called the pass and we were such a run heavy team. They play actions and everybody bit. I read the post corner, I was wide open, the quarterback put it right, right between the numbers and I took it to the house for 51 yards and that was my first ever touchdown in in organized football and I was a senior. It was my last game. That's played two ball games after that and I scored a touchdown in every game after that. But that was like coming of full circle for me. So yeah, they, they wound up having to use my wrestling photo from the year before, when they were writing articles about me during the year they didn't take your picture at the football.

Joe Nyce 15:04

They didn't take my picture and and I also, I also played fullback at 125 pounds when our fullback got hurt. So I was that's a heavy load man I was laying out linebackers at 125 pounds and again, just and I know it's so funny because I look at myself in photos and I had almost, I almost had like invisible lat syndrome, right Like I thought I was big coach, like I, I was 125 pounds, but in my head I was like 220.

Coach Riley 15:33

That's how you got to think when you're, when you're the little guy right, you got to do like remember just you know, some of our games were televised and the announcers like this kid's all over the field.

Joe Nyce 15:42

I hit a fullback. He was 225. I was 125. We met an open field, head on collision. He fumbled. We recovered the fumble and they were like, oh my God, they couldn't believe that I laid this kid out. But it was just. I just had that mentality right and I think that mentality has kind of stuck with me my whole life, like I I enjoy being the underdog, right, and I enjoyed, you know, being overlooked, and but I try to explain to my athletes no matter if you are or not, when you get on a sports field or athletic field, you have to believe that you're the best player on the field. And I still believe that to this day. It doesn't matter what I'm doing, it could be basketball, it could be football, it could be softball, it could be kickball, it doesn't matter, I'm the best.

Coach Riley 16:26

I mean and that's winners mentality, right, you might not win every game, that's irrelevant, because sometimes you're just gonna come up against better talent. You just, I mean, it just happens, right, because can't win them all, you're not gonna lose them all. Well, sometimes you can have a losing season, right, you know there's we don't even win a game, but usually those are rebuilding years and at least at some point you've won some game. But I mean, you know you're talking, you football, last game, touchdown like dude, that's a movie, that whole from the beginning to the end.

Joe Nyce 17:01

It kinda is, but the way I look at it is, I think that every great athlete. Because I studied greatness right, so I became a motivational speaker. I was certified by Eric Thomas, number one motivational speaker in the world.

Coach Riley 17:14

He's the very first motivational video I ever saw. Yeah, it was, as you know, as bad as you wanna breathe.

Joe Nyce 17:20

Yeah, it's the same. For me, it's the first time I saw him.

Coach Riley 17:24

That was. I'd heard about YouTube. I knew, but you know I'm an old man and so the kids are watching YouTube. I'm like I don't got time for that, I'm working and whatever. You know, before smartphones were really heavy, heavy and so, yeah, somehow I got on, I typed something in. It must've been motivation or something, because my son was playing basketball, right, and so I was looking for I don't know something and motivation came up and it was that Eric Thomas video and it was so like, when certain people say certain things, it is such a game changer because you hear some people say some things and you're like, eh, it doesn't, because it doesn't speak right to you, right. And when you do hear somebody say something and it resonates and you're like, holy mother-effort, that is so powerful and that's. You know, eric Thomas does that. You do that. You know I've seen some of your speeches that you're giving to the kids and stuff like that. You can't fake that. That is how you have to.

Joe Nyce 18:30

It's real life, that's the thing it's like. It comes from real life experience. And just to use that as an example of that same mentality, when I saw that video, right away I go online, right, and I start looking up all of this stuff, and then he's having these conferences at the time and I'm like, all right, I'm gonna go. But I said so I would go online to sign up and there was the regular admission. They'd be like the VIP admission and I'm like, if I'm going, I'm going Might as well, so it would be like VIP. So after the regular conference, you go into a smaller room with the VIPs and just have dialogue, right, and just start talking. And it was one in Philly, then it was one in Boston, then it was one in New York City and before you know it, just he remembered me oh, it's the jacked cop with the tattoos. So we would just start having organic conversations. And then the next thing, you know, I'm invited to speak with him in Atlanta, in Detroit, in Flint, in Philly, right, south Side, chicago, right, wow. So it's like how does this guy with basically no motivational speaking experience go to the number one motivational speaker in the world? And, before you know it, you're standing right next to him, talking with him, and it's because of the mindset I wasn't just gonna partake. I wanted to get something out of it and become something with it. So I study greatness Kobe Bryant, jeter Jordan, tom Brady, right, these are people that you know that I've spent hours listening to and watching and I think that the mindset of someone great right is what sets them apart from everybody else.

Joe Nyce 20:20

The competitive like I'm the most competitive person I know, but also extremely humble in defeat, right. So if I you know you might beat me, but I know you're not gonna outwork me, but you might beat me. And if you beat me, at the end of the game we're gonna shake hands and we could be friends or we could down each other up and it's over with it's competition. But when I'm playing you, it doesn't matter who I'm playing like I'm 45 years old, the turkey bowl. People are like dude, are you okay? They're like what are you talking about? They're like you're out of your mind. You have to go to work tomorrow. I'm like, yeah. And they're like you're diving all over the place. I'm like I only know how to play one way. So when we're playing, we're playing, and then, when we're done, I'll limp off the field and go ice up after that. But mindset, I think, is what really really separates people who really succeed or people who just partake, and that's one of the reasons why I created that program that we'll talk about.

Coach Riley 21:13

Right, and so that's what I wanted to talk about. So the last time I had talked to you, you're always coming up with these ideas and these philosophies and, like you said, it's the mindset and stuff like that. So now you've created the championship athlete program and I'm gonna listen. I'm telling everybody, if this guy says it, he can do it. He's not just talking the talk, he is everything that he does when he posts on Instagram You're at 5 am, I'm like 5 am, like no man. It's 6 am, it's not 5 am. Your brand needs off a little bit. I'm like Joe's there an hour before the 6 am guy, right, and just that motivation. And so you possess that championship spirit, right, and so you've created this program. So what's the main objective of this program?

Developing Mentally Tough Athletes for Success

Joe Nyce 22:06

Yeah, so I coached youth sports for 12 years with my kids, right, and then I'm in a high school for the last five years, working with athletes on a regular basis, talking to them right, being part of the football program and the school that I'm at. They allow me access to the kids and I think that the smart ones always try to identify the gap right I think there's, in order to get better. The first thing you need to do is you need to identify the chink in the armor, and I firmly believe that sports is way more mindset than it gets attributed to it. Okay, so let's just say you ask the great sports, mindset physical? They'll say like it's 80% mindset, 20% physical. But because you're not working with professional athletes and kids have to do, they have chores and they have school and they only get to practice so much with their teams and they have to put so much into creating their offensive system, their defensive game planning, that they don't have time for the mindset. So if mindset is 80% but you only spend 5% on it, then we have a huge gap that we need to make up. So that's where I can come in now and work with athletes and fix how they think and how they operate.

Joe Nyce 23:41

So my objective in creating the championship athlete was I want kids to identify what it takes to become a complete athlete, both on and off the field or court. Right, we wanna develop an entire team of mentally tough athletes that work together for a common goal, because right now we have a lot of mentally weak kids. Right, we wanna create within a team, we wanna create a culture of accountability and ownership for their decisions in their play. Right, they're not gonna blame anybody else, they have to take ownership of that. And then kids go into high school for four years.

Joe Nyce 24:18

That's their window of opportunity. So I want them to be as best equipped as possible to take advantage of their opportunity in the lifetime of that opportunity, because it's only four years. And after that four years, I mean, I think they say, like you know, 7% of kids go on to play college sports, so 93% of kids are done after those four years. So they only need to realize that that window is very small when it closes. And if they care deeply about something, then they need to know that it's a lot more than just showing up three to five, monday to Friday, to practice Four years is a long time, because before they get into high school, four years was, like you know, like fourth grade and then fourth grade.

Coach Riley 25:00

That was so long ago and it goes by so fast, so fast. And so you're right when you start early, right, and you put these systems into place and you have a strategy, you can get so far ahead where, even if you don't end up not going to play college ball, the times and the memories and the experiences you've had being on the team and being one of the better players and actually, you know, forming that team family, that's what's unforgettable about high school sports.

Joe Nyce 25:35

And you're 100% right. But on the flip side, the other thing is that regret is so powerful because you can never go back and change it Right. So I look at it on the side of no regrets, like if you go out and you give everything you have for your team and yourself to be the best version of yourself, whether that's a football player or a hockey player or a basketball player, and the chips will fall where they may. But when you look yourself in the mirror, coach, you can say I did everything I possibly could to be the best I possibly could be. If you don't do that, then there's all these what a should or could is, and you can never go back and change that. And I have regrets as a high school athlete that at 45, still eat away at my soul and you can't go back and fix it. And that's the first part, it never goes away.

Joe Nyce 26:28

And that for, as a coach, if you could teach kids that right, where they're not getting that from, say, their, their actual coach, because they're too busy implementing the game plan, the techniques, right, they need somebody that's going to be able to have these conversations with them. Right, and you and I were speaking about before we started. Sometimes with your own kids, right, they don't want to listen to dad. Sometimes, athletes who spend a lot of time with their coaches when it comes to stuff outside of the sports, they don't want to hear their coaches voice anymore. Yeah, it's like they're tuned out. So that's where you bring another voice in. And all the other the teams that I've worked with so far, like one of the basketball teams that I work with the coaches reached out to me and said hey, the kids want to know when you come back and speak to them, because they just started their season and that's unsolicited, because they like those conversations that we're having and it's not the coach.

Coach Riley 27:19

Yeah, yeah, that's a huge thing. When the kids caught, when the kids like, hey, when you come back, like you know you've identified they have they're like, hey, that guy has my best interest, right, and you're right. You know the kids don't want to hear it from the parent and they don't want to hear it from the coach, so they're looking for places to hear it from and if it's not supplied, they'll find it on TikTok or Instagram or whatever. And hopefully you know there's a lot of. You can like ET and following these guys and following you.

Setting Goals and Daily Discipline

Coach Riley 27:52

You know those are positive experiences, but when you can set, when you can put systems into place. So you're right, you're that new voice that they're hearing and it's from stuff outside of sports. You know you might not be talking X's and O's, you might be talking how to jump higher, right, you're talking about. You know you mentioned the 80, 20, it's probably more like maybe 95, five at some level, because professional athletes at the yes, some are better, some are worse, but overall average, the skill sets the same. So what's the difference? It's the mindset, it's it can't be anything else.

Joe Nyce 28:28

The little things after practice. It's the little things before practice. Right, it's that's. I just watched the video today of who was the basketball player that was talking in the video it was. He was talking about how the game is the easy part. He could play the game in his sleep, right, right, it was the all the hard work before practices the early, the early morning sessions, the five AM gym sessions, the nine PM gym sessions after practices over. That's where the champions are made. The game is the easy part, what's that?

Coach Riley 29:07

saying, yeah, practices are where it's won, games are where you pick up the trophy, something like that. I totally butchered the good quote. I can't remember what was off the head of that piece out, but you're a hundred percent right. And so you know you've talked about, you know, a complete athlete, and so there's things you do on the field at practice. There's things you do off the field, right, you know, after practice, before practice. And so how do you, how do you set that up for kids to where it's not so structured? But I mean, they've got to buy in, they've got to see the benefit to them, and so how do you explain that strategy to them? About it, what you do off the field does matter.

Joe Nyce 29:51

So the first thing that I try to do with my athletes is we need to identify what our goals are. That's important. I cannot tell you how many blanks, how many blank stares I've gotten when I've asked an athlete, hey, what are your goals? I just got the blankest look of all. When I asked my son two days ago, I sat him down in the kitchen and I said all right, pal, I gave you some time off after the season. You're not playing the winter sport, let's talk. What are your goals? What do you mean, dad? What are your goals for football for next year? I don't know. Play.

Joe Nyce 30:24

I said oh, okay, so your goal is to play football next year? I said all right, well, you will. You will all lead honorable mention this year. I said do you want to be all lead next year? Do you want to be all sectioned? Do you want to be the best safety that Bruce has ever had? Do you want to gain 25 pounds? What are your goals? Yeah, now, once we identify the goals right, whether they're personal or team now we can sort of reverse engineer how we're going to get there.

Coach Riley 30:49

And that's the key part that most people don't do they don't identify the goal. I want to be a better basketball player. Well, lottie Dah, who doesn't? What does that mean? What does that mean? Better shooter, better shooter what?

Joe Nyce 31:01

is it right? I want to be dad. I got to gain 25 pounds. That's a great goal. How do we gain 25 pounds? Okay, well, we need to be on a nutrition plan. We need to consume. If you're 145 pounds right now, we need to consume 20 calories per pound. So that's right there. That's going to be at least 29,. At the very bare minimum, that's 2,900 calories. What does that look like? We're going to structure your day accordingly. You got to have 145 grams of protein pop pop, pop, pop, pop pop. We got to go to the gym four or five days a week.

Joe Nyce 31:30

We got a, we got a we got a squat, we got a deadlift pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. Okay, now we can get to. Now we can gain 25 pounds. We've identified the goal and we've reversed the engineer and what we have to do on a daily basis to get there.

Self-Love and Leadership in Athletics

Coach Riley 31:43

And you know it works, because when you do certain A, Bs and Cs, you get the same result. And that's why having a system whether it's like that, right there when your, when your goal is identifiable enough, where at the end of the week you can look at a checklist, and there's a bunch of you either check it or cross it off and you've put in the dues You've, you know you, you've done the work, you look at that. That is self-confidence, because you know you can't, you couldn't have done anything else. So now you've done the work, you have the confidence that's going to increase, you know, your performance. Possibly it's going to drive me because now you're motivated, so now I'm going to put the work in. I'm going to put more work in because I got, I got it. And that's the thing People are like. Well, I'm never motivated, so I don't do it. No, it's backwards. You do it, then you get motivated, then you do it. You got to prime the pump a little bit. You got to put a little bit of work in, get the results.

Joe Nyce 32:42

Listen, I don't want to get up at 4am in the morning. My wife is laying next to me, the bed is nice and warm. It's dark outside, it's 20 degrees outside, everybody in my house is sleeping. I'm running the world asleep Right. 4am the alarm clock goes off and it's the discipline that gets me up at a bed. I'm not motivated at 4am. It will work out. Nobody is Right. But my discipline forces me out of bed and then I do it. And then, when I'm done working out at 6 o'clock in the morning, when half of the world is just waking up, that makes me feel like I'm a superhuman person, a freaking champion of the world, like hey.

Joe Nyce 33:20

Yeah, when I'm driving in my car at 4.30 in the morning to the gym, I'm different, right? So I'm going to treat myself like I'm different, because not everybody's doing what I'm doing.

Coach Riley 33:34

That is a good example, that example right there superhuman, because you do. And here, listen, I have never after a workout been like I shouldn't have done that.

Joe Nyce 33:44

No, it's the greatest feeling in the world.

Coach Riley 33:47

Because you didn't want to do it. And you're like, what up, I can't get it anyway, you can't stop me. Get in the mow way, right. And you're driving back and you're looking at people and they're rubbing the sleep out of their eyes and you're like, what's up, lazy head, hold on, I got goals to accomplish.

Joe Nyce 34:05

So it's the identification of the goals coach, that is the person foremost. And then I have fundamentals that I put into my program that we just go through Right, like you know, and I have specific names of the fundamentals and then under each fundamental is subgroups Like, for instance, the love of the game, right. So that's my first fundamental and underneath that fundamental I have gratitude, attitude, self-love and your why. So we go through gratitude, right. We go through that right. You know, feeling grateful that you have the opportunity right to do something that you love to do, right, and how your attitude feeds into. So we go through all this your gratitude, attitude, self-love.

Joe Nyce 34:59

And we talk about self-love because people are really weirded out about self-love. So first we identify what self-love means, right, and I believe that self-love is about having the discipline to make the right decisions on a consistent basis. Self-love is not about saying, oh, look at me, I'm so beautiful, I got a six-pack, I'm Jack. That's not self-love. Self-love is about having the self-discipline to make the right decisions on a regular basis. Self-love is honesty to ourselves and being honest to yourself.

Joe Nyce 35:31

You know who the little hole says right, yeah, and so I'm sorry, yeah, coach.

Coach Riley 35:38

Well, so we demand that other people don't lie to us and we don't lie to other people normally in the world. Right, you don't want to lie to people, but we will lie to ourselves all the time or like it's nothing right, and I'll start tomorrow liar right. And the weird thing is is that the more you do it, the more your brain expects it. I mean, the brain is really weird how it develops and you talk about habits and all these things, and so the more you lie to yourself. So when you don't lie to yourself and you hold yourself accountable right, and you get up and you do the thing that you know needs to be done, that feeling that you have it's so it makes it all worth it.

Coach Riley 36:36

Because at the end of the day, you can look and you know, because most people have goals and initially they're for themselves, right. But as you talk about the gratitude, they start seeing how they can help other people and how it's not about them becoming better, it's about how they can help other people become better, because somebody's always a level or two below you and somebody's always a level or two above you, and when you can help those out who are, you know who you are able to help that. I love the fact that you have the gratitude and the attitude built into. You know the mental aspect of how these kids, because it's so more than sports, it's so more than sports, right?

Joe Nyce 37:21

Yeah, listen, it's something that you could. Obviously, it's something that you could take with you. And you know in life, right, you can lie to yourself all throughout the day, but at the end of the night we talk about how you feel, right, how you feel about yourself, you know, determines, you know, whether you're honest to yourself. It really determines how you feel about yourself. You know when you do exactly what you say you're going to do. You look at yourself with a certain level of reverence and confidence. Right, because you're truthful. You can lie throughout the day and say you didn't do this because your thumb hurt, or you didn't do this because you didn't have enough time or you were tired, or. But then when you brush your teeth at night, when you're staring at yourself in the mirror, you feel like a piece of garbage because you know you're lying to yourself.

Coach Riley 38:07

Toothpaste, toothpaste. Time is some of the roughest times of the day, man, yeah, you're looking at that. It's the end of the day. You're looking at that, dude. You told him what you were going to do today. Did you do it, did you not? What Did you wimp out? Did you not wimp out? That is such an honest look at how most people probably view the success of their day. When you're brushing your teeth, man, because you're look, you know you got to be. I knew that you can't lie, you can't.

Joe Nyce 38:39

You get to be a part of self-love, and that's why I started with it, because I believe it's so important. So, so Lou Holt said that without self-discipline, success is impossible. So I'm saying that self-love is about having the self-discipline to make the right decisions. But self-love equates to self-discipline, and Lou Holt is saying that without self-discipline, success is impossible. So without self-love, success is impossible. So it starts with how you treat yourself, how you look at yourself. If you feel like a piece of garbage, you're not gonna go out there and be successful. If you're a liar, you're not gonna go out there and put in the hard work and be successful, because you know you're taking the shortcuts. So it starts with how we look at ourselves, and then it branches off into everything else that we do in our lives. So it's again now. I'm not reinventing the wheel when I created this program. I'm not hitting kids to have honest conversations with themselves that they otherwise probably wouldn't be having.

Coach Riley 39:42

Yeah, the success always leaves footsteps, right. What everybody wants to do has already been done, and there's things that work and consistency wins. And as long as you're being honest with yourself and treating yourself like you said earlier, when you look at yourself at that level you said reverence and respect, like you have the respect for yourself, and if you have the respect for yourself, that just it doesn't make you cocky. In fact, you're probably more humble because you understand that what it's taken to get there and, with the gratitude aspect of it, like all of these parts build on each other and so you're constructing. You're constructing the championship athlete because you've got these different levels right. So you mentioned that your habits and everything and your goals, and it branches out to these other areas, right. So let's talk about, let's talk about branching off to the team, right.

Coach Riley 40:42

So a lot of times, teams work together because there's a common goal, right, and so you can take all these different people, put them together. Here's the common goal, all right. Now, in that space, there's gonna be people who become leaders, right, and so who other people lead up, who they look up to, and usually by default it's the best player, and maybe rightly so, I mean, because that's usually who everybody looks up to. Well, someone says the best player and stuff like that. So how do you get an entire group of kids, that's all. They have one common goal, but they all think there's different pathways there? How do you, how do I, as an athlete, communicate with the guys and step up to be that leader, right, to be that championship athlete, and say listen, you know, here's how we're gonna do it.

Building Team Unity Through Leadership

Joe Nyce 41:41

So you mentioned before, right that like, for instance, for me. For example, I walk the walk, right. So if I'm gonna preach to someone about fitness and nutrition, I better look like I'm into fitness and nutrition, right? So I'm 45 years old, I don't look like a million bucks. I don't know too many 45 year olds who look like me, number one and number two, who can go out on a football field for not having played football for a year and play with division one athletes and be the best player on the field at 45.

Coach Riley 42:20

Let alone 45 year olds, just people in the world right.

Joe Nyce 42:25

So if you wanna be a leader, okay, you better be doing what you're saying. You better be doing what you're telling others to be doing, right? So I don't think necessarily that I think there's a tremendous responsibility on great players to be leaders, but just because they're great doesn't mean that they're leaders. You know a lot of players get it right, but there are some that don't. I think natural born leaders are the ones that are gonna work the hardest and show their teammates that they're always willing to put the team in front of themselves, right? So when I talk to, when I get kids to buy in as a team, I tell them I have one saying that I say all the time good teams play together. Great teams play for each other, right? So if you see me out there breaking my rear end on a block because my teammate has a ball on the other side of the field, and if I make this block it's a difference between a 10 yard run and a touchdown and if I'm going out and doing that consistently, then you know that I have my teammates back in their best interest in mind, right? And those are the types of players that kids are gonna gravitate towards.

Joe Nyce 43:45

There was nothing better for me. My running back my senior year ran for 2121 yards. His senior year was the number one running back in New York state and I was a split end and the out of you know I had three touchdowns and big catches. There was nothing better than me stalk blocking a cornerback and watching number 21 run right by me Because you're gonna make that block. It's a 10, 15 yard game. Yeah, that's a great game. I make that block. He's going for 67 yards for a touchdown.

Coach Riley 44:15

Yeah you're part of. You don't have to be the guy, but you're the guy. The reason's the guy, and there's all these pieces and people who you know. Football especially it's. It is such a. It is such a when teams play like it's their thankless right it's. I'm not playing for me, I'm not playing for my staff, I'm playing for you. You know why? Because I saw you at the fields. I saw you in the gym. I saw you eating right. I saw you not going out Saturday night, right. You, because I know you, I saw you and you saw me. So, let's, I'm going to do everything I can do in when you're right.

Joe Nyce 44:55

That creates this gravitational pull and people you know what that creates too. It creates culture, exactly, team culture. Team culture is everything right, and you can have the best player on the team. If he's not doing that stuff, he's ruining the team culture. Yeah, because those other fringe players, those players that are trying to find their way, are looking at the best player on the field and watching him dog it and they're saying, well, if he's dogging it and he's the best player on the field, why, why not bust my home, right? And then, all of a sudden, you have a, you have a major problem, right? So that's why there's a tremendous responsibility for the best players to be leaders, but that's not always the case. So, yeah, how do you get a whole team? The first thing you have to do is you have to get them to believe that the team, obviously, is more important than the individual, right? You have to create that, you know. You have to create that culture and get them to play for each other, right? And then the next thing I do is I identify the best team that they are going to be playing against, okay, okay. So that's the right. Now, in section one, somers High School has been to has won four section championships in a row. They've been to three section state finals in a row and one back to back state championships. They are the Cremdella Crem right now. Okay, if somers is doing X, y and Z and they have 70 kids on the roster and they have tremendous talent, if you are not at least doing X, y and Z with 30 kids on your roster and not as much talent, you do not have a chance to beat them. So you identify the big dog and then you start chasing the big dog Conversation.

Joe Nyce 46:57

The other day, one of the captains for next year in my high school, when I sat him down and I said, hey, listen. I said you ever see a picture of a still pond? It looks like a piece of glass. Yeah, if you throw a pebble in that pond, it disrupts the whole pond and just ripples out. I need you to be the pebble. It's up to me. I said I need you to be the one player that decides that he's gonna be different.

Joe Nyce 47:25

Why is it so far-fetched to think that on a Friday night at eight o'clock at night, while everybody else is partying, wasting their time and doing stupid shit, that's not gonna help them or benefit them in any way. Why can't you be on the field running the bleachers. Why can't you be doing 10, 100 yard sprints? Because if you do it and you get your best friend to do it with you, that's two. Throw a radio on the field, blast some good music Right before you know it, you're gonna be like kids are gonna be like oh, drew and Joe were over at the field. That sounds pretty cool. That's cool. Then the JV kids go oh, the seniors are working out on a big mom. I really do, oh God. At eight o'clock at night, the seniors are running the bleachers. That's awesome. And before you know it, you got 30 kids. And while somers is hanging out playing video games or partying, you guys are in 20 degree weather, eight o'clock at night on a Friday, running bleachers. And now you're chasing the big dog.

Coach Riley 48:25

And destroying everybody in between the two of you, because you're working at the highest level.

Joe Nyce 48:30

And you are building a bond with your teammates that cannot be broken. And then, when times get tough, you're gonna remember the nights when you were freezing your butt off, running the bleachers okay, in the snow and in the rain, and it's not gonna feel so hard. These kids are so afraid to get uncomfortable, right? So you need and you only need coach. You only need one. You only need one player to be the one. Yep, so who's gonna be the pebble? Right? So it's harder to get a whole team to buy in than it is to get one player. But if you get one player and then they grab another player and you get two players, they're each other's accountability partner.

Joe Nyce 49:12

Now, just like losing and bad attitudes, like winning and good attitudes and hard work is contagious. It's contagious. Yeah, if you see a couple of kids busting it, you're gonna have more than a couple of kids. So that's how that, all of a sudden, it goes from two to four to six, to eight, to 10, to 12, to 15, almost 30 kids are all on the same page. Now you have your team coach. Now your team is working in unison for that common goal and that's when the real magic of high school sports happens.

Coach Riley 49:45

Yes, that's the thing that dynasties are made of, or they talk about undefeated teams, or just the memories that you'll get make everything worth it. And, like you said, when you're doing the hard stuff together I think you mentioned this earlier the game's the easy part. Game's the easy part, I mean, that's when you have the fun, like we've done all the hard work and you've put the time in and you know everybody's put the time, because there's nothing like professional jobs. You work with people who are like not pulling their weight and they know who they are and they're just a drain on morale and when people are like that on a team, it's really a toxic culture and that spreads. But the fact that you have the first guy, he's the pebble and it can be anybody. It can be anybody because that's gonna attract somebody else who wants to win. Maybe somebody else is a little upset that you guys didn't win or anything, or really wants to win or whatever the deal is. And yeah, Jimmy Butler.

Joe Nyce 50:52

Jimmy Butler was the athlete that was talking about that. He said the game's the easy part. I could play the game in my sleep. He says it's the hard work on the off hours when the lights are closed and nobody's watching. The 5 am workout sessions, the 9 pm, the 10 pm gym sessions, he goes. That's when you become great.

Coach Riley 51:13

So you're putting the work in. You know you're doing everything you need to do. How do you self-assess? Because most of the professional athletes have all these teams around them, stuff like that. You're a kid, you probably got maybe your parents. Maybe your parents don't know anything about sports, so they cheer for you but they're not gonna give you any advice. Dad doesn't know what dad doesn't know. So you've got your teammates. So, but the real honesty that we talked about earlier, about not lying to yourself while you're brushing teeth comes down to self-assessment. So how do I begin that process to self-assess, right? And then how do I? Maybe one of the reasons that I wanna self-assess is because I don't wanna hear the truth, right? So how do you get around that piece and say, listen, this is how you have to do it and you have to be honest?

Athlete Mindset and Team Unity

Joe Nyce 52:09

Yeah. So obviously, first thing is first, you have to be honest with yourselves, right? So I think there's a couple of different levels to self-assessment. So there's the actual self-assessment part when you're looking at yourself, right? So self-assessment is being honest with ourselves and identifying both our strengths and our weaknesses, right, I need to be honest with myself and know what I do really well and know what I do for, right. So if I'm a wide receiver and my footwork is bad, then you know what. I need to be honest with myself and say, hey, you need to put in some extra work with your footwork and it's gonna help you out running, which is gonna get you open, which is gonna give you the ability to catch the ball, because you know you have really great hands and you're gonna catch the passes that are thrown to you. So that's the first step. Right Is identifying our strengths and our weaknesses so we can build off of our strengths, but we can work on our weaknesses, right. Yep, yep. And then I think so in the final fundamental of this is where I call the four Ps of I don't wanna say it wrong. So I have hold on a second. I got my little cheat sheet here, so I have the process right and then the process is the four Ps of the process. So I practice, preparation, performance and then post-game analysis.

Joe Nyce 53:28

Now, post-game analysis is a really good place for you to do an honest self-assessment, right? So this is where I have athletes assess everything leading up to their performance right, practice, performance, preparation, right, and then your post-game analysis. So I asked them how was your mindset going into the game? Did you practice hard enough that week? What was your effort like? Were you practicing the right things? Were you getting better during practice? Were you prepared? Did we study enough to be watch films? Did we follow our routine? Were we healthy? Were we rested? Through all these questions right After our game that we can ask ourselves and give ourselves an honest self-assessment. And if we had a poor performance because that's the last part of it right, practice, preparation, performance If we had a lackluster performance, we can go into our post-game analysis and identify where we were short and fix it and make sure we don't make the same mistake again.

Coach Riley 54:38

And you're holding yourself accountable because you know exactly what you need to do. Like we talked earlier, it's either crossed off the list or there's a check in the box and when you look at the variables, yeah, maybe I didn't. So every question you just asked is a yes or no question. There is no, I don't know, like you might not like the answer, but it's yes or it's no and you know the answer in an instant. And when you can look at the assessment after the game and you can say, okay, I didn't do these core things and you can make the adjustment. Now, if you don't want to make the adjustment, that's a whole different story. Maybe you shouldn't be playing sports or whatever. But if you're an athlete and you realize that somebody came to you and just imagine it's just somebody you hire, right, because you've written it down, you've identified what you need to do, you can hold yourself accountable and then just make the adjustments.

Joe Nyce 55:41

So you have to make the adjustments. If you're an athlete and you're playing sports, then you should want to do this. But in reality you're not going to have every kid want to be a championship athlete, right. Some kids are on the team because they want to be with their friends. Some kids are on the team because they need something to do, right. So every team is going to have stars and really good players. But now and then you're going to have some players that want to be a championship. They want to be a championship athlete. They want to be the best version of themselves. They want to make mom and dad proud. They love the sport so much. They've been playing with their same friends their whole lives. They're all in right. Just think how phenomenal a team could be if you didn't have two of those kids, right, but you had 15 or 20, right.

Joe Nyce 56:36

So let's just say, coach me, and you go out in the parking lot with we grab three or four kids and we say we're going to move this car from point A to point B. I have ropes on all sides of the car and I said coach, get in the back. I'm going to take the front. Jimmy, you get on the front door on the passenger side. You know, steve, you get on the back door, on the driver's side, and, on three, everybody's going to pull the rope and everybody pulls straight back. Car goes nowhere. Everybody's pulling in an opposite direction. This person's playing the game because they love it. This person wants to be phenomenal. This person only cares about their stats. This person's just there because mom needed him to do something and the car goes nowhere. Right, we take the same kids, we tie all the ropes on the front bumper and I say, on three, we're pulling. Where's the car going? That way, everybody's moving in the same direction.

Joe Nyce 57:34

Now, we don't have. We're not all the same. We're not all the same strength level. No, we're not all the same height. We're not all the same speed. Right, we're different sizes, weights, ages, but we're all moving in the same direction. You don't have to be a stud athlete, you don't have to be the best player on the team, but if you're moving in the same direction with the same mindset of becoming your best version of yourself, then you're helping the team drive towards a championship. And that's what kids don't understand. They think, oh, I'm not the best player, it doesn't matter. No, we cannot do this by ourselves. The best player cannot do this by himself. He needs every single one of you. I need practice players. I need kids who are gonna go all out on scout team to give our starters the best look possible. Why? Because that's their job and they're gonna do it to the best of their ability.

Coach Riley 58:27

Yeah, I'm ready to run through another wall. You may even run through two walls so far.

Joe Nyce 58:32

Because that it's a mindset. If we all have the same mindset and we wanna put the team going in the right direction, then we're all gonna do whatever it takes to get there, and we don't have enough of these conversations with average teenagers in today's society to get them to understand that we're moving in the same direction.

Coach Riley 58:49

Right, you don't have to be the best, cause a lot of kids look in themselves. They know they're not the best. I ain't the best. I'm like 100 pounds lighter than the best guy, but you're part of the team. He doesn't succeed by himself. You're along for the ride, man. Everybody gets the trophy Like it's. You're part of the journey.

Joe Nyce 59:08

We're all driving the bus. Yeah, we're all driving the bus.

Coach Riley 59:12

Yeah, even if you're on the bench, you have a role during practice, right, and if you don't like being on the bench, work harder, right, but that's your role right now. So I mean, that's like Rudy stuff, you know, that's what. You know. The movie, right, he's on, he's given the practice squad because they have to toughen up for the team they're gonna play. Because you don't beat up on your own players and that's a lot like.

Coach Riley 59:35

So if, if you don't play foot, everybody's like well, there's the offense and the defense. Well, you don't have your offense, play your defense because your defense is doing stuff and your offense is doing stuff. And you got the practice squad and you got everything going. So there's so many parts to being on the team and you don't have to be the best. So I'm a coach, I'm here in this and I'm like you know what. I want to institute that in my, in my program. Like I know I'm here, I have these children, they're, they're at four years in high school. They got a short window and I want to install this, this mindset, with my players. Your program can be implemented across teams. Is it an individual thing? How? How does it work?

Joe Nyce 1:00:17

So this isn't, this isn't like, this is not for football, this is not for baseball, this is for athletes. Yep, I was very specific when I was, you know I was. I was very specific when I was creating this that I did not want to isolate it to one specific. You know, sport Right, male or female, it doesn't matter. You can put this on a youth soccer team, you could put this on a varsity hockey team, it doesn't make a difference, it's mindset, is mindset and sport. If your athletes in a room, the way of design this program and actually getting ready to do it with the, with six, seven and eighth graders at one school and I just met with another varsity football coach who were trying to change the entire culture of their school because it's right now, it's not good, and we're doing this with the modified football team, we're doing it with the JV football team and we're going to do it with the varsity football team.

Champion Mindset in Coaching Athletes

Joe Nyce 1:01:15

So the way I broke it down, I told you I had four fundamentals. We do each fundamental in about an hour and an hour and 15 minute block Right when I have my presentation and we go through all of this and then every player or athlete gets a workbook, right? And then after every block there's questions. Okay, they're going to write down their answers. Like, for instance, we have found, before we even start, we have foundational questions. I call them and that's like what are your goals? We have a triage page where we write down all of our goals and then I want to move over five of our top goals into the other box so we can really focus on those goals. Right, so every kid gets a workbook. We meet four times, we go through them. Sometimes, you know, a coach will ask for us to have a follow up after that, just to kind of digest everything and talk about it. But other than that, we let them go out and start creating a vision board for themselves, start writing. You know, they have their goals right in front of them now, creating that plan for them.

Joe Nyce 1:02:17

And then this is just giving them to understand that there's, you know, there's a lot more to being an athlete than just playing your sport, right, there's a lot more. So there's, you know, there's the movement or the skill of your specific sport or training. That's what coaches are focusing on, right. Coaches are focusing on teaching their kids specific movements or skills at practice to get them ready for game day Right? That's one part of being an athlete. That's not nutrition. Being an athlete is the nutrition, with your hydration and your circulation. Then the third part of being an athlete is your recovery. That's going to be your gaze off your sleep, how you treat your soreness and your injuries. And the number four, most importantly coach, is your mindset. And that's where this program spends the most of its time is teaching kids how to think and act like a championship athlete.

Coach Riley 1:03:21

And you're not saying this is key, you're not saying you need to be the championship athlete, you just need to think like it.

Joe Nyce 1:03:30

And if you've got enough kids that think like it, guess what? You're going to win championship.

Coach Riley 1:03:33

You becoming a champion. It's a self fulfilling prophecy. Right, I'm going to do this, this and this. Ba-da-boom, ba-da-bing.

Joe Nyce 1:03:40

But we all say this as coaches, right? What's one of the greatest parallels of real life for kids? Sports, right? Yeah, so if I'm coaching football, I tell my kids listen, I am coaching you to be a champion in life. Football is the vehicle that I'm using. Yeah, the lessons that I learned from my varsity football coach, who I spent three years with, and my varsity wrestling coach, who I spent four years with, I call them.

Joe Nyce 1:04:11

I've been out of high school now. I graduated in 1996, I'm out of high school almost 30 years, 28 years. I still speak to them on a weekly basis. We still, to this day, tell each other that we love each other, right, they have. Besides my father, they are the most influential people in my life because they poured into me as an impressionable young man, so they were using football to teach me how to be a champion in life.

Joe Nyce 1:04:40

And if you look at my life, right, I'm at my high school, sweetheart, I have three amazing children, I have a beautiful home, I'm a police officer serving the community that I grew up in. I own multiple businesses. I give back to kids, like I've done really, really well. And it has nothing to do with money, right, because most of the stuff that I try to do is give back Right. It has nothing to do with money. I'm a champion in my life because I had coaches that created me to have a champ and my experiences through my life created a championship mindset. So it doesn't matter what I do, coach, I'm gonna win because I know the blueprint and I know what it takes.

Life Catalyst Program Discussion

Coach Riley 1:05:29

The level of influence that coaches have on athletes is huge and, like you said, you'll remember those guys 30, 40 years later and they're there. They usually are the second biggest, besides your dad's. You know influence in your life and especially with you when you play with them for more than one year, especially if you play with them in your entire career. It's such a, it's such a responsibility and you can tell that you're so passionate about it because everything you talk about is from the heart, like you're. You just you don't have to fake it right, because that's not. That's not what it's about. You've done it, you know, you know how to do it, you're winning. And what do winners really want to do? They want to teach other people how to win, because there's the apex, the mountain where everybody the tippy-tip. It's not a pointy. There's room for tons of people at the top of the mountain and nobody and remember this if you're listening to this, nobody who's putting the work in is ever going to make fun of you for what you do, because they know where you're at. It's the people who aren't putting the work in and who, because they just figured they can't do it. You can't do it. You do these things, you end up with the mindset. You attract the culture and, before you know it, you've got this team that is just, you know, killing it, and these kids will remember each other for the rest of their lives and some of the best memories. And so you mentioned how you were working with these teams and implementing it.

Coach Riley 1:07:05

I'm a parent. My kid's school isn't going to do this. How do I get ahold of you to get my kid this program? Because, as a parent, I want to supply them with all the resources and I want to supply them with shortcuts and mentors. And looking at you and looking at your story, you can tell you know what you're talking about and I know this guy is going to save my kid a lot of time, a lot of heartache. He's not going to make the same mistakes he's. You know you've talked to hundreds, if not thousands, if not tens of thousands of athletes and you know the stories, you know their problems and you're saying listen, here's how we navigate these roads. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. People have done them before you and I'm laying it out for your kid. And it goes outside of sports. You're a champion in life, when you, when you.

Coach Riley 1:07:56

And so what you? You had, you had something on your website or it was like motivational speaker, and it was crossed off. And then something else Like catalyst. Explain that to me, tell me what that. So that's the give me. That's so for people who can't see, listen to the podcast. He's got a website and it's got some words at the top and it's a picture of him, and then the words are crossed off and there's them. So what are those words and why are they crossed off?

Joe Nyce 1:08:21

So you know, a lot of people say like motivational speaker, right, and you know that's one way to that's one way to say it and there's there's no disrespect to that. There's an entire industry of people who are motivational speakers. Right, they make a lot of money and I look up to a lot of them. You know I have personal relationships with Eric Thomas. I have a personal relationship with Inky Johnson. Those are the two of the best in the world the best they're, the best at what they do, and you know they're motivational speakers. But you know we're also, you know we're life catalysts, right, because we are. We are trying to propel people in their lives. Right, you know we're. You know, listen, we can always grow and do better ourselves. Right, and I'm on a never ending journey to every day be a little bit better than I was yesterday. Right, I was on a nail some days. Right, and I picked myself up and I learned from, you know, my failures and my loss and I keep going and I move on. But at the end of the day, we're trying to take other people and, with our words and our actions, and get them to take their life to the next level, right. So I think that life catalyst is is a term that that's not really popular, right? A buddy of mine came up with that. You know he said and he goes. Yeah, you could say you're a motivational speaker, but he goes. You're actually like a life catalyst and that's just getting people to, to, to become better versions of themselves that's all it is really and get on a journey that's going to make them proud, right? So when I look back at myself, you know, coaching, one of the things, the final things I'll leave you with, is when I look back at myself from this journey that I had as this you know this little scrawny kid that was, you know that was debilitated when he was, you know when he was younger and went through all this adversity, right, and moved from school to school. And you know my parents house. First of all, we were evicted. I was 18 years old and sheriff was throwing our furniture out on the street and I ran down the, got in a car and ran to a U-Haul and rented a U-Haul van and drove it back and was throwing the stuff into the van. And then my parents got a new house a year and a half later and the whole house burned down to the ground from a house fire and I had to take my parents to the giant came art and buy the new comforters. And I was 20 years old, you know, I was a personal trainer emptied out my bank account. I've done so many things right and I've just kept moving along. So now we're 45 years old. When I look back at my whole entire journey, I'm really proud of it. Yeah Right, you should be, you should be.

Joe Nyce 1:11:07

I've always tried to help people, right. I think that one of the most fulfilling lives that you could live is a life of service and I think I've done a pretty good job of that as being obviously a public servant. You know, for 18 years as a police officer, I never I took that job because I always wanted to help people. That was my number one. You know my number one priority when I became a police officer I became a cop because of 9-11. You know when I saw what those police officers did that you know, on that day and those months after that event, I said that's what I want to do and I want to be there on somebody's worst moment. I want to be able to help. So I, you know, I've coached for free for years and years and years, and even in my entertainment business, right, I'm, you know, I'm a master of ceremonies. I've been in the business for 25 years. I'm the best at it. Yeah, I serve people, right, I make sure that their families have the best night of their lives.

Coach Riley 1:12:06

And that's and I've seen some of those videos chaos productions.

Joe Nyce 1:12:09

So chaos productions is more of my company's nice productions is the other one does weddings and the other one does ball and botnets fuzz.

Coach Riley 1:12:17

We have. Those videos are crazy. People are having a good time. Man, there is my job.

Joe Nyce 1:12:24

That's why people pay me. So you know, and they're even in that element I'm serving people Absolutely and I'm coming to the realization that I'm a got. My gift from God was to be a servant. So now you know, I have the opportunity to serve kids and make them better versions of themselves, right, and I take that very seriously and I put a lot of time and effort into it and I love doing that, yeah, the, the service, the serving at leader.

Coach Riley 1:12:56

Right, it's all about giving and helping others, because everybody needs some help. Sometime in your life you need some help and when you can win, you don't always know when people need help either. That's the other thing. You could be stepping into some situation and helping some kid out and he's got something going on at home and this is the only stable thing he's got going on and you're impacting. You're impacting those lives. So website to to find out information about the program.

Joe Nyce 1:13:26

Yeah, so it's wwwjoanicecom. Right now we're we're an in person, we are, I'm an in person coach right now. So, right, who's the teams will bring me in in person? We are working on putting this program online, okay, so, where people could actually buy the program and have the blocks and modules, like on our, on our light speed virtual sort of platform. Yep, they don't need me there, right? So?

Joe Nyce 1:13:58

Parent wants to buy the program for their kid? They'll have me teaching them directly on the screen. Right, here are the steps. Here are the steps. I mean, they'll get their mail book, they'll get their workbook mail to them and they can follow along and they'll be all that stuff. So that's the next step. Okay, take this to the next level is, obviously, it can't be in multiple places at once, right, right, but if athletes or parents want their kids to be, you know, if their school can't bring them in or the team can't bring me in and their, their, their parents are adamant about improving their athlete and giving them this course, they'll have the opportunity to do it. It's just not ready yet.

Coach Riley 1:14:32

Right, and they can also follow you on.

Joe Nyce 1:14:34

Instagram. Yeah, I'm at Joe underscore nice is my Instagram handle. I'm going to be doing, in 2024, a much better job of getting my content, my motivational coaching content, on it, right? That's a lot of family, fitness, motivation, everything mixed together, right? So, yes, you can follow me on Instagram, you can. You can email me at Joe and Joe nicecom and the website, like I said, it's wwwjoanycecom.

Coach Riley 1:15:04

I knew we were going to every time we get together. And, dude, we just touched the iceberg. We could go on and on, and on.

Joe Nyce 1:15:10

Oh, we haven't even really even spoken about the program, we were just kind of rushing over it, right? So, and and listen, again, I said it in the beginning and I love these conversations Right, yeah, you live on the other side of the country, right, we only know each other through Instagram, but again, we're on the same mission. Yeah, you know, when you can, when you can align your that's the beauty of social media, right, when you go live yourself like minded individuals who you never come in contact with normally, that's the beauty of social media, right, and that's one of the major benefits. There's a lot of drawbacks to it, but us connecting right now, like this, that's only, that's only done through social media.

Coach Riley 1:15:50

And never would have happened 10, 20 years ago. None, I'd be sitting at my house with my little quotes or whatever. You know, and you and you know, if nobody, everybody probably around me would be tired of being here. Pete's giving me some motivational stuff. I don't want to hear it. It's Thanksgiving, pete. Be quiet, be quiet, just.

Coach Riley 1:16:08

Thank you so much for coming on and and explaining what's going on. I'm going to leave some, some information down in the show notes. People can reach out to you as you improve the program. You know and you get it. You know online where people can go. Let me know. We can definitely we'll put some information down.

Champion Athlete Program Promotion

Coach Riley 1:16:26

So, depending on when you're listening to this, go check out the show notes, because it might be live by then. Just a thank you from and I'm going to speak as a parent now, right, and not as a coach or anything like that Thank you for helping lead my kids in a positive way. So I know that when I'm, when they, when they graduate and when they're older, they have those life lessons learned and they've developed how to make choices and how to structure their day and and how to view right and wrong and and know. You know that there's at the end, at the end of the process, as a result, and you're teaching them all these things when, in all reality, you didn't have to, you didn't have to start an Instagram, you didn't have to do a podcast. I mean, in your podcasts are are fricking dynamite. You're always dropping so much knowledge. You're talking to these people and that's where the best conversations happen is when it's back, and usually on podcasts, and I think podcasts are really underrated for the amount of information that happens, and a lot of times, well, the podcast is 20 minutes, 30 minutes, this one's an hour or whatever, and so it's.

Coach Riley 1:17:42

The next level is is extracting these nuggets and putting them out on social media. So, as we wrap up this episode of the six AM practice podcast, I just want to thank Joe again for joining us and sharing these invaluable insights of his champion athlete program. And, trust me, this guy is really dedicated to helping you achieve your goals and setting you up with the systems, and he's somebody who's done it, so you can believe what he's saying, and so I highly encourage everybody to check out his program, follow him on Instagram, you know, reach out to him if you got questions. He's the guy, he's the real deal. Again, joe, thank you so much for being on the program and next time I'll see you at six AM practice.