S02|E206
Asking Reflective Questions in Coaching with Sean Swetnam | Samson Strength Coach Collective
On the latest edition of the Samson Strength Coach Collective, we sit down with Sean Swetnam, Assistant Director of Football Performance at UCLA. In this episode, Sean shares his path from private sector training to coaching at a Power Five program—and how that journey shaped his approach to athlete development.
We dive into how to support athletes during identity transitions, why relationship-building is crucial to performance, and how asking the right questions can create breakthrough moments. Sean also details the innovative fine system he uses to create accountability among coaching staff and how he balances technology with personal connection in the weight room.
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Topics Covered:
- Transitioning from private sector to collegiate athletics
- Identity crises and mental health in athletes
- The role of soft skills in coaching
- How to build trust and communication
- Balancing tech and human connection in performance coaching
- Creating accountability through a staff fine board
- Relationship-driven coaching culture at UCLA
- Coaching consistency and leadership under change
“So it’s like about two years from now are you are you in pro ball right now are you playing somewhere like are you playing with uh what practice clothes are you wearing right now and what do you like what game are you are you throwing to your like younger self understand that and try to take yourself out of it by you know, kind of using yourself in the future of where you want to be. Have you thought about like where you want to be? I want to go to the NFL. That’s great. Everyone does. I want to go to the NFL. I haven’t gotten drafted in 15 years now. That just just went by, right? But I’m not going to be I want to make it there anytime soon. Playing, right? So I’m not going to be in pads. I have zero experience in that. So, you know, take yourself where you, know, whatever you see yourself, whatever, again, time, wherever that is, try to understand like what the conversation would be like or like what kind of questions would you be asking yourself if like it was the other way around?”
–Sean Swetnam
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Sean Swetnam
so it’s like about two years from now are you are you in pro ball right now are you playing somewhere like are you playing with uh what practice clothes are you wearing right now and what do you like what game are you are you throwing to your like younger self understand that and try to take yourself out of it by
you know, kind of using yourself in the future of where you want to be. Have you thought about like where you want to be? I want to go to the NFL. That’s great. Everyone does. I want to go to the NFL. I haven’t gotten drafted in 15 years now. That just just went by, right? But I’m not going to be I want to make it there anytime soon. Playing, right? So I’m not going to be in pads. I have zero experience in that. So, you know, take yourself where you, know, whatever you see yourself, whatever, again, time, wherever that is, try to understand like what the conversation would be like or like what kind of questions would you be asking yourself if like it was the other way around?
Connor Agnew
What’s going on Samson Strength Coach Collective listeners on today’s episode, have Sean Swetnum, Assistant Director of Football Performance for UCLA. Sean, thank you so much for coming on,
Sean Swetnam
Connor, man, appreciate you having me on. Let’s rock and roll, let’s have some fun.
Connor Agnew
Dude, I’m stoked for it. I’m very excited. we’ve talked about this pre-show a little bit too. Like you’re a mini podcast celebrity right now. Like everybody’s had you on their podcast recently.
Sean Swetnam
I’m on tour. No,
I don’t know what it is. But let’s keep the snowball rolling, right?
Connor Agnew
It’s aura, I believe that’s what they call it. You got some aura to you, so.
Sean Swetnam
Nah, nah, nah, nah, don’t know how to do that, whatever that means, Try to act like
I don’t know what’s, you know, somebody said, the hell are the other day? I’m like, okay, I’m still on that. I don’t even know what’s going on anymore with the lingo.
Connor Agnew
That’s a Rob 49
song. Trust me, I’m about as brain-routed as it gets with these kids. They still keep me very updated on stuff. Before this devolves into absolute nothingness, can you just give us a breakdown of ⁓ your career and then what’s brought you to UCLA?
Sean Swetnam
The slop is real.
Yeah, my name is Sean Swendham again. Connor, thanks for having me. Really appreciate it. I’m originally from PG County, Maryland. Moved out here in 2015, moved out towards Orange County in 2017. And yeah, I’ve been in LA basically ever since. So started out forming a division one athlete. The road to professionalism didn’t work out so well. A couple speed bumps and kind of pivoted into strength finishing.
sports performance, sports enhancement, whatever title that they allowed me to have at the different places. was in the private industry from 2011. Almost 11 years, so adding that up, going into collegiate, started out at Concordia University Irvine, got my master’s there in coaching and exercise science. was a great time. Worked with track and field with Coach Bloom, and it was just an amazing experience. wanted to take an eight week summer.
internship at USC with Coach Steiner, Coach Beerus, Chad Smith, those guys and ended up staying there for whole year with two other guys, Jordan Penel and Devonti Wilson. So really had a great time over there. Really learned a lot about the business side of it when your head coach gets canned in week two in season. I have to get 40 piece by Stanford. Like it’s kind of hard and you kind of have to understand the business of collegiate sport as well at that level. So got a lot of
I guess if you want to call it street knowledge or know street sports from that along with just a practical knowledge of coaching and being involved in traveling and really being in the mix. Had a few opportunities after that ended up going to UCLA for the Olympic side of that before moving on to football where I’m at right now currently working with the SPAX assist coach Tim with RTP he runs the RTP and we kind of split it up based off of
different conditions, including time as well as, know, specific injury and what’s needed and where the protocol is. So he does a great job. And my job there is just to amplify, you know, what the other coaches are doing as well. So I kind of swing and work with the bigs as well and work with everybody, even though Coach Corey Miller, who’s our director, does an amazing job with everybody, sets parameters for what’s going on, then gives us the autonomy to just run it, have some fun, get after guys. But we all kind of coach everybody all at the same time, even though we’re…
We’re not excluded to our position groups that we’ve been given.
Connor Agnew
Now it’s such a cool story too. And we were actually just talking about it right before the show as well. Like you mentioned that you were in the private sector for a long time and then you were able to transition over to college. And that can be quite a challenging process, especially for coaches who are just starting out with not having necessarily collegiate background. It can be tough to kind of get your resume looked at what, what drew you to college athletics and then how are you able to kind of break through and actually ⁓ be able to transition to it from private?
Sean Swetnam
Yeah, great question. I had an experience in college where I transferred schools after my freshman year. I didn’t play professionally after an injury and decided to, like I said before, pivot and the aforementioned, you know, motive with that was I want to make sure that one, and I said this in my interview with Corey and we still kind of talk about this every once in a too, is I don’t want any of our athletes or any of our student athletes, right, to have an experience like I did where, you know, you get finished with college, you don’t get a chance to play professionally and there’s this year of
let’s say identity crisis, right? Cause like all your life since you were like, started playing baseball when I was nine. So I was putting other sports up until that, but I’m an athlete. ⁓ you know, I’m a baseball player, I’m a pitcher, I’m this, I’m that, and this is what you’re building and trying to get to this one spot. And then when that’s cut off and you’re done, you don’t have to be a team meeting team or you want to be a practicing where you don’t have scheduled lifts. ⁓ you don’t have to be at the, ⁓ and meals at certain times, right? You’re not testing for certain things, and your whole schedule and, ⁓
Everything is kind of just torn asunder. So what do you do in that transition? ⁓ So I had a really horrible experience for about a year after I got kind of together And just kind of try to get the wheels turning with regards to like how we’re moving forward what we’re doing I wanted to get involved with the collegiate sector with You know being on a retainer basically for a certain team and specific teams specifically so that I can just move forward And try to help as much as we can. I like having a group of strength coaches with me
that I work with so that we can have one goal and move one team. It was really awesome working in Olympic and having, I’m in charge of baseball, I’m in charge of men’s water polo, I’m in charge of women’s water polo, and we were very successful. But it’s always nice having collaboration with one team. Now we did collaborate with Olympic, like I before, and with Adam Garner, who’s now at USC, and then Dom Malone, who’s the director here now, as well as Daniel Rivas and a couple other really great coaches that have been in and out.
We had our staff meetings and everything was, you know, globally within the Olympic setup was awesome. ⁓ But they weren’t coaching, you know, the same teams I were. So it was just a little bit different. So I got tired of, you know, the private sector where an athlete would come in amateur professional, whatever they say, Hey, here’s some video of what I did this weekend. Here’s how I did. Hey, I’m feeling this. I need recovery legs are heavy, whatever.
We hit a couple of workouts that week and I say, good luck this weekend. Right. I tired of just like being there in that one space and then they would go and compete. And then I was kind of missing out on that. And when you get busy and you know, the, curse of success where you’re kind of in one spot and you can’t really go anywhere because everyone’s coming in to see you. And then they’re getting tuneups and adjustments during season and then people are in off season and it gets hectic and it turns into, you know, bedlam. Right. So, ⁓ I said, Hey, I want to be in one spot. I want to be, you know, in California.
Luckily, with football especially, there’s a lot of travel and people from a lot of different places. I got lucky enough to do my masters ⁓ as well as an internship, as well as two different, I guess, setups, two positions in California. Got the state and Southern California, so I pretty lucky with that. ⁓ But strategically, having a family, having two kids, it’s kind of nice to be in one spot and just provide them stability even though I’m doing this as well.
Connor Agnew
And so I agree wholeheartedly that there’s a huge identity crisis that can happen with athletes when they first transition out of sport. I mean, especially for those who are not going out on the professional level. ⁓ I think you can almost see more challenging for the athletes who have an opportunity to play at the professional level. And maybe in your, like your case, have an injury that occurs or unfortunately, sometimes things just don’t work out, you know, where they’re not able to necessarily get the certain position or contracts that they were looking for.
What are the things that you focus on when working with these athletes about transitioning out of being an athlete into being more of a ⁓ regular human being, if you will?
Sean Swetnam
Yeah, I mentioned time before, but just the idea, like the lens of, you’re really focused on this specific day or this specific week or this specific season where we’re in. Like what’s the outlook of, you know, your timeline of your life of, know, before you’re playing football and after you’re playing football, there’s going to be X amount of years after. Or you have to be like, quote unquote, a civilian, right? Or you had to just, you know, blend in society and be a normal person or you, you go coach or whatever it is. Right. So the idea or the sentiment of like, enjoy what you’re doing right now, you know, be part of a team.
Get into something like UCLA, like it’s really awesome that all the resources we have here, UCLA Health is around the corner. Like literally you can see it from outside the office store. ⁓ And then just all the things that are in LA, you know, there’s as much trouble and negativity as there is positivity in places where you can intern during certain parts of the year and classes you can take and there’s just a lot going on.
Ensuring that they have a set up when they’re outside of here in case things don’t work out right ensuring that they have an idea what they want to do Ensuring that they’re more of a holistic person as opposed to I’m just a DB or I’m just you know a kicker or what have you they have interests and You know that they do something besides play video games, right? hope right fingers crossed
Connor Agnew
Absolutely. I can guarantee you they do. Well, how did you pull yourself out of that crisis?
Sean Swetnam
Yeah.
Yeah, so it took a lot of just understanding like what I wanted to do and what was, you know, just kind of listening to myself a little more of, I’m not an athlete anymore, right? I’m not a student anymore. What can I do and can I help? like, where am I of value? And a lot of it came from, you know, speaking to my father, speaking to my now wife, who was, you who I met in Baltimore also, was you have…
certain abilities to coach, see things, some foresight. Why can’t you, like I started out as a pitching coach and what happened was I was in a facility in Tysons, scoring a really nice spot in Virginia. And it turned into, hey, like they’re doing great, but they’re not strong enough on their lead block leg or their hip to shoulder separation. It’s just not snappy enough or, or what have you, or the elbow, shoulder, like whatever. So I have some exercises we can do these exercises. And it turned into the place next door was like a multi-sport.
know, And then was a cross, I was working at like three or four different places, like driving from Greenbelt, PG County, down to Tyson’s Corner, back up towards like Gamberels to like another place which is like Baltimore. And like this whole, this whole spiel is working out of high school for a little bit in St. John’s College High School in Chevy Chase, DC. And that all to say, like there’s, once you get the ball rolling, it’s really hard to stop the momentum if you are just focused on what you’re doing.
⁓ And you’re just like headfirst in the moment as opposed to just like kind of your toe in a lot of it just comes from hey like if you’re doing this you’re enjoying it like just send it right like be tired and have some caffeine and get your sleep that you need to and hydrate and make sure you’re taking care of yourself and One of the guys I worked with coach coach wall climb who’s at st. John’s? I’ll try school that helped out with because I was doing kind of a dual role of like a freshman sophomore freshman team and then I’d come up to the varsity team and help out with some stuff and pitching and
just different stuff as well as strength conditioning. One of his famous lines was like, hey, I don’t trust you if you have clear P, if you’re a strength coach, right? You’re too hydrated, you’re not busy enough. Or if you’re too overly strong looking or jacked, you have too much time to lift, you’re not crafting enough. So mean, there are sides of spectrum and the continuum and those are meant to be served, right? So that all to say, yeah, it’s just, you get a bit.
get busy, like get some action going on, right? It’s easy to just sit there and kind of, I didn’t have the tools to mentally ⁓ kind of, you know, work my way out of it. Now, like there’s so many resources here again, there’s, you know, therapy as well as psychological aspects that we have is like from coaches to the professionals, licensed professionals. like, I didn’t have that, like, so like I didn’t have any tools to just, you know, talk my way out of it or kind of like.
logic my way out of it if that’s the right way to look at it. But I just got busy and just got like into something else. It just kind of pivoted and that kind of helped out tremendously. And now like having kids, it’s one of those things where it’s like, oh, like, you know, like if you don’t want this macaroni and cheese, cool, I’ll make butter pasta. If you want butter pasta, cool. I’ll just put, you know, pesto on it. Now it’s different. Right. Oh, you don’t usually want toast. You just want butter toast with a salt on it. Right. Whatever. It’s all it’s all just pasta. It’s all grain anyway. Same stuff.
with different topics, who cares?
Connor Agnew
Your kids sound like me. I mean, that’s, literally had buttered toast this morning. That’s exactly what I start my morning off with every single day. So, but I, I love what you said about it’s okay to be tired. Like I think one of the things that I always, I always look at everything at a homeostatic curve, cause I swear things go way too high and they go way too low. And I remember when I first started out in training conditioning, we were kind of at that point where it was like, well, you have to grind all the time and you have to, you know, give everything that you have to the profession. And so that’s what.
Sean Swetnam
I, yeah. ⁓
Connor Agnew
I ended up doing, that’s what my peers ended up doing and it allowed us to be successful. Now I feel like we’ve kind of flipped on the opposite side a little bit. Now it’s a little bit too like I really need to take care of myself. I need to not overstress myself. I can’t be outside of my 40 hours per week. And it’s just like, ultimately there is a time and a place once you reach enough work where I feel like, okay, you can start to be more concerned with those things, but it’s gotten a little too, like don’t want to.
put the word soft on it, right? Because I think that’s just like a, it’s a bad connotation for the overall profession. But at the same time, like I think people and younger strength coaches are kind of avoiding that work a little bit. I think they’re a little bit scared of it. And it’s also ultimately not going to lead to their success down.
Sean Swetnam
How many strength coaches have you talked to that complain about the interns that are, it’s this generation, they’re so off or right? So.
Connor Agnew
And to be fair, how many strength coaches complained about us as well too.
Sean Swetnam
Yeah, I’m not pointing fingers, but right. It’s
different. ⁓ It’s different when you have some authority, right? I think that’s like the one thing and not to say that, you know, you need to be given some space to, you know, feel like you’re autonomous or some space to feel like you’re in charge of something. But one of the best experiences I had was at SC where Coach Steiner somehow felt trust in me, where he gave me the RTP guys to do a little bit stuff and he had it pre-programmed and he just let me do it. And then he…
One day I was like, hey, like you didn’t, there’s nothing on this list right now. was like, yeah, you write it, you do it. I’m like, all right, cool. And I would handle like some of the RTP stuff within, you know, the muscle beach or the pit during practice and things of that nature. And he gave me a lot of autonomy just to like do some stuff. And it was all, you know, it was all harmless stuff, right? Like it was really hard to screw up. was pretty dummy proof. ⁓ But there was definitely like a lot of like, okay, like let’s do this. And then we switched ⁓ guys after a certain amount of time. ⁓
It was really this like big eye up and I was like, yeah, I could do this. I could, you know, have some fun with this and decided this, especially like coming from a baseball background with like half of the lifting, you know, is RTP anyway, because guys are always like complaining about, you know, being hyper aware of this and the other. So that being said, like, yeah, like everyone, like everyone has moments of softness or moments of instability or moments of whatever it’s, you know.
what led up to that and then how do you pivot away from that or how do you like lean into that so that you can build off of it, right? And I don’t know what the answer is, at the most part, like everyone’s soft, everyone’s just trying to hide it though. Everyone’s really good at masking it, There’s something where somebody has a weakness and they’re doing jujitsu for whatever reason and know, whatever the trope is of strong coaches as they get to a certain age, right, or doing marathons.
Connor Agnew
Yeah, that’s a great point. ⁓
Yeah, we, I, no joke, I ran a marathon and I do jujitsu. So I’ve quite literally fallen into both of those.
Sean Swetnam
And I love that because it’s like physical chess, right? That’s whatever Joe Rogan says it’s like physical chess with know, dire consequences and the marathons like a test of capacity So these are all things where it’s like hey, man, I’m not gonna run 20 miles an hour anymore. I was decently fast I had classically trained by a you know former Olympian, right? So it’s like I’m not gonna be running fast anymore I don’t have that like my superpowers have all been taken away at this point I’m just you know, I’m just Bruce Banner now. Let me just have some fun doing something, you know Let me be competitive. I downloaded the chess app. I’m trying to figure this out, right?
Connor Agnew
And so what do you do physically to challenge yourself still?
Sean Swetnam
I’m still lifting. ⁓ My training is pretty much like just dog water though. Like I’m doing like a, like let’s say it’s five three one where I honestly will squat once every two weeks, deadlift once every two weeks every other week. I’ll either do a metrus or a squat, sorry, a squat or a deadlift. ⁓ Trying to get back up to like closer to 700, which is like probably sketchy, but you here I am. Don’t let my wife hear that because she hates it, but. ⁓
Yeah. I’m like, like rotating different bars and like, I grew up on a concurrent system and like using different things, different applications and being very, ⁓ creative with, with the ways that things are picked and chosen and trying to get certain adaptations out of things. ⁓ you know, I switch a bar once a while, I want to get to a certain number, you know, so it’s, it’s besides that, it’s just slop. It’s all just slop, slop maxing and we’ll see what happens. Yeah, it’s physical. get,
Connor Agnew
But you’re still doing something and that’s what matters, I swear.
Sean Swetnam
I was talking to a buddy the other day and trying to explain our system, but Coach Corey Miller brought this system of finding guys within our strength staff. he, at the Carolina Panthers where he was using it, like, and involved with it, they were actually doing it with the trainers and the nutrition staff, dieticians as well. And it’s like, if you don’t train every third day, at the minimum, like you get a fine. If you use the elevator, it’s a fine. If you’re acting a little bit caliente or spicy, you know, or sensitive, it’s different tiers of fines.
Right. And there’s a bunch of other stuff that like, you you can ball with if you, ⁓ let’s say if we’re, off the airplane or on the bus going to or from somewhere on a bus, if you use the bathroom in the bus, you know, am I allowed to curse? If, if you crap on the, if you crap on the bus, you crap on the team. It’s like, it’s like the fine, right? That’s like, that’s one of them. Right. So there’s a lot of different nuances.
Connor Agnew
Ha
That would be, that’s not
a fine in our team. That’s a straight up kicked off the team, I swear. The sacred rule.
Sean Swetnam
Yeah, so there’s, you know, the things
that I talked to you and my dad played, ⁓ you know, baseball and basketball at the University of So I explained these things to him. they’re so, he doesn’t get them because like a lot of the stuff he was just, you know, focused on what he was doing. Like, you don’t understand like as a coach, like we’re dealing with young adults. Again, they’re young and impressionable. I call them kids sometimes. I don’t like using that term anymore, but ⁓ my dad calls them kids. So it’s conversational.
But like we mentioned before, with the six year stuff now and the guys and whatever the rules are, there’s no rules, right? Let’s just go with that. We get guys who 25 years old and that’s scientifically when the prefrontal cortex has been fully developed, right? And we’re like, I’m just test driving this thing now. I just got this thing. What are we doing? What is this? So foresight is huge. A lot of guys just don’t have that skill. And that’s where the, speaking of soft skills are huge.
Connor Agnew
Some would say.
Yeah, no, absolutely. I think soft skills make the ultimate difference, know, especially with what you’re trying to do and why you get into the strength and conditioning, which is helping athletes transition and have a positive experience of going into kind of the real world post-athletics. Like you have to be able to know how to speak with them. But the biggest way to communicate is by having a really good relationship built via those soft skills on the front end.
Sean Swetnam
No doubt, and like going back to the intern situation, we had a lot of interns that are undergrad too, or some that are local, and they don’t know, some of them don’t know if they want to do strength conditioning or athletic performance or athletic training or what they want to get into, but we still try to give them the skills to be able to approach someone, ask them what they’re doing, have a conversation while still getting work done, situational awareness, just being able to read the room. Like all those skills are just, know, I mean even coaching, I know that’s more about.
coaching specific thing, like if you’re going to use that like in any profession, you would probably think that would be important or critical within the range of, know, just trying to be a human afterwards and being successful at any level.
Connor Agnew
Yeah.
Well, you know, it’s funny. actually I’m glad you guys bring people in and try to teach them more skills. I just spoke to a exercise science class two days ago and I told them that, you know, they can come shadow anytime. And anybody here has that open invitation with their curious about strength and conditioning. But you can definitely not intern unless you want to be a strength and conditioning coach. I’ve officially set that rule for myself because I’ve had a few too many interns discover about halfway through the semester that this is not necessarily what they want to do.
Sean Swetnam
Like, no, ⁓ no, this is not it, this is not, this is not it.
Connor Agnew
Yeah. great. Well, you’re still
stuck with me for another six weeks here, brother. So let’s enjoy the time we’ve got together. Yeah, exactly. This is actually a great lesson for you in the future. You have to finish this out because I rely on you. So ⁓ well, you know, something you can identify with that you mentioned earlier was, you know, your coach getting fired early on, especially within a season, it can be extremely challenging and especially from
Sean Swetnam
Yeah. Yeah, under understand commitment because you’re an adult now, right?
Thanks.
Connor Agnew
the psychological standpoint, like obviously, you know, people understand, you know, there’s the challenges of, well, you know, the players might end up transferring out at the end of the year or coaches may not have their jobs at the end of the year. Like those things can be very, very draining, but I feel like there’s other certain challenges that you don’t even necessarily think of. Like who was going to step up and going to be the leaders, like who are going to be the ones who convinced us and the rest of the guys that, Hey, it’s a great idea to keep pushing and try to give everything that we can.
What was that experience like for you and what were the lessons that you took from it?
Sean Swetnam
When someone puts their faith or like their monetary value behind you and bring you from your hometown to LA or whatever the school is and they trust you to do well and perform and they’re going to develop you and then that person is removed from set space. It’s very difficult and hard on the guys, right? So the first thing was, you know, first thing coach Neier said and ⁓ Chad Smith said, we all love the guys up. Just love them up. Just be soft with them. Right. Go back to that word soft. just be soft with them. Like the guys are hurting.
Guys were devastated when they were told that. And then like me, like spanning that time of having three head coaches in one calendar year, going from Clay Helden to Coach Dante who took over to Coach Lincoln Riley, it was very difficult to understand like, hey, like nobody, do you really want to lift in week eight or week nine? Like when your body’s beat up and we’re not really going to be bowl eligible possibly. ⁓ like, who knows what’s going on right now? Like for the most part, it’s like.
If we can do one thing and again, the mastery of Corey Miller as our head, Srinath Gochi, our director of football performance at UCLA, is be the most stable, you know, portion of their day. Be the most stable ⁓ and most coherent, most communicative group to provide some stability in the day, which, you know, besides classes outside, but when you come in, because you’re, you’re at that institution for football, right? We joke about this and, you know, it’s
It’s always, you know, student first and an athlete second. Right. Um, and, and, and like the joke behind that is like, they’re here for that. And if we’re going to be able to provide them that service, we want to make sure that we’re not high one day and then low the next day. And we’re really loud and energetic, but the next day we’re kind of flat. Now, if we’re doing a recovery, like we did today on Wednesday, we want to be a little even key. want to kind of drop the tonality and make sure that they’re in a down regulated state.
That being said, somebody talked about Jordan, Kobe, and some other stuff, and Shaq, and now we’re having a conversation. You guys are throwing fumble over at each other in the weight room and whatnot. But they feel open and able to have that conversation in front of our coaches and ask us and get us involved. And they’re really animated, and I wish they were that animated about academics, ⁓ Books and ball, I’m just kidding. ⁓
Connor Agnew
Yeah
Sean Swetnam
The idea there is like, just no matter what, I don’t know what these guys are going through. We’ve had some, you know, over the years, you know, some stuff where a guy has to go home for a family member or this or that, or some things are going on. Like they’re human too. And they have obligations outside of here ⁓ that are not just, you know, aligned with, just ball the ball up and let’s see what happens. So, ensuring that- What’s up, coach? So, everyone just feels free and open to, you know, say it like it’s great. So-
Connor Agnew
That
is, I think you set that up because that was a perfect example of what the culture you’re trying to develop there.
Sean Swetnam
That was, that was so
we want to be player, player ran, right? And we want to be player led and coach Foster does an amazing job of setting the parameters for that. And then coach Tesso comes in here with, with his, know, they just got done a big lift. You know, I’m, taking today off. so I have to live tomorrow or I’m on the fine board. have a board. So when recruits come in, like we have a space and it says like coach, sweat elevator on the state elevator on this state elevator on this state.
Connor Agnew
Yeah
Sean Swetnam
Right. Then it’s coach Miller, not training, not training. And then coach Brasher misinformation is another one is a funny one. Or misinformation was always funny. again, allowing the space to just have some fun and just like be a person in between the stuff. Like when you put the pads on, like, yeah, we got to go. You know, we’re we’re still going to, you know, be as brutal as we can, you know, with the opposing team and impose our will and be physical. But we’re going to do it in a way that’s, know.
The UCLA way of like our standards, our Drey standards, our discipline, respect and enthusiasm, enthusiasm is a cute piece of that. You can be as disciplined as you want. You need all three of those pillars. You can be as disciplined as you want, do everything right way. And just not have any fun or do anything in the matter which excites you. You can be too enthusiastic and not disciplined and be loose. every time one guy goes in, might as well just welcome back, push him back 10 yards, because that’s already two flags for false starts or what have you.
Connor Agnew
Hmm.
Sean Swetnam
The respect of the game means I had to have a balance. I had to be enthusiastic, but I had to be disciplined. I had to be highly disciplined in certain situations, enthusiastic in others. And I have to respect what’s going on in the school that we came before us. And Coach Walsh does a great job of emitting those pillars to the guys. Our job is to echo that and make sure that within this realm on campus and Walsherman.
And then around Westwood and anywhere they go that it’s easy for them to continue to make choices that are, you know, from Dre as opposed to being impulsive, you know, under under 25 year old guys, you know, with that prefrontal cortex, who keep mentioning, right.
Connor Agnew
Well, okay, so I’m curious, how do you keep that kind of human aspect of the forefront? Because I think it’s the best way to coach athletes 100%, but it can be difficult sometimes too, especially when it gets to late season. And, you know, I mean, we’ve been there before where it’s tight at the end of the season for a conference title race and certain guys aren’t taking care of business the way they need to. Or, you know, you may in the off season be worried about what the results are going to be upcoming, like
At the end of the day, there is a true statement to collegiate athletics and that’s if you win or lose, like that’s going to determine your availability to be, ⁓ continue to be employed to the university or not. And so how do you kind of keep the human at the forefront on the micro level, like from the day to day.
Sean Swetnam
Yeah, so I want to preface that and qualify that exact sentiment by saying we have all this technology of vault with our board on Monday to make sure that their hamstrings and their asymmetry is, you know, decent enough to go into Tuesday, which is our, you know, our green day or like, let it rip day, right? Longer practices, full pads. ⁓ we have our kind of movement job, you know, to make sure that we’re getting our good heights and,
All the metrics that go with our force deck or our whole suite through bald, right? To make sure that after practice, we do our CMJ and we lift, you know, we make sure that they’re in a good spot. On Thursday, we do our drop jump from 12 inches to make sure that there are RSI is good. And we talk about all the things, you know, within the force deck, you know, that are, that are privy to coach Bradstreet does a tremendous job as our sports scientists. are Tony Stark and then our match day plus one. on our Sunday, we are doing our thermal human, which is our
are set up with our infrared thermography and we can see what their hotspots are the day after. We’re thinking about doing a grip test to see where the CNS is. ⁓ All these things are indicators of state readiness, fatigue. ⁓ But if you really know someone and you’ve had conversations with them and it’s difficult when you have 120 guys, now 105 or whatever it is, but there’s time to carve out conversations and things are in training. If you find out certain things about certain guys, like I like to know.
one to two, maybe three things that typically a guy wouldn’t know about a certain other guy. I like to know that this guy back home, he likes to eat checkers. And I’ve had checkers before, that’s pretty good. That’s a pretty kind of niche place in terms of where we’re at in California. Being from Maryland, this guy being from South Carolina. knowing little things, it’s easier, hey man, no way you’re getting any checkers. I’m bringing checkers for you tomorrow if you’re gonna be, you know.
not pushing hard on this, know, IMTP or whatever it is. Right, so I’m kind of like get into a little bit of having fun conversation with guys and understanding that, you know, all that testing protocol and the whole vault suite to bring up that like, I should already know if a guy’s gonna be doing well or not. Now I’m just statistically qualifying where they’re at during that space and time, if they’re on the hot list or not, and whether or not they’re gonna be at their best. You can kind of know something’s up if you just pay attention a little bit, you know.
to the psychological slash human aspect of it. Or you can just be completely unaware and just look at the numbers and be informed with data and have that drive you as opposed to being able to manipulate that during the times and understand him and this guy, he needs to do some activation before he needs to get into, we have a relationship with a nearby recovery place, he needs to go into that float tank for 45 minutes, because they say that of sets up like four hours of sleep is what they do.
the equivalent is, right? So maybe he needs to go float in some salt, maybe he needs to go to some cryo, maybe he just needs like, let’s go sit him down, let’s have position coach if we need to, but hey, let’s hit him first with something quick and then just kind of see, hey, like, let’s make sure, or even, hey, let’s bypass that, let’s go talk to position coach. Has he been good in film? Like, what’s going on with, know, what’s he on tape right now? Is everything good? Is he a little bit off where we at? So I shouldn’t know, you know, maybe that’s like the second or third, you know, step is all the.
Statistical driven stuff all the data that we’re getting collecting before we analyze it of where they’re at I should already kind of know he’s not flying right thumbs up. So Having you know informal conversations is know, they want to say hey, what’s going on? Got my own load on something or hey now what’s going on? And I’m good No, no, no, don’t say that because I just saw you jump 12 inches on that on that thing CMJ and your norboard has a 20 % asymmetry Even though your power is so good. You feeling something like let’s you know, or maybe hey
We take the scan of the thermohuman and we say like, you know, maybe like a quad is a little bit, you know, discolored and let’s say it’s a CNS thing. Hey man, you gotta go get some sleep. Like what’s going on? Your quad’s bothering you, whatever. Oh yeah, I’ve been place holding a lot this week or, know, I got a helmet to the quad, whatever. Like, no wonder your numbers are down on this end. Right. Doing okay. Yeah, it’s tough. You know, I got to play on the other side this week. I’m not used to it. It’s, it’s been rough, you know? So there are some things we can kind of get into and have the conversations and I like.
again, player led. like, I’m, I tell this to Bradshaw all the time, like, we’re always investigating what’s going on, but data helps us investigate and get clues. We’re not here to make presuppositions of like, what is actually happening, right? If we’re assuming that we’re already, you know, in the hole too deep. So to understand, you know, where the guys are and where they’re coming from and a little bit of their background or, you know, what they’re into, and guys are wearing animation shirts now, and that’s like fun too. And then kind of like pick apart that and like look stuff up now and have some fun with them.
or like different things they’re saying and whatever the colloquial terms are. You can really dive and take your shovel and really dig as much as you want to, because that lets you, they wanna have some fun. They’re still dudes at the end of the day. They wanna have some fun, they wanna do well. And they want their face on the board with the crown. If they win the CMJ and they win the drop jumper height and speed, there’s a speed threshold minimum they gotta hit for those.
they get the crown on top, right? So they all want that. They’re not worried about the strongest brewing where they have the more board, right? So investigate, let them lead the conversation. this might, talking to a couple of other coaches as well, it might sound like, I’m trying to get some information out of you or I’m investigating. You don’t want to make it feel like you’re cross-examining a guy and you’re sitting at a table with a light in their face, asking where they were the night of the whatever. So you really have to just, know, just
Just be there, just be in that same space with them and just understand like, man, we’re trying to have some fun too. Like I’m trying to win too. I know I’m not wearing pads and I know I’m going out there with you, but like, come on, I want to have some fun too. Like, let me have a little bit of fun. What’s going on? You know?
Connor Agnew
Yeah, that background information makes a huge difference. Like it just makes those conversations so much easier. Like we, you know, I can literally think of, have a weight loss guy, you know, he’s, been maintaining his weight for, I mean, over a year now. And then I saw it slowly start creeping back up. ⁓ And I noticed, you know, I mean, I’m not talking anything drastic, but I also noticed is that by the same time they started dating his new girlfriend, right. And so I know this about him because he’s open with the information with me, but like,
Sean Swetnam
Baby, come on.
Hmm.
Connor Agnew
It makes it way easier to have that conversation because all I had to say was like, Hey man, when I started dating my fiance, you know, I gained about 20 pounds because we were going to cook out all the time and having fun and going on sushi dates and doing all this stuff. Like, you know, that’s just something you need to be aware of because I know you’ve been taking your girlfriend out to, you know, Betty’s biscuits or whatever it is because you got an NIL deal with them, you know, so like just be aware of those things. And like, that just makes those conversations so much easier. And I feel like it allows you to address things before they get.
Sean Swetnam
Mm-hmm. ⁓
Connor Agnew
out of control. And then it just allows the athlete to be a little bit more open with you as well too. Cause they know that, like you said, you’re not treating them like a robot. You’re not treating them like you’re cross examining them and you’re trying to find out something and say like, gotcha. You know, like we figured out what the problem is and it’s a problem with you. know, instead it’s like a, this coach cares about me and wants to see me succeed. And like you said, he wants to win too. So let’s help him out.
Sean Swetnam
Yeah, it’s one of those things where it’s like, know you’re doing something wrong. And I know this, this is the outcome of that. And it’s like, Hey, Connor, don’t do that. What’s the first thing you’re to do? Right? Like instinctively, it’s like, dude, I’m not, I’m not listening to you, man. I’m going to double down and like, you know, I’m going to, I’m going to do that. And, you know, expedite that as quickly as I can, just in spite of that now. Right? So it’s kind of one of those things where some of the conversations have been, Hey, like you’re doing something and we’re seeing this result. Like,
Connor Agnew
Yeah. Go straight to do, I’m going to do it right away.
Yeah.
Sean Swetnam
Let’s stream like if you were to be a month from now and talk to yourself right now like what advice would you give yourself or like a week from now or like three days from now after this whatever happened right whatever the incident is or the the micro incidents that that cause whatever this conversation is right so it’s like about two years from now are you are you in pro ball right now are you playing somewhere like are you playing with uh what practice clothes are you wearing right now and what do you like what game are you are you throwing to your like younger self understand that and try to take yourself out of it by
you know, kind of using yourself in the future of where you want to be. Have you thought about like where you want to be? I want to go to the NFL. That’s great. Everyone does. I want to go to the NFL. I haven’t gotten drafted in 15 years now. That just just went by, right? But I’m not going to be I want to make it there anytime soon. Playing, right? So I’m not going to be in pads. I have zero experience in that. So, you know, take yourself where you, know, whatever you see yourself, whatever, again, time, wherever that is, try to understand like what the conversation would be like or like what kind of questions would you be asking yourself if like it was the other way around?
So it’s not like you older telling you younger, you know what the deal is, even though it might, the gap might be a month from now. It’s what questions are you asking that person? Hey, did this go well? Hey, did I get through this? Hey, how did I strategically whatever? And I think that’s been a good tool in terms of just like kind of, hey, you’re doing something wrong. Finger point, finger point, finger point. You’re doing something wrong. This is what’s gonna happen. Don’t do that anymore. We’re gonna, you know, we’re gonna find you or whatever the spiel is, right? Wherever you are. So that’s much.
better than having that conversation like, man, you’re not doing, you’re not living right. You need to be here or hey man, like you missed a meal. What you gotta do? We got this, this and that, right? So that allows them to kind of open up. It’s like, yeah, I know, I know. And then after that, we probably see like, hey man, know we talked about it I was doing good and that kind of back.
These guys don’t need new information. They need to be referenced to standards like over and over. They need reminders and to be reminded because there’s so many different things going on with meetings, classes, external stuff, right? Family and whoever else ⁓ is in their social circle as well as just like interacting with their own team outside of their position group within their position group. There are so many lenses that we’re looking through that things get distorted after a certain amount of time. So removing themselves from that equation sometimes.
or kind of distancing themselves with some time and then having the conversation with the back is like super helpful. It’s like reverse engineer this thing. Like, what does it look like? Where are you? You don’t have to close your eyes. I’m not gonna get woo with you. But do understand that like you wanna be somewhere and you’re not working towards that right now. You just told me you wanted to be here. Like funny example, I can joke about it now, but like you’re on the shade room. I don’t even know how that worked out. I didn’t even know that was a thing. Now I know that’s a thing.
And the dude’s been absolutely a hammer ever since. So we want to make sure that these guys are taken care of and they’re protected as much as we can. But again, going back to the term soft, like we have to have those soft skills where we actually have a conversation with somebody and they’re not just bullshitting us or just giving us information that’s here or there and just not important or they kind of just scoff and don’t really open up.
Connor Agnew
I think that’s an incredibly valuable tool. haven’t really heard of that that much because if I were to go out in our lift later today and I was going to say, who here wants to go to the NBA? Everybody’s raising their hand, including my GA in the back. They’re all going to be excited about it, but ultimately when you make it specific, it allows it to be a little bit more realistic for them. And then actually tying it back into, okay, well, do those actions match?
Sean Swetnam
Right. Right.
Connor Agnew
what you’re doing right now, does those actions match where you want to be? And would that allow you to get to where you want to be? And I think, like you said, it is very important to give your athletes reminders because there are so many distractions. And it’s just, it’s very, very interesting. I would almost relate it to like asking like a sophomore, you know, what do you think as ⁓ a senior captain, you would be saying to yourself right now? You know, what would, how would you approach those conversations? And because they’re all smart, like they all know these things. It’s not like,
You know, they are, you know, I knew when I was 19 that not going to class was probably not a good idea, right? But I still didn’t go to class. But if I had told myself now, you know, if I had the opportunity to talk to myself when I was 19, Hey, you should probably go to class more. I probably would have listened a little bit more to like all these athletes know these things. They know what it takes to get there, but it’s just hard for them to kind of fall through on it. So I love that simple reminder because it is simple, but it’s just a quick way to check them and say, you’re probably not matching.
what you need to be doing right now to actually be successful and get to where you want to be.
Sean Swetnam
Yeah, the most critical part about that, think, is we are mandated reporters, That was like professionals within the collegiate sector, but to mistrust them would or to abuse that trust would be to talk about what they’re talking about openly, right? And I’m not saying like we’re stinching on stuff, but like to use information against them or to use what they’ve given you as some kind of like ploy in a different way can, you know, definitely, you know, ruin a relationship. It takes so much to build trust with somebody and build rapport.
Connor Agnew
Yep.
Sean Swetnam
And it takes one little instance or one little aggression to lose all of it immediately. Right. I mean, I know when I was, man, I was in college, I talked to the academic advisor and I appealed to take extra credits. So I would sign up for the same. I got an econ, I got an econ degree in economics degree. Right. So it’s like, what am I doing? I have no idea what I’m doing. Like my, my first, ⁓ my freshman year, it was, it was finance. And then I transferred to a,
community college and the closest thing they had to finance was accounting. I got my, you know, AS there. And then when I transferred to UMBC, the closest thing they had to finance or accounting was economics. I’m like, this is a behavioral science, you guys. This is not the numbers that I’m used to dealing with. I’m good with numbers, right? This is not, this is not it. This is very difficult. So I appealed and what I would do was, they allowed me to take extra credits. So I would sign up for the same econ 405 or whatever the course was.
Connor Agnew
You
Sean Swetnam
with different professors and I would go to syllabus day and I would drop the class that had all the quizzes and exams, or sorry, all the quizzes and homeworks and like little projects and stuff. And I would only take the course with a professor that had a midterm and a final. And I would just not show up and I would get the book and I would figure it out and, you know, look at the syllabus and all the different things we reading and all the articles and stuff and try and figure it out. And yeah, I graduated at 2.57, you know, GPA. I’m not afraid to say that. I had to appeal to get into my master’s program and write a letter.
Right? So like I would like, I would like our guys not to have to deal with that, whether they’re getting a master’s degree or a one year certificate or whatever they’re doing, whatever they’re pursuing outside of their four year degree. ⁓ getting a degree from UCLA is a big deal. I mean, really emphasize that. understanding that there’s so many things going on. There’s so many distractions. and guess what? You’re in LA. Good luck.
Connor Agnew
Yeah, I had to write the letter of shame as well for my master’s program. My GPA was certainly not where it needed to be. I had a great, great GRE score. It was the only reason they looked at my application. But I certainly had to write a full letter that said, I promise you, I’ve changed my ways. So I understand that situation.
Sean Swetnam
Yeah.
Beautiful.
Yeah, and don’t
use that information I just told you to abuse the system like I did. Because I had a lot of days to just train and sleep and eat and just, you know, yeah, there was some anxiety and worry and there of course there was, but.
Connor Agnew
Yeah, you just gave the secret hack to all the student athletes listening to this right now. They just figured it out. Then they’re going to come back to me and they’re going to say, yeah, I graduated with a 2.6, even lower than Sean.
Sean Swetnam
Don’t do that. Don’t, don’t, don’t.
I was eligible and
I got after it.
Connor Agnew
That’s all that matters. Well, real quick, I do want to dive back into this fine system quickly. How much is the fine? A dollar? But that’s enough, seriously. So a dollar fine, what does the fine go towards? Is this like a group lunch or anything?
Sean Swetnam
just a dollar and then we kind of add it up over time and then we’re supposed to have like a cookout.
Yeah,
we do like a barbecue and we’ll cook out at the end and we’ll have a whole spiel. I did the math. I tried to break the system where with the elevator thing, there was a certain thing where somebody saw me in an elevator, but it wasn’t me because I came down the other way. There’s, you know, logistics and it turns into, you know, I feel like I’m playing gold nine on the N64 sometimes with, um, sniping people. And, um, I did the math. If I use the elevator two to three times a day for how many days I’m here per week for the entire portion of the year, I’m like, Oh, I’m definitely okay with paying that.
Connor Agnew
⁓
Sean Swetnam
And just like, like if, and, let’s say you catch me 80 % of the time that like lowers. Okay. Yeah. So I tried to break the game a little bit. I’m, I’m horrible. I try to break systems and that helps. You know, I, joke around with, ⁓ coach basher or director of sports science. I’m like, what, and, and as, as serious, you like trying to find the blind spots of what’s going on with our training and where we’re at and, the proponent of like testing and how much testing do we need to do? And we’re assessing this and we’re looking at that. Like how much do we like, I’m looking for blind spots and trying to break the system to understand, you know, what can we prove on? What can we.
Connor Agnew
Yeah.
Yeah, there’s…
Sean Swetnam
Mitigate and then how can we be as reductionist as possible also being effect right the minimum minimum effective dose? At a certain point. I was like yeah, here’s 20 bucks. This is for me for next week and this week, so right. It’s horrible. I’m horrible
Connor Agnew
And
what is misinformation? What would qualify as misinformation?
Sean Swetnam
So
we do like a lay of the land, one of our funnier ones, did a lay of the land. It was supposed to be raining at a certain point at the time of day. we go over, as a staff, go over, we’re playing on grass, what kind of grass, turf, what kind of grass, or what kind of turf, rather. Is it more bouncy? How many fans at a typical game? What’s the crowd noise like? All these external factors that we kind of look at and how can we influence practice leading up to that game?
And it was supposed to rain one day and did, you know, and turn into this, I guess, find or, or, hey, this guy didn’t weigh in, but he did weigh in, but somebody wrote it down as a wrong name or like these, you know, just little things or could be big. Um, you know, but it’s fun. And there’s some, there’s some other, there’s some other, you know, uh, finds that I can’t really discuss on air, you know, of, of, of just some stuff that you’re not supposed to be doing right in terms of.
Connor Agnew
I’m sure, I’m sure.
Yeah, I’m only
asking about the system because I’m going to implement it with myself and our interns here at RGA.
Sean Swetnam
It’s a good time.
It’s a good time. And a lot of stuff I can’t mention just has to be like, hey, somebody grabbed two boxes of lunch, right? So like, yeah, an angel food cake, you know, fine, driving too much dessert, you know, stuff like that. So it’s fun or not re-racking your bars, leaving stuff out is another one. Not having a stopwatch, not having a whistle on you at all times when there’s athletes with you and stuff like that. So there’s some seriousness to it. It’s a little bit of a kangaroo court, you know.
Connor Agnew
I
I can ⁓
there ya go.
Sean Swetnam
but it’s fun.
Connor Agnew
Well, I can promise you that truly, if you were to go number two on a bus, that’d be straight execution. I mean, that’s like the number one rule. Like we don’t, we don’t very clearly state rules a lot of the times, but that’s like the number one thing. Yeah. First time everybody gets on a bus is like, you absolutely cannot do that. Like there’s no possible way. Yeah. You’re getting dropped off at this cookout on the side of the road and then we’ll come pick you up on the way back. That’s it. That’s your punishment.
Sean Swetnam
Yeah, that’s.
guillotine immediately yeah that’s rough
Right. Yeah, man.
Connor Agnew
Well,
Sean, thank you so much for coming on, man. I really enjoyed it. ⁓ anybody who wants to follow you, what would be the best way to do that?
Sean Swetnam
I’m pretty I’m on Instagram. I just got a Twitter yesterday or an X. I just got one.
Connor Agnew
wow,
as the first ever account? That’s insane. Okay.
Sean Swetnam
Yeah, my wife’s a high school volleyball coach. want to watch the playoff games and have updates and
stuff, right? So I want to know what’s going on with her and her success. She also teaches Spanish at the high school. So I wanted to know what’s going on and there’s recruits and stuff. And I’ve been avoiding X as much as possible, but Instagram is the one I’m most on is ⁓ coach C-O-A-C-H, sweat S-W-E-A-T. So just coach sweat without the X-ray in there.
It’s easy to find me or you just search my name. But yeah, man, I’m decently responsive to coaches and DMs where I get a lot right now and I’m trying to get to everybody. But I’ve had coaches DM and we get on a phone call and just chop it up and have some fun and just kind of go over what they’re doing. And I’m always good with trying to push the profession forward. That’s all want to do.
Connor Agnew
I’m still astounded that X is generating new users, first time new users. never would have thought in my entire life that would happen.
Sean Swetnam
Right I Had um
I had snapchat when it came out right I figure what year that was but I had some somebody came out Deleted it because I just was you know just doing too much stuff Redownloaded it and there’s like filters and all kinds and it’s a snapchat is now. I got this is too much I believe it again I I act like I’m 90 but I’m not yeah
Connor Agnew
Yup.
Yeah, yeah.
You get overstimulated quickly.
Well, mean, seriously, you drove up their ad revenue by one customer, so that’s good for X. Well, thank you, Sean. I appreciate you greatly.
Sean Swetnam
There it is. There it is.
Thank you. Appreciate it.
