On this episode of the Samson Strength Coach Collective, we sit down with Johnny Fabrizius, Assistant Athletic Director for Strength and Conditioning at Florida State University. Johnny shares lessons learned while transitioning into a director role, including how leadership responsibilities evolve and why relationships remain the foundation of successful athletic departments.
The conversation dives into emotional intelligence, delegation, staff management, and building trust with coaches and athletes. Johnny also reflects on the importance of staying connected with staff members beyond the weight room, identifying challenges early, and creating an environment where coaches feel supported and valued.
Key Takeaways
- Transitioning into a department leadership role
- The importance of emotional intelligence in leadership
- Building trust with coaches, athletes, and staff
- Learning to delegate responsibilities effectively
- Staying connected with staff outside the weight room
- Leveraging relationships within athletic departments
- Navigating challenges and resource limitations as a director
Quote
“In this previous semester, trying to understand the difficulties of what some of my strength coaches were going through, I think I struggled to realize the fact that I needed to be just involved in their life.” — Johnny Fabrizius
Johnny Fabrizius:
in this previous semester, trying to understand the difficulties of what some of my strength coaches were going through, I think I struggled to realize the fact that I needed to be just involved in their life. I didn’t need to be out on the floor, watching them coach. I just needed to sit down in their office for 30 minutes in a day or 30 minutes in a week and see how they’re doing.
And so I think that was one of the first things that I had to identify was being able to say, hey, where are these fires starting? How are they happening? And how can I get to them before they spark? And so most of that came from sitting down with our strength coaches and just being engaged.
Samson:
What’s going on? Sampson strength coach, collective listeners on today. We have a guy I kind of know just a little bit. I think we’ve, we’ve what? Only been in each other’s weddings and lived in the same house and shared a long and happy relationship together. Jonathan or Johnny as he’s known.
Johnny Fabrizius:
Yeah.
Anf, anf.
Samson:
John Fabrizius over at Florida State University. He’s the assistant AD for strength and conditioning at Florida State. He’s been a previous guest on the show, but we wanted to bring him back on to talk about his progress in life. I think you were like one of my first five guests that I ever had on the show. Yeah. Yeah, hopefully so. I think there was something with the audio last time. don’t know. But yeah, I’m excited for the world to get to know you for the second time.
Johnny Fabrizius:
I think I was. So hopefully this goes a little better.
Yeah.
Samson:
for a long time listeners for the first time for some of our more recent listeners. Can you kind of just give us a breakdown of your career, where you’ve been and then what you’re currently doing?
Johnny Fabrizius:
Yeah, so I started strength conditioning. I think it was about 10 years ago now. ⁓ Started working at a small NAI school in South Dakota and was working with pretty much every Olympic team, ⁓ end football, I guess. ⁓ And that strength coach, was the one who kind of pushed me to expand my horizon out of the Midwest a little bit. So I got my
graduate studies at the University of Tennessee. While I was at the University of Tennessee, I was a coaching assistant, flipped back and forth between football and Olympic sports. ⁓ And once my time was kind of up within the football side of it, our soccer coach ⁓ kind of pulled me over and asked if I start working with him and utilizing GPS and
worked with him for about five years at the University of Tennessee. Afterwards, transitioned into a role in the MLS, started with the USL team, the Rio Monarchs, which are the MLS Next Pro now. After about a year of that transition to the first team, ⁓ had several titles within that regard, head of sports science, head of end stage rehab. ⁓
and worked in that role for about three years. then Brian Penske, who was my coach at Tennessee, he’s now here at Florida State. And we had always jokingly called each other and had text exchange that were, hey, when we can get back together, let’s do it. And ultimately this last year, the previous director here at Florida State had moved on and he gave me a call on January 1st and the rest of this history.
Samson:
I love that story, the only part I don’t really like is that you’re texting somebody else and telling them that you can’t wait to meet back up with them. I thought that was saved just for us. Is that not correct? Yeah. And you know the date that he ended up calling you to bring you back and everything. It’s all right. No, it’s fine. Yeah, well, you know the date. What was the date of the last time I called you?
Johnny Fabrizius:
⁓ yeah. Ooh, maybe I shouldn’t have divulged as much as I did.
Well, the only reason I knew is January 1st and we were in DC for a wedding.
yesterday?
Samson:
No, May 20th. It was this morning. Okay. So see, I can understand what our relationship is already valued like, which is fine. ⁓ But, you know, we talked about bringing previous guests on. ⁓ so, you know, ultimately it’s been what? It’s been three years since you were last on the show. And so your role has changed a lot, right? Last time we spoke with you, you were at RSL. ⁓ Now you are an actual assistant AD. You run the Olympic strength and conditioning department at Florida State.
Johnny Fabrizius:
Tough, tough.
Samson:
And I remember, you know, this is something that our listeners don’t know, but I know from obviously just speaking with you and, uh, you know, having a relationship with you is that you wanted to be a director by 30 and you achieved that goal. So you’re a director at a power for school of Olympic strength and conditioning. How does that feel for you to actually achieve that goal?
Johnny Fabrizius:
Mm-hmm.
⁓
It was pretty surreal honestly when we had accomplished that goal. say me, we, my wife and I, Gaby, she’s been great in allowing me to transition on a whim within my career. And so she’s definitely involved in that process. However, yeah, it was kind of unbelievable. I didn’t really think that I was going to accomplish it.
But yeah, here we are. it’s been so unique. I’ve grown more in the last year than I have in the entire 10 years of working in the industry. I’ve learned so much. I’ve had so many challenges and had to grow exponentially. But it’s been very eye opening. And it’s been something that I’ve really actually enjoyed more than I thought I would.
Samson:
Yeah, you and it was funny because you became a director first and then, you know, about six months later, I ended up taking over as the director at App State. And it’s funny because, you know, we kind of can talk about it and the different challenges that have come with it. You know, you say you’ve learned and had more fun in the past year than you have in 10 years prior in your career. You know, what are those lessons that you’ve learned? What are the new things that you’ve had to take on with this new role?
Johnny Fabrizius:
Yeah.
Well, would say that it’s not the most fun I’ve had in my career. The most fun was when we were working together. Yeah, exactly. You’re welcome. ⁓ Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing and where RSL really prepared me was being able to hone in on the strength and conditioning, the sports performance, return to play, sports science aspect. So I got so entrenched and so ingrained within the principle of human movement and
Samson:
All right, there you go. There you go. Now you’ve redeemed yourself. Good job. Good job
Johnny Fabrizius:
understanding how to do our day to day job. And I had to do it at a very high level for three plus years. So I got it. I got to learn that like the back of my hand. Now it’s pretty much the opposite. I have to know this stuff like the back of my hand because I don’t have the time and energy to ultimately put into, you know.
programming for three hours on the computer or looking at a return to play and trying to figure out how do I get this person from A to B? Like I know the principles. I know kind of the next steps right like in the back of my head. So it’s very easy and fluid for me where now it’s more so the relationships and the communication with other sport coaches, with other strength coaches and trying to learn and educate our staff on how to solve problems.
⁓ in their own regard. And the biggest thing that I’ve learned is that you can’t shove your own ideologies and your principles and your methods down people’s throats. You have to ultimately give them a little bit of bandwidth and just put up little rails, so to speak, to allow them to function within their role in their realm of things. The first time that I
tried to shove something down somebody’s throat, it just did not work. And I’m like, okay, I need to kind of look at myself in the mirror here and understand that the way that I do things isn’t the way that everybody should do things. And the way that I do things isn’t the best. It might work well for me in my environment, but everybody else is dealing with different things and everybody else has, you know, different skill sets that they ultimately need to lean into. And some of my background in education, you know, I did my gift fellowship with the Gray Institute and
For that, what I learned the most in that is you really just have to dive into what you’re successful with, lean into that, and then kind of tether and feather your way into where you need a little bit more work and how you can ultimately build and bridge your skill set is you have to lean into what you’re good at, you have to lean into what’s successful, and then you can start to tether and feather in.
some other areas to help influence people and influence the people that you’re working with.
Samson:
Yeah, I think it’s you know, it could be a very double-edged sword of when you run a department trying to decide Okay, should I do I want to have a set standardized programming for every team here, right? Or is there a specific philosophy that we as a department kind of subscribe to and does every coach have to kind of follow along with those principles, know, know Departments that have success with it, you know, and I think ultimately where it really works is
Johnny Fabrizius:
Right.
Yeah.
Samson:
where somewhere like AppState, right? Where we have two full-time strength coaches right now we have four GAs, right? Because then that creates consistency amongst training and then allows people to, you know, essentially see, even though we have a different strength coach each year, there’s going be similarity in training. It can kind of be a long-term development piece. But ultimately, like you said, it can be really unsuccessful too. ⁓ It really kind of takes away a little bit of the autonomy of the strength coaches that you’re working with ⁓ and can really be something that
Johnny Fabrizius:
Mm-hmm.
Samson:
can
take away from their experience and in my opinion can kind of increase turnover as well too. So I think it’s interesting that you saw that and were able to kind of transition it and you know understand the lessons learned from it. You say the first time you tried to kind of implement that it didn’t go well you know obviously we don’t have to get into super specific details but what was that experience? How did you know it wasn’t going well?
Johnny Fabrizius:
⁓
I mean, so everybody has their unique qualities within themselves. you know, some of my previous work and the things that I look at is just kind of, you know, personalities and
how people are interpreting their environments. And something that I would say my biggest asset is, my ability to read others. And when I have start having conversations, I start ⁓ asking about problems and I sit down and have a conversation about something that’s going on with a particular coach or within a particular strength conditioning professional. It started out as, okay, here’s my problem.
And I am going to now just tell you how to solve your problem. And they didn’t know how to exactly utilize the skills that I was interpreting to them. And so we just kept running into the problem again and again and again. And then it was kind of it’s just like any relationship that you have. It’s a relationship with my wife. You sit down and sometimes you just have to listen. Sometimes you don’t need to have an agenda to push forward on somebody. And I wanted
I came into this place. People have been here for as long as I’ve been in the profession. And I think that is challenging. And kudos to my staff for accepting me the way that they have, because ultimately it’s a very difficult spot to go in somewhere when you don’t know anybody. Some of them have been coaching for longer than you’ve been alive. And for them to kind of step back and pull their egos away has been something that’s been extremely beneficial for me. But
within these relationships, it’s just about understanding who they are as a person, understanding where their strengths are, and then not just telling them how to do their job. They’ve been here for a long time. They’ve been in the field for a long time. I don’t need to tell them how to do their job. Sometimes they just need to vent to me about things. And sometimes it comes down to getting the coach on their side. So rather than just solving the problem for them,
A lot of the rift comes from these conversations with sport coaches and these sport coaches not understanding what the strength conditioning or the sport performance professional is trying to accomplish. So how can I help educate the coaching staff? How can I help educate those around that can ultimately get greater buy in? And that’s what I’ve seen to be most successful within our kind of team here as I’ve gone through the year.
Samson:
Yeah, I think you really hit the nail on the head there, right? Like it’s exactly like your relationship with your wife or my relationship with my wife. Like I remember, I think a lot of coaches can relate to this. When you first start having that relationship and it’s a serious relationship, you can almost, you try to be the fixer with a lot of things, right? And you’re a coach. And so like what you do is you try to coach people up and, you know, ultimately this is not going to be successful in the long run. Like it’s just going to be, it’s going to be grading on the relationship. They’re going to feel like you’re not actually listening because you probably aren’t.
Johnny Fabrizius:
Yeah.
Correct.
Samson:
you’re just trying to apply the methods that you have and say, well, this is going to work. And it may not work for their situation, like you’re saying. So I love that perspective on it because at the end, what Tess had to tell me, you know, my wife obviously is, you know, she kind of had to be like, you know, sometimes I want to just, I want you to just listen to me. Sometimes I want a little bit of advice, but like, I never want you to just tell me straight up what to do. What I want is guidance, right? Like, so instead of telling me you need to guide me. And then I think that makes the world of difference because
Johnny Fabrizius:
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Yes.
Samson:
Again, we go back to that autonomy piece and I bring it up because we went through the same sports psych program. We all know the importance of autonomy. It heightens the autonomy of that person and then it allows them to feel like, even though I got help with this, it’s still my solution at the end. And it’s the process that I had to go through to get there. And it helps them develop the skills to actually get better too.
Johnny Fabrizius:
A million percent. that’s skill acquisition for coaching, right? We talk about essentially all the time with our student athletes and motor learning and how they interpret their environment and how they piece together their movements in response to their environment. It’s the exact same just from a coaching perspective and a relationship perspective.
Samson:
Yeah.
which people can forget that’s part of coaching too, right? Is growing and learning and getting better. That’s the massive water bottle, by the way. Yeah, I can tell. Bullfish, yeah, bullfish. And so, you know, obviously taking over the director role, there’s always some kind of unforeseen challenges or different things that pop up that you just didn’t really expect to have to deal with. We’ve talked about this on the phone a couple of different times. What are some of those unforeseen things? Like different things that have popped up that you just thought in your mind, you
Johnny Fabrizius:
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, it’s Gabby’s. Shout out Bullfit.
Samson:
no way this is going to be an issue or something that just kind of came out of left field that you have to deal with pretty regularly.
Johnny Fabrizius:
Yeah, it’s pretty much on a daily, right? You’re always, again, I always go back and say 80 % of my job is, yeah, 80 % of my job is putting out fires or identifying when there’s smoke. So there’s been a lot that has been put on your plate and it’s every single day where it’s like, ⁓ Lord, I gotta do something about this. So you get a piece of information, it’s like, ⁓
Samson:
Yeah.
Johnny Fabrizius:
OK, we got to process this. We got to figure out what the next best step is. And I think a lot of it comes down to like time management. And I’ll always refer to this relationship piece, but time management and your relationships with the people that you’re currently working with. If I don’t have a good relationship with a strength and conditioning coach, I’m not around and I’m not involved in just their daily life or what’s going on in their daily life.
⁓ It blinds me. ⁓ You know, we read a bunch of fantasy novels and it comes back to some some of this Mistborn stuff where you know Sazed this God is blind he’s cut off from seeing the world and he has no idea the problems that are going on and then all of a sudden he gets taken over and the world is in chaos and that is what it is like to be a director when you don’t have
good relationships with the people that are around you. And so in this previous semester, trying to understand the difficulties of what some of my strength coaches were going through, I think I struggled to realize the fact that I needed to be just involved in their life. I didn’t need to be out on the floor, watching them coach. I just needed to sit down in their office for 30 minutes in a day or 30 minutes in a week and see how they’re doing.
And so I think that was one of the first things that I had to identify was being able to say, hey, where are these fires starting? How are they happening? And how can I get to them before they spark? And so most of that came from sitting down with our strength coaches and just being engaged. And I’ve struggled in that. I’ve done really well at it at times. you just get pulled in a million different places, but I think
always going back to that, always trying to just be present with the coaches that you’re around, was something that I had to deal with and manage very quickly, and I’ve struggled at times, but that is first and foremost. But then too, it’s mostly just communication. Now the next piece is, okay, we have communication within our strength conditioning coaches, but now that strength coach or the performance coach to the head coach level.
And that’s where so much falls apart. And that’s where I think really young coaches struggle with as well as, you know, connecting and being an extension of your coaching staff. think I even talked about this on the last time that we had a conversation. We are an extension of our coaching staffs. And this was something that I brought up at in our end of year review meeting with our athletic director was if we don’t have solid communication, even the best ideas and the best concepts can never gain traction.
And if you don’t have the relationship and the trust of your sport coach as a strength conditioning coach you’re never going to get by and with your student athletes because the athletes know they’re smart and understanding hey how can I get what I want and how can I get it as easily as possible? It’s a natural human trait that we all possess is how can we accomplish a task with as minimal effort as possible and
So if we’re not together and united as a strength conditioning coach and athletic trainer and a sport coach, the athletes know and they just try and drive themselves and wedge themselves in between that. And then that’s where ultimately many problems arise. ⁓ understanding that and then helping our coaching staffs and our strength and conditioning sport performance coaches kind of understand that I think has been the best step that we’ve taken.
over the last 15 months or so.
Samson:
Yeah, I think you again bring up a fantastic point about the relationship between the sport coach and the strength coach because when the athletes see it, it’s not like it’s like this one overwhelming event that occurs, right? But it’s just to me, feels like it’s like sand kind of just slipping in until it drives in like this massive wedge in between the two, right? It’s just one day you kind of look up and you’re just like, wow, we’re completely divided in where we were and I don’t even really know how we got here. Because again,
Johnny Fabrizius:
Right.
Yeah. Right.
Samson:
If I’m an 18 year old athlete, obviously you were an athlete, wasn’t, you know, past the high school level, but that doesn’t matter athlete regardless. Like I think back to how I was when I was 18, I was trying to get out of everything that I didn’t want to do, you know, and one of the main things would be within the weight room. It’s just a natural piece of it. I think people can kind of antagonize that a little bit and say, well, you know, you’re not giving credit to the athletes or whatever. It’s the truth of the matter, right?
Johnny Fabrizius:
Not a good one, at least.
It
is the truth.
Samson:
At the end of
the day, you’re going to have one guy who really loves the weight room, you know, or one girl, and then the rest are kind of just going to be like, I don’t really want to do this or I know it’ll help me, but I ultimately don’t want to be here. So how can I kind of navigate getting out as much as I can or how can I kind of manipulate this relationship? Not in a necessarily malicious way, but it’s just the truth. ⁓ And so when you see those things happen, that’s where the divide just grows larger and larger and larger. Because then you said the trust kind of gets ruined between the sport coach and the strength coach. then.
Johnny Fabrizius:
Yeah. Yeah.
⁓ yeah.
Samson:
When that trust is gone, it’s really, really hard to get it back. And I’ve seen it happen a couple of different times and it’s something where I feel like ultimately it’s not really on either of the parties, know, necessarily like a hundred percent of the blame is on one or the other. But it can be brutal and it can be a really tough relationship. You know, do you think that divide that can occur sometimes, you think it’s from lack of communication? What do you think really kind of drives that divide?
Johnny Fabrizius:
⁓
.
Yeah, I think, well, again, it’s just all about this relationship piece. If you don’t have a good relationship with a particular player or, you know, a strength coach or a coach in general, that is just going to be the glaring hole, so to speak. ⁓ And so being able to this is what I have hired two positions now since I’ve been here.
And you know, the number one factor that I always come back to is emotional intelligence. And it’s something that you can’t really teach. We can teach X’s and O’s about strength conditioning and we can talk periodization and philosophy all day. That stuff really doesn’t matter. You can skin the cat a million different ways.
the problems arise when you don’t have an emotionally intelligent coach or somebody who can read the room and ultimately decipher what plan of action needs to occur. You know, with when I’m looking at, you know, hiring somebody and bringing them into our staff, that is my number one priority is does this person have empathy? Do they have the ability to understand, you know?
what is going on within their environment and then understand the coaching staff and understand the players and then how do they build that relationship? We sit down and we had a conversation as a staff about ⁓ with our interns about what our interview process looks like. And I probably didn’t even do a good enough job explaining this in that conversation with everybody in the room. However.
Everybody’s talking about, hey, here’s my packet and here’s here’s my annual plan and here’s how you know, we’re going from A to B with our periodization in the gym. Here’s what we’re doing on the field and our speed work. And that stuff is fantastic. But how are you actually going to get the athlete on board? How are you actually going to get the sport coach on board? And it’s those conversations that really matter. And it’s understanding that from a human side, what really matters. And one of my biggest.
Speel so to speak when i’m even in recruiting. Is that the types of relationships that we have and we talked last time on ⁓ using data appropriately well it’s really important to understand that. We’re not robots and data is very objective and it’s great and it gives us a lot of great information but we’re humans and the human factor is the thing that drives everything and if i can’t have a.
conversation with somebody and I can’t get to know somebody and understand why they are the way that they are or I can’t just sit back and listen and understand them as a human. All of it is just going to go through the wayside. Innately, they’re just not going to trust. We talk about self-determination theory all the time. Like you have to let them.
do what they need to do to feel safe within an environment. And if they don’t feel safe, then there is going to be trouble. And so that just starts with that relationship. So I think that’s really what drives that wedge between a sport coach and a strength conditioning coach, a strength conditioning coach, and an athlete.
Samson:
Well, I can’t wait for your NSCA or a CSCCA talk on this because that was a very high level response. love it. No, thanks. Next question. Yeah, but I mean, again, I think it it just rings so true to what my experiences have been as well. You know, you know, we went through a GA hiring process where I did a phone interview with, I mean, it must’ve been, unless somebody was, you know, blatantly not qualified. I did probably about 40 phone interviews.
Johnny Fabrizius:
No, no, thank you. I’m good. I’m good.
So.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Samson:
total
because you know, ultimately somebody can look really good on paper. They can have the qualifications to do these different things. They could have had three internships before the time they graduated from undergrad. I had to get on the phone with them because I just had to know is this like a normal human being? Like is this somebody who can even have a conversation in general? Because at the end of the day, you know, you’re going to be running full teams for our GA positions here. Like our GA’s are assistant strength coaches. They’re not, you know, okay, I’m going to help out, you know, with baseball and help out with soccer or whatever it might be. It’s no, you have to lead.
Johnny Fabrizius:
Yeah.
Correct.
Samson:
multiple teams. And so you have to be able to deal with multiple head coaching personalities. And ultimately I’m the one who is the one who hired you. So it’s going to fall on my head. So I’ve got to make sure that, you know, you can actually handle these things. And so I found through that process is the first time I went through a full hiring process for, you know, four separate positions. But what I really found was it kind of solidified my viewpoint on it where somebody can look fantastic on paper, but if they can’t have the conversation, if they can’t be a normal human being, right? Like some of my questions were just like, what do you like to do for fun?
Like, you know, like, and if you hit me with, well, I read straight in the conditioning textbooks and I lift, you know, and then I’m like, all right, then you’re just not a normal dude, you know, like, cause you’re lying to me or you’re just a robot. I can’t have either one of those in here. So it, go ahead.
Johnny Fabrizius:
Correct.
What?
Well, and
that’s so funny because I don’t know if this is the best way to go about things, but I’m always, you know, I shoot you a taxi and I’m saying who is good, you know, and it’s not from a who is good at strength and conditioning. It’s hey, who do you like? And we’re with these people for more time than I’m with my family. So like they have to be good people. They just have to be normal. And if we can’t have a conversation, that’s just like, ugh, gross. Right. And so
when I go through a lot of my hiring process and this is right, wrong and different, I don’t know, but I’ll get on the phone with, know, four or five of my closest buddies within the industry. And I’m like, give me some names. And then, you know, I get some names to me and then I literally just call them before we even post what’s going on. And I’m just like, hey, I just wanted to connect. I just wanted to see what’s going on. You know, I heard about you and let’s have a conversation. And that is like my interview.
I’m not unbeknownst to them, you know, but it’s those relationships and we talk about networking all the time and why it’s so important. ⁓ But it’s being able to just cold call somebody and have a conversation as much as I, you know, hate like the salesman type things. It’s a good skill to have in terms of conversation because you can get so much out of a person and understanding them.
by a quick phone call and asking them, yes, a little bit about strength and conditioning, but then, hey, who are you and why did you get into this? My first question with everybody is why strength and conditioning? Because as you know, burnout is a real thing and if you don’t really, really enjoy what you’re doing, it can take over you and overwhelm you very quickly. And I wanna make sure that you are in it for the right reasons. I wanna make sure that you…
You still are in love with what you do. and if you’re not at that point, if you’re just in it because it’s like, I like sports, then, ⁓ OK, we got to kind of figure out because I don’t the last thing that I need is to hire somebody year after year after year. And we go back to those relationships with the athletes, with the sport coaches. They just get sick of it. And then it’s like, I’m not going to get what I need out of it. And so those those things are so important. But then there’s also and.
We’ll probably touch on this is just like the the budgetary restrictions of things because they, know, there’s so many moving parts within an athletic department and it’s like, where do we fall in terms of a packing order? And there’s just so much that goes on with it. And it’s like, okay, one, I want to help improve the floor of what we currently have, because I think we have great strength and conditioning coaches where I’m at and I want to reward them for that. However,
there’s still some areas that need some work. And so how do we balance finding the right person for a particular salary? How do we get people in positions that can propel them somewhere else ⁓ if we don’t have the resources available to maybe allow them to grow where they currently are? There’s so many things that play a role in all of this. And if we can’t have just a normal conversation day to day.
and challenging each other back and forth, then it’s probably not going to be a good relationship between me and my staff, or you and your players, or you and your coach.
Samson:
Yeah, you and that’s why I felt so comfortable recommending Nico, right? Cause you asked for, know, we need a tennis strength coach. And it was somebody who I immediately knew I worked with him for a year and he was a guest on the podcast before. Like, so some people may be familiar with that episode, but ⁓ you know, you asked and obviously I’m not going to send you anybody, especially with how close we are that like would really not be, I mean, cause I would never hear the end of it, right? If they didn’t fit in, I would never hear the end of it. Like you sent me this guy and you you, vouched for him and it didn’t work out. So.
Johnny Fabrizius:
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Yeah.
Right. Yeah.
Samson:
I knew it had to be somebody who could really fit in, but know, Nico’s a normal dude too. Like he’s a really high level strength coach. He can think really well, but he’s a normal dude. And I also knew too, like you are also looking for somebody in that position where, you know, it’s ⁓ a part-time role, you know, and you needed somebody, you know, who was a younger strength coach too. Like I would love to, you know, for every position that pops up, send all my full-time strength coaches that, you know, I know are elite, you know, human beings and could be really.
Johnny Fabrizius:
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Samson:
good fits, sometimes it’s not going to work out that way. So there has to be a lot of different selective pieces that go into the hiring process. And I’m glad it worked out with Nico. Has he gotten you on the espresso shots yet? He’s been weirdly onto those. ⁓
Johnny Fabrizius:
⁓ He bought one for our staff and I was like, maybe I’m paying you too much, man. what is going
on? Literally every day we go out and then we have an espresso shot. So it’s been good. Yeah.
Samson:
Well,
see, there you go. So that’s exactly where it works out too, right? It’s a normal human being who you actually like being around. Yeah, and I think you mentioned the budgetary constraints and the first thing that kind of pops into my mind is like, especially to the school like App State where we’re in the sunbelt, our budget’s gonna look a lot different than even Florida State. But I think people in their heads automatically assume that if you’re at a Power 4 level, you get whatever you want at any point in time and there’s no question about it. And that’s obviously not the case.
Johnny Fabrizius:
Yeah.
Yes.
Samson:
I’ve heard that from your experiences too. Like, you know, I don’t know if this has been what you’ve seen, but I feel like what I’ve become really good as a director is finding creative ways to get told no. And just the, like you in not accepting the first no, right? And understanding, okay, well then there’s another angle I can approach it from. And if that doesn’t work, then there’s another angle I can come from. And then finally, like when you get told that yes, on whatever it may be a raise for a staff member, specific equipment that you need, something that you know, really help elevate the department.
Johnny Fabrizius:
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Samson:
It’s like the best feeling in the world. And it’s, you know, it makes the 99 no’s worth it because you got that one yes. Has that been your experience as well?
Johnny Fabrizius:
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
I mean, that is the entirety of my experience. It’s it’s again that, you come to this place and you’re you sit and you say to yourself, man, yeah, we’re at Florida State. Like it’s massive brand, massive logo. Let’s get all the cool shit. And I think that was one of the first things that when I accepted the role was, man, I’m super excited because I get to, you know, kind of make this weight room my own or I got to I kind of get to do all this fun stuff that you
You always dream about doing and I get here and I’m like, no, that is definitely not what is going to happen. And that goes back to the relationships again. I have developed relationships with, you know, our kinesiology department. I’ve ⁓ developed relationships with our Institute of Sports Science and Medicine. Now those were some partnerships that the previous director had done a fantastic job of utilizing as well. that.
of gave me a foot in the door. So I’m extremely thankful for that. However, continuing those relationships have been something that has been very, important to us. our kinesiology department, they bought a couple of Kaiser machines for us. And just saying like, hey, I want to continue to educate the up and coming people within our profession.
within this partnership, you guys buy this, like, let’s get your students down here to check out the gym, go through some of the sports science stuff and build a relationship that way. And then with our ISSM department, it’s like, hey, we have these doctoral students that need to do X, Y, and Z research. Can we partner with you? And that’s a two-way street because now we’re getting research done on areas that are pretty, I don’t know, they’re just not researched. ⁓
Now we’re getting some of this research and you know, we’re able to make an impact pretty immediately off of that. As we know, research takes several years to finally get fully published and accepted and everything. being able to start to quantify some of our infancy like sports science technologies right away, those things are really cool. And then outside of like where we are at Florida State, it is a big brand. So we are a little bit lucky in the fact that
hey, when we have like these new companies that start to roll things out, we can kind of hop on board and I can, you know, reach out and be like, hey, would you guys consider some sort of partnership? And they give us a pretty good deal on some things because they’re in their infancy and they want a big brand to be able to say, hey, we’re working with Florida State. This is what we’ve accomplished with them. This is what we can do with, you know, another university.
And so being able to work with some smaller companies that are getting their foot in the door has been really awesome as well, because one, you’re getting a great product, but two, you’re helping them out and helping them grow and they’re just bringing it back to you. And so that has been really how we’ve kind of managed our budgetary restrictions is yes, still being able to leverage some of our logo and our brand with some of these companies.
like hydro and phase, and that allows us to get more for student athletes. So it’s a unique little dance that you have to do in order to get the appropriate things to help influence your student athletes. But yeah, you have to get used to hearing no a lot of the time.
Samson:
Yeah, I’ve certainly gotten my fair share of nos. ⁓ But I think you bring up a great point too. I remember ⁓ a small company, a VBT company, literally walked into our weight room one day. And it was the wrong weight room because it was in my weight room. So it’s a satellite basketball weight room, walked in and they were like, do you need VBT? I’m like, who the hell are you guys? But then we ended up working with them and it was direct phone calls with them all the time because we were one of their first schools.
Johnny Fabrizius:
Yeah
Samson:
Being able to leverage those relationships is huge. And then like you said, you end up getting a better deal because you’re almost testing the product and you’re kind of the first ones to really give them feedback and say, Hey, this is not going to fly with other schools, just so you know, you know, and, you can kind of go back and forth. But again, it all just comes down to that creativity, right? And just because I think a lot of people try to see money as a solution to different things. Whereas, you know, ultimately we got a pair of force plates, excuse me, we got a pair of force plates from Hawkins because of a research project we did with one of the researchers at Texas Tech.
Johnny Fabrizius:
Yeah.
Yeah.
Samson:
Right? And so that’s money that, you know, we would not have gotten there certain, no way we would have had this fourth place if we didn’t do those things. And so that comes from the research side. comes from meeting with small companies and, being creative is really the best way to help your department. Because then when it comes down to asking for the big stuff too, you haven’t asked for money for all these little small things that, you know, have, have value. But when you need the biggest thing, all of a sudden they’re saying, well, you spent all our other money here. You know, why would we help you out in this big project too?
Johnny Fabrizius:
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. into all everybody has connections somewhere. Right. And again, we have a very experienced staff and they’ve been doing this for a while and they all have connections. And so like to say like, oh, I have all the answers and everything within my roll of decks, so to speak. It’s it’s just so easy to go down the hall and ask, hey, does anybody know?
so-and-so at Soar Next, does anybody know so-and-so at Samson? Does anybody know this stuff? And they’re like, oh yeah, I got a contact. Like, let me reach out to them. And then you get a little bit better of a deal going through that rather than thinking that I have to sit here and do all of these orderings and all of these projects myself. It’s just like, how can I get everybody else involved? Even if it’s just, hey, can you shoot this guy an email or shoot him a text and say, hey, we’re looking to do this, right?
And then that gives our staff a little bit more autonomy and hopefully makes them feel a little bit more valued over time. so all of it, it all plays a role in how your department is performing and how ultimately you’re getting the things to make your athletes more successful.
Samson:
Yeah, I think what you say there too is delegation is a skill I really had to learn. Like I’m a control freak, you know, I really struggle with not doing everything myself because then I’m like, need to, you know, that’s the only way I know or how I previously felt was that’s the only way I know it gets done right. You know, and so I’ve had to learn how to delegate and it’s been really good for me in the long run, but man, it’s an uncomfortable process when you first start.
Johnny Fabrizius:
yeah.
Ah, dude.
And I still suck at it. know, and that’s I need to be better with it. I still suck at it, though. It’s so hard. And I think about this all the time. We have an intern that’s working with us with soccer right now. And, you know, the first probably six months that he was working with us, I was like, you’re not doing anything, buddy. Like, there’s no shot.
Samson:
Yeah
Johnny Fabrizius:
Because I know I’m just going to have to go in and do it again myself. And so there’s a learning curve for, think, both of us, but me in particular, to just be like, OK, hey, we do have to build some foundational trust, and that is important. But hey, how are we going to do that? And it’s kind of putting you into the fire and letting you learn and understanding that there’s going to be mistakes. And that’s where I think the relationship with your sport coach becomes so important and paramount as well as.
You you have to get them on board to be comfortable with a particular person working with their student athletes and, ⁓ you know, they have to build a relationship. So instead of, know, going and huddling in the corner and, having a conversation amongst yourselves is, Hey, can we bring him in and allow him to be involved or her to be involved a little bit more with some of these conversations? Because that’s how they learn. And that’s how.
They develop trust with those coaches as well. And so now he’s he’s out there running, you know, our return to play sessions when I have a meeting or I take a phone call like this unbeknownst to him. It’s, you know, old friends reconnecting. But hey, I can trust that he’s going to do everything that needs to be done. And he’s going to do it, you know, in a very similar way that I would with his own flair and his own twist to things. So it’s a process and I need to still get better at it. But it’s I think one of the most important pieces
I’m learning as a director because you you have there’s so many different things that are going on. You can’t do it by yourself. You’ll drive yourself crazy. And I think that is something that I’ve learned in the last year as well is, you know, I want to take all this stuff on and I want to make sure that it gets done the way that it is supposed to. And that is just going to drain you to the core and it’s going to make you feel burnt out. And it’s going to be like, man.
You know, I came to Florida State because I wanted to spend more time with my family, but now I’m working more hours. So how did this really help me, you know, within my, within my personal life and everything else going on? It’s, it’s not. ⁓ and I’m going home super stressed out and can’t have a conversation. And so it’s learning that and understanding, Hey, my staff wants to help. You know, I have every single day. What I love is my staff comes in and they say before they leave, Hey, Johnny, is there anything else that I can do for you today?
And I’d say 95 % of the time I say, no, like all good. But, you know, on the 5 % that I do need something, it’s just, it’s a super, it’s a great relief. And it’s, I’m super grateful for those opportunities that they come in and, and say, Hey, I’m free. I’m available. I can do this for you.
Samson:
We’ve got a funny story about that. We both know Greg Adamson very well. I’ll never forget walking past his office one day as I was leaving and I was like, hey, is there anything I can do for you today? Is there anything I can do before I head out? And he goes, you’ve got your backpack on, you’re already dead set on leaving, so why would I ask for anything? I was like, bro.
Johnny Fabrizius:
Yeah.
Uhhh…
Samson:
So I had to go to Greg’s office. had to my
backpack down in Dan’s office and then walk over to Greg and be like, hey, Greg, there anything I can do for you? He’d be like, no backpack today. You actually want to help? I’m like, all right, Greg, come on.
Johnny Fabrizius:
That is hilarious. That is so good. Greg might have actually been the one that even told me that. like just when I was, you early on in the career was, hey, make sure that you, you know, ask Dan every day if there’s anything else that he needs. It’s a little thing and it takes zero effort. And most times they’re going to say no, but you know.
Samson:
Yeah.
Like you said, 95,
it’s honestly 99 % of the time. You know, I’ve probably been taking up on that offer maybe twice, you know, and it’s usually something small like, Hey, can you just fold those towels before you head out? It’s like, yeah, for sure. You that’s awesome. All right. Well, my final question for you, we, you know, for our listeners, Johnny and I read fantasy books together, essentially. We’re making our way through Red Rising now we’re on book three and
Johnny Fabrizius:
Yes, correct. Right, right.
Yeah, yeah, so all good, yeah.
Yes.
Samson:
Between the three that we’ve kind of discussed heavily, Way of Kings, Red Rising, and Mistborn, what is your favorite?
Johnny Fabrizius:
Oof. You’re not going to like the answer because you haven’t been able to get you haven’t been able to get through it, but.
Samson:
I know what you’re going to say.
Way of Kings, obviously. I know. What just kills me is at the end of the day when I’m trying to read a book and I’m trying to have a little bit of action and there’s 15 pages describing what a castle looks like, it really breaks my heart. ⁓ Maybe it just doesn’t work for me.
Johnny Fabrizius:
Yeah, I
know. Like this third book is literally in Red Rising, Son of Mourna. it’s, I mean, it’s been 10 chapters and there hasn’t been any gore. And you’re like, Oh my gosh, I can’t even read this book anymore. So yeah, let’s go. Yeah. Yeah. But I think that’s kind of, I mean, maybe the difference between you and I.
Samson:
Yeah.
Bro, come on. I need somebody to cut somebody with a blade here, please. I mean, my goodness.
Yeah.
Johnny Fabrizius:
in terms of like, really like the nitty gritty and the sports science stuff and going down loopholes. And I think you like really getting to know people and, you know, weightlifting with them, strength training in that regard. So I think that those those are the two personalities. You have this intensity about you. And I just had like this reserved like, let me see what’s going on here.
Samson:
That’s a great analogy.
L-
Yeah.
And then that’s why Red Rising would be my favorite because it gets to the, it gets to the action so quickly, you know? So yeah. We’ll look at that. There we go. What a nice note to end on. ⁓ If anybody wants to follow you, if anybody wants to follow your Instagram or, you know, possibly reach out just to chat, what would be the best way to do that?
Johnny Fabrizius:
Yeah.
Yeah, that’s fair. Good question. Yeah, the perfect note.
huh. ⁓
I don’t know if I know my Instagram handle. Maybe it’s Johnny Fabrizius.
Samson:
I feel pretty confident in it, Johnny Fabrizious. We can look this up in just a quick second.
Johnny Fabrizius:
Yeah, we
should. Johnny Fabrizios, can. I’m always I always try to be. Yeah, there we go.
Samson:
Johnny underscore for brazius j-o-h-n-n-y
underscore f-a-b-r-i-z-i-u-s.
Johnny Fabrizius:
I’m always going to try to be an open book. I’m obviously busy, but I try to get back to emails. I try to get back to people on Instagram, text messages. ⁓ So I’m always happy to have conversations if people want to reach out.
Samson:
Look at that, that’s incredibly kind of you. My dear friend, Johnny, incredible. Well, Johnny, sweet soul, he’s a sweet summer child. Johnny, thank you so much for coming on, man. I appreciate it. It’s great to catch up with you. Yeah, I’ll talk to you tonight.
Johnny Fabrizius:
F. Sweet soul.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, man. All right. Bye.
